City Council Work Session Transcript – 11/12/2019 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 11/12/2019 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 11/12/2019 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. [9:08:15 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we have a quorum so we can begin. A cold day. We have some of our colleagues that will be late joining us. I think that the mayor pro tem said she would be here about 9:30ish. I think councilmember alter anticipated to be here at 10:30 or 11 in that time frame. The others we've either heard from and are going to be here about now. Councilmember harper-madison is not going to be with us today. Today is Tuesday, November 12th, 2019. It is 9:08, and this is our work session here in the boards and commissions room at city hall. I want to start by thanking the clerk's office who has -- which has managed to [9:09:16 AM] open us today and here on time after staying really late last night at the planning commission meeting. Heading home in not altogether great conditions and coming back today in not great conditions. To the clerk's office, everything in the office, I want to say thank you for going above and beyond. We're going to start today with a presentation on homelessness. So we can go and I think that we will lose Matt meleka at about 10:00, so we'll push this presentation forward and make sure that we hear from Matt before 10:00. >> Thank you, mayor. Good morning, Rodney Gonzalez, assistant city manager. Today's briefing is going to cover several topics. First we're going to go over the guided path pilot project update. We've been posting updates briefly to our website. [9:10:17 AM] Then we're going to bring up Matt meleka, as you mentioned, prayer, the director of ending homelessness coalition, to talk about the encampment strategy that we're talking about, using motels as immediate housing units. Then we'll have representatives from . Integral care, Ellen Richards and Darlene Biler to talk about integral care's role in providing. They are the local mental health authority. Then we will have director Ken snipes come up and talk about cleanup and storage and talk about an overview of the services in that regard and some recent changes to increase cleanups. Lori Harris is not with us this morning. She is out sick. So I'm going to go over the guided path pilot project. Just as a quick reminder to the public, Lori is still our permanent homeless strategy officer. We did indicate that she will be transitioning to a consultant role. That has not occurred yet, however she is still a permanent employee of the city of Austin and is our [9:11:18 AM] homeless strategy officer. As a reminder for the public, the guided path pilot project was developed by the homeless strategy office in concert with numerous city departments and external partner agencies. It was a strategy designed to address encampments outside of the Austin resource center for homelessness. There are three phases to the guided path pilot project. First is outreach and assessment. That was completed. Then service, engagement and referral. That has been mostly completed, but as you will see, the individuals that have been contacted we continue to refer them to various services across the community. And the third phase is sustain. And accountability, which is underway, and that includes monitoring by the Austin police department as well as cleanups in the area. As to the results, we had the pilot project underway for three weeks now, so you're seeing updates on October 28th, November 5th and then as of yesterday, November 11th. [9:12:18 AM] In terms of the number of individuals housed, nine of the 99 who have been contacted have been housed. Two were reunited with family members. 79 individuals have been enrolled or referred to enrollment to housing first programs. 23 have not been matched due to lack of resources. Just as a point of reference, we started with 24, so that number we hope to of course gradually reduce. And 13 have accepted respite care. So we've had some good success with guided path pilot project. I can't thank the city departments and our partner agencies enough for their support in the guided path pilot project. And next we'll bring up Matt meleka and we'll talk about utilizing motels as parts of our encampment strategy. >> Kitchen: Mayor, if I have a quick question should I ask now or wait? >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you wait and let's keep going and that way we will make sure that we have Matt out of here by 10:00. [9:13:20 AM] >> Mayor and council, you may remember called in previous memos and previous presentations on October 29th we talked about an encampment strategy that we want to move forward with. The key to the success of that encampment strategy is identifying immediate housing units that we can locate individuals to, and these would be low barrier or no barrier units in most cases. We believe that motels are the key to that immediate housing unit. This Thursday on council's agenda is an item for consideration for utilizing motels. You may recall, mayor and council, that previously we had talked about the south Austin housing center. There are a number of reasons why we want to use motels. They're both the same strategy, but the motels have an immediate aspect to them in that we can use them right away and what we're bringing forward is a partnership with echo. Echo is aligning various community partners, [9:14:20 AM] philanthropists, if you will, to help support the operations and maintenance and to stand these facilities up. The motel that we're looking at is in south Austin. It's approximately oltorf and 35. It would be 87 units, I believe. It is our intention, of course, that this is the start of that process and we would continue to, of course, make acquisitions like this in the near future. I'm going to turn it over to Matt so that way he can explain more about the encampment strategy, in particular utilizing motels as immediate housing units. Something that Matt has done successfully in Denver as well. >> Thanks, Rodney. Good morning, council. So I'm happy to provide a shortover view and then answer any questions that you may have. So one thing that's been consistent when we've talked to people experiencing homelessness in a lot of the camps around Austin was their desire to be inside. And we asked specifically about hotels as a gateway and a pathway to providing [9:15:22 AM] shelter and support to those folks. And we almost unanimously, 100% of the folks that we positive to, said they would take a hotel room and hotels are preferable for them from a privacy perspective and a space perspective in terms of getting inside. This -- as Rodney said, this strategy I've used throughout my career in San Francisco and in Denver. We've used it on -- to provide immediate an increase in the housing stock in certain communities. So, you know, there's a lot of other ways that communities have gone about purchasing new units to provide permanent supportive housing or interim or bridge housing like we're talking about. Hotels are one strategy that doesn't cannibalize existing housing stock, so we're not buying or purchasing an apartment complex that might otherwise be affordable for folks that provide income -- provide rents that are low or that have voucher holders [9:16:24 AM] in there already. They're new units and new housing stock that didn't exist in community before and it's a way, it's a very well established strategy across the country. I'm happy to answer any questions or talk a little more about sort of how -- what our strategy to attack this acquisition is. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann. >> Kitchen: Thank you. So I really appreciate the work that echo is doing in partnership with the city and with many others. And so having the benefit of what you've seen in other places is very helpful. So it makes a lot of sense to use motels. They're already configured in a way that you don't have to change the building. That alone is very useful, I think. So let me just ask a few questions. So you know, we talked a lot about -- I'm not sure if I'm going to use the same terms that you think of it, but we've talked in terms of [9:17:28 AM] like a path to housing, a housing first, which I think is different, but basically what we've talked about is the importance of when we find places for people to say immediately that we also connect them to services so that they also have a path to more permanent housing, whatever that is for them. So when you are thinking in terms of standing up these motels as a place for people to stay, talk to me about what you're thinking in terms of that connection to more permanent housing and to social services or health care or other services like that. >> Sure. So I think, you know, crucial to the success of something like this is the supportive services that can be provided in the physical location of the hotel. So I think there are some very critical services that are needed for folks experiencing homelessness that are in vulnerable situations coming off the street. Mainly we're looking to bring health care services, [9:18:28 AM] primary care, some specialty care, some psychiatric care to them. Case management, clinical case management, substance treatment counseling. All those things will be provided on-site for folks experiencing homelessness there. So the idea would be that we would be able to set up an area and provide space there for service providers to come see people, see their clients there, bring them down to see primary care and get other services on the spot right there. And I also think it's important to recognize that we're going to provide this space for folks, the start on these 81 or 87 units, I'm not sure. I think it's 81 units, and folks will be able to stay there for as long as they desire to. And I think that's an important distinction to make. So if we have somebody there that's waiting for another resource and we're able to say here's a rapid rehousing voucher, hearing loss a permanent supportive housing voucher, let's get you [9:19:29 AM] stabilized, get you case management and move you back into the community, we'll be able to move somebody else in behind that person. There will be some percentage of folks, I don't know what number that will be, that will identify this hotel as what they think is a long-term solution to end their homelessness and we need to be allowable for that to be the case. We can turn those units into affordable housing units down the line, but what we've seen in other communities is average lengths of stays in projects like this are around 90 days so you can imagine if 80 folks are staying for an average of 90 days, then you're cycling about -- every room is being turned over four times. That's approximately 3 -- I'm doing math on the spot here, 320 households being served through this one hotel annually potentially. There's an impact there that can be really large and can scale up to serve lots of people experiencing homelessness in this community. I think another thing to be really clear about, which [9:20:30 AM] you mentioned, is we're going to be serving some of the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness in our community in these units. And the reason -- we're going to have very low barrier. We're not going to require any sort of background check for entry. We're not going to require any money upfront. We're not going to require a housing plan up on front. We're going to get people inside and then bring the supportive services to their front door, to their door, and everyday, over and over again. And ask are you ready now? You know, this is -- are you ready to engage in your health care and your primary care, in could you case management and offer those services to them in this case while they're healing and off the street. >> Kitchen: So you will be working on -- I'll just ask a few more questions and then let others. So you will be working with social service agencies in the community? >> Yeah. So echo is going to work to raise operating and service dollar funds for the first two years that the hotel [9:21:30 AM] will be in existence, like operating. And then it's the belief that we'll be able to then bring in revenue from other sources to operate the hotels long-term. So yeah, we'll be rfping out or requests for proposals to social service agencies to provide the types of services I listed before in those hotels. >> Kitchen: Okay. Then I just have two last questions for now then. So folks are referred to you -- folks will be referred and so they may be referred by social service folks, they may be part of the guided path kind of program or some other encampment response strategy program. So there are a range of ways in which they may come to this location, is that right? >> Yeah. I think we're going to -- one of the things we're -- obviously 81 units, 87 units, it's not enough to serve all the unsheltered population and people [9:22:30 AM] experiencing homelessness in this community. We're going to have to create very focused referral pathways that are easy to define for people in community for both the service providers and the people experiencing homelessness. How do you get referred into these programs? Because there won't be enough units to serve everyone that needs to be served or wants to be served through this mechanism. So I think that there will be a combination of people on our coordinated entry waitlist. This will a combination of people in the camps. It will be a combination of people in the shelter system that need this sort of service. So I think we're looking at a broad sort of wide range of referral pathways that will have to be defined. And I think we'll need to bring our community partners to the table to determine what some of those best pathways are. >> Kitchen: Okay. Last question then. So -- and this is for Rodney, I believe, perhaps. So I think I'm understanding [9:23:30 AM] that our staff is continuing to look for available motels, is that right? >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Can you speak to that a bit? >> Absolutely. And because there are real estate transactions tied to this, I we believe have an executive session item that we could also answer some questions in that regard. But obviously 81 units is a good number. We feel that we need more, though, to adequately address the total number of individuals experiencing you know sheltered homelessness in Austin. And so it's something that we are pursuing consistently. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. I'll have more questions later. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I have some questions. I'll start here and then pass it on. Hotel that we're thinking about that is up for consideration this week is one that's going to -- that the city would initially purchase this and then echo would operate it. I understand you'll bring in services, is that correct? >> Yes. >> Matt, does echo or you [9:24:32 AM] have any experience operating motels? >> Sure. So echo I don't believe has experience operating motels. I have experience in other communities operating these hotels at both the Colorado coalition for the homelessness and through our San Francisco department of public health, direct access to housing program in the city of -- in the city city of San Francisco there was a partnership between neighborhoods, the department of public health, the housing click and providers where single room occupancy hotels in the tenderloin that were being renovated and provided to people that were accessing the emergency services, mainly the housing health clinic through the San Francisco hospital. >> Mayor Adler: And you've had experience operating these and been successful? >> Yeah. What we found is this type of housing is -- has been [9:25:32 AM] identified by people experiencing homelessness as a desirable sort of transition off of the street. And they've been successful because they -- we take into account what people experiencing homelessness want in their housing situation and what they desire. So this time after time we operated one in Denver, Colorado called the gateway inn and suites and that was eventually overtime created -- was the actual hotel was torn down and 112 units of permanent supportive housing was built on the site. Beautiful units for families and individuals. So yes, we've done this in many communities. It's been done across the country in communities I haven't been a part of and it is a successful homeless response strategy. >> Mayor Adler: Is there an estimate on how quickly we would be able to stand up this particular motel? >> Sure. So as far as the contracting goes, once it's bought and [9:26:33 AM] the city takes over ownership, I think, you know, in the days and weeks leading up to that we're going to have to look at -- because it is a hotel, who is staying there and how -- what kind of reservations are pushed for you a period of time, if we can accommodate folks and if they can find other accommodations for that. But I think, you know, it has an immediate impact. The units are ready for occupancy and until the money is raised to have it run smoothly and fluidly through echo, I believe, and I'd imagine after talking to service providers in the community, there would still be a desire to use the space for folks who are in existing programs that R. Homeless on the street experiencing homelessness. So I think we have integral care here today but after talking with caritas, front steps, integral care, there are people that could access these spaces immediately. And services connected to them to be able to provide it in the space. So I think that it's an immediate impact. [9:27:34 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Since we are in a diligence period of time and getting ready to go, since we're exploring using the rooms now to a degree that we can I think is important. We continue to look at other motels and I think that that's a really good thing. And to the degree that web we are able tow do that. In addition to the motels, we have some people that are not as challenging, sometimes to find places for that can more readily move into apartments or into other rapid rehousing situations. Are we continuing to do that? Who is leading the effort on continuing to increase those numbers? >> Yeah. So it's an important thing to mention is that this -- these hotels aren't -- bringing the hotel units on, aren't creating -- it's not happening in a vacuum. [9:28:35 AM] These things are all being built into the homeless response system. We're still housing folks. Since our coc funds, our continuum of care dollars, federal dollars, into our rapid rehousing programs. The city dollars are in the guided path pilot project. Rodney provided an update into that project earlier. Folks are still being housed through those means now and that won't stop while we wait for -- while we bring in the hotels into the fold. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. You talk about the cost. There's a cost to purchase it. I guess we would have to look and see if there's a cost to renovate and just to daylight, there's some discussion about if this -- some of these units would be long-term permanent supportive housing, bringing in kind of a kitchen aspect to it. Could you talk about that for a second? >> Sure. [9:29:36 AM] I don't believe that there's any cost to renovate to move in immediately for the bridge housing purposes. As we look down the line to create permanent supportive housing out of these units, one of the things that's needed, that will be needed, is a sink -- and this is a very sort of technical thing, but a sink in the kitchenette area because in order to use housing vouchers, federal dollars, for this, you can't have only one sink in the bathroom. You can't wash your dishes in a bathroom sink. That doesn't pass what's called a housing quality inspection standard. So hqs inspections. So they must -- we'll have to put sinks, little kitchenette sinks into the refrigerators and microwaves in the units in order to use housing vouchers which long-term will be used to pay the operating dollars to stand up the hotel free of needing to raise that money. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. And we had talked about the [9:30:37 AM] people that would be able to take advantage of the opportunity and this property would -- those would be people that were then referred by echo or social service agencies or come off the priority list or the guided path project list as opposed to people just walking up and showing up and asking to come in. >> Yeah. So we'll -- you won't be accessing the hotel at the site. The referral pathways for access into the units will be -- will need to be established by the -- really echo would be listening to the service providers around what some of the best ways to allow for those referrals to come through and where are some of the best ways to get referrals. I also think we've seen over time that -- and in other cities, in other communities, that this is a good opportunity to really engage some other institutions, whether it be the health care institution, [9:31:38 AM] the criminal justice institution, around being able to discharge folks immediately into housing instead of having them discharged to the street and utilize their emergency rooms or emergency services over and over again or hit the jail systems over and over again. So I think as we start to scale this up there will be some engagement needed. We will -- echo will be engaging those systems and we are creating jobs within our organization to engage those systems on hopefully paying for beds in some of these hotels to stand up the operating costs long-term so they can have spaces to discharge folks to who are experiencing homelessness and are utilizing their systems on a high level. So there will be a lot of different referral pathways. Some come from the service providers, some from larger institutions, some will come from the coordinated entry system. And I think that those -- the variety of referral pathways is crucial to being able to operate these [9:32:39 AM] long-term in a flexible way that allows us to meet the need of people experiencing homelessness in our community. >> Mayor Adler: So unless and until there's a better option and a better geography, one of the things you will be taking a look at is whether we could create, say, respite bed or opportunities. >> Yeah are, I think respite has been identified as a need by a lot of service providers and the health care institutions in our community as something that we could really use more of. And I think the -- that hotels are used as respite in other communities. They work really well. Phoenix has a great model for that and there are others that have used motel R. Hotels and motels as respite. >> Mayor Adler: And I understand and recall that from the ordinance that the city council passed there's the opportunity or at least the allowance for the city manager to identify an area around a facility like this to help ensure that they're [9:33:40 AM] not seen or perceived as being difficult in an environment. And I would hope that you would be advising -- among the group advising the manager on making that decision at his discretion. >> And also in Denver, Colorado and the last time -- the last space that this was done was in a quality in suites in Stapleton. If people are family with Stapleton. In a neighborhood is a very well established, new neighborhood now. There isn't a lot of permanent supportive housing happening there. And this was integrated smoothly into that community with no issue. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. And we -- the ordinance we passed and there was a set area that was defined around the arch and then there was an allowance on other shelters. Is this something that possibly could be considered? I guess you will take a look at your discretion and see whether or not it fits within that. Wrapping up here, the numbers that were given on the guided path, and while I have you here, I wanted to [9:34:40 AM] talk about numbers. And my hope is that you all are developing a dashboard that we can be looking at here weekly to be able to compare week to week that goes beyond these numbers. I'd be interested in knowing how we're doing on the coordinated entry waitlist. Are the people in that list going up, are we moving people off of that list so that this community on a week to week basis can compare numbers from one week to the next week? Which means also presenting the numbers in a form? I know that you've given us a memo on over the last couple of weeks. I don't know if we're getting another memo today because we had talked about finalizing the numbers on Friday, which would mean we would get a memo either yesterday or today. That would give us an update in each of those areas, but to get to some kind of regular reporting forum so that it's easier to compare where we are week to week, broader than this? >> Absolutely, mayor. And at the conclusion of all these briefings, we're going to open up the floor to general questions for each of our priority area leads. [9:35:43 AM] Lora Faust is here, she's our priority area lead for communications and she can talk to you about the work being done to create an initial dashboard on our website to do just what you're talking about. Not just the guided path information, but information that would come from echo. We've been talking about the more broader general information of number of individuals housed and served, et cetera, and posting that information weekly so that way community can see the good work that's being done not just by the city departments, but by our partner agencies. >> Mayor Adler: We could talk about that later, status and movement on that coordinated entry waitlist, the number of rooms that are available in the city and what kind of rooms they are kind of thing so we can keep track of that. I know that when we were successful with the veterans we were keeping track and soliciting apartment associations to help us and they were great partners on this, apartment managers were keeping track of the rooms going up. We were create the risk fund [9:36:44 AM] balance, even reporting on that dashboard what the balance was of the risk fund in case people wanted to participate and contribute to that. It might be another data point, but we can talk about that when that person comes up. The incomes overall is what -- the numbers overrule is what I want to -- overall is what I want to conclude with. We said we had housed or successful exited from homelessness I think 500 people since August. And it's really important for the community to see that while all these discussions are going on that the city and the service providers in this community are actively engaged in this work and continue to be. And that we're housing people or exiting people to the tune of about 170 people a month. But we were also doing that prior to August as well. But there's always going to be a limit to how many people we can exit until we start building a greater [9:37:44 AM] capacity at the end of the time. But the numbers are still not clear to the community. We had 2255 people in a point in time on one given day or night how many people were experiencing homelessness in shelters or not, but over the course of the year, my understanding is that there are about 7500 people that intersect with our system that may be showing up as experiencing homelessness and are housed or existed, and that -- exited, and that number would never show up because they entered homelessness and left homelessness at other periods of time. So there's a bigger number than 7500. And I understand there's another number that's like 12,000 or 14,000 of people. Can you talk about the numbers? >> So it's difficult. [9:38:45 AM] The point in time count, the annual count that hud occurs continuums of care in order to receive funding to better understand the homelessness from hud in communities. As you can imagine it's a physical count of people experiencing homelessness on one night in January and it relies on -- echo is in charge of that count, and it takes almost 80 volunteers that fan out across the city and have to physically count and get somebody to fill out a survey in order to be counted for the point in time counts. When you talk about 2250 people experiencing homelessness in our community on one night in January, the 24th I believe it was last year, that night being able to be found and be counted is a lot different than how many folks are experiencing homelessness in our community that are touching our coordinated entry system and are running tally of people experiencing homelessness throughout the year. So right now we have a list of folks in our coordinated [9:39:46 AM] entry system that is around 7500 people that are our coordinated entry system has identified in austin- travis county. That is obviously a larger number than what we were able to count in one night in January in terms of finding those folks and be able to physically count them. So the discrepancy there is we have folks on that coordinated entry list that hit that list at some point during the year that haven't resolved their homeless situation that we know of to date. And of course we don't have enough capacity in our community to track every single one of those 5500 people and exit them out of the homeless information system if they self resolve or haven't resolved through one of our housing programs. Right now the data, it's difficult to put your arms around exactly the number of people experiencing homelessness here in austin-travis county. It's my in opinion that it's closer to our coordinated entry system and not the point in time number. [9:40:46 AM] So I think we're somewhere between the 2250 and the 7500. And I think we're doing a better job of being able to count folks on the point in time level and getting people out of our coordinated entry system that are no longer homeless, experiencing homelessness. But those two things are difficult to manage when we have -- our service provider community is doing a lot of work with folks and are stretched pretty thin already. So that's the answer on the numbers. It's complicated and we need to be able to provide -- I think hud is moving away from using point in time count potentially as a way to count people experiencing homelessness in your community. I think there's some discussion that in the next year to two years that won'ting be something that's used to measure need in communities. And we will be using a by name coordinated entry list, which I think is a lot more effective and should help lessen the confusion in communities. And that is the hope. [9:41:48 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I want to say I'm real appreciative of staff and echo and everybody involved in trying to find the additional capacity in our system for housing and this motel strategy that we'll consider this week. I'm just really thankful to see it. My sense is that with this we begin to turn the corner on dealing with this challenge insofar as it's putting us on the right path to be able to increase capacity, which ultimately is something that we need. I think it would be helpful if you could take a look at the motel strategy and come back to the council and talk to us about how that number fits in context with what we're doing. I mean, are we looking to get 300 motel rooms or 500 motel rooms or 800 motel rooms? What is the capacity of our system, capacity of echo, capacity of -- what are we hoping for? What is the goal in this city so that the community [9:42:48 AM] knows what it is that we're trying to achieve over what period of time I think would be very helpful. >> Yeah. So echo is looking at putting together with help from the service provider community five -- potentially a three to five-year plan on what type of permanent supportive housing is needed in this community and how we can get to that number. >> Mayor Adler: And the last question, I promise, is what is the state is doing and with the chamber doing inconsistent with the strategy that we're focusing on here with the motels? >> So I think what the state is doing and what the chamber is doing is outside of where I would spend my first dollar in terms of if I was getting into this work or if I was starting to create or add on to the homeless response system. The state right now is just providing space for people to be. And if they've talked to people experiencing homelessness in the community and that's what they've identified as that [9:43:49 AM] they need, I think you will see people using that space. If they haven't talked with people experiencing homelessness or talked with service providers about whether or not this is something that will work for the community, then you will see that it won't be used -- >> Mayor Adler: What the state is doing, what the chamber is doing, is not inconsistent with the strategy. If someone wants to come off the streets and be in either of those locations, you know, it may be safer or healthier for someone to be there than to be out in a river or creek. It's not inconsistent with what it is that we're doing. >> No, I would agree with that. I think -- yes, I would agree with that. >> Mayor Adler: And providing the housing might actually make those more successful if people knew that they had the ability to go somewhere and they were going to be pulled out into a permanent supportive housing. >> I think what it doesn't do is address the long-term need for permanent supportive housing and as an answer to ending homelessness in our community, that's the difference is we're doing some emergency -- we're [9:44:49 AM] providing more emergency support for people through those mechanisms, but there is no flow for those people to exit that emergency support without more investment in permanent supportive housing options. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. Kathie and then Leslie. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. Apologies for coming in a bit late as maybe the mayor mentioned. I think the school delay is impacting several of us on the dais. I have some questions. As I understand we did the guided path pilot project update so I have a few questions about that first and then some about the motel. So these are cumulative numbers, I assume, but it was less clear to me whether individuals not matched due to lack of resources is also intended to be cumulative. Are we looking at 24 plus 23 plus 23 individuals or is the number 23? >> So the total of people enrolled for the 75 plus to 24, if you look at the [9:45:49 AM] October 28th column. So that's 79. There were I think three more people that have been enrolled since then, so now you're looking at 102 that have been enrolled. And of those numbers, 13 had accepted respite, nine were housed and two or three reunited with their families. The other information about the individuals that have enrolled, I think we're still trying to identify ultimately their path. But the numbers that we're looking at are those two rows that are individuals enrolled or referred to enrollment and individuals not managed by resources. >> Tovo: I see. Thank you for that explanation. What are some of the resources that are lacking? I assume housing is primary among them. Are there other resources that are lacking? >> Sure. Right now I think what you're looking at for not matched is either there's not enough capacity within the social service -- the service organizations to [9:46:49 AM] take on additional people experiencing homelessness so their caseloads are to the point where they're extended beyond -- you don't ever want to be extended beyond effectiveness, so if one case manager's effectiveness to serve and I'm making this up, is 20 individuals, and you try to enroll 25, well then the care of all the 20 individuals is compromised from that perspective. So there's some capacity on the case management and service provider end and there's also obvious capacity on the rental assistance, being able to provide the housing subsidy to people experiencing homelessness in that space. There's also a mismatch of resources that Laurie Harris talked about before around we're using some rapid rehousing dollars right now to serve people who need permanent supportive housing. So that's not something that's indicated in this charted, but that's also something to keep in mind. >> So that wouldn't be reflected in the 23, but it might be reflected in 79 or is that strictly -- are [9:47:51 AM] those individuals enrolled or referred to enrollment in housing first? >> Yeah. So the 23 individuals are ones that have not been identified for any case management resource or housing resource because of lack of resources. Within the 79 you have people enrolled in rapid rehousing projects that probably need or have been identified as needing permanent supportive housing as their intervention, so there's also a gap there that exists within the 79 that's not called out in the 23. If that makes sense. >> Tovo: Got it. So they may be -- they may not be . Referred to enrollment for housing first program. They may actually be receiving rapid rehousing dollars and be waiting for resources to be identified for housing first. >> Yeah. So the definition of the housing first program in this case is just that they've been -- like the housing first program is the case management resource they've been identified to have. And that comes along with a [9:48:52 AM] rental assistance subsidy that may or may not -- they might not have the funding to use the rental assistance within that 79, if that makes sense. They're being case managed, but there's not rental assistance funding behind it to house them if they're receiving case management. So you can still be in the case management service. I know that housing first service programs is a misnomer, we're not talking about rental assistance housing dollars. >> Tovo: I think we need more clarity around the 79. Among that 79 how many -- how many are enrolled and what kind of different -- to really understand the gap here I think we need to be provided with much more specificity around these numbers. >> And we have these numbers. I think it's a matter of how much information to provide updates. And it seems like more is better. So we should have that in. >> Tovo: I think as we consider what our next move needs to be, it seems clear that identification of additional resources is probably the next step, but [9:49:53 AM] we can't really -- I don't have any sense at this point of what the scale of that is. >> And it is our intention of course at the conclusion of -- I think after a few weeks of this to identify what those gaps are and to bring those forward and to find out whether or not it may be that we just need to redistribute or reallocate some of the resources to fill those gaps or if we need to seek council approval for those gaps that. Certainly is our intention after this to do that type of analysis. >> Tovo: What's your timeline on that? >> I'd have to talk to Laurie because a lot of it is we're still underway. It's week three of it. Right now we're focused on that third phase, which is sustain. And accountability. But we do intend of course to do an analysis of it. >> Tovo: So as I look at these numbers, are [9:51:17 AM] -- is there 102 who are still unhoused or is there some component of those that are in shelter now? >> If they were in shelter or enrolled in programs, you would see them as -- I'm sorry, if they were housed, whatever that -- the definition of that is, and I'm not sure. I can't speak to that because I think Laurie would be better to speak to that. I will say that I do know . That as you can see, the population outside of the arch has shrunk dramatically since the cleanups have occurred there. So I think there are some folks that were out in front of the arch that aren't anymore and that connection to their service provision might have been impacted by the cleanups outside of the arch. >> Tovo: So is it possible that some of the 79 are in shelter or would they appear in that first category? And if these are just questions we need to ask of Laurie, then that's fine, [9:52:17 AM] just help me understand kind of what the means of doing that is. >> Sorry. I can tell you for sure that that is a question for Laurie, but anyone who is -- that would have put in shelter would have hit our his system and we would have known they were in shelter in another housing program. If they're non-profit identified as being in a -- if they're not identified as being in a housing program on this chart, then they're not in housing. But this doesn't call out to me whether or not they're in shelter. I'm assuming that if they're not -- they're not in shelter or maybe they are in shelter, I'm not sure. I think that's a good question for Laurie. >> Tovo: All right, thank you. And so we know at least in that area that we have probably a good number of individuals in need of immediate shelter. And certainly that's the case elsewhere throughout the city. So I guess that brings me to my next question about the hotel option, which sounds like a very important one for our community. And again, unfortunately I missed kind of the lead into this and we'll have to go [9:53:18 AM] back to it. But with regard to -- I have some questions that probably are better for executive session so I'll save those, but with regard to this particular property, are there any -- I assume it probably has communal laundry. Does it have any kind of communal kitchens? At this point? >> I mean, I think that's a good question for the city real estate office. >> Absolutely. Every property is going to differ with regard to. -- With regard to this particular property I don't believe there's a communal kitchen available, but every property is different. >> Tovo: That's why I was asking about the one that we're potentially making a decision about this week. >> Alex scale is here from real estate and we can certainly get to those answers today or if council collectively has other questions specific to those properties we can do it at another time as well. >> Tovo: And so -- and I did have one more question. Where are the respite -- the individuals whore now in respite? Where are they in respite? [9:54:19 AM] What are our respite options at this point? >> I'd have to follow up with that response. >> Tovo: Okay, thank you. And so the part I'm not understanding completely, and I think you were addressing this, Mr. Meleka, as I came in. Today we -- this week we have the decision before us to move forward and potentially purchase a property. What is the next step with regard to potential operations? Would there be an rfp? What are the -- what are the steps for hiring someone to manage the project? >> Sure. So -- that's probably -- in terms of managing -- like how will the transition of the hotel be managed or would we get services to the hotel? >> Tovo: I assume our city staff would do the management of any kind of renovations that would be semester necessary and the actual transaction. What would be the process and what would be the [9:55:19 AM] timeline for the securing of an operator for that property and getting services in there? >> So the question is about the -- >> Tovo: The process and timeline for hiring somebody to operate the -- operate the facility and also the provision of services? >> Absolutely. So it's our intention, of course, that we do a long-term lease of the facility . Echo has offered to stand up and do that lease arrangement with us. What we would do of course should council decide on Thursday to move forward with the motel, we would have a due diligence period for the procurement of that motel. And in the interim then of course we would situate any type of long-term lease agreement or perhaps even operating services agreement. It's not unheard of. We've done that before with those other city facilities to non-profit non-profits. And echo at the beginning of this presentation, Matt had talked about should it be [9:56:21 AM] echo that he would then rfp for those direct services to be provided on-site. >> Tovo: Okay. So our next step then would be to lease the property to someone, potentially echo. Is there a process for making that decision or is it just the intention to lease it to echo? >> Right now it's the intention because they have stepped up in a very big way with funding the operations and the maintenance of these facilities. We've not been approached by any other organization to do that. >> Tovo: I missed that important piece. So the funding. Ongoing operations would be a financial obligation that echo is prepared at this point to take on? Or would you need to fundraise for it? >> We would need to fundraise for it, but we're willing to do that, yeah. >> Tovo: So what would be a time frame? What kind of time frame are you thinking of that you would have the funds necessary to operate it? >> So I think that we would be looking at trying to [9:57:21 AM] raise those funds within the 60 day due diligence period so we would be ready to operate as close to the end of those 60 days as possible. >> Tovo: What would be your expectations for fund-raising. Would you try to fundraise for a six-month period or -- >> Two years. >> Tovo: So you would undertake a campaign to fundraise for the maintenance and operations of this facility for a two-year period before the due diligence? >> So I believe that we need about a two-year period of unrestricted funds to operate this before we can make it operational using other funds that exist in the community already. So if we turn it into a permanent supportive housing operation and we're getting rent paid on these units, until we start charging rent for the units in a more like using housing vouchers or creating permanent supportive housing out of the space, I believe that it will take about two years. I think the community need is for this bridge sort of housing area for people to [9:58:23 AM] be in, and I think that we have a long-term need for that right now. And I think in two years hopefully we'll have more hotels or more units for people to move into online, but I think we need to raise operating funds for any hotel that comes online with the assumption that we need two years before we can start to charge rent for those spaces. And then once we charge rent for those spaces that will pay for the operating dollars to operate the space moving forward. >> Tovo: Thank you. Thanks for your participation in this. Manager, I want to really well understand kind of what the next steps are and what the arrangements are, and it's not terribly clear to me at this point to whom those questions should be directed, but I would ask that you maybe provide us with a memo really spelling out what the arrangement would be, what the expectation would be in terms of timeline and sort of whose responsibility it would be and what the decision points for the policymakers are. [9:59:24 AM] Thanks very much. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie. >> Pool: Yeah. Thanks for staff and for echo's work on all of this. A lot of the questions that I had, Kathie has already addressed. But let me ask this: Will echo or the city be the lead in enrolling people at the motel and directing people to the motel? >> Yeah. So echo will be the lead, but will work closely with the service providers in the community in establishing the referral pathways. Yeah, that will be an important part of this. >> Pool: And echo has been for how long the recipient of all of the hud homelessness -- aren't you the grant recipient and the applicant? >> We are. We're considered the continuum of care lead agency. And I believe it's been 13 years I want to say that that's -- but I'm new to Austin. I believe that's the case. >> Pool: So 13 years you've been the lead convener for effort in our city. Sometimes when not you, but [10:00:25 AM] echo, sometimes when people talk about the work we're doing for people who may be homeless, it sounds like the city is in charge of all of it, but in fact really the flow of funds and the organizational chart if you will has echo kind of up at the top, but then lots of partnerships with the various different agencies and non-profits throughout the city, is that correct? >> That's correct. I would say for the federal dollars we are the lead agency for the federal funds. We are not the lead agency for the city contracts. I would I want to be clear about that. >> Pool: But the city is a partner with echo in this larger organizational flow? >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Pool: Okay. So last question on the motel. When will it open? I was thinking that this was something that would happen pretty quickly, assuming this is approved on Thursday, but then I got a little bit -- then I started wondering about that when you talked about having two years' worth of financing in [10:01:25 AM] order to operate it and manage it. Do we have any idea for when it actually would open? >> In terms of for this purpose, for people experiencing homelessness, I think my hope is that there's going to be a 60 day due diligence period that occurs where the city is getting inspections done, working with the new -- the owner to ensure that the purchase is a sound purchase and that there's not anything -- I'm hoping that within that 60-day period echo will be able to raise the funds to immediately begin operations at the end of that 60-day period. I think the difficulty becomes not only do we have to raise the money, but we have to hire staff, we have to rfp out the service provision. So those things take some time. I think there will be a gap, there will be a period of time where we'll have access to the units and some of the service -- the people experiencing homelessness in the community that are already attached to service provisions might be the ones to access that space immediately or we might be able to get some health care -- we might be able to [10:02:26 AM] stand up a clinic in the space with our health care for the homeless folks here in Austin. And I think there's going to be a patchwork and like a mish-mash of resources going into this initially until we're age to stand up on -- we're able to stand up and begin operations through hiring, getting people in place to do that work. And rfping out the funds. >> Pool: Okay. I did read an article in the paper today that there are some folks who found a tent that the state erected on the eastside was actually kind of helpful in the frigid air that we got that was just untimely, but seemed kind of randomly appropriate. So it made me wonder because I know that we have not actually engaged in any real conversations with the state on what they are trying to do. Is that something that's on a to-do list maybe? >> Well, we've tried. We've certainly reached out to state on several occasions without response, [10:03:26 AM] so I want to make sure that it's not that we've ignored their -- the work that's happening on that front. >> Pool: So the nonresponsiveness is more on them not communicating back to your request for conversation. >> The Texas homeless network, the statewide organization that is sort of the convener of all of the continuums of care across the state is at the capitol now and trying to get a response from the governor's office and they've been trying for the rest -- this past week or more to try to get some response and get a meeting set up. -- And have been keeping in touch with echo as one of the coc's within the state that will be part of that conversation. >> Pool: That's great. I think it's really heartening to see a lot of different efforts out there. And if we can all just collaborate, even if it's only just a little bit, I think that's a real plus. And so then the second question I had, I have been [10:04:28 AM] asked just in informal and various conversations by people in community if there's a way that they can help. And they don't know themselves when I talk with folks exactly what that means to them. They don't know if the donation of how they help is time or money or resources. And I wasn't even sure who the single point of contact would be because I know that Oklahoma City co-is the lead -- echo is the lead convener in community, but the city also has its own operations. But these would be people who would want to volunteer or make contributions and the city isn't set up necessarily as nimbly as some other organizations. So should I refer folks to you or to downtown Austin alliance with their atx help initiative? Are we talking with atx help to combine those efforts? What kind of cross-collaboration do we have there? >> So the atx help group, so this point we've had some discussions with them, but [10:05:29 AM] we have no official collaboration in place with atx help. As far as how to donate to different service provider organizations or how that would look, typically -- which is similar in most communities, you would get in touch with say you wanted to make a donation to caritas or to integral care or to front steps, you would get in touch with them and they would tell you what they need as an organization, how you can best support their efforts. Echo as a convener, there has been some discussion of being able to create on our website links to various organizations and their funding or their campaigns for fund-raising or campaigns for maybe mittens, hats, gloves, boots, whatever the case may be, or financially that we need to raise money for this initiative. So I think echo's looking at putting something in place on our website that could navigate to other organizations and say this is how you donate to these [10:06:29 AM] different organizations and these different initiatives. >> Pool: I think that would be really helpful. Especially since people who generally are maybe just engaging with this issue may not know about all the different organizations that are in town so they wouldn't necessarily know to reach out. Or by the tame token if I could remember the list and I send it to them that might also be overwhelming. But if I could say go to echo, whatever your url is, and there would be on the main page a link to how you can engage and support and donate whatever it is you want to donate, then that might -- that would be really nicely organized. >> Yeah. We have a partner list up so that you can connect to our partners. But there's not a specific list saying these are the areas to donate to or how you can donate Nate to these organizations. So we're looking at building something like that out. >> Pool: Okay. And what is the address for y'all on the web? Is it echo.org. >> It's atxecho.org. >> Thank you. [10:07:32 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Greg? >> Casar: I just want to reemphasize a point that I think was earlier in the presentation. There have been some folks that have taken the eight million dollars for the hotel and divided it by 81 or 82 and said that that's how many people get helped, but as you emphasized earlier, this most likely would help hundreds of households every single year, understanding that some people might stay there longer or even long-term, and some people very short-term, but I just wanted to make sure for folks watching that in the operation of these and other places you would anticipate that there are folks that are coming in, getting stabilized, getting services, moving on to other types of housing and so you could help hundreds of families per year, is that right? >> Yeah. Yes, the belief is that this will help more than just the 80 plus -- the units will help more than just one person a year in each unit. I think like I said, we've seen in other cities and other communities average length of stay is around 90 days in these areas, in this sort of project type. [10:08:32 AM] I also think it's worth mentioning that every year that somebody -- every year that this hotel is in operation you're having and continually cutting that cost in half. So say you house somebody for two years in this space, the cost to the city then becomes that number divided by four instead of two or one D that make sense? >> Casar: Right. >> If it costs $100,000 for one year, it only costs $50,000 for two year because you're not consistently paying eight million dollars a year for that space. So if someone stays in that unit for four years, it's a quarter of the cost, the initial cost per door. That cost per door that you're paying for the unit doesn't change, it stays the same. You only P it once. And so -- >> Casar: We would own that property long-term. So you're talking about years' worth of help for those people. Many years of help for families. Because each room in some cases somebody might bring their spouse with them. >> Yeah. Sure, that's a great point. I think there may be [10:09:33 AM] scenarios where each unit is serving more than one person and we can expect that to be the case. >> Casar: And I appreciate manager and Rodney and everybody working on bringing this forward to us and on potentially bringing more options like this in the coming weeks and months. I think that this really goes to show the continued strategy of housing folks and actually getting to the root cause of the issue. And I think we need to maintain focus as we turn the corner here in the community. I think more and more folks are coming to see how the city has actually helped house hundreds of people in just the last 60 days and how we can help hundreds more through this action. I think this provides a level of hope. It can be proof of concept that we can expand our efforts and I think we just need to maintain focus as we turn the corner here. >> Thank you for that. And we appreciate the questions. We know that this is a new strategy that we're [10:10:33 AM] employing. We'll certainly come forward with more details, especially in responses to the questions that we've gotten here. I believe that it's a winning strategy and it truly is going to turn the corner in how we address homelessness in our community. And just to be clear with the council, we are pursuing the motels as a strategy. We won't be pursuing the south Austin housing center. This is, as we've indicated, a more immediate response and it's a true partnership between the city and its community partners in that they're coming to the table with funding of their own. You've heard me say this repeatedly that the city can't be the only funder of homelessness initiatives in our community. I think that's where echo is coming forward with reaching out to philanthropists and other partners in the community to bring forward dollars. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ann. >> Kitchen: Yes, thank you. So a couple of points that - - first off, I wanted to echo what councilmember tovo had said in terms of [10:11:35 AM] additional data with regards to what you're seeing with the guided path project. I'm excited about that project so I'm prepared to make sure that whatever -- that the council's role with regard to helping with resources that we step up to the plate for that because I think that the question about what is not matched due to lack of resources is something we need to drill down on and understand. And looking toward to a memo from you guys to tell us, you know, what in terms might be needed if there are additional resources needed. So there's that. As well as the memo about the additional details that councilmember tovo asked about how this would be operated. Then I would say I am excited about the motel strategy. I know that when we first began talking about the south Austin housing center, there was an effort to locate motels. And at that time there wasn't one available to pursue. So I'm excited now that it looks like that's opening [10:12:35 AM] up. That combined with the fact that the experience that echo and that Matt is bringing to the table, actually operating those, would be helpful. So I see, and I'm just kind of summing up what I think I'm hearing with regard to this strategy. This motel is part of a bigger strategy of looking into using motels as the best kind of -- best kind of physical resource for us to to -- us meaning the city, to invest in because it's actually more effective, more immediate and a better use of dollars for the city. That there's a referral process just as we've talked about before with regard to the south Austin housing center that involves working with the social services and echo and that kind of thing. And I would just add as an aside that I know we have to look at the appropriate processes you laid out and a range of things for referral. I'm hoping that we're also [10:13:35 AM] looking at folks that may be staying in south Austin because I think that was part of our thinking behind the south Austin housing center as being a resource for folks that are having to live outside in south Austin areas. And then as the mayor mentioned, we already have in place in the ordinance an approach for addressing areas around shelters. And I think it's really exciting the potential to have access to the units within that time period during which we're kicking the tires to purchase. You know, having access to those rooms, understanding that there needs to be a funding source for that. So to my mind what this is doing is actually providing the path to more quickly bringing -- more quickly and effectively from a cost standpoint doing what we've talked about with the south Austin housing center. So we're actually just have [10:14:36 AM] found a better location. And combined that better location with the path for future locations in looking at motels. So in that sense I hear your recommendation to not go forward with the actual location along Ben white, and I support that. I agree with that. Because I'm understanding that what we're talking about with the motel strategy is some things that I just talked about, it's part of a larger strategy and it is a potentially available at some point. For folks that are having to live outside in south Austin. Not all of it, but rooms may be available for those living outside. So, thank you. >> Did you want to respond? >> No, no. There was a question raised by council member pool about how [10:15:36 AM] individuals can help. I also wanted to add that in our website we just recently built that out. That's Austin, Austin .gov/homelessness. As you may recall, one of the things that Laura has done is convened an interagency communications convening of the city and its partner agencies and we want to continue to support each other and to link to each other's websites, so that way we can drive donations and drive more help towards each other. >> Mayor Adler: And I understand to do the comparative cost with the south Austin shelter, there was something like $140,000 a room, and this is just over half of that. So I like that we're finding a more cost-effective solution. And as you get into it and restart developing the policies of the plans for how we locate and identify who it is that goes into this motel or any of the other motels we have, if you can let the council know how we'll [10:16:41 AM] be prioritizing people or filling those spaces, that would be helpful. Thank you. Anything else for Matt on this? Go ahead. >> One last thing, and it ties into what you just mentioned, mayor, is that I'm also really excited about the guided path pilot. I see that as part of what we've talked about in terms of the encampment response strategy. So piloting is a first step of a particular area in town to see how that works. And so I'd also -- you'll continue to keep us up to date on that. We've had conversations about the importance of taking that kind of approach in other parts of the city as well, including the area under Ben white, as well as there are many other areas in the city that need to be looked at. So I just want to keep that in mind and I want to hear back when you're giving us more information on the status of [10:17:41 AM] this pilot what y'all's thinking is about when we might be able to look at other areas. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I had one last question about numbers. The guided path pilot started with 107 people. It's up to 126 people now. Are we continuing to add people into the guided path program? >> I believe what it is it's those number of individuals enrolled, and the number does not match what was originally 99. And now we're up to 102. I believe what we did was we added three more individuals to the list. I can confirm. >> Mayor Adler: So some of the numbers here are double counted? >> No, they're not double counted at all, but the numbers that were contacted and we did outreach to originally was 99. >> Mayor Adler: If I add up the numbers in column one, it's 107. And then if I add up the column numbers in 11-5 it's 111. And if I add it up in the third column, it's 126. [10:18:41 AM] I mean -- >> There was no intention to add up the numbers at all. What we may have to do is probably perhaps put a break in some of those rows to show the numbers that should be added up. It's not every single row. >> Mayor Adler: Got it. So just going back to Kathie's point earlier, more detail and more understanding of what these numbers are I think would be really, really helpful. Anything else for Matt before we let Matt go? Kathie. >> Tovo: I don't know that it's really for Matt. It's a question for the manager, and it may be it's better covered in one of the upcoming presentations. But I know the downtown Austin community court provided us all with some different -- talked about some different scenarios. As I understand, they have also now provided some financial estimates. And I wanted to ask the manager, it sounds like one of the gaps we're facing with regard to individuals in the guided path initiative is case management. And so, manager, I wanted to ask you what your process is for [10:19:45 AM] considering their proposal, increased outreach. Remember, they had done a memo earlier this fall. I think there was a little confusion about it last time we talked in the work session. They evaluated the options. But they did suggest and recommend adding outreach teams. So is that something that you are contemplating and what would be the time-frame for that? >> Thank you, council member. Absolutely we're contemplating that. We're working with our homeless strategy officer to look at all the different proposals including that are coming together to say how can we continue to make the right investments and the right strategies, and we'll be bringing that back to council, again, have the standing request if we need to do something immediate, I'll be requesting a special-called meeting to make that happen. But really would want to get our homeless strategy officer and the team to evaluate those different proposals. >> Tovo: And is that something they're doing kind of right now? [10:20:45 AM] Because we did have the -- spent the summer getting us that information and now they have done the cost estimate and it sounds like we have an immediate need for case managers. I would ask that be -- >> Prioritized. >> Tovo: Yeah. We have an immediate need and we have a proposal for executing that. It would be great to know whether that's going forward or not. And then who is the contact on your staff for more information about the hotel/motel option and what the relationship would be between the city and echo and other entities? >> The primary contact would be the assistant city manager, Rodney Gonzales. >> Tovo: Thank you. I didn't know if that was something public health was on the ground working on -- okay, Rodney, I have lots of questions, as I indicated, so we're going to be in touch. I think this is a very good move. I don't know whether you talked about it earlier. It is in council member Renteria's district but it is just right over the border of [10:21:47 AM] mine too, so I know it is of interest, generally, as well as to the whole community about this path that we're embarking on. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Thank you for being here this morning. Please thank your board for offering to step up in a real significant way to operate this. Thank you. Rodney. >> Mayor and council, next we're going to have Ellen Richards, who is the chief strategy officer from integral care present an overview of their agency's work. They are the local mental health authority. They're going to talk about their engagement, navigation, and housing of individuals experiencing homelessness. >> Good morning, mayor, council, staff. We appreciate the opportunity to be here and also appreciate your leadership in this area, and we have a deep partnership with the [10:22:47 AM] city and work with staff all across the city of Austin and appreciate the good working relationship that we have. My name is Ellen Richards. I'm the chief strategy officer for integral care. Carolyn is with me. She is our expert in housing and homelessness, when the questions get hard, she's going to be the one to answer them. We exist to meet the needs of people living in serious mental I illness and developmental disabilities in Travis county. And we are a governmental entity created by federal, state, and local laws in the 1960s. We're one of 39 centers across Texas and we serve in two roles. We serve as the state-designated authority for mental health and intellectual disabilities and we are also a provider of direct services. And our board of trustees is appointed by the city of Austin, [10:23:48 AM] central health, and Travis county. As an authority, we have a lot of different roles that we play. And I'll go into some detail on the next slide as to those roles as they relate specifically to housing and homelessness. One of the things we do as an authority is resource development. And we apply for funds and secure required match for funds to expand resources in our community. And through our intergovernmental agreements and contracts with the city of Austin and Travis county and central health, we secured the required match for all of the hud vouchers that are received by haka and we also provide 100% match for the forensic assertive community team which works for the people experiencing homelessness, and who have engagement with the criminal justice system. Those are examples of how we use [10:24:49 AM] our authority role to bring additional resources to the community. We're eligible to apply for other state funds and when the state has funds left over we can often secure those funds for our community. Often these funds are not available to other organizations. Related to housing and homelessness, specifically, one state grant we have provides more than $800,000 in support for the coordinated reentry system through echo. The center which will open shortly, peer support and services through family elder care. As an authority we also manage and we have a utilization management and fund management function for the community and for our areas of impact. We manage access to in-patient psychiatric hospital beds at ash, and those that are funded [10:25:49 AM] in the private system by central health for people who are unfunded. So when someone seeks care, they come through our system, our utilization management system to access those hospital beds. Additionally, our utilization management team ensures that anyone seeking services -- and finally, one area that's worth mentioning are three areas really is planning, education, and training. We collaborate with the city and other key stakeholders to strengthen how our community addresses homelessness and housing access . For example, Carolyn serves on the downtown community Austin board and we have a seat on the membership council of the coc. And those are just examples of the ways that we collaborate across the city to help in this area. We also train first responders, including APD and ems on how [10:26:50 AM] best to respond in a mental health crisis in order to avoid poor outcomes. This would include responding to individuals experiencing homelessness. And finally we offer community-wide training to anyone in mental health first aid. And your staff here at city hall, and some of you in this room have taken advantage of that training. So as a provider, we provide a wide range of services, everything from navigation in 24/7 crisis response to integrated care, jail diversion, substance abuse treatment, prevention and wellness. We have a team of more than 100 staff who work in the area of housing and homelessness, specifically. This diagram shows our work in the area. We have teams on the street every day working to do outreach and engagement, helping individuals to meet their basic needs, and making sure that they are assessed for housing. We also offer crisis respite, when appropriate. Our next role is to help [10:27:53 AM] navigate individuals on a path to housing, which can mean access to short-term housing or shelter, conducting landlord outreach to identify available units, and providing employment services along with peer support and coaching. And when everything goes as planned, we move individuals into permanent supported housing and provide the rehabilitation support necessary to achieve housing stability. And along the way, we provide the types of services and supports listed across the bottom such as mental health and substance abuse disorder services. Just as an example, we use state funds to provide all of the clinical care at community first village and manage the on-site clinic for that community. In addition to the services we provide directly out of our clinical system. There's always a lot of questions about permanent supported housing. Y'all are talking a lot today about housing first, and so I wanted to use this diagram to try to explain where we fit in [10:28:53 AM] the continuum. Those of us in this room live in the yellow house on the right. And integral care works at the opposite end of the spectrum or continuum with the individuals experiencing the highest level of need and have the lowest level of resources and have the most barriers. So these are folks who are living with mental illness, substance abuse disorder, many of them have a chronic disease as well. They often have criminal histories and other issues that keep them from accessing traditional housing programs. To meet the needs of all the people in the community who are experiencing homelessness, requires all of us working together in collaboration. While integral care is at the left, we collaborate closely with everybody in the community, such as community first village and foundation communities, haka, front steps, anyone working in this space, we're all working together to try to fill the continuum of housing needs. [10:29:56 AM] Our biggest challenge as an agency is access to housing units due to the significant barriers our population faces. And currently it's taking us about three months to move someone into housing. Our focus right now is on scaling our landlord outreach efrts to reduce that time to housing to 45 days. These charts show you our financial commitment in this area. The chart on the left are total budget in homelessness and housing is $11,310,000. The red slice is the city of Austin investment. The majority of all of our funds, all of our budgeted funds are used for clinical supports and approximately 14% are for rental assistance. On the right, you can see the distribution of city funds. These are the funds that are invested with integral care. And the largest portion of these go to providing community treatment team services, and [10:30:58 AM] I'll talk about those in a minute. The second largest area of support is to individuals living in permanent supported housing. So these are housing support services like rehabilitation supports. The next largest is for rapid rehousing services, and then rapid rehousing would be more in the area of rental assistance, and then our homelessness outreach street team, I think y'all are familiar with. Finally, the purple and green pie slices are used for the match I mentioned earlier, for hud vouchers, and the other is for path, which provides outreach and engagement directly to people on the streets. It's a state grant and y'all provide the local match. There's a lot of numbers on this chart. I apologize. This is our data on just kind of a snapshot of data on our homelessness and housing activities. I can give you a high-level overview of our service data. In fy19 we served almost 4300 [10:32:01 AM] people experiencing homelessness out of a total of 30,000 people served. And then there's some time- frame breakdowns that were requested by city staff that I think must align with some of the changes that have been happening over time, but you can see in different increments from January 1st until November 1st. January 1st to August 1st and then August 1st to November 1st, who we've served that's homeless or has status unknown. And then the total served. The bottom chart shows individuals we are housing or working with to be housed. Today we're supporting 561 people in housing who were formerly homeless. And we provide the appropriate supports to increase housing stability. Since January 1, we've housed 107 people. Since August 1st, we have housed 22 people. And we are in the process, beginning this week, of moving 50 people into terrace at oak springs, our newly-constructed housing community in district 1. [10:33:02 AM] And this will be completed by 12-31. And we have 64 people we are ready to move into housing. They have vouchers and case management support and we are identifying available units at this time. So I wanted to go back and just talk to you a little bit about housing impact, and this relates to the program I mentioned earlier that's a city program called the assertive community treatment team, or act. The city of Austin secured funding through the 1115 medicaid waiver several years ago and contracted with integral care to implement this program. It focuses on individuals who are experiencing homelessness and who are also using significant numbers of public services. This data is from fy18 but we would expect the data for fy19 to be similar. So we did a look back to see [10:34:02 AM] what -- how much service individuals were using prior to being in the program and then after two years of being in this program. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about the impact this program has had. So we tracked three areas, ems calls, emergency room visits, and psychiatric admissions. So in the area of ems 9-1-1 calls, so this is when ems actually responded. We saw a reduction from 482 calls prior to services, to 55 after two years. And if you average the cost of $831 per call, the savings over the two years was a minimum of $355,000. I got this kind of late, so I couldn't get it on the slide. And then with emergency room visits, the decrease was 891 to 117 after two years in the program. And the approximate cost of an emergency room visit is $1400. [10:35:03 AM] And so that would be a savings of $1.08 million over the two years. And, lastly, the reduction in psychiatric admissions was significant as well, both admissions and days in hospital. So we reduced admits from 113 to 21, and days from 3300 days to 363 for a total savings of $1.4 million. So this is just a sample of the areas of savings that a program like this creates. Others include reduction in crisis service use, such as in our system, and also interaction with law enforcement. So I think the city should be really proud of the investment they have made in this program and the significant impact that it's had on people, both in terms of the quality of their life and the positive impact on public systems. And, with that, I'll open it up to any questions or comments [10:36:03 AM] that you may have. >> Mayor Adler: There's also what you're doing is real impressive. We all know that. Thank you again for what you all do, and congratulations for opening up the new facility. >> Thanks for being there with us. >> Mayor Adler: The work that you're doing, like on the last program that you talked about, the housing impact question. If you had more resources, would you be able to do more of that? Is there a limiting factor in that? >> I think our limiting factor is the same as what you heard previously and what I mentioned in the presentation is access to affordable housing units for the people that we serve. So if we had one more dollar to put in, we would put it into creating affordable housing that can be used for permanent-supported housing for people with significant [10:37:03 AM] barriers. >> Mayor Adler: So our staff, as we heard this morning, found one motel and is trying to find more motels, is trying to answer the question how many motels should we be finding. Please -- I don't know if you're prepared to speak to that, or if we just need to make sure that you're layering into that analysis that our staff is doing to make sure that your numbers on need get rolled into what we see. >> So we fully support the recommendation to move forward to purchase motels and create deeply affordable housing. It's really important for our community to have a continuum. And the plan you adopted had five areas that we, as a community and providers came together that we said we were [10:38:03 AM] going to work to increase. The first one was, of course, the creation of affordable housing. The second area in that plan was ensuring that resources were in place to provide supportive services, understanding that the creation of housing alone will not end homelessness. We need to ensure that we have the supportive services in place. The other area was increase outreach and engagement. And I'm glad that Kathie tovo is talking about increasing resources on outreach and engagement, because that is an area of significance. And we also talked about ensuring that we have the ability to have access to immediate shelter and places for people to go. And I think that the strategy to use some of the resources through the motels and that [10:39:06 AM] initiative and create bridge housing, as we convert those, into deeply affordable housing and permanent supportive housing meet what we all as a community and what you all voted was important for us to move forward as part of the plan. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Anything else before we go on to the next section? Mayor pro tem and then Ann. >> Mayor Pro Tem: On slide 9, is that basically the pie chart, is that saying essentially the county is not investing at all in homeless and housing? >> Oh, no. That -- it really was intended to show you the city's investment. So the county has a small portion of funds in this area. But they invest in other things [10:40:07 AM] with our system. So the city and the county invest almost equally with integral care but the county funds go to other types of programming. >> Mayor Pro Tem: Okay. Do you know what, for example? >> They support substance abuse disorder treatment, children services. Those are two significant areas. >> Mayor Pro Tem: Okay. >> As well as the mobile crisis outreach team. >> Mayor Pro Tem: And when it comes to the savings part you mentioned, is there a way to -- and you don't have to answer this now, and if it's something that needs to be sent later, to understand. Because I don't want to turn this into who's giving more and who's getting the savings part of it. But with that being said, the city is really the focus of this extremely challenging topic when there's other governmental [10:41:07 AM] entities that help and maybe could help more. And so I'm just curious to know if there is a way to see -- compare our investment to the savings. Because I guess I would assume that some of the savings may not be seen on the city side as much as possibly other entities as far as our jail, for example, our criminal justice system, for example. That is much more. And if we are able to house people and the significant investment that the city is making with housing and how that helps people in the wraparound services provided by nonprofits and how that can keep people out of the criminal justice pipeline and that creates savings for the district attorney and the county attorney and the jail system. So is there -- do you have info on the savings part more? >> At this time I wouldn't be able to speak to that [10:42:08 AM] specifically by entity. I think just broadly speaking the savings that the city would be experiencing from this would be in reduced ems utilization and reduced APD response. Would you say there are other -- >> Mayor Pro Tem: But ems is also a shared cost with the county. >> It is a shared cost, you're correct. But I would -- yes. >> Mayor Pro Tem: That would be my assumption too. And fire because fire makes medical calls as well. >> We have the ability to provide that information. We would need to explore and just go through our data to be able to provide that. I'd like to look at this just in terms of quality of life. >> Mayor Pro Tem: Yeah. >> For the 115 individuals that this is impacting. If you imagine individuals using 3,301 days of hospital and after [10:43:08 AM] the program, only 363 days, that is a significant improvement in quality of life, so I'd like to focus on that . And the investment and their ability to engage with family, engage in the community, which is a huge win for our community as well. >> Mayor Pro Tem: Yeah, absolutely. And I understand having to take that we are answering many questions about our investments. It would be just helpful to know. >> I'm happy to provide that information. >> Mayor Pro Tem: Thank you. >> Just to add, I will say we have another program that I didn't bring data for called the forensic assertive community treatment team for people with significant criminal justice involvement, and we're just not getting the first-year data for that program and starting to analyze that. So it's our desire to do deeper analysis on these programs so that we really can help the community understand their [10:44:08 AM] impact. >> Mayor Pro Tem: What was that called again? >> It's called a fact team. Forensic assertive community treatment. >> Mayor Pro Tem: Thank you. >> So it's very similar to the act team. It just focuses on a population that has -- these are folks with felony convictions and things like that. >> Mayor Pro Tem: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: Thank y'all for being here. This is very helpful to understand and wrap our minds around what you all are focusing on. So I had two questions. I wanted to understand a little better the numbers on page 10. So just so I can get a scope of -- get some understanding of the scope of the folks that you are working with, the numbers. So I can see that for fiscal year '19, total served was around 29,000. But I'm not sure what number to look at for the total served that were homeless. [10:45:10 AM] >> Yes. So for the fiscal year 2019, the total number of individuals served by integral care, housed and unhoused, was 29,000, close to 30,000. 4,293 of those individuals were experiencing homelessness. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Just to provide some clarity around the numbers currently in our system we have 2,524 individuals who are experiencing homelessness and are receiving services from our organization. This is aggregate data. However, many individuals come in and out of our services. So currently the number to look at is 2,524 at this point in time. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. How does that relate to what you all think of as the needs? If you don't have those numbers [10:46:11 AM] now, that's fine, but it would be interesting for me to understand -- I'd like to understand what the scope is in terms of the folks that need y'all's service who are currently experiencing homelessness. >> Our system has -- we have increased services to provide individuals -- to provide services to individuals experiencing homelessness. Five years ago our system had five case managers dedicated to the work. And currently we have 130 case managers who are providing services, all from providing services under the bridges camps and our clinical support. The demand exceeds the number of staff who are able to provide the services. As an example, right now we're navigating 64 individuals who are still on the streets. Some of them may be at a [10:47:12 AM] respite. We were able to work 15 individuals, take them directly from the guided path program. 13 of those individuals -- I'm sorry, in addition to that, 13 were moved into our respite program. I think one of you had a question in terms of respite, so that was integral care respite. Those individuals will continue to be navigated. But to Matt's point and to what Ellen mentioned, it's difficult to find appropriate housing. We have a dedicated landlord outreach team that is out there meeting with landlords, developing relationships. And that is still a gap in our community. Our goal is to house individuals within 45 days of engagement. And currently we're at three months. So we have a lot of work to do there. So gap, I would say, is we need more affordable housing and we need the supportive services, [10:48:13 AM] not only integral care but across the system to navigate the individuals and support them in housing. >>. >> Kitchen: Okay. At some point if you could provide us with the scope of that. I understand those numbers change and there's some flux to them. But maybe some order of magnitude numbers that would help us understand if we were to -- able to locate additional dollars, either for housing or for services, what would that look like in terms of what you need. So, those are all my questions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for the work that you do. >> I want to thank integral care as well. Ellen and Carolyn and David for all the work they do and for the results they showed. I think it's a really good example of how when partnered with community agencies like this we can make a big [10:49:13 AM] difference in homelessness. >> Mayor Adler: Actually, it's important to note that the one thing they said they need and where they would next spend is to make sure that they had the housing in order to be able to provide the services. >> Absolutely. Next, director Ken snipes is going to provide us a brief overview of encampment clean up and storage. How we have increased services recently as well. >> Thank you. Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem, council members, manager. My name is Ken snipes, director Austin resource recovery. And today I am here to talk about the work being done to clean up trash associated with homelessness. As you all know, a major complaint driver for our 311 center and many of our departments surround trash and issues associated with it. But from my perspective, the fact that homeless people create trash is not the issue. [10:50:14 AM] In fact, we all generate trash. Nationally the average for trash generation is about 4.5 pounds per person. Here in Texas it's closer to 6.5 pounds per person, but I'm not here to talk about that today and I hope to talk about that at another point here in the future with you about that. So but the difference between those living unsheltered and those who live with shelter is simply trash removal services. And that's the purpose of today's topic. I want to begin by thanking all of the departments that are active and engaged in this effort. I have to tell you that I have been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm and the vigor with which they have all jumped in. And my experience that has not always been the case doing this work. Their efforts are right now, I find them invaluable and I would be remiss if I did not say that while our approach here may be [10:51:16 AM] new, the teams, the work that they're doing is not new. They've been doing this work for quite sometime. They've been doing great work and you'll see some evidence of that a little bit later in this presentation. And I think that's going to be the main reason that our pivot is going to be pretty easy going forward to our new approach. All right. So a little bit of background here. In an effort to more efficiently manage activities related to homelessness and the encampments, the city manager's office created a new vision for organizing activities related to homelessness. Under this vision, several objectives or tasks were created. One of those objective areas, encampment clean up and storage was established to address issues of blight associated with homelessness. The lead department for this objective is Austin resource recovery. An additional task associated within this area is to explore [10:52:16 AM] development of a program to store the personal effects of individuals experiencing homelessness. The overarching goal of the encampment clean up storage team is to establish a unified response and establish protocols, methods, and procedures. So what have we been up to and what's going on? If activities that are being undertaken right now include underpass clean up, that work is being done by public works. And they are currently cleaning 61 designated locations. And that's quite a bit. I have to tell you that's quite a few locations that they're taking on. That's pretty impressive. Encampment clean up is being performed by public works and watershed protection. And also community court is doing some of that work as well. Bulky items are being taken care of by Austin resource recovery, and that is typically performed in conjunction with the encampment clean ups . Litter is being performed by [10:53:17 AM] Austin resource recovery. That work typically occurs nightly across the city. The violet bag program, also being performed by -- picked up by -- administered by the folks from watersheds and a couple of others. And also picked up nightly by -- excuse me, now twice weekly by Austin resource recovery. Arch clean up activities, that's a multi-agency effort. As of last week the decision has been made to perform that work weekly. Parks department is also performing encampment abatement. They're also taking care O litter and trash on their properties and they're doing work right now to find out or to get a better idea of how many people are actually living within the boundaries of their properties. And I talked a bit before about community courts who are also participating in the effort to clean up encampments. Changes. So what are we doing differently? What are some of the changes [10:54:17 AM] we're taking on right now? The city manager created an encampment clean up and storage tasking. I mentioned that. The violet bag program is now administered twice weekly. That's happening on Tuesdays and Fridays. Prior to that it was happening once per week. The overpass and underpass clean up work is happening twice monthly. That was happening once a month. Again, the arch clean up work is going forward, going to be taking place weekly. An inspection element was also created. And the purpose of the inspection element is to start to transition us into a more proactive approach instead of a reactive approach. So instead of what we've kind of done is we've operated solely on a schedule and on a complaint-based type of operation, and now we're moving into a more proactive approach. And we've also developed tools and we'll hear a little bit about that here shortly. [10:55:18 AM] So just in the short amount of time since we've made the pivot, we're seeing some changes here. And one of those that I like to call attention to is so far we're seeing a downward trend -- if you can call two months a trend -- but we're seeing a downward trend in the amount of calls coming in to 311. That's a stat that I'll pay particular attention to going forward as we start to do more and more of this work. We hope to see that come down even more. The arch clean up, again, I mentioned that work. And the last clean up took place on November 5th. The team removed 3,260 pounds or 1.5 tons of debris, litter, and trash. And I want to highlight some of the work that's being done, again, by watershed protection with their removal work. And then also public works. But watershed protection conducted 37 clean ups across 11 sites. Between the months of March [10:56:18 AM] through September. And they removed 24 tons of debris and litter. They engaged 400 people during those activities. 152 received outreach services. 21 people were connected with the other ones foundation. And with respect to public works, they are currently, as I mentioned before, servicing 61 sites. From the months of October -- excuse me, August through October, they've collected 54.4 tons of material. One of the other major achievements here recently from the working group was to define and develop a definition of personal items. Now, I can tell you that in my experience in this work, this has been a major risk area for the agencies. And that's why we decided to tackle this area first. I'm not going to read the entire [10:57:19 AM] definition. Again, this is a testament to a lot of the work that has already been done by the teams here. So we were able to pull this together pretty quickly by making some changes. And the goal here is to create a citywide definition for personal property. And if I could, I just want to read the first sentence here. Personal property is an item that is reasonably recognizable as belonging to a person, has apparent utility in its present condition and circumstances and does not pose a health and safety risk or potential health and safety risk, which includes any item that poses an environmental or a fire risk, a potential environmental or fire risk. Examples include personal property but are not limited to -- it goes on to talk about personal papers, documents, tarps, radios, electronics, identification, so forth and so on. So I think this is a major achievement for the team here. And more work like this to come [10:58:22 AM] here soon. Next I want to talk about work to be done, which is the development of a citywide procedures protocols document and some additional tools. Public works has done a great bit of work here, we'll see that in just a bit, on development of protocol and procedures. And then watersheds has done an amazing job with an assessment tool, which I think is a really critical tool for displaying the fact that these clean ups don't happen without some sort of acknowledgment that there's a criteria. We're not just moving people just because or going in because we need to move people. We're not doing that indiscriminately. And so really quickly, I know that's a little bit difficult to see there, but what I wanted to do, this is page 1 and page 5 from the public works document here. [10:59:23 AM] And I want to call out the fact that it starts out with the purpose, the definition, very similar to what we just looked at. And it goes on to highlight things like the unattended property, and those kinds of things, which are really, really key. Because we want to make sure that we don't throw people's things away just because they're not present when the teams show up to do work. And then secondary to that on the second or fifth page, I want to call out the fact that one of the provisions here is to connect people with services, whether it be through ems or integral care or any of the other service providers as part of these efforts that take place as we go forward. And then the last document here is a snapshot of the assessment tool that kind of displays the work that watersheds does as they go forward in addressing [11:00:24 AM] issues within their boundaries. And what we'll are. What we'll do here is the same. We'll adopt similar documentation for an assessment criteria before we move people to determine whether they're a hazard either to themselves, to someone else or creating a general hazard for the city. As I wrap up here, I just want to say that the purpose of this work and this effort is to clean up trash to protect public health and the environment. It signals a departure from the reactive approach and a transition to a more proactive approach. People creating trash is not the problem. Not having an outlet for disposing of their trash is the problem. Questions? >> Mayor Adler: Questions? How does your cleanup [11:01:27 AM] operating at the same time in conjunction with what the state is doing? >> We're in the process of assessing. The state has determined that they will service 17 areas and we're aligning the work that we're doing with the work that they're doing. And so they're putting out a schedule and we obviously won't service the areas that they're servicing on the same days that they're servicing those areas. There are some areas that we've serviced -- we move into service twice a month and we'll probably service those areas on an off schedule from the state's work. Richard, do you want to speak to that? >> Mr. Mayor and city council [inaudible - no mic]. He is the district maintenance director. What we've been able to do is share each ear's schedules so there's no [11:02:28 AM] overlap or conflicts between those crews that do occur. He's also shared with us some calls that they receive on areas that they do not intend to service so that we could overlay those with our planned service areas so that they may be able to increase our frequency there. So coordination effort is ongoing and has been on a daily basis. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Greg. >> Casar: I'd like to thank both of you directors and departments for creating that definition of personal property. I think that that's really important and hard work to do. And the litter issues while respecting and appreciating that we don't want people to lose their ids or wheelchair or anything else. Thank you all for that work. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. [11:03:30 AM] >> Tovo: I want to echo my colleagues' thanks. Quick question. With regard to the outreach that you've described on page -- the one where you had different stats under results and associated information. You engaged with 400 people, 1 152 received outreach services. Can you let us know what outreach services? Were these from integral care primarily, other entities? Who were the services? >> I'm not sure at this point. I can get the information for you. I've been told it is a variety of services depending on individual need, whether it is mental health services or medical services. So a variety of services. >> Tovo: Thank you. I saw another reference later to-- within public works policy and procedures, 5.2.1, an expectation that public works would [11:04:30 AM] coordinate with ems, community care to provide health checks and other services. I'm wondering how often? Does that happen each and every time there's a cleanup? Are those -- are the outreach workers going out first? What's the actual process for delivering those services? Those outreach services during a cleanup? >> Councilmember, our practice has been to engage the services three days prior to the actual scheduled cleanup. So we may need to access additional services. That's the same process that we mirrored when txdot formerly did this work and this seems to be the optimum practice. >> Tovo: They go out -- I'm sorry, you looked like you were going to add. >> That would be the same approach we would like to mirror citywide regardless who is doing the work going forward. >> Tovo: Thank you. [11:05:34 AM] So talking about the assessed need, let them know the cleanup is happening, hand out the bags and give them information about their personal property in terms of things they want collected. In terms of medical services, are those provided at the time of the cleanup? There was some language that suggested that there were actually services or additional outreach going on during the times of the cleanup as well. So are those same individuals the same outreach workers coming back three days later alongside the actualing? -- The actual cleaning. >> They are. It is basically on an as-needed basis so they're in constant communications with our crews and with our contractors. If there are additional needs that we recognize need to be addressed on the actual cleanup day, we'll solicit and engage those resources. >> Tovo: Are you also engaging with like the street med teams and some of the other services that are out there? [11:06:37 AM] >> Councilmember, I'll have to poll my crews and managers to see what other resources outside what we have in our procedures that we're accessing. >> I'm not familiar with street med usage either. >> Tovo: Councilmember kitchen may remember. I'm not getting their name quite right. It's central health's street team... It wasn't path. >> Kitchen: Path is integral care. >> Tovo: I thought we had -- I'll get the name for you and -- >> Kitchen: I'm sorry, I'm not remembering. >> Tovo: To extent that our other services being delivered in Austin, that would be good to bring into this process, I think we should engage them. >> Yes, councilmember. I was just informed that we are utilizing integral care as our single point of access and they may be reaching out no these resources as needed. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anybody else on this? Yes, Alison. >> Alter: I was looking at the definition that you provided for the work. [11:07:38 AM] For the definition I was wondering to what degree will txdot agree to operate with the same definition? >> It's my understanding they have been to some degree. We can ask that question specifically and see where they may differ, but we haven't done that yet. >> Alter: I think a lot of work went into creating this definition and this is a definition if we as a city want to adopt, then at the very least we should be providing that to txdot and encouraging them to respect the same definition that we put forward. I don't know exactly how those relationships are evolving, but I would encourage that we make those efforts as well. I wanted to drill down into the comments that you made about pard because some of the information on here and some of it is not. So can you speak a little bit to how arr is supporting pard or some of the other [11:08:39 AM] units are supporting pard in their cleanup needs beyond the other ones foundation? >> We're just starting those conversations. The team has met three times now. We meet every Wednesday. And so one of the discussions is the opportunity to connect with some of the other departments and see their needs. One of the conversations we had -- oh, she's here. With parks is just how we could support them as they start to understand the needs on their property. So Kimberly? >> So I concur with what Mr. Snipes said. I would say that we have our own point in time count that's happening on this Friday where we're going to be going out in teams to try to assess exactly where all of the different encampments are. We have a system by which we rate those camps as to the priority in which we could do cleanups. Health and safety issues [11:09:40 AM] obviously being a priority, but I can tell you that there's more than our team can keep up with, which means that unfortunately some -- or fortunately I guess it depends on how you look at it, those camps stay intact until we have an opportunity to be able to give the appropriate notice. But we do visit each of them or all the ones that we are aware of. And we make sure that we tell people what the rules are, that they're not supposed to be in parks. We also help them understand what the -- give them bags and the sharps containers like we talked about before to make sure that they're keeping their encampments clean. And then we give them an proximate time frame which we would be back. We also engage integral care to help us. I think one of our issues is that everybody here is engaging integral care so they also have a resource and a capacity of a certain number, so we work with them to make sure that somebody from their agency can visit before we actually move them out. So we'll have more information about maybe additional resources that we [11:10:42 AM] need. The other is the foundation has been engaged and continues to help us as we identifying these locations, but we have a little more work to do to give you a few more metrics by which to understand exactly it looks like in the parks system. >> Alter: Great. Thank you. I would really appreciate having that better picture. It sounds like the point in time count will be a good next step for getting that data. You kind of answered this question, but I wanted to see if you wanted to add anything more about the kind of services that you're connecting folks up with. You sussed integral care, but I didn't know if you had anything else you wanted to add. >> That is our go-to and they help us understand. Our team -- the team who has been working on these issues for a long time, they actually are -- they could tell you the exact services. I cannot. But it's through integral care that there's the connection. >> Alter: Yes. I know there's been a lot of care to try to do that and I've been talking with that team off and on over the last several months. I appreciate the efforts that are being made. [11:11:43 AM] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't know you were doing a point in time count. Your own census, which I think is a great thing to get to have that information so we can get a feel for the scale of the challenge that we're looking at. Has pard done that kind of census count before outside of the echo point in time account? >> Not to my knowledge. The issue that we've determined -- not an issue, but the thing that we found is that the echo point in time count is very helpful, but it doesn't go far into the park system. So this is boots on the ground, hiking, to be able to see exactly where encampments might be because there's one thing to do a point in time count when you drive around the parking lot of a park and it's another thing to actually hike back into locations. So that's what our point in time count, that's how it's going to differ a little bit from the January count. That's not to discount what happens in January, but it's [11:12:43 AM] to help us have a better understanding of what's happening in our system. >> Mayor Adler: No. I think the better understanding is great. I know that echo also does some boots on the ground diving into areas as well. But they might not be doing their boots on the ground diving into areas that are the parks areas. I'd be interested in knowing when you report back that number if you could also take a look at the last echo point in time count, which identified where it was that they were finding people to see and let us know if there are undercounts last January that you would be aware of based on what you're finding? Obviously we don't know whether they existed on January, but a lot of these camps get started and then they just get maintained until somebody moves them. But if you would look back at that other report and tell us what you can see as compared to that, that would [11:13:43 AM] be helpful. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: I was wondering if you need volunteers for Friday or if you're just using staff? >> We're just using could you our staff, that but that's a great idea for the future. >> Alter: Because I think there would be a lot of people who would be willing to come and volunteer, and we're hearing from a lot of people that they want to find ways to engage. And I know we have lots of people who in the past have participated in the January point in time and we might be able to leverage some of those folks as well. >> Mayor Adler: It's not a bad time to mention that coming up in January we'll have that point in time count again and to participate there's a training. You don't just show up on the day to do it. Which might be something you take a look at. And if you ever pulled in volunteers, they actually train people for being able to successfully participate in that kind of census, but I'm sure there will be a lot more publicity as we get closer to those training opportunities citywide for the echo point in time [11:14:44 AM] count. Kathie. >> Tovo: And I just wanted to follow-up on my question earlier and clarify it's community care I believe has the street medicine teams. And just wanted to suggest that they might be good to engage in this and then also there was a federal grant provided that I think is being utilized by Dell medical school community care and integral care for additional street medicine teams. I'm not sure whether they're replacing the other street medicine teams or just a more interdisciplinary, but it seems like if -- to extent the community care and the Dell medical collaboration is not involved they might be good to engage. >> Thank you, councilmember. >> Mayor Adler: Okay? Pio. >> Renteria: While we're on the subject of counting, I would be very interested to see how many people are camping out in our watershed. I know I haven't the the one in montopolis and I've seen that they have quite a few [11:15:45 AM] camps there. I'd be very interested in finding out how many people are camping out there. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Just as we conclude this piece of the presentation, as you heard, departments are doing great work and they always have been doing a lot of work regarding cleanups encampments, but the change we're seeing now is really a coordinated and standard effort across the enterprise and I want to thank director snipes for leading that effort. So thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Rodney? >> Mayor and council, so that was the last presentation, but as I mentioned at the beginning of this briefing, we do have our priority area leads from communications, housing, public safety, homelessness services and of course cleanup and storage here to answer any general questions that you may have of any of those priority areas. I know that there was a question about the dashboard. It's my understanding that it is in design and we do have Lora Faust here. We certainly are -- we want to take council input as to your thoughts of like what a [11:16:48 AM] dashboard looks like and means as we are designing that dashboard out. But all of our priority area leads are here for any general questions that you may have. >> Mayor Adler: With respect to communications, Laura, we did talk about that before. I think something like the dashboard that we could compare over time would be really helpful, but I think there's a lot more data and numbers of things that would be really interesting for me would be to understand the numbers associated with the population that we have, so people can go there and see the 2500 number, the 7500 number. The 7500 number seems to be a more -- perhaps a number that we need to spend a lot more time talking about than the 2255 because it shows us over the course of the year. And if we're dealing with 7500 people we would know over time if that number is going down or it's going up. [11:17:49 AM] Knowing what we're housing and exiting people from homelessness, but having details to those numbers, not conflating a lot of categories because it's hard to know what to do when we conflate -- when conflating numbers as opposed to pulling those out I think would be really helpful. Then with respect to housing and shelter, the number that is in our inventory at any point in time that we own, that we're renting, that we're using vouchers with and having that by type what we own, apartments, houses so we know if we're going to be moving toward that. It might also be helpful to know what the balance of the risk fund was that we use to lower the barriers for landlords helping so that we can monitor that and see what if any kind of claims are being made against it but so that we can point to you landlords what those [11:18:50 AM] possibilities are. And I would also think that the sooner we could get this up the better so that the community has a feel for what it is that we're doing right now because I think a lot of the community does not. And I think that being able to track it along with us to see that there's forward progress and movement if there is and certainly to know if the opposite is true so that the community can get more engaged that way and we can increase the measure of hopefulness that is in the community. Anything else? Thank you. Does anybody want any other project lead to come up here before we go to land development code? All right. Thank you very much. Rodney, thank you. >> Land development code I'll call up anik Beaudet and Brent Lloyd -- >> Mayor Adler: Are you going to be giving us a memo [11:19:52 AM] after this that tracks the other one? >> Absolutely. >> Anik and Brent are here to talk about the supplemental staff reports that were issued on October 25th and November 25th as well as talk about next steps. As you know the planning commission has convened multiple times, including this evening, and so we're here to talk about what the next steps would be after the planning commission completes its work. >> Good morning. Anik Beaudet here with Brent Lloyd. And we also have members of our leadership team here for Q and a should there need to be folks brought up. The focus of the briefing this morning is going to be to focus on the elements of the October 25th supplemental report and also talk about elements [11:20:53 AM] forthcoming in a second supplemental report that we are aiming for November 25th. I'll start by saying I can't emphasize enough our continued refinement of the draft that was released on October 4th with regards to what we've learned through community engagement, meetings with mayor and council, and from the planning commission deliberations that have been going on over the last week. So I'll start by going over our timeline, which has been substantial. In October we had multiple one on ones with the community through office hours. We've attended councilmember hosted town halls, which have been fantastic engagement opportunities as well as open houses hosted by the team. There were also several milestones, significant [11:21:55 AM] milestones in October. The planning commission held their public hearing and staff also published a full report card on the performance of the October 4th draft of the code. And again can't emphasize the continued refinement and ideas in testing that staff is doing based on input and reaction to the October 4th draft and map. I do want to highlight themes that came from the planning commission public hearing, which was all day on a Saturday here at city hall. And looking at work for how the code will identify areas of gentrification and displacement. We heard about concern about trees and flooding and infrastructure needs in general and how those will coincide and work with the [11:22:56 AM] code. We also heard concerns about changes to neighborhoods and some misunderstandings on how the regulations might work, which is doing a lot to inform our messaging and how we're talking about what we're doing. So I really appreciate October being very iterative and helping us to listen to community and understand how we can do better and how we explain what it is that the code is doing because it's so comprehensive and touches so many things. So with that we're going to focus on now walking through the elements of the October 25th -- I'm going to pass it over to present to start that conversation, supplemental. >> Thanks. Brent Lloyd with the ldc leadership team. And as anik said we're going to go ahead and walk through the October 25th supplemental staff report. And this is the first of [11:23:57 AM] what we envision to be a few supplementals where we communicate to council and the commission and the community the feedback we've received and the kinds of changes that we're proposing to the draft code. And the October 25th report supplemental was our first one. So we'll just kind of walk through the highlights of that. The first I think important section of the report is part 1, which is text and map changes. And these are really a combination of changes that are ones that are fairly specific and clear and are I think stated with sufficient precision to be actionable at first reading. So if council were to incorporate these changes they would provide sufficient direction for staff at second reading to incorporate. And in particular the text changes are pages 3 through 9 of the report. And these are all changes [11:24:58 AM] that range from clarifications, corrections to minor substantive changes. They're all more than typos, but they're not Earth changing and they're well within the scope of issues that we've been discussing with council. Some highlights include changes in response to feedback from the community as well as internal review. And examples include the elimination of type 3 3 strs in transition areas. Some further provisions that we propose to strengthen consideration of wildfire issues during development review, that was a comment that we've heard consistently. The removal of the save our springs amendments and the deferral of those to a later process, which we've discussed previously with council. That's in here. The elimination of demo permits for interior demolitions. So there's a handleful of [11:26:00 AM] changes from changes and corrections to substantive changes that are in pages 3 through 9 of the report and we're happy to answer questions from those. Additionally we provided map corrections and those are linked in the report to a document that's available online. And this document is meant to really identify technical corrections as well as corrections related to the former title 25 zoning district. And the bulk of these corrections and for lot size. We don't want to create substandard lots, but don't want to create lots with Zones that would immediately render the lots too small for the soon and we've found instances where that occurred and we've tried to go through and correct those. That's a fluid document and we'll continue to make changes to that as they are [11:27:04 AM] identified. Additionally more substantively the report highlights proposed changes to the map that would be substantive in nature. Really changes to the criteria that staff used in preparing the draft map that was released in October. And these changes are described I think fairly clearly, but they're not yet actionable and we intend on November 25th to release a second supplemental where we will flesh out exactly the type of criteria that we're envisioning proposing with respect to these changes. And specifically the kinds of changes that we're proposing have to do with the residential corridor transition changes. I think that's the biggest one. We have signaled in our October 25th report that we believe based on feedback from the community that some reduction in the transition areas along residential corridors is appropriate, [11:28:04 AM] and that includes residential corridors in all parts of town, particularly those where -- that are identified as the most susceptible to gentrification based on the U.S. Uprooted report as well as other streets that are principlely residential in character, but are listed as corridors in our transportation plan. Also related to that is bolstering opportunities for middle missing housing in high opportunity areas. This was part of council's direction and I think it was -- it proved difficult to develop criteria consistent with sort of the general transition area mapping criteria because of corridors are not distributed equally all over the city. We are committed based on feedback to approaching criteria that would allow for greater opportunities for missing middle housing in high opportunity areas. [11:29:06 AM] So that's part one of the report. We look forward on November 25th to following up with additional detail, as I mentioned, on those substantive mapping changes. Part 2 of the report is additional provisions. And these are provisions that are attached as appendices to the report. In the first one is a proposed amendment to the imagine Austin comprehensive plan, and we have a map that we can present. And the goal of this change is really to provide a firm foundation in imagine Austin for the transition areas. So it includes a map with accompanying text that describes the transition areas and gives them a firm nexus to the growth concept map of imagine Austin which is a citywide enactment. In addition, the accompanying text that describes the proposed amendment affirms the [11:30:07 AM] importance of small area plans and neighborhood plans going forward and specifically it states that any extension of transition area boundaries beyond what's shown on the map, which is meant to be concurrent with the draft zoning map for transition areas, that any extension of the transition areas would be subject to the Flum amendment process for neighborhood plans, including contact team review and those provisions are all carried forward in the draft land development code. Additionally the amendment, the draft text for the amendment describes that if somebody were to propose a change within the transition areas that would be, for example, a neighborhood commercial use consistent with what's allowed under the mixed use 1 and 2. That too would require a Flum amendment. The map that's proposed for the comprehensive plan is [11:31:07 AM] really just to ensure authorization for the multiunit residential within the transition areas and in all other respects applicable area flums and amendment procedures would apply. So the additional -- the second new provision that is proposed in the staff report is attached as appendix B and that is some draft revisions to the sign code. And those have to do with prior initiation from the council related to right-of- way installation, off premise advertising, as well as off premise advertising for schools. And I'm not prepared to talk about those at length today, but it is essentially items that council initiated last year and I think followed up on earlier this year and they would provide limited allowances for off premise advertising in the circumstances that I mentioned. [11:32:08 AM] And finally the last section of the report is items for further consideration. And in this part of the report we basically just identify provisions that are changes that we anticipate proposing that are not yet fully developed or certainly not actionable, but they're ones that we're confident we're going to be proposing additional changes to. And that includes some modifications to the missing middle housing regulations. The site development standards for the transition areas, as well as changes to the preservation incentive. And I think there are a handful of other changes that are mentioned in that section of the report. And we anticipate for at least some of those coming forward in the November 25th second supplemental with some additional refinement that would actually make those changes concrete. [11:33:08 AM] So that is essentially the sort of layout and content of the October 25th report. I think the one thing I forgot to mention is we're very cognizant of typographical errors and corrections as one would expect in a document of this size. We've identified some and so we've-- rather than sort of list those voluminously in the report itself, we've provided a link to a document that we're continuing to update that lists typographical errors and minor wording changes and we anticipate that that document will continue to be updated going forward. And hopefully in advance of first reading we'll have a fairly thorough and comprehensive, reasonably comprehensive identification of those errors. So as I mentioned on November 25th we will be providing a second supplemental report. And that report will include follow influence on the October 25th report. It will include a more [11:34:11 AM] specific description of the revised mapping criteria with respect to residential corridors. It will include more specific descriptions of the proposed changes that we're suggesting with respect to site development standards. And additionally, we continue to review comments that are coming in. So I think it is possible, likely, that we will be proposing some additional edits based on ongoing feedback that we're receiving from the community and variety of stakeholders. The other inc. That I will mention - - the other thing that I will mention as well is that the expectation is that tonight the planning commission will wrap up their work and vote on a final report to council and we will be taking their various recommendations and putting them into a readable spreadsheet for council and we'll be providing that I think on November 18th along with a short summary of staff's position with [11:35:11 AM] respect to those recommendations. And that will essentially be whether we support, are neutral, oppose or partially agree with those recommendations. I think in the supplemental report that will come out on November 25th we'll provide some additional context and clarification for staff's position on the planning commission recommendations, but we are committed by November 18th to providing you with a full report of the commission's recommendations. So with that I'll turn it back over to anik and then I think we'll be available to answer questions. >> This is our next steps, as Brent mentioned, November 18th will be the planning commission report that we will assist in compiling and forwarding to you all with our comments. And then November 25th supplemental staff report number 2 that will go into more detail of the things we signaled October 25th that we are making changes to our [11:36:13 AM] own criteria based on feedback and from the community and planning commission and meeting with mayor and council. Council is posted for public hearing on November 7th. I know there's work sessions early in December as well scheduled. And then first ordinance reading is scheduled for December ninth. And then I will add that tomorrow we will be forwarding you all community maps that were submitted on our October public engagement month by district. We received about 52 community maps through that process. And so we'll be forwarding those hard copies to you all with some comment and then we will send an email to mayor and council summarizing the themes that we saw amongst the maps. So that will be tomorrow. And with that we're happy to answer questions on the supplemental or any other parts of the project. Thank you for your attention. [11:37:18 AM] >> Garza: What do you mean by community maps? What does that mean? >> During October we created an opportunity for individuals or neighborhood associations, organizations, anyone really in the community, to download. We had the new zoning map by district. We had all the districts cut into quarters that the new zoning map could be printed and we had a cover sheet that outlined some parameters that were within the guideposts with council direction for may 2nd. Because folks were asking for an opportunity to -- an outlet to give feedback on the mapping that we did of the new Zones. And so that was our -- that was our way of being able to collect information that folks really wanted to give us with regards to the mapping. And so they came in all different shapes. Some were just really changes to small areas within a district. Some were a little bit more [11:38:18 AM] expansive. >> Garza: Okay. So those were -- but they were maps created by our staff with comments by other people? >> Yeah. They were the zoning map that was out on October 4th that was then either digital Ali modified or physically written on by the community. They changed this, I don't like this, change this to a different zoning, move these around. I don't like any of this, those kind of comments specifically on the map. >> And you said those will be made public when? >> We're going to deliver those by district to you all tomorrow with the cover sheets of our marks on how well they met or didn't meet the council direction per our opinion. Then we'll summarize what kind of comments in an email to you all as well. >> Garza: Do you know now of the 52 where most of those came from? >> I would have to ask Greg. [11:39:21 AM] If you can remember. Greg and his team have been looking through most of them over the lasteek. >> Greg Dutton, planning and zoning. I am actually not sure districtwise where most of them came from, but we will -- we'll bring them out by district so we will know. We just don't know at this point. >> Garza: Okay. In your memo can you provide a chart that says? >> Yes. >> Garza: And then -- oh. What were you -- why did you bring this up, I'm sorry? Did I miss -- you were talking about the transition Zones? >> We brought it up -- we brought it up because it's an important part of the supplemental -- the October 25th supplemental and it's -- and if I didn't describe it clearly enough, I apologize. It's a proposed amendment to imagine Austin that would [11:40:23 AM] essentially show the transition areas as part of the growth concept map series. And it would ensure a solid foundation for council's action with respect to transition areas in imagine Austin and it would also as I mentioned affirm the ongoing significance of small area neighborhood plan combining districts with respect to -- owe neighborhood plans with respect to certain transition areas as well as certain areas outside of the transition areas. >> Garza: Does having it as an amendment to imagine Austin create some different process than what we're on track for now? >> We've posted -- the amendment was posted before planning commission and it's following the required process concurrent with the land development code amendment. The process required for amendments to imagine Austin. >> Garza: Okay. And lastly, I believe last time you -- somebody said that the transition Zones are about two percent of our city's -- and you said you would also be able to break [11:41:23 AM] it down by watershed? Have you been able to do that part of it, of the transition Zones, like of the different watersheds? What percentage of the watershed there? And if not, can you do that? >> We can. Haven't done it, can do it, will do it. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Paige. >> Ellis: Thank you all for the work that you're doing on this. I know it was such a hit in my district and people were able to get their good questions answered, so I have another community event, Q and a happening on November 19th for district 8. So I operate y'all willing to be a part of that and to continue answering questions for my constituents along the way. One of the topics that came up commonly was about private deed restrictions. Can you talk a little bit about are those things that the city rights, that the city enforces? How do those work in neighborhoods? >> Sure. I'll state just generally what I think -- what has [11:42:24 AM] been said publicly on it. And we have our law department to also expand on that. Deed restrictions are enenforced by private parties to the deed restrictions. The city does not and cannot enforce them either in the form of proactively bringing legal action or -- and Roling permits based on deed restrictions. Notwithstanding whether or not it has private restrictions. The city has recently made amendments to the application to let landowners know that they need to be aware of their deed restrictions so that it's something that we're committed to in that respect to making sure that [11:43:24 AM] information is available and landowners know that they need to take care of that also on they're own. But it's not something the city can enforce. There are very limited ways in which certain kinds of private deed restrictions affect the notice that's required for certain types of subdivisions but other than that the city does not have a role in enforcing private deed restrictions. >> So if there was some conflict between the zoning and the private deed restriction that's actually being enforced, which one would prevail in that particular circumstance. >> Where private deed restrictions are enforced, people can be ordered by a court not to pursue development that otherwise would be permitted under city regulation. There are really two separate types of regulation. >> I appreciate that -- >> Ellis: I appreciate [11:44:25 AM] that. So any change in zoning that happens during this land development code update, those private actively enforced deed restrictions would still be in place in those communities that have them agreed to. Is there any -- are there any other community goals like, you know, affecting climate change for the positive? Housing goals, mobility goals or equity goals that could be affected by deed restrictions? Like can we meet our housing goals? >> Councilmember Paige -- councilmember Ellis, I know that there's a lot of discussion about deed restrictions in the community, but I think -- I don't think we're prepared to weigh in at a policy level on all the different types of deed restrictions and what their impacts are. >> Ellis: Thanks. >> [Inaudible - no mic]. [11:45:37 AM] There is a kind of practical reality to the deed restrictions if somebody decides that they want to violate the deed restriction, they tear a house down and put up a triplex, they're going to sell it, what's the the point of them going through an exercise where they can't sell it because it won't comply with deed restrictions, but you run into title issues. I think that's something that we've thought about most recently in terms of not every deed restriction gets enforced through a costly lawsuit. There is some real practical market forces that keep deed restrictions [inaudible]. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Leslie. >> Pool: Thanks for the additional work. I wanted to follow-up on the draft transition zone map that y'all offered. And I wanted to find out how this aligns with imagine Austin and the direction that was set out in imagine Austin for where regional centers and town centers would be and also our [11:46:38 AM] transit corridors. I think under state law our zoning code is required to align with the comprehensive plan? I think I've asked for that before. That would be great. >> So I'll start with -- so this map is meant to complement imagine Austin chapter 4, which goes through our vision for our growth concept for the city, which includes as you mentioned, our center's concept leading up to chapter 4 is our priorities, one being compact and connected. And there's a lot of discussion and policy discussion within imagine Austin about land use and transportation and the nexus between land use and transportation. And so this map is meant to be inserted in the series that lead up to the comprehensive growth concept [11:47:39 AM] to include in our growth concept a visual of the concept of transition areas, which is spoken to a bit throughout and we can -- we're in the process of putting together a complete roadmap, so to speak, of how all the regulating plans, neighborhood plans, imagine Austin policies work together. I think that would be really helpful and you have asked for that in the past. So we have that sketched out and it should be out in a week or so. >> Pool: Yeah. Because I don't know how we can vote to amend imagine Austin by putting this in here until we know how it aligns with what the comprehensive plan says in the first place so we can see where the alignments exist or where there may be variations and then we can have a better informed map, literally map wildfire we may or may not agree with that. So that's great and thank you for that. And I hope we can get that fairly quickly. And then I had asked [11:48:40 AM] previously about the two percent, the distribution of the two percent transition Zones by district. I know that we are saying to general population in our city that it's two percent of what exists and one of the questions that I submitted to the Q and a gave the calculation which was the number of acres, which was like 3400 acres. I can't remember what the numbers were. And then the number of these that were -- the number of acres in the transition Zones was indeed a little less than two percent. But what that doesn't say is what is the direct impact by district, which is really what people are talking about. And this map to extent that it's helpful, actually does show where the transition zone impact is occurring. And it is roughly in the central core of the city. And I think that is -- that is in fact what people are most concerned about. [11:49:41 AM] So if you could also along with the alignment with the comprehensive plan give us the break down of the number of acres by districts, that would be helpful. And there's probably some morphine tuning and detail work that would be helpful that you all know would help us because you're working much more intimately with these maps. And I would urge you to bring that information to us as well. Don't wait for us to say, well, we need this additional detail because all of a sudden we just realized that we don't understand this piece because we haven't asked for these four subsets of data. So if you all could use that initiative and help us understand what it is we're looking at. And if it means one on one's in the various offices, that would be really great. But the map does show what the community is deeply concerned about, which is much of the change is happening in the central core of the city, which is [11:50:42 AM] where the land is the most expensive. And it is also where it's the most scarce. So if we can get those numbers broken down, then we'll be able to -- we'll be able to have a more informed conversation with the residents who really need to be okay with what we're doing. I really -- and I want to emphasize that. I want to make sure that the community is okay with what we're doing here. And that means we have to provide a lot of information, we have to do it in a way that is easily communicated and we have to take the time to answer their questions that -- because they deserve that. I think it was Delia who also asked for the break down in the watersheds. I think I had asked for that previously as well. So that would also be very helpful. Thanks for bringing that up. And then there's some other [11:51:43 AM] issues related to our work in December. I had a conversation with the city manager about some additional issues that are just pending, but we haven't had time to talk about them. And city manager, since you're back, there was a list of issues that are important, but we haven't spent time with them yet. And when were you -- you were compiling that list. When do you think we'll see that? >> Thanks, councilmember. As -- to you and your colleagues, I'm giving that information to staff and we'll have a way to present that so that you are aware of the different areas that are still out there that should be talked about. >> Pool: That's great. Yes, some stuff we should be talking about publicly. So again, with the full information. And the full impacts of what it is that we're proposing. Thanks. >> Councilmember pool, if I just -- just very briefly, I think relevant to one of the comments that you made, we [11:52:44 AM] are -- planning commission recommended yesterday, I can't remember the exact wording of their recommendation, but to really look at mapping transition areas more robustly around centers. One of the criticisms we've received is that transition areas focus a lot on corridors, but not enough on centers. And so there are some challenges that staff has encountered in trying to anchor transition areas to centers, but it's a criticism that we received from several folks and from the commission. So as part of our map revisions that we're going to be looking at, we will be looking not only at the issues you brought up with regard to the comprehensive plan, but also in the -- at the mapping level seeing if there's more we can do to emphasize centers which may help to address capacity, missing middle capacity loss as we reduce around the residential corridors. So just know that we're looking at that as well. >> Pool: I appreciate that and I'm glad that the planning commission knows that too. [11:53:45 AM] But I have been raising that issue for about a year, if not longer. And so while I really appreciate that we're now kind of focusing on that and pulling together a map to address that, that situation situation, I am disappointed that it has taken this long to actually focus in on it. But I am heartened that others are asking for it as well and that we'll see that work season. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: I have a couple of questions related to the process that you've -- that you've been explaining to us. So first, city manager, in terms of our opportunity to talk through some issues, we've talked at previous work sessions about identifying those and setting aside some work session opportunities to talk about that. [11:54:46 AM] I'm sorry, I don't have the full calendar in front of me, but I do understand that we have a work session on November 4th. >> Mayor Adler: The 18th is our first one. November 18th lob the first one. >> Kitchen: You can help me with this. How many work sessions do we have scheduled between now and December 9th? >> Mayor Adler: I'm not sure. There's one on the 18th and then I think just prior to the public hearing on the 9th. So the first week in December I think is one. >> Kitchen: So that would be 2. >> Kitchen: I'm sorry, were you going to say something else? >> I see a third and a fourth on here. >> What did you say, councilmember Ellis? This has our 11-18 special called session and 123 and 124 have council work sessions. That would be three before the public hearing. >> Kitchen: So my question is in -- and you -- [11:55:46 AM] councilmember pool asked related to that, but is it safe to say that you'll be sending us some list of those topics and we will start gearing them up for the third, fourth -- or the 18th, third and fourth, so that we can have the opportunity to talk as a group at those work sessions. Is that the thinking? >> Overall we stand ready to give the information to council. I've heard from a number of your colleagues at least having an awareness of what topics are out there and to the degree that council wants to continue to dive into those, we will be ready to do that. The 18th is the planning commission report, we will want to cover that, but then using the remainder of the time we can work with you to make sure that we are using that time effectively. >> Kitchen: Okay. So I guess I'm really trying to get at what is the best way if there is a policy conversation that I'd like to have, how do I -- how do I make sure that is Teed up [11:56:49 AM] for one of these work sessions? What's the best way for us to be you sure that we get on a schedule? >> Go ahead. >> Mayor Adler: I would suggest we go to the message board and people just identify the things that they want to make sure we talk about. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then how do we then get from the message board to the actual agenda so that our staff are prepared to speak to it? >> Mayor Adler: I would ask our staff to be available and ready to speak to anything that anyone posts on to the message board? >> Kitchen: All right. That's fine. I just wanted to have a route to understand. Okay. >> Mayor Adler: If we get inundated with stuff on the message board then we'll deal with that then, but assuming -- but I think in the first place is just for people to post on the message board things they want to make sure they want to discuss and hopefully we'll be able to accommodate as a group all of those. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then city manager, the list that you're talking about, when are you thinking and how are you thinking to [11:57:50 AM] disseminate that? >> I would also encourage if there are topics to post them on the message board, but as I make my one on one's with councilmembers, there may be themes that get brought up and I'll make sure to highlight those for staff to also bring forward. But I think that the most effective way to make sure that you're colleagues are are aware of some of the issues that you want to talk about is through the message board. >> Kitchen: Yeah. I just want to get them on the calendar. I can certainly use the message board to let people know what I'm thinking and ask others what they're thinking, but I want to make sure it gets on the calendar to know what we're talking about. Okay. Then my question about the supplemental staff report is I wanted to know what the best way is -- let's see. The best way if -- I have submitted in areas that identified that I thought were just errors in terms of parkland that I thought [11:58:50 AM] should be zoned park, for example. But I didn't see that come out in the supplemental report. So what's the best way for feedback? I know that folks are trying to help identify things that are going on with the mapping. So I know how busy you all are, but how is the best way for us to get some feedback on what we're submitting? And because -- I mean, there are some things that I had expected to see in the supplemental staff report and I didn't. And I don't want to inundate y'all, so I need to understand what the communication mechanism is to go over those and understand why they weren't included. >> So councilmember kitchen, the body of the supplemental doesn't really list specific map corrections, but there's that linked document that does. >> Kitchen: Right. And they're not on that. >> All right. Then we will follow up with your staff and find out specifically what parcels you're talking about and then give you a response. And as I mentioned, that [11:59:53 AM] corrective work is ongoing so I'm not positive the status of your -- the issues that you've pointed out, but we will follow up with your staff and get back with you as soon as we can. >> Kitchen: Okay. I know you have a lot on your plate and I want to similar laity the process for you. That's why I'm trying to ask what is the easiest. And if a phone call is the easiest or just sitting down and walking through it with you if that's the easiest, that's fine too. I don't want to create more work. I just need some kind of understanding of what the feedback process is. >> There's also the council Q and a, but I think for these particular parcels that you're talking about, we'll just follow up with you informally and get you a response, the status of those tracks. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. And then finally, I think that what would be helpful to see, and it may be what you were talking about a minute ago, but in seeing these transition areas, I'd [12:00:54 PM] like to see them with the town centers et cetera, overlaid on it. Now, I heard what you were saying with regard to going back and looking at mapping more around those kinds of centers. So I can wait and as you will go through that process, but what I would want to see is it's helpful for me to see how these relate to the centers as opposed to just separately like this. Does that make sense? >> Yes. And the map, we want that map to be as useful to people as possible. So we will take this feedback and at the appropriate point we'll produce a different map that shows not only the transition areas, but the other features that you and councilmember pool have mentioned, and make it as useful for everyone as we can. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: Thank you for this additional information. It's not -- I have jillions of questions. It's not clear to me what our expectation is for [12:01:55 PM] today. I assumed that next week was our work session. So I guess I'll try to keep my questions to a minimum today. Are we intending to spend hours here today or just very brief? So let me run through them kind of quickly. One, thank you for addressing the alternative maps. I know one question that came up again and again for individuals who are contemplating doing that, one, I know several reached out and said they were working -- they were working pretty actively on this. But we're unable to make it in on time and so I hope we'll continue to accept those. I think it's community feedback that is acceptable up to the time that count has finished deliberating on it. I know one thing that came up with a lot of people who were looking at it, the criteria were expressed really as imperatives. I think the language was shall do this and shall do that, yet the introductory paragraph talked about it as [12:02:57 PM] guidelines. So I clariffied, city manager, with you, that these were guidelines. The language never changed, though. So I just want to emphasize that those were, in my understanding, guidelines rather than strict criteria. And I mentioned in this setting one of the ones that I think caused lots of questions, and that was that the same number of properties -- if you were submitting an alternative map for your area, you needed to involve the same number of properties. So it wasn't an imperative that you achieve the same number of units, it was an imperative that you impact the same number of properties. So as I look at some of the neighborhoods like dellwood 2 and others in my area that are mapped darn near the 50% capacity, are proposed for rezoningings. To effect any kind of alternative map you basically have to pick the other part of the properties, which makes no sense. You know, as you're trying to identify properties, areas that would be more [12:03:58 PM] appropriate for increased capacity, to allow communities to really provide an alternative viewpoint would mean adjusting that criteria. So I don't know that we really conveyed that message clearly to the community that these were guidelines rather than strict criteria. So I would just -- again, I would suggest that we continue to accept those maps and make it clear to people these were intended as guidelines, not as strict hard and fast rules. I know the form itself also asked you to check off which of the criteria had been met so that too conveyed that these were strict criteria rather than guidelines. >> Let's see. I have a host of questions that I will need to ask independently, butust generally, councilmember pool talked about the question that she had submitted about capacity and trying to understand what capacity is in the transition zone citywide. But then to look -- we've heard that number two percent. Then to look at it on a more granular level, mayor pro [12:04:58 PM] tem Garza asked for it to be out by watershed. I asked in the Q and a for it to be by council district. In the information coming back to us, I'm a little confused about whether the answers ear getting are about what has been suggested for rezoning or what is -- what is really estimated to be redeveloped as such? I believe that probably the percentages we're getting back are the latter and not the former. So what I'm trying to determine is really when you look at the extent of the rezonings proposed council district by council district within the transition zone, what do those percentages look like? And I want to know what the percentage of rezonings, contemplated rezonings are, not necessarily what our -- what are supposed to be built out? Does that make sense? [12:05:58 PM] I mean, I'm looking at some of the numbers for district 9 and they just owe -- it's hard for me to square what I'm seeing on a map. My guess is these are really percentages that factor in how many of these properties you might redevelop and that relates to the capacity. >> I think, councilmember, that the -- what you're seeing, and I'm not sure I'm looking at the same thing you are. I've got a breakout by council district of transitions in r-2 Zones. It's by zoning. And I think you're asking for it's something other than just what's zoning on the map or proposed buildout, but I'll check with the mapping team. I believe it's just the zone. On the map. >> Tovo: Thanks. I would like to sit down with one of you or have my staff sit down with one of you and really go through that to better understand T it's not really jibing with [12:06:59 PM] what we're seeing on the maps neighborhood by neighborhood. I appreciate all the answers that we've gotten back. I don't know if there's something we could do differently for -- in terms of linking them. I know that the first three computers I tried, both at home and here, were unable to load those PDFs. And so I'm guessing that if my staff and I are having trouble opening those responses that some members of the public are as well. So if we could kind of take a look at -- >> Do you mean on the Q and a portal? >> Tovo: On the Q and a portal. Again, I'm just accessing it as a member of the public, not going through the portal password, which also isn't working for me. But just viewing it from the general public, I would ask you to take a look at those on a couple of different platforms and see what's going on? Can you provide some information about what specifically you'll be [12:08:00 PM] proposing with regard to residential transition Zones? I'm sorry, residential streets that are being proposed for transition Zones? I know you said in the supplemental report you're considering adjusting that. >> Yeah. Generally when we were looking at the go to five lot criteria from a second, we did not throughout the whole city our first draft on October 4th did not include the corridor lot in that count, so the revision will be to include the corridor lot that is residential, which will have the effect of reducing by one lot the areas of our corridors that have residential frontage. That's generally the description. >> Tovo: I know you're hearing lots of feedback about the residential street that is Duval and fact that it is now proposed for [12:09:02 PM] remapping far more than two lots,? Some cases 12, 16. Is that something you're actively revising. Will that go back to the council directive of two to five lots? >> >> We can look at that. But right now it's using the same criteria, but counting the first lot. So it will reduce some, but maybe not to the degree that you're suggesting. >> Tovo: I guess I still need an answer in some forum about why the council directive not to apply to Duval because it just exceeds -- and I think there are other areas within district 9 where it also exceeds that two to five lot council directive. So I'm still trying to understand the extent to which that happened in areas outside of district 9. A the this point I'm struggling to get through the code and understand what its impact is on the neighborhoods I most directly represent, but I certainly know that that's the case in my area. >> Yeah. We had the question from [12:10:03 PM] planning commission as well a few nights ago, and we can follow up with your staff on what timing that was in the deliberations as well as with an explanation where we showed the equity component of the number of lots in a certain configuration to another. >> Tovo: I have heard that particular explanation, but I think what the public is -- what many, many, many residents of that area are asking is why it -- why it exceeded two to five lots. And the fact that on one side two to five lots equates to 12 on another is -- has not been a satisfactory answer to why we are so far out of the council directive on that. So we can -- we can revisit this next week, but that's certainly a question. And then I just want to better understand the map. [12:11:04 PM] So this is intended, as I understand it, to amend imagine Austin. This would be part of that. Is that because -- so without this map as I'm beginning to understand through this conversation, this is because imagine Austin directed that the rezonings take place within activity centers and on corridors, not within other areas. And so I'm looking forward to seeing the discussion. The information coming forward that you believe kind of speaks to transition Zones. As I remember imagine Austin and the growth concept map, it was directing growth and increased density to corridors and to those activity centers, which would put what we're -- what's before us out of line with your imagine Austin plan. And so this is basically what allows for the rezoning of those residential areas that are now called transition Zones. Is that right? This is what is -- this is what will amend the plan [12:12:05 PM] because we've now diverged from what was contemplated with imagine Austin? >> I think that the -- the text of imagine Austin and specifically the text around the growth concept map does discuss greater density along the corridors, but we definitely felt that the transition areas are serving a very important purpose and there are several flums. There are a lot of different maps that are elements of the comprehensive plan and so we felt it was necessary for a variety of reasons as well as just good planning practice to really document the transition areas as part of the comprehensive plan and state specifically kind of what the effect of being in the transition area is. As I mentioned, the text affirms the ongoing significance of the planning process for [12:13:06 PM] rezones outside of the transition area as well as rezones proposed within the transition area that would do anything beyond just the multidirectional. And we felt it was beyond council's direction. That it was important that we have a place for it in imagine Austin. We have received feedback on the map itself and ways that the map can be made more useful to people and we certainly anticipate proposing we are looking for revisions as well as comments from councilmember alter and pool. >> Tovo: >> Tovo: So the normal process would be if you wanted to build four units on a lot or eight units on a lot that currently has a limitation of two, you would [12:14:06 PM] go through the neighborhood planning process and you would need a Flum amendment as well as a zoning change, and so this -- so absent this map, that would be required? >> Absolutely. And this is, I think, it's fairly -- this is an example of sort of the citywide within a specific area, a citywide designation supplementing and superseding individual flums but the text that describes -- describes that relationship takes pain to affirm the continued significance of the Flum amendment process. With respect to any proposed zoning that's within a small area planning area that's outside of the citywide [12:15:07 PM] designated air map as well as as I mentioned certain kinds of rezones that would be proposed within the transition area as well. >> Tovo: So if this is adopted and the rest of the plan happens and the map changes -- go through if you're in an area designated for transition area, that zoning happens -- well let if you're not and you wanted that same zoning you would have to go through a Flum amendment and rezoning process? >> Absolutely. We carried forward in the draft code I think almost verbatim the neighborhood contact plan provisions placed in the same area as the boards and commissions section of the code as well as the basic procedures for requesting Flum amendments. Those are all carried forward in the land development code. I think the October 4 staff report suggests -- includes a document that sort of points the way towards revisiting area planning overall going forward, but [12:16:07 PM] the current draft maintains the existing process. And the only changes are with respect to the citywide designation of transition areas. >> Tovo: But while today those would require a Flum amendment and a zoning change, basically the adoption of the map will accomplish those rezonings? >> The -- yes. And I would just add, though, that the amendment process with respect to flums, if you read the description of it that's in the code, it really is geared towards requests that are made by applicants for individual parcels, as well as council-initiated or commission-initiated amendments that are for individual area or subschool districts and this is really in the nature of a citywide designation that would sort of cross different planning areas. >> Tovo: I guess that's where we continue to have differing opinions because the impact of those citywide changes are very different, depending on what your individual property is. So they have the impact of [12:17:10 PM] individual rezonings, depending on whether or not you're in an area scheduled for a potential transition rezoning or whether you're outside it. I mean, the impact is different among different neighbors, so those are individual zoning proposals, in my opinion. Anyway, thank you for that information and for explaining how it would work from this point forward. >> Flannigan: I think the conversation about centers and corridors is a good one. But I think it's also important to remember that when I look at many of the centers, they're already -- they already have fairly intense zoning. There are some -- some centers that have pud zoning, like the Robinson ranch center, which has some very intense zoning aloneses inside of the pud. I look at the lakeline regional center and it has mu-5 being zoned broadly across the commercial properties there if a lot of the centers are already [12:18:10 PM] commercial, so, you know, if we're going to compare transition Zones to centers, then I think we would see a very different map with the types of buildings sizes and entitlements that are going to be zoned in some of these centers when the transition Zones are fairly small in comparison. I just think it's important to remember that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Other comments? Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I have a number of questions that are on the q&a that haven't been answered and still haven't even been loaded. When should we expect to get answers on the q&a so we can understand what we're voting on. >> Yeah, we're looking at that weekly, at the volume of questions and today we will be finalizing a good number of them related to capacity, which I believe were a lot of your questions, councilmember. And so this week we'll be [12:19:12 PM] churning through many of them that were submitted last week and trying to keep on top of a healthy production. >> Alter: So I have a lot of questions that were submitted before our q&a existed that have not made it into the q&a even. Which we were told were supposed to get into the q&a. So I'm a little bit concerned on that process. And I think it's really important that we get these questions answered and that they're out in the public. It's one thing for me to sit in a meeting and have you answer my questions. That doesn't help us to dispel things that are out there or to provide clarity on what's been going. And so the sooner that we can get some of these answered and my staff will be happy to work with you to make sure that we get those, that would be great. I hope in the answers that you're providing that we will have access to the database for the capacity that is predicted. When we looked at the codenext draft 3 and the capacity numbers looking at it, there were some real serious anomalies on which [12:20:12 PM] this was based. And I really need to see what those envision tomorrow projections are for where that capacity is going because it's one thing for things to be rezoned but, you know, we could be looking at this data and all the capacity could be in particular areas even though we're tokenly rezoning it elsewhere. So it's really very important for me in understanding what this code does to see that capacity number in that granular level. And wherein it exists because it was available with draft 3, so, you know, ultimately your capacity numbers are based on that and we have the capabilities to do that. Next thing I wanted to mention was that on December 9, four of us have a campo meeting that evening so just in terms of timing, we have a campo meeting start at 6:00 P.M. So I just wanted to flag that for staff. I don't know what's on the agenda, and I don't know whether that will be moved, but we do have that meeting [12:21:13 PM] scheduled. I wanted to focus in on some adjustments and kind of reiterate my understanding of what's going on and ask for some clarification. I understand that you're considering a series of potential adjustments to the code in a variety of areas that was produced on October 4 was a draft code and a draft map, and the point of the public communication was to iterate and improve the code. I think, though, that everybody to get clarity more quickly on what you are considering in more detail, and I want to highlight a couple pieces in particular that are of great concern to me that I want to raise with staff. We've had some conversations but I also want to flag for my colleagues. So, first of all, I do not believe our preservation bonus is currently calibrated in a manner that achieves our shared goals around affordability, preservation of existing [12:22:14 PM] older housing stock and increasing density with smaller units. That is primarily because we have increased the F.A.R. For the duplexes and allowed unlimited F.A.R. For the bonus unit. I would support calibration that would incentivize smaller units and prohibit units that exceed our current mcmansion limits. So it looks like from your presentation that changes are being considered to the March maximums and far exemptions. Can you share more about what you think needs improvement? >> Before I turn over to Greg, I just want to say I think that based on community feedback we feel that the F.A.R. Needs to be more closely calibrated to increase the number of units so we think there's some improvement there, and we also, as signaled in the last supplemental, we think that the preservation incentive we agree with -- we agree with some of your [12:23:15 PM] comments and we think that it needs to be improved. The preservation aspects of it need to be strengthened and we also are going to be looking at the way in which the F.A.R. Bonus applies in connection with the preservation incentive, and we expect to be proposing specific, you know, clearly defined changes with our November 25th second supplemental report. >> Alter: So it seems like you agree that it could be improved, particularly the preservation incentive. What exactly is your diagnosis open what outcomes it is currently allowing that we would rather not see? >> One of them, it's not clear on -- it's not clear on if there's multiple structures on the lot which one would be subject to the preservation incentive, and that is something that absolutely needs clarification. The intent of the preservation incentive is to -- multiple, but one is the character of neighborhoods and the [12:24:16 PM] primary structure that is interacting with the street. And so structures that are over 30 years old that are the primary structure are the ones that are meant to be preserved and so we'd like to clarify that. And Greg may want to add more to that. >> We've heard a lot about the structure being preserved and whether -- how useful it is to -- what about it should be preserved and for how long and how it interacts. Because part of it is -- there's an aspect to it that has to do with neighborhood character with the preservation incentive, and so how it interacts with the street and whether the front facade is preserved is something we've heard a lot about. So we'll be looking at that and how much you can add to the unit that's being preserved, how much additional square footage if someone wants to expand that, or possibly add an internal accessory dwelling unit, if that would be allowed. >> Alter: Thank you. I think this is the level of detail that we need to be [12:25:17 PM] communicating because people are not feeling like they're being heard, from what you just said, I'm hearing that you heard certain things and elements of the concerns, but the way this process is unfolding people do not feel like their concerns are being heard and they do not understand how it will be taken into consideration. And I don't know -- it's a very complicated process and we're moving at a very rapid pace, but people are not hearing that their concerns are being addressed. So I hope that we can address those things. From my colleagues, part of what we're hearing with the preservation bonus is if you're not hearing it from your constituents is, you know, you can preserve one wall and you can take advantage of unlimited F.A.R. It doesn't say how long you have to preserve it. You could be preserving the little tiny apartment above the garage and that counts as your preservation and then you can get a huge amount of additional space without the unit. One of the other things that I wanted to mention is, [12:26:21 PM] separate from the preservation bonus, we've been talking a lot about the transition Zones and that's where we're upzoning, but when we look at what is in this calibration we are seeing huge changes in the single family areas, and I would like to know if changes are being considered to the F.A.R. Calibrations and the F.A.R. Exemptions in r2 Zones and with respect to the exemptions you specifically mentioned attic exemptions. Are you considering examining and eliminating or changing other exemptions as well? >> Yes. We're looking at F.A.R. Outside of the transition Zones in the r2a and r2b, specifically to duplex and other products that are allowed in single family. >> Alter: And what about the exemptions? >> And the exemptions, absolutely, yes. >> Alter: And in our capacity calculations, what did you assume about the increased capacity that would come in in the r2a and [12:27:25 PM] r2b areas? >> I'll have to follow up with that. We have our meeting with our capacity consultants today, and I believe that was a question on the counsel portal so we'll be reporting out on that. >> Alter: Because it seems to me that given what we're seeing could be taken advantage of by developers in those areas, given what was put out on October 4, which may hopefully be changing, that there's a huge amount of capacity that will come in the r2b, it could be even larger than what we're seeing on the transition areas and it incentivizes very large houses and does not, you know, in combination then with the preservation bonus create some things which are very much not what the council I think as a whole wanted to see on the other end. So I wanted to flag that. The other thing I wanted to flag for my colleagues and I had an opportunity to talk with the staff about is, we need a definition of what a unit is that is not just a [12:28:25 PM] sink outside of a bathroom. It has to be a place where some different household is residing. I mentioned this case before. I have a case in my district where they subdivided a single family under the current code and they put a pool house and it was counted as if it was a different household. Nobody is living there. There had to be no bedrooms. You know, you could have a wet bar. It counts as a kitchen. And I know that sounds like an extreme example, but there is a lot of wealth in this community. There is a lot of demand for very large houses. That's why we had to go to mcmansion in the first place. And we need a definition of a unit as a -- as a safety break on what we're doing if we're going to be increasing the number of units. I don't know how to get to that definition, exactly what it is, but it shouldn't be that I can add a second unit in my house that is [12:29:26 PM] essentially, you know, a game room with a wet bar and it counts as another unit so that I get all of these increases in entitlements. And I know that's not the intention, but if our code doesn't allow us to prevent that, that is what we will see. It's the same reason why we're looking at some limits on strs, if we're going to be creating more units and more housing we need to make sure we're getting housing and not hotel beds from that. So I just -- I wanted to kind of flag that we need to be doing that. And to the degree that you can really be -- being very clear about what's coming down the pipeline, I didn't get a chance to walk the planning commission last night, but, you know, there are -- this is a 1300 page document. There are lots of different conversations going on. There's lots of different information. We don't have great models from staff at this point about what this looks like, and we need some clarity on [12:30:26 PM] what is changing and why and how it's achieving our goals. Because what we saw on October 4 is the only thing that we, as councilmembers or the public, can be looking at. We cannot read minds, and it's creating -- as people catch up to this process it's creating a lot of confusion and injecting uncertainty into the process right now. >> Mayor Adler: I want to concur with what my colleague said. I think that you are -- in your presentation you talked about listening and you're making changes or considering changes. The sooner you can daylight that. You did hear today on a lot of individual topics, but the more information you can get to the community, the earlier the better. So that people know what's in play. Even if you don't know the right answers. So I recognize that you're [12:31:27 PM] going to lay all that out on the 25th but we are meeting on the 18th, so I hope next week you're able to give us even more detail of the kinds of things that are in play that you're taking a look at so that people know that they're being heard and that there are issues you're discussing. Again, even if you don't know how you're going to end up on that, I think that would be really helpful. To the degree that you know how you're going to end up on that, the sooner you can get that out, the fewer things that we're gonna have to hear for the first time on the 25th. So I would take as much of that as you could. I think that would be really helpful. We -- right now, colleagues, are looking at doing the first reading on the ninth. I put something on the board that's been up now for a month or so, suggesting that [12:32:29 PM] one approach to my recommended approach on how we handle the first reading. My hope is that's something we'll be able to discuss at our work session on the 18th so that we can see if there's agreement for how we should be proceeding in December. If we want to make changes to that, that we discuss those so that on the 18th hopefully at the end that have meeting we know what we're looking forward to as we go through. I appreciate -- as I've been going around the city and talking to different groups in different places, I appreciate you going back to the deed restriction question. I get that question a lot of places where I go, and what we're doing in the code doesn't impact deed restrictions, their enforcability in any way. Those rights preexist a development code and post-exist a development code. I think that's important for people to see. What about trees? Are you changing -- are you [12:33:29 PM] eliminating the heritage tree production in the draft? >> Is no, mayor. The changes proposed to the tree ordinance I think are fairly minimal. There is a clarification that will be proposed. There was some language that I think needs to be added that was in the staff report from October 4 that needs to be -- that wasn't reflected in the code. But the -- essentially there is an opportunity for administrative variances to remove heritage trees along corridors, but the intent of that is for that to be only residential projects that have 75% of the frontage on the corridor and that are providing at least 10% on-site affordability. So it's a very limited process change that would definitely make it easier to request and potentially obtain variances for [12:34:30 PM] residential projects on corridors. Outside of that, the changes that I can speak to, again, I think they're fairly straightforward and minimal, but with respect to removal of trees in public easements and public property, there is a greater ability to weigh transportation impacts. We have, you know, regulations that sort of compete with each other, and sometimes trees present challenges with respect to -- with respect to driveway placement and connectivity. So there's a little bit of a greater flexibility to consider that for removal of trees on public property and easements. And then the planting requirements I think are actually strengthened, and I can't speak in detail to that, but I think that on the whole this is a positive code. Oh, and the other thing I want to talk about, which rarely gets mentioned but I think it's very important to daylight, is that we proposed and worked with staff on a provision in the [12:35:34 PM] the -- and the law department on a provision that is intended to basically disincentivize the illegal removal of trees before an applicant submits a development application. So in the proposed code it includes a provision that would -- if somebody -- if there's clear evidence that a tree was illegally removed prior to submittal of a development application, that the development application cannot be removed until maximum levels of mitigation have been provided to the satisfaction of the city arborist. And so that I think addresses an enforcement loophole that we've had in the current code. I mean, I think there are limit to -- you can't render properties permanently undevelopable based on violation of the tree ordinance, but we can do a lot better than we have, and so I think that's a real positive improvement to the tree regulations. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. What about local historic districts? In some of the meetings that I've been to, Hyde park included, the question arises will the design [12:36:35 PM] standards and requirements of the local historic district still apply even for a property that has a rezoning, property transition zone, for example? >> Yes. If a property has an H or HD now, that is carried forward in the transition areas and outside. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Once every few places I go I get asked the question about petition rights. I know you addressed this before. But are there individual petition rights to protest or appeal zoning changes as part of the citywide process? >> The law department has advised publicly that the petition right protest right process applies to more individualized changes and not to citywide legislative enactments of a new zoning map or a comprehensive revision. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I get questions about [12:37:35 PM] property taxes. You've said before that the property code itself provides that's if tough a homestead residential property it's to be valued in an ad valorem tax as a homestead residential property even if its highest and best use would be for commercial or more dense residential development. Is that still your understanding in your discussions with the appraisal district? >> Yes, that's correct. We -- and we will be coming out with information, more information after a more recent meeting. I know that the tax office did come during the previous work on the code, and we've recently met with them in the last two weeks along with Ed van eenoo and our financial services department to understand a little in more depth and how we can provide information and communicate with the public on that issue. As we heard through October, that was a very important item, so more information [12:38:35 PM] forthcoming. But that is correct, the homestead is the highest and best use for the properties that have the homestead exemption. That is still correct. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Or it's still valued that way even if it's not highest and best use. If its highest and best use would be to tear down a home or build commercial on it or more dense use, it's still valued as if it were a homestead residential property? >> That's correct. >> Alter: I wanted to clarify something there. So my understanding that there's two parts to this question about the property taxes that people will experience after we make a change. So one is what happens overnight when you change their zoning? Does their property value change? The answer to that is no because the zoning -- the appraisal district doesn't base it on the zoning. But then there's a question of what is the knock-on effect that happens after that once houses start selling on your street that have the upzoning? And that house that sold looks just like your house and then that affects your [12:39:36 PM] property value moving forward. Now you're still protected by your 10% and your homestead exemption, but the property values that you will be judged against when the appraisal district gets to relooking at stuff will be looking at that property if that property -- because when it was sold it was still the same house type as yours, which is what they're looking at. They're not looking at what it's going to be used at next. They're looking at what it was when it was sold. So I think there's a distinction here when we talk about the property taxes that, yes, changing the zoning doesn't affect the property taxes, but changing the zoning affects the entitlements on the properties and when you change the entitlements on the properties you change the value of the properties and when they're sold they're worth more and then that impacts your property if they're sold on your street. >> Mayor Adler: I hear that but I disagree with that and I think that's perhaps what we need to fill in. If the property next to me that looks just like my house sells for more because someone is paying more for it because they can turn it [12:40:37 PM] into a triplex or a quad or commercial use and that's why they paid more for it, then that sale, even though it's right next door to me, can't be used to value my property because the highest and best use of the property next to me, the highest and best use that was taken into account in setting that value was not the value that somebody would pay for a single-family home. They paid more for it because it had the potential to be used for a higher and better use. What the property code says is that that kind of value that your property would have if someone were considering a different highest and best use, diversion a triplex or quad or commercial use, is not something that is -- can be used to value your property as a single-family home. Even though that was a single-family home that sold because its value is related to its highest and best use and not to its existing use. >> Alter: The only way they [12:41:38 PM] know that is if it's converted into the higher use within the time frame before which your evaluation gets done because the appraisal district doesn't know what somebody who buys that property intends to do with that property unless it's done. >> Mayor Adler: I would agree if someone buys it for that use and never converts terror to a commercial use and doesn't do that kind of stuff that it will look like and will be a sale for someone who wanted to use it for that use. To the degree somebody pays that much in a neighborhood and then that person then converts it to its highest and best use based on the new entitlements, then sales that that value and that look like that sale would be sales that they couldn't use and would be what someone would come into an appraisal district when they're valuing the property and say you can't use that. But that's not unlike lots of different valuation questions that take place in ad valorem tax hearings a lot, when someone -- a lot [12:42:39 PM] of times people will buy a property, pay more for it for other than its existing use, they'll pay more for it based on what its highest and best use is given its entitlements. I look forward to y'all developing that concept more to see if there's still issues for us to face. >> Kitchen: Can I follow up on that for a second, on the tax. >> Mayor Adler: Sure. >> Kitchen: I think this is an area that's really of concern to the public. I would like the opportunity to have a conversation with the tax appraisal district, the kinds of -- the kinds of concerns I'm hearing are the ones that councilmember alter is expressing. And I think we need to get into some detail about it. Because what the public is telling me is they're taking -- that there's a lot of complexities to it that they need to understand. And I think we need to also. And I think it's one of those areas that we can't -- I'm not saying you were saying this, but I think it's one of those areas we [12:43:42 PM] run the risk of having trust issues if we just keep saying, no, there's no impact, there's no impact. So it's one of the areas that I really would like the opportunity to spend some more time on and have an opportunity for us to ask questions of the appraisal district and I think it would be a good item for our work session conversation. I know we did that last time with -- I don't remember exactly when we did it, but I would appreciate the opportunity to do that, to try to really use that time to get to them -- I'm not going -- I have further questions about it myself but I'm not going to get to that right now but I'd like to flag that as an issue for work session. >> Mayor Adler: I agree. I think it's something we should spend time on. So in your conversation it might be something we want to discuss. >> Flannigan: On that point, I think the designation of the homestead exemption is an important trigger for the appraisal district that if a district buys a property [12:44:43 PM] that's no longer designated as a homestead property doesn't have to redevelop before that designation changes, and I think it's also important to note that, you know, some folks in the community have expressed concern that allowing a duplex in their neighborhood will reduce their property values. I have started calling it shredding years appraisal, no matter what we do your appraisal will both go up and down. Only once we do it will we know what happens. I think it's a good idea to dig into it more but I don't know we're going to find any more clarity than the appraisal district currently provides for its process. >> Mayor Adler: Same topic, appraisal issue? Go ahead. >> Pool: In the last couple years the appraisal district started separating out the value of the home structure and the land structure. I mean, they've been doing that for a long time but they went around, did a round -- a circuit around the city and upvalued the land significantly. And then they reduced the value of the homes. So what I think is gonna [12:45:43 PM] continue to happen is as the homes get older the value of the structure is going to continue to go down. My home is a good example of that. The value of the dirt neither it is going to continue to go up. Whether that's in advance of something being upzoned, we are talking about massive residential upzoning in this code. I mean, we might as well as just say that. We'll be -- we will know what happens with the taxes once the sales begin and once the comparables are assembled for -- both for mls sales and then when the tax appraiser comes back and reviews all the activity that's gone on after these things have happened, that's when we are really gonna see the changes. We're all seeing massive increases in our taxes now. To the extent that we're all seeing the 10% cap being reached every year. So, yeah, I suppose if you hold on to your property, [12:46:43 PM] it's only going to be 10%, but it's still 10% and nobody is making 10% every year in an increase in their wages. So that's where the theme gets tilted out of kilter, and it's even worse for those of us who have a lot of people who bought their properties centrally so they could be located near hospitals and restaurants, maybe family, walkable to a -- well, to a library, and so they had pitched all of their investment into that home to age in place in that home, and now they're finding that the financial forecast that they had put together for their aging in place structure just seemed to them to be out the window and that's what's causing so much dislocation and dismay in the community. Yes, the more we talk about what's going on, what the impacts are, potential or not potential, the better it will be for the community to come along. I'll say it one more time. [12:47:44 PM] We really have to have the residents of Austin coming along with us willingly on this ride because we are talking about their property. It's a huge investment. Emotional, psychic, physical, financial. They're invested in where they live, whether they are renting and they've been in a neighborhood for a long time or they have a home, they raised a family and now they hope to live out their years in it. That's super dislocating for our community and the homestead exemption piece is just one little part of it. I did have a couple more things that I wanted to bring up. >> Mayor Adler: I'll come back. Item -- one more thing. On the property tax value question or the property appraised value question, more questions, yes, Jimmy. >> Flannigan: Just to remind folks that appraisals going up does not automatically mean taxes go up because as the way the state regulates tax rates, it's about how much we collect. [12:48:45 PM] It's not about how much value there is in your property. There's kind of a distribution question. If you get really into the weeds there, but especially with tax caps and other changes made at the state level, the tax bill changes are really not as related to valuation changes, as some folks often -- as will often say. And, you know, the other thing is that we don't values to raise taxes as much as we have. Now we won't be able to anymore because of what the state changes were, but, you know, I had to remind a few folks in the community about how votes have gone when it comes to raising taxes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. On the same question? >> Casar: On the same question. I want to concur with councilmember kitchen that we should have the appraisal district really lay things out because my reading and recollection of when she was hear, chief appraiser was here, is that this state law says that you are not to be taxed on your homestead based just on the value of your home. Regardless of the value of your home, you're supposed [12:49:46 PM] to be taxed based on other comparable homes, regardless of whether you're zoned mf-3, CBD or H2. My understanding of the reading of that law is it's actually a change, a protection against being taxed solely on the value of your home but instead being taxed based on comparable uses, regardless of that highest and best use and, therefore, regardless of the highest value of your home. So I would really want her to lay that out really clearly and for us to make sure that's the way she does her work and intends to continue doing her work. I think that that distinction is just really important. >> Mayor Adler: Let's book mark this item as something obviously we need to spend more time, as councilmember kitchen asked. My last one is -- that I hear in several places that I go to, if you have a single-family home in a transition area and if the home is destroyed by fire or flood or if you decide to demolish it, can an owner -- [12:50:47 PM] is the owner able to rebuild a single-family home if their property is located in aransition area? >> Yes. Absolutely. The draft code that was released October 4 does not, I think, distinguish between homes that are destroyed by accident or homes that are simply being leveled and rebuilt voluntarily. I think that is an issue that we have flagged as something that we're continuing to look at it it's something planning commission has touched on at least in their deliberations as far as voluntarily demolishing a single-family home in the transition area and rebuilding it. Are there potentially some size limitations that could be considered? So that is an issue that we're looking at, but the rights afforded a single family homeowner in the transition areas are greater that would apply for just a nonconforming use and we [12:51:47 PM] expect that that will continue as we refine our work. So I hope that answers your question. >> Mayor Adler: It does. Thank you. Has anybody not had a chance to ask a question yet that wants to ask a question? No? Leslie. >> Pool: Okay, real quick. On the tree, heritage tree ordinance piece, if I'm understanding correctly, the tree removal would be approved administratively. Is that right. >> Only in certain very limited circumstances. >> Pool: Which ones are they? >> If it's a residential project that is on a corridor that has -- I may slightly misstate the particulars, but a% of the frontage is on the door and it's providing 10% on-site affordability, then it would have the option to pursue an administrative variance for tree removal. That is the only -- that is the change with respect to [12:52:49 PM] tree removal. >> Pool: Does that criteria -- did the basis for that criteria come from an analysis of where our heritage trees currently are in the city? >> I'm not sure the extent to which that was considered, but what was considered is council's direction to sort of look at non-zoning regulations and look at the ways in which they could be modified to make it easier to do housing construction with an emphasis on affordability. >> Pool: Exactly. Which is why people are concerned that we're going to lose our heritage trees. So what I would say is that -- that the -- any administrative approval is not public and it's not transparent. And particularly with trees and our city's love affair with them, right? So we need to look at that very carefully. And I would like to see some criteria connected with those rules about where the trees actually are because if we are finding that some of our oldest trees were [12:53:50 PM] planted 50 to 100 years ago in order to line our boulevards to provide the shade which you need in a hot climate and then those are going to be inequitably targeted for removal then I really think we need to have that conversation. On mcmansion we've been talking a lot about how we don't want to incentivize huge new residential building but I think that's what we are doing with our density bonuses and I want to ask what is the fate of the mcmansion ordinance and the envelope that had been constructed in order to keep the -- to keep things kind of in a human scale? >> Councilmember, so the mcmansion ordinance today was largely simplified in the draft code. So we kept the -- there's a -- in some of the Zones there's what's called a top of top plate, which is a certain height within a certain distance of the property line, and then as you go back towards the middle of the property you can get more height so it kind of steps back into the property. [12:54:51 PM] And then we've kept F.A.R. For a variety of uses. I mean, the F.A.R. Is what's used in mcmansion today, the .4, but it's used in the new code to incentivize uses other than single family but also to -- it's leverage for the preservation incentive. >> Pool: Yeah. So this dovetails with what councilmember alter was talking about, and I'm not comfortable with what we've done with regard to the F.A.R. Increases and essentially you've moved compatibility on to an actual residential property rather than -- we were talking about with codenext compatibility standards and now we're talking about transition Zones and we've lost compatibility but it looks like it's been relocated to the back portion of somebody's property where they can go up a lot higher, irregardless of what's behind them, another residence perhaps. So I think we definitely need to look at the mcmansion ordinance and make sure we have not done [12:55:52 PM] any violence to that because that would in effect allow mcmansions to be built. We are incentivizing the building of really huge structures. And I thought that the city had agreed that we were going to move away from doing that. I think that is a general feeling around this dais. We don't want to incentivize massive single-family homes. We would rather have a number of smaller homes, and I don't see what we're doing in this code to incentivize that. But I'm happy to be disabused of that. Then the last thing I want to say is visualizations and modeling, there are folks in the community who are using the code that's out there for the rewrite and they're doing some 3D renderings -- 2d because they're on a piece of paper and they don't look anything like what the aia for example, has submitted to y'all. Those were really pretty pictures, but the other pictures of people who are doing them that maybe don't have the incentive to make them look really pretty but [12:56:52 PM] rather to do them firmly and authentically with the data we've provided -- and I think you've met with some of the folks who are doing this and agreed that the drawings that they came up with are in fact using the data that we have on the books. So I would like to see where they may be wrong, and I would like to see how those visualizations -- I would like the city to have these renderings. I was looking on the website last night and there are some drawings -- sorry. Is the staffer's make it Oscar? Who did the renderings up on the land development code page? Put up there -- >> We have a team that -- >> Pool: They were put up on October 30. >> Yeah, we have a team. Laura Keating and Wendy Garwood worked on some as well as others who were hired with our consultant. [12:57:52 PM] So there's a variety of folks. >> Pool: Okay. Well, the name is listed on there for whoever had done it and it's on the city page. What I couldn't figure out was what those renderings and there were four of people, how they compared with what the residents had been putting together that are similar. I want to see a one-to-one comparison. So that we can get a better handle and be better informed on what the heck it is we're doing here. >> Absolutely. We can bring those forth on the 18th at work session as part of the agenda. >> Pool: If you could get them to us beforehand, that would be really good so we have a chance to study them and look at them and see what's different and what isn't. When we get to the 18th we're gonna be paying attention to what people are saying in our conversation, and we won't have time to upload and accommodate and have questions about the information that you're handing out to us. So, city manager, it would be really great to the extent possible if we can -- and everybody is working at a thousand miles an hour. As are we and our staffs trying to understand what it is we're looking at so we can ask cogent questions, but I would say that [12:58:52 PM] bringing the information to us on the 18th is gonna be too late. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann and then Greg. >> Kitchen: I think at this point I just wanted to flag a few things for work session items. So I do want to talk -- I want to dive deeper into the affordability provisions. I appreciate we did have a chance to have conversations when we combined the housing and work session, that was useful and very helpful. There are remaining questions from my perspective related to how we are handling the vmu requirements and there's been concerns expressed to me about the change ending up in reductions of what we might yield in terms of affordable housing. So I would like to dive into those affordability -- that futile discussion as part of the work session so that would be one of the items I want to flag right now. [12:59:55 PM] So I also just want to -- I do think that we need to talk further about the transition Zones. I share the concern expressed earlier about the two to five lots. I think that -- I think that we were pretty clear in may in our direction that we were talking about two to five lots. I appreciate the -- I appreciate the staff is trying to interpret and apply what we said, but I think we need some further discussion about how that was done, and potentialititives to that. I really appreciate the fact that you're going back and looking at the vulnerable areas because we had always said that those would be on the lesser side of that two to five. So I appreciate that but I do think we need to have a conversation about that criteria as a whole because what we have seen is not an application of two to five lots. [1:00:55 PM] And I think there may be ways to handle that that we don't have to sacrifice capacity. And so I would like to have that conversation so that's another thing that I would like to put down. Let me ask one quick question, did I hear y'all right? That for the next sediment -- supplemental you're going back and looking at the mapping of transition Zones in the vulnerable areas? Is that what I heard? >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Okay. Those are the areas that are marked as vulnerable on the maps that we've been using? >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Okay. All right. And then I wantnd to also -- I just wanted to respond to councilmember Flannigan. I was thinking when I talk about the centers, I am thinking about transition Zones -- or actually missing middle is probably a better term around the centers, not in the centers. Because the concept behind the missing middle in the transition Zones was [1:01:56 PM] stepdowns, stepping down from greater areas of density so the fact that a center is a dense area, which is what we all said we want in imagine Austin, doesn't answer the question about what should be happening around it in terms of some of those areas perhaps having potential for more missing middle. So I'm glad to hear -- I think I heard that that's something y'all are gonna go back and look at. Is that right? >> That's correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. I'm concerned that I share the concerns that were raised about the tree ordinance. I think that we may need some more conversation about that balance. I hear what you heard from what we said in may. I will go back and look at the language, but I think what we were trying to acknowledge when we adopted that in may is that we need to look at balance. So I'm not sure if we've quite -- if we've gotten to that balance yet. [1:02:57 PM] Let's see. I have concerns about neighborhood plans. I have concerns about going in now and making changes to neighborhood plans in a way that doesn't follow the process that was set up for change. And that really doesn't follow it in any way at all. So I think that we need to rethink what we're doing in those areas where we have -- if we have -- many of those neighborhood plans -- actually, I can only speak -- there's only one in my district so I can speak to that one and that was adopted, hmm, in 2014. It's a very recent neighborhood plan that the neighbors worked very hard on it and they identified areas in their neighborhoods where it was appropriate for more density. So to now go back -- for us to now go back and just say, well, that was a couple years ago and you went through a long process, you [1:03:57 PM] have a contact team, we're just not gonna follow that, I don't think that's appropriate. So I think we need to think about how we can balance that. I understand that people have concerns about neighborhood plans. I think we should talk through that. I think we should talk through that as a council so we can all understand what those concerns are and perhaps there's a way that we can find some level of agreement on what we do with the neighborhood plans because from my perspective it is -- from my perspective, it's not -- I don't -- I'm not saying anybody is saying this, but from my perspective we've got neighborhoods that are interested in their area that understand their area that are thinking about where in their area it makes sense for additional capacity. And I think we need to have a way to hear that and listen to that within the context of the process that we've set up, which is these contact team processes. So, anyway, I want to flag [1:04:58 PM] that as another work session item. And I'd just ask us all to have -- create some space to kind of think through what we're trying to accomplish and how we can accomplish that in a way that respects -- it respects that neighborhood planning process, understanding that it's maybe not the same for all of them. Because some of them are pretty old and some of them are not. Anyway, I think we need to have that conversation. So that's all I want to flag for now. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Kitchen: I'll flag additional things on the message board. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. And you should probably list those, too, even though you went through here. I put them on, too. Greg. >> Casar: I think it's important to use that message board thread that has been started. I and I think others have posted saying -- and I hear the staff saying that there should be modifications to make it really clear that we are incentiving more smaller homes in transition zone areas as opposed to really large ones so I don't want folks in the community to think that anything other [1:05:58 PM] than that is the intention of what the council is if that's what was in the council direction, if that's on the message board that everybody is agreeing to, and I haven't heard anybody agree with that. Again, I think it's important in the places where we all -- we're gonna disagree on this process and that's fine but in the places where it seems like there's broad agreement and I haven't heard anybody to disagree, for us to do our best to mention that is the Dr., it seems the council and staff is going, which is to try to have -- disincentivize the really large units and incentivize the smaller units in the transition Zones and, frankly,s to try to incentivize the smaller units in single family areas generally with the expansion of mcmansionesque intent into other parts of the city it seems as well. I do want to talk about the preservation incentive. I think we really should and need to make that work, and I think, again, that's a place where everybody's [1:06:59 PM] intent seems to generally be aligned, even if there might be some details where we land. It sounds like the staff's intent sounds really similar to what council's was in may and I think ours is now, which is we do want the idea of a 200 square foot shed triggering the preservation incentive I don't think was anybody's intent and that's the point of working through this together and I don't think the goal is for it to lead to really Big Mac mansion construction 2002 help homeowners keep their house and add gentle density. Again, I think that's the intent and I want to reiterate if symmetric disagrees I want want to hear them disagree but I haven't heard anybody disagree with that so I think that's the direction we're going. I really do want to make that work because especially on this tax issue, as we know the state has refused to have a more Progressive taxation structure, we see valuations continuing to rise for a wide variety of reasons, and a really good way to help folks is for [1:07:59 PM] them to either be able to, you know, get -- make more money by either renting or selling portions or addressing, you know, having some portion of their land provide income for them. If we can make it not just be about adus but also the opportunity for this preservation incentive I think that's a really -- that's an area where we have more control and I really want to make that work and I want to make that work together, regardless of where everybody lands on everything else. It sounds like we're really aligned on those sorts of issues. Then on the questions of drawings, you know, I've talked to lots of the folks, sometimes in person or sometimes online when they tag me about the variety of drawings going around, and I just think everybody is of course entitled to draw things the best way that they can, but I think that a lot of what's required in the coated is landscaping and things like windows and private street frontages and for, you know, humans to be scaled on the drawings the size that most people are and I think that the more that everybody -- no matter [1:09:00 PM] what your preference for, against code changes are, the more that everybody can make things look more like houses really would look and more like what the houses really do look like and compare it to the code I just think, again, that's better for everyone. And I'm totally fine with people making drawings that love the code and people making drawings that hate the code. Again, because it's such an intense topic and we've gone through years of it I urge for folks to not purposefully make them beautiful nor purposefully make them really scary and instead do our best to try to get to the facts. Because folks have brought up issues here that I think are creating change in the code and that can make this better. I agree I want to look at the affordability sections, want to make those transition Zones work to provide the housing we really want, really want to make the preservation bonus work for homeowners that need income and preserve housing, so I think all of those things are good. I really appreciate the neighborhoods that are trying to figure out if there's a way for them to [1:10:01 PM] accommodate the density in a way that works for them and I intend to be -- try to be as supportive of folks doing that, would as I can. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Go ahead, Pio. >> Renteria: Yeah, what I want to know is [off mic] I see some streets that assume kind of concerned about. They're residential streets like govalle avenue where it was zoned r4 and it's just a small street that goes -- I guess there's just one bus that goes through there and I'm really concerned because those are very affordable housing there that we have. And I want to make sure that y'all take a really good look at that because I don't want to be able to -- I just don't see the density in those little single-family houses lots there in the govalle street. It's pretty much isolated from the rest of the major corridors. It's just a -- it's a little [1:11:01 PM] smaller street and I just don't believe that, you know, that area -- I don't know -- I can't understand why it was zoned r4 there, but if you could let me know why, what were the reasons behind it. >> We'll follow up with you. We did meet with the neighborhood association and did hear those concerns as well and with the residential frontage it will be subject to our revisions coming out November 25, but I'll follow up with your office on particularly why and what might be changed. >> Renteria: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, it's 1:10. I don't know if you want to stay here with the land development code for W should move to the pulled items that we have. If people just want to quickly -- just identify some things and then see if we can -- I don't know how long people -- a lot of people pulled their own items on the deal. How about if we finish up with land development code code. I'll call three people whose lights are on to highlight [1:12:03 PM] your issues and then we'll have a conversation about what we want to do next. Kathie. >> Tovo: Councilmember Casar, thank you for highlighting some of your issues. I have questions for you about the comments you made. I have questions for the manager -- I mean, for the mayor about his suggested process. I was leaving those for next week for our scheduled work session rather than today so I just want to be really clear that I am not -- I do not have the capacity to respond to everything that's on the message board with regard to the land development code. I'm doing my best just to get through the material at this point. So that's probably not gonna be a forum in which I'm gonna engage and let you know if I have concerns and I believe I do. So let me just note that please don't interpret the lack of digging into the details and responding and engaging on very specific proposals in that forum as agreement. I just -- I can't formulate a response until I really understand better what you're proposing and it's just nearly -- you know, it's just not time efficient [1:13:03 PM] to do that in that forum. That's all I wanted to say, that I hope we can talk about some of those things and not sort of come to an agreement that the message board is gonna be kind of our proxy for having those face-to-face conversations. >> Mayor Adler: Noted. Leslie, you wanted to identify some things? >> Pool: Real quick, just a response also to what councilmember Casar was saying about the mcmansions and the really big residentials. Yes, I agree. We are all are on the same page on that. The problem is that what is written incentivizes building really big residents, single family residents, because of some of the elements that are in there. And I think that was a natural outcome maybe of how we did the guidance document or something. But I think if we can go back and we clarify that with staff and let them know we don't want those additional incentive bonuses in there because that's adding F.A.R. For single family, that that will address a huge issue for me and clearly for others around here. [1:14:03 PM] I really am concerned about the mcmansion aspect. And then, mayor, you were talking about the process for which we come back to do first reading. And it occurred to me because we have so many questions now, we still don't have the maps, we don't know how this is aligning with imagine Austin, we don't have the overlays that show the 2% transition Zones by district or watershed that -- I don't know -- and we won't know at first reading if the errors that we've identified have all been corrected. We won't know if the corrections are correct. So I -- I don't know if I'm gonna be ready, if we will be ready to do a first reading on -- under the scoping that you have listed on the message board. Now, when you posted it a month ago, it sounded like a good plan, and so I've been thinking about it in that form for the last four to five weeks, but now it's [1:15:03 PM] really clear to me that we may need to rethink it. >> Mayor Adler: Gotcha. Thank you. Alison, you want to close us out? >> Alter: Yeah, one quick question I want to get clarity. So the part about the heritage trees being administrative and only allowed under those certain conditions, were those conditions laid out in the draft from October 4 or is that a new change that you're making? >> So I think the staff report describes -- so the limitations on the administrative variance option in terms of being 75 -- residential projects 75% on the frontage, frontage on the corridor and then 10% affordable units that's described in the staff report, but it's not reflected in the code language. So we'll be doing a correction on that. So that was -- it was clearly documented as the intent in the staff report but it was just a discrepancy in the code language. The code language just I think says residential -- administrative variances are [1:16:05 PM] available for residential projects on the corridor and it needs to have those caveats that are stated in the staff recommendation. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. On the message board I just, you know -- since you posted that I have been, you know, thinking about it but I'm really focused on trying to understand the code and -- until I understand the code it's hard to understand which process I think is best so silence on that not acquiescence it's really trying to spend the time focused on understanding the code. I wanted to make sure in terms of topics, these are things I already have mentioned multiple times, that we're talking about the F.A.R. And size of units and not just in the transition Zones but also in r2a, r2b that we are covering the preservation incentive. In many prior discussions I've talked about my concerns about entitlements that we're giving and how that calibration affects affordability. We may need to revisit that. It's brought up a number of times by my colleagues about [1:17:05 PM] the regional centers and how we are mapping for increased density around the regional centers, and I appreciated councilmember kitchen's comments that part of that is missing middle off the regional centers which does not seem to have been mapped in ways it has off of the corridors. And then I wanted to also briefly talk about the models, which I've spent several hours with staff and they're accurate, the models that are out there in the community, they are accurate. We found no challenges to them to be something that could be produced by this code. The issues that Mr. Casar raises about the trees and other stuff I just want to point out in the few -- in the few models that we have from staff you have similar issues of things being presented in ways that exaggerate what it looks like perhaps in a different direction, and, you know, that really just underscores the fact that we need better models from our staff that [1:18:06 PM] are helping us to visualize what can come out of this code. It is, you know -- should be something our staff is producing and there are very few we have from that testing and there are ways in which those models present things in a way that makes it look more attractive than it is. And what we were trying to communicate is not about design in these models or what Chris and gene yeah, as I understand it are trying to communicate is not about design but the massive scale, which is why we're asking questions about the car and number of units and the preservation incentive. So I just wanted to kind of respond with that. Because I think that we have to be appreciative of volunteers who are spending time doing things that we as a city should be doing ourselves. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's good. You're going to bring us some maps or drawings, modeling on the 18th. I think that will be helpful [1:19:06 PM] because it's not only just the modeling of what can be done under the code, it's the comparison to what can be done under existing code as compared to what is out there now, to be able to do the whole universe of comparisons I think would be an important thing for our discussion. So let's move off the land development code. Colleagues, it's 1:20. Do we want to come back after lunch to hit the pulled items or do we want to see if -- people just want to identify issues on those? Should we try to get through the pulled items? People are saying yes if it looks like it's something we can. I don't know how long people want to spend. Councilmember tovo, you pulled item number 50. >> Tovo: Yes. Yes, I did. >> Casar: Mayor, can we decide that? My preference would be to go and eat but I don't want to stop somebody. >> Mayor Adler: How many people would rather go eat lunch and then come back? >> [Off mic] [1:20:06 PM] [ Laughter ] >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let's break for lunch and then we'll come back. >> Mayor, before we do that may I ask do you know the city employees to be here for the items you pulled or is it just a conversation for yourselves. >> Kitchen: Could I speak to that? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: I had wanted watershed to be here but I think I got my question answered so they don't have to be here for that. If there's time I might make a point -- make the -- I might explain to my colleagues, but I've already talked to Mr. Arellano and he has answered my questions. >> Mayor Adler: Does anybody want staff here for any of the pulled items when we come back from lunch? Councilmember pool and then councilmember Flannigan. >> Pool: I pulled the two items that I'm bringing on transportation just to allow -- if anybody had any questions so I was just going to talk about how important these items are for our mobility plan in reducing vehicle travel by 50%. >> Mayor Adler: Do you need staff here? [1:21:07 PM] >> Pool: I don't need staff and I don't even need to bring it back up if nobody has any questions. Does anybody have any -- >> Mayor Adler: Does anybody want staff on councilmember pool's questions? >> Pool: 57 or 100. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: So I've got two items that I think will warrant discussion but probably just the parks staff will need to stick around. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Do you want to hand out what you were going to hand out now? >> Flannigan: Yes. [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So parks staff on the items that Jimmy pulled. We won't take that up first so parks people don't have to be here so that they can come as we get started, it will be time for them to be able to get here. With that said, council is now going into closed session to take up two items pursuant to 551.074 of the government code, personnel matters related to e2, the [1:22:07 PM] employment euduties and evaluation of the manager, pursuant to 551.072 and 071 of the government code take up real estate and legal matters related to e4 which the purchase, exchange, lease or value of the real estate for the shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness. With that said, it is 1:22. And we will go into executive session. [ Executive session ] [1:51:47 PM] [Recess] [3:09:40 PM] >> Mayor Adler: >> All right. We're out of closed session. In closed session we discussed matters related to e-2 and real estate matters related to item e-4. It is 3:08. And we are here to now just discuss pulled items. Kathie, do you want to introduce yours, item 50? We have the four items that are on the list and we also have councilmember Flannigan has pulled item 64 and 96. >> Tovo: I'm sorry, which were the additional ones? >> Mayor Adler: 64 and 96. 25 and 100 year floodplains is the first one, and edc consulting contract is the second one. >> Tovo: Okay. And I have a question -- >> Mayor Adler: But you may not actually want to discuss them. >> Flannigan: [Inaudible - no mic]. [3:10:41 PM] >> Tovo: Also, I have a question about the questions councilmember Ellis put on the message board for family changing areas. >> Mayor Adler: What number was that? >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: I'll have to look it up. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: I pulled up the Rainey street item just to put it in context and I can make it short or long depending on what people want to do, but also to answer questions. I'll start with a short version. My office hosted a stakeholder meeting and invited people to come and participate from the business community, the residential community, the la Reza round table. We came and asked them for ideas about how such a fund could be used and what kinds of place making opportunities they saw and so I've got a fair amount of information and would be happy to share it or not, depending on what colleagues -- how detailed we want to go into today's discussion. I will say our staff have raised that there are a couple of projects. I think we've discussed in [3:11:42 PM] this session or in the context of this fund how much might be generated for the fund and the range was around 190,000ish. The staff have raised that there is a project or two, or a project or two that might come in with much higher fees so they suggested potentially placing a cap on it. And that I think would potentially mitigate some of the concerns that maybe some of you felt would be authorizing the diversion of general fund revenue in an unspecified amount. So I just wanted to raise that with y'all and see if there was a particular number you felt comfortable with. >> Mayor Adler: We talked about it was in that range and if you were going to cap it in that range I would -- >> Tovo: Like around 150? >> Mayor Adler: In that area, as you were saying, just in that area I think was what I was thinking and that I would still support it at that level. >> Tovo: Okay. [3:12:44 PM] >> Renteria: I was wondering have y'all looked into also the revenue that's been generated by parking? I think that we have started that conversation with our transportation staff about whether the parking benefits district could also be utilized for this and I think that's also a possibility. >> Renteria: Because I know that the one that we have in Cesar Chavez we actually are doing four-way stop signs. We're doing sidewalk improvements with it. We have where we collect over half -- we collect half of that revenue from parking in the fourth street districts. And we divide it between the businesses on sixth street, it's a quarter of it. The contact team gets a quarter of it. And the other half go back into the general fund. And that's a really good source of revenue that could be used because that parking [3:13:45 PM] goes all the way to 35. >> Tovo: Right. I think that's a really good discussion and I think in -- suggestion and inc. Terms of some of the infrastructure kinds of projects that could be the most appropriate way to fund it. Initially we had brought this forward with the idea that it would fulfill the two purposes that were envisioned for it. Roughly cultural, historical, preservation and place making and infrastructure support I think in response to the conversation we had back in August. We've now narrowed that down to place making for this fund. I think in terms of the infrastructure support something like the community benefits district, parking district or whatnot would be used for that. Those kinds of things would not be eligible for funding through this source. >> Renteria: Yeah, because there's a lot of sidewalk improvement is going to be the unit in that area. And that fund can be used for parking -- parking fund can be used for sidewalk improvements. So I just hope that that's [3:14:46 PM] also looked into. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Alison? >> Alter: So I would be closer to support it with a cap. I think I would be closer to 100,000 than 150. If I'm understanding -- I want to make sure that I'm understanding correctly the the narrowing of the scope because it seems like now everything allow under this fund is allowed with our hotel occupancy taxes. And I'm not sure why we wouldn't just use those for that purpose. And then have that money available for other things. So I want to be clear I'm not objecting to spending money on that purpose, but I don't understand why we are constraining ourselves in this way when we have other money that can serve this purpose. So could you speak to that a little bit and then tell me a little bit more about why you narrowed it because the need that I kept hearing from the public was about [3:15:47 PM] the infrastructure. And so we have -- this is what I'm struggling with is we've got money that can cover what's in here now but we are not necessarily providing a mechanism to facilitate speeding up some of that infrastructure with it. >> Tovo: I'll answer the second question first. Based on what I was hearing as feedback and I may have misread it. I thought I was hearing support for narrowing it and not a will for supporting the fund if it were also funding infrastructure. So again, I may have miss judged that, but that was my sense of the conversation that we had on the dais. And in reflecting on your question after our last conversation about this, we went back and kind of looked, and I'm now not remembering the examples, but we did think there were examples of some of what we were hearing from the community that would likely not be eligible for funding through the hotel occupancy tax dollars. So I can have those ready for you on Thursday. [3:16:50 PM] >> Alter: Thank you. And I would -- I don't know what other people think about adding infrastructure back in as an allowed use. I don't remember that being -- I don't remember why that was narrowed out for that conversation. But this has come up with a number of times so I may be misremembering. >> Tovo: I would say that any -- right now the way it's phrased under part 3 would have to be infrastructure that supports one of these broader goals of place making, cultural vibrancy, et cetera. So it's not to say that one of those things might not be interpreted as -- some people might think, say, wayfinding is a type of infrastructure because you're providing a service to people in addition to potentially recognizing the heritage and the cultural significance of a place. So I'm not saying that there couldn't be projects that fall within that that also serve an infrastructure purpose, but in terms of addressing some of the major mobility areas, major mobility concerns in the area, these -- this is [3:17:53 PM] this is no longer contemplate willed as a funding driver? >> Alter: Why would those fall under place making? >> Tovo: I mean, some of the sidewalks, you know, if they were also serving one of these other purposes in a significant way, I suppose they could, but, again, I was trying to respond to what I was hearing as concerns in that August conversation. I think it was August. >> Alter: I just don't even know how we would know whether a sidewalk did or didn't do that. I'd rather just allow it to be paid for, but I'll think about that. >> Mayor Adler: My sense, I like the balance you're trying to reach. I mean the conversation came up where we were trying to parse and understand what had happened historically. We had several councilmembers that were coming up and saying with respect to things that were purely infrastructure like sidewalks and the like, all parts of the city should be competing equally for those kinds of things and should be placed on need and priority. So in my mind the kind of the balance or the kind of the compromise was reached [3:18:54 PM] to have something in the range of dollars that you discussed, focused more on the cultural tie as being separate from things that the rest of the city was competing for. To honor those discussions that happened before. And I like the place that it sounds like you're going, Kathie, to move those together. Anything else on this one? >> Tovo: Any other thoughts about -- maybe the message board or between now and Thursday, if others could sort of weigh in on what an appropriate cap -- you know, what you would support. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Garza: I'm sorry if I missed the cap conversation. What -- why was that put there? >> Tovo: In part -- well, it would be an amendment, and partly it was to respond to some of the questions that people were asking about how much it would generate and a concern about the level we might be diverting from the general fund and also the staff came forward and said [3:19:55 PM] there were one or two projects that might generate well in excess of what we're discussing, between 100 and 191,000 a year. And so they wanted us to contemplate whether a cap would be the appropriate way to do that. >> Garza: Okay. >> Tovo: Did you have a feeling about it? >> Garza: I don't -- I mean, we talked a lot about this the day -- I remember on council, without knowing exactly what the projects are, I don't see why we should be setting a cap, but I would -- if I have to make a choice, I would go for the higher one. If we're deciding that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: I'm just trying -- I think, mayor, you articulated as well this was a commitment that was made that's never been fully relied. I'm trying to pull from the ashes something that we can all support and honor that significant -- what I regard as a significant commitment that the council hasn't -- or that the city has not [3:20:58 PM] upheld and so initially it didn't have a cap. I'm just trying to get it across the finish line. If there's a significant will not to have one I could support that. If to get this established and implemented it requires a cap, then that's what I'm willing to do. >> Mayor Adler: That was my sense. I think people were -- when we found out what the level was, I think people were ready to do that if it had the cultural tie. So I think we have -- my sense is there's a majority on this council to move forward doing it within -- you know, in that range of dollars, to honor the cultural ties issue. And I applaud your efforts in trying to bring that home. Okay. Let's go ahead and do the next item, 57. This is pulled by councilmembers Flannigan and pool? >> Pool: I just pulled it in case anybody had any questions and the two are related in that they're both transit oriented and both have something to do with our asmp and one of them in [3:21:59 PM] particular will be tremendously transformational for our city, not just district 7. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, I Amy. >> Flannigan: I handed out a motion sheet for this item in talking with staff I think they're going to help me draft a new version for Thursday that just helps separate out the items that I've noted related to other jurisdictions and the part of the trail that could go through the Robinson ranch to separately resolve this tied to the implementation schedule laid out in the draft. The Robinson ranch pud specifically calls to build segments -- the rail line intersects those trail easements or future trail easements fairly significantly through that property so moving forward I want to make sure that the staff is considering that, as well as the areas of the rail line that go through the city of Austin but are in limited purpose areas, [3:23:00 PM] both in Travis and Williamson county and of course with our partners in cedar park and Leander headed north. None of that has to be done within 180 days so I'll bring a second version of this on Thursday. >> Pool: And I have no objections to any of this. With the one caveat, just to acknowledge that city of Austin funds, to the extent that there needs to be any financing or funding outside of the city of Austin, would be handled by the jurisdictions that would have the benefit of the trail. But the trail is gonna be spectacular. 32 miles. So it's -- not that this portion is 32 miles but in the end when the red line trail is complete it's 32 miles, so I'm just really pleased to bring this initiative. >> Mayor Adler: Anybody else have read this and have comments on it or opinions? Okay. Great. Thanks. >> Pool: Same thing with ten. That is to -- with the gap financing for the two rail stations that are necessary on the red line with the moving -- the closing and [3:24:00 PM] moving of Kramer and working with capital metro on that. >> Mayor Adler: Has anybody read number 10 and want to comment on it at this point? >> Pool: 100. >> Mayor Adler: 100, sorry, 100, want to comment at this point? All right. >> Pool: I thank all my sponsors on both of these initiatives. >> Garza: That is just asking for a report back. Is that right. >> Pool: Yes, in fact I'm just saying give us a memo by the end of -- I think it's the end of January and February, let us know what the financing options would be. There's some ideas out there. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's go then to item number 69. Mr. Flannigan, you pulled this one. >> Flannigan: This is the parks long-range plan. I handed out a possible amendment. I drafted this fairly quickly. My concern here is that the most important and very first recommendation in that plan cites a very specific metric. None of the other suggestions or policies or [3:25:00 PM] approaches cite such a specific metric and I have concerns about how this parkland acres per residence really works in a city that is growing but not expanding. And so, you know, if we -- my hope is that we can look back at what we've put in our strategic direction. That first sentence in italics, access to parks, trails, recreational opportunities, that's the line from sd-23. My concern is that as we, you know, build -- say you build an Facebook development near a park that's a great benefit to that affordable housing but makes what pard [indiscernible] I think as a city we want to be able to have more residents walking distance from a park, getting back to that quarter mile or half mile, depending on how you prefer it. What I've written here does not pick a metric. It just says standards of park access. Then I add housing where [3:26:02 PM] parkland exists and including the acquisition where parkland is deficient and then adding one point to work with other departments to ensure that that ratio can be improved walking distance from the park. And then at the bottom there's a side bar that talks about demand but, you know, the challenge with the metric of acres is you get an improvement in your metric no matter where you put the acres as opposed to it being where parkland is deficient or as opposed to it being where we have equity issues or as opposed to it being parkland that is used or even operational. We've got parkland I think in every district -- I know I have some in mine that are undeveloped, can't be used -- but when you go into the deficient map there's credit given for that parkland. I'm open to all manner of wordsmithing on this but I wanted to mostly bring up my concern with using the one metric. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any further comment? [3:27:04 PM] Ann. >> Kitchen: Okay. So just so I understand, it's the -- is it all the metrics there? The -- let's see. Because there are some metrics per number of residents that you struck out. So 20 acres per 1,000 residents. >> Flannigan: Yeah. So my thought here is rather than the very first recommendation in this plan, citing such a specific metric that I think has some issues. >> Kitchen: Right. >> Flannigan: Just saying that the standards of park access which we can be adopted through the strategic plan which can be adopted through other means, which will like -- I don't think it's right for it to be the only and most prominent metric. >> Kitchen: What's the process then? It sounds to me like you're keeping existing standards because you say maintain or improve upon current standards so you're not [3:28:06 PM] really speaking to how they might be improved upon. You're just -- >> Flannigan: And in context with the long-range plan it sites all the manner of ways we will approve park access. There's a whole section that talks about making sure that the entrances to parks are coming from multiple directions so that the walking distance isn't necessarily as the crow flies, that it's actually you can walk to it and that kind of stuff. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Flannigan: So in context, you know, all of those other strategies exist in the plan. This is just the first and most prominent and it kind of felt different than the rest. >> Kitchen: Okay. I may have some wordsmithing. When I go down and look at the rest of it, I have -- you talk in terms of supporting increased population near existing parkland. That may or may not be appropriate depending on the terrain, et cetera. So I might want to word that differently. I wouldn't say that pard needs to support it. They can certainly analyze it, where it's appropriate [3:29:06 PM] in certain areas and that sort of thing, but I would -- I might want to wordsmith that one. >> Flannigan: Yeah, I'm open to all that. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Alison. >> Alter: I wanted to invite Kim Mcknight who have been -- or Kimberly Mcneeley, whoever from pard would like to speak to this proposal. Youifies have been working on this over many years and understand the importance of parkland acquisition so I wanted to get your perspective on the proposed amendment, whoever, Randy, whoever. I want to invite you to share since it's a change to the. . . >> So Kimberly Mcneeley, director for parks and recreation. >> Kim Mcknight, parks and recreation. >> Randy Scott, parks and recreation. >> So I think that what I'm -- what I've come to understand, you know, when can you read something you interpret it the way that [3:30:07 PM] you think that it was meant to be interpreted, but what I'm hearing you say is that you're not -- you're not necessarily -- your goal is to ensure that we have -- we acquire land where it needs to be acquired but also that we're considering the fact that people -- if we're going to be looking at density or density is something that is happening within the city that there's also an opportunity for us to think about that space and making sure that there's parceled development in the area in which people are actually living. Is that kind of what I'm hearing you say? >> Flannigan: Yeah. I think there's a lot of ways to slice and dice what is in essence a very high-level document. But thinking about a -- that the most primary metric of the document would just be number of acres per population, kind of loses the nuance that I think is [3:31:07 PM] really important about who's getting the parkland and how many people are able to use that parkland and how many people are close to that parkland. So the walkability metrics are more what I'm interested in, but finding a way to really focus in on what we did in the strategic direction about access, which to me is not just about a raw analysis of acres over people but how many people are by each acre, you know, to be kind of flippant about it. >> Okay. So the metric that's -- seems to speak you to more is the quarter and the half mile metric, where we're talking about people having access within a quarter mile or a half mile over this -- the 20 acres per thousand people. >> Flannigan: Right. And I think it would help really clarify for staff, you know, what the council's intent is. Are we trying to get more people to have access to parks, be accessible to parks or do we want just a lot of land? I don't know that those are inconsistent but if you just look at the amount of land you won't capture the more [3:32:08 PM] critical metric about access. >> I feel like they might be able to live together. I hear what you're saying. >> Flannigan: Absolutely. >> They might be able to live together but it's a nuancing in the language to make sure that both points are made in this long-range plan so it doesn't appear as though there's a concentration on a mount rather than a concentration on location. >> Flannigan: And I have all the parkland acquisition language in here that was in the original draft that's in the italicized paragraph, that's in the 1.1 where it talks about parkland acquisition where parkland is deficient and I think that's the intent anyway. >> I just wanted to make sure I understood the goal. >> Mayor Adler: There was another goal that made sense to me, and that was that the strategc plan is where the really specific goal could be set. One possibility. So the council could say we really want you to focus on acquiring property for the next five years or ten years. Because that's where we are right now. That's the greatest need [3:33:08 PM] that we have at this moment. Or another council could come in and say really the parks standard that is most needing of work right now is this other standard. So what I heard you say -- and I need to go back and take a look at the document, but what I said that resonated without reading this is this might not be the document to set the priority for a quantitative goal, that it might better be set in the strategic plan. But to say that our parkland prioritizes access. However that might be prioritized or enumerated at any point in time. >> Something to bear in mind -- >> Mayor Adler: Because I think they all live together. There are more than just two that live together. There could be February that live together. >> Somebody to bear in mind, this plan is intended to be adopted as part of our imagine Austin comprehensive plan so really a far more [3:34:10 PM] guiding document than a five-year strategic plan. I think it's important to bear in mind if we're not really clear and aggressive with our parkland acquisition goals -- the parkland we're acquiring now is really here to serve generations after us, and so that is something that we hearted resoundingly through the community engagement, is that having adequate parkland is a concern and a desire of our community. But I do think we could do a better job of better highlighting the access goal and make it sort of -- in terms of adding the quarter to half mile more explicitly. It's repeated through our narrative and we have numerous maps that we've provided because it is -- maybe we took for granted that it wasn't particularly clear. So something just to consider is the idea of highlighting that access goal. But without -- I do need to talk with our colleagues but our stated goal to maintain [3:35:11 PM] our per capita parkland goals and our land acquisition goals, we think -- and we've done a peer review with cities to validate that specific goal. I do recognize that we didn't provide metrics for every single goal, but this has long been a goal and it's one of our key performance indicators. So just some things to consider. >> I don't think I'm hearing you say eliminate that goal. What I'm hearing you say is consider -- take a look at some other metrics and consider them equally or prioritize them as need be because at one point in time, as the mayor pointed out, we may be needing to focus on a particular access issue where at another point in time we might be looking at a separate access issue. >> Flannigan: And I think it's fair to say that it has been a key performance indicator. And we are still struggling with parkland deficiency and with equity issues with our parkland. And so I'm not trying to eliminate any metric, but [3:36:14 PM] more contextualize that I think we are making a shift in the city to think more about equity and to think more about actual outcomes, which to me is more access than ownership. And so, you know, agent more parkland is an inherent value. I don't think anybody would say, oh, you should have less parkland. But to really say that it's about usable, accessible parkland as you filter it through, you know, equity metrics. Of course some of that is referenced elsewhere in the long-term plan but I think this was the first one listed. I was uncomfortable with it being the governing metric for the next 30 years. >> Okay. I think we understand the intention and it sounds like you all are going to wordsmith but we can also wordsmith on our own. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Alter: I was still up. I had asked them to come up. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Alter: Thank you for sharing. And I'd welcome your input [3:37:14 PM] in how to think about that. I think that Mr. Flannigan is pointing out something that I think the access thing was sort of a given as like the overarching thing and making that more prevalent. It happened to be -- I think the first goal was ensure goals as active relief from urban life and a park can't act as relief from an urban life if you don't have the parkland in the first place so I think it was a logical place to start but I definitely think we could find a way to highlight the access issue [that. I'm not prepared to support the language as it is kind of now. I think there's some good things in therefore that are additive. I do think we very much need to have a explicit numerical goal and having been focused on parks those numerical goals are standard throughout the parks field, ones that we have been looking at that we have been striving for and you cannot [3:38:15 PM] always meet the park needs of a denser population by simply adding amenities to the same land. So we do have to be strategic about the parkland acquisition and I think there are other places in the document that very much talk about how you should be strategic about that acquisition and where that helps. So to the except that we want to have multiple priorities and we want to talk about the importance of making sure that our parks are activated and better developed where we have significant density, I would certainly support that. Additive. Is that -- could you clarify for me, Mr. Flannigan, if that's what you mean in your 1.2? Is it to better develop and activate parks where we have significant population density? Is that what you're -- >> Flannigan: Essentially, yeah. >> Alter: Okay. So I might want to wordsmith that a little bit. >> Flannigan: Yeah. I'm really open top a lot of wordsmithing here. This is mostly a strawman to [3:39:17 PM] get my thoughts out on to paper. We can talk. >> Alter: I'll yield the floor. I know some folks want to talk about the specific amendment first. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: So it may be that I think this follows councilmember alter's question fairly well. Councilmember Flannigan, I'm -- the lines that are just -- that I'm trying to understand what the intent is here, pard will need to support increased population near existing parkland and then later you've talked about working with nhcd and others in what sounds like to achieve a higher ratio of population. I guess I don't -- are we -- I think it is appropriate to this plan to ask them to look at activation of undeveloped parkland and providing access in those areas where we have more people. It almost sounds though like we're directing parks staff to in some way support land [3:40:18 PM] use changes near existing parkland. And I'm assuming that's not the intent. So is that another -- can you help? Is that -- is it basic -- is my question about those basically the same answer to councilmember alter's that you'realking about increasing access and really focusing on those areas where we have existing parkland in high dense areas, highly dense areas? >> Flannigan: 1.2 is definitely high ratio population within walking distance of a park. It's that metric about percent within a half or quarter mile. So making sure that -- that the -- that undeveloped parkland that we have is -- that the development that have parkland is prioritized where the most people are around it to use it. That's the intent of 1.2 addition. It's not about adding more people. It's about we've got parkland that we already have and it doesn't feel like we're prioritizing activating it. It's like we're getting more land in other areas where there may be fewer people who are going to use it. So that's the intent of 1.2. [3:41:19 PM] But to your point -- >> Tovo: Now I understand even though you just explained it. Now I'm reading it differently. You're talking about prioritizing activation so that we are -- we are achieving our metric of having more people within walking distance. Okay. >> Flannigan: Because they're already there, but we haven't activated the park park yet. I think 1.1, not necessarily the most elegant writing but I'm not trying to put hand use decisions into the long range master plan but to say there are areas where separately we are saying more housing will be going. Sometimes that's because we've added housing to areas where there's commercial or other reasons. It's not the heavy land use conversation we had earlier. But that those areas, again, very similar to 1.2, we should be prioritizing both acquisition and activation in areas where the most people are gonna benefit from it. That's really the intent. >> Tovo: You're saying where [3:42:21 PM] parkland already exists so it does sound as if we're talking about land use -- about making land use decisions there in areas where we already have parkland. So but is what you're saying that we're really talking about improving acquisition and access in areas where parkland is deficient and we have high -- high population of individuals? >> Flannigan: I think it -- it's -- the writing it needs to be flipped the other way around. It's not that pard should increase housing. It's where separately the council or city has predicted housing will be increasing we should be prioritizing parkland. >> Tovo: That makes sense to me. I think I agree flip flopping of that. The same would be true of that other sentence which we've talked about a little bit, pard will need to support increased population near existing parkland, that to me, again, sounds like we're asking pard to drive land use decisions when I think what I hear you saying is we want them to respond to existing land use in terms of how they're [3:43:22 PM] prioritizing access and activation of parkland. >> Flannigan: Yeah, that's fair. >> Tovo: So are you -- what's our next step? Would you like -- >> Flannigan: Sounds like staff will be willing to work with me to worth Smith some of this. >> Absolutely. >> Flannigan: Okay. >> I will offer I think some of what you put forward might be better suited for the section on access itself. I think you made good points about how we didn't explicitly state the half mile. There's one other thought I wanted to put out therefore about about focuses on access as well as the quantity of parkland and it's to kind of think about parkland beyond just a place forane infill park within a city but the idea that we can't really provide certain types of recreation to our community without a -- the larger parks. The role that -- the connectivity role that our parks play along watersheds, the ecosystem services that [3:44:22 PM] our parks play with respect to climate change and flood mitigation. So I just want you to bear in mind that the metrics themselves reveal there's a lot more behind those numbers as far as the health of the city and the role that parkland plays in a healthy city. So we're happy to continue talking about that, but I do appreciate you calling out what I think was an opportunity for us to better highlight our access goals, and I think your fresh look is what -- I think that's going to be something that will help the plan. >> Flannigan: Thank you. I appreciate that comment. All of that stuff is really important, and a metric about heat island effects and other open space benefits would need to not just be a pard analysis. It would need to include, you know, watershed lands and open space lands and water quality lands and that doesn't seem to be how this reads. So, yeah let's find a way to kind of note all those metrics and the pieces of [3:45:23 PM] which departments factor into those metrics. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Greg. >> Casar: I have a potential amendment to the plan that falls into some of the same metric categories that councilmember Flannigan's does and if you post yours, I would want to find a way to make sure they both make sense together. I appreciate what you have here and am supportive of it. I think the area that I want to address in this is the urban core boundary. So in 2009 the city council set the half mile outside of the urban core and quarter mile inside some of the urban core. That lines up with land use and parkland dedication rules and that makes sense within the land use code but I know our park staff when we're actually using city dollars to do acquisitions is oftentimes more nimble than that and I want to recognize that. For example, three of our ten densest neighborhoods, Franklin park, Georgian [3:46:27 PM] acres, three of the ten densiest neighborhoods fall outside of the urban core boundary so you actually have areas inside the bound [indiscernible] And I know our staff know that, but I think that it's actually good to name it and have it here just so that it doesn't -- so that if we -- you know, as things change people still have something to go back to to know what it is we referenced. So as you work on the metric, as far as people being near parks, I also want to likely have something that says, you know, insofar as our land use code has these boundaries which may be useful for legal purposes, that as far as actually determining what is urban and what is suburban we need to be more flexible than a half mile versus quarter mile given the context of the neighborhood, given that many of our densest neighborhoods -- top 20 densest neighborhoods, several of them actually fall outside of those. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Casar: I'll make sure to put that on the message board and work alongside you [3:47:28 PM] to get that. I think that reflects from my understanding a lot of the way our parks staff already thinks. >> Flannigan: That's a good point. That's, again, why I think the people who have access, the walkability numbers can drive those decisions better because it's really gonna be looking at how many people are around there that can get to this new park should we prioritize this acquisition, should we prioritize its activation. So we'll work on that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Leslie. Then we'll come back to Alison. >> Pool: First off, I'll admit that when I got the long range plan for the parks even though that to me, the best reading I could have, I still haven't had time to get through all of it with everything else we're doing. So I will say that with regard to this I'm glad we're talking about adding additional information and metrics and not losing the 4,000 to 8,000 of new parkland over the next ten years. I understand that's a best [3:48:30 PM] practice to -- for this kind of acquisition. And I think just like one of the things that this did remind me of was how we have tasked our housing folks to come back to us and tell us how many units of affordable housing are needed in each district, for example. So we have an actual number goal to aim for and a time frame to achieve it. That's the same thing here. We have a number goal and a time frame to achieve it. And I think to the -- keeping up with demand, the 21% increase in parkland as needed by 2020 -- is that 2023? I can't -- or 2029? What is that number at the bottom? It's the side bar on page 88. It's on the sheet that Mr. Flannigan provided. Anyway, all I was gonna say about that was that's a really good call-out as a side bar, as a marker for our community to know that we need more. Just like we've talked in these same kind of hard metrics, hard stats, hard [3:49:32 PM] numbers terms for looking for miles of sidewalks that we need, numbers of affordable housing units that we need. It's the same thing with our parkland. For us to have enough for the generations in the future. So I'm glad you guys are calling out these numbers as signals to the community. If they're only able to flip through it, too, and they catch some of these higher-level graphics catch their eyes and understand that we really are on a long-range plan to achieve these ends and then we have a measure against which when we look back when this needs to be updated, whatever year, I guess 2029 we can go back and say we knew we needed 21% minimum increase and look at this we got 22 percent because we were really aid with us. Thank you for all of this good work and I'm gonna try to carve out time between now and Thursday to do better about reading more of the plan. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I have an appointment to talk to you guys tomorrow on [3:50:33 PM] a lot of details but I wanted to highlight a couple things and I don't know if they require amendments or what. For the [bleep] We just passed a state proposition that will lead to more funding for parks in the state. And what I didn't get a sense from this plan was how we were accessing state and federal grants. It seemed a lot more to be sort of aimed at private grants. So I'd like us to add something to the funding section that was on state and federal grants and maybe consider what would happen if we got a grant writer to be exploring whether if we got additional grant writing resources if we'd be able to sees more opportunities. I do have a sense there are some federal and now they'll be more state that we are not necessarily accessing as much and some of that is a function of not necessarily having enough resources for the grant writing. And we have to be able to fund this plan as well. So I'd like to add that in [3:51:33 PM] some way. Unless I missed that being in there. I'd like a little bit more emphasis on the internal to city cooperation. That could help with funding. So it could be programs that are being cross-funded with public health, some of the exercise programs that we've started in conjunction with public health I think is relatively new. Working with Austin water, either for the purchase of parkland that's also watershed land and also with respect to reducing water waste at our pools. That saves money. Austin resource recovery with respect to composting and recycling and Austin energy also could be helping us with energy savings, just as kind of mechanisms that we could be using to help with the funding. It might be -- we talk about the general fund, but we don't call out the deferred maintenance policy and sticking to that, which has provided us a lot of money over the last few years for [3:52:35 PM] facilities. I'll just as a side say I'd love to see us expand that to facilities so we could actually helped deferred maintenance for things that are not called buildings, which we have a lot of in the parks system. Then I wanted to note I don't think we included the new park at 360 that's coming out of the camelback pud and then there's a little bit of land separating the two parks that I think ought to be in there as a land acquisition goal there to create that park along the 360 bridge. And then I really liked how nature play was highlighted. I mean, want to ask how we've evolved in allowing this. When we did Ramsey we ended up having to do mechanical tree logs and rocks and they're not real. Because we couldn't take the risks on the real nature. And I'm wondering whether we have changed how we're looking at the risk profiles so that we're gonna be in a [3:53:39 PM] position to do true natural play areas now. >> So the short answer is yes. I think that the whole industry has taken a different look at the way that amenities are used and what the benefits are where children gain physical strength, they gain confident, they test their skills, those sorts of things in a nature space. And I think we have evolved from the more mechanical and molded kinds of things to there being an opportunity to go over -- to use natural spaces. I would say that in the parks and recreation department, if -- any risk manager would probably shut down the whole department, right? Because everything has its own risk, but we've evolved so this is an allowable risk and something that's not an extra liability. >> Alter: I believe you're hosting a program tomorrow night at the wildflower center on nature play and [3:54:39 PM] unfortunately I'm not gonna be able to join but I think it's a very interesting topic. The last thing I wanted to mention is that there's a lot of discussion of master planning at parks and other things, and when I was in the parks board there was a real constraint in terms of having landscape planners available, landscape architects to facilitate that programming, whether it was a friend program or whether it was a city program. How have we addressed that gap? Because it's really hard -- if you can't get the master plan done. >> Right. >> Alter: Then you can't get any of the other stuff funded. >> Well, we've moved to sort of far more concept plans that we can be a little bit more nimble with in terms of implementation. For the larger plans we obviously employ the larger processes. I will add that we've had some success with partners taking on some master planning, and a good example are the Austin parks [3:55:40 PM] foundation has taken on some master plans recently and we have some private partners that are working on that. I will say that we have -- we have since you were on the parks board been able to grow our staff some, but it does -- just being able to keep up with the demand, it's just a balance. And we are looking actively for more ways to be nimble and resourceful with our master planning services. I think it's getting better. But it is something that we have to kind of look at our staffing to make sure that we can actually deliver these plans. >> Alter: Thank you. I look forward to our conversation tomorrow. Just conclude by saying it's really important to me we keep the number goals. I'm fine with adding some of these other things and I'd completely support what Jimmy is saying about making sure that we're activating areas if they're near population densities and make sure we're paying attention to that and if we have stuff outside the urban core that's really dense and it needs parkland let's get it parkland but all of that requires us to have an eye on parkland acquisition and [3:56:41 PM] having these metrics if we're gonna be able to do that and, you know, to recognize that not all parkland is the same. It doesn't come into us in the same ways, and so -- and that's the virtue and beauty of our system, is that we have this variation, and I think it very much belongs in this plan. But the access goal comes above that goal in terms of priorities. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let's move on to the next item, item 64. Mr. Flannigan, you plaintiff, you pulled this? >> -- Mr. Flannigan, you pulled this? >> I had some questions, but I don't need to have them answered. I already told staff that I was comfortable with the way it was laid out. But if we want to consider a similar administrative process for commercial properties, if we're going to find ways to get folks out of harm's way we should always make that easier. [3:57:41 PM] But staff believes that the commercial version of that hasn't been vetted out fully and completely, so I'm not worried about moving forward on that right now. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Item number 96. Mr. Flannigan, you pulled that as well? >> Flannigan: 98. The edc. That's 98. Again, this one is really simple. It's just in the rca it cites language from the 2017 resolution that directs the edc's, as opposed to the one that created the edc. It's a nuance and probably not substantive, but the item from 2017 lists specific things the edc can do, but the resolution from August 8th included all allowable uses under state law. So I want to make sure that whatever we're directing the consultant they're building [3:58:44 PM] an edc recommendation that would allow all uses under state law. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That's it? All right. Kathie, you pulled item number 8, changing items? And then I want to speak about item number 16, which is the auto aid agreement. >> Tovo: Yes. I just wanted to -- we've been going back and forth with the city staff just to make sure that our long-awaited Portland loos will not be required to have changing stations. Not that it's not a good idea, but I don't know if it's possibly and certainly don't want to see additional delays in that regard. So we've gone back and forth a little bit with the staff I think because of the way the ordinance is constructed it really applies to internal, restrooms internal to buildings as I understand it. Councilmember Ellis, your new amendment about waivers, [3:59:45 PM] as I understand applies to the staff waivers to existing structures, but not necessarily new ones. >> Right. [Inaudible - no mic]. >> Tovo: Which seems very appropriate to me. Again, I just want to be sure that not just the set of Portland loos that have been ordered, but any future ones that we order won't be subject to this. I'm just not sure the constraints even allow for those. So again, we're waiting for word back from legal, but I just wanted to raise it just to let you know that that's -- I don't know if you have feelings about that or wanted to capture this. >> Let me know what legal says -- [inaudible - no mic]. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. I appreciate your leadership on this. [4:00:47 PM] >> Mayor Adler: And finally on the auto aid agreement, we continue to work with the fire chief and the association. They have described to me both what they want. It seemed like there was agreement between them. So we're hoping to facilitate that agreement and I think we're going to be able to either post something tomorrow or present it on Thursday or have the parties do that or the chief do that. That I think we've gotten to a place where there will be everybody on the same page. Yes. >> Flannigan: I would just add that the auto aid agreement is really critical for my district. With the very crazy, weird annexations we have, we have Williamson county esd fire stations wholly contained within the city of Austin because of annexations and it's really important that we get this auto aid agreement for the health and safety of my district. >> Mayor Adler: I think we're there to be able to do it. I think with the kind of details, trying to put in [4:01:47 PM] language that would enable what everybody agreed should happen to manor to happen with manor without happening the door to everybody else, but I think we can describe a universe that fits minor that will not do that harm. There was another section about changes that might happen post-execution of the document that the council might want to have a chance to take a look at so just putting in a provision that says that the council would get a 45-day notice of some of those changes were happening, just being noticed to council. And council could decide whether it wanted to intervene or whatever. So it's that kind of thing, I think. I think they did a really good job, everyone, the chief and the association, of getting together and working through 98% of things. And just the last two percent that I think we're pushing across the line now. My hope is we can pass this on Thursday and everybody will be in agreement. Anybody else have anything else to discuss? Yes, Kathie. >> Tovo: Yes. [4:02:51 PM] I have had two time certain requests, one for 4:00 for number 55, which is the ace item. We have I think a fair number of people who want to be here to participate in that, but they're going to organize their testimony. So they've requested 4:00 for that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: And then for the U.N.O. Item, and I'm sorry, I don't know what number that is, we've had a request for a 6:00 time certain. My guess is that we're likely looking at an after dinner meeting and so it seems to me that that's probably going to fall within a time we're already meeting. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. On item number 55, what we'll say is we won't take any action on that before 4:00 so if people are there earlier and there's an opportunity to speak, they can speak. And the folks at 4:00 will limit their numbers. So we won't make a decision on number 55 until after 4:00 P.M. And then on item number 67, if we were done the day before dinner on Thursday, would we stay until after [4:03:52 PM] dinner to do 67? >> Tovo: The request from the west campus neighborhood association is that we do stay until 6:00. We can certainly communicate back to them and see if they're amenable, say, 5:00 instead? >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you check and see. I don't know that we'll necessarily get pulled over. If we can avoid that it would be great if they did. Why don't you check on that. We can certainly agree that we would do number 67 last. >> Tovo: Let's not do that until -- if suddenly the agenda blossoms -- I don't want to commit them to being the very last on the agenda. [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: There are good and bad things about getting a preference granted. So check with them. And with that said, that's all that we have on our agenda. At 4:04 we're adjourned.