City Council Work Session Transcript – 02/04/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 2/4/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/4/2020 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. [9:06:07 AM] >> Garza: Good morning. Is this thing on? Hello? Is it on? Okay. I'm mayor pro tem Garza. We are in work session. We have a quorum. Mayor Adler is out and he will be arriving later this morning. Today is February 4th, 2020. We are in 301 west second street and the time is 9:06 I'll call our work session to order. The first briefing will be on the conoravirus so we can have staff come up and give us that briefing. >> Good morning. I'm Dr. Mark Escott. I'm joined by Janet pachette, who is the [9:07:08 AM] epidemiologist at Austin public health. We're going to give you an update on the 2019 novel conoravirus. This is something that's changing very quickly and sometimes multiple times a day. As you are aware this outbreak began with a cluster of, cases, 41 cases, outler 31st, 2019. On January 7th of 2019 that was isolated as this novel conoravirus. In the first report from the world health organization they reported a number of 238 cases, which was just two weeks ago. Today -- not today. Yesterday there was a total of more than 17,000 cases. This morning that number is more than 20,000, with the deaths currently at 425. That's primarily in China. There are some cases, including 11 in the united [9:08:08 AM] States, with only one death outside of China. This gives us a mortality rate currently of two to three percent. It's about 2.1% for the whole outbreak and about 3.1% for the city of huwan and I'll talk more about that impact in a bit. There are many folks who are asking why should we be concerned? And the answer is this, this slide. Something we call rnov, the reproductive number of the virus. We see that the seasonal flu has a number of about 1.3. That is an individual who is infected with likely infect 1.3 additional people. So the 2019 novel conoravirus is at least as contagious as the flu and perhaps twice as contagious. But substantially less contagious than things like measles. The graph that you see on the right is modeling of the actual outbreak. It's hard to see the numbers [9:09:09 AM] at the bottom, but around the middle of this graph is when the cases were first noticed in huwan city. At that stage it was close to a thousand cases. This modeling is used to determine the actual impact of the disease rather than the confirmed cases. And that model indicates that the actual number of cases in this outbreak may be substantially higher. It may be 10 to different times the number of confirmed cases. So this is the reason why we need to be concerned and why we need to be concerned now. A real concern for our jurisdiction and for the United States is the uncontrolled person to person sustained spread of the disease, which is necessitied the increases measures by the CDC and HHS that happened this weekend. There is some reassuring notes at this stage, and that is that the two person to person spread in the United States were spousal [9:10:11 AM] transmissions and CDC has followed closely individuals on the plane with the initial nine cases that flew into the United States and there was no spread in travel during that time. So this is really dependent on close personal contact. Currently there are no cases in Texas. And that's reassuring because there's not risk of exposure unless there are cases. And it's important for us to remember and share with the community because there certainly a a risk of xenophobia associated with people who are Asian Americans or Chinese Americans and that is not necessary and inappropriate at this stage. So it's important for folks to remember that if somebody is coughing and they look like they have the flu, there's about a 35% chance they have the flu and virtually a zero percent chance it's conoravirus at this stage. So initially the U.S. Issued a health alert and travelers [9:11:13 AM] returning into the united States from China were given this card. There was the initial screening done for fever. If they had a fever there was a further medical evaluation and if they were not sick they were given this card and allowed to travel -- continue travel to their destination. That changed on January the 31st when HHS secretary declared a public health emergency associated with a presidential proclamation limiting entry into the United States. On February 2nd that public health emergency and proclamation went into effect, which is going to limit the travel of individuals into the united States. More specifically individuals who traveled from the hubay province will be quarantined at or near the entry into the united States, which is one of 11 and includes dallas-fort worth airport. Those who are not sick and only travel to mainland China will be allowed to [9:12:13 AM] continue on their itinerary and will be tracked by local state and health departments. At this stage we don't know how many individuals that will be for the city of Austin and austin-travis county, but it's probably going to be more than zero. And I'll say this was an important step to limit the travelers. Usually in the United States there's about 14,000 people returning from China to the United States on a daily basis, which creates a number of travelers which is impossible for current public health resources to track. So this narrowing down of entry into the United States was critical at this stage to be able to adequately monitor those individuals. As currently the case definition is listed on this slide, a fever and indication of a lower respiratory inflection, cough or difficulty breathing and that past history of travel to China in the past 14 days and contact with a person who has been diagnosed with the [9:13:16 AM] novel conoravirus. Austin public health and our partners throughout this region have been dialoguing on a regular basis. There's ongoing conduction through an electronic method method. Which monitors health care records in our emergency departments. We've been actively involved in fielding questions from health care providers, employers and school districts regarding what to do and how to interact with individuals returning from China. And we've been involved in regular communications with CDC, dhhs and other stakeholders in the regionally and locally. We have sent out -- if you can go to the next slide. We have sent out health alerts to our health care community, to the Travis county medical society. Memos to mayor and council as well as social media and sharing information, much of which has been created and [9:14:18 AM] shared by CDC and dshs. In addition to this we have instituted screening through our 911 system for those with influence is a like illness who have a travel history to China. Prior to moving that individual there's a consultation with public health to determine if this person has an appropriate exposure risk and then navigation of that individual following that screening. Overall the risk is low to the United States and it's low for us in the city of Austin and Travis county. And it's important that that risk stay low. And this is where the community comes in because this is a community effort. Not only for this novel conoravirus, but for flu and other respiratory illnesses. So we are continuing to reinforce some messaging to the public, to our city of Austin departments and to the general community that these steps are critical for this and for those other diseases. [9:15:18 AM] And that is wash your hands, soap and water if you have it. Hand sanitizer if you don't have it and avoid touching your face, particularly the nose, eyes and mouth. This has a low risk of infection but when it comes in contact with a mucous membrane it's much easier. If you cough or sneeze do so in a bent elbow or a tissue. Don't want people coughing or sneezing into their hands because their hands then touch other things and that virus can survive. We do have indication this novel conoravirus probably survives a couple of hours, maybe a few hours on suraces and in the air, but it's limited to that. So it's relatively fragile. And again, sort of like we talked about with with ebola, you can get this on your hands. If those hands don't touch your face, you are not going to get this infection. So it is critically important that we avoid touching the face and that [9:16:19 AM] we do this coughing or sneezing into the bent elbow or tissue. Next slide? The other critical factor is that folks stay home when they're sick. And for 24 hours after they have the fever go away without medication. This is something that we need to reinforce as a city, that we need to encourage employers to reinforce in their workplaces and schools and in health care settings because this is how people are more likely to spread this disease. There is some indication that this conoravirus can spread when people are asymptom tick, they are much more likely to spread it when they're stick and if they have the flu we encourage people to stay home if they are sick. And we're happy to take questions. >> Garza: Does anybody have questions? Doesn't look like it. Thank you for that presentation. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: I had one question. >> Garza: Councilmember kitchen has a question. >> Kitchen: Just a quick [9:17:20 AM] question. So in terms of putting this information out to the public, how is that happening? >> Sure. So we're trying to amplify the state and CDC's messaging so we are directing people to the CDC web page or the state web page. You know, again, the state has been having daily situation calls, and so they're staying on message with CDC as we are with local health departments staying on message with the state and CDC. So any time they have information we try to push it out. And then-- okay. And then we have our communications person who can tell you more. [Laughter]. >> Jen Zant, communications manager at Austin public health. We, like we said, we're amplifying dshs and CDC. Because this is happening so fluidly, we are directing [9:18:20 AM] people to the CDC site because it's constantly being updated. >> Kitchen: Okay. If there's a message that you would like us to get out, I can send this out or write something up from this, but if you have something written you might chair share it with our offices and if we want to put something in our newsletter, I want so make sure what I put in the newsletter is what you want put out. >> And the current plan is to work with city source with our employees. I know that we have a memo that we're drafting to go out to city employees. And then on top of that we have social media posts that we can send to your offices so that you can amplify that. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Garza: The next briefing is census 2020 efforts. And while that staff is coming up, the only item that I have as wanting to be pulled on item 48 by councilmember tovo. Are there any other items [9:19:22 AM] that councilmembers want to pull? All right. >> Morning. There we go. Sorry. First time. Thank you so much for having us over this morning. This is a really exciting update we'll be providing y'all. We've spent several months, actually over a year getting to this point. I'll be joined today by Ryan Robinson, our awesome Austin city demographer. My name is John Lawler, I'm the census program manager for Travis county-city of Austin, but let about me. Let's get into the meat of this presentation. How do I skip on this thing? All right. That's not it. Well, while they're pulling [9:20:22 AM] that up, y'all, here's what we'll get into today. We have kind of a four-point presentation. We're going to talk about the general importance of the census, which I'm sure most of y'all are already aware about. We'll end with what we've done so far. We'll be talking about what the strategic plan is we've landed on as a local effort. And then we'll be finishing up with some really cool tools that I don't know how much time you have to get into because I'm sure you would love to nerd out over them, but we have some neat mapping tools, a new website we can get into. So really I'll leave that part up to y'all as far as y'all want to get into that. Before I go any further, Ryan, do you want to jump? >> Ryan Robinson, planning and zoning. Before I start I wanted to say a big thank you to mayor and council for funding this effort, being generous in funding the awesome John Lawler in that position and then the other money that we will use for matching and for spending. And then special shout-out to city attorney Morgan who [9:21:23 AM] has had to work kind of that attorney magic behind the scenes for us and she's done some heavy lifting for the effort. Thank you very much for that. Clearly the census is crucial. It is a very difficult task to count every single person in the country every 10 years. That task will be probably more daunting than ever because of a variety of reasons, but why is it so important? It's because of federal money, first and foremost. The distribution of -- you can find a couple of different numbers out there, but 800 billion is the most frequently encountered money. That is given to communities annually a base and based on population estimates each year. Of course, reapportionment of congressional districts among the states. And we are as a state expected to gain three seats. Redistricting of everything out there, state, house, senate, legislative, other districts, of course our own council districts, that will be an exciting endeavor. Travis county commissioners' [9:22:23 AM] court. And let's talk a little bit about where that 800 billion goes. I'm going to list -- I think it's impressive to go through these. Medicaid, medicare part B, children's health program. Snap, highway and public transit programs. By the way, this is just tip of the iceberg arrested if you are interested I can give you the exhaustive listing of where all this money goes. But we also think this is one of the most important selling points for us is to convince people and educate them on just how important it is because of course the recipients for these very programs, head start is my own personal favorite, they're the individuals that are hard to count. We'll get into that in detail in moment. Programs for the elderly and crime victim assistance. So the list is long, it's varied and it's -- and final, substance abuse, prevention and treatment. That's a simple map of states. Texas is the only state poised to gain three seats and that's because of all of the population growth that's [9:23:24 AM] occurred in the state. 20% of the population growth since 2010 has occurred in the state of Texas. All right. Who are the hard to count? And we're going to go through a listing and for sure austin-travis county has got large numbers of these hard to count people. First and foremost is young children. And this is a known, difficult to count group, but I've never heard a good answer as to why. I think it's associated probably with school age. The folks just think that a child is not going to start school yet so we don't count them. Maybe for an infant, but for a variety of reasons this is a hard to count group and so we pay a lot of attention to it. We try to remind people all the time, count everyone in the household. College students, this makes a little bit more sense. There are of course in the case of austin-travis county almost 135,000 of those individuals in the city and county. That to me is sort of an information campaign. We've also got great benefit of universities and colleges [9:24:24 AM] have email connectedness like we never had back when the Earth was cooling and I was going to college. So it's basically, you know, where do I count myself? And we come up with different techniques, but it's when your day is done on April 1 that's where you should count yourself, not at your parents' house in Houston or Dallas, but that's an educational campaign. Of course, immigrants and foreign born and refugees, you can see the overlap, young children in immigrant households, those are very difficult to count, another big overlap group. Non-english speaking residents who may be linguistically isolated. Tip of the iceberg, Chinese, Vietnamese and Spanish. This city is absolutely blessed to have really, really great language folks, and they've been weighing in with us on this. Renters. Recent movers. The highly mobile, the newly arrived. If that doesn't sum up Austin, I don't know what does. I mean, we're so -- we're the number one msa in the country in terms of migration, adding to our population in the last 10 [9:25:25 AM] years K households of color, the homeless by definition hard to find and count. Complete count committee, core member Bruce elfant, this is one of his others of focus. The elderly and aged. Lbgtq, the disability physically and mental. And finally low income households and the very poor. You can see the enormous amount of overlap in these groups and this is my attempt, it's not a perfect diagram, but you again to see that there's lots of overlap and we're focused on that. All right, this is a map from census 2010. It's mail back participation rates. The darker the blue, the higher the participation rate was. This doesn't mean who was counted or who was missed, but it was sort of who was able to send back to the bureau their paper questionnaire. So I'm going to flip the colors. I'm going to go from the dark blue being response to where we're going to highlight those areas that did not respond. Again, this is not necessarily who was undercounted, but it's certainly where the undercount lives. And the census bureau, once [9:26:26 AM] they receive the responses, and in this case from 2010 from paper, this time around we'll have online responses, which I think is going to be a huge benefit, then they do something called non-response follow-up. That will begin to happen in may and June and across the summer and that's the knock at the door. And that's probably what we're most concerned about because in this environment we are concerned that people are not going to open their doors generously to any kind of knock, so we'll try to head that off. And again, John mentioned some really, really cool cart graphic analysis that we've had with Austin and John will talk about that in a second. This is to give you the lay of the land N my opinion it's not so much that I don't think it's a mystery where the hard to count are. The challenge is how do we message, how do we convince folks that are probably skeptical and a little worried, how do we convince them this is important and they need to be counted? That may be the end of my slides. I'll hand it over to you John Lawler. >> Awesome. [9:27:27 AM] See why I consider this guy awesome. Every time I present with him I hear a new factoid about austin- travis county growth. I never heard that Texas had such a huge share of the population growth across the country as a whole. One of the other interesting things I heard from Ryan is how we have to split census tracks now. We're one of the few counties in the united States or Texas -- >> And even renumber them across a lot of people split them, but we were singular in our splits and how to renumber the census tracts. A fun fact. >> This is a very unique time in our country, but just locally our population growth is just astounding. Yes, ma'am. >> Pool: I wanted to make a really quick comment when Ryan was going through the list of Austin area populations and communities at risk for an undercount. It's very obvious to all of us that these are typically and really the most vulnerable of our residents, the indigent. But they also have the most to gain by being counted. So when you're talking about an information campaign, to [9:28:27 AM] the extent that we can reach them and message it, I'm sure that that would be part of the message. You truly, you and your children truly have the most to gain if you happen to be in any one or multiple of these categories. >> I swear to y'all we did not put the councilmember up to provide that beautiful segue for this part of the presentation, but you're absolutely right. And that is the investigation that we've been performing over the last couple of months is identifying those critical messaging topics from the community, but let's jump into this because I know you have a lot to go over today. The story so far, it's a long, long time ago, October 2018. Y'all the city and Travis county decided to come together and fund a census program manager role, which I now have the real privilege to get to serve in. Shortly after that there was the first meeting of the austin-travis county complete count committee. What the heck is a complete count committee, it's an acronym that I never want to hear again, CCC. CCC is a model that the census bureau uses across the country. To part land has one, [9:29:28 AM] Tallahassee has one. There are cca as all over the country and that is a model that we started with and as part of that model they wanted us to form subcommittees so we had these very broad based subcommittees like business, community-based organizing, government, very mile wide, inch deep. It was very good at bringing folks to the table, but as we started to get more and more into this program it became apparent that we were going to have to be a little more inch wide mile deep in approach if we were going to start to get results. So with that said I came on board in August of this past year. Shortly after that y'all here at the city funded $200,000, which the county commissioners' court matched that 200,000-dollar investment. So with that $400,000 we have heavily put that in a -- effectively put that in a lock box because we did not want to tap into that. Similar to an electoral campaign we wanted to save the dollars for the get out the vote or get out the count part of the campaign because those dollars would be so useful going door to door and having targeted campaigns. [9:30:28 AM] Now, since then we've formed a strategic plan as well which I'll go over in just a minute. And part of that strategic plan was identifying that we needed to create these inch wide, mile deep verticals. So these groups that were focused specifically on those largest hard to count communities here in Austin. So with Ryan's help we identified the five largest hard to count communities and with the folks in this room and county and across the city we've started to form the different community CCC's. Also in December we partnered with hays and Williamson county and now with the five other counties in the region to have a regional media plan. That was in part because of the practical realities that if we were to ever buy a TV commercial, ever to have a large scale digital campaign, by the very nature of us being a majority of the region's population in Travis county and definitely the largest share of the hard to count population it was going to be a regional plan. So why not work with them so we can leverage any assets that we develop? [9:31:29 AM] In January of this year already our community CCC's have been meeting, they've been forming. They're starting to have creative sessions to nail down ads and campaigns that they would like to deploy within their communities. Similarly some of them have actually gone and asked for funds from the statewide Texas counts campaign. So that way they can fund their own work within their community. Something else that I'm really excited that happened was our southeast Travis county CCC was formed that was under the leadership of constable I don't remember more or less and asianer more get Gomez and they said it's tough for us to organize county wide a population as large and diverse as the hispanic population. We're going to focus on our part of the county where we know our neighborhoods and the communities and the non-profits we can work with so we can get out the count and the under count the populations. So moving forward, timeline for success, what we've been trying to do is finalize these digital assets that we would like to deploy in a targeted media campaign and we've been trying to support the development of the community cccs as needed. [9:32:31 AM] Some of the subcommittees have evolved off. They're not as active as they once were. That's okay because a lot of the folks actually on the subcommittees have stayed involved maybe through a community CCC or another individual effort. This month we'll try to launch our field campaigns and actually publish austin-travis county specific outreach materials with some of the messaging themes you were describing, councilmember. In March we'll start our regional digital media ads, which I can dive more into exactly how crazy cool that can get with how specific we can hone in on a message on a specific neighborhood block. And then for the fifth weekend of March, which there are five Sundays in March, this is an idea that one of the folks at foundation communities came up with while in a suborganizing meeting, often times some churches when there is a fifth Sunday in the month, they will go out into the community. They won't actually come into their church to have their service. Instead it's a day of service. So one of the ideas was what if we had a fifth Sunday sometime during our census campaign that we could try to brand as a weekend of service or a weekend of [9:33:32 AM] census activities? Lo and behold it turns out there's a fifth Sunday in the month of March so what we're trying to say is rather than April 1st, which also happens to be April fool's day and it also falls in the middle of the week, why don't we take this fifth weekend of March, which is two weeks right after these postcards are being mailed out to folks, and have that be the time? If your neighborhood association wants to have a pot luck, block party or whatever it may be focused on the census, do it that weekend. Do it that Sunday, that Saturday. We as a campaign can step in and provide resources. April through July that will be the follow-up by the census that Ryan described. So again, and this is critical, March 12th is when the postcards will starting to out to folks' homes with their online digital id to take the census. Ryan talks about this effort in very positive terms of this new online method. I'm frankly concerned in some ways because for some folks that will be a help being able to take it online, but for others it will not. And we've got to make sure that we provide resources to [9:34:35 AM] folks who don't necessarily have the mines to take it online will be able to take advantage of that. So as the folks are getting the postcards and this was an idea of quincy Dunlap at the you are began league is we don't need to concern ourselves so much with trying to remind folks to save the postcards. We thought that may be part of our mail campaign. Hey, when you get this postcard don't throw it away,, it's really important. Instead we can have folks call in or go online and they can have the census bureau provide that unique idea if they answer a few questions. Really the task is not to concern ourselves with saving that postcard, but deploying those resources out there, that technology so folks, regardless of whether or not they have that unique id, can take the census bureau. And then also really cool in this role is that in August and September there was baked in two months for evaluation. So this is the first we've done a census effort of this size or scale here in this community and there's also been some very interesting lessons learned already in terms of how this city, county can work together, maximize their partnership. [9:35:35 AM] So I think the idea is that this role would then bake into some of the lessons learned, mistakes made, opportunities missed, challenges maybe not foreseen and wrapping those together so that next time the city and county takes on something like this there may be some lessons in there. So real quick, here's our strategic plan. You've already heard me mention certain pieces of it, but the institutional approach was the CCC. That was bringing in folks like the city, the county, governmental entities. Folks that were already going to largely be participating in the census or getting out the word about it. But when we talk about the folks that are hard to count, often times they are distant from institutions or they are right on the edge in terms of having to add one more thing to their plate. So when we started to think about how those institutional strategies may or may not work on this campaign, we realized we would have to take a different approach and that's our grassroots strategy. And the bedrock of our strategic are the community cccs that have formed. The third part is the media [9:36:36 AM] strategy. We're very fortunate here in austin-travis county to have the media partners we have. They have stepped up tremendously and said whatever you need, let us know. All the different media partners are saying they recognize how partner this is to the civics and the economy of austin-travis county and so all those TV stations, radio stations, publications are saying let us know how we can get the word out. Here's an example of the different subcommittees that we've got influence the CCC. Here are some -- through the CCC. Here are some examples of the community cccs. These I'm excited about are the asian-american CCC. They are the example we followed. They formed organically last year and watching their success made so much sense as to how we were going to need to evolve as a campaign to actually get out the word. And since then the black African-American CCC has formed. Big thank you to councilmember harper-madison who stepped out. Neal in particular has been really helping lead that with Miriam from the African-American quality of life commission, the hispanic Latino CCC has [9:37:38 AM] formed. That actually been -- taken us quite a few months to get the different folks and pieces to the puzzle at the table, but I feel we're in a strong place now. Thank you, mayor pro tem Garza, your staff providing different folks to serve on that. Councilmember Renteria for buying breakfast a couple of those events. And councilmember Casar, who attended just this past week in his district a north Austin event we had. We also have a homeless services provider effort underway. Austin public health is a number of echo as well as you name them. They're part of that coalition. And we met with them earlier this month. One of the awesome things we have here, and this moment right now, is that we had the point in time count just a few weeks ago, just a week ago. So they did exactly what we're going to have to do. The difference is they had one night. We have weeks. They have all that data that has come in that now shows us where the most up to date hot spots are, how many folks it took. So we can take that and now we basically have our campaign plan for how we will address that. So we'll keep working with them on that. [9:38:38 AM] And health care providers, this is another one that I think could be a game changer if we can get it up off the ground. Central health convened different health care providers from around the Travis county area. You name them, they were there. And the ask was was to get outreach materials to their different clinics because again if we can deploy the technology, if we can get an iPad in that clinic lobby, if we can even just get a cricket phone in the corner with appropriate messaging on how to use it, folks while they're there in the clinic could take the census and that is where one of our best touch points for the hard to count populations. With that said we're trying to get up off the ground in affordable houser CCC, so they have stepped up working on different affordable housing providers and then a college student CCC because that is one of our harder to count local populations. I wanted to just quickly give you examples of what our media campaign would be. Targeted digital ads. It's a little scary when you think about it, but at this point now the technology we have at our hands is we can literally geo fence a school [9:39:41 AM] dropoff pickup location at the at the times parents and families are picking you and dropping off their kids. We can tag those phones and target those phones with ads specific to that school. We can have the principal of that elementary school telling folks over that static or short video ad, your school that your child goes to depends upon you taking the census. So that's one opportunity we have. We can also leverage this hard to count specific messaging that our community CCC ass are developing. One of the ideas that I thought was front of the Latino CCC was having an evolving telenovela that's playing out in Austin based on why the census is important. Our asian-american CCC's is going to be the check outoutcounter where someone is telling someone in line why it's so important. Identifying places that are safe and communicating the message through that means. And then our regional media plan, this again is that partnership with the surrounding counties. A lot of these counties have not had as much time. They don't have a full 40, [9:40:42 AM] 60 hour a week person working on this job. So these assets that we develop, they can then take and use and Williamson county and hays county are actually already sending member counties of their CC to our community -- CCC to our community CCC meetings so they can help build that community's specific messaging. This is a quick fund-raising update. As you know you put in $200,000 in your annual budgets, as did Travis county. We received that roughly $60,000 from central Texas. We'll be receiving a little over $100,000 from the statewide pooled fund. What's exciting about that is it's not even going through us, we're just sending that directly to the non-profits, but we've been trying to coordinate with the different non-profits as they put in their applications. For example, safe has put in an application to try to see if we can get technology in their shelters because even though the census bureau will be out there doing their snapshot count of those quarters, folks come in and out of those facilities for services or as life -- it depends upon what's going on in life at that time. So that's the way we can [9:41:42 AM] catch the full breadth of that hard to count population. It's a good example of where the local effort steps above and beyond what the census bureau would simply be doing. And down here at the bottom I have been advised we cannot fundraise on city hall property, so I will not. That would have been fun. We have a 300,000-dollar missing mark here in terms of what we could use here locally to get out the count. And that would expand our digital media universe and expand our canvassing as well. Real quick, we have national and statewide resources that we're tapping into so we're really luckily to have groups like the national association of Latino elected officials. Our count, campaign of color change, a group of African-Americans campaigns across the country. And there's translating for the different asian- american communities here in the United States. What we can do is reuse those one pagers. We use the focus group studies. Retesting. We don't have to go recreate that wheel. One of the things that's [9:42:43 AM] come out of those is that one pager and bullet points simply don't work. Telling someone there's $800 billion a year at stake does not move someone in a hard to count population. It moves everyone in this room probably because we all understand that impact, but for a lot of these folks with the message testing coming back was saying I've already got so much on my plate and you're going to throw the bullet points in front of me. Even here locally at different CCC meetings we've had, folks have said in my community we don't feel like we're a part of the system. So when you say the system is missing out on funding, does that impact me? So that's part of the bridge that we have to come across with our messaging. And then statewide groups, we've got several that have come together, including the center for public policy priorities, kind of under the umbrella communities of Texas. They are Dallas based. They are the group that has convened the large donors to put forward the money for the Texas counts domain our local non-profits will be trying to draw down funds from a coordinated fashion. [9:43:44 AM] This is actually something just for the presentation for y'all here today. This is an example of how we're going to leverage our local resources for a need we have on the campaign. I don't know if we have someone from the library. I don't know if they were able to make it out. No, they weren't able too. That's unfortunate. They helped to put together this slide here. This is really cool. I think this is a game changer. They have now dedicated all their libraries to having a census workstation. What that means is if someone walks in, wants to take the census, they can walk up to a dedicated computer and take it right there. All the librarians will be trained on a baseline level how to help someone, not take it because we legally can't help someone take the census because it's confidential, protected information, but at least walk them how how they can approach the computer and start to take it. But the really cool thing is they have these mobile pods already where they can send out these stations that have wi-fi connection, three to five little laptops already there, and a librarian trained to help folks who have issues with technology. So for us the question is not, you know, whether or [9:44:45 AM] not this is a useful tool, it's -- of course it is. It's where do we place it? Where are the parts of town that we'll get the biggest bang for our buck? And two, how can we try to replicate these pods if we can fundraise more dollars, how can we replicate the pods will private donors or volunteers? So moving on real quick here, this is a video that -- I'm not going to play it right now, but I would encourage everyone to click on it and take a look at it. This is jolt. It's a statewide group that's a member of our CCC. They've given us permission to share it. It's a great example of how messaging specific to a population can really make a compelling message. And they've got a series of these that are coming out. Some of them I've even heard feedback that it made some folks uncomfortable, which I think is actually the sign of a great ad because it's actually speaking to the concerns or those uncomfortable truths of the reality that something like the census can reveal. With that said, I wanted to put a spotlight here on our website. In fact, we've got our digital team here today who helped put this together. [9:45:46 AM] This is another excellent example of how the county and city can work together. When I first started in this role we had a website that someone had volunteered to put together who she herself live journal page from the '90s. And we could have gone out and paid 5, $10,000, however much, so try to build this out with a consultant. Instead what we were able to do in big part due to the city manager's office and mayor Adler's office is we were able to get existing talent within the city. So Mateo Clark back here is one of the senior developers in the Austin transportation department. He also happens to be a leader of open Austin, a local organization that gets folks from the tech industry who are civically minded and puts them in positions where we can make an impact locally. So we were able to get him from the transportation department, grab a graphic designer from the county, Tara Olson has been managing our content who is in your Pio, and that group has been meeting, cross-collaborating from county and city and we have not had to spend any additional dollars. We haven't had to touch into [9:46:46 AM] the public dollars to fund that work. We already had that talent here internally. This website I would encourage everyone to check it out. It has officially gone live as of this past weekend. It is atxcensus2020.com. It's still evolving and growing. It's set up that as more community CCC's come on we'll be able to add presence to that website. We've also got several tools on that website that I think this group in particular would like. We've got two different maps. One of which, the one on the left, the pretty green one was put together by one of our volunteers. Lizzie has a day job, but she spent her Christmas break putting together an amazing map that takes a lot of the information that Ryan had gathered from the census bureau and what she did and I'm probably going to butcher the way she did this of -- actually, would you like to hear how she put together this really cool map? Is that worth your time right now? How do you feel about that? Lizzie, come on up? So Lizzie is going to walk you through real quick on how she used a model that [9:47:47 AM] the state of California used to identify different hard to count populations. And how they work together. >> Sure. So there are a lot of ways to predict who is going to respond to the -- their mailing from the census. And the bureau has come up with like algorithms that are complex that can help us understand where our efforts should be most concentrated. And California simplified it, brought it down to 14, similar to this slide that Ryan showed you, the 14 most vulnerable groups. So we took every census track in Travis county and we ranked them 1 to 15 on each of these issues. For example, with renters, the tracks with the most renters got a 15. The tracks with the east number of renters got a one. So for 14 different variables like that, each tract gets a score. You add up those scores so [9:48:49 AM] then the most vulnerable tracts will have the highest scores. So what you see in dark purple are the hardest to count tracts according to that index. And so then we also break it down, what are the top five things that scored highest in that tract. So you can know if it's a tract where with a high rate of low English proficiency. So then you would know -- you have to target some language specific efforts to that area. If it's renters, you may want to bring your affordable housing team in to work with the constituents they're most familiar with. And so then also bringing in some different demographics to help you better understand if you go door knocking in that tract, who are you most likely to come across and what kind of tactics or messaging would be most useful for encouraging them to fill out [9:49:50 AM] the census. So that's what this map is. It's breaking down some of those hardest to count demographics into the smallest area that we can reliably say something about. And on the left side if you see there are a bunch of options that you can select. So if you -- if a community group, for example, has a lot of Spanish speakers that they want se off to a neighborhood to knock doors or something like that, you could select a high percentage of Spanish speakers. So find the tracts with the highest percentage of Spanish speakers and that would narrow down your field. So I don't know what John just selected, but that is an example of how this map could be used. >> As you can see there's a lot of potential with this map. What I just did was click on the census tract with the high pest percentage of Spanish speaking only residents. So that helps us when we start to think about how we use our limited public dollars or how we use our [9:50:52 AM] limited organized width, where we place those dollars, where we place the organizing time. I wanted to share that map with you real quick and highlight Lizzie's volunteer effort. Thank you, Lizzie. [Applause]. It's really awesome. The other map we have on there. If you want to go back to the powerpoint real quick, this other map that I'm about to show y'all is actually the area thank the city can have the biggest help in. To so this is a map that's much more simple. This is our public-facing map. What -- you will have to click okay at the bottom right corner. So what this map is is it shows you these large super neighborhood areas. As cut by Ryan Robinson, the city demographer. As you zoom in on the map you will see the different neighborhoods with the red circles. Those are libraries, so those are places that have committed for folks to go and take the census. Why is that important? You can click on the circles, it can tell you how far away it is from where you live or maybe where a certain event is. We can also place events going on around the county, city, specifically related [9:51:53 AM] to the census. So again thinking about your local neighborhood association wants to put on an event about the census where they're asking the librarians to put up one of the pod systems. All you have to do is go on to our website, register that event with our effort and we will work to try to get the resources out to that event and it will also be publicized on the map. So that way as things get more hectic in the month of March and folks are getting more involved and wanting to get out the word, we can remain coordinated with how the events are playing out and we from a county perspective can see what parts of town may be receiving more attention aren't, which is a really important thing I think when you think about folks who have a lot of volunteer time or parts of town that have a lot of neighborhood organizing infrastructure in place. They may be able to step up with the volunteer manpower, but we will need to step into other areas so make sure they're not being left out. >> Real quick, probably about the second week of April we'll begin to get response rate data by census tract. So that will be realtime information that we'll map on a daily basis and that will really give us a handle [9:52:54 AM] on, wow, these neighborhoods have only responded at 20%. We're going to send resources to that neighborhood. So that will be an exciting part of the process, but we are planning to take advantage of that timely information. Thanks. >> So if you want to X out of this browser real quick we'll get to, I promise, the last slide of this powerpoint presentation. But I did want to show you those two maps. Here are some simple ways that y'all could help out right now. And I'm asking this of different city councils around the county, same with the county commissioners and other local government jurisdictions. A calendar of events in your district. So what is going on the next three months in your part of town? Are these events that could be helpful where we have a pod system placed up there? Is it -- would it be helpful if we had a table there because you can't take the census yet because we can still get out the word? Too, as we produce these local outreach materials, please share them. Right now you can go on to [9:53:56 AM] 2020census.gov and you can find a whole lost of messaging. Don't wait on us if you want to is put out a flier today. We're trying to get out our own local messaging for the census. Three, we'll have a Google form that goes out to council. That will be coming from Tara Olson on our digital team, asking for you to provide on that Google form where your hard to count populations are. Where do they frequent in your district? And who are the connectors to those populations? Who is the manager of that grocery store? Who is the grandma of wisdom on the block who brings folks into their home and has the opportunity to actually host an event? Who are the local individuals that but for you telling us we would never know that they are on the ground and could be a great resource in getting out the word about the census? So those are the big three things that I would throw at y'all that we could definitely use some help with. I've shown you that neighborhood organizing map. I hope that's useful too in kind of showing how we can visually make sure we're putting resources where they need to go and that other map, the more detailed one [9:54:56 AM] that Lizzie put together, I'm hopeful that y'all can use that for your -- for any purposes because as you start to drill into that it's a really powerful map and what it can show. So with that, that's our last three things. Happy to answer any questions y'all want. Mayor Adler does anybody have any questions? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you, guys, both of you. I wanted to ask a little bit more about the relationship between the point in time count and the census? Is there any sharing of data there? Or is it just that the census has to go and redo that count? >> No. We've asked ourselves that same question. I think the biggest piece of Intel that we'll get from that is basically a map of where concentrations were then. Of course, we're aware that it's dynamic, they're going to change. The census bureau is adamant about we can't do the counting in the way that echo, as you well know is a volunteer group, we go out. They have to be officially [9:55:57 AM] sworn as an enumerator because of confidentiality. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> But it will give us -- we'll take advantage of it because we'll have a pretty proximate association with where concentrations are. But unfortunately we can't just take the echo count, which is widely considered to be the better of the counts, maybe this time we'll flip that. But we'll get something from it, but not nearly as much as we'd like to in my opinion. >> Kitchen: So that's a real big disconnect. >> Oh, yeah. >> Kitchen: So is the difference from the federal perspective is the swearing of the enumerator, is that the only difference? >> It's not the only difference, but it's a big one and I get this. They want do it the same way across the country. And of course, we have got a much larger concentration of these individuals than in many parts of the country. We tried to get creative in 2010, it didn't work. They're kind of a one one-size-fits-all and I get that. It's the bigger, the confidentiality. And that will also come into play as we do have some flexibility. We're going to be able to be [9:56:58 AM] a little bit more creative than we were in the past. We'll be able to accommodate an individual who is homeless. If they know their zip code, that type of thing. So there's -- it is a disconnect, I completely agree, but we'll take as much from the echo count as we can. >> Kitchen: So can you send people to camps to count people? >> That's still to be determined. The census bureau has, again, be adamant in we're the ones who have to do the counting. You know, we've gone through -- >> Kitchen: We meaning? >> The bureau staff. >> The bureau staff or volunteers. >> They have to be sworn bureau staff. >> Kitchen: Can we send sworn bureau staff to the camps? >> Absolutely. But that will be the census bureau doing the sending. >> And that's why it's so critical that we just had the point in time count happen. Because now what echo can do is provide us that location data that tells us where those hot spots are and so now we as a local effort can help inform the census bureau as they go out and do that. But to the root of your question, though, there's [9:57:59 AM] nothing stopping us from sending out volunteers to camps. To go out there and provide fliers, information. >> Kitchen: Yeah, but that's not going to -- you need to connect the individual to the person doing the counting. And so do you know if there's been a request of the census bureau to do that, to go -- to go to people to do the counts? >> This is one of our big topics. We discussed it with them constantly. >> Kitchen: But what is the specific ask of them? That's what -- you can provide me this information later if you're not family with it now. >> No, it's okay. >> Kitchen: What I'm wanting to understand is what did we ask the census bureau to do specifically? >> Well, they're asking us. And that may be maybe the disconnect here. They're asking us where should we set up these -- where should we go out? Because they have a limited amount of resources and they will go out however best they can where we can help inform that outreach as they go out to camps and other homeless sites, right? >> Yeah. I wanted to be sure that it was within their -- their [9:58:59 AM] scope of work. >> It absolutely is. >> Kitchen: That they would actually send a census worker to a camp. >> And they've got a community partner specialist whose name is Billy Horton who is specifically assigned to this population. He's been working with these different groups. I would love to connect you with him because he has been running the traps on that. >> Kitchen: I wanted to make sure that's happening. Make we can talk about that more. >> Tovo:I think mayor pro tem said I was the next question. It's good because one of my leads directly on that question about the point in time data. So I know that Mr. Malik is here as well. In some cases, I hope that -- I hope that as you're preparing the information from the point in time count for the census bureau that there might be an effort to go back to some of the team leads in the point in time count. The team I was on, for [10:00:00 AM] example, went to multiple camps, multiple camps where we didn't have necessarily participants but we know there are multiple individuals there at some point. They either weren't there that night or didn't want to participate in the point in time count. But if you went back and asked -- there wasn't anyway really to provide that information because you either have an interview or an observation form, not necessarily -- there wasn't necessarily a form for more general information about where somewhere of those camp sites were where we didn't have interviews or didn't V observations. Right now while it's still fresh in everyone's head might be a good opportunity to ask the team leads where they didn't get observations or interviews, again, just with our team I think there were at least three, maybe four camp sites where there were multiple people. So I would definitely want our census bureau to be in that area even though that may not show up on a hot spot of the data that was collected. >> Yeah, good morning, councilmembers and city staff, Matt Malika, [10:01:03 AM] executive director with echo. Absolutely, councilmember tovo. We've been collaborating with the census folks they came to membership back in January. I think getting in touch with the team leads is a great idea and we will bringwhatever we can to bear for, you know -- in support of the folks working the census. I think, you know, our volunteer numbers are really high this year, as you know. I think in other ways we can get folks connected that want to participate in that work moving forward. The team leads are a great resource for the census, and I think we're gonna -- we'll be able to attach those folks to the census folks moving forward, absolutely. >> Tovo: That's great. I appreciate that collaboration. >> Yep. >> Tovo: So thanks to Mr. Robinson and Mr. Loller. I think the plan you outlined is really smart. I like the detail about the libraries. I wanted to ask if our neighborhood centers and rec centers and all of our other city facilities are at least going to have materials. I would assume they would but just wanted to offer you an opportunity to talk about [10:02:04 AM] what the resources are that are going to be available at some of those other city facilities. >> Yes, absolutely. >> Tovo: I apologize if I missed it. I think you talked about clinics. >> The enabled centers here for Austin and the county. I spoke to the neighborhood managers several months ago and I'll be speaking with the different managers from Austin public health about that exact question. Part of the feedback they provided us, though, was, sure, you can set up a computer there but they're already carrying the weight of the world everyday in those neighborhood centers providing different services so the challenge on us as a local campaign is if we're gonna have a laptop or cricket phone for folks to take the census for other services how do we not increase the workload on the staff. We talked about volunteer leads on different partnerships. Our tax assessor collector runs a very robust deputy voter registrar program with several volunteers. He has volunteered to tap [10:03:04 AM] into that population to potentially serve as volunteers who go out to a neighborhood center, are sitting there -- it sounds redundant but I think it will become necessary as more and more folks realize they can take the census at these facilities. Here's the primer on how you need to do it, here's frequently asked questions. Absolutely what I would love to have as a commitment from the city of Austin here in coming weeks to place all the different neighborhood centers and any other public facilities that we could place a computer in up on that map. So by the time March 12 rolls around you see a [indiscernible] You need to drill down in your neighborhood to see how many different locations are that you could potentially take the census and to volunteer, you could volunteer at one of those facilities to help navigate folks how to get on to the computer and take it. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you. Then my last question, you talked about -- I wanted to talk about the schools and your outreach through schools. Can you send fliers home through the student -- the packets that students get? [10:04:05 AM] What beyond the kind of creepy digital ads are available in terms of reaching out to school-aged -- parents of school age kids. >> I apologize. We're doing so much, y'all, and we're all over the place with different folks being involved. Actually one of the awesome things I'd like to highlight is our partnership with Austin ISD. Lien nor vargas who heads up the parent support specialists brought in over 70 specialists into one location just this last week and trained them for over an hour and a half from the census bureau and we spent the last hour coming up with campaigns for their specific school verticals. That's an example of where we could have just done the institutional approach of sending out the fliers, right, but what we're trying to do is this grass roots strategy of asking psss what's the most effective way for us to communicate with your families. Is it through events? Whatever it may be. Already that's informing our strategy because we'll be able to put on -- maybe it's a high school graduation event, right? Maybe it's an event that's already on their calendar. But then we go out there with one of those pods. [10:05:05 AM] So aid is definitely setting the example and manor ISD, del valle ISD, pflugerville ISD, and all the dozen ISDs we're hopeful that model we can replicate within these school districts as well. >> It's a known proven technique to reach parents hard to count, through their children. The bureau has a robust program. I think that challenge is to take that model for aid -- they're hard to count folks in aisd, but without doing that same thing, del valle, pflugerville, Leander, because there are 11 different school districts that touch us so we're putting focus on it and it's a proven technique to use. >> We're at a very unique time, you know, with issues like the census, right? And, you know, on a national level and in that ps training I want to make note of this, one of the psss stood and said do you really want me to go potentially burn that relationship I've built with these families over something I'm not even certain if it's gonna be something to be trusted. And that's a real concern. [10:06:06 AM] And so when addressing those types of concerns I think we as a local combined effort can't just simply wash it away with $800 billion a year or, oh, don't worry, someone is gonna get prison time for that. We have to validate those concerns, that absolutely there's real fear in the community about participating in these types of programs, but the reality where folks don't participate is a much more scarier reality. And that's the kind of messaging that with the psss in different community cccs we've been forming we find that emotionaller argument is the one that really hits home that, actually validates those concerns versus a cold, bureaucratic approach. We're finding that in the schools. >> Tovo: Thanks for the detail about the parent support specialists. I'm not sure if other districts have something akin to that. It may just be aisd but in some other districts they likely are have communities and schools or some other trusted partners and I'm sure you're working with those but that seems like a great way of getting it out so thanks for that info. [10:07:07 AM] >> Kitchen: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. This is really important work and I'm glad to see how far we've come already. I wanted to give you an opportunity to be really clear if I'm somebody who wants to volunteer, what it is that I could be doing and how I do that. >> Sure. Absolutely. So now that we have our new improved website live, I can direct those folks to the get involved tab of our at xcensus2020.com. There's a prompt where you can put in your name, email addressnd what communities they would like to volunteer in and we are going to start collecting that information. As we develop that needs assessment, we'll start to be able to figure out how many volunteers we need and where. It's the classic chicken and the egg scenario here of organizing, right? We don't know how many volunteers we need until we know how many locations. So the best way for folks to help out right now is go [10:08:08 AM] onto the web page and submit that you're interested in helping so we can start to build that universe of help as we figure out where we need them. >> A simple example might be staffing a pod location where we -- again, we're going to use the technique of going to where people are, so that would be just a simple example, go to an HEB and work it Saturday morning, give -- do educational materials. They might even, depending where we are in that window, have a laptop and help someone answer the census. So a wide variety of opportunities and I think we'll be able to use those volunteers in a variety of effective ways. >> Or set up an event, right? I mean, if you've got someone who is maybe a member of a neighborhood association, church congregation, whatever, you know, they can go on to our website and say I want to create an event and put all that information in there. So as y'all reach out to your constituents about how to get involved, please direct them to that tab. Also let them know if you'd like to set up an event in your neighborhood, the local campaign is willing to come out and help y'all in that [10:09:09 AM] effort. >> Alter: Thank you. And can you do the same for if I want to donate? What do I do if I want to donate? >> Goodness, do we have another 30 minutes? No. We're working through that right now. One of the interesting things about having been able to serve in this role with these different folks we've been trying to figure out exactly how we have a local partnership like the county and city share funds and also receive private contributions. My understanding is that in the next week to two weeks -- I don't know how much city manager's office would like to comment on this -- that we should have that account set up so that folks could go online and donate. Again, that $300,000 is not going to raise itself in the next two months. We're expecting large corporate partnerships to step up but also folks who may be willing to contribute however much they can towards this effort. >> Alter: Thank you. I think it would be super helpful. We've already sent out some material through our newsletter about being employed and whatnot for the census, but would love to include information about volunteering and donating [10:10:10 AM] and if you have something that's ready or can be ready soon, we would love to have that for our next newsletter. I wanted to point out another group of leader that I haven't heard you mention. We had a group meeting of our board and commissioners, and we had a long discussion about the census and the role that different commissioners were -- commissions were playing in that, so we have over 400 volunteers at the city, I believe, who are on these boards and commissions who are -- most of whom are leaders in some respect outside of that commission and are committed to helping improve the city, and I think we have access to that email list of folks and it would be really good to get them involved through both engaging them by email but also making sure at each commission meeting you get material to them, but for them to help source some of those places where you could go out and do the outreach. [10:11:10 AM] You know, my area is not an area that is hard to reach, but I had -- you know, I had five or six commissioners who were already hard at work reaching out to communities and so I think there's a lot of people there who would be excited if we can give them some meaty things to follow up on. I think for -- and this needs to be beyond our quality of life commissions. Because I think the quality of life commissions have been dealing with the census but other commissions haven't. So I think it would be -- there was a lot of enthusiasm for those who hadn't been entertained yet on -- engaged yet on that. The last thing I wanted to ask about was if you could speak more about your outreach with unions and employers and the chamber. >> Two really awesome questions. As to the first one we have presented a couple quality of life commissions through the city and county. Not all of them at all. Most of our organizing organizing work has been focusing outside of the commission. [10:12:10 AM] Some commissioners serve on the cccs have been helping them, others don't. Absolutely I think our plan, too -- Tara can correct me if I'm wrong we've got a number of quality of life commissions calendarred up we'll be presenting out. Now that we have a website we'll have our travel roadshow over the next month where we go to different boards and commissions but I'd love to work with you to figure out maybe some other places we can get plugged in here to the city side of things. Your second question about unions and chamber of commerces we're fortunate that locally we have an all star who serves as the sect test Texas aclfio right now and she's been taking their chapter through a straightwide programming lens, involved with our hispanic CCC. One of the things we've talked about is going to the central labor council, briefing them seeing if they'd like to get involved on the organizing end. We simply to be honest with you we've been trying to get this campaign up to a point where when we went and met with people we would have [10:13:11 AM] actionable items for them to take on versus going and reiterating why the census is important. But we are there now. I'd love to get plugged into more different union groups that would benefit from hearing this. As far as the chamber of commerces they were some of those institutional partners that came on early to our complete committee for the county and one of the tactics we're gonna try to use to leverage their network is sending out a letter signed by the mayor and judge out to their membership encouraging them to take part in the census, directing them to different resources, but one thing we've heard from our community cccs is that a lot of the marchedder/medium businesses may not be hard of those chamber of commerces so that's one of the things I would love help on, how we get both the members of the chambers but businesses that are not. That seems to be one of the tough spots there. >> Alter: Thank you. I want to underscore for boards and commissions I think it's important to target the quality of life commissions but there are other commissions and commissioners we could definitely engage and want to be engaged if there's a [10:14:13 AM] substantive path forward for them. >> Garza: I just saw more lights come on and I want to make sure we get a break between 12:00 and 1:00. So if there are additional questions and I'm happy to recognize folks, but if there are additional questions beyond these, do they just contact you? >> Yes. Your best point of contact will be me, john.waller, you can just do kens@traviscountytx.gov. We will be hosting a briefing through Tara as well, a notice here from city hall where aides can come and we're thinking we might make that a recurring event. As y'all identify different commissions or different community groups that could be involved that would be that input there so it wouldn't be folks coming from all over the place trying to figure that out. >> Garza: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I'll be quick. [10:15:13 AM] When should people start expecting to cease these postcards in their mailboxes? >> March 12. The Travis county will have in waves postcards going out. So it will take probably I think up to a week for all the different postcards to get out, week to two weeks. Some neighborhood may get it before another one. One of the other cool functions we've been able to figure out with the census bureau is which neighborhoods will get bilingual mailers and which ones will not. So that actually if we're going to do any paid direct mail as a local effort it will be to go into those census bureau, and mail those low English proficiency households bilingual mailers where the census bureau is not. >> Flannigan: For clarity your complete count committee, John, you run includes my part of Williamson county or does not? >> Absolutely. It's city/county so there are about 50,000 folks who fully Williamson county who are also austinites and they're in the study area and we're focused on. Not necessarily one of the [10:16:14 AM] hardest to count areas been there are lots of renters, highly mobile folks so we're going to be giving that part of the jurisdiction lots of attention. >> Flannigan: I pulled up the gis maps while y'all were talking to look because some of your maps included Wilk and some didn't. I did have areas in there under 70% in mail response and not surprisingly where I have my oldest apartment complexes. So I'm interested in renter outreach specifically for my corner of the world, even if it was as simple as posters we can put up on the mailbox areas where we know every renter is gonna walk through that little pavilion, be on the lookout, here's what the postcard looks like, that kind of information and I'd be happy to include all my neighborhood ambassadors to help distribute those, put those up. I have a lot of apartment complexes and growth on the wilco side so that's important. Last question, you mentioned lgbtq as a hard to count population but not as a subpopulation committee. [10:17:15 AM] Is there work happening with my community on this? Or should I be rattling the chains on this a little bit more? >> Would love for you to get more folks geared up and excited about it? >> Flannigan: Okay. >> You are correct, it was not one of the priority populations when we first started out, but now that we have our five priority populations underway -- by priority I meant they were the largest ones, the first ones we wanted to wrap our hands around. I would love it for us to go down that entire list. >> Flannigan: I meant a census staffer responsible for lgbtq outreach and I also know the lgbtq task force has a kind of query the census initiative. I met them in Dallas two weeks ago. >> Your first question, first point is really one I want to hone in on real quick. The regression analysis of those different socioeconomic variables that make a population hard to count it was actually status as a renter versus a homeowner which was the largest determinant whether or not you were gonna be hard to count so that's [10:18:16 AM] really important information for us AAS a local campaign and other community leaders. As we focus on this effort we're not gonna be prioritizing single family homeowners. Our number 1 priority will be those in multi-family complexes and those that are renters. The data shows they are much more likely to be hard to count. >> Flannigan: Thanks. >> Garza: Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: I'm pretty certain that councilmember Ellis was -- her light was on before mine. >> Garza: You go ahead and go first. >> Harper-madison: Quick and easy. I was thinking about populations of people I didn't hear mentioned. Those insurance-incarcerated persons and hospitalized people. Incarcerated people probably aren't the same considerations about privacy but I'm certain some hipaa requirements might prevent your ability to count hospitalized people or people in nursing homes. So just curious about the approach there. >> Those are both populations that are hard to count and the bureau classifies those individuals as living in group quarters and so in many cases they [10:19:16 AM] won't be filling out their own form but in the case of a skilled nursing facility it would be a nurse assisting those individuals. So there will be very much an assist. And for what that's worth, be in my opinion the census bureau is pretty smart about how to do that and they've done that. Still challenges, but it's not a gigantic population in our case, but it's large and growing so we're cognitive of it. And we'll focus on it. >> Just to add on top of that, you know, again, the census bureau will have their own coordinated effort and resources going towards group quarters. They will get those folks counted. So a way of thinking about this is dorms on the UT campus, St. Ed's will get counted. Those students off-campus will not get counted. They're hard to count. Folks currently incarcerated will get counted. Folks recently incarcerated will be hard to count. So as a local effort that's the way we're trying to [10:20:16 AM] think about things. It would be really amazing if anyone in this room has networking ability with folks in the advocacy space for the recently incarcerated. That would be amazing because I would love for us to have a focus specifically on that population here locally. >> Garza: Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Are there printed materials currently available? I know there's a lot of groups locally that may be doing block walking in the next couple weeks with early vote starting, generally having that neighborhood touch of being able to take those fliers and in addition to saying it's time to vote to also say, hey, guess what, the census is coming out and you should expect it. I think that could be a level of reach -- outreach that might be productive and didn't know if that was something that people could go grab either at precinct offices or something like that. >> Sure. That's something we're thinking about doing this next week, actually, printing off several thousand copies of just very basic austin-specific information for different campaigns that are running. [10:21:18 AM] And any campaign, you know, totally a all partisan campaign, but anyone could participate and go pick up a flyer. Right now what I direct folks to is the census bureau's website because it does have fliers in every language and from different perspectives, and we have printed those off for certain groups, like, our asian-american CCC we've printed thousands of fliers in Vietnamese and simple Chinese for them. So we could continue to do that, but I hear you. I think there's an advantage us to coming up with a coordinated drop-off or pickup locations for folks to grab those. >> Precinct offices off of top of my head might be a good place to start. I appreciate my colleagues bringing up the discussions of talking to echo as someone who did the point in time count and ten years ago actually worked for the census bureau doing the quality control for the address mapping, I see that there may be some unique experiences people are able to overlap and go through that training, knowing that -- I've seen where [10:22:18 AM] camps are in my district. I know that you have to be, you know, checked with the federal government to be able to work on their behalf. But I think that could be an extra level, especially with our constable and deputy constable in district 3, lead the point in time count. You know them. I think that could be a really big win to make sure we're not leaving any vulnerable populations out as my other colleagues have mentioned. >> Yeah. Constable suits is -- he has been great and he's an example of our coordinated approach to these fund-raising asks so he's put in application for his office to get an expanded community liaison role specific to folks experiencing homelessness or more importantly working poor, folks living out of cars, and his office has worked really hard to identify those places and he's applied for a small amount but it will be in a coordinated fashion. >> Ellis: They could be a great resource as people are visiting justice of the peace to have that extra reminder that it's coming and to expect it. >> It was actually -- we've [10:23:19 AM] had several constables step up big time to help out but also associate judge Jones, she's helped lead our African-American CCC and offered up her facilities. >> Ellis: That's great. Appreciate it. >> Garza: Do you have a question? >> Casar: No. Thank you, guys. I think the two things that we didn't fully cover are just, one, as we -- as you get volunteers, if we need more because we have enough locations for more, I think it's something we could have a conversation with our own staff and the manager is we obviously have a lot of folks that work at the city that care about volunteering so finding good ways for city employees to participate that way I think could be important. Second if you're short on locations because there aren't enough libraries or rec centers don't work or the clinic there's too much going on, I think many of us have connections to folks that run the grocery store, corner store, other places in our district so I'd say to make sure you're in touch with councilmembers about ways we make sure that if we [10:24:20 AM] have enough volunteers but you don't have enough locations that we get you the places. >> Thank you for bringing those points up. Again, having those locations you all provide on that Google form will be extremely helpful. That first point that's a question I'd love to get answers with the city manager's office, is it possible for any Austin city employee to be able to request eight, 16, however, many hours offing to work at one of these census stations? Is it possible for us to have a policy where the city cod open up effectively their employees to going out and volunteering at a specific location? If we were able to do that, that would be a game changer because now suddenly it doesn't matter how many locations we probably get, we probably would be able to staff them. Sop that's something creative maybe we could approach at some point. >> Garza: The only thing I'd add that hasn't been mentioned is that immigration status is not a question that is on the census. I think that's important for a lot of people in our community to know. >> It was taken off by the supreme court. There's some that might argue the damage was done. It's certainly increased the [10:25:20 AM] environment of fear and intimidation so it's not without a cost but thank god it's off. And so -- >> Garza: Yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'd love more presentations where Ryan Robbins raises the roof. [ Laughter ] The next item is I believe our -- councilmember tovo, did you want to talk about the utility oversight committee? >> Tovo: I do, thanks. Those of you at last week's utility committee I Teed this up. I think this is a very important role that we play as managers of the Austin energy -- as managers of Austin energy so this committee was set up with purpose of giving us time outside of our council meetings to make sure we're providing the level of stewardship of that really important resource and level of financial and fiscal [10:26:22 AM] review. We are -- I had Nikki huff on my staff did really a very thorough, useful analysis of the last year's worth of meetings. We are increasingly having trouble reaching quorum and I know everybody's schedules are really busy and that's part of the concern but it's happening month after month that we're not reaching quorum, that we're waiting to start the meetings so staff are waiting and then we're sometimes not reaching quorum for long periods of time, and so I would like to propose -- we have several ways -- options we can consider. I think the one that would be most efficient for everyone's time, Austin energy staff's time as well as ours but would allow us to allocate enough time to do what we need to do, which is review the financials, to get ahead of any issues that are coming before the utility, coming before council and providing us with that space to ask the questions that we need to have staff outside of our council meetings, I'm going to propose we keep it as a committee of the whole but go to every other month and just wanted to offer that up [10:27:22 AM] for concentrations. Ordinarily we could have had this at the Austin energy committee but there were so few members it didn't make sense to have that concentration in that space. Unless there are any concerns, as a first step we'd move to every other month on that. I'd just like to encourage, again, you know, this is an important role. It's one that we have -- you know, I think it's very critical that we continue -- that our public continue to see us in that role, reviewing and making the kinds of decisions that we need to and providing the level of oversight that our customers and state legislators require of us. I know we spend a lot of time outside of our committee meetings working on Austin energy issues and we are providing that level of oversight, but having that opportunity to talk with one another I think is critical. >> Garza: Thank you, councilmember tovo. And I don't know -- I know [10:28:24 AM] there's some committees that I also have trouble getting quorum, and so I think sometimes -- and I'm not making excuses or anything. We assume others will be there. And if we're running -- for example, I was running late to the one this week, and so did you -- did you have confirmation for more people than showed up that day? >> Tovo: So we have asked several times that if people are absent, if they would let us know. And that consistently isn't happening. And so, you know, I think that's -- I appreciate your raising that point because I think it is really important. If you know you're going to be out for a committee meeting I always make sure I let the chair know as soon as it's clear to me. Sometimes things happen and it's not clear. Because that allows us to make a change. If we know we're not gonna have quorum we can let staff and other colleagues now and reschedule that meeting. But after several months of that not happening, we need to take a different path. [10:29:24 AM] Again, I think every other month will allow us to do the work we need to do and hopefully be something that accomodates everyone's schedules more reasonably. >> Garza: Okay. Thank you. Does anybody have any comments on this topic? All right. The next discussion item was the intergovernmental entities and council committees memberships? Anybody want to talk about that? We can wait for the mayor for that one. And then the last item was the update regarding homelessness issues. >> Good morning, councilmembers. My name is Chris shorter. I am the assistant city manager supporting outcomes associated with hedge, health, culture, and lifelong learning. As you know we've invited echo to provide a [10:30:26 AM] presentation of the point in time count held on January 25. After their presentation and questions that you may have for them, I'd also like to highlight some of the progress we've made since our last work session and give our priority leads an opportunity to provide updates or answer questions as needed as well. >> Good morning. Can you hear me? >> Garza: Yes -- no. You turned it off. >> Okay. Good morning, councilmembers. Thank you for having us here today. My name is Sarah. I'm the new vice president of quality assurance with echo. And I look forward to working with you all on the issue of homelessness in our community. So this morning I'm going to give you a little bit of background on the pit count. Basically today we're going to talk about methodology and process. We do not have results yet, but we will get there with you and tell you a little bit about our process too [10:31:26 AM] achieve results. So to give anyone background in the room, the point in time count is required by hours and urban development for continuums of care in each community in order to receive H.U.D. Funding. So it's an annual census of the Austin . Travis county population experiencing homelessness. And the census contributes to both local and national efforts to end homelessness. So this is happening across the country on one night, January 25, to really gather numbers and demographic information. It provides a snapshot. Okay. So the objectives of the count are really to get a total number and characteristics of those who are experiencing homelessness in Austin Travis county. Also to understand the subpopulations. Without understanding the subpopulation oz we don't really know how best to help them and route them to specific service points. So those include veterans, [10:32:28 AM] unaccompanied youth, domestic violence victims. Then we compare those counts to previous years and look at our performance in preventing and ending homelessness. The count -- the pit count also provides information on people's experience with housing and homelessness, their current living situation, age, characteristics, and any self-reported disabilities that may interfere with their ability to maintain housing or employment. And then those who choose to can provide their contact information and be kind of routed to the correct service point and contacted by coc partners for services via outreach staff. Okay. So the methodology -- a pit count is essentially a prevalence estimate of sheltered and unsheltered individuals. This year for the first time we used a web-based survey [10:33:32 AM] with geolocation capability. It was really nice. It's an anonymous survey, mixture of various type of questions, close-ended, multiple choice, open-ended questions. There were 11 items per respondent and there's an observation only option as well for individuals who maybe don't want to be disturbed or for whatever reason. We had a six-hour data collection time frame on January 25 from 3:00 A.M. To 9:00 A.M., and this year we had 861 volunteer survey administrators and 25 command center staff and volunteers, so a total of 886 deployed. So there are some limitations to the pit count. These are known in the scientific literature. There's variations in count methodology year to year within and across communities, and we know that unsheltered counts are subject to more variation due to geography, weather, [10:34:34 AM] considerations around volunteers. And so first I'm going to talk a little bit about historical data. The pit count data for sheltered and unsheltered persons in austin/travis county from 2010 to 2019, this gives a little bit of trend data. You can kind of see that it's held fairly steady. It kind of wobbled down and then came back up in 2019. But it's really varied between 2,087 and 2255 in that frame. In Orange we have the sheltered persons experiencing homelessness and in blue we have unsheltered. And so this is also the 2019 housing inventory count. So you can see that we had -- you know, we count the emergency shelters, safe havens, transitional housing, and then permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, housing only, for a grand total of 3199 in [10:35:36 AM] 2019. So now talking about the 2020, what we just did, just talking a little bit about the preparation. As you can imagine there is a lot of preparation that goes into a pit count, and in fact the preparation started before September when we engaged hyperion to launch the map we started in may to begin lining it out and starting testing and piloting. So in September, you know, we engaged volunteers, initiated a new volunteer management system, give pulse, which was also pretty helpful. We updated the volunteer page on the echo website. We initiated the new application for counting, selected team leads and subleads for each of the 73 sections. It's a lot of logistics. Finalized training details. [10:36:37 AM] In October we began hosting orientations for team leads. We opened up volunteer registration. And then finalized our methodology to -- to membership council for approval. November we ensured that those pit count materials complied with H.U.D. And confirmed our methodology for the housing inventory to count local shelters. And then in the run right up to it, December, lots of training, piloting the app. We piloted the app with an outreach team, and then with our volunteers we had them beta test the app in a test environment. We developed a cold weather contingency plan, began printing our materials and making packets. And then in January the real ramp up, training as many volunteers as we could to be team leads, subleads, general volunteers. We were able to get volunteers to submit [10:37:37 AM] hundreds of test cases into the app for beta testing. And then coordinated with donation volunteers to kind of sort and organize items, schedule packets for pickup for the implementation on January 25, 2020. So on the night of the pit count, echo engaged, trained and deployed, as I mentioned before, 886 volunteers for III hour shifts between 6:00 A.M. That start -- that started between 3:00 A.M. And 6:00 A.M. You'll note that the in 2019 we had 661 volunteers, and in 2018 we had 663 volunteers. So we saw an over 200 volunteer increase from 2019 to 2020. And that's a 34% increase year to year. So just to give you an idea how we mapped out the [10:38:40 AM] sections, we had different shifts, depending on, you know, the level of urban, suburban, rural. Red was urban. Black was suburban. And blue was rural. Then we were also able to do some hot spot mapping. So the blue pins on the map represent individuals counted in the 2019 pit count, and the red squares are individuals identified by Austin police department during 2019. So analysis and follow-up. January and February, we really want to debrief. We're debriefing with team leads, staff and volunteers. We're incorporating that feedback from survey results into pit count process and our manual for next year. We're reviewing and cleaning pit count data. So as you can imagine, when we get the csv file from hyperion, it's not [10:39:41 AM] necessarily pristine. There's a lot of cleaning, removing duplicates, and making the data set analyzable. And then of course we do the data analysis and prepare the pit count report for H.U.D., and we plan and host a volunteer recognition event. In March we'll begin preparing outreach materials for press, social media, and sponsors. And share preliminary data on the pit count with our stakeholders. April 20 -- or April 2020, we finalize the pit count report, any data visualizations and kind of the information sheet. We update the website. We release outreach materials and begin testing the app for 2021. And we just want to thank all of you, the councilmembers, the mayor, the city managerment staff, volunteers, media for all your help and support and outreach and administration of the 2020 pit count. [10:40:42 AM] We couldn't have done it without you, so thank you. I also wanted to introduce Melissa wheeler, our his director who has been instrumental in administration and planning of the pit count. Thank you. >> Garza: Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Thank you all so much for come and presenting to us today. I got a chance to do this myself and definitely saw a lot more volunteers in my area. Really impressive to see about 200 more volunteers. That's 34% more folks. And so my experience was -- and I'd be interested in hearing if this is what you all heard back, since we had so many more volunteers we were able to really dig into more areas, so when I've done the pit count in the past in my area, covering Cameron road and Rutherford and north Lamar and all of the 183 frontage and all of the convenience store parking lots to check to see [10:41:43 AM] if folks are sleeping in their cars it was really hard to be thorough and go into the fields or check every car, but this time we split into three or four groups that were able to do each of those. So my experience was we were able to find more folks because we were able to focus more on our areas. So my question to y'all has been -- is with 200 more volunteers, 34% more people counting, do you suspect or hope that that means they'll have a more architecture count and potentially actually be able to count more people because we can actually count more of the folks that are there? >> Yeah. I think that that is an accurate assessment of the -- you know, when you have more data collectors, you can get a more realistic snapshot of the picture, particularly when you're dealing with a population that is mobile and often invisible. >> One of the things I wanted to add as well with our pit app this year was [10:42:46 AM] that at headquarters we we were able to watch numbers come in live and they were able to deploymore people to areas that needed help. This was the first time we had that kind of coordination this year and it was an incredibly helpful tool to use this year and continue to learn how to use that in the future. >> Casar: In this case we'll see when the numbers come out here in several weeks, but in my view us actually getting a number that is higher is a good thing because it means that we would actually be identifying the folks that are actually living in our community instead of being ignorant of some of the issues, actually knowing how many folks are sleeping on our streets or in their cars is important for us to adequately fund the problem, actually address the issue, know where folks actually are, and draw down more funds to actually address it. So I appreciate that we had that increase in volunteers and that that increase might mean you see an increase in the number associated with [10:43:46 AM] us actually showing the truth on the ground and I appreciate everybody stepping out to do that. >> Thank you. >> Garza: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Yeah. I thought the app was a really nice, interesting improvement from prior years. I've done it now for about four or five years. But I thought it was good. It seemed to work real well. A question I have is -- first off, just time line. What are y'all thinking your time line is for getting the results? >> So as mentioned, we're looking to have preliminary results in March 2020. >> Kitchen: Okay, yeah. Do you do -- and this may not -- well, I wondered to what extent you can do estimates. Because I know that when we count we have to count a person, you know, that we actually talk to. And there were places of course that people were still sleeping and may not have wanted to come out of their tents. And so is there a way to do [10:44:47 AM] any estimates based on that? I know you can do -- you could input an observation, but at least the way we were doing it was an observation of a person, not a tent. So is there any way to account for things we may have observed like that to estimate how many more people were actually sleeping outdoors than what we were able to actually count? >> We do not currently count a tent if we don't see a human being in it. >> Kitchen: Right. >> As you mentioned. >> Kitchen: Right. >> And so we know that a census or a pit count is a prevalence estimate and it is often an underestimate. If you think of it as the unshelter the population is sort of the tip of the iceberg. With us having more volunteers the tip of the iceberg might come up a little bit higher so we're seeing more people, but we do know across the country it is likely an [10:45:49 AM] underestimate of unsheltered populations. >> Kitchen: But there's not a methodology for estimating and not a methodology for counting? >> Not that H.U.D. Recommends at the moment. >> Kitchen: I wonder if that's something we might want to consider locally in the future because that would be an additional data point, to councilmember Casar's point, that would really help us understand. Because I know where we were, there were quite a few tents that we were able to observe that, you know, that people were still sleeping. >> Absolutely. Yeah. And we are, you know -- the census presentation was fantastic, and we have learned a lot from those folks this year as well. I think that some of the H.U.D. Regulations do hold us back from some of that, with the methodology they give us from year to year as to what we can -- to use as a count versus an estimate. But we get that question a lot in training about I see a tent, I even maybe hear people inside talking to me, can I count them? [10:46:49 AM] And our general rule is you have to see them, the actual visual. >> Kitchen: I guess what I mean is why couldn't we just add a data element or two for us? You know, even if it doesn't meet H.U.D. Requirements, could we not consider that for us here in Austin that would help us? I would just -- I don't know. I'm sure there's complexities to that. I'd just ask that you guys think about that for next year because that could provide us some additional level of detail that might be helpful for us here. >> Absolutely. And we can take that back to our pit count planning committee for them to think about. From time to time we have added local elements to our survey. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Specifically a couple of years around pets and pets being with people. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Was something very important to the city. And we have in the past added things to it. It's a balance between wanting to add additional data points and also the burden that that causes to asking more questions to individuals in the middle of [10:47:50 AM] the night. >> Kitchen: But if we're just adding a count of tents that's very easy to do. >> Absolutely. That's a great idea. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Garza: Does anybody else have any -- councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I want to conquer. I referred to this earlier. I do think having a separate sheet where you could note the location of other camp sites and the number of tents so that it's not confuse -- I don't know where you'd put it in the digital form because there's not a place. You'd be putting it on somebody else's record but I do think that information is really helpful in terms of getting locally a broader perspective. I understand the reasons to not embed it within your questionnaires and within the process. People can be somewhere else, they could be sleeping somewhere else that evening and be counted somewhere else, so I understand why it shouldn't be part of the official data, but I do think it's helpful and maybe having it on a separate sheet, a real sheet of paper, would be one way -- >> Absolutely, yeah. I think that we can work with our developer hyperion to think about strategies [10:48:50 AM] and ways where we could incorporate local estimate counts maybe in the years prior. Every year we just try to continue to improve on our methodology and I thank you for those feedback. >> Garza: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I just wanted to congratulate you on managing a much larger process than you've had in the past and doing it at the same time that you're rolling out new technology in an app. There are folks in Iowa that may want to consult with you? [ Laughter ] >> Thank you. >> Thanks. [ Laughter ] >> Garza: I think those are all the questions. Do you have another -- okay. >> Okay. Thank you again, echo. So, councilmembers, as you know, the working group formed in the fall involving staff really from across the city that participate and actively work to make sure [10:49:51 AM] that we are providing services are here. They are priority leads and available for questions. I wanted to also make sure that I highlighted the fact that when we were last together at our last work session, the communications team talked about the dashboard and your offices have received at this point directly communications from the -- from that team, getting your input, making sure that you have an opportunity to provide feedback. As you know, the homeless dashboard ultimately will cover key indicators associated with our homeless service deliver system and I wanted to make sure that we mentioned that. In addition to the commitment around the homeless dashboard, we also talked about expanding the guided path program and transitioning that program from guided path to an [10:50:52 AM] overall encampment strategy. So thanks to your approval and financial support our providers are now in a position and are beginning to hire staff to help with case management and build capacity around rapid rehousing. That said, we plan to provide an update on both the dashboard, as well as the overall encampment strategy or guided path program at our next work session on February 18. Wanted to make sure that I mentioned that. In addition to those two items -- and thanks again to your support, we have been working with Barbera poppy and associates. Her team over the last few weeks and plan to hold this afternoon our first conferencing call with providers and our working group and barb's team. Ultimately the team -- and y'all are aware of this -- will be covering a review of all contracts and grants [10:51:53 AM] associated with homelessness in our city, and so our support and the providers awareness in support of her work will be vitally critically important so that conversation will happen this afternoon. We are also seeking your authorization this week to negotiate and execute a contract with Matthew Daugherty. That contract is in the amount of $95,000. It's an eight-month contract due to end September 30 of this year. So ask for your consideration. As you know, manager Daugherty has over 25 years of experience in the public and private sector, specifically dealing with homelessness issues on a nationwide level. He served as the executive director of the U.S. Interagency council on homelessness between 2015 and 2019 and just has a breadth of experience that we would very much value here in our system. So with that said, I wanted [10:52:57 AM] to open it up, obviously, for questions and as needed invite our priority area leads up to answer as we go. >> Garza: There any questions? I don't think so -- oh, sorry, councilmember alter. >> Alter: I don't know if this is a question for you, Mr. Shorter, or not. I'm wondering if someone can speak to us a little bit about the circumstances surrounding the fire that was reported yesterday. >> Sure. >> Alter: On east Anderson. >> Absolutely. I'll invite Ken snipes as well as Vella from aph. >> Good morning, Vella Carmen, Austin public health. I'm going to speak on -- to the incident on a service level. We do have street outreach teams, both the host team [10:53:57 AM] and the path team through integral care who are aware of individuals that are living out in that area, have had contact with them in the past and are also making contact with them now, correcting them to services. Several of them have been connected to services or are already in touch with different programs. So the outreach team has been aware of folks living in the area and will continue to do the outreach and connect them as necessary. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Good morning, council, mayor pro tem, manager. This is Ken snipes, Austin resource recovery and also the priority lead for encampment cleanup or cleanup activities. So one of the things that happened as a result of the fire is that we learned about this location and what we plan to do going forward is just to connect with the service providers so that we have a better understanding of where these locations are. Some of them are out of the [10:54:58 AM] way. They're not visible from, you know, the normal roadway or sidewalks or what have you and this happens to be one of those locations. So now that we are aware of it, what we will do is continue to assess the area and add it to our normal protocols that we are currently operating with across the city. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate you all coming. I requested some more information on this yesterday, so I appreciate you coming. We're hearing from constituents concerns about whether the folks are receiving services. I wasn't sure, though, Mr. Stokes, from your answer about who has responsibility for that area. Is that city or txdot? >> I think we're still trying to learn that right now. The area was completely new to me. I think as of yesterday, I was not made aware of it. So we're still working on who has jurisdiction and who will clean that area going [10:55:59 AM] forward. I don't know if there's a update on that yet. >> Alter: Okay. And I just wanted to point out because, you know, folks are expressing concern over the needles, but people use needles for hedge reasons and for insulin and other stuff, and I believe that's what we were seeing. And so I just wanted to throw that out there, that a lot of folks who are homeless have health issues and are using the needles for health reason. That doesn't make them safe to be on the ground, but it is -- that is one of the reasons that we may be finding those in those areas. Thank you for the update, and if tuck provide further updates on both this particular location either at -- through work session or to my office separately, whatever appears most appropriate, I'd appreciate it. And I would like more information about how you're going to be identifying other locations which might [10:56:59 AM] not have already come to your attention and sort of trying understand how long we knew about this location prior to the fire. >> Very good. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Garza: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Well, thank you, all. This is very helpful information. And so I have a question for you about the clean-ups. And I think you've responded to this before. I'd just like you to repeat it for the latest information. I'm getting a lot of calls from constituents just asking about the schedule, and I just wanted to confirm that, as I understand it, we are doing monthly clean-ups and those are in -- and those overlap -- not overlap, but that txdot is also doing weekly clean-upses and these are in the areas that are identified. Is that -- am I right about that? >> Almost. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So the underpass clean-ups are happening twice a month. >> Kitchen: Okay. The city is doing them twice [10:58:01 AM] a month? >> That's correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> But at the locations where txdot is doing monthly clean-ups, we're offsetting that with an additional clean-up as well. So all the clean-ups are still happening twice per month. Some locations, we are performing both clean-ups. And at other locations the state is performing one and we're performing the second. >> Kitchen: So there aren't weekly clean-ups? I had understood there were weekly clean-ups. >> For the litter and debris clean-ups those are happening twice weekly. So those will continue. And we're actually in the process of evaluating a couple of the sites to see if they might be better served to go to three times per week. We have a couple of sites that seem to have more activity with litter, so we're kind of reassessing those. >> Kitchen: Oh, okay. So -- all >> Kitchen: All right. So repeat for me one more time so I have it clear. So the litter cleanups are twice a week? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: And the other cleanups are twice a month. >> That is correct. [10:59:01 AM] >> Kitchen: And where are you all at on the sides of the freeways? >> In response to that, councilmember, you asked us to take a look at those locations so we connected with txdot. And as of last week txdot did deploy resources to clean up those areas adjacent and alongside the areas near the overpasses and underpasses. So think did respond and they are cleaning those up. The new contract, the contract that we're using to clean, is up for renewal soon and so we're also going to look at adding that scope to the new contract as well. >> Kitchen: Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Garza: I have a quick follow-up. You said txdot is cleaning up those areas now, but then we will add a scope so we will take over the cleanup and txdot will not? >> No, I'm not saying that. What I want to do is get a better understanding of what the overall agreement is with them, but we want to have the ability to do it if [11:00:04 AM] we needed to. >> Garza: Okay, thanks. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Return to the point about coordination. Mr. Snipes, you said you were looking for ways of coordinating, raise thought I understood, and -- as I thought I understood and I may not have, ways of coordinating with the outreach teams to make sure you are aware of some of the places they may be visiting and interacting with individuals that would be appropriate for a cleanup. I guess in some of the media reports yesterday some of our firefighters indicated that they had been out to this particular site multiple times. So I don't know whether that's a question for you, acm shorter, about how we make sure that our city personnel who are visiting sites and responding to emergency calls are also aware in a it would be useful to get that information back. In one of the reports it sounded as if the [11:01:04 AM] firefighters had some concerns about this -- well, I don't want to characterize it, but in any case, that would have been good information to come back. And is it coming back and finding its way to you? Or what are your strategies to making sure that that information transfer happens in the future? >> Sure. Appreciate the question very much. This is exactly the reason why we have formed this internal working group that ultimately our public safety teams, our service -- home delivery teams and homeless teams, we're currently meeting every week. This is an area where we need to make sure that if we are providing services, even if it's non-government entity, we need to make sure that there's information and intelligence coming back to this group around where there is an opportunity for cleanup. So this was -- this was obviously one area where we have an opportunity to do [11:02:04 AM] better and we certainly will. We were talking yesterday about how we make sure that outside of the weekly meetings that the teams are coordinating operationally and so that's where there is improvement and will be improvement. >> Tovo: And certainly if there are safety issues that our responders are noting out there, I hope there's also a way to work with the outreach providers or others to try to address some of those safety issues. >> Sure. It's important. So each one of our various departments play an important and key role in the provision of services and how we make sure that that information translates from one public safety agency, for example, to our cleanup effort is something that we need to make sure we get right. I don't want to necessarily say that our entire organization knew about this [11:03:06 AM] encampment as it's clear that our encampment cleanup teams did not. So where we need to improve, and we will improve, is how we get that information back and then make sure that it is really funneled across our enterprise. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you for continuing to improve and strengthen our processes. >> Sure. >> Tovo: You had mentioned before a dashboard? >> I did. >> Tovo: Would you mind telling us again where and how we receive that in our council office? >> Sure. So the last time we were together at our working session, the communications team, and I'm not sure if a representative is here, but we talked about different formats and frames for a specific dashboard -- fantastic. So in that time we've begun reaching out to council process. >> Tovo: I checked with my staff and none of them were -- I may have misunderstood. Did you say you sent out a link that we all have a link to provide feedback about or is it more informal feedback [11:04:09 AM] at this stage? >> No, we're going to come to your office and -- >> Tovo: I'm sorry. I thought that time had already arrived. We'll await that information. >> We are in the process, yes. >> Garza: Are there any other questions? >> Harper-madison: Not a question so much as a statement. And you probably can speak to this with your experiences being a firefighter and my experience with being married to one for almost as long as he's been in, almost two decades. That encampment has been there for decades. And so during the course of these conversations, I think it's most important to include the people whose boots are on the ground. And I'm not certain how we would, you know, create a communication system there, but, you know, battalion chiefs, folks who aren't fighting fires in the woods probably couldn't provide you that information as well as firefighters can. [11:05:09 AM] So I wonder if that would be an important consideration like who are the paramedics and firefighters who are actually going into the woods? They can tell you where encampments are that you wouldn't see or know about otherwise. So just something to consider. >> Thank you. >> Garza: Yeah, I was -- I thought about commenting on that exact thing that as we've been having this homelessness discussion, the one thing I've said is this is not new. I was a firefighter from 2001 to 2007 and we've been going to homeless camps in the # 360 area since then. So it's medical calls. People see smoke and we usually confirm are they warming or cooking fires? And then they were loud. So yes, firefighters know where those camps are. >> I think one immediate improvement here is that we can begin to invite AFD to our weekly working group meetings. >> Garza: I think that's all. Thank you for the updates. Did you have a closing? [11:06:09 AM] >> No. >> Garza: Okay. So the only thing left on the work session agenda -- we're not having executive session. The only thing left is the discussion on the land development code, which is not supposed to start until 1:00. The mayor should be back by that time. I am not sure of what the processes -- I was going talk about if I was running the meeting I was going talk about what we were going to do, but I haven't had a chance to talk to the mayor about what that process will be like. But happy to discuss comments on what -- on what others would like that to look like. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: So the first question I have is I guess our executive sessions. There were -- there's at least one on there that I regard as extremely timely. So I wasn't aware -- in fact, I spoke with you, city manager, late last week and it was still on the agenda at that point. I'm not sure how and why it's not on our agenda for today. >> Councilmember, I think because we don't have the full dais we're going to wait until Thursday. [11:07:10 AM] >> Tovo: Okay. Is the mayor coming later? Could we take a brief break and try to move on to executive session? >> Garza: The mayor is supposed to be here. I also would -- I don't know if you're talking about the ais -- >> Tovo: There are two. One is the ace and the other is palm. I don't know -- it looks as if we have a pretty easy agenda on Thursday, but if things get -- if we get very bogged down in the morning, then there's a possibility -- I have a very short day on Thursday. I'm going to need to leave the meeting early as I've indicated, as early as the first week of December. So I'm also -- I'm very interested in ace, also interested in palm, having led on several of those resolutions related to it and given that it's in my district. So it's important to me to be here for that conversation. And it is, as I said, very timely. I think the county commissioners may have an item on their agenda today related to palm. [11:08:11 AM] So again, it's just a surprise to me that we're not talking it up until Thursday. That wasn't communicated back to me and that is of concern as well. Hopefully we'll have time on Thursday to take it up, but again, it's timely as of today. >> Councilmember tovo, why don't we -- in this break, I agree that we need to have it, so why don't we in this break find out what time the mayor is coming back and regardless plan to have that today at some point. >> Tovo: That sounds good to me, mayor pro tem. The other -- I think the ace too in preparation for Thursday is a useful conversation to have today rather than on Thursday. So thank you for that. And if it's -- is our afternoon work session part of this one? >> Garza: Yes. >> Tovo: Great. So I have a question about what time -- we don't have an end time scheduled for today or tomorrow. And I wondered if we could get a sense of what our expectations are. I know some of us have probably children we have to pick up at certain times and whatnot. So we have to have a clear sense of whether we're going [11:09:13 AM] until -- whether we're going until we're done today and it could go late into the night. And if so if we could agree on a break time, that would be great or if we're intending to end earlier. >> Garza: I had it in my calendar until 5:00, so that's when I -- I plan to leave at 5:00. Is that everybody else's expectation? It looks like it's everybody's expectation to be over at 5:00. >> Tovo: Thanks, same tomorrow? Again, in our communication I think my staff might have asked, it was stated that there was no end time. That staff weren't going to apply an end time to it. It's just scheduling other things a little challenging. But if today end time is 5:00, is that our end time for tomorrow as well? End time is 5:00? >> Garza: Looks like it's for 5:00 tomorrow as well. >> Tovo: Can you help me understand how that arrived on your calendar at 5:00? Because again, I think the literature we received had it as no end time. >> Harper-madison: I don't have any calendar. I can't answer that. >> Casar: I don't think it [11:10:13 AM] was formal or official, but it was just time getting blocked. That might have been indicating to us that when we discussed this, well, we suggest five. I think it's more of a suggestion in my calendar. >> Tovo: Thanks. >> Alter: I think it might have been on the message board post. I'm trying to get to the message board, but I believe the mayor had posted some end times, but we believe we still need some clarity for next week on end times. Again, if we have children and we have staff who have children, we have to know what we're planning for and just having these random meetings that could go late is challenging. >> Tovo: And just to follow up, I'm looking at the message board post didn't say either. Again, I have three contingency plans with my children for today because I wasn't sure. It would be helpful if we could figure this out in advance. >> Garza: Let's have that discussion when we reconvene about end times when we come back, when everybody should be here, if that sounds [11:11:14 AM] good. Okay. Since we're on the fortunate, I unfortunately will not be here tomorrow. I have a family member is having a medical procedure that I would like to be at. So I will be gone Wednesday. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I wanted to let people know that for item number 77, which is a zoning requirement, the Messinger tract, we're working towards -- we may be able to do consent on first reading, but if we're not, I'm going to need a time certain so that the neighbors can come speak. And they have wanted -- they've asked for a time certain that's after the dinner break. So we're trying to get it on consent because I understand that tomorrow may be -- Thursday may be a shorter day. But I'm going to be asking for a time certain at 6:30 if I can't get it on consent. >> Garza: Okay. Anybody else? All right. Well, then we are in recess -- it's 11:11 and we are in recess until 1:00. [11:12:18 AM] [Recess]. [11:57:38 AM] [ Recess ] [1:15:32 PM] Garza: I'm going to call our meeting back to order at 115, and we are actually going to go into closed session to take up two items pursuant to sections 551.072 and 551.071 of the government code, the accountant will discuss real estate and legal matters related to item e-2, the purchase, exchange, lease of value and interest in real property and improvements commonly known as palm school. And pursuant to section 551.07, the council will discuss legal matters related to e3, the directors of Austin enterprises. Item e1 is withdrawn. If there is no objection to going into executive session... Hearing none -- is there any objection? Hearing N the council will go into executive session. [Executive session]. [2:15:20 PM] >> Mayor adler:it is -- we're back out. We have quorum. It's 2:15. The executive session on the other item we're going to cover on Thursday. It was not covered today. Colleagues, we have three topics to discuss, and we wanted -- I understand it was kind of the will of the body to try to shut this down at 5:00. We have three topics. We have basically three hours that are left. I would propose that we take 55 minutes for each of the three topics. We let staff make its presentation on that topic. We'll take whatever the intervening time is, give everybody their opportunity to ask questions about that topic. It looks like it's going to be about two minutes per person, and then we will go to the next 55 minute block, to the second topic, have the presentation, take the remaining time divided by councilmembers that are here, finish that off, 55 minutes. That way we can be done at [2:16:22 PM] 5:00. Without objection we will start. Why don't you start us off on the first of the three topics, which, I guess, is the affordable housing bonus section. If you could, leave some time for the council to be able to ask questions. I'm anticipating you guys are only going to use about half the time or so, up to 30 minutes. That will give 25 minutes for council to ask questions. >> Mayor and council, Rodney Gonzalez. With me are the members of the ldc team, as well as various consultants assisting us with the project. For the viewing public, as a reminder, as first reading in December city council as part of first reading council adopted various amendments and provided direction to staff for first reading draft. Since that time staff has been hard at work in accordance with amendments and correction. I applaud staff and consultants for the hard work they've done since that [2:17:24 PM] time. Last Friday staff released the second reading draft version, as well as a staff supplemental report number 3 and revised maps. Today and tomorrow are work sessions to provide context to the information released on Friday for the public who is watching or who may view this briefing later, today is one step of an iterative process. The code and the associated map have changed since first release in October, and undoubtedly there will be additional changes on the way. We are in the second reading stage, and the total process involves three readings. And as critical and important as the code is, it is one of many tools our community will use to address various issues and challenges that we face. With that I'm going to hand it over to annick Beaudet. >> Thanks, Rodney. If we could pull up the presentation. Let's see. I wanted to go through a status update, mainly the time line, and then I'm going to hand it over to Brent to go over some [2:18:24 PM] highlights of the supplemental staff report number 3 and then we'll dive into an overview of the mapping that has come out with the second reading revision an overview of the density bonus program calibration, as well as the new housing capacity information. So with regards to time line -- >> Mayor Adler: With respect to those last three things we're going to hit one of those topics. You called mapping first, and then you said the bonus and then you said -- >> Then housing capacity. >> Mayor Adler: We'll do it in that order. When you're done with the presentation on mapping -- >> Questions, that's right. Thank you. So moving forward through February, we're here today at work session. Tomorrow we have work session starting at 9:00 A.M., where we'll go over renderings of the Zones, as well as non-zoning regulations. And then we will start second reading, the first day of second reading, on [2:19:25 PM] February 11-13. So with regards to the staff report that was released, as Rodney mentioned Friday the 31, there are 199 amendments in the report that have responses to them. We'd like to highlight about ten minutes' worth of those for the public and for you and Brent is going to go ahead and highlight those. >> Brent Lloyd, ldc team, and I'll try to be brief. I think we've got a lot of media items we want to get into so I'm just going to give a brief overview. So the staff report posted Friday explains in detail how we've tried to address all 199 amendments, and we've addressed -- they're all council's amendments at this point, but we've divided it in terms of whether they come from planning commission, are supplemental reports or individual councilmembers. Besides explaining the [2:20:26 PM] amendments, we tried to also provide our thought process and the analysis that went into how we address the issues. In particular, I think annick mentioned there were approximately 10% of the amendments that we found difficult to address as you all framed them, so we've tried to explain the challenges that we confronted in part so that as we move into second reading we can work with y'all to find alternatives for furthering your objectives, and we're on that note available to work individually with council offices as well as to help make the second reading process as efficient as possible and help you all to frame amendments that will further your objectives. With that in mind I want to highlight just an overview of some of the amendments we think are of most interest to the council and community. In particular with respect to mapping, which you'll hear more about today, we have proposed per your [2:21:28 PM] direction and per the guidance from planning commission and our own supplemental reports to reduce or eliminate [indiscernible] Missing middle Zones for areas where it will exacerbate pressures, in particular that means applying comparability equivalent in areas identified as susceptible or early type 1, per the UT uprooted record that has guided a lot of our mapping decisions. We've additionally proposed to reduce the depth of transition areas on predominantly residential corridors, and in general that is involved reducing -- counting the corridor fronting lot as part of the distance measurement. And we've also considered additional contact sensitive criteria for particular corridors that have unique features. With respect to mapping, and you'll hear more about this today, we've proposed a reduction of the application of missing middle to address [2:22:30 PM] areas that are particularly hit by localized flooding problems. And, finally, this will also account for a lot of our presentation today, we've attempted to make up for the loss of capacity through mapping missing middle areas, Zones in other areas, particularly the high opportunity. As far as text revisions, again, we'll be able to talk more at tomorrow's work session about these, but we also wanted to highlight some of the ones that we think are of the most importance to council. Particularly with respect to the preservation incentive, which is a unique tool that we are trying -- we are developing that will preserve existing structures at the same time providing limited development incentivize to increase number of units, we proposed significant changes and revisions to the preservation incentive. And in particular we have proposed limiting it to development that adds at [2:23:30 PM] least one unit per the goal of increasing units. We've also proposed counting the new units against floor to area ratio, context sensitivity and ensuring development better fits within the fabric of existing neighborhoods has been one of the guiding principles of this effort. And we've also proposed more carefully limiting alterations of the existing structures and providing stronger enforcement and administrative authority. Finally we've made some significant revisions we'll talk about tomorrow I think with regard to multi-family structures that are taking advantage of the preservation incentive. Along similar lines we proposed general recalibration of floor to area ratio to achieve more context sensitive development that better furthers the goal of more units but not necessarily larger single unit structures. In particular we proposed reduction in far for the r2a [2:24:34 PM] and r2b Zones we hope will help minimize pressure towards one for 1 replacements. You will see tomorrow I think some modeling that illustrates how we've gone about recalibrating and revising applicable far limits. In keeping with the theme of graduation and sort of limiting increased entitlements to development that's going to further housing goals we proposed a graduated impervious cover thresholds that will limit increases to more units rather than just larger units. In particular one of the key features of this approach is that we've proposed to maintain streamlined regulations for projects that have 50% impervious cover or less or up to 5,000 square feet, whichever is more restrictive, but projects that are over that amount would still be entitled if they're within the missing middle unit range to the streamline regs [2:25:35 PM] as long as they provide a drainage plan that documents and shows that run off from the propertied will go into public right-of-way or a dedicated drainage easement. And finally there's a variety of other amendments that will be available to talk about. We proposed changes that would allow the board of adjustment to grant limited setback and height reductions for projects attempt to go provide significant housing capacity but are experiencing limitations due to things like utility easements, drain easements, other sorts of impediments. And we have a variety of other tax revisions we'll be available to talk about tomorrow and feel free to reach out if you have concerns or concerns about any of the amendments and how we sought to implement them. With that I turn it over to [2:26:35 PM] lacy Patterson. >> Hello, I'm lacy Patterson with the planning and zoning department on the land development code revision team. I'm going to cover three topic areas in relation to first reading mapping amendments today, and those topic areas are transition area reductions, additional missing middle mapping, and then other non-missing middle mapping amendments. So first I'm going to discuss the changes that were made in vulnerable areas as identified by UT's uprooted report. Per direction, where transition areas were applied in the October 41 reading map and areas that were considered -- or are considered as early type 1 and susceptible for the uprooted report, we have in this map the new second reading version applied r2 and in areas designated as [2:27:35 PM] r3 where there was r4 application in the first draft or in the October 41 reading map, we have applied r3 as part of this second reading map that was just released. And areas considered late, the r4 mapping has remained the same, as in with areas considered continued loss. Additionally, this direction was emphasized as an overarching policy that any additional transition Zones should not be placed in any areas identified in the uprooted study found as being susceptible, early, or dynamic. All additional mapping of missing middle was done with this consideration in mind. So next I'd like to show a couple of examples. Here open the screen on slide 6 we have an example of an early or susceptible transition area that was originally mapped as r4 it [2:28:37 PM] now being proposed for r2 in this next second reading iteration. Next example, as you can see on the left, is the first reading map that was released on October 4 that shows two lots of r4, and this being an example of a dynamic transition area. Now in the map you see on the right is the second reading version that has r3, and it's a bit difficult to differentiate between the colors, but the black outline shows where r4 was on October 4 versus where r3 now is in this next iteration. So next I'm going to move to another area of transition area mapping reduction, and we're going to look at an example of areas that are corridors -- excuse me, corridors that are considered primarily residential. And in those areas that are -- those corridors that [2:29:37 PM] are considered as primarily residential, as directed in first reading, the transition areas are reduced. So that this reduction is defined by adjusting the transition area depth methodology to couch the corridor lot as the first lot in the transition. Overall, for each residential corridor this result in a single lot depth reduction as defined by the transition methodology. At times this does result in more than one lot being mapped as r2 that was previously mapped as r4. As shown in the slide 8 right here, you can see another black outline shows the first reading map there was a lot depth further of r4 that is being proposed as r2 and a reduction of rm1 that isn't outlined but is being proposed as r4. Another area of reduction is the local flood problem areas, but I'm -- we will [2:30:38 PM] come back to discuss that momentarily. So next I want to talk about areas where missing middle was added in this map. There was a first reading directive to increase the supply of missing-middle housing in high-opportunity areas. The list of criteria were considered that is on this slide. And we're going to talk about those today. First I'd like to talk about how r4 was mapped in and near activity centers by examining properties that were within an eighth of a mile of these centers. I'd like to note just as with mapping transition areas we looked at lot orientation, block configuration and access to these centers. Also, in this mapping of additional r4, we provided more missing middle near grocery stores, as they're also often in proximity to our centers and our [2:31:39 PM] corridors. The other criteria listed on this slide -- first I'm going to go into mobility-funded corridors. We reviewed these corridors that are planned for investment with the 2016 regional and corridor bond programs. We reviewed properties that are within a 16th--mile area along these corridors with the same attention to lot and block orientation and access to the corridor. Once again, it's not seen on this slide, but there is a grocery story that is near this area and thus is part of the capture of missing middle mapping. These other criteria listed on the slide, parks, schools and corner lots I will come back to momentarily. But first I do want to discuss mapping amendments that are outside of missing middle mapping. So the first one I'd like to cover is the mapping of uc [2:32:39 PM] and centers, where we were considered to rezone some highland tracts and other activity centers to uc and apply transition Zones. We did, as also directed from the text side of the first reading amendments, create a uc-60 zone, meaning it's uc with a 60-foot base and increase in entitlements comes through participation in the affordable housing bonus program. This uc zone, which is this lovely pink on the slide, is applied in three regional centers. The lakeline station mall, which is represented on the left, the highland mall station represented on the right, and then known shown here the south control waterfront regional center. The other regional centers already have a regulating plan of some sort applied, such as kind of -- you can see here there's pud zoning right next to the -- in the lakeline station there's pud regulating plans in our other regional centers, and [2:33:42 PM] we did reserve uc for regional centers only. So our next amendment was to examine additional mapping. I've increased entitlements to maintain housing capacity. And regional centers and to review properties that are undeveloped or green-filled areas. What we have here on this slide is the breakdown of zoning designations that we found on properties that are currently undeveloped in centers. It is a mix of zoning, and what we've found is that roughly 50% of the acreage that is undeveloped in our activity centers are currently zoned for pud. The rest is a myriad of different zoning designations but I do want to call out the 8% that is zoned for r2 and rr. We are going to continue to discuss the possibilities for increased capacities in these areas prior to third [2:34:43 PM] reading. Next we did examine special districts, state and publicly owned lands to find out what current zoning is in these areas. The chart on the left shows state and federal land and the breakdown of proposed zoning designations and 60%, roughly 60% of the acreage in these special districts do comprise -- of the state and federal land, excuse me, do comprise of unzoned land, public zoned land, and pr zoned land. So it's over a majority. In our special districts, which includes P.I.D.S and muds and some other areas, but not school -- just more specialized special districts, we have a breakdown of, again, where about 50 to 60% of the special districts have pud zoning and the breakdown from the other zoning designations have a variation between all of our [2:35:44 PM] zoning designations. We do not recommend changing the approach of comparable zoning at this time due to the complexity of zoning governmental uses, and we feel that this should -- any change in zoning should be done through a separate intergovernmental process. Next I'd like to talk about development reserve. We are not recommending that development reserve be incorporated into the revised land development code because its basic purpose can be achieved through other, more flexible Zones. In some respects Dr is similar to an interim zoning designation, and what we have here on the slide is also from our staff report, and it's a breakdown of the development reserve properties and the four different proposed zoning designations you can expect [2:36:44 PM] to see on this map on properties currently zoned for Dr. They include preserve land, existing public parkland, municipal properties, all zoned accordingly for those other processes to cl-pr or P, and any other Dr zoned properties have been given an f25 designation. Next I'd like to talk about the directive to right-zone citywide existing missing middle houses including triplexes and fourplexes. Upon further review, we intend to follow direction. However, if we are to apply r4 or r3 on existing fourplexes or triplexes, this could result in either an increase or a decrease in entitlements. And harmonizing the direction we continue to discuss the direction about right-zoning and changing of entitlements on properties such as these. [2:37:46 PM] And, lastly, coming back to our high-opportunity missing middle zoning application, we reviewed the locations and the context around parks and schools and corner lots and have concluded that they're typically very site-specific variability between them, and these features complicate the application of new Zones through comprehensive revision. So next I'm going to hand it off to Matt Holland, who is going to discuss the local flood problem area changes. >> Thank you. Thank you, lacy. So one of the council directives was -- in the first draft was to -- first reading was to consider reducing the application of missing-middle Zones within local flood problem areas if warranted to mitigate the [2:38:47 PM] risk of drainage problems. And so staff actually has done a number of different things. I'm going to go through one of the key changes today that involves the map and then tomorrow we'll be talking about some of the other important changes that really sync up things with your direction on graduated impervious cover and a lot of other important changes that you requested. So the concern, again, was that you have -- potentially you have new residential units introduced, new -- into areas that are experiencing local flooding problems. And so what we did ise did something very similar to what we did with the atlas 14 dynamic. As you recall, we had this bigger floodplain that we were responding to and we wanted to make sure we weren't upzoning properties in floodplains, adding missing middle into floodplains. So we've already done this. This was already part of the draft we come out with, the map we came up with in the fall. This picture, this kind of cartoon you can see that the [2:39:48 PM] floodplain has white properties underneath it, blank properties. Those are -- instead of the missing middle, kind of a -- continuing on across there, those were already taken out. So in the case of these local flood problem areas, what we did was we had our flood engineering staff go in and this is kind of a idealized local flood problem area in shade gray there. We put this dotted line. We had those folks, those engineers went in and looked at the drainageways, flow paths through each 147 problem areas. They looked at those areas and then they identified the downstream half of those flow paths. You can imagine in a floodplain, they get bigger and bigger as you go downstream. These areas are by -- so they're upstream but they also have accumulated drainage along them. And so we felt out of an abundance of caution, as you [2:40:49 PM] would say, let's go ahead and eliminate the missing middle zoning within that lower half along the drainage ways. So we looked at all those areas. A lot of them didn't have any missing middle zoning or it wasn't along the drainage way, but we did identify over 300 particles that we removed the missing middle from and just left it as it would have been otherwise translated. So pretty straightforward. Again, we tried to add a little extra margin of safety in these areas, in the event that that is a driver. So, again, we'll talk to you tomorrow about other changes we made for lot to lode flooding and -- lot flooding and so forth and that's it. >> That concludes our presentation on the mapping and we're happy to take questions. >> Mayor Adler: All right. So we have 35 minutes left in this section and there are 11 of us. [2:41:51 PM] Everybody gets three -- basically three and a half minutes. All right. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: Just on the special districts question, you mentioned P.I.D.S, but I don't think that was the intention. We were looking at specifically the districts that have elected officials . That are more appropriately represented by the public, so limited districts in muds and not so much P.I.D.S and I don't know if that would change the analysis or recommendation. Just want to make that point first. >> Mayor Adler: That was ten seconds by the way. >> Kitchen: Did you -- and this is a follow-up to what councilmember Flannigan just asked. So in some areas with M.U.D.S, we already have a request from the M.U.D. Elected board to change the proposed zoning to what matches what they have on the ground. So it would seem that that would -- it would seem to me that y'all were recommending [2:42:51 PM] this should be done through an intergovernmental process. Well, in your mind, would that -- the fact that the other governmental body has a certain use and they're requesting that we match it, wouldn't that satisfy that intergovernmental process? I mean, to be more specific, I've got two M.U.D.S that have land that's used as park and that's how it's designated within their elected body and it wasn't zoned that way, and they're asking us to zone it that way. >> Councilmember kitchen, this is an issue that we can certainly continue to look at moving forward through second reading and onto third. However, at this time we're really emphasizing the importance of having a very clear translation table that shows with minimum subjectivity how parcels are translated from one zoning category to another, and we're concerned that the more we get -- have to get [2:43:51 PM] into the facts of a particular case, the facts of a particular situation, that that is more appropriate from a best practices standpoint to be handled outside of the comprehensive revision process. But we understand the point you're making, and we're certainly available to continue looking at this issue. But at this time our recommendation is that any changes from the current approach for governmental properties be deferred until a late process. >> Kitchen: Okay. I'd like to talk with you about that more because I don't understand what you mean by that. And also, you know, this is -- we have a request from a governmental entity to match a current use on the ground that's easy to translate. So if we're saying we need to put that off, then I would like to understand how long and when and exactly what that process is and that's something I need to explain to these M.U.D. Boards. And so I would request that we have that information as part of second reading so going into second reading I [2:44:51 PM] can explain that level of detail. Do you think that can be done? >> Absolutely. We will prioritize getting you more thorough response on those issues. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Two minutes. Leslie. >> Pool: Thanks. Yeah I just want to emphasize the piece on the zoning on governmental properties. I think there was a conversation early on in our earlier codenext conversations that that zoning would in fact take place during the ldc rewrite, and so I want to double down on making sure that we don't have another situation where property being developed that was previously state-owned and so was unzoned that we had protest right issues and complications that could have been much easier -- the development could have proceeded much more smoothly if the zoning had been in place. So that piece. And then I wanted to -- so emphasizing what Ann is asking for. [2:45:51 PM] And then, Matt, I had a couple questions for you. And it may be that you'll talk more about this tomorrow, but I'd like you to describe the methods you used to determine whether a parcel would not be allowed more impervious cover in local area flooding problems and ask whether you'd be continuing to examine areas and potentially add to your list of parcels that shouldn't get impervious cover. So essentially are you done with the 300 parcel tz or are you continuing to work? And then I want to point to the parcels in brentwood that are in the red zone that the residents in brentwood have been concerned about for almost the entire time I've been on council, and you've participated in a number of public meetings with them. It looks like virtually none of the parcels in brentwood were scaled back, and there is a lot of known local area flooding. So I'd like to know where the parcels you removed are located and why parcels in [2:46:52 PM] brentwood may not have been included on the list. Yeah. >> Sure. >> Pool: So essentially two questions other than a methodology. >> So we are -- we have completed this phase where we're looking at those drainage ways and the properties along the low-lying areas. So we're not -- I mean, we can -- >> Pool: Specifically the grove branch, for example. >> Correct. If it was within one of the local problem flood areas we did look at it and try to identify parcels immediately adjacent. Obviously we would love to know if we missed -- if folks think we missed something. We could look at that, but we didn't have plans to continue the work as such. The -- so we did -- back when we started we looked at the impervious cover levels on each one of these areas, and they -- I think we already presented about this, but the local -- the impervious cover levels were very modest in pretty much [2:47:53 PM] every one of these they increase. If they had been spectacular that would have been a red flag but we did not see that level. We are continuing to be extremely concerned and seeing important changes for the lot to lot flooding component and along these drainage ways so we're hoping that was gonna be -- that forward progress was gonna be part of the new code. >> Pool: Okay. That's great. And my staff and I will work with you further to identify parcels in brentwood that we noticed had not been addressed but are subject to the lot to lot and that are a topic that the residents have been concerned about for quite some time. And then, last, could you give me some details on the code language prohibiting the lot to lot flooding and the process for making that language more publicly accessible? >> Sure. And so we have -- so we already have the -- as we presented earlier, we talked about the plumbing code, which applies to all of these single family and missing middle projects. So we're looking at ways to [2:48:54 PM] strengthen the plumbing code as well, and that's a separate process. It's actually not literally in part of the code that we're changing now, but we're gearing up for that and looking at process changes that are very important and make sure all the departments are involved, they're really ready for that. And then as we'll talk about tomorrow, we have some important changes that talk about the -- how -- if a property is upslope of another report and it's not able to get, as Brent mentioned earlier briefly, if that property is not able to get its drainage to a safe location instead of, like, schlepping it through that same property we're going to literally tamp down the impervious cover and limit it to 50%. You will not be able to go up to 60 or 55. You will have to lower it down. So that was directly something we were look at as a lot to lot drainage. And actually, again, this is all stuff we'll go into more detail tomorrow but we're going to be requiring if you go above 50% impervious cover you're going to be required to submit a formal drainage plan by a licensed [2:49:55 PM] professional such that that drainage will be basically tracked through the property from above and then, you know, coming off and you'll have to have diffuse flow off the bottom part of the tract. So those are the two -- those are the backbones of those? >> Pool: Sounds great. I appreciate that, especially the lot to lot. That's a chief concern. And we'll continue to work with you. >> Very good, thank you. >> Pool: In the coming days. Thanks, Matt. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Leslie, that was five and a quarter minutes. Greg. >> Casar: Thank you, all. I know you put in a lot of work so far. I just want to highlight for folks that are watching or go back and check this just the important work y'all have done to address some of the issues in the uprooted gentrifying areas but then our related direction that we still wanted to have a large amount of missing middle capacity, and so moving some of that missing middle capacity around the centers makes good sense to [2:50:55 PM] me. I think we'll keep on looking at all those centers and figuring out how to refine that best. For example, one of the big centers in my district, the highlands mall, you all added additional height and density there so I think moving some of those pieces around while maintaining that missing middle I think was an important achievement that we're gonna keep on working to refine, but I just think it's important for folks to have seen and highlighted. If we wind up with some net reduction of missing middle that's mapped at the end of the day, I do think -- I know this is outside of mapping but I was working on the buildability of that missing middle and making sure the places we do map it we really do get it I think is also really important. If we wind up with a little bit less but make it a little easier to build I think that more than makes up for it. The three areas that I wanted to -- really two areas I wanted to highlight on this front were the university neighborhood overlay, the downtown area, and then also some of the [2:51:55 PM] triplexes/fourplex multi-family zoning, you know, looking at this, we mentioned please add more height in the bonus in the uno area and in the report it goes back and cites that council had previously voted not to do that but council just voted in the direction to do it. So advise us if on second reading we need to go and vote again to do it so that maybe two out of our last three votes would be to add the height at uno. If there's some issue let us know but when we voted to do it and the staff report said earlier you said not to and now you said to do it I think the latest vote should control but if we need to vote again on second reading y'all let us know. On the downtown area I know stakeholders are working closely together to add more height and capacity in those areas without a density bonus and I hear they're getting close to agreement on that and hopefully we'll hear back from them but hopefully on second reading we can continue to make up for any lost capacity by [2:52:56 PM] adding some of the height mapped -- height there in downtown. Then similar to the uno issue, I think it was councilmember tovo's triplex and fourplex amendment and multi-family amendment, I know our prior direction said generally downtown downzone below the existing use but I don't think that any of our amendments did that, our amendments were to zone those three and four and multi-unit things to the existing use. So I don't think we're in conflict there from the may direction and would love to hear as we get closer to second reading, do we just vote again to say let's do -- let's really do uno, let's really do 15 years on the preservation bonus instead of 30, and if we just need to get rid of the word consider and be more direct and say go ahead and do it then we can do it and that might mean on second reading we're voting again on some of the same amendments we voted on first reading, just with really -- or without the word "Consider." In some cases the word consider was included so I know you just considered it. I know in some cases council [2:53:57 PM] said to do it but you cited previous action so maybe if y'all advise us whether we vote on it again. Thank you for all the hard work. I'm picking on four out of the 199. I know y'all did a lot of hard work. Just let us know when we have to revote. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. That's three and a half minutes. I want to address the equity overlay real quickly in the context of the larger community conversation. I go to a lot of places in the city and there are a lot of people in the city that feel very strongly about the land development code. And I hear almost without regard to which room I walk into a conversation about equity and about doing everything we can to ensure that all kinds of people have a chance to live in all parts of our city. What I tell people is that I am proud to be part of a council where I feel like every member on the dais has prioritized equity as part of this process. [2:54:57 PM] I think everybody is trying to achieve a similar result. It's frustrating sometimes to be in a room where because somebody's way of achieving it is different than somebody else's way of achieving it there's the suggestion that one or the other obviously isn't concerned about equity, and nothing, I think, could be further from the truth. I think we're all in search of that. The conversation we have about the equity overlay and pulling back some of the opportunity to be able to have density bonuses and affordability bonuses in areas that are experiencing displacement brings back to oust a conversation that we've had as a council on zoning cases where that same equity issue has been present. It -- I recognize that if we upzone a piece of property in a particular area we could be speeding dislocation for people that [2:55:57 PM] live there. And that counts against the equity goal. At the same time I recognize that the more opportunities we have to have a dash a to be able to create affordable units and to add money, that increases the possibility that ten years from now we're actually going to have places where all kinds of people from all parts of our city and all kinds of circumstances are able to live there. And, unfortunately, in a lot of these conversations as a council we have this difficult choice because we have -- it's a forced choice. Do you do something that has an impact on people that are living there right now? Or do you avoid that altogether? Even if it means you're going to lose the opportunity to have people there ten years, 15 years from now that might not otherwise be able to be there? I mention that. I want to support the move we made toward the equity [2:56:58 PM] issues we made in this and I appreciate the work staff has done and I'm going to support it. I will tell you that I'm going to support it because I think that it furthers equity. I will also tell you when I go to sleep at night and I look at this vote there's part of me that is worrying that this vote done to further equity could have the exact opposite impact. And that somebody is going to be looking back at this council 10 or 15 years from now and say why didn't you maximize the opportunities to create permanent affordability in these areas. There is no right answer to this question. Both are goals that are borne of trying to find greater equity. Each of us will prioritize and come from a different perspective on that so there is a right answer probably for each of us and for people in the community. For me personally I'm convinced there's not an absolute right answer to that. And I just want to emphasize that we are in search of [2:57:59 PM] trying to find equity, preserve opportunities for everybody to live in all parts of our city, and with that motivation and recognizing different people have different ways to get there, I think we're all trying to achieve the same result. Anything else before we move anything else before we move on? >> Kitchen: Very quickly -- mayor Adler and by the way, I used three minutes and 45 seconds. >> Kitchen: I'm not sure we're counting towards. >> Mayor Adler: Roughly three and a half minute each in each section. >> Kitchen: So my question relates to the mapping around centers to make sure I'm understanding. So it was an eighth of a mile from centers. Is that measured from where? The center of the center or the edge of the circle or where? Generally speaking. >> We described this in the staff report but the mapping of eighth of a mile is from access points within the center, aka intersections. >> Kitchen: Okay. And is that -- it also says [2:59:03 PM] second criteria was access to the center. How was that applied? Is that the same way in. >> The same kind of way when we were looking at transition areas where if technically you were to do as the grackle flies an eighth of a buffer, and that property is within an eighth after mile, but it's actually a cul-de-sac in the road and the entranceway and the access from that property to the have the is much longer than that eighth of a mile, we do not consider it having that same access. >> Kitchen: So eighth of a mile measured from access points, which are considered to be intersections within the circle of the center. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else before we move on? Jenni and then Alison. -- Gem Jimmy and then Alison. >> Flannigan: To your point, I think we all have ways we address equity and I'm mainly concerned about reducing transition Zones in areas you are not actually affecting equity at all [3:00:03 PM] because people are being displaced with zoning that allows only one unit. By reducing that to the corridors you further point the market to certain properties instead of letting it naturally occur to folks who are ready to sell, whose families who don't want to live in that neighborhood anymore, people have passed without a transfer of wealth and other factors, but one thing is for sure is that doing nothing also doesn't help us. So I'm going to continue moving forward on this process. You know, I feel like we're all making our compromises to try to get to a place where we can be comfortable. I'm less comfortable with some of these things, but still ready to move forward. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Anything else on this? Alison. >> Alter: Thank you T I wanted to ask about the green fields in the centers. [3:01:05 PM] And what I heard you said and we had started some conversations because when we met before we realized it hadn't been mapped. Can you tell me what the timeline and the process is going to be for looking at the Greenfield. So you've identified that there are two within activity centers so we have single-family zoning in activity centers regardless of where they are, but they're in activity centers that we have an opportunity to upzone that are greenfields, so you're not displacing anyone and yet we haven't up zoned those. So what is the process moving forward to make sure that that happens? >> Thank you for that question. Annick Beaudet. We are happy between now and second reading to look at some options, that might be as Brent pointed out earlier, comprehensive and translatable as regards our growth centers. And bring back some options. [3:02:06 PM] The first step as lacy pointed out was to understand what is the universe and we've gotten it to eight percent. And now we've looked at what is the surrounding zoning, what makes sense in using zoning criteria to look at those areas and bring back in options for you all in our second reading presentation. >> Alter: At the second reading presentation or the third reading? Because I've heard both of those today. >> We can see how far we get for second reading and if we haven't gotten that far then we will do it before third reading in our next supplemental report. >> Alter: Just so I have a sense of the magnitude of the numbers, are we talking about 500? Is that what I read -- >> Lacy can give you the percentages. She did in in acreage. So by lot she might have an estimate. >> I do not have a lot specific estimation at this point in time, but the acreage is about eight percent and it's roughly if I remember correctly, about [3:03:07 PM] 200 acres or so, but we can get the correct numbers as we continue this conversation. >> Alter: Okay. I think that's potentially I think of places that are already located in terrorist centers which do not displace people that we really should be looking at whether we want to be incentivizing and creating conditions where those are going to be single-family, and we have on the flip side put missing middle in the middle of neighborhoods that already exist where people will be displaced and I just think we need to be weighing these choices and these options and I hope we will have that information for that. And it was 200 acres out of like this over 2500 acres that were in there, am I reading the chart correctly? Is that -- >> I do not have the overall acreage. >> You have a left-hand -- you have access that goes up to 3,000. Is that in acreage? >> Yes, that's in acreage. >> So it's 200 acres out of [3:04:08 PM] all that that's in our activity center. So there's a really big opportunity there I think for putting missing middle or potentially further density we would have to have in a planning process, but I think that's an important thing to note. And I wanted to push a little bit further on how you determined the centers and I'd like to understand what is the best way because sometimes you just kind deaf a circle and sometimes you did different shapes and for some of these they don't make a lot of sense for where the boundaries are and then sometimes they extend beyond and sometimes they don't. How do we think about it if we want to suggest different boundaries that you can look at a map and say this is the access point or be on the ground and understand how the community flows and understand where those access points are because they're parts of even on the maps in front of you that have much more access. If you have to cross the [3:05:09 PM] highway to get to Anderson lane station that's very different than being right up next to mopac and being next to the activity center. But yet because of the way you have drawn it you've excluded it. But I'm not understanding how we as councilmembers or neighborhoods who live and breathe in those activity centers what is the process for us to be able to make that make more sense? I understand you had to come up with a rule, but as we're refining it, how do we make it make more sense? >> That's a really good question, councilmember. I would propose to sit down with councilmembers one on one, which we'll have between second and third reading. And look at the centers from y'all's perspective as you know your districts and see if we can come up with amending our general rule in a way that captures the [3:06:10 PM] reality which we might find in talking to your offices that there's a lot of similarityies in how the areas have developed in certain patterns that would be reapplicable citywide and we'd be happy to do that between second and third reading. >> Alter: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: That was five and a half minutes. Paige. >> Ellis: This is kind of what councilmembers kitchen and alter have been asking about. I live in an imagine Austin center that has hundreds more units than it had a couple of years ago and in looking at the map was trying to see there's some r4 that has been zoned to that circle that goes into the residential neighborhood. But talking about access points when you really look at some of those other locations and how you get to and from that activity center. I've been talking to public works and cap metro about creating crosswalks and A.D.A. Accessibility through there. And it seems to be more of like as the grackle flies, [3:07:10 PM] like lacy was saying. Instead of where you would actually have foot traffic to be able to cross there. So I want to kind of echo that I'm kind of seeing the same thing and wondering how that works if we need more direction or if that's something that can just be tweaked. And I noticed also there's a couple of community centers through circle C, they asked for those to match because the uses are being used the same way. And there's one that I looked at just now that seems to have gotten like a residential zoning even though it's not being used that way. So I don't know if that's maybe a process question for us if it needs to be a specific map amendment or if that is something we can just kind of work offline with y'all? Have we kind of discussed how these programmatic changes might happen if we need to take them offline or if we need to bring those in a third reading amendment to make a community center not have a residential zoning? >> I believe that's similar to the special -- somewhat to the special districts as [3:08:11 PM] well that we need to -- staff needs to talk about what that process might look like. Land the plane on what we would recommend through this process and how we might recommend it as councilmember kitchen pointed out to handle the request if not in this process. And we'd commit to coming back to y'all at second reading with that information. >> Ellis: Okay. That would be really helpful. I think there's a couple of spots, maybe I need to get on the ground and see that what it looks like or if it's a glitch, but a couple of things that we could bring to your attention offline so see if it was truly a data got inputted in a weird way or if it is something that we need to go in and say look at this specific tract of land and change it. >> Councilmember, I will say that properties such as these, the proposed zoning is a result of the current zoning on the ground, not the current use. So just to make sure that's a clarification as we're going through this. [3:09:11 PM] Maybe when things seem like an anomaly or don't seem like they're zoned appropriately, often times it is because of the current zoning. >> Ellis: Okay. Would we be able to change that for use? Or is that a council question? >> We'll talk about that, but there's definitely a need to have a clear translation criteria so the more situations we get into where in these circumstances it's zoned to the existing zoning and these others it's zoned to use, it starts to get too complicated and so there are definitely going to be some situations where there's every good planning rationale for going one direction, but it doesn't lend itself to a comprehensive approach that we're pursuing here. So we can just as with the special districts and the centers issues, we can talk offline and see if there's some refinements that we can make, but I think there are going to be just some [3:10:12 PM] situations where we're confronted with the limitations of the comprehensive revision process. >> Ellis: Okay. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Paige, that was three and a half minutes. Ann, you've used three and a half minutes so you're beginning to eat into your time for your remaining two questions. But go ahead. >> Kitchen: That's fine. This is the only time I get to ask. Okay. So from the staff report page 10 there's a reference to working more on issues related to contact sensitivity and side setback compatibility. And there's just language that says that that is something staff is still studying with an intent to recommend the revision. So I wanted to know the timeline for recommending the revision and if that's something that we could see for second reading. >> Yes. We actually will have some information on how we're developing a response to the transition areas where you [3:11:12 PM] have the more intensive corridor Zones that are -- corridor Zones that are abutting on more than one side to a r4, for example, which is not a large geography across the city with regards to how we've approached the methodology for transition areas. And tomorrow we will -- when we show the renderings of the different Zones and the commercial Zones, we will -- we can show that example and how we're thinking. And we would invite feedback from council on what we're thinking on that at that time tomorrow. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That was only a minute. Pio? >> Renteria: Thank you, mature. What I want to know is the procedure. [Inaudible - no mic]. Right now the way it's mapped it's R2s, and I was wondering is there going to be an opportunity later on to really look and focus on some of these properties [3:12:14 PM] that has the ability to put in more capacities of middle housing there? How are you going to handle that section on it if it's -- just like our land that we have at the pecan street there, we're never going to be able to build housing, low income housing there. We'll do it at R2s and now we'll build reads through there and it's going to be have been expensive. I was wondering the residents around there will be willing to allow more density if we don't mess with the trees. So I was just wondering -- right now you have property like that zoned R2s. And I was wondering is there going to be any ability to rezone that property? >> So as lacy pointed out, for the most part with the exception of the council direction and the comprehensive rules that we're applying to apply the new zoning and the new code, [3:13:17 PM] what you'll see on the zoning map is the translation from the existing zoning to the new zoning, which is probably what's happening in your district with an sf 3, for example, that ha now as an r2. What we would recommend is looking at the direction from may 2nd with regards to small area district planning. Next level planning would be the appropriate time to look at adding and changing and applying more Zones that -- the new tools we have and the new code in order to continue to provide for diversity of housing throughout the city. The code is not -- it's not static. You know, as we're going to create the tools and we're going to apply it comprehensively with the map and then we need to do next level planning to continue to refine using those tools that we've created. Did you want to add something? >> Yes. The other possibility that could be considered is we've [3:14:18 PM] definitely had situations where properties are -- would be r2 because it matches their existing zoning, but they are really large parcels and they could as you mentioned accommodate more density and one could make a case for giving them an rm 2 or some kind of zoning that would be update per acre. And if council is interested in doing that, we need to be able to fashion a role that could be applied citywide. If it's a property that would translate to radio with certain zoning, but over a certain size it might be one of the rm 2 or up Zones. If we could reduce that to a rule we could apply uniformly, that is something to be considered. But the harder it gets and we find some some areas it makes sense and other areas it doesn't, then the more as annick was saying that we [3:15:20 PM] really need to pushing that off into a subsequent rezoning process. >> Renteria: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Pio, that was three and a half minutes. Leslie? Everybody has roughly nine, nine and a half minutes between the three sections and can you use your time however you want to. Leslie, you are just over five minutes. >> North burnet gateway regulating plan on the mapping. My staff and I have talked with the team leadership in the past on the opportunity in district 7 in the north burnet gateway area which is anion regional center and it was designed to be as you know, Austin's second downtown, I will be offering an approach to treat this as a test case for how to embark on revisions and updates of existing plans and tods because I think we need to crack open that discussion and the north burnet gateway senior just a perfect area for -- is just [3:16:20 PM] a perfect area for that. We have talked about looking at our growth township map and looked for areas to identify density and community benefits and job centers. And this is the regional center in my district and we've planned for the growth and we have the two rail stations that would be coming online with the tif resolution that I brought at our last inc. November to build new rail stations. We have 6 million square feet of retail square feet happening at broad Moore, and directly south of that about a mile is the soccer stadium. So we need to be looking at that regulating plan and the tiers and tif activity area that we're going to be defining when we get those boundaries from our consultant, and I'm worried that if we wait, because that isn't reflected in the [3:17:21 PM] current map, even though we did talk about it, if we wait, we will Mitt an opportunity to capture the value of the transformative redevelopment that's occurring at a faster and faster rate. So I want to put this back on your radar for the mapping. So the domain area where broad Moore is should absolutely be looked at for additional density it can absorb density, not just in district 7. And also the tiers area, which is bounded by -- tirz area, that includes Kramer station, which we know is light industrial and that currently is not being up zoned to the greatest possible potential on the maps. I did suggest that be looked at and scrutinized for that very additional development because we know that that area is going to develop really soon. [3:18:23 PM] So I don't really need a response to this, but I want to lay it out so that everybody knows that there is a really active area in district 7 that is in the central part, north part of the city that was anticipated for this additional growth. We need to get that additional growth plan reflected in our maps. And I look for everybody's assistance in making that happen because it's a benefit for the entire city. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That was about three minutes. Are we ready to move on to the next presentation? Go ahead, Kathie. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. I have hopefully a couple of quick questions. The first is can you provide us with an update on when we might have available digital copies that we could print out maps from I have a district that has hundreds and hundreds of impacted properties and it's very important for the digital. We rerye on the paper copies. We didn't receive them. [3:19:23 PM] The last estimate I heard was I think not until Friday. I didn't know if you had updated information about when those digital files so that we can print out the maps might be available. >> Councilmember, are you referring to digital PDFs or the digital shaped file such as the digital shape file. >> Tovo: The digital PDFs. It's my understanding from working with the printer last time that they need the file in a particular format to print them out or just the last time the printouts that you supplied to our offices. Do you have an intention of supplying us a printout of our district and then a second part of that, when are the digital files available so we can take those and get the digital copies of maps? >> The Friday turnaround timeline, I should say, does incorporate the creation of the PDFs themselves. That's unfortunately the most consuming piece of printing the maps. The printing is actually the quickest piece. We'll try to get you the digital PDFs as soon as possible but I still don't know if I can promise [3:20:24 PM] earlier than Friday. >> Tovo: Okay, thank you. Thin could you address -- I know we've talked about mapping in some specific ways. I have kind of the same question I've had all along. From what I can recall from my initial review of the maps in district 9, it doesn't appear there's a measurable change to the issue I've addressed several times, which I said we had council direction that had two to five lots for a transition zone and in multiple, multiple cases we have in excess of five, like many in some cases as 17 lots rezoned. We've talked about the distance on one side or another, but I still haven't seen any meaningful change. So could you help me understand it doesn't appear to be happening in other areas but in the district I represent why the transect Zones are mapped well beyond the five that were directed by council? >> Sure. [3:21:28 PM] Annick Beaudet, ldc revision team. The council direction was for two to five lots and so we came up with a methodology based on planning judgment on how to reference the lots that should be included in a transition area proposal. That we then carefully worked through at various work sessions to receive feedback on. And that's been an iterative process and we're open to continued feedback on that. And tomorrow we can have a slide or two and talk about a equitable approach again, but we read the direction to say generally two to five lots which our methodology did start with that direction and then we added [3:22:28 PM] some planning judgment to look at how those reference points are realized in the map and also because of the configuration of the lots. So in talking about them through an iterative explanation at the various work sessions that we did prior to October 4th we were looking for more feedback and direction on that methodology, and we did receive some that we were able to pivot on and so that's why you see sometimes more than two to five lots in some areas. >> Tovo: Frequently. I would say I don't think my feedback on this has changed, nor have -- nor has the feedback from most of the people who live in these areas changed: And I guess I would continue to underscore if the council direction is two to five it's not at all clear to me why in some cases it's been [3:23:28 PM] tripled and that doesn't seem to be happening anybody else in town. And I don't understand it nor do I think it's a rational approach nor do I think that the council direction supports it. I guess that's my feedback for today. I would also say, make no mistake to those listening and the public the conversation that we always had, that was part of imagine Austin, was about densifying along the majored corridors and in the major activity centers. It was not about going into the interior of neighborhoods. So not only was there a decision to create so-called transition Zones in interior neighborhoods, then that transition zone span in many cases extends far beyond what the council direction indicated. I appreciate that you went back and in a few cases changed from rm 4 to rm1 or we lost one track, but it hasn't resolved what is a substantial issue throughout the neighborhoods I [3:24:33 PM] represent, and that's it. I guess that's my comment for today. >> Kitchen: I'll just reiterate what councilmember tovo said. I would also say that I hear what you're saying in terms of some direction from council that has adjusted that. So for example, the direction related to vulnerable areas, recognize that the application of that rule citywide didn't make sense and also was counter to some goals. I would suggest that it continues to be counter to other goals. We've had conversation already about fact that just the application of transition Zones in a way that we've been doing, we're missing opportunities for increased density in areas like councilmember Renteria mentioned P councilmember pool mentioned, because we're not doing a more specific planning process to actually look at what's on the ground. Instead we're taking a blunt [3:25:34 PM] approach that is not in some areas of town that we've already recognized by pulling back on the vulnerable areas. It's not appropriate in other areas of town either. So I think it's it would behoove us to really think about that as long as we get the tools in place to actually move more towards more density which we're doing with the code. A starting point with regard to density with regards to the map and have a very clear process for understanding where it makes sense. I think we can go beyond what we've achieved so far in terms of density. So I would just make that point and I would ask my colleagues to really think about and allow for an opportunity for a process that really gets us closer to our goals. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That was about a minute and 15. For me I would say I'm open to a conversation with respect to the transition areas. If I thought and felt like [3:26:35 PM] it was enabling us to reach a much broader consensus on the council, recognizing that any conversation about that is going to be difficult because we run spectrum on the council. But I will say that I am supportive when we look at the numbers of number of lots to reconcile the lots that are perpendicular to the corridors as opposed to the lots that are parallel to the corridors. And I don't think it's right for us to treat those the same because I think much more is the distance represented by the two to five lot and I think that was the conversation that is involved too on the council when that question was brought back to us. That said, I'm willing to have the broader conversation on that issue. That was about two and a half minutes for me. Yes. >> Tovo: I hope that we can build space into this process to have that conversation. I think it's a critical one [3:27:36 PM] and it's very -- I know we're trying to limit our time and have been every time we've had our sessions to a certain number of questions questions. We can't really converse with one another if we have a pretty tight limitation on our questions. So I hope we can build that space in. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. Let's move on. Yes, councilmember alter. >> Alter: I just wanted to clarify something. So we're not getting printed maps until Friday, and when are we getting printouts of the over 1,000 page documents if we believe we need to read more than the cliff notes? >> Also Friday. >> Alter: And we're voting on -- >> Tuesday. >> Alter: Is that correct? I just want to be clear that I'm understanding correctly because I thought I would have had them some time today and I'm surprised to hear that we're not getting them until Friday. I think for those of us who do have constituents who are [3:28:36 PM] having their zoning changed with this map and are just hearing about it and whatnot. The timeline that we're on and not having these materials makes it challenging for us to have the kind of substantive conversations that I think a code change of this magnitude merits. And I know that I may be in the minority in saying that, but I do need to acknowledge the conditions underwent we're being asked to consider this material with a council meeting on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: That was a minute-45. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: To be correct, it's all online. >> Correct. The updated code maps and supplemental staff report that serves as an executive summary, which is about 80 pages, looks like this, is available online. And then we will try to expedite the hard copies before Friday if possible, [3:29:37 PM] but as lacy pointed out the maps are a little more labor intensive than simply sending the PDF of the text to the printer. But we will get those delivered to y'all's offices as soon as possible with the latest being Friday afternoon. >> Flannigan: And the hard copies are just for council offices? >> Correct. >> Flannigan: So I've already had members of my community download the online, provide their feedback. I don't want there to be a misunderstanding in the public the second draft stuff is published. It's just the hard copies for our offices that take time to print. >> That's correct, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Kathie? >> Tovo: I just want to be clear with the public that there are some areas in our city that are being relatively unchanged and there are some areas that are being substantially proposed for very substantial changes. It is not possible for my constituents to get a clear sense of all of the ramifications, the very significant ramifications of looking at very small mapping. It's certainly not possible [3:30:37 PM] for me to look square to square. But if you represent a district that has been proposed for extremely few changes it certainly is possible to read them online. Easily. So I look forward to getting those copies. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That was another 30 seconds. Let's go on. >> Alter: And I just want to add that there's a need to understand the changes over time from the last draft and be able to explain that to people. And the comparison that we have is to the proposed which has its value. But if your constituents are trying to understand what changed and talking about how one area was hit harder versus another and you have to be able to have a constructive conversation and explain that to them, it's really much more helpful if you have the three maps and you can actually point to things and you cannot bring -- it's very difficult to go to the neighborhood association if they don't have the ability to display things up there and have those conversations or in office hours, it's not as easy on that little screen for people who are [3:31:38 PM] not familiar with zoning. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That was another 45 seconded. Let's go now to housing capacity. >> If we can pull up the presentation. We're actually going to go to the density -- the affordable housing bonus program next. And we've east Austin Carlton from eco northwest and Alex steinburger. And Erica leak will start out the presentation. >> Good afternoon. Erica leak, neighborhood housing. So I am going to give a very brief update on council [3:32:42 PM] direction related to density bonus programs and then Ian will provide a quick reminder on how density bonus bonus programs are calibrated. And then we will move on to Alex who will provide information about capacity and where we are with that at present. So in terms of council direction relating to density bonus programs, the sort of most significant direction in this area includes direction about creating an equity overlay or an equity area. Direction regarding vertical mixed use, the downtown db program and a few other density bonus program changes. So relating to the equity overlay, one of the council amendments called for the creation of an equity overlay with boundaries that [3:33:43 PM] were created based on the uprooted report showing the areas that are -- have vulnerable populations. In that area the idea was to try to preserve existing multi-family and create at least 10% of new units as affordable. So the way that we are attempting to implement that direction is by creating a new equity area bonus program that does -- that is defined by the uprooted report vulnerable area boundary. Within that boundary there is a new bonus program and in that bonus program 10% of the units would be required to be affordable, and for any properties that are currently multi-family council would have to [3:34:46 PM] approve those properties to participate in the bonus program and that is an attempt to try to minimize the likelihood that those properties would be re redeveloped. Additional direction, council direction related to vmu properties or properties that were able to participate in the vmu program that we have at present, the way that we implemented those recommendations was to add a V decision to the zoning change for all those properties. They would be required to have at least 10% of all of the units be affordable and on-site, and the mfi requirements would be consistent with the citywide affordable housing bonus program, which is 60% median family income for rental units and 80% median family income for ownership. Right now we have rm1 [3:35:47 PM] properties that have -- vmu properties that have a variety of different income requirements. Downtown density bonus program changes, there was a recommendation to allow unlimited bonuses -- unlimited height in F.A.R. Through a bonus program so the proposal at present in the second reading is shown on the right-hand side. Basically all areas that were eligible for the bonus program. At present they would be allowed the additional unlimited F.A.R. And height through a bonus program. And again, that allows us to maximize the affordable housing benefits of the program with following that council direction. And then other general bonus program changes that we wanted to make sure just everyone was aware of, we have renamed what used to be [3:36:48 PM] called the dash a to dash Q so that there was less confusion about the mu 5a. So now it would be mu 5a dash Q if the property does not have residential entitlements at present. And with that as the case there is a requirement that at least 10% of the -- sorry. Now I'm confusing my programs. Then that means that all of the residential space would be considered bonus. So the the important thing to note there is that what used to be called the dash a is now called dash Q for our alphabet soup. But we're also trying to make it really clear that if a property didn't have a residential entitlements right now that all of the residential space would be considered bonus. [3:37:51 PM] Okay. Now I'm going to turn it over to Ian to do a quick reminder of calibration. >> Good afternoon. Ian Carlton with eco northwest and a consultant to the ldc revision team. I want to provide a quick recap of how bonuses function and then describe work of the work that we did to calibrate the bonuses in this second reading draft. So the first thing to remind ourselves of is the way that the real estate development process works is that development only occurs when there is sufficient land or sites available for development. The public policy allows that development to occur, there is adequate market demand and available capital to deliver those. If any one of those factors is insufficient, then development will not occur. When development can occur [3:38:52 PM] it can generate value. And in this slide we're duplicating what value might be created through the development of a building under base entitlements and the goal in a density bonus program is to offer greater entitlements that allow none to create something that has more value. And that bonus value, that incremental value that is created is what we then hope to capture in part through a public benefit, and in this case an affordability benefit. That benefit can come in the form of on-site housing or some in cases some the payment of a fee-in-lieu off site delivery, but an affordability benefit that is generated out of the value contributed by that new bonus offered to development on a site where all those factors are present. Now, when we capture that public benefit, we're [3:39:52 PM] leaving a certain amount of value available to the person or the investors who are delivering that bonus building. And so long as that bonus building is creating more value than they would generate under the base we would expect them to pursue the bonus option, which allows for the delivery of those public benefits that we desire, the affordable units, the fees, et cetera. And so there are cases where if we were to require too much benefit, we were to capture more value than the bonus generates, then the bonus would end up having less value than building under the base entitlements. And in this instance we would expect that we would see the delivery of a base building, a building built under base entitlements because it generates more value than a building built under the bonus entitlement while capturing that amount of public benefit. There are also cases in this [3:40:55 PM] market where delivering more units and more, for example, office space on a site does not generate more value. It may be financially infeasible to build a larger building on a given site given the market dynamics, the cost of construction that might be higher for a more expensive building. By going from surface parking to structured parking, for example, to be able to build something that uses the bonus entitlements. So we often say that you can zone for Manhattan skyscrapers in Manhattan, Kansas, but if the market does not exist to deliver it, it will not happen. If there is not a market to deliver a bonus building we will see base buildings built or nothing built at all. Now, our goal with calibration is always to try to right-size the bonus and the requested public benefit so that the bonus entitlements offer a benefit and they are taken more [3:41:56 PM] often than not, and in that way we get the delivery of those public benefits in the form of affordable units, in the form of fees and sometimes that we generate public benefit through that bonus. It is a balancing act and that's what we're depicting here is this balance that we're trying to play out and we're trying to run calculations to better understand what might happen. So to put this into practice we conducted a calibration for the citywide program and we revised our calibration from the last time. You saw one for the first reading. To reflect the changes in the Zones that were produced. And so we want to remind you that these calibrations are really targeting that 60 and 80 percent of Ami household, generating units in market race buildings to address just one piece of the overall housing need that Austin has identified through the housing blueprint. [3:42:59 PM] Now, to accomplish this, I'll remind you that we authority incorporated the bonus program into the code and into each zone where it was feasible and we incorporated the bonus program in the mapping to the maximum extent possible. And then we calibrated it based on market specific attributes so that in one market where there might be bonus value we might be able to capture more affordable public benefit and in other areas where perhaps the market is weaker we might not capture as much benefit and we might not require as much. So we have different requirements for different market areas. So as we calibrated the citywide program, again we were looking to compare the base compared to the bonus to understand how much public benefit we could request in each geography. This is an example of the outcome of this calibration. This is a zone mu 1-q, so a [3:43:59 PM] quick reminder this is the new designation for what was formerly dash a. So in this zone there would be only bonus units, so this percentage requirement would apply to all units in this geography. So so you see different colors on the map. Those are different requirements if you are seeking to build in central Austin in the pink area you will be required to deliver more affordable units if you're building in an mu- 1-property than in T joy geography trying to build a building that uses the bonus in an mu 1-q zoned property. So understand the differences here, I'd point to the Orange which is both within the hatched area and [3:45:00 PM] just to the west of it that Orange is a 10% requirement of all units in a building. That 10% requirement reflects two things. One, the market geography can support a 10% requirement as well as the equity area program where we have set a floor of 10% requirement for a zone like this. And in those areas where there's a 10% requirement, what we're saying is that one affordable unit would be cross- subsidized by nine market rate units. So you can require nine market rate units to be delivered to cross- subsidize that one affordable unit that's 10 percent out of all the units, for this to be feasible for a developer to deliver the bonus for them to deliver in a dash Q any units at all. [3:46:05 PM] And in some cases developers may want to opt out of this so in the citywide program there is a program of in-threw fees and these are in-lieu specific. So if a developer obtained to play an in-lieu fee, instead of delivering a required one bedroom unit, they would be asked to pay $180,000 in lieu of delivering that affordable unit. That is calibrated to the cost for nhcd to basically take that funding and go buy an equivalent one bedroom unit that can be affordable somewhere in central Austin. So instead of building it on-site, for it to be delivered elsewhere. Now, we also conducted a calibration of the fees for downtown and the university [3:47:07 PM] neighborhood overlay or U.N.O. And in these areas there are base entitlements that are related to the ldc Zones, but there are very distinct bonuses. These bonuses relate to these plan areas and do not correspond to the downs you would find in the standard ldc Zones. So this calibration related to the fee so it would be what someone could pay to deliver units on-site or to be able to access the bonus if they're building a commercial property. So these two areas are in central Austin. There's -- these are strong markets, delivering a lot of units and a lot of dash today and anticipated into the future. And so when we were calculating the base and the bonus, we saw that in these areas there was an opportunity to take the bonus and it had value and that we could capture public benefit from these and so we [3:48:07 PM] looked at that base versus bonus to calibrate a fee that someone might pay while still ensuring that there was enough value left on the table for them to almost always take the bonus. We want them to always deliver that bonus because when they deliver that bonus they deliver all the public benefits that come with it. We also had to determine what the optimal geography was to define these fees. So thighs fees currently are defined between three geographies downtown and across all U.N.O., but we were asked whether it would be better to define the fees in a more nuanceed matter based on the entitlements or the base entitlements, this is a map of U.N.O. And all the different heights that are offered in the different programs of U.N.O. So we explored whether it would be appropriate to have a different fee for each bonus height because again we're [3:49:08 PM] looking at that base versus bonus value and how much one could ask for in public benefit. So the result of this the definition of a set of recommendations for residential properties to pay a fee and for commercial properties to pay a fee to access the bonus. And in this case on the residential side of the equation it is to opt out of some of the doctoral units in U.N.O., some of the affordable units in Rainey and all of the affordable units in the rest of downtown. So these were ultimately calibrated based on some sensitivity testing to what the base entitlements were in downtown and in Rainey, so we found that based on your base entitlements you could pay a fee. And in U.N.O. We were balancing specificity, ledge eligibility of the policy, [3:50:09 PM] we landed on one fee in U.N.O. And you will see that in in U.N.O. That is one fee across the entire geography. And there are actually more than 60 distinct base and bonus pairs, but in our calculation we think that one simplified fee as it exists today is the best path forward. So that concludes our presentation on the bonus program changes. I think we're going to take questions now. >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to go ahead and start and note that I have five minutes and 45 seconds for questioning remaining today. I appreciate this work and I think we have to get really good about calibrating so that we actually get our tools used. It doesn't do us any good to have tools if we're not actually using them to generate housing that the [3:51:12 PM] market would not otherwise produce and it's a same that in the state of Texas, our state legislature does not give cities the ability to really do everything that one -- a city might do in order to be able to generate in the marketplace greater affordability. But with the limited tools we have we have to make sure that we use them wisely and well. And again, I would urge us to make sure from my mind that it would seem to me that we have that expertise on staff and that we should annually or by a regular schedule recalibrate to make sure that our policies are reflective of the market to ensure that they're used and I'm sure there's a big conversation we'll have at budget if not before budget. I do want to focus on the use of the word that you used when you said more value. So the whole theory is if we get more value with greater [3:52:14 PM] entitlements we can capture more of that value that otherwise would have gone to the property owner or to the developer to get community benefits paid for. And I know we're using kind of a club as opposed to a scalpel because we have to go over general rules, but when we say more value I would imagine we're not just looking at absolute value, that we're also looking at investment yield. Is that right? >> That is correct. We're assuming that it has to be competitive to attract capital to both a base building as well as a bonus building. >> Mayor Adler: So let's make sure that I understand this. We talk about value, but we don't often talk about yield and I think sometimes I find myself in a community talking past one another because of the question about yield. An investor that comes in that wants to put capital against a development is going to be looking for a certain yield, a certain return on the money. They take their money and they put it into a savings account. They'll want to get one and a half% or whatever that is. [3:53:15 PM] If I take my capital and I put it into something that's really kickky and I could stand to lose it, then I'm going to want a much higher rate in order to be able to invest in that. I'm going to look at 10 percent, 15 percent, 20, 30% return if I'm being asked to do a risky investment. The market sets what those returns are based on hundreds of people offering their capital so in the market we have in Austin if somebody is building a three story multi-family building in a certain part of town it has a certain risk associated with it, there's a certain return that I would expect to get. And that person is going to receive offers to potentially invest in five or six different multi-family properties, but the return that's being offered, the developer is going to be basically the same because if the return is too low those builders are never going to get anybody to invest. [3:54:16 PM] If it's too high they're going to find everybody wants it and somebody is going to offer their capital at a lower amount in order to be able to get it and that's how the market would get us to a certain yield. So if I have a project that has three stories and by the yield that's set by the market is seven percent, if you give me the ability do an additional floor on my building requires me to bring additional capital to the deal. Now, when I bring additional capital to this deal that means I'm not bringing it to the other offer that I had to build a multi-family tract down the street. I know I can get a seven percent return on the one down the street so if you're asking me to put more capital in this deal I'm going to want at least that same seven percent return or I'll put my money down the street. So you have to calibrate this in such a way that the investment yield stays constant. Don't let somebody get a higher yield on their [3:55:17 PM] dollars when they go the additional floor because then you're paying them more than what they would have gotten for their return, but what you're trying to calibrate to is when you say you make sure to capture some of that more value it's not just absolute dollars. It's not just the developer makes more money if they build another floor. You have to get for that developer a similar yield to what the return was for that investment to start off with, is that correct? >> That's correct. In our math we are assuming that the yield required by investors is similar for building a base building compared to a bonus building in a similar location. >> Mayor Adler: Great, thank you. I have 30 seconds left. Ann, I have you can three minutes left in these last two sections. >> Kitchen: I'll be quick. [3:56:17 PM] So I want to ask about mapping existing affordable housing. My understanding is that we're mapping it based on current entitlement, not based on what's on the ground. And I'm assuming that's the case all across the city. That's my question, including in the equity area. >> That is correct, yes. >> Kitchen: Okay. So my concern is that we're not really -- we're not really preserving affordability that way. I'd like to ask for information about how many of our existing multi-family affordable housing, and I know you guys have identified them based on the data that you have. How many of them have current entitlements that are higher because I'm wanting to understand how many of them are at risk for being redeveloped. So then my question is under the equity area overlay, one component of it is the last bullet, which is to preserve -- to preserve [3:57:20 PM] existing multi-family, you're suggesting that -- it comes back to council for approval to participate in the bonus program? But I'm not seeing that first I would think why don't we do that all over the city since we want to preserve existing multi-family all over the city, but the second question I have is how does that actually preserve existing multi-family when we are zoning existing multi-family according to current zoning, not to what's on the ground? So how does this help us. >> So the rationale for requiring city council approval is that it means that there would be a public process when existing multi-family might be seeking to participate in a bonus program. So that public process is an opportunity for potentially neighborhood groups to be [3:58:21 PM] able to have discussions that the city can't have. >> Kitchen: But that's not really my question, I'm sorry. Let me be more specific. How does it help in a situation where that existing affordable housing already has a higher entitlement and we're zoning based on that higher entitlement as part of this process. Because they wouldn't have to come back to us, right? >> Yeah, that is correct. Sort of depending on what entitlement they had and what is developed. And so I think this goes back to the discussion about, you know, can we -- I think this is perhaps a discussion that the law department would like to have with council. That's my understanding. >> Kitchen: I would like to have this discussion and maybe it's in executive session. I don't know. I'd like to understand what my colleagues think. Basically the concern that I have is if we're zoning [3:59:22 PM] comparable zoning based on current entitlement, not based on the fact that a property is multi-family affordable housing. We're not protecting that property as continuing multi-family housing. So I want to make sure that we use every option that we have -- and I'd like to know what my colleagues think. I know councilmember Casar has mentioned this too in our housing meeting the other day we Teed it up as a conversation. So I don't know what the best way to have that conversation is. If it's to have it in executive session or when to have it. If there are some options from from council that we can act on to preserve them, I'd like to take them. If there are not options for us, I'd like to understand them. What we are saying as a council is that we're protecting affordable housing and we are not. [4:00:24 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Got it. >> Kitchen: Are you going to let me know when we can have that conversation? >> Mayor Adler: Right. And we have several work sessions -- we have a work session, maybe that's something to tee up. I don't know that it needs to be in executive. I just don't know. But -- and staff needs to be keeping a cumulative list here. There are some other things that councilmember pool put on the message board that you wanted to make sure that we had a chance to address. If we're not addressing those today make sure we have time to do that. >> The last point is. >> Mayor Adler: Real fast because you've gone over your time. >> Kitchen: As part of that. That fourth bullet was asking why don't we -- if we're applying this for multi- family property in the equity area to preserve them, I would like to suggest that we should apply that all over town. >> Mayor Adler: Got it. Thank you. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: On the development risk yield stuff that the mayor was laying out, another factor that I've experienced with some [4:01:24 PM] new developments in my district is the developers coming in, having a certain type of product that they build that is much smaller than the entitlements granted on the site. And when I've spoken to them about maybe having some more units that's in walking distance from a train station, like my district, this is what we build. So there's more -- you know, mayor, you said that the yield should be zero, but I would argue that it can't -- the difference in yield between base and bonus, it should capture all of it. I would argue that you can't capture all of it because the risk changes depending on the nature of the product, depending on the nature of the developer, and that's against -- it almost gets more complicated than you caneally nail down, but I have certainly seen where the complex developers come in, they build a product, move on. Part of their willingness to do that is because they've streamlined all of their [4:02:24 PM] development processes and all the things and they get their capital in, get the copy out very, very fast. In some areas we're asking developers to come up with a new product or asking developers who build these products in other cities to come to our city and try to learn a new process in a new community with higher risk. So I think we have to be careful about actually getting these products on the ground. >> Mayor Adler: My point was more -- even more important than total dollars was yield. But you're right, the actual yield should be reserved. >> Flannigan: I think we should be careful not to think of zoning as a preservation tool, unless we're talking about historic zoning, which is different. We have properties today that gentrify without a change in zoning. So right-sizing or matching zoning to use does not prevent gentrification. It doesn't prevent turning over of a property. It's more nuanced about market dynamics of the land and the space and the proximity to assets. [4:03:24 PM] We see single-family homes turning into mcmansions. That's why the mcmansion ordinance happened over the past few years. We see apartment complexes turning into luxury apartment complexes without increases in entitlements. And if we aren't really careful we could actually get no bonuses anywhere and a lot of luxury houses and exacerbate gentrification. So it's a tough conversation to talk about redevelopment means more affordable, but when you're able to do it with the calibrated bonus you can actually get there. And I think that's what we're trying to get because today's condition is not viable. Change is inevitable and our long list of predecessors 20 and 30 years ago maybe the councils doesn't have as much data to prove that point as I think our community understands now. But I worry about trying to use this process as a tool to preserve existing construction when I don't know that that's a doable [4:04:25 PM] act. One question for you all, is there a calibration difference we should be thinking about when it's a dash-q versus a bonus without a dash-q? Is the calibration different if we're talking about total percent of units on a whole site because we've added units to a commercial property or if it's just like the fractional unit of a third floor or should the calibration be different different? >> Yes. It should -- it generally should be and it generally is. >> Flannigan: That's a nuance that's being worked out, is a better way to frame it. >> Yes. If we put the equity area aside, then the calibration -- we actually have different affordability requirements for properties that have the dash-q than those that don't have the dash-q. >> Flannigan: That's helpful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: That's four minutes. Kathie? [4:05:26 PM] >> Tovo: I want to clarify something about transition zone zoning. So with our four if you go from four units from four to eight there's an affordable housing contribution. It's my understanding when you went from six to 10 in rm1 that one of those units needed ton on-site. Is that no longer true? Is there a flew option for rm1 zoning? >> That was not -- that was not a regulation in the rm1 or r4 from the beginning. But now it would be in the equity program area, but that wasn't the original regulation. >> Tovo: So I misunderstood that on the first round. I thought if you built 10 units in rm1, that one unit needed to be built on-site. [4:06:26 PM] So it does not? >> No. >> Tovo: So I just want to single that I believe -- signal that I believe we should change that. I'm not sure why we would prohibit fee-in-lieus in the equity area and then in high opportunity areas allow for fees in lieu to be used rather than creating that housing in our high opportunity areas. That just doesn't seem to be expense I believe to me. -- Sensible to me. I don't know if there's a response as to why we're not requiring -- I mean, number one, we are doubling or tripling the base entitlements. So we are already missing the opportunity to capture some of that value. So lots that can currently build only two units can build four or six with no affordable housing contribution. And I'd like us to spend some time in this next week really relooking at that. I had an amendment. I don't believe there were any changes in response to it. It got significantly watered down in what we passed, but I don't see any measurable [4:07:27 PM] change in our affordable housing contributions to really recognize capturing that value from current zoning to what the entitlements would be in the transition zoning after the fact. But it really concerns me that in addition to losing that opportunity to capture some value, we're also not requiring that one unit to be purchased -- to be built on-site in high opportunity areas. >> The challenge that we always have and will continue to have both -- there was an amendment that may help with it to some extent is when you have individual affordable units throughout the city it is much more challenging to monitor those. There is an amendment that has been included in the code that said if there are three or fewer affordable units that they should be managed by an entity that is certified by the city. So I think that could help [4:08:28 PM] with that. It is just much more challenging and much more time intensive. But I think that's a discussion for council. >> Tovo: Why would it be more challenging to maintain and monitor that unit in a high opportunity area versus in the equity overlay? >> No, not the difference between those two areas. Just small number of affordable units anywhere are a challenge to monitor because of the amount of time it takes to train the people who are renting those units to make sure they have all their records in line is a very time intensive process. So no difference between where they are, just in general. >> Tovo: So why are those two areas being treated differently in terms of the fee-in-lieu versus the on- site? I would think in the areas that are potentially have more expense active housing costs it would be even more important to have that unit available on-site. [4:09:30 PM] >> So the on-site requirement was part of the amendment -- was part of the equity overlay amendment. That's the only reason they're being treated differently. >> Tovo: Okay. Again, I think that we need to revisit this and obviously we're out of time and probably I don't have time to ask our consultant a question of whether there isn't more value to be captured if you're looking at sites that in large part can construct two units on and we are allowing them to construct 10, can we not capture more benefit for affordable than what we currently have in this code? And given in a lot of cases it will be replacing housing that is much more attainable than I think what is to come. I think the requirement to have it on-site is really critical. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That was five minutes. Alison. >> Alter: Did you have an answer to that? [4:10:31 PM] >> We did a calibration specific to each individual zone citywide for each submarket geography and in each case we tried to optimize the percentage of affordable housing that could be required. So for each zone we feel like we have tried to right-size the requirement to optimize the number of units that could be delivered out of any given zone, be it missing middle, large scale and any zone. That has a bonus in the affordable housing bonus program. >> Tovo: But would we optimize it even further if we captured the units beyond -- that represent new entitlements. >> >> I'm not sure I follow. By using the word optimize I mean we have tried to take into account all the factors present in the code as [4:11:35 PM] defined and maximize the amount of affordable housing that we could request from developers in each subgeography for each individual zone. >> Mayor Adler: You're nearing the end of your time. >> Alter: So I would also also -- I'm still concerned about this and what we're doing with these bonuses, particularly in the high opportunity areas and if it works in the equity areas to do on-site where you're going to get a higher -- I'm not understanding the math why it doesn't work in high opportunity areas so I'd like to know that. And I would also like to understand why is it that we're requiring that you come to council to use the bonus? Won't that just deter people from even accessing the bonus? >> So to answer the first question I think that we will address the feasibility [4:12:35 PM] of requiring 10% in the dash B and in the equity program area momentarily because our analysis shows that in some cases that is not in our math viable. And so in some cases it might not happen although in some cases it would, in the dash V and overlay areas. Vault why what won't happen? >> The variability of a bonus that will require 10%. We'll get more into that. And then for the second part of your question, Erica? >> That part of the question about whether someone has to come to council for increased entitlements wouldn't that be a deterrent. And absolutely, it could be. It is also something that we have heard from community members as wanting to have an opportunity to weigh in. In as part of the process. [4:13:38 PM] It's in -- in some places there are groups that are not council that can make agreements with developers for entitlements -- not entitlements, excuse me, for community benefits that aren't necessarily those that are required through a program. >> Alter: So isn't that true throughout the city? >> Sure -- >> Alter: I mean, I'm just -- there's some pieces on what we're doing with multi-family and what we're doing with the bonuses are making me very uncomfortable about whether we have actually got all of our economics. In order. And I'm not sure if it's good or bad if they can come and do that. There's something missing here. >> So the question is sort of in an equity -- in the equity area or not. And I think one of the things that we thought as staff is that we would need [4:14:40 PM] additional direction to make that be a citywide requirement. So there was language in the equity overlay that seemed to make that clear. If that's a desire citywide, then I think we would like to see that as additional council direction. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: On that point I want to note that when mayor pro tem put this amendment up in the first place, she did mention that if that extra height over existing multi-family being discretionary as opposed to by right wanted to be statewide that we would be supportive of that and a I think in my message board post I mentioned I would be supportive of that. So this is a conversation that we had on the message board and I would support that amendment to say that it's not in every case, it's just in cases where somebody is knocking down existing multi-family that we want to take those case by case. As the mayor said, they're going to be different in [4:15:41 PM] different cases. In some cases you might actually get more affordable units than you lost and in other cases it may not make good sense. And so this wouldn't hinder the capacity. It would just add an extra step is when you're talking about knocking down already dense apartments. So if we wanted to make that provision apply to the entire city, I have already indicated, I think the mayor pro tem indicated we're fine with that. I do want to point out that I think that there is reason from the amendments that we passed as to why what is going on in these vulnerable areas. It's areas that are overwhelmingly renters. It's areas that are overwhelmingly communities of color and it's areas where you have really, really rapid change or are about to get that level of change in a way that people are losing a sense of home and often times that was caused by red lining that depreciated values in those places and now we all know about gentrification. We don't have to talk about [4:16:42 PM] it. But there is reason for us to be especially thoughtful there. And I think that having on-site units in those areas is important so that as that development occurs because regardless of what we do here there will be development that occurs. Having -- still having those affordable units there is an important value to the community as those places face gentrification. And so for me when you have lower levels of home ownership and you have those things happening I think it makes sense to think of those areas differently, but -- I'll continue to advocate for that. But I do think that there are some parts of this that make sense citywide and the multi-family issue raised by councilmember kitchen and others here in the last -- in the last round here make sense to me for us to be looking at those issues across districts. >> Alter: If I could clarify. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad. There are some pluses or mines of this process we're [4:17:43 PM] trying to simplify the code and then saying you have to come to council and we were trying to make people not come to council. I'm trying to understand the logic and I can see that there's pluses and mines. I just want us to be clear on whatter we're doing and if it should apple' or not apply. I'm not advocating one way or the other at this point. I'm just trying to understand it. >> Mayor Adler: Let's go ahead to the third category. That will leave us about 15 minutes for questions about anything. >> This should be actually fairly short. Good afternoon, councilmembers. Mayor Adler, I'm Alex steinburger with cascadia partners working on the ldc revision. And getting right to the punch line here, compared to the October 4th draft of the ldc which we anticipated to have 143,000 housing units, [4:18:43 PM] this round of revisions has yielded actually a range. And the reason why we're presenting it to you as a range is because there are policies included in this draft that we wanted to present to potential outcomes -- two potential outcomes from. From that I mean the dash-v program that we discussed earlier and the equity bonus area. Program. And so I'll get into this a little bit more, but just to summarize right off the top, the resulting capacity could be as high as 410,000 units, which is actually an increase from the October 4th draft. However, if some of the economic modeling that we've done bears out it could be somewhere around 357,000 and that could be less, and I'll explain why that is in a moment. But first let's just start with a high level [4:19:44 PM] explanation of the differences between October 4th and the January 31st draft. We've all heard today about changes to mapping and you've heard about changes to the bonus program and you've heard about these new policy ideas, the dash-v and the equity bonus program. And because those things are changing there is a significant difference between those two drafts of the code. In terms of mapping not that much changed. There was direction to as you heard from lacy, move some of the missing middle Zones and change some of the location of those, but the bigger impact here was the equity bonus program and the dash-v. So we provide you with two book ends of what that could produce. On the high end we assume that in all those areas where now the requirement for an affordable housing set aside is 10% of all [4:20:46 PM] units that that works in any situation regardless of whether the economics of it don't equally make sense from our perspective. And then on the low end we actually modeled it as we have before and any location -- that includes within the equity bonus geography, where a 10% set aside does not work we assume that the bonus would not be taken advantage of. So that's what caused the difference in capacity. So what does that look like compared to October 4th? Here we can see October 4th on the left and the two versions of January 31st, the low and the high on the right. So on the one hand you could have an additional 13,000 units of capacity over October 4th and you could actually double your affordable unit capacity through this policy, these sets of policies. But on the other hand, if the modeling that cascadia and echo northwest have done [4:21:48 PM] bears out, then we would potentially see quite a bit less bonus capacity and affordable capacity because there will be lots of instances where we've shown that 10% just is too much for the market to bear at this time in certain locations. The likely actual result is probably somewhere in between. Again, this is a range. It's not one or the other. It's going to be somewhere between the high and the low. So this is the October 4th draft, total capacity by council district. You've all seen this before. I've presented this to you before. So it shouldn't be surprising, but let's move from that to January 31st. Did you catch the change? Because it's subtle. There's almost no change actually. And that's kind of the point. The changes that were made are getting smaller, they're getting more targeted. For instance, changes to where missing middle Zones are applied. Those are also offset by [4:22:50 PM] some of the remapping of centers that lacy talked about. So the net result even across council districts, is more or less the same as it was before, but we're addressing that council direction with a scalpel, quite frankly, more than with a hammer like we used to do. But the real story here is like I said, there are -- there's some uncertainty around whether we can actually get all of that capacity within the equity bonus program area and within dash-v and that's represented by this Orange portion of some of these bars. So you can see districts 1, 2, 3 and 4 and to some extent 5, they all across into that equity, the extent bonus program area to some extent. And so in those areas we do think that if our modeling holds that some portion of that Orange may actually not be deliverable. So that's the trade-off that we face here. [4:23:50 PM] So to some of the other direction that led into the mapping that we can measure through capacity, the remapping of some what we call missing middle Zones, these are Zones that typically are associated with missing middle, r3, r4, rm1. We remove these primarily in areas that were deemed susceptible or an early type 1 phase of gentrification risk in the UT uprooted study. And you can see that in the capacity we went from about 16,000 units within those Zones in the October 4th draft to just about 11,000 in the January 31st draft. So that's in response to your direction, but again the impact to overall capacity was relatively low. This is what that looks like again across all council districts. So this is only the capacity generated within r3, r4 and rm1. [4:24:51 PM] In October 4th what you see in the blue compared to January 31st, what you see in the yellow, and you can see in several council districts I went down by as much as a few thousand, but in most cases only between 50 and a couple hundred units. Across the board there were reductions, so it wasn't focused on just one district, but certainly other reductions were quite large in some areas. But again, this is in response to direction and it was offset by higher entensety mapping in other parts of the city. So that is the end of my set of slides. And I think we'll go to questions, but as the last speaker I do want to take this opportunity to just say that from where I stand your understanding of the issues that this code presents is really -- it's quite impressive. I do this work all over the country. No city goes to the lengths that you have to really understand the potential impacts of your code. You've test driven this code more than anyone I've ever [4:25:52 PM] seen. So kudos to you. I think it's great and I'm really excited to see the changes that we're proposing, the policies that we're proposing are getting more and more specific. So I think we're coming to the end of the beginning of the next phase of this. So kudos. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. Questions? Greg? >> Thank y'all so much for all of the details on the capacity, and I appreciate how much we as councilmembers look into the details and I think it's just reflective also of our constituents that have gotten really well informed on the topic. One thing that you didn't mention in your presentation that I heard from y'all when can we've met on this is that equally the 397,000 that you presented on first reading draft probably had a range associated with it too. You picked the best number that you could, but that today you're presenting us with this 351 to 410 range and when you gave us 397 it was probably a range there as well, is that right? [4:26:53 PM] >> Yes, that's correct. >> Casar: And so I think if we want to stick close to that 390 number we have to sort of try to find ways to get close to the middle of that range between 350 and 410. And if y'all have recommendations or thoughts as a staff that might make you feel more comfortable like we're edging towards closer to the middle of that range, do think us know because I think it is helpful and important for us to get the numbers in the presentation to see that frankly while there's been some movement of capacity, we'll we've said in some gentrifying and other areas we'll do less and some areas we'll do more. I think that in places like downtown we'll make up more than that. We'll have ideas that keep us sort of closer to the middle of that range, do let us know because I think that will keep us in that 380 [4:27:54 PM] range. Knowing knowing we're not done, once we pass the ldc we're not done, we're going to keep seeing cases come before us, hopefully lots and lots less, but idea folks are hoping that we stay, you know, not -- not go below 350 but kind of try to hit the middle of that range so keep thinking for us about how we get there. >> Mayor Adler: Delia. >> Garza: Just because of that last comment that you made about our deeper understanding, I was curious of other cities that you've worked and who have been work on this as long as we have, and not to say that -- not to diminish our intelligence here, but I would say it might be because this has been an incredibly long conversation. What is it? Five years since codenext started? And so I'm just curious, compared to other cities you've worked in, has it been an as-long [4:28:55 PM] conversation. >> I think you hold that distinct honor. But it's not a bad thing. To have this level of discourse about your code. A lot of cities will just sort of, you know, they'll say, yeah, that looks about right and fix it later. You're fixing it first, which is really good. But, yeah, I started working on this project in 2012. >> Garza: That's right. I think that's the important point, is we've been working on this since 2012. And it's good that we continue to have this discussion, but it's been a long, long discussion. So thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: Just real quick. I had asked for a tally of the lots within city limits that were proposed for zonings, you know, the list of zonings that were not included in the capacity analysis. I assume that those same zoning categories were not included this time, right? [4:29:55 PM] Is that right? That's the rr, the r1, r2a, r2b, r2c and r3, right? >> Those were modeled as part of capacity, yes. >> Kitchen: Well, they weren't modeled the first time. So did you change the approach this time? So what I mean is the first time my understanding was that there wasn't a factor applied to them because there wasn't a way to -- as y'all explained it, there wasn't a number that you could apply because that was up to decisions of individuals and there wasn't a way to estimate how often they would take advantage of it. >> So this was the question about our assumption that the capacity changes would only occur on vacant land. >> Kitchen: Right. >> I want to make sure I'm understanding. >> Kitchen: So you didn't change that methodology. >> That methodology has not changed. >> Kitchen: I wanted to remind the staff that I had asked for a tally of those number of lots, and I haven't gotten that yet [4:30:57 PM] so. . . >> Mayor Adler: Do we know the total capacity of new missing-middle housing? And how much of that is in transition Zones? >> We -- at this time, as we reported in the presentation, we can report the total number of units produced within those three Zones that we most closely associate with missing middle. We're working on getting the updated transition areas boundary computed, and we should be able to deliver that tomorrow. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, great. Thank you. Leslie tomorrow. >> Pool: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: I just wanted the break-out of missing-middle housing, as part of the overall break-out number. The answer was that could be found in three different areas and we'll get those numbers tomorrow. >> Kitchen: That would be r4 and rm. >> Mayor Adler: We reported total capacity within those Zones citywide but not the portion that only exists within those transition areas. >> Pool: Okay. Are we still on target for [4:32:01 PM] the 135,000 units? >> There is still -- there is more capacity than -- >> Pool: The 135,000? >> The strategic housing blueprint goal, but not three times the amount potentially if you take the lower end of the range. >> Pool: But it might be more if you take the higher end of the range? >> That's correct. >> Pool: Okay. I would like to get another iteration of the charts that are on the pages number 50s going forward where you've got total capacity by council district and you've got October 4 and January 31. I'd like to add a bar next to these that shows the target for each district and then if you could put in the actual numbers in here. It's hard to -- it's hard to really know what these numbers are with the bar graph. That would be great. And then also I'm not finding it in your documents, so I would like this additional information. The total market feasible missing middle figures, I think this may be what Steve [4:33:03 PM] is talking about. And I'd like it just for my district, although I'm sure other people would like it for their districts, but I'd like the total market feasible missing middle figures and from the first reading map compared to the second reading map. >> I'm not sure I follow. Are you referring to you would like us to make an assumption that some missing middle redevelopment occurs on existing developed single-family lots? >> Pool: I think that through -- threaded throughout all of our conversations is exactly that assumption. We're making assumptions about missing middle where it isn't and why isn't it there and can we put it there and if so how? So as far as market feasible missing middle, which is the most likely to be built, I would guess, I'd like to see a comparison of those numbers from the first reading map that we had in December and this map. [4:34:03 PM] And then the difference between those two figures, if it differs in a zoning district or a housing type, so that we can get a better handle on exactly what it is we're doing, the impact of our changes. The capacity stuff is really at the heart, I think, of what we're trying to do with regard to ensuring that there are lower-cost housing units for everybody in our city who can't afford the more expensive ones. We still don't know. We're still guessing because we don't have actual data to prove up how many we think will be built and where. So I'd like to drill down a little bit more and ask again for the overall units mapped in the city, market feasible or not. We did ask to have those figures provided at the first reading, and this is getting a little bit closer, but it's still not exact what we're looking for. >> I've explained previously that we can't because of the reasons that councilmember kitchen brought up -- it's not possible for us to make [4:35:04 PM] assumptions about what individual property owners would do with their property. It would be a misrepresentation of our ability to do that. >> Pool: Completely. But we are making some assumptions here. So using the assumptions that you have used throughout this process, I'd like to get a little bit closer to where we think these numbers are gonna fall out. >> I'll have to discuss with staff if that's gonna be possible to do. It would require a complete realignment our assumptions we've used throughout this process so I'm not sure we'll be able to do that. >> Pool: I think having the conversation about what the assumptions are that you've used, maybe we can have a one-on-one and sit down and parcel through that. >> Sure. >> Pool: I think that would be helpful. Again, we're kind of scatter shot, our approach is scatter shot here still, so I'd like us to be more targeted with more specific information. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy Flannigan. [4:36:04 PM] >> Flannigan: Just kind of on that point, you know, I'm concerned and I've said this before about asking staff to do more and more granular analysis. The more granular we get, the less accurate because the more the assumptions become bigger parts of the math. And I would really hate for us to be putting out information to the public that has, you know, a 50% margin of error or some type of really unusable for analysis or decision-making. So I, you know, entertain any idea from a councilmember but please know that I'm not interested in having y'all do a ton of work that's gonna end up not being valuable for decision-making purposes. >> That is my chief concern, is that we can't be -- we can't stand behind those sorts of numbers. It's just not possible for us to get to that level of detail. And I'd also underscore briefly the purpose of this tool is not to be a crystal ball. It's a relative measurement [4:37:06 PM] of where our policies are getting us. Are we moving the needle in a better direction or not. So we're not going to get all the answers from this unfortunately. As I said before you're doing light years more than any city has ever done. >> Flannigan: I would just add, again, council district were not drawn to be planning areas, so comparing the numbers by district becomes very challenging because there's very different levels of acreage and very different levels of current condition and in some cases already some pretty significant entitlements like downtown and Robinson ranch and lakeline in my area. It becomes a very challenging area because that's just not why they were drawn the way they were drawn. >> Pool: Mayor, I'd just like to add to what -- >> Mayor Adler: Real fast. >> Pool: What Jimmy was saying. That may be. And we know that there are arbitrary lines and nobody knew we would be doing these exercises when those lines were drawn. But we did assign certain numbers to each of those [4:38:06 PM] districts, and we do have targets for each of our districts. And to the extent that we're able to meet them or miss them depends on how we distribute the housing units throughout the city. And so I think what you're saying is accurate, but we also have put together this task in front of us that we've given ourselves numbers to achieve. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Kathie, did you turn off your light? >> Tovo: Just because I had knocked everything on to the floor and was creating a lot of noise. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: Thanks. Yeah, this is a complicated conversation because on the one hand I understand what you're saying about it being -- those numbers assisting us in measuring the relative impact of different policies. On the other hand we have also heard, including today, conversations about, you know, we need to bump up to that higher level of numbers. So on the one hand we're talking about the fact that I think there's some who want to see us [4:39:14 PM] that em-- on the other hand we know there's going to be redevelopment of other property, we know people will build ads. And if we're really driven by a particular number those numbers should count, too, because people will add Adu, that third unit, they will redevelop a property. I would say that the kind of intense focus on achieving a particular number has certainly woven its way in and out of our conversations, and so that's why I would support and believe we need that estimate of what the total number of units that have been mapped is. I forgot what you called it, but -- and I know councilmember kitchen had talked about it the first time through. So that's just my thoughts on that one. Thank you for providing this chart. I need to understand. I'm still not clear, mayor Adler, on what -- you were asking a question that I thought was answered on this. >> Mayor Adler: I don't know that all of those units [4:40:14 PM] appear in the transition zone and there's not a number associated with those. So I can scale those off as best I can. It looks to be about 12,000 unit by district before it looked like to be about 16,000 units. But I don't know how many that -- I don't know if we have any units outside of the transition zone so I asked that question just to get the numbers as well. >> Tovo: I guess what's confusing is we've defined the transition zone as being the places where these zonings happen so I -- with the exception maybe of r3. So that's just a point of confusion. So I guess what you're saying is this is a subset of that larger question. >> Mayor Adler: I was asking that question. For me the transition zone is the area between what's happening at the corridors and what's happening internally. So we have some areas where there might very well be missing middle housing but I don't think there's very much there. I was just asking the question [overlapping speakers] >> Alter: In some of our districts there is a lot [4:41:15 PM] that is not in a transition zone, that is missing middle. >> Mayor Adler: That's why I was asking the question. >> Tovo: The common parlance has come to talk about those in a transition zone just in the public. Thank you for clarifying that question. I just wanted to be sure I understood. The redevelopment versus new construction by district, I think we may have had a slide after the first draft that showed us how much of the increased capacity was expected to come through redevelopment versus new construction by council district and if possible I think that would be very helpful to have this time as well. >> So just to clarify, development -- it's all new construction, but development on existing developed properties versus development on vacate properties? Is that the distinction you're drawing? >> Tovo: Yes. Because I assume the latter is you're redeveloping over -- demolishing and redoing a structure, right? >> Okay. I just want to clarify. >> Tovo: I'm sorry, is there another -- you either have vacant land or land with something on it. When we're talking about -- [4:42:16 PM] can you help me understand what -- >> My question is -- stemmed from your use of the term "New construction." >> Tovo: I'm sorry, got you. >> It's all new construction. Just wanted to clarify. >> Tovo: Yes. I understand your point now. Yes, if we could get the breakdown by council district of how much of the capacity is being achieved on vacant land, which is how much is demolition and very development, I think that would be helpful to see. Then just as a last observation, kind of back to the point I was making before. And mayor Adler I appreciate your willingness to entertain some conversations about how we might adjust the transition zone. As I look at this and I'm obviously more familiar with and more focused at the moment on my district than others, the capacity in district 9 is one of the highest citywide. It's about 65,000, 1,000 of [4:43:17 PM] which is coming in the transition zone. So we are -- you know, in my mind rezoning vast swathes of our - - some of our oldest neighborhoods that have been recognized for their compact, walkable nature. It has caused an enormous amount of upset among many of the residents in those neighborhoods, the majority of whom are renters in many of those neighborhoods. And we're achieving a very small piece of the overall intended capacity. So it's a lot of disruption, and I think it's going to result in really significant redevelopment and very significant changes, potentially to the point where some of those areas are unrecognizable, potentially for very little gain. I mean, 1,000 out of 65,, [4:44:17 PM] 66,000 is just a balance I think we should have a conversation about. >> Mayor Adler: Ann and then Alison. >> Kitchen: You can go first since I used my time. >> Mayor Adler: You both have. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: You're both on borrowed time but there aren't any other lights up. >> Kitchen: I'll be very quick. I had mentioned a minute ago about asking for a tally. Is that something I can get soon or can you let me know when? >> Sorry. A tally of? >> Kitchen: This is something I asked for a while back. This is the tally of all lots within city limits proposed for zoning rr, r1, r2a, r2b, r2c and r3. >> Yeah, we will get that to you. We apologize for not getting that you to prior to the release. We should have. We should get that to you this week. >> Kitchen: That's okay. I just wanted to get an idea. >> To everybody. >> Kitchen: Yeah. Then the last question is I'm just curious -- I understand the -- I [4:45:17 PM] understand the difficulty in the assumptions related to capacity has to do with the difficulty in assigning a number to the behavior of individuals, right? So that was -- okay. But did we have to -- but I'm also curious about -- and what was our methodology, or have we applied some methodology to make assumptions about the incentivize that we were trying to think through for the preservation bonus related to different incentivize around F.A.R. And impervious cover to graduate those? And I don't know if you guys were -- maybe you weren't involved in that and others were. I'm just wanting to know -- my question really is have we had to make any kind of assumptions in other aspects of what we're trying to calibrate that relate to individuals' behavior around homes? >> No. >> Kitchen: Is that no? >> No. It was more of a technical [4:46:19 PM] analysis of -- >> Kitchen: Okay. >> -- What could fit, what could not fit, that type of thing. >> Kitchen: Rather than incentivizing behavior? >> Right. >> Kitchen: All right. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Alison -- wait a second. Jimmy still has more time. >> Flannigan: I should be quick. To councilmember tovo's point on the two graphs, the ones about total capacity and the missing-middle Zones, there's a big gap between -- I mean, most of the capacity is not coming from the missing-middle Zones. So high level where is it coming from? >> Well, in -- hmm. I would say -- it's tough for me to answer that question right now. >> Flannigan: Let me ask it differently then. I think a lot of the conversation of the community is about transition Zones but we can see it's a pretty small part of the total. >> I understand. >> Flannigan: Right? I would assume a lot of the capacity in my district [4:47:19 PM] comes from commercial redevelopment because there's a lot of commercial underused big, flat parking lots. I got car dealerships and the like that will be redeveloped. Am I kind of in the ballpark here? >> Corridors, mostly. >> Flannigan: Commercial properties on corridors that aren't the missing-middle Zones. >> Right. The land area that the model is showing that would likely change -- or it has capacity to change is very, very small overall citywide. Most of the city we don't think anything would really change significantly. >> Flannigan: Would you say that louder and into the microphone, please? >> Sorry. We don't think there's capacity for change in most of the city. It's really confined to mostly corridors and centers. >> Flannigan: I liked it the way you said it the last time. >> Sorry. Maybe we can play the audio on the way back. >> Flannigan: Okay. I think that's kind of an un-- I didn't notice that as a takeaway when I went through these because the numbers on the Y axis are [4:48:20 PM] very different between the one chart to the next chart. So it's something that I think I'm going to ruminate about a little bit. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: So I just want to reiterate the concern very briefly that we're not counting what's being rezoned on single family, we're not counting the ads, we're now creating a whole process to graduate the impervious cover and graduate the F.A.R., which presumably has a goal of increasing the number of units we're getting on those lots. So there's capacity that's coming there. I understand you can't model it, but as we're trying to do our accounting, it's important to understand that there are units there. We have no idea the number of units that we've rezoned, so we can't even come up with a ballpark even if we said 10% of those unit -- of those lots would be rezoned and give us one more lot we'd probably get a lot of units. So we do need to have those numbers and we should keep that in mind. [4:49:23 PM] Going back to page 60 in that chart, I want to clarify. So that is the number for the capacity. That's not the number of lots that have been zoned missing middle. Is that correct? So can we get a chart like this that has the number of lots by district that have been zoned missing middle? Because I'm very surprised given the numbers we've been hearing that district 9 has less capacity coming out of the transition zone than district 8 or district 7 or district 10, it looks like district 5 and district 1. And so we really need to be having a better understanding of where we're just putting a color on a map and making people mad but we're getting no capacity. And somehow there's some economic understanding that we don't have or we're not fleshing out here, but we're [4:50:23 PM] going and putting these colors because we've made up these rules, but maybe there's another rule that would allow us not to do it where it's not going to yield capacity in general. Because then when you get that one odd lot you're creating some randomness that doesn't follow any planning principles. So I'd really like to see that, and the other thing that I'd like to see is I'd like to understand what is missing middle that's not in the transition area off of the corridors. Because we've now just added a bunch of missing middle that's not on a transition area, whether it's an activity center or I have it just in the middle of neighborhoods that's not arguably a transition area, just high opportunity. I don't have any way of knowing what you're counting as capacity for that. And, you know, if we're going to get a lot of capacity, we should know that. But if we're not going to get a lot of capacity and we know that then maybe we shouldn't rezone it and create a lot of angst in the [4:51:26 PM] community over a land development code change that we need to adopt. So we really do need that kind of data. I understand you can't give it to us on a lot by lot basis, but you must have a lot more data than this. Otherwise how did you get no these numbers and how do we possibly get a situation where the capacity in district 9 from missing middle is less than all those other districts. I just -- I'm not seeing that on the maps at all. Do you have any other insights beyond giving us the geographics that I asked -- graphics that I asked for. >> I'm not able to say offhand whether the number of lots are r3, r4 or rm1, increased or decreased but we can certainly produce that number. Perhaps the story will be clear for you at that time. >> Alter: But it was still bad in draft one. I mean, it's not a matter of only whether it went from draft one to draft two. It's what is our zone -- what have we zoned versus what are we getting capacity [4:52:27 PM] of? Because you can look in some of these neighborhoods and nobody is ever going to build some of these things. The lots are too small. I mean, the number of lots you have to combine -- I mean -- >> That's exactly why we don't -- we can't produce the estimate that you're asking for because it is so complex and there are so many -- >> You can tell me how many lots you've zoned this. >> Certainly. >> And you can tell me what your capacity number is and you can tell me that by district. And you probably have some lower-level, you know -- >> Getting -- back to what councilmember Flannigan said we don't want to produce estimates we can't stand behind. If we didn't that I would not be able to stand behind them because we cannot estimate what someone who owns the property would do with their land. It's often not an economically rational choice that they're making. So unfortunately we can't -- I don't have the number. I can't -- it's not like [4:53:29 PM] it's sitting somewhere and I can just get it to you. I'm sorry. We just don't. >> Alter: There's a fundamental assumption underlying this with the transition Zones and we're getting 11,000 capacity. I could go take a couple warehouses in north Austin and give somebody, you know, six stories worth of residential capacity on a transition line and I'd get more units and I'd be guaranteed to get them. Like, I mean, we just have to -- I mean, there are choices and planning options that we could do, and there's several places in the city where we could do that if we planned it. And so I mean the transition Zones are really what is giving everyone the heartburn, and we really have to understand how little we're getting from these transition Zones. And they're gonna not just create heartburn now. It's gonna create challenges for folks moving forward as the neighborhoods change. >> Certainly. We will give you as much information as we have and feel comfortable producing [4:54:29 PM] and providing. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: So I think this is a bigger conversation here that we should have, much of it for second reading, certainly before third reading. There's an advantage of housing missing-middle housing types, additional housing types than we have. There's an advantage to us having created density and walkability near transit ways but I think the question people have raised is a valid one for us to discuss. It goes hand in hand. We have a lot of consternation and involvement with respect to transition Zones. It also would appear as if the transition Zones aren't going to bring about anywhere near the impact some people are concerned about disruption in their neighborhoods. It's just not going to be that in their neighborhoods. So it's -- you can look at this from both sides of that same equation. I think it's an important conversation for us to have. Paige. >> Ellis: Because I still have a little bit of time left. >> Mayor Adler: Do you? >> Ellis: I wanted to use it [4:55:31 PM] up. I just know these next couple of weeks are going to be really difficult for all of us. I just want to remind people that a lot of people get scared about the buildings, get worried about the bulldozers they didn't call they think are showing up for their house because I know this concern has been echoed out in the community. But this is about homes for people no matter for it's solo home, if it's an apartment, if it's a duplex or whatever type of housing option that you need. I hope that we enter these next two weekends with a bit of compassion, understanding that the 1984 land development code we are currently operating under is the reason people are being priced out and it's the reason we have mcmansions. So I just really want to make sure that we approach this with a level of clarity that this is about people, it's about renters and it's about homes, no matter what size or shape they take. Sop please keep that in mind as we go through this next step. >> Mayor Adler: Thanks. We have five minutes left. I want to say, in case people want to respond to it, there was a question about ending times on the sessions that we have. [4:56:35 PM] On tomorrow's work session, my feeling was the group still wanted us to end at 5:00 tomorrow, work session, which is what I would do absent the will of the council being exercised differently. That gets us then to the work sessions next week. On the work sessions next week we have a second reading. My understanding was we have a full day that folks wanted to go until 5:00 next Tuesday. What I would do absent direction. On Wednesday, it's kind of a broken up day. We don't start until 3:00 and go 3:00 to 5:00, then there's a break, we back at 7:30. I'd suggest we keep our calendars clear to go to 11:00 that night. We're not starting until 3:00 P.M. Then on the following day, on Thursday, I'd recommend [4:57:35 PM] that we keep our calendars clear again until 11:00. My hope is we can finish second reading next week. If not I think staff is supposed to be reaching out to council offices about the following week but hopefully we can get this done next week. >> Pool: Mayor, question. >> Mayor Adler: Three minutes to 5:00. Anybody want to say anything about the scheduling piece of this. Alison first. >> Alter: My question wasn't on -- >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry. >> Alter: It wasn't on the scheduling. >> Mayor Adler: Scheduling questions? Yes. >> Pool: So the Thursday February 13 that you just said would go until 11:00, we are starting at nine in the morning. >> Mayor Adler: We go from 9:00 to noon then recessing at [indiscernible] >> Alter: Some of us have mobility committee in the interim. >> Kitchen: That's why we're taking a break. >> Alter: For those of you who have mobility committee [4:58:36 PM] we're not going to have a break? >> Pool: My point is going to 11:00 P.M. I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that. I feel like 10:00 P.M. Would be more appropriate since we're starting so early and it's a busy day. >> Mayor Adler: When we get there we can pick -- I was suggesting people as they're making arrangements and the like try to keep it open until 11:00. Hopefully we can get this done. Ann. >> Kitchen: Scheduling question. So we had talked earlier and you said something about work session. So which of these days -- does that mean that we're thinking that we start on Tuesday with the items that we identified that we needed more conversation about? Or what's your thought there? >> Mayor Adler: My hope is we'll be able to work through some of these issues tomorrow. We're in work session from 9:00 to 11:00. Then we're going to break for two hours. And then we'll be back from 1:00 to 5:00 in work session. >> Kitchen: Okay. So the conversation we Teed up earlier today related to affordable housing we would have tomorrow? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. [4:59:37 PM] >> Kitchen: Okay. Second scheduling question. What's -- what are we anticipating about public hearing? You know, last time we had scheduled a day for public hearing. So are we just thinking that when we start on Tuesday people can come testify? Or -- >> Mayor Adler: Right. I had laid out some parameters in the posting that I had put on to the board, urging people to sign up as we begin our meeting. We'll take the total number of people, we'll divide by the two hours, but in no event will we go less than a minute for people being able to speak. But I posted something on the board last -- >> Kitchen: I'm sorry. I didn't see that. >> Mayor Adler: No problem. Okay. It's almost 5:00. Anything else before we break. >> Tovo: Back to public comment. I'm sorry, I think I missed that proposal for public comment as well. I see it now. So is the assumption that this will be one continuous council meeting and from [5:00:37 PM] Tuesday, Wednesday, to Thursday, so people will have an opportunity to speak just once? >> Mayor Adler: I think -- >> Tovo: Or are we ending and reconvening a different meeting? >> Mayor Adler: I think the council can make that choice as we finish on Tuesday. But my understanding is that you can't have a meeting that reconvenes over three days. >> Tovo: That was the substance of my question. Two would be one day, two days would be one meeting. >> Mayor Adler: We are noticed for three separate meetings if the council chooses to work that way. >> Tovo: So we're noticed for three separate meetings, and in no case can we have fewer than two? >> Mayor Adler: Correct. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That said, 5:00, this meeting is adjourned? [Adjourned]