City Council Work Session Transcript – 02/18/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 2/18/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/18/2020 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. [9:11:29 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. We have a quorum present. It is 9:11. Tuesday, February 18th, 2020. We're in the boards and commissions room. This is the city of Austin council work session. Colleagues, we have two briefings. One is an update on homelessness issues. The second one is a briefing on puds. We have five items that have been pulled. We also have an executive session to discuss the palm school and to discuss many in executive session. We need to come out after the executive session back here to discuss the many issues publicly. So let's move forward recognizing we have to come -- we have to come back here after executive session. Let's go ahead and begin with the briefings. [9:12:31 AM] We'll start with the briefing on homelessness. >> Good morning, councilmembers. I am Chris shorter, assistant city manager for health, environment, culture and lifelong learning, here to kick off the homeless update for the morning. We do have two presentations, one presentation from echo and another from integral care. After the presentations we do plan to bring up priority leads to give updates on the guided path program, housing and motel strategy, a communications update as well as encampment update and cleanup from the teams. So before we do that and the priority leads start, we would like to again invite [9:13:32 AM] echo and then following echo, integral air up to provide presentations. >> Good morning, everybody. I was here to talk a little bit about a homeless navigation pilot that the city has been funding through echo for about two years now. I will say that I get very nervous in these so I will talk very quickly. So I would appreciate grace and patience. And then David Gomez will be coming after me to present on the path program, which has been doing fantastic navigation work and outreach work since before I was born. So consider this an opening act. [9:14:33 AM] So the echo homeless navigation pilot is a street outreach and homeless navigation, housing navigation project. So our -- the primary goal of our program is to connect people experiencing homelessness in austin-travis county the opportunities for safe, stable and permanent housing. So there's three primary ways that we do that through this particular grant. One is through housing outreach. So very short version is that's when we actually take the opportunity to apply for services and receive services directly to people experiencing homelessness wherever they feel most comfortable requesting services. So rather than requiring folks to come to us to ask for help, we bring the help to them. Once we've engaged someone, the primary service to be provided directly is called housing navigation. So the purpose of that interaction is to help someone identify all of the different service options and personal pathways they may have to return to safe and stable housing. And then to make that happen. A very common situation, [9:15:33 AM] especially for our federally funded housing programs here, is folks will now they're eligible for a program, we will know that someone is eligible for a program, but they will require some very, very specific documentation. Frequently specific document from medical provider in order to verify eligibility. So one of the primary purposes of this program and programs like it is to identify what those final hurdles are and help folks check that final box to be able to access services. And then its final piece is services coordination. In addition to the direct services they are doing, they drive our systems level community-wide coordination so rather than everybody doing their best in just a case-by-case basis, they also provide a lot of admin support in making sure that the different programs that are providing street outreach services or housing navigation services are coordinating with one another and coordinating with the actual housing providers so that everybody is working together as a system efficiently and -- [9:16:35 AM] yeah. The primary target is folks experiencing homelessness outside of Austin's downtown core. So when this project was funded the idea was that host's primary target is downtown. So this was intended to supplement house of host target area. So specific targets are highly visible camp sites, folks living in public or semi public spaces such as highway overpasses and pedestrian bridges. And there was a specific mandate when this was funded to especially be sure that underserved areas in southern and northern Austin were targeted by this particular project. Y'all will hear in a bit about the work that path is doing as well, which is the lion's share of the work in those areas, but I believe it's a happy and healthy partnership there. And then program funding. It funds two full-time physicians and then part of a management position. Contract foals goals to [9:17:35 AM] serve 180 clients every fiscal year and last year we served 213. Full-time positions. The next couple of slides we break out in more detail about the general services we described earlier. So for housing outreach again the idea is to bring services directly to clients so that folks who can't access normal standing locations where those locations aren't convenient to a person's day-to-day, that does not become a barrier to someone accessing services. The services we provide when we are interacting with someone access to our permanent housing homelessness dedicated interventions such as emergency shelter and the coordinated entry process for permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs and also direct diversion or reunit opportunities. If they need something small like a bus ticket or a mediation call with a family member, we also provide those services. [9:18:35 AM] In addition to that our navigators are also trained on the vast majority of mainstream things that people can access the mainstream social services pathways as well as those specifically dedicated to homelessness. Housing navigation, so like I said, this is for folks that do have a specific programmatic housing opportunity coming up, but they have some kind of barrier that is keeping them from being able to access that immediately. So the most common barriers there are a lack of information, so clients may not know that they have an opportunity coming up. Or they may not know the details of the opportunity that's coming up. So it's very common that someone will hear that there's an opportunity, but it's hard to distinguish from just a letter or a phone call whether that's a section 8 voucher or an actual permanent supportive housing project or whether it's just an opportunity to come speak to a case manager. So these staff make sure that folks know exactly what services are available. And the steps to take to access those. [9:19:36 AM] And then when there is a specific barrier a client is having trouble crossing, again, most commonly a specific piece of kind of paperwork that's specific to a program, they actually provide that connection step to make that happen. And then services coordination of partnerships. So we have lots of different programs that are providing street outreach or navigation. Sometimes as part of their dedicated and sole purpose and sometimes just as part of their mission and day-to-day. So in addition to the direct individual work that this project does, we also put a lot of effort into being sure that these staff are communicating with all of the other applicable programs and trying to create as many communication structures as possible, so other programs that talk to one another as well in the easiest, most efficient manner possible. I won't even attempt to read down that list because even though there's more than a dozen I'm sure I left someone out and will get in trouble. There's lots of really fantastic folks doing fantastic work. [9:20:37 AM] Challenges and opportunities. So this is probably an old chestnut from echo, but it's truelove the biggest resource barrier that we have right now for street outreach and navigation is actually permanent supportive housing programs or specifically -- other, permanent housing programs. Rapid rehousing as well as permanent supportive housing. What we have found is that when those resources are available, especially when they're available with extremely low barriers and when they are dedicated to people experiencing homelessness, folks are enthusiastic about accepting those opportunities and the programs that we do have active are phenomenally is successful in turning that enthusiasm into an actual move-in. So the biggest challenge we have right now is -- as street outreach programs and navigators is keeping folks hope up for lack of a better word that those resources are being created and are on the way. And then rebuilding trust so that once that opportunity actually does come up folks [9:21:39 AM] know, hey, I know you've waited for one, two, three, 10 years, but it's really real this time. Okay. And I should have had a more dramatic last slide, sorry. [Laughter]. Questions to follow up. There's our website and there's my email. >> Mayor Adler that's okay. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Hi. Thank you. You did great. A quick question. What's the source of funding for this outreach and navigation program? Is that what you call it, the outreach... >> The technical contract name is the homeless navigation pilot. If I had known that one day I would have been presenting the name I would have named it something catchier. But it's funded through an Austin public health grant. >> Kitchen: Homeless navigation pilot. Is there some place that we could get a drill down just to -- I appreciate the information here and -- but just kind of the history and the number of folks served. [9:22:41 AM] Can I ask y'all to send that to me. >> Absolutely. >> Kitchen: Okay, great. If you could send that me that would be great. >> I'd be more than happy to to. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Garza: You said towards the end there people waiting one, two, 10 years. Do you know an average of time people wait for that permanent housing? >> So unfortunately because there's so many programs that are dedicated to such specific populations, I actually prefer not to even pretend there's an average. For va eligible veterans it's less than 90 days. For folks who don't fall into any special target population we have some folks who have been requesting services since the first day we asked. >> Garza: Okay. Is the there an instance where people have been waiting 10 years? >> Our specific system here [9:23:41 AM] has been around for five years, but yes, we have folks our first day that said I've been experiencing homelessness for five years and would like to not be. >> Garza: Thank you. Good job. >> Mayor Adler: So talk for a second because it's an important program and you guys are doing just great work. In part because we now see the challenge of homelessness that exist in this community, we've brought people out from the woods and the street, it's now something that our community sees in ways that we didn't see before. I note that you have a contract goal of serving 180 people every year. And served 213 last year. How many people could you serve if you had the resources? >> As many people as are experiencing homelessness. >> Mayor Adler: Do you have a feel for how many people there are in your [9:24:41 AM] target population? >>>> To avoid our target folks in the parking lot, it's basically the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in any year in Austin. So more than three thousand in any given year. >> Mayor Adler: So in order to be able to treat the number of people or to sense the number of people that you could assist, recognizing the universe is maybe 3,000 and you're hitting 200 a year, any idea what the path is from here to there? Is the -- is the roadblock having the permanent supportive housing units available? Is it having greater number of shelter opportunities? [9:25:41 AM] What's rapid re-housing in this context as compared to permanent supportive housing? >> Sure. So a lot of the specific like detailed answers to that would actually be found in the action plan to end homelessness. But in terms of which pieces are the greatest initial need, if there were sufficient permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing available right now, it wouldn't be a matter of hot and humid folks -- if there was sufficient rapid rehousing resources and I mean the sufficient programs to connect folks to subsidies and units, two staff serving 300 people could eventually serve everybody. It would just take longer. So right now we are serving 213 people, but lots of folks are -- quotienting that last piece or more -- we're connecting that last piece or more folks are waiting for that last piece to be connected, but they're now their point of engagement while we wait for [9:26:42 AM] an opening to come up. If sufficient permanent supportive housing were available, then the same number of staff could have much quicker turnover for lack of a better word, hey, great news, my job is to give you great news and sign one piece of paper with you and -- >> And you move them into a place. >> We could serve them, yeah. >> Mayor Adler: So there are two kinds of housing that you need to be able to move people into. You have the permanent supportive housing, which is potentially a home that they can be in indefinitely, accompanied with the services that they need. And then rapid rehousing. Rapid rehousing, what is that? >> Sure. So a very detailed answer would take a lot of time, but shorthand response would be so both permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing, the end goal is to connect somebody to a housing placement they can stay at for as long as they want, so a permanent place. The primary distinction is that with rapid rehousing the support services post [9:27:44 AM] move-in and the financial assistance post move-in or short-term or at the temporary. And with permanent supportive housing both the case management support services and the subsidy are intended to be permanent. So overall goal is app can have a -- rapid rehousing can have a much quicker turnaround, but because the services are by definition time limited, there's some folks that need that permanent subsidy and/or case management. >> Mayor Adler: So we have a universe, we have 3,000 people and some of those 3,000 people that you just described in any given year may enter into experiencing homelessness and exit experiencing homelessness within that year. Is that right? So there's a term. If you have a permanent supportive housing unit, it's not like just one person necessarily has that forever. You can run statistically across the balance of permanent supportive housing. You can move people into it [9:28:45 AM] and out of it so it has a turn function, isn't that right? >> So typically with permanent supportive housing we don't encourage an expectation that units will turn over. We -- usually when we're planning out capacity and like housing, future housing needs, we plan that if somebody goes into a permanent supportive housing placement, they will probably need that for an extremely long time. We have had of course -- because there's such resilience of the folks we serve, there's lots of folks where after a couple of years of permanent supportive housing or sometimes even less, folks are no longer need either the subsidy or the case management, so -- lots of resources, initiatives come into place to make sure that anybody that wants to move on can, but primarily when we are creating permanent supportive housing the expectation is if somebody is going into that they will probably need that for a very long time. >> Mayor Adler: Where do we house people for rapid rehousing? >> All around the city. >> Mayor Adler: Are those rent assistant subsidies or [9:29:45 AM] vouchers that we're providing to people? >> So it's usually not paired with a voucher. Sometimes if we're lucky we can make that happen, but usually it's a -- either a placement at a private landlord that's -- either a private landlord or -- I'm using the word fortunate, but if we are fortunate that it can be an affordable provider or a public housing provider, but because folks experiencing homelessness tiply have no ex-at the expedited pathway. >> Mayor Adler: So the number of placements or housing that you were doing prior to June of the same rate after June as we had before June? Or have those changed? >> I would say let's triple check with the data folks in case I'm putting my foot in my mouth here, but I don't believe there's been any change. Going back to what you said [9:30:47 AM] earlier, ordinance changes that made unsheltered homelessness more visible did not create more unsheltered homelessness, it just made it more visible. And it did not make any additional housing resources or create any either. The problem is still the same, just more visible. The resources are still the same. >> >> Mayor Adler: So manager, what I would be interested in seeing is that we have the plan that he spoke about, which was kind of theoretical and identified the universe. I'd really like to know what our plan is for scaling this opportunity and over what time frame we expect to be able to see it and how much it's going to cost us to be able to do that. So the public can have an expectation of where it is that we're going, over what period of time, with what cost, so that we can measure how we're doing along that. It's a lot more visible now so we have a lot more people that are aware of the challenge we have and a lot [9:31:48 AM] more people that are calling for us to be doing more. I know that we are with the motels, but we're not actually seeing that on the ground yet and I think that people want to see stuff on the ground and want to have a feel for what their path is in a way that we can measure progress against it. Do you have any idea how soon we can see something like that so the public can know what we're doing? >> Sure, mayor, I really appreciate that question and the comment. It greatly aligns with what we're going to hear in a few minutes from our priority lead for motel and housing. So as our strategy is articulated, it aligns very much with this need for -- for more housing. So whether it's motels or other sources, we are certainly on the path. So we'llnary a few minutes -- we'll hear in a [9:32:48 AM] few minutes from our lead what the plans are in the short-term and what our needs in the long-term will be. >> Mayor Adler: That would be great because I'm going to be interested in knowing and we can ask? A second how we get to 3,000 people and how long we think it's going to take and what resources we need to be able to get to that equilibrium place. But I'll wait for the next person to talk. >> Very good. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you, Chris. So thanks very much for the work that you do and the important different components. You've talked about the connection to housing. Could you talk a little bit about the more sort of immediate needs that the outreach staff are often working with individuals experiencing homelessness around? We've had presentations from the host team and it's my understanding that the second bullet -- well, under challenges and opportunities, it talks about the time dedicated to preserving the health and safety of individuals experiencing long-term homelessness. So I imagine some of the needs are similar to what [9:33:50 AM] we've heard our host team working on, but I wondered if you could give us examples and give us a sense of the breadth much that work. >> Sure. I'll be honest that I can't do it nearly as much justice as the host team could or David that I know can. But it's the intuitive and the date needs that you would expect. For folks that have been living outside, especially for a long period of time, all of the immediate emergency health care needs, safety needs, both just immediate needs of I'm going to be sleeping outside tonight. Like I need this, this and this to be safe. And is one type of needs and just all the social needs, physical health care needs, every need you can imagine where if someone had been inside this situation would not have gotten worse, but for folks in situations like recovery from surgery outside, a lot of street [9:34:52 AM] outreach capacity goes towards those immediate health and safety needs. >> Tovo: And when the outreach team is made aware of those kinds of immediate health needs, medical needs, that's when I assume your group, like the host team, connects with those other partners in the community to bring in the health resources that are necessary. >> Yeah. We have -- so in terms of physical health, the community health paramedics and the community health street medicine team actually have an integrated mission to do both. So they do street outreach and housing navigation, but also they have clinical medical professionals to be able to provide those services right therein house. Host has a similar model with -- with the paramedic system. And for folks that do not have it integrated service, whether that's because of -- whether it's an inability to directly provide medical [9:35:53 AM] needs or something related or -- something similar like let's say veteran benefit applications, folks have really strong partnerships with the providers that can do those so that either the mobile teams can come directly to the client or the mobile team can bring the client to a static location like the care connections clinic down south to do a warm handoff to get those needs met. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. Manager, I would like to suggest that that might be a good area of focus for one of our work session briefings because there are a lot of different outreach teams and they're working in partnership and they're working in different areas sometimes, but I think getting a real sense of what that picture looks like and the number of community partners who are involved in that kind of work in different ways would be very helpful I think for our public to know and for us to have an opportunity to on really see all in one place. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just a quick question. So as we've been talking [9:36:55 AM] about, the challenges are huge in terms of the numbers of the need and the number you're able to serve. So how do you -- if I heard you correctly, this is a program that works outside of downtown. So how do you decide where to go? Because this is outreach. You're actually going to -- maybe I should say what are your priorities? I mean, I just want an understanding of how clients get into the program and where you go to do outreach and that sort of thing? >> So for our particular program because it only two folks, we actually communicate with the other street outreach programs and we try to create a -- this is going to sound horribly simplified, but also too promising. To create a kind of a citywide plan so that we do know, hey, folks, citywide meeting, we have heard there's a big camp site down here or we know for a fact [9:37:55 AM] there's always a big camp site need here. Which team is going to meet that? Which days with how many folks? Do we need additional folks to go? Hey, we've heard about a new camp site. Who can go out there and find out like actual face to face together what that need is and especially what that need is in relation to the places we're already going. So it's a very dynamic, honestly, month to month, week to week process. >> Kitchen: Okay. [Static]. Do you follow the folks until you can get them into housing? >> Yeah. So our program in particular, but also any program that's coordinating that is willing to, we ask folks to track their progress through the common service point hms, homeless information system database that echo runs. So if folks are touching multiple programs, any program that touches the client again can see kind of the progress that's already been made or any next steps that were already identified. And as folks do move from [9:38:58 AM] unsheltered homelessness into actual permanent housing, any program that was previously working with the client can see that happen. >> Kitchen: So it would just seem like you're caseload would fill up pretty quick. So particularly given the fact that people have to wait awhile to get in. So -- I'll talk to you offline about more, but one last question so I can get a sense of that. How many new clients are you able to take a month? In other words, what is your turnover of your client caseload? >> This is a little embarrassing, but I'll be honest, I don't have that off the top of my head. >> Kitchen: No worries. That's drilling down a bit. I'll be happy to talk with you offline. >> A short pithy response would be it's usually tied to the amount of housing movements we do have. When we have an exciting opportunity like the oak springs property that integral care created -- >> Kitchen: So it goes up and down. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Two more quick questions. And you probably already answered this. What's the difference of [9:39:58 AM] relationship between you and the path program? You're both doing housing navigation. >> I'm sorry, so we -- the two teams provide very similar services. In terms of street outreach and housing navigation. The path team has more folks and a broader scope, which I think y'all will see in David's presentation in a bit here. And also they do have integrated mental health care connection services so they have that integrated piece where folks that have immediate need. >> Mayor Adler: What do you do that they don't do? >> I will actually say I don't think there's anything we do that path doesn't with these two staff. We focus a little bit more on the program to program coordination side of things. As kind of part of our department's mission. But honestly, between us and [9:40:58 AM] path, it's very frequent that it's a -- we know it's a street outreach work that needs to go out over here, but whether that's someone for path or someone from host or someone from echo, it's -- it will be the same S. >> Mayor Adler: Got you. And then the program that's operating outside of the arch, taking we did a southbound sus of people that were out there when the ordinances changed and we were going to house those folks, is that something that you're doing or is that something that somebody else is doing? >> So the actual initiative is being driven through Austin public health. Echo is there in a coordination and strategic support role. So these two staff were originally with city permission redirected from down south to the arch for the beginning of the pilot. But now they, along with the other programs that were temporarily shifted, have returned to their original placements, so now it's primarily programs that were [9:42:00 AM] already downtown doing trustee nitsch outreach like host and to a degree path -- doing outreach like host and to a degree path. While we wait for the permanent supportive housing that can be dedicated to housing. >> Mayor Adler: I'll wait to ask them about that. >> I will add that we are going to receive an update from public health from around guided path program send around guided path program >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else right now? Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. >> In addition to echo's navigation pilot program we wanted to invite integral care up to talk about the path program. >> Morning. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to talk [9:43:00 AM] about a 30-year-old program that's been in our city for that long. I hope I can be clear and concise and complete this in 11 minutes, but that's a lot of stuff and I like to talk so I'm going to try to get through this. So let's just get going. So -- >> Mayor Adler: Sorry, would you speak up, please? Bring it up a little closer. >> Path is one of a score of programs that are part of integral care, and, you know, integral care's involvement in homeless services has been forever in that they've provided services organ to provide services back in '68. And to get to the people that couldn't afford to get private care for behavioral health, substance abuse and intellectual developmental delay disabilities. So they've been involved in [9:44:00 AM] it for awhile. So there's a part of what they do or what they've done is about taking services to where the people are. I was lucky enough in 1976 to start working with mhmr, which are what it was called back then, the body of social work specialists. I've been doing community mental health work for awhile trying to engage individuals who feel disenfranchised and disconnected from services that they may not even know that they need. In the in the '70s and '80s, there was a push to deinstitutionalize individuals who were in mental health institutions. That transition didn't go so very well because resources didn't follow the individuals. As a result quite a few individuals who were homeless had mental health issues. In 1987, you will 6, the [9:45:02 AM] federal government made the path government available. It's a program to assist in the transition from homelessness. The idea was to provide assertive outreach to find these individuals and try to figure out why they felt disenfranchised and why they failed to connect to the -- to the community mental health system that was available for them then. And so -- integral care received the -- applied for and received the grant to do path in '87 and we have been doing it since. We have been -- in -- we have always been meeting our metrics and our goals and one of the better -- I shouldn't say better -- successful path teams in the state. So ... Um ... Oops. So -- so because of integral care's involvement in caring about the individuals who [9:46:03 AM] are homeless who end up being very vulnerable, they have developed a fairly good continuum. I think some of you have seen this before we -- we have a budget of about 13 million that -- that's dedicated to this population. Last year, we served 5400 people, 670 people received housing. Last -- just last year. The job of path is way at the beginning where the arrow is, to provide outreach and engagement to those individuals who feel disenfranchised and we have been doing it since '87, like I said. And -- and the -- the people haven't changed much. The environment has changed a little bit. But the treatment of these individuals hasn't changed a whole bunch. I look forward to you guys being agents of change to -- you already have been, so thank you for that. And I applaud the -- the [9:47:04 AM] process of -- of continuing to make these individuals more visible and more -- more able access services. So -- so this is the overview of where we are now. Our funding for the path program is 754,318, some of it is -- most of it is federal that comes through the state. The state throws in a little bit of dollars and then the city matches and you can see that on there. The most important part of the path team is the staff. The -- that is the tool that we have constant availability for. I tell my team that you are the resource that you can guarantee you can give the individual that they are interacting with all of the time. And so it's very important to have the right kinds of individuals doing this work, because it is different. It is -- it does require a [9:48:06 AM] special kind of person. Host has been very successful because we -- not because, because they do good work, but also we gave them three of our path workers to pilot it and then they kept them. Which was not a bad thing, because I think -- we had no turnover on my team since, like, '95, '96. So I've got people that have been with me for over 20 years. When we moved the people over to host, it provided an opportunity for us to hire some people with -- that are a little younger because we were all getting a little old. But still doing good work. Well, so let me go back here. Our metrics are that we are supposed to outreach to about 1100 individuals and enroll about 550. Enrollment means that we actually set up a treatment plan with goals and start working with them and they are willing to do that. The outreach component is these are individuals that we get enough demographic information that we can put [9:49:07 AM] them into an hmis system and be able to count them as an outreach activity. We see probably three, 4,000 more people who are homeless that are not ready to engage with us. The outreach and engagement process has taken as long as nine years, and thank god we've had staff that have been consistent and -- in pushing to make ourselves available to these individuals for that long of a period of time until they finally decide that they are worthy to -- to get housing. That they are worthy to make their lives better. Somebody asked what the difference between path and the homeless outreach team or the navigation team is and that is that we concentrate on the mental health needs, but also in kind of the beginning stages of helping individuals who are homeless reinstill a sense of hope that things can get better. And sadly we do and have found people that have been [9:50:07 AM] homeless in our community for over 20 years. So our philosophy -- is a no wrong door philosophy, because we are out there providing this -- this service throughout Travis county. All of Travis county. And then the parts where Austin is outside of -- of Travis county, we go there, too. Occasionally we cross over to -- to other counties, but that's all directed by where the individuals are that we find and where they tell us they're going to be so that we can find them to try and continue to engage them. Our philosophy, as I said, is no wrong door. Which means when we go to a campsite, we are not just looking for individuals that meet mental health needs or have issues with mental health. I personally feel like everybody we find has an issue with mental health because if you are not depressed because you are having to live out there and worry about where your food is coming from, then, you know, wow, I want to meet [9:51:08 AM] him or her and try to figure out how they got to that place. But we employ a number of techniques or models. The trans theoretical stages of change is something that came after our program already started that includes motivational interviewing, but we have don all the way back to call Rogers and really focusing on listening to the individuals that we are engaging with and treating them with dignity and respect, acceptance and understanding. So -- so we use rogeran transactional analysis and stages of change and motivational interviewing, but it's more about accepting the individuality of the person that we are working with because each and every one of them is different and we cannot and should not lump them into a category or a generality, [9:52:13 AM] on those traits and part of what we end up trying to do is to help them rediscover their unique humanity and use the energy that comes from that to work on their goals. So the -- at the basis of this is -- is establishing a relationship of trust, honesty. And if you can do that, with individuals -- you can begin to have them -- believe that -- that things can happen, that change can happen, that they can be hopeful again. So when we start working with individuals, things, as I said, is just calling them by name, seeing them when we say we're going to see them, again like I said, we have done that with -- with individuals for nine years before they are willing to engage. But they say, "Oh, here they come in again." It's like "We are back Joe, [9:53:15 AM] what can we do to help you today?" It's like, "Can you give me a pair of shoes?" So we do that. So our goals begin very simple, but they get to the point where we finally are able to get them to decide maybe it's worth another shot to get into housing or to get a job or to get mental health services or to get my diabetes checked or to get my whatever is going on. One of the things that we have found was that if we treat the resources that we're trying to link the individuals to the same way we engage with the individuals that we're serving, with dignity and respect and -- and honesty, then we can link an individual to a service provider and have that be a successful engagement and there's -- there's magic that happens when you do that. If you are able to bring an individual to a service provider and have that be a [9:54:16 AM] successful linkage, the provider is happy, the client is happy, and they are more apt to do it again. So when you call and say, "I need some help with this individual because they need your services" they will say, "Yes, bring them again." Again, like I said, my staff has been with me for a long time, most of them, and we have developed relationships with providers that range from getting tennis shoes to actually getting housing and everything in between. Because we have established good relationships with those individuals. I think that -- that as I said, the success that we have with the clients that we serve leads to success with -- with them via a warm handoff that we are able to do. So we follow the individual all the way to getting all of the different services that they need and, also, are warm with the provider of the service and this disallows for them to be willing to accept the [9:55:17 AM] individuals that we bring. I think it's important to note that the people we work with, they hire us to consult them on how to change their situation. And it's very important for us, again our staff, is to let them control the situation. Because we go to them, wherever they are, they can decide not to be there when they told us that they wanted to meet us there, are not to follow through with what needs to happen. So they are in will co. So the key, again -- they are in control. The key again is to let them be in control. The opportunity to let them do what needs to be done and to be in control of their service planning goals. Because if they do own their service plan, then they will work to make it happen as opposed to having a plan that we devise for them and the problem with that is that, one, you don't empower them, you don't make them feel like they made it happen; and, two, if it doesn't work out, then they can easily blame you for [9:56:18 AM] creating a plan that didn't work. So um ... So where do we do this magic that we do. When you begin to reflect the humanity of people, you begin to see major changes. That is a gift that all of my staff have been able to realize, to see, and to a certain extent expect. That's the reward that we get, that's where we stick around, that's why we do the work that we do. So we provide assertive outreach. Like I said, we go to places where they are, wherever it is, whatever it is. We used to do it all over the city. When host got created we said we're not going to be downtown because there's few of us and now we're going to be able to focus on everything outside of the downtown area and west university area. We do it at fixed locations, [9:57:19 AM] also, there are providers of service that invite us to be there, to meet with their people, because they provide a service there. We also go to places besides the shelters and places where -- where homeless services are provided, we go to churches, to pantries and to places where there are food pantries and clothes pantries, but also places where the churches invite individuals to come. The libraries and -- there are some businesses that actually give us a call and say, hey, there's a bunch of homeless people out here, can you come do something about it? And we do. In reach is an interesting term. What it revolves around, actually talking to providers of service, actually our own agency and say are there people that are homeless that are engaged in receiving services that may not be as successful because they are homeless and then targeting that individual to go and talk to them about what we might be able to do to make them successful. [9:58:20 AM] Prevention is something that we have had to jump into because a lot of the individuals that we got into housing at some point got into problems and were then being evicted or would call us, five, six, seven years later and say, "Hey, can you help me again, I'm going to get kicked out." So we jump in. We've been able to develop a fairly good eviction process that we have been piloting now for a little while. We average about 30 referrals from property managers and individuals who are being evicted and have been successful with about a third of them to keep them housed because once they become homeless, it's very difficult to get them housed again. So the other thing that's on there is education and engagement upstream and to this point I think it's important that we look at places that are adding to the individuals who are homeless in our community, whether it's dropouts from [9:59:21 AM] school, teenaged pregnancies, people flunking out of UT and the other universities and because they lose their scholarship, they also lose their housing, people that are being deinstitutionalized from different places or discharged from hospitals. Our desire, our hope is that once a system of care touches these individuals, it would be greatly beneficial and save our resources if we could guarantee that they wouldn't be put in a situation where they would to go get sober again, go to detox again or go get the same ailment treated again at a hospital that costs a lot of money. And the way to do that is by providing a safe and stable place for these individuals to be. We -- because we deal with our providers the same way we deal with our clients, and that is by -- by a relationship based and -- and working with them, understanding their limitations and taking that into account, we have a tremendous number of -- of [10:00:22 AM] collaborations. The list would go on and on and on and on. But we -- with regards to healthcare, we trained the community care street outreach people, street medicine people, to not be afraid of going into camp sites and took them out there with us and we're involved at the beginning of that. We are at the community care co clinic on south first, which was established to try and make a one-stop shop for medical and psychiatric services. So it is a place that we can almost guarantee that if we find a person on the street -- there are -- they are more willing to receive medical services, we can say you can get it at care co, but then also a mental health provider there that we can do like hallway consultations between the medical doctor and the psychiatrist and then be able to provide holistic treatment for the individual and that's something that integral care is also doing, trying to provide holistic treatment. We've been working with the [10:01:22 AM] justice system for a while. It began a long time -- before the downtown Austin community court got started, but we get their docket and we check it against people that we're looking for, people that we often lose track of. And -- and then -- then with the police department, we have a wonderful relationship with the constables. We have been able to go out with them and shout out to drew mcangus who had helped us find some camp sites that we didn't know exist, especially southwest. As far as the public library, we -- we have a presence there and then -- then watershed recently received an award that -- I guess will be talked about in a little bit for the violet bag program, that we were able to provide the outreach and engagement part of linking these individuals who are needing to be moved or to be -- to move while the cleanup happens, and try [10:02:23 AM] to link them to services. The same thing with parks and recreation, because a lot of these individuals have been -- have found a place -- a safe and stable place in watershed property or parks and recreation property. There's been lots of campaigns to -- to try to end homelessness and the path team has been involved in that from the veterans initiative to a whole bunch of other stuff. We wrote the first shelter plus care grants and we wrote the initial hmis grant that we then handed over to echo when they became a 501(c)(3) And we celebrated, I think, the -- the invitation from txdot to be involved when they were doing the cleanup and the work on the infrastructure, to -- to humanely ask the individuals who are there and end dangered to move but to do it with having asked to go and engage them, trying to get them out of [10:03:24 AM] danger's way. Endangered. I am done. [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: Thank you very much. Thank you for decades of -- of important and critical work in our community. Since you ended by talking about the txdot collaboration with path, I wondered if you could tell us whether that's continued with the states renewed efforts under the underpasses and also -- >> I'm sorry. >> Tovo: One other thing. If you could also tell us what past involvement is with the -- with the -- with the area that the governor designated for camping. >> I wondered if that question would come up. So I work with txdot, started and continued, because not only were they -- they asked us to get involved because of the -- [10:04:25 AM] because of the bridge cleanups, but also in their attempt to reduce the number of homeless individuals that were dying on our highways because they -- they didn't need to be there. They shouldn't need to be there. And so -- so that work continued with them after they pulled back from the cleanups that went to -- to Austin public works to do. We -- we continued with Austin public works to do the going to visiting the bridges, under the bridges, when it switched over. And then when the governor decided to jump back in or bring txdot back in, we got a call from txdot saying, look, we are back in the game, can you help, can you continue to do what you were doing before and we said, yeah, I mean, we are continuing to do it all the time and we will continue to do that. And I feel like this -- well, so we've been doing it for a while and been able to connect people to resources very well. With regards to the [10:05:28 AM] encampment, we go wherever individuals who are homeless are. There are over 140 people over there now and we have followed some of the people that we found and engaged either in camp sites or under bridges to that site. We continue to visit that site to provide services. We have a collaboration with the community health paramedics and they help us with the medical stuff. But we try to get the individuals who are there to come to care co, to the care co clinic, to that collaboration that we have to try to get their medical needs met. Psychiatrically we provide all of the levels of service that our agency has to offer. By either going out there or taking the provider out there or getting them to the clinic that they need to get to. And because we are out there and because we have a philosophy of no wro door, there are other services that we end up helping the individuals get connected [10:06:28 AM] to. We have been educating and learning together with Texas emergency disaster management team that's out there. Primarily the forestry workers that got assigned to be out there. Which I thought was interested. They said "We do trees, we don't do human beings." But we were able to help them get comfortable in dealing with that. So ... I hope that answers your question. >> Tovo: That does, thank you. And I had an opportunity to go out there and councilmember Renteria was also out there. There was some discussion about what services and what organizations were involved, but it wasn't clear to me that path was. I'm glad to hear that. You mentioned the community health paramedics also providing services out there. Can you help me understand which -- is that through community care street system -- >> This is the chips program. So the chips program an degree Hoffmeister who is [10:07:31 AM] kind of in charge of them. We have been collaborating for many, many, many years. So when we ever needed a community health paramedic, we could access them. We can say listen, there's a guy at this campsite, looks like he has gangrene, he won't go to the emergency cool, can you come out here -- emergency room, can you come out here? They would come out there and meet them at the campsite. Part of what they have been doing is that, wherever these individuals are. It just happens some of these individuals are at the campsite. Our hope that is the campsite doesn't equal you can't provide services here, because it is where they are and they are in our city. Just like we go to all of the different camp sites, we will go to that one and they come with us to help us with the individuals that can medical needs. >> Tovo: Thank you. That's our chip program? >> Yeah. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen? >> I wanted to say thank you. You all have helped us when [10:08:32 AM] we have called about individuals that are -- that we have -- that have come to our attention, either through our constituents or otherwise. So I know that y'all do that. If you could speak to that for a moment. I mean, what we have found is that if someone in particular is having difficulty, we can give you guys a call and you can go and check on it. >> So because we have been around for a long time, our phone number is available to lots of police officers, lots of politicians. We have been called out to -- by senator Watson's office on a couple of occasions when he's had somebody having difficulties. We respond to neighborhoods, we do presentations at neighborhoods and churches and say hey if you come across individuals like this and you care about them and you want them not to be arrested but you want [10:09:33 AM] something to be done, we can go and so we go. And we have responded to lots of calls from all of the different administrations and the different Austin public health employees that have been around. Call us and say, "Hey, we need some help. There's a constituent out here having difficulty. Can you come see what you guys might be able to do?" And we do that. There's only eight of us. I mean, eight people -- >> Kitchen: I know. >> But -- but -- but we're very flexible. And, again, we don't promise our -- our people that we work things that we cannot do. What we do promise them is that we will listen to them and we will tell them the truth about what we can and cannot do. And we do the same thing when you guys call. >> Kitchen: Uh-huh. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Renteria? >> Renteria: Thank you for what you do and -- and I'm glad that you brought up the [10:10:34 AM] fact that in the '80s, we did -- there was a lawsuit on a lot of the people that were suffering with mental illness was released, the promise of the state and the court saying they were going to provide the resources that we needed to take care of these people and unfortunately, like you said, it didn't happen. And we are facing the fact that there's a lot of people out there that -- that needs a lot of help, you know, and they are -- you know, I know that -- that when people are out there on the street for more than two years, they are the hardest to get off the street. I mean, that's just -- that's the -- that's a fact. And I am -- I am pleased -- when you said that a lot of these people go into these areas and camp out because they look at -- they want to be secure, I mean, they are just like anybody else, being out there all by yourself. So how many do you say [10:11:35 AM] that -- on these campsites, are these people camping out in groups? Because I -- I experienced the same thing when I went out to people call it abbottville, the governor's little village there. But the first thing that I heard them say is that they were out there because they want to feel secure. And they feel secure because there's security out there. Do you see a lot of that happening out there? >> Well, I think that the camp sites that I am familiar with, they do a good job of policing themselves. They don't allow themselves to get so big that it gets out of control. And they do that without any other resources except that they kind of have a marshal at arms that says hey, dude, that behavior is not going to be okay here. You need to leave or whatever. At the encampment, the governor's encampment, one of the things that we have heard loud and clear, it seems like the population that's out there is older [10:12:36 AM] and lots of women. And what I hear from the women is that -- and this is the reason why we got, say, sleep shelters started many, many years ago, hoped that it was still continuing and that would be something that we could be proud of. But the reality is that for -- for the women that are out there, if they are -- if they don't have a dog and they are not tied to a particular individual male or female, that the chances are they are going to be the victims of sexual assault. If not just once, maybe a number of times every night. And that is -- that is unconscionable. I can't believe that we are allowing that to happen. But it happens. And what I have been hearing from the ladies that are at the encampment is because the dps presence is there, that -- that there has not been a single rape out there. And I think that's a positive thing and they all talked about the fact that [10:13:37 AM] we finally have a safe and stable place to be. I know there's been discussions about storage and -- and they feel like they can leave their stuff behind and go to a job and not worry about their stuff getting ransacked arrest or stolen, that has led for people being able to get jobs and -- if they get a job, then they can afford to self resolve, that's wonderful. So that's what I see, that's what I find. >> Renteria: What's the possibility of this city being able to provide more service out there? I went out there and saw the conditions of their shower. The two little wash tubs that they have there to wash their clothes. I feel like there should be more out there. But it's just as a state we [10:14:37 AM] don't have that capacity to go out there and -- >> I think it's not a secret that pastor mark from sunrise church decided to step up and be the organizer for -- for the stuff that's going on out there. Trying to mobilize the resources that are necessary via churches or -- or -- or businesses or -- or anybody else that has resources that they need. They have tried to bring in mobile homes, not mobile homes, but rvs and trailers that had showers. But because they don't have sewer tie-in, then they can only provide as many showers as they get gray water for and then they have to leave. Same thing with laundry. But those are two things -- I want to mention the thing about the laundry stuff, one of the reasons why there's a lot of trash is because these -- these individuals [10:15:37 AM] who are out there don't get an opportunity to wash their clothes very often and they will use them until they get really dirty. And then they throw them away when they can get something else. But they would prefer to keep the clothes that they have and that they like. The only way to do that is to be able to do laundry. And so providing laundry and other hygiene stuff would be outstanding. I wish we could do it at different encampments, but there is a fear of sanctioned encampments because there is a fear that they will become -- become unruely, but I think we have an example where maybe they don't have to be that way and we can assist the individuals that are there through the program that you heard about a little while ago, because our job is to find the ones that are disenfranchised and reinstate some hope and then to link them to the service providers that could get them to the next step. And so if they are there already and we can stabilize [10:16:38 AM] them psychiatrically and medically, then they can work on housing and maybe we can get them other services that they might need there. And if we could -- if we could do that, not just in that encampment but in others, that would be great. Of course, the issue continues to be there's not enough affordable housing. >> Renteria: Well, thank you for your presentation, I really appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember harper-madison? >> I will echo my colleagues in thanking you for your work, you and your colleague, I really, really appreciated your presentation, including you putting the emphasis on just how long this has been an issue and sort of where it started. I think that helps to disarm some really unproductive rhetoric, so I thank you for pointing that out. Allan agreement during our [10:17:38 AM] visit to community first, put so much emphasis on the need for building community, what are the implications of having people that you can talk to, what are the implications of really feeling supported. Allan graham. Like people will advocate for you. I just find myself wondering how -- as a community, how do we build in intangibles, hope, self worth, value, sense of belonging. I just really struggle and I don't know if it's -- if it's a statement so much as a question. I just sort of struggle how do we do that. What do we as a community do to -- to make people feel those things that are inherently a part of the cyclical nature of homelessness. >> I think community is a very, very important part. The social problems people have sometimes lose to [10:18:38 AM] people losing their housing because we stick them in an apartment and they lose their support system. We find some of these individuals end up going back to where they were homeless just to have some social interaction. They have asked while we are doing what we are doing, not to forget, because they have a lot of socialization that happens when they go to church, not to forget that they go to church. Not to forget they have a need for recreation, pool tables they could use, bowling alleys they could have access to, somewhere to come and do some recreation together. I think the most important thing, I mentioned about finding people to do this job, you need people that are going to listen and -- to them and to -- to reflect their humanity to them. Part of what integral care has done is provide something called mental health first aid. We did that with txdot. We trained all of their txdot workers that we're going to be interacting with the individuals who are homeless. We did the same thing with watershed and parks and [10:19:39 AM] recreation. And with Austin public works and we will continue to do that and basically it's a curriculum that teaches individuals a little bit about mental health issues, but more about how to treat people like human beings. And what I have found is that whatever campsite you go into, if you take that with you, then it has a tendency, that's when the magic happens. It has a tendency to -- people start dealing with each other like human beings. The problem happens, as I said, when they begin to be the generalities or the label that they have been given. So each of us has -- is a unique and important individual and we need to reflect that. And so Allan does it. I have known Allan for a long, long time and dealt with him through the different iterations of trying to get the city to give him a place to set up his community first village thing and then finally doing it and getting it done. [10:20:40 AM] But I think it's understanding the need for social recreation and spiritual stuff and building that into the things that we offer. But also through mental health first aid and other things is teaching the police and the paramedics -- paramedics do it because they come in at a time when somebody needs something and there's compassion there. I think police officers are beginning to do that more and more. I think it got piloted with the host team of how effective policing can be. If you treat people like an individual human being. And not deal with the stereotype. So it's -- I think that you guys are helping it to get to that place by your leadership. I think we're at a place right now where we can really make a difference. So thank you for all of that. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? >> Garza: I just wanted to say thank you for your presentation and the work that you do. It was -- it was like -- I [10:21:40 AM] felt both extremely sad, but hopeful from what you said. You know, somber in that this community has - - has, you know, been villainized and stereotyped unfortunately, but very grateful and hopeful that we have people like you, you said it yourself, it takes -- you said it requires a special type of person and -- and so -- so our community is so lucky to have special types of people like you. I know people like you don't take that kind of compliment well because it's just part of who you are. And the people that work with you. So we're incredibly so grateful. And, you know, you eloquently pointed out that -- this is from failed policies since the '70s and the '80s and how all levels of our government continue to fail the most vulnerable in our community. And we continue to see it. [10:22:42 AM] The discussions of decreasing social services, of defunded snap or significantly decreasing the funding for snap, not expanding medicaid, which is healthcare, this discussion that shouldn't even be a discussion about healthcare is a right for everyone. It shouldn't even be a political issue. It should just be the right thing to do. And -- and, you know, this has -- I remember when we started having this discussion on this dais and I said that I was so worried that it was going to become a conversation about "Those kind of people." And that's exactly where it went. And I talked about having this discussion with my daughter and seeing the sadness wash over her face when I talked about homelessness. It was like seeing someone realize sadness for the first time. So incredibly hard. I hope, you know, in that conversation with her, I was able to build empathy as [10:23:44 AM] opposed to judgment. I feel like that's where we are. We are at a turning point. This should not be a political issue. This should be about helping people, about empathy, but not judging people. Again, I'm just -- I'm just so incredibly grateful that there are people like you and the people that do this work in our community because we have to get -- we have to get past this and we have to understand that -- that people don't choose this type of lifestyle. And it is because of failed policies. And we are trying to get past that. So thank you. >> Thank you for the thank you. And thank you guys for all of the stuff that you are doing. I do want to say my wife is a second grade teacher and she knows what I do. She teaches a little bit about what I do. But I think that we have youngsters -- we have youngsters that like the socks, the thing that was done about the socks, that -- that begins to teach [10:24:46 AM] the next generation about compassion and about -- about not fearing people that are different than you. And -- and even -- even under the bridges, where -- where a lot of tents have come up and other places, the people that go to the stereotypes and the generalities are the people that don't take the time to meet the individuals and -- there's a lot of people who are -- powerful advocates for some of these individuals because they have taken the time, as they walk under the bridge, to actually meet the individuals that are there. Some have actually been able to say, "Hey, I know who you are, I know your mom or I knew your dad or my grandfather and your grandfather knew each other." This whole -- the -- the stigma and the myths that these are all coming from California or they are all coming from here or there. [10:25:47 AM] These are all people that are being pushed out. As far as policies are concerned, you saw that the -- that the code stuff that you guys have done, all of that fits together. The equity stuff that is out there, all of that fits together and us being able to try to figure out how are we going to make sure that -- that people can have safe and stable housing. Because if you have that, then the medical, the psychiatric, the substance abuse stuff, it falls away. You begin to have places where people, where kids can actually read and actually maybe get a computer, so that they can -- they can keep up and do the stuff that they need. So this -- this inequality that happens as kids grow up, falls away. So -- >> Mayor Adler: I also want to add my thanks for what you do. And for the path program. Obviously you guys are at the front lines and in the trenches on this. [10:26:48 AM] The conversation that we see in social media is more than disconcerting. It's harmful to demonize people, to make us scared of one another. To suggest that hiding this challenge is in any way an answer to this challenge is sad to see. I have a few questions. Integral care. You are a part of that. The -- what else does integral care do other than what you do? In other words, integral care is bigger than just path? >> Oh, absolutely, yes. You want me to rattle off like the 97 programs? [Laughter] >> Mayor Adler: In a much shorter period of time, I just want you to put into context path within integral care. >> Sure. So I think that the -- I can go back to -- to -- can we [10:27:50 AM] go -- >> Let me pull it up. >> So the housing continuum that integral care has goes from what we do, which includes the integral care part of host, finding and engaging individuals who are out there and disconnected from services and linking them back to services or getting them into services for the first time because they didn't even know that they had a problem. >> Mayor Adler: Do you do the initial engagement services, navigation services and the housing placement services? >> We try not to, but we sometimes end up doing that because it's all relationship driven and it requires that we be able to do a warm handoff. But there are those parts of our agency that are out there -- >> Mayor Adler: What you are doing is primarily the initial engagement services and then integral care -- >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: -- Through you does that, but then through other people and other parts of the agency. >> Program. >> Mayor Adler: You do the rest of the continuum. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Then you say that the work that [10:28:52 AM] you're doing for the -- for the initial engagement, is funded with $754,000; is that right? >> Yeah. >> Mayor Adler: That's the work that you guys do, right? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. You said that most of that comes from the federal government. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: Do you know how much of that comes from the state? >> I think it is 3% of -- so we get 7 -- we get 550 something thousand for the feds and then the rest of it that comes -- is state match. And then when it comes here, we need to provide local match. At three to one. >> Mayor Adler: So if it's a total of $754,000, and $591,000 of that comes from the state, if I -- if I take [10:29:53 AM] out the -- is the city 182 part of the 754? >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: If I take out the federal money, I take out the city money, doesn't look like the state is contributing much of anything. >> Like I said, 3% of what we get. If you take 591 -- >> Mayor Adler: 15,000. >> About that, yes. >> Mayor Adler: $15,000 from the state, wow. The decision to deinstitutionalize the mental health challenge, was that a city decision? >> No. That was a national decision. I think that -- that what ended up happening, is legal here? Yeah. But so I think that the -- that the issue was too many of these individuals were kept there longer than they needed to be kept. >> Mayor Adler: Right. >> And it was used as a place where people could dump individuals, members of their family that they didn't like. >> Mayor Adler: Right. >> Also, part of what was going on, these are the [10:30:53 AM] worst case scenarios, was that husbands that wanted a divorce could commit their wives and then go do whatever they wanted to do. So because of those kinds of things that were happening, all -- >> Mayor Adler: People that was intended to help -- [multiple voices] >> That was the problem. >> Mayor Adler: Were those institutions run by the state? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So we had state run institutions that were closed down. Wasn't there a promise then that when the state closed down those institutions, that the state would then provide alternate resources to pick up the obvious challenge then that was otherwise put on to our local streets? >> I think that -- yes. I think that policy going back to whatever constraints, funding constraints were there, the push, the desire, was that with deinstitutionalization, there would be something money to follow that individual on to the [10:31:55 AM] community and mental health center that would be at the community so that they would be able to accept them. >> Mayor Adler: Do you know how much other money the state is contributing to integral care? They are giving, I guess, $15,000 or so -- to the path program. Do you know how much money the state is giving to the rest of integral care as well? >> I don't know. But we can find out. >> Mayor Adler: I would like to -- >> It's a good number, but again if we look at -- at how much money -- well, how much interest there is for politicians to do something about this problem, you can follow it down from there. I mean, there isn't -- so I think what we do at the state level and at the federal level to lobby for more, I think that we have a good leg up on being able to do that with Mr. Doherty coming on board because he's kind of been involved in some of that stuff. >> Mayor Adler: I would like to see that and manager -- we're working on [10:32:55 AM] an item from council, perhaps to get the -- our city to do an inventory of the resources that are available for mental health work and where that's being spent and -- where there are opportunities or holes or, you know, I think at some level that the state is trying to find a constructive way to be able to help with this challenge and it certainly seems as if this might be an area. So to get a feel for what's being done, what isn't being done, where there are opportunities, I think would be really helpful for all of us as we talk not only to each other and to our providers, but also as we speak with the state. The number of people that are enrolled in your service, you said, services actually enrolled were about 550. You said there are about 5,000 people that aren't actually enrolled in the service but are within your system and then another 3,000 people, you thought, outside of that? Do I understand those numbers correctly? >> Well, 5,000 that are not [10:33:55 AM] actually within -- okay. So the -- >> Mayor Adler: Explain to me what the numbers are there. >> The 5400 that are served by our agency. So those are people that we have found and linked to services who are still homeless or whose housing is marginally being provided. Some of those are individuals who bounce in and out of -- of board and care, which I think is another thing that we need to figure out how as a community we're going to do better at. But what we do -- there are people that we engage. People that we do outreach to, that we don't get as much information as we need to in order to get them into -- to be officially counted. But then about 1100 of those, we actually are able to provide a little bit more -- we get more stuff stuff with them. And then the enrolled people are the ones that we actually have a service plan for that includes addressing their mental health needs. >> Mayor Adler: So that I understand, I want to get a feel for this because I'm not sure that I do. [10:34:56 AM] There's about 550 people that are enrolled. You house about 650 people, a little bit more, in any given year. There are another 5,000 people that are experiencing homelessness that touch your organization. About 1100 of which you are able to provide some services for. Is that basically the numbers? >> Kind of. They are kind of dirty numbers in that the 5,000 that the agency serves, they don't all have to come through me in order to get housed. So they don't all have to come through me to be part of the 670. These also might be people who became unhoused and then were resourced by our agency because we were able to keep them or try to keep them housed. The -- the people that we bring through the pipeline is about 550. That actually get -- the others are people that we're [10:35:57 AM] still working with, like we were able to get them, say, like started on the social security application, but they don't want anything else. Get a pair of tennis shoes and they are willing to tell us who they are. We continue the relationship with them because what we do is all relationship based. Until they are ready to take the next step. So -- so the -- you can't, you know, like add and subtract and figure out how that goes because it doesn't go that way. >> Mayor Adler: The numbers overlap, I understand that. >> Then if you talk about the total number of homeless individuals out there, I think that -- we just had the point in time count, so hopefully we'll see what that is. But the rule that we've had for -- since the late '80s is multiplied by 3 and that gives you a better idea of how many individuals are homeless in our community. >> Mayor Adler: Talk to me -- the last question that I have, in our community, what -- what some people [10:36:58 AM] have come up and talked to me about is the perception that there's more aggressive behavior exhibited by people in our community -- some of the people in our community that are experiencing homelessness. Can you speak to the aggressive behavior or how our community should see that. >> I have thought long and hard. Again I want to make sure that I say this is my view, I'm not talking for integral care. So I sometimes get in trouble from saying too many things, [laughter], so this is what I see. >> Mayor Adler: I don't want to get you in trouble. >> I'm already there. Doesn't matter. [Laughter]. You get what you give. And that's a statement that I have heard many people homeless individuals tell me along with I don't care what you know, I need to know what you care. Talked about getting a more human interaction with the individuals that are out there. [10:37:59 AM] When you begin with a statement that these are dangerous people, being said at the highest parts of our government, certain people are bad, certain people are violent, certain people do this, that, the other thing. You have parts of our community that are going to believe that. They are going to treat the individuals that they interact with that way. That usually leads to, instead of the cycle being healthy, helpful, hopeful, it becomes hateful, violent and going from cuss words to actual maybe even things, rocks getting thrown at people or worse than that. I think we need to be really, really careful of the rhetoric that we use that -- that -- that paints individuals who don't have the luxury of having their [10:39:00 AM] own place to live as -- as criminals and aggressive people, because they are not -- not anymore than -- I don't know what the -- what the average is, but if we look at -- there's an average of that. And it's no greater, no less. As a matter of fact, I think that the new data that came out to show that -- that -- that they are more apt to be victims of that. And that's the other piece that ends up happening when you vilify a population. Is that if there is aggressive behavior towards them, then they will be more looking to -- I wonder if this is a smiley face that's going to hit me over the head or going to slash my tent or -- or take my food or -- or -- or do something to my dog and then they get a little bit tentative about their interactions and that just leads to -- so we need to stop that. We need to make sure that people react to people as [10:40:02 AM] individuals as opposed to a generality. I did want to say a little while ago talking about the state, that senator Watson, I was around when he was around as a mayor. And he -- he was able to make some major steps and I think we can hopefully use them to help us do something at the state level. I didn't want to miss that opportunity. I meant to say that. >> Mayor Adler: Got you. We need a plan B. [Laughter]. Only the senator I think announced this morning he's moving on to a new job. >> Oh, man! [Laughter] Well, hopefully we can still use him. >> Yes, I'm sure we can. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm sorry, councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: I have country one quick question. You made a reference earlier on to the safe sleep shelters program. Can you remind us what that program is or was? >> So about -- maybe now [10:41:02 AM] it's seven years, I don't know exactly how long ago it was, there was some violence towards homeless women. There were a couple of women who got killed on the streets. And so I'm going to -- so -- so because that was going on, the -- the homeless women were afraid there was a stalker that was looking to victimize homeless women. And we were able to talk a lot about the rapes that happened and were able to -- I'm going to use this to guilt our city into doing something about it, trying to provide safe sleep shelter for the women. All they needed to do was provide the security at the different churches. So they went to the churches and asked that the churches be -- make life the -- the cold weather shelter process available to the women. They were all met at Trinity [10:42:03 AM] center. And then they were taken by van to different churches where -- where partners or men couldn't follow them and not know where this place was. That went on for about six months until the funding went away. Then I think Salvation Army took over doing some of that. They don't turn -- they say they don't turn people away. But the way people get turned away is that it takes a while to get in, you have to check in at a certain time and a lot of women work so they can't get there in time to be processed through. And -- and as a result, they stay hidden away. I think that when the ordinance changed, one of the things that ended up happening was that a lot of the women came down from where they were being victimized to be somewhere, where it was more public, where something was to begin to happen, hopefully a good [10:43:04 AM] samaritan and hopefully a human being that would not allow for something bad to happen. So my hope would be that maybe we could do something like that again, that if we could get the churches to continue to do what they do for -- for this population, it would be beneficial. There was a dream that I had back when we were -- there was a discussion that there would be a -- a homeless program in one -- in each of the districts, that -- that there would be a district person that would say I'll take the women and I'll talk to my neighborhood and my constituents about creating a safe place for women to be and then they could be there. Similarly for women similarly for women with children and families. Similarly for geriatrics. Similarly for lbgtq. That would be wonderful, because all of those items as a population are victimized quite a bit. It would be nice if we could find safe places for them to be where they could then be facilitated to get into housing. [10:44:04 AM] >> Kitchen: Well, thank you for explaining that. I also wanted to just recognize penny Adrian I think is her name who has been coming to speak to us on multiple occasions. And I know councilmember tovo has talked with her about her interest in creating a similar program or recreating a similar program with the churches. So I wanted to highlight that that that is something that we did in the past and I know the Salvation Army does really good work, but there's still a gap. And so just wanted to let you know that and also let my colleagues know that that's something that I'm interested in working on and hope to bring you guys something soon. I'll talk to councilmember tovo and others about that. >> If I can help in any way, let me know. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Councilmember Flannigan? >> Flannigan: And I want to say that work with communities is occurring it district 6 and we are [10:45:05 AM] working with a couple of church leaders who are interesting in doing on-site housing and we kind of worked with echo to try to incorporate that into an actual process. I think it is good ways of working in different corners of the city. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Okay. Again, I want to thank echo and integral care for the presentations this morning. We've committed toll highlighting the phenomenal work that our providers are doing, especially for this most vulnerable population. And we will continue to do so and use this forum at our work sessions to highlight where we can providers through presentations. On our last work session on February 4th we talked about the guided path program and we wanted to provide an update today. We also talked about housing and wanted to provide an update today on path, so I would like to invite or interim homeless services church up to provide -- to provide an update on the guided path program as well [10:46:06 AM] as our director of neighborhood housing and community development to provide as a follow on an update on housing. >> Good morning. Bella Carmen with Austin public health. I'll give a quick update on guided path. As you know in October the city and echo and community partners came together and had a targeted approach to reach out to the encampment outside the arch. Over two days we used a brief survey to find out who was staying out there and what their needs were. And we created a by-name list with 99 individuals on that list that we committed to working with to get into housing and get needs met. And so the most recent update, of course, -- this work is ongoing so the updates change on a daily basis, but most recently we know that 21 of those individuals have been [10:47:08 AM] housed. Five of them have been housed through the downtown community court, three through front steps, three through integral care, three through caritas, three through foundation for the homeless, one through AIDS services of Austin. And there were four that actually were in the works with housing identification prior to guided path starting so they were continued to be supported, but with minimal assistance from guided path. So that's 21 individuals that have been housed. 66 are enrolled in programs that are leading to housing, whether it's rapid re-housing or permanent supportive housing. There are three individuals that have not been seen since the survey was administered in those first couple of days. And there are three individuals that are in long-term incarceration. That was previously four, but recently one person has been released and is engaging with downtown community court. So that leaves six individuals that have not yet been connected with a [10:48:09 AM] housing program so they're not yet enrolled in a program and don't have a case manager, but we have our host team and our path team and our community health paramedics reaching out to those individuals, making sure that we have a coordinated assessment for them. One of those six already has a current coordinated assessment that's been done. Five of those they're coordinated assessment is either outdated or there hasn't been one done, so we're working to get that done. Of the 21 that are housed, five are in permanent supportive housing and 16 are in rapid rehousing -- has been housed through rapid rehousing programs. And the age of the 99 individuals ranges from 25 to 76 years old. About 78 are men and 21 are women. And we have multiple individuals that have been staying in shelters, whether it's the arch, salvation [10:49:09 AM] Army or a new entry for recovery and treatment. When we first started the program we reached out and also offered services, which included shelter and storage and respite care, which is temporary care for mental health and substance use also, treatment and recovery services for mental health and substance use needs. And those services and resources are continuing to be offered ongoing. So we are continuing to work. Community partners are continuing to meet. Echo again as the administrator of the homelessness management information system or his, which is the database where we enter the data, is pilot project and we continue to meet regularly and do case conferencing to leverage all of our community knowledge and resources to increase [10:50:09 AM] housing success. There was funding approved by council January 23rd and that was to fund some additional case managers and staff for this project. As you may know, there were no resources devoted to this project when we embarked on it and the goal was to look at where the gaps might be and then be strategic about funding those gaps. So additional gaps are being evaluated. We know that there's a need for financial assistance, rent and utility, assistance and arrears and debt assistance as part of what a typical rapid rehousing or psh program would need. There is also a need for location service and a need for additional permanent supportive housing units, which is limited in our community. Just to let you know too the average period of time to get folks housed once they've enrolled in a program and are in case management can be anywhere from 30 to 90 days on [10:51:10 AM] average. So the guided path pilot will continue for several months, get even though there are individuals enrolled in programs it doesn't mean they're housed that week. It takes some time as both Preston and David explained earlier this morning. There's processes, there's documentation, there's engagement that needs to happen. And so finally, we are looking at an expanded encampment resolution strategy that we've talked about before that would extend beyond the guided path as the guided path participants are being housed and getting into services. I'll take any questions. >> Mayor Adler: I really appreciate the work. The 66 people that are enrolled, did you say that you anticipated them being housed or most of them being housed within the next 30 to [10:52:10 AM] 90 days? >> That would be wonderful. And I would imagine most of them will fall into that category. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Do you think -- when we say most of them, I'm trying to figure out if we participate being able to house the 66 or almost all of them or what are you thinking, half of them might be? Is it realistic to believe that we can house pretty much these 66 people over the next 90 days? >> I hope so. Again, we have a shortage of affordable housing, we have a shortage of permanent supportive housing. And so this pilot was taken on on top of all of our existing programs, which continue to try to house folks through rapid rehousing and through [10:53:11 AM] permanent supportive housing programs. So it's a matter of rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing require housing location and negotiating, if it's on market rate or a private landlord, you know, getting the lease negotiated and getting that housing identified and secured. It also sometimes has to do with looking at criminal records and past debt and dealing with those types of issues. But then also getting first month's rent paid and deposit and those sorts of things. And then continuing with all the other needs. So it's complicated and it's a case-by-case basis. So it's certainly possible. It's certainly possible. >> And I would also just add, mayor, as you can see from -- sort of from the report out it's a very complicated and fluid [10:54:11 AM] situation. What we will say is that we will continue to report out, we will to monitor this group of individuals and continue to report out on progress until we are not able to meet any deadlines associated with 30, 60, 90-day progress, we will certainly be able to report that progress out and be clear about what our plans are as we move forward. >> Mayor Adler: And to a degree it doesn't look like you will be able to hit the 30, 60, 90 days. And let us know that that expectation isn't something that looks like it's going to be hit. Then we will talk about what we might be able to do to bring different resources or different approach or something to be able to be able to get that done. Are most of the folks that we're housing this way, what is the challenge? Is it -- do we have a motel strategy which I think we'll be talking about in a second, but we haven't gotten any of those rooms open etiquette, but yet [10:55:13 AM] we're house -- but yet we're housing people. Is it rental assistance? Is it finding landlords that are willing to rent units to folks in this population? Where's the challenge for -- the greatest challenge for us in housing these 66 people? >> So again, I think everyone person is vaned has individual needs and has individual barriers and distinct barriers to being housed by tomorrow. We certainly need -- we could certainly use more financial assistance, more case management, more partnerships with landlords who are willing to work with us. The folks have been housed in all different parts of town and so that is happening, but we just need more of that. And we do have a shortage of permanent supportive housing. That's the type of housing that's most appropriate for [10:56:13 AM] people who have experienced chronic homelessness, which is long-term, or consistent patterns of homelessness as well as one or more disabilities. And so folks have just a lot of barriers. And having that type of ongoing assistance is a great need. >> Mayor Adler: Does that person -- that typology that you just described, is that -- is that the predominant situation for most of those 66 people? >> I'd have to look at the 66 and sort of what it looks like their particular needs are. Generally in our community we're about -- we have about a 30% of our population experiencing homelessness needs permanent supportive housing. And 60 to 70% needs rapid re-housing. So has not as deep needs. So I would imagine you could extrapolate that to the folks in this pilot as well [10:57:15 AM] that about a third need permanent supportive housing or psh, about two-thirds need rapid rehousing. >> Mayor Adler: And does the difference between permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing, just the level of services associated with the housing? >> It is the level and the duration. So permanent supportive housing is long-term subsidy and long-term support services, whatever those may be. There's a variety of services. Whereas rapid rehousing is short to medium term, financial assistance for rent and utilities as well as short to medium term services. >> Mayor Adler: What is the typical duration for people? So 30% of our community generally needs permanent supportive housing of indefinite duration and 60% needs more rapid rehousing services of a more limited t4 ration. What does limited duration mean in that context? [10:58:15 AM] >> That varies greatly. Our community practices what's called Progressive engagement, which basically is whatever that person needs is what we're going to gear towards them. So some folks just need financial assistance and some housing location assistance and maybe a little bit of help that will last just a few months. Some folks need two years or even more of financial assistance and case management, but not expected to continue sort of long-term. >> Mayor Adler: And again, city manager, the city manager, I think what would be helpful for me and I think many people in the community is kind of what the plan is and what everybody can expect. I know everybody is working really hand and doing the best they can do with the resources they have. But if there was a way to [10:59:16 AM] feel that this is the duration that we think it's going to take us to get to an equilibrium place and we can measure progress over time or if we could add more resources and accomplish these kinds of things then we can shorten that runway and we could adjust what our expectations were that would be measured against over time. I think part of what we have in the community right now I believe as I go around is a community that is really -- really wants to assist and participate in this challenge. Really wants to get to an equilibrium place, but-- and they believe that good things are happening, but they don't know how those things relate to one another. What is the plan and what are the metrics associated with the plan that we would anticipate being able to hit in two months and three months and six months and a year so that we would be able to hold ourselves accountable [11:00:16 AM] for performance and for success. It would be really helpful if we could get that. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks for the update. I couldn't quite capture all of the different places that the 21 had been housed through which programs. So I wanted -- I wondered if you could provide us with just the numbers being helped. >> Sure. >> Tovo: And for those who are not connected to housing. I can't remember what it was the last time we had an update, but could you help me understand what the gap -- what the gap is for those individuals. Is it a gap in -- I think I heard you say that those individuals don't yet have a case worker? Is case management part of the gap that we're experiencing in terms of resources? >> Exactly. So someone being enrolled in a program means that there is staffing, to case management support for them [11:01:16 AM] as well as financial assistance. All the pieces that are necessary to move someone from homelessness into housing. So those six -- it's a matter of caseloads rolling and that's partly why we came to council for additional funding for additional staff because there's a need for more staff in these programs. >> Tovo: Will those additional staff help serve the needs of those six individuals or not until the caseload -- not for a bit until the caseload owe. >> Yes. They're in the hiring process so it takes a little bit to hire folks and get them trained. But again on a daily basis things are changing. So I would anticipate mid January there were 14 people that weren't in a program and now there are six. So we are making progress. >> Tovo: Thank you. And then for those 66 who are enrolled in programs leading to housing, are [11:02:17 AM] there funds identified for those funding supports? Six that's something that we'll probably come back to council for as we're looking at those gaps and needs, the staffing we've already established when we had to increase the staffing, but there are -- yes, there's financial assistance to support those programs. So we've asked our partner agencies to provide the amount of funding that they spent so far, but since it's been at the very beginning of the program, that wouldn't fully capture the need, but we'll be putting that together and making that available. >> Tovo: It sounds as if for those 66 individuals once an housing opportunity is identified for them, we then have -- there is not a set aside body of funding to providing the housing subsidies and the support services that would-- that would be a need that some of [11:03:19 AM] our partner agencies will have to step up and fund or the city will have to fund. We don't currently have a -- have funding allocated for that. >> Correct. So the we asked all of our partner agencies that have these housing programs to do this pilot and to take on clients and essentially that minute they weren't taking on other clients or their caseloads and their expectation of people served was greater than prior to the pilot. So there is a need for more resources. There's not -- and that will have to come forward in the next few weeks. >> Tovo: And that was my last question. What was the timing for providing the council with an assessment of what the funding needs would be to house and provide support services for these individuals. >> Yeah, we can do that in the next few weeks. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Hi a question, two questions, two different [11:04:20 AM] questions. So we've been talking about the challenges for folks in this program getting into housing. I have a question. Are you guys using the coordinated assessment -- I don't know what you call it -- ranking system to determine what housing is available for these folks? >> So the coordinated assessment does -- yes. Does give a score and that helps -- >> Kitchen: Score is the better word, yes. >> That helps determine what type of housing is likely more appropriate for success for the individual. And that's how we would determine if someone or a household should be looking for permanent supportive housing or rapid re-housing. >> Kitchen: Yes. I understand that. But my question is for the individuals that are participating in this program that you all are working with on this program for housing, are they -- is [11:05:24 AM] there access to housing dependent on their score? In other words, I know one of the issues that we've dealt with is that because of the way the scoring system works, for lots of reasons, if you have a greater need, you're first in line for housing. So I'm wondering if that's one of the barriers for folks who have not been in housing and that's because they're scoring too low on the list and others are -- there are other priorities before they get -- before the housing becomes available to them. >> So this pilot is actually outside of the community-wide process for prioritization. So they're not -- they're not dependent upon their scoring on prioritization to have access to housing. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: And then the last question is -- I'm sorry if I missed you, you may have said this earlier, and I know there is at least the last time we talked, [11:06:24 AM] there are plans to expand the guided path program and outside of the downtown area to other encampments. So what is the status of that? >> So I did mention that because it takes multiple months, the guided path program itself will be continuing for awhile, but we do have in our sites the plan to expand to different areas and really learning from what we've learned from this encampment resolution strategy as we move forward. So it will be several months down the line before the folks that are in this program and in case management before we get the final folks into a program. And those people are in case management and so those caseloads are full and once they are getting housed and are sort of ramping down in terms of the final numbers, then we'll embark in the expanding it to other areas. [11:07:24 AM] >> Kitchen: Okay. I'd like more than of a timeline and we can take that offline. But my understanding from our last conversation and report to work session is that this could happen in a couple of months and now I'm hearing again in a couple of months. So I'd like a date. I'm looking at acm shorter, maybe we can have a conversation about that? >> Sure. >> Kitchen: I understand if we were only doing these sequentially, and I understand the concerns you're saying. If we only end up doing these sequentially, it could be quite some time before we expand them to other areas. So I'd like to understand what resources it would take to go ahead and get other programs since we're -- you've already done a lot of learning and I appreciate that. I would like to understand what it would take to launch this program in other areas rather than waiting until the -- waiting until everyone was housed in the guided path program. [11:08:25 AM] So if we could have a conversation about that I would appreciate that. >> Happy to have that conversation. >> Kitchen: And I would like to have a specific timeline. >> Mayor Adler: I would join in that. I have the same concerns and the same requests that councilmember kitchen had. >> Just something to keep in mind too is that because this pilot is outside of the regular prioritization process, it's essentially not doing business as usual in terms of the community's plan to house folks and there are folks in line waiting for those housing resources. And so as we move forward with expanding encampment strategies we also need to look at -- some communities will sort of blend in folks that are reached through encampment strategies and folks that are on the coordinated entry list by score waiting and prioritizing housing so that we would not displace folks that are prioritized for [11:09:27 AM] programs as well. So that's something we would have to look at and have to look at in terms of timeline. >> Kitchen: Mayor, I understand that, I need to think about not doing business the way we have in the past. I understand the reason for it, but if we're planning a zero sum game and we're guiding up a pile that we used to have, we're not going to make the progress we used to make. That's why I asked what would it take in terms of resources. I find the encampment response strategy in an interesting tool, one of the interesting tools, not that it's the only thing, but I think we need to move forward to it and I think we needed to what it would take to do that given the other concerns that you raised. I -- I know we have choices we need to make. I find it frustrating to think of in terms we only [11:10:27 AM] have X amount and we can only do an X amount because we need to have a conversation about what would it really would take. >> We are prepared to have that conversation internally and come back to the council with recommendations. I will say that Bella and team as a priority have been meeting with our encampment cleanup teams and others to begin the process of understanding what these encampments look like and what they will be our priority as we go forward in terms of next steps. So we're certainly having those conversations and will be prepared to come back to you with recommendations on how we -- how we move forward and what resources might be needed. >> Kitchen: I'd like to hear that for our next briefing. >> Mayor Adler: That would be great. Yes. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: I was wondering if we could get a recap of the presentation here, maybe an update to the homelessness status report that we got I think it was [11:11:29 AM] in December or maybe it was in January. It was a really good update. >> Numbers or you mean the memo to mayor and council? >> Pool: It was the memo to mayor and council. >> Happy to. >> Pool: That would be great, thanks. That was pretty comprehensive. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Housing? >> Good morning, mayor and council, Rosie truelove, director of neighborhood housing and development. I'm here to talk about the moment conversion strategy. I have some information that I'm going to pass around and then I'm going to come and grab it. We're looking to in light of a lot of the conversation that we've had today knowing that we have a need of about a thousand permanent supportive housing units and more that have been provided by echo. We're looking to accelerate our motel conversion [11:12:29 AM] strategy. We -- there's a document that's coming around that as folks are getting it I'm going to walk through what this looks like in a general format and then how this comes into play with current status of actual properties that are being considered right now. So we know that we have a goal right now of 300 units for motel conversion. That's a number that we've come to from talking with staff and looking at what we think we can get in a fairly quick turnaround. The service providers and echo are going to be the individuals that are going to be referring folks to housing programs via the coordinated entry system. We know that for permanent supportive housing we want to have both the rental piece covered with rental housing voucher and with the supportive wraparound services that are so critical. Sorry. [11:13:30 AM] Apparently I'm too close to the mic. Those services come through our service provider agencies and the rental housing vouchers also come through agencies in the forms of grants or federal funding or contracts that can be both federally funded, locally funded, state funded and privately funded. Where the city of Austin is going to come into play is with a capital investment to acquire the actual facilities. These facilities can be acquired through either general obligation bonds, the affordable housing general obligation bonds, through federal community development block grant dollars or through certificates of obligation. That funding source is highly contingent on the programmatic use of the facility. So when we go into talking about specific facilities we can talk about how that comes into play. And this will give us housing that is considered permanent supportive housing that could be considered permanent housing, but really structured more in a [11:14:31 AM] rapid re-housing mechanism or it could be temporary housing, which is something that's considered to be bridge or transitional. On the back of this document there is a set of definitions to help us kind of level set and make sure that we're all using the same language as we talk about all of these different housing strategies. So I want to call your attention to that. The language that we've heard used today is all very consistent and in line with what we're talking about as we move forward. So our goal is to acquire facilities to ensure that they're able to operate in a permanent supportive housing manner or permanent rapid rehousing manner which means they have to meet certain logistical requirements for how each unit is physically structured so that's one of the things that we're looking at as we go to acquire the facilities. If you look at the next page, which is titled the motel conversion implementation strategy, I want to give you an update about where you are with that. So the first motel was [11:15:33 AM] identified as the rodeway inn that council negotiated to purchase that back in November. It's 87 units located in district 3 off of I-35. The funding source for that particular facility has been identified to be community development block grants. As you'll recall when we were going through our consolidated planning process we talked about trying to bring together a substantial amount of money of federal dollars to be used for a facility and this is how we're going to move that project forward is with our community development block grant facility dollars dollars. We're in the process right now of completing the environmental assessment that is required to utilize those federal dollars. That's moving along. We anticipate being complete wi that by the end of March and that we'll be moving to close on that facility in mid April. We anticipate some minor amounts of rehab that is going to be necessary and we're working with building [11:16:34 AM] services and with office of real estate services and our partners at health to identify what those -- what that work really needs to look like so that we can get it as operational as possible. I don't have a time frame on that yet for you, but as soon as I have a time frame on that I will communicate it. Right now we've identified the service provider for that particular facility to be echo and echo is working with the city of Austin on the agreement that will come into place between the two agencies for the operation and maintenance of that flare facility. Again, we're looking at closing on that in mid April. We're looking to expedite the rehab as much as we possibly can while still knowing that we want to deliver a quality facility to the agency to house people experiencing homelessness. So when we drive our attention to future facilityies, we're going to take a parallel [11:17:34 AM] track on this. The first track is looking for additional sites to acquire. There are some that I think our real estate department is working on and as soon as we have information on those we'll be bringing it forward to council for consideration. The funding for those again will be contingent on the programmatic use, but I think for the next one we are targeting general obligation bonds, affordable housing general obligation bonds for the acquisition of that particular facility. At the same time we're going to be issuing a request for qualifications to see what agencies out in the Austin community are poised to help us with providing the services associated and needed for those facilities and the property management for those facilities. So we anticipate issuing that rfq in March, mid marchish and then we will be bringing that award for potential future agreements to council later in the [11:18:36 AM] summer. Do you have any questions right now on the motel conversion strategy? >> Harper-madison: Quickly, when you were talking about the rfq you said service providers to provide services. Can you tell me what those entail? >> It would be -- this is going to be a health facility in the end so I would let vela speak to some of the services that might be provided, provided at these facilities. >> So again, it depends what type of housing model it is. If it's permanent supportive housing, if it's rapid rehousing or if it's bridge, transitional, temporary housing, those types of housing models would dictate what types of services would be there. So it would be certainly case management, access to health care, employment services, access to substance use, mental health services, peer support. Again, depending on the type [11:19:38 AM] of housing provided there. >> And we're structuring this as a request for qualifications so that we can get a good assessment of of what is in the community and what folks might be able to bring to the table so we could then best fit with any future facility that might be acquired. We've heard from multiple agencies that there is interest in this kind of a conversion strategy and I want to make sure that we're right sizing and aligning with what's there in the community. I will also note while it's not on this paper, we are starting to look at and assess the feasibility of an affordable housing voucher. We know there is an increased need for rental subsidy in our community and we're looking at how we might be able to structure something like that that would be basically like a housing choice voucher at a local level. It might be project based to align with our facilities, it might be something that's tenant base that would go with folks inside our facilities. We would recommend something [11:20:38 AM] like housing trust fund that would be a significant investment of housing trust fund, but I think an appropriate utilization of housing trust fund. It would be something that would be continuing on an annual basis. So we're not sure much in the way of detail beyond that and that is something that we're starting to talk about and see how we might be able to right size that and fit that for our community. >> Mayor Adler: I love that you're looking at that. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I want to say thank you very much for this. It is very, very, very, very helpful to have the program distilled on to a Paige one page front-back that we can hand out. This is the kind of thing that is very helpful and I know we had a meeting with some folks from Pio that will be working on other things like this related to our homelessness or related to our services. That's very helpful. [11:21:39 AM] So my question to you is where can we get a copy of this and is there a lick as we share information with our districts that we can get a link to this. >> Absolutely. We'll get it out to you probably through Pio, but we'll get it out to all the council offices and it will get posted online. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> And we will continue to update the implementation strategy document as we progress. >> So how is that going? What does the progress look like? What is the path to a thousand permanent supportive housing and the 2,000 rapid rehousing units? And as councilmember tovo points out making sure that we have the services to be able to make them constructive and meaningful? >> So I don't know what I could tell you what the complete path is right now. I think this is one piece of it. I think a local housing voucher is another piece of it. We're going to be looking to 11 our low income housing [11:22:40 AM] tax credits based on how the qualification plan was laid out for the ones that we're working on right now. Points have been added for supportive housing and so the projects that are rising to the top through that scoring assessment are projects that have supportive housing so that's potentially another 2 to three hundred units coming online in the next two years depending on how that goes. So we're working to try to get us that full path to get us to a thousand and two thousand. I can speak concretely to what we have in front of us today as the goal that staff's working toward. I'm hoping that -- again, depending on what we get in terms of responses to the rfq, the local housing voucher could be in addition to what we have here if we have services to go along with that. So that might be a point of need that we identify in the coming weeks. Again, we're starting to explore that, but this is a [11:23:40 AM] good path for the first 300. >> Mayor Adler: So similar to the question that councilmember kitchen was asking, it would be really good to see that on a timeline so that we can see how we are progressing relative to the goals we have set and it would make it look like -- I know it's not disjoint or ad hoc initiatives that are happening, but a place where we can see how these things get us to a path and then if one of the elements that we have turns out to be one that we don't think is going to work, then it would be easy to see the hole that's created by that or something is particularly successful and we think we could scale it more, we could ajust too. But so that the community could see -- my sense is that the community will be with us to the degree that they feel hopeful, not unlike the earlier speaker we had from integral care. I think the community will be with us if they feel hopeful, but feeling hopeful means that they think that [11:24:41 AM] we have a path and a plan and they can see getting from here to there. And I think we need to do that even beyond talking about the immediate initiatives that we're working on to be able to have that in perspective. So at the same time that you're reporting on councilmember kitchen's deal, even if it was rough what it looked like to get to one thousand or two thousand rooms, what it was like and the services supported with that. What about the three hundred rooms for the motel strategy? How soon do you think we'll have three hundred rooms or motels? >> So it's hard for me to give you a forecast on that. I can right now give you a concrete forecast on when we're going to close on 87 rooms. And I might be able to have -- >> That I heard. >> I might be able to have the timeline on what it's going to take for rehab within the next week to two weeks. And then that will tell us -- >> Mayor Adler: That's on the 87 rooms. >> That's on the 87. >> Mayor Adler: What about the other 213? >> Those are real estate transactions that we're working on and I'm not at [11:25:42 AM] liberty to speak publicly about those, but we are actively looking and we have one motel property that has been identified that I think we're negotiating on, and then we're working on whatever might come next. >> Mayor Adler: So is it reasonable for the community to think that we might have those 300 rooms identified, maybe not closed, but moving forward in the next 30 days? I'm trying to get a feel for what is the valid community expectation with respect to that -- recognizing that we can't know for sure and we may have to adjust that over time. >> I think identified is going to take for -- for 300 is going to take longer than 30 days to be able to speak publicly about those. But I would want to have a conversation with Alex gale in real estate to see where we're at. I'm happy to get back to you on that. I recognize the need to have the path for the full number of units that we need to meet the community need. I just don't have that information today. [11:26:42 AM] >> Mayor Adler: That's fine. Maybe when you report back I would really like to see, recognizing that we can amend it, I would like to know what the public can think of in terms of when we can get those hotels, motels identified, and then purchased or closed or rehabbed or whatever it is. We talk about motel strategy. I don't know if that's a 10-year strategy for 300 rooms or if that's a two-month strategy to get to 300 rooms, but I think we need to actually create -- we have to tell the community what is reasonable for them to expect to see, recognizing that we'll adjust that. >> And we will do that. We just -- we're sharing the information that we have available today and we'll work to get to that. >> Mayor Adler: So at the same time we come back in a couple of weeks on the other timelines, I would be really interested in -- I would like to see more benchmarks that we're setting ourselves. And sometimes we set goals in part to hold ourselves accountable and to make sure [11:27:43 AM] that we're driving and we can see what the resources are that we need so we can plan not only for the facilities, but for the services that we need. So -- >> We certainly appreciate the request and we'll do our very best. So in terms of homeless services, developing a timeline and working with the various teams to produce some recommendations, we will certainly work to do. Housing is a bit different. There's a lot of moving pieces and I think the market bears some lev of -- sort of inconsistency in terms of where we might want to be in terms of goals and where we might end up in terms of working with potential partners. What I will say is that the concurrent work that's happening that -- that Rosie presented this morning of us soliciting, doing a solicitation where we are [11:28:43 AM] looking for partners to potentially operate while we are out looking for potential properties is great progress. A lot of pro work is happening and -- positive work is happening and great work is happening right now and that being done concurrently means that is putting us in a position that as soon as we potentially identify a property that we may have lined up a partner to help us operate that facility. So that -- the work that team is doing and the fact that we've identified that as a tool and really all of these as tools for progress in my mind is really good work and we will continue to do -- to do this. >> Mayor Adler: And I think it's all really good work. Being able to put that on a timeline I think will better help people to put that in perspective and also understand what the process looks likes and we can hold ourselves accountable. Thank you. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks very much for this update. [11:29:44 AM] This is very helpful information. I want to be sure I understand a few pieces of it. So for this first -- for the roadway inn, echo would be the lead -- has been identified as the operator. >> Correct. >> Tovo: Any future okay with a sessions acquisitions, [indiscernible] >> We're structuring the rfq to be general enough that we can assess what the environment looks like so we can then once we have a facility we can quickly get a service provider aligned with that particular facility. So we're not -- alternatively we would have to acquire the facility and then do an rfq and add the additional time to do that competitive process. >> Tovo: Right. I understand the concurrent nature of it, thank you. I think that's very smart. What I was trying to determine is this first time we're not doing that, we're identifying echo, future acquisitions will go through that process. >> Correct. >> Tovo: Thanks. I think that one thing that [11:30:44 AM] I'm still not really clear on is the funding piece for all of these elements. I see that -- on the other sheet I see the discussion about motel ABC, and I assume motel a is not necessarily the roadway inn. >> They're just three potential types of facilities that we might acquire. >> >> Tovo: As you come back with the funding needs for the guided path, I think it would be helpful to see that alongside this. Because it -- it's not completely clear to me how we are at this point planning on funding -- planning on funding operations or services. And I guess I'll start by asking that question, how are we funding -- with the roadway inwhat has been identified for funding and services? >> Echo is providing that funding for roadway inn. >> For funding and services? [11:31:45 AM] >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Do we have a sense that -- I see that in large part they'r doing fund-raising. Do you have a sense of when we'll get -- it says target date tbd. Do you have a sense of when we'll get an update on that fund-raising piece? >> I don't have a sense. I can certainly get that. I don't know if echo -- I know Matt was here earlier. >> Tovo: There he is. I don't want to put out the spot. I wanted to get a sense of when we might have that piece of information. >> Sure. So echo is -- sorry. Matthew mileka, executive director of ending homeless coalition. Echo is well into our process of fund-raising. We've engaged a lot of the larger -- larger players in the community right now from a foundation perspective and from a philanthropy perspective. We've also been talking with larger institutions, health [11:32:45 AM] care institutions around their willingness to fund the project. And working currently to try to bring together some other joint fund-raising campaigns that are helping in the -- happening in the community under one larger umbrella to build the services at the hotels. So I would say we have commitments and I think I'm learning about fund-raising in terms of commitments and then what's in the bank. We have a lot of commitments and I think we're well on our way to be able to stand up the first year for sure. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you. So I think as soon as you're able to provide us with sort of the details on that, that would be very useful. >> Yeah. This will obviously be an evolving conversation and evolving information and as we get information we'll update the documentation and provide that. >> Tovo: So it looks to me that with regard to the next acquisitions, I think that's still a pending question [11:33:45 AM] about where those -- where those operational dollars would come from and where the support services dollars would come from. Is that accurate? >> It is. And that's part of what we're doing the request for qualifications to assess to see what folks might have in terms of support and operational dollars that they would be bringing to the table so then we would be able to make an he assessment on the city's part about what if any we would need to bring to stand up the facility. And that's why we're working to try to get those service providers identified early, even in advance of having the actual facility so that we can work through those kind of questions. >> Tovo: So there's a hope that some of the service providers might actually have the available funding and just need a facility. >> Yes. And that is what we're hearing, which is why we're handling this in the way that we're handling it. >> Tovo: Okay. Good. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Thank you all very much. Our final two updates are [11:34:55 AM] encampment. The last time we talked about encampment cleanup and storage and I believe a handout is coming, as well as communications in the executive dashboard. So we'll start with encampment cleanup. >> Morning, mayor, council. I'm here -- Ken snipes, director of Austin resource recovery, and also lead for the homeless encampment cleanup area. Here to talk about our strategy for cleanups across the city. We believe that everyone deserves to live in a clean city. A clean city speaks to pride, it speaks to dignity, and we particularly believe that also applies to people living unsheltered in our city. Through this effort we are working to create a sense of community across the entire city. We're doing that through a multi--department effort with parks department, watersheds, resource [11:35:55 AM] recovery and other departments also participating as well. The public works department continues to duct the cleanups that -- conduct the cleanups that they've been doing for the past -- almost a year now. They're performing these services once a month at 34 locations. The locations will be expanding by the end of the week so we'll have a total of actually 41 locations as we start to pivot and move services to areas that are in need now and as we continue to do that we will remove services from some areas that no longer need services and provide services to areas where those services now need it. If there are residents experiencing homelessness at the sites when those crews go to perform their work, they do not move the residents at those sites. They work to remove the debris and the trash and also -- they also provide be seen be safe bags for them to store their personal [11:36:57 AM] belongings and anything that they feel is of value to them. Watershed protection is continuing their efforts as well. They are particularly concerned about any of the areas where there's a threat of flood or water quality risk for their particular lands that they maintain and own. Other land owning departments also are participating in the effort, particularly with respect to dangerous locations, specifically if you think about areas like electrical transformer yards and places like that where there maybe harmful to have people camping. They're paying particular attention to those locations. Austin recovery is expanding in scope to provide cleanup as well. The cleanup provides on demand cleanup for any other departments that are participating in the cleanup activity around also is now has taken on the 311 [11:37:58 AM] homelessness calls. They track the information and prioritize areas for cleanup and also recently started taking calls for graffiti as well. With respect to storage, the effort is still moving forward. For those experiencing homelessness, being able to have a place to store your personal belongings is crucial. And it helps to safeguard important documents. It helps to facilitate the ability to move about the city to conduct basic life sustaining services, find food, find work, etcetera. And we believe that it is one of the single most important things that we can provide for people. Our best practice for providing that service is through using carts, the carts are typically stored in a warehouse. We're exploring an effort here to do the same thing. We talked a little bit before about using the help force site for doing that. [11:38:58 AM] We're still moving forward on that. We are -- we've done an evaluation on site. What we've learned so far is that there were concerns about a couple of fire code issues there, particularly based on the size of facility, the two options that we were given include either installing a fire suppression system or partitioning the area off and right now we're leaning towards partitioning the area because the fire system seems to be cost prohibitive. What we're doing right now related to storage, we've provided 144 carts to the arch to support their efforts to provide storage to every one of the people that they house at the facility. We're also looking into a citywide storage lockers. Lockers would give people another option to store their things. It would also provide people [11:39:58 AM] an opportunity to receive -- to store their things at locations that might not be suitable for them in terms of coming to the central location. The violet bag program is continuing as well. And also I wanted to talk about the workforce solutions project. Workforce solutions is a project -- a partnership with Austin public health and the parks department. And they're working to hire people experiencing homelessness as an alternative to panhandling. And the thing that I want to point to about that program is it's been very successful in helping the city cleanup. To date they've removed about 50 tons or about 1,000 pounds of trash from the streets and from encampment locations. When we last talked I mentioned to everyone that we were working on tools and I want to point to a couple [11:41:01 AM] of three documents that we have here or story boards that we have down front. The first one is a cleaning map. That map captures all of the areas that we're currently performing or providing services. The second is a 311 calls calendar that kind of allows us to look at trends. It allows us to predict what is happening out in the city so we could take a more strategic approach to providing our services. And the last is a heat map. The heat map has been particularly beneficial to us. It allows us to really focus our efforts where they're needed. We don't expend our resources driving around and looking around the city and the areas where we really don't need to provide the services. Questions? >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I just wanted [11:42:02 AM] to -- thank you very much and the -- I'll say the same thing about the handouts. This is really very helpful. And I'd like to be able to access it and send it out to constituents. Also, the maps are very helpful too. So I'm wondering if there's a place that we can access those. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Okay. So you'll let us know that information. >> That's right. We'll get them posted. >> Kitchen: Okay. And finally, I think last time we talked I know you were working with txdot on some of the areas that were alongside freeways. Not under the freeways, but alongside the freeways. Can you give us the status of that? Do you remember what I was asking about that? >> Yes. Good question. So for most of those areas, we haven't done much. The state has actually started cleaning those areas [11:43:02 AM] along the sides of the arrive ways there, just adjacent to, but away from the actual overpass. So they've started cleaning those areas. And I think we may have initially cleaned some of those areas just to address the initial issue, but we haven't done much with them sense. >> Kitchen: Okay. Just remind me and others, we talked about it last time, about how often txdot is cleaning? >> So if you think back to April of 2019 to November there were 61 total sites that we were cleaning. The city was cleaning all of those sites. And then in November the state started cleaning 17 sites. The sites that they started cleaning they are cleaning once per week. And we were cleaning at a higher frequency as well. And through our tools and assessments I think we've taken a more strategic and surgical approach, so what what we do as I mentioned before is we look at the data, we look at our mapping and what we do with that is we determine the most need [11:44:03 AM] areas and then we provide services in those areas either on a monthly or as needed basis. So some of those areas receive service more than once a month, but typically we're performing services at those areas once a month. We're also -- in addition to that, we're also cleaning in our parks lands, our watershed lands as well and then arr is also conducting the violet bag pickups. Those happen twice per week at the violet bag locations. And we're also in the process of expanding the violet bag program to other areas as well. >> Kitchen: I've noticed and I appreciate the trash caps in the violet bag area. The program in the area under Ben white, along Ben white. I did notice, however, there are some -- there's an area at Lamar and Ben white, just [11:45:07 AM] west where I've not seen trash cans and it appears to be an area where some additional either cleanup or trash cans would be helpful. So if you can make a note of that. Do you know where I'm talking about? >> I do. We're also, councilmembers, we're looking at probably two or three areas where we think we may need to expand the service to three times a week. So we're in the process of assessing that. And once we have a better sense for what the actual need is, we will adjust the service. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: So I really appreciate the work that we're doing on cleanup in the city and I think it's significant to know that state is doing 17 highway overpasses and we're certainly appreciative for any and all assistance that comes from the state. What we're doing are they underpasses? >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: So we're [11:46:08 AM] doing twice as many, the city is, and expanding up to 41. And I appreciate that because I'm not sure a lot of people know that we're also involved and in fact doing about twice or more of the locations. >> That is correct. >> Mayor Adler: In addition so that, watershed is also doing cleanup separate and apart from the public works cleanups? >> That is correct. >> Mayor Adler: Do you have a feel for the number or magnitude or the kinds of cleanups that watershed protection is doing? >> They have 20 sites. I don't know if we have data for that, but we can bring it for that department. >> Mayor Adler: And Austin resource recovery, are they also doing cleanups, but different sites an public works and watershed protection? >> It's usually on demand or in support of the other departments. And Austin resource recovery does go go out whenever there's a need and they're also doing the typical litter work that they're doing. A lot of times if we get a call about litter in between one of the cleanups, the [11:47:09 AM] Austin resource recovery department does go out and clean up those areas. So those are the on demand calls. >> So I think what would be helpful for me and I think for the community again in a sense of understanding what it is that we're doing because I think we're doing a lot and I think that people understood and appreciated that, it would be cause for increased hopefulness. If we knew what the tonnage was of what we were picking up with the 34 going to 41 sites, the tonnage that we're picking up, the kinds of materials that we're picking up with watershed protection and the like and if we could keep track of that over time I think that would be significant. I don't know if we have access to how much the state is picking up in terms of tonnage in its 17 locations, but if we could access that as well so that the state gets credit for and we know what they're picking up to have that kind of reporting [11:48:09 AM] for us. Maybe on a regular basis, but certainly at the next time that we're together or before I think would be helpful. >> Thank you, mayor. We have date to support all of our cleanups, all of the departments do. The state does not track tonnage. So we don't really have the ability to compare or contrast the performance of our terms versus what they're doing because they're not tracking tonnage tonnage. >> Mayor Adler: Don't we use the same contractor? >> We do. >> Mayor Adler: They don't ask the same contractor to keep track of that for them? Okay. I wasn't thinking in terms of compare and contrast. I was thinking more in terms of additive, but-- so before we started doing this, before we put -- does this represent more cleanup than we were doing a year ago? >> Right now? [11:49:10 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> It does. I think before we started the overall cleaning effort it was more on demand based and so now we've created the dedicated sites and the dedicated cleanups and the dedicated teams. So there's certainly more happening now than was happening at the time. >> Mayor Adler: Do we have a feel for how much tonnage we were picking up before we did this surge? >> I don't know if we were tracking that then. >> Mayor Adler: If you could check on that I would like to see that. But it does give rise to the question, before the challenge of homelessness was more visible in our community, before people came out of the woods and the streams and the creeks, since we haven't created more people experiencing homelessness, I imagine that similar kinds of trash and waste was being produced all over the city. We just didn't see it. Is that right? >> I couldn't speak to that for sure. I can tell you that we're [11:50:12 AM] actually studying the locations on many of the encampments that weren't tracked before so we have that project on the way it's not complete yet, but we might better have an idea of what's throughout still and some of these locations that haven't been cleaned up yet. And once we get eyes on some of those locations, I think we can probably start to pull together some data on that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Because I would like to see that too. One of the reasons I joined with any colleagues to kind of change how we were approaching this challenge a year ago was because a year and a half ago and two years ago I went to some of the camps that you couldn't readily see and there were vast amounts of trash that was accumulating and no plan and no activity to remove it. In part because we didn't know where it was or we didn't see it or weren't ready at that point to put the resources against it. [11:51:15 AM] But I definitely feel that with this work we are a safer and healthier community because we're taking care of a challenge with trash alone that we were not seeing or recognizing or really dealing with except on an as-call basis before. Thank you for the work you're doing. >> Garza: I have a quick question. As you mentioned, we used to do this more on a responsive way. For people who are listening or so I can respond to my constituents, if people see an area of trash they can always call 311 and we're still responding to that. >> Absolutely. This chart on the floor here speaks to that. The 311 data has been one of the primary drivers for our response and what we've done since is we've created programming based on what we've received there to determine where it makes sense to setup the standing [11:52:17 AM] cleanups. And so -- and it ebbs and flows. Sometimes we have areas that we're servicing and for whatever reason the residence leave and we stop servicing that area and we look to redeploy those services to areas where people have moved to or where there's a need. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Renteria: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: I just want to make a comment. Last year in January I went to visit just two sites, and I photographed the sites there and it was just amazing all the trash that was inside the -- underneath the overpass of the -- at Riverside. And one of those drainage tunnels it was just full of trash. So yeah, you couldn't see them. You could drive there. You would never see that trash, but it was there. Another place that you could get some of that data is clean my park. I was down there at battle [11:53:18 AM] bend cart and I took out four grocery carts of nothing but trash that was there and there was still more. And it was in the park. You had to go in deep. But it was there. >> Mayor Adler: It's good we're doing better now. Thank you. >> Always the technical difficulties. Good morning. Mayor and council, Jessica king, interim director with the communications and public information office. Laura Foss is your communications priority lead. She is out of town so I am presenting on behalf of her and will provide you a a brief update on the dashboard as well as the other communications process we have at works. In our hands today which you've mentioned a couple of times, councilmember kitchen, are a couple of one pagers that we will refer to later on, but for the most part we are working towards that end. Let's start with the dashboard. This is Sarah Rodriguez with the office of design and delivery. She and Laura have been work to go move the homelessness [11:54:18 AM] dashboard forward. As many of you know it originated with the Bloomberg I team and the cio working on it in 2019. Been working with the office of design and delivery and working with the office of design and development as well. At the end of last month the staff created a prototype and they are gathering input on the dataset and they will be doing this in focus groups which include your offices as well as those who work with individuals experiencing homelessness as well as Austin residents. So far the team has met with about five council offices and they will work on scheduling time with the balancing. I think we have one more meeting next week that's already been scheduled, but anyone we have not met with we are working to get on the calendar. I'll hand it over to Sarah to handle some of the themes that were discussed in the meetings last week. >> Yes. I'll be brief because I know we're at the end of this portion. I want to say first thank you to all of the council offices that have taken the time met with us and we look forward to meeting with the [11:55:19 AM] rest of you and we're in the process of setting up the rest of those meetings. At those meetings what we've really been doing is going through the prototype, having a conversation about who the end users would be, who we should reach out to, what success looks like for a first release. And also additionally what content is missing, what data is missing, what should be in the narrative that we're telling, how we should be telling it, especially leading with compassion, community, transparency and safety. And so yes, as interim director king said, we will be going forward and scheduling meetings with the rest of the offices that we haven't at the present time met with. And then in tandem with that as that starts to roll down, synthesize all of those insights and all of that feedback and then have conversations with community members. Thank you. I'll hand it back over. >> So couple of projects that are in the works right now, atxn is working on a [11:56:20 AM] video that tells the human side of those experiencing homelessness and provides a diverse background in situations of austinites that are currently or have recently experienced homelessness. Atxn is currently working on several additional projects that are in preproduction phase working with lifeworks and integral care on success stories of those who were once homeless and now housed. Also videos on housing first. The dedicated service request on homelessness launched February fifth and that will go through a three month review process. We're now able to collect and track better data on 311 calls about homelessness and we are looking at which datasets from those calls are appropriate for the dashboard. Lastly, the one pagers that you received today, we are working through a couple of more -- a couple more of them, an overview about homelessness which includes snapshots of present state and causes. City efforts for support services, programs, pilots, housing first, which you have, and then understanding the continuum of care for the rest of the public. [11:57:20 AM] We will make sure that those are available on the website and also present an email to you so you can share with your constituents. If you have >> Mayor adler:any questions? Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor, those are all the presentations that we have for this section of the work session and happy to answer .as we move forward we will be conscious about the number of presentations and the length of the agenda. Very excited about the progress that is being made and the fact that we have executives at a very high level within our organization who are taking on each of these items as priorities, and so as you could see in the presentations this morning, a lot -- a great deal of work is being done and we will continue to work in an expedited way to making [11:58:21 AM] progress. >> Mayor Adler: I have some questions about public safety if we could. And I want to talk about aggressive confrontation, that issue. I know that this week we had one of the vendors in the farmers market pull out and -- pull out from that location. I had the chance to speak with the owner of that company who had raised some concerns about homelessness generally in the city. And I asked him to explain to me the incidents that he was referring to or that -- that were impacting him. He pointed out for. [11:59:21 AM] The first one was the shooting that took place at the pecan streets arts festival in 2017. It happened after the festival had closed on the Saturday night, before it opened on Sunday night. I don't think that involved someone who was experiencing homelessness. I don't remember. But it was back three years ago, and obviously, well, it happened while no one was there because it was closed, very few people. I can certainly understand how that would be pretty disconcert be near his booth on pecan street festival. The secretary thing that he -- second thing that he talked about was in the spring of last year, 2019, so, again, before we passed any ordinance changes as a council, he described a situation where he and his family were trying to get to their car in a parking garage and there was someone who was asleep or passed out, blocking the elevator [12:00:22 PM] and 311 was called and I think fire department came and assisted in that situation. The third thing that he addressed occurred several weeks ago, not at the farmers market, but at a coffee shop nearby, and there was someone who was aggressively panhandling, was aggressively confronting people. The person got loud and was upset. And he reports that police officers arrived and said they weren't allowed to take action against people who were experiencing homelessness. And then more recently he talked about what he perceived to be increased aggressive behavior downtown. He also had issues with respect to how the farmers [12:01:24 PM] market was being run and the management and other kinds of issues. But I want want to talk about the third and fourth thing that he mentioned because I'm seeing it discussed on social media and in other places. First is, I know -- I mean, we have an ordinance in this city that continues to make it wrongful conduct, illegal, to aggressively confront people downtown or anywhere in the city. And I think it's really important for everybody to know that, that we have that in these defined terms. Aggressive confrontation includes people approaching, following pedestrians, attempt to confront a person [12:02:25 PM] despite refusal, profanity, potential block of a pedestrian or vehicle access, that ordinance defines aggressive behavior. Our ordinance defines confronting -- those things are all illegal in this city, and I just want to confirm for the public because I don't know what happened in the conversation that ensued, but do we continue to enforce our ordinance against aggressive confrontation? >> Mayor, council, may name is Joe chuck, one of the assistant chiefs. To answer your question, mayor, yes, we continue to enforce the ordinance. The ordinance -- guidance on the ordinance has been put out to our officers over the last several months, and the expectation is for our officers to enforce those ordinances as they see fit. They do have the ability [12:03:25 PM] to -- they have discretion on how those ordinances are enforced so that we see an end to whatever the conduct is. However, the statement apparently that was made by the person that was complaining -- >> Mayor Adler: Again, I don't know whether that statement was made or not. It was just a report. >> Right. I can just tell you that our officers, the expectation is certainly, therefore, for them to enforce those ordinances. >> Mayor Adler: Within the last week or so, I was asked and it was suggested that there had been instruction from members of this council to the police department not to enforce our aggressive confrontation ordinance. Is that through? >> No, that is not true. Not at all. >> Mayor Adler: If there is additional assistance that -- or additional programs that we can bring to bear, we heard from the first person that talked today about aggressive [12:04:25 PM] behavior and, quite frankly, how oftentimes that becomes a self-fulfilling kind of prospective prophecy, if you walk into an exchange anticipating aggressive conduct and you act in a concern way, you might help precipitate aggressive conduct. But if there's additional resources that we need to bring into our street, more street navigators, greater host team presence, greater community paramedic presence, greater social work, folks on our streets, I don't want the [indiscernible] To be created that there's aggressive behavior, aggressive confrontation occurring in our city that we're not being responsive to or dealing with. I recognize on social media sometimes these things just catch and then all the world starts commenting on it. I want us to stay ahead of [12:05:25 PM] that and I want us to affirmatively react to that and make sure we're doing everything we can to make sure in a everyone in our community feels safe. Everyone in our community and realize people experiencing homelessness in our community are much more likely to be the victims of crime than perpetuate crime. If you or the chief or anyone can identify any additional resources or if there's anything we as a council can be doing to further support your work, I want you to let us know. >> Mayor, I appreciate that. I can tell you working through the homeless group working strategy committee that we have, that what you said exactly is what happens. You have one incident that is reported and it catches fire on social media. I think that education is the key. [12:06:26 PM] I think that we have a good communication strategy on how we're pushing out the message, the correct message on really what reality is, that our -- when we're looking at our violent crime incidents, especially in the downtown area, that a small minority of them involve a -- an individual experiencing homelessness. What is driving that right now is gun crime. It is people that are not homeless, and we put things in place to begin to push that down, and that is working. But I think that education this and the communication piece is going to be key in that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Every chance you have a address to address that and say what you said out loud I'd appreciate it and if people could see that clip of what you just said widely because there's some pretty loud voices right now on [12:07:27 PM] social media that are pushing isolated incidences as if they were the norm. And creating fear in our community, which does not make us a safer place. I know that we had a spike in crime a year ago as you're moving into the spring festival season. No one at that time suggested that had anything to do with people experiencing homelessness. The police reacted by creating a greater presence downtown. That worked. The spike went back down. And I saw the chief the other day telling the community that he was going to redo that greater presence again, and I hope and expect that it has the same impact that it had before. I trust manager and that if [12:08:32 PM] what is appropriate for us is just to maintain that level of presence over time, maybe with a larger city it's just something that we need to do on an ongoing basis, but whatever it is, whatever you need in order to be able to keep the community safe, please just ask us. And I do appreciate what you said a moment ago. More and more people need to see that. Thank you. Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: You know, this is important dialogue to be having. I just want to make sure -- we need to react, but we need to not overreact. So I don't want the response to be when I feel mischaracterizations of what's happening, not you out there, the response to be let's put more police, more police. Because we know that overpolicing affects certain communities more than other communities. And so, yes, please let us know the needed resources, [12:09:34 PM] but I definitely do not want us to overreact when people are misstating facts and mischaracterizations of events. I've said this before, it's such an interesting time in our city right now. I moved to Austin 20 years ago. I remember the population sign was 600 something thousand on mopac. And I moved from San Antonio, a big city. Via San Antonio college Station here. And I remember watching the news, and I -- it was -- I would refer to it as "Cute news" because it was so interesting from growing up in a big city and then to move here and see that I had moved to a much significantly smaller city and the types of news that was created. My point is, we are at this incredibly challenging -- this isn't for you, chief. [12:10:35 PM] This is just a general statement. We are growing. We have become a big city, and we are starting to see big city issues. I feel like we are San Antonio 20 years ago. And every night. And I'm not excusing violent behavior. And we do not -- we should not make excuses for it. We need to know that we have the right resources to be addressing these issues. We want our community to be safe. We want -- but I always want to have a very reasonable and practical message for people to understand that we are not the 637,000 Austin anymore. I know people want to hold on to that. I know people want to think that we can have that again, but we're a growing, big city. We have significant challenges. And part of that comes -- part with that comes, unfortunately, these types of issues. And it's kind of -- I feel like I'm in this weird time travel because, you know, I grew up in a big city and [12:11:36 PM] then to come here and see this -- you know, this just people putting the most ridiculous things on social media and saying that all these horrible things are happening, what's going on with Austin. It's that we're growing. We've become a big city, and so just, again, I don't want us to overreact. I don't want us to overpolice because I'm concerned about how that affects certain types of communities. But thank you for the work that you and your officers do. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Yes. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: On the subject of resources, so we had a rash of gun violence, and thank you for naming it what it is, over the summer. And the police department increased the policing staff resources, especially in the downtown where this violence was being experienced. Manager, at our budget time, I introduced a measure of budget direction to keep some of those additional resources in the downtown area because it had been [12:12:37 PM] successful. In conversation, I stepped back my language and asked you to consider keeping it rather than having it be hard and fast direction. When the pilot ended those resources went away. We then experienced in december/january time another rash of gun violence, and now -- and I appreciate it. Our police chief has responded by increasing the level of resources in our downtown area. Absolutely, we are a growing city. And with that comes the responsibility of making sure that we have enough officers in our -- in the areas where we're experiencing acts of violence. And so I know that you and I have had an opportunity to talk, also with our assistant police chief and our police chief about you providing us with some -- providing the council with some information about what those additional resources are costing right now so we as a council can make a decision about whether to continue it, so that we're not in a phase of being [12:13:38 PM] responsive. But if there is an ongoing need for those additional resources that we're proactive about it. Before that -- before those additional resources and, as I understand at the end of spring festival, is that the end time for those additional staffing levels? >> Well, I think that we are going to assess at the end of spring festival about whether to continue or not. And what we're doing is looking at crime analysis prior to implementation, during implementation. Of course the resources that we're bringing to bear right now are significant. And then during spring festival it will be even more so. And then making a determination about what are the appropriate levels to continue. So there's no hard end date to this. We're just going to take a look at it. >> Tovo: That's a little different than it sounded like initially. I think the commitment was to have those additional resources through spring festival. So we will -- will the council have an opportunity [12:14:40 PM] to have this conversation again before those additional resources are allocated elsewhere? Or allocated back to their existing areas. >> Absolutely. We will be communicating through city management and with council about, you know, what those resources are going to look like. And prior to any discontinuation. >> Tovo: Good. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That was a great presentation today. Thank you. Colleagues, it is 12:15. We have another briefing, b2, on the south first street pud. We also have five pulled items, and we have an executive session to take up two items. Do you want to get the briefing first and then break for executive session and then come back for the items? Or do you want to break now? Yes. [12:15:41 PM] >> Alter: I think the staff have been here for 3-plus hours to do their briefing and it would make sense to let them do that before we go -- >> Mayor Adler: Any objection to moving forward with the briefing? Let's pull the briefing up. >> Tovo: Mayor, if I might suggest, we seem to -- I think the homelessness briefings that we're having are critically important and there's a lot of interest and I know I had lots of questions and others did as well. I think it might be helpful if we -- you know, when those are on our council work session agenda we seem to be taking two and three hours on that and just kind of figuring out and planning with that in mind I think might be a good idea because we have quite a few staff for all of these items who have been waiting and clearly we're not going to get to them until after our break and executive session. >> Mayor Adler: Good point. >> Mayor, council, one other thought is to potentially have special called work eggs ISES that would just focus on homelessness so we could have that time dedicated to lengthy conversation around some of the issues that we're [12:16:41 PM] confronting so I'll also be exploring that with you if that would also be a possibility. >> Mayor Adler: At this point I still want them to happen regularly because I think it's pressing. Thank you, councilmember kitchen. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: I'm going to have to leave at 3:00 today, and I didn't think we would be going that late, but if I do have to step out before we get to all the questions, I think I had pulled a couple items, I will go ahead and try to find the answers to my questions outside of this meeting, although I did want to raise a -- couple of them here but giving you a heads-up I'll have to step away for another engagement. >> Mayor Adler: I think we can probably do this briefing, go to executive session, when we come back out I'll make sure you get to air what your questions are before you have to leave at 3:00. >> Mayor, council, Jerry rusthoven with the planning and zoning department. Prior to to submitting an [12:17:41 PM] management for a pud an management is required to submit a development assessment to the city, dry run. Staff is also required to do a briefing to the council, which is why I'm here today. We do have a new pud that's been submitted at the site of the timber creek apartments at 614 south first street. This property is not too far from here on the west aside of the street. West side of the street, immediately after you pass Bouldin creek, currently the site of the timber creek apartments, about 200 some units built in 1972. The applicant is proposing to redevelop as a multi-family site. However requesting pud zoning because they want to have an adjustment in the site development regulations for the property. The applicant is proposing to construct about 550 multi-family units to replace the 200 that are there today. They are proposing to remove existing impervious cover from both the water quality [12:18:41 PM] zone, flood erosion hazard zone and floodplain. Proposing all parking to be located underground. They are interested in possibly working with the city on a possible trail along Bouldin creek, also something in the south central plan. This property is not in the south central plan but it is right on the border of that same plan. They're also committed to working with atd on some traffic ideas, mainly pedestrian beacon. The site development regulations they seek to adjust are to increase height from allowable 40 feet today to 120 feet in the pud, to increase the floor to area ratio to reduce the setback from 0 feet, to modify compatibility to allow building within 60 feet of a residential property, whereas today it would be about 540 feet, decrease impervious cover to 55% and they are proposing to do three star green builder. With that available for any [12:19:42 PM] questions. Again, there's not a vote required today. This is a briefly to let y'all know this pud will be submitted after today's briefing is concluded. So that's it. >> Mayor Adler: Any questions about this? Councilmember pool? >> Pool: Yeah, I'm curious. With the reductions in easements, how does the applicant intend to handle water, runoff on the site? It looks like it's into creek buffer -- >> There's significant portions. I think there's about 50,000 square feet of impervious cover they removed from the erosion hazard zone, about 10,000 they removed from the critical water quality zone and about 50,000 they've taken out of the floodplain. That's actually their main point is the reduction from what's already there today, getting it -- pulling it away from the creek. >> Pool: So the reductions in the easements are not along the creek buffer. Everything is moving either to the south end and the east. >> Exactly, they'd be pulling it away from the creek where it is today. >> Pool: Thank you. [12:20:44 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you for this overview. How much affordable housing -- >> That is to be determined. The applicant would be required under tier 3 in the pud ordinance to prove affordable housing because they are proposing to exceed the baseline far so proposing to go from .75 to two to one. I can't at this time -- I don't know how much that's going to come out to. I'm have to work with them when they actually submit the application to see what it's proposed to be. >> Alter: What are the rule under the pud ordinance? >> Ten to one for the bonus area, so the difference between the .75 and two to one they would, oh, 10% in the fee-in-lieu. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I'd like information about the affordable housing. I'd particularly like to understand since it's an older complex, I'd like to understand what's on the ground now, you know, from [12:21:48 PM] an affordability -- more affordability perspective. It is a central area, so I don't know what we have in terms of, you know, rents and those sorts of things, but I'd like to understand that in comparison to what they're talking about building there. Because of the location, I would be concerned that we -- and would be looking for maintaining sufficient numbers of affordable units. That is close into town, so the properties in those areas in general are becoming -- are very expensive. So I think that will be very important for us to understand how they intend and how much they intend to maintain as more affordable units. And I assume that they're talking -- are they talking rental still? Or are they talking about -- >> Yes, my understanding is they're talking about multi-family complex, so it would be rental. [12:22:48 PM] >> Kitchen: Rental, okay. What do you think the time line would be? I know these things can take a long time. >> Average is about a year, to be honest. So really long ones three years. A really short one is eight months. >> Kitchen: Okay. And our current proposed -- our proposed zoning on that site under the land development code, they would -- they'd still need to come to us for a pud, right? >> Yes. I'm sure that the land development code -- I mean, I could double-check but I'm pretty sure it does not allow [indiscernible]. >> Kitchen: Okay, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ready to go into executive session? Thank you very much. City council will now go into closed session to take up two items pursuant to 551.072 and 551.071 of the government code, we're going to discuss real estate and legal matters related to e2, palm school e3, e1 and e4 withdrawn. Without objection we will now go into executive session here at 12:22. When we come back out we [12:23:50 PM] will handle the five pulled items. Maybe discuss what happens in executive session. >> Tovo: Mayor, I'm sorry I had to step out for that pud briefly and I will reconnect with the staff and applicant. One thing I wanted to highlight for my colleagues, the last information I received about that is that there is -- there is an intent to have a fee-in-lieu for the affordable housing component rather than on-site units so I hope we continue to have that conversation. I think it's really important that we have that housing on-site in that area and continue to work to advocate to do so. [12:25:10 PM] [ Executive session ] [12:54:49 PM] . >>> >>> >> >>> >> >>> [Music]. [2:09:55 PM] [Executive session]. [2:55:41 PM] >> Mayor Adler: All right, it's still Tuesday February 18th, 2020. It is -- it is 2:55. We have come out of closed session. While in closed session, we discussed real estate and legal matters related to item e2. Real estate matters associated with item e3. We are now back. We have some items that have been pulled, which we will go through. We discussed the many items, manager, while we were back in executive session and we're going to vote on Thursday to -- to extend the lease on many and the development agreement. We will take that vote on Thursday to basically create a five-month rolling [2:56:42 PM] proposition. I would just say, you know, kind of as an aside and -- in that conversation, that I would want and I would think the dais would all want you to engage in a conveation with the university of Texas that discusses the -- the issues that were listed on your list to the university and came back from the university to -- to us. I think it's important that we have those conversations. I mean, hopefully, you know, that -- that is part of being able to resolve the many issue, but separate and apart from the many issue, our relationship with the university really shouldn't be transactional to the degree that we can make it. It is in the city's best interest for the university to do well. And we should be doing everything we can, as a -- as another governmental [2:57:43 PM] entity, another public entity, to help them. And vice versa. They should be doing the same thing for the city that the university is located in. You know, I particularly like that the university wants to engage with us on housing issues, for example, dormitories, there are 55,000 kids at the university of Texas and almost 50,000 of them are in housing in our city. We should be actively seeking out things we can do to help facilitate the university building dormitories and housing students. And I think that you could make the same kind of argument for the kinds of things that the university has listed. Things that would obviously help facilitate them and their operations and think in the very direct way then helping the city. And vice versa. There are things that the university could and should be doing to help the community that they are living in. I really like the idea of [2:58:44 PM] you convening with -- with staff and leadership staff and the university of Texas and with the city of Austin to really think through what is a non-transactional just beneficial relationship look like? I think there's a real desire for us to do this sooner rather than later. You know, it's kind of been weaved into the conversations about many. And I understand that, but they are also separate. I think there's a real desire for you to really treat this as a priority issue and now that there's some momentum to have, you know, broader conversations, I think, that I would very much like to see you engage in that and engage in that right away. And my sense is, I think, that my colleagues on the dais share [2:59:44 PM] that. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I'm academic by training and my first professional experiences were in the university setting and I see there's so many opportunities for us to collaborate and coordinate and work together with university of Texas and I'm really excited about continuing these conversations and what they might mean for the city and appreciate my colleagues sharing that broader goal with me. I hope that, you know, as we try to fashion a timetable that we can all work on that we will hear from the university of Texas on a number of items where we need to have information, be able to negotiate with an understanding of both what they need and what is feasible in different parts of the city with respect to their goals, and so I look forward to us seeing the [3:00:45 PM] traffic study and having that information so that as we try to accelerate this process that we can do so in a way that both sides are informed and I definitely have seen a commitment on the part of our staff for bringing that kind of information to the table and I think we have demonstrated that in our ability to help get the arena done, red river straightened, the HEB entitled, et cetera, and I think that we can continue contructively to the benefit of the whole moving forward so I look forward to those conversations. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Are we ready to go to pulled items? Let's do the pulled items. Councilmember Flannigan pulled item number 9. This is the Faulk issue, history center. >> Flannigan: Yeah, so I asked this question before and we had in judicial committee a conversation [3:01:45 PM] about the downtown community court and costs related to it that may be coming to us in the future in a real estate transaction, and I know that those costs are not yet available because it's still happening in negotiation. But I am curious at least about what this particular contract for the Faulk is for. Staff is here for that, and is this coming from bond dollars related to this or is this more general funds if? >> Good afternoon, council, Rolando Fernandez. I'll speak to what this is about and ask to speak about the funding source. In August of last year we brought forward the recommendation to use the construction manager at risk methodology. We issued the solicitation. [3:02:46 PM] This action for Thursday is asking town council to approve the recommended firm to perform design services. My hope is next week or following week we'll issue for construction manager at risk and that will be coming back to mayor and council in about three months. So this specific action is again for the design services for this project. >> Roosevelt which directive libraries. As a total of $14.5 million for the Faulk renovations. >> Flannigan: So this is out of the voter approved bonds. >> 2018 bond, yes, correct. >> Flannigan: I'm getting different answers from different folks but I will take that under advisement. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Both from my colleagues and I'm happy to hear from staff, we heard in judicial committee we could be looking at making a multi-million dollar [3:03:47 PM] investment and potentially purchasing a building to suit and then purchasing a building for the downtown Austin community court. We've had previous conversations about whether or not those services could be available in some portion of the old Faulk library. I know that there are -- there might be logistical challenges with getting that done, but I wanted to know as we proceed down this path if we are making a decision, you know, nondeliberately making a decision about the location -- potential for the downtown Austin community court to be co-located there if we are in effect pocket vetoing, so to speak, that decision by any decision about the history center. I support it and was excited to increase the amount of money in the bonds program to make sure that we could do this work with the history center. Councilmember tovo brought that amendment forward. I think it's really important for the expansion, but in previous [3:04:47 PM] conversations we've talk about what it would take to look at, whether it would be more feasible and more cost effective to potentially have this all in one location rather than sort of further away from downtown, having to purchase a multi-million dollar building. So I don't know at which point we would find out whether that works or not and I just don't want to take a vote on one thing and find out later that that actually decided something else. >> I can speak to the building and the work we're going to do there. Real estate can talk about the municipal court piece on what the time line for that building. We support city council and the city's efforts to get out of lease space and get into our own space. We supported the innovation office and ctm in the Faulk building for about two years at no cost to them. So we do support that effort. In this instance, we still have folks in that building. This project is going to [3:05:48 PM] last about three years and I think courts is looking to move sometime prior to that. And so I don't know if it's feasible or not to try to get courts into that space when we're going to have to do some work in it for the next three years. I don't know what the time line is for real estate finding the space for them. >> Casar: We heard in judicial committee that real estate would be bringing back a space very shortly. And so what I understand that y'all have construction going on and people in the bottom of the Faulk, that could be challenging, I don't know if we've done all the diligence to make sure -- see if that is not doable or comes with extra cost. I would want to compare that with the cost of buying a whole new building as opposed to co-locating in a space where that's already existing in downtown and already on one of our major transit lines. It's just been such a -- it's such a great location that I don't want to -- I [3:06:48 PM] just want to make sure that we have -- potentially if the manager comes back and says, you know what, it will cost us so much more to do it all at the Faulk or cost us so much less. >> I know there's work we have to do on our end, real estate, and working with our department. I can say the need for the history center we have to expand somewhere. We're getting more materials in than we can handle right now in the history center. The goal is to expand the Faulk and make it into a library services. We have challenges right now with presenting our programs in that space that we're in right now. Right now, and I think most of you have enjoyed the exhibit that we bring to the districts about the -- about our services and the exhibits that we provide. We want to be able to provide that in a centrally located space so everybody can enjoy it, not just one district. And we want to do a lot of exhibits in that first floor [3:07:50 PM] space as well. And provide meeting spaces as well. And so, you know, it is -- we have some needs in the library and I know the city has needs as well, you know, but my first priority is looking at the library needs in conjunction with looking at what the city needs. >> Casar: I agree and support the expansion of the history center. I don't think of the library as separate from the downtown community court and separate from all these things because we're all the city. So I don't want to choose your needs over another department's needs because that's actually not how this works in my mind. In my mind your library users need the courts and it's not about picking one department over the other, it's can we fit the history center needs and the downtown Austin community court in the same building or maybe the answer is we just can't. But I don't know if we've gotten from someone other than the library system and from the court system the answer. I would really like for [3:08:50 PM] there to be some folks to get together and come and tell us, you know what, stop talking about this idea because it's just not going to work, or it's a great idea or it's a challenging idea and here are some of the challenges. >> From a space standpoint, it will be a challenging situation because we still have library needs right now where we still have staff in that building, we can't put them in the central library. From a space standpoint it will be challenging. From a financial standpoint, we'll have to get with real estate and find out what that is. >> Tovo: Yeah, I guess I'm not clear on why we haven't been able to answer the space question because I thought it was clear from our earlier conversations that the space at the Faulk library was pretty fully planned for the library needs. And so if I'm -- am I remembering that correctly? >> I think that is the case, but from a financial standpoint whether it's feasible to, you know, move courts into another space, [3:09:52 PM] buy a new building versus them staying in the Faulk building, I don't think that has been resolved yet. What that cost will be. >> Tovo: I'm just starting with the space issue. If the library has planned and needs to use all the space in the Faulk library, then from a spatial perspective there's not room for a municipal court. >> There is no space. For the two departments to co-exist in the same space. >> Tovo: Okay. That was what I thought I remembered from our previous conversations. So it would be great, I mean if real estate has done any more thinking about that, but based on our conversation of the Faulk library, it sounded as if there were pretty clear plans for how that space was going to be utilized. That kind of answers that question for me. Here's Mr. Gill. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Alex gale, interim officer for the office of real estate. Council, that was the same information that we heard as well is that the library was going to be utilizing all of [3:10:54 PM] the Faulk library and putting downtown Austin community court in there wasn't going to be an option. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: My understanding from the last conversation was that while the library had programmed out the full use of the building, there was not sufficient funding in the bond to fully make the entire building usable. That there was a funding gap. And there was some conversations with outside groups, with the foundation and others, but that it is not actually fully funded. Is that also right? >> That is correct. The main pieces that we're working on is the hvac system, making it usable. The first floor we would have to do that in-house possibly as displaced space which is easy to do because it's already an open space right now. But we have the means to do minor work in that space to make it presentable for exhibit space. [3:11:55 PM] >> Flannigan: So I think my thought was that rather than assume the full building is going to get built out with an unidentified source of funds, that we might be able to possibly leverage funds we were going to use on the dac to finish more of the Faulk. As councilmember Casar said, for us at this level the money is the general fund, it's not -- and the properties aren't owned by departments, they are the city's property. So there needs to be an economys of scale related to combining these efforts. And I understand that the -- there are plans for the whole building, but there isn't money for the whole building. That's where I get stuck. >> Mayor Adler: Greg. >> Casar: What I would need to understand from the departments and manager, if we move forward on this, [3:12:55 PM] sounds like it doesn't impact this other broader conversation. If it does, I would want to know, but if this is design services that we can do and that we can keep on having this conversation moving forward, then I feel comfortable. I just want to understand how this item impacts the broader conversation. >> John Daniels, facility planning, Austin public libraries. Councilmember, the impacts will be felt from literally day one. Our plumbing systems, our elevator systems, our electrical systems are all slated to be renovated and upgraded during this bond period. We do have sufficient funds to upgrade all of the infrastructure in the building. The physical buildouts that you refer to, no, we don't have the funds for that. But when you start shutting down your major life support systems like plumbing, [3:13:55 PM] elevator and it will make it -- the building very unattainable for the next couple of years while we're going through that part of the construction period. >> Casar: Great, no, and I know that those needs exist and actually have friends that have been working in that building for some time. So I know about it. And so I'm comfortable and feel very good about making sure we do all of those upgrades to the building, but manager I think we need to circle back and understand if it means that for a couple of years it's hard to use the bottom floor, is in a worth buying a whole other building somewhere else if potentially we could move that back in. Is there a way we could have displaced space and the dak in the bottom. But we need plumbing and elevator working and hvac working, so I'm for that, I just think flagging that is an important moment to take a look at it, so thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. [3:14:57 PM] >> Could there be more information provided in the backup before Thursday, possibly just a list of what was asked in the rfq to kind of make sure we know what they responded to? I saw all the information about scoring and WBE, which I appreciate, but I think it might help me kind of break down what it is their bidding on, what those architectural services may turn out to be later on. Because I do agree the history center needs an expansion. I also took a tour and it's a really great space that is going to need to expand, but I think I want to grasp a little better some of the other things that y'all are looking for in a that space. I don't know that the dak needs to be there. I appreciate Greg's work on that, but I think I'm just trying to wrap my head around the space and what the needs are at this point in time. >> We can get you that. >> Ellis: That would be helpful. >> If I may, I've looked at the services, that was part of the request for qualifications, mirrored what the rca says, work with [3:15:57 PM] the department to find more information on that and see how we can attach it as backup or send to your office. >> Ellis: It's probably available somewhere else, I haven't dug deeper than what was posted in backup, but that could be helpful to see what was asked of the submitters. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Let's move on then to the second -- >> Flannigan: Mayor, if we could jump to the other item pulled, I need to leave in a few minutes. This is a quick question for the sponsor. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Flannigan: On item 46, my concern is really councilmember Ellis, does the resolution say that the parks foundation is going to operate the train and that's what we're directing staff to do, or is there an open rfp process that is still going to be part of this? [3:16:58 PM] It's not clear what we're getting to. >> Ellis: That's a great question. Right now it's open ended that it could be the parks foundation or another vendor. Because this is kind of a stop-gap alternative before the zilker park master plan gets fully built out, we wanted to make sure there was something that could get up and running quickly. But we know it's an ongoing discussion and issue with the train. But left it open to whether it was parks foundation that was operating the train or whether another vendor would be supplied. It gives the city manager the direction to figure that part out. >> Flannigan: I feel like we need to be a little more specific on what we're looking for. I'm less comfortable directing the manager to work with a specific vendor. I'm open to it if it's a stop-gap measure, but I would then want to preclude them from being a bidder in whatever open rfp came later. I do think that -- I still believe that it is important [3:17:59 PM] to have an open rfp process. >> Ellis: Absolutely. >> Flannigan: Would you be open to language that clarified that. >> Ellis: I would be willing to discussing that. I think that was the intent because hopefully all of us are open to that open bidding process. We've dealt with it with other contracts that have come up for renewal, but I wanted to make sure between now and the zilker park master plan there was going to be a couple years where it was tricky and wouldn't lend itself to a normal process, that we had expected a certain end date and things are shifting rapidly. So I wanted to fill in the gaps there. I completely understand a precluded list. I would be willing to look into that but I hadn't thought about it yet, but I understand that request. >> Flannigan: It could take a couple of forms. It could be that we contract with the parks foundation to manage this interim period and then they put out the rfp for separate vendor. [3:19:01 PM] It's just if you contract directly with one vendor and they are a participant in the next rfp you have, you've given them a leg out without an actual open rfp process. >> Ellis: And I think there's maybe some nuance we need to look at with that because if it's not like they drew the engineering plans and then bid on building it. That's different I think than operating it for a couple of years and then being availability to bid when it does go the open bid. I think it's a little different when you are dealing with multiple phases versus the exact same type of work. But I also wouldn't want to preclude anyone who has ever been a vendor on that previously as well. So I'd be open to looking into that, but I think it's slightly different than, you know, you do the environmental assessment and you want to bid on the engineering, sometime that is a conflict of interest, but I would really have to see if they should be precluded or -- to me I would like it to be open [3:20:01 PM] ended. When it does go, the master plan is fully built out and we're finding a more long-term train vendor and at that point it would be set back to zero because everyone is on a level playing field at that point. >> Flannigan: Through staff we can figure out language that says that thing so that we're in agreement and staff has the right direction. >> Mayor Adler: Kathy. >> Tovo: I had a few questions too along the same lines. It's not clear to me, it looks like -- like the manager is directed to work with Austin parks foundation to get the vendor. And so I'm trying to figure out why that would be more expeditious than continuing along with the path of having the parks department seek a vendor. >> Ellis: I think it was a matter of a nonprofit that's well versed in working with the city right now being a little more nimble. We put a lot on our parks department and they do a lot for us, but trying to make sure that there was an outside group that was ready [3:21:02 PM] to jump right in. And if anyone is here -- >> Tovo: Can I ask the parks director to -- I guess in what ways are they more nimble. What are the advantages of not continuing -- >> Kimberly Mcnealy, director for parks and recreation department. So I think that the one thing in this that maybe we just have overlooked is that the idea here is if the Austin parks foundation is working to contract with somebody to be able to help run -- help run the train. Any proceeds beyond whatever the cost of running that will then be distributed to nonprofits that are already working in the zilker park area. So all of the conservancies or the nonprofits helping to support the parks and recreation department. If you were to do an rfp or rfq process, it's highly unlikely to find a vendor that says take all the net proceeds and distribute them [3:22:02 PM] among nonprofits. Of course they are going to want an opportunity to keep all that funding for themselves. That's number one, which is something that's different than what the parks and recreation department would do. In order to secure a vendor, it's going to take a minimum of a nine-month process. >> Tovo: I thought that some of that process you had undertaken knowing that the contract had -- >> No, ma'am. The contract -- what we were trying to do was to be able to negotiate something with the current vendor and those contract discussions they fell apart. So if we were to issue an rfp, we're looking at a nine-month process minimum before we would be able to even put somebody on, then three months negotiation, so another year before the zilker zephyr or the train known as the zilker zephyr would be up and running. This provides us with an opportunity to expedite [3:23:04 PM] that. I would say I'm being very optimistic, but my goal would be cut that time frame in half and have it operational as soon as possible, and my hope would be sometime this summer. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. So it both gets it on the ground faster and then there's not a revenue share -- I assume we had a revenue sharing arrangement with the zilker zephyr operator so some of that money did come back to the parks department. What was the percentage? >> I would have to double-check, but I would say that on average it was $50,000 a year. It was not a -- the revenue share is not going to significantly impact the parks and recreation department's revenue obligation to the city via the budget process. >> Tovo: So based on this resolution, and I like it being 100% nonprofit revenue action distribution, would any of that money flow to the city though to help with any costs that the city incurs? [3:24:05 PM] Related to -- >> That hasn't been contemplated up to this point, but certainly with a trusted partner, be it the Austin parks foundation or if for some reason that didn't work out, some other trusted partner, I'm sure we could work out the details. >> Tovo: Seems to me there would be utilities and other expense that might be appropriately defrayed by the revenue. >> In the past all of those have been part of the contractor or the vendor's responsibilities, but we'll work out the details of that, absolutely. >> Tovo: Because that would otherwise be an increased expense for the city in addition to the 50,000 going away, it would also be the additional expense of those -- >> Cost neutral to the city. >> Tovo: Thank you. And this makes me somewhat sad when I learn that our -- that we didn't actually own the train. I remembered that we had an opportunity to bid on the [3:25:06 PM] kiddie acres back in the day and couldn't figure out how the city could bid on equipment, but there was some equipment that was part of kiddie acres that we were not able to acquire. >> Yes, I remember the situation you are speaking of, yes. >> Tovo: Thank you, councilmember Ellis, for bringing this forward. This seems like a good resolution to a difficult problem. >> Mayor Adler: So I gather that given the mission and purpose and where we are with the train and the like and your work with the nonprofits here that this resolution is something that you are generally supportive of. Yes, sir, very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Okay. Anything else? Okay. We have three more items pulled. Two of them were Leslie's she is gone. We have pulled the pid policy. >> Mayor Adler? One of the ones that councilmember pool pulled I wanted to discuss as well. [3:26:07 PM] Item number 37. I actually have to leave in five minutes. >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to go first? >> Harper-madison: Please. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Item 37. Purchasing. >> Harper-madison: So many questions, so little time. So as y'all can probably imagine, I'm hearing a lot from my constituents with some concerns about item number 37, and so I put together just a couple of questions and then I'm going to fuss at you and slip out of here like a thief in the night. Will this contract have the same provisions as the existing contract or will approving this item give arr authority to change the contract without additional council approval? Is my first question. [3:27:08 PM] >> Councilmember, James Scarborough, purchasing office. The requested item is an interim contract. The need is to cover the city's requirements for these services for a short period of time until the solicitation that is currently in development has been issued, offers have been received and we could bring back an award recommendation. So the terms, the conditions, the pricing of the current contract, the one that expires at the end of the month, have all been brought forward into this new contract. So essentially it's the same contract, it's just going to have a separate number and separate authorization. So it will have the effect of a new contract, but the contractor, terms, conditions, pricing all the same. >> Harper-madison: Which includes the need to come before council before approving extending, modifying, et cetera. >> You mean the interim contract? >> Harper-madison: Correct. You said essentially the [3:28:10 PM] content is the same. >> Yes, so we're asking tore a six-month base term with an option if necessary to go for another six months. We don't contemplate any need to come back and ask for additional authorization. We intend to move on to the new contract so when he with come back it would be a recommendation for a new contract resulting from the solicitation that's currently in development. >> Harper-madison: Okay. So I think you answered my question. So the rfi issued by arr back in August of 2019 has been completed. So how long does arr anticipate it will take to initiate a competitive bid process? >> Well, it's our goal and understanding -- Ken snipes, arr. It's our goal and understanding this would take about six months. >> Harper-madison: And then lastly, so I've been told there are some concern about switching vendors and that it could add additional cost as it would require a new vendor to distribute new [3:29:12 PM] dumpsters. So have we received an estimate on what it would cost to switch vendors? >> Councilmember, I do not believe so. The rationale is for an interim, a short-term contract, the costs associated with transitioning to a new contractor for a very short period of time, the new contractor wouldn't have much time to reconcile all the expense they would put into setting up that contract and absorbing the costs associated with the transition. So typically when we only need a short-term period of time, the default approach is to go with the existing contractor, they already have their containers in place, they already have operational experience supporting the city. So it's the least amount of service disruption with the least amount of costs, but no, we go out and receive some quotes to verify that, no, we have not. >> Harper-madison: Okay. So I'll leave you with this then. I think I'm fine if staff needs additional time to solicit a bid, but as a [3:30:12 PM] policy matter, this is a tricky situation especially for district 1. So representing a district where I don't have to remind anybody in the room how historically environmental justice issues, landfills are a sensitive top he can for my constituents. -- Topic for my constituents. I wonder if we shouldn't be sending city of Austin waste to this landfill that poses environmental threat to my district 1 constituents. It's been opposed by members of council, previous councils, the county, state reps. I just have significant environmental concerns and I'm having a difficult time as the policy maker for district 1 relaying to my constituents that I was in any way supportive of this action. Very difficult. And I really wish I had had more notice to be able to [3:31:14 PM] talk through how to potentially reconcile what's happening here. Also uncomfortable with the idea that given staff any sort of unilateral direction over a million dollar no bid contract is not appropriate. It's supposed to be a competitive environment so that gives me pause as well. Just generally speaking I'm not comfortable with this process and my hope is between now and Thursday I'll get closer to a place where I feel like I can go to the residents of district 1, especially the ones who live in close proximity to this problematic landfill and have an honest, earnest conversation with them about what next steps look like and be able to assure them that in the future -- for them it feels like a whammy, a gotcha, it just appeared out of nowhere without warning and that's unfortunate. My hope is between now and Thursday that we'll get to a better place for those folks [3:32:15 PM] that I'm representing. Thank you for your time. >> Councilmember, we appreciate your comments. We'll definitely follow up with your office. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Mayor Adler: Item number -- >> Kitchen: Mayor, I had a -- councilmember harper-madison, I share your concerns and support your efforts and so if there's anything I can do to be helpful. I would just say to staff that I think -- I had thought that we had said a long time ago, as the councilmember said, that we were not going to be sending waste here. And so I would really like to see a path towards ending that process. I'm also concerned that -- that we're extending this to up to one year, which seems excessive for the explanation that we're giving for no -- you know, for no bid. So I'm hoping that -- I'll look forward to hearing from the councilmember and from your office on what [3:33:17 PM] adjustments can be made to this. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Yes. >> Ellis: I've got a question. So this is talking about -- maybe this isn't what it is meant to do, but talking about, like, composting for city facilities, and I was wondering kind of citywide what -- if we have existing plans or goals or if we're trying to increase that. I know there's been discussion of some facilities have it and some don't and I think that could really help with the landfill discussion if we're diverting as much organic waste as possible out of the land landfill it could help solve. If that was something initiated or -- there you go. >> Sorry. Tammy Williamson, assistant director Austin resource recovery. In this particular contract, it is a part of -- compotis [3:34:19 PM] is a part of this particular contract so we would be asking for that in the upcoming one. >> Ellis: Okay. >> Did I answer your question? >> Ellis: I think I wanted to know more about trying to compost more or if it's just a matter of these are the things we think we're going to need in the contract, how it's -- like if there were any metrics or goals for, like, can you provide more bins so that the pickup service encourages more composting or if any of that is part of this? >> We do have final rollout this summer. I think it's 56,000, is that right? 56,000 in terms of composting. For the rest of the city. >> Ellis: I know we're still working on multi-family. >> Yes, we're are still working on multi-family. We're going to see how that goes and that may give us an idea what our concrete plans are when we go further into the multi-family area. We're going to see how that goes. There's also going to be education outreap to help us look at what we can do to look at multi- family -- [3:35:21 PM] single-family even more increase that percentage in terms of participation. >> Ellis: So sounds like they are kind of a different contract but working toward the same goal. >> Yes. >> Ellis: Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? The last one we're going to call up is item 15. You pulled this. I don't know if you want to go first. >> Ellis: Yeah, I don't mind daylighting my questions for about it. I know that we had postponed this the last time it was on our agenda and I noticed in the backup for this time that it had struck the language about if we don't have an interlocal agreement between the city and the county and the etj, that we would not be shown as objecting. And most of my concern has to do with our council schedules and wanting to make sure if the county is involved in a pid in our etj that we don't have gaps in time where the city would be seen as supportive when we [3:36:22 PM] just needed time to discuss it. I kind of wanted to know if there was any tweaking to that language or the process behind taking that language out. I'm not sure if that was in line with what the mayor wanted to ask about or if you had a different question. >> Belinda weaver, city treasurer. And we did still keep in the policy itself that an interlocal will be entered into with the county regarding timing issues along with reimbursement to the city for time spent on these county created pids. So that is something that we are looking to start discussions with them as soon as the pid policy is approved by council. >> Ellis: Okay, great. I remember those discussions kind of about our staff time to review things that we feel like we need to deal with. So would part of that time discussion take into account our breaks that we have over the summer and the winter [3:37:23 PM] where we don't have a meeting for a month or longer sometimes? >> That is correct. When we have those discussions and in formulating the interlocal agreement with them, it will address those timing issues moving forward. >> Ellis: Okay. I would hope we have a chance as we develop our relationship with our county counterparts that we could at least pay special attention to providing our feedback so they know what we are looking for and they know what we are looking for and trying to achieve mutual goals with housing and transportation and things like that. >> Mayor Adler: Just a quick question. This is the pud policy and I appreciate all the work. The pud gives us the ability to give some benefit to property owners in exchange for a promise of them giving us community benefits. One of the provisions that we have is that in order for us to do this with someone in the etj, it's going to require a waiver. I don't understand that. [3:38:24 PM] If someone offers us community benefits, why would we -- why would we have a waiver process? We could always say we don't want to do it if that's not something that we wanted to do. I just don't understand why the waiver. >> I don't believe it's a waiver process. Our preference is if we're doing a pid to do it in the full purpose jurisdiction. If it's in the etj, certainly we would want to have the special benefits, community benefits coming to us, but that is also going to be a pid that's going to create taxable value for Travis county. And so we would prefer that before the creation of the pid, that we talk to the owner about possible annexation. Typically a pid when they petition is a handful of property owners. So an annexation process would be an easier process than if it was a fully [3:39:31 PM] developed property. Most of the developments in the etj are also using city services, city streets. We have mutual aid in our fire areas, maybe not the right technology, that's electric, but our firefighters go fight fires in pflugerville and other areas and esds. So the purpose of the annexation prior to creating the pid is to recover some of those revenues for the city of Austin for property and infrastructure that we know that the etj developments are going to use. >> Mor Adler: And does it make it more -- I just don't know how it works in practice. If someone is contemplating and desiring to have a pid, they would then -- and they would look at the -- our process then and say, well, in order for me to apply, I have to agree for us to be annexed. Is that right? Or is it that being annexed is part of the community benefits that they would offer in an application for [3:40:32 PM] a pid? How does that work. >> It could be the first. They could come in and they could say here are the community benefits I'm offering. What we would then do is prior to bringing forward to council to approve the pid, we would actually start talking to them about possible annexation. If they indicate that they don't want to do that or they are not willing to do that, our policy allows us to still bring it forward to council. Our preference stated in the policy just for transparency reasons is we prefer that they annex. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> But that doesn't preclude us from bringing a worthy pid in the etj based on our review committee's recommendation. We could still bring it forward to council. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. Anybody else have any other questions on this? Anybody have any questions? Thank you very much. Anybody have any questions on the last item? That being the case, none. At 3:40, we are adjourned. [5:58:28 PM] [Music]. [Music] [6:02:08 PM] >> Hello. It is 6:01 so time to start tonight's zoning and platting commission meeting. And our facilitator is Sylvia Limon. Good evening. >> Good evening, commission. Hello? Good evening, commission. Sylvia Limon with development services development. I'll start by calling the roll. [Roll call]. >> Okay. The agenda, citizen communication, there is one person signed up to speak. Item a, approval of minutes. Approval of minutes from February 4th, 2020. [6:03:10 PM] Under public hearings, rezoning, case number c14-2019-0118, champions commercial development. There's an indefinite postponement by staff. Item number two rezoning, case c14-2020-0001, Colton bluff springs road. This will be a discussion item. Item number 3, preliminary subdivision plan, case c8- 2018-0171.sh. Goodnight ranch phase 2 east. This is offered for consent. Item number 4, preliminary subdivision, case c8-2019-0057. Peer son ranch west preliminary plan. This is offered for consent. Item number 5, site plan, case sp-2019-0189d. X space group. This is offered for consent. [6:04:10 PM] Item number 6, final plat with preliminary, case number c8-2018-0122.1a,, east village phase I. This is offered for consent. Item number 7, final plat with preliminary, case c8-2017-0307.3a, the vistas of Austin, section 4. This is offered for consent. Item number 8, final plat from approved preliminary, case number c8-2016-0109.7a, pioneer crossing east section 18. This is offered for consent. Item number 9, rezoning, case number c14-2019-0159. , Arboretum lot 9. This is a postponement request to April the 7th by the applicant. Under C, new business, item 1, initiation of zoning change for property associated with [6:05:12 PM] c814--96-003.14, pioneer crossing pud amendment number 14, that's offered for consent. Item number 2, initiation of zoning change for property associated with c-14-2017- c-14-2017-0043, this is offered for consent. Are item D, items from the commission. And E, future agenda items. And item F, committee reports and working groups. And that concludes the agenda. >> Okay. Thank you very much. So the consent agenda is a1 with the minutes with a slight correction. >> Yes. The correction will be that there's a vacancy for district 4, so Abigail tetco should not be listed. >> And the rest of the consent agenda is b2 through b8, c1 and c2 and then b1 an indefinite postponement by staff and b9 postponement by the applicant to April 7th. And is there a motion? >> I'll make a motion to [6:06:12 PM] close the public hearing and approve the consent agenda. >> Okay, commissioner Smith made the motion. Seconded by commissioner Evans. All those in favor please raise your hands? Okay. Great. >> Do I get to ask a question about -- [inaudible]. >> A question about? >> One of the ones we're postponing. >> Why don't -- since we're just postponing it -- >> I have a relevant question related to the postponement. >> Oh. >> If it's relating to the postponement you can -- you should pull it. >> Then is it going to be a simple yes or no answer? >> Should be. >> Okay. Why don't we go ahead and do that. >> I have a question on b1. That project is being postponed indefinitely. That is a part of the champion tract which has [6:07:13 PM] several deed restrictions and restrictive covenants. Are there drop dead dates in those covenants that we are exceeding or surpassing in our decisi? >> Not that I'm aware of. My name is Wendy Rhoades with the planning and zoning department. There is a restrictive covenant from 1991, but there's not -- other restrictive covenants on this particular tract 4 that I'm aware of. There was a tract 3 at the southwest interaction, but that's a different case. >> Okay. >> Okay, thank you. Great. >> Thank you, Wendy. >> Okay. We had somebody signed up. Thank you so much. And so now our only case to be heard, everybody else, that's it. We actually did vote. >> Yep. >> So we're -- yeah. All those in favor please raise your hands? Okay. And so okay. The consent agenda approved. [6:08:14 PM] >> And chair, just to clarify, that was a unanimous vote. >> Right. >> Thank you. >> Chair: Yes. Sorry, I seem to be rushing it. And so now we're on to our only discussion item, which is b2. And thank you, everybody else for showing up. >> Chair, I'm sorry, there was a person signed up for citizen communication? >> Yes, there was, but then I got a note that that person did not wish to speak. But thank you for checking on that. So b2... >> Good evening, commissioners, I'm Kate Clark with the planning and zoning department and I'm presenting item 2 on your agenda. It is case c14-2020-0001. [6:09:14 PM] This property is located at 6917 Colton bluff springs road. It is currently undeveloped with single-family residences to the north and to the west of it. These areas are zoned sf 2 and sf 4a. To the east across Mckinney falls parkway is undeveloped land zoned a combination of single-family, multi-family and commercial zoning. South of the property sun developed land, which is in the city's etj and is not zoned. The applicant is requesting a portion of the property along Mckinney falls parkway to be zoned to gr-mu with the remaining area behind it. Staff is recommending the applicant's request to rezone to mf-3 and gr-mu. Gr-mu is a commercial zoning district that is appropriate near major traffic ways. The portion of the property the applicant is requesting to rezone is at the intersection of Mckinney falls parkway,, which is classified as a level three or minor arterial. [6:10:15 PM] And the Colton bluff springs road, which is a level two or a collector. This location for the gr-mu would provide access to both of these streets. As for the multi-family portion, there is an existing property across Mckinney falls parkway with a base zoning of m3 which is adjacent to mf-4 properties. Within the -- also within the m3 zoning districts buildings have a maximum height of 40 feet and buildings within the sf 4-a zoning districts are permitted up to 35, which is the residences across the street of Colton bluff. Both of these zoning districts have similar maximum building and impervious cover standards, and rezoning this portion of the property to mf-3 would not be introducing a new zoning category in the area and would be capable with the existing site development regulations. I'm here if you have any questions and the applicant is also here if you have questions on the property. >> Okay, thank you. Then next we can hear from the applicant. [6:11:17 PM] And the applicant, you will have six minutes. >> Thank you, madam chair. Evening, commissioners. My name is Jeff Howard for the applicant. We have a presentation. I think Ms. Clark gave awe good orientation and a good statement for the rationale for the staff's recommendation. A couple of points that I wanted to emphasize, the property here is shown with the red star. As you can see, William cannon drive and slaughter lane are both asmp transit priority networks and they are imagine Austin corridors. They are under study and designed for corridor improvements, which will include bicycle, pedestrian and transit improvements as well. Mckinney falls parkway to the east is a major arterial. It's divided, it's four lanes as well. Here this map shows the [6:12:19 PM] street levels of the various streets. As you can see William cannon and slaughter are level four streets. Mckinney falls is a level three street and Colton bluff is a level two street. In addition to its current access to a robust street network, it's also worth mentioning that project connect envisions the extension of the pleasant valley brt line out to this area all the way to Mckinney falls with a park and ride as well. So far this will be a good location for transit supportive development and densities. Here's the map that shows the zoning, and as Ms. Clark mentioned there is mf-3 on the other side of Mckinney falls. The purple pud is the pud that has very flexible intensities as well. You can also see on the other side of William cannon there is mf-3 zoning as well and gr-mu zoning in that direction that is adjacent [6:13:19 PM] to sf 2 zoning as well. The reason for the gr-mu zoning with the odd configuration is due to an odd configuration along com and Mckinney falls parkway. You can see that easement, that's going to restrict our access, so in order to get the access points to Mckinney falls and coal we've had to -- and Colton bluff, we've had to change the configuration. There is a floodplain, marble creek crosses the back portion of the property and that portion is undevelopable. And along with the critical water quality zone we will not obviously be developing there. And with the extension of the critical water quality zone that pushes most of the development east of nutri run. So to the east will be primarily ponds, trails and that sort of amenities. So in summary, the property is located at a major intersection. It's located in an area [6:14:22 PM] that's getting transit priority attention, both currently and under project connect. The property is undeveloped and there will be no displacement to occur on this site. As Ms. Clark mentioned, the development intensities are similar between lr-mu and gr-mu and sf4a and mf-3 as it relates to the watershed impervious cover regulations. Zoning we're asking for is very low density, something on the order of eight units per acre. And then we'll comply with the atlas 14 requirements and all current city tree preservation, environmental drainage requirements. And as I mentioned, the western one-third of the property is undevelopable and will be undeveloped except for required drainage facilities and parks and trail facilities. There will be compatibility standards triggered by the property to the north. We'll have to comply with that. And so we're recommended by [6:15:24 PM] staff. With that I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> Chair: Okay. Thank you very much. And is there anybody else wishing to speak in favor of this project? And if not, then we do have one person -- well, really two people signed up to speak against. And the -- I believe it's don zedansovek. I know I just butchered your name. You have time donated by your wife Heather. So would you like to speak? And you will have nine minutes. And if there's anybody else who wishes to speak you can fill out a card and speak. >> Thank you. Nine minutes, that's a lot of time. [6:16:24 PM] >> You don't have to fill it out. >> Let's see if I can get through he everything I want to say in nine minutes. I'm not sure. First, -- so I'm don, I live at 7013nutri run in the -- what they call vista point, which is really Springfield, I think section 4 and 5, which was the legal. The south property, boundary line, property line of my property, is the north right-of-way lane of Colton bluff springs road. So my property directly abuts the proposed rezoning. Of course, since I am speaking now as is clear, I'm opposed to this rezoning rezoning. The largest portion of this property request for rezoning is to change to mf-3. City zoning ordinance [6:17:26 PM] section 25-2.64 defines this as multi-family residential medium density, not low density as he just mentioned. The district is designation for multi-family use with a maximum density of 36 units per acre. Not eight units per acre. Depending on the unit size. Mf3 district designation may be applied to a use in a multi-family residential area located near supporting transportation and commercial facilities. In a centrally located here or in an area for which medium density multi-family use is desired. So I'm going to refer to what was on the website, the zoning change review sheet. Page 5 states that the nearest cap metro transit stop is located approximately 1500 linear feet from the property. While I'll say this is technically true, I think [6:18:27 PM] it's also very miss pleading. That -- misleading. That distance is measured from the southwest corner of the property, which is along the alum road, alum rock road, and that's the portion of the property, as the applicant points out, is undevelopable. The nearest point which would actually be developable is much further. And to get to that spot, you would have to-- people would have to walk down both Colton bluff road and alum rock road. There's no sidewalks on Colton bluff road and a large portion of alum rock road there's also no sidewalks. It's not until you get further south on alum rock road that that actually is a sidewalk. The closest existing commercial facility right now is located on Thaxton at bandera drive, which is about three quarters of a mile from the southwest corner of the site and even further measure if you consider it to the developable portion of the site. This seems to be highly [6:19:28 PM] inconsistent with the mf-3, the stated mf-3 definition. Again on page 5, the zoning change sheet, it states that the proposed use is 144 unit multi-family apartment complex, but we have no information of how this is actually going to be approved. As is stated, the maximum density is 36 units an acre, and this overall site is 23.24 acres. , So that would allow you a maximum density of over 800 units. So we have no assurance that what they're stating in this is what will actually be built. On page 8 of the zoning review sheet under transportation, the Austin strategic mobility plan refers to calling as 120-foot right-of-way on Mckinney falls road, a 64-foot right of waive on alum rock road, yet nothing is noted on Colton bluff [6:20:28 PM] springs road at all. It seems highly unlikely that the site could utilize alum rock road due to the creek and it being undevelopable. So they're not going to cross that. So all traffic would either have to enter and exit off of Mckinney falls road. Why is Colton bluff road not mentioned. Also on page 8 it's stated that the traffic impact analysis is not required. Yet the increased traffic should absolutely be a consideration in this zoning change. If any traffic from the site is exiting or entering the site from Colton bluff springs road, it will have a terribly terrible impact on the vista point subdivision directly to the north. As many residents will attest, this community is already seeing a heavy cut-through traffic. It will only get worse with a huge multi-family development directly across the street with little better option of traversing the city streets. Per the city website, [6:21:32 PM] data.mobility.austin..gov signal request, a traffic signal has been recommended as part of the 2016 bond corridor program at the intersection of William cannon drive and James ranch road, which is the main entrance to vista point subdivision off of William cannon. The same site does not list any such traffic signals being listed or planned at Colton bluff springs road and Mckinney falls parkway or anybody else nearby, thus the natural thing for this new community to do will be to use our community, our neighborhood as a cut-through to this proposed new traffic light as it will be the easiest way for them to traverse. The city Austin guide to zoning dated September 2016, which can be found at austinstate of texas.gov sites default planning, planning, underscore guide PDF, section 2 zoning principles, states zoning should promote compatibility with adjacent and nearby uses, and should not result in detrimental impacts to the neighborhood character. [6:22:33 PM] Unless you can ensure that this zoning change and the future development will not result in detrimental impacts to this community and our neighborhood, then this zoning change cannot be approved. The resulting increases in traffic through our neighborhood alone should exclude this zoning change from consideration. Section 4 of the same city of Austin guide to zoning states that, quote, nearby neighbors are considered to have a stake in the zoning as well. This is well said, but why has the applicant not reached out to discuss the zoning change with the residents of the closest property to this site? I know that neither myself nor my wife have been contacted except to get this notice of hearing. I think that the applicant is dealing in bad faith. The homeowners of vista point whose lots abut Colton bluff road were also told by kb homes, the developer and builder of vista points, and [6:23:34 PM] by note, the previous owner of the 6917 Colton bluff springs property, that that property would not be developed because of the floodplain and other environmental concerns. The applicant noted a robust street network. I honestly don't think he's ever tried to drive out of our neighborhood at 6:30 or 6:45 in the morning and tried to turn on William cannon road. I would say the street network is anything but robust right now. There is not -- they mentioned there was an mf-3 zoning across the street. I want to note that this is not directly across the street. There is at least per the document that was provided and mailed to us, there is sf-4a and sf-6 in between this property and the mf-3 [6:24:35 PM] property that's been zoned. And lastly again, I just ask that this rezoning be denied or at least be deferred until further discussion can be had. Thank you. >> Chair: Okay. Thank you very much. Is there anybody else who wishes to speak in opposition? And if not, then the applicant has three minutes for rebuttal. >> Thank you, madam chair. I want to thank the prior speaker for his thoughtful comments. And I want to briefly address those if I can. First with respect to sidewalks, as part of the project we will extend the sidewalk the length of Colton bluff springs road so that will be an enhancement, that will I think benefit the entire area that will [6:25:35 PM] come from this project. Colton bluff springs road itself I think has sufficient right-of-way. I think it has -- I may have to consult the backup on 80 feet of right-of-way, so it's got sufficient right-of-way for its level two needs per the asmp that was adopted by the city. As far as a traffic impact analysis goes, that wasn't completely waived. It's been deferred. And we anticipate that when the project comes forward with a site plan that if there are any mitigation measures that will be identified, we can certainly address those at the site plan. With respect to the city's zoning guide, you know, I just would respectfully disagree with the speaker on that and I think your staff is the best and most qualified to determine whether or not this project meets the zoning guide requirements for compatibility and your city staff has recommended this project. Compatibility will be addressed through compatibility standards. And on the point about reaching out to the neighborhood, obviously there are quite a few single-family homes to the [6:26:35 PM] north that would have gotten notice both of this public hearing and of the filing of the zoning case in and of itself. We have diligently been asking the case manager to let us know if there's been any outreach to them about concerns expressed by the neighborhood. We have been contacted about one such neighbor. We got an email on February of from that neighbor and we responded on February 7th offering to meet with that neighbor. So we remain committed and willing to meet with the neighborhood and anybody that has any concerns about the project and would be happy to do so. But notice was sent and we did reach out and we heard of someone with some concerns. Again, the project -- the reason this mf-3 was chosen is because we think it's capable land use -- comma exalt land use and appropriate infrastructure for this part of town. Our density will be lower than what's indicated on the [6:27:35 PM] mf3, but we still think that mf is a viable and proper zoning designation W that I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> Chair: Okay, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Chair: Okay. Now we can vote a motion to close the public hearing, please. Okay. Motion by commissioner denkler, seconded by commissioner Smith. All those if favor of closing the public hearing, please raise your hands. Great, unanimous. And what next, folks? Okay. Commissioner denkler has a question. >> Ms. Clark, can I ask a question? We've got a different-- it looks like a slightly different configuration from the gr tract than what's in the backup. [6:28:36 PM] Does that require a change in notice at all? >> I'm not sure what -- Kate Clark. I'm not sure the backup is what they're requesting for gr. >> Okay. It is the. >> What might be confusing is there's a little rectangle there and that's existing lr-mu and they're rezoning the whole L shape. >> Okay. And why gr and not lr? Just curious. >> We thought that gr was more appropriate for the commercial opportunities over here also and Mckinney falls parkway is a minor arterial and it's a major -- it's a divided roadway with potentially a lot of residential developments to the east of it along the fact that there are not a lot of commercial opportunities in this area. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Commissioner king? >> Yes. [6:29:39 PM] I had a question for you too. Thank you so much. And so I was looking at the as we're doing these zoning cases, I think most folks, hopefully most folks understand that even as we're doing rezoning under the current code that new code is being worked on and would eventually if it passes council will replace even what might be approved today or in the next few weeks by council. So I looked online to see what the proposed zoning for this site is in the new land code and what I found was that the proposed zoning is for what's being requested mf3 on this site, the proposed zoning is r2-c. And then for the gr-mu portion of this, what's being requested, the proposed zoning is -- under the new code is mu 3. And I recognize that what I'm seeing on the map is what is being requested is [6:30:39 PM] what's not currently on the ground there, the zoning. So I can see how the proposed zoning that's on the new proposed land development code is not -- does not take into consideration what's being requested tonight. So long-winded question. If we approve the zoning tonight with what's being requested tonight, what would staff -- what is staff going to recommend for the new zoning? Because questions have been asked about capability standards that apply under the current code, but may not apply or may be different under the new code? What I'm trying to do is get the message out that although things are being said tonight that are true under the current code that things could change so you must be vigilant about what's the proposed code because it could change again what's being approved. So anyway, do you have an [6:31:39 PM] idea of what -- if zoning were approved tonight, what the new zoning might be for these two tracts? For example, what would mf-3 typically be recommended under the new zoning? >> [Inaudible - no mic]. >> I don't know what it would be recommended as. Sounds like somebody else does. >> Rm3. >> And I understand generally there are correlations between the new zoning categories and the existing categories. That's all I'm trying to do so that the public, the folks that are being impacted by this could understand what might be coming. >> And what I do know is that there are compatibility standards with the proposed. Those are changing for various districts so I do not know off the top of my head what triggers what. But I do know that an r2-c, which is what I think is going to be proposed for the [6:32:42 PM] neighborhood above the property to the north, that would trigger compatibility. What I don't know is what zoning district the new proposed land code create. I don't know if it would be rm3, rm 4, but I do know that the property north work in a category that would trigger it based on what the new code lands on. >> And other things can change. Under the new proposed zoning, which could still change again with what's out there right now after draft 2 was approved by council. So in the conditional overlay could you explain what that -- what is the conditional overlay that's currently in place? What does it do? What is it -- that's not being carried, right? >> No conditional overlays are being currently carried forward. The sf-4a-co right now is a maximum density of a [6:33:42 PM] combined 6.25 residential units per acre and a total of 550 residents residential units. >> Thank you very much. I appreciate your answers. Thank you. >> Chair: Okay. Vice-chair Duncan. And I know what he's going to ask because we've been trying to figure this out. And this also would be for -- >> I'm trying to figure out who is on first. A map that -- >> Which one I can have? >> First of all, let me say I know it's awkward for you because I know a lot of these questions are what's codenext going to bring and right now we're in the transition area and you really don't know the answers to those things. Compatibility will no longer be an issue because it's not in the code. But anyhow, what I'm trying to do is figure out exactly what's happening. I think the applicant misspoke when he said the [6:34:43 PM] word low density. We're not talking about low density. Well, it depends on what you call it. It might be low density in New York City, but it's not in Austin, Texas. We're talking about I think the existing zoning and forget about the proposed districts. By my calculation, and the existing zoning is what was it, sf 2a or something? Between sf-4, which is small lot residences, which is one of the first districts of what we currently can approve for missing middle, which everybody is ennative-americanered with and trying to get, -- enamored with and trying to get, which is a notch up, there are six districts between that and what the applicant is asking for. There's sf 4b, mf1, mf2 and mf-3 and the mf-3 actually says medium density. Now, I think we need to get in perspective exactly what we're talking about. [6:35:44 PM] Let's not play numbers games. It's difficult to follow. Then we also have another factor in here change needs to be taken into consideration. We're talking about 23 acres, but we're really not talking about 23 acres. Does that 23 acres include the commercial, the front part? If it is, just take it off. >> Yes. >> Then what have we got left? About 18 acres of residential? >> About 18 acres and the floodplain is about five. >> It's in addition? I thought the 18 acres included the floodplain. >> Sorry, it includes. >> It includes. That's important because basically what will happen is that density on the floodplain will be transferred to the up land. So we're doubling the density. So we're really playing the numbers game here. And you need to understand that to understand what the time product is going to be. And that's all I'm trying to do is to get transparency because I think that the public deserves that. You said 500 something units. [6:36:44 PM] 550 units on -- let he me go back, 18 acres mines the floodplain, is about 12 acres. That is a really high density. >> No, sorry, sir. The 550 units was from the existing co that's currently on the property that was done in 2002. So the property is currently sf-4-a-co and commissioner king asked what the co was for at that time. That's not what the applicant is proposing. That's what the current conditional overlay is. For that land. >> Okay. What does that mean in terms of -- how many units can he build right now on the residential portion? >> I'll have to go back and get my calculator. >> I'm not trying to get you on the spot. I'm trying to clear up the mess because I think there is some confusion. My colleagues disagree, then I'd be glad to stand aside, but I've been doing this for 60 years and I really can't [6:37:44 PM] understand it. And I think that the neighbors need to know what's going to happen next door. That doesn't mean I don't think it's good or bad. That just means that let's be straightforward with what we're talking about here and stop playing games. >> Let me let the applicant step up and see if he can answer your questions on the units. >> Chair: I'd also like to ask then in the backup it says it's 144 units proposed, but I don't see a co limiting it to 144 units. >> Thank you, madam chair and vice-chair Duncan. That's correct. The proposal is for 144 units. That's what we've put in our tia waiver. And if you put that on, say, 13 acres of developable land, that's mf-3. That's 11 units per acre. That's pretty low density. And we need to have the mf because it's rental property so we can't have an sf 4b or an sf-5 or an sf-6, but [6:38:46 PM] obviously -- and then we have some things like height. We need the 40 feet of height for this particular type of project. So that's the proposal, 144 units over that 13-- say 13 and a half acres or so. I think what could be built there now according to Ms. Clark was approximately six units per acre under that co for let's say 21 or 22 acres or 21 acres. So you're getting into the 120 units allowed under the sf 4a. So we don't think it's a huge increase in density in terms of what we propose. The reason we ask for m3 is because it's a exalt zoning when -- compatible zoning when we look at the area. We do think that is a warranted zoning. If you think that should be something else, I think that's your prerogative. As far as a co, I think there's just a general [6:39:48 PM] killing R. Concern about cos -- I think there's just a general concern about cos and again if that's part of your recommendation, that's your prerogative, but that's our proposal. >> Don't leave. We have a question. >> Chair: Yeah. So how many units would be allowed under the mf-3? >> I just did it in my head. Your numbers -- okay. You used a good figure. You said that there are really 13 developable residential acres. >> In the mf-3, right. The gr does allow for residential. >> But you're not doing that. You're going to put commercial on the corner. >> That's the proposal is to have some commercial on the corner. >> Forget that because I don't think anybody is arguing that. There are 13 effective acres and you are talking about putting 144 units, which would be an effective 11 units an acre. >> On the developable portion. Obviously you will have a portion that's undeveloped, but your math is correct. [6:40:49 PM] >> Chair: Okay. Any other questions or any other -- commissioner bray? >> So you said that like your 150 units is based on 23 acres, but there's enough left developable -- >> I'm sorry, say that again? >> You said that -- I thought I heard you say 23 acres and about 150 under the current zoning? >> Yeah. So. >> What would it be under current zoning? >> I can't remember the number that Ms. Clark quoted, but I believe it was six units per acre on the sf 4a. I believe that -- I don't know how many acres that is, but let's say it's 17. >> So like what -- is that 17 acres including commercial or is this that -- >> I'm sorry, say that again? >> Is that 17 acres? I'm trying to figure out why you're saying 17 acres under sf 4, but 13 -- are you including the commercial in that? >> Well, right. Under the current zoning a smaller portion is commercial. So there's a piece that's [6:41:50 PM] currently lr-mu, but it's a smaller parcel than what we've currently proposed. And so that means the balance, I want to say 21 acres, is sf 4a and [indiscernible]. >> Okay. That answered my question, thank you. >> Chair: Any other questions? Commissioner Gary? >> I just have a question. If the applicant would be willing to meet with neighbors in regards to working on this -- the site plan. >> Yes, ma'am, absolutely. >> That would be something -- and I understand environmental resource inventory is pending. >> Yes, ma'am. We're -- it depends on how the zoning goes naturally, but we're in the process of working on things like site development permits, various applications, obviously due diligence. Part of the site development permit application process [6:42:51 PM] will require an eri so we'll have to do that and the applicant is in the process of generating all those materials. So that's all underway. As I mentioned in my presentation, we'll have to comply with all current environmental requirements. So if there are any cef's, I don't know if we anticipate any, but if there were, we would have to comply with city requirements regarding cef buffers. >> Okay, thank you. >> Chair: Okay. Commissioner denkler? >> Mr. Howard, I'm sorry. Can you tell us what commercial uses y'all are contemplating? >> Not entirely sure. We know that the owner would like to reserve some of that because of its location for commercial use. I think we could foresee some sort of neighborhood type food sales or service station or something like that that would serve the needs of the area. >> Okay, thank you. [6:43:53 PM] >> Chair: Okay. Commissioner Barrera Ramirez. >> Because there is a lot of commercial on Colton bluff and it's 82 feet, the right-of-way? >> Good question. I don't know the attendance that technically. We will put this sidewalk where the atd tells us it should go based on their corridor requirement. >> But you wouldn't build -- it says the chart and the document says that there is 25 feet of pavement there today which I understand why it feels like a very rural road when you have 25 feet, but if there's actually 80 feet of right-of-way, then someone some day, maybe not your project or -- would build out that pavement with. So you would likely have to put your sidewalk far back to accommodate that eventual -- >> That's correct. I think the asmp does have some plans for that road as [6:44:54 PM] it is a substandard road currently and the asmp does plan for all ages, bike lanes, pedestrian facilities and curb and gutter. And I would imagine we'll be asked to help with that. And then, of course, the sidewalks -- we'll put them where atd says it's best to put them. >> One more question. Where are you thinking about entrance and exit. Would it be off of Colton bluff springs or would it be off of Mckinney falls. >> We would like to have one curb cut off of Colton bluff springs road. I expect that would be well east of nutria. >> I'm still going to go back to -- this question about the units because I've been penciling out and you're asking for mf-3, which as my colleague pointed out, is a lot of units. And under the existing sf 4a, it looks like you could [6:45:55 PM] get approximately somewhere between 104 to 130 units right now on the existing -- on the leftover 13 acres. And then going up to mf-3 just seems like a huge amount for something that's in the back and that doesn't have great access to a major road. So I was just wondering why -- why are you doing that? >> Well, -- >> Other than to make money. [Laughter]. >> No, sure. Obviously we could have probably filed an mf-2 application. And that probably would have been fine. But I think our thinking is that when we looked at zoning in the area, mf-3 was an appropriate zoning category. And so given that, that gives us the maximum flexibility to meet our requirements. Having said that, we don't plan to do 36 units per acre acre, madam chair. If this commission thinks [6:46:55 PM] that that's too much, then I think it's your prerogative to recommend that. >> Chair: And that's where I was going is thinking, well, then a lower zoning for -- because I agree, co's are messy and putting a co limit of how many units, but the unit limit should just be in the zoning. So that's why I was questioning whether -- because I don't think mf-3 is appropriate here especially with sf 4a all over the place. I do like the gr-mu on the corner for amenities because I'm always talking about amenities, but that was just my point. >> I don't think you can do the [indiscernible]. >> Chair: Really, even with sf-4b? >> These are apartments. These are rental units. >> I know, but why -- are you saying -- I guess somebody [indiscernible]. I don't understand why you're saying that you can't [6:47:57 PM] do rental. You have to do ownership in any district under mf-3. >> Sf-4a requires one dwelling unit per lot. It requires one unit per lot. So we could not have multiple dwelling units. >> I'm not arguing about the mf-4a. That does -- what about one of those six districts in between skipping over? >> So sf-4b would be the same thing as sf-4a, one dwelling unit per lot. Five would also be one dwelling unit per lot. >> That's condominium, but that's dwelling unit. >> Sf-6 is a condominium residential which requires a condominium residential unit. >> How about sf-5. >> That's a town home that is also one dwelling unit per lot, per town home lot. It's just a zero lot line. >> All right. And how about mf-1? >> I think the concern with mf within 1 would probably be height, building could coverage. It would start to get into flexibility issues. >> What is the height on [6:48:57 PM] that? 35, 45? Do we have anybody who knows our zoning districts in the audience? I didn't mean that. Facetiously, we should know it up here, but we don't. >> Yeah. So the impervious cover drops and the building coverage drops in mf-1, whereas under mf-2, the impervious cover stays at a point that's consistent with the watershed regulations for rental housing. So I don't know if mf-1 is something that the applicant could agree to. >> Because I agree with my colleagues up here. To give you a district, an mf-3, that would allow you to do four times what you say you want to do and stick it on the map, without any guarantee, that takes a lot of trust. >> I understand, Mr. Vice-chair. And I think all I'm suggesting to you is that mf-3, you're right, we're [6:49:58 PM] not looking for 36 units per acre. We are looking for, you know, that 144 units -- >> See, I don't think I have a problem with what you want to do, let's get that straight. 11 unit effective density is a good missing middle density. I just think there has to be a better way of doing it. I've seen too many people that get the zoning and tomorrow they sell it and there's no guarantee and whoa can't control it and it creates -- we can't control it and it creates a wart in the neighborhood and the next five people come in and say you gave it to them, why don't you give it to us. And that's not the way to plan. And I will say this, this is sort of indicating that we have a problem with our zoning districts. >> I'm sorry? >> I said this also indicates that we sort of have a problem with our zoning districts. In other words in other words, we don't have flexibility of really creating what I think all of [6:50:58 PM] us up here would like to see. And we haven't even gotten to the issue. It's what percent is going to be affordable, which is usually asked. I'm sorry. Part of the problem is not you. It's -- >> I understand. >> I do have one question. >> Chair: Commissioner Smith. >> [Inaudible]. >> We've talked about nobody likes to have conditional conditional overlaysful, but I think that may be resolved as part of the problem is we approve the mf-3 with a limit on the number of units to 144 or 150 or 12 units per acre or something along that line. >> I think you -- yes, I think you could do that. It was stated very clearly we're not looking for more than that. >> 12 units per acre would be a reasonable mf-3 with 12 unit per acre limitation. >> You're the builder. A 10 to 12 unit density is not a bad density for what he's trying to do, especially rental. >> 12 units per acre would [6:51:59 PM] get him what he wanted. >> Absolutely. >> Commissioner Smith, just for clarity, I think if perhaps mf2 would probably be preferable to that, just as that gives us a little more flexibility. I don't know if that's something that the commission would entertain or not. >> And what are the -- [inaudible]. >> Thank you. >> They're pretty much the same, 23 units per acre on mf-2. Down from 36 to 23. >> Chair: Okay. Any other questions? A motion? Any -- commissioner king. >> Just a clarification. How many developable acres are there from these 144 units? >> About 13, I think. >> Thank you. >> About 13. >> Thank you. >> Chair: Commissioner Barrera Ramirez. >> Just to clarify because I'm learning. The mf-2 zoning for maximum density -- maximum density up to 23 units per acre, is [6:53:00 PM] that the entire 18 acres or is that the developable acres. 23 units per developable acres? >> Over the [inaudible]. >> They can only build it in that small. You may have twice the density in half the area. But you have the same number of units. >> Chair: Good question. Is there a motion? >> [Inaudible]. Either [indiscernible]. >> Chair: Commissioner Evans? >> I would like to make a motion that we honor nf-2 zone -- mf-2 zoning at the density -- as it's currently mapped out without a co on the property. >> Chair: Okay. A motion by commissioner Evans, seconded by commissioner Smith for zoning of mf-2. And. >> [Inaudible - no mic]. >> Here's my concern, it [6:54:01 PM] would be 23 units is what the code sets, right? >> Yes. >> That would be applied to the non-developable land as well, which puts effective density on the -- more like 40 units an acre. A long way off of the 12 or 14, what you just said, would be assumed. >> Right. As doing a co you do mf2 or 3 with a co you will get it to the same place. >> We don't get it with this motion, though. This motion is get the potential for three times that density. >> Right. >> [Inaudible - no mic]. >> No, but they can transfer the units to the [indiscernible]. A lot of people forget about that. [Multiple voices] >> You still have the height requirements, the setback and impervious cover. Imagine that the 40 units per acre that you're talking about with mf-3 or councilmember Flannigan it is, I would -- or whatever [6:55:02 PM] it is, I would hope that the zoning is designed that the other restrictions would restrict the practical a amount of units you could build. You wouldn't be able to double it with the higher requirements, impervious cover, all that other stuff. >> Chair: Okay. Commissioner Evans? >> I just think we have to keep in mind that we're putting zoning in place. They have to go through a site plan. They're going to extract some right-of-way, probably on every road that touches that property. They're going to have to make through access requirements, setback, height was mentioned. So let's give it the opportunity to develop with something that they would like to develop with. We're suffering in this city greatly from our posted stamp -- postage stamp approach in trying to limit everything. At some point we see the future the day we put zoning in place and I don't think that's what we're about. So I think this is a -- the applicant is willing to step down to mf2. Mf2 fits the site. He needs that to make it [6:56:03 PM] rental property. >> Commissioner king. >> So I think it's -- vice-chair has brought up a very important point here that, yes, even though, you know, the understanding that it seems to be occurring here is that we do want the limit of 144 units -- I'm sorry, was it 12 units per acre? That's what we want. And -- but we also understand that if we apply it to the whole tract that they can transfer those units to the upland portion and then therefore it's not - - it doesn't meet my expectation that we would achieve that density of 12 units per acre. Now because - - and of course, I've seen these cases go all the way down through an appeal and a variance and the board of adjustments that say, oh, look, we can't develop this, so therefore we need to be able to transfer these and have more density into the area that we can develop. And that's -- it's playing a shell game here. And I don't want to play any shell games here. [6:57:04 PM] Either we have a certainty that we're going to limit it to 12 units per acre or we don't. And I'm not willing to go to some -- to vote for something where it's uncertain as to how many units per acre we would get from this. I'd rather have a co that has certainty than to have a zoning category that's so broad that -- and the transfer of development rights that that really kind of defeats kind of our goal here of limiting it to 12 units per acre in this particular area. >> There are no transferred development rights to calculate the zoning. >> I understand. I've seen where it becomes a question of a variance or a hardship and they want to have the right to transfer the units to an area that can develop. So -- >> That's not the case in zoning. There is no transfer of development. >> I understand, but the vice-chair has mentioned that as a concern. >> I'd agree with commissioner Smith, though. [6:58:07 PM] I don't want put words in your mouth. I have no problem with the product they've implied they want to put on that property. They themselves have talked about 130, 140 units. I don't want staff to be confused in the future by this net gross and density and upland because I'll tell you that somebody is going to fan dangle them into playing games. I don't care what the zoning is, as long as we say you can't build over 140 units period. We're not denying them anything. We're not talking about density. They're talking about the tract of land they've asked for, and I think that's in concurrence with some of what you were saying a while ago, 140 units. >> I would like to ask staff to clarify, if you could, Mrs. Clark, about the -- is there anything in the code that allows, you know, the transfer of development rights from the floodplain [6:59:08 PM] into an area of the tract that is not in the floodplain because commission has granted that zoning into the entire area and now they can't build into that area. Can they come to staff and ask for the right to transfer some of those units to the developable area? And while you're working on that, I do appreciate that the on the record, saying 144 units on these roughly 13 acres, I appreciate that. I need to have some comfort level that's what we'd actually end up with. I just concerns me that we might have this unsettled issue here that could change what we had hoped for here. >> My name is Wendy rose with the planning and zoning department, and transfer -- in suburban watersheds, which this is, it's based on a net site area. [7:00:09 PM] Whereas an urban watershed does, I think, allow for them but suburban does not. >> So they could not then say, well, because I can't develop in this part of the area -- the tract where I do have mf-3 zoning I'd like to transfer those rights to the area where I can develop and then increase the density? So they're not allowed to do that under the code? >> Under the suburban watershed, no. >> Okay, all right. Thank you. >> Thank you for answering that. Any other questions? Commissioner Aguirre? I just have a comment. I think I heard as far as the commercially -- the use it could be during the -- it could be a gas station or something to that effect. Is that correct? Did I maybe misunderstand and this is probably for the applicant? Of what kind of gr uses you're thinking of using or putting there? >> Commissioner Aguirre, [7:01:10 PM] Jeff Howard for the applicant. Gr-mu would allow that use, and it would be something that I think would be utilized by the neighborhood. >> Okay. So may I suggest really getting with the neighborhood regarding that? Living in southeast Austin we would like to be a go-to place as opposed to a drive-through place. >> Yes, ma'am. >> So something to think about, you know, because we're trying to change things in south east Austin. I think there's some things we could create that would allow residents to go to their own locations instead of having to drive to central Austin or some other part of Austin. I think if we could focus on -- and I would ask staff to also consider that, maybe southeast Austin a go-2 place instead of just a pass- through place. Thank you. >> Since the applicant is there, I'm sorry, you're getting some good exercise there going back and forth. >> That's all right. >> But just to follow up on the question earlier, I do appreciate that you're [7:02:10 PM] trying to provide some more housing options here and more housing on the ground for communities here. But -- and you know that we have an affordable housing problem in the city, a big problem. >> Yes, sir. >> Do you plan on offering any of these units through the density bonus programs, the affordable housing dent bonus programs? >> These are going to be market rate units. We do anticipate that the market is such that these will certainly be, you know, more affordable than -- to more people than you typically see, say, in other parts of town. So while they won't be an affordable housing project, we do think these will be sort of small a affordable units. Again, sort of the push-pull here is we're not really asking for high density, and so we don't anticipate participating in the density bonus programs. >> Thank U. >> Thank you. >> I think we're ready for a [7:03:12 PM] vote, unless somebody really drags it out of me. All those in favor of commissioner Evans motion, seconded by Smith. >> Is just clarify that. That's without a -- without co. >> Is correct, straight mf-2 zoning. All those in favor -- >> And the commercial on the corner. >> Is and with the commercial on the corner. >> All right. >> All those in favor -- which was tract -- for tract 1 and tract 2. >> Just to be clear we're doing what staff recommends except mf-2 instead of mf3. That's the only change we're making. >> Correct. >> I just want to make sure we're clear. >> With no limits on the units. >> Right, mf-2, whatever it is. >> All those in favor please raise your hand. All those opposed? Okay. That is 9-1. And so thank you very much, everybody, for participating. >> Chair, can I request the [7:04:14 PM] commission stay at ease for five minutes? >> Why? Oh. He's going to tell me something. [ ♪ Music ♪ ] Okay. It's been brought to my attention that on item b-5 that the neighborhood is [7:05:16 PM] requesting reconsideration. They were unaware that the item passed on consent. I am a little concerned -- hi. I don't see the -- this is where it gets really tricky because we already passed that and the applicant is not here. And so -- >> What kind of options do we have, basically? >> [Off mic] >> Why don't you come to the mic. >> Hi, yes. What kind of options do we have now? My name is Sandra delgado. >> Hi. >> Good job. >> Thank you. >> And this was -- and this is the case -- this is the variances. >> Is this the big tract up on 620? >> That's right. We were representing the surrounding neighborhoods behind and to the southwest. [7:06:19 PM] >> So -- >> [Off mic] >> It was two variances for -- >> I have to explain this -- I don't think a lot of that tract is actually in the city. >> [Off mic] >> Yeah, xspace. >> Oh, yes. >> Well, we're going to have to -- actually, first, I think this is not -- yeah this is -- >> We've had a motion and approval already. >> Right. >> It's been done. >> We can't undo. >> Well, we could -- somebody could raise an issue -- I mean, from the dais somebody could ask for reconsideration. >> [Off mic] >> My problem also is that the applicant -- everybody has gone. And I think we're -- commissioner Evans. >> And also on this we're basically taking recommendations that have [7:07:19 PM] been given to us by -- it's already been through environmental to look at this. >> Right. >> And it's a continuing saga that we go through that we've got these defined numbers that impact cut and fill and other things that we have to deal with. And environmental I think has dealt with that pretty well and passed it on to us, and we have taken our action. >> Okay. I think, though, that we ought to explain to the lady, any recourses -- this was a variance. Can they appeal this to the city council or can they appeal it to the director or what are their options? >> Good question, vice chair, Duncan. >> Chair, commission, liaison, I do not have the staff present. I would not be able to answer that. >> I think that's important because we can't act on it. You understand? I don't think. >> I understand. However, the process wasn't clear to us in the beginning. [7:08:19 PM] We can barely hear you at the beginning of the start of the meeting, and none of us heard it or understood what was going on. >> Yeah. >> So hopefully we have some other option either to reopen or appeal -- >> Chair, I wanted to find out -- >> Commissioner king. >> Thank you. Our procedure is that folks sign up. I just want to make sure that, you know, were you -- >> We received -- >> Did you sign up to speak on the item? >> Is we received the notice in our mailbox and it told us specifically to show up here so we thought that we could come and stand before you. >> Okay. >> Is and speak. So there was nothing saying that we had to officially sign up? >> And, you know, I can understand how that -- it wouldn'ting clear if you don't come down here often. >> Right. >> And you don't know to pick up the agenda where it describes and how -- what the process is. So I would think that what we should do as a courtesy at the beginning of future meetings is just make sure [7:09:20 PM] that people have looked at this and the sign-up procedure before we vote on consent so they can make sure, you know -- or somehow to be aware of that so we can avoid this because they came down here, obviously wanted to speak. I would like to hear them, and I don't know if it would be out of order to consider their comments. >> We can't. >> Okay. And the other thing is that, you know, we technically -- we could ask to reconsider, you know, and postpone it if we wanted to to the next meeting. But I'm not suggesting that we do that. I'm not saying that. But definitely I'm -- don't want to miss the opportunity to hear from the community and the neighbors that are affected by this. >> Yeah, because we are the final arbiter of this variance request, and so that's -- >> So this doesn't go to council, right? This is it? >> No. >> What I would suggest -- well, they can appeal. Is that what I understood earlier? >> To who? >> I want to make a [7:10:20 PM] suggestion. Could we recess for ten minutes? I'm gonna text the environmental officer and see if he knows and hopefully we'll have an answer. Also, I was looking at the backup a there's no -- I mean -- >> We've had variances before, but it just seemed to confirm to me that, you know, we're the final decision-maker because it doesn't go to council. It's not listed for council. >> Is I also have a quick question for you? >> Is sure. >> Were you all aware about this going before the environmental commission? >> No. We did not know this. >> See, those are concerns. And me being a resident and not having the experience that, you know, planners and realtors have here, those are some of the experiences I had until I learned the system. And yeah. So I don't know. Hopefully there's a way that -- there's some -- >> Okay. Vice chair Duncan. >> I think this is a unique [7:11:22 PM] situation. We had a short meeting tonight. I don't have a problem with ten minutes trying to get these people a good answer. I do understand your situation. You're way up there in the northwest. A councilmember said one time half the people don't know it's the city of Austin. It's not everyday you get notices on this. I will tell you the project before us tonight only addressed two variance ordinances on fill, okay? Most of it is in the either etj or the -- that's right. >> In upzoning. It's not really in the city of Austin in a sense. So I don't think you're gonna be able to -- we're going to be able to do much to help you. But as a courtesy, it's an important part of this city because it's one of the most grueling areas, I think we ought to give them as much of an answer as we can. >> Is I agree. I feel really bad about this. >> I do too. >> And just had no idea? >> I kind of want to weigh [7:12:23 PM] in as parliamentarian. I have that role periodically, actually speak up and say something. >> Sure. >> We can't reconsider tonight because it was a unanimous vote. >> That's true. >> So -- and I don't know if we have legal questions having approved it. I don't know. But one option may be to allow two members for consideration of new information, missed speakers, to post it on next meeting. But I still think it would be helpful if we take a ten minute recess and see if we can reach the applicant. >> Okay. Why don't we take a ten minute recess? >> And see if we can reach environmental. >> Is before we recess I think if we could get the question answered about at the next meeting if we wanted to reconsider this at the next because of new information, could we do that? I think that would be a good question to answer. If we could get that answered. And I'm assuming, do we have the access to the legal staff? So we can ask questions? [7:13:24 PM] >> Yes. >> Chair, commissioner liaison, Andrew, the parliamentarian is correct. As this is an act this evening, you do have the option of two members, because it was prevailing, so two members on the prevailing side, it was unanimous, so two members can move to reconsider. >> Right, right. >> Okay. So should we take a recess now and -- yeah? >> The woman -- Michelle, who represented on this, is no longer here. >> Right. Exactly. >> She's trying to see if -- >> Anyhow, let's take a recess and talk about it. >> We'll take a recess for ten minutes. It will 7:13. We'll be back at 7:23. Thanks. [ Recess ] [7:32:43 PM] [ Recess ] [7:33:52 PM] >> Okay. It is 7:33. So we were out a little bit longer, but thanks to commissioner denkler's intervention and also the applicant's agent able to get on the phone, some -- two members, I believe, of the neighborhood are going to meet with the applicant's agent and they've got their issues and it sounds like it actually could be a win-win situation. So happy with that. And no need for reconsideration. And we also did cover our new business I believe that was in my motion. Yes. In the consent. So the only items left are items from the commission, and that is d1, revision of the Austin land development code. Anything there? Okay. Then future agenda items? Anything anybody wants under [7:34:53 PM] E? Future agenda items? And if not, then we'll go to the committee reports and working groups. And codes and ordinances joint committee. >> Our meeting was canceled. >> Comprehensive plan joint committee. >> We're still waiting to schedule our next meeting. >> Oh, gosh. >> And a small area planning joint committee. >> We have a meeting tomorrow at 11:30, one Texas center, room 500. Thank you. >> Okay, great. So, well that was it. Lessons learned in notification. And we are adjourned. Thank you. [Adjourned]