City Council Work Session Transcript – 03/10/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 3/10/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/10/2020 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. [9:09:31 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. We have a quorum. Let go ahead and start. Today is March 10th. It's Tuesday. We are here for the city council work session. We're in the boards and commissions room. It's 9:08, and we have a quorum present. We'll go ahead and begin. We're going to begin today two briefings, the third briefing we'll have as well. We'll begin with the virus briefing and we'll go into the homelessness issue. We'll talk about the business enterprise at the airport, they will be with us and then we will need an executive session on that issue. Hopefully we can get through all three of these things before we break for lunch so that we may go into [9:10:32 AM] executive session. Let's start there and see how we're going. Let's begin with the briefing on the virus. >> Good morning, mayor, council, Mr. City manager. Dr. Mark Escott, interim health authority for Austin public health, along with Stephanie Hayden. We'll give awe you a brief update on the covid-19 situation. As you all have seen in the media, substantial increases continue with a worldwide count yesterday of over 113,000 cases. Again, the vast majority of cases are still in China, however Italy is of particular concern due to [9:11:33 AM] widespread and sustained person to person activity, with more than 9,000 cases and 463 deaths. You may have seen yesterday the country of Italy is under quarantine and will be closed largely until April the third. This is an effort to break that chain of transmission and we expect to see that happening in other European countries and other countries around the world. I've listed a few countries where there is substantial person to person spread. This is not . An exhaustive list of countries with evidence of person to person spread. There's a full list available on the who website, but that number is much larger than this. In the United States the situation has substantially worsened since Friday. A total of 607 cases now with 22 deaths, actually it's 26 as of this morning, with 13 confirmed cases in Texas and evidence of person to person spread in [9:12:36 AM] Washington, California and New York. I lost a slide there. Of the cases in Texas there are six in Harris county, six in fort bend county, one in Collin county. All of these in Texas so far are not person to person spread. They're all travel related with no evidence of person to person spread in the state of Texas. In the Travis county situation we are still in phase 2. We have sent off a number of tests for covid-19. All those tests so far have been negative. As of Thursday of last week, the lab was online in the city of Austin through the Texas department of state health services. This adds to the other state labs in. >> El Paso, tarrant county, Lubbock. And as of yesterday quest [9:13:37 AM] diagnostics went online with a private lab and we're expecting additional labs to go online as well. We have heard from quest that their number of tests exceeded their abilities already. We are expecting that to increase. The state lab in Austin has asked for an increase in capacity right now that is limited to 10 to 25 tests a day. So we've been facing a lot of questions about mass gatherings and why canceling south by southwest made the most sense. This is a graph from CDC and illustrates why now. The peak on the left is what happens when we don't have aggressive control measures and we start to see the [9:14:38 AM] person to person spread in the United States or in our community. The one on the right-hand side is with the control measures. The dotted line is the capacity of the health care system. So as an example from this outbreak, what you see in Wuhan city was the graph on the left. Because they had a massive increase in cases very quickly it far exceeded the capacity of the health care system to manage those cases. The case fatally rate for Wuhan city was 17.3%. From January 1 to January 10. If we look at control measures in the rest of China, that case fatality rate dropped to 0.7%, so substantial differences based upon how we managed that outbreak. What we call the other out of the curve, the total number who get it may not be different between the two, but if we can control that [9:15:38 AM] process we don't exceed the capacity of the health care system and people are going to do much better. So as a result of the disaster declaration we've prohibited mass gatherings over 2500 people until they can submit and we approve a mitigation plan to ensure that that event is as safe as possible. We asked about what if we draw crowds locally or not from Texas? That's a completely different profile because we don't have spread locally, we don't have spread in Texas. Again, we'll be reviewing those, we'll be approving those and providing further mitigation advice. For those gatherings under 2500 people, we're still going to provide recommendations. We're still going to be available for consultation with folks so that we can guide them even if it's a wedding reception or smaller event so that they can do [9:16:41 AM] what they can to ensure the safety. I will mention a number of private consultants who are available to help individuals, help companies do assessment for events like this. So those are available, and recommend folks look for those if they want to consult a private firm to help them in the planning process. We have been up for a month now. We have ongoing phone calls from our staff 24 hours a day. They're receiving calls from clinics and from hospitals. And triaging those, identifying those who need to be tested, and then coordinating testing. We have triaging going on from folks who call 911 that involves consultation with a physician to review and to triage as well. Calls for the general public are coming in through 311. We have scripting available [9:17:41 AM] for them. If a clinician calls through 311 that gets moved over to aph to manage. Again, our team has been actively involved in collecting swabs either directly testing people or collecting them from hospitals or clinics that may have tested. In addition to that we're ramping up social services support for those under monitoring to ensure that they have what they need to be compliant with that quarantine order. We've also added information technology, gis mapping service to help us anticipate future needs in the utility of mapping, both publicly facing and I ternally facing mapping software to help us as we continue to prepare and respond to this event. The emergency operations center is still at partial activation. That includes a joint information services. We have daily reporting through the capital area of Texas regional advisory [9:18:42 AM] council so there's a network of all of our regions. We have listing of every single hospital, every single freestanding emergency department in our region and we know how many beds they have, we know how many isolation beds, we know how many icu isolation beds we have. So we're in the process of the daily report so we know how good we are and when we start to face a concern where we need to increase capacity. In addition to that we've got our capital area medical operations command working on contingency planning for surge events, how can we increase capacity if we need to increase capacity. And also we've asked our hospital systems to look at opportunities to increase their telehealth service capabilities. As we know the vast majority of people who will get this infection have a mild illness. They don't need to be no the hospital, they probably don't ever need to see a [9:19:42 AM] hospital. This is what we do with flu. As flu peaked and hospital beds went down, the messaging was stay home. If you have telehealth capabilities, contact your doctor via hellly health, they may give you tam ma fee-in-lieu or some other medication, if you get worse, call a hospital, but the vast majority of people don't need a hospital. The vast majority of people who will get covid-19 do not need a hospital either. Our messaging for the public continues. We are working on a series of public health orders to strengthen the public messaging as well as to protect those most vulnerable populations, including those at assisted living facilities, nursing homes and rehab hospitals. We expect to have those drafted the next couple of days and issued. We're working closely with the law department as well as our environmental health services division to craft those and get those [9:20:44 AM] finalized. Finally, we have our website, which is consistently updated with frequently asked questions, responses to those, as well as links for people who want to hold a mass gathering for schools, for clinicians and for the general public. Again, this is the website with reliable and up to date information, and I'd be happy to take questions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I'm going to begin. Colleagues, know that on Thursday this action item on our agenda for this, the county judge and I both declared a local disaster so that the city and the county could weigh in and start directing some activities, start establishing some standards. Included in that was as you know canceling south-by. Also putting the order in place that says in the event over 2500 people can't take place unless and until they've worked a with our [9:21:48 AM] public health officer and director and department. But that only lasts for seven days, which means that on Thursday it comes to us as a dais to decide whether or not to keep any or all of of that in effect. So this is coming to all of of you here and it's with the commissioners' court today. So questions. First I want to say that I'm really proud and once again just so impressed with watching the city and the county and the regions of emergency operation command there are protocols to follow and it's a machine that steps into these kinds reassuring to see. The comments that we've made [9:22:50 AM] publicly I think can be repeated really quickly. This is -- with this virus obviously there's been a briefing of this council a couple of weeks back. The conversations are ongoing, are daily conversations. The emergency operation command is on call daily, at least once a day. Portions of it are on the phone throughout the day constantly doing a risk assessment. I commend you both for convening that advisory panel that has representatives of the three large health providers in our region as well as the top infectious disease specialist from Dell medical school, our top public health professionals in central Texas to advise. And please thank them again for their work. I know it's taken a lot of their time over the last week as they've been meeting constantly. [9:23:52 AM] The decision was made on Friday to recommend and the have judge and I both implemented that order to cancel south-by. I get asked the question on Tuesday you had a press conference and you suggested that the risk assessment indicated we shouldn't shut it down and then on Friday it was shut down. What happened between Tuesday and Friday? I would remind everybody that at the press conference on Tuesday we went through the factors for the risk assessment at that point. We also said that it was an ongoing conversation and the decision and the advice could change at any point in time and when it did we would act immediately. Would you explain what it was that happened -- what was the change? >> Sure, mayor. You know, after that first meeting with the advisory panel there was concern, there was concern about risk. The question was could that risk be mitigated or not. [9:24:53 AM] Part of that was hinging on some details regarding the events. Where were people coming from, what do the venues look like, how long do we expect people to be together face to face. And the group needed to talk to south by southwest. They needed more details. We needed to discuss mitigation options which may minimize that risk and still allow us to go forward. In addition to that, there was deliberation about the health impact of canceling because we know if there is an economic consequence, then businesses could close, people could lose their jobs, they could lose health insurance. So these are all things that had to be weighed before we make a decision of this magnitude. While we were doing that the situation continued to grow across the United States. We had evidence of increasing person to person spread in multiple [9:25:53 AM] communities, and that led to also the anticipation that the situation would continue to get worse in the days leading up to south by southwest. Ultimately through the discussions with the panel and with south by southwest, we could not identify a safe path forward that would minimize the risk enough to the community. Let me explain a little bit more why that's of particular concern. Bringing people here together, the potential of having or developing an outbreak locally that then goes to other communities. Part of our ability to surge for events like this is based upon partnerships with other cities in Texas. If Austin faces a struggle we have an event, we have a lot of people that get sick, we call on Houston and Dallas and San Antonio and other jurisdictions to come help us. If they have outbreaks themselves that redundancy [9:26:54 AM] goes away or is lessened substantially. If we have outbreaks across Texas we can pull in people from other states, but if other states are experiencing outbreaks at the same time, that redundancy is then limited. So events like south by southwest has the potential to create a ripple effect across communities across the state of Texas and across the United States, and that was certainly a factor that we discussed as well. What's the overall impact on our ability to really protect this community and the potential for larger impact across the U.S. >> Mayor Adler: I think you also pointed out the time that there were at that point increasing person to person spread of the virus that we were seeing as well. >> Correct. >> Mayor Adler: Next question I get asked that I want you to speak to is south by southwest was shut down, but yet we are allowing events to continue [9:27:54 AM] in this city. The UT basketball team continues to play sporting events. We continue to have clubs that are open and restaurants that are open in our city. Why are those things allowed to stay open if we had shut down south-by? >> Yes, sir. And we've received lots of questions and comments on that. Again, events that are local local, events that are anticipated drawing crowds from Texas or other areas that have no evidence of person to person spread pose a substantially decreased risk of initiating an outbreak or per pep perpetuating an outbreak because we don't have indication that there is disease in the community right now. Again, as the situation evolves, our guidance is going to have to evolve as well. And part of the guidance for the mass gatherings for folks who are wanting to [9:28:55 AM] host is what is your plan to change last minute if the situation changes? If we get evidence in Texas, if we get evidence locally at some stage that we have person to person spread in the community, how are you going to message your attendees? How are you going to -- what options do you have to further mitigate that threat based upon what's happening? So again, that's why we're reviewing each gathering individually to determine if there's a substantial risk or not. And if there is a risk, if we can effectively mitigate it or not. >> So right now we have the general order that says if you're doing an event over 2500 people they have to check with you. You've published lists of mitigation measures that activities should follow. That's something that you're continuing to update, even for events fewer than 2500 people to be able to follow that. As a city we've given [9:29:56 AM] permits to events. My understanding is our permitting department is reaching out to all events that we have permitted that are not south by southwest events to lay out what the protocols are for mitigation. And your working with -- our health department and code staff are working with all those entities, is that correct? >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: We recognize that there are a lot of people in our city that are hurting right now because of what we've done with south-by. And certainly, depending on what happens with this virus and the indicated action, it could increase or expand. We don't know. But even dealing with what we're dealing with right now, we're encouraging people still there's not a reason for people not to go out to eat at a restaurant or club. In fact, it's something they could do to help support the local economy at this point, is that right. >> Absolutely. >> And the Austin community foundation has opened up a [9:30:58 AM] fund, stand with Austin is what they're calling their fund. It's taking in gifts from people, as stated on their website, their mission is to provide charitable relief to those that have been most injured with the cancellation of south by southwest and are least able to weather that injury. And I commend the Austin community foundation and the other foundation and I think the two of them together are working to set that up. I have a couple of questions now that go outside of what our response has been and where we are as a city. If someone has an event that's coming to Austin they know about, a big group and they want to touch base with our city to make sure they're doing everything they can do and that they would be allowed to proceed, [9:32:01 AM] and the recommendation would be to allow them to proceed, who do they contact in our city government? >> Good morning, Stephanie Hayden, Austin public health. We would go through the usual route that they take. So if it is a special event they would go through the Austin center for events. If they are working with the convention center or palmer events, they would reach out to them as well. If it is a private hotel we have established contact with them as of yesterday, so they are familiar with the process. Ultimately we are asking people to call 311 because our operators are ready to just kind of give general high level information. The environmental health services division has established a mailbox. If people want to email us as well. So those are the measures in [9:33:02 AM] place. What we really cannot emphasize more is that we're wanting this to be a seamless process. The existing process that is in place, Austin public health is just going -- Austin public health is just going to insert an additional step to the original process. So there's not going to be any changes to the process or procedure that is currently in place to our special events process, but there's just an additional step for mitigation. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. And what we're recommending is a city and as a public health official is really to take seriously the admonition to wash your hands a lot for a full 20 seconds. The hand sanitizers are good, not as good as washing your hand for 20 seconds, but still better. We're trying to get people to not shake hands as a social greeting. That's a really hard thing [9:34:03 AM] to do especially when someone woks out and holds out their hand and there's an expectation that if you don't take their hand something is wrong. The only way we create a culture where people can accept that is if we actually start doing that. So a bump or namaste greeting, really we want people to go through this uncomfortable period of time while we tried to resocialize that as wildly as we can. -- Widely as we can. Beyond that I want to ask you about testing. We read in the newspaper that in some countries right now there are drive-in testing facilities in order to get to a vast number of people. We have a testing facility with a capacity of 10 to 20 people a day I think you said. A private one that would stand up that's already at capacity. It seems to me that one of the first places we're going to see our health systems stressed are going to be with people that aren't [9:35:03 AM] feeling well that are going to want to get tested to know whether or not they're a danger to others with this vairs. Where are we on testing and is there an expectation that we'll -- how are some people do drive-in testings for people and we're not? >> That's a great question, mayor. We have actually done some drive-up testing already. The challenge is we don't have the capacity to support scaling that at this stage on the testing side. We actually have our ems department, austin-travis county ems developing planning for community drive-up testing as one option to do a large number of tests. You know, I think it's important to understand that at some stage testing mild cases may not be necessary. Because it's not going to change what we do. At least at this stage we [9:36:09 AM] have no specified treatment plan for this. There are some clinical trials underway using current drugs and novel drugs, but testing for the purpose of knowing or not knowing, it's important right now to contain it but once that's breached the testing may not be as relevant unless people are hospitalized. So why is it important in the hospital to test? Hospital testing has a priority because it tells us does this person need to be isolate understand a relatively rare commodity at some change, an isolation bed, or can they be in the regular population, a regular floor or telemetry bed. We expect that testing capacity will increase. I do want to be able to offer the option of folks who want to be tested. At least right now for the foreseeable future we're still going to have to triage and prioritize those folks who are hospitalized so we can differentiate those who need the [9:37:11 AM] hospitalization versus those who don't. >> Mayor Adler: Is the testing or any other aspect of this a question of resources that you have? Let me state that differently? If you think of anything that we can we could be doing as a city to keep the community safer or to get ready faster or to be doing anything that requires any measure of additional resources? I assume either the manager will just do it with the emergency and administrative authority he has or that you will comake to this council with whatever it is that you need to err on the side of making sure we're ready as we can be to keep people safe. My last set of questions do goes to the ones that are most vulnerable in our community. What is the mortality rate right now for people who might be over 70 that contract this virus? >> That's a great question, mayor. We've all seen lots of different figures related to case fatality rate. The indication is right now for those over 80, they're [9:38:12 AM] at the highest risk. Some estimates are as high as 20%. As you go down in age the risk is decreased. 70, 79, maybe closer to 10 to 15 percent, 60 to 69 closer to seven to 10 percent. And then it goes down from there. When we get to the vast majority of people who are getting sick, that number is probably close to .2 to .4%. So again, this is not ebola where everybody gets critically ill and a significant number die. This is not that. It's not as bad as Merz or sars either. If it gets into assisted living facilities, nursing homes, it could be devastating for those facilities. If it gets into hospitals in an uncontrolled physician where there's already people suffering from illness or [9:39:13 AM] sure it could be devastating, that is why we're taking steps right now to secure those facilities to make sure that we're controlling access that we're doing some temperature monitoring of individuals entering those high risk facilities. So that we can take measured steps based upon the actual risk that we have that we know of to try to secure those areas and protect those people? >> Mayor Adler: And that was my last question. What are we doing in those -- you answered the question about those facilities. What about homeless encampments? People that are experiencing homelessness in our city I would imagine would also be a population that could be at risk with compromised immune system or at least some folks there might be. What will are we doing there? >> So we're in the process of working with our homeless office. I don't know if Stephanie wants to take that. She's been involved in those discussions. >> There are several things [9:40:14 AM] that we are finalizing. One, working with our outreach teams as they are going out and having contact. One of the things that's really important for us is to ensure that they are -- have the protections that they need so they don't contract anything themselves. In addition to that, putting together little small kits that we are able to take out to the homeless population. The kits will not include hand sanitizer, but will include hand wipes. So that's just a little bit of a mitigation that we have to put in place. In addition to that, we are working with the shelters. We've received guidance from the national alliance to end homelessness as well as hud to provide surplus additional guidelines, to be able to put some measures in place at our emergency [9:41:14 AM] shelters as well as any kind of short-term places where folks are doing transitional type housing. We have increased the list of other facilities that we need to work with as far as substance abuse treatment facilities, as well as boarding homes. So there is a list of vulnerable populations that we are working with and doing some targeted specific outreach with those populations. And then the last thing is the department is working with the commission on seniors and we will be providing a presentation to them as well as working with the aging area on aging as well. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Leslie? >> First I want to thank our staff for the nimbleness through can which you all came together and the [9:42:18 AM] collaboration through all the departments and throughout the region. It has made a huge difference in people understanding what we're looking at and how we're proceeding. I just had one question with the testing kids that you could address. The one kind of gap that I perceive in the reporting is whether -- whether and where there are sufficient testing kits in order to assure us whether people actually have the virus. Do we have -- are we on the distribution list for them? And do we have enough? And what's the future of that? >> Excellent question. We don't have enough kits. Austin public health doesn't have any testing kits. We have the ability to Schwab individual -- swab individuals and send testing, but the testing kit actually runs the test and those have to be done at the state lab here in Austin. You know, we were talking to physicians every single day [9:43:19 AM] asking could I test this person, could I test this one? Right now we're still having to triage. It would be right now at some point to be able to say yes. It would be nice if they had capacity to send it off in the the normal fashion. They don't call us when they need to test for flu. They collect a flu swab and they send it to the lab and they test it. It would be nice to have that capacity. We're not there yet. I think the test kits are being prioritized to those areas that are currently expressing outbreak and that makes a lot of sense. When we have limited resources we need to focus it in those areas that are being more effective right now. And again this is the all government, all community response that China displayed and it has been successful. We have to be willing to say we understand that you guys need it more than we do, but let's work on increasing the capacity so we can offer this more widely. [9:44:20 AM] Dshs is trying to build more capacity. They're trying to understand and they're feeling the pressure from us and everyone else. We have shared those requests with our congressional delegation when we've had the opportunity to speak to them. I think everybody's aware and the appropriate pressure is being applied. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann? >> Kitchen: I had a follow-up question on the testing. And actually it relates to seniors and places that you've mentioned that are at risk. So I think I heard you say that you all are working with those places like senior living centers, assisted living, to provide guidance to them if I heard you correctly. Baptisted to drill down for a -- but I wanted to drill down for a minute. I'm wondering about the personal care workers. Many of those workers, well, they're dependent on their [9:45:21 AM] jobs obviously to get paid. And those are workers that in addition to people that are actually hired, are on staff at an assisted living center or place like that. So I have two questions. One relates to what are the plans for testing of those workers? And at this point you mentioned you were working with the senior commission. At this point I would suggest that we also think about the economic impact to those workers. So these are workers that are absolutely essential to the life and health of seniors as well as persons -- people with disabilities. Can you speak to that at all? Is that something that you have addressed yet? Is it on your radar screen to address in the future? [9:46:29 AM] >> Yes. So part of the directives that we're preparing with the law office will include mandatory reporting of workers or patients who become ill with the influenza like illness so that we can identify quickly if there could be a concern and we could prioritize testing for people sick with ili's in those facilities. Those should absolutely be at the top of our list of getting tested, so again rule in or rule out a covid-19 infection, we can put a lid on it as quickly as possible so that it's part of the planning process. When we receive calls about clinicians who are concerned about the possibility of co-individual 19 and it's -- it involves someone who is over the age of 65, we're always asking, do they live at home or live in a facility? If they live in a facility that's going to substantially increase our increase in getting that [9:47:30 AM] result quickly. So we are looking at that and it is a priority for us as we've seen in Washington, there was a series of illnesses, a series of calloffs from health workers in that nursing home that went relatively undetected. So part of our planning now is also how are we as a health community going to support a facility like that if there is an outbreak and their staffing is low to ensure that the quality of care doesn't suffer. And luckily we have lots and lots of nurses and physicians and ems providers that are part of a disaster response plan for multiple different disasters that we can plug in in situations like that if we know about it and can identify it early early. >> We are considering everyone as we look through [9:48:31 AM] this. And basically the bottom line is that our existing system. So through our neighborhood centers, we've had conversations with the county, through the county community centers as well to be able to provide a certain level of, you know, financial assistance kind of on a case by case. So we are developing that as well. That was one of the slides that Dr. Escott included. That is a social service component of this as far as the response. >> Kitchen: Well, I would just ask as you reach out to the senior commission and as you reach out to nursing homes, assisted living, independent living places, that you also reach out to the independent non-profits or independent small businesses who actually -- who -- the home health agencies. Not all of them are home health agencies. There's a lot of small, very small independent businesses who connect personal care [9:49:31 AM] workers with families. I'm sure you're aware of that. I would suggest that you include those folks in your conversations and work with them on what they might need. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Greg. >> Casar: Dr. Escott and director Hayden, mayor, I really appreciate all of the advice it and work and leadership in the last few days in preparation for a surge, triage, walking on really getting prepared and getting folks educated. [Off mic]. I think where we can continue to step up and help. The echo the mayor's comments that if there needs to be a midyear budget amendment or if the manager needs to move funds for to us focus on especially taking care of our seniors and those that are in a vulnerable position or those that are sick that I and I think probably the whole dais, I know the whole dais would be there to do whatever it is that needs to be done to make sure that we take care of folks locally. [9:50:32 AM] I think on the economic damage side, I really appreciate the philanthropic efforts and if there are ways that the city can also go in and contribute and those that are hurting not just because of the cancellation of events, but if there's longer term economic consequences we should be prepared for that. I think, manager, if you start looking at ways that we could prepare to potentially accelerate some bonds projects, if there's more macro economic damage and people -- we have to be absolutely focused on the public health side, but then also if there's continued job loss or damage to the economy we need to be thinking of ways to make sure that public funds are going in to make up for any lost jobs. And then a third thing is the city of Dallas is now able to more aggressively educate and enforce their paid sick days ordinance, which is almost identical to ours. Unfortunately Austin and San Antonio's are currently stalled in court so I would also ask that the governor and the attorney general and [9:51:33 AM] the Texas public policy foundation pull down their lawsuit at least temporarily for us to begin to enforce our ordinance just like Dallas is able to right now because this is exactly why we put this into place so that people would not feel like they had to choose between a paycheck and being able to go to the doctor and get checked, especially people working in working class jobs, in our assisted living facilities or in hospitals or arr as health care workers. We want you to be able to go -- go to the doctor and we of course it would be great if speakers would go ahead and give them their -- if employers would go ahead and give them their sick team, but I think there's a call across the state for our state leaders to allow us to enforce those ordinances because it really is a matter of life and death for a lot of people. And the U.S. Surgeon general appointed by Donald Trump just yesterday put out a call to say we need paid sick days for every person. [9:52:33 AM] And so I hope that's something that will be under consideration. I also understand that the governor can activate by emergency measure more unemployment benefits for people so that you don't have to jump through so many hoops to get your unemployment. So I hope that he will consider that as well. But short of that we need to do everything that we can as a city. And so whatever funding that needs to be made available to deal with the public health issues and those economic issues I think that we all stand ready to do both because we have to be canceling events, but also if there's longer term damage especially focused on those places where there's folks who are more at risk of dying. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you, Dr. Escott and Ms. Hayden and Mr. Cronk for your evidence-based approach to securing public health and safety. So thank you. I had a couple of questions first about our school- aged [9:53:34 AM] population, which I know is not the most at risk and so might not be the first out of the gate, but can you talk a little bit about how you're working with the school districts to make sure that our schools are safe and are not a breeding ground for the virus? >> Yes, certainly. So the medical director for Austin ISD is part of our expert panel so she has been continuously engaged in that discussion with that expert panel. And part of having her on there was to ensure that we had that group represented. We have Dr. David leakey who represents higher education as the chief medical officer for the university of Texas system. So we have shared guidance from CDC regarding schools. We've circulated a screening tool for both screening [9:54:34 AM] staff and screening students for febral illness, as well as steps for what to do if somebody guess sick in school. Right now it's important for schools to start thinking about what am I going to do if a teacher gets sick? It's similar to what was just discussed in that there need to be no barriers. Teacher gets sick, they check their temperature, they have a fever, they have to go. The school needs to be ready to fill in that gap. Nursing homes, hospitals, you know, even bars and restaurants. We want there to be no barriers. If somebody is sick, particularly with a febral illness, for them leaving work and going home and recovering. That is the linchpin in our public health response. It is the linchpin in our preparation activities. It is the number one defense that we have. [9:55:36 AM] So right now it is absolutely critical that there are no barriers to people being able to stay home when they're sick. So we are part of the public health orders that we're working on is to address schools and how we can strengthen that messaging and strengthen the defense of school children. Now luckily so far the evidence that we have from this outbreak is that individuals, 18-year-olds and younger, number one, don't seem to have a very severe course, and number two, don't seem to be at least diagnosed with this very often. So in the -- up until mid February, 18 and under represented about 2.5% of total cases. We're not sure why that is yet. Evidence is coming out everyday to better inform us. But schools are absolutely on that list of priorities for how we're going to continue to protect the community. As we know from other public [9:56:37 AM] health interventions, if we share messages at school, hopefully that message also goes home, that engaged discussion with happen and the family can be informed of the advice so we are absolutely working on that. >> Alter: So I have two high high schoolers and I would just say that I think there's still some messaging that needs to happen. I don't believe we even received a message from the school district saying keep your kid at home if they're sick. I know we don't control the school district, but in your conversations I think there's much more of that that could be done to communicate and to address those concerns. We're about to come on spring break. What is your recommendation for families that are trying to figure out whether they should proceed with their travel plans or not? Especially if they involve air travel. Obviously we're not encouraging air travel overseas, particularly to the targeted countries, but what is -- I know as our medical director, what is [9:57:38 AM] the recommendation with respect to travel on airlines at this point in time? >> I think it's important for families to pay attention to where there is person to person activity. There may be cases in locations that are travel related. Those don't represent a substantial risk to individuals. It's really the locations where there's person to person spread, and maybe we don't know where that person was or who they may have infected. Those that don't have evidence right now are going to be safer. For those who are at higher risk, they really need to be a conversation with their health care provider to determine if now is time to travel on an airplane, particularly longer air trips. You know, driving in a car is going to be isolated. The only ring you will face is your family. But it really is something that is going to be based upon upon that individual's threat either upon their age or due to underlying health [9:58:38 AM] conditions. >> Alter: Thank you. I was struck last week when we had the press conference, I think it was on Tuesday, that there were comments that folks were going to come anyway even if we canceled south-by. So we have now canceled south-by. There are still reports of folks coming. How are we addressing any potential health issues related to those additional folks coming to town? >> So we're working with our public safety agencies to try to determine how many folks are still coming. Again, we're going to continue that community messaging. Part of our -- the public health orders that are in the process of being generated is posting of signs in restaurants and bars and some other steps to help make sure that whoever comes, whether they're Austin residents, from other parts of Texas or other parts of the country, are seeing that message over and over and over again. >> Thank you. And then my last question I think is for Mr. Chronic and we spoke about this -- [9:59:40 AM] Mr. Cronk and we spoke about this. Obviously we made the decision to cancel south by southwest on the basis of health and safety, but there will be large economic repercussions and potentially big impacts for our budget. So as soon as we can if we can get some detailed estimates so that we can take any steps that we need to take earlier in the budget year, I think that would be important. I would also be interested if there are -- if there's information that can be shared for any consequences for the airport and the running of the airport as flights are canceled and other stuff that we need to be mindful of, just from a responsible government perspective for our budgeting and choices that we're making . . >> Council member, thank you for bringing that up, we will bring those issues way learn more about the impact on our community so absolutely we will be providing more information soon. [10:00:40 AM] >> Thank you. >> Thanks, mayor. Thank you for making a tough call this last week. I know wasn't easy. Mayor, thank you there aren't a lot of powers that sit in the mayor's office separate from the council than is one of them, and thank you for making a very tough decision that no matter what you did were going to have impacts across the city and across the state. Quickly where did the number 2500 come from and what do we think 30-days will accomplish? >> So, 2500 is the benchmark for state law for mass gathering definition. Again, there's some element of risks for any large event for, you know, disease spread, but because that benchmark was there, because it is going to target the higher risk due to larger numbers of people, that seemed like a reasonable benchmark to set for focusing [10:01:41 AM] our attention. >> Do we know, roughly, how many events that are planned that cross that threshold? >> As of yesterday, we were alerted there are 20 events that fall into that category. >> So it is not like there are a thousand events and they don't have resources to go through their plan. It is a fairly small number and it seems like those groups, if they do the right thing, they can move forward and the staff has the resources to help do that? >> Yes. >> Those two questions that you asked, they're also an additional like 230 permitted events, non-sanctioned so it is also in the range of our staff dealing with, and ter' dealing with those, even though they are below 2500. Your question on the 30-day limitation came from the person who peated in the university of Texas who said when you issue a ruling like this and order, [10:02:42 AM] don't leave it open ended, actually put a date continue to so you make sure you go back and revisit that. >> I've been fielding questions on that I'm interested in the airport can as well. Seems like a very unique situation contextually to the other situations we're having. Whatever FAA regulations that apply that we're not talking about right now, we don't have to talk about it right now, but I'm interested in that conversation. My office fielded a lot of calls an hour after the press conference. I spent more than a decade running the lgbt chamber of commerce. Kate works in the music industry and cultural arts side of the city. We started having meetings that meet, folks who were reaching out to my office wanting to know [10:03:42 AM] what the economic impact was going to be, and I feel like it is a good conversation to have now while there aren't cases, so we're not weirdly conflating a very challenging public health issue so this is an opportunity to talk about it. We were even at the art show at city hall, closing my office door and having meetings with folks from the musician industry while others were milling around my office looking at the art. I'm concerned that the conversation about austinites going out to eat and choosing local businesses is not going to to be sufficient because we're talking about an event that generated 300 to $400 of economic impact, and that is outside money so we should shop local, we should eat local, we should drink local and we should be doing that anyway. In Austin, we to that more than other cities as a baseline [10:04:44 AM] activity. I want to be involved in a much deeper conversation with how we're continuing to engage all of the external industries that benefit. The folks who didn't come here by whose bests have been built by south by. I don't want to @jack at Twitter but your best kind of launched from south by and you were one of the first to say you weren't coming so I hope to see a support line from Twitter for the city and community that launched you. Same for the music industry, there is an opportunity to think bigger than shopping local. They're going to be, as you said, larger check impacts because the coronavirus generally. If we had an even nominally functioning federal government I would feel more confident maybe they could do something to help with those largermation wide impacts and the way it is going to impact us in Austin. [10:05:44 AM] I hold out hope that maybe 8 to 9-months from now we will have functional federal government, but that is up to the voters. The opportunity for us to collaborate with the music industry, with the tech industry in this moment for the city, for the check development department, small business resources staff is unique. This is a really important conversation not just for the folks that own the venues but for the folks that work at the venues, the folks that play the venues. I've had friends they owned small businesses because their land lord wouldn't let them stay open through the next south by and they closed months later. There are now conversations with folks I talked to in the last through days. One event in tech, I asked what are the other businesses I talked to that would see the impact, they said the guy that delivers ice, how is he going to make it? [10:06:45 AM] I had this huge ice order. Ice is pretty per, perishable, so that is a question for the ice game less for the alcohol, you can store alcohol. Nevertheless this is really important work and whether or not it needs to be a resolution or needs to be some other effort, I think this is an opportunity to do something really special and something that can be beyond south by, something that can help folks who work in those venues feel more secure not just during March but year around, folks that, you know, musicians who are looking for their gigs to pay a certain level who are the bus boys looking for health care in a more reliability way. This is a moment to do that work and I wham want to be involved in that work. I know check development is doing brainstorming and I want the public to know that work is going on but I want us to be [10:07:48 AM] thoughtful to work parallel with the public health crisis that we're solving our economic issues at the same time. >> Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you. I have a few questions but I want to pick up from there, perhaps that is a great discussion for another work session. I've gotten session gotten suggestions from the last week for activities the city could do for waving work fees or pedicabs, something in the city's realm. So as your staff is able to come up with suggestions that require policy actions that would be something many of us have spoken to here today, figuring out how we might better mitigate that I mean pact. I want to switch gears and just add my thanks. [10:08:48 AM] This is an extraordinary time for our city and I just feel so appreciative of the expert staff, professional staff that we have leading this effort. My colleague made really challenging decisions age appreciate and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into. This mayor, this has to have been a very challenging couple weeks, as well. So can you talk a little bit about and before we move on -- no, let me just move on. I think we hit on. That you could talk a little bit about, could you offer some suggestions to people, this is cedar season and oak season and other allergy season. Can you help members of our community understand what they should be looking for in terms of symptoms before they reach out to their physician? >> So, right now. The evidence that we have, the [10:09:50 AM] two primary symptoms are dry cough and five. You know, those are not very distinguishing features of anything, which is why this is a diagnostic challenge, particularly since we still have flu season going on. So, you know, this is what I was mentioning before about testing capacity, there are going to be a whole lot of people who meet those two criteria. Because, you know, the travel, number of countries with person to person spread is going up, that's going to be unreliable soon so now we're just going to focus on people with those two things. You know, I think the answer is, stay home and if you're young, don't worry about it too much, stay home, do the things you would normally do I know, chicken soup and Netflix would be fine, keep up your fluids. If you are an older American, if [10:10:52 AM] you have heart disease, if you have lung disease, you need to have that communication with your physician. You need to call them or connect with them on tele health, and certainly, if you get worse, you need to go to the hospital and get evaluated. Again that advice is going to change as we hopefully identify a treatment rej minute regimen for those who are infected, but now it is the seam things we've always said, take care of yourself, stay home, get rest, keep up on your fluids. If you get worse, let us know. >> Tovo: But fever is the distinguishing fracture factor from allergies. >> Yes, that is a key [10:11:52 AM] distinguisher generally between allergies and bacterial or viral infectses infections. >> Tovo: I know you've had out reach to other doctors, and I want to make sure that includes clinics, as well. I had the opportunity this week to take my family to one of those for an injury, not anything else, but they were differing, in the one case they didn't ask questions why we were coming in and in the other case they had no seenage posted on the door with it and one instance they did. Can you sort of assure us that out reach is hitting the emergency clinics and out reach centics because American in our community may not have a regular physician and on the weekend their regular physician may not be available so I want to hit those pleases where somebody that is feeling ill might go [10:12:55 AM] first. >> We intentionally have a person on our panel from the free-standing emergency room and urgent second, urgent sector so we're thinking about that space. >> Tovo: Great. >> There is advice out there for hospitals and ore health care settings. The challenge is what you described, there is a lot of variability. Those that are large enough to support this kind of thing are going to be well organized and others may not. By issuing these sets of orders it will help gain the uniformity and the messaging regarding disease prevention and the steps to take to further reinforce those facilities and make sure we're all working from the same sheet of music. >> Tovo: Great, thank you. I think I heard you say in one [10:13:56 AM] of your conversations last week that restaurants around town were getting the posters about hand washing? >> We Seattle out a notice to the -- sent out a note to anybody with a food permit, Austin public health licenses those entid entities, we're preparing the posters and we will have a mandate this week that requires it to be posted at restaurants, pars, any place that serves foods. >> Tovo: Is that something the school district is part of because of their food service? >> I think they are part of that process. >> I haven't seen any posters up in the schools I've been visiting and based on some of my [10:14:57 AM] observations with the groups I was in, we could do with more hand washing in those environments. >> It will be your schools, your childcare centers, so all of those places we permit. Even from a vending machine perspective, if there are perishable items in a vending machine, we regulate that, as well. We will get that investigation. Even the car dealerships that are popping popcorn, so anyone that is doing anything with handling food, that information was disseminated. And then, the next step is to move into those thorough conversations about posting those materials at those sites. >> Thank you very much. And I think my last question gets back to one of the earliest points you raised here today, and that is about the events and the sizing events, and that makes more sense, and thank you to my colleague who asked about how you came up with the 2500. [10:15:58 AM] We continue to receive questions why certain activities, if they're drawing people from -- well, two kinds of questions, one is about the larger scale activity such as the rodeo, such as moto-gp, where you stand with relationship to those events. And then why some of those smaller events that might be drawing people from places outside of Texas are not covered within the cancellation. >> So, the department is having conversations with the rodeo staff. We actually have a tour out there today to be able to walk the fa sellity and have conversation -- facility van conversations about mitigation so we're taking each of them on a case-by-case basis. As far as the event this past weekend at coda, what we [10:16:58 AM] determined is, it's because it was a larger outdoor venue that, you know, there was the ability to mitigate that event so that event could continue as scheduled. We did have our environmental health folks out there and just continuing to work with the vendors and have that oversight. So we do have several of those on our radar and we're going to get to them as quickly as possible. >> Tovo: Thank you. Arrange then, lastly, how are you communicating with the hospitality industry, including short-term rentals, about the need of any additional cleaning needs? >> We're going to be working with our code department, they are part of the team we have [10:17:59 AM] assembled to help with the mass gatherings. As most of you may knows, there is a current pace team in place the city of Austin put together previously before this, and the code officer team will work with us to provide that information so we can disseminate that, as well. One of the other really good things is we have worked across in several departments where we've sent information to them specifically and they have sent that out to our contacts, as well. It is really just widely disseminating information throughout the city and going to that drill down once we have orders in place. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Council member harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: I think my inclination to wait and see what everybody else said was accurate [10:18:59 AM] because I've seen everything addressed exempt for one except for one. We haven't heard about incarcerate Ed people, and the nasty computers we walk around with all day, so those are two-points of consideration I haven't heard yet. >> As a part of the emergency operation command center, the city and the county have put together a team that are building services from both city and county, and so basically, as part of that, they're going to be coming up with some recommendations, and then we're going to share those with Dr. Escot, as well. What we understand is, you know, we have to protect the people that are working there, but we [10:19:59 AM] also have to protect the people that are incarcerated, as well. So that group established yesterday and has began those conversations, and so once we have the recommendations, we're going to get them to Dr. Escot and make sure. The other thing that you're going to start to see is, you will start to see more city facilities, like our recreation centers, our libraries, most of our, you know, where we are really working directly with the public to have more signs up, because I'm sure most people are thinking why are you not putting signs in the city facilities, we're in the process of doing that with the building services department. And lastly, we've had conversations with building services about cleaning and the number of teams that they are cleaning on sources, ensuring that internally to the city and [10:20:59 AM] county that we have established a cleaning protocol. >> Harper-madison: I guess the only other thing that wasn't addressed, I haven't heard warnings about how filthy cell phones are but I've seen the data so I wonder if that is something we can have people be mindful about common behaviors we overlook. >> Yes, we consider that as part of the washing your hands frequently and not touching your face, as well as the direction we've given about commonly touched sir fasts frequently. As you have described, cell phones are disgusting. And that is something people need to think about because they shall constantly touching their phone and constantly depositing all sorts of things on that phone. It is greatries great advice and we will [10:22:03 AM] ENCORP thought enrate en incorporate that and remind people to clean frequently. >> You have to navigate and I appreciate your diligence on, this as well. I heard a couple people mention the distribution list, is there a discussion of a one-stop shop, like a subscription that they will notify you with an update. It seems like different departments and steak holder are communicating with you. I thought it would be helpful because there is so many different entities from inside the city and outside the city to pay attention and it would be helpful to have one spot that you can you can get a blast to say go check the website for [10:23:08 AM] updates updates. >> We will have a conversation with homeland security about that. >> That would be great, I've been getting messages from school districts and I thought that would be easy to accomplish quickly. >> Thank you for all the work you all been doing. My question is how are you all handling the front line, the airport workers out there. Also, the airline workers, my understanding is that when, because we can't control their labor contract, they also don't have second leave. Is that -- have I looked you looked into that? >> We've had a couple of considerations with the airport management staff there. It is very important that they [10:24:09 AM] have to follow their federal guidelines, but we are overlaying that with kind of local, our local guidelines, but we will take this into conversation and make sure that we are expanding those conversations with the airport. >> I'm really concerned that we have workers out there that don't have sick leave, and they're right there being exposed, handling all the luggage and everything else that comes in and leaves, and that is a really concern to me that, you know, we have a federal government that doesn't regulate their employees, the airlines employees who are guarantees them sick leave Sime' very concerned about that. >> Council member, we have had discussions regarding how to further protect those individuals, this goes back to measles and rubella and, you know, mumps and now this thing. Because we do recognize that there are many folks who are not [10:25:11 AM] city of Austin employees that support the efforts of the city, and we do not want to ensure that as much as possible, we can support as. And possible and protect those individuals. We want to make sure the message of hand washing gets to those individuals. That is a great observation. >> They are the wishes really in the front line and I was concerned other airports and the international airport now and getting a lot of people from out of country. I don't know if these that's -- I know we're not allowing some of them but we never know the ore way around where people can visit other countries and come back to Austin. >> Just want to mention real fast, the first one is that I [10:26:12 AM] see that the Moto grand grand prix event has been postponed until November, and they have avenue called me this morning, they wanted to make sure that we knew why, it is an international event, they were dealing with international logistics, they had the opportunity to be able to postpone it until November, so that worked really well. Again, I I would add as an aside, it is not because it is big event, we still have big events moving forward, but they were able to postpone to November so good to see that. I would also mention that workforce solutions, which is the entity in our city that takes point and lead on workforce development, working [10:27:12 AM] with folks that have been lead off or may be laid off, they're issuing an announcement this afternoon, their stepping out and reaching out to south by, but anybody in this city that looks like they may lose a job or lose an opportunity, please reach out to workforce solutions. Any employer that is thinking they melee 60 people, please reach out -- they may lay off people, reach out. They may be able to avert the actual lay off of workers. I urge everybody to reach out either as an employer or as an employee, and their website is wfscapitalarea.com. That's workforce solutions or the initials wfscapitalarea.com. [10:28:14 AM] People should reach out to them. >> During the Kohrs of you answering another question, you mentioned it was like the linchpin of the strategy for people to be able to stay home from work can you clearly lay out for us, for people to be able to take off time from work, how important that is. >> The ability to take time off from work is absolutely critical that the stage. This is why this mayor and this council passed this ordinance last year because we understand the importance of people being able to go home and recover. When we're trying to aggressively manage the potential for uncontrolled oat break, this is slightly critical. I was on the phone with congressman Doggett's office last week and had the seam conversation with him that my opinion, at this stage, this needs to be federal law. [10:29:17 AM] We have to have the ability for people to stay home when they're six, ensure they can recover appropriately and Mitt gate the risk to other people -- mitigate the risk to other people. It is critical. >> And given the risks for health care workers and seniors, I hope we ask the employers to step up and have paid second dales dales if they aren't doing already and ask the attorney general to drop the lawsuit at least temporarily so we can put it into effect. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: I want to mean Kut and culture map have lested other ways that community members can help out, and also, there's an eel vent that I was notify -- an event that I was notified today called rally Austin, another way to bring people together to talk about ways to assist. So if members of the community [10:30:19 AM] are looking, those are a couple pleases to start. >> I wanted to take a minute to thank this body December, the support of the mayor and council is critical to address this challenge as a community. With our key partners, university, education systems, the county and the support we're getting from this body so so important for us to continue to address this as community, so thanks to each of you for your leadership and guidance in that effort. >> Mayor Adler: All right, council, thank you very much. Keep us abreast, please. Let's move on to the briefing on homelessness. [10:31:34 AM] >> Good morning, mayor and council and city manager. My name is Chris shorter aircraft sis Tant city manager. I want to take the opportunity for the opportunity to provide another update where we are in homeless services throughout the city. This morning we will hear from our host team and the fantastic and thought. And comp comp comprehensive work across the city. After their remarks, I will provide a memo from March 9 and homeless services, our interim homeless strategy's car men and housing services Rosie truelove and open it up to questions you might have. >> Thank you, mayor, council. Appreciate the time. Wanted to give a brief update. [10:32:37 AM] Hopefully, we will give you keep this short. >> So, I'm not going to go into great detail about host, I think we've talked about it and everybody is generally familiar with wt host is, but I will do just a brief overview. The homeless out reach street team, or host is a multi disciplinary team. It consists of police officers two police officers, mental health professionals which include licensed therapists, peer support, case management, community health paramedics and the case management staff from downtown Austin community court. Of course, like I said, these partner agencies, integral care, APD and tacker are critical to [10:33:39 AM] the success. The objectives of host are to seek out through pro active engagement, those experiencing homeless, engage them, work on building a relationship and connecting them to services they identify different barriers that span the gamut but this team is also able to extend medical care and mental health services to these individuals, a critical component to success getting them into housing. Of course, one of the biggest things they offer and provide is the consistent navigation to resources because it is a complicated system. And to distinguish between health and you've heard the team community health paramedics, it is team specifically in ems, you all were gracious enough to [10:34:39 AM] proprovide funding for -- to provide funding for the team that was embedded. We have two teams north and south but they work in the same capacity as the paramedic assigned to the host team, so if that takes sense so host serves the down town and west campus area, while the community health paramedics partner up with the same agencies. These are the same paramedics that will compose of mental health response we have in a different discussion. They work as the same objective as host to connect individuals to services and provide medical care. So, just a brief over view of the outreach efforts over the last month or during the month [10:35:41 AM] of January 15 through the 14th of February, these are just real simple numbers, wanted to provide you simple numbers to give you a little bit of perspective. There were 404 individual engagements with individuals experiencing homelessness through 209 different visits the host team and community paramedics made in that given time. That's not year to date, that is just the four-weeks of that time. During that time, they provided medical care and service to 50 individuals and that's specific interventions, those types of things that could have been anything from helping take care of a wound or some sort of chronic medical done navigating them into a doctor's appointment, getting them signed up for map, something like that. There were 26 individuals served for, or served through the mental health system, that could be deescalating a situation or [10:36:43 AM] getting connected with the integral care, so anything like act or something they may be being served by. And substance use is another big challenge for many of the folks we work with we've got four individuals into services and that in itself, is a small number but it's a huge accomplishment for those individuals, it is very challenging, it is hard to get them into different services which also temporarily gets them off the street and into longer term services through case management and into long-term recovery. So while a small number, it is not insignificant, especially during that time. And there were a number of critical diversion that were made, 19 individuals from the emergency room. Instead of going to the emergency room for chronic or on [10:37:44 AM] going medical conditions they were taken care of in the field and connected to a primary provider or urgent care. That provides some relief from the responses and transports to the hospital. We prevented, during that time two jail lookings so two individuals did not have to go to jail for what they were experiencing and psychiatric hospitalization, we diverted two individuals. Small numbers but very significant in terms of the cost and the individual that's experiencing that particular issue. The general out reach and efforts of both host and the chp medics assigned to this area, host like I said, focuses on the down town and west campus areas and then the chp medics, the community health medics focus outside of downtown. [10:38:46 AM] They collaborate and coordinate hand in hand and they work with the same agencies. Those medics are focusing on the 183 corridor, the Ben white corridor, south park meadows, Cameron road, those areas. So it is a small but mighty force. They are able to accomplish a lot of very important work and they're very good at it. During this same period of time, there were some targeted out reach that they were asked to participate in, some of it was in the flood prone areas so the areas off of like east river side and some of the encampments in the tunnels and some areas in the low-lying areas that were very prone to flooding and issues like that, so hopefully western able to prevent -- we were able to prevent some devastation to some encampments and individuals there. Some were involved in the [10:39:47 AM] encampments that experienced some fires and worked a lot around the terazas library, specifically after some requests were made and there were particular issues they wanted to get into that area and provide out reach. The host team and the chips do provide regular engagement at the state encampment. We've been able to establish a relationship where they have a direct call. They can call us directly if they have somebody that has an ongoing longer term issue, but fortunately, our partners at community care and their street med team have taken on providing medical care to those individuals at that encampment and dedicating, I believe it is going to be another day of their work at that encampment serving the long-term medical needs, that is comitial because that helps is gray -- that is crucial because that helps us respond to [10:40:47 AM] the medical needs and respond for safety, ems and transport to the hospital, for those. One of the things that makes host and community health success system they are mobile. They are able to get out to individuals where they are in the community. There is not a reliance on brick break, setting anden and -- brick-and-mortar, setting an appointment and missing it and setting it again than cycle. The ability to go where they are, whether it is under an under pass in a creek, a park, anywhere it makes a huge difference. You're going to exactly where they are, you get to see what they're experiencing, take that into context and provide the best resource possible. We've tried to equip the team so they are capable of providing mobile intakes so something as [10:41:47 AM] simple as a laptop, wi-fi access, a telephone and the ability to access certain systems and screen or fell out applications is critical. Some of these things include the ability to be mobile and complete elements of the social security and disability applications and forms that are necessary that in itself is a huge under taking and many teams falls through the cracks. Being able to go out where they are and where they're experiencing Serb crisis, decase late and sometimes within minutes or hours. And, then, I can't emphasize enough the ability to get them connected and linked up with critical documents, an id or birth certificate. A birth certificate costs minute, that's not something we're able to necessarily wave. It is not a fee we're able to wave but there are funds available to pay for these things. The team is able to establish [10:42:49 AM] relationships with dps, they can take someone to the flyinger pleugerville office and get a temporary id there are work arounds and in roads that the team has made. A lot of what this leads to is they're connected to medical care, acute and on going medical dire address those on going conditions. Diabetes, hypertension, heart problems, get them connected with on going disability benefits that hopefully lifts them up out of where they're at and into a sustainable housing situation and connect them with the housing support services. So like the team is able to connect them with or perform a coordinated out reach assessment, getting them in the pipeline for housing, getting them on the lest, into the other services downstream. [10:43:50 AM] So I wanted to just emphasize a few things. The host team and chp's spent a lot of time coordinating with a variety of agencies, this is the short list. But the city of stick, they work close leer -- of Austin, they work closely with the library, the terazas, central and walnut creek, and they work closely with the recreation department, they have a close line to the team and are working on a process with gis where park staff can identify where there is an individual and we can work on getting out there as quickly as possible as they work through the different processes they have. We work closely with public works apple an cue the activity of hosts and chps over what public works put out as far as their clean up schedule, so when [10:44:50 AM] they will go out and clean a tech location, those med he cans, host team members go out' head of team and try to met mitigate what issues they can there active working closely with the violet bag program and the project involving healthsouth. There is a whole host of different external partners that we work with, so it is not just the city departments that are taking the front of all this be, but we work closely with community care, the street medicine team. Integral care is a huge part of what we do, we work with their path team, both host and chp so we can coordinate, if there is a peaken peak patient outside of the area, we hand them off to the path team. The care people is another level of care we work with HIV and [10:45:51 AM] AIDS. The traf invest county constable, precinct 3, actually is very pro active in their particular area in southwest Austin. They have a constable out reach program, a Cort program, and we have direct contact with him regularly in supporting his efforts. We also work with txdot, different elements, host will coordinate with them, excuse me, coordinate efforts with their clean ups and there is also, like I mentioned earlier, regular interaction with the state encampment. The Trinity center down the street from the arch, the host team has regular weekly interactions and support there. I could go on and on and on, but there's other on going collaboration, the other ones foundation, Austin harm reduction, uplift through the [10:46:55 AM] university presbyterian charge. Church. He wanted to keep it short and sweet what we've been up to, what the team has been able to accomplish and we are going from there. I'm happy to take any questions. >> Tovo: I have no questions, I wanted to say thank you, the other team members here, thank you for the work you do each and every day, it is really critical and one of the really important strategies we need to continue to support. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Ellis. >> My comment is in the seam rain is, it is incredible to see the work you've been doing. I've been able to do the point in time twice with that team and it is good to see you working alongside of them, they make us proud in southwest Austin. [10:47:56 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. I think it is great work, too. I only wish that most of the people in the city knew that we had a host team or what the host team did. I don't mean that as a throw away line, my concern is we will lose the ability to do this kind of work locally with a host team unless our community actually comes to learn there is a host team out there multiple host teams out there doing that. My fear is we're going to lose control of our ability to do these things. There's Goss to be got to be a better way for the community to know the work of the host team, they know the name, they know we're doing this kind of work and I don't think it is pen treating out to the public generally who -- penetrating out to the public generally and are feeling hopelessness because they're not understanding the work being done or not seeing it by being presented with it. I don't know if we need to bring in an outside marketing firm to [10:48:57 AM] help the communality understand what we're doing, but I think if we had greater awareness in the community, we would have greater significant community support for what is happening. Council member tovo. >> Tovo: I appreciate the manager putting together information on the website, there is great coverage of the host team in the past in the media and a really good report that the I believe novation office did that -- that the innovation office did, put faces to some of the individuals with whom you interact so I would suggest maybe pulling together that material and making it avail. I'm sure it is available somewhere on the website but in. So other fashion might be useful. >> Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes, I think the fact sheets that you all have started to put together are really helpful, I think you've [10:50:10 AM] given us some in the last briefing before. This is a document is easily digestible for people understand so I appreciate that, also. I can you have it on the website, if I'm correct. >> We are. >> There is a fact sheet on the motel strategy, a fact sheet on a couple other things you've given us before. >> That's right. We could review a listing of some of those documents this mornings. Could come up and talk about even what's next. >> That would be great. I assume they're being continually updated. Those are very helpful. So I wanted to, this may be -- I have a question, but if you're going to present more, and that really is a question about the guided path project base we've had some conversation with that extending beyond the downtown area. >> Right. I will respond and maybe, if [10:51:11 AM] there are no more questions, just really want to thank the host people for presenting this morning. >> Yes, thank you very much, appreciate it. >> And offered, I know from council member kitchen, we received a great suggestion in terms of a potential provider presenter in the morning work sessions and invite other council members to certainly do the same. We have invited the provider community to come and we're making this as consistent as possible in terms of giving a voice and audience and appreciate you all from taking the time out to hear from our providers during work session. Just by way of update, last time we were together, we talked about two things and that was the consultant team coming in for a visit and that's Barbara poppy and associated. At the time, we didn't know for sure but Matthew dough math Dougherty's contract was approved and he was [10:52:13 AM] able to join Barbara poppy and her team. Wet a consult last week, they had a fantastic visit where our government leaders and community providers were present and actively involved in making sure our providers understood what we're doing here locally. Started on March 3 with the host team going out and understanding so the real time and real experiences of folks experiencing homelessness here in Austin. The team had the opportunity to visit the arch, life works, terrace at oak springs and Austin's shelter for women and children. On the second day there were a series of provider for rims, topic-based forums. We started here at city hall with the consultant team, with [10:53:13 AM] an actual provider forum where many community providers were here in this room in a facilitated conversation that really helped our consultant team understand what was happening here in Austin. We then went through the day talking about issue-based and topic-based areas like prevention and diversion strategies, temporary housing strategies, permanent housing strategies and they had a chance to talk with the coc board. On the third day they spent more time with echo in particular and talked about out reach and encampment strategies and we had a close out for the team. So a really good visit. We do plan to have them back next month to spend time with you all and we will we will likely figure out if this is the right forum, the work session, or another forum for that but do plan to have the consultant team [10:54:17 AM] spend time with you all. We also talked about a very clear set of goals, 30, 60, 90-day goals that you all wanted to see out of the team. You've received a handout that tries to do just that, and so we've broken those goals out by priority area and so you will see goals listed under housing response services, clean city strategy, as well as commune educations. And so, if there are any questions answer those now, what we'll do, maybe I should invite the leads up to do their piece first, but we will take questions and then we will have housing services come up to talk a bit about sort of the latest and then we will have homeless related services come up and [10:55:17 AM] talk, as well. >> So I'm going to hold my questions until after the leads go because they may answer some of the questions that I have. >> So the question I just raised about extending guided path beyond the arch, I guess that will be answered as part of this presentation? >> Yes, so we'll have Bela Carmen go first and follows but Rosie truelove and we will again open it up for questions. >> Bella Carmen, to address your question, council member kitchen, we are working actually with the consultants. Barb poppy and associates as been working with a broader team across the country for a year and a half on unsheltered homelessness, specifically, looking at encampments, [10:56:18 AM] strategies working and not working and a lot of guidance and materials are coming out to be shared broadly across the country, but we are in consultation with them about how we should best proceed with our current strategies here, guided path as it stands is continuing. We have at least six more people that have been housed. One person has left our community to a location that we haven't confirmed is stablely housed and one more person I thinks that been incarcerated so there will continue to be movement in our guided path. As we look to expansion, we're looking at areas around the city and how locations and how we might proceed, but we are in consultation with the consultants and learning from their expertise as we decide how we move forward with the expansion. >> I would like to ask a quick follow-up question, since we're [10:57:19 AM] on the subject. So the reason I ask, that's great, I appreciate that, we really want to understand the best practices in that area, but the reason I keep asking is that we've been talking for a couple of months about extending guided path beyond the downtown area, and so I really would like some clarity about when we're actually going to do that, so, and I appreciate and understand we need to talk to the consultants but I would hate to have this delayed months and months for a consultant report and what might be involved so I need to understand when. We have been talking a while about extending the downtown area. If you don't have a date now, that is okay, but I would like a date and I don't want to go another month just saying at some time in the future it might happen. >> We will certainly follow-up [10:58:19 AM] with your office directly and then provide more detailed information to the council as whole. We certainly don't I believe tend to push this out -- don't intend to push this out to the end of the consultant's time with us, but we want to be thoughtful about how we expand and/or mention, if you will, the programming around guided path to our coordinated sort of standard coordinated system. So more to come on that, and I hear you, we will certainly follow-up. >> Kitchen: I appreciatiate that, but I hope by the team we get briefed again, we will have a date. That is something I've been asking for for quite some team, so thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I know we talked about it but I don't know it was decided so I'm not sure expanded path is the way we're going to [10:59:19 AM] move forward. We've talked about it. >> Kitchen: We have talked about it. >> Flannigan: I'm not hearing that as a decision. I'm hearing from staff if that is to go into the larger system or going forward. We will talk about that if the pulled item later but I'm concerned about asking the staff to do this whether we brought on new staff, and before the consul tent has the ability to get their arms >> Kitchen: Councilmember Flannigan, that's not what I said. I said we've BP talking about the encampment for quite some time. As you may note I did say it's very important to understand what the consultants think, but it's also very important for the whole community to take some action. So we can talk some more about it later. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: So I think I want [11:00:20 AM] to understand a little bit. We can call it guided path, we can call it something else, we can call it the encampment strategy. What it is is focusing intently and providing services, case management services to individuals who are experiencing homelessness and constructing a path to housing. And so I'm certain that whatever our consultants tell us it's probably going to include components of that. My understanding -- I guess what I want to understand is the limitation of resources. It was my thought that probably why the guided path hadn't extended to other areas because we're still working hard as a city to identify the individuals who are working through this strategy and is it really one of -- I guess is the focus right now on guided [11:01:21 AM] path rather than other encampments, primarily being driven by resources? >> Right. So we brought to council January 23rd, I believe, some items to fund case managers for guided path. And that was not for an expansion, that was primarily for resourcing guided path. So we asked partners to come together last fall and not add any resources, but to take on additional -- additional people, additional work, additional focus on serving more people with their current resources to learn where the gaps were and how we did need to resource guided path and how -- and any future encampment resolution strategies. So that's always been in our sites that we would learn from this pilot and that we would source the current project right now, which is what we've done with that [11:02:22 AM] staffing. Of course, once council approved the funding then city staff have to amend the contracts which takes a few weeks and then agencies have to hire their staff, which takes a couple of weeks and train them and get them on board. So it's not immediate, I know it takes longer than we would all like, but that has been moving forward with the current project and in anticipation of how we might move forward beyond that. And that's what we're trying to figure out the best next steps while we are focusing on the current project with the 99 original individuals. >> Tovo: So to me this kind of speaks to the need in part for the local government corporation, which I hope at some point, maybe not today, but that we'll circle around back to talking about how that might be a funding strategy because as I look at these numbers I'm really glad -- I'm not sure, you had talked [11:03:23 AM] about individuals who had been involved. Was that after the memo? >> It was after the memo? >> Tovo: So we can update it, can did you say six individuals. >> Yes. >> Tovo: To me this needs to be a message to our community that this is very resource intensive and that the city is putting a lot of resources into it, and if -- as there are 19 encampments throughout the city with lots of individuals -- many encampments throughout the city with lots of individuals experiencing homelessness, frankly for this work we need more resources to house people because since October it's great to see the progress monthly month by month. We still have multiple -- we still have more than 70 individuals waiting to be housed. So anyway, thank you for that ongoing work. And I guess -- I think at [11:04:24 AM] some point it might be good to have a conversation about some of these issues more specifically. I'm not sure why we continue to circle around to -- we had a resolution that supported the encampment strategy and perhaps it's -- we should reintroduce that. It seems like that is a best practice that our staff has brought to us. So I'm glad that we're continuing to work here. And again, it seems to me that the resource issue is what's halting us from being able to expand across the city. Not one of a policy decision or that's needed. >> Mayor Adler: So my assessment of of this as we go back, manager, is that I'm getting really frustrated with the pace of how this is moving because it's moving exceedingly slowly in the community's perception and in my [11:05:24 AM] perception as well. The questions we're dealing with here today are no different than the questions that were laid out last summer in July -- in June when we passed the resolution we passed and everybody made a laundry list of the things to address. We've heard most specifically about the things we can't do. We've heard some specifics about the things that we are doing and we need to celebrate those, but even those things are moving too slowly. You know, I will tell you that I come from the camp that was -- that Mr. Flannigan laid out, which is we shouldn't be getting ahead of our staff, we need a plan and then we need to provide you the resources because you're experts to be able to get that done, but I will also tell you that you're losing me. You're losing me because the-- in the absence of our staff coming forward and saying this is what we need to do and here's the plan and this is how we measure it and this is what we're going to accomplish by these days, then as a council we are going to step in. In order to just be able to see things happening and [11:06:25 AM] moving forward. It's moving way too slowly for the perception of the people that live in this city. Part of it is they don't know what it is that we're doing. We're communicating. We have some great one-pagers. I think those are great. We have some great stuff on the website, but that's kind of a passive communication. People have to find that and seek that out. If I'm trying to get the community to understand what we're doing then I find them and I communicate to them what we're doing with a power and a focus beyond anything that we have done thus far. I think looking at the 30, 60, 90 days is really good. It tells us what you're going to do to start achieving things that people will see. This is kind of back of the house stuff. What I'd really like to see is what it is we're going to achieve in 30 days and 60 days and 90 days that the community is going to see. How many people are we going to house? We keep asking for the goals with respect to the 70 people. This is something that we're thinking about because we're being asked about it daily. [11:07:27 AM] We got a memo out yesterday that had numbers from three weeks ago and those were numbers that I thought we were going to be updated with on a weekly basis. And now three weeks later we're getting numbers from three weeks ago. There's a sense of urgency I think from this dais that I'm not sure is being felt. I want to know when we're going to house those 77 people are 71 people. And every week I want to know how we're going to move toward that goal. And if we need to change that goal because we can't meet that goal, then let's change the goal. Let's change it here so that the public has an understanding of what it can reasonably accept or not accept. We had a goal of 1,000 permanent supportive housing and 2,000 rapid re-housing units and two weeks ago we asked when are we going to get that done by and what resources do you need to get that done by? We were told we were going to get that this week. But we don't get that. We have another restatement of the fact that we need 1,000 permanent supportive housing units and 2,000 -- [11:08:28 AM] and 2,000 rapid re-housing units. We know that. What is the plan to get there? To councilmember tovo's point, I think we can get out there and raise money with that organization that we're creating or other organizations if we knew what the plan was. But in the absence of having a plan that we can articulate to the community to do something about unsheltered housing in this community, people don't know. They don't know what it is that we're doing. They don't know when it is they expect to see things. They just don't know. And if we were to set goals. Even if we change the goals, if we were to set the goals and meet on a weekly basis or biweekly basis and say how we're going on the goals, then people would understand. I think we have the capacity to do it. But I will tell you in the absence of our staff coming forward with a plan I'm going start voting for us to do things. So I want us to do things that will actually move us in that direction. [11:09:32 AM] Those are my comments on my three colleagues who went before me. >> I think we wanted to have one or two updates on specific topic areas and then obviously if there are other specific questions we wanted to avail to those as well. >> So I'm going to give a quick update on the pay for success project. This is something that our community has worked with multiple partners on for quite some time. One of the potential end payers decided not to participate in that project, that's Travis county. So partners have been convening to figure out how we might move that project forward and rescope the project. More details will be coming in the next few days directly to mayor and council and we will be bringing back on the March March 26th agenda for approval, but the summary is that we're looking at a shift of about 10% of the project. [11:10:33 AM] In order to accommodate the changes in the partners that are still at the table. All of the partners residentialing have indicated interest in moving forward with that project. And as I said more details will be coming. So any questions at this point about the pay for success project? >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to go first or second? >> Tovo: I want to thank our staff. This has been a very, very challenging process to work through and our staff have worked really hard in bringing together the different stakeholders to work through something that's just not yet been done in Texas. It's an innovative program and I know we can do it as a community and I'm just extraordinarily disappointed that one of our partners is not -- has indicated that they're not going to participate. Unfortunately they had made that decision before I and ears were aware of it, otherwise we might have been able to contact our [11:11:34 AM] colleagues over at Travis county and presidential had a conversation or had a broader conversation so I would ask, city manager, that when those opportunities arise if we see something kind of going down that path, that's a perfect opportunity for your council to potentially reach out to the colleagues who are going to be voting on it and see if we can affect a different resolution there. Possible now and maybe that's a conversation for after this. So thank you staff for continuing to rescope it so that we can move the project forward. I think it's critically important that it start. I'm certainly happy to have those conversations with Travis county if we think we can get to a different end. And get their participation again. >> Mayor Adler: So this is something that I also advocated for going back together with councilmember tovo. On lots of levels. One, we want to do something about homelessness. Second we never had [11:12:34 AM] everybody in lots of different parts of our city all pulling together on not have just what is a city problem, but a regional problem with all our providers. I think that's great to have a model where the private market is assuming some of the risk for achieve. And then getting rewarded for taking that risk is a model that I hope can move to lots of other areas other than just homelessness. So I would love to see the model work. That said, I still have the same concerns that I had back then about whether we can construct something that actually has private investors coming in and taking real risk in order to be able to drive a return. Again, we're not interested in just a financing model. We don't need someone to front money for us to be able to do projects. So recognizing that there was still really difficult issues and no one had been able to figure out we sent you back into the fray and we said try everything you can do to try to make this model work because it has application in other places. And I'm anxious to hear the [11:13:36 AM] report if it's coming back on how or what we were able to actually achieve those things. One of the other benefits of doing this was that we had Travis county and the hospitals in and everybody in and they have capital that's earmarked. I want to make sure we're not losing those funding to anybody that might be having second thoughts or pulling out. I want to make sure that it is still targeted to this and I don't know how to roll that into the conversation. But I think probably we are at a place where we need to make a decision. It's good it's coming back to us on the pay for success. Know that when we look at it what I'm going to want to understand really well is what is the risk that the investors are taking in exchange for getting a return separate and apart from advancing any capital. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I would just echo, I'd like to be helpful if I can on the pay for success. I did participate in working [11:14:39 AM] with -- with central health for their participation. So we'd like to understand what aspects of the model was of concern to Travis county. So we can have a conversation offline. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. >> Alter: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I want to echo the disappointment of my colleagues with regard to the county pulng out and would also like more information on what it is that drove their decision. I think this is a very innovative program that had huge promise for us to be able to target our resources to those who are using the most resources in our community and get them the services that they need. So I would very much like to know more. >> Flannigan: Mayor, I'll reiterate the thing I said in work session on cap metro yesterday is maybe we should consider a joint work [11:15:39 AM] session with the commissioners' court. We can have this conversation directly face to face with our colleagues where the public can see it. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I certainly would support that. I would also say that we have certainly joint bodies like the ISD, Travis county, city of Austin, which several of us sit on. This would also -- if we see something like this coming to a head and a vote, that could also have been something we could have put on our joint subcommittee agenda for conversation and discussion and possibly that would have made the difference. >> Mayor Adler: That would have been a great forum. >> Tovo: I'm supportive of a joint work session. I think we should also use the existing bodies when we can for those kinds of conversations. >> Mayor Adler: Understand. Continue on. >> Okay. Rosie truelove, director of neighborhood housing and community development. I'm here today to update you on a couple of items. The first is on the roadway [11:16:40 AM] inn, which is one of the motels we're converting to permanent supportive housing. We are continuing on spodes a closing on the property with federal funds in mid April. Everything is moving on accordingly with that. And we are continuing to work on ways that we can minimize the schedule for the rehabilitation that's going to be required to get folks into be housed as soon as possible. I don't have a tight time frame on that, but we are working on that actively and I hope to get back well in advance of when we close on the property. We're also working to bring forward the next potential motels for acquisition and conversion. Those are real estate conversations right now that I would ask Alex gale to update you guys on if there's any update that can be provided. In addition, we are working on the request for qualifications that I talked about at our work session to gauge community and provider support for operation and being the service provider for any of these potential [11:17:40 AM] future motels that we're looking to acquire. That rfq will go out this month and we will bring the award of that to you in the summer based on a normal -- expedited requests for qualifications process. We are looking to finalize and launch our 950,000-dollar contract for low barrier permanent supportive housing with echo that is funded by the downtown density bonus program that was approved by council last year and we're looking to get that launched this month in coordination with the pay for success program. And that's everything that I have to update you on today. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I pulled item 16, but I think this is a perfectly time to talk, one question I had. Item 16 is the relocation assistance for the folks that are currently in the roadway inn. Itsomes like a lot of money for I think -- it's very email number of folks that are needing relocation, but my understanding is that is [11:18:41 AM] a federally required -- we don't have any flexibility as a city on that part of the process, is that right? >> That's correct, because we are using federal dollars we do have the uniform relocation act that it calls into place. We would be actually following the same process if we were displacing folks with city dollars or local dollars. >> Flannigan: It's not about the source of funds. >> It's not about the source of funds here. Alex can explain if folks are interested the calculation in how we arrived at the dollar amount. We do estimate for the total amount that might possibly be needed so we don't have to come back to council for additional funding. As an example when we did the relocation with the orchard plaza development in the last couple of can years we set aside a certain amount and we didn't spend anywhere close to it. So we would tend to estimate on the high side so we have adequate funding should it become necessary. But again as we're displacing folks whether a federal funding source or a local funding source, the relation comes into play. [11:19:42 AM] >> Flannigan: That's the point. Rather than get into the details, it's a federal process so it kind of is what it is. So we don't have to talk about 16 later. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. Again for me this time frame is not moving fast enough. You're talking about getting another hotel by the end of -- the end of may. We're still not getting to the 30rooms, the goal we were trying to reach with motels back before the end of the calendar year in December. If there are additional resources, right now now that's the best thing that we have in order to move people off the streets and to deal with unsheltered homelessness. It's impacting the conversations that we can be having with the downtown Austin alliance, and with the chamber that want to represent assist with this city, with helping us deal with unsheltered homelessness in our city. Obviously we have a state interest in us doing something with unsheltered homelessness in the city. And manager, I see the schedule here that has us [11:20:43 AM] getting another hotel. You know, April 1 and may, the size of the hotels we're doing. That gets us to just over 200 rooms and want it to be over 300 rooms. I would really like us to get to 300 rooms by the end of this month. And if not by the end of this month, by the end of April. I don't know why that's not an achievable goal if we reached out to the people that are in the community or handled this differently. I would really like to have consideration of whether we can do this much more cheaper than that or if there are more resources. I recognize that we still have to find who operates those and how it happens. I think we can move on parallel tracks with that. We have folks step up on the echo board to help us operate 300 rooms, of that made that offer to us. We just have to find the facilities. If it's not hotels, maybe it's a vacant tract somewhere that we put on modular housing northbound and southbound to be able to serve the same purpose. I don't know if the cost of that would be substantially different. Still would provide a [11:21:44 AM] permanent supportive housing or rapid re-housing function. But if there's a way for us to get that done by the end of April, I would very much like to see that. And in all things I understand that we can't give a tight time frame that we can promise on, that we would bet the farm on but I would like to see the tight time frame and I would like to see if we're thinking a month or in terms of five years just so I can see if we can change that time frame over months but it gives us something to hold ourselves accountable for, for the public to hold ourselves accountable for. But in the absence of time frames unnone of that can happen. >> Yes, exam councilmember Renteria and then councilmember kitchen. >> Renteria: My question is the -- the downtown alliance went into a lease contract with the state -- on that property there in montopolis. Did they get that lease? [11:22:45 AM] Do y'all know? And I've been trying to reach out to that and saying hey, let's work together on this. Because there's a big potential, almost six acres of land there in montopolis. Since they got that long- term lease I reached out to them and said, hey, let's get together and see if we could take advantage of this property that's out there. And make it liveable where people can have warm showers and -- that's a big piece of property and I think we should just get together and work -- reach out to them and that be a big opportunity to be able to relocate some of the homeless people that are camping out there. And it seems to me that even in the condition that it is right now that it's still better than what it was [11:23:45 AM] living out in the street. So I would recommend that y'all reach out there, reach out to the alliance and see if you can form some sort of partnership with them. >> Kitchen: I would just say, mayor, thank you. I do share that urgency and I won't repeat because I think you said it well. I also, councilmember Renteria, I think that's an interesting idea that's worth exploring. Perhaps that could be helpful to our strategy. I don't see that as instead of our motel strategy, but there could be some win-wins there. So we should -- I would agree with you. >> Morning, mayor, morning, council, Ken snipes, Austin resource recovery, and also the encampment and storage cleanup lead. Just a quick update on the cleanup activities. [11:24:46 AM] So last week we cleaned up 21 sites for and removed a total of 2.4 tons of material. The encampment cleanup work is continuing in earnest and making progress. We're also expanding the violet bag program. That program has been very successful. The next site that we will establish the program at will be at 183 and oak knoll. We also conducted a cleanup at theter razz S.O.S. Library and following the cleanup we stalled a cart cage at that site. And that site has so far been very well used. In fact, so well used in fact that I think the team is picking up the materials there daily. And so next on our list there could be a couple of contract issues we're working on. One is to modify the current cleanup contract to include the areas that are adjacent to the underpasses. [11:25:49 AM] We were asking them to focus on the areas not directly under the overpasses, but along the side. So we're moving forward with that group and arr, Austin transportation and public works is working with expanding that work. The 183 and Cameron road work that we did a couple of weeks ago we're looking to ratify the emergency contract to move that along, the cost of that project cleanup was about $100,000. So we're looking to get that taken care of. A couple of other things we're working on include establishing a framework that will allow us to better predict this work as we go forward. The way we've been working now is because the work is so unique is that we've been conducting the work and assessing the costs and compiling the activities associated with that afterwards. [11:26:52 AM] I have good news on the health south garage. As you know we've been working to create a storage program at that site. There were concerns before about code requirements there and so we've created a couple of modifications to our original design and those have been deemed as favorable so we're not able to move forward with -- we're now able to move forward with submitting that design and hope to have it approved by the end of the month. And lastly, we're working -- I partnered with director Richard Mendoza and chief buyers from the fire department on conducting a risk assessment of all of our bridges and low hanging that could be impacted -- low hanging infrastructure that could be impacted by fires. So we just started those conversations and I think it will be important for us to know where those sites are. [11:27:54 AM] We will add those sites to our list to regularly inspect and clean those areas so that we reduce the potential for fire. Any questions? >> Mayor Adler: I think this work is great and you're doing an amazing amount of work. Three weeks ago or two weeks ago you took 30 tons out of a location in Austin. I wish everybody in the city knew that in over four days you were able to get 30 tons from a location. And for people to know that that location was one of our encampments that have been with us for a decade. Who knows how long that encampment has been with us. And it's something we haven't tended to for decades. In part because we didn't know where they were and we didn't know where people were. And in part we didn't have the will and the resources. So now we're doing that. I would like community to know that. I would like them to know that you picked up three [11:28:54 AM] tons just in the past week or so. I would like them to know that our parks department picked up over 6,000 pounds of stuff out of our parks last week and moved it out because I think that would be really important for the community to know. They know that the state is cleaning up under 17 overpasses, which is great. Thank you, state for cleaning up under 17 overpasses. That's great. They don't know we're doing it at 41 locations. 44 locations. They don't know that, and I wish they did so that they would know that we're doing it too. But also to be able to have that conversation with our community that says we haven't created more people experiencing homelessness, we haven't created more trash. It's just for the first time in forever probably we're actually dealing with trash at the scale that the trash has been complete understand our community. And I wish the understand [11:29:58 AM] knew that and felt that and was proud about that because they should should be with this activity that's happening now in our city. Councilmember tovo, did you have something? >> Renteria: I had something. I just wanted to make a comment that I've been getting a lot of feedback and I want to thank you for cleaning it up. It's very unfortunate to let that between the fence line and the sidewalk that is public hand and camping is allowed on public land, but it's really destroying all our beautiful landscaping we had around our library, which is very unfortunate. I know the frustration of the neighbors around there because I'm hearing it, and hearing it constantly. I try to tell them that this is what we're facing and they seem to not want to [11:30:58 AM] believe that, but that's exactly what happened is that area in between the sidewalk and the fence line between the library is being used as a campsite and we can't have the landscaping around there and have a nice library. So I want to say that to the public that this is what we're facing. >> Thank you. >> Just before Mr. Shorter closes us out with this presentation, I want to thank the council for the dialogue. I think we are hearing this as staff loud and clear that we need to step up our urgency on some of the strategies that we're pursuing to get you information on how we can hold ourselves accountable to clear and specific timelines and goals so we took a stab at that. We know we have work to do. I will also reflect on fact that we are building a more mature system overall. Obviously as councilmember [11:31:59 AM] Renteria just mentioned, this has been going on for democratic cades in our community and yet as a system we have a lot of work to do and I really want to compliment the work that our staff and more importantly our partners have been doing over the past year to ensure that we are moving from -- moving to a more mature, homeless strategy system that our community hadn't seen in the way that we're seeing it now. And so I know that we have work to do. I know that frustration is coming up in different ways, but we will be moving in that direction and we are getting there. And I'm very happy about how we have been working with our community partners. As we all know this isn't just a city challenge, it's a community challenge. With that I will ask Mr. Shorter to close us out. >> Thank you, Mr. Manager. I will say that for the ask around the action of plan [11:33:01 AM] goals, those 30, 60, 90 day goals, please let me know if there are additional-- if there's additional feedback that we need to incorporate. We will continue to monitor and report out on these goals as well as the other items that we need to make sure that we're responsive on. We'll also be prepared, councilmember kitchen, to talk to you directly about sort of the strategy forward around guided path and keeping in mind sort of what our conversations have been with our consultant team. And we will also be prepared to answer questions on, and before I assume the council meeting on March 26th at the work session will likely have a conversation about pay for success and its future. With that if there aren't any additional questions we'll close out now. >> Mayor Adler: I think that would be good. I'd be interested in you taking the 30, 60, 90 and [11:34:02 AM] turning them into measurable outcomes as opposed to just the outputs that drive those programs. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I just wanted to thank our staff. In the last years that I've been on council I've seen the staff work harder and harder and in a more focused way on this issue. It's always -- I think we've always had good programs here at the city of Austin, but the increased collaboration with community partners and now the increased collaboration at the city level I believe is really important and will be very effective. And I think -- you know, I just want to reflect on -- we all feel this as an urgency and I want to be careful not to let it sound like we don't have great confidence in the work that you're doing because I certainly do. And you know, from some of the more detailed conversations I've been in, I'm aware -- I mean, I don't do this work obviously day in and day out, but I get [11:35:02 AM] little glimpsed here and there of just the heart and the focused energy and resources that it really takes to make progress in these areas. So I think it's -- it's a lot easier for us on this side to say we want this done faster and sooner and without knowing all of the details and all of the work that has to go into achieve those outcomes. So I want to thank you for the work that you're doing and this chart I think is very useful. And to the extent that you're hearing from the council an interest which I think you are, an interest in doing some of -- in doing more of this work and faster, then I would ask, manager, for you to come back and set realistic expectations with the council. We can certainly probably escalate some of these timelines, but there would be a need to hire more staff and to put more resources into housing and other things that I think it's really -- I would just ask you to be very clear with this council about what it takes to achieve those. So that we're not asking the staff to accomplish unreasonable goals with the resources that they've been [11:36:04 AM] provided. So thanks again for the work. >> Kitchen: Mayor? I would just add that I think this is a high priority. First off, I would second the thanks. I know that you all have been working very hard and it's very, very much appreciated. And I would just say for myself that I will support additional resources that are needed to make this go faster. So I just want to hear what it is that we need because it is a top priority and it's a top priority that impacts so many things in our city. So please don't hesitate to tell us what is needed. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Thank you very much for the work you're doing, which is an amazing amount of work. Thank you. Let's have the briefing on the airport issue and then we'll go into executive session. [11:37:37 AM] >> Mayor, I just want to say that we are going to have an executive session about the airport issue that came up last week, but we were lucky enough to have our national expert here, so we're doing a briefing on the mwbe program and I'll let you take it from there. >> Good morning. My name is Edward campos, the director of the small and minority businesses resources department. We have with us here Cole Collette holt. She's doing our disparity study and today she will be addressing some of the questions that we have related to our mwbe, WBE and dbe program. She will be discussing that with you and then we have a executive session discussion on this as well on this item. [11:38:39 AM] >> While they're working on that, thank you all for making some time to hear from me this morning. It's wonderful to be back here in Austin. I've been doing work for the city since 1995, and in fact the city of Austin was my very first client when I opened my own law firm and I've done work for you off and on ever since. I got married last year and we moved to San Antonio from Oakland, California, so now I'm a Texan and I guess I need boots and a hat and some other things to kind of fit in, but it's been great and we really enjoyed it here and so we're looking forward to this project and we were delighted to be chosen. But today what I was asked to do is just give you kind of a brief overview. My understanding is that some of you at least are new to minority and women owned business programs and so I think the idea was to just do a brief primer on what the legal standards are and [11:39:40 AM] the issues that might help you as you go forward. So -- and of course, at your pleasure stop me, ask questions, whatever is your pleasure there. All right. So one thing that I think is important to understand is kind of the evolution of how do we get to this point. I find that when I talk to groups of people for whom this is not their full-time job it can often be a good question to say well, why do we need all this evidence, why do we need disparity studies? Isn't it obvious that we have problems with race and gender this this country? I would say the short answer to that is yes, it is obvious, but it's not so obvious to federal judges and the supreme court. And whatever I might have thought before I think it's a fair comment that we will not get a better hearing from justices Cavanaugh and gorsitch. It all comes out of a case called city of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, think [11:40:41 AM] about that, the capital of the is it confederacy, versus the Croson company. And the court up ended what was 70 years of law at that point and held that programs designed to remedy the continuing effects of slavery were to be subject to the same level of review as those designed to continue to injure historic victims of discrimination. So in effect you look at cases in law being poll tax or voter suppression or anything through the same lens that you would look at an affirmative action program. So hence we have the Croson case. And the court held that any type of race-based decision making at least in public contracting is subject to what's called are strict constitutional scrutiny. This is the highest level of review that a court can apply. And generally speaking, the burden to go forward is on the government and then the plaintiffs have a -- the ability to respond to that, but it really is a very [11:41:44 AM] difficult bar to meet and the courts are extraordinarily hostile to these programs. Many, many, many agencies across the country have been sued and last their program. So this is a difficult standard to meet. So in the Croson case the court struck down Richmond's 30% quota and it was a quota and a set aside and you had to meet it in order to be a responsive and responsible bidder. But certainly what came out of the case was a very different standard, but it is possible to have a recommendly definitive affirmative action program and I'm delighted to say I haven't lost a case yet. You don't need to look that the agency itself discriminated against anybody. This is very important from your council's point of view. Certainly when I was an assistant corporation counsel for the city of Chicago there was no way we were going to federal court and saying we discriminated against anybody. But you don't have to do that. What you do need to prove is that if you don't take some [11:42:44 AM] type of remedial intervention into the market failure of discrimination, that you will then be a passive participant in that discriminatory market. So you don't need evidence that the city discriminated, but you do need evidence that there is discrimination out there in your overall marketplace. It's not sufficient to just point to something called societal discrimination, whatever that is. Things like housing, employment, incarceration rates, the courts have all held that that is not relevant for the question of whether or not you can have a minority and women-owned business program. You have to look beyond just general population so you can't say let's make up a number, that 50% of the city of Austin is black and Latino and therefore we're going to have a 50% goal. You have to look at the actual business availability in the population. You must take seriously race neutral measures. You don't have to try them all and have them fail, but you do have to have race [11:43:45 AM] neutral measures in your program. But if do you that you should be able to survive a legal challenge. So that was the case that started us off and that applied to state and local governments. Then in 1995 the federal government was sued in a case called adaran versus Pena and the court there applied the exact same framework to federal enactments. Certainly when I was in law school we thought the federal government had broader remedial powers to deal with the effects of slavery than the state and local governments did, but in this case the courts said no that the feds have to meet the exact same test. So the takeaway from that, I think, is that the legal standards are the same, regardless of whether it's a dba program, an acdbe program or whatever you call it, federal judges don't care what the label is, if there is any benefit or preference on the basis of race regardless of the level of government you have to [11:44:46 AM] meet this strict scrutiny test and this led to wholesale revisions in federal regulations that we still deal with today. So what does this mean in practice. The first thing is that you have to have a compelling interest in using race. Now, discrimination is always a compelling interest. So in effect what that really boils down to is you have to have sufficient factual evidence that there is a problem in your community. And if you don't do something you would be as I said before a passive participant in a discriminatory marketplace. So that's your first prong, the compelling interest prong. I don't know why lawyers like prong, but we do. Once you've done that you have to have a program that is narrowly tailored to the evidence that you present. And really frankly where the litigation has been moving over the last call it 10 years or so is away from challenging whether or not you get to have a program at all, but to challenging how the program is in fact being implemented. So that's the narrow [11:45:48 AM] tailoring prong of strict scrutiny. It is sort of an open question what the standard is for gender. The case law says it's quote, unquote, intermediate, which are somewhere between strict and rational basis. Again what Ares do these terms mean? It actually comes from a case from justice Thurgood Marshall's opinion of law, which is a challenge to the all male draft in the Vietnam war. And the court said well, gender is different. I don't know that today you would get that outcome. There is a recent district court case challenging the all-male registration requirement. And the court struck that down. So what I tell clients is maybe there's a lesser standard for gender, but I wouldn't count on it. So assume that your program for women is going to be at the same level of scrutiny for the program for racial and ethnic minorities. In contrast, location, veteran status, business size, all of those are subject to what's called rational basis scrutiny, [11:46:48 AM] which is more or less not much beyond is there any rationale that the legislative body or the policymakers could give you. So that's a very low bar. But what it does mean is that you don't need disparity studies to do, let's say, a small business program or a veteran business program or something like that. But it is a very, very low level of review and nobody has ever really tried to challenge that. So what does this mean in terms of looking at your program? You will see there those are the five factors that the courts look at under narrow tailoring. And some of the things that you might want to take a look at, things like unbundling your contract, trying to make them smaller or less complicated. I always sort of call this the ma and apple pie of programs because everybody says it but it is often not very easy to do. But it is certainly something to think about. So in some ways it's more a mindset about do we bundle cleaning every fire station together in one contract or could we make them into [11:47:50 AM] smaller chunks so that smaller firms would be able to in fact participate. Taking a look at things like bonding and insurance requirements. Do you really need a five-million-dollar policy on 100,000-dollar project? Those kinds of things that help all firms regardless of their ownership. Small business set asides, those work. Unfortunately the Texas local government code I am told. I do not have a Texas law license yet so I'm not giving awe legal opinion here. I want to be real clear. But my understanding is that anything 50,000 and above would not be able to be set aside, but it is something to think about perhaps for some of your smaller contracts. Mentor protegee programs where a larger firm will mentor a smaller firm to help them learn how to do business and assist them with growth strategies, those kinds of things can be useful. Technical assistance, doing certified payrolls, how to do invoicing, all of that. One of the things that we often here is that the [11:48:50 AM] minority and women firms are excellent at the service that they can provide, but that they lack back office experience. And you can be the greatest trades person in the world, but if you can't keep your receivables under control you're going to go under. So those kinds of things are important. Certainly your goals need to be based on the availability of firms to provide the skills of -- scoops of work that you're looking for on the project. It's important, really important that you set goals on a contract by contract basis. Taking a look at who is available, the scopes of work, progress towards meeting your goals and other types of factors. And this is becoming important. New York state has an active lawsuit right now where they were essentially being challenged about how they set a 30% goal on a contract that is almost at the Canadian border and whether or not anybody could have met that and now we're off to the races on that one. So we'll see. We're trying to settle that. Your program must be [11:49:51 AM] flexible. No quotas, no set asides. Anything that could be construed as a quota or a set aside, if you are challenged you're going to lose. And this includes things like, you know, saying that we're going to prefer you because you're a minority owned firm or you get more points or all these kinds of things, they work, but the courts have seriously, seriously hamstrung us about what it is that we can do. So it's very important that your program be flexible. You can't prefer a bidder gets more than another, that kind of thing. You can't make sure that the remedies are over or under inclusive. You have to have everyone that is included in your program if that does suffer discrimination in your marketplace, I do believe you would need an economic disadvantage and a size standard because that's one of the reasons that the federal programs have been upheld is because they do have a personal net worth cap and they do have a size [11:50:51 AM] limit to -- of who can participate in the program. And you do need to make sure that firms can graduate. That's been one of the real sticking points is that people feel like people get in these programs and they never leave them and the courts are very concerned about that. So you absolutely do have to have some type of graduation provision. You do review the burden on other third-parties. There has to be some burden otherwise there wouldn't be a remedy. If it were easy and everybody could do it and there would be no problem you would be doing it already. So you do need a program for sure, but it can't be overly burdensome, whatever that might turn out to mean in practice. And you do need to be trying to reduce those burdens through those race neutral measures. And last but not least, you do need to engage in regular review of your program. And consider how long you would like the program to run. One of the things that the courts seemed very concerned about is that these programs are going to go on forever. [11:51:51 AM] Some of you may remember the university of Michigan cases, I think 2004, and then an opinion there the court says surely we won't need these kinds of programs in 20 years. Well, 2024 is coming soon and I suggest we still need them, but you do have to take a look at your program on a regular basis and conduct things like disparity studies. So that's how we ended up with where we are. Let's see... And that's my last slide. Questions? Y'all want to go to lunch? [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: Ann? >> Kitchen: What about programs that -- this may be a small part of it, but one of the concerns I've heard from small businesses is requirements that require recertifying their rates every year. Like if they're on the list as an approved vendor, and [11:52:55 AM] they have to establish certain rates. I've heard concerns about the burden that places on them if the process requires them to go and hire or pay for a professional some of sort to certify their rates. Particularly if they're not changing their rates or if they're charging lower rates for public work, for example. So I just wanted -- I don't know if you have any experience with that, but I wanted to -- >> No, I do. We're a small firm ourselves. We're about 11 people. So you can't get too much smaller really than what we are. I think what you may be talking about are things like indirect rates, particularly on the engineering side where they have to come up with with a direct rate and direct cause and indirect cause and whatnot. And it can be burdensome. I think that's certainly true. It's not really an mwbe issue. It's more of a small business type of issue. And that's certainly within the control of the city about what it might choose to require there. But you do see it more on [11:53:56 AM] the engineering side where they have to go through some cost accounting and often, especially if you don't have any background in it yourself you will have to hire somebody to help do you that. But that's something that is really a policy decision by the city. It's not really an mbe/wbe issue per se, I think. >> Kitchen: Okay. Just to note, I'd like us to consider that. I understand that we're doing that. And I don't know if it's specific to our -- you know, our -- if it's just small businesses or if it goes beyond that. >> We do have -- reloan dough Fernandez, we have him with us from the purchasing office today. >> Good afternoon. Yes, it is afternoon. Rolando Fernandez. I gather that you're talking about how we negotiate professional services such as engineering services? >> Yes, it's beyond those, but other professional services too if I'm understanding correctly, but yes. >> We've been talking about that, but what we do now the [11:54:56 AM] statute is clear that we don't select based on cost, fee for services, but after we select the consultant we begin to negotiate. And what we try to achieve is a fair and reasonable price so that requires us to look at sort of the hourly rates, the overhead rate of the company and also the profit. So before -- a couple of years ago it was -- we didn't have an established process to do that based on feedback from a lot of associations of engineers, architects, is establish a process that every year we're able to look at the rates and that way we have some consistency in terms of the rates we process and rates for a contract moving forward. It is impactful for the community side, but it's also impactful for staff as well because it's a lot of work for us. We've been be look the a -- I've had some initial conversations with the associations to maybe look at a two-year process rather than a one-year process. So it's on our to-do list in terms of looking on that and [11:55:57 AM] getting the pros and cons and seeing if we can make a change. I appreciate you bringing it up and certainly something we're looking at studying and seeing if there's a benefit to implementing a two year program rather than a one year program. >> Kitchen: Do you have a timeline for that? >> It's on my -- it's on my list. And I've had initial, cans. I believe I think in December just to kind of see what the initial reaction was going to be from some of the associations and the response was yes, let's look at that. And just trying to get there and do the work. So it's something that I want to certainly look at this year. >> Kitchen: Okay. You might also consider and you may be doing this, that if a small business is not charging their rates, in other words, if they go through the process of establishing their rates, but then they provide a break to public entities like the city, you might consider either waiving or requiring a reduced process. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Mr. Flannigan. [11:56:57 AM] >> Flannigan: Thank you, Ms. Holt, for that presentation. That was really good and I don't know that we've had such a great telling of how these programs see involved a and the legal visual environment under which they exist. I'm looking forward to you getting the Texas law license -- >> I don't have to take the bar here, that's really important. >> Flannigan: As soon as you understand what the state further reduces our ability to do this, I would like to hear more from you about that. Glad that you're our new neighbor to the south so that should make that conversation a little easier. We often hear the story from our staff that it's restrictions at state law that inhibit our ability to do certain things. So I'm interested in that additional overlay to your work. But also good to know at the state level, can you -- again, it was on the slide, but I want to make sure I really understand that there's case law that says you can't give a different number of points based on their scale of mwbe. Like if one does more [11:57:59 AM] mbe/wbe than another you can't give them additional preference in your process, is that right? >> No, I wouldn't describe it that way. What I think the case law is clear on is that good faith efforts have to be treated same as meeting the goal. And so if you give additional points or somehow prefer more participation, you violate that principle. You have to treat people who meet the goal and people who don't meet the goal, but who made a good faith effort -- I really want to stress who made a good faith effort to do so because the devil is often in that phrase. But if they really did make a good faith effort then you can't prefer the people that give you participation. The courts have treated that as kind of a quota or a set aside or giving an unfair advantage that way. And one of the hallmarks of the disadvantaged business enterprise program for usdot assisted contracts, which of course applies to your contracts that are FAA funded at the airport. One of the hall marks of that program is the fact [11:59:00 AM] that it is strictly goals based. Now, what I have seen people do seen people do, in a negotiated procurement, you can't do this on the hard bid side because then it's just going to be dollars, but if it's negotiated I have seen folks do something like this, we want to know what your overall affirmative action programs are. We want to know about how you work with small businesses. It's not goals, it's not points. But you could use that as an evaluation criterion where you really want to know about their commitment, you know, to equity, do we have a mentor protege program they run, are they providing some of the very large national firms do contractors colleges. What else are you doing? And sort of score that. But what you can't say is bidder a gave 30%, bidder B gave me 35%. The goal was 25%, and we're gonna preferred bier B. You just can't -- that I don't think we can sustain because then you really are giving a benefit that is now [12:00:02 PM] untied from the firm's ability to make good faith efforts. You know, again, whatever sort of wiggle room I thought we might have had to be more creative, the last thing I want to do right now is end up in federal court and talking to these judges. You know, the bench is even more conservative than it's ever been, and quite frankly is going to get more conservative because the senate is busy confirming judges. They may not get anything else done but they get that done. The administration appointed a third of the federal court now. This is extraordinary. Judges live forever. [ Laughter ] They do. I'll tell you this. The federal -- I clerk for the chief judge of the federal court of appeals, for the lawyers in the room, seventh circuit. He died on a Monday at 95 and he was set to hear cases that Friday. Okay? It's a great job. And people live a long time so if you appoint somebody who is 40, you should have an expectation of 40 years on the bench. So this does not seem to me [12:01:03 PM] to be the moment to leap on out there and doing things that could put the entire programs at risk. I think we can really -- realistically say we have four supreme court judges who would probably vote to strike down any affirmative action program. And certainly I do note that our two new justices when they were lawyers at the department of justice both wrote memos saying they thought the doe program for dot programs was unconstitutional so that does not make me feel good about what some local agency wants to do so I've become very conservative about this because I want to maintain what we have and hope for a brighter day. >> Flannigan: At least we're not a city constantly under threat of lute by our own state so that's -- >> Yeah, having come from California. >> Flannigan: I completely misspoke on that. >> It's interesting here. Big change from ogunbode, Oakland, California, put it to you that way. >> Flannigan: Thank you for that. My last question, a little to the side, you made a separation between mbe and [12:02:03 PM] these other programs like veterans or other things. And those are easier, they have less scrutiny. Maybe a longer conversation about that with staff separately, but I'm interested in your experience with lgbtq focused programs and where do those fall on the spectrum. >> Really good question and I don't have an answer for you. I think we'll get more of an answer by the end of this supreme court term. So the question is, what level of scrutiny -- >> Flannigan: Your prior comments don't make me feel good. >> I'm not here to make you feel good this morning. I'm sorry. Welcome to my world. [ Laughter ] The first question is what level of scrutiny applies. >> Flannigan: Yeah. >> Right? So is it gender discrimination? There's a case in front of the supreme court right now that involves title 7. So this is employment, not contracting. The Obama administration had taken the position that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is sex [12:03:04 PM] discrimination under title 7. And, therefore, covered. The trump administration has switched sides. And is now arguing in fact it is not. So that's sort of the first thing, which is what level of review are we supposed to apply to these types of programs? If -- assume for a second that the court says that it is gender discrimination and, therefore, subject to this whole equal protection framework approach, then we need to start figuring out how to try to go collect data and you immediately start stumbling there. There are no national databases to go to. I know there's a national group that certifies but if they certified 3,000 businesses and we're a country of 370 million people that still is not much to work with. So we're trying to feel our way. I have a couple clients now putting out their vendor applications that you can check. They're making it voluntary, but the problem from a researcher standpoint is that doesn't really help me. [12:04:04 PM] I need to know what my entire body is of data that I'm working with, not just the people who self- disclose because presume whether I that's a smaller subset than who is out there. What kind of questions are we gonna ask? What are we gonna look for in terms of certification? How are we gonna set goals? So we don't really know what to do here. We know we have a problem. It doesn't fit very well, honestly, within the framework that we're used to. >> Flannigan: I was briefly on the board of the nglcc or [indiscernible] >> Right, right, group I was referring to. >> Flannigan: My web development company I had before I was a councilmember was the first business in Texas to get that certification so I went through that process and it was a very interesting and at times awkward process when you're trying to validate your membership in my community. It doesn't come with the same level of markers that you have and the research side is exactly the same problem. We've encountered that problem on the city staff side when we try to put lgbtq-type programs in the same process buckets that we [12:05:05 PM] put mbe programs when it's -- well, you know, we don't have data for this so that program is not gonna get access to certain resources or certain angles and it's just a different thing. It's not one is more or worse than the other. They're just very different. >> Exactly. >> Flannigan: I guess that work will continue. Thank you, again. Excellent, excellent information today. >> Mayor Adler: Any further discussion? Yes. >> Alter: Thank you for being here this morning. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to which cities or states are doing it right with doing it right not just being legal but also where you're having concrete outcomes that are helping the target businesses to grow? So could you speak a little bit to who would be the examples? I know they have different constraints based on different states, before where we might learn from. >> To tell you the truth for many, many years when people would ask me who they should call I said Austin. [12:06:07 PM] You have had a program for a long time here, and I haven't done any work really with you for a few years, but it was always one of the best programs out there because you resourced it. In some ways that's the single most important thing, is do you have enough people and resources to run the program. I can draft anything but if there's nobody to do it and there's no commitment then it doesn't really matter so I would still put y'all up there certainly in my top ten programs across the country in terms of what you're doing. Now, you know, are there programs that have pieces that are really good? Yes. So, for example, metropolitan transit authority in New York, mta, the trains, those folks, have a very robust supportive services program. They have classes and they go on for months. I've taught them off and on for years. Great program there. That piece of it. But of course they're also running the federal dbe program for fta money so they're starting out in good place. They got a great supportive [12:07:07 PM] services program. Minority-owned department of transportation has an excellent mentor protege program so there are places around the country that have pieces of it. Dfw airport we just finished their disparity study does data collection really, really, really well. They were one of the few clients we ever had that could hand us almost everything we needed from the very beginning. We didn't have to go back and fill it in so they're doing a good job on that score. So there are pieces. And in some ways the places to look are the places that have strong black and Latino, women business communities. Again, we can draft anything, but if there's nobody to actually do the work, if there's no growth there. For example, the city of Chicago has had a program since 1990, when I wrote it back when I was a baby lawyer in the corporation council's office and the city set very aggressive goal for 30 years. So of course they have good participation. So there are places that are [12:08:08 PM] good. Y'all are one of them. And you've got great staff here. And so I think there's some places as we do the study we'll be looking to make you some recommendations about where enhancements might come based on -- I probably have worked for 150 governments by now so we've seen a lot and we will be doing that. I really do want to stress that overall you run a very good program here and you've got staff and smart committed people that are doing a good job, as best I can see. >> Alter: Thank you. I think that's a really important reminder as we're talking about this and we see this in a lot of different policy areas, we're striving to do better even though we may be starting at the head of the pack but that's how you improve. So I appreciate that. I don't know if this is more for the executive session but I understand that there are some levers we can move that would increase participation, so whether it's the type of [12:09:10 PM] certification allowing state certification or allowing other types of certification so that the certification process doesn't become a barrier and some other things that we might be supplementing what we're doing for additional support so that those businesses are there to take over and the splitting of the contracts, which we're beginning to see some of that with our landscaping contracts. I noticed we've had some of that. What are some of the other levers that we might consider or if that's executive session then we can take it up there? >> Well, I'm not sure if it's executive session. It certainly is part of what we're going to be looking at in the study. I don't want to prejudge those results. We'll be talking to business owners, staff, where they see improvements can be made so we'll certainly be giving you recommendations about that but I don't really want to prejudge them at the moment especially because I haven't done yet a deep dive into the current operations [12:10:11 PM] of the program. So my experience might be three, four years behind where things really are so I don't want to speak about something that I'm not really confident that I know what I'm talking about. >> Alter: Thank you. And then I had a question for the city manager. As we're talking about this program, you know, it's hard not to notice that there's not a lot of resources in terms of staff within the central office. I don't know how it's resourced in our enterprise funds and I was struck by some of the information received about the Denver airport and how many folks they had in there. And just want to make sure that we're considering our opportunities since so many of our contracts do come from our enterprise funds where we might have a greater flexibility to support some of the staffing and take some of the weight off of our central office, you know, or they could be working in conjunction but be funded via those other [12:11:12 PM] mechanisms and there are different rules for the airport and I don't know if there are different rules for Austin energy. But that some of that process of making sure that our staff have the time to do more than the administrative checking of the boxes but can actually do the support of the businesses, which I think many of them went into this field to do but because of the lack of resources are not able to do. So I would really invite you to be looking at that as we're going into our budget process as one mechanism for us to take a next step in what we're doing moving forward. >> Thank you, councilmember, for highlighting that. I think as we have this conversation not only with the dais but with our consultants, we will be looking into those opportunities to further enhance some of the efforts, especially as you said, our enterprise programs might be able to do. >> Alter: Thank you. Then my last question has to do with the primes versus the subprimes. So my experience has been [12:12:12 PM] that we usually are mostly talking about the subprime opportunities as opposed to the prime opportunities and it seems to me that the goal ought to be to get to the primes and we've had several contracts lately that I've been pleased to see that women or minorities are the primes on. How does that distinction play into what's legally allowed or not allowed? >> Well, in some ways the most difficult issue is trying to get work to people as primes. Both for cash flow, bonding, all sorts of things. And you would hardly be alone and I think this is true for almost every program I've ever seen where the majority of your utilization is going to come through subcontracting. The course -- because they told us we can't have set-asides, quotes, [indiscernible] That would be the only way to meet it, be a certified firm and [12:13:13 PM] that's obviously a quota. So we don't have a lot of direct tools to work on that. But things like trying to unbundle your contracts, making sure you pay promptly, that you don't have burdensome insurance requirements, that your experience requirements are reasonable, that you have your solicitations out on the street long enough so that smaller firms might be able to joint venture with another firm. If it's out there for 21 days it's just too short, can't put it together that quickly. Those kinds of race and gender neutral measures are really the best measures you have to try to encourage and support prime contractor participation. But I certainly agree with you that that is an area I think we'd all like to see more across the country because that's where the money is, where the profit is, it's how you grow. Especially on the consultant side. So we want to I think focus on those things, but there's not a whole lot of direct tools that you can use that are race and gender [12:14:13 PM] conscious in order to do that. >> Alter: Can you use it in conjunction with your subprime goals? It almost seems you could have a minority/woman prime but the combination isn't valued. It's just the subprimes that seem to get valued. >> I don't -- maybe -- could you answer -- >> Alter: You have to fulfill the subgoals even if your prime is minority women. >> When we set mbe/webb goals on a particular project the goals can be met through prime participation. >> That's what I thought. >> Alter: Thank you. That was not my understanding. I appreciate the clarification. >> Mayor Adler: [Indiscernible] Through the prime participating and getting credit for it as a sub would but if you have a company and you're asking for best efforts to hire subs that qualify, that's different than saying what's your best effort for you to be a minority or a woman-owned business. So it's just harder to set [12:15:14 PM] the standard. >> No, no, I wouldn't describe it that way. Let's make up an example. You have a 20% goal on a project. I'm the prime consultant and I'm gonna do 80% of the work. I've met the goal. >> Mayor Adler: Right. >> Period if if I were not a certified firm I would have to meet the goal of 20% or make a good-faith effort to do so but they're not exclusive. I have one goal on your contracts, correct -- subgoals potentially, but you've got -- you're not saying that you don't count prime participation. Some programs do that. They don't count prime participation. I think it's a mistake because, as the councilmember was saying, you want to try to encourage prime participation if it's all subs and that's all you're gonna count that's all you're gonna get. >> Mayor Adler: That I understand. What I heard as an additional question, which is how do I encourage my primes to qualify, so not subcontractor work, I understand how that will be handled the same way, but is [12:16:17 PM] there anything I can do to help ensure my primes themselves qualify informal and I heard you say that was a harder thing to do because you can't -- how do you set a standard there? You either are or you're not. What's the best effort proposition for somebody if you have a prime best effort and you're not a -- and you're not a woman or minority-owned prime? There is no best effort at that point. Which is where I thought that the difficulty rose in trying to encourage the primes themselves for being -- for all the reasons -- good reasons that you gave as something that you'd want to do. If there was a tool or mechanism to help us with that part of it, I'd love to know what that part was too. >> Right. As I say, I think the issue for small firms and the mbes by definition are small. That's part of what the courts require. We can have a conversation about what small might mean, but they're going to be relatively small. It can be difficult for them to step into the prime role if the contracts are too [12:17:19 PM] big, if they're too complex, if the city doesn't pay for 90 days. Those are the kind of things that will destroy a small firm. Sometimes it's easier for them to be the subs because they don't have to meet as many requirements to do that. One of the things we'll take a look at in the study are there some barriers that are city imposed frankly to people being able to be prime contractors or prime consultants with the city. And things like even the -- the indirect cost rates, they make my head hurt so I appreciate that problem. Those kinds of things, is there anything that we can do to reduce those burdens so that people can step into that role. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. I'll recognize Leslie. It is 12:15. We're gonna lose our consultant at 1:00 soe need to get into executive session in time to be able to have that conversation and there are three items that are on the agenda. The request was we could at least elevate the issue real fast before we go back to executive session. Item number 21, while we [12:18:20 PM] have our health department here, it would be good to elevate those questions. Item number 24 and 35, the mayor pro tem was gonna be -- maybe not being able to join us when we came back so to elevate questions on those. But before we move away from this conversation, I want to recognize Leslie. >> Pool: Really good question. Thanks for being here. Will you also in the study be looking at the matrix, criteria we use among the rankings? On the bids? >> On the consultant snide we'll certainly ask questions about it. We want to make sure that there aren't inherent barriers built in there obviously firms that have more experience will be rated higher. But, for example, you sometimes see agencies will not accept equivalent experience. So that's something to take a look at, that a firm might not have done this exact thing but they may have done something similar and it's similar enough so that you'll recognize. Those kinds of things we will take a look at. [12:19:20 PM] >> Pool: Great. Thanks so much. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> We're working closely with our procurement offices to make sure we're covering a wide variety of context within the context of the disparity study. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I wanted to flag for the consultant and colleagues that we had a discussion on this program in audit and finance the other week so you can go and watch that discussion if you're interested. And one of the things that I asked for was for us to get some better sense of our performance-based, you know, outcomes in terms of the amounts that we're spending supporting these businesses or the contracts that they're getting. And really helping us to understand. Because not every contract is even eligible, so really to help us get a better handle on that and I understand the group is working on new performance metrics but that may or may not be part of the scope of what you're talking about. So I just wanted to flag it. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. All right. Recognizing that we need to get into executive session, let's elevate some issues on three items here really [12:20:22 PM] fast. Councilmember Flannigan, you pulled item 21. >> Flannigan: Yes. I was asking twofold, one, the -- why just the one additional year's extension but also if we are at the end of a five year, I think it was an original five year contract, are we gonna get metrics analysis of its effectiveness, some way to analyze why we're continuing it? This seems like the moment we would be doing oversight over our contracts. Not necessarily about the details or that we need housing stability, obviously, but in this case it seems like a contract review moment for the council. >> Stephanie Hayden, Austin public health. This contract was sent to [indiscernible] So this is one of the contracts that they are reviewing. One of the things that the -- as far as the effectiveness, we are using the performance measures, a percentage of households at [12:21:22 PM] risk of homelessness that maintain housing, so this falls up under homeless prevention options. And what -- typically what this will do is, yes, it will add an additional renewal option because we are out of them, and so this allows us the ability to exercise one of the renewal options. And they are just that. Both of them will be optional. So if we get to the point, as we're working with our consultants and they provide some additional feedback that there are changes that we need to make with our contracts, we are prepared to do that. We have language in the contracts to be able to do that work. >> Flannigan: So I guess that's kind of my conflict, if this contract is under review by the consultant but we're voting to extend it this week. >> Yes, we are. >> Flannigan: So wouldn't I want to know the review from the consultant before I extend it? >> I would say northern -- no, not [12:22:25 PM] right now. We can't stop doing business. So if we pull this funding and we don't fund that and we're trying to keep the existing folks housed because there's research that shows that it's easier to keep people housed than to pull a resource out of our community and allow people to go into homelessness - - our goal is we want to keep the system stabilized and we don't want to start pulling funds and unstabilize the system. We have mechanisms in place that if we get to that point we can do that and we can do that legally and communicate in that space. >> Flannigan: I don't think we're asking each other the same question so I'll take it off-line. But I'm just really trying to figure out when is it that the council gets to review the effectiveness of contracts, saying that we shouldn't stop a thing because it's needed doesn't actually answer my issue about is this the right vendor, is this the right contract? Because I'm being put in a [12:23:25 PM] position as a councilmember that I have to renew it without question and that does happen on procurements often, we find ourselves in that situation so I just want to understand that better. I'm sure it's fine to move forward this week but I'm finding myself continually frustrated in that way. >> Mayor Adler: Maybe the associated question, if we're just -- served this to keep it running, maybe rather than a year contract, maybe it's three months, were we going to get the results knack we can actually substantively -- maybe handle that off-line. >> Kitchen: Can I quickly say, we also might want to think of the time line that these kinds of entities need because they need to prepare. So if we're gonna make big changes in our contracts, which we may need to do, we may still need the longer contract while we're changing. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let's go then -- thank you. Item number 24 and 35 both have to do with transit [12:24:26 PM] passes. >> Garza: I guess I don't know how much time we have to talk about it. Were you just -- >> Mayor Adler: Not a lot. I'll let you elevate the issue. We have to get into executive session. Hopefully we come back before 2:00 but we have to get to her before she leaves at 1:00. >> Garza: If we can come back before 2:00 I can wait. >> Mayor adler:I just don't know? >> Garza: It's in response to a resolution I did about the transit incentive fund. But I guess I'm not -- I'm not happy with what the response is. It's my understanding what the response is is we're gonna give transit passes away, and that wasn't the -- some of the examples that we talked about were a credit on your Austin energy bill, were -- I've seen other cities do if you show your transit pass you get a discount at retailers in the city. Those were some things I've seen that would incentivize people to use transit to get [12:25:27 PM] another benefit out of it. So this is -- my understanding is purely we are giving passes to members of movability, many of which -- most of which are for profit entities. And we have other -- if we're just going to be giving transit passes away, we have the transit empowerment fund like casa part of, which gives transit passes to people who really need them. So I plan to either offer some kind of amendment on Thursday that says we're gonna give a portion of this. It's my understanding that this is -- we did allocate 500,000 in the current budget and this is adding 200 in response to the resolution I did. I would prefer that additional 200 go to the transit empowerment fund. I just have a real -- a concern about -- this wasn't -- you know, if this is something else not in response to my resolution, fine, let's have that discussion. There's two levels. I don't think this is responsive to the resolution [12:26:27 PM] that I did. The other thing is, aside from that, is this the best use of $700,000 when we're seeing all -- and I know this can only be used for transit or that kind of thing, but it's my understanding this money comes from our parking fees. Is that correct? And I've heard from people in my district, very upset that we have increased our parking fees. Most of them service workers who are -- one particular gentleman was very upset we voted to double -- because we doubled their budget for parking and now we're using the parking fees to give transit passes to corporations. So there's this weird connection going on that I don't know if this is the best use of the -- of such a large amount of money. And the related item 24 I believe is the fte that will administer this program, and so there's some connection here that I think we have to have a longer discussion on and I know we don't have the [12:27:28 PM] time now. Those are my main concerns and I hope we can come back and have a more lengthy discussion. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Do you want to say why you pulled -- >> Tovo: Yeah, I also pulled the second one but I have a concern about the first one, too. I welcome that longer discussion. I did submit questions through the q&a, including whether some of those additional measures that were specified in it the original resolution had been evaluated, like the one mayor pro tem Garza, that you mentioned about the discount at local retailer. There were a variety of things you had brought forward with your colleagues on this that I thought merited consideration. So I guess the question -- I would -- I also want to have that longer conversation, especially in regard to smart trips. I want to say, you know, I support -- absolutely support the 50/50 -- moving toward a 50/50 mode share and incentivizing transit and want to look at the creative ways to do that. I had -- I wanted to have a conversation about whether [12:28:29 PM] an investment in smart trips -- how that fits in. You know, those are much smaller investments. I think it's about $22,000 from the city, and about the same from cap metro, and those have had good success, as I understand, based on your reporting of increasing transit ridership. My office sponsored a [indiscernible] Last fall and I know those are open to other areas around the city so that seems like a good way of introducing transit and providing bus passes and giving them to people to try them. Some of the questions I submitted that I would want to have conversations around is why movability partners were selected since those are simply people who have opted into being partners on these issues? As I mentioned, whether it's some of those other ideas were explored okay, such as the one for discounts, did staff explore the idea of offering a credit or rebate [12:29:31 PM] toward a pass after proof of utilization, as the resolution had explained it? And then I just need an assessment of the total a funding that we've provided to movability that we currently provide, that we would be providing after this, and what portion of their funding that represents? And whether there would be minimum ridership requirements for these passes. How much each would cost and will the companies be responsible for any? But, again, the basic conversation I'd like to have is in comparison with smart trips and some of our other investments in helping shift ride mode, whether this is really, as mayor pro tem Garza stated it, whether this is our best investment of $800,000 if you count the administrative cost. >> Mayor Adler: We'll have the conversation on this after lunch. I want to give you literally -- we need to get back for her so 120 seconds. >> Kitchen: Could I -- [12:30:31 PM] >> Mayor Adler: You have 15 seconds. >> Kitchen: I'll take ten. I support what both councilmembers have said. I think movability is a good program. We need to support it with dollars. We need to balance that in a way that councilmember Garza is talking about. That's what I would say. >> Mayor, rob spillar, director of Austin transportation department, 122nd, we're working on the answers to mayor pro tem -- sorry, Kathie tovo's presentation. Back to mayor pro tem, I'd correct one item that you said. It is actually requesting a new expenditure of $700,000 for purchases of passes. That originally is being proposed by staff as -- to get people out of private cars, so people that are driving cars now into transit. But if it is the will of council to direct part of that more as a subsidy type of investment, we're happy to work with council to define a portion of that to [12:31:33 PM] work through either the transit empowerment fund or movability if council supports staff in working with movability and I can provide you why we think that's a good idea. They also have a nonprofit go fund that specifically targets nonprofits that operate in the central business district so their employees and customers can also participate. >> Garza: For clarification, are you saying -- there was 500,000 allocated. Is this an additional 700,000. >> Additional 700,000, yes, ma'am. >> Garza: That makes me even more -- >> Increased with Ila and cap metro. >> Garza: Was the original 500 for bus passes? Glue no, ma'am. Let me find out where the 500 is that you're talking about and respond to you when I come back. I'm not quite sure what you're talk about. >> Tovo: Just to be clear about the financing, so then it's already 500, we'd be allocating 700 and additional 100 so 1.3 total to movability? [12:32:33 PM] >> Councilmember, I'm not sure what the 500 is that you're talking about so if I could talk off-line. >> Tovo: I see, okay. >> Figure that out. We have an existing contract for other services with movability and that may be where we're getting it mixed up. >> Mayor Adler: We'll pick this conversation up. We're going to go into executive session. I think my comments will be the same as councilmember kitchen's, those are two separate goals, subsidizing and getting choice riders to do something else, we need to do them both. So I need to understand more about both. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: We're going to go into closed session to take up four items pursuant to 551.071, discuss legal matters related to e5, gas rate increase by Texas gas, e7, which is the minority women-owned business enterprise program, procurement laws, e8, possibly to fill a vacancy and position of elected official pursuant to 551.071 and 072 discuss legal and real estate matters related [12:33:34 PM] to e6 which concerns purchase, exchange, lease, real estate for the Austin convention center, e1, two, three, four, have been withdrawn. We'll handle personnel matters on Thursday and without objection then we'll go into executive session here. It is 12:33 and I would urge everybody to go straight over there so we can give the full complement of time to our consultant. [ Executive session ] [2:27:28 PM] . ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [3:04:03 PM] . [Music]. [3:28:03 PM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. We have a quorum present. Today is still March 10th of 2020. It is 3:28. While we were in closed session we discussed real estate and legal matters related to items e6 and legal matters related to items e5, e6, e7 and e8. We've gotten through all of the executive session items we were going to get through except the personnel ones that we'll handle on Thursday. That gets us then to the pulled items. I think that's where we were. Kind of giving people a chance to work their way back here. I don't know if the mayor pro tem comes back, I think she indicated that she was not going to be able to stay here. But let's go through and handle the pulled items that we have. [3:29:04 PM] Councilmember Flannigan, Jimmy, you pulled item number 4. >> Flannigan: Yes. So this is for parking lot expansion at the Rutherford campus. I wanted to hear from staff what the work was to comply with the August resolution about Ruther Ford lane redevelopment for the Asian resource center. Two million dollars is quite a bit of money for a parking lot in the context of kind of all the other things that we're up to. I don't know -- I'm like who's coming? [Laughter]. >> Alex gale, interim officer for the office of real estate. So we have started work with the consultant to help us with looking at what the potential uses of the Rutherford campus are. We expect something -- recommendations to be coming back some time in June or [3:30:05 PM] July of this year. >> Flannigan: So I mean, should we spend two million dollars on a parking lot if we're contemplating a larger redevelopment? >> Walter grain, building services, deputy officer. I was the one that made the decision to move that project forward. I had originally pulled it when we got the resolution for the redevelopment exploration. It's kind after combination of factors that led me to put it back on our roster. We have an immediate need there for parking. We have about 300 more cars per day that visit the campus than we have paved parking for them. So they tend to park on the grass. And that causes root damage to the trees and it also causes uncontrolled flow of any fluids or anything from the cars that goes into the soil and can hit the neighboring creek. [3:31:06 PM] The project includes a DI tension pond and a rainwater -- detention pond and a rainwater garden and that will help that controlled runoff. Also looking at the timing of what it would take to redevelop that project going from studying whether or not we want to do it to a concept and then consensus and then procurement. I assumed it would be approximately best case five years before we would be doing demo work there. That's assuming we did find that we wanted to move forward with that. In the meantime we have the utility of that parking lot. I also felt that there was a strong chance of residual value, even if we do redevelop the site, the parking lot is on the side of the site opposite the asian-american cultural center. And I know that all of the drainage work and the detention pond and all that will still be of value. [3:32:09 PM] Some or all of the parking lot should be a value as well. It was kind of a combination of desperately needing it now along with environmental concerns for the runoff and the-- figuring that we'll have at least five years utility and likely be able to carry it into the new development. I at least wanted to put it back on the schedule for this type of discussion. >> Flannigan: So I don't know that you and I need to deliberate in a work session about that. Manager, I have kind of a separate higher level concern about when staff is reacting to council resolution resolutions. We have this conversation somewhat frequently actually about the timing of those decisions being daylighted up to council, but it clearly a council initiative and something that we move forward, and I talked to my other colleagues, at what point are we making that decision text wally with our [3:33:10 PM] intents and our processes? We've already done projects in less than five years from the council vote to the doors opening. We're about the planning development building being kind of the first mover on that. So I don't think five years is accurate. I think it will be like three years. To me that changes the math a little bit and I'm curious about, you know, councilmember harper-madison, to the extent it's all in your district so I don't want to step on your toes in any way. I go to the Asian resource center a lot. A lot of us do. There are a lot of empty parking lots in that area. I don't know if we're talking to neighboring property owners will leasing space in their lots. I feel like more conversation is to be had. I'm going to vote in on this because that's just how I feel. I will leave it up to everyone else to decide how they feel. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? [3:34:16 PM] Councilmember harper-madison? >> I really appreciate going in order. >> Tovo: First of all, Mcraven for pulling this because I hadn't seen it on the first review and I appreciate the opportunity to think about it, talk about it. What will make a big difference to me is whether or not this parking lot improvement includes the bridge over the creek bed. >> , No it's the opposite side of the property. >> Tovo: Is there any opportunity if this were approved and while you're doing the work in the parking lot, extending the work over to that area? That is just such an ongoing need. >> Certainly. That is a complete separate issue, though. We couldn't just add it -- >> Tovo: It wouldn't make sense because that's on one side and it's on the other. >> It's taken years of engineering and about $300,000 to get this far and that played into ability bit too. We have the moment and we had identified the need well over five years ago. It just took us that long to [3:35:19 PM] work with watershed to come up with an an acceptable solution for the runoff. >> And if I can add, we wouldn't be able to add that scope of work to an already procured contract. We would be prohibited by state statute for change orders. So it's not engineered already, it's not designed. So it would be a totally set of scope of work and not doable to add to this already procured and bidded out scope of work. >> Kimberly Mcneely, parks and recreation department. I just wanted to add to the conversation about the bridge in a the parks and recreation department has been in close contact with watershed protection and with the working group for the aarc improvements for the master plan. And it has recently been determined that it's most appropriate for watershed protection to incorporate that particular project in some of the drainage work and some of the work that they're doing with regards [3:36:19 PM] to a project that had already been scheduled that is about two to three years out for completion. But it's on their schedule and the working group and the individuals who care about the master plan and the implementation of that are aware of the time frame for the bridge. >> Tovo: All right. That sounds like a long time. Two to three years. >> That's my understanding, but I will double-check with watershed on the exact time frame. >> Tovo: That's a long time. As you may know, city manager, I'm not sure if you've been here during our conversations, but how many people walk through there all the time. I had to kind of carry one of my daughters over it last time. That's the easiest way from the parking lot to there. Thank you for the additional information. >> Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: I'll just echo councilmember tovo's sentiment about -- thank you for pulling this. I did the socially [3:37:19 PM] responsible thing when I had the flu for eight days and I stayed away from everybody and largely to my computer and this didn't really make it on to my radar. I would like to know -- now that I'm looking at it I have some questions as well especially about some of the adjacent organizations, amenities, etcetera. And now that we're having this real unprecedented conversation about the damages that we're going to see as a city people incur by way of south-by, by way of coronavirus concerns. I wonder if it would be prudent for to us postpone this item and really take into consideration what some of our unexpected upcoming expenses are going to look like and do some cost benefit analysis that's maybe -- that has more of our contribution to the dialogue. It certainly is just a suggestion at this point, but I think I would be inclined to make a motion that we postpone this item. >> Certainly. [3:38:20 PM] And that was my initial reaction as well is let's just wait and get some more information. The ink the immediacy of the environmental -- I think the immediacy of the environmental concern and the contractors, we had bid the contract. The bid expires on the 20th of this month and that led us to go ahead and bring it here, up here for discussion. Go ahead and let it move forward and talk about it. We - - >> Let me provide some context. I don't want to -- I don't want to have a statement out there that says we're running up to the bid expiration date because there's some background to that. We solicited this solicitation back in September 23 of last year. We're really working hard to expedite our procurement process and contracting process and move our cip as fast as possible. The bids were provided to us in October. Our intent was to come to [3:39:20 PM] council in December for approval of this item. We did receive the request from building services to hold on that because of the resolution and wanted to kind of look at that and examine the impact to the lift station. At that time we reached out to the contractor and we asked them to extend their bid guarantee. What the bid guarantee is when they submit a response to our project they say I guarantee you that price for this long. So we had that big guarantee for -- bid guarantee for 90 days. The reason for that is because of the market. In this economy things are changing and so it's important for contractors that when we identify them as the potential contract awardee that we move as expeditiously as possible for that price. So we asked them, they responded yes. And so we expended that bid expiration date and it does expire on the 20th of this month. And so my concern is that if I asked the contractor to extend that bid pricing, I'm not sure what they're going to say, but I certainly [3:40:21 PM] don't want to ask if at the end of the day we're going to reach to not move forward with this contract because that doesn't look favorable to the city when we're asking somebody to extend that and then we're not going to work with them on the contract after all. So part of that was asking building service offices we need to make a decision on this, we don't want to be in a position where we're asking contractors to extend their bid pricing and not only their pricing, but their subcontractor pricing and then not award a contract. So that's the concern that I have regarding the potential postponement consideration of what that means to the project. >> Harper-madison: Okay. We don't want to set a negative press precedent, but I think the overall financial welling welling with of the city center supersedes any inadvertent situations that we aren't able to bid out. I think this conversation warrants more conversation and I think that's where district 1 is going to land on this one. [3:41:24 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: Thank you, councilmember harper-madison, I will join you in that postponement so we can think about it a little bit more. Did I hear you correctly that this contract was -- the solicitation went out in September? >> Yes, sir. >> Flannigan: So a month and change after the resolution about [indiscernible]? So you -- I hope you understand how that lands on the dais. So all of -- if this had been solicited last April and it took a year to get through the process then I would be way more sympathetic to that situation, but I feel like staff made a decision to spend money on a site that cancel had just passed a resolution on, so I'm less sympathetic to the other considerations. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So y'all can decide how you want to approach that. The next item -- thank you very much. Thank you, gentlemen. Item number 14, councilmember tovo K Kathie, [3:42:24 PM] you pulled this one? >> Tovo: I did and my questions were primarily for watershed. And because it looked like our work session was going on so long I let them know that I was just going to ask them on Thursday. And some of them I've asked through the Q and a. I think what I wanted -- >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to daylight the issue? For the rest of us? >> Tovo: So this is a project for the Guadalupe storm drain and this we've talked about a few times in the context of the land development code. It's been more than a decade long infrastructure project, probably more like 15 years, I think. I'd have to go back and see the information. And so I'm glad that they're moving forward on it. My question -- my questions were along the lines of did we contemplate the acquisition of land and how that fit into our estimates of cost. It's a very expensive [3:43:26 PM] project. Now I've forgotten whether it's 15 million or 21 million, but it's a lot. And I wasn't sure that the acquisition of land was contemplated in it, so that was one question. The other was just one about just an observation. So this is a tract of land that aid sold recently and it's one that we had an opportunity to bid on and we bid zero dollars. And so as we continue to work with our partners at the county, at the aid, it would be helpful to -- I want to just continue to encourage you, manager, to make sure that all of our different department representatives are involved in those conversations so they can have an opportunity to really identify what projects might be coming on the horizon. Again, the Guadalupe storm drain project has been a very, very long-term project. So if we knew we needed land, I'm not sure why that wasn't contemplated in our proposal that we made for [3:44:26 PM] this site. Now, that being said I will also add I had an opportunity recently to tour -- I mean, I would love to have seen the city own that site and operate it. We had a grand vision of something that would have been really cool that would have had affordable housing on that site in the middle of Hyde park. I will say the Alamo draft house purchased it and they have done an unbelievable restoration of that building. It's a great example of adaptive reuse and they've really done it in a way that honors the tradition of the school and the teachers. And it's beautiful and I'm glad that if the city could have known it, they were a successful party. I did want to mention that this does highlight the need to have those broader conversations with our staff so that we're really -- when we're going out and making offers we're really thinking about the fact that we might some day need it. [3:45:28 PM] >> Mayor Adler: All right, thank you. Next item is item number 21. We did that one. We did that one in the context -- we did 16 in the context of -- >> Flannigan: And 21 because we had it come up. >> Mayor Adler: And then 24 and 35. We touched on briefly. Do you want to talk to us about the movability program? Previous and this is couched as a pilot? I thought mobility had been doing stuff for some period of time. Is there a track record that we're looking into. >> Robert spillar, director of transportation. The pilot is really the transit incentive pilot. Movability, the regional transportation management association, has been operating for a number of years. We were one of the founding members. So they're not the pilot. To make it clear we would -- [3:46:30 PM] we have two items on council. One is 24, which is to partner with movability so that they can administer the pilot. The pilot being actually providing reduced or free transit passes to companies that currently have people that use their car to incentivize them to get out of their car and use transit transit. So movability is not the pilot, they're the administrator of our pilot. To be clear why we chose movability is they have a track record of working with companies not just downtown, but large employers around the city that are interested in modifying their employees' commute to work, getting them out of their private cars. They just did, partnered with Texas state and did a survey, a realtime survey of people interested in the tma. They marketed it through the tma and they found that people that interacted with the tma survey only drove [3:47:30 PM] their cars like 60% of the time whereas the rest of the region is closer to 74%. So again I think most of those responders were probably people that were predisposed through their contacts with the tma, transportation management association, to do something different. So that's one of the big reasons we chose to partner with the transportation management association. They also have a wonderful access to those employees of those participating customers. Let me get the number right. It's close to around 78 companies currently participate with them. So they have access to those employee communication networks and so forth to really get a robust response to the pilot, which is the free transit passes. Did I answer your question, Mr. Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: I think those are issues to get out for the discussion. We have one issue which is we need to subsidize transit as much as we can for people [3:48:30 PM] to be able to use. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: Second, for this to be successful we need to have a large number of riders of choice that are otherwise happy in their cars, actually getting out and using transit a half dozen times because I understand the statistics that are you can get somebody to use it a half dozen times, then they're much more likely to use it on a regular basis. But how do you get that user of choice to actually use it the first six times when they don't think they have to or need to and that kind of stuff. There was also the question that the people have asked about what about the alternative methods, incentiving with discounts or incentiving with other programs. So I have those questions. I think essentially they were raised this morning. I don't know if the leadership of movability Austin is here or if they can be here on Thursday. >> Yes, they are. >> It might be good to hear from her with respect to movability and who they are [3:49:31 PM] and what they do. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: So I think those were the issues I heard this morning. There are probably others as well. >> We are in the process also, Mr. Mayor, of responding directly in writing to councilmember tovo's questions, which many of the questions you asked are embedded in there. I do have Lisa fonan still here who is the executive director, and she can answer specific questions if she will come forward about movability itself S. You know, I mentioned that they have about 78 corporate members or members that are associated with it. That grows everyday. But that represents about 38,000 employees across their perspective. One of the reasons we chose -- two of the reasons we chose movability, one is we're on the board by direction of the council. I sit on the board to assist in the direction of those services. They provide total wraparound services, so we know if we give someone a transit pass that's not enough, but we also need to wrap that with the advertising and the marketing and the education that we believe that tma can [3:50:34 PM] bring to the program as part of their administration and for services and also tracking of those services. We've been very focused over the last year about developing metrics so that we can truly measure the benefits that we're providing. And we think that we are as an organization providing a lot of benefits. And that's why we recommended to you all to move through movability. And theability to get that done quickly. You talked about the discount. I think those are a really clever way to encourage people already using transit to incentivize themselves to reward themselves for having a transit pass to go get a discount, for instance, at seven 11 or whole foods or any number of restaurants, whatever. That is a longer term effort to set up and we wanted to try to get something into the marketplace quickly so that we can start to learn about how incentivizing through an organized mobility agency like movability could help us. [3:51:34 PM] Lisa, do you want to answer questions, fill in information about what movability does? >> Certainly. So movability is a transportation management association, and they are -- tma's are all across the world, very heavy in the United States, and every one of the tma's act a little different. >> What's a tma. >> Transportation management association. Some tma's actually provide service where they will operate a vanpool or coordinate carpool matching. The type of model we follow is we work more with the employers and provide consulting services. We also act as a liaison to our employers and the service providers. Unlike many other areas in the United States, central Texas is not mandated to do anything regarding our air quality because our air quality is so far so good. [3:52:39 PM] And so many companies within our service area they do not have a designated person in their company to work on transit-related problems and solutions. So we act basically as an arm of our partner organizations to help them implement policies and processes to set up transit friendly methods for their employees to use, which therefore is not taking away from other staffing members at their organizations. So we have partner members, we have corporate members. One of the things we do instead of company X saying I want to offer my employees various mobility options, but we they want know where to start. We know where to start because we have the relationships with the various service providers, whether it's cap metro or a scooter company or companies that offer carpooling options or screens. On so we can not only provide consulting services to get processes and policies in place and then [3:53:40 PM] implement those policies and processes, but we can also make those connections for them. >> And Lisa, you might also explain that you're a five O one c6. >> We are a five 01c six which means we work with the Austin community foundation, we have a physical sponsorship with them. It's a new program that we've just started so we can offer our services free of charge to the charitable organizations within central Texas. And it's called npo go. >> Mr. Mayor, there was another question about the budget. There was some confusion about whether we were adding two hundred or adding five hundred. We're actually asking to in item number 35 to sign an interlocal agreement with capital metro to buy up to $700,000 in transit passes. We have a separate item, item number 24, which is a [3:54:44 PM] contract extension with movability for 100,000 for them to administer the distribution of those passes along with data collection and marketing and so forth. The 700,000 I think I know where the confusion is coming from. In our original budget that you passed I did have a line item for 500,000 for this, however I have uncovered additional budget acknowledged I would like to purchase 700,000. That's what I'm asking you all to do is to allow heme to purchase up to 700,000 with cap metro. If the council would like to have a portion of that 700,000 dollars' worth of transit passes, say 200,000, spent on subsidizing low or free transit passes for people who maybe may not be able to afford transit, cap metro has a wonderful program. Their transit empowerment fund that does just that, and I would suggest then council give direction to spend a portion of that or to direct me to negotiate [3:55:45 PM] that interlocal agreement with cap metro so that we spend a portion of that budget, the 700, with their subsidizing low income. I would point out that the movability does have this new npo go program that is geared towards helping to fund other non-profits in downtown to do the same thing that the corporate entities are doing. So that might be another avenue for it, for council to direct monies towards people who might otherwise not be able to afford options. >> Mayor Adler: Do you have goals or does movability have any goals or metrics? If we invest this money and I understand the need to try across the city we have to try to get choice riders to start using transit. Do you have a goal for performance on that? How many new riders you would expect to convert so that we have goals against which we could measure that kind of investment? >> We think that we can on the monies provided we think that we can realistically [3:56:48 PM] provide 17 to 1800 passes over the 16 -- over the six-month pilot program. And that's not seven to 1800 different people because if somebody uses a pass all six months or three or four of the months, so it's monthly passes. The $700,000 would actually provide us funds to offer about 26, 2800 passes for the six- month, but realistically we think we could do 17 to 1800. So I think it's very reasonable if the council wishes to offer this program to an additional demographic beside just the employees 6:00 our member organizations that it can do so easily. And like rob said we could either work directly with the transit incentive fund or if there are charitable organizations that the council would like us to engage with or leave that to us, we can also do that. >> Mayor Adler: Getting back to the choice riders for a second, do you have a goal for how many people you would like to convert? [3:57:48 PM] I would imagine out of a pilot like this, especially with project connect coming up, what we're trying to learn is if we gave people a pass to use for a month, do we convert them from a car, football driver to someone that's also -- automobile driver to someone who is also using transit. Do we measure these kinds of things? Do you have goals for those kinds of things? >> Yes, mayor, we will be measuring that. The goal is -- I don't know what the goal is. I would like to, you know, remind ourselves that our asmp goal is 50/50 by 2040. I don't know if we can get to 50% of the people we try to keep on transit. But I also hope it's higher than 20%. Adjustment know what that -- I just don't know what that goal would be. That's something to learn and set over the period of that six months. >> What we're talking about is behavior change and it's not like us can give somebody a bus pass and they're going to use it. It's going to take behavior change. Nobody just wakes up on January first and says I'm going to go to the gym. [3:58:49 PM] It's a process to get to the gym. So what we are hoping to do is offer the passengers within this program the pass for the first three months and if they do not utilize this pass 10 to 12 times each month, then they do not get a pass on the fourth month. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Greg and then Kathie. >> Thanks, we had a chance to talk about this. Yesterday, on the transit dependent spectrum to choice rider, spectrum I think that on the bus that I take from my place to here when I get the chance to get on it, we've got a whole mix of people. And I believe that we should be subsidizing helping all different people. Ride transit. I like the idea of potentially setting aside some of that money on that more transit dependent side, >> But forbe the choice rider side, which, again, I have no problem having us put in money to get more choice riders, obviously, I just want to [3:59:50 PM] raise up a question or idea for between here and Thursday to me it seems like a potentially missed opportunity to set the money aside -- I understand we're giving these directly to employees, not giving it to a company, but working with that employer to get their employers these passes. I think there's a missed opportunity if we're just giving folks the passes and have there be the expectation that the city is going to be the person that subsidizes those passes potentially up to indefinitely. If I think that our goal is to actually drive people having their employers pay for the transit and support people getting on transit, if there is a program where the employer needs to provide some, we're going to provide some and then there's a timeline that says if your employees use it a lot, then that's great for the employer. The city should ramp back our share and the employer should [4:00:51 PM] pick up their component because the savings and their parking spots are going to be really significant, all sorts of other good things will come out of it. And so I just would feel better about this if we were to think about structuring stuff. If the idea is we're going to give six months worth of transit passes and hope that people like them and then buy them again, that could create a situation where six months we're having to approve another $700,000 instead of having the employers pick up some part of the tab and agree to participating in the program. >> Thank you, councilmember. We did talk a little bit about this, and, you know, in thinking about it, our plan is the first six months, we want to get passes into the hands of employees. Many times employers are paying for parking. To the employee, wait a second, I get free parking so driving costs me nothing. That's what they're thinking, right, and you're asking me to now pay for a transit pass, why would I do [4:01:51 PM] that? So we want to get the employee in a sense used to using transit. This is really great for a lot of reasons, I'm happier, that also gives us that chance through the transportation management association to have that conversation with employers, to have that value opportunity to say you get rid of your employer, quit paying for parking in a sense, pay for transit or give your employee a lump sum each month to get to work and let that employee figure out how to do it. I think there's lots of models where we can get to. Our intent is not to go beyond six months for any one employer, it's to move to, you know, not se segregation is not the right word, but a shared model, or we transition 100 percent to the employers at that time. I would like to have a conversation during the budget cycle with the city manager as well as with council to sustain this program, but to build in just what you're saying is graduation where you get to try it, you know, a company gets to try it for a certain amount of months and then either buys into it or moves [4:02:52 PM] off the rolls so we can move to another company. I think there's also other ways we can incentivize, we heard some of those today, the discounting. But the biggest barriers, the companies don't understand what they're paying for free parking for their employees and that's what we hope to do. I think there's also been a question, there's some big named companies on the list of members of mobility, many of those, whether they be Google or Facebook, actually go ahead and pay for transit for their employees, some of them don't pay for parking. And through the transportation measurement association, we're looking to then be mentors to other companies, aboutually tell how great it is to be part of the urban environment. We've heard you loud and clear. I don't know that we could implement a comprehensive, we put in a dollar, they put in a dollar this first pilot. I'd like to make the hurdles as low as possible for companies to participate would be my recommendation. [4:03:53 PM] >> >> Kitchen: I do have something, if you don't mind. So I hear you loud and clear because it's, you know, moveability is a marathon, not a sprint for us. So we're trying to not only change the behaviors of individuals but of companies. So we want to -- hopefully this pilot will help us prove to the employers that it will be beneficial to their bottom line if they stop providing free parking for their employees and instead offer other mobility options including transit passes. It will help their bottom line, we also believe it will help create happier and healthier employees which will help with recruitment retention. I'm right there with you. The way we're setting up the model right now is the employers who offer fully subsidized parking will have to have a little bit of skin in the game in this pilot program. And like rob said, the employers who are part of moveability who already offer free transit passes to their employees, [4:04:53 PM] they are excluded to this, and there are five big ones of these, Google, indeed, Facebook, America and [indiscernible] And we've already been in conversation with them. Several of them, not all of them yet. And they are completely on board with helping us to stand up this program because they know it's a good business model. >> Kathy was next. >> Tovo: So, you know, I think it will make -- I look forward, thank you, for answering the questions in Q & a. It's not -- I think I would feel more comfortable if we actually had some of those provisions laid out at this point. Like what are they -- it's one thing to pay 100% for the bus passes for nonprofit that may not be able to identify those extra funds in their bottom line. I do feel like any of the companies who are participating should have some cost share and that there should be those, you know, at the outset, it's going to be a [4:05:55 PM] three-month -- three month and then you'll absorb the cost. We're negotiating T. It seems to me the piece that's useful is we're negotiating lower passes to them, to capmetro. I mean, the partnership results in a discount to the companies for those passes, as I understand the cost structure that was in the backup. And so that in and of itself is an advantage to those companies. So I'll pause there for a minute, but that's not my last question. >> So, councilmember, you know, one of the things we are -- the proposed pilot takes advantage of capital metros, metro works program right now which already provides volume discounts to companies. And so we're just paying the discount. Deeper discount essentially of a free pass, and so that's also one place we could retreat back to as we move to partner with these companies to take over this, I believe they could still participate in the metro [4:06:55 PM] works piece of it and still get the 30% discount or 20% discount. >> Tovo: So we can may it -- pay it a couple months and they can continue to include those at a lower rate? >> Yes. And that would certain will I be our goal, I think, expressive goal, is to get companies as quickly as possible to that rate, but, again, I think there's a number of companies that don't pay transit, but yet provide free parking for their employees without thinking about the financial impact that that has on them. Many of them that's wrapped into their rent, so it's hard to get out of on an annual basis. So I would recommend to make that initial hurdle to get into ts pilot as low as possible so that we can get directly to those employees and give them a chance to really try transit and become internal advocates in those companies for doing something different. >> Tovo: So if we made the companies -- you said that one of the passes would be - - would be given directly to the employees rather than to the companies themselves. If we instead -- if you all instead [4:07:56 PM] gave the passes directly to the companies, would that eliminate the need for the additional employer -- employee at moveability? >> No. So, you know, moveability is hiring an additional employee to assist in administering this, but they're also providing the marketing, the daily collection and everything else. So I don't think that it would eliminate our need to still partner with something for administrative capabilities. >> And going back to my original comment, there's rarely a company in central Texas that has a staff member dedicated to doing this. I can name three at the moment. And so we could give these passes to company X and they just might sit on the desk of a facilities person or an hr person and without the wraparound communications, it might js be all for -- might just be all for nowlgt -- [4:08:56 PM] naught. So having to help push and get the word out to their employees and with the messaging I think is really important. Another thought with the metro works question that you had, right now metro works is set up that a company has to purchase a minimum amount of passes to get the 20% discount. I believe it's 100 passes. Going through moveability, capital metro has eliminated that, so we can work with the smaller companies that that would be a burden to try to purchase 100 passes, even at the discounted rate. >> Tovo: I guess I'm still trying to square this with the smart trips program and whether the smart trips -- you know, directing a smart trips program toward some of these companies wouldn't provide that level of wraparound services and support and potentially eliminate the need for an additional staff member. But can you give me a sense of what -- again, this will be returned in the budget -- in the Q & a -- the council Q Anda, but what portion of the budget comes [4:09:57 PM] from -- is funded through the city. >> So the city this year is giving us $60,000 for their membership, which is about 8% of moveability's budget, and we also administer the mayor's mobility challenge on an annual basis, and this year, last year and the next year, it's $150,000 to administer the mayor's mobility challenge. >> Was that the Bloomberg program referenced in the -- >> That's completely separate. >> Tovo: Okay. There was a reference in the backup for the earlier item, 16, I guess. There was a reference to the Bloomberg initiative and I wasn't clear to me from the backup whether that had been accompanied by any funding? >> So, yes. The Bloomberg funding is completely separate from membership of the city or the mayor's mobility challenge. It is to help us implement this particular program and get it off of the ground. And that funding expires at the end of this calendar year, and we have not [4:10:58 PM] drawn down any of that money yet in waiting for your decision, so... >> Tovo: I'm sorry. I'm not understanding. If I could just back up for a second. >> Sure. >> Tovo: So Austin was named -- I'm looking at the backup for 24. Austin was named a Bloomberg American city's climate challenge participant and received assistant to reach climate related goals through commuter incentives. >> Uh-huh. >> Tovo: Was that assistance support or actually financial assistance? >> Financial. >> Tovo: And then I -- how does that relate to -- so if you got financial assistance to do this, are you saying that that goes away at the end of the year and that's why you're requesting city funding to continue the administrative support for it, where basically the city is coming in and continuing -- continuing the staff support that was paid for. >> Let me clear that up. We're buying $100,000 worth of [4:12:01 PM] wraparound services from the transportation measurement association moveability to provide the marketing administration of the passes, getting them out and the education. Bloomberg saw that as an opportunity to give a grant to also assist with that program, to expand even beyond what we're buying in terms of services. And so it's a separate funding. It's just recognizing that -- that the moveability transportation management association is bringing their own funds to this project, too, on funds received through a grant. >> Tovo: So I'm still not understanding the sentence in the backup, whether Austin received funding from Bloomberg to do this or whether moveability received funding from Bloomberg to do this or both. >> I think the confusion is Austin as a community, not necessarily the city of Austin. So they're assisting us on a range of different [4:13:02 PM] projects, some with our partners, some with us. W actually did not receive money directly. We actually received in-kind services at the city. So I'm sorry about that. >> Tovo: Moveability received direct funding to support it. >> Right. >> Tovo: And what relationship does that have to the funding that's being requested here? That relationship wasn't made clear in the backup. >> Sorry about the confusion. >> It's a direct relationship. The funding provided from Bloomberg to movability is directly to support the pass. >> Tovo: Then why do you need 100,000. >> In addition to. >> Tovo: So the actual cost of administering the program is more than $100,000. >> Yes. >> This first year. >> Tovo: How much was from Bloomberg? >> 50,000. >> Tovo: So the cost of administering the program is 150,000? >> For this first startup year. >> Tovo: Is that one staff position? >> Yes. >> It covers one staff position plus the services that staff person will help bring, the marketing, the [4:14:02 PM] education, the accounting, accountability, et cetera. >> It is for a new position at movability and to also help offset the expense of what the other employees are going to be helping to move this process forward. It's going to be a very collaborative effort within movability. It's going to take more than one person to get it off the ground. >> Tovo: I see, but it funds the staff -- it funds one new staff member. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: And provides an offset for your existing staff members? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. >> Sorry that was so confusing . Mairms okay. Ann? >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann? >> Kitchen: Let's see. I wanted to say a couple of things. What you had mentioned earlier, I don't see this as a -- I don't see it as an either/or in the sense of the concern you're hearing expressed is dollars that go to perhaps lower wage workers, and I don't see that as [4:15:05 PM] different or at odds with your mission. I would hope that this thinking in terms of ensuring that at least some portion of these dollars are -- are -- go to either smaller businesses, like you mentioned earlier, or businesses that may have lower wage workers in them. I think that would be important, because I think the perception you're hearing right now, not from anyone here, but the perception that this program may be subject to is the perception that it's just all big companies with corporations and we're subsidizing them. But my understanding of movability is that's not what it is. We have many companies in in assistance to get started. And people don't go out one day and say I'm going to ride the bus, unfortunately. That would be nice if that [4:16:06 PM] happened, but it takes a certain amount of assistance, you know, in terms of understanding what they can do and then seeing how it works and changing their habits and those kinds of things. And so working in the -- working with employers in that sector is really important to approving transit. >> Uh-huh. >> Kitchen: Improving the use of transit and all the benefits that go with that all the way from climate change to sharing -- improving costs and all those kinds of things. So I would just ask, you know, which I think is consistent with what you're hearing from others, is that you have some way of paying -- that you build into your program an approach that ensures that you're reaching out to smaller companies, that you're reaching out to companies that have lower wage workers, and that you have some way to measure that, so that you can -- can be accountable from that perspective. There's been a lot of suggestions about how that might be done. [4:17:07 PM] I don't have a preference about how that's done, but I do think you should be able to demonstrate how you're doing that. >> That's very good input, councilmember, thank you for that. We will be collecting demographic and financial data on people that participate. We'll be asking them to volunteer that information, and we know that even the biggest companies have contractors that provide custodial services and -- in a variety of services all the way up, so we know these companies are much more complicated than just a single company and really do represent a full strata of economic profiles as well as people from throughout the city, all the different districts. This focus is specifically on the employment end. I know there was questions about smart trips, which focuses on the residential end. What we know is there's no silver bullets. I think I heard that said the other day in the transit thing. We really need to try to affect all ends of it. And [4:18:07 PM] this allows us to go to the highest concentration of employees in the city, many of which already belong to movability and so they have the' those to doing -- the ethos to do something about their carbon footprint. So we are wanting to make sure people of lower income or service jobs have access to this. >> Kitchen: Yeah, as well as the smaller companies. >> Absolutely. >> Also, Mrs. Kitchen, our -- movability has a couple of the smaller chambers as member, and we're offering this to their membership as well so we can get those smaller businesses. And right now we're retooling our membership model so we can make the smaller employers, possibly two to 50 employees, even at a lower rate for membership. So that's not quite as much of a barrier. >> Kitchen: Thank you. [4:19:08 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this item? Thank you very much. That gets us to our last item, which pulled by Jenny. It's the parks issue. >> There's two on the back. >> Second one by Mr. Flan again and -- F lcialgannigan. >> So I mostly wanted to check with staff or the sponsors about if this is something new or how it's different from what the staff is currently working. Because I thought -- I support the intent to do these types of agreements, but I thought you were already doing it on staff, so I want to understand if there's some difference or change. >> So Kimberly Mcneilly, parks and remembering recreation department director. The answer to the question is, yes, it's [4:20:09 PM] something we are doing. I believe our partners are appreciative of something like this because it's an after fir nation -- affirmation that the council supports public/private partnerships, and so there has been a number of meetings and a number of things that have been done in the direction of creating some standardized terms for like partnerships, so that we can bring agreements forward to council in the future. It almost wholly sits in mie office and -- my office and with one other individual within our department that's helping to manage partnership agreements. >> Flannigan: So this is just reaffirming work you're already undertaking? >> I believe so. But I believe it's important to our partners because they wanted to make sure that our city councilmembers also had the -- are in agreement that public/private partnerships are a good direction. >> Flannigan: I think at times we've all deny resolution to affirm work to make sure the public is in line, but I just wanted to confirm that. [4:21:10 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Leslie, did you want to say anything about this? >> Pool: I did. I wanted to thank Kim Mcneilly for the work she's done, Heidi Anderson with the trail foundation is here, too, and the staff has pulled together different configurations for partnerships. These are the templates that Kim was talking about, and they range everywhere from nonprofit public partnership which would be an mp3. It lists out the activities that they might accomplish with the city to partnership configuration, B, which is program or project partner, down to an adopt a park configuration and a parknership program which is another initiative that the city staff had put together with folks outside the city. This reaffirms and confirms the city's interest in working more diligently and deliberately and more officially with our partners in the community, given the [4:22:10 PM] constraints that we have tax-wise. And I appreciate everybody's efforts here today on that topic. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Now to the back page, item number 42. Councilmember Flannigan, you pulled this one? >> Flannigan: Yeah. On some level it's kind of a similar question, trying to understand what it is that we're doing towards resolution and I'm -- I just -- I'm struggling with what we're adding to the conversation given how much conversation we're having on this topic. If this is really what we should be doing as a council on this issue when it felt like we had gotten away from this and were going to just be working with staff on a regular basis to move stuff forward. >> Do you want me to speak to that? So -- I'll speak to it. So basically, this is not unlike the parks proposal in [4:23:11 PM] the sense that it's an affirmation from the -- it's an affirmation from the council about the importance of funding for rapid rehousing and a permanent supportive housing vouchers -- or not voucher, but funding for housing in those categories. It is timed to -- to make that statement of affirmation to the city manager as he proceeds into budget process. It is not prescriptive as to the -- how the programs are done. And it also -- it also recognizes what we've been hearing about the additional need for rapid rehousing funds. It was developed and the language reflects language that is -- the language was reviewed by both our social service providers, including echo and caritas as well as our city staff, and it also has language specifically about working with our [4:24:13 PM] consultants and these social service agencies in considering how these funds can best be -- how these funds would best be used. And then it asks the city manager to come back to us at the budget time to talk about how we might use these funds. There's also -- it also acknowledges work that our staff is doing to create a city-funded housing voucher program which is particularly important and focused on permanent supportive housing and is something that our nhcd department has -- has surfaced as an idea that they want to pursue and are pursuing. So it's -- I think it's important as an affirmation from the council about what's -- what our priorities are, and I think it's important to ask the city manager to review this and have this ready for us as part of our next budget process. [4:25:16 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. William? >> I'm reading more in this than I'm hearing you describe. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We're at 4:30 now, I don't want to drag this on too much. But every year I get concerned about giving the manager budget direction while he is still figuring out his recommendation, because I don't want it to feel like we all need to start bringing resolutions to inform the manager's initial budget recommendation, so I'm not sure how I feel about that. I know how I feel about it, I'm not sure what to do about it. And it just seems much more prescriptive. I appreciate the groups like echo and caritas have reviewed it, I'm not sure it means that they approve it. >> Kitchen: They do. >> Flannigan: That's not what I've heard, so I don't know that we're on the same page. I've heard very different things. So I guess for staff, I don't also want to be in a big long conversation on Thursday ant this when conceptually these are things [4:26:16 PM] we support. We all support permanent supportive housing. The voucher is essentially that item I pulled earlier in the day. So if this is considered affirmation of practice and the ongoing work, then I can be fine with it. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Flannigan: Just looking for staff to see if that's how they're taking it. >> Kitchen: Okay. And I should have mentioned that the last item, I'm going to revise after conversation with staff and make it -- it's not intended to be prescripted, but it list three categories of individuals to serve, so I'm just going to delete all that and just leave it for staff to consider whatever range of individuals they want to serve, so that will -- that may be the part that seems prescriptive to you, and that will be changed. >> Flannigan: Okay. >> Kitchen: And also I invite you -- you don't have to say now, but my understanding is, and I have heard from the social service providers that they want this and they approve it. So if you're hearing something else, that would be very different than what I've been told, and so we [4:27:18 PM] can talk about that. >> Flannigan: Yeah. It's just another one of our Toma challenges where it's hard for us to have the conversation but for in this moment and it's difficult to have a conversation in this moment. So I'll look forward to the revision that you'll put. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: And, again, my comments from earlier today, into a vacuum, we will all be trying to get stuff done and I'm going to start supporting us initiating stuff what's missing I think at this point is what is our overall plan. What are the -- we've got a 30, 60, 90 day plan today that was good. It was heavy on outputs as opposed to outcomes, things that we can actually measure to see progress, so hope lf live we'll be doing some work on that. But even that, there's not a context for that how that fits with everything. I think that's what the community wants at this point, and recognizing we have challenges at lots of different levels, we have permits for housing but we also have people on our streets right now as well we need to do something. All right. So I think those are [4:28:18 PM] all our items. Does anybody else have anything else? Councilmember Ellis? >> Ellis: I have an item. >> Mayor Adler: I'm trying really hard not to let you do this. I apologize. >> Ellis: I'm not sure if councilmember pool had a question about the last one or... Okay. I didn't want to be skipping over. I just wanted to pull this item today light. We've been having a couple conversations with staff and the applicants and save our springs alliance about this particular tract of land. So it is 130,000 square feet. It's in my district on convict hill right near imagine Austin center and it's on the 333 bus route. So I intend to move the zoning and platting commission recommendation of the sf6 limiting it to 15 units. The applicant has actually gone back and revised their concept plan to minimize impervious cover in line with save our springs, so it brought us -- it from 20% [4:29:23 PM] impervious cover down to lower than 15% actually. And save our springs had reviewed it and we've asked staff to update the backup on the website with the new concept plan for y'all to look at and we've got information from save our springs that says they now are in support of this, now that they have reduced that impervious cover. So that's not on the website yet, but I just wanted y'all to know, to expect it soon. And we're happy to provide that as well if for some reason it's difficult for staff to get that there. >> We just received that letter from them a couple hours ago. >> Ellis: Yeah, I know it was all moving yesterday and today. I wanted to take the information to let y'all know that information is now up there and hopefully this is a plan that can pass with approval from zoning and platting, appreciate your work, too, Jerry on helping us navigate all these things. That's it. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Yes. >> I just had one thing to [4:30:23 PM] note. >> Mayor Adler: Does anybody else have anything? >> Okay. I just wanted to draw everybody's attention on February 28, I put up some time for speaker time requests for our third reading that we follow our standard process of three minutes per speakers with up to two more people giving them two minutes for max of seven minutes going forward. I don't know if anybody has noticed that that's up on the message board, but I put it up there a couple of weeks ago, so we could give everybody a good head's up in advance of the public hearings that we're going to have toward the end of the month. >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to go ahead and post something, I'm checking with the subforum height -- right now. My intent to take what you did, maybe go one better than that. We're setting up two long public hearings day. One to be all day and one to be all evening and I'm going to suggest that everybody shows up gets three minutes with two minute transfers on each of those for both of those blocks. On the days when we're actually in meeting, I'm going to recommend that we do [4:31:24 PM] one minute. On those because some of those we just have three hours to pleat. But in the large block of time, I'm going to propose that everybody speak -- get as chance to speak for three minutes but I'll put in some more details but thank you for raising that issue early. Anything else? >> Casar: Mayor, for that public hearing they were trying to find a date that worked for all of us. Turns out there was no date that turned worked for everyone and so I will have to watch some of that tape later because I have two different weddings that day, including a wedding that I'm participating in and obviously can't -- it would be a challenge for me. It is not -- for those inquiring, it is not my wedding date. >> Mayor Adler: Start of that rumor. All right. That's that. Anything else? So then at 4:31 this meeting is adjourned.