City Council Work Session Transcript – 05/05/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 5/5/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/5/2020 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. [9:02:47 AM] >> Mayor Adler: This work session with the Austin city council on may 5th, 2020. We're going this virtually. It is 9:02. Let's take roll real fast. Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Present P. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem Garza. >> Garza: I'm here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Renteria. Not yet. Councilmember Casar? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I'm here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: Here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: I am here. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Here. >> Mayor Adler: And councilmember alter. >> Alter: Here. >> Mayor Adler: One last [9:03:48 AM] time, is councilmembers Renteria or Casar present? We'll look for them when they come in. Leagues, we're going to start with the covid briefing. [Echo]. >> Mayor Adler: Was that somebody who mine a staff member? >> It sounded liken echo from when I first logged in. >> Tovo: If anybody has their TV on make sure you turn it off. We're going to begin today with the virus update from public health, an update about homelessness. We'll hold questions until we get through those and then answer questions and then we will have the thrust of our meeting briefing with [9:04:48 AM] respect to finances and budget and covid dollars. Does that work for you, manager? >> It does. And before we even begin, mayor, councilmembers, community, I just want to acknowledge that this is public service recognition week, so we have incredible public servants across our enterprise, across our community that are doing work to make sure that we are keeping our community safe and just want to highlight that. We'll highlight it again on Thursday, but this is a chance for us to once again acknowledge and appreciate everyone that is doing this work to keep our communities safe. But with that, mayor, I'll ask director Hayden to start us off and then she will pass it off to Dr. Escott. And then as you mentioned we'll have assistant city manager shorter and our consultant Matthew Dougherty provide us with specific update around homelessness and covid. Unless there are questions I'll pass it off to director Hayden. >> The record should reflect that councilmember Renteria is with us. Can you hear us, Pio? [9:05:49 AM] Okay. >> I'm not sure if you're unmuted director Hayden. We might do an audible while she's getting on. Dr. Escott is on the line so maybe we'll have director Hayden follow Dr. Escott. Dr. Escott, are you there? >> Dr. Escott: Yes, sir. Thank you. >> Do you mind starting? >> Dr. Escott: Yes, I'll go ahead if I can get I.T. To put up my slides. [9:06:56 AM] Perfect. So again, I want to give you all an update and thank you for the opportunity to present this update. [Echo on the line]. Can you see the slides? >> Yes. >> Dr. Escott: Okay, perfect. If you can go to the next slide, please. So what you're seeing here is -- it looks like it's reversed on my screen, but what you're seeing here is an update from the graph that I showed you last week. Obviously in the red bars is the total number of cases, the cumulative cases. The green bar -- the yellow bars are new cases at the bottom. And the green is the percent change as compared to the previous day. So again, we are in a downward trend for the [9:07:57 AM] percent increase by day, which equates to now about a 19 -- almost 20-day doubling rate for us, which is a substantial improvement over where we were a month or two ago. So we're very happy with this trend. Again, we've seen it improve over the past several weeks from 12 to 14, and now to almost 20 days. So again G signs for us. And I think this is really reflective of this community's effort to flatten the curve. We have flattened the curve. It is continuing to flat 10 and as I discussed yesterday along with the mayor and judge, we need these efforts to continue. And it's critical that we continue to remind folks that this is not the result of luck, this is the result of an investment in time and resources and effort by the community and we need that to continue for us -- to continue to have success as [9:08:59 AM] it relates to flattening the curve. Next slide, please. So what you're seeing on this graph is -- [echo]. Sorry. Is the Travis county hospitalization trend. So this is based on data which has been provided to us by Baylor Scott & white, by ascension Seton and St. David's. And what you're seeing here is the bottom two lines, the blue lines are new admissions and the Orange line is discharges by day. And so you see those lines dance throughout this pandemic here in Austin. They're not large increases in admissions on a daily basis. In fact, they're quite well balanced with discharges by day. But what you see is a cumulative effect over time, and that's resulted in as of last Wednesday, last Tuesday, 82 admissions, despite the fact that [9:09:59 AM] there's only been a small number of new admissions everyday. And this is reflective of the fact that people who are hospitallysissed with covid are hospitalized foe a long period of time, two or three weeks. So when we think about the possibility of overcrowding in hospitals, it may not happen suddenly like we saw in New York, it may happen steadily over time. So we'll continue to follow this trend and follow the hospital capacities so that we can make predictions about when hospitals may get overcrowded. Again, right now we've relatively plateaued. We've been between 75 and 85 hospitalizations over the past two week period and there's still plenty of hospital capacity so we are in good shape at this stage, but we want to stay in good shape. And again, that requires the ongoing efforts of this community to achieve that. Next slide, please. [9:10:59 AM] This is also an update of a graph I showed you last week. I spoke about last week that the fact that we had our first week of decreasing cases since this pandemic began in Austin. Last week was an increase, a small increase, about 15 -- 14 to 15 new cases compared to the week before. But you can see over the past five weeks the number has been relatively consistent. So we've had between 40 and 50 new cases on average per day, so it's a relative plateau effect, and we're pleased with that. We'd like to see it go down, but as long as it's not going up substantially, we'll still be in good shape. Again, we will continue to monitor that and those efforts at maintaining that consistency will be based upon how we do as a community, particularly now that things are starting to reopen to some extent. Next slide, please. This is an updated slide in [9:12:02 AM] relation to the race and ethnicity of those hospitalized. So this includes people who were admitted and discharged up through last Wednesday. And you can see that we've had a significant increase in our portion of hispanics and blacks who have been hospitalized. So hispanic, the community now represents 51% of those hospitalized and the black community represents 12%. Both those numbers are significantly higher than their representation in the community. We are hopeful this week to be able to show you weekly trends as we rebuild the data backwards to show you the week by week effect on race and ethnicity as it -- as it pertains to hospitalizations. Next slide, please. Again, this is also an update of tests by county. This is based upon dshs data [9:13:04 AM] on may the second. Again, this dataset is based upon tests that have been reported to dshs and that they were able to classify a jurisdiction. So there's going to be some variability in the accuracy of this data, but this is what we have at this stage. As we can see, Travis county, the cumulative number of individuals tested per thousand is 9.9. That's the green bar on the right. We can see that Travis county -- that Harris county and Dallas county have pulled ahead in relation to their testing per capita. But we are, you know, continue to test and increase that testing, again, starting last week we've increased testing by four fold so we continue to expect that -- that rate per 1,000 or our population to increase. Next slide, please. [9:14:05 AM] In relation to individuals who signed up for the public enrollment process, we've had about 4500 individuals that have gone to that site and filled out a survey. We've had almost 2,000 as of yesterday who have scheduled or had a test performed. Of the ones that have been tested and we have results for, that's 735 so far just with this new process, just through the public health drive-through. 16 of those have been positive, which gives us a positive rate of 2.18%. So significantly lower than the numbers I was talking about last week, which was around nine to 10%. Now, it's important to remember this is not our community positive rate, this is just for the aph site, so we're still in the process of piecing together the other testing that's happening in the community with community care, with [9:15:07 AM] Austin regional clinics and others in the community so we can have a better idea community-wide. But this is a refreshing result and we'll continue to follow this and report on it. And again, we hope to have a publicly available percent positive per week so the community can monitor that and have an idea of how to assess risk going forward, again, particularly now that things are starting to open up. Next slide, please. >> Mayor Adler: These slides by the way were emailed to all the offices at 8:45. >> Thank you, mayor. This is an update of our nursing home long-term care and institutional clusters. As you can see we've grown by two facilities. Those are located at the bottom and identified as N and O. Those are not all nursing homes. They are state facilities on this list. There are shelters on this [9:16:09 AM] list, but a significant number of these are nursing homes or assisted living facilities. You can see that in these clusters they have a total of 103 staff which have been identified as covid positive. 232 residents are positive for a total of 335. That's an increase of 46 from last week. In relation to our nursing home task force, they are continuing to work on this issue. We have deployed strike teams to most of these facilities already. Some of those facilities received large strike teams, and that was done in cooperation with the state. We were notified on Friday that those state assets that were deployed would be limited to 10 days and so we are going to have to take over contracts for those facilities who still need to have those personnel continue beyond that 10-day limit. To other facilities, we've [9:17:10 AM] deployed smaller groups because they don't have the same staffing impact as some of the harder hit facilities facilities. So in those circumstances we send out two or three individuals to evaluate the situation. They've been focused on doing a needs assessment, identifying and training individuals in ppe use, ppe needs and training for individuals and staff. We will continue to send out small terms early on in outbreaks so we can assess the situation, make determination of needs and then fill in additional staff if that's identified as a need. Next slide, please. Again, this is a slide regarding our public enrollment process. We have been able to enroll many, many more people than through our previous platform that required a [9:18:12 AM] physician evaluation and referral. So we're very pleased with that. It's critical that people the same day they develop symptoms to get on this website, to fill out a survey and to schedule to get tested. Right now we are testing anybody with symptoms. So if they have any of the covid-19 symptoms identified by the CDC, which is the fever, the cough, the shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. We've also included if they have a sore throat, if they have a change in their taste or smell, if they have chills, if they have muscle aches they're going to get tested. They're going to get offered a test. So we want folks to sign up as quickly as possible and to not take chances. We know that this is an illusive disease and it presents like many other things present. Elusive. I just showed you that 20% of people with symptoms don't have covid-19, but it's critical that we [9:19:12 AM] identify the folks who do have it so we can isolate them, we can provide them the resources they need including connections to health care, connections to social services so that we can isolate the right people, stop the outbreak and continue the businesses in the economy going, but do so in a safe manner. Next slide, please. So we've been working with the Austin chamber in their efforts at identifying a plan to reopen businesses safely. Part of that has been to remind the community regarding the essential things that work. That's the social distancing, that's the public masking, that's these personal hygiene messages. These are cocooning those at risk for complications. As we go forward and consider further Reon openings and how to do so safely, it will really be dependent upon hammering those messages over and over [9:20:13 AM] again to ensure as we allow the community to breathe a little bit that we do so safely. We can't lose track of these messages. We have to have these signs. We have to have the hand sanitizer. We have to reinforce the hand washing. We have to continue to require facial coverings and that social distancing piece in order to avoid further shutdowns. Next slide, please. Again, all these resources are available on our covid-19 website, the schedule for testing is on that website, updated information for homes and communities is on the website. So we continue to want to encourage folks to go to that site, go to trusted resources for information on covid-19 and how to get through this together. That concludes my presentation. >> Thank you, Dr. Escott. I think we're going to pivot directly now to director [9:21:14 AM] Hayden. I believe she's on the line. Director Hayden? >> Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm just going to provide a few high level updates. Our epidemiologist and disease surveillance staff are continuing with our case investigations, including our cluster investigations. As we anticipate the gradual reopening that started on may 1st, our staff are just ramping up a little more in anticipation of new cases. We are continuing to interview people who are covid positive and gathering a little additional more information from them based upon the requirement from the state of Texas. [9:22:17 AM] Our social services grant, our staff continue to work across with several providers including ensuring that interpretive services are being provided when folks are going in for testing, making sure we are Ada compliant and ensuring the safety and security of folks as they're coming through. We are working with the [indiscernible] On a suicide prevention need and survey through the mayor's office. In addition to that we are also working on various solutions for transportation. Our food access continued to provide shelf stable food at [9:23:18 AM] the convention center. And with our homelessness we have three pro lodges that are currently operational and we are working very closely throughout the community to ensure testing is happening for our homeless population. With our faith-based groups we are adding some additional marketing strategies to ensure that we are providing information to African-Americans as well as hispanic and Latino populations. And as we refine those efforts, we are going to be doing some additional efforts in those spaces. Our childcare task force has started to look at and have conversations about recommendations as well as concerns about summer camp. [9:24:18 AM] And so they have started those conversations to do some increase planning. We are also working very closely in our joint information center and our Pio to address -- to make sure we have appropriate language on our fliers as well as ensuring that our information is culturally and linguistically appropriate. And that ends my report. Thank you. >> Thanks, director Hayden. We'll hear from assistant director shorter and Dougherty around the efforts around homelessness within this covid environment. So with that, acm shorter? >> Hi, good morning. Can you hear me okay? >> We can. >> Perfect. [9:25:18 AM] Well, good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem, councilmembers and, of course, city manager. Thank you for the opportunity to provide updates on our homeless response to covid-19 as well as our longer term system improvement planning. I am joined as manager chronic mentioned at the top of the meeting this morning, by Matthew Dougherty, former executive director of the U.S. Interagency council on homelessness and part of the consulting team working with our staff and with community providers and partners to reduce unsheltered homelessness and alleviate the negative impacts of homelessness and housing instability. This morning we wanted to give a quick update on our efforts to provide immediate support to our neighbors experiencing homelessness in response to covid-19 as well as our longer term and [9:26:19 AM] ongoing strategic planning efforts. As you all know during an initial site visit to Austin, March third through fifth the consultant team, including Barr poppy and Matt Dougherty, as well as Matt white as well as Matthew Dougherty conducted a series of public forums with city staff, community stakeholders, service providers and people experiencing homelessness. They also visited several facilities in programs serving our homelessness neighbors. Very soon after that site visit, in fact, I believe March 6th, we canceled south by southwest the very next day after they left. The city turned its attention to responding to covid-19 and our consultant team has provided critical support and daily guidance really throughout this [9:27:21 AM] process. Matthew Dougherty will discuss the overarching response to the intersecting crisis of covid-19 and homelessness, recognizing that addressing the need and protecting the health of people experiencing homelessness during this pandemic is a critical strategy for reducing infections and illness and reducing the demands on our scarce health care resources. In addition to Matthew's presentation, I would also like to point you to the April homeless services update memorandum to mayor and council with the really latest information on our ongoing work around facilities for isolation and protective lodging which Stephanie just highlighted. Food access, hygiene resources, the very comprehensive work and services being provided by our downtown Austin community court as well as the homeless outreach street team and ems community [9:28:23 AM] health paramedics. In terms of our process to reengage council around our longer term system planning efforts, we have worked with your respective offices and I really appreciate you all setting aside 90 minutes next week on may 30th and 14th to do facilitated working sessions with the entire consultant team to get your feedback on some of their preliminary findings. Separate from the longer term planning, this afternoon we are scheduled to attend the social services cabinet meeting at 3:00 P.M. To provide more detailed -- more detailed overview of the more immediate work and short-term response during covid-19. And with that, if I can I would like to ask Matt Dougherty to chime in for remarks. >> Good morning, everyone. [9:29:24 AM] Thank you very much, Chris. I just wanted to provide a quick overview of some of the work that's been happening collaboratively between the city and its non-profit, faith-based community partners to try to be an important element of the public health response to covid-19 by addressing the health care and housing needs of people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic. The key organizing document for the work that's happening to address homelessness is what we've called the covid-19 homelessness response plan, which the consultants helped to develop collaboratively between the city of Austin and the ending community homelessness coalition, echo, really captured the full range of strategies that needed to be implemented to address the needs of people experiencing homelessness again as a part of the overall community response to covid-19. That plan was developed with the support of the city [9:30:24 AM] consultants, myself included included, and also a consultant Julie Mcfarland who has been helping in this process as well. The plan was intended to be an iterative plan and adaptable as conditions changed on the ground. The plan has five key objectives and the work is underway under each of those objectives and they all really do intersect and support one another. Early focus was on deploying comprehensive screening processes for both stealthed and unsheltered people, identifying people who were symptomatic, identify people in high risk categories to try to link people to other settings which is the second objective was to secure and operate sites and rooms to provide alternate living arrangements for people experiencing homelessness, including integrated in with other people who needed similar kinds of protection. That includes the isolation facility and the pro lodges that were mentioned earlier. The third objective focuses [9:31:24 AM] on implementing purposeful efforts to transition people and help people exit from those alternative living arrangements. Really with the commitment of all the partners to try to prevent anyone from being discharged back into unsheltered homelessness especially, which we'll try to use this as an opportunity to try to connect people to the housing solutions that they need to end homelessness. And that -- the working group focused on those efforts is also beginning to transition to a focus on the strategies for preventing and entering homelessness as we enter the recovery phase of this process and scale up some housing strategies during that economic recovery period. The fourth objective focuses on supporting people in emergency shelter and supporting the shelters to pride safer environments, safe as we can environments within congregate settings and the fifth objective is providing similar support to people who are unsheltered, [9:32:25 AM] including access to hygiene and facilities and safety equipment. Comprehensively those five objectives comprehensively try to address the full range of strategies and activities that are needed, which is a pretty ambitious range of activities. And quickly found that we needed to create some structures to help implement that plan. And I'm going to be pretty quick on this part, but we put together between the city and echo teams to really drive forward the implementation of this plan and to take lead responsibility for specific elements of the plan. Overall the implementation is overseen by a project management team making sure that we're moving forward on all elements of the plan. Again, co-lead by the city and by echo and identifying areas of priorities, removing object Ta cancels for some of the implementation teams. Making key decisions together to support the work of the implementation teams. [9:33:26 AM] There are currently four implementation teams that are in place and active right now. One team focuses on the hotel-motel strategy and the implementation of those facilities, addressing both logistical and property tax appraisal needs but also the needs of the challenges that team has been able to address to make sure there's adequate health care services for people staying at the pro lodges, many of whom are coming in with behavioral health care needs. Another team focuses specifically on the emergency shelter and the unsheltered elements of the strategy. That team right now is especially focused on assessing the level of safety that's being provided within the emergency shelter settings, the occupancy that's possible while operating safely so that we can better understand what kind of shelter capacity is available in the community while operating the safety principles in place. Two more recent teams have been formed just within the last week or so to begin to [9:34:28 AM] move the work forward towards the next phase of this work. One team focuses on the re-housing strategies, prioritizing the re-housing needs of people who are staying in the pro lodges, but also looking at the prevention, the strategies that we need to be implemented during the recovery phase. And that work is very closely supported by a team focused on funding strategies looking at both existing and new resources, and identifying what are the opportunities to use those resources to support re-housing, prevention, diversion strategies moving forward. We may find over time that other teams are needed to be formed, but these four teams feel like for the core basis of being able to implement the response plan. And the final thing I want to highlight is those teams do not work in isolation. There's a lot of communication with existing structures and teams, and the non-profit and faith-based providers, but [9:35:28 AM] the work of those teams is being closely informed by the work of others in the opportunity who are also responding to this pandemic. And then also trying to be accountable to sharing information with key stakeholders to report on the progress, challenges, next steps of the priorities for those teams. Thank you very much. >> With that, mayor and council, that concludes part one of our briefing. Again, part two will focus on the economic resiliency and the budget planning, but for now we'll pause and see if there are questions either for Dr. Escott, director Hayden, acm shorter or Matthew Dougherty. I'll turn it back to you. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, any questions? Councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: Do any of y'all really have an update on when we're going to do public testing and if that's [9:36:29 AM] going to be possible any time in the future? Do y'all know exactly how far out that might be? >> Councilmember, I'll take that. So we're doing public testing now through that public enrollment process. I have been in discussions with the university of Texas what we're regarding zero prevalence study. This is using a high quality antibody test to assess prevalence throughout the community as well as in some subsections is of the community as well. So I'm expecting a summary or a proposal for that this week, and once I have that we will present that and discuss that with council. >> Do you know how many -- if it does happen and here in the next couple of weeks, and do you know how many tests are available to the [9:37:29 AM] public if they're -- once it becomes available? >> So right now we're aiming for 2,000 a week. We certainly want to have the capability of doing up to 2,000 a day. We don't really have a timeline yet on when those resources may be available to that scale. I'll tell you that we have been focusing on getting nursing homes tested, both staff and residents, but we don't have enough testing available in this community, for instance, right now to test everybody who is admitted to a hospital. So there are still some barriers in testing. We are working with the testing companies to increase capacity. Our innovations team is working with stakeholders and partners to 3D print test logs so we hope that situation will continue to improve. But again, we are not where [9:38:29 AM] we need to be to offer significant increases in scale at this stage. >> Renteria: Thank you for what you're doing. You know, I know this is a very stressful time, especially for you. I really want to thank you. >> Dr. He is Dr. Escott, to clarify the answers, is that aph tests or citywide testing? >> Thank you, mayor. That's aph testing. So again, we've got community care who is doing testing. Some of the test kits which we are providing to them, we've got the medical school doing testing, we've got Austin regional clinic doing a lot of testing. There's testing happening in hospitals as well and throughout the community. That 2,000 a week is just the aph testing. >> Mayor Adler: So all together we probably have about a thousand tests or reaching that a day in the city or trying to get to [9:39:31 AM] 2,000 tests a day overall in the city? >> Yes, sir. I believe that's a reasonable estimate at this stage. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. And Pio, anybody in the city that has any measure of system can sign up right now and get a test. The problem with testing people who don't have symptoms is right now 80% of those people would get a negative test, perhaps, but they could be infected tomorrow. So we're trying to figure out what the best investment of time and dollars is. Continuing on with questions. Mr. Flannigan. >> Flannigan: Thanks, mayor and thanks, Pio, for that question because I believe it was certainly on all our minds. On the nursing home and long-term care facilities that's clearly a pretty significant portion of cases overall. Depending on when and how you do the math, it's 20%ish of all cases. Are there other pockets of positive cases that helped a up to the 1800 that I'm [9:40:32 AM] seeing on the dashboard. Who were the people that are being infected? >> So right now we see clusters around people who are working right now. That includes health care workers, that includes construction workers. That includes people working in grocery stores. The dataset we receive from the hospitals we are merging in information from our epi line list, which is our record at aph so that we can include information like occupations so that we can follow those over time and get a better assessment of where those occupations are happening. We are working to do some targeted testing at construction sites as well because we know it's a hotspot right now. We will continue to follow those trends and try to do focus testing in those areas where we see those clusters happening, those industries where we see the clusters happening. And this was a critical [9:41:34 AM] element of the discussion with the Austin chamber as more businesses look to open, we have to be very clear that we have to not only protect the workforce through requirements of workers and customers, but we have to make sure that they know what to do if they develop symptoms. They know how to connect in to get the public free testing, they know how to connect to health care and they have the capability of being responsible, of being able to call in six and to be paid for that time off so that there are not disincentives to keep people who are not well from having to go to work. >> Flannigan: I think we all know this on the council, but for the public, the struggles of reopening businesses is not about whether or not someone who is patronning that business is at risk, it is really about the fact that you need employees in the business and those are the ones at [9:42:35 AM] risk. The protestors that are holding up signs saying I need a haircut, it's not about whether you get sick from getting a haircut, it's about your barber or your folks working in the salon that get infected and that I think really does fall on the business owners and they make their decisions about how they're going to survive and what programs we can create to ensure that they do survive. So that will be more in the economic part of the conversation. >> >> Mayor Adler: Next question, colleagues? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you all for this information. It's very helpful. I'll just have a few questions for Dr. Escott. So with regard to the nursing facilities, can you help me understand the status of testing in the nursing facilities? First off let me say I really appreciate sharing the information that you [9:43:38 AM] have by facility. That's very helpful. And thank you for what you said with regard to strike teams. I'd like to drill down just a bit deeper. Can you tell me specifically how many of those -- the status of testing and then perhaps you can provide us some information after this about which one of those listed facilities we've deployed strike teams to? So to sum up my data question is if you would provide to us, and you can provide that to us later, each one of those facilities that you have identified, just give us a check mark of which ones actually have the strike team deployed. And then lastly, can you help me understand it the status of testing, particularly of workers and residents in these at the same times that have clusters? -- In these facilities that have clusters? >> So we have -- we have three full strike teams deployed to three of these [9:44:39 AM] facilities. And those are the ones that have been most impacted by both residents and staff who have become ill. The other facilities, except for one of the new ones, have also had the smaller teams deployed. At least those who are nursing homes and those where we have jurisdiction. So again we've got some state facilities where the state has jurisdiction on this list. We have at least one shelter on this list where the situation has been resolved at that shelter. So the ones that still are active have had teams deployed to those facilities. In relation to the testing of staff and residents, so we're in the process -- continue to be in the process of getting testing for all of the residents and staff at those facilities. My understanding is as of this morning we tested 500. The teams are continuing to [9:45:40 AM] both test people and to train the staff how to collect tests. So we have several facilities where there are plenty of staff there. The staff has not been significantly impacted. And they are willing to do the test collections themselves internally and then provide those results to Austin public health. So the nursing home task force is building out those processes to ensure that we can test all of the residents and all the staff at all those nursing homes that are on the list. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you very much. I really appreciate all the work you guys are doing. Can you tell me if we've finished testing workers at any of these facilities? >> We have completed testing at at least one or two of the facilities. >> Kitchen: Okay. Of the workers or the workers and residents? >> Workers and residents. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank [9:46:41 AM] you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before we get to the finance part of this? Yes, councilmember tovo. Then councilmember Casar. >> Tovo: Thank you. My first question is -- I've got a few. My first question is for Dr. Escott. Dr. Escott, in the numbers that you gave us, and I just closed them so I don't have them in front of me, but there was quite a gap between those who are completing the survey online for online registration for testing, there was a gap between those who were completing it and those who were actually being tested. Can you remind us of what that gap is? >> Sure. Councilmember, so we have a lot of folks who login to see what's going on, see what it's like. That aren't experiencing symptoms. We have some folks who log into the site multiple times. So everybody who has any of the symptoms is offered a [9:47:43 AM] test. Anybody who has unprotected close contact with the covid-19 patient is offered a test. So I think we're really getting to all those folks who need to be tested. You know, again, we don't have the capacity yet to offer widespread asymptomatic testing unless there's a risk factor associated with that. For instance, we are going to offer testing, asymptomatic testing through the public site for nursing home workers. We offer some asymptomatic testing for family members of nursing home workers so that we can try to better cocoon those facilities who really are at high risk and have demonstrated that risk throughout this pandemic process. Certainly if -- >> Tovo: So that was the substance of my question because it seems to me that there are hundreds of people who are doing the registration, but not [9:48:44 AM] actually getting tested. And so you've answered my question that individuals with my of the symptoms, they don't need to have a combination of symptoms necessarily, but if they have any symptoms and they're logging in through that site they will be offered a test. >> That's correct. >> Tovo: Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Tovo: Okay, thanks, Dr. Escott. And one more question for you. Thank you for the response to my colleague about the different -- sort of the general -- some general trends that you're seeing among those who are testing positive. Do you have a sense of of that group -- and I know you said you're going to collect more additional information through the survey, but do you have a sense of those who are positive at the moment, do you have a sense of how much -- what the percentage is of that group who are working on construction sites? Versus other professions? [9:49:46 AM] Or how it breaks down construction versus [indiscernible] Versus groceries? >> I don't have those numbers today. Again, we're hopeful that we can integrate that data so that we could provide some weekly snapshots of what that break down looks like. I think that is certainly important for us as we go forward as things start to reopen, but we have seen a significant number of construction workers as well as family members of construction workers who are in that positive group right now. >> Tovo: I think that would be helpful. Do you have a sense of whether that's the dominant industry within that -- >> It certainly seems to be at least one of the dominant industries. Again, the people who are getting sick right now are generally people who are working right now. And again, as we've discussed, that risk is going to increase the more [9:50:47 AM] people who are working. As councilmember Flannigan pointed out, at the heart of risk is that person to person interaction. The more person to person interaccuses you have, particularly in an unprotected fashion, particularly within six feet of one another, the higher the risk of getting this illness is going to be. And this is why those same messages are so creditly important now even as -- critically important now even as things begin to open. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: I have two questions. First, Dr. Escott, at this stage and prior stages you had talked to us about what some of the roadblocks were to more testing and what our responsibility in work was versus states and federal governments, private sectors. Where are we now as far as what it is that we're doing and is within our control on increasing testing and what we need other actors to be [9:51:47 AM] doing? >> Dr. Escott: So we're still continuing the dialogue with the state. You know, the challenge with the state is the state serves as the local health department for a significant portion of the state. So in most jurisdictions the state is the only entity that's looking after public health for that jurisdiction. So in jurisdictions like ours in other major metropolitan counties, a lot of those responsibilities fall upon local government to handle. But we are continuing that dialogue. In fact, we've had a request this morning from additional needs from the state. So the state has been supportive, but, you know, we are taking on the vast majority of the responsibility ourselves to identify avenues for increasing capacity for testing, identifying equipment both for us and to our region so that, you know, as the situation [9:52:48 AM] continues to evolve we could be a bit more self-sufficient as we make our plans and implement our strategies. >> Casar: And so at this point it's largely fallen upon us to get from that 1,000 a day to 2,000 a day, and it sounds like it's not a resource -- necessarily a resource or budget issue, but more of a supply chain issue that we continue to run into that we're trying to figure out how to get around, is that right? >> Dr. Escott: That's correct. And that's true for testing and also true for ppe. We're still not in a situation where we have substantial stockpiles of ppe. And that remains a concern for us, particularly as we try to be more aggressive in providing protection for nursing homes. Ppe shortages are still an issue. >> Casar: And the last thing I'll mention is we're still having conversations and working on, especially as I hear from constituents, [9:53:48 AM] some of them in retail sectors, they may have an underlying condition or have someone at home with an underlying condition. They don't want to go to work, but they don't know what to do in that situation. Or they don't know if their underlying conditions is one of the ones that puts them most at risk. I think the more you can develop for us information that we can get out to people so that we can start figuring out how to know who to -- who we need to cocoon and start coming up with strategies on how to best cocoon them that would be really helpful because I'm hearing from folks who don't know if they're underlying condition is one of the ones at risk or if they qualify for unemployment or if they should tell their boss, no, they're staying home, or not. So I think that information is becoming more and more urgent as more things open up. >> Dr. Escott: Thank you, councilmember. I think those elements will continue to be including in future orders that will come. They certainly have been in the orders that the mayor, the judge have issued up to [9:54:50 AM] this stage. I think that is critical. Our success as we talked about yesterday, our success is going to be partly dependent upon our ability to cocoon those at risk. And that means that those folks at risk need to continue to telecommute, need to continue to protect themselves, and our businesses, our local and state and federal government need to find creative ways to support that effort. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. I really appreciate all the work you're doing, Dr. Escott. I know it's been going on quite awhile and I really appreciate how much effort it's taking on everyone's behalf. Can you tell me a little bit about whether or not this virus is mutating? I had heard at one point it was not mutating quickly, but I just was curious to know if there's any change on that front. >> Dr. Escott: So there [9:55:51 AM] does seem to be some minor mutations that are happening. You know, again, we don't have any indication of any substantial changes, but that's something that continues to be tract by the CDC as well as the who's who. And some of that volumes detailed assessments of individuals as we identify clusters and track those, but there hasn't been any substantial mutations that I'm aware of that would indicate a cage in strategy at this stage. >> Ellis: Does it seem like there's a low likelihood if someone has recovered, their chances of getting it again are pretty low at this point in time? >> Dr. Escott: The jury is still out a bit on immunity and how long that lasts. I believe most experts believe that there is at least partial and temporary immunity, but that is an [9:56:52 AM] issue that we'll continue to track. With any disease, individuals are going to have some variability in their immunity and part of that is based upon their own body's immune response to the initial disease. If they don't mount a significant immune response they're not going to build the antibodies to protect from future infections, but that work is still being done, those studies are still being done and we'll certainly be paying close attention to what that looks like. We have seen some jurisdictions that around two to three percent of individuals have retested positive. I think we can expect for some reinfections to happen. And again, part of the who and CDC's recommendation is to not use a positive igg antibody as an indication to indicate that person is safe from future infection, but they may be safer than others. >> Ellis: Okay. That's helpful. And can you tell me a bit about the testing and [9:57:55 AM] whether or not different forms like saliva testing, would become available soon or is -- can you tell me a little bit more about those different testing styles? >> Dr. Escott: Sure. So there is at least one saliva test which has been approved by the fda. We're expecting to see an increase in saliva testing. There's some other innovations that are happening as well. We see that some labs are doing batch testing, which basically means in the circumstance where we have relatively low incidence of disease like in the sample I showed you, if you test 100 people and only two of them are positive, we can batch. You can batch 50 together and 50 together. If you run a test on the 50 that are negative, you run one test of 50 people and you exclude them, you run the other test of 50 people and you find there's a positive, now you only have [9:58:55 AM] to run half those tests individually. So there is some innovation that's happening to increase the efficiency of testing. There's been some suggestions of batched saliva testing which may be quicker to turn around results. So I think that's a lot of I think we'll also see a substantial change in improvement in testing, that doesn't require it to analyze to run. Similar to like a flu test, where you can go to a clinic, or a pharmacy and be able to get relatively instant results. I think once we have that kind of capacity to test, that doesn't require a sendoff every time, it's going to improve our ability to (indiscernible) Amongst this disease and be safe. >> Ellis: That's helpful. Can you tell me about the communication process for people [9:59:55 AM] who might be able to donate platelets or plasma? It's not like on the portal they can tell people where to go if they've been found to have the anti-bodies. >> Dr. Escott: If individuals are covid positive 19 and recovered, they can sign up for plasma donation. Part of our new platform will automate part of that process. So once we have an indication they've recovered, it will give them an e-mail saying, if you're interested in donating plasma, here's the link to do that. Part of the reason why our recovery numbers are lower by percentage than other jurisdictions, we're still calling those individuals, contacting those individuals to confirm recovery, with the intention of introducing them to the plasma donation piece. Once we automate that, it will [10:00:56 AM] be more efficient to ensure that folks who are able to and wing to donate plasma have the opportunity to do that. The CEO at we are blood, we have a surplus of plasma, allowing them to bank that for future needs. You know, Austin has come together and recovered rvgts and are doing a great job at donating. At some stage we may have the potential to send plasma outside of the jurisdiction if we have surplus. I think that's a great opportunity for folks to really help those individuals who are most critically ill, and I'm very pleased with how Austin's doing in response. >> Ellis: That's great to hear. Those are all my questions. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Other questions, colleagues? Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. [10:01:57 AM] Good morning. Dr. Escott, I had a couple of questions about how the testing's playing out if you go to a doctor's office instead of the dph. If you were to go to a doctor's office, are they able to do testing just based on a single symptom? And is that the protocol? Or do they have so few tests that they are having to conserve those? Can you just tell us a little bit more about how those protocols are changing and what would happen if you went to the doctor's office rather than going directly to dph? >> Dr. Escott: So we sent out messaging to the medical society for physicians to link their patients to the public testing. Having said that, clinics and physicians, they have direct access to testing. So they could order that through quest or lab core or one of the [10:03:07 AM] other laboratory systems. They don't receive a bill. If they go through a physician's office in a private lab, there may be some bill associated with that. But we're going to continue to see increases in testing availability at doctors' offices, so that's going to be the sendoff. Some of that's going to be the rapid testing. So again, I think if folks want to go see their physician, they can do that. It's important still to call ahead, let them know that you're concerned about covid-19. And the physician's office should be able to tell them if they have the capacity to test or not. >> Ellis: >> Alter: Once we've put up the facilities for basically quarantine, can you tell us how many people are in those facilities, and how does one actually take advantage of those opportunities should they need [10:04:07 AM] them? >> Dr. Escott: I don't have the numbers. If Stephanie's still on, I'll turn to her for that. We are offering an isolation facility for everybody who tests positive, for those individuals who are exposed and don't have the ability to isolate at home safely. They're all offered a spot there. We certainly want to encourage folks if they have symptoms, if they test positive in particular, to utilize that free resource, that hotel to help prevent spreading in the household. One of our issues that we're having right now, particularly in our east side crescent, is that we have lots of folks, sometimes multi-generations of individuals living in one home, and the more congested the home is, the more likely that household transmission is to happen. So in those circumstances, in particular, we really, really do [10:05:08 AM] want to encourage folks to utilize that free resource, to separate themselves from their family, to help protect their family from getting the infection. >> Alter: So if somebody felt like they needed that and -- I mean, are they just getting that when they get their positive test? Or how are they actually getting connected once we know they're positive? >> Dr. Escott: So, when (indiscernible) Makes the first call of notification, then they are offered that facility. So there's some other mechanisms, sometimes referrals will come in through ems, sometimes the referrals will come in from hospitals, or physicians' offices. But the threshold for offering a spot at that facility is very, very low. So certainly if folks want a spot, there is a spot, if we fill up a facility, we have other facilities that we can [10:06:09 AM] add. There really should not be a barrier to folks who want to take advantage of the isolation facility. It's a comfortable spot. It's a hotel, there's a TV, there's wi-fi, there's food. It is really a nice place to recover, and do so safely. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. Lastly, I've been hearing from more people, particularly about young people who are speculating about whether they had covid back in, say, February or earlier. Can you speak to when we think the first cases came to Austin, and also, you know, how best to respond to folks who are speculating about having it in, you know, periods earlier in the year, and what we might make of those comments, obviously with only 2% of our aph test being positive and lots of other illnesses being out there, the chances are still very low. [10:07:12 AM] But I'm struggling with a little bit of how to respond when asked questions in that regard. >> Dr. Escott: So, you know, is it possible somebody may have had it in February or January? Yes, it's possible. We've seen a case in France that I saw on the news this morning that may have happened back in December. So it's possible. But remember that still, the vast majority of people who have covid-19 symptoms don't have it. Probably the highest level that we had here as far as broad-based testing was about 12%. So there are lots of things that look like covid-19, a long list of symptoms, it's really hard to tell. The challenge that we have at this stage is a lot of people want to go out and do the antibody testing. [10:08:12 AM] The prevalence of the disease is so low here, we estimate 1% or less, that the risk of having false positives is very high. Even the fda approved test in the prevalence of 1%, 5 out of 6 positive results are going to be false positives. So that's why we want to encourage folks to really be wise and do their homework when they're do be antibody testing. At this stage they're probably not specific enough to tell us much, particularly as it relates to positive tests. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you. I have a follow-up question, I think I turned my mic off when I was asking Dr. Escott, and then I have a couple of questions for director Hayden. Dr. Escott, we were talking about the professions where [10:09:13 AM] you're seeing cases came from, and one was construction, and I received in my office concerns about what individuals are seeing out on construction sites in terms of a lack of social distancing, a lack of masks. I witnessed some of that myself. I know that public health is doing a good job of trying to get the word out. Are you involved and trying to get messages out through some of our trade unions and through other means? I'm wondering what you're seeing in terms of compliance with those health and safety protocol, and what means you're using to try to get that message out to a broader array of construction sites and companies. >> Dr. Escott: So, we've been in discussions with them for weeks now, and that includes some of the -- you know, the major contractors, the home builders, as well as the representatives from labor, to really have a [10:10:16 AM] coordinated way to approach this issue. We have had ongoing outreach from the construction industry regarding testing, and evaluations. The challenge that we have is that there's so much variability within the construction industry, you have some of the larger projects have a lot better control over the employees and have a lot of structure built around doing so safely, whereas some of the smaller projects where you may have two or three people interacting at a time, maybe a bit more challenging. But we continue to work to engage construction. We want to ensure that they are doing the screenings, doing those screenings well, and that we continue to provide advice on them how to do that well. Having said that, we've known all along that enforcement of these standards is going to be very difficult for us. [10:11:19 AM] But, you know, I believe the construction industry and the workers themselves understand the importance to not only the health and safety of the workers, but also to the continuing of operations that is critically important to keep people safe, to keep that construction project under way. Obviously if a significant portion of the workers become ill, they're not going to be able to work for at least a two- week period, and that's going to impact their ability to continue with the project. So we're continually looking for opportunities to engage those groups from both ends, and hopeful that we can continue to enhance those efforts. >> Tovo: Thank you. I've heard concerns about both size projects, both smaller and larger ones. So you answered the question that you're working with labor -- >> Mayor Adler: One of the priorities for medical right now is to do a (indiscernible) Construction test and they're [10:12:19 AM] getting data from the construction site in that industry to be able to report that. >> Tovo: That sounds important. I would add, if home builders association are not in the mix of people with whom you're talking, that they would be an important organization, because they have a lot of those smaller (indiscernible) -- They might have members working on those smaller projects. I'm keeping one on in my neighborhood that I'm not sure I've seen any masks on. If so, they seem to come off pretty quickly. A couple questions for Dr. Hayden, real short ones. I know my colleague council member alter asked the question about the capacity at this point at our quarantine facility, and I'm interested to know whether we have capacity remaining at any of the three pro lodges that we have. And if you could speak, director Hayden, to where they are in terms of capacity, but also if [10:13:19 AM] you have a sense in those pro lodges, the percent of individuals who are there who are experiencing homelessness. >> With the isolation facility, according to the data that I've recently reviewed, there were about 80 people who were there. We have upwards to capacity of a little over 200. And so -- and with the pro lodges, I will say that all three of them are at capacity. They are full. And they are full with our people that are experiencing homelessness. So at this point, we have no capacity in those protective lodges. But I will say that the Salvation Army is -- we've worked with them, they've got everything cleared up, and they are -- they have opened their [10:14:22 AM] doors up today, starting today, with the downtown location. >> Tovo: I see. So some of the individuals who are in those protective lodges, 1, 2 or 3, will be able to move back to the Salvation Army, so that will free up some capacity? >> Well, I will say that the staff are working with them on various exit strategies. So some of them may go back to the Salvation Army, some of them may stay where they are, and we'll just case management them to a longer-term facility, something more permanent. So we're working with them in various ways. >> Tovo: And I look forward to talking more about those permanent strategies, and really how the investments we're making right now could be part of that [10:15:23 AM] longer-term work, to find permanent housing for individuals experiencing homelessness. I'll leave my questions on that front for later. And then my last question is, you talked about the different teams with regard to this work, and I missed -- and you probably said it, but I missed the kinds of people who are serving on those teams. Are those city staff primarily, or are they also community partners, or are they a mix? >> It is a mix. So city, county, as well as nonprofit community organizations, even, you know, community advocates are there, organizers. So it's just a blend of people that are serving on the different work groups. >> Tovo: Thank you. Is it possible to see who's [10:16:25 AM] serving? Which organizations are represented on those work groups? >> I'm sorry, to be clear, are we referring to the implementation teams that Matthew Daugherty referenced, or is this a different work group -- set of work groups? This is Chris shorter, by the way. >> Tovo: Mr. Shorter, I was talking about the teams referenced earlier, and I think it was Matthew Daugherty talking about them, the different teams looking at different elements, permanent housing versus some of the other responses. >> All right. So the action plan that Matthew Daugherty referenced, and I'm not sure if he's still on the line, in the team of leaders focused on leading the implementation is primarily echo leadership and city leadership. [10:17:27 AM] And so we are also that team of staff, we are working to make sure that our providers are kept aware of the progress being made around those implementation teams generally. But that we have focused membership and composition around echo and the city. >> Tovo: Okay. Then it is -- then that is not the set of teams that I'm referring to. The set of teams I'm talking about are the ones that director Hayden is describing, that have a mix of community members. But again, I'll have an opportunity in the social service cabinet to drill down. But it would be useful to see what organizations are represented on those different teams that are working to respond to the current situation. >> Thank you. >> I'll make sure that when you have the meeting this afternoon [10:18:29 AM] with Adrian, assistant director, that she can give you a high level of who those organizations are, that are working across the social services branch. >> Tovo: Thank you, director. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: This is a question for Dr. Escott. I just wanted to understand a little bit better on one of the things that has been identified, you know, in the news across the country, and that has to do with retesting. And the extent -- I wanted to understand your thoughts related to retesting and the importance of that, you know -- I guess what I'm talking about is repeat testing, testing the same people more than once. Can you speak to the importance of that, and what you see us [10:19:32 AM] working towards as a community in that regard? >> Dr. Escott: So, council member, we don't have the capacity right now to uniformly retest people. So generally, we are using the guidance from CDC on the clearance process. That's been updated recently to say at least 10 days since the onset of illness, as well as at least three days past the resolution of fever, or improvement of the respiratory symptoms. We know that the state is using a calculation to determine that rather than, you know, calling individuals and confirming that's the case. But we may consider retesting in some individuals, such as health care workers, nursing home workers, to ensure that they are cleared before going back to work. But as a general strategy for the population, I don't expect that we're going to have the capability of doing that anytime [10:20:35 AM] soon. >> Kitchen: Thank you, Dr. Escott. Do you think that's something we should be working towards at some point, or as soon as we can? >> Dr. Escott: I don't know that that's the case. You know, the CDC is being quite confident in the clinical clearance process. You know, it's certainly something we can look at and discuss, but so far, it's been relatively reliable. It has been changing as the evidence has changed. But, you know, I think that it's unlikely that we're going to be in a position to be able to do that uniformly. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Can you all hear me? [10:21:35 AM] >> Now we can. >> Sorry. Anybody have anything before we go to the funding budgeting report? Okay, we'll go there. I do want to point out council member Casar joined us just as the initial presentation was actually beginning, and it was councilman Casar's birthday yesterday. But keeping in line with our virtual rules, we're not going to sing happy birthday for fear that somebody could actually pull out a single voice. Though we do wish you a happy birthday yesterday. >> Casar: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Manager, do you want to lead us off? Council Madison do you want to go? >> Harper-madison: Yes, it was about -- I've gotten a couple of concerns about medical schools sending out a call for [10:22:37 AM] volunteers for contact tracing. I think the concern is that it seems like a pretty hefty lift what they're asking from volunteers, is 24 hours a week of volunteer effort for four weeks in order to conduct the contact tracing. So I just wanted to daylight that that's a concern that's been expressed to me, that the fear is that that's not a sustainable way to conduct the tracing. >> Mayor Adler: I'll make sure that gets passed on. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: (Indiscernible). >> Now we're going to pivot to the portion of this briefing that really relates to our budgeting, and then the economic recovery. And that will be done in two portions. The first will be led by our deputy cfo Ed benino who has a few slides and he'll be joined by staff who will help [10:23:39 AM] complement the presentation, then we'll move to the director of economic development, and she will be kicking off a group that is really excited to talk to you, and that's the panel of experts that she's compiled. And that will be the second part of this. We'll wait for that entire briefing to happen, and then we'll turn back to council for questions for either Ed, and we have Ben Franco also on the phone or the economic recovery panel. With that, I'll ask Ed benino to kick us off. >> Good morning, deputy chief financial officer for the city. It looks like the tech people are bringing up the next presentation. There is a lag between, I think what's happening in the room, and what's on your screen and what I'm seeing on the live stream. So if I'm ever not speaking to the right slide on the screen, please just speak up and let me know. Let me provide you with an [10:24:39 AM] outline for staff briefings. I'm going to start off this morning with a recap of the various federal funding sources, and eligible uses for those funding sources. You've seen some of this information before, at the briefing I provided on April 7th. And the briefing that Franco provided on April 21st. We're trying to summarize everything and update information for the most recent data that we have available to us. I'll start off talking first about the city of Austin funding, and then I'll also provide a recap of resources that are available to other regional public entities. Following that, I will turn the mic over to (indiscernible) Franco to provide an update on the coronavirus resource fund that's available to the city of Austin and Travis and Williamson counties also have a share of that. We have more clear guidelines from the treasury department [10:25:40 AM] now, as Mr. Franco can speak to those. We'll be joined by Juan Ortiz to talk about the eligible expenses that can be reimbursed from FEMA, which is another major source of funding that's available to us. And then we wanted to transition into speaking about a spending framework for our coronavirus response. We would view this framework as being something that we could then use to guide future funding decisions, and heading towards a may 21st initial round of appropriations from these different funding sources in alignment with the spending framework. So we'll be looking for council's input on that framework. And then finally, as the manager mentioned, we will transition to a -- to Veronica to speak about the leadership panel, and the work that they've been doing. [10:26:41 AM] So with that intro, actually, let me say before I dive into the various funding sources, I want you to keep in mind that what I'm highlighting is funding that's available to local public entities. It's not a complete recap of all the funding that's coming through the C.A.R.E. Act. It's focused on funding that's coming into public agencies. So please keep in mind there's a lot of other funding that's available to our local community and local businesses through the C.A.R.E.S act such as the paycheck protection program, the payments to individual taxpayers, enhanced unemployment insurance benefit, nutrition assistance, and many other programs. I'm just going to focus my comments in on those public dollars. Can we go on to the next slide? All right. What we're looking at on this slide is a summary of C.A.R.E.S. [10:27:43 AM] Act funding. The largest portion emergency, such as meeting medical and public health needs. But it is also allowable to use for second-order defects and provide economic support to those who have been impacted by business or employment interruptions. And then another broad category is payroll costs of staff that have been substantially dedicated to covid-19 response. So oftentimes in disaster relief [10:28:44 AM] funding, it's only the additional cost, overtime costs that would be reimbursable that this fund could be used to offset the payroll cost of the staff that are substantially dedicated to covid-19 response. We do have some additional clarity from the treasury department of what substantially dedicated means. There are some limitations in regard to this funding source. The costs must be incurred between March 1st and December 30th, 2020. Essentially over the course of the next eight months. We have to have $170 million out the door, or we'll have to return those funds to the treasury department. Also, supplanting is not allowed of budgeted expenditures with the above exception that I talked about with regard to the payroll cost that's substantially dedicated to covid-19 response. Finally, we can't use these funds for revenue replacement. [10:29:45 AM] The next one I want to talk about are the community development block grant. We received $4.6 million additional funding from hud. This can be used for rental assistance, child care, job training and meals, economic development assistance, including grants or loans, as well as acquisition and improvement of land or buildings for affordable housing. I would mention in regard to the public services, the cbg funds generally have a 15% limit, and under the C.A.R.E.S. Act that limit has been waived. In regard to the emergency solutions grant, $2.4 million which can be used for emergency shelter operations, purchasing hand sanitizers and masks for individuals experiencing homelessness, as well as case management, including the coordination of medical care for that population. We received an additional $415,000 from our Ryan white [10:30:47 AM] grant. This funding can be used for increased clinic operating hours, increased staff costs, overtime, services that support social distancing, and things of that nature. Our housing opportunities for persons with AIDS was increased by $272,000 for health facility operations costs, with short-term hotel stays as needed to protect individuals experiencing AIDS, as well as access to food, medication and medical care. The burn jag grant is provided through the justice department. There's $885,000 that's available to the Austin police department to help with overtime costs related to crisis response, personal protective equipment, as well as law enforcement protective equipment needed to response to the crisis, and traditional training and travel expenses. This is really related to the [10:31:48 AM] distribution of resources to individuals in need. And then our airport received an airport grant of $58.7 million that has very broad eligibility of uses. It can be used for airport capital expenses, operating expenses, or debt services expenses. That's a summary of what's available to Austin. If we could go on to the next slide, please. I think I fell one behind you. So actually, we should be on slide 4 now, which is a summary of the C.A.R.E.S. Act funding available to other local agencies. At the top of the list you can see Travis county. A lot of these funding sources are the same as what I highlighted for the city of Austin, with the same purposes, uses and limitations. Travis county received $61 million for their allocation of the coronavirus relief fund, $700,000 in a cbg grant. [10:32:53 AM] Williamson county, coronavirus relief fund was $93.3 million. $938,000 of additional funds for the community development block grant program. And a $40,000 burn jag grant. Capital metro, our local transit organization received (indiscernible) Grant from the federal transit administration. These funds similar to the airport funds that are received by the city of Austin can be utilized for operations and capital expenditures of the transit system. Central health received $3.7 million for public health and emergency funds. This funding can be used for health care related expenses, or lost revenues caused by the coronavirus, and they also received additional funding for their community health centers. And then finally the people's clinic received $1 million of [10:33:53 AM] public health emergency funding, similar purpose to what the central health money can be utilized for, health care related expenses for people impacted by the covid-19 virus, or illness, as well as $79,000 for their community health centers. Finally I just wanted to close out my comments, if we could go on to the next slide, slide 5, that there are a number of additional grant funds available through the C.A.R.E.S. Act. And the various city departments are working on grant applications to tap into these funds. But the national endowments for the arts, and the national endowment for the humanities, each released a total of $75 million in addition to grant funding, that the city will be applying for a share of those grant moneys. Libraries and museums has $50 million available through the C.A.R.E.S. Act. [10:34:53 AM] Our library department is pursuing those grants. The department of commerce has $1.5 billion available through their economic development administration program. The firefighter grants is available through FEMA of $100 million. Then we also have disaster relief funds and emergency management performance grants that are available through FEMA. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to bree Franco, and if our I.T. Folks could go to slide 6 of the presentation and bree will talk to us about the coronavirus relief fund and the use of those funds. >> Mayor Adler: Is bree with us? >> The 170 -- can you hear me? >> Mayor Adler: Can you start again? >> Yes. Can you hear me now? [10:35:54 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Okay. Bree Franco, intergovernmental relations officer. I'm going to go over the coronavirus relief fund which is the guidelines we received from treasury. The coronavirus relief fund is the 170.8 million that we received directly from the treasury department. After I last presented to you on April 22nd, the next day, the treasury released its guidance on the fund. Along with a half page faq. That guidance broke down the eligible expenses -- remember, before this, all we had was the legislative language that said it had to be necessary expenses related to covid-19. The guidance broke down those expenses into five categories before you. The first three largely applied to the city, and how the city can be reimbursed for its [10:36:54 AM] expenses. It's broken them down into medical expenses, and public health expenses, which are pretty explanatory. Most of the city expenses fall under either of those two categories, particularly the public health expenses. And that goes to things that you guys are familiar with, like testing, and ppe, and anything to set up those types of services, or to maintain the spread of the virus from those departments. The third is payroll expenses, substantially dedicated to mitigating or responding to the emergency. That language was causing us some heartburn for a while. And then on Friday, the treasury department released additional guidance in their faq that now says that we may presume that the cost for public health and public safety employees are substantially -- payments for services are substantially [10:37:56 AM] dedicated. Let me say again, the treasury on Friday said we can assume payroll kocts for public health and safety employees meet these expenses. The other two categories, they can't -- category 4 can be for city expenses, but these are for expenses related to helping enforce covid health related measures. Think of this also helping to enforce our stay at home, shelter in place, protecting vulnerable communities. In the guidance, the treasury provided examples of that, such as food delivery to vulnerable residents, such as senior citizens, telehealth capabilities, the pay for family sick leave that cities were not compensated for in the legislation, and also care for homelessness population. So again, this is to help the [10:38:56 AM] community -- the city help the community respond to the measures we put in place. And then the last category is economic support for businesses. And so this is for the private sector, and the city can use the money to provide funds to the private sector that had been affected by business interruption related to covid. Again, I just will keep saying that, and I'm not saying related to covid to be overly repetitive, but just to emphasize that when we look at any relief we're providing, we have to provide that corollary relationship back to the incident of covid. And that's also provided within the dates we can use this money, and how we can use this money. So again, even on our economic support, to the business sector, this needs to be to help them get through the business interruption caused by closures, and assist with those funds. I will also tell you that even [10:39:57 AM] as of last night, that half-page guidance that treasury first issued -- I mean, the half-page faq that they issued with the guidance, that they updated on Friday, they updated it last night and it's now seven pages long. And I've done a very cursory glance, but will provide more information of that to you all. This guidance was also e-mailed to all of your offices on April 23rd, so you do have that -- you and your staff do have this in your inboxes. Of course, my office always stands by ready to assist with any questions. And now I'll pass it along to the next speaker. >> So if we could have the I.T. People move to the next slide, it will be Juan Ortiz talking about the federal emergency management agency, FEMA, and what is eligible for reimbursements through FEMA. [10:40:58 AM] >> Good morning. Can you hear me? >> Yes. >> Good morning. Once again, my name is Juan orti. Traditionally, under a disaster declaration, we have at the federal level the program is funded under the Stafford act which allows the president to designate (indiscernible) Support through their local state. This is where we normally go through after a major disaster like a hurricane or major flood, our last one was last fall -- excuse me, the fall of 2018 during the Colorado river flood, and boil water notice, this is a 75/25 cost share where the federal government basically reimburses the local community [10:41:58 AM] or the state on a 75 cents, every dollar for every disaster related expense they've acquired. The local cost share, 25%, that can either come from the local community or from the state. The majority comes from the local community. But in some situations, sometimes states provide some of that cost share. There's also other ways where that cost share can be covered is by documenting your volunteer hours, and the volunteer time can be matched to cover that 25% share. In this disaster, we specifically have what we call a category B emergency protective measure, related to the covid response, that are eligible for reimbursement. Some of these examples of eligible activities are basically anything that we're doing in the community to [10:42:58 AM] protect the community from covid response, as a protective measure, which includes costs for the operations or training or technical asis taps, anything that we're doing to protect the public, protecting public facilities, providing other methods of minimum impact to covid-19, providing testing and diagnosis as well as any purchase of food or water, ice, or medicine that can be provided as well as emergency medical treatment and transportation to covid-19 patients. These costs start from the, what we call the opening of the (indiscernible) Disaster, which on this disaster in the state of Texas goes back to January 20th of 2020. So any costs from January 20th until the disaster is closed, and at this point in time there's no closure for this [10:44:00 AM] disaster, so the eligibility would extend to a future date that has not been identified at this point by the federal emergency management agency. Additional costs that would be eligible will include also our efforts to provide security in law enforcement, as well as temporary hiring of personnel and contracts for labor support in areas where we need support, like for example, what we're doing to support the protective lodges, to provide temporary nursing or other efforts of such where we're hiring temporary labor. Right now we're working with all the different departments to ensure that we're documenting all those costs, and we begin to outline and begin to organize what areas we are going to be asking for reimbursement. And we have brought in a consultant onboard to help us organize those efforts, and working with those departments [10:45:00 AM] to make sure we're ready. At a certain point in time in the disaster recovery process, we'll have more specific meetings with the state and FEMA to start submitting those documentations and identify what we call a project work sheet to submit those documented expenses. That's the -- that will be the end of my slide. >> Mayor and council, this is Ed back, if we could move to the next slide, I'll start going into the spending framework for our coronavirus response. This is a very complicated funding situation, much more so than a typical disaster such as floods or hurricanes in the sense that there are just so many funding sources available. And so many of the uses of those funding sources overlap. [10:46:01 AM] I can think of at least a dozen sources of funding that are available to the city for the purchase of personal protective equipment. Maximizing our use of these funds -- back on slide 8 -- will really take a lot of thoughtfulness and strategic thinking. We have organized the coronavirus response spending framework into three broad categories. And I would ask you to think of this as -- kind of think of our department program structure for the city budget. We have a fire department, and within the fire department we have combat operation, they have wildfire mitigation as programs. This will be the structure, this spending framework we're about to present will serve as the structure for the allocation of available resources. And we are targeting may 21st [10:47:04 AM] council meeting for an initial recommendation to council on funding amounts for the different components of this structure. And so even though we're more than two weeks away from that date, I think it's important that we think about this in terms of maintaining flexibility, so that we have the room to maneuver and adjust and respond to the evolving conditions of this crisis. As I mentioned at the beginning, three components of this framework, one related to emergency response, expenditures that the city is incurring and trying to recover those costs, Juan Ortiz is going to come back and walk us through that. The second broad category is meeting the medical and public health needs associated with the crisis. Stephanie Hayden will be on the line to talk through that section of the framework. And then finally, economic recovery and support, Veronica will come and talk us through [10:48:04 AM] that slide. And then we're going to be looking for council, once we're done with the staff presentation, once we're done hearing from the economic recovery leadership panel, we're certainly going to be looking for council to provide input into this framework to let us know if you feel there's any spending categories that we've missed, and need to be addressed before we start coming up with a spending plan for these dollars. So with that introduction, I'm going to turn it back to Juan. If we could go to the next slide, Juan will talk to us about our emergency response portion of the framework. >> Mayor, can I ask a very quick question? >> Mayor Adler: I think we're trying to get everybody -- let's let Juan speak and then we'll get to questions. >> I couldn't hear his second category. >> Mayor Adler: Ed, do you want to repeat the three categories? >> Yes, mayor, I can do that. [10:49:06 AM] The three broad categories, keep in mind, there's many subcategories within each of these areas, but the three broad categories are the emergency response, medical and public health needs, and economic support. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Juan? >> And we are on slide 9. >> Okay. On slide 9, the emergency response categories, there's lots of things that we're doing that we need to make sure we're documenting specifically in support of the emergency -- excuse me, protective measures. These are activities that we were doing as we were looking at the enforcement of the mass gatherings restrictions that were put in place. And so event management, what we were doing to support activities out in the field, to ensure that people were adhering to the [10:50:07 AM] orders that were issued by both the mayor and the judge, as well as food being provided to support emergency activities, any training that was conducted with our personnel to ensure that we were up to speed with the latest protective measures from covid-19, or any other additional training that was provided, especially in the emergency operations center, as we implemented new systems to ensure that we were able to manage these types of activities. There's lots of different examples of transportation costs that were being provided, both at being able to transport equipment, resources, personnel, some of our different clients or guests that we are taking care of at the isolation facilities, or pro lodge, also examples of the -- some of the activities that we're able to categorize for the emergency response. In some areas we're also [10:51:09 AM] incurring some overtime where we have to have people come in and work extra hours. So that overtime is eligible for reimbursement, as well as in situations where we have to backfill, that we have to backfill a situation, a position with somebody else, and that incurs overtime, depending on the category of the employee, some -- the regular hours or overtime hours, all those are eligible for reimbursement. So we have to work through and document who was actually backfilling. If we had to hire a contract person to come in and fill a position, because they were backfilling for somebody else, then 100% of that cost would be something that would be eligible for reimbursement. Another area is the payroll expenses for certain staff that we incur as a response to the covid-19, as well as the need to [10:52:13 AM] contract for storage in support of different activities. That could be either at the facilities that we contracted at the different hotels, or expenses that may be incurred in other storage facilities as we are identifying places where storing personal protective equipment or other supplies that we have to receive. One of the other areas that's also in this category is what we're doing to educate the public with the -- what to do in response to the covid response. Our public information efforts, our language access contracts that we had to put in place to make sure that the information was accessible to everybody in the community, all of these types of activities are something that we're categorizing in the emergency response, and we continue to have expenses in those areas as we continue to make sure that we [10:53:14 AM] are current with what the orders and the recommendations to the public, to ensure that we are doing what we can to protect ourselves from covid. So these are all the types of examples of emergency response categories that we've identified, and there may be some additional ones as we move forward. Ed? >> Thanks, Juan. We're just going to move on to the next slide, and Stephanie Hayden will talk to us about the medical and public health needs. >> Good morning. Thank you, Ed. What we know is we must continue to test, trace and track. As you heard from Dr. Escott earlier today, we must increase our testing efforts to 2,000 per day. We have to ensure our ability to increase our case investigations, our contact [10:54:16 AM] tracing, and active monitoring. We must protect our vulnerable population, seniors, homeless, people with disabilities, just to name a few. We know it's very important that we have -- we must educate and inform the public to be able to mitigate and slow the spread of covid-19. Through our recovery effort, it is very important for us to start to think about our sheltering operations, and ensure people have the basic things that they need. Our use of telehealth, for example our tb clinic as well as our nursing virtual visits with visitors, as well as our maternal infant outreach program. It is very important for us to always, always think about our [10:55:19 AM] education that we are providing our community, and look at how we are doing our outreach to our community. And ultimately, ensuring our work is done with an equity lens. As you can see from the slide, we have an array of things that we know fall under the medical and public health needs. So that concludes my part of the presentation. >> All right. If we could have the I.T. People go to the next slide, and Veronica will talk to us about the economic support category of our spending framework, and then immediately transition into a discussion of economic recovery leadership panel. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Can you hear me? >> We can hear you. >> Great. Thank you. So I'm happy to be here with you [10:56:19 AM] today to talk a little bit about the spending framework in regards to economic recovery. As you're aware, our creative and business community has been hit hard in this time, and there are some opportunities within the framework that we have to provide some relief. So on the slide, you see we've included several bullets where we can provide assistance. I want to highlight some of the main areas. The first bullet is business assistance, where we see this in numerous ways throughout the slide, looking at our traditional loans and grants. I would like to highlight that this funding does allow for grants, which is a huge benefit. Because we know that our businesses are -- several of our businesses are in a situation where they can't -- they don't know that they're going to have the ability to pay back a loan. So a grant is a great resource for our local business community. Child care assistance, providing assistance to individuals as [10:57:20 AM] they are required to go back to work, and needing to provide child care. But also providing assistance to our child care centers. We recognize that a center tries to open up, they're going to need financial assistance to put proper precautions in place, make sure that they're providing social distancing and so forth. Cultural arts and music assistance, particularly in Austin, because of our vibrant, creative economy, are cognizant of this. So we're able to provide some resources through this funding in that regard as well. So looking at, again, the potential grants through this, and loans, potentially looking at how we can assist in this industry, in making sure that as we come back online, we're providing the appropriate health protections as well. Counseling services, we know that there is a huge concern for [10:58:21 AM] individuals that are in a position of potentially being evicted. So there is funding included for counseling services as well. Food assistance, the need to help those in need of food, have access to that important resource. Nonprofit assistance. So, another need in our community, and that is an opportunity within these funds is assistance for nonprofits. The nonprofit ecosystem in the city of Austin is huge, and they employ several austinites. So we'll look to opportunities to provide that assistance as well. I'll skip down to rental assistance. Through this we'll be able to provide rental assistance. You are aware that the housing department just released a new program this week. They're already seeing -- they're seeing that demand quite high and they knew that it was going to be that case. This is a way for us to [10:59:21 AM] identify what that demand is. So we will look to opportunities to provide additional rental assistance in that regard. And finally utility assistance, another key part of keeping our individuals and our households with the utilities they need, particularly in a time where they may be at home more and in need of assistance. So those are the main areas that the coronavirus funds would allow for us to provide some economic support. We're exploring all of these as through our recovery effort and to anticipate what programs back to you more that will reflect the supports. I'm going to go ahead and transition into our economic recovery leadership panel so if I could ask our tech support to move us to the next slide, it the final slide, slide 13 of this presentation. We've we've communicated in work sessions past and you [11:00:23 AM] received a memo last night about our city of Austin economic recovery expert leadership panel. This panel has been convened for a few weeks now and we have been meeting to discuss this approach of recovery. They are providing us some guidance and leadership on how we look at recovery in the city and what principles do we want to put in place, what programs should we prioritize and so forth as we pivot into this time of recovery. I'm going to say their names and we have several of them on the call with us today, but I wanted to make sure that we acknowledge all of the members. I'm truly appreciative for their brain power coming behind this effort and really giving us some guidance of the city. So we have age loss age loss, John hockenyos, Rick Perryman, (saying name), mark sprage, Daniel Wright. [11:01:24 AM] On the phone we have with us everybody with the exception of Victoria and with mark Sprague. He joined us earlier but he had an internet outage in his earlier and was not able to continue on with our call. But the rest are here and once I walk through this last slide I'm going to open it up for questions for all the speakers that you've heard so far, but also for questions with our leadership panel since we have the benefit of having them present with us today. So I just wanted to summarize some of the discussion that we have heard in their discussion, in their deliberation. I wanted to break it down into two areas that they have really been focusing on. The discussion has focused on employee's health, first of all, there's an acknowledgment that as we're looking at reviving our economy and bringing our businesses back online, we have to keep employers health as a top priority. So some of the discussions have revolved around these initiatives to keep both employees and the public [11:02:25 AM] safe. To look at ramping up contact tracing. To look at Vatican City some more opportunities for covid- 19 testing. To make sure that we're providing ppe as people return to work. And to provide guidance tonesses on how to protect their employees -- to businesses on how to protect their employees. That's some of the guidance where they have focused heir conversation and the other category of interest in employment security is looking at workforce development that allows for employees to invest in capital for business adaptation so employees can keep their jobs. Provide training to work from home, connecting employers to safety equipment for their employees, and providing guidance on how to open without risking employee and customer health. Those are the main areas of discussion where this panel has been in the past couple [11:03:25 AM] of weeks. But I also wanted to acknowledge that we're -- the two themes that we're seeing throughout all of our discussion not only with the panel, but with our recovery efforts at the city is the need to lead with equity. There has been a lot of discussions about how we're looking at recovery. How several areas are impacting our residents of color in a more significant way, both in in the health perspective, but also in the perspective of the wages that are earned and the unemployment and so forth. And then there's an interest and a desire to drive with data. So we're having conversations about how we can work with our university of Texas in tracking some of the data. Three of our panel members are professors at UT and they have some ideas on how we can really make sure that we're getting the data that we need to have a better understanding of the need in our community. [11:04:29 AM] But also how it impacts or community geographically and how it can be equitable and prioritized as the area where we need to provide those solutions. So that concludes my presentation. With that I would open it up to questions of any of the speakers that we've had so far as well as our panelists that are with us on the phone. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. And thank you to everybody who participated in that presentation. I'll start off with some quick questions. The FEMA money that we get, is that outside of the 170-million- dollar coronavirus funding and is there any limit to the FEMA money we can pull down? >> That is outside, sir, and there is -- as long as it's a disaster related expense that's not reimbursed by insurance, but it is [11:05:29 AM] reimbursed at 75%. So there's still 25% local cost share. And there may be specific -- other requirements that need to be documented to make sure it's an eligible expense. >> Mayor Adler: I don't know if we're able to use the coronavirus money we have to help with our 25% or not, but it may be a way to leverage that. We know that Los Angeles is using the FEMA money to provide testing to anybody in their community asymptomatic or otherwise that would like to get a test. But it sounds like they are pulling down a huge amount of FEMA dollars that I think has been reapproved. I hope we're taking a look at that. I have a question about the faq that came out from the treasury department. There was the one paragraph that came out on Friday. Did you say, bree, there were seven pages expanding on that one paragraph that [11:06:29 AM] just came out today? >> Yes. Today there were seven additional pages on additional items and answering questions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Did the additional pages today speak to that paragraph about the flexibility of the coronavirus funding for cities? >> That paragraph remained the same, mayor. >> Okay. >> I also can speak to your FEMA session just a little bit to provide some guidance. >> Okay. >> This question was asked in treasury about the 25%, and they have in a phone call -- in a phone call and they said they have not opined on that yet. I think they're trying to decide if they feel like locals should make that match because we've always made that match, but I also say what's difficult is FEMA reimbursement lags by years, and we have to spend this money by December 30th either way. [11:07:35 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Got it. That's important. With respect to the one paragraph that came out last week it reads to me very broadly and looks to me if we put the money towards public safety salaries which exceed the total amount of our coronavirus funding that we might be freeing up other dollars that we might spend for things. Is that actually that we just spend 170 on public safety salaries. >> Mayor, I read the language that broad prosecutely too and -- that broadly too and in addition there's. >> The treasury secretary did a town hall with trump on Friday where he basically reinforced that that reading of that language is as broad as we're taking it and was designed to make sure that first responders don't suffer any revenue issues due to this -- not revenue issues. Funding issues due to this. [11:08:35 AM] So it does read that broadly. >> Mayor Adler: And that would certainly be reasonable and appropriate given the impact on revenues that cities are suffering because of what's happening and certainly our revenue in this city goes to a large extent towards public safety. I really appreciate what staff is doing to help us come up with a budget. I hope that there's something coming back, manager, to us on the 21st similar to how you came up with a budget if the city under your charter obligations that has the staff's best thinking on how we should spend money what is our burn rate right now in terms of what Juan and others -- we see the dollars that as a council we've been directing to help with some quick emergency needs. Do we have a feel for how much we've spent so far of that coronavirus funding for [11:09:38 AM] the emergency operation command, for testing, tracing, for all the other things that we're doing? >> Mayor, we're now where slightly over 17 million. >> Mayor Adler: 17 million in the first six weeks. Is it appropriate to -- I'm trying to figure out what your estimate is that we're going to need. Do you have one yet of how much you anticipate spending over the next three, four, five months? I guess it all depends to a degree on what happens with this toe dip that the governor is doing. >> Mayor and council, obviously those are variables, but that's our goal is to come back on the 21st with some of those estimates and so we can have an accurate discussion around what we currently know at that point in time. >> Mayor Adler: And the $17 million that we've spent thus far on this operation I think there's a parallel expense that Travis county is also paying out of their [11:10:38 AM] dollars for their share of this combined effort, is that correct? >> Correct. And that's separate from what the county has spent. And it was just updated, it's actually $22 million that we have documented up to date and there's more additional costs that just have not been -- that are still coming that we expect that number to increase by this Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. All right, colleagues, I'll pass the floor over. Councilmember Flannigan. >> Thanks, mayor, just a couple of quick ones. On one of the first slides, Ed, you talked about the monies that went to counties. Do you know in terms of how the formulas worked if Williamson county's portion included city of Austin or not? Since our part of wilco is -- they don't have any cities if I'm correct that have individual funding in [11:11:39 AM] wilco because we had to have a 500k population. But did the formulas include the Austin part of wilco or not in that bucket of funds. >> Side I'd have to check with wilco to be sure of this, but my understanding of how the formulas work is cities with populations above 500,000 that receive their own allocation or backed out of the county populations as part of the calculations for what the county would receive. And I think that's why you see Travis county seeing a smaller dollar amount for the relief fund than what Williamson county received because the city of Austin's population is backed out from their population count as the funding was being allocated. We could follow up with Williamson county to get more information about exactly how their amount was calculated and if it was just a portion of the city of Austin's population that was backed out or all of it. I don't have that exact detail. [11:12:40 AM] >> Flannigan: Thank you. I would appreciate that work. I think the math isn't always perfect at the federal level and certainly as we move quickly that becomes more likely. One thing to note on the other slide about Eda grants and this is for my colleagues. I've been working on the Eda stuff through my role on capcog and we're still waiting for the rules on Eda funds. The last I heard it was maybe a week or two away. Veronica, do you know if there's an update on when those Eda rules may come out? >> Councilmember, you're correct. Actually, I've heard it may be more like two or three weeks, but we're keeping an eye and working closely with the regional office to see when those rules are released. >> Flannigan: We're in the middle of the five-year Eda plan on the capcog board and we're trying to incorporate capcog staff into that [11:13:41 AM] analysis. Hopefully we can advantage our whole region in those funds. I'm also interesting in seeing a layout of the larger strategy for 170 million, but also at the same time I think we've been clear that we want to get help into the community as quickly as we can. So being able to highlight or rapid proceed tow type these types of programs with a smaller portion of those funds may seem to be the right move while we figure out the strategy for the whole thing. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I have two basic questions. One of them is -- first off let me say thank you to the staff for laying this out. It's very helpful. I have a question about the scope of what we will be seeing on the 21st. I have been -- in suggesting [11:14:42 AM] that the resolution that my co-sponsors and I filed for everyone's consideration and to add to, speaks some to the scope and I'm trying to see if we're on the same page with you, city manager, and with Ed on what that scope is. So what we're talking about in the resolution is a scope that comes back in the spending framework that you said, but also that gives us a comprehensive look with dollars or perhaps percentages of all of our available funding. We know there has to be contingencies and we know we don't have all the dollar amounts yet, but we do know we're getting started on quite a few things. Many ever of our colleagues, everybody I would say, has been putting forward resolutions for different very important needs and we've passed some of them and we'll pass more on [11:15:43 AM] Thursday. So my thought is that what will be coming back to us on the 21st will reflect everything that we have passed so far in terms of buckets of funding. That it would include the whole universe of funds that are available and then it will give us an idea of the dollars by bucket and perhaps the percentage by bucket. So I want to make sure that I'm -- that's what I've been thinking of and is that what you're thinking of, city manager, when we talk about what's coming back to us with dollars by bucket on the 21st? >> At a high level, councilmember, that is. I think that's our goal to have that type of discussion on the 21st. Obviously there's going to be a lot of assumptions made and contingencies that we're going to plan for and maybe different scenarios that we'll different. But the framework you see [11:16:44 AM] today will guide that discussion. The one additional I don't know if it's caveat, but we do hope that we'll have these next two weeks to have those conversations so we can agree that we don't see any additional programs or additional discussions coming from items from council that would at least help us continue to put that framework in the appropriate buckets. But to answer your question at a high level that is our intention. I don't know if Ed wants to say anything more to that. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> I've only had our planning, we're looking to align the expenditures that have already been approved by accountant, the $50 million for the rise program and the million and a half dollars of funding for the music disaster relief fund, the bridge loans and the additional items that are in this week's agenda. We'll be looking to match those up to this spending framework and the funding amounts, the initial funding amounts that we've been [11:17:44 AM] looking to get council support for on the 21st. Just as the city manager has mentioned, I really do think we have to express the importance for flexibility because we're not going to have all the answers by the 21st. We're going to be as strategic as possible with the uses of those funds. We're going to need to have some flexibility. As I mentioned, there's at least half a dozen different sources of funding for personal protective equipment so we need make sure we have the ability to put the dollars for that particular fund where we have perhaps the greatest restrictions and then leave less restrictive funds for other purposes and that's going to be a work in progress. >> Kitchen: Okay. I think that answers my question there. I think the other important aspect of it that I think you spoke to, city manager, is that this is comprehensive in nature. In other words, one of the things we're trying to do is get an overall idea of both what we've committed to date and identified to date as [11:18:45 AM] well as our projected needs so that we're working from the perspective of an overall view of what our budget might be. So I think I'm hearing you say that. Is that right? , City manager? >> That's correct. And again one final thing and a nod to the work of the expert panel that Veronica has assembled. It will be seen through that lens. They gave us some feedback and we continue to get additional guidance on how we should be looking at that. So we'll be using that framework as well to guide those discussions. >> Kitchen: Okay. And the last question I have -- actually, it's just a comment. I have two -- I have a comment about the buckets, the spending framework buckets, the three major buckets. Those make sense to me with one question and one caveat. I am concerned that the vulnerable populations is a [11:19:47 AM] subbullet with so many other subbullets under medical and public health needs. I had been thinking more in terms of four buckets so that you pulled out the needs of the vulnerable populations. So that's one thing. And the second thing is the economic support and recovery, if I heard that right I wasn't sure if you all were characterizing it as economic support and recovery. I think that's important because I think it's really important that we identify,, you know, programs in funding, etcetera, related to resiliency because we've been talking in terms of coming out of this better and better able as a community and also in terms of considering future waves. So I heard different things. I heard it called economic support sometimes and called it economic recovery. [11:20:49 AM] This is a question. Is this bucket designed to include those kinds of programs that will make us stronger into the future? >> This is Ed van eenoo. I think it does include those types of programs. I would just say that the wording we use for the broad buckets we selected because it aligns exactly with the wording from the coronavirus relief fund treasury guidelines. So we were trying to match this up as closely as possible since that's the largest bucket of funding, we were trying to use similar language. And the term economic support is what they referred to it as. >> >> Kitchen: Okay. I just want to be clear that -- I think I heard you say yes, but in our mind that includes the recovery and resiliency types of activities, right? >> Yes, to the extent they're eligible for the use of the coronavirus relief [11:21:50 AM] fund and some of our other funding is certainly going to be an area that we want to address. >> If I could expand upon that. I agree with what Ed said and this is one piece of how we're looking at recovery, so when we're looking at our existing programs, our existing budget, we're looking at how can we best support both economic support and economic recovery. And honestly this is going to be a phased approach. We have the immediate need to stabilize our economic community and then get to that more midpoint of stability and then long-term of recovery. I completely agree but there's certainly a need for economic resiliency in our community and we'll be looking to the solutions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you. Just to follow-up on something that councilmember kitchen said, as we -- as [11:22:50 AM] the manager brings back that plan, I want to underscore what I think I heard her saying. You know, as I looked through each of these sections it looks as if each of these sections really has opportunities to invest in more long-term solutions from shelters and quarantine facilities to the extent that we can really invest in pro lodges now that could provide longer term permanent supportive housing? I think that's -- I hope our staff are kind of approaching each one of these possible expenditures or expenditures with an eye toward how those could become part of a permanent strategy so that we're not entering into leases with hotels that we know are not going to be interested in selling, but that we're really looking at hotels and motels that offer the [11:23:52 AM] opportunity potentially for long-term purchase. And I guess I would apply that to other areas for well, food access and food assistance obviously is critical right now. What are some of those sustainable long- term solutions that we could also be investing in, like community gardens and allowing partnerships on city owned land for those? I think we all got an email about that yesterday, but that's something that's bubbled up a little bit here and there, in addition to providing that critical immediate food assistance, how can the plan that you bring back also embed within it those longer term permanent solutions that will help us build the resiliency for the future? So those are just a couple of ideas. I did have a quick question about storage and what that means on 11. I think I'm not clear enough on, say, storage and public [11:24:52 AM] information access as they're noted on page 11 to know whether those two are examples where we could be investing in longer term solutions if the storage is along the lines of what we've identified as a need in this community for awhile for individuals experiencing homelessness, for example, then I think that's another opportunity. And then language owe language access, that too is something else that we've had lots of conversations and lots of stakeholder input about and I understand the need for immediate language assistance, but are there some more sustainable solutions we could put in place now with those dollars? So again, just the approach I hope that we're taking toward all of these expenses. When that framework comes back we hope to have other information about the other grant lines at the federal level that we're applying for, the Eda, imla, nea, [11:25:52 AM] neh, so we can all be mindful of whether the resources -- of what those other existing programs are. Obviously I think we should always try to use -- try to use those more specific grant lines for more specific requests so that we can use this more general money for the really extensive general needs and that will help us understand whether that balance -- whether we're striking the right balance with the city of going with those targeted grants or targeted projects rather than funding the targeted projects through more general funding. Then a technical question I think it was early on in the slide. On page two I think this is a question for Ed. So there are certain needs that can be funded through the community development block grant. Can we fund some of those same named needs through the [11:26:53 AM] coronavirus relief fund? For example, if we wanted to spend more money on emergency rental assistance, could we do so under the coronavirus relief fund rather than under our community development block grant? I think the answer is yes, but I wanted to verify that. >> Councilmember tovo, this is bree. >> Go ahead, Ed. >> No, bree, you take it. >> Thank you. You can use the coronavirus relief fund to supplement funding. But not in place of funding, if that makes sense. >> Tovo: That makes sense, but it's not exactly the question I was asking. I guess what I was wondering is if we wanted to spend more than 1.6 million on the things named in the community development block grant eligibility, could we tap into the coronavirus relief fund for some of that additional money? Again, I think the answer is yes if we wanted to spend 15 million on rental [11:27:54 AM] assistance we could take it out of the coronavirus relief fund rather than use our community development block grant, right? >> So the answer is yes. And to the extent that you also plaque sure it's targeted towards people impacted by covid-19. >> Tovo: Absolutely. Got it. Thank you. And just one other example and I don't mean to belabor this point but I think it's important as we make our investments and how we make investments that deal with the emergency situation that are going to be longer term solutions, something as sanitation I see on one of the lists to the extent that we can invest in more permanent restroom facilities, for example, rather than just relying on temperature ones, I think that's another example of wherein vesting out front or soon in those longer term [11:28:57 AM] solutions might help us get really leverage of our dollars. So thank you again for all the work, all of you on the call. >> Flannigan: Mayor, before you call the next -- >> Mayor, before you call the next councilmember, we have this expert panel and I know some have to leave in a few minutes so if you can prioritize some questions for that expert panel, they've been instrumental in helping us get through this. >> Mayor Adler: Let's do that then. Let's start with questions that relate to the very last part of the presentation and then we'll double back. Councilmember pool. And then councilmember Flannigan and then councilmember alter. Leslie, you're muted. Do you have a question to the last part? We can't hear you. We'll come back to you. [11:29:57 AM] Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I'm interested in the challenges that I'm hearing from landlords versus rental assistance and this kind of financial system food chain that's being disrupted. We've done -- started some initial programs for rental assistance, but I'm also hearing from an austinite who owns two or three rental properties in their own neighborhood, like my landlord does. And trying to figure out what the banking system is up to in terms of making sure that landlords have that same level of permission, we're asking landlords to have with their tenants. What are you all seeing in terms of the economic system around this question? And how can we be sure that we're not putting money down a rabbit hole that just ends up at bank of America or Wells Fargo? >> This is John hockenyos. Can I answer that? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. [11:30:57 AM] >> So councilmember Flannigan, one of the interesting things we are seeing is that most banks, whether they're big national banks or more regional and local, have made what amounts to a policy decision to give most of their borrowers about three months of payment relief. Take the next two or three months off, don't worry about it, everything is fine. Well, that has made it very easy for landlords who have debt to also mirror that and to say okay, fine, since I don't have to pay the debt service on the property I own, I'm going to give my tenants some relief. And that's particularly true in commercial situations. And so where that's going to come to a head is probably in about July, around the first of July where the banks are like okay, now it's time to start paying because you've got a loan obligation on this property, and that means that the landlord may very well then come back and say to their commercial tenant, okay, have you to start paying. [11:31:58 AM] And that's where it's going to get interesting because many commercial tenants are going to say look, my business isn't back to 100% of where it was before the pandemic hit. I can't make my loan payment or my rent payment, or at least not on the level that my lease calls for and that may be the point where we start to see some tension around all this. >> Flannigan: That might might be right at the time that we're looking at a second spike. >> Yep. >> Flannigan: That's something that I saw a lot of concern about. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember pool? Anything for our expert panel? Leslie, still can't hear you. We'll come back. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate councilmember [11:32:58 AM] Flannigan's question on the landlords and I hope that we can think that whole chain through even further. My question for the panel relates to some of the comments that previous colleagues have made about the desire to make investments that improve our resilience and increase sort of the sustainability of the investment because this may be over a longer period and there is an opportunity to come out stronger this some way that we have started. It has laid bare a lot of challenges in our city, but I'm not necessarily seeing in the categories that were presented for spending nor in conceptual uses [background noise] That does that. I want to ask this may be the next stage, it may be more of the we did our immediate, now we're doing this sort of, okay, when you [11:33:59 AM] actually open doors, but how should we be thinking about those kind of investments and resilience that have more of a long-term impact. >> I'll take a shot at that one, I guess, if that's okay. One thing that I think is very important and I think our group is going to be done is in [indiscernible] Is the fact that it does need to be [indiscernible]. Part of what you need to be doing is to emphasize equity that is going to contribute to the sustainability. [Indiscernible]. I think the other thing that does is I've been trying to look beyond the immediate separation. I know that has to be our focus right now and most of the concentration, but as I look beyond that it is what are companies going to be looking for to make an investment in people, what types of community? They're going to be looking [11:34:59 AM] at equity, issues like sustainability and safety nets and [indiscernible] And those kinds of things much more than they did in the past. And [indiscernible]. It's really been I think a very productive discussion discussion -- >> Mayor Adler: Excuse me for a second. Can you all understand? I don't know if you're on speakerphone. You're coming over to us a little bit garbled. >> I apologize. I'm actually on my computer. I don't know -- >> Mayor Adler: Now you sound good. Now you sound good. >> Okay. I leaned forward a little bit. Maybe that's the trick. Okay. I was just saying that it's good that you are looking at it and trying to think about the sustainability issues because I think as I try to think through what happens after this, and moving forward, even things like the equity, the equity in recovery, is a part of sustainability because you're taking care of the [11:36:00 AM] global population. Once we start to come out of this, and I know your immediate focus has to be on other things, but as we start to come out of this, I think the global investment community, the global business community will be [indiscernible] Differently. I think that sustainability and safety nets and quality health care systems and those kinds of things will get a lot more attention than they used to. And I think Austin is in an ideal situation to be at the forefront of some of that and I think it is important that as you're talking about [indiscernible], you are indeed focusing on the sustainability. I know you have to provide a long-term future. At some point we are going to get a vaccine, we will come to a new normal, but I think one aspect of that new normal is something that if you think about it now and start [indiscernible] John and anglo and aerials and everyone on the group has been focusing on this and I think as you move forward in this way I think that's something that can be very [11:37:00 AM] productive. >> And this is Eric. Can I piggyback off of that? >> Mayor Adler: Yes, go ahead. >> So I think, you know, Dr. Escott said it best and clearly earlier when he said the people getting sick are the people who are working. And my firm belief is that they are not unaware of the risk and they are not unaware of what you need to do to socially distance, so on and so forth, but they are disciplined by the fact that if they do not go to work that they will not have a job and they're not going to be a guarantee of their retiring. And on top of that some of them are not eligible for unemployment for a variety of reasons. And when we think about the construction industry, it's clear, the data is clear that these are the decisions that people are [11:38:14 AM] how are we addressing that cation that they're making in heir -- that calculation in their head where they know the risk, but there's no protection for them economically should they not go to work? And the question I think we should work on is can some of the cares funding be directed towards providing them more protections so that they make the right decision that allows them to protect their safety, their family's safety, the safety of the public, and at the same time not have to make the false choice between that and economic security. So that's kind of where I think we should be focusing our energies. What part of this funding can be used to take away some of the dilemma that these workers face and of course as others have pointed out the racial disparities in terms of who has to make that decision is clear with the vast majority of them being Latino low [11:39:15 AM] income workers. The last thing I'll say is have family members in new York who are frontline workers. My family runs an er in queens and he was infected. He recovered. He got back in the er. And upon his return he had these workers at krispy kreme donuts offering free donuts to the hospital workers and a lot of free food for hospital workers, and in his mind all he could think of was you young people should be home. Most of them black and Latino, low income workers. You shouldn't really be out here making free donuts for health care workers. We're spending all this money trying to get people well but we're also extending the problem by not protecting these low income workers and giving them options to be able to lose economic security. So I think that's what we as a panel mean when we talk about equity to kind of drill it down a bit more. How can we again use some of [11:40:17 AM] these resources towards ensuring that these people are not given this choice between their health and their economic livelihoods. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mayor pro tem. >> I wasn't sure where to plug in consideration of the rise fund and I think what the -- the gentleman previously just said is exactly was the motivation behind rise, and not having people make that choice. I know in our economic -- I forget which cabinet. I'm on the main one and the subpanel. And we've talked about the numbers where we can see specifically about what the number is of those families who -- the different ways to look at the statistics on people who have less than 30 [11:41:17 AM] days of saving, pay to check to paycheck kind of situation that a lot of our minority families are in. And so I don't really have a question. I just want to make sure that -- I feel like this is an important part of the discussion that we're thinking about. The need is obviously there, it's what the rise fund was specifically set up to do and why do they always -- she has been in the room the entire time and I start talking and -- [indiscernible]. Was specifically set up for that reason. So I know there was one organization -- I want to understand that may 21st may 21st -- I guess that is a question. May 21st there's going to be a presentation on the specific allocations. Is that what I'm hearing? >> I'll have Ed jump in as well, but the broad [11:42:18 AM] categories, the larger categories and then the subbullets under that we would be taking that to the next level. And to the extent that we can put some estimates for both what we have spent in those categories and then what we project to spend. And then have a conversation around what are the different scenarios that we might play out to have that be the budget for our covid response. So currently the answer is yes. >> Garza: Okay. So the discussion we've had a little previously about testing and where the fund is going and what the allocation is, is kind of along the lines that the supply chain, so to speak, that Jimmy referred to specifically to rented and -- to rent and tenants, if we are going to be allocating additional funding for more testing, I think I heard this, but I just want to make sure that that is prioritized for the [11:43:20 AM] industries that are having to work right now. So I know, for example, obviously like nursing homes and anywhere with vulnerable populations if there's additional testing that would just give families piece of mind if they can get even regular testing, you know, every two weeks, whatever, once a month, to get regular. And that also applies to, you know, I'm hearing from other mothers of young children the constant confusion on whether the current orders still only allows childcare to be for essential workers, and if not how we would give mothers peace of mind in trying to keep our sanity and maybe even getting part time -- being able to send our children part time. But there's been a discussion around, you know, can those centers get recurrent testing at those centers so parents have piece of peace of mind if they're going to send their children [11:44:22 AM] to childcare on a part-time basis or whatever and then also requirements around, you know, the workers wearing masks and -- I know we're not supposed to force at this point because of the governor. But I just wanted to make sure we're thinking about all that, the increase for rises there, and I'll check with Stephanie later, director Hayden, about -- to understand, you know, to get an update on rise. Because it's my understanding one of the nonprofits was able to get that funding out really quick. And I heard the need to spend this money (indiscernible) Specifically responding to covid. If we need a place to quickly get help to folks, there's an opportunity there. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else for the expert panel? It's 11:45. Before we let those folks go. [11:45:23 AM] Okay. We're going to let those folks go. But I do want to thank you for what you guys are doing to help to assist us. It's going to be critical obviously for the city to make sure that we come out of this strong and we've leveraged our dollars to do that. And you guys bring special expertise, and we appreciate that. Colleagues, it's 11:45. Council member pool? >> Pool: All right. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Pool: Can you hear me this time? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Pool: I've done away with the ear buds and headphones. Just a reiteration, bree and Ed, flma, additional pay that the council approved, I think I was a co-sponsor on it, this additional pay for family and medical (indiscernible) Can be reimbursed (indiscernible), is that correct? Is that about a $2 million [11:46:24 AM] (indiscernible)? >> Feel free to chime in. But my understanding is that the additional pay to fund pay at 100% as opposed to the 66%. That additional pay would not be allowable. >> Pool: I'm sorry, do you have a back of the envelope estimate of what that is, that we receive back, reimbursement? I mean, it's not a reimbursement, it's being paid instead of our source is different. And while you're thinking about that, maybe it's not the best question in the world, I don't know. It sounds like we can cover public health and public safety payroll at 100. They are 100% occupied with the covid response. Am I right? I think I heard bree talking about that. >> This is Ed again. [11:47:24 AM] That is our understanding of the treasury guidelines. We're continuing to have conversations with other budget and intergovernmental relations people across the country on that topic, because it's caught us all a bit offguard. That's our understanding of it and it would extend us additional flexibility. >> Pool: That was really great news. I'm glad they gave us those seven additional pages. Thank you so much. And thank you, everybody, for all your hard work. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, 11:45. Anything else? Any other questions on this? I'm thinking 11:45, what we would like to do is see if we end the questions on this, and continue, break for lunch and then come back and do the six pulled items. Council member alter? >> Alter: Thank you. I had a question, I don't know if this is for bree. I understand that our schools are getting support for providing food to students, but [11:48:28 AM] what other kind of support are our schools getting, and is there going to be a gap there that we may be called upon to help with at some point? Or is that coming from the state? What's happening with our schools in terms of additional funding to help them? I mean, most other units of government are getting some assistance, but I'm not sure what schools are getting. >> Mayor Adler: Who is it that should speak to this? >> This is Ed. I can't speak to it, because I don't have an answer, but I can commit to reach out to Austin independent school district or financial staff and find out what federal assistance they're receiving. I don't know of any at this time, I just can't say for sure [11:49:29 AM] they're not receiving any. >> Alter: I appreciate council member tovo's distribution systems that our school districts have already set up. But also employees. Some of our restaurant workers. I think that's a great way, and to the extent we can find examples that fund multiples, I appreciate it. The other question I had was in terms of expenses. Did we incur costs for moving to telework? And where does sort of just the cost of moving our own work force into this new setup, and things that we are incurring to continue operations that are different than what we originally budgeted for, where does that fall into these categories? >> This is Ed bambino again. We have incurred costs to teleworking, and that will be eligible for the coronavirus [11:50:30 AM] relief fund and maybe if Juan is still on the line, I believe it might also be eligible for FEMA funds. Yes, sir? >> Yeah, that is correct. Some of that will fall in the category of protective measures to protect the critical infrastructure and making sure that we're still able to provide the services to our citizens to keep our communities moving forward. So yes, some of that would be eligible for reimbursement, to identify what the specific costs are. An example would be whenhe eoc moved and implemented platforms to allow for a more virtual environment, that would be an example that would be an eligible cost. >> Alter: I hope we'll be able to see some of that more clearly in two weeks when we have that spending framework. I would like to see, you know, as council member kitchen and [11:51:31 AM] tovo flagged, I would like to see a little bit more of thinking about the recovery piece, whether we call it recovery or not, but things that are going to allow us to continue to meet the needs of the community over the long term. So I didn't see anything on here for improving broadband access, and I'd like to see kind of a work force development really called out there, as part of that we may also need to support our businesses and nonprofits in a kind of a more marketing type way. And I know there are some thoughts about that percolating in the community. Then the last comment that I wanted to make was that, I appreciated council member Flannigan's comment about the need to kind of prototype. And I think that's part of what we're doing with the rent program is, we don't actually [11:52:32 AM] know what the demand is out there, and how it plays out in some of the dimensions of that. So that initial money will -- that initial lottery that we're doing will provide us some of the data that we just don't have, and I think similarly, some of the programs that we have in item 23 also will do that. And I think it's really important that we try to prototype and figure out how to make things work most effectively and where we're having the most impact, and build in that ability to iterate and to prototype and to kind of have that flexibility as we move forward with our spending plan, since we have so much uncertainty and our data is so poor. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Casar. >> Casar: I just wanted to know the process-wise here, you mentioned that you were going to start discussing items after [11:53:33 AM] lunch. But we wanted to ask the expert panel things, but we didn't all get to chime in on Ed's presentation, the presentation beforehand. So when is the right time? >> Mayor Adler: The time is now. If we have a lot of questions, we could break for lunch and come back from lunch to do that. I just wasn't sure how much questioning we had. With respect to the rest of the report, how many of you have questions that you want to be able to go into? I see Ann and Greg. Anybody else on the plans of the report? Well, let's stay here right now and finish the report. Greg, ask your questions now, and then we'll go to Ann. >> Casar: Given the time, I won't ask questions, I'll just reiterate something that I think is in council member kitchen's resolution which is, my continued support for in the emergency response category, and the medical and public health response category, to do [11:54:34 AM] everything we can to make sure that those are adequately and fully funded. Because I think that we all understand from Dr. Meyer's presentation, the best thing we can do for economic recovery is to make sure that we contain and do everything -- the best we can on the public health response. So that we prevent not only thousands of deaths, but a third or fourth lockdown. So I've supported it, and I think we still all need to be building out the economic recovery as part of this, but manager, as you bring back something in a couple of weeks, I absolutely, and I think all of us should ask, have we potentially shorted ourselves in any way public and medical health response to this, because the question is how low of a recovery -- what are we recovering from. If we're having to recover from three or four lockdowns, economically it's so much worse. And so I think, you know, we [11:55:35 AM] have to make sure people stay fed and we have to keep the infrastructure going economically. But I just want to reemphasize the importance of making sure we absolutely don't underfund it anyway, the first two. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member kitchen? >> Kitchen: Thank you, council member Casar, for that, helping us keep our eye on the ball there. That is one in which we have written into the budget resolution that you're co-sponsoring. So thank you. My question is something that you may not know right now, because I'm not sure if you're thinking about it this way, Ed, but perhaps you can get it to me if you don't. I'm curious, I heard in response to the mayor's question that we'd spend about $17 million, if I heard so far, on public health response. What I'm trying to understand is, how much have we spent so far with regard to meeting the [11:56:36 AM] challenges in nursing facilities? So that includes testing, that includes strike forces, that includes ppes, other kinds of things. Do you have an order of magnitude idea of how much that has been to date? >> Council member, this is Ed. I don't have that. I would be happy to get it for you. If there's anybody else on the call who knows that information, please feel free to chime in. >> Ed, this is Juan. I don't have that specific cost, but we can come back and provide you a report of what those costs are. >> Kitchen: That would be great. At this point I'm just asking order of magnitude, not exact numbers. But that would be helpful for me to understand our resolution 59 that relates to the additional work and the additional resources that we need to devote [11:57:38 AM] to this immediate effort. I'd like to understand what we've devoted so far. And then that will give us all an idea of what additional levels of resources are necessary to achieve mitigation and address the challenges that were identified for our nursing homes. >> Mayor Adler: Thanks for the presentation, staff, on these issues. I would ask that you fill in as many blanks as you can for the 21st. My hope is you'll give us a proposed answer to almost everything. In that vacuum, you give us something we can work off of (indiscernible), that would be very helpful. And with regard to what Ann said, and Greg, again, I would add to the base priorities tracing. I would love for our city to do better than any city in the [11:58:40 AM] country, because it appears as if that's going to be one of the real significant ways that we're able to reduce the infection, testing, tracing, for the vulnerable populations, are the three things we need to do really, really well. I think that's how director Hayden started her presentation. All right, colleagues, we're going to break for lunch, and then come back and do theulled items. It is right now noon. Do you want to come back at 1:00? That sounded right. Okay. Here it is noon, we're going to take a recess of this council meeting until 1:00. We do not have an executive session today. It will just be the six items. I'll see you guys in an hour. Bye. >> Do they want us to log out? [11:59:50 AM] [Recessed at 12:00 P.M.] [12:28:21 PM] Test test test test test test test [music] [1:02:08 PM] >> Mayor Adler: It's 1:01. This is reconvening the city council work session. We're meeting remotely. Is councilmember harper-madison with us? Not yet? What about mayor pro tem Garza? >> Garza: I'm here. >> Mayor Adler: What about councilmember Renteria? >> Renteria: Here. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. What about councilmember Casar? >> Casar: Here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen? Okay. Councilmember Flannigan? You're muted, I think. >> Flannigan: I'm here. >> Mayor Adler: Got it, thank you. Councilmember pool. No? Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: I'm here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I'm here. [1:03:10 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So I think we're missing councilmember kitchen. We have councilmember Renteria. Councilmember pool and councilmember kitchen I think are the two I don't have. That's a quorum. Let's go ahead and start. We're going to do the pulled items. Mayor pro tem Garza, you pulled item number 7? [Echo]. >> Garza: Yeah. We did a question in the q&a, but I know it was kind of late and I was just wondering what was the criteria -- I just have some general concerns. I think this is a good idea, but I want to understand the criteria as to how the sites are being chosen for this -- [background noise]. [1:04:11 PM] >> This is Stephanie Hayden, Austin public health. This is neighborhood pop-up grocery doing -- a contractor of the sustainable food center. They are basically looking at food access points within the neighborhoods, with helping areas with fresh and healthy food. So our office is going to be working with the sustainability office. And basically we are wanting to analyze the ability of restaurants to undertake the transition to a food retail operation and the ability of the restaurant to serve targeted communities. And so with the criteria we are going to make sure that they have the ability to access pedestrian traffic, [1:05:12 PM] use the public transit, culture of a given neighborhood, ability to communicate with community members by word, social media or other built networks. Variety of goods, dry and fresh. Ability to facilitate, set up a retail space. Capacity for safe customer movement, including parking space, ingress and egress. Ability to operate at a set [indiscernible] Without endangering the future viability of their business. So those are some of the points that we're looking at. >> Garza: Okay. I had talked to -- my staff was able to ask the sustainable food center some questions and they referenced a gis map that the sustainability office [1:06:13 PM] has used that I have expressed significant interest in -- I'm sorry, concern with, and the sustainable food center did say they were using that map as criteria to choose the sites. So I'll just express that I'm concerned. I still have concerns with that map. It basically shows thathe del valle area and probably other areas in east Austin are not as prioritized for needing food access because one of the criteria to determine it is whether you have a vehicle or not. And obviously people in del valle have to have a vehicle because they have little access to public transit and because they live so far out. And so I would just -- I can give this direction on Thursday, but if that map is in fact going to be used as criteria of where these sites are chosen, I would [1:07:17 PM] ask that -- frankly, I would ask that we not use that map, but if we are going to use that map it includes areas of del valle. And I think this is very well intentioned. The problem I see is that places that don't have food access, don't have access to grocery stores, are likely not going to have the place -- the places really in need are not going to have restaurants either. So I think it's well intentioned. I appreciate the creativity, but I'm concerned about the criteria being used, and this is my sixth year on council. I think the second meeting I ever took as a councilmember was about grocery store access, and we seem to keep trying to solve that issue with programs here and there, and I'm really curious to know if we had added all those programs up if we would have had then an opportunity to provide a chapter 380 agreement to a grocery store because that's what these communities [1:08:17 PM] really need is a full service grocery store. And I've had significant push-back frankly from staff in the sustainability office whether a grocery store is the right thing, when they -- what they believe is the right thing for that area as opposed to what people have been asking for for a very long time. The other part of this is families that are looking need that food access, they also need diapers and toiletries and it's like we're piecemeal solving these things when we're just creating another trip for them. So that's great that they can go to a nearby restaurant and get some produce, but then they're still going to have to go to the grocery store for toothpaste, diapers and all that stuff. So I just -- I just wanted to express those concerns with this item. I think it was well intentioned, but we need a bigger picture push foe that full service grocery store in those areas that really [1:09:18 PM] need food access. Those are all my questions. Is somebody trying to say something? >> I can follow up with them about your concerns about the use of that -- you said a map, and part gis map. I will follow up and share your concerns with them as well. So I will definitely do that and I can get back with you before Thursday. I'll follow up with you and one of your staff about that. >> Garza: Sounds good. Thank you, I may just provide some additional direction but I didn't want to waste the time on Thursday. I wanted to explain where I was coming from. Those are all my questions and I believe I'm -- thank you, director Hayden. I believe I'm chairing the meeting right now, so I don't have the -- can somebody tell me what the next pulled item is? [1:10:22 PM] >> Item 15. >> Garza: Who pulled it, Ann? >> Casar pulled it. Item 15 concerns janitorial services. >> Garza: Go ahead, Greg. >> Harper-madison: Mayor pro tem, can I speak to item 7, please? I don't know if you can see me. My hand is raised. >> Garza: Go ahead, councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: I wanted to say that I appreciate that you expressed those concerns. I share some of those concerns. Folks out in the far eastern part of my district also have to have cars, also don't have access to restaurants. When I was asked to offer some suggestions for restaurants that would be good -- a good fit for the program, I'll be honest with you, we kind of struggled. You know, it was a heavy concentration in certain parts of d1 that certainly did not meet the needs of the folks who are most insecure from a food perspective. So I really appreciate those concerns being daylighted. And my hope is that director Hayden, you will also follow up with my office when you get that information to [1:11:22 PM] mayor pro tem Garza on Thursday. >> It may be best if I can just -- if we just need to post that way everyone on the dais will be able to see the response. We'll make sure to follow up with you all individually, but we'll work with the clerk's office to post something. There is a question that we have to respond to so we'll get that done. And also, I understand that councilmember Flannigan had a question about number 7 as well. >> Flannigan: Well, I pulled item 46, but it's a different set of questions. >> Oh, okay. Thank you. >> Garza: Okay. Are there any other questions on item 7? I can only see like six people in front of me. So if you're raising your hand, unmute yourself. [1:12:23 PM] Okay. Councilmember Casar, do you want to talk about item 15? >> Casar: Yes. I would love to maybe hear between here and Thursday from purchasing staff what direction is necessary or potentially none at all, but just some word back. This is a custodial contract and I know we'll eventually be moving towards insourcing this. It even says that in the backup, and I think that makes a lot of sense. And one reason for things to be in-sourced is because we can have more control to protect the health and safety of employees, and I think that as we think about how are we making sure that some of these workers who may be over 65 or may be getting close to that or may have an underlying condition, how we get them to do more isolated work or to telework. As Dr. Escott and Dr. Tang [1:13:24 PM] and so many others have raised, this may be a good place for purchasing office to start employing how we talk to our contracts about such things and what the impediments might be, what things we should be asking of the private sector. I know that we're working really hard with our own city employees and I think we really need to keep getting that right. But then, you know, if we want this public health response to work, we need to do it with our contractors too and once we work with the contractors to start pushing that out to as wide a part of the community as possible. So manager, if you could talk with -- I don't know if Mr. Scarborough is on, but if y'all could talk and figure out -- I think it's good to reauthorize an extension of this contract and then in-source it here soon as we go to the new Austin energy building. But if we could start talking with some of those contractors that aren't telework contractors where people are actually having to go into work we could start figuring out what requirements we put into the contract or agreements we put in there, conversations we can have to make sure [1:14:24 PM] those people that are most vulnerable that work in these jobs don't come into close contact with a >> Do you want a response from staff? Is staff going to respond? >> It looks like the manager unmuted himself. >> Council member, thanks for raising that. I think it's an important discussion to have, and we'll start those conversations. We may not be able to get very far by Thursday, but I think we have enough to continue to say, here's the new environment that we're all living in, here's the way in which we can hold our own contractors accountable, and now that we need to protect the populations in a different way, we can have more of those conversations. I think James Scarborough is on the line, so he can add anything, but I understand your direction. >> Council member, this is James [1:15:26 PM] Scarborough, can you hear me? >> We can. >> Okay. Very good. I appreciate the question. We have posed similar questions to this similar contractor, so we do have a little bit of information on the precautions they are taking. But you are posing a much broader question, something we are absolutely glad to look into further and determine if there are some standardized questions that we could be asking our service contractors and our essential services contractors. We're glad to start looking into that more broadly. Like the manager said, maybe nothing substantive by this Thursday, but we certainly understand the intention behind the question and we're glad to start looking into it. >> That sounds good. I know we can vote on this and you can sort it out after we've authorized that. Thank you for starting to look into that. >> Glad to. [1:16:29 PM] >> Garza: Council member rent re a. >> Renteria: Yes, I really believe we need to take care of our older workers, but when we do get out of this crisis that we're in right now, we want to make sure that, you know, these jobs still go to the people are challenged a little bit, have some kind of a, you know, a medical problem, that they don't get discriminated, and they won't get hired onto these kind of jobs because of their health conditions or their age, because I don't want to see that revert back to where we're just going to be hiring healthy, strong, young people. >> I think you're pointing out exactly the challenge we're all grappling with here, so ... >> Garza: Anybody else have questions on 15? [1:17:30 PM] Okay. Mayor, did you want to take over? >> Mayor Adler: Are you up to 22? >> Garza: Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Any comments on 22? Thank you, mayor pro tem. Council member pool pulled this one. >> Pool: I'm hoping you can hear me, and see me. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Pool: Okay. Great. I pulled it to see if there were any questions, and I just wanted to speak a little bit to it today, if we have the time. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Pool: I'm excited to bring this committee resiliency forward with the co-sponsors, because I think there's no better time to talk about resilience. It's really what we've been talking about in the last six to seven weeks. It's really the capacity of individuals and communities to [1:18:30 PM] adapt and thrive, no matter what kinds of chronic stresses or acute shocks they experience. Am I still coming through? I'm not sure at this end. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Yes. >> Pool: Okay. Great. I'm really proud of the seeds of resilience we've sown in this city. We were just now talking about food access, who are inadvertently impacted by such events despite sometimes our best intentions and our heartiest endeavors. Climate change, though daunting for our community and planet, it's not the only crisis our communities face. We've got floods and wildfires, chronic droughts, pandemics, ongoing inequalities, all of these present us with complex shocks and structures that we must be prepared to respond to. In the last six years I've been on the council, I've seen all of [1:19:31 PM] these things here in Austin. So we have to be ready to bounce forward, maintaining a direction of increased well-being and prosperity for all the residents of our city. Through each shock and chronic stressor that we've faced as a city, we've learned that communities themselves need to be a part of helping us to understand and solve for what they need in order to be able to recover and thrive in the face of danger. We also need to leverage the work of our regional partners, and organizations to better understand the landscape of the pivotal roles they play in what the act of resilience looks like. All of this is why the resolution calls for building a comprehensive community resilience plan with community, regional partners and staff from across multiple departments. This isn't a one-and-done, which is why I'm hopeful we'll be able [1:20:32 PM] to fund innovateively and through partnerships a chief resilience officer who would guide this effort and ensure that it adapts well and continues to serve the community. We're asking for the city manager to return to us options in June so we can have more discussion at that time and consider different ways to staff and implement the plan. I have information how the resilience officer which funded in Houston, for example, working with the global resilience cities network, once known as 100 resilient cities and Rockefeller, they were able to work with the resilient cities network to find the dollars to fund the officer. I think Houston is paying at an executive level, which is about 150,000. And the global resilient cities network helped craft the plan. [1:21:32 PM] I've asked Mary to be on the call for any questions, and muria, are you on the call? >> Council member? Can you hear me? >> I can hear you. I think others can. >> So I don't know if I missed the question in there, but I can speak generally to the questions you have asked me about this resolution. I'll say that I'm supportive and really excited to think about resiliency in a broader fashion. I believe that sustainability here in Austin has done a tremendous job with climate resiliency. It's stellar. But I also know, and I think the conversations today that council have shown that resiliency is a broader term in terms of how do we best prepare our community [1:22:32 PM] for some of the things that, frankly, we just didn't even know of. The pandemic being one of them. Minneapolis, I know you talked to me and asked me about my experience in that -- let me turn my volume down a little bit -- my experience in Minneapolis, we had two cros under two administrations, and our cro really started with an officer-involved shooting and the economic disparities and impact that that created in Minneapolis. And I was fortunate enough to go to the last of the Rockefeller foundation's convenings in rotterdam last summer where we got an opportunity to hear firsthand where how in the United States at least the now global resilient cities network was really turning its attention to economic development and job creation. So it is an interesting time to think about staffing, but also an interesting time to broaden the conversation about [1:23:33 PM] resiliency, and we will be looking to see how that can be -- we can take the foundation of what already exists in Austin and are able to really think more broadly about our community needs. >> Thanks, mariettea. My office works closely with council member tovo's office, and I thank your willingness to jump on to the expansion we've been engaged in, since, well, February, really working heavily on it in March and April and today. And the community groups and with our expert staff and several departments to bring forward the resolution. I did find as mariettea described that our deputy city manager has a depth of understanding in her planning from work in Minneapolis that they just touched on. And through conversations with her and directors from other departments, we built flexibility into the resolution [1:24:34 PM] for its implementation and staffing potential, so we can have as many options as possible to build resilience for our city. And I just want to remind my colleagues that while we're calling for a comprehensive community resilience plan and the potential funding of a resiliency officer. This is just the first step. I'm asking for the city manager to return options in June so we can have more discussion at that time and consider more ways to staff and implement the plan. We put up a joint posting on the message board. I did with my four co-sponsors. So if you haven't had a chance yet to look at that, it's there, easily accessible for you. And again, I just thank everybody for the thoughtful approach to this broader -- kind of a meta approach to all of the work that we've been doing. Not only on this current crisis, but all of the various crises we've faced in the last, [1:25:35 PM] certainly six years since I've been on council, but the city historically has, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Anything else on this item? Yes, mayor pro tem Garza. >> Garza: Yeah. I'm trying to understand -- I mean, I appreciate that this doesn't make any budget amendments or creating another office, but I'm trying to understand what seems to be overlap with the sustainability office, and the work that they've done around resiliency. And is there anybody I can address the duplication efforts? It's my understanding we weren't included under the cities, because we have a sustainability office. So I just -- as we talk about -- >> Mayor pro tem? Excuse me? >> Yes. >> I'm happy to respond. In cities across the nation, there have been other folks that have had joint sustainability [1:26:36 PM] office and cros, Minneapolis just happens to be one that had both. That was not a limiting criteria. I think that the request of us is really to lift up and expand the great work that sustainability has done already, as they were thinking, and I know that they have sent and forwarded some memos to you, and have created this sort of blueprint for a community-wide resilience plan. That would certainly be one aspect of it, but broadening it out to think about things like economic resilience as well. So it is not intended to be redundant, but frankly, just a yes-and to the efforts of resiliency and community. We will be involving all our staff in this effort. >> Are you saying that the sustainability office can absorb this work without having to create another position? >> I'm saying that we will be thinking about a variety of ways [1:27:37 PM] to do that. In other places, Boston, for example, they absorbed it within the equity office, in other spots they aligned a coordinator. But we'll be looking at all alternatives to see what is the best approach, and we'll come back to you per this direction and give you recommendations on how best to think about it. Resolution asked us to bring in an officer, so we want to think about what that looks like and how we can absorb that in our community. >> Garza: Okay. And I like the idea of the equity office possibly being absorbed in the equity office. Again, I think it's going to be -- we all know it's going to be an incredibly (indiscernible) Budget, and we talked a couple of weeks ago about the cost of people providing representation at magistration. There were concerns about that. [1:28:38 PM] And asking for constitutional rights. I just have concerns about adding another office. So I'm happy to see what the report back is. I don't know where I'll be during budget session about creating new offices that our current staff -- when our current staff can do that work. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Can I just jump in here just to say that we are looking for funding from outside of the city to fund the resilience officer. And that's how it was handled in Houston. They were able through the global resilience network to find donors and pulled together the money necessary. Completely keyed in, and tuned into the need for us to be very careful stewards of our current financial situation, and that has been top of mind for all of this. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Flannigan? >> Flannigan: I just wanted to thank my appointee to the [1:29:39 PM] commission who was leading this effort -- >> Mayor Adler: Can you speak up? >> Flannigan: Can you hear me? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Flannigan: I'll hold the mic closer. Just wanted to recognize my appointee to the commission, Katy, who my understanding led the work on this, and brought this proposal to the council. She shared it with me several months ago. I encouraged her to seek out other members of the dais to make this happen. So I'm glad to see this coming forward. And I do -- I think we all share the mayor pro tem's concerns about budget and we'll all have to cross that bridge together in a few months. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any further discussion on this item? Let's move on to -- council member tovo? >> Tovo: I wanted to thank council member pool for her leadership and for her -- for Louisa on her staff, all of her solid work and Shannon on my staff's work on this issue as well. [1:30:41 PM] And I appreciate the concerns about budget, and obviously that is going to be critical. As council member pool said, there are several bullet points that talk about additional funding opportunities, including the last one, to explore partnerships with the philanthropic and business community for assistance and other references as well. But you know, I don't want the funding piece to overshadow the really important perspective that this would introduce. And so regardless of whether it's additional staff, or asking our current staff to really think differently about the work they're doing, it is introducing an approach that is broader than what we currently have, in terms of thinking about resilience. And it is also involving more departments than are potentially currently involved in that conversation. So I see this as a really important way not just of moving [1:31:42 PM] forward and responding to future crises, but really learning from the one we're currently in, and using that learning to help our residents be more -- be able to recover, and to rebound and to face those kinds of unexpected but, you know (indiscernible) Events in a different way. So thank you again, council member pool, for your leadership. I think this is a really important direction for our city. It is a global movement. And I know there's been great work at the city, but I do think that this advances it into a broader platform, and allows for a different perspective than the one we currently have in place. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. Let's move on. [1:32:43 PM] Item number 46. Council member Flannigan, you pulled this one? >> Flannigan: Yes. I pulled this one because it was the largest contract of the list, but my question is really for staff about how we're going to be ensuring that there's transparency and oversight over how these dollars are allocated. Item 23 that myself and others have include a revision for a dashboard that would ensure this data being put out there. But I wanted to hear from staff how these contracts ensure reporting back to the city from these granting agencies. >> I'm here. Council member Flannigan, and council and mayor, all of our contracts have several clauses [1:33:44 PM] in them, including the -- that ensure that we're able to monitor the contracts, as well as have a level of accountability in the contracts. All of the contracts have -- do have performance measures as far as the number of people that the agency is going to provide services to. In addition to that, they are also -- they're all deliverable base contracts. So each of those specific deliverables is a -- it comes back to the city in the form of -- in a requirement for that contract. So there is the level of what they have to provide back as far as the deliverable. There is monthly reporting that [1:34:46 PM] they are going to -- all of them have to provide a monthly report back to the city. And then which includes the number of people they serve. And then they all have to do a closeout at the end of providing the services. And then on the other side of this, we will add -- we will put these contracts into the monitoring schedule that we will conduct either toward the end of this fiscal year, or early next fiscal year. It just depends on where we are with the covid-19 response. >> Thank you. The backup on the agenda is not super specific, so I'm looking forward to getting more information about that level of detail. And hopefully that we can provide more realtime reporting than just once a month. I know we all want to get this money out into the community, [1:35:46 PM] into the hands of folks who need it as quickly as we can. But I think that means we need to really ensure that we've got the oversight and transparency side equally robust. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. Anything else on this item? All right. Let's go to the next one. Item 56. Council member Flannigan, you also pulled this one. >> Flannigan: I support the item itself. The question was partially addressed in our conversation earlier about how we're ensuring kind of the whole financial system, especially for our smaller landlords. I'm also interested in some of the advice and questions that I've got from other members of the public about ways to maybe manage this process a little bit, a little different. But I would also want to remind everyone that half of my district is in a different set of justice of the peace courts. So while they are doing their best to maintain the -- some level of similarity to the Travis county courts, it's a [1:36:47 PM] very different conversation on that side of my district. And that's the side of my district that has title 1 schools, and a couple of apartments and pretty significant vulnerable folks. So I may bring some stuff on Thursday that I hope would be friendly, nothing that would change the overall intent, maybe just a little clarity. Or not. I'm still thinking through some of those things. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Council member Flannigan, I really appreciate that and understand and was thinking how challenging it might be for some of the tenants in your district. We've had to coordinate closely with law on this one, the sooner you can post anything, the easier it is for me and my staff to take a look at it and think about it, on those fronts. But appreciate your work on it, for sure. >> Flannigan: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Council member alter? [1:37:47 PM] >> Alter: I just wanted to -- I'm supportive of the intention, I was just having -- I'm having a little bit of confusion since not all of the ordinances in this ordinance in trying to understand, you know, in layman's terms what this means for the tenant and what it means for the landlord's responsibility, and how long that would play out. So maybe if one of the (indiscernible) Could clarify that, it could situate what I need to read from the ordinance in putting it together in terms of changes. >> So the two changes, two amendments are, just two differences. One is that, in the original ordinance we said that notification from the landlord to the tenant saying, hey, you've got 60 days, we wanted it to be issued similar to a notice to vacate, which is something that exists in state law. But those notices to vacate sometimes are posted on the inside of a tenant's door. [1:38:47 PM] And right now we don't want people going to the inside of someone's door when we're trying to keep people more apart. So this clarifies that e-mail communication, if that's the normal way you communicate is fine. Or posting it I think on the outside of the door, on the front side of the door rather than the inside of the door. That's one change. The other change has to do with the expiration of the ordinance. When we passed this, it was back in March, before April rent was due. We didn't really know how it would work. So far a lot of the data that has come out has shown that people can pay their rent, really are paying their rent. I thought that the number of people in our area that would be paying rent would be much -- potentially much lower, but it's actually pretty high. And so we have made the ordinance apply for the same period of time that the mayor's disaster ordinance applies. And so that is the other change [1:39:49 PM] that we made, for that number, in case people are interested. Back in 2019, for April rent, it was about 93% of renters made full or partial payments in their area. This is according to the national multi-family housing council that keeps track of this. By about that same time, this year, during the crisis, it was 89% of apartment households in our area made full or partial rent payment by April 19th. And so it's certainly down some, but not down enormously. It did not cause tons of people to skip out on their rent. It just creates that time window for the people to work together. So those are the two changes it tries to make. >> So if I'm understanding this correctly, this is saying that if the landlord has cause to evict, they have to provide the notice for 60 days, it's not saying that they can't give that [1:40:49 PM] notice until 60 days after the disaster, it's just until we're 60 days after the disaster they have to provide 60 days of notice of eviction. >> The 60 days base period ordinance, yes, applies during the full disaster. But it does not mean that -- correct, it means that this ordinance continues to apply. 60 days notice continues to apply. >> Alter: But it's the ordinance that says you have to give 60 days notice, it's not the grace period. >> Yes, the grace period is not changing in length. >> Alter: Thank you for the clarification. >> Mayor Adler: The other related issue on this is that near the same time, one of the orders that I issued stopped the notice of eviction from being posted, which effectively stopped eviction proceedings. The federal government went ahead and did the same thing as part of its C.A.R.E.S. Laws, but [1:41:49 PM] it only relates to federally backed mortgages, which are probably most of the mortgages for these kinds of things. My order also is expiring, so I'm going to extend that. It will be the same order that I had before. It will be extended. It will either be extended to the end of the declaration, I think, or until the C.A.R.E.S. Similar ruling also expires. Which I think is in July. Yes, Ann? >> Kitchen: Just quick questions related, although not directly. I understood that extending our orders also extended a -- what's the right word -- we've not been collecting certain city fees. And that's based on the order. So I'm assuming that when you extend this order, that extends that waiver, I guess you might call it, on these fees, is that [1:42:51 PM] right? >> Mayor Adler: Different order. But that is the main order that you're talking about that expires on the 8th, that's being extended, and that provision is being extended as well. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay? Go to the next item then. Item number 63. Council member Flannigan, you pulled this one as well. >> Flannigan: Yes, thank you, mayor, this is to let everyone know that the judicial committee completed its process related to appointments to the municipal court. Just to let everyone understand how this process worked, we followed all of the very similar processes we went through the first time around, and thanks to my committee members, vice chair Casar and mayor pro tem and harper-madison, were going through this process, judge shefrs had announced her run for an elected seat and that triggered a resign to run provision, which is why we ended [1:43:51 PM] up going through this process. What we as the judicial committee is recommending is to appoint very key to that position as a part-time judge, but we also worked with judge statman about challenges the court is having related to staffing during this crisis. So we are also recommending that Edgar and judge jefrs be retrained part-time for the court so we can can ensure the court is fully staffed for this period. All of these terms will still have the four-year length that they have now, meaning all of these positions will be up for review at the end of 2021, and we have also made it clear to the appointees that because we are adding part-time judges, which should be noted does not have a budget implication because the part-time judges are just scheduled within the need, according to the budget, that we are not ensuring that all of [1:44:52 PM] these positions are going to move forward. We will do a full review when we review the size of the bench at the end of 2021. So that is the work that the judicial committee completed. Thanks again to my committee members and to the review panel, our community volunteers who helped us work through this process, and to the really fantastic two new judges we will be adding to the bench. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Flannigan, thank you for your leadership on this, and to your group. Obviously this took a huge load off of the rest of the council, in you guys dealing with this, and you've been able to really make some quantum leaps forward with respect to how the city's municipal judicial system works. So thank you. Anything else? Any other item? I think those are all the things we had pulled. >> Mayor, I did have a quick question on item number -- sorry, I think it's 23. [1:45:54 PM] Is this the one with clear (indiscernible)? So I just wanted to raise a couple of ideas and broader questions. On the ideas front, these may already be things that we are considering doing, but especially on the for-profit business side. I know a big part of the federal goal has been to make sure that people stay on payroll, or that people come back onto payroll that may have been let go. I don't think that you need to lay out every programmatic detail in the resolution, but I would be interested whether y'all are expecting that to be the way that it works, to say if we're going to give you money to rehire people, please go rehire the people that recently lost their jobs. Or if we're going to be giving [1:46:55 PM] money, it would be great if that money went to payroll and to making sure that people had employment. What are sort of the thoughts around that? I think we do want this to achieve the goals that I think we all have. >> We've been working with some of the nonprofit entities who have more familiarity with this type of programming, some of whom are doing similar programs in other cities in Texas. And it turns out even helping city staff administer the economic bridgeland program we adopted several council meetings ago. The bullet under the clear fund that talks about revolving loan programs, expand upon needs and eligibility criteria as identified as part of the program, is the area that is to address your concerns, council member, so that staff working with these administering organizations can ensure that these dollars are going to help support the community, and we're [1:47:56 PM] not ending up putting money down a rabbit hole as we had a conversation with this earlier. Another important part of this is that this is really -- it's got to stay in compliance with the C.A.R.E.S. Act, so we saw some of that definition happening with relation to economic injury and the economic challenges that businesses are facing. But my expectation is that we will find several different entities coming to the city wanting to help us administer this program, that they will have varying different approaches to how to do that, and then once we see this money getting out into the community and we see its impact, we'll be better prepared for what the future holds in terms of increasing that support. To my mind, in much the same way we've done other programs in this kind of prototype, let's get things out in the community, let's see who's doing the best job and we can expand that investment. Separate is the grant funds for expenses related to compliance with orders and reopening. [1:48:57 PM] So it's divided into a couple of buckets there. >> Flannigan: What I might be thinking about, and what y'all can think about on your end, whether we should express it verbally, whether we should write it down, that as you prototype we want to see grow, would love for us to actually find some way to be checking to make sure we're getting what we want, which is people back on payroll, the people that lost their jobs back on. And then I think your transparency stuff is really important, because obviously some of the failings of the federal program were not small businesses getting it, you know, lots of gaps that I heard, of course, from lots of our local businesses from getting boxed out. So I think the transparency piece there is clear. I might be missing somewhere in the resolution, are we finding some way to really prioritize and are we able to really prioritize those folks that have really been left out by the federal paycheck protection [1:49:57 PM] program? People that are actually local and actually small? >> Well, let me -- I think Veronica is here if we want to have her come and talk about -- >> (Indiscernible). >> Good afternoon, council members, director of economic development. So we are definitely taking this into account. We want to make sure that we're releasing funds to the most -- the businesses that are most vulnerable. Council member Flannigan rfrd referred to our current bridge program we have under way, and we're using that to really collect data of what our businesses' needs are, looking at businesses that were turned down for the loan, for example, to analyze why they were turned down and what is a program that could be of assistance to them. That definitely is a priority to look at our smallest, most vulnerable businesses. I should also point out as we're tracking that data for the current bridge loan program, the [1:51:00 PM] average business side that is applying for loan has less than 10 employees. So we are targeting those smaller businesses as we move forward. And we will continue to do so at this direction. >> I would just add to that, I think the transparency is a really key part of this, kind of as you mentioned, Greg. It is probably more difficult and it would take too much time to design a perfect process. So better for these administering organizations to know that the public will be watching, so that they will avoid the pitfalls that the federal program has experienced. >> And then my last and broader question is, and I agree entirely with you on this, council member Flannigan, about this earlier, that I want us to be able to move quickly and get these things going. At the same time is the fact that we are -- let's see, two weeks from now, in a broader framework from the city manager. And a big priority for me, and I [1:52:00 PM] think for everybody here, is how do we make sure we know we're funding the public health and medical emergency response sufficiently, such that we aren't triggering a third or fourth -- that we really try to avoid the third or fourth shutdown that will require us to spend three to four times as much in the economic recovery area. So I certainly don't want to get in the way of this money moving quickly, but I am interested in what we can do, either in this resolution, or if the city manager can guarantee if we need more of the C.A.R.E.S. Money for buckets one and two, so that we have a less bad economic recovery situation, you know, how do we pivot from there. I'm interested in what folks' thoughts are. Because I know it's hard to pick a number. I do want to hear people's thoughts. >> And I appreciate that. It's why I think the total program that's proposed in the resolution is less than 10%, or it's about 10% of the cares money. So it is designed to be the [1:53:03 PM] initial foray, expand on the data collection that Veronica talked about. And we'll have the time to pivot and to move and move our resources in the right direction based on that outcome. But I think we know there's at least this amount of need right now. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter? >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate the questions. I wanted to speak to the anchor fund and child care, as we talk about what we need to recover. The nonprofit ecosystem that we have in our city that supports lots of what we need to be doing in terms of delivering immediate relief, but also what we need for our community over the medium and the long term is really in dire straits. The nonprofits have traditionally not a huge amount of cushion, maybe two months, [1:54:03 PM] and they have not been very successful in pulling down the payment production fund, or the loans. We have a lot of smaller nonprofits as well that we need to be caring for. We have designed the anchor fund so that we are trying to support our nonprofits across the life cycle, and the amount that we've put in there are really the minimum we feel is needed at this point to get started to give them that lifeline. In terms of the child care support, in order for us to recover, we have to have child care available, and what we're hearing is that there are a number of our child care centers that are going to have trouble reopening because they're not going to survive this period when they're closed. And so it's really of the essence to get that money out quickly to those organizations, so that we can keep our child care ecosystem and our nonprofit [1:55:04 PM] ecosystem healthy so they'll be there to work with us as we transition through the various phases moving forward. I wanted to also point out that, you know, we have the dashboard piece as well as some other pieces towards the end that are about sort of the tracking and the accountability. What we didn't want to get into was constraining this so much, and having to have the dais design all of the programs. What we found when we went out and we started talking to folks about how they might be able to partner with the city, to get this money out the door quickly and effectively and transparently, is that there's an enormous amount of knowledge, and it requires a conversation that is not -- the dais is not necessarily the best place to have that, but our city staff would not be giving the money out without some sense of what [1:56:04 PM] the criteria are, and depending on the creativity that the administering organizations bring, particularly to the small businesses, you might have different criteria for different types of programs because we have different administering organizations that have different strengths and are trying to meet different types of needs. I will also point out that some of the money for the small businesses is loans, so that's kind of -- you know, if they succeed, is recyclable, and we don't have to decide which pot of money to use for that. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I just want to say that I support council member Casar's reminding us that the approach that we need to use with the use of dollars. I also support the resolution we're talking about. I have no idea if 18 million is the appropriate amount or any other million is the appropriate amount for anything that we [1:57:04 PM] passed. That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to a more comprehensive to a look at all the dollars that are available to us, and looking forward and expecting that on may 21st. So my support for moving forward with all of these items has been with an understandings that they're definitely something we need. Because I don't know if we're in the -- if we're anywhere near concerned about choosing between different alternatives. So I'll just leave it at that right now. You know, I would have said -- I didn't put a number on the nursing home resolution. I know that's probably a big price tag. The rise funds, 15 million probably wasn't enough for that. There are other resolutions we put out there with dollar amounts that we know we need more for. So I don't want us to stop moving forward. And I will be supporting these resolutions, including small business one which I think is important. But I just think -- I'm looking [1:58:06 PM] forward to having the conversation on the 21st, which will give us all a better idea of where we are (indiscernible). >> Mayor Adler: All right. Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Yes, I agree. And I already know the resolution I'm bringing forward later this week regarding access for funding and investment in the meals for caregivers who are picking up student meals, we're hearing back from some of those additional districts. That's just one such example of an area that we'll have to revisit the amount. I'm very supportive of this resolution. I appreciate the leadership of my colleagues in bringing this forward and look forward to supporting it on Thursday. I have one just very quick mention on line 95, where it's talking about child care, and council member alter thank you [1:59:06 PM] for your leadership on child care. I agree with you. We've been in close contact with United Way about the situation facing our child care facilities. I'm concerned about their future as well. On line 95, it talks about a two-star rating. I assume there you're talking about the Texas rising star system. But I just wanted to point that out that that might be worth clarifying, if that's the rating system that you're intending. >> Yes. And I did -- we can certainly go back and make sure that we have that appropriately. But yes, it was the Texas star. We originally had three stars, and then in our conversation further with United Way, they indicated that there were some periods where four-star agencies were stuck in the two-star rating for a while, and we didn't want to leave them out. But we didn't want to be spending this money and rewarding child care facilities that were high quality, and that's why we had the basic [2:00:08 PM] requirements in there. >> I think that's appropriate. I would just ask that you clarify what rating you're talking about, because there are a couple of different ones. >> Sure. I'm fairly sure it's the Texas star one. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Manager, one last time, I think the comment coming from a lot of my colleagues, what is expected of the staff in a two-week period of time. We need a good feel for what is the revenue hole that we're going to need to fill. We need to get a good feel for the emergency services that are happening, and we really need recommendations from staff as to how the dollars should be spent so that we have something to be able to work off of. In some respects, it's kind of like putting together a city budget in 10 days. Smaller, but it's the same kinds of consideration prioritizations. And I think I would very much [2:01:09 PM] like to see it. >> Knowing the situation evolves constantly, we're going to be putting information forward to you, the information we know at the time, but we will have other alternatives and scenarios that will have to play out. But I definitely hear the council's desire to keep that conversation in a specific and strategic manner, and so thank you for all the work that has gone into the various resolutions so far. I would ask that after Thursday, again, that you allow staff to then take what has been passed, so we can use that to inform our future discussion, alongside of the discussions we're having with our health partners, alongside of the discussions we're having with our eoc about what those needs are. But absolutely, I'm looking forward to that conversation with the council in the coming weeks. And we'll get as specific as we can. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. With that, it is 2:00. And this meeting is adjourned. [2:02:12 PM]