City Council Work Session Transcript – 09/01/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 9/1/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 9/1/2020 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. [9:03:33 AM] >> Mayor Adler: The city council meeting, September 1st, 2020. The meeting is being held virtually. We have a quorum present. It is 9:03. Colleagues, we have two briefings, multiple pulled items to we can then go into executive session. In executive session the first thing we're going to cover is the comp and benefits discussion for the clerk, the auditor and the muny park. They're all available to come and visit with us today, and then we'll reengage on the conversation that we had started with the city manager is quarterly discussion. That's the process we will follow. The intent is for us to [9:04:34 AM] break about noon for lunch. We may do all the executive session after lunch if we have time to do executive session before lunch, we'll do the three wage and comp questions and then have lunch and come back and finish after lunch. We'll start with the first briefing and we'll begin with the covid briefing and then we'll do the Walter E. Long briefing after. Once again I want to thank you manager you and director Hayden and Dr. Escott. The numbers continue to come down. I guess most of the thanks needs to go to the community that is maintaining vigilance, especially with respect to masking and social distancing. What we're finding is that [9:05:35 AM] we can in fact take a little bit more risks out in the community, but only so long as people are diligent about masking and distancing. If we are not diligent the numbers will spike as we see so many other cities do. And I want to thank again looking at the state numbers, I just want to thank county judges and mayors across the state for having been so insistent that we get to a mandatory masking policy and bringing along the whole state that way. That helped to put us on the track that we are on now and we can continue to state it. With that, manager, I'll turn it over to you so you can turn it over to the [9:06:38 AM] others. >> Thank you, mayor. There are many things that we can say that are positive developments within our community, but we still don't have a vaccine and we need to remain vigilant and we have seen our community step up to the plate and really make sure that we are keeping each other safe and that effort is led by incredible public servants and many of those are working in the city under director Hayden's leadership. So I'll let director Hayden to lead off this update. >> Thank you, good morning, everyone. I hope you are doing well. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Our epidemiologist and surveillance staff continue to track populations. We are still seeing an increase in some of the nursing home clusters and so we are providing some additional support as well as technical assistance to those areas. We are ensuring to increase [9:07:43 AM] our prioritization with Spanish translations to ensure that we're age to meet the requests that are coming in. Just as a reminder, we continue to have our locations of dove springs, givens and walnut creek and we still have our drive--up site. And as a reminder, we are doing testing at home. We have provided that information publicly on the website, but we've also -- also have shared that with the community as well abroad because we want to make sure that for our populations that are not comfortable with coming out, especially when they have underlying health reasons that they will take advantage of that at home testing. Austin public health will have a skeleton crew working over the holiday. We will produce the reports [9:08:44 AM] and do all of the work we do, but just a smaller crew. The medical hotline and the call center will be closed on labor day. And so on Monday there will be no testing available, but staff will resume all of their shifts on Tuesday. With our long-term care update, I'm sure you received the email from Ann Morgan and so we'll provide some additional information with Dr. Escott's slides. We continue to do testing in nursing homes. We've added an additional long-term care facility which brings us up to 48 long-term facilities that we have provided testing in. We are continuing to see a decline. No additional strike teams have been deployed for the last five weeks and so -- [9:09:46 AM] but we continue to offer that as a service but year to date we have provided to 19 facilities and 300 strike teams have operated. We received an additional nine more ppe packages which brings us up to year to date total of 33. So we continue to offer those ppe push packs if they need them, and we will continue to provide all of the training that they need. With our protective lodges, all five of our protective lodges are operational. Integral care is continuing to provide on-site behavioral health services at all of those lodges. And community care is providing weekly on-site services at three of them. And we're continuing our [9:10:47 AM] partnership with community care and Dell med to offer the covid-19 testing to our homeless population. As of today with our multiple community organizations providing foods, over 3500 meals have been provided to date and we continue contracting with revelations food to provide those services. With our social services branch our health equity task force continues to partner with community organizations to provide ppe. The department has partnered across the city, including several of our zip codes where we have a high level of positivity rate so we have provided a mask as well as hand sanitizers in seven of the key high positivity rates, but we've also provided and partnered with in del valle and in manor. [9:11:49 AM] We are in the process of kicking off a protect yourself and protect yourself is the campaign and is a six- week campaign with the city of Austin, central health, community care and Travis county and it's around messaging. And we will be providing ppe distribution and so that kicks off this week. Our staff will be this weekend, we will have a shared community calendar with all of our partners, and that will be on our website of the locations where we will be providing ppe as well as the areas where our partners will be providing ppe and hand sanitizer. Staff are finalizing the timeline for rise 2.0. We do have a few of our agencies that are providing services. [9:12:50 AM] With our childcare in school summary, our staff are continuing to work on our weekly covid-19 point of contact school district with the school districts. And we've decided to add more epidemiology staff to that team because what we're finding is that as schools begin to open, we are starting to see cases, whether they are doing their athletics or as they are opening. And we are going to continue to receive that information in our school information, austintexas.gov. Last week we distributed the results of the survey. That information is so that we can provide information to the latinx and hispanic community so we will continue that process. The last thing is environmental health staff, [9:13:50 AM] we began a zip code, targeted covid enforcement initiative. We are working in six zip codes right now and those six zip codes have the highest positivity rate, and staff have conducted 279 visits to businesses and restaurants and ultimately we're working with them and we are providing technical assistance, however because of compliance issues we had to issue 78 warnings to them. There is a city team that has a teams covid compliance, which is used by code, fire, police and Austin public health. And we will continue to go out to check on those businesses and ensure they have what they need, but we will work very closely with code compliance on any challenges. At this time I will turn it over to Dr. Escott. [9:14:55 AM] >> Dr. Escott: Thank you, Stephanie. I'll ask av to pull up my slides. While they're doing that, mayor, I want to echo your comments. When we first started talking about covid-19 we talked about the importance of that all community-all government approach and I think we've certainly benefited from our city and county partnership. We've benefited from the state and the governor continuing to watch the data and adjust and create policy which is more protective. I think we're getting in alignment. It's certainly improving. And we've got to stay the course and I'll talk a bit more about that here in my next slide. Next slide, please. So mayor and council, what you're seeing here is our new confirmed cases in Travis county. Again, the yellow is showing our seven-day moving average. You can see that last week I talked about this plateau and oscillation that we were [9:15:57 AM] seeing since the end of July. Now we're seeing a substantial decline as we've gotten through that backlog of cases. Right now our seven-day moving average of new cases is 89 and that's a place we haven't been since June the tenth. But what I want to remind folks about is that it took us three weeks to get from 89 cases a day to our peak at 558 cases a day on July the third. And it took us two months to come back down. Now is not the time to crowd bars, to have barbecues and family gatherings on labor day. Now is the time to stay the course because if we change our behaviors significantly, three weeks from now we could be back in that place again where we're in cases. I know we want -- where we're in crisis. I know we want to celebrate, we want to be more normal than we have been, but if we [9:16:57 AM] take those liberties now we're going to pay for it a few weeks from now. So again, we've got to continue to urge to stay the course. Again, if folks want to go out to their household to a restaurant, that's probably okay if that household is low risk. Beyond that we need to be very careful and we certainly need to call on our young people, our teenagers, our college students to also avoid those behaviors. Again, while they may not be as severely impacted, those around them will be. And we need to protect our whole community. Next slide, please. This is a graph of our new admissions. Again, the yellow showing the seven-day moving average. Our new admissions continues to decrease. It's down to 18 now. That's a place we haven't been since June the 12th. Again, this has been our key [9:18:02 AM] indicator, the fact that it's going down as well as our decrease in positivity rates led us to make the change to stage 3 last week. We are continuing to see improvements there. But again we have to be careful and follow this and report this daily on our dashboard. Next slide, please. Right now hospitalizations at at [indiscernible]. Very healthy situations for the hospitals and I'll ask folks again if they've been putting off seeing a doctor, getting elective procedure, now is the time to go. There's plenty of room and [9:19:03 AM] we're not sure what the future is going to hold, so now is the time to get those things taken care of and get yourself in a better health situation. Next slide, please. This is showing hospitalizations by health and ethnicity. The points on the right are from the hospitalizations last week. Currently or hispanic or latinx hospitalization in green is representing 50.5% of the hospitalizations last week. Again, it's overrepresentation of their population in this community. Our African-American numbers last week were 11.9 percent, also overrepresenting them as compared to their population in Travis county. Again, this continues to affect more substantially our communities of color and [9:20:04 AM] as director Hayden said earlier, we will continue the efforts to provide outreach and ppe, masks, hand sanitizer and other items, particularly focused on these communities so that we can decrease the trend of transmission and hospitalization. Next slide, please. This is a graph of our hospitalizations by age group. Last week we saw increases in our 70 to 79 age group as well as our 50 to 59 age group. So we'll continue to follow these. We did see a decrease in our new admissions for our younger age group, our 10 to 19 age group that we've seen several weeks of higher numbers. So that is certainly refreshing. And again we'll continue to report these and share these on our covid-19 dashboard. Next slide, please. [9:21:19 AM] This is the nursing home chart and we have the actual names on it this week. So I'll thank Ann Morgan and her team. We had some previous attorney general rulings related to disclosure of this information and those were related to public information requests and the city attorney's advice has allowed us to share this now. I know a lot of folks have been concerned about why we haven't shared this and why we've been so protective of this information in the past. And it's not at all about transparency, it's about the law. And disclosure of information inappropriately means a criminal penalty for me and for the city and we would have to make sure that what we're doing is legal and I appreciate the hard work of Ann Morgan in the city attorney's office that has found a way for us to share this. [9:22:21 AM] Having said that, our numbers in the nursing homes continue to decrease, 42 total cases this week as director Hayden said, we've got decreased requests for support from these facilities. You can see this week we have a number that are indicated in gray which tells us that they've gone three weeks without any new cases and are likely to come off the list next week. So again, we're pleased to be able to share this information with you. Similar information is available on the state health and human services commission website and we will continue to update this information weekly. Next slide, please. This is an update of our positivity rate across the community. Again, this is a data feed which comes in from multipe partners throughout Travis county. We're grateful in their partnership and sharing of their data. The data input into this [9:23:23 AM] feed represents about 231,000 covid tests, so it's a huge number of tests and we are pleased to be able to share this. I want to give you two updates on this. One is the percent positive from week 32. Last week we reported that at 7.6%. It's been updated to 8.3% with some additional tests which had not been reported for that period of time that we received last week. In this week's percent positive for week 33, which ended two weeks ago, is 6.2%. Again, we're continuing to follow the data. We started twice weekly data feed starting yesterday from these facilities who we're testing. Our hope is in the next couple of weeks we will able to report on the positivity rate for the immediate past week which in this circumstance would be week 34. I will tell you that the [9:24:29 AM] data we have in hand shows the numbers continuing to improve somewhat as chaired to week 33. Again, hopefully next week we'll be able to provide week 34 and possibly week 35. Again, this is the same data, but broken down by race and ethnicity. You can see there's a new line on here for American Indian or alaskan native. There is a significant increase you can see over time in terms of that group's positivity rate. I will tell you that the numbers of tests performed in that particular group is relatively small so it's going to be more likely to have substantial swings in the percentages. I do want to point out that our hispanic or Latino group, which is represented [9:25:30 AM] in the gray is continuing to decrease, which is fantastic. You can see that week 35 at least the data we have in hand so far is showing a little over 10% last week. About 12% for week 34. Again, our goal is to get everybody below this red dotted line, which is the five percent mark. So we've got more work to do but we are progressing and we are certainly hopeful as a community as we band together we can do that. And I do want to say thank you to the many business partners who have been providing funds and masks to many of our community groups representing our communities of color. Those efforts are noticed. They are much appreciated by our community and they need to continue. We do have groups that have trouble affording masks and hand sanitizer and the other [9:26:30 AM] things necessary to protect themselves and their families and we are grateful from public health that we see that community going on. We see the beauty of those partnerships and the generosity of our public and our business community in helping push these lines down. Next slide, please. This is a graph showing you the cases by zip code. You can see again that we have our 78744, which continues to be a significant area for transmission of disease. 78665, 78660, 78661 as our top zip codes. This is just through the Austin public health portal [9:27:31 AM] so this will include our county partners, Williamson county and bastrop who are also feeding information into this data. But as director Hayden said, we continue our focus on those zip codes that are being more substantially impacted and we are hopeful that perhaps as early as today we will be able to share publicly the potty rates by zip code. Our team is working hard on getting that and making sure that the information is accurate and the data feeds are updated regularly. So we're hopeful that that will come out today or later this week. Next slide, please. So a quick update on schools. As director Hayden mentioned, we currently have a number of outbreaks associated with schools, public and private that are open to some extent right now. We have four clusters that [9:28:32 AM] represent more than 25 cases which are active since last week. Some of the clusters are associated with strength and conditioning, programs associated with football teams and it's important that folks understand this. As we've said before our guidance to schools was that these activities where people can't stay masked or they can't stay social distancinged or both is going to lead to opportunity for an infection and transmission of disease. We've asked the schools to provide notice to parents before they send their students to these activities that it will increase their risk and also increase their risk of household transmission. And now we have of course evidence that that is happening. At least one of the strength and conditioning programs at one of the schools has closed. We'll continue to work with [9:29:32 AM] the schools to provide advice and guidance as they face these outbreaks. And again our hope is to contain them as quickly as possible and prevent further spread. Again, because of these challenges these are why we've made the recommendation that schools only open at 25%. As we take risks, we want to take install risks, measured risks, determine how we're doing with the small risks before we move on and I'm grateful to see that aid, Leander, lake Travis, are all looking to implement that 25% reopening process when they do start up or delaying completely the in person education because we do have a lot of work to do to determine what's safe and what's not and refine those processes. [9:30:37 AM] Our task force continues to meet. They had the meeting with the single points of contact at the school district last Friday of last week. Talked about some of these processes. Our team is working on an online portal so that the school districts can provide statistical information regarding cases and their school district and individual schools that we can share. And we're also sending a form, a notice to the school districts, I'm very pleased with the partnerships with the school districts. They are going to help us with the contact tracing process. That also involves providing notice to students and faculty and staff and parents if somebody is covid positive or if they're in close contact of what their responsibilities are to the school and under the law to ensure that folks are staying home. There's been a lot of confusion about whether or not somebody needs to stay quarantined for the full 14 [9:31:42 AM] days to get a test before the end of that 14 days and the answer to that is yes. It doesn't matter if they get a test on day 3 or day 7 or day 10 which is negative. Right now the guidance is the full 14 days because that disease can manifest any time in that 14 day period. Our hope is that as go through the fall we will gather more information and data which will allow us to shorten that. Which may be very important for us to maintain the month newty of education in returning teachers and students back to school sooner if we can do that sooner. Mayor and council, I want to touch briefly on one fact versus fiction thing and that's related to covid-19 deaths. I think we all saw in the media and social media claims that only six percent of reported deaths were actually covid-19 deaths. [9:32:43 AM] That's absolutely false. So let me explain a little bit of the information that was shared yesterday by CDC. CDC provided all the information on the deaths and provided information on other things listed on the causes of deaths. Things like influenza and new on moan I can't, adult press practicetory disincrease syndrome, respiratory failure and arrest. These are all things associated with covid-19. When somebody has a severe disease they develop knew moan 82. They might develop Ards. They might develop respiratory failure and they will certainly develop respiratory arrest before they die. That has nothing to do with covid-19 or not. That's just part of the pathology of covid-19. Similarly on the right side you see some of the other things listed related to [9:33:46 AM] covid-19 and the causes of death. These are very common causes in our community. Heart disease, heart failure, cerebral vascular disease, which means somebody may have had a stroke or a tia in the past. Hypertension. Sepsis of course is related to covid-19. But to give some perspective I'll give you a few slides here. So we've been talking about this since the beginning about risk factors. Hypertension, heart disease. This is not a surprise that these things are associated with people who died. But it's important to understand that these are not rare conditions in our community. We can see in this slide that 8.8% of people in Travis county had diabetes from 2014 to 2018. 11.6% in Texas. Next slide, please. [9:34:49 AM] Obesity, you can see there's a substantial variation. About5% of individuals in our community are obese. You can see that obesity certainly impacts other communities more substantially as compared to the general community, but absolutely not a rare thing in Travis county and certainly not in Texas. Next slide, please. And hypertension, we see that risk grows with age. Those who are between 44 and 64 like myself, 45 to 65% of people in that age group suffer from hypertension. When we get to 65 plus it's over half. Again, very, very common diseases in our community and certainly things which have been shown to contribute to death in covid-19. We've been at stage three [9:35:50 AM] for risk. As a reminder this means that individuals who are at higher risk, over the age of 65, they have underlying health conditions, or they're members of a community which is more severely impacted, like our African-American community and our latinx community your risks are higher and that means avoiding social gatherings, gatherings over 10. Avoiding nonessential travel. That means don't go to restaurants and bars. For those at lower risks, it also means that you should avoid those social gatherings and gatherings over 10. Again, we're not out of the woods and we could be three weeks away from a bad state again if we relax too much. So we must continue to be protective, we must continue to be vigilant in terms of how we're protecting ourselves so that we can protect our community. [9:36:55 AM] And I'll be happy to take questions. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo and councilmember alter. >> Tovo: Thank you very much for the additional information, Dr. Escott and director Hayden. I wanted to ask a couple of questions about our campus communities. If you could give us a sense, I know the news has carried reports of some cases at UT and some cases at UT San Marcos [indiscernible] For the perspective on those campuses and also I know the news carried a story about at least a party that was going on in west campus as part of a campus group. [9:37:55 AM] I know you sent out letters in the wake of that, but what's the -- what's the status of outreach to those campus groups or off campus groups rather and also whether there are -- what kind of outreach is public health doing, what is underway? I hear reports of other gatherings larger than 10 taking place around some of our campuses, and also if you could likewise address -- I noticed an article yesterday about a campus that elsewhere in the country that is doing sewage testing to isolate dormitories where there may be asymptomatic cases and they focus their testing in on that. And if you've heard whether any of the colleges or universities in our area are considering those kinds of [9:38:56 AM] needs of testing. So a couple of different testing, the sewage testing and other practices that are going on elsewhere, the extent to which they're being deployed here in Austin, what kind of additional outreach and enforcement actions you're taking, especially in those areas where we have off-campus groups that are frankly, you know, not following regulations that are in place. And then I have some questions about the school clusters that we may need to come back to you. >> I'll be happy to start and director Hayden may want to comment as well. We have a very close relationship with UT and the Dell medical school and have been working with them to address the issues on and off campus. As you mentioned we sent out letters to the sororities and fraternities. [9:39:56 AM] We continue the messaging of the importance of college age students and they're engagement and protective actions. As director Hayden said we've got a team through code enforcement as well as the fire marshal's office who is continually engaged in monitoring those situations and addressing the ones that they are able to. >> Tovo: Let me stop you there. Are some of our campus areas on that list that are being monitored? You can get back to me afterward. I didn't immediately see the zip code, but I also didn't have my presentation up. I was just watching it on the screen. >> My understanding is the code and fire marshal were [9:40:57 AM] working in that area addressing some of those hot spots, the restaurants and bars that are now restaurants. Director Hayden may have some further detail on whether that includes west campus or not. I don't have that at this time. >> Tovo: Okay, thanks. >> So with the enforcement we are going to work with -- the pace team is going to come back and do some work selectively. That pace team is the environmental health, fire department, police, as well as code, which includes the fire marshal. And so we're going to be working very closely with them, but that team's covid information was set up so that folks can go in. [9:41:58 AM] And if you've issued warnings you can enter that you've issued those warnings for those businesses and establishments and then so as the warnings is initially provided then it moves towards enforcement and it really depends on if it's a food establishment, then it comes back to Dr. Escott and myself. And we could move toward other penalties as well as closure. The other outreach we've done is we did on Friday receive the list of apartment complexes around the UT area so the west [9:42:59 AM] campus, Riverside, as well as far west and one other location that they put on the list. So this week Dr. Escott's assistant is sending out that information to those communities so they will have that awareness and we've also are including a photocopy of a document that they can post throughout those facilities and those residences as well as apartments. Our next step is we are scheduling a meeting that UT has with one of their vice-presidents. A couple of their vice-presidents and directors on scheduling a couple of meetings with the fraternities, sorority as well as other groups to provide them information. And then they are updating [9:44:02 AM] one of their hand outs that they provide every year on health and safety so they're going to update that and include some information from us so we'll work collaboratively with them on that. We had to sent it out to apartment complexes as well and in addition to that we will share the information on our site with our code -- covid setup that we have. >> Tovo: Okay. We have a couple of ideas that we'll send on to that are umbrella organizations for those campus apartments and maybe some umbrella organizations that might help with your outreach. >> That would be great. [9:45:03 AM] And if any of you have any suggestions we are open to suggestions. We've communicated to the universities that, you know, we are willing to meet with groups, answer any questions that we have, because our goal is to provide the education, just consider let them know about the orders that we have, the success that we have, but we're also leaning on them to be leaders in the community. We'll rely on them to be leaders in our community. >> Tovo: I think that's very important. Who on your staff is the right person to be communicating with. >> You can send it to me. >> Tovo: Thank you. And my last question was the one about whether you know of any universities and colleges in the area that are doing that kind of approach that at least one other university is that is using sewage testing to identify dorms where they might want to go back and do [9:46:05 AM] more targeted testing of all of the residents. It just identifies of course the presence of covid, it doesn't track it to who those individuals are. >> No, I'm not familiar with that. So if you have that information, we'd love if you want to share it with us, we can follow up with that. I am aware that water was working with UT on a couple of studies as well, so I know that is underway. I know just a little bit, not a lot about it, so we'd have to get director Meszaros to send information about that process. >> Tovo: I'll send that on. It was the university of Arizona. I read about it yesterday. Mayor, when we've gone around if you can come back to me I have information about the other school clusters. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. [9:47:05 AM] I wanted to just mention I'm also pretty sure that Austin water was talking about and looking into whether the wastewater was a possibility. I have some constituents who were raising that issue months ago and I don't remember right now where that landed. Hi a question for Dr. Escott and I'm trying to get some clarification because we're seeing some confusion in the community. At work session last week you talked about a new goal of five percent positivity across all racial demographics. What we're hearing is that many in the public have interpreted that to mean that until we reach a positivity rate of less than five percent we will not move into stage two risk level. And I've seen folks contend, for example, if only three people in Travis county need tests and one tests positive that our positivity rate would be 33% and may be pushed back into a higher risk stage. So I know your team is using an array of metrics and looking at how they interact [9:48:09 AM] with one another but I need you to help dispel this myth and clarify so people can understand how we are approaching this. So can you please help clear up the concerns that we're only using the positivity rate and can you explain how we're measuring our progress, which metrics we're using, how we're using the positivity rate and highway we're using the metrics to reach stage two. I'm just trying to understand this, not advocate it's what we need to be doing. I think we need to address it because I don't believe that's what we're doing. >> Thank you, councilmember. Yes, we are using a number of measures in determining risk. Two of the primary measures are the positivity rate and the new hospitalization, new admissions on the hospital that we've been tracking all along. There are other indicators, [9:49:09 AM] hospital capacity, our doubling time and some others. It may be a combination of those things. Where we want to be to be to stage two? Yes, we would like to be less than five percent positivity. Yes, the hospitalizations need to be under10 per day on that seven-day moving average for at least a week. And of course we want to make sure that our hospitals and icus are in good shape to be able to accept more risk. You know, there's not a magical formula for determining this. It's looking at a number of measures, talking to experts in public health and infectious diseases and making a determination. But we're not focused on only one measure at this [9:50:09 AM] stage. It's a cluster of measures. Even as you're measuring positivity, Yo taking into consideration the whole universe of numbers that are being tested and the rate in which we're being able to test people and were we in a situation where we were only testing four people, which would be great in that's all we needed to test, and one out of the four were positive, we wouldn't necessarily be looking at that as a true rate, correct? >> That's correct. And again, smaller jurisdictions may have that issue and have had that issue in the past where they test 50 people and 10 are positive and they end up with an alarmingly high rate. That's not really the case here. While we have seen significant increases in the numbers for testing, the numbers for the week that I showed you were nine to [9:51:11 AM] 10,000 tests. So there are still lots of testing happening, it's just not 15 or 16,000 that we saw in juniper week. >> >> Alter: Thank you. And the other question I had and you touched on this some with councilmember tovo's question on west campus. Who has responsibility for enforcing the rules, say, in west campus, Riverside or far west, and what role does UT play in that if that enforcement falls on us? >> Sure. So legal enforcement outside of the campus proper is the responsibility of the city. I think the university is also a part of that because those students are part of the university community whether or not they are on campus or not. And my hope is that they will continue to be strict [9:52:11 AM] about their enforcement and their penalties from the academic side for those who are willfully disregarding these protections. I think it's easy for somebody in their teens or 20s to want to not be as compliant. They want to be back to normal. They recognize that their risk of complications in death are much smaller than others. But it's not just about them. It's about the rest of us. It's about the parents and grandparents of this community. It's about the faculty and staff. It's about the restaurant owners and restaurant workers. And we need to really engage those students to make sure they are civically minded and they understand their responsibilities as part of a community. Again, we have great universities in Austin and they are known for their public engagement. Students are known forking [9:53:13 AM] being active in that space and my hope is as director Hayden said earlier that these students will choose to lead and that the university of Texas and our other universities will choose to be the ones that set the example for other universities across the country in how we can still function in the university setting, but do so safely. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: If I could address a couple of things that you said as well. When we start looking at triggers and indicators and virtually was using the number of cases, they were one of the first cities I think in the country to move away from cases, things that were related to the amount of testing we did, and that's how we ended up with hospitalizations. So the limitations of doing anything related to testing, they can be based on testing if it's something that really really well aware of which is why we went to hospitalizations as our primary indicator, it continues to be in the work [9:54:16 AM] that Dr. Escott's office and Dr. Hayden's office is continuing to do. That said the ineffectivety number we have, we looked at how that tracks with respect to hospitalizations in terms of being a forward indicator of what we may or may not see in hospitalizations. And there appears to be a relationship. It's not as good as the hospitalization number, but it is an early indicator of what we might be seeing and there is a really good, albeit rough correlation, which is why we take a look at that number as well. Are giving greater elevation to that issue now is because as we've moved away from having our hospitals about to be overrun, hospitalization numbers had a great impact on people's behavior because they were doing everything they could to get that icu from not filling up. Now that the icu is not in a [9:55:18 AM] present danger of filling up, we're finding when we talk to people or people interact, they want to know what the chances are that schools will be able to stay open? What are the chances that when a child goes to school or a teacher goes in we're going to run into someone who is infected? And when people try to decide when I go out do I go outside the restaurant, inside the restaurant? We're finding from a communications standpoint that people want to know that information. So we're elevating that because it is an early indicator, it is also something that seems to be making sense to people as they're trying to alter behavior based on the information and data. The last thing I would point out is the university of Texas website that shows the R naught factor, which is the infectivity number is also something that's used that Dr. Escott didn't mention, and that also looks at mobility data based on cell phone usage, the number of people that are moving around now relative to the number of people moving [9:56:18 AM] around before. So just by way of an example, there are lots of things that we're looking at. The key indicator for us is still hospitalizations because it's the most objective number that we have, which is why that appears that way. >> Alter: I appreciate the clarification. >> Dr. Escott: If you don't mind I want to touch on something you mentioned. That rt, that reproductive number this morning has been increased to 1.03 and the update from UT indicates a 75% chance that the epidemic is growing. This directly correlates to the mobility data. Which tells us that people are moving around a lot more than they were a week ago. So again, we need people to be very, very careful. My hope is that with the masking and the distancing and the hand hygiene that we will find out that the R [9:57:20 AM] naught is not really that high, but it does require when folks are out that they must be very cognizant of those protections and they must maintain those. Again, my recommendation is that if something is a bar or used to be called a bar, that's going to lead to you having a mask off for an extended period of time face to face with other people, not something you should be doing right now. >> Alter: Can I just clarify where the R naught data is? Because I don't know that I've seen it on our dashboard. You said it was on the UT dashboard, but how does someone find that? >> Dr. Escott: Yes, councilmember. We'll send out a link to you and we will -- we'll see if we can put that link on our covid-19 website. The UT -- Lauren Wright and her group has been great throughout this pandemic, updated data regularly. So it's a combination of the [9:58:21 AM] hospital admissions plus as the mayor said the mobility data. As those things change it will affect the reproductive active number in that risk of epidemic growth. >> Alter: Yeah, I understand the reproductive number and where that fits in the broader theme. I just didn't know where we had that calculated for Austin. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: It's good. That will be posted on -- if anybody is watching us right now, it's covid-19.tacc.utexas.edu/aus tin-projections. Council member Casar and then council member pool. >> Casar: I have a question about slides 9 and 10. Maybe we can start with slide 10 which has the sky blue bars on it. It has the zip codes on the bottom. What is the Y axis, the record count? Is that just number of cases? >> Positive cases for that zip [9:59:22 AM] code within the last seven days. >> Casar: Got it. Do we have the per capita information as well, just because zip codes with a small population and a medium number of cases might actually be more overwhelmed than otherwise if ten zip codes don't have ten different numbers? >> Councilman, I know the team is looking into that. I don't have an update but we can certainly get that this week, unless director Heyden has any further information on that. >> No, they have not finished it. They are working on that and compiling that information for us. >> Casar: And I know that the gross number and the per cap numbers are both useful, I just haven't seen as many of the per capita numbers and I don't want folks potentially to not -- to neglect a zip code that is fewer in people but maybe has a high per capita number. If we could privately get that [10:00:23 AM] or share it publicly, if it's useful, that would be great. And then I have the opposite question on the positivity rates, which I think was slide 9. And I know you're saying you're going to be doing positivity rates for zip codes as well. Dr. Ascot, it might have been two or three presentations ago where you had the zip codes and you had a different size bubbles, I think, based on either positivity rate or number of tests. Part of the goal is to figure out are there places where we have a high positivity rate, not just because there are a lot of cases -- which is really important. We want to bring down the number of cases. But also because people are underutilizing our testing facilities where people are busy or scared or what have you, have less trust in institutions and then don't get tested as much. My understanding is that could also lend to a higher positivity [10:01:24 AM] rate and is also not good for people -- for there to be a lot of cases but people aren't utilizing the tests. So have we gotten to a place where we are tracking and feeling comfortable that our positivity rates are reflective of a lot of cases but everybody is comfortable and everybody is going and accessing the tests equally? And does that question make sense? >> Yes, sir. I think a lot of those concerns about getting tested have resolved and it's taken a lot of outreach, not only by the city and county, but our community partners who have been actively engaged in dispelling some of those myths and concerns. As director Heyden mentioned earlier, some of those neighborhood testing sites are designed to focus on those areas that are both experiencing high disease burden but also maybe [10:02:25 AM] more challenged in terms of getting a test. Again, community care has also done a great job at reaching out to those communities and ensuring that folks have adequate access to free testing. As I updated maybe two weeks ago now we are testing asymptomatic people. We're testing people who have been exposed. We're testing people with symptoms, so if folks need a test we have a test for you. We're still encouraging folks if they have private insurance and access to private testing to utilize that as their primary method but if they don't or that's challenging for them, they can certainly come to one of the aph or community health resources for testing. >> Casar: Anecdotally I hear the same thing when I talk to community members and constituents and group, but I would love for us to check with the data to make sure there's not a place in the city or [10:03:27 AM] certain demographic in a certain area that we're missing based on the broad responses that people are feeling more comfortable getting testing for us to miss any particular area. And I think we have the data to say where, you know, if there are particular zip codes or demographics where we are seeing a high positivity rate, if the number of tests we are seeing administered, you know, equally high with the increased number of cases or are we actually in some places seeing a depressed number of tests and a higher number of cases. It would just be really useful for us to check the box and make sure there's not any particular zip code or demographic of where we're missing that because on the whole we're doing better. If that makes sense. >> We could certainly see if the team could -- when we're working on the per capita positive numbers to see if they can also [10:04:30 AM] pull out a number of per capita testing. >> Thank you. I appreciate it, Dr. Ascot. >> Dr. Ascot, two things, one what Greg was talking about with the population by zip code on that slide, that was a question I asked last week as well to try to get the numbers relating so we can see what is on the ground. I think we can do that. And then the other thing, I just want to thank Dr. Ascot and our city attorney and Morgan and the team of folks in our law department for finding a way for us to publish the names of the nursing homes on our dashboard. Especially today when we could see how the numbers have improved across the board on a number of those nursing homes, which is really good news and now folks have come to our site looking for that comprehensive data and statistics that we're [10:05:33 AM] able to see some clear indications that may give them some confidence and assurance that we're all moving in the right direction with regard to getting on the other side of the global pandemic. So thank you very much for doing the extra -- taking the extra steps to make that possible. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, anything else? Council member Renteria and council member kitchen. We'll be coming back to you, council member tovo. Council member Renteria. Microphone. You're muted. >> Renteria: Now you can hear me? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Renteria: Yeah, I want to thank Dr. Ascot and the rest of our city staff and all the work and outreach that you have done. My question is what is your -- do you have a plan or [10:06:35 AM] recommendation about how we should handle our labor day weekend? You know, fourth of July we closed a lot of the parks and restricted a lot of activities and I just want to hear from y'all and find out what kind of recommendation you're advising us and the city on what we should be doing for this weekend, knowing that we're going to have bars that are opening up and restaurants. And I'm very concerned about all this gathering that's going to happen over this weekend and whoever can let us know what is the recommendation. >> Council member, I'll say that I too am concerned about labor day. Again, my recommendation is that folks not participate in gatherings like they normally [10:07:35 AM] would on labor day. Pool parties and so forth. And if they're going to do that it should be in their own household. If they choose, regardless of that advice, to have a gathering or to go to a gathering, they need to do so in a protected way. They need to maintain social distancing. They need to wear masks. If they're taking their mask off to eat or drink, they should do that away from other people. I know that folks may think that this is an alarmist attitude. Dr. Escot things are looking better and why won't you let us do our normal thing? And the answer is because we have seen this over and over again across the state, across the country, across the world. When we relax too quickly we pay for it in two or three weeks. And particular right now we were [10:08:36 AM] trying to open the doors a little bit to schools. Now is not the time to take that risk. Now is the time to stay protected so we can get our kids in the classroom and if that works, get some more kids in the classroom. That should be our primary focus right now. How to successfully get our children in a classroom and maintain those classrooms and schools open. Everything else is extra right now and we can't afford the extra right now. We're continuing the conversation regarding their facilities and we're certainly discussing labor day and what should be open or not and the potential for gatherings. >> Renteria: Yeah, because I'm really concerned. I know that, you know, when we open up our parks people just flock to places and there is no [10:09:38 AM] social distance or anything that's going on. People just have all kinds of sports activities out there in the parks. I have seen it happen here a couple of weeks ago where the African American soccer league had their tournament behind martin middle school and it was 105 degrees out there and everybody was just hanging out under the trees with no mask and no social distancing. That was very alarming to me so I just want to make sure that you have reached out to also the coaches of these leagues. I know there's a lot of pressure with families who want to have their kids out there and these activities and we really need to pound that message down to them to say, hey, you know you're exposing your whole -- your kids' families and grandparents and fathers and mothers if you continue to do those kind of [10:10:38 AM] things. So thank you for all of that. I'm glad you're emphasizing over and over the need and make sure that people are following the recommendations that we're making if we want to beat this horrible virus. So, thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> I also wanted to echo the comments and say thank you, Dr. Escott and Morgan. I think it's helpful and important to provide information to the community related to the names of the nursing facilities and long-term care facilities. So I appreciate you putting this information out. I'm also encouraged to see the improvements in this population in terms of the impact. And so I just wanted to say [10:11:39 AM] thank you to you as well as to director Heyden for the continued support for the folks that are living and working in these facilities. So -- and I think you said this already but I just wanted to confirm that the information you're sharing with us will continue to be available on the city of Austin's covid-19 web page under clusters. So this particular information will go up on that page also. Is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. That's correct. >> All right. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Let's go to council member tovo -- I mean, council member alter. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. Thanks for coming back. I had some questions about the clusters -- let me find them again here. As I understood that slide, [10:12:39 AM] primary and secondary school clusters and cases related to those clusters. Some of those clusters are associated with strength and conditioning activities sponsored by football. Can you give us some sense of those clusters -- how many of those fall into that category? >> Council member, I'm waiting on a report from the team. The indication that I received was that at least 11 of those are related to those activities. >> Tovo: 11? >> Say again? >> Tovo: I'm sorry. 11 of the 25? >> Correct. >> Tovo: I'm sorry. I didn't cut you off. You were saying you were waiting. >> Yes. I'm waiting on a report with some more details on those. Again, the team, you know, does the initial case investigation, the contact tracing and [10:13:40 AM] coordination with the schools. And then we try to find out more details. You know, what was the school specifically doing, how were these individuals interacting? What protections were they using? Were they wiping down equipment? Were they wearing masks when appropriate? So that we can provide further advice for that individual school. But if we see an opportunity that we can share with other school districts to better protect their programs, then we want to do that. >> Tovo: Thank you for that. You talked about you said something about asking those -- ask our area schools to send letters to parents letting them know that some activities are higher risk than others. Is that a requirement that they do so or is it just a request? And if it's just a request, do you have a sense of how many of those schools are in fact getting those letters into parents' hands? [10:14:42 AM] >> It is guidance so I don't have a count on how many are doing that. You know, one of the challenges that we heard about was that there was a perception from students and families if the school was following the uil guidance for how to do things properly, that meant the kids were safe. >> Tovo: Right. >> And that's not at all what it means. It means they're safer than they would be if there was no guidance but not as safe as they would be if they stayed at home. And, again, it's up to individual families to weigh into that decision, do I want my child to take that risk, not only for themselves but for my household? And if I do I need to consent to that or acknowledge that but also be aware of the fact that our advice is that when that [10:15:42 AM] student returns home they wear a mask in the household and they social distance in the household, particularly if there are others at high risk for complications or death in that household. >> Tovo: Doctor, thank you for making that point about the uil. I think the same is true of some of the other provisions. When certain provisions change because of state changes I think people in our community thought those activities were suddenly a lot safer than they really were because the government was telling them it's okay to go back to a bar, to other places. Thanks for making that point about uil. Back to the point of is it allowed to be a requirement? Can you require that schools that intend to have those programs send a letter to parents who are participating? >> That's probably a better question for the city attorney. You know, I think it probably does overstep the boundary of [10:16:44 AM] between public health and the school's autonomy and I think it's important to be as transparent as possible with the school community and I think that acknowledges that -- needs to acknowledge that there's activities which are going to create more risk than simply just going to school. And there's activities where you can't wear a mask or social distance because you're hitting helmets together is going to be one of those activities. Even if they're running on a treadmill or lifting weights, if they're doing that without a mask or they have a spotter that has to stand over them it's going to increase risk. And, you know, I understand that some people are willing to take more risk than others but they do need to have the awareness or that consent or acknowledgment [10:17:47 AM] needs to be informed. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. On that issue, can we -- is there written guidance that we can share out. Is it general enough guidance that we can also be communicating out in case the schools are not? >> Council member, there's a 50-plus page document. That recommendation is part of the guidance to schools that we published a couple of weeks ago on August 14th. That is available on our covid-19 website with the rest of the school-related documents. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. And now that we're going to be publishing this list that has the actual nursing home names on it, there's not a lot of explanation in your slide as to what this slide is telling us. So there's three different colors, it looks like. Some is just to differentiate [10:18:47 AM] one line from the other. And then there are darker gray ones and those are ones that come off the list, so this is not an exhaustive list of all nursing homes in the city that have ever had covid. What puts you on this list and what takes you off this list and what time period does this cover? >> Sure. So you get on a list if you have a case. You get off the list if you've gone four weeks without any new cases. So we will be displaying the current active clusters or active facilities with active cases. And, again, it's an excel formatting thing. The gray means those facilities have gone three weeks without any new cases and will follow up next week. >> Alter: So if I took any one [10:19:49 AM] of these this would list their cases since we started tracking covid? >> Correct. >> Alter: And then the last one is how many new cases there have been in the last week? >> Correct. >> Alter: And if that column has a zero four weeks in a row it comes off? >> Correct. >> Alter: So there are nursing homes that are not on this list that have been covid free for four weeks. There's some on this list that are going to be going off and just because they're on this list doesn't mean that there's like a raging outbreak or anything. We just are tracking the numbers and if they had any cases they were put on this to be watched and so we could support them. >> That's correct. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, anything else before we let these folks go over to the commissioners court? [10:20:50 AM] Dr. Escott and Heyden, thank you so much for the briefing today and for the work that you're doing. >> Thank you, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to turn it over to you to recognize the next briefing on the Walter E. Long. >> We're going to ask av to shift over Kimberly mckneeley who is going to be walking through this next presentation. This is a vision plan for Walter E. Long. A lot of things were happening over the last year and this is something that has garnered a lot of interest and we have been doing a lot of staff work and community work over the last two years, but partly because of covid we had hesitated to bring this to you. We're doing a little bit of clean up work now and we're ready to bring this presentation to council for your approval on Thursday. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimberly mckneeley, our director of parks and recreation. >> Thank you, city manager. If I could ask our av team to [10:21:53 AM] also move over Greg Montez. I'm joined by him in case there's specific questions about the plan that I'm unable to answer. And if the av team could also bring up the presentation, that would be super great. Thank you. So this presentation is obviously about the Walter E. Long vision plan. I'm hoping to cover a process overview so you understand the process that we went through that completed this plan. The resulting foundational framework that we would be using as guidance in the future, some conceptual features and amenities that we might be able to find in this particular plan, and also a phased development recommendation that includes estimated costs and a very brief conversation about public- private partnership opportunities. Just as an overview, to give you [10:22:55 AM] some conceptual understanding of the size of Walter E. Long, we have provided you with two parks that you may be familiar with. And so Walter E. Long is seven times as large as zilker park. It is a metropolitan park and it serves a region or a large area, the entire city is something we would hope everyone in the city would access this. Because it is in the northeast corner of our city it is also utilized by individuals from outside the city, and I'll talk a little bit about that later. The park plan develops an overall vision for the plan. It identifies some recreational uses that we would use as guidance in the future. It prioritizes initial development, and it serves as a document for us to reference for when we would like to develop something in a second or a third phase. It has -- like I said, it has some foundational concepts as a part of this plan and then it [10:23:56 AM] also suggests some features that might be interesting to our community based upon the feedback that they provided. So as part of our process, please know that we had multiple community engagement opportunities. And so we had a technical advisory group, we had stakeholder focus groups that included entities that had a specific interest in this area, fishing groups, community groups, including the rodeo. We had public events and public interaction opportunities. We went to the park itself and did intercept surveys. These are pictures of the middle school where people were able to participate in meetings. We had online engagement surveys. Of those online engagement surveys we collected 3,103 general survey responses and then we had a very targeted survey about specific amenities that garnered 1,886 survey [10:24:57 AM] responses for a total of 4,989 online survey responses. To give you an idea, the people who responded, about 10% of the individuals that responded in the survey were specific to the 78724 zip code, which is the zip code in which Walter E. Long resides. 25% of the people who responded were within the surrounding zip codes that actually touched the 78724 zip code. 40% of the people who responded beyond the 78724 and the surrounding zip codes were city of Austin residents and then there was about a third of the individuals who resided in zip codes outside of Austin who utilized this park because it is in the northeast corner of Austin. We've also went to boards and commissions, which I'll talk [10:25:57 AM] about at the very end of this presentation. So as part of the process overview, we also took a look at the history of the park, and I thought it might be interesting to council and to the mayor that there was an initial master plan completed in 1966 and that interestingly enough that master plan had some similarities to the current master plan -- and I apologize for saying master plan, it's vision plan. I know we're transitioning to the new language and I will do better with regards to that. This particular plan was called master plan. Our new language is vision plan. But it has some -- the historical perspective you'll see in the new features, you'll see things like water access, boating, fishing. This particular plan in 1966 also showed different uses and Zones, which you'll also see in the future plan. [10:26:58 AM] It highlighted camping and picnicking and it highlighted things that had to do with ecotourism. I'm not sure if we used that phrase in 1966 but it's certainly the concepts of this particular plan are very similar to what you'll see in the new plan. Also part of our process overview, at council's direction, we did work with our friends in economic development to determine if there were opportunities or a demand for alternative economic starters O economic opportunities within the park itself. So could we be looking at this park as a way to -- as pathways for economic growth, as pathways for job creation, as pathways for resolving housing issues. And this particular -- this is a slide that came from a report that was done by the economic [10:27:58 AM] and planning systems and it was under the direction of our EdD, economic development, they helped us with this. What this is telling us there's going to be 152% increase in households from the time when this plan was done into the future. And that that will also result in increased retail square footage. It will also result in our office and commercial space and hotel space outside of the actual boundaries of the park. And so basically what the recommendation from eps was that the park should focus on job growth and options for services and goods that are recreational in nature because it appears as though -- or at least the prediction is -- that things that a community needs that are outside of a park will be taken care of in the surrounding developments. [10:28:58 AM] Next slide, please. So this right here talks a little bit about those foundational frameworks that I mentioned in the very beginning. And so basically this particular slide took a look at the topography and the environmental features of this park and it showed us that there are particular places where it is very appropriate for us to develop and be able to have buildings and surface structure and parking lots and different kinds of infrastructure that are really more about active kinds of things that are happening in the park. And then there also is areas that should have very limited construction and very limited areas because they're considered more environmentally sensitive. They are preserves or they're wetlands or they're part of an already-established wildlife sanctuary. So when you see the vision plan in the future you'll notice that it will be consistent with this [10:29:58 AM] particular analysis of where things can be built. And so this is a foundational concept that I think will carry through, regardless of the features or the specific amenities that are chosen in the future. We would be following this as a foundational concept. Next slide, please. So to go along with the idea of having certain areas that are developable that you can actually develop in, that you can build structures in, we've also tried to determine what would those structures look like. And we wanted to make sure as a foundational concept that we have consistent uses for the areas that can be developed. So in the areas that are highly developed, we would have active sports and organized sorts of things. I said that earlier slide, but this is just another way of looking at it that you would have things that are highly developed that would be active. [10:30:59 AM] And we would have arts and culture in certain areas where you could develop spaces that would allow that, and you would have passive and natural spaces. Again, another foundational concept that we would fall back on when we're in the future choosing specific amenities. Next slide, please. And so this was a preferred framework plan. So when we worked with the community and did all of the community engagement, we presented to the community multiple options of what a vision plan could look like for Walter E. Long. And what this plan was was the plan that the majority of individuals who participated in community engagement said that they thought would be the most acceptable, the most interesting, the thing that would serve the most individuals. And you can see that it has a variety of activities and it has a variety of active spaces as well as passive spaces. It was one of three plans that was presented and it was the preferred plan. [10:31:59 AM] And when you have a chance to look at the document that's online, or you can send it to you via PDF, you will be able to see exactly all of those different activities. But it does range from things like camping to trail walking to boat launches to amphitheaters and cultural arts spaces where performance art can occur. It's consistent with -- this layout here of where things are active and passive is consistent with that foundation. And it's also, again, interestingly it's very consistent or has similarities to the 1966 plan. Next slide, please. So here's where we get into the idea of us having similar conceptual ideas of what could go into each area of the park. [10:33:00 AM] And so while we had a foundation where we made things active and passive and we decided whether it was developable or not developable, here's where we say here are the appropriate things that could go into this space based upon the feedback that we received from the community members. So when community members said we would like to see trails, we were able to plot that on this map as a possible feature as to where trails would be most appropriate. When community members told us we would love to see performing arts or an opportunity to bring music or bring theater to this space, we were able to determine the most appropriate space that that kind of amenity could occur. Sports courts. Where should there be boat lunches and should there be more boat launches? That's what we heard from the community and you can see from this particular plan, which you would want to look at the plan and obviously enlarge this, but you would be able to see the [10:34:00 AM] features that folks said were interesting to them and would be desirable for this park and where they are plotted on this particular vision plan for the future. I want to just bring your attention to the lower left hand corner where it says expo center. And you ll notice that in that space that is not very green. There's just a couple of buildings. When the parks and recreation department embarked upon this vision plan, we did reference the hundon report which was the report at the time as to how it should be used. This particular area adjacent to the expo center is absolutely filled with active recreational opportunities. This is where the amphitheater is located. This is where the sports courts are located. This is where the active space and the infrastructure, the majority of infrastructure would [10:35:01 AM] be developed in this particular plan. And while there are synergies with the expo center and there's shared parking opportunities and perhaps even shared amenity opportunities, I'd also like to mention that this could also be a plan that stands on its own. Whether the expo center is looked at for alternative uses or if it's reconfigured in some way, this particular plan, the Walter E. Long vision plan, will stand alone as its own plan. It is not contingent on the future of the expo center of the future uses of the expo center. This plan will show you everything from sports areas, playgrounds, boat houses, marinas, boat launches, cabins, and camping spaces. It is emphasis on sort of that performing arts and that cultural arts space and then also some of the ecotourism opportunities. This is just a bird's eye view [10:36:04 AM] of the entire thing. Next slide, please. One thing we wanted to take into consideration is the circulation of the plan and also the accessibility of this park from the surrounding area. So as you'll recall in the very beginning of the presentation, I talked about the development that was -- whoops. If we could go back one. We talked a little bit about the development of the surrounding area and so the slide that says circulation around the park shows you how the up and coming developments that are happening in that space would be able to access the park, either through vehicular access or through bike or pedestrian access. It also talks about the number of individuals based upon that [10:37:05 AM] economic development report that we received, what the population estimates are expected to be as those particular developments grow. And so I wanted to make sure that I showed you that there were -- that it was accessible, not just by car, but it's accessible via bike and through hiking opportunities. It's also important to note that there is an E ee -- it's a feature. It's not a done deal. We would have to have more conversation about what it is that trails should look like . So this is just another illustration of the different areas of the park. Because this is such a large park we would want to consider area development -- or development of this space in multiple areas. And each of these multiple areas [10:38:07 AM] have its own theme that goes along with the activities that are happening in that particular area. Again, this is based upon the community feedback and the things that the community told us that they would like to see in this park. And so we tried to put those kinds of amenities and activities in the areas that were appropriate for that type of development. And so you'll notice that we have the expo center area where I talked about how that was kind of the active area. Area number two is the lakeside park. This is where we have a lot of those features that would enhance the user experience. It's right along the water. There's trails in there. Post oak Savannah is area number three. It's more of a passive area. I won't read all of these to you because I know you can read yourself, but basically this just gives you a description consistent with those foundational items that I showed [10:39:07 AM] you earlier. Next slide, please. So the next slide's going to show you an idea of some conceptual features of how we would improve the existing park. So when you go to Walter E. Long right now you drive into Walter E. Long and this is the space that is utilized by the public. And so this is a enhanced look at what it could look like instead of what it currently looks like. So we have a current state of the park, but this is our vision for what we would love this park to look like in the future. And you can see that it has a lot of features that have to do with the water. It has a fishing pier. It has a marina or a boat space and a boat dock. It has a beach access. And this is how much of that space is utilized right now. [10:40:08 AM] And so it would be the parks and recreation department's recommendation to consider improving this space first to enhance the features that are already readily used, provide some more parking, provide some more amenities in this space so that individuals can enjoy this as a family. You can see that on the left-hand side of this there are some sports courts. Those happen to look like soccer courts. Again, that is just a picture of an amenity that could be there. Those could be volleyball courts or basketball courts. They could be something else. They could be tennis or they could be any combination of those things, but the idea is that it would be family oriented and something that families could come and enjoy pavilion and picnic space. The parks and recreation department would recommend if we are going to begin to invest in this park we would begin by investing in this space. If you go to the next slide, another area of consideration that the parks and recreation [10:41:09 AM] believes would be an appropriate investment in the early phases of this park development is this active area. And the reason why we think the active area has great potential, it has potential for public-private partnerships. It's the cultural arts area. It could be used as a music venue. It could be used as a performing arts venue. It could be used for events. It can be used for food trailers. Again, it has some synergies if the expo center is to be developed as it is or it could also morph a little bit to be able to accommodate whatever it is that the expo center space would eventually be. We believe that with there being music and performing arts that there's multiple partners in the community that may be interested in partnering with us. And so this would be an area that we would really like to focus on as part of our initial [10:42:09 AM] phases of the parks. So you can see that these are the projected costs related to the park. And you can see that zone B and zone a, those were the two areas that I suggested that the parks and recreation department would look like at first begin their development. And the price tags associated with that are written there and so this is why we believe it's important for us to think about revenue streams that could help support the park, public-private partnerships that could help support the park. Even perhaps a conservancy that we have in other areas of the parks and recreation. So there's lots of options for us to develop this park with the community and in cooperation with the community. But I wanted to be forthcoming with the cost. And we have to remember that while we have -- this park is -- I just wanted to remind everybody that this park is seven times the size of zilker [10:43:11 AM] park and it took us a number of decades to actually develop zilker park. I just wanted to put that into context because sometimes the price tag feels a little bit oppressive but it's something we can work through and find creative ways in which to fund. If we could go to the next slide, please. These were just overview of the potential phase one cost. You can see phase one, that's the area that I talked about where we have the existing uses. And so these were just some cost estimates that would go along with the Gates and the restrooms and picnic areas. It shows you some areas we may have partnership opportunities like with a rowing club or with a boat concession or perhaps other water activity concession. And so I just wanted to give you an idea of that sort of cost [10:44:12 AM] range. And then the last slide, please, is our next steps. So our next steps -- please know that we did go to the parks board June 25, 2019. I believe that Greg and Leanne were the presenters for that particular presentation and also to the environmental commission in July 17, 2019. We are coming today before you with this presentation and certainly we would love to see this considered on September 3, but understand there may be some discussions that need to be had and we'll be taking your direction. And the next phase is after approval would be design and construction on a limited scale. So we have already put aside approximately $3.5 million and we are engaging partners -- very, very initially engaging partners because we don't have an approved plan as to how we might be able to start that initial development in the space that's already used. [10:45:12 AM] And then we would obviously be coming back to council for any types of designs and final cost approvals for any sorts of construction that would happen. And I'm available for questions. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for that presentation. Colleagues, questions? Council member Harper Madison and then council member Flannigan. >> I think I'm having a tech issue because all of the videos are going weird. I'll defer to council member Flannigan and I'll be right back. >> Mayor Adler: By the way, we can see you really well. Council member Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I hate to go in [10:46:13 AM] front of council member harper-madison because this is in district one. I have many questions maybe not dig into them today. This is a big plan. This is a big plan. On some of the slides it talked about regional impact. Ms. Mcneiley, you mentioned regional partners but I don't know if you closed the loop on that conversation. >> I did not. We have had conversations with everybody from -- well, the range from folks from Texas rowing to U.T. Rowing. We have had conversations with individuals who are interested in fishing and boating sorts of concessions. We have had conversations with individuals who have expressed interest in events and in opportunities for performing arts facilities. We have had conversations with the community about [10:47:14 AM] opportunities for having community-based sorts of activities that might be revenue generations like food trucks or green -- I can't think when you sell vegetables and fruits to people. I can't think of the name. >> Farmers markets. >> Farmers markets! Sorry about that. And those sorts of things. When I talk about regionally we tried to take a look at different partners that could bring different aspects of the park. Something that would be large as well as something that could be very community based. >> Flannigan: I was hoping you were going to talk about Travis county. [Laughter] >> Well, thank you. There has been some conversations with Travis county and specifically those conversations have been about the expo center. And those conversations have not been unique to the parks and recreation department but they [10:48:14 AM] absolutely have included our friends in economic development and they've absolutely included -- at the time it was judge ecert and those conversations have been stalled we also talked to the rodeo folks and what they would prefer to happen with that particular space and who they would prefer to be partners with. But it is incumbent upon us as a city department to get back on the horse, if you will, to be able to begin those conversations again. We started down that path and then covid hit and we have not come to conclusions as to what a really solid partnership that would be beneficial to both entities. We have not determined what that would finally look like. >> Flannigan: I'm not even really talking about the expo center. There's a lot of conversation we don't need to go into today on [10:49:14 AM] that. On one slide there was an EdD assessment about the future growth in a five-mile radius. Did EdD provide for you how much of that was going to be in our taxable jurisdiction versus outside of our taxable jurisdiction? >> I don't know that they did, council member, but I could go back in the report and find out for you. I don't recall, so I don't want to say if they did or did not, but I absolutely could get you that information. >> Flannigan: Yeah, I think that's an important element of this. And on the back side of Walter E. Long, you have -- I think wild horse is really adjacent to, which is a Travis county pid, which would not have to pay any of the costs of this park but would absolutely be one of the primary users of this park which, you know, I have a lot of issues with how that works. >> And council member, if I could add to that, I think [10:50:15 AM] taking your lead we have had conversations about tirz, you know, tax increment reinvestment Zones, but that's absolutely something that the county would have to consider because, to your point, a lot of the taxable area is not necessarily city of Austin but is also county. So, again, on the very surface those conversations have been had but we have never come to a final conclusion of how we could best partner. >> Flannigan: And I worry about the operations and ongoingen maintenance as much as I do about the initial capital. It's two different questions. When you had the slide about the input process, you know, it triggers me when I see a graphic that says put a sticker on the map where you live. And my district isn't even on the map. I'm curious if you have a breakdown, in my sense. It could be north, south, west, east or by district or whatever about how much input was [10:51:17 AM] provided in this plan. >> I'm going to ask -- I hope that we moved over Greg Montez. I think I'm going to ask that he be able to answer that question because either he knows the answer or he can get you the answer. >> Thanks, Kim. Gregory Montez, parks and recreation planning division. To answer your question, we had survey and data from everybody that participated, as the director mentioned. There was nearly 5,000 folks that participated. We did not collect, other than the zip code that the participant lived in, we only had the breakdown of the zip code where they lived. We would have to look back into that. I don't know that we have anything that documents exactly the percentage of people that might be in a particular district, but I could look with [10:52:18 AM] the -- >> Flannigan: Just providing zip codes would be fine. I can scan a list of zip codes and get a sense of what parts of town are weighing in. To be clear, if this was a neighborhood park or one where we expected a small area of service, then I wouldn't have asked that question. But this is obviously a gigantic amenity that would serve the whole region. >> What might be helpful too, council member, I believe we have a map exhibit that might show where people were, you know, residing who were participating in this process. >> Flannigan: That's great. In the public engagement process, how is the public informed about cost and timeline when they're doing their visioning work? >> Well, we obviously have to lay out the process for that. We have to obviously inform the community stakeholders that this is the front end of development of the park. [10:53:19 AM] So they're in the visioning exercise. But the next step is obviously then to go through the approval process, which is where we're at now. Once that is done, we then have to inform them as well that there's going to be a design element and associated costs with the development of the park. The information that Kimberly shared with you was shared with the community as well. So they're aware of the costs associated with this and those costs are obviously estimates right now. That information is shared with them up front. That information, again, will be shared with them, as the director mentioned, when we go through the design phase which includes another public engagement opportunity for those stakeholders. >> Flannigan: So there's more public engagement to come? >> There usually is in our design phase. Because this vision plan is really trying to designate uses in the area or park. [10:54:19 AM] As the director mentioned, we showed the current location of our park and it showed soccer fields. But what we're trying to show through that illustration is that this is a family active area. Once we get into the design phase, folks might want to add basketball courts, tennis courts, volleyball courts or multipurpose fields that are not specifically designed for soccer alone. The idea is during the design phase we get a little bit more detail as to what is needed by the community and obviously outreach to the same folks and we try to expand that because we know demographics change in the areas. >> Flannigan: Kim, do you know off the top of your head if the entirety of Walter E. Long is dedicated parkland? >> You'll see a little space that's carved out that I believe Austin energy owns. >> Flannigan: Yeah. >> And other than that, to my knowledge, the entirety of Walter E. Long, including the [10:55:22 AM] space that the expo center is on is dedicated to parkland. >> Flannigan: Did you say that parks has already set aside $3.5 million? I think I missed what that was for. >> Yes. We set aside $3.5 million before this plan had been approved to be able to immediately do something once the plan was approved, some sort of infrastructure. Better roads, you know, improve the time to launch their boats. Fix up some picnic pavilions, do Ada accessibility in the restrooms or improve the restrooms. We have some money set aside to do some immediate things so that folks, after this is approved, can see some immediate response. >> Flannigan: Was that general fund or part of the bond? >> It was part of the bond and it was part of the metropolitan park category. >> Flannigan: Okay. Those are my questions. I have spoken to a lot of staff about this and I have [10:56:23 AM] affectionately described this plan as six flags over decker. It can a gigantic plan with a gigantic price tag. There's a fine line between a vision and a hallucination and I'm really concerned about this process that we seem to follow where we go to the public with basically no guardrails and say what would you like to see. And then the council is not involved. We're the ones who have to make the hard decisions but we're not involved until the end and now we're presented with a plan, which looks like we're promising the public a lot of cool amenities. There's a ferris wheel on this plan, for crying out loud. And an $800 million vision plan was put on the addendum. Under no circumstances can I vote for it this week. There is a lot of thought and work to be done here for us to think about are we saying, given all the other needs of this community, that we're willing to put an $800 million vision plan in? I mean, I'm not sure this is where I would put the next [10:57:24 AM] $3.5 million, frankly. There are a lot of really critical needs in neighborhood parks in other parts of the city right now. I appreciate a long-term vision but, you know, this is a pretty shiny object and I just can't see given all the other constraints that we're operating under, how we can move forward on this without a lot more work from the council. >> Mayor Adler: Council member harper-madison. >> Harper- madison: I'm all fixed up now. While I can appreciate your deference to me, I appreciate it that you went first because you asked literally all my questions including -- and this is sort of the lowest possible level, the ferris wheel. You know, just some considerations around operation and maintenance and what does that even look like. But I will say I'd like to keep it higher level and just say I absolutely appreciate the time and the effort that went into [10:58:25 AM] this process. I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of work and time that our parks folks put into this vision plan and the amount of time and effort that the community put into their contributions to the dialogue. But very much like my colleague, I have seven pages worth of questions and I think those are best asked outside of this setting. I think this was a great opportunity to say I know that this was hard work. I know that this was a lot of hard work. It is not lost on me, however, that there's still a lot more work to be done. Walter E. Long, this massive regional park, is one of five extraordinarily important assets within a 1.6-mile radius to one another. So we have the -- Austin energy [10:59:26 AM] has a site right there on the lake. We have the expo center. We have colony park that's happening. We have the metropolitan park right around the corner that's happening. And then so many other things. So I think it is absolutely in our long-term greatest good, best interest as a municipality to think about all these things as a combined sort of suite of assets as opposed to one-off asset, especially like this one that's just so massive. So there are a lot more questions we need to ask and answer. There's a lot more time that we need to put into this. And so I also have a great deal of concerns about being able to move forward without having some of those questions asked and/or answered. In which case I would like to sort of think through what are our opportunities here to give it a little more time and massage it more before myself [11:00:26 AM] and my colleagues to say yes. I'm also hesitant to say yes today. So, mayor, I'm not sure who I'm asking that question. What are our options for giving us a little bit more time to talk through some more questions and concerns? >> Mayor Adler: What kind of time pressures are you working under for this? >> Obviously it's been an entire year since we brought the plan to the parks board, so the time constraints are minimal. I think that the department would like to deliver on a promise to the community, but I understand that council would like to look at it a little differently or more holistically or, if I could just use council member harper-madison's phrase, a suite of assets. And certainly we understand that. We could, as a staff, certainly we could withdraw and come back [11:01:26 AM] at a time after we have been able to answer the many questions of the council members in separate meetings. Of course, council always -- can always postpone. So I think our biggest -- maybe -- I think our biggest concern, I won't say maybe, I think our biggest concern is being able to deliver something to the public. We do have some mandates or regulations in place that say that we're not to move forward with any kinds of improvements until we have something that is approved by council. So, you know, we can work towards that and I'm sure the community understands how important it is to lift it up as a suite of assets or more holistically. And the sooner we can do that the better we will feel about delivering something to the community. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Yes, mayor. This is one of the parks that I [11:02:27 AM] do go to. It needs a lot of love. It's more of what I would call a primitive-type park, in a sense that if you look at all the parks, you know, there's hardly any shade there, very few trees. No covered picnic tables at all. You know, I think that even presently there's just portables there for restrooms. I don't know if there's any permanent restrooms there. There might be. I think there's some up there on the hill, but it needs a lot of love and I don't think -- I mean, I know that this park, you have to pay to go into this park. There's a fee associated with all the regional parks. You just don't walk in there and go free. And so, you know, it needs some love and I would hate to delay [11:03:31 AM] the $3.5 million of improvements to it. I think that people will use it even more if they have more ability to have more activities there. And so the big improvement there, the $8 million, that's a dream, you know. I don't see it being done any time soon, unless we go for a big major bond election to the voters, which would probably be way down the road. But it does need a lot of improvements and people really want to have something down there. It's just been so many years of being neglected and no investment done in it. I personally would like to see something getting done down there that we could start seeing [11:04:31 AM] and enjoying. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I wouldn't mind taking a bit more time, but I would suggest postponing, because I do think there needs to be time for people to get their questions answered. But, at the same time, it is important to move forward with it so perhaps there be an amount of time that it could be postponed for that the council members could ask questions. I would also say that I would be thinking of this in terms of a long-term plan. I assume that's what is intended because it's a vision plan. Is that the right way to think about it? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Is there a particular time-frame on it or just vision as a long-term vision? >> It's envisioned as a long-term plan and typically as [11:05:34 AM] bond programs are opportunities for public-private partnerships present themselves, take a look back at the vision plan and we determine what would be the next phase or what's the next opportunity for us to improve that space. And it would be a combination, of course. I think that it would require some bond but also other creative ways of funding it could present themselves. We would like to explore those too. >> Kitchen: Okay. I will say that I do share the interest in looking at how all those things work together, particularly from a funding standpoint so we could -- but I understand where we're at right now is just a vision plan. We're not funding this plan right now. That's a lot more work that needs to happen. I'm also excited about this. This is a fabulous amenity for [11:06:35 AM] our community. And for me I want to see a vision of what we would really like it to be, understanding that it's now -- we're not going to be voting tomorrow to fund it because it's not our top priority today, but that doesn't mean that we don't want to work towards an amenity that is, you know, as council member Renteria was saying, can really be an amazing amenity for the whole city , especially for that area of town. So I'm happy to have an aspirational vision for this park and I'm excited about it. I think it's a huge amenity and it deserves the kind of focus and thinking and visioning that we have done for other parks in the city. It's bigger than zilker park, for example, and it has the potential to be that much more of an amenity for the whole city. [11:07:35 AM] Thank you for bringing this. I think I would support a little bit more time, maybe, you know, I started to say September, but we're already into September. Maybe October or something like that. I just wouldn't put it off for very long because I do think it would be good to show the community some progress and also use the initial dollars for just getting something started. Thanks for doing this. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate all the work that went into this and understanding, you know, when we do look at parks we very often are aspirational about where we want to go and it takes sometimes decades to build them out, and this is an enormous park and that's going to happen. I'm fine with taking more time, I just wanted to throw out a permutation that might give us the time we need, which is we [11:08:36 AM] could think of this as the area, this is a massive land area, and it could be that we could pass the vision for the section that we use right now for those renovations and what we want that to look like and be able to make some of the investments that we already have money now to the bathrooms and some of the other things, which I'm not really hearing that that will change a whole lot as we think about some of the other spaces that we might want to think about or the regional partners and that part, I think, is a little bit more -- slightly more constrained for access in terms of how you get there from places outside of Austin. So that would just be something, as we're moving forward, to think about is there any value in chunking this and having that one section be passed and we [11:09:36 AM] work towards that goal as we work out the vision for the rest of the pieces. Just a thought to consider. Not necessarily for this week but, you know, in the short run. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. This is really -- like my colleagues I share the excitement about the plan and moving forward. This has been an ongoing interest to community members and I'm excited to see the conversation. I would certainly support taking a little bit more time on the plan. I would love the opportunity to look at it more carefully. I did have a couple quick questions. Could you help me remember -- I can't find it in the plan itself, but can you remind me, director mcneiley, the [11:10:40 AM] timeline. >> I'm sorry, the timeline for the -- >> Tovo: Camping. >> I think the camping is actually in a phase three or phase four. They're not part of the -- it's not part of the initial or even the second phase but just to be clear, that's part of the reason why we go back to the community because when we're ready to do something else, we need to go back to the community and say this was our recommendation for the phases. Does this still make sense or should it be something else. Even though it's in phase three, that doesn't mean in five years if we're ready to go back and do some major development, that would move up instead of being in three or four, it would move up to second or, you know, part 1c or something of that nature. >> Tovo: I absolutely support moving forward on the things that would make immediate amenities for places that are already being enjoyed, but I wonder if some of the elements like the camping might be [11:11:42 AM] something that could be done relatively -- I have no idea what it costs to create a campsite. I'm looking around and seeing what I perceive as a renewed interest in camping right now because of the pandemic. I'm wondering if that might not be the kind of amenity we want to roll out more quickly. >> Yeah. >> Tovo: I have seen so much on social media about people camping and I can tell you everything from camp stoves to, you know, all kinds of other camping supplies are sold out because of the interest. I wonder about that -- if it's relatively inexpensive and quick to get something, some of those elements. I'm just using that one as an example. That would allow enjoyment of new areas of the park, whether those considerations couldn't also be embedded into the [11:12:44 AM] timeline. Some of them might be in a later phase but could be accomplished relatively inexpensively and quickly and could get embedded. But maybe you have already taken those kinds of considerations into account when determining your phasing. It wasn't completely clear to me how the phasing was. >> Yeah. I think you bring up very good points, council member tovo in the difference a year makes. We had chosen those two particular phases and frankly the two particular phases that were chosen was because we believed those to be the ones that might be able to best help support the park through different revenue streams. But it's a year later and when we start the development it might be a little bit of a different time. It's important for us to reengage the community to determine what is the most important thing to do second. I hear you loud and clear and I understand that's something we might want to consider as we begin the park development. >> Tovo: Thank you. And, again, I haven't had an [11:13:45 AM] opportunity to really review the vision plan carefully to look at how carefully it engages or how thoroughly it engages funding opportunity. I know I heard a couple mention. >> I would just mention a couple of other things. Somewhere in your slide you talked about kind of a welcome center, a vision center. It is my memory of our conversations about the hotel occupancy tax that visitor centers and information centers are eligible expenses under hotel occupy city tax revenue. As are I believe some of the other elements, like the lodge. You know, other things aimed at visits, out of town visitors at this site, which I would argue would be eligible for hotel occupancy tax. So I hope that will be a large consideration for funding for this. >> No, no, no. One last question. [11:14:45 AM] Would you sort of briefly encapsulate the -- alternative? >> Yes. So the alternative was, took up approximately one-third of the park. It was right along the water's edge and it also traversed transmission/distribution lines from Austin energy. The final survey that the department to determine whether or not golf was an agreeable amenity or something that was windowly, widely -- widely desired .. By the users, we found that it was not the number one thing that people were looking for. We did do some additional exploration with the -- with PGA and did some additional exploration with other community members to determine opportunities and the amount of [11:15:45 AM] money, that that revenue stream might be able to support the park and it really became, as time went on, the it really became less and less clear to other sorts of commitments by other entities who wanted to partner with us. So because the community had said there is the desired vision that we have for the park, that is the one we brought forward instead of the second or the third alternative of having a golf course. >> Thanks for that summary. I was pa part of those initial conversations when there was a proposal, a private proposal to develop a portion of this as a golf course. And I wasn't sure in looking through your table of contents, and got some e-mails about it as well, whether that was the alternative that was explored in this vision plan. So thank you for both providing that context but also giving us a summary about what the conclusion was. You know, that to me, several of us felt that conversation was moving too quickly without [11:16:46 AM] consideration for other potential uses for in space, so, you know, it seems to me that process shows exactly, you know, why that is the best approach, because with more community engagement about alternatives and alternative public uses, it sounds as if the community has -- it sound like you are saying the community, coming from a different position, than was the one when it was on the council agenda moving through at what I would say was a rapid pace. So thank you. Thanks for that summary and thanks for -- a reminder of -- that's very much about talking with the community and not just talking to the community quickly but doing that more -- that really more challenging longer term work of community engagement. [11:17:46 AM] >> I would join in my colleagues in thanking you and your staff as well as the community that participated in this. Obviously a huge update, and incredible opportunity and promise for this property. I would also join in, to allow those initial conversations to take place, and then maybe out of the very first of those to determine whether or not it made sense to bring back, if that is consistent with what was suggested. As part of the conversation associated with this sweep of opportunity, I think it is important for us to figure out the expo center and, you know, there have been some resolutions that have come from the council [11:18:47 AM] on that. You know, it is not in the best state of repair right now, so we are trying to figure out how that might be approached. I have never seen economic analysis of the different alternatives in terms of how much they generate the business plan associated with different alternatives. That has been a hole in my mind in trying to wrap my head around it. There have been conversations about the tax and getting a feel for how much the revenue, something that is generated -- but I would love to have as part of the conversation [indiscernible] By continuing those who haven't had a chance to speak, mayor pro [11:19:47 AM] tem and councilmember Ellis. Thank you for this conversation from my colleagues. I am curious. Is a way to look timor -- I hear the concerns about the initial price tag, but I am also hearing that this is, you know, a vision. So like for example the project connect vision map right now, we don't have the funding for every single thing on there, but it is just -- once we get the funding this is what this system would look like. Is that a similar -- and a obviously we don't -- it is not an apples to apples but is that a way to understand this? >> I think that is good way to kind of look at it, yes. It is so big. We never envisioned, the parks department never intended nor did we envision nor do I believe we communicated to the community that everything would come at once. [Indiscernible] When opportunities become available from the Texas parks & wildlife [11:20:48 AM] partnerships, those are the things we can engage the community and say, great, we have this great opportunity. What do we want to apply it to and let's get that part done. Without a plan, it is hard for us to be able to -- for us to be able to take advantage of those opportunities. So I think you summarized it well. >> Okay. And -- I am trying to compare this to all of the other things we learned in this job. Does it create a situation where this is lake a shovel ready thing so when the grant becomes available we say, look, we have this vision. This is why this grant for, you know, half a million in volleyball courts, because we have this plan that shows these are the volleyball, because the plans shows this is where the volleyball courts are going to go. >> Yes. That helps us with the shovel ready -- >> I don't want to be disingenious. There may be other things we have to do for the grant or [11:21:50 AM] other opportunities. >> Okay. And this might be -- I am sorry if this was answered in councilmember tovo electro's questions but I assume the plan can be nimble in there is a new sport that comes along and, you know, where right now we have, you know -- I just -- you know, people in ten years people hate volleyball or something. Does approving this still allow us to be nimble? >> Absolutely. What I tried to do and maybe I wasn't successful is talk about the fact there are foundational concepts which says that here is where you can put certain types of developments. I mean there are concept July concepts of the the .. Future amenities which will change over ten years. Like you said volleyball may be a sport nobody wants to play. But we have yet to conceive or even understand is now something everybody would like for us to [11:22:50 AM] build. [Indiscernible] >> Okay. And the last question, my visits to this park have been primarily for -- events and -- couple of triathlons there. And so I am curious and I am sorry, again, if I missed this. Have we reached out to that community? Because I know like -- and I may say this wrong but we have a partnership with different private organizations for Cialis Kerr .. Zilker .. >> So they kind of partner with us and help us maintain that area because they use it for their live music. Have we had conversations with like these athletic groups who use this park and have done the -- I have done the decker challenge there. I have done a couple of different sprint triathlons, so -- and it always has been great for those purposes and I think, you know, there is an opportunity to make it even better for those kind of sports. [11:23:51 AM] >> Yes, we absolutely did. And we will were actually part of a focus group conversation. [Indiscernible] I keep focusing -- when I said event I was focusing a lot on music and performance art but they were a part of that group of events, so running events and marathons and triathlons. That's an event for us too. >> Okay. Awesome. All right. Thank you. >> >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Ellis, I think, is next. >> Ellis: Thanks, mayor. I am in agreement with a lot of my colleagues about wanting more time to kind of think through phasing and funding and kind of what our options would be. I am curious, if this is on the green line or near the potential for a Frein line, has there been thought to entry, access points for people who might want to utilize that in the future or conversations around a circumstance layer, so .. We can use all of the different portions of this if they decide [11:24:51 AM] to go and not take their own vehicle? Is that something that has been a part of this planning process? >> So you broke up a little bit. Did I hear you say green line and transportation? .. >> Ellis: Yes, I want withed to think if it was near a green line and if there would be a stop for people who want want to, who would want to use it in the future. >> Yes. We considered public transportation options and how people might be able to access the park without using their vehicles. I know the plan exact specifically shows pedestrian and bike but also considered public transportation and bus stops. >> Ellis: Okay. And is there any talk about a circulator, who may want to get to a different part of the park to use a different asset but maybe can't use their bike or take care car? >> I think that would be a great idea for when we have the design process. I think it was spoken about, obviously, because it is so large, and there is actually a [11:25:52 AM] trail that connect it is entire system but I don't know that we spoke specifically about moving people within the park system but certainly something we could consider and I just want to mention that there is a planned or proposed bus stop on the north side of the park, so that is -- someone just texted me to let me know I should tell you that we already -- there is already a proposed bus stop. >> Ellis: Okay. That's a fantastic and I will take a closer look at that and kind of curious about, you know, what amenities are going to be offered where, so making sure there are restrooms available or, you know, places to get water or food or things like that, which with sounds lake you are already thinking about, I just want a little more time to also review that and understand all of those different layers. >> Thank you. >> Ellis: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> >> Tovo: One thing I wanted to mention, and thank you for [11:26:54 AM] reminding me about this on my staff. We had conversations in the past about the decommissioner of the decker power plant and whether there would be any funding possible through that project. You know, -- not always, but sometimes when we have infrastructure projects that are funds that go to the park. So we should ask Austin energy at some point about that. I don't know if you had any additional conversations about there would be any additional funds coming forward from Austin energy to help mitigate the impact on that area through the length of that power plant and whether those -- because that would be another funding source that could be reinvested in the park. >> Sure. At the time of our conversations, we did include -- I believe they were a part of [11:27:54 AM] our stakeholder group and at the time, when we began to discuss this, ae was not in a place to help us understand exactly the future of that particular power plant nor any sort of time frame for decommissioning, but absolutely, they are good partners with us so I am sure that when the time is appropriate we can reexplore and reengage on that particular topic. >> It has been decommissioning, fully decommissioned by 2022, so I think that time is right now to have that conversation. And I see, you know, the holly power plant as a precedent in that. There were mitigation funds that were used for the pk as well as, I think, for the lead mitigation program, which we had an opportunity to recognize -- last week. He was very -- really helped get the word out about the lead [11:28:54 AM] mitigation programs and I don't want that moment to slip by without mentioning their involvement in that. I think as a city we have a precedent for when we decommission the power plants we are reinvesting in the surrounding area. And acknowledgment that there is damage to the, there is physical damage to the land around those power plants. And so -- and just looking back I think I even have language in the gen plan language from the generation plan about that. >> We will absolutely reengage with them. >> Tovo: Thank you. And let's -- I will put it on the agenda too as well for our -- to talk about at our next ae meeting. And you probably will have an opportunity to have a conversation sooner I think that would be a good source of additional funding. The. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. The colleagues, anymore comments on this report before we let her [11:29:57 AM] leave? All right. Thank you so much for the presentation and to your staff. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember harper-madison had her hand up. >> Fortunately it is super brief of. I just wanted to again say thank you to director Mcneilly and the team for all of the work they put into this. It is clear that the size, the magnitude of what it is we are digitally about to accomplish here, especially for the community, as a city in terms of atone., right, we have some making up to do and I really appreciate we are finally moving in the direction of bringing the type of amenities and the type of care, concern, consideration to my community finally, it feels good. I know there are a lot of people very excited. There were two things mentioned that I actually sort of forgot. Especially like you said I have a lawedly list of questions and I know we have been back and forth on a lot of these things already, so I don't have to say [11:30:58 AM] it here. We have already been talking about some of these things, including, I think it was really interesting the concept that councilmember tovo electrobrought up about neighbor accelerating the pace in which we .. Engage in the camping component. I think focussing that up to an earlier phase is a really good idea and I hope during the course of the next couple of conversation we get the opportunity to explore that. I also really appreciate what councilmember alter said about being able to go ahead and make those initial investments on infrastructure, because ultimately when I say I think we need to make sure to take the time necessary to make the appropriate next stems it is because what we don't want to do is be inefficient or, you know, have a project that is going to already be costly, cost more than it needs to because we didn't take the appropriate steps sequentially in which case I really think that sat good idea to go ahead go ahead and just be mindful about making that initial investment in infrastructure that doesn't [11:31:58 AM] necessarily affect the other elements. Then lastly, the question that councilmember tovo brought up about golf really reminded me of a question I had -- reminded me of a question I had about .. I think slide number 12. There is a section about a golf clubhouse and given that a -- I know you guys have engaged in the same conversation I have and it doesn't seem to me as though what the community wants from this, you know, really massive and amazing asset is golf. So I am just wondering why there is a golf clubhouse on this slide. >> -- Golf or golf-golf? >> I would say it was not intended to be golf-golf. And I will have to double-check for you, because that might just be my user error, me putting together this slide show and not combing through old information and at that doing that. Thattoe. [11:33:00 AM] >> Harper-madison:. >> Please don't think we are trying to slide a golf course under your nose because we put a golf course on there. That would be completely my error but there is the distinct possibility it is disk golf so I will need to make sure I go back and look at the slides a little more closely so I can confirm that for you. >> Harper-madison: You have to get up uh pretty early in the morning to get one over me, director. Thank you. I appreciate that and I look forward to that clarification. >> Okay. >> Harper- madison: Thank you to you and your team again. I know is a lot of work and sweat so we really wholeheartedly appreciate all of the effort that went into it so far and look forward to moving forward in a way that is really going to get us what it is we are hoping to accomplish and I can't wait for my grand bay byes to play at this park. Thank you. >> I appreciate that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think that's it. Colleagues it is 11:30 three. Executive session we have four things. We have the discussion of compensation for three of our [11:34:01 AM] appointees. We have a conversation with the manager .. My question to you right now is, do you want to break here at 11:30 and come back in executive session to take up all of them at 12:30 or do you want to go into executive session for 40 minutes and receive information from hr relative to the first three and then break for lunch? Mayor pro tem? >> Garza: If my colleagues wouldn't mind I would the prefer to two now because unfortunately I have some commitments I will not be available after noon. I wonder if we could go for 30 minutes and at least I get to participate in the 30 minutes of it. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Does anyone have an objection to that? All right. Then that's what we will do. It is 11:34 and the city will [11:35:01 AM] now go into closed session to time up four items. Pursuant to the government code we discuss personnel matters related to E the 1 -- E 4 has been withdrawn. We will now go into executive session. Councilmember kitchen. >> I have a question of what order you will take them up into. >> I don't have an objection. I just have something else I have to do at 11:30. >> Mayor Adler: We are going to take the first three, depending on who we have standing by will affect the order. Municipal clerk, city clerk and then auditor. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: And I think we will probably just get the download from hr on all three of those all at the same time. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: And it will be those. Those. >> So we will take the fourth one after lunch is. >> Mayor Adler: Correct. Yes. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: With that, then, yes, councilmember pool. [11:36:02 AM] >> Pool: Thank you. [Indiscernible] -- This afternoon so I may not be able to come back to session. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I understand. Thank you. It is 11:30 6:00 and I will see you all in executive session. [ Executive session ] [12:14:58 PM] . . . . [12:43:26 PM] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [1:28:08 PM] [music]. [2:55:44 PM] [Executive session] [3:57:36 PM] >> We're on, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. We are out of closed session. In closed session we discussed personnel matters related to items e2, e3, e4 and e5. The time is 3:57 here on September 1st. And our city council work session is adjourned. Thank you for coming back.