City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript – 02/25/2021 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 2/25/2021 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/25/2021 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. [10:06:53 AM] >> Thank you very much for your time. Yesterday I was delighted to present on behalf of all of us on council honoring Jim Spencer declaring today Jim Spencer day in the city of Austin. I would hope we would follow him with a letter or passionate support of animal friends. Like many I was lucky to have grown up with Jim has our family's weather man during his 30 years on television. For me age five to 35, his accuracy of his forecast and the fact he has saved lives in the midst of terrible weather incidents such as one day and the tornado outbreak will never be forgotten. From all ofs at the city of Austin, thank you, Jim Spencer and thank you, mayor, for the time to speak. >> Mayor Adler: Let's call to order today's meeting February 25, 2021, this is a [10:07:53 AM] city council special called meeting. It is 10:08. We're holding this via video conference. We have all of the councilmembers are present. We begin take a minute or two here and address the reason that we're here. The weather events that unfolded across the state of Texas obviously had great impact here as well. It began with below freezing temperatures that resulted in frozen pipes and then a loss of electricity. And before long closed plants and frozen pipes that resulted in outages and boil water notices, and some of those outages for water are still existing situation for some of the people in our city. [10:08:53 AM] We wanted to open today just with a collective thank you to -- to the community. Nonprofits and individuals who provided just an enormous outpouring of support for that's that were impacted and some still impacted by this deadly storm. Individuals too numerous to mention, thousands, literally jumping in. A lot of organizations and at the risk of leaving some out, I just want to mention some I just kept running into over the course of the last week. Works Austin, community resilient trust, Austin mutual aid, Austin area urban league, meals on wheels, Austin disaster relief network, world central kitchen and the list I'm sure would go on and on, [10:09:55 AM] but at times like this when you have these kinds of disasters, it's a community that pulls together and these individuals and these organizations effort getting people to places that were warm and safe and securing water and food just so incredibly needed and so affirming to see so much of the community engaged in helping neighbors. It did point out another magnifying glass for all of us. Myself, but the entire community the inequities that still exist within our community that we were seeing so vividly in the pandemic, which was the big disaster or the most recent disaster yet, and this amplified those challenges that we're working so hard to address. I want to especially thank [10:10:57 AM] the staff of the city and the county employees that were themselves and their families impacted by this storm, but who despite that just really rallied through incredible challenges to keep us all safe and to keep us all going. So thank you so much for that. Between the city and county emergency operations command and county officials, the council offices that sponge into action to organize and to lead the countless others, we got a lot done, we got a lot done fast, opening up warming stations, disaster relief sites, only two of which I think are open now, but they are closing. Power has been restored to 99.9% of all Austin households. I think we only have 39 customers now with system power outages. Water is turned on all over [10:11:57 AM] the city, although we know that there's more disruption still to individual apartment buildings and to individual residents. Distributing over three million bottles of water in the community. Mammoth task, short period of time. I just really want to thank the city and the county and the staffs and the partners for getting this done. Now, we're going to need to access and -- assess and then discuss what happened and how we prevent it from happening again to take a look at our response so that we can learn from what we do to make sure that our response in the future is always better. Not so much that the assignment today because we are still in the middle of this crisis. So as you look at the agenda that we have, it's directed right now to the disaster, to the relief and to the immediate recovery [10:12:57 AM] operation. We have a full agenda today, colleagues. We've two briefings. We have the covid briefing, which was our dominant disaster up until just a few days ago, but we have I think Jason picket, Dr. Picket and Dr. Escott is off on training this week. But director Hayden so we are going to do that briefing first. When we are done with that they can leave and then we'll have the briefing on the water and energy disaster. And then it's intended we're going to take a lunch break at 12:30. We have speakers that have signed up to speak at 1:30. If we're done with the proofings before 12:30, we can start discussing the items that will come up later for a vote, but I would suggest that we not [10:13:59 AM] vote until after we've heard from the speakers, they get called at 1:30, so we've heard from them before we take votes. But for planning purposes, 12:30 to 1:30 being the lunch break today. Everybody set? Mayor pro tem? >> Harper-madison: Thank you, mayor, I appreciate you. I think you might have read my talking points because you said most of what I would have said and we would all say the same thing. We all had the opportunity to witness much of the same, duty and disaster, frankly. It's been an excruciatingly tough series of days for all of us and some far more than others. I personally had the opportunity to spend the last seven days at the millennium youth entertainment complex watching with my own eyes just this really amazing, awesome display of neighbors helping neighbors. I appreciate that you already called out that we are going to have to continue to have conversations about infrastructure and equity and how we really just get [10:15:00 AM] it right. You know, especially on the tail end of something like this where, like you said, we're not even at recovery stage yet. We're still just trying to stabilize. So I look forward to those conversations and creating policy that helps to protect our community more so that -- more in the way of empowerment. I think those essential supplies that we were giving out this week and will continue to give out, there's a lot of families that need them as a direct result of this disaster, but there's families that needed them before. I hope we all keep the same energy around addressing need in and out of disaster, maybe even acknowledge that sometimes the level of even equity that we experience in our city, economic inequity, that's always a disaster. I really do look forward to us having these continued conversations, like you said, there's too many individuals and organizations to name, so maybe just a collective [10:16:01 AM] thank you unilaterally to everybody who showed up, you know who you are. I'm looking forward to this meeting, to hearing from our constituents, you but I can't stress enough how much we need to circle back as a body to have this conversation about how to put ourselves in a better position for moving forward. Thank you for recognizing me. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Quickly, I'll speak to this more when we get to items this afternoon. Amendment to help us learn from our seniors and people with disabilities experienced. As everyone has said so far and as we all know, it's really been a heart-breaking experience as we've reached out to people and helped them with the impacts on them and, you know, the -- the fear that they had and the difficulties having water and medication and not being able to get out of their homes. [10:17:01 AM] So many stories. So I want to add my thanks also to the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteers who really reached out to their neighbors, to the neighborhood associations who came together and worked to support people in the community and their neighbors down the street, and the senior apartment complexes they supported in all of these. We all have many, many people to thank, many, many people we worked with, and a lot of things to learn from. So I appreciate that, mayor pro tem and mayor for your comments. I know that we can -- we can celebrate the coming together that our community brought to the table here and we can also learn from and put in place some things to be much [inaudible] In the future and I do know that councilmember pool was instrumental and others were also in passing a resolution [10:18:02 AM] about a resilience plan. So we're being reminded even more now of when that will be. So I'll speak to the well check program that we put into place more this afternoon, and mayor, I want to thank you for your role in making that happen. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Colleagues, we have councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: Yes, mayor, and I really want to thank the firefighters that came over to Rebecca Bain on Wednesday. You know, they didn't have any power at all and this is a 16-story building and it couldn't get down through the elevator and the firefighters went down there. And I heard some even carried some of these people down from up there. So I'm so grateful that we have such a great fire department and ems that were out there at the same time. [10:19:02 AM] And capital metro that was able to evacuate the ones that wanted to leave. So I really want to give thanks to helping out our seniors at Rebecca Bain when they lost power. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's go ahead and get started and I'm sure there will be lots of chance for everybody to talk about the events. Manager, if you want to queue up the covid briefing. It's hard to imagine how big a disaster which was by itself, but then to have the other one overlaid on top of it. As we come out of the weather disaster, we run smack dab into the middle of the covid disaster yet again. Manager, why don't you open that up. >> Thank you, mayor and mayor pro tem and councilmembers. As was stated, the purpose today is really to provide an overview of the two emergencies that we're experiencing, the pandemic and then the winter weather events, and then to take immediate action to continue [10:20:02 AM] to provide resources and support for our community as we not just get through this event, but then start the recovery process. We were not able to provide the covid update last week for obvious reasons, but we did want to make sure that we spend time today giving you and our community the most information we have at this time. So with that I'll turn it over to Dr. Pickett. >> Good morning. I'm filling in for Dr. Escott this week who is training with Texas department of public safety. And just in case anybody forgot about we covid, covid did not forget about us. If it's possible to share my slides, that would be fantastic. And next slide, please. So for our update today, we [10:21:03 AM] have 237 new cases. We have 102 confirmed icu inpatients of which 71 are on ventilators. Over the past 24 hours, we've had 35 confirmed covid-19 admissions to the hospital and 50 confirmed discharges. Next slide, please. This is our update for today. Now, I want you to view with caution the data towards the right side of that epi curve and I'm going to get into that a bit, but unfortunately the weather disaster did affect reporting and the data stream that we received at Austin public health. Next slide, please. So this is our covid-19 -- our confirmed new cases. Now, you will note there is a gap, a one-week gap during the ice storm there. This is for a few reasons. One is that the testing sites due to the inclimate weather were closed, as well [10:22:03 AM] as the interruption in the data stream from some hospitals due to computer outages, which affected that. Also as the hospitals were in disaster mode, reporting is still catching up there. Next slide, please. So here we have our new admissions to the hospital. And you will notice that the seven-day moving average that is correct, that yellow line stops annually will get into why we have stopped calculatings that for a moment. Next slide. Current hospitalizations, aye admissions and ventilator use. The dashed lines from are seven-day moving averages, we stopped calculating those temporarily. As you can see, we're generally on a good trend as far as our hospitalizations are concerned. We're leveled off a little bit in terms of icu admissions but trending down [10:23:06 AM] some. We're not calculating the seven-day moving average until February 27th. So we had the sustained weather event for a week. The data collection site was without power and without water and our folks could not get in there in any event to work on that. The hospitals as they were operating from disaster mode, think did have a computer outage that interrupted data reporting, and there is also changes in clinician behavior which we can't account for which as the hospitals were dealing with extraordinary volumes of patients, then we don't know how that may have affected individual clinicians' decisions to test or not test specific patients. There also was changes obviously in patient behavior. Patients who may have delayed presenting to hospitals because of this severe weather event. We had a substantial shift [10:24:06 AM] in overall patient types, a few motor vehicle crashes and falls and dialysis patients, as the die die Alice patients were off line, more experience experienced shortness of breath. Whether or not that was more or less likely to result in testing, we don't know. So the seven-day average is what drives our changes in our risk based guidelines. This is what helps us to understand, to level out the peaks and valleys from day to day and understand the general trend where we are going with this virus in the community. Because we have such a radically different week last week, we felt it wouldn't be right to try to calculate that seven-day moving average based on incomplete data, missing data to make decisions that would potentially affect people's behavior. And potentially affect their [10:25:06 AM] safety. Because of these changes in patient behavior, because of these changes in testing and this interruption in testing, the data that we get from that one-week period may not accurately reflect what the disease is actually doing within our community. And our feeling is that bad data is worse than no data. So we have halted calculating that seven-day average until February 27 when we'll have a good solid week of good data and we can resume calculating it at that point. The question that I have been asked is what -- what effect will this winter storm have on transmission within our community. And we don't know. The -- the ice storm did provide a lockdown of sorts and it did broadly limit people's movement throughout the community. However, there were a lot of folks who had to shelter in close confines with family or friends to flee houses that were without power, [10:26:07 AM] without heat, without water. How that will affect the spread of the virus within the community we won't know that for another week or two. As more testing comes in. May I have the next slide, please. Our regional infusion center which opened on the 6th as to date served 658 patients. We have plenty of capacity. We have 90 appointments per day. We have a regional call center where any clinician can refer patients to the infusion center. And our capacity is such that we are getting all next day or even same day appointments for patients who are referred to this infusion center to receive monoclonal antibody therapy. This is an infusion that helps prevent hospitalization, potentially prevent the more serious forms of the disease. Next slide, please. Our alternate care site continues to operate at the [10:27:09 AM] convention center. We have 37 patients at the acs. We have 154 patients who have been treated and discharged from that facility. Our capacity currently sits at 75 patients, and our average length of stay is nine days. There's a discrepancy between my first slide and this side in terms of number of patients. This one is the more up to date number as of just a few minutes ago when I got the update. Next slide. The alternate care site there, just a picture of where the patients are coming from. This is definitely regional resource. You can see all the different counties which have contributed patients to this alternate care site. And then from -- looking at the Austin metropolitan statistical area, 92% due come from within the Austin msa, however, 8% do not. Next slide. So this is the [10:28:11 AM] hospitalizations by age group, and overall we're -- we're seeing this sort of wavering up and down, no really large trends to report other than this little blip on the age 20 to 29 age group as that age group seems to have picked up with hospitalizations. Next slide. Here -- this is the overall count by age group, and as you can see, the 20 to 29 age group represents a larger percentage than has previously, but overall not a lot of movement in the number of cases there. Next slide. So here we are looking at our data by race and ethnicity. And the one thing I want to call your attention to is this uptick in black and non-hispanic patients that are hospitalized. So we saw this increase, that's the gray line that see. However, as I show out the [10:29:13 AM] next slide, that doesn't necessarily show an increased number of African-American patients who have presented, but they are representing a larger overall percentage compared to hospitalizations. But as you can see, there's only a difference of one patient from the previous week to the last week. This is a little bit too early to tell if this represents a trend or not, but simply the -- at this week's data shows that African-American patients a little bit increased representation there, but overall decrease in case numbers makes that an exaggerated effect. Next slide, please. This is our long-term care facility weekly dashboard. You can see this online on our Austin public health website. And no great trends to -- to talk about at this point. Next slide. Here are the influenza [10:30:15 AM] report, and we are still in the midst of flu season, however, I'm happy to report that this is a very, very mild flu season. Next slide, please. As you can see, the blue line is the current flu season, and then the other three lines represent previous flu seasons. And I think that this shows that the -- many of the measures we've taken with social distancing and masking and hygiene have helped to decrease the spread of influenza within our community. As influenza is a disease that kills 20 to 80,000 Americans every year, this is indeed good news and this -- in the otherwise grim news of this pandemic that we've had. Next slide, please. So we remain at stage 4, and this is -- we recommend for high-risk individuals that they avoid gatherings greater than two and that [10:31:15 AM] they avoid dining and shopping except as essential, and for everyone else that we avoid social and gatherings and gatherings greater than ten and avoid non-essential travel. We still recommend that businesses remain at 20 to 50% occupancy. Next slide, please. Thank you. So stay home if you can. Of course,ed dozen essential trips such as seek medical conveyor, obtaining groceries, outside the household should continue to mask, continue six-foot social distancing. Schools should limit attendance at sporting events, but to the players, coaches and parents, as we do not see big spreads within classrooms, we do see them associated with athletics. Next slide, please. That is all that I have. I would like to open it up [10:32:16 AM] to director Hayden, please. >> Hayden: Good morning. Thank you, doctor, for joining us today. We want to start by just kind of talking about the weather delays in, you know, what we've had to put in place in order to mobilize this week. And so as you all know, we closed our vaccine and testing closures last week, and we also -- per Dr. Pickett's information, we were not able to provide updates. One of the things that did happen over the time with the weather, there was -- one of our locations where we keep our vaccine, the power went out and we also have a backup generator. Well, the backup generator went out as well. All of our vaccines are on -- have an alarm system [10:33:16 AM] tied to them. And so we were alerted, worked with fire and ems, and so they were able to assist us with moving the vaccine over to another one of our locations. That location did have power, but all of our sites as well, each of them have a backup generator. And so we were able to move our vaccine safely. We informed the state of Texas about this -- about us moving our vaccine, and we did not lose any vaccine, all of our vaccine was kept safe. And so I just wanted to alert you of that and then just give accolades to fire and ems for helping us and my staff that came out to ensure they were able to get into the various building, et cetera, working together. What we've done for our [10:34:17 AM] weather mitigation plans is we've opened up additional sites. We've extended some hours. And we've added some additional days. So our goal is to complete 37,000 vaccines this week. That's going to include your first and your second dose. Next slide, please. This is a photograph of one of our patients that came in, got his permission to use his photo and he's getting his second vaccine. We've been able to provide 56,000 vaccines have been distributed. Those are for first as well as some of the second doses that we began the week before the weather impacted service delivery. We continue to meet with our vaccine coalition. We meet with them monthly. And we're in discussions with the department of state health services upon the pending approval of the [10:35:19 AM] Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Next slide. This is just kind of a snapshot of what we are sending out to folks for their second dose appointment. And so it provides the location, the date and time of where they need to go. They do not need to get on our system to schedule a second dose appointment, and so what we are encouraging folks is is that if they have not heard from us, we're asking them to reach out to 311. 311 at this time is collecting that information, name, email, phone number, and they are providing us a daily report and our staff are calling people back to make sure we are getting them scheduled. We have made some significant changes and upgrades to our technology. On Tuesday we released [10:36:21 AM] appointments and we have received positive feedback from that solution. We have updated and put a queue element to it where it allows folks to queue, but it also allows you to know if you have selected these screens or selected one of the other sites, it lets you know how many appointments we have left for that area. We're continuing to work on that area with our technology, but technology is moving along very well. Our three areas of -- I'm going to say four if we include 311 from a message perspective, our nurses are still taking calls and we've set up our equity line which is an outbound call for folks that don't have access to the internet and need to get in, and then Travis county is also assisting us [10:37:23 AM] as well. Next slide. This provides just a sample of vaccine notifications. They will either come to your desk top or you'll see the text message that folks will receive. We are proactively reaching out to folks just to let them know, you know, it is almost time for your vaccine or you are registered in our system. So we are proactively sending those messages out to folks. Next slide. One of the changes we were alerted on last week from the Texas department of state services that what they are going to do for us across the state of Texas is that they are going to automatically start shipping out the doses for the second doses. So what this has done for [10:38:25 AM] us, we're really excited about it. So when people are coming in this week to get their first dose, they are receiving a card and so our staff will go ahead and schedule them for four weeks out because we now know they are going to send us that automatic shipment. That is really great news for us. Even though we were proactively sending out second doses, this also kind of gives folks the assurance to know I have my card, this is actually an appointment, and then they will receive a follow-up message from their computer and/or text. I want to just remind folks that the second dose actually mirrors the first dose. So for the folks that we provided the first vaccine to, that second dose will come to us automatically. So unfortunately we don't have extra doses to provide folks that did not come to us for their first [10:39:27 AM] allocation. The state is continuing to determine our allocations that are coming to us. One of the things that was shared with us is that typically the state of Texas is alerted on Monday about how much their allocation is going to be. Based upon what the allocation is, then they provide by Wednesday to each of the local health department and providers how much vaccine will come to them the following week. That is all the notification at the state level that they are receiving. And so we were in a meeting with the centers for disease control and they alerted us to what they are working on and they have communicated that with the state. The state has said that is not in place yet, but that is a goal that the federal government has is that they are want to go be able to provide at least three weeks [10:40:27 AM] worth of notification about what they will receive. When they were able to receive it at the state level from the federal level, they are going to pass that information on to the local level to the providers. Once we have that, we'll be able to set appointments three weeks out. Based upon that allocation. So that is something that's in the works. I talked to the state this morning, they still don't have a eta on that, and so the federal government has decided to do that, but they've not implemented that as of yet. So I just wanted to let you know that those things are in the works and we're really hopeful about that. Next slide. The other thing I'd like to share and actually acknowledge Travis county and city of Austin came together to put together [10:41:27 AM] this central Texas vax.org. It is a website where folks can go on to to check with the vaccine hubs or other providers. And you are able to go in and look and see who has providers, and then it has a link that will take you over to that site. This is not a centralized way of how to get your vaccine, but it at least puts the providers that we are aware of. This is a regional effort so it has ten counties' information in there. And so folks are at least able to get into the hub site or get into the other vaccine provider and then the link takes them over to that provider to see if they have vaccine. But this was a way of just kind of having a one-stop shop for the information that we have. With each -- with more information they are going to update this site and add [10:42:28 AM] more information. The last thing I want to share is is that the federal pharmacy program is -- is really up and running getting very robust. We have been alerted that HEB, Walmart, Sam's, Walgreens, CVS, a you all know CVS actually started providing vaccines on February 12th, and so each of those will start to receive direct shipments from the federal government for being a part of the pharmacy program. There are other pharmacies in town part of a good pharmacy program and so they also will be receiving vaccines from the federal government. I don't have a eta when that would happen, but we're hearing that with shipments that are coming in this week and next week, we're anticipating that there will be more vaccines available [10:43:29 AM] through those outlets. In addition, in conversations with community care, community care was selected by the federal government as a federally qualified health center to be able to receive additional vaccines straight from the federal government as well. So as you can see, we are definitely going to start seeing more opportunity to get vaccines in our community. That completes my report and I am available for questions. Thank you. >> Thank you, and with that, mayor, I'll turn it back to you for questions from you and your colleagues. You are on mute. >> You are muted. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Let's go ahead and try to do what we were doing at the county before. [10:44:29 AM] Let's cycle through, ask a question and we'll pass it on. We'll just keep going thrown council and that way everybody gets a chance to be able to do that. All right. Does anybody want to start us off? Councilmember Fuentes and then councilmember Kelly. >> Fuentes: Thank you, mayor. Thank you, director hayden-howard. I appreciate the update. I just want to get a sense it's great news we're going to be able to get out 31,000 vaccines this week, that's incredible and exciting so see that level of progress especially coming out of this storm. Can you give us a sense is that how much aph is going to give out, noting we have additional pharmacies come on line. What does the snapshot look like for the amount of [10:45:29 AM] seniors who are eligible per 1b category who are on our wait list waiting to get a vaccine, how many do we have left and just general thoughts on how quickly we can get through that wait list? >> Hayden: I think what I would have to do is I don't have that granular data in front of me. What we'll have to do is prepare that and send that back. I can ask the folks that put together the questions so we can send that back and it comes back to mayor and council. So we will definitely do that. You know, we do continue to reach in our focus on different areas. One of the other things we have not been doing and we're going to start having conversations with providers like we did with testing is ask them to provide demographic data to us. [10:46:30 AM] We feel like that worked out well with us for testing, but we are going to have those conversations with them about providing their demographic data. At least for Travis county we're able to see and hear. When you are able to see it at the state level, but we want to make sure we have that type of data at the local level. Fen-phen. >> Fuentes: Aph does have demographic data online. >> Yes. >> Fuentes: Even though we don't know how many seniors we have on our wait list, we know how many vaccines are circulating throughout Austin with private pharmacies and community care, how many vaccines do you anticipate the Austin, Travis county area to be able to get out this week? >> Hayden: I don't have any idea of what any of the partners are putting out this week. I do know that judge brown [10:47:32 AM] has an event on Saturday that they are working on with community care, and so that will be 3,000 vaccines that they are providing. But beyond that, I don't have an idea of how many vaccines are going out in Travis county this week. >> Fuentes: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember Kelly. >> Kelly: Thank you for that comprehensive update about the covid-19 and vaccine process. I would like to thank all the staff who was at the palmer event center as well, especially from Austin public health and police officers who were there. I went and visited and it was a great operation and I appreciated the time staff gave to me to show me around. I would like to switch gears and talk about the covid isolation facility in my district at the candlewood. Could you please maybe talk about the pipe that burst over there and what happened [10:48:32 AM] with the people who were isolated there and what plans are in the future for getting that fix 9 and also how it might affect us opening an additional isolation facility? >> Hayden: According to the information that I received, a pipe did burst in that building before the weather got very cold. Those individuals were transferred over to our isolation facility number 1. And so the goal was is they were really trying to get that fixed within the seven days and then, of course, the weather happened. So I don't have a eta of when they were going to be able to next that bursted pipe. But my understanding is is that we started looking for an additional site if we needed it as another asset, [10:49:33 AM] if that pipe cannot be fixed. That's my understanding that's what staff are working on to determine do we need to stand up another location temporarily until that work can be completed. >> Kelly: Thank you. I do have a couple follow-up questions if that's okay. The first one is how many beds do we currently have available at the Fairfield isolation facility, and the second one is is the city responsible for the pipe damage and if so has anyone been out there, are we still paying for use of that facility while it's being repaired? >> Hayden: I would have to talk with Juan Ortiz, the emergency -- the home land services director because he would have all of that information. I don't know if he's, like, waiting for the next iteration, he can provide that specific detail about both of those. But typically as the owner it's like owning a home. If you own it, you are [10:50:35 AM] responsible for the repairs. So if you live in a home and you are paying for where you live, you have to still continue to pay, you know, for that facility. But they can definitely, Alex or someone else can definitely verify that. But we are going to be responsible to fix that facility. >> Kelly: Thank you so much. If staff could follow back up with my office about that, it would be appreciated. Thank you so much for all you are doing. >> Hayden: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. I really appreciate these briefings to keep us rolling since we are dealing with a number of crises at the same time. Can you tell me for today's appointments, our website right now says that appointments should be coming online to be scheduled today. But I'm getting word that people are refreshing and it just keeps saying that -- it doesn't actually open up the appointments. Do you know what's going on with those? >> Hayden: They've not [10:51:36 AM] released those yet. They are going to be releasing them later on. Typically with the system that we do have in place, on Thursday it does allow people to be able to queue. So it will happen later on today. We're just making sure, you know, we have everything we need accounting for the location on yesterday, we provided about 5,500 vaccines on yesterday. So typically it is making sure that you have enough vaccines for the remainder of the week. And that's how you open it up the next day. So today is based upon what we've done over the last couple of days. So they are working on that. >> Ellis: Okay, so is there any more specific time expectation at this point? >> Hayden: No, ma'am. >> Ellis: Thank you. I have heard anecdotally the second round of vaccines is working very smoothly so I [10:52:36 AM] wanted to pass along compliments people have sent to us that they appreciate out well -- can you tell me a little more information since obviously a lot of people were due for their second vaccination over the past week. How that triage is going to kind of catch up with how many people need to get that second vaccine and now that there may be a backlog, how that's going to work moving forward just so people have an expectation. >> Hayden: For the people that are in sales force proper, they are able to run a query and able to tell exactly where they are with their vaccine. And so based upon the ones, you know, that are beyond, you know, 28 days, definitely trying to get them before 42 days, they are reaching out to them proactively sending them an [10:53:37 AM] email, et cetera. We do know that there still were a few folks that showed up to the site, you know, we put them in imatrek so staff is working on them as well. So if you have folks that may have been with the people that we provided a courtesy vaccine to on the 11th, 12th, 13th of January, tell them to go ahead and call 311 and we'll get that information and then we will call them and schedule them to come in. Because we do know there are a few people, you know, that came and didn't have appointments. But typically our system is able to queue these, flag those to our folks and they are proactively sending out emails. There are some individuals our staff and Travis county has been calling by phone this week, and so -- so we're doing both of those as [10:54:39 AM] well. >> Ellis: Okay, that's great to hear. I know there's a lot -- there's a lot going on and a lot of vaccinings being contributed. There were concerns people have side what does that mean for my second round vaccination. It's good to hear you are being proactive about outreach and trying to catch up on those. I did hear about the circuit of Americas kind of mass vaccination site. Is that a county initiative and are you working with them on that or are those parallel operations that you are running right now. >> Hayden: That is a county and community care as well as Seton initiative. And so as you may have read, there were several county judges that made the request to the department of state health services, and they granted them 3,000 vaccines. And so basically [inaudible] [10:55:42 AM] All of those counties this weekend, and so if it does look promising, the state is willing to provide more vaccine. So that's going to be a great pilot for our community and not just for Travis county but for all of those other counties that may have not even potentially have received any vaccines. >> Ellis: Okay, and so looking into that would be a different website. That wouldn't be through the Austin texas.gov. That would be a different website. Is that one you can share for people taking note? >> Hayden: Yes, we'll ask -- because typically what's happening is because it's community care patients and they are working with those counties off of their wait list as well, so if folks are in the neighboring counties, they need to check those websites. And if they are in the Austin -- in the austin-travis county area, then they need to look on the the community cares website. Now, it's not an open [10:56:44 AM] process. They are using -- for community care and Travis county, they are using their existing patients for that right now. >> Ellis: Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you so much and thanks for your hard work. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. Councilmember kitchen, then the mayor pro tem. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. I really appreciate the improvements that are being made to the website. It's been very helpful for people and I too want to pass along the feedback I'm getting particularly about the second doses and how well that is working for people. So I want to say thank you for that. I wanted to ask a few more questions, and I little want to say thank you -- and I know that folks are reaching out by telephone to our seniors and helping them schedule. [10:57:44 AM] And so it's been very helpful for our seniors, particularly those who don't have access to internet or email to be able to receive a phone call. That's been particularly helpful for our -- you know, our elderly folks in the community, so I want to say thank you for that. I do want to just highlight -- I want you to -- I would like you to just explain again for folks what's happening there, so just for awareness. And also to let you know that through our senior welfare checks initiative that I'll talk more about later that we just all helped reach out to seniors with disaster response to help with water and food and other things, we also did end up identifying some folks who are asking us about vaccines. So this is just -- we will be sending you a list of individuals. And our response to them was [10:58:45 AM] we would pass their names along. And these are seniors over -- I think over age 70 in the community and a number of them are quite a bit older. That list is being finalized and we'll get that sent over to you. So could you take just a moment and let people know more about what you all are reaching out to seniors? >> Hayden: Yes. So there's kind of several things that are happening. Some of it is based upon the information that we have in our sales force platform. Some of it is based upon referrals that we've received from our partners that work with the elderly population. And so as a result of those referrals, we're able to proactively reach out to folks and get them [10:59:45 AM] scheduled. And so what we are finding is that some folks may also require transportation, so working with them to get the transportation to them as transportation to them as well. Because they want to come in. As you all know, we have stood up our mobile operations. And so this week, we are working through the housing authority, that was actually scheduled for last week, but we shifted it back to this week. And so, the seniors that we've been contacting, if they have the transportation, they're like, no, I want to come in now. So, we're just working with them to go ahead and bring them in via transportation. But that process is definitely working well, and our goal is to make sure we through as many seniors as we can. >> Kitchen: Well, thank you very much. I know the feedback I've gotten is that people are very, very appreciative of y'all's efforts. So, thank you. [11:00:52 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mayor pro tem, and I think council member alter had her hand raised, and then council member tovo. >> Harper-madison: I think some things have already been covered. One thing I wanted to ask, and I don't know if this is a director hayden-howard question or director Pickett question. That graph where you showed the spike for the 20-29-year-olds, I'm just curious about whether or not you have any indication, what are the implications there? What behaviors do we need to be mindful of? What's happening to shift that age group? >> Thank you. That's a very good question. I think that some of that is that we're seeing not a lot of moment in that age group, whereas the overall cases are declining. So, it may be -- as you look from one week to the next, there was not a huge shift in the number of patients within that [11:01:52 AM] age group, that 20-29 age group, whereas there were decreases in others. So it does look like a bit of a spike. I'm not sure, though, that it necessarily represents a big shift, just from one week to another. It represented a shift of only a couple of patients total. >> Harper-madison: A couple literally? >> Pickett: Yes, ma'am. >> Harper-madison: Okay, thank you. So there's not some massive concern that we need to be making sure to communicate to the community about that age group or that people need to be avoiding? >> Pickett: Well, of course, we always want to continue to communicate the distancing and masking and so forth, that age group sometimes proves challenging with those messages in adherence to those guidelines, but we want to continue to reinforce those messages that we've brought up previously. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. I appreciate that. And then the other question that [11:02:52 AM] I had -- actually, it's not a question so much as I'd like to present an opportunity that was shared with my office. Apparently, the trailer lights foundation has partnered with aph to support the covid-19 vaccination operation. They're hiring people. Most positions are not clinical. $20 per hour, start immediately. Director hayden-howard, I wonder if you can speak to that in a way that's more comprehensive to by way of this quick message that was sent to me. >> Hayden: Yes. What we've done is working with that foundation to assist us with parking lot outside management. As you all know, one of the huge concerns that we had is when it was really cold outside, we could not get people to remain in their cars. So, with all of the systems we continue to set up, they didn't want to stay in there. So, what we thought is that [11:03:53 AM] let's work with the professional that's done this in so many other ways and has done it well. And so basically, they're going to be working with people as they're coming into the parking lot, making sure any questions that they have, they have appointments. Checking their appointments, et cetera. So, everything kind of around the perimeter parking lot, et cetera, they're going to be addressing that at our large location. So right now, we're at the performing arts center, and so they are assisting us in those locations. So what we were able to do is that our staff that were out there, we were able to reassign and shift them and were able to open up another location. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, I appreciate that. Is there a place where people can go to get that opportunity? Something that we recognized at [11:04:55 AM] the millennium -- generally in central east Austin. I don't know if they were available to y'all across the city. But when I say that the musicians and the advocacy organizations that represent musicians, there's four of them, and I know I'm going to forget a name, so I won't say the names. Y'all know who you are. They showed up -- we consistently had over 100 volunteers from that -- those organizations over the course of the last several days. That to say, a lot of those folks have been out of work, and so them having the opportunity to actually be gainfully employed and address crisis would be fantastic. I just want to make sure that they know how to find that information. >> Hayden: Okay, we will make sure to send that out so that all of you have it. >> Harper-madison: Is there a way for us to put it on a public- facing -- is there a place that we can just direct them? >> Hayden: Let me get with the communications folks and let them kind of figure that out. I try to stay in my lane. [11:05:58 AM] >> Harper-madison: I understand. What my colleagues have already said about the magnificent job that our Austin public health department has done. Thank you so much. We appreciate y'all. Just generally, our staff has been showing up. If there's any confusion about how much appreciation we have for our staff, let me just chlor -- clear that up now. We appreciate you so much. I also look forward to these continued conversations. I look forward to us talking about how we can help to fortify our public health department now that we all recognize that it is of the utmost importance. Thank you again, Dr. Hayden- howard. We appreciate you. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem, it's a good point to get those volunteers out and there is a specific link to do that, so we need to get that out for more people to sign up and volunteer. Colleagues, it is a little after 11:00. We're going to continue through the folks that have haven't had a chance to get called yet on the covid deal. But I urge everybody to move quickly, because I think at 12:30, the desire was to get [11:06:59 AM] some of the disaster field back out into the field. They're with us. So we still need the presentations from the disaster people and the folks to be able -- time to be able to ask them questions, to the degree you can follow up with questions about covid, probably want to take advantage of that. Council member Ellis, are you real quick? >> Ellis: Yes, I have the link. I wanted to spell it out. It is vxatx.com. >> Mayor Adler: Say it again, please? >> Ellis: Vxatx.com. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member alter and then council member tovo. >> Alter: Thank you. So I am actually still hearing that the system is still complicated for seniors who are trying to sign up, and requiring folks to have somebody who is helping them to sign them up. [11:08:03 AM] So, you know, this has been expressed multiple times about concern about folks who are not tech savvy, and it seems like it's still exceedingly difficult. I'm really pleased that we're able to change our process for second doses and just give appointments right away. But I need you to clarify how that appointment process is working for seniors at this point, because from what I heard from last night, it hadn't changed much. Folks who were 80-plus did not get emails. You know, folks who were alerted that the system opened because they had somebody who was tech savvy and was on a Facebook group were able to get in and get their appointment. And so I need some more clarification. If I was a senior who was going through this process and I tried to go in there, how is that working at this point? If I'm [11:09:03 AM] signing up for the first time, or if I'm still trying to get my second dose, and I wasn't in the batch that was lucky enough to get an appointment for my second dose when I did my first. >> Hayden: With the second dose, we don't want anyone to go in the system. There's no need for you to go in the system. Staff will send you out -- if you registered with salesforce and kind of went through that process, then we will reach out to you. They just need to wait until folks reach out to them. If you have some folks that did not go through that process and we called and scheduled, et cetera, we're still calling them as well. I think the thing to keep in mind is that we have to go back to February 12th because we didn't have a clinic that day. So we need to pick up everybody from February 12th, but we also need to pick up anybody from [11:10:04 AM] during that week that were a no-show, and reach back out to them. And so we needed to plug in that week and last week to make sure we're getting them in this week. And so it may be a matter of, we've not gotten to them, because based upon our system, we want to make sure the people that have been waiting longer for the second dose, we've contacted them. So that's one piece. Tell folks don't go back in the system. I think the other thing is if you have folks that are that age, just tell them to call 311. We've established a process with them and they can say, you know, I was trying to register or I'm trying to register, or whatever that the case may be, they're creating service requests. And they are sending -- every day, they're sending a batch over to our folks and our folks [11:11:04 AM] are calling them. And so in addition to that, we also have folks reaching out proactively based upon who we're seeing in salesforce. So we have a lot of kind of things going on from the call center perspective. And so I think probably the easiest thing you can tell your seniors is just to call 311, and we'll work it, you know, from there. So even if they're concerned about the second dose, et cetera, that would probably be an easier solution. And then that information comes to us, and then we call them back. >> Alter: So we should be recommending to the seniors who are having trouble navigating the system to get an appointment, that they can just call 311 and then they can -- they can call 311 and then they can - - they will be called as a follow-up from someone there? Now, one of the things we're seeing, though, is a lot of, you [11:12:07 AM] know, relatives are trying to take this on for them. Can they also call 311 and do that on behalf of somebody, as long as the person showing up would be the person who is eligible? Because not every senior is able to navigate those phone calls and write it down and make all those arrangements on their own. >> Hayden: Yes. I mean, typically, you know -- and this is kind of the typical process for really any sign of social service agency, they're going to want to speak to the person because that is the client, but a they're going to say give me permission to talk to your daughter, or give me permission to talk to your son or whoever is calling for you. They're going to ask that of the person first to get that permission. And then they can work with that person to get them scheduled. >> Alter: Will 311 take both of those numbers in? They have a mechanism to do that when they get the information in the first place? >> Hayden: They're going to take the information that theal caller provides. So if they give their name, [11:13:07 AM] their phone number, and what they need, then they're going to take that information in. Based upon that, and information they provide 311, and they're going to send it over to our staff. So even if our staff called and they get that person, then, you know, they can tell us, well, my daughter is taking care of this, can you call them? That will not be a problem for our staff to do that. So, just -- I think the easiest thing is just have them to call 311 and we will definitely take it from there. >> Alter: Okay, thank you. Can we get some of this in our write-ups so that we can share it as clearly as possible with folks what the messaging is on this when you get a chance over the next couple days? Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, anything else -- council member tovo, sorry. >> Tovo: That's okay. Thank you. I didn't want the moment to go by, director Hayden, without just really underscoring huge [11:14:10 AM] thanks to your staff. In the middle of this emergency went and got those vaccinations dosages. That's really extraordinary. Also I just have some quick questions. As I understand our conversation here today, for those who have not received information about a second dose, they are -- and the time has been a while, they can reach out to 311, aph will call them. In addition to the ability, as you said, of going through salesforce and seeing where they are in the process. >> Hayden: Yes. >> Tovo: Are individuals able at this point to check the same system, to see if they are -- if they have successfully registered? Does the system now allow them to do that? >> Hayden: Yes, it does allow them. They should have received -- when they completed their registration, they should have received a message that said you've completed your registration. [11:15:11 AM] Also, they should have received some subsequent message to say, you know, we still have your registration, you're registered with us and whatever. We're doing those proactive reachouts as well. So if they're not receiving that, then we would want them to call 311 because they'll do a service record for them, a service request for them, and send it to us. >> Tovo: Thank you. And that is for individuals both eligible at this stage and ineligible? Back a few weeks ago, there could be three reasons why somebody hadn't heard, one of which is not that they were not eligible yet. Even if they're ineligible and they've registered, they should still receive that confirmation back from the system saying we received your registration. >> Hayden: Yes, yes. >> Tovo: Thanks for that clarification. So in the conversation earlier with council member Ellis, you indicated that more vaccines would be released today. We've received a few constituents who wrote and said that they actually today tried [11:16:12 AM] and received a message back saying that aph would not be releasing any more vaccination until 3/1. So I just want to make sure I'm clear on whether there would be vaccine release today or whether the message that some people have received is the accurate one. >> Hayden: Well, as far as I know, when I talked with my staff, they told me we were releasing appointments this morning. So, I will tell you, even though we've done significant work on that system, there's still a few more things that we are finding. I'm just kind of taking note and I'm going to let my I.T. Folks know about -- sounds like it's an error message is what that is to me. >> Tovo: I can also forward that on to the appropriate staff member so that you can see exactly what they described. I have another one like that. I think it's in the vain of a [11:17:17 AM] suggestion. I think this happened after the new system, because it happened a few days ago, we got an email from a constituent who said they made it through the process and it said your appointment is not confirmed until you proceed to the next page. When they got to the next page, it rolled and rolled and rolled. And then kind of kicked them back or said no appointments are available. So for some users, it looks as if appointments are available, but then as they try to progress along the next stage, they're told it's not. So, if that's a consistent experience people are having, I wonder if there's a way to indicate at the beginning of that process there are no appointments available right now. Rather than kind of taking them through the various steps. I'll forward you that email as well, or if there's somebody else on your staff. I know you've got lots of email coming in. >> Hayden: You can send it to me. I'll send it to our I.T. Folks. >> Tovo: Thanks again for the tremendous work under extraordinary circumstances. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Colleagues, anything else on this point in the presentation [11:18:18 AM] before we get into the disaster? Just real fast, 31,000 out this week is an incredible number and I hope that you continue to get the supply to be able to do that, not just because we have the supplies from last week and this week, but actually start increasing the numbers, because we have the capacity to get it out. I appreciate the effort by judge brown in working with the other three counties in the area to increase our supply of vaccines. My understanding from talking to judge brown is that will be additive to the numbers that Austin public health is getting, and I appreciate the focus on community care folks as well as the community care clients in each of those other three areas. You're opening up more sites in order to be able to deliver this capacity over time, and as you open those, you'll be letting the public know. But just to let everybody know [11:19:19 AM] that you are planning for those plans and developing additional sites. Isn't that right? I don't know if you've gotten to a place where you're announcing any of those yet or you're going to wait until you're just about to open that. >> Hayden: We did announce it. The performing arts center is the additional area that we added this week. And actually, we added that location, you know, to be able to give us that additional capacity. But we will remain there for a wheel to be able to provide those vaccines there. >> Mayor Adler: And we have additional places we can go to if the state and the federal government will give us additional supplies to get out. Thank you for the tech advancements. I think the queueing capacity and just getting back to people with those weekly notes to say hey, we remember who you are, and you're in our system, don't worry, will be really helpful [11:20:21 AM] because just hearing something is going to be really helpful in letting people know who they are. I know you were saying you were trying to get the demographic data out of the other supplier, the other people that are providing vaccines, and I think someone asked the question. You've given out 50-some-odd thousand at Austin public health. The question is how much are we giving in the area. And I think the number that I had seen was somewhere just over 100,000, if you consider everybody. But it's really tough to have visibility to that, because they don't have to report to us. That was before we had this last push. But if you need me to enter the same kind of order that I entered when we were doing testing, that orders all those folks to give over the demographic data, even though they're giving it to the state, please let me know so that I can work with legal to get that out. There was an article in "The new York Times" talking about the drop in nursing home deaths, pretty dramatic, because they [11:21:22 AM] think they're now vaccinating people in nursing homes at that age. If you can take a look at that, I'd be interested in a follow-up note. Looks like our numbers are down at the higher ages. The oldest age group seems to have the most dramatic drop in hospitalizations. But if you could confirm that, iPod appreciate that. Next steps I think that people are talking about may be looking at the alternate care facility.I'd appreciate that. Next steps I think that people are talking about may be looking at the alternate care facility. We have questions about moving to the yellow risk level 3 and that would have us dropping below 30. We're kind of locked in the 30 range so we're close to that. My hope is that the community will get us below that 30 so we can own it. To recommend that we actually -- and finally, I am also getting great reports about the [11:22:22 AM] processing at the vaccination sites. People seem to be moving through very quickly. All right. Thank you, Dr. Hayden. Thank you, Dr. Pickett. We don't off get to see you, but you are among the people that have not slept in months. So it's good for the council to be able to see you two. Please thank both of your staffs, which are some year you'll get the opportunity to rest again. Manager, if you'll take it through the disaster presentation. >> Thank you, mayor and council. Thank you, again, Dr. Pickett, Dr. Hayden- howard. As we pivot to this next presentation, I was reflecting last night, putting my daughter to bed on these last ten days, and I don't think that hectic or stressful adequately describes how everything went. We all say unprecedented a lot these days, too, and that doesn't really describe what happened. The reality is there is no good [11:23:24 AM] word to describe how scary, catastrophic, and crippling the last ten days have been for our community. But I can think of a few words that describe how our community responded to this event and they include heroic and inspiring. As individuals, we choose to live everywhere, but we can choose to live anywhere, but we do choose to live here. I was inspired to see neighbors helping and receiving support from other neighbors, people self-organizing to distribute fundamental food and groceries to those who were hit hardest. Restaurants offering hot meals. Faith communities working together to deliver services. Brewers providing much-needed clean drinking water. Families sharing their limited resources. Friends checking in with each other. I personally can't thank all of these groups enough. While our city employees worked to get our critical infrastructure, our power, our water, our roads, our hospitals, police, fire, and ems stations, back up and running, so many [11:24:24 AM] community members and organizations stepped up to help. After all, this is Austin. We're a resilient city, but more importantly, we are a caring city. From the bottom of our hearts, wety thank you. Today, staff will provide a high level overview of how we responded to this event and continue to respond. This event was unlike any other. According to the national weather service, this storm broke so many records. It set new records for the lowest temperatures, the highest numbers of hours below freezing, and record snowfall levels. You've also probably heard that our state's power grid was minutes away from a statewide blackout that could have lasted weeks. This was a statewide disaster. And in most cases, we would have reached out to our neighboring communities to help. But they were suffering and struggling as well. The entire state was and continues to be competing for some of those same resources. You will hear how our own employees, the people who we all rely on to respond to the emergency situation, often [11:25:24 AM] couldn't because they didn't have power or water, couldn't communicate their status, and couldn't travel to their work sites. You will also hear how we came out of this storm and how we are recovering. We have a lot to cover today and I want to be certain that we won't -- I know that we won't be able to answer every question that you have, but I assure you that we will carve out time for more detailed conversations at a later date. You will hear from Juan Ortiz, Sydney Jackson, our deputy general manager for Austin energy, and then Greg masaro, our director of Austin water. With that, I'll turn it over to director Ortiz. Juan? >> Thank you, Spence eave. Mayor and council, thank you for giving me the opportunity to give you a report on where we are in response to this never-before-seen event. I'm the director for the city of [11:26:26 AM] Austin. The goal of our office is to prepare the community for disasters and help coordinate the response when disaster strikes. Before we move forward, can I also have the slides for this presentation put up? Okay, next slide. The office of Travis county emergency operation center is the facility where the regional organizations, volunteer partners, and critical infrastructure organizations, we all come together and coordinate major disasters. For this event, the eeoc activated on February 12th on that Friday after previously that week already conducting operations as necessary. [11:27:32 AM] Next slide. The eoc uses -- to manage resources. This system is flexible and scaleable to respond to the incident. We're able to work with all the different organizations that you see on the screen to work together. These are just an example of some of the organizations that wsh involved in response to this incident. Next slide. Like I was saying, the system is flexible and scaleable to respond to incidents. On the screen, you see an example of what organization structure looks like in the eoc as we manage the and respond to all the different needs of the disaster. One way of describing our response or the role of our office is to -- we work as the [11:28:34 AM] conductor of the orchestra, making sure that all city departments and county departments play their parts and ensure no efforts are duplicated or lost. Next slide. I also wanted to say that the response still continues in some areas, and recovery will continue for several more weeks. And recovery has advanced in other areas as we continue to work to address our community's needs and continue to move forward. We have dozens of city and county staff and people from partner agencies work 24 hours, seven days a week, and the picture here shows sometimes having to live in the facility, away from the families for days. So that we could respond to the storm as was required from us. Like the city manager indicated, we broke a lot of records. Austin remained below freezing [11:29:35 AM] for more than 164 consecutive hours, breaking a record by nearly two days for the longest freeze event in the area. Austin also experienced the highest two-day total for snow ever recorded. According to the unanimous weather service, this weather event even broke daily records for climate sides in the region. All climate sides saw five to six consecutive days of record-breaking temperatures as well as multiple days for record-breaking snowfall. This unforgettable event had catastrophic impacts to the entire state of Texas, including south Texas, and failed our grids, burst water pipes, and limited road to air travel. This provided a unique set of challenges. As an example, we established a shelter in one location, then lost power, and had to be moved, only to lose water at the second [11:30:35 AM] location requiring it to be moved again. All of these three relocations happened in less than 12 hours, and all of our city and county and community partners worked together to ensure that these happen as quickly as possible without any disruptions to the people that we were trying to provide services for. Many of our staff were also directly impacted by the storm. In fact, just like the community, many were people who stand up to help when disaster strikes without power. Without the ability to communicate, unable to get to work because unsafe road conditions, lost access to potable water, and experienced property damage to their homes. Our resources were severely limited because of this storm. Before I pass the next part of [11:31:36 AM] the presentation to Sydney Jackson, with Austin energy, I also just want to say we did suffer a burst pipe in one of our facilities and we were able to successfully move everybody, consolidate to the other facility that we had and we're working with the facility owners to ensure that they make repairs. And we're able to utilize those facilities as best we possibly can. Next, we're going to pass this presentation to Sydney Jackson with Austin energy. >> Thank you. I'd like to express some of the same sentiments in terms of the significance of this event. This grid, electric grid degradation that we had in Texas represents one of the most severe electric grid compromises ever in the history of the United States. This situation rises to that level of significance. [11:32:36 AM] Grid reliability is a fundamental tenet that our system relies on. In parallel, we also had the polar vortex, as you read earlier, Mr. Mayor. That polar vortex was one in a 100-year excursion in Texas. And the confluence of both of those at the end of the day as we know led to emergency declarations orders from the state and federal and Texas. From an individual Austin energy customer, we felt that same emergency. You, I, all of us. As city manager cronk spoke to, we as Austin energy, our staff rose to the occasion and I'd like to speak to some of the considerations that Austin energy personnel and staff and team members did. One, to arrest the electric grid [11:33:39 AM] degradation. To stabilize this electric grid crisis. And then help in its restoration. So I'm going to speak to even different areas. How Austin energy conformed and met and executed the ercot directives to shed load, but also to restore load. Austin energy's power supply and power plants war strong contributor to stabilizing the situation and we'll speak briefly to that. Austin energy's management of financial risks, our risk management protocols are an essential issue that came to bear, and as you have seen in the news, that is an important consideration. The storm field crews get a lot of attention, but our response and our contributions to restored normalcy were beyond that. Critical customers. Oftentimes, people don't consider that while we're doing this load shed, we have medical, fire, police and other emergency responders that we have to keep energized and we were able to do [11:34:40 AM] that. In addition to that, dealing with some of the large industrial customers and their processes that are ongoing and we work to get them offline. Sundry of support and logistics as well. I'm going to step through those. As city manager said, this is intended just to be a high level fly over. There will be opportunities for post-event analysis. But I wanted you to have this high level view. So let's talk about the overarching -- the load shed directives. The load shed directives executed by ercot, they are the main lever to solidify the grid when you have a deficient power supply and strong load, one way to balance that equation from ercot's standpoint, and it's their directive, their responsibility, and it's likewise our responsibility to follow their lead because they are the grid operator. We executed several directives to shed load, not only did Austin energy execute that, but [11:35:41 AM] all similar situated utilities with transmission and distribution authority did the same in orchestration. It is that singular lever that arrested grid degradation, regarding some responsibility, and allow time for generating units to return to service and restore normalcy. Load shedding is an unenviable task. It is required. It is the major level to restore grid stability. And absent Austin energy personnel executing that within the timeframes and effectively and efficiently, the unthinkable may have occurred. Let me move to Austin energy power supply. So, all of our generating units were made available to ercot. Our Austin energy power supply team, our power plant operators were sleeping in facilities, [11:36:41 AM] they were sequestereded in facilities, just as well as our operation team. They made themselves available, oftentimes while their personal situation was in harm's way, as we're all aware. We brought -- both our facilities contributed and were made available to ercot. Obviously, when you have a power supply shortage, any time you can bring power supply and make it available, that is a benefit. While we did have some outages, the power supply team was able to restore those facilities in short order in making it available. In conjunction with the power supply, we also had financial risk management. The power supply equation is part of that. But our financial team, our risk management team has been engaging in the necessary risk management protocols as you well know that has mitigated and [11:37:43 AM] lessened our exposure to the extreme price volatility that has been experienced in this time in the ercot market. While our cfo, I believe, should be on this call and he'd be able to address that more in the q&a section. Let me also talk about storm restoration. That is a significant event. This was a multi-day storm full of ice, snow, precipitation, and our storm restoration teams worked tirelessly sequestered as well in Austin energy facilities. Working in very adverse conditions, in very dangerous conditions, but nevertheless, working for the benefit of the community. Transitioning to critical customers. While the load shed requirements are being directed by ercot and ux cuted by our operations personnel, we also have to maintain critical load.executed by our operations [11:38:43 AM] personnel, we also have to maintain critical load. That critical load is necessary for civil society and that might be where that critical load is medical facilities, police, fire, emergency responders, and those circuits and those loads were maintained while we were executing ercot directives. Another significant issue that's going on simultaneously in all of this is the working with some of the large industrial customers. As you might imagine, these are huge facilities that consume huge amounts of energy, and as they have processes, ongoing processes, the immediate restoration could cause safety compromises, environmental, chemical compromises. We worked with them so they were able to come offline effectively as possible, averting some of the things I just managed. That was a significant [11:39:44 AM] accomplishment in this crisis. Lastly, let me speak to support and logistics teams. As our teams were quarantined across our service territory, able and ready to respond at a moment's notice because they were close, while transportation corridors were compromised, we had a team of logistics personnel that were providing food and other essentials just to sustain them while they were sequestered. In addition to that, I just want to topically mention the customer service piece, as the customer service team tried and executed working to address questions, trying to relieve fears, and that was a very important logistics support task. Again, post-event analysis is forthcoming. There are some lessons learned in this space. And I'd like to take you through the timeline. [11:40:44 AM] Can we throw up -- put up those slides that I mentioned? That I submitted. I'm sorry, I'm not seeing them. Would someone confirm that they're there? >> They should be there now. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: They're there, Mr. Jackson. >> I still don't see them. >> We can see them. >> You can see them. Okay. I'll just speak to them from memory. The first slide speaks to the [11:41:50 AM] confluence of the authority of ercot. So, why did we load shed? Load shed is the authority of ercot. Ercot has the ability to mandate load sheds. Their authority is given to them by the public utility commission, public utility commission of Texas. As I mentioned before, they are the grid operator. They are the ones with the only unique insight to see the whole grid of Texas. Austin energy does not have that view. And as they're oversight, they direct all the individual constituents such as Austin energy. Mentioned the polar vortex. I'm not going to belabor that point, but again, employees working around the clock to support and sustain the grid and to arrest further degradation. Next slide, please. The sequence of events. I'm just going to speak to this topically. What we have in the -- February [11:42:51 AM] 11th, February 12th, February 13th and 14th, those were generally associated with the storm event. The actual execution of ercot load shed directives did not come into Monday morning, 20:15. So as the storm came through the community, we had severe sleet and we had outages associated with that. Most of those outages were cleaned up by -- as we approached midnight, we were probably 99% restored from those outages from the storm events that happened thursday/friday. As we approached Sunday, we experienced more outages as well. A we approached the load shed starting Monday, we went from probably 19,000 outages, customers that were out, going into that timeframe, and as Monday -- as the load shed events, that grew to 220,000 [11:43:52 AM] customers out. That load shed event was sustained, it was deep, and again, it represents a severe grid compromise, as I mentioned earlier. As power supply was restored to ercot, they started lifting our constraints. Our team started restoring customers as we approached Thursday, we were on full restoration. On Friday, again, restoration. As we approached Saturday, we were nominally 99% restored. And again, all of these load sheds being conducted, as you can see on the other page try -- next page, please. Trying to keep critical load going. Trying to do row stating outages, which we initially [11:44:53 AM] started to do on the on set of the load shed events. As you're well aware, and you've heard many times over in the press, load shed could not be completed due to the severity of the actual curtainmen curtailments mandated. Those critical customers are a preserved block. The cuts were so deep that load shed wasn't possible. Excuse me, rotating outages wasn't possible. My apologies. The next slide, it's just some visual indications of the severity of the storm, the severity of the weather. But by far, the major severity was the grid compromise. While the trees can come down and we can fix local distribution, once the electric grid is compromised, that is [11:45:56 AM] overarching as compared to a localized event. And with that I'll take any questions you might have. >> Thank you, Mr. Jackson. Before we take questions, I'm going to turn it over to director mazaros and back to Juan. >> Mayor Adler: I do want to real quickly -- director Jackson, chief operating officer, only with us now for two weeks, right after days ahead of this event. Thank you for getting here at least a week. >> Thank you. >> And we have an incredible team at Austin energy. I will just note that our general manager Jackie is up at the capitol testifying and that's why she couldn't be with us today. [11:46:58 AM] >> Good morning. Nice to be here today. I am director of Austin water. I want to provide you an overview of our experience. Mayor, council, this is my 37th year in the water industry, and sometimes I reflect that I've seen everything, but this event was like no other. At its peak, tceq reported over is 1 hundred water utilities in the state of Texas in the some form of a boil water notice and just really an incredible experience for our industry.state of Texas in the some form of a boil water notice and just really an incredible experience for our industry. Each utility is a little different, though, and I thought I'd walk you through how this affected Austin water and how this progressed, and what we're focusing on now. This all starts with preparation. Our utility was getting prepared for this event ahead of the bad weather. We began to prepare for sequestration of our employees, much like my Austin energy colleague indicated we have dozens of employees who spent up to a week at our dispatch centers and our plants preparing and getting through this event. [11:48:00 AM] We took chemical deliveries at all of our plants. We went into this event with full chemical inventories. We weatherized plants, wrapped thermal blankets, prepared our fleet. Clearly, that was one of the challenges. In a typical operational day, we will roll 600 vehicles, and with the roadways essentially shut down for much of this event, it was really, really challenging for our employees to move about and help manage the system through the extreme weather. We also took an opportunity on the preparation side to make sure all of our reservoirs were filled and really got all that prepared before the ice storm began on Friday. Really, the first five days of this event, from the ice storm on Friday, or excuse, Thursday, the 11th, into Friday, all the way through Tuesday, things were operating pretty well for us. [11:49:01 AM] Our biggest concern was actually wastewater. With the rolling blackouts, we were experiencing significant wastewater incidents. We have hundreds of small facilities, lift stations throughout the community, and as the blackouts were hitting those areas, we were losing power to our smaller facilities. And so, our focus was transporting portable generators across the city and getting some of these small lift stations working again, cleaning up overflows. You know, very challenging. But that was the first part of our experience was on the wastewater side. As the event continued to intensify, really on Tuesday night into Wednesday is when we started to see water issues emerge. It was late Tuesday night I got a call from our operations center and our head of operations where he was describing changes in water use, and I can put it no more clearly than water use was exploding. [11:50:04 AM] It was just climbing off the dial for us. Quite honestly, I didn't believe the numbers, and I ordereded some of our crews to go and physically check some of the reservoirs, particularly southwest where this was first starting, and verify that these numbers were correct. A we all learned, they were correct. And the reason that water use was exploding was our system was exploding. And I mean that literally. The number of breaks and burst pipes and private infrastructure that fell apart during this extended 100- hour freeze is just incredible. And certainly, you all have a feel for that, either through your own direct experience or the experience of your constituents. Mayor, I remember talking to you during one of those days, and you were asking me about water main breaks and leaks, and I said I didn't think it would be in the thousands, but it was in the many hundreds. Our crews were heroic and having heroic repairing water mains and [11:51:04 AM] leaks. We experienced more leaks and breaks in a four-day period than we would typically get in six to eight months. And we've been knocking these out, you know, 40 to 60 every 24 hours. We've been a 24- operation distribution repairs since this event started. But really that paled in comparison to what happened on the private side. Tens of thousands of private buildings had burst pipes, burst bio lines, significant damage at the apartment complexes, and these are not just small lines. These are sometimes -- that were breaking and leaking. And really, that was a fundamental cause of our system depressurizing. We could just not pump water through the system with that kind of use and leak that was occurring. And whenever pressures drop below minimums, 20 pounds per [11:52:04 AM] square inch, that requires a boil water notice. That's protective public health and safety. Water pressure is what keeps the risk low that other sources of water could get into our system, and whenever we drop below minimums, we issue boil water notices to make sure we're protective of public health and safety. That's what we did Wednesday, is a series of boil water notices ultimately culminating with the entire system. As we moved into Wednesday and beyond, our goal was to stabilize the. -- The system to make sure we knew what was going on. We began canvassing the system. We did not have transmission main failure. We began to restore service, working through bringing our reservoir levels back up, progressing through the various pressure Zones to restore service, and lifting our boil water notices through a sequence of the pressure Zones starting with our main central zone and [11:53:08 AM] working out through the other Zones. I want to make it clear that we know this event is not over. And while the public system is stable, we are turning our eyes towards helping on private water system damage. I've redirected our incident commander. Austin water are working to team with our apartments, working with the eoc to help these folks restore water. We know there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of apartment complexes that sustained significant damage and there are still many days ahead for them to recover from this. I'll just share a story along the lines -- last night, working in council direct 3, councilman Renteria's district at Fargo drive, we dispatched crews working with an apartment complex there. Some of our experts helping. We brought construction lights out, so their plumbers could [11:54:09 AM] work through the night. They had water restored this morning. We have now over 40 Austin water employees that are delivering water throughout the community to these apartment complexes. We're work on plans where we can use hydrants to fill water for apartment complexes, bulk water. Maybe even wire them with water, with hydrants. We have reallocated a million dollars of funding for low- income customers to repair plumbing at their areas. We're taking steps on the financial side to make sure that customers don't experience large bills. We're providing relief there. We've started those actions. I know there will be some more about that on the council side. We're going to get water back to their systems. It's hard work. And detailed work and -- you know, this is not going to be easy. You know, we're doing what we can in lending expertise and [11:55:10 AM] resources to that effort. We're committed to examining this at every level. I know council member kitchen has asked about communication strategies. . We did use texting systems. We used central Texas warn. We used new portal capability through our advanced meter infrastructure, my atx water. To begin some communications, interactive maps. Other operational reports. We still need to get better. Our map alone had over a million hits. I think we made some good progress there. I want to give you a couple of examples to make that come to life. Some of you, if you are [11:56:11 AM] following our Twitter feed, you saw the tweets we had and our most popular one was with Abram rosha, Abram repairing a water line in the snow, water up to his knees, and we did that by the hundreds throughout this event. And Abram is now a superstar on social media. We had 67,000 views and followers. That just brings a highlight to the kind of effort that went on. Another story I'll share is a new hire. Marilyn Toliver, we asked her to call all the hospitals and get updates from them. When you're calling a hospital that's out of water, you know, that's not a very pleasant experience. And she did it with professionalism and grace and her work helped us get those hospitals back in service faster than we could without her. And I'll share a story. This came from council member Fuentes. She contacted me during the event and mentioned a Walmart [11:57:11 AM] that was experiencing water problems. They had food available for customers that were lined up, and they wanted to open, and we sent distribution crews out there and they checked the public system. They ultimately got with the storm manager, rocked her store, and found a leak in the garden center that they were able to isolate. That store started up -- as a matter of fact, Jessica with council member Fuentes's office sent pictures of shoppers with food in their cart. And that's the level of service that our employees went through. Mayor, council, you should be very proud of them. If you see them on the street or working, please take time to thank them for the service. Over 1,200 Austin water employees gave that level of service throughout that event. And we're committed to not only, again, recovering still, but learning from this event. After action reviews, on infrastructure, communications, better emergency distribution of water. This is going to be a long-term event where we're going to stay [11:58:13 AM] focused on this and make our systems more resilient. And that concludes my remarks, mayor. >> Thank you. Director Ortiz has a few more slides to go through, and then we'll open it up for questions. >> Thank you, Spencer. If we can have the slides back up. Next slide. We'll talk a little bit about shelters that we operated. The city has a process of how we open up shelters to provide for those folks that are experience ING [indiscernible] To spend the night. And so we open up these cold weather shelters once we meet specific criterion. [11:59:14 AM] These are just operated overnight. And the next morning, folks -- we quickly have to make changes to that approach. And we were able to operate those shelters, for 24-hour operations while we were experiencing the temperatures that did not go up above freezing for multiple days. Because of covid, we have to make sure that we're maintaining social distancing. So that required us to limit the capacity of facilities, and we were happy to open up multiple facilities to make sure that everybody had a place to go. We ended up having to operate these facilities 24 hours a day. Starting on the 13th of February. And then also we were able to take care of over 1,000 people [12:00:16 PM] in shelters that were operated in different locations across the city and the county as well as supported by the city and county to include Austin disaster relief. Next slide. These shelters -- you know, also were providing the place for those folks that had no power or no heat at home. They were encouraging them to go to these facilities so they can stay warm, or spend the night, as well as find food and water at these locations. The palmer event center specifically served as the primary cold weather shelter. You know, as we were dealing with the ability to move people around, the palmer event center became the place where, you know, when he got there, staying there until road conditions allowed us to move people around [12:01:16 PM] to facilities and kind of spread the love to different shelters that we had. The palmer events center got -- at one point, full capacity. Close to 500 people in this facility that we were providing shelters as well as food and water. In addition to opening up the palmer, other locations were open. Aisd school facilities and also faith-based locations in coordination with the Austin disaster relief network. Next slide. In a water distribution area, I just want to point out that we started quickly early on to identify sources of water. [12:02:17 PM] All available locally sourced water sources, as well as place an emergency order on the -- for a million gallons of water that we're using to support the water needs. We developed a three-phase approach to look at what are the most critical areas that we have in operation to ensure there was plenty of water. Critical infrastructure locations as well as covid filleteds that we were operating and the shelters. Second phase was more targeted, that's the phase we're continuing to work with right now, to provide water to those locations where we have vulnerable populations, to make sure that they have access to drinking water and other locations. The third phase we established several phases of distribution, able to receive plenty of water on hand to establish the different points of [12:03:17 PM] distribution. At one point, we had more than ten facilities and locations that were functioning as points of distribution across the city. And today, we have distributed over three million bottles of water through these points of distributions and other efforts that we have. You know, work's not done. We still continue to provide water wherever we see the need and we're continuing to work to identify those locations and make sure that we have folks that can have clean drinking water for them to drink. And like Greg explained, we're working to explore other areas of what other things we can do to make water available for folks to use in their homes, and we'll be working with a water department to support those efforts as we make our water available for the coming days and weeks. Next slide. [12:04:27 PM] As we identified specific areas of water, like apartment complexes, we're asking them to call 311. Our teams, consisting of Austin code and other groups will then identify those locations. Our staff will reach out to them and verify the need. And we'll be working with them to establish points of distribution and facilities that provide water as necessary. Work on a timeline to see how best they can make those repairs and make sure that those repairs are -- those facilities as quickly as possible. For single family dwellings, we're asking those individual families to call the Austin disaster relief number, and that way, we can identify them and be able to provide water more specifically to those locations. So we're looking to identify those multi-family locations as well as the single family [12:05:28 PM] locations. Next slide. In the healthcare arena, we were supporting everything from all the area hospitals, making sure that we were working with them to see what we can do to keep them open, as they were dealing with loss of power, generator failures, limited access to fuel, as well as making sure they had water to operate and heat in those facilities, and any moment, we could have been real close where we might have had to evacuate a facility. So we had a different group of folks working on a contingency for what we needed to do. Therefore, we opened up a functional needs shelter at the Austin convention center. After that, after trying to open up that facility and another facility, that also experienced loss of water, had to be relocated to the Austin [12:06:28 PM] convention center. So the Austin convention center at one point was serving as the location for an alternate care site in support of the covid operations, and also a functional -- functional needs facility to provide a place for those folks that could not stay at a hospital or patients that were being discharged from the hospital, but they had no power and no water and needed a place to stay -- before they were able to get back home. This allowed us to make sure that we kind of off load some of the capacity hospitals, to allow the hospitals to be able to take more patients that needed their attention. Next slide. Like it's been said, we're continuing to provide services to all our citizens. Folks can go to the city website [12:07:31 PM] to find information about water distribution information on where the temporary showers and laundry centers have been established as well as water and power outage information, and any emergency repairs. There's a couple of things I wanted to point out here. And that is we have been declared a presidential disaster and folks can call FEMA to get that additional information, as well as there's ways that folks can sign up to receive assistance from other non-profit organizations active in disaster. And that is through a program called crisis cleanup. And I would like to give out a couple of phone numbers for folks to call. Obviously, the city operates the 311, so if anybody needs assistance, a good source of information would be to call 311, as well as you can also call the Austin disaster relief hotline, 512-806- 080 0. [12:08:34 PM] Crisis cleanup for help with damaged homes can be reached at 1-844-965-1386. And finally, contact the FEMA disaster assistance number at 800-621-3364. Folks also need to -- folks can also go to the city of Austin website at austintexas.gov/weatherinfo. I'm going to repeat this in Spanish as well for the spanish-speaking people that are listening to this call. [Speaking Spanish] [12:10:21 PM] The last thing I would like to say is we had over -- next slide. We had volunteers provide services to the community throughout the week. Thousands of hours of time donated by the community to help others who were in need. We're also deeply appreciative of the hundreds of community organizations and businesses that chipped in to make a difference in areas. This is an important piece of the response that helped our community. This winter is still ongoing and in the coming weeks we will sit down and take a look at lessons learned that worked well. In all my years as public service, I've never seen or lived through an event quite like this. It was a humbling feeling to see so many of the community leaders come together so quickly to help [12:11:23 PM] one another on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people who helped us survive and begin recovering from this event. I want to personally extend my heartfelt thank you to everybody. >> Thank you, director Ortiz and Sydney and Craig. Again, today was really meant to provide a high level overview as we continue to respond to this weather event. There are so many incredible stories out there in our community. And then the city employees, many of which you heard from today. I'll echo what has been said, which is we will do a comprehensive overview and response to this, an after action report, and make sure that we have many opportunities to discuss with you, mayor and council and our community about what we learned from this and how we can improve and get better. That is not the goal for today. [12:12:23 PM] Today, we really want to take immediate action for your consideration on additional ways that we can address this with our community. Those items are before you and we hope to get to them shortly. I did want to personally acknowledge director Ortiz. You have done incredible work over the last handful of days in particular, but just the leadership and calm demeanor that you've had throughout this situation. You were often sleeping on the floor at our emergency operation center, and I will also note, as a personal story, that you on the first day of the snowfall made sure that we were doing everything we could to make sure that our community is safe, including bringing together a crew, including our ems folks, to go out to all the different encampments of people experiencing homelessness, as many as we could do in that date, over 50, where you personally joined the ems folks and knocked on tents to make sure that they knew they had opportunity to shelter, that we [12:13:24 PM] had those shelters available, and their transportation was ready for them. So you can hear stories about this all the time, but I did want to personally acknowledge director Ortiz. Thank you so much. And with that, I'll turn it over to you. We have other staff available for questions. But we did want to take a moment to make sure that you had a chance to have any questions answered at this time. Mayor? You're on mute, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Juan, would you also please thank Eric Carter, who is kind of like your twin. You guys are joined at the hip. That's the county equivalent of Juan and the county side of the infrastructure that we're not seeing here today. But obviously, everybody was working together. I want to thank judge brown for being actively involved in [12:14:24 PM] operation as well. Colleagues, it's after 12:00. Everybody needs to be short. Let's kind of do this as rapid fire as we can. We will break for lunch when we're done with these questioning. We'll come back at 1:30. That's a hard time for speakers to speak. I think there are -- I don't know the exact number, but somewhere between six and 12, I think. So not a tremendous number of speakers. They're going to speak for three minutes each. Then we'll go through the agenda. We're not going to pull anything. We're going to consider each of them in turn. I'm going to start first giving an opportunity to those council members that did not ask a question in the first group. We'll start there and work our way backwards from the people that spoke before. >> Mayor, right before you get started, just a quick process question. >> Yes. >> So, just for us to give general comments thanking staff and the like, would that be a good moment for us when we get [12:15:27 PM] back from the lunch break? >> Mayor Adler: I think the best time to give those general comments will be when we come back. Let's come back at 1:30. You'll hear from speakers and then there will be a chance for people to give general comments before we get into the agenda items. >> Thanks, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So, let me start with questions right now on this part of the disaster response. First shot at asking questions now. Council member pool. >> Pool: Thanks. Two things. My deep appreciation for the heroism, everybody from start to finish who were involved in the winter weather crisis, the ten and 11- day persistent situation we just came through. Calamities compounding calamities. It was difficult for everybody. I am going to hold my questions for a week. [12:16:27 PM] Council member kitchen and I share the individual utility oversight committees. I oversee Austin energy, as you all know, and chair that oversight committee and council member kitchen chairs the water committee, and she and I have been working on combined -- probably just a two-hour meeting that would expand on some of the information that was provided to us today. I want to dig in a little bit more on how things rolled out and talk about utility, market economics. Because I think it's really important for us all to understand how ercot and the PUC and railroad commission work here in the state, and what role Austin energy plays both as a generator and a purchaser of energy off of ercot. So, please look at your calendars for March 3rd, 1:00. We'll divide it up into two one-hour segments. We'll do Austin energy and we'll do Austin water. [12:17:27 PM] And those of us on the water oversight committee, I think council member kitchen, weren't you planning to also take up -- because that's a regularly scheduled meeting for us in water oversight. You had some other items on that. >> Kitchen: We have actually decided to devote the time to -- devote the time to our disaster response, and we've been working with him to work through exactly the items that we'll cover. >> Pool: So we'll have an opportunity to dig in further. City manager, thank you. Your leadership throughout has been stellar. There is nobody who didn't put themselves on the line for getting the city of Austin through this disaster, bringing all the various incendiary [12:18:28 PM] groups together. But wow, the effort was astronomical and it was immensely impressive. And so, I thank you for the very strong leadership that you showed to the city of Austin as our city manager. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, council member. Mayor Adler: We look forward to those joint meetings next week. I would imagine this is going to be something that we have conversations in lots of different forums. Having those two council meetings together, I look forward to participating. Council member Renteria or Casar. Council member Casar? Go ahead. >> Casar: So, real quick. We'll be talking about this in the items coming up. Can you expand a little bit about what the city staff are going to be doing that you've assigned to emergency water [12:19:28 PM] delivery to those places without water, and do we have any estimate yet on about how many major complexes are down? >> A few thoughts there. In terms of estimates, we've been working through various data sources and there's a lot of folks gathering data, including aof water and it changes dynamically. I spoke to one of our staff and she communicated that she had a list of 400, and that was probably 100 duplicates in there and she's cleaning that up. But I would anticipate right now there's -- you know, at least 200 to 400 apartment complexes, condos, areas served by kind of interior piping systems on their side that are out of water in one form or another. That's changing rapidly. But that's a very large number. And that doesn't count single family homes or others that are struggling to those kind of [12:20:28 PM] things. You know, what we're doing is working with the eoc. We're targeting water drop-offs at those locations. You know, rise to those facilities. And trying to get water to those areas. Even up to the door staff. Some of those areas are with elderly folks. And then they don't want to come out of their apartment, concerned about covid or other things. We're trying to work through some very specifics there. We're rendering expertise there in terms of how we can exist and give advice on bringing him back up to water, as I mentioned, as simple as providing lighting where we can look to team with eoc and others on how fire hydrants in the area can help with bulk filling and people can keep toilets flushing and things of that sort. I hope that's giving you a little bit of a flavor of kind of what we're doing there. [12:21:29 PM] Is there another question? I don't recall it. >> Casar: No, and we'll talk later about whether we can get big water tank delivery in some of those parking lots. If elderly folks can put a big jug outside their door, those sorts of things. As a look-back at some point, just sort of our communication systems, like who gets texts and who doesn't get texts or emails as well as -- we had so many volunteers step up on homelessness, but what our city response is versus what the community had to pick up and why we couldn't fill in there. Those are questions maybe for the future. But I just want to say them out loud now so folks can start thinking through that when we do a look back. But my sense is we are still not looking back at the disaster because we're still in it. If we have hundreds of complexes without water and that's not counting all of the single [12:22:31 PM] family homes. >> Mayor Adler: I think that discussion would be appropriate this afternoon in terms of talking about how we're doing the recovery now. Not looking back, but from this point forward. How much are we sourcing or organizing through the city and how much are we relying on partners, because this recovery is going to be extended here. I hope that you'll bring that back up at that time. Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Yes, mayor. What I want to learn later on is the performance of our utility. I believe there was a lot of misinformation out there at the beginning. On renewable energy. Which is -- I'm really interested in seeing how much we contribute to the state, and how that we help the state out [12:23:33 PM] including the usage of our renewable energy. So I'm very interested to find out. The governor went on fox and said that wind power and all the other -- he would mention that. And then later on. But I still want to find out exactly, you know, what we need to do in the future on our renewable energy. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member tovo, did you have something? >> Tovo: Yeah. Thank you, and I'll save my thank yous for later. But I do want to just drill into -- let me just say a general huge thank you. I want to just drill into a couple things that were said [12:24:33 PM] about the process moving forward for water distribution to larger complexes, and I think these questions are directed at director masares. So we have had just an amazing partnership with the Austin firefighters association who has gone to complexes and done water distribution, using everything from Home Depot buckets to equipment borrowed from breweries and large vats. So as I understood your presentation, and I think this is terrific, that now Austin water and potentially some other city resources are going to be out to bear for those complexes. What I need to understand is how many of us have lists. Some properties in y'all's districts as well as a good list going of west campus properties in my own district. And I want to be sure I [12:25:34 PM] understand what should advise those complexes. Should they be calling -- as I understand your presentation, they should call 311 to try to work with the water utility in getting that assistance? Assistance about advice for payers as well as about potential water? >> Yes. If I can answer that question. So obviously, Greg as well. Everybody has different kinds of lists. So we're trying to learn all the different lists and make sure we go through them and verify with those facility owners or managers to ensure that they still have a need, and what that need is. If there is a partner manager that is dealing with flooding issues and doesn't have water running into the facilities, yes, we're asking them to call 311. The team will look at that and see if they are already on the list or not, and we'll reach out to them and make contact and do [12:26:34 PM] that verification. And if we need to take water out there, we'll take water. If it is -- if they just need lighting so they can get the plumbing done, whatever that assistance would be, we'll look at seeing how best we can provide assistance in helping them get back online from a water perspective. Or be able to get them drinking water for their residence, and then put them on somewhat of a schedule. Because we may have to come back and give them additional water until they're able to make those repairs. But we'll be working with them to figure out exactly what they need is. But the first step is to ensure that they call 311. If any of the council members have a specific list of apartment complexes, we can reach out to them after this presentation. We'll reach out to you and get the list from you. And we will just run it through the list that we have to make [12:27:35 PM] sure that we haven't left everybody off the list. And then go through that process. >> Tovo: Thank you, director Ortiz. Just to clarify. Someone on your staff will reach out to each of the council offices for that? Either that or somebody on the manager's staff could let us know who the direct contact is. I've been working to try to update some of the lists I have, because as you said, the situation is dynamic. So, again, I just need to know, either if y'all are reaching out to us or if there is one contact that you'd like to share with our council offices where we can push that information to. As long as it's clear what the process is. And then is -- are these -- is this water delivery work being coordinated with the really extraordinary volunteer effort as well, just so we're not all -- I know many offices including mine have been working kind of around the clock with the firefighters association. I want to be sure we're not sending -- that that work is coordinated, so that we're not sending both volunteers and city to the same complexes. [12:28:36 PM] So are you coordinating with that afa volunteer effort? >> Yes, and we will be emailing you instructions on how it's provided to the eoc. So you'll see that email coming from us shortly. The second part to that question would be, we're going to verify that there is a need at the location, and we will work with the other organizations that we're working with to ensure that if we played water to an apartment complex, does the apartment complex have the ability to distribute the water across the complex, or do they need help in getting the water out to everybody else? So it may be a combination. We will bring the water. And if they need help in getting the water districted, they will also work with the volunteer agencies to accomplish that. >> Tovo: All right. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. [12:29:36 PM] We're working our way backwards through the list. Council member alter, do you have anything? >> Alter: Yeah. I have a ton of questions, and I want to be -- I want to be mindful that we are not -- I'm not even sure if we're stabilized yet and moving into recovery. But I think it's really important that this council sends a very clear message to the community that we are intent on investigating what happened, understanding what went wrong, what went right, and how we can move forward. I want to be really clear on Austin energy that this is not just about ercot. We in some sense experienced two emergencies connected by the weather. We had a considerable number of households without power due to a combination of weather and tree damage. At what point during that period from February 11th to February 14th, 40% of my district was out of power. This was before there was any [12:30:39 PM] issue with ercot. And I had households that were out of power from 3:00 P.M. On February 11th until Sunday morning on the 14th and then out again on Monday. So we need to, you know, be very clear that we are going to acknowledge all the parts of this event and that we need to address that first part that was not ercot-induced, and really understand the lessons that we can learn and what we need to do. There is enormous amount from the communications problems that we saw, the subsequent week that we had already surfaced by the 12th, the outage map with respect to the techs, with respect to the communications. And I know that ae staff is very aware of this, but I think it's important to the community that they understand that we know these problems happened and that we are addressing them, while at the same time we need to [12:31:40 PM] recognize that our staff have been at this 24/7 for a really long time under difficult circumstances and cannot yet pause to do the full analysis that we would like. In that vain, I want to make sure that we are understanding about the vegetation management. My colleagues may recall on the Wednesday before this all started, on the 10th, that I was emphasizing the importance of that vegetation management in terms of strategy. So I'm going to really want to understand how much of the non-ercot outages could have been avoided, if Austin energy's vegetation plan had been fully implemented, and some questions on that. I also think that people -- we need to get some information to people quickly about how the ae's generation fleet performed relative to the rest of the state. Some of that was alluded to, and it sounded line it was pretty good news. [12:32:40 PM] But that is the piece that's going to allow us to understand any financial implications later on with the psa. And then since it doesn't sound like we're going to have a whole lot of other time, I want to say we really need answers to what happened at the power plant and why the redundancies we had in place did not work. And then finally, I don't think anyone is intending that we would only have two hours of a discussion of this next week, and I know we're all getting our feed under us, but I want to just make it really clear that we're going to have to devote considerable time and resources to the oversight moving forward as we stabilize and as we address the many needs that are still out there in the community. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All good points. I think there's been a posting by council member tovo that [12:33:40 PM] provides greater detail. So I think we also have another vehicle to start setting that in motion. All right. Mayor pro tem Harper Madison, did you have something? >> Harper-madison: I did. Thank you. I think a lot of these questions -- my hope is that we just have considerably more opportunities to ask all our questions. This just feels -- it feels insufficient. I'm not discrediting anybody's distribution to the dialogue. There's just so much that we all individually, our communities, all the stories we're going to hear from our constituents, it doesn't feel like enough. There's so much that we've been downloading over the last several days. I have so many questions. I don't even know where to start, to be honest with you. So I'm going to try to articulate it quickly. One of the things that I have a question about, and really want to see something substantive in the way we're having a dialogue on, is how we get that community-level effort, that community-level mutual aid, and then some sort of facilitation through the city. [12:34:41 PM] How do we make that less clunky? I mean, to talk about how it was not nimble would be an understatement and I don't have to tell Juan that. He was right in the heart of it. Which by the way, I mean, Juan, you probably took more phone calls from me this week than -- I mean, thank you. I appreciate your staff. Just thinking -- moving forward, if we can, you know, have a process that would just be so much less problematic, I think one of my colleagues is actually working on an ifc that will help to address that, and I really look forward to being able to support that. That was one of the things I wanted to say. But through my quick questions -- we answered the question about non-potable water. I think we're going to do some follow-ups to talk about afa and their effort with water. We talked about private complex [12:35:42 PM] S. Okay. So, one of the other questions about that sort of community level effort, I want to make sure to introduce to the conversation, and we have an opportunity to figure out how to tap into those resources moving forward. I watched next door really become a place where people went to for nflgs, and the local buy nothing groups. We can certainly be a part of the conversation about how effective they were in the time and need. I also wanted to ask a question about Austin resource recovery. I realize they are not a part of the folks who have presented here now, but hopefully during the course of our day, we get a chance to talk about arr. One, I think this would be for your office. Folks are asking us a lot of questions about recovery from an infrastructural perspective. We all talked about their pipes [12:36:44 PM] failing. So folks are asking a lot of questions about how to tap into any resources we have available to us for home repair, specifically as it pertains to responding to their pipes failing. Who is that? And how do we continue that conversation to make sure to put information out that people can use? >> Council member, yes. Thank you. That's a really good question. We're working -- we have a website called called atxrepair.com. You can go to the -- you can find that at the austintexas.gov website. That information will be located in that location. In addition to that, you can also call the crisis cleanup number that I gave before. And you can identify what kind [12:37:44 PM] of assistance you need and whether it's assistance that is provided for the city or county or provided by a non-profit organization. Probably the best way to start in that recovery effort. >> Harper-madison: I think this would be a ctm question. I wonder if all of these email addresses and websites and phone numbers that we're all rattling off, I wonder if there's a way for us to be sharing those throughout the course -- is that a possibility? I know I definitely missed half of what you said. And those are probably really important resources. So I wonder if there's a way for us to be sharing those things. >> The best source of updated information is on the city's website. Going to austintexas.gov on that page, there's a quick link to our cold weather response. And through that, there is [12:38:45 PM] information on everything that has been described, and we continue to update that as we get additional information, additional new programs, and so that is where we have been directing people, just to our regular website, austintexas.gov. And then on that home page, it is severe weather recovery resources is the landing page for everything that we have at the city. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, city manager, appreciate it. The last question I have would be about -- this is certainly not something we're going to answer today, but if we could have a conversation about moving forward, it felt very much like we were trying to figure out where our best place is. Like, we didn't have the opportunity to have had, you know, an asset conversation. The places we were propping up -- I hope moving forward that we have a thorough and comprehensive list of these are the best places. This is why they are effective. [12:39:47 PM] And/or not. Some of the places that we tried to prop up weren't, frankly, prepared or appropriate for what it is that we were trying to process through them. So I'm looking forward to having that conversation also. Thank you all. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to thank the director for the information that you shared. Appreciate that. And I appreciate the efforts that you all have made and the improvements you made in communication throughout the course of this, as well as the efforts that you're now shifting to help our apartment complexes, particularly those for seniors and low-income folks in the community, helping them get their water back up and running is so important and really helpful to the -- you know, really helpful to the private community. I so I appreciate that. [12:40:48 PM] I want to say also to my colleagues -- well, let me just emphasize again what you said, that your incident command is now shifting to working with apartments to restore water. You all are working on delivering water to apartments. And you've shifted $1 million to help individuals with their repair efforts. So really appreciate that. I want to ask my colleagues if you all -- working with my colleagues on the water committee, and vice chair, council member Fuentes, to put together our agenda for next week, as we work with director masaros. If you have particular issues you would like to make sure we delve into, please post them on the message board. We will also be posting on the message board issues -- should have that in the next day or so. But also please bring that to our attention so we can be sure and incorporate it into our [12:41:52 PM] discussions next week. We understand that we cannot cover everything next week, but we want to highlight the kinds of issues and steps that will be important to work with Austin water on, and so I would invite you all -- it will help us with our discussion next week, if you will share the kinds of things that you'd like to see discussed and the kinds of issues you'd like the see us delve into. So I would invite you all to do that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Ellis, and then Kelly, and then Fuentes. >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. These are all very good questions and comments that are being asked. And I just -- I cannot stress enough that we are not through this yet. I have a lot of apartment complexes that went offline on Tuesday and still don't know how to get clean drinking water and even nonpotable water. So I really hope our planning moving forward addresses those needs in addition to Porto [12:42:52 PM] potties and hand washing stations. These places have been trying very, very hard to work through their plumbing issues. I'm well aware that once things are no longer on the city plumbing line, that the private managers and owners of complexes, trying to systematically work through their issues. I have seen apartment complexes that own multiple locations in the city, trying to take all their extra water, once they get a building fixed, and move it to southwest Austin, knowing the need is still very great here. So I see that my district is still the most affected by these outages. And so I just really want to put on your radar that we are not through this yet. So many employees are working incredibly hard around the clock, as have I and my team and the management offices, we're all still navigating this. But I do, before our lunch break, want to daylight that I have offered an amendment to the message board. I have a four-legged friend joining me here. [12:43:54 PM] I would like more detailed communication with the water utility. I know there was information coming out. A lot of what I was hearing from my constituents was that they didn't know what that meant. They didn't know what they were watching for to know when the water would come online. I appreciated the graphics being shared. It was good to be able to communicate we're halfway there. We're 90% there. Knowing that my district was in that last 10% was incredibly stressful for a lot of constituents. So when I see water and utility workers out there fixing things, I tell them thank you because I know they're working incredibly hard. I know all the offices are working hard. But we are not out of this yet. We still have the next phase of this crisis management. So, thank you for your continued diligence on this. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Kelly. Did you have anything? >> Kelly: I did. More of a statement also. I just wanted to provide thanks [12:44:54 PM] to city staff and also to north Austin municipal utility district number 1 as well as the Williamson county district, for setting up a water fill station. And also for providing water to the constituents in district six and all across Austin. I know that representative John Bussey also came to me with a need for water to be taken to the claremont, which is a requirement community in the city of Austin. It's not covered by the jollyville fire department. Yet I was able to get them to go over there and provide water with a fire engine to the retirement community so that those individuals had water when they needed it. I thought it was a great bipartisan effort. The community just coming together like that. I did want to add something that council member -- I'm sorry, mayor pro tem reminded me of and I think it's important for the community to know. You should not be bathing with your drinkable water. That is because it is made for [12:45:55 PM] drinking and it's just a super important thing to remember. So thank you so much for that. And again, once all this is all over, I look forward to finding out the answers that everyone in the community has been asking. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Fuentes. Did you have anything else? >> Fuentes: No, not at this time. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. It is a quarter to 1:00. My suggestion would be that we leave, come back at 1:30, that's in 45 minutes, so we can have speakers, and then we'll go through the agenda. Everyone, manager, Juan, Mr. Jackson, thank you so much for the presentation. As a city, we got so much done. [12:46:57 PM] We relied so much on the volunteers and the individuals that stepped forward. There's a lot we're going to have to learn from this. A lot of conversations in the future. I also support keeping the focus right now on the people that are still without food, still without water, and one of the things we need to talk about this afternoon is what is the extent of the recovery. We have people that are still needing shelter because their homes are not habitable. So there's an ongoing element of this that we are in the very middle of. That's where this conversation really needs to focus this afternoon as well. So, with that, colleagues, if it's okay, we'll go into recess here at 12:47, we'll come back at 1:30, so that we can listen to the speakers. We'll then go through the agenda items one at a time and that will be our afternoon. [12:47:58 PM] Manager, we'll try to get the disaster staff back out onto the streets just as quickly as we can. We'll work through this afternoon as quickly as we can. All right. See you guys at 1:30. [1:13:05 PM] >>> >> >>> >> >>> [Music]. [Music]. [1:32:46 PM] >> Mayor Adler: How many speakers do you have in the queue. >> Five. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let hear from the speakers. >> The first speaker is Miguel Barbosa. >> We are not through this disaster. We are still in it. I am not sure how many people are listening. People are probably out at work to recover a week's worth of lost work. But I can tell you that I, Miguel, am I speaking for many austinites when I say what I am about to say. And there is a critical question. When was the city notified about this incoming disaster? If anyone can answer this, please do. Now, I would genuinely to thank the concerted efforts by council districts one, two, three and four. They exhibited initiative in what is still a state of humanitarian disaster in the city of Austin, Texas. The local civilians who stepped up from all over [1:33:47 PM] Austin, thank you too. Lastly, I would like to thank all of the organizations, restaurants, local brewery, H.E.B. Partners for stepping up in this emergency. You are all doing a lot of great work. And if you are still out here, I know how it can feel for I have been out doing what I can since Saturday. I sincerely hope the city does not forget about these efforts and how the city came together. This should go down in Austin, Texas history. Now, in reference to item 3 and item 6, I approve and I am sure there is no optician to them. I just think that concerns are not imminent for they are here and have been here since February 15th, 2021. Yes, I am talking about water scarcity, continuous food shortage, broken pipes in homes and apartment complexes all over town. Just a few days ago water across town was clean and ready to be drunk, but in many, many instances, families, including children, are living in [1:34:49 PM] unsanitary conditions with water shut off. Why? Well, because their homes have broken pipes. Water is cut off and who knows when it will be turned back on. It won't be cut back on until those pipes are fixed. People need toilets. Families knees showers. This is risky and quite frankly it is life-threatening. There needs to be more work done in this state of disaster to make things right. This means bringing in plumbing professionals from wherever they are willing to come from. Get them from the states, no, get them from out of state. The city of Austin really needs them. Some families are now having to start all over again. Floors are wet and moldy, including all of their belongings. People are having to leave their homes, leave the city and even leave the state of Texas to live with family elsewhere if that is even a possibility. Until then I am providing clean water to drinking water for some families. I am going later tonight to some families and bringing them some water. Austin, Austin city council, you will have to stand up and continue to do just that [1:35:50 PM] until things are made right. This is what you're elected to do. We also have to look into a what landlords are doing to help they are tenants and they should be held accountable if they're not helping their tenants at all. Bless you and thank you very much. >> Next speaker is Wesley Stewart. >> Hi. My name is Wesley Stewart and I am currently sitting in my truck in the mist covered in water. I am on day six of me and my fellow Austin citizens delivering water to anybody who needs it, which is a lot of people. And I'm speaking right now on agenda three, which was the first option and seemed like a fine fit when I read it, but I could have spoken on any item and made the same point just the same. The consideration of declaring a local state of disaster is actually a perfect fit for what I want [1:36:51 PM] to say, though. The city, the county and the state have failed every single Texan. What we have gone through is not only traumatic, but embarrassing. It didn't need to happen and we all know that. It happened for profit, for greed. It happened for representative subservient with interest. We all know it will happen again and again and again faster. And the only clear lesson that anyone I've talked to have gotten from this is that we have no functional government, not as a city, county or state level. The only true functional government we have right now when shit hits the fan is us. And science and experience has only shown that shit is hitting the fan at a faster rate, just as our experiences show us out inept our, quote unquote, leadership is at meeting any [1:37:51 PM] real actual problem, besides of course the problem from moving money from us the people to them to what, the utilities, representatives, ercot, friends ever Greg Abbott. It's hard to tell really what we're investing in when it really has nothing to do with the reliable transmission of services necessary to meeting the most basic requirements for human dignity. So in regard to item three and the disaster declaration, I 100% support the declaration. This is the kind of disaster that changes a community forever and in the case of Austin and in Texas at large, I think for the better. It's certainly why I am here and why I will continue to be present and heard from going forward. I'm speaking today that you ask to consider in addition to declaring a local disaster to petition governor Abbott to invoke section 418-022 of the Texas [1:38:51 PM] ghost code and provide aid to individuals under the emotional and physical prudent of the travesty of this. Those that continue to be affected by resource inability, or the abuse of wear I've been putting on my truck everyday lugging almost twice its rated payload to provide clean water to people who need it. [Buzzer]. All this because the city, the county and the state were either unwilling or able to help and the companies we paid to provide these resources -- >> Speaker, your time has expired. >> Can I finish, please? >> Mayor Adler: No. You have three minutes, but we appreciate you coming in. Thank you. >> Kiabe white. Hello, my name is kiabe [1:39:51 PM] white and I'm calling in today on behalf of public citizens. We are a non-profit organization that advocates for consumers and for environmental efforts. And I first of all wanted to call attention to the fact that the disaster that we are still trying to recover from as a community and as a state is almost certainly a climate disaster. There is still some additional research needed to confirm that these polar vortex events are in fact a result of climate change, but the data is pointing in that direction. So I think we should expect that this will happen again. I hope that this is something that we can learn from and prepare for so that when it does happen again and it doesn't have the same kind of catastrophic impact on us here locally and across the state as it has this time. First I'd like to talk about [1:40:52 PM] how blackouts can be allocated in a more fair and rational way when electricity supply cannot meet demand because that is something that we want to avoid, but is very likely to happen at some point again so we should be prepared for that situation. As you may or may not know, Austin energy has invested in smart meters. They can turn everybody's individual meter on and off remotely if you don't pay your bill or if you are moving or for whatever other reason it's needed for safety that can be done. Currently they do not have the software to do that in bulk batches, but that is something that could be implemented so that instead of whole neighborhoods like my own being with power throughout the entire week and having the benefit of having our heaters on while other people froze for days on end and that was only [1:41:52 PM] because I happened to live near a fire station and they have to keep the fire station powered up, then they have to keep me and my neighbors also turned on because we are on the same circuit. We can do better because we have smart meters so it's worth that investment to make it so that we can utilize what we have already invested in that hardware, let's get the software to make it so we can keep the critical loads on on so that the blackouts could actually roll and everybody could get some power to keep their homes at least to a minimum temperature that is survivable and hopefully avoid some of the power outages that many are experiencing. The other thing I want to talk about is investing in resilience more broadly. There are many businesses as well as homes that were without power including grocery stores. And while I agree that in general commercial entities should not be prioritized in terms of keeping electricity on, food and water -- [1:42:54 PM] [buzzer] -- Which many people were trying to get from grocery stores is a basic need. So I would suggest that as we use those smart meters to -- >> Speaker, your time has expired. >> We can invest in solar batteries -- >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Selena sye. >> Thank you, council for taking this opportunity to review what happened last week. I have shared in other forums my experience N how the winter storm was and continues to be as humanitarian crisis, having so many of us underestimated how many austinites are medically vulnerable and on the verge of disaster. And we still have so many communities that are suffering without water and food. The Austin ems association has been gathering input from its members to learn about how emergency services can improve its response to future winter crisis which we know will be coming. [1:43:55 PM] For example, some stations lost power and were unable to charge life saving equipment. We failed to maintain winter boxes or put chains on our ambulances. Even if the power doesn't shut down we have a lot of work to do to make sure we are prepared for freezing weather. While we are gathering this information I also wanted to take a minute to thank you for the investments that you've made so far this year. Due to investments in the cheap medical officer, Travis baker, our physician assistant, was able to go out and provide care directly at the bedside, including sutures, abscesses, taking care of those. Ingrown toe nails and antibiotics. And making sure that ambulances wouldn't have to make that dangerous drive to patient and then to the er. Our communications hotline was able to navigate people who have dialysis, methadone, oxygen and other critical needs once those resources were set up. Additional ambulances were in ambulance to answer countless calls and our new community health paramedics [1:44:56 PM] were able to health when integral care and mcot were without power in the first ice storm. I am proud of all the first responders and their critical thinking and we look forward to working with city council to make sure that emergency services is better able to prepare for future emergencies that we know are coming. Thank you. >> Michael conte. >> My name is Mike conte, resident of district 9. We were lucky to keep power and water which meant we have the luxury of looking at Twitter to figure out what the hell the city was doing. On Tuesday night I watched the city manager assure residents Austin water was, quote holding steady and if anything changes we will inform the public as soon as possible. [1:45:56 PM] According to Austin water's overview, the reservoirs had hemorrhaged half of their capacity at that point. Communication and transparency could have kept people from going thirsty and living in unsaner to conditions. Last week I did not receive a single emergency text. My partner didn't receive an alert for the citywide boil notice until 12 hours after it was issued. I heard Mr. Cronk to call 311 without alerting them to the fact it was completely overwhelmed by call volume. These are just small pieces from the litany of failures from the top to communicate and respond which left people fetching for themselves. It is uncon shunnable to hear Mr. Cronk and mayor add her spend this meeting behinding hiding behind [1:46:58 PM] community groups. The mayor pro tem and councilmember Casar, other members doing the work we see you, we're with you, let's fix things. I know there's not many speakers because we are all still in an emergency. Folks are traumatized and the everyday people who have been left to hold our city together are busy struggling to do so. I hope that all of you will proceed with the same urgency. I yield my time. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem, did you want to make a point? >> Harper-madison: Thank you to the speaker. I would just like to take the opportunity to say there's not a member on this die as or member of our staff that hasn't been keeping that same level of contribution to this effort. So while I can appreciate people singling out some of us, I love it, thank you for [1:48:00 PM] seeing me because as soon as I'm able I'm going to sleep hard. But the truth of the matter is we are all addressing the need as quickly as we can. But thank you to the speaker for the kindness. Mayor, the other thing, I wonder if we can queue it up so we can speak to that sweeps question. What was clarified for me was something along the lines it was picking up refuse and not sweeping camps. Even if we don't speak to it this second, I think it might be helpful for some of our other callers to know whether or not we are doing quote, unquote, sweeps. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's a good point want I remember seeing a list of what the change rules were for the activity that happened even more discerning than what we have been doing. But that's a good point. Manager, if we can make sure that's part of the presentation, part of the [1:49:01 PM] answers. Good point. Anyone else signed up to speak? >> Yes. Jordan Middlebrook. >> Hello, are you all able to hear me? >> Yes, go ahead, please. >> All right, thank you for hearing my testimony today. My name is Jordan Middlebrook. I am a recent member within district 3, and I am calling on you all to take some immediate relief to provide to your constituents within Austin, Texas. We have all lived through the disaster that just happened so I'm providing for utility bills, direct cash assistance of $2,000 a month or more must be provided specially to those who provide mutual aid like myself and the organizations I work with. There must be specific support for our most [1:50:01 PM] marginalized community members including those who are on the streets until the day of the storm. I'm also asking for your help to advocate and endorse a weatherized public well regulated power system that we all know would have prevented this crisis. We can also use this to put Texans to work and stop the climate crisis making us more resilient. I'm asking for your help to get Biden to come and endorse green recovery within Texas and using this moment to take urgent action on the climate crisis. We've seen this with hurricane Harvey, we've seen this now and we're going to keep seeing it moving forward so I'm asking you to be accountable to take action and do what needs to be done to make us resilient, to make us combat climate crisis and ultimately reduce the number of climate refugees we will be having in Texas. The last thing time asking for assistance with is to support the resignation of governor Abbott and senator Cruz who neglected their [1:51:02 PM] duty as public servants in the midst of this humanitarian crisis much these people are unfit to serve. They do not represent the people. They put profit over people, and they need to step down immediately. I'm asking for your help as the leaders within our communities to take these actions and I look to hold you accountable to these asks. Thank you. I waive the rest of my time. >> Zenobia Joseph. >> Thank you, mayor, councilmembers. I'm Zenobia Joseph. My comments today are specifically related to senior citizens as it relates to item 3. I just want you to recognize as you are ratifying the disaster declaration, mayor, that our senior citizens that live in the area of Parmer lane had no access to transportation. So while I certainly understand and I did listen to the transit meeting yesterday, there is not transportation throughout the city. And I would ask you to [1:52:02 PM] recognize that in this case it was a dire need. And so when you are talking about providing water and essential services, our senior services who did not have access to get the water, I personally went to walnut creek metropolitan park, two buses away, I called 911 and ask you to recognize the -- 311 and ask you to up today it the sites that run out of water so transit dependent riders as well as the population at large would know which sites to actually go to. I just want to call to your attention that I also looked at the ercot slides from yesterday and there's information that shows that this warning was as far back as November 5th, 2020. And so I would just ask Austin energy to be a little bit more explicit with the community. There was no rolling blackout, I understand that areas like Samsung, the electricity was turned off, but far north Austin, I can tell you it was three nights [1:53:03 PM] without lights. No lights, no power, no phone, nothing. I would ask you to also recognize that while I appreciate MI casa was open, they did not have D cell batteries. As you look at after action review, include batteries as an essential item to distribute to the community. I lastly want to say thank you to in cahoots, an east Austin facility that opened up their doors so the community could take showers. It took me to be proactive to write to the capital metro CEO Friday to let them know that essential workers in northeast and northwest Austin needed the bus in order to get the free hot meals, needed the bus to get water, and also to go to in cahoots if they wanted to take a shower. I bring that to your attention because the buses were not due to start running until this past Monday. When he emailed him on Friday, he responded in about an hour and the buses were activated in the black neighborhoods in northeast Austin as well as the area [1:54:04 PM] from dessau to tech ridge and lake line station 2. The other thing I would call to your item is 7. I want you to understand these encampments need to be citywide. While you are looking at the homeless issue, I want you to recognize that before the pandemic, there was no wash station or port-a-potty. Now there is, so you have a encampment there, I'll send pictures, but the area needs to be cleaned up. I want councilmember Casar -- [buzzer sounding] -- To recognize Gus Garcia was on the list. Council has a member run dumb that listed some of the areas where the encampment -- >> Speaker, your time has expired. Mayor, that concludes the speakers. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Colleagues, let's turn to [1:55:05 PM] the agenda in front of us while we work our way through the items in the order they were presented. We've done 1 and 2. That gets to item number 3, ratifying the declaration the local state of disaster. I issued that. Council needs to ratify within seven days of issuance. Because we didn't meet next week I entered it again and now the ratification is in front of us. Is there a motion to approve the ratification? Councilmember pool makes the motion and councilmember Ellis seconds. Is there any discussion in? Let's take a vote. Those in favor please raise your hand. Those opposed? I think that was everybody with their hands raised. I think that's everybody. That gets us to the second item. This is an ordinance waiving residential permitting and [1:56:05 PM] development fees. Manager, do you have someone on staff to lay this out? >> We do. It will just take a minute to move them over. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's the way to handle this. We'll call this out, give staff a second to explain what it is, I'll ask for questions. >> Sounds great. Dr. Lucas. >> City manager, I can go if you would like. Assistant city manager Rodney Gonzalez. Mayor and council, you may recall with previous disasters the city has taken an initiative to waive related permit fees to assist residents with recovering. And so in front of you is amendment to do so, to waive related permit fees. On top of, of course, the permit fees thatter waived, [1:57:08 PM] director Lucas sent council a memo outlining many initiatives that the department has taken to assist homeowners and residents with recovery. >> Did you want to add anything, director Lucas? >> I am having difficulty getting my video to start. But I think that's a good summary. We recognize that there was going to be a need to work quickly with the community to get these repairs started and we believe this will be a great incentive. We've set up a website where people can go and see what repairs are exempt from fees formally and what additional repairs are going to be exempt because of this resolution. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember -- city attorney, did you want to -- >> I just wanted to point out in this ordinance we also added the waiver of the ems fees from February 12th until February 20th. [1:58:08 PM] That's in there as well. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. And I think that's a great addition to make sure that ems has what it needs to have provided the work and the efforts that they have over the previous week. Could -- could you, director Lucas, talk a little about some of the differences between the residential permitting and commercial? I know -- my understanding is you have a single or double -- if you have a single or double unit, that you are under residential, but if you are a tri-plex on up to a full on, that's an apartment. Highlight some of the differences and if people can get started on emergency repairs before permit is approved. I know the websites are up, but I've gotten a few questions about the [1:59:09 PM] difference between residential and commercial. >> So in this instance for repairs, all emergency repairs can start right away. On the commercial side, we're asking that within five days of starting the repair, you do apply for your permit. This allows for plumbers and electricians to get into the buildings and start much needed repairs to protect health and safety. On the residential side, our recommendation we have homeowners that may be financially burdened with trying to get all these repairs done and there's a shortage of plumbers in the area as well as supplies. We didn't want any delays with them doing home repairs waiting on a permit to be issued. >> Ellis: Thank you. And I think another of my colleagues may speak about the the shortage of plumbers coming up. So I did understand that if an apartment complex has a repair person like a [2:00:09 PM] maintenance person on site that can do plumbing, that that may be different than when they hire a team to come do the plumbing for them. Is there any difference between the onsite maintenance versus contracting outside? >> Not particularly in this instance. We do expect for on-staff maintenance personnel to take care of these kinds of problems with an apartment complex. That's perfectly allowable. >> Ellis: Thank you. That's really helpful. I heard a lot about people who are frustrated because until the entire apartment building is ready to turn back on, everybody is without water. I really appreciate you running down some of those details with me. >> Certainly. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you, and I just wanted to -- to plug in here with a comment that councilmember Ellis has made, been working to help recruit plumbers to Austin, working with plumbers [2:01:10 PM] without borders and water mission and I'm pleased to report some plumbers will be arriving Monday and working through the Austin disaster relief network that's been a fabulous partner through this process and they will go through the crisis help line. There will be messaging on the access to plumbers through that program in the near future and they will be using the adrm's data base and we have some folks helping to house them in some local hotels. Hopefully, you know, this will be the first batch that are coming in, hope more will be coming as nationally plumbers recognize the need to make sure we can address the plumbing situation. The second thing that I wanted to mention was on the ems piece. I just want to really acknowledge, you know, all of our first responders that in this case because the -- the billing issue is vis-a-vis ems, the ems folks [2:02:13 PM] on the ground had to make, you know, quick decisions in difficult circumstances, and one of those was about taking people to the right place when the E.R.S were swamped and they couldn't take them to the E.R.S, which is where under our current system you get taken with ems. So they were able to route folks in different ways. Problem solving on the ground. But given our current billing system and the way insurance works was not possible for them to be able to bill appropriately, but they were working to get people the need and the care that they need and I want to just thank them for doing this in these difficult circumstances and to point out that many of the things that we put in motion with the budget, as recognized with the office of the chief medical officer, but also some of the billing work and the changes that were preparing for with national changes is going to really help improve our way to [2:03:14 PM] deliver public health in the future through our ers. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Thank you for that work. Any other comments on this item? Is there a motion to approve this item number 4? Councilmember alter makes the motion, councilmember tovo seconds. Any discussion? >> Tovo: Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you, mayor. With apologies, I need to just back us up a tad. I want to be sure that -- one, I want to thank councilmember alter for her leadership in working with the plumbers. I think that's going to be a tremendous resource for our community. I also want to just ask about our community development corporations. My understanding from one that I just got a communication from that they may -- I guess acm Gonzalez, could you address how these [2:04:15 PM] permit waivers, how the permit waivers that we're considering and have approved are going to impact those community organizations, and if there's an opportunity we have here today to make sure that those extend, that those provisions extend to nonprofit organizations that are managing, you know, in different neighborhoods including some that I represent are managing some of our most affordable home opportunities? >> Thank you, councilmember. To the extent that they are doing work on behalf of a resident, then those permit waivers should apply. You know, when folks come in for a permit, of course we look at the address and whether or not it's a residence and that's typically what will happen. But if they are doing work on behalf of a residence, which I think that's the case, then it should apply. >> Tovo: Okay. Great. Thank you. I will pass on that information. So as -- from your estimation, there's no alteration we need to make [2:05:15 PM] today on council to make sure that those -- that those CDCs are eligible if they are applying on behalf of - - >> Not to my knowledge, but if we see something that -- that we have missed, we will certainly come back to town. Typically they work on behalf of the residents. >> Tovo: Okay. Great. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, there's been a motion and a second. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just a quick question. So Mr. Gonzalez, could you just lay out for people the time line? In other words, I know the city is working as expeditiously as possible and will be working very quickly on any kind of permitting requirements, but can you just speak to people about that, about how you handle that in an emergency? >> Absolutely. >> Kitchen: The turn-around, what are we talking about for people? >> Actually what we're asking folks to do is to go [2:06:16 PM] ahead and begin the work that they need to do for emergency repairs. And then within about five business days to come back and get their permit. So we don't want to delay them unnecessarily in getting the emergency work done. We are authorizing them to do the work and then to come back later and get a permit. >> Kitchen: Mayor, I would also like to point out that there is -- I want to thank you guys for your action plan, your emergency permitting and inspections axe -- action plan which answers some of the questions people have. I want to point out that's in backup and speaks to all -- with your customer assistance team and 311 as well as communications and regulatory adjustments. I just think that backup is important for people if they have questions in particularly or -- you are [2:07:17 PM] working through 311 and you are online -- and your online assistance. I just wanted to point that out. Director Gonzalez, do you -- >> Mayor and council, if I could, I did want to thank Denise, director Denise Lucas and her team for coming up with this plan. As you all have mentioned at the start of this meeting, there are many residents and many businesses that do not have water currently. And so when we crafted this plan, we wanted to ensure that we weren't in their way of getting water operating again. And so that was the whole purpose of this plan is so that way we're not putting people through a permitting process first to get water connected. That is not the goal here. The goal is to have them get connected immediately as soon as possible and then to come back later and request the permit. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Manager, as an aside, [2:08:20 PM] relevant to the time line question, when we get to item number 6, it was originally drafted to be able to respond by March 25th, but I think a lot of these items are much more timely and some are already starting to work on. Just a heads up when we get to number 6, I'll be asking the question whether or not you can report back at our council meeting next week to whatever degree you are able to move those things forward. All right. Continuing on in this item, it's been moved and seconded. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I continue to apologize. I just found out two minutes ago. Very quickly on the dais, I'm trying to understand. I think the issue acm Gonzalez is some of our CDCs manage properties, but they are not managing them for homeowners. They are managing them for tenants. And so is there a way to make this -- I think it [2:09:21 PM] might take a tweak to make sure that our CDCs who are managing properties that are affordable would have these permit fees apply. So they may be managing -- let me give you an example of charactersville CDC manages some single-family homes in need of repair. And so it doesn't appear to me based on my super quick review looking for this issue that those kinds of organizations would have permit fee waivers. And I assume the same would be true for the single-family homes that are managed by Guadalupe, CDC and black lands and some of our others. So I guess I'm flagging the issue. I don't know that I would have a resolution this minute, but if one -- if we need one and could come up with one quickly, perhaps we can revisit this during the course of today and make [2:10:21 PM] that tweak. >> Thank you, and I'm looking at part 2a of the ordinance where it does say city council waives all residential permitting. And so I think the instance that you are talking about may not necessarily fit into this if they are -- it seems like it might be more of a commercial enterprise, but I'll defer to attorney Ann Morgan. >> I think on this, just so you know, we'll be coming back next week on the commercial multi-family situation, but I think this ordinance covers what you are talking about, councilmember tovo. So I believe we're actually fine for this one pore the question that you are asking. >> Tovo: I appreciate that very much. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Further conversation on this? Yes, councilmember Kelly. >> Kelly: Thank you. Could you maybe help me understand what the fiscal impact might be if we were to extend this, maybe by another month? I know that I've heard from a lot of residents who are struggling with getting back [2:11:21 PM] to work, overcoming challenges with their children at school and repairing their homes, take they might not be able to do it in that amount of time and I think it be remiss for not taking advantage of this by extending a little more. Can you speak to that? >> I certainly can. The reason we came up with the March 31st date is because we wanted as many homeowners as possible to enter into the repair process quickly. We recognize now there is some challenges with getting the technical trades to do the work as well as getting the parts available to do the repairs. And so what we would like to do is revisit the day before it expires to see if in fact we've seen an increase in the volumes and that extension is necessary. So far today we've had 22 calls with only issues -- only issued seven emergency repair permits. So in many cases a permit is not required and so we may [2:12:22 PM] not see large permit numbers and they may be exempt from needing a permit from us anyway. >> Kelly: Thank you for explaining that. As someone who is new to the council, could you explain to those watching when you might bring this back to council so that we might be able to do an extension? And how that process works? >> Yes, we would like to come back at mid-march. We can also extend a memo to mayor and council talking about the results and what our recommendations would be, and then give you the opportunity to approve an extension of the program. But we would have more data at that time to help you with your decision-making. >> Kelly: Thank you so much. That's wonderful. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Adler: I think we're scheduled with another council meeting on March 25th. Also one on the 4th, that will be coming up next week, but also one on the 25th. Moved and seconded. [2:13:23 PM] Any further discussion? Then let's take a vote. Those in favor of this item 4, please raise your hand. Those opposed? I think that's everyone on the dais. Thank you so much, staff, for bringing this forward. Let's go to item number 5 manager, can someone speak to this? >> I can certainly speak to this one. What number 5 does is allow us to take advantage of some of decisions that the governor put in his order such as using plumbers assistants, those with expired licenses, and also allowing plumbers outside of the state of Texas to come in and -- and perform the much needed plumbing work that we have. It also gives the building official additional authority to -- to waive some of the things that are code. For example, be able to allow people to do replacements of up to 12 inches in length on their [2:14:24 PM] pipes without having to -- to engage with us, which is new and different. It also allows us to extend certain applications, registrations, if a plumber is temporarily suspended required by the state and the city, all of this is done to increase the supply of plumbers in our market space. Any questions? Is there a motion to approve item 5? Councilmember Kelly makes the motion, mayor pro tem seconds. Any discussion? Those in favor of this item, please raise your hand. Those opposed? Unanimous, I think that's everybody. That gets us then to -- item 7 has been withdrawn, by the way. That gets us to item no. 6, the last thing on our agenda. And -- [2:15:24 PM] >> Mayor, don't we have an 8? >> Mayor Adler: Did I miss something? [Multiple voices] >> Number 8. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, item no. 8, let's do no. 8, thank you. Manager, can someone speak to this? >> Our legal department can. This is a -- just waving our light fees, something that we have done in the pass, but for water and electric utility and -- Ann anything else to add. >> It would also include the -- all of the utilities, everything that comes on the utility bills, waives the late fees. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, is there a motion to approve item no. 8? Councilmember pool makes the nothing. Seconded by -- makes the motion. Seconded by councilmember Ellis. Any discussion? Yes, councilmember Renteria and then councilmember Casar. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. My request is to look into [2:16:26 PM] also taking some of our -- of our water, wastewater, wastewater -- a lot of -- of other people are experiencing broken pipes, lost a lot of water. And I would hate to see that we are charging them for, you know, water [background noise] That's just going down the gutter, you know. So -- so if it's possible, that we -- we could look into that and see what we can do for that incidence. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Councilmember, I will note part of that discussion will be included in item no. 6, I know our utilities can be able to speak to this a little bit more in-depth. But this item was just on the late fees, I hear your points and we are doing everything that we can to mitigate those costs. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. We have a motion and a second. Councilmember Kelly. [2:17:27 PM] I just want to say as someone who grew up paycheck to paycheck, I really appreciate this okay our agenda today for approval, because I know it will help so many families across the city. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, moved and seconded. Those in favor of this item 8 please raise your hand. Those opposed? Number 8 is adopted unanimously. That gets us to item no. 6. I'm going to make the motion for approval of item no. 6, is there a second? Councilmember alter seconds it. I'm going to make the motion to approve the amendment that I have raised with one change. Where it says that -- that the manager will respond back by March 25th. I would propose that we change that language as part of this amendment to say report back to council beginning no later than its March 4th regular meeting. With the understanding, manager, that as you learn [2:18:27 PM] things, you will get that information to us just as quickly as you can. So I would offer that -- that amendment. That was posted with that additional change. Is there a second to my amendment? Councilmember kitchen seconds that. Colleagues, this was intended as an opportunity just to put on the agenda for folks to tag things they wanted to make sure that the staff was looking at. I threw some out. Initially they were things in some cases I knew staff was already working on, but wanting to make sure that they were elevated so the community can see it. I also included some things on here that you, my colleagues, I have heard mention in the community. I wasn't trying to get out in front of everybody. I wanted to make sure that they were up on the board, but I think a lot of these things we have all been talking about as a group. Other people have filed amendments, I'm going to go [2:19:27 PM] through those amendments in the order I think that they were filed. You can either make your amendment as an amendment to mine or you could wait until that one gets amended and passed and then make it separately, whatever is your pleasure. In front of us right now is the amendment that I made, yes, councilmember alter? >> Alter: I appreciate you getting this on the agenda so we have this initial opportunity to start this process. I don't think what we do today is going to be the end. I wanted to make a quick comment on the last bullet which is this plan for a formal review of the disaster and response with the goal of avoiding future disasters. I'm comfortable with that language. I want to make it clear whatever comes outs of this direction will likely not be only mechanism that we pursue to review what happened and identify improvements. I know councilmember tovo has some language as well. But I can imagine a variety of different ways we could do that. [2:20:28 PM] So I'm -- I'm totally comfortable providing this direction, as you've given it. I just wants to be clear as we transition out of stabilizing that we are going to really need -- to be reviewing this in -- in ways that are different than we have done for -- for other issues. So I just wanted to underscore that. >> Mayor Adler: Good point. I think that was the intent as well. We know that committees are doing review and departments will do after [indiscernible] Reports and then councilmember tovo's thing that we will talk about. It's a big thing, we want to learn as much as we can and be prepared. Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: Yeah, I just wanted to comment briefly and thank you for the first item in particular where you - - where you recognized [2:21:28 PM] the needs for housing and resilience for people experiencing homelessness, I appreciate your efforts on that and highlighting it. The homeless experience is another experience, the difficulty for those in the community that don't have housing in particular. I just wanted to say thank you for putting that there. And there's much more work to be done in that regard. >> Mayor Adler: Any comments before we call the first amendment to the amendment? Councilmember tovo do you want to add yours as additive language or -- >> Tovo: Either way, mayor. I'm happy to take it up as a separate one. In some ways these are directions that you have offered for the manager and one that I have offered is really about our process and our community process of review. So I can do it outside of that. I did have a question, though, councilmember Casar [2:22:29 PM] brought -- brought an amendment that seems to restructure yours. And so it may be -- it may be in order to take that up before we pass yours. >> Mayor Adler: I think it would be. I will work my way through. What I'm going to do is going to -- come back to yours, councilmember tovo, after we do -- as a separate item. >> Tovo: I will say to add on to what councilmember kitchen said, I'm really glad to see that item on here. As we start to work through some of the different facets of both the preparedness and response, some of, you know, I know for example at the saint martin's shelter, they had good success identifying housing options for those individuals who were experiencing homelessness who stayed there. And so that -- that's really the outcome, you know, that I certainly want to see for all of those individuals who are housed either through [2:23:29 PM] the community effort in hotels and motels or at the Parmer center or one of other shelters, so thanks for -- thanks for including that on there. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. >> Casar: If I can make it easier, because I didn't know that you were going to be changing that date, I don't know if we need my restructuring any more or not if your intent is that the manager should just do these things immediately on a rolling basis on the timeline needed, then I would just take the bullets that I added and have that as my set of amendments so folks don't have to worry about voting on structure. >> Mayor Adler: That sounds good. That's the intend -- some of these I wish we had the answers to yesterday. The manager and staff understand that. I would next go to councilmember alter's, but councilmember Ellis your hand is raised? Councilmember Ellis I think the one sentence that I wanted to add in under your last bullet point makes sense, I wanted to make sure when it's appropriate to try [2:24:30 PM] to get that one amended in. It kind of flows really well with yours. >> Mayor Adler: I think it does, too. We will get to yours in just a second. Councilmember alter? Do you want to lay out your additional bullet points? >> Alter: Sure. So my additional bullet points, the first one addresses, you know, directing the city manager to work within the city's regulatory authority to mitigate the impacts of non-city owned utilities. So we have much more control and we will have to vote on any -- any potential rate changes, et cetera, as we get more information. But for non-city-owned utilities, that process is somewhat different. And I was thinking in particular for gas, but there are multiple other utilities, so it's just providing direction to take whatever steps they can to mitigate those bills. And then it's coupled with a second part which is about [2:25:32 PM] advocacy at the state and federal levels for disaster relief resources and steps to avoid future disasters to the extent possible. That phrasing it meant to be broad because there's a lot of aid and relief that is needed and could come from the state or federal level, I want to, in light of the first bullet, I want to flag what I have learned about the gas bill situation. So with respect to Texas gas, they have a, you know, a fixed rate component and have been authorized by the railroad commission to -- which is their regulatory body at the state level, not the public utility commission and the railroad commission, is allowing them, as I understand it, to kind of set aside the big expenses into an accounting bucket to deal with at future discussions. So I think there's an opportunity for us to be advocating at the state level or at the federal level for relief for some of [2:26:33 PM] those expenses so they don't end up getting passed down to consumers at a later date. I will add that as my understanding is that the rate per unit of gas used will not be changing for your upcoming bill, but if you did use more gas than you normally use, you will see an increase to your bill, which is something that happens when it's cold. In general. So those are the two bullets that I would add to mayor Adler's amendment. >> Is there a second to the alter amendments? Councilmember kitchen makes that. Any objection to the alter amendments? Hearing none the alter amendments are added to the base motion. I think that gets us to councilmember Casar. >> Casar: I would just add my bullet points that were [2:27:33 PM] new into the resolution of my amendment. If folks want me to read those through I can. >> Mayor Adler: That will be your a, B, C? >> Casar: That's right. I think D and E are from your original, if that's right. Councilmember Casar moves adding his a, B and C, is there a second to that amendment? Councilmember Kelly seconds. Discussion? You want to talk about it first, councilmember Casar? >> Casar: Sure thing. So the -- the first a is the centralized list where we can make sure that we know where the water outages are. Sounds like from our briefing today that eoc is going to start holding that list, and I think that's really important and I think [2:28:34 PM] it would be good for the public to know how close we are getting. To actually addressing the disaster because I think it's important for people to know how we are addressing it and how deep into it we still are. One idea that I would like the manager and other folks to think about is whether or not our water distribution centers we ask people, not as a requirement to get the water, but ask people are you out of water at home and what's your address and to connect people to those resources. In our food line today, adobe middle school -- at dobie middle school we have been asking people, asking people to take that information and if people don't call into 311. Anecdotally, we have found between a third and a half people say they don't have water of the people coming to pick up food. B, I really see that line up with what Dr. Meszaros said. We need to find a way to coordinate efforts with the city led effort. Part of what I imagine is [2:29:35 PM] things like the 400-gallon tanks taking up a parking space or two in apartment building so that people -- when they need it, can go and fill up jugs of water because you can't bathe your kids or -- or, you know, flush toilets just like with water bottles that you are picking up from the emergency distribution site. So you have to find a way to bring mass quantities of water to people. Who need it. Immediately and hopefully it doesn't take months. Hopefully it is just weeks. Then the third, the third piece I think is really important for us to support those moderate and low income homeowners through the repair process and giving tenant voice throughout the process. While I expect most landlords will make the repairs as diligently as they can because it's the right thing to do. I want to make sure as we deal with not in crisis times, there are sometimes those properties where repairs are not as diligent or as fast as they need to be, so we need to make sure that there is tenant voice [2:30:35 PM] in that process to keep that moving along. So happy to take any questions about those three or any additions and ideas from y'all because I'm sure that I have missed stuff. I don't know what's happening in every corner of the city, thank you all for looking at this. >> Mayor Adler: I have a quick question for staff first that I think would frame at least part of this conversation on this issue. During the -- a lot of this I imagine will be addressed in the after action report when we evaluate what worked well, what didn't, what we can do better. But a lot of what the city and county's response was, was not to be the point person on the organization of the collection of data or the publication of that data. But rather to -- to go to -- to organizations in the community that were believed to be organizations take that could handle that [2:31:37 PM] component of taking it where it was and connecting it to resources. Which necessarily involves to some degree being able to keep track of where needs are and where resources are. While we were in the [indiscernible] South the information was not as transparent as many folks wanted it to be. And there was a lot of questions about why isn't the city out and publicizing this kind of thing. And the city had -- had given [indiscernible] Or other organizations can do it. Can you talk about what the city response was and how these three requests -- would impact that if at all? Or if this is entirely consistent with -- with how you would see moving forward. >> I see this consistent as [2:32:38 PM] moving forward. We are addressing the emergency at hand and so we have been reaching out to many community partners and assisting with those efforts, doing everything that we can to communicate in different ways. About the need and receiving that information and collecting it. As you noted, a lot of this will be part of how we can become more resillent and get -- improve our processes if we god forbid ever experience other events, but we do know that we have to shore up these infrastructure systems moving forward and we look forward to working with you and the community to be able to do that. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: Thank you. I just want to circle around back to some of these issues. I did send on some questions after our presentation from this morning. I'll just air them again here. Manager, do you have a timeline? It's my understanding that we're going to get [2:33:42 PM] information from your office today about to whom we should forward those lists, do you have an eta when to be in touch, should I send on a list. We sent on a list, now we have information which properties are better, still in need of water. It's unclear to me to whom I should be communicating. Whether it would be wasted effort for your eoc staff or water utility staff to be in touch with some of them if they've had their water situation resolved. So there's that. The other question that I had sent on this morning is it's still not clear to me when the water utilities, water distribution efforts are going to be rolled out and whether those are now nicely synced up and in coordination [background noise] Association. So I guess that's three questions. When will we be hearing from your office about the process for forwarding on lists to when the water utility is going to roll-out its water distribution and, [2:34:43 PM] three, whether they are coordinating at this point with the afa's volunteer effort. >> Thank you, councilmember. To your first question, I know that staff was working on drafting that as soon as we were having this discussion. If it hasn't gone out, it will go out shortly after this meeting for where you can submit the list of properties that need attention. >> Tovo: Great. >> Second, as director Meszaros said, the utility is already implementing additional measures to address some of the needs that are in the community. We know that we are putting work towards that end and coordinating as much as we can with the other requests that have come in through 311 and the eoc. And to that end, number three, I know that that type of coordination is happening in real-time. But as you know, we are still in the middle of a response and we are getting different data points from different sources and the folks at the emergency operations [background noise] Are looking at those [2:35:44 PM] datasets that we have come in [background noise] That we're focusing on where those residents have been without water the longest and [background noise] [Unmuted]. Population so that work is underway. >> Tovo: Great. I should have clarified I was talking about the water distribution piece at the water utility. That is about to happening or currently happening or has been going on? [Background noise] >> Can I speak to that? >> Please, director Meszaros. >> So a couple of clarifications. We have roughly 40 to 50 Austin water employees that are working with the eoc on distributing bolted water. I may have miscommunicated. This isn't our own distribution of bottled water and other resources. We are coordinating with the [2:36:45 PM] eoc with our extra bodies there. But in addition to that, we are in the process of evaluating and looking at how we might provide higher volume waters through hydrant connections and things of that sort. We're also coordinating that with eoc and we are working with AFD with those kind of things, how we might use hoses and larger containers to get some higher volume water to some of these locations. So that's still taking shape and that's a little more of a, you know, of a detailed unit by unit plan as opposed to across the board plan. >> Tovo: Thank you, director Meszaros. That was exactly the large volume that I was wondering about, thank you for that clarification, that that planning effort is still I guess still being reviewed. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> You are muted, mayor. [2:37:45 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Sorry, councilmember kitchen and then councilmember alter and then [indiscernible]. >> Kitchen: Okay. I just wanted to thank you, councilmember Casar, for bringing this forward. I wanted to just comment on I think -- I think they are all very helpful and represent some -- some of them represent actions that are underway right now. I would like to speak for a minute to the centralized list of places without water. Just highlight that we've, you know, this incident has, you know,, you know, just gone through has really highlighted the importance of being able to do that. And I know that I've had some conversations with Austin water, with director Meszaros, so that in the future the access to smart meters which are being rolled out now will provide even greater opportunity for us to pinpoint and highlight where places are out of water and in the meantime we are doing what we can right [2:38:46 PM] now through all of the different efforts and sources of information to compile a list like that. So I just wanted to give director Meszaros a minute to speak to that potential in the future. >> Thank you, councilmember kitchen. You are absolutely correct as we have a larger scale digital meter system, we will be able to tell essentially real-time which meters are operating and which ones are not operating in terms of flow, flowing through. And that would certainly help us with the identifying where there's water loss. We only have 4,000 meters installed right now in our pilot area. But we did start to see that potential even telling how much water was going through with the -- with residential units that were dripping faucets during the cold. And so, you know, we started to see that come together and I think as we deployed [2:39:46 PM] this across the entire city in the future, we will have a much better tool for communication both to and from the customer. >> Thank you, I also wanted to just comment on the third item, which I think is really helpful particularly where you highlight tenant organizing resources, councilmember Casar, I'm sure that other councilmembers had similar experiences. But I've talked to at least one apartment complex of seniors who is -- had amazing response working with the nearby neighborhood and really helped them get the resources they need. But one of the things they are thinking coming out of this they may want to create their own organization, tenant organization, at their location to help them be more organized in terms of response in the future. So I think that's helpful to think about and I hope that many across our community are thinking about how they [2:40:51 PM] can organize better or organize in places where they haven't to set up those -- that community level response. Mayor pro tem has spoken to that. In the past, that's been an important part of this response is that grassroots, neighbors helping neighbors. So one of the pieces that I hope we are thinking about as we move forward is how we can be of assistance to people who want to do that. So thank you for that last item. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think it was councilmember alter next. >> Alter: Thank you. I wanted to, you know, first of all extend my thanks to the Austin firefighters association and Bob nix and lieutenant Caldwell and firefighter Hadler who early on councilmember tovo and I were trying to get bucks and Sherwin Williams stepped up, we were able to get a lot of [2:41:52 PM] that going but it's been amazing to watch how that has evolved and working to get folks water. I just want to really commend the ingenuity and many hours of work that have gone in on that. I wanted to just draw a distinction as we are putting this list of places together that we have noticed as we've been trying to navigate complexes in my district that don't have water. That there is a difference between complexes where you have multiple buildings and one of the buildings has water and one of them doesn't. Because the -- they are able on site to get spigots going and stuff so that folks have access to water. Now that the boil water notice is over, that water generally speaking is potable water. So just we still need to track those units that have access to water in their complex because they may need assistance getting the [2:42:53 PM] plumbing working again. But the water distribution needs -- needs to be targeted to those properties that don't have any water on site. That is available. And I don't know how wide-spread that distinction is. But that's something that we kept kind of -- we kept running into experiencing. So I wanted to flag that. Then, you know, in December we passed an ordinance that was allowing the extension of the ae cap program, to Austin water properties, where the Austin water meters were separated. It seems to me that that list of folks who are either on the ae cap but not able yet to get the Austin water or those folks who are on the Austin water list in general, if there's a mechanism for us to -- to text those folks or email those folks with some kind of check-in, and have a [2:43:54 PM] clear set of questions that we could be asking them, it would be a potential way to get some accurate data of what's going on, on the ground. Insofar as there's a correlation, you know, with the building conditions that we might observe. Then finally I wanted to mention just from a structural standpoint for what we're voting on, from what we said earlier, about not restructuring, it's my understanding that we would not -- we would be inserting what is under ABC and the amendment on D. But we are not adding letters to them in -- in mayor Adler's amendment, which we are now amending. Correct? So those would just be plugged in perhaps in an area because they go together, but I just wanted to clarify that that was the intention so we don't end up with a little monster here. [2:44:55 PM] Okay, great, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: And just to say it out loud so it's in the record, it's -- I understand it to be bullet points and to keep these bullet points together. Councilmember Casar? >> Casar: This is just a good moment for me to first thank my colleagues here on the dais, many of whom sent water to lots of complexes in my district when there were lots of pipes bursting. And I know you were serving your own district and then recognizing how much older housing stock and low income housing stock is in north central and northeast. So many of you whose districts are further away were texting and calling. And instead of naming each of you, I just want to say here in the meeting how appreciative I know my constituents and I am for y'all hustling to help everybody know matter which part of the city they're in. So thank you, thank you for that. And to just reiterate our thanks to the breweries who [2:45:56 PM] were able to boil water so quickly at the beginning to the firefighters, but also to the united professional organizers who did this together with them and went and got the trucks from parts of Texas and went to wells in Wimberley and cleaned out tanks of water. We could not have done that without them. And some of the organizers who culled through the volunteer lists. I remember that mortgage we put together the Google form for people to sign up to volunteer. Many of you shared it and within an hour there were 800 people signed up saying they had trucks. So I appreciate everybody that contributed in that, including so many of you on the dais, that helped. And I think that one important part of moving this forward in this resolution is while that is heroic and dr.and I think there will be -- great and there will be continued work from those folks, government has to step in and we have to provide this now. And I just want to reiterate [2:46:56 PM] that while I do think the water bottles component here is important that what director Meszaros and the manager and councilmember tovo hit on of finding ways to provide large quantities of water now that folks have so many other needs apart from just drinking is important. Then a second piece, and I think this folds into what councilmember alter said and councilmember kitchen, I think that tenant voice part will be very important. Even if a hose is available, for example, on a site, that might actually serve tenants. There might be some sites where the hoses are available, but the property owner isn't letting people access them at night or a certain time and they really need a tank. That's why I want to reiterate here the component about investing enough resources to make sure that we are really hearing from the people that need the water so that our system very well tracks whether repairs are happening or not, if people are being displaced from their units for repairs or not, if water is really on or not in different buildings. [2:47:56 PM] We just really need to know that and I think the city and county holding that is appropriate at this point. So thank you for all your work on this and thanks to everybody on the staff who I know is tired and still needs to execute this because the disaster persists. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, can colleagues. Anything further on the Casar addition to the three bullet points? Any objection to those? Hearing none the Casar three bullet points are added. Councilmember Ellis? >> Alter: Mayor, I wanted to clarify there was also a change to a fourth bullet just so that the record is -- there was an edit to due to housing damage and repairs process UND his D. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. The additional language to D, so that would be an amendment to the language in there. So councilmember alter, so [2:48:57 PM] it's adding the bullet points ABC as the bullet points and making the language change as shown in Casar amendment D. Councilmember Ellis? >> Ellis: Yes. So the amendment that I would like to make, it follows in line after your last bullet point that says plan for a formal review of the disaster and response, yada yada yada, and at the very end, including, but not limited to improve the public communications from Austin water such as more timely warning notifications, more localized realtime outage information and estimates of when water service will be restored. They were able to share information like boil water notice and how fill the tanks were getting, but some of the information about how quickly will we get back to [2:49:59 PM] that 100 million-gallon minimum to repressurize the system was what we really needed to know in district 8 and I was hoping there would be some way to investigate an opportunity to have some of that information more readily available. I know it can't predict the future and a lot is based on human behavior, but some sort of understanding of how long people would have been waiting would have been extremely helpful for this past week. And so I wanted to lay that out there and have that included in the information that's currently being worked on. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Is there a second to this amendment? Councilmember Ellis seconds -- councilmember Kelly seconds. Discussion, any additional to this? Councilmember Kelly. >> Kelly: I wanted to echo councilmember Ellis's comments there. I know I had frustration and my staff ton more frustration from constituents from all over the city because we didn't have an accurate timeline. And while we can't predict the future like councilmember Ellis said, I do think that it's [2:51:00 PM] reasonable to offer some sort of time frame of when something would be corrected. So to ease concerns from the community. And I think that at the very least we should be able to do that for the community. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Any objection? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I wanted to say that one of the items that we can -- that I look forward to talking more with Austin water about, I think that's an important one, councilmember Ellis there are those emergency alert systems in place so digging down into the details and understanding what challenges there are and what improvements there might be made on those would be good conversation. I do appreciate director mess czar Ross' efforts -- Meszaros' efforts to give people an idea of a timeline. I understand it was not as specific as would be desired by people and so we can have that conversation also. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Further discussion? [2:52:00 PM] Councilmember Casar and then councilmember tovo. >> Casar: I'm really supportive of this and thank you, councilmember Ellis, for bringing it forward. My staff had shot me a note about whether we could add at the end of your last bullet point including options for communicating with multi-family and master metered residents. And the reason for that is just I think that is a challenge that we have to find a way to grapple with. I don't know if that means if your master metered that we have to find a way to get you an Austin energy text or some other way of communicating with you. I don't have the answer here now, but I think listing it as something where even if we texted all Austin water customers when you have a mastered metered apartment we have a find a way to still communicate with those folks. If you wouldn't mind I would appreciate adding that and tasking our staff with figuring out how to address that more complicated issue. >> Mayor Adler: Would you say that language again more slowly? >> Casar: Including options for communicating with multi-family and master [2:53:04 PM] metered residents. >> Mayor Adler: Is that okay with you, councilmember Ellis? >> Ellis: Yes, I accept that as friendly. That's a great way. Sometimes trying to communicate with people within complexes has created a couple of different issues along the way, just trying to get information out. >> Mayor Adler: On the Casar proposed amendment, the discussion on that, does anybody object to that being added? Councilmember Kelly? >> Kelly: I don't expect B I do have a suggestion possibly. May I talk about it? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kelly: I know the boil water notice went out through the reverse 911 system that we have and I wondered if we might be able to amend councilmember Casar's long to reflect utilization of the 911 system regarding water usage to circumvent having to go through Austin energy's list. >> Casar: I would certainly think that that would be one of the options that they could look at or we could add lines like wording at the end that says [2:54:05 PM] such options the manager could look at could include reverse 911. I don't know how targeted reverse 911 can get to a particular complex, but we could add those words or the manager could maybe take that into consideration amongst the options. >> Kelly: Thank you. It was just a suggestion. >> Casar: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: So adding the language that councilmember Casar had, another comma that says including without limitation, consideration of a reverse 911 system. Okay. Any objection to that being added? Any objection to councilmember Casar's amendment as amended? That was actually an amendment to the amendment to the amendment which I shouldn't have done, but we did. We'll proceed with it that way. No objection to Casar's amendment. Ann, were you raising your hand, Ann Morgan? >> I was trying to figure out I think Casar's [2:55:06 PM] amendment is councilmember Ellis's amendment to your amendment. >> Mayor Adler: Correct and I let that go anyhow because it's the quickest line from here to there. But you're right. All right, councilmember alter. >> Alter: Because it seems germane right now, I just wanted to ask the city manager if he can make sure that we have a report about why reverse 911 was not used sooner for the blackout stuff. >> Cronk: Yes, we will. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Without objection then, any objection to councilmember Ellis' amendment as amended by Casar as amended by councilmember Kelly. Hearing none that amendment is now put in. That gets us to the last one we have, which is the Kelly amendment. >> Kitchen: Mayor, I have an amendment also. [2:56:16 PM] I think mine should be before councilmember tovo because it's also adding to your list. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Coming to you next. Councilmember Kelly, we'll come to you next. >> Kelly: I would defer to councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: My amendment is I'd hike to add this amendment to the list that we're creating to add to yours, mayor. So this is another item that specifically addresses -- I'll speak to it briefly and then explain why. Specifically asks -- >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen's proposed amendment. Is there a second? Councilmember Renteria seconds it. Councilmember kitchen, go ahead. >> Kitchen: Okay. The amendment asks the city manager to provide recommendations for formalizing and improving our city's and the community's notification and disaster response system for [2:57:17 PM] seniors. For vulnerable seniors living in the community specifically. And also for persons with disabilities living in the community. So that should include our systems for welfare checks. And also I would like to ask the city manager in developing his recommendations to consider our age friendly program coordinator with our commission on seniors and with the mayor's committee for people with disabilities. Now, this is an action going forward to help us build on and improve the systems that we used during this crisis and that we have built in the past. So I imagine it will take some time. So I have suggested that the city manager to report on recommended actions by September 1st which will give some time for these commissions and the committee to think through these efforts. The reason I'm proposing this is I think it gives us [2:58:18 PM] an opportunity to learn from and build on the senior welfare checks that cpr completed over the past week to deliver water, food and medical assistance to people over 70 at need in our community. It was really an amazing effort and let me say that everyone participated in that effort. I want to thank the mayor for marshaling the resources to help make it possible. And it's something that my office initiated based on the efforts that I did and a number of other councilmembers did last summer or actually last year with regard to covid well checks. So it's a process for how in an emergency we can quickly reach out to our vulnerable residents. It was an amazing community effort this time with actually over 500 volunteers working with Katie Naranjo and other members of the [2:59:19 PM] community. I want to just cite for you all because I'm very impressed with the effort that the community brought to bear. Those community volunteers reached over 14,000 seniors. Provided support during their calls and identified over 1,000 seniors for wellness checks for water and food delivery. And then I know all of you worked with those seniors in your districts. We also worked with public safety professionals, adrn, many other volunteers. And also with the city. And I want to thank ray Arrellano for helping us organize that through the city, to reach out to those folks. It really is an example of a way -- it's an example of both the need for having a quick response mechanism to reach these vulnerable seniors and it also points to because there are a lot [3:00:20 PM] of different efforts happening, it points to -- it really Beggs for a conversation about how we might coordinate in the future and if we should have -- I know we all don't want to think about this right now, but if we should have an emergency in the future how we can more nimbly put something like that in place. I also mentioned in this people living in the community with disabilities and the committee for people with disabilities, because I know all of you have been working with different complexes in the community apartment complexes and working with the Austin firefighters association, for example, to help get water to those complexes. So I think, as councilmember tovo has been mentioning and others have mentioned, it's important for us to think about how we systematically and in a centralized way reach out to those kinds of [3:01:20 PM] communities. I know that councilmember Renteria has mentioned the rbj center and has really been working to keep an eye on that center. But I think this kind of effort will help with that. And then finally I just want to recognize the-- I know we all have many, many people in our districts to recognize and we're continuing to do that because as others have said, this crisis is not over but I want to call out our western trails neighborhood, our Southwood neighborhood, our south Lamar neighborhood, because that was an example where they just jumped in immediately to help the western trails apartment complex, which is a complex for seniors when it was identified that they need food and water. Those neighborhoods that surround that complex just immediately stepped in and made sure that they had water and food. And to this day we heard [3:02:21 PM] just yesterday how appreciative the seniors are in that apartment complex and how their needs have been met by the neighbors. I mention all this, I know we all have many experiences here that we can share and talk about, but I think our tcso going forward is to learn from all these efforts and build a better, more resilient system for helping our seniors and people with disabilities living in the community to help them stay safe. So I have spoken with our age friendly program coordinator as well as my appointee to our commission on seniors. And they are looking forward to working with you, city manager as y'all worked through a process which I know will take some time to come back with recommendations on how we can -- how we can learn from this experience and build on [3:03:22 PM] it. You're muted. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember kitchen, before we move past this, thank you for your leadership in identifying this need as well as the vehicle using the phone banking system at the democratic party for what was a nonpartisan effort, incredibly heartwarming story from one of the candidates for council running as a Republican who was part of the effort and made one of the emergency calls, made the contact ended up, Robert Thomas and his family, driving over to someone they talked to on the phone. But two statistics you didn't talk about that I think are important. Because there were several waves of phone calls and texts, of the universe of [3:04:24 PM] people over 70 that they were trying to reach, there was Austin verse Al 74,000 people including 57,000 households. But they were able to actually connect with over 32,000 of them. And I think one of the most important ones is that it identified initially 28 people with emergency needs that we might not have otherwise found. I think that expanded up to just over 100. And these were at a level that ems and APD were deployed to those folks homes. So it was an important program and one of a thousand important programs that were happening during this period of time so thank you for that. >> Kitchen: Thank you, mayor. There's an amazing number of really both heartwarming and very scary stories that came [3:05:25 PM] out of those connections. So appreciate your effort in making that happen. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter and then councilmember Renteria. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate councilmember kitchen bringing this forward and the work that went into the effort the last week or so. I wanted to ask for some clarification about what constitutes seniors living in community. We had several senior centers that had no power or no water at various points in time. And one of the things we found was that Austin energy's contact numbers were not good. They would have like an 1-800-number for a senior center and so in order to corroborate whether they had electricity or not even at the most basic level for the senior center, and many of the seniors living there would not have been able to answer a phone if we had reached out to them. So I just want to make sure that when we're talking about this effort that we're [3:06:28 PM] including those types of facilities that some are assistive technology, some are nursing homes. They had a lot of different names depending on what they called themselves, but it's not the same thing as the senior that's living in an apartment on their own. So I just wanted to clarify the termology and if it doesn't include those places, would like to see about an amendment. >> Kitchen: That would be fine. I was thinking in terms of people on their own not in nursing homes or assistive technology centers but your point is well taken and I'm happy to add this. -- To add that clarification. >> Alter: Okay. How about if we just say for vulnerable seniors living in the community and in more facilitated settings or something. >> Kitchen: Yeah. Living in the community as well as in facility settings is fine. >> Alter: Facility settings, yeah. I want to underscore for the [3:07:29 PM] city manager, you know, we had to -- we had those types of facilities that also had a lot of seniors that were in trouble that we needed to deliver support to. And our systems for identifying and understanding how to notify people, especially as power was down for some phone systems, etcetera, were very limited and there was not always the sense that you could get to them via what you would think would be the normal route through the numbers that say, our utilities had. So I think there's a whole project just on those facilities and making sure that they have people in our facilities and have the information in our system and correct and accurate. It was also evolving as certain people were on-site and didn't have their phone [3:08:30 PM] systems. So there's definitely some preparedness things that relate to this that are above and beyond the type of welfare checks that were engaged at through this broader group. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter, did you I get this correct, at the end of the words community, it would be as well as in a facility setting. >> Alter: Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Any objection to that change being made to councilmember kitchen's amendment? Hearing none that's included. Further discussion on councilmember kitchen's amendment? Councilmember Renteria was next. >> Renteria: Yes, mayor. Thank you. On that line of discussion, the big frustration that I had with the reaching out and contacting Rebecca Bain is that their power went completely out. They lost the land line to the office there. So while we're also on that subject we need to really make sure that we reach out to these locations and set up an emergency phone number, a contact person that has a cell phone that will be working so that we [3:09:32 PM] could reach out to them and be able to communicate and ask those questions of what they need. And so that's -- I'm just really glad that we brought this resolution up -- amendment up because it's really needed. And we have seniors up on the 16th floor that couldn't communicate with anybody and a lot of these seniors that normally have these little pay phones, they run out of their minutes and that's it. It's a lot. This amendment is very important and is -- is very much needed. I want to thank y'all. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just one last shout-out. We have many, many people to thank, but I do want to thank the managers and staff at Sam's and south park [3:10:32 PM] meadows and Walmart at south park meadows. They donated bottled water to us. I know there are others that their councilmembers got water from different locations, but I wanted to thank them for donating that water to us as we were working to distribute water to folks in district 5. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on councilmember kitchen's amendment? Those in favor of the kitchen amendment being added raise your hand? It gets added unanimously. >> Manager, councilmember alter is off the dais. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Except for councilmember pool off the dais, and also councilmember alter that is off the dais. Oh, councilmember alter is here and she's voting aye. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Let's go then to councilmember [3:11:35 PM] Kelly's amendment. >> Kelly: Thank you very much. I would like you to know there is a revised sheet that went out through the email. We were told by law that we were unable to do one of the things so we withdrew it from our proposed amendments. They're pretty straightforward. I would like to conduct a review of first responder response to the disaster including of how staffing levels were maintained and a comparison to other municipal equivalent responses in Texas to include staff on duty ratio to population throughout the incident plus overtime expenses. I'd like to look at a plan and recommendation on how to best encourage austinites to be aware of simple and cost effective ways to be better prepared for weather crisis. I know in the past the city of Austin had a community emergency response team of which I was a part of and I found it to be very helpful. More educational campaigns through homeland security and emergency management might be effective. I would also like to do a review of city mental health supports to determine how to [3:12:36 PM] best reposition and deploy such resources in a crisis. A lot of people in the city have ongoing mental health needs because of what they had to endure. I know for me I was without power for four days and it was a struggle. And so for someone who might not have the same means as I do, it might be more difficult for them to be able to overcome some of the trauma they experienced and I really think that's something that we should look into. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Kelly urges and we'll do all the pieces. You've done the second section there. Councilmember Kelly recommends adding those three bullet points is there a second to those proposed amendments? Councilmember tovo seconds that. Do you want to say anything more with respect to those? Is there any discussion? Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: I just want to speak to this too. I hope that when we get to [3:13:37 PM] talk about my amendment I'll provide more context in terms of the recommendations moving fward. But I'm glad, councilmember Kelly, you brought up the cert program, community emergency response team, I forgotten what it stands for now. That's something that I haven't heard much talk about and I was reminded of that over this last week that so many of immediate response did happen on a neighborhood level and as we continue to think about how we prepare and respond to the next kind of emergency, I think it is that localized response that is really critical and so in need. So I really thank you for bringing forward this amendment. It connects to some of the work that my office has been doing around food access, which is an ifc that some of you are working with me on that we had intended to bring forward in February [3:14:38 PM] and now it will certainly be in March. But also looking toward ideas of what are the institutions in our neighborhoods that could serve as community resilience spots I think is really necessary certainly for this. Shannon holly on my staff has suggested that schools would be really ideal community resilient hubs. As we saw in this response to the emergency, aid immediately came through in helping with those warming centers and I'm just-- I know we've said lots of thank you's during this period of time, but I want to thank matea Segundo for responding immediately and saying do you have schools in these areas and he was able to check quickly to see which ones were online and which weren't. And we were able to find those possibilities for warming centers. So it's a couple of jumbled thoughts. [3:15:38 PM] I know our minds are working in our hands and lots of different directions these days, but thank you, councilmember Kelly, as we start thinking about what our community -- how this tweaks the community resilience work that's already begun, the kinds of localized efforts whether it's through cert or through really local neighborhood level community resilience hubs I think is a very important direction for us to consider or enhance. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, councilmember Kelly, with respect to the amendments that you've offered, there's the first group of bullet points that we're asking the manager to jump on right away because they might impact how we respond to the present crisis to get the information out to people right thousand, open up the database or page right now. The last bullet point that I think councilmember tovo is going to be talking to in a second, is talking about looking forward. What do we do better in the [3:16:38 PM] future. And it looks as if those three bullet points you just made there are more forward looking as opposed to thinks that happen right away. Can we -- if we -- it we approve as I think we will, those three bullet points, can we add them under the last bullet point that we have so it's including but not limited to as part of the review in the forward look? >> Kelly: That would be sufficient, yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Without objection then they will be included that way, including but not limited to these bullet points and amendment three would be there. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate councilmember Kelly bringing up the need for a review of first responder response. I think that so far we've talked a lot about Austin water and Austin energy in terms of our after action. I think that -- I know for [3:17:40 PM] AFD and ems there were resources that were stretched very thin to -- not having chains, having to deal with roads that txdot didn't close down and all sorts of things that we definitely have much to learn from for the first responders. So I think that's a really important addition. I know some of the stuff I saw with APD they were handling beautifully, but I just think that we really do need that piece to happen moving forward. On the encouraging austinites to become better prepared for weather crisis, you know, I just want to flag that we have declared climate emergency and I think in 2019 in a resolution that I led, we called for these preparations. Councilmember pool around the same time led on a resolution for resilience preparedness. We have [indiscernible] Serrano in a position of [3:18:41 PM] doing that resilience work. And this is knots a new thought and -- this is not a new thought and in terms of what we should be doing as a city. And I appreciate councilmember Kelly reiterating it. We have provided direction on this multiple times. And I think that on multiple ways when we've talked about the climate resilience and the resilience issues, this is the perfect storm. It's not the only situation we will face. I just really want to underscore for the city manager the importance of fully implementing those resolutions which we already have in process. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Further discussion on those three bullet points? Any objection to those three bullet points? Then they're added to the last bullet point preferenced with including but not limited to. [3:19:42 PM] Councilmember Kelly, your first amendment on your page was inserting words also in that last bullet point? Go ahead. >> Kelly: That's correct, mayor. I wanted to see how others responded, utilizing after action reviews and really focus on Austin energy and Austin water. And they're associated communication efforts and expenses during the disaster. >> Mayor Adler: Let me get a second to your amendment and I'll let you describe it. So there a second to this amendment from councilmember Ellis to include this element? I'll second it because I think it can be part and should be part of the review. Councilmember Kelly, do you want to defend it? >> Kelly: I just really think it's important to learn from other cities and municipalities especially if they're equivalent to the same size as ours so we're note reinventing the wheel [3:20:43 PM] but making our next response better. >> Mayor Adler: And is it possible, councilmember Kelly, to include this as like the fourth bullet point so the review is to include without limitation also a comparison with other Texas municipalities. >> Kelly: Yes, sir, I would be amenable that. >> Mayor Adler: So as an added bullet point to number six is there any objection to that? So it will be included that way. I'm now going to hold off on your last one, which is an amendment to councilmember tovo's deal, until we've handled councilmember tovo's deal. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you, mayor. So I think -- so I've distributed an amendment sheet and I guess since its own own deal I'll just add that it should be prefaced by a be it further resolved statement. And then I have one other addition to put in here and that is I've called out [3:21:43 PM] the -- that the hearing should be conducted in alignment with the conversations taking place at other council committees, including the Austin energy council oversight committee and I'll call out our water oversight committee as well there as well. They were meant to be included in the -- included this and several people mentioned that. I'll call it out explicitly. >> Mayor Adler: Cocilmember tovo moves an additional be it further resolved clause to contain this language but also adding the water oversight committee. Is there a second to that amendment? Councilmember alter seconds that. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you, mayor. We've all talked throughout the day identifying areas that work very well, suggesting some recommendations for the future and to some extent those things will be interwoven. I know all of us are just working around the clock to respond to the immediate [3:22:43 PM] needs and aren't going to be in a capacity to really analyze the event at the moment. But it is I think critical to our community that we undertake a process that is deliberative, that helps inform recommendations going forward and that we've all been receiving suggestions via our constituents and community members and others, everything from communication and improvements to shout-outs for our emergency responders and some of the provisions that they took to really get out there immediately. So what I'm proposing is that we set up a deliberative process at council for how -- what topics we want to undertake conversations around. And some of those might happen through the oversight committee, some might happen, you know, through the general umbrella. I'm open to conversations about how those -- how those happen, but I do think that it would be helpful if we had a work plan and some [3:23:44 PM] invited testimony if from our city staff as well as our stakeholders, again at the appropriate time, not in the middle of this emergency response, but as soon as we can feasibly undertake it so we can really understand -- understand the circumstances and again help inform those recommendations and action plans for the future. I would like to see this accompanied by a community task force that is also hearing directly from the public about their experience. Again, their experience about elements of the response that worked well and elements of the response that they saw as gaps moving forward. So again, I know some of you have mentioned -- I have my own list of things that I would like to consider as action steps, but for me I think it might be better undertaken to think what the action steps are once we fully have an opportunity to [3:24:44 PM] understand what did happen because there are so many efforts that I'm not aware of as a councilmember that say the eeoc was involved in and really getting a full understanding at the council level and the community level of what some of those efforts were and how they were intertwined would help some of the recommendations. We did something like this on council at completely different topic, but looking at Austin energy rates where we kind of divided it into a series of work sessions and had a topic each time and had a council q&a and it helped inform that proposal and I see this working in the same way. I would say what I envision if this passes today is coming forward with an ifc I think on the March 25th meeting. I've asked some of you to be on it. Thank you for your support on that. I would like to initiate a discussion on the message board as soon as some of us have the capacity to have one, not this week, so we [3:25:44 PM] can together figure out what we want that work plan to look like. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes. Councilmember tovo, I appreciate this effort. I want us to be working in concert with the committees. We have meetings next week. We'll be working on the work plans specifically focused on water. So I look to coordinating that effort with the work plan that you're talking about. There's so much more than the water impact to what all is going on here. Just don't want us to be duplicating efforts. The other thing is I wanted to ask you about the community task force and I had some suggestions for I'm wondering whether you're reading this as are you suggesting that the city manager come back with an approach for a community task force. Regardless, my thought is one way to approach it is to [3:26:46 PM] pull together a group of people on the boards and commissions on those impacted and have them put a representative on a community task force. It's just one idea. I just know if you had more specific ideas about how the community task force would be created or if by this amendment you're thinking that the city manager would come back with a recommendation on creating one, is that what you're thinking? Help us understand that? >> Sure. I appreciate the question. So these are really statements of what our intent is rather than direction to the manager. So I'm intending to follow this up with an ifc that outlines a process for our council as well as a process and a suggested composition for that community task force. So I had aired this with some community members, via my council newsletter and have gotten some suggestions back about -- especially about that community. [3:27:47 PM] So I'm -- the community task force. So I'm really open to hearing ideas, but my intent today is not to sort out what that looks like. Just to let the community know that these are two parallel processes that I would like to see our council undertaking in addition to the really important critical work that the manager is going to undertake with his staff to do an after action report. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you, that makes sense. >> Mayor Adler: So what we have here is pending. I'll go back to councilmember Kelly who is also suggesting one way to do it in addition to the one that councilmember kitchen suggested. I wonder if rather than prescribing it, councilmember Kelly, it's your amendment so you can do whatever you want to, whether it's good to say this or just as councilmember kitchen just did, so it can be considered as one of the alternatives that should be considered and studied. >> Kelly: Yeah, I like that suggestion. [3:28:47 PM] Thank you, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think that makes sense to whatever system you have to have the ability for the public to be able to generally give thoughts might be something that's worth considering as well. Okay. That gets us then just to the tovo amendment with the changes that she included. Is there any objection to the tovo amendment, adds the be it further resolved and adds the water oversight committee. Any objection to those? Hearing none, the tovo amendment is included as well. I think that then gets us to consideration of my amendment. As amended, any objection to that amendment being included as amended? Hearing none, that's put into the item. And now that gets us to item number 6 as amended. >> Tovo: Mayor, I'm sorry, could we just talk about the structure a bit? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Tovo: I thought mine was its own be it further [3:29:48 PM] resolved, not that it matters. I just want to be clear about what we've -- where we have placed things. >> Mayor Adler: It was. We just never took an actual vote on the -- >> Tovo: Okay, gotcha. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: We're now taking a vote on item number 6, which includes my amendment as amended and it also includes your amendment as amended. It's the final vote on the item in its totality. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: I just want to take this moment to thank everyone for the work on this item and then also to just comment generally on the last few days. We're far out of being out of this disaster and I think the amendments in the item that we have before us today will help us continue to address the persistent issues we're facing, but I do want to thank the folks that have helped so much during the last few days the people who really stepped up were our public employees and everyday members of the [3:30:48 PM] public who saved lives. I don't think we can say enough to thank the line workers at Austin energy who was in the wind and ice and snow getting power back on. The Austin water staff who worked all day and all night to get water working in our pipes. The public safety employees who pulled folks out of stranded cars and put out fires and got people to the hospital. The staff who ran our shelters and the volunteers that pulled people out from under bridges and got them into hotels, really the public employees and the caring members of the public were the heroes of this crisis. I also want to bring some voice to the anger and disappointment that many people felt. I think the heroism of our public employees and everyday austinites stands in stark contrast to officials who did not step up and it is really just upsetting that people this were this situation in the first place. Often times because of decisions that did not prepare us for this moment as a state. And I just remember the moment when I saw the news about Ted Cruz fleeing on [3:31:49 PM] vacation. That very day I had been on the phone with a constituent who was trying to make sure she had enough gasoline in her car to keep running her son's ventilator. And I just think that that frustration and anger is real in the community, but at the same time so many people channeled that into helping. That same night people from my district who didn't have power themselves were hauling blankets to the is snow to our warming shelter that was out of blankets even though there were people who needed to stay there. So I appreciate those volunteers. Frankly they should not have had to do so much, but they really filled in where government could not fill some of those voids. And accountability will be important at the state level and here locally establishing what we could have done better on communications and on shelter and emergency response, so I'm glad that's part of the item here today. Right now the priority is drying to address the disaster we're still in. People without food or flush [3:32:50 PM] toilets, can't cook or bathe their babies, people displaced from their home. As a local government we have to make sure everyone has a home and water and food, no exceptions. So I appreciate what everyone has done here today to get us towards that. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Casar, thank you. I think that is kind of the thrust of what we're doing here. We are still mid crisis and mid disaster. I appreciate the beginnings of how we approach this looking back, but there's going to be a lot more detail on that. I look forward to the further council action on that. But we still have a lot of people that are without water tonight and without food. We still have people that are lining up in distribution stations. We still have to take a look at whether we need to provide housing for people whose homes need significant repairs. We don't know yet the full extent of the disaster that we are in. I hope the kinds of suggestions that the staff made and brought to us, [3:33:50 PM] thank you for that, will provide some measure of immediate relief. I appreciate the work of colleagues to suggest other things, manager, that certainly don't wait for a week from now to put into place. I know that you will work on that right away. When the dust clears and the water settles, we'll figure out how to look back, but the focus right now is on the continuing process. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Earlier we said we wanted to ask specific questions and save the thank you's for later. I want to say a few thank you's. We've mentioned some of the community partners who have participated councilmembers, community members, working across district lines and across neighborhood lines to really get assistance where it needed to. [3:34:50 PM] One of my constituents stepped forward immediately to provide a literal lifeline to the constituent that councilmember Casar mentioned who was wondering if they would have enough gas to power some really life sustaining equipment. So as we move forward there will be lots of stories like that and I just want to thank the community members who are doing that extraordinary workday in and day out. And also just to extend my thanks to our city staff. I was at the end of one very long day after I had been texting one of our manager's staff. I realized in the course of that conversation that that individual had no provider and was continuing to do his job extraordinarily well as he always does without power. I don't want to name names in this conversation, but for so many of our city [3:35:52 PM] staff, they did their jobs extraordinarily well last week, rising to really unbelievable challenges, many of them and their families undergoing the horrible ordeal of not having any power, sometimes no power or no light and doing their job from their cars or from other places. So I just want to send huge thanks across our city staff. It is an extraordinary city team from our first responders and our public safety officials to those who work on our lines at Austin energy, to arr water utility to city utility. Every one of the staff members and it was pretty much all hands on deck who helped our community and continue to help our community respond to this catastrophe. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you, mayor. I want to uplift some of the [3:36:53 PM] organizations that have been working really hard in southeast Austin. We have the del valle community co-mission, do good atx and many, many others who really stepped up and mobilized. You know, when the disaster first hit our community we've had systems in place that we could very quickly tap into. But still we know that when any type of disaster hits our community of Austin, it does not affect everyone equally. So my focus will continue to be around food access and ensuring that no one goes hungry and that we continue to prioritize food relief for our families in need as well as getting drinking water and water restored to many pockets of Austin. So also just wanted to share my gratitude for everyone for checking in, colleagues and offering support and providing support and also to our community members who really make Austin stronger and make this a resilient community. I'm so appreciative. [3:37:54 PM] As you all know, I am -- I just started week seven on the job as a city councilmember and certainly have learned a lot of lessons in these first seven weeks, but I know that we're all in this together and I'm grateful for that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: Sorry to backtrack especially since I've already talked. When I called out city staff I want to really send an explicit thank you to all of the council staff who have worked around the clock as well as my own staff. And they -- we just have a tremendous group of people, not just on my team, but on y'all's team that have worked tirelessly through their own situations to provide support as well. >> Mayor Adler: I appreciate you mentioning that and I also want to let you know that this is the first council meeting that I've had without john-michael on my staff who [3:38:56 PM] has moved on. At the next council meeting probably I'll bring a distinguished service mention because of his service to the city. And I'm lost in some respects without him already, but even off the payroll he was also involved in this effort. So john-michael, you will get your due recognition at that next regular council meeting. Ready to -- I don't think we've taken a vote on item number 6. Let's go ahead and do that. Those in favor of item number 6 please raise your hand. Those opposed? Everyone voting aye. I don't see Natasha, the mayor pro tem, and councilmember pool who told us earlier that she couldn't be with us, wanted me to mention that had she been here she would have voted yes. But it passes with those of us that are here. Manager, please thank your [3:39:56 PM] staff, thank you and your staff for everything that you're doing and I know that there's still not a moment for everybody to rest the way that they need to both on this winter and power disaster, but also on the covid disaster as well. And I would urge everybody to continue wearing masks and maintain their social distance. I heard a rumor today that the governor may have mentioned in Corpus Christi that he's contemplating removing the mask mandate in the state, and I hope that's not true and I hope it doesn't come until we don't have people dying, but we'll see how that goes. With that, it is 3:40 and our meeting is adjourned. Good work.