City Council Work Session Transcript – 03/23/2021 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 3/23/2021 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/23/2021 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. >> Mayor Adler: At 10:1:59, we're going to end the joint meeting, city and county. Again, our appreciation to the commissioners court and judge brown for letting us all do this together. Colleagues, it's 10:59. How about if we take a five-minute break and at 11:05 we'll be back in the city council work session. Mayor pro tem? >> Harper-madison: I just would like to ask for a favor from you and my colleagues. I need ten minutes if that's okay. There's a transition I need to help the kids make and I can be there at 11:10. >> Mayor Adler: That's fine. See you there. Thank you. [11:08:22 AM] [Music]. [Music]. [11:14:36 AM] >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to go ahead and start the meeting if staff is ready for us to do tt. Okay? Today is March 23rd, 2021. It is 11:14. I'm going to call to order the city of Austin work session, scheduled to begin at 9:00. We were in the joint session with Travis county hearing the updates from Dr. Escott and director hayden-howard. We have a quorum present. Colleagues, this may be a long day. We have a lot of items that are pulled and several items to be taken care of in executive session. As we go through the day, something to keep in mind that we have a hard stop at 5:00 because the equipment [11:15:37 AM] and the channel gets turned over to a commission at that point, so that's a hard stop for us. The legal item with respect to -- two of the legal items I think are being moved to next week and which two -- until Thursday, rather? Which two are being moved to Thursday? >> The item concerning the storm uri and Austin energy generation resource. We'll get to those on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: That's e6 and e7 will be on Thursday. We three personnel reviews for three of our appointments if we can get to that today. Thursday has a big agenda, a lot of zoning cases, may have a lot of speakers, policing item up and so likely we will be pressed on Thursday. [11:16:38 AM] What I would do in terms of scheduling is I would have us do the briefing, the Brodie oaks briefing and then the b2 and pull that item. B3 is the homelessness update. Then I would have us breaking some time between 12 and 12:30 as appropriate, start calling pulled items. Try to get through the pulled items as much as we can. I will imagine that we'll be off for lunch say 12:30 to 1:30. We'll get into a lunch break from 12:30 to 1:30. Coming back for pulled items and then go into executive session. Ann, was there something you wanted to add. >> Kitchen: The two items I pulled, 14 and 25, I've been working with staff and we've been working on amended language. So if that's not something [11:17:38 AM] that others are concerned about I can just let staff go and just let my colleagues know that we expect to have agreed upon amended language to track the resolution more closely that it's designed to address. >> Mayor Adler: I had heard that staff was going to postpone 14 and 25. >> Kitchen: Yeah, they said they were going to. We would have that option if we wanted to. I'm okay either way postponing it or revising the language. >> Mayor Adler: Alison? >> Alter: If we do get pressed for time, I would like to spend the appropriate amount of time on our points and their review. That should we need to I would be willing to do a special called meeting which I think might be a better practice anyway so that we can provide undivided attention to our appointees [11:18:41 AM] in their reviews rather than rushing that. I don't know if we have to make that decision right now, so I want to three out as a possible solutions. >> Mayor Adler: Let's keep that under consideration. We'll have executive session late in the day and we'll go ahead and make that decision then. All right. We ready? We'll have three briefings. Let's do the Brodie oaks first. Ann, this is in your district? At the end of the presentation I'm going to take any issue first after the presentation is over. Manager, do you want to call up the presentation on Brodie oaks? >> Thank you, mayor, council. We'll get started right away and I'll turn it over to Jerry rusthoven who will introduce this topic. >> Good morning, mayor and council, I'm Jerry rusthoven with the housing and planning department. We're here to discuss the [11:19:43 AM] development assessment for the Brodie oaks pud. Just as a reminder the city council, the pud process requires that the applicant submit a development assessment which can also be looked at as a dry run prior to actually submitting the application. We reviewed this application, this assessment, we provide comments to the applicant and we give a briefing to the city council both to give you a preview of a case that will be coming your way after quite frankly probably quite a few months of staff review, but it also gives a chance for the city council to provide input to both the staff and the applicant on the kind of things that the council will be looking for out of the pud when the actual application comes in. This property is located at the northwest corner of Ben white boulevard and south Lamar. The project was developed in 1981. It was originally 128-acre piece of property. At that time 84 acres was donated to the city which became the portion of the Barton creek greenbelt. And the remainder 37 acres was developed as the Brodie oaks shopping center and [11:20:44 AM] office complex. This property is located in imagine Austin activity center. It is also located at an important transit node of project connect. It is also located obviously within the Barton springs recharge zone, a very environmentally sensitive area. The pud is proposing a redevelopment of the shopping center into a new development that would comprise until 1,500 residential units, 1.1 million square feet of office space, 450 hotel rooms, 110,000 square feet of office space and 30,000 square feet of restaurant space. The applicant is proposing heights of up to 275 feet closest to the intersection of Ben white and south Lamar, with a transition down to 160 feet, more interior to the development. And then down to a limit of 28 feet within the open space and parkland areas. The applicant is proposing to reduce the existing impervious cover of 84%. He is proposing to reduce [11:21:44 AM] that down to 54%, a reduction of 36%. This would result in a total of almost 14 acres of impervious cover being removed and brought in to private open space and parkland. This would be 8.9 acres more than what they are required to do under code. They also are proposing nearly a mile of trails. This property to me is kind of a very important one. It kind of brings three things together. As I said, it's in a very environmentally sensitive area. It's at a very important transit node for project connect with the existing 803 bus, rapid bus, as well as the improvements made with project connect, and it is quite frankly a shopping center that's past its prime and has suffered some vacancies in recent years. So it is prime for redevelopment. It's important that we try to bring it back closer to today's code environmentally if possible, and we also want to of course because it is located along the bus [11:22:46 AM] rapid transit line to -- this is an opportunity for us to have a rather large site and develop in a very transit friendly way, including affordable housing. And we have Barbara here who is working with applicant and she will have a powerpoint presentation and she and I will be available for any questions afterwards. >> Perfect, thank you, Jerry. It looks like I'm unable to share my screen so we'll just operate off the powerpoint that you have pulled up already. Would you go to the next slide, please. Thank you all for having us today. I'm Rebecca Leonard with lionheart places, an east Austin business. I'd like to introduce parts of my team here. The landowner is bar shop Knowles. They are a long time developer in Austin. [11:23:46 AM] Central market was one of their early projects. In addition we've got a host of other local team members, Armbrust and brown, [indiscernible], consulting, etcetera, and we've been bolstered by several national leaders in the fields of planning, engineering and design. Let me express our team's gratitude through your time today and ongoing dialogue about this project that you and your staff have had with us over the last several months. Next slide, please. Jerry mentioned where this site was. It's about 37 and a half acres. It's about three and a half miles from downtown. It's at the junction of two high capacity transit routes. And we can't forget that its prominent location on the Barton creek greenbelt, very important amenity for us. Since -- next slide, Gary, I'm sorry. The original development was approved in 1981 and this [11:24:48 AM] was before hill country overlay, before the S.O.S. Ordinance. It was three decades before imagine Austin. A lot has changed in our city since this original development was approved. And I think the policy direction is pointing in a direction than what it may have been 40 years ago. The parcel that we are talking about specifically in this pud or development assessment is what's labeled there in Orange Brodie oaks shopping center. The rest of this was part of that original approval in 1981 and you can see the 84 acres of gusry park on there as well. Next slide, please. Many of you have been out there. Maybe even recently. And are aware of some of the beautiful amenities of the site. We have some fantastic views, I would argue the best in the city on the back side of the development. We also have a number of beautiful heritage trees, very large heritage trees and groves of trees that are [11:25:49 AM] wonderful amenities to the is site. They are also some not so loveable parts of the site. As Jerry mentioned, it's 84% impervious cover. Also surface parking. Before barshop and Knowles was able to obtain some of the txdot right-of-way it was actually 90% impervious cover. So quite a bit of impervious cover right there on the recharge area. Also the Mac side connecting to the greenbelt -- back side connecting to a greenbelt there's a barrier of a wall that's anywhere from eight to 20 feet tall and it really prevents condition to the greenbelts. Next slide, please. So as we got into the planning for this project, we first started by looking at what the city was signaling they would like to see on this project. As you are very familiar with the city of Austin map this is one of the five or six green dots which are labeled in the plan activity [11:26:50 AM] center for redevelopment in septs active environmental areas. And I think we're the first green dot to attempt a redevelopment so we really are trail blazing on this project and seeking guidance from you all as to what a green dot means and what redevelopment should look like. In addition I've noted already we're on two high capacity transit corridors so really important connections there. It's also a site that doesn't have any single-family -- immediate single-family neighbors. So this is an opportunity for us to have transit-supported density and affordable housing near a transit station without directly impacting single-family neighbors. And then finally, again, affordable housing piece that any pud has to provide, we're excited because we get to provide yours right next to one of our city's greatest transit lines. [11:27:50 AM] Next slide, please. So we share the city's highest goals for this site. We knew from the very beginning that we would have to meet the highest environmental standards and I hope you all have seen that we've come out of the Gates very strong in that regard. We also know that we need create a walkable mixed use activity center that will support that transit station. In addition, we also see huge opportunities to connect to the surroundings. There's either a fence, major highway or a wall that separates the site from almost every adjacent parcel. We also know that this development needs to feel and be of south Austin. This can't be something that could live in any other corner of our city or any other city in the U.S. And then finally, we want this site to continue to be a prominent gathering place in southwest Austin so we need to position it as Jerry said. It's seen its life, this shopping center, and we need to position it into [11:28:51 AM] something new. Next slide, please. So this next slide is a conceptual master plan that we are currently working with. I wanted to point out a few things on this plan. First of all, we intend to comply with the S.O.S. Ordinance and store our -- our storm water runoff into S.O.S. Ponds. We also include rolling back some of that impervious cover about 13.7 acres of buildings and parking lots will transition to parks and open space. We intend to have an intentional trail head. You know, there are several trail heads that have evolved over time on shoulders and highways and internal to neighborhoods and this is an opportunity for us to plan for a trail head to Barton creek greenbelt from the very beginning. Also we are developing at transit supported densities so we are looking for [11:29:52 AM] densities that will make that transit station really successful, a mix of uses that would allow people to park once and do many, many things and again include affordable housing near that. We also hope to include some art space and other creative space on site. And then finally, there are other signature quality public spaces. The central green in the middle, it's about approximately the size of republic square surrounded by retail and restaurants on all sides and programmed with family friendly amenities to encourage people to come and spend time, dawn to dusk, and enjoying this new gathering place for southwest Austin. Next slide, please. So the next couple of slides just have some renderings of what some of these spaces would look like. This first rendering here is the internal main street. You can see dedicated pedestrian and bicycle facilities on this road. Increased landscape treatment. Retail on the ground floor [11:30:53 AM] and residential office and hotel on the upper floors. In the background you can see some of our tallest buildings on site. And what we've been trying to do with the architecture is make sure that it's eclectic and doesn't look like one campus, that it looks like it's evolved over time. With varied styles, heights, step backs and materials. Next slide, please. This slide is a view of the central green from one of the office buildings. You can see the greenbelt and downtown in the background, retail on the ground floor wrapping around that plaza space, the park amenities, we're hoping to include a playground, finally give that grove of trees a happy home. And have a picnic pavilion there. Perhaps a performance venue, water play, social games. You can also see that we have increased the quality [11:31:54 AM] of the street scapes for that internal drive. Next slide, please. So this image here is looking from the greenbelt back to the site and we wanted to show this because it really is one of our key strategies for connecting to the greenbelt. It's taking down that wall that exists around the back side of the greenbelt and grading to more natural conditions. Restoring 13.7 acres of land and allowing the greenbelt to climb back up into the site to create that intentional trail head for people to access the greenbelt. We hope to reduce the island affect by reducing pavement and planning more trees, focusing on multi-modal travel by clustering density around the transit stop. Next slide, please. So the main dilemma and the big idea from the beginning of this project, and you all grappled with it in imagine Austin, was balancing environmental sensitivity [11:32:55 AM] with activity and transit-supported densities and that's what we hope that we've done. On one side we have environmental sensitivity. We want to reduce impervious cover. We want to meet the S.O.S. Water qualy standards. We want to provide quality public outdoor spaces for people. And on the other side we need the height and the density next to transit to really make a successful transit-supported density. As we go through the -- as we go through the feedback that we've received so far, a couple of key questions are coming to mind and we would love your feedback on these specific things. Next slide, please. First one is land area requests. Code requirements and reviewer comments resulted in nearly 30 acres of land requests and the site is only 37.6 acres. So the viability of this project is really contingent on our ability to prioritize these or overlap these in multipurpose some of the space. And so I've put this slide [11:33:56 AM] in here so we could encourage council to give us feedback on what your highest priorities are. Next slide, please. In addition, we've had comments from reviewers and stakeholders that the height may be a little too high so we've got 275-foot height limits around the outer edge near the highways. And we want more feedback, more direct feedback on that. We're trying to provide transit supportive densities here within walking distance of a transit stop so I really encourage y'all to let us know what you think the appropriate height would be. We've put in some metrics around employment density and residential density from professional journals and transportation research record, for employment density around transit stops and the city's own tod ordinance for density around transit stops of residential [11:34:58 AM] units. In addition, they are already seeing heights in the area of 360 feet. And finally related to height, there has been an assumption that this will be very visible from the greenbelt and we've got the next slide here has a college of what that could look like. We have walked the entire greenbelt trail and the Greek bed itself and have not been able to see the site from those areas mainly due to topography and tree canopy. So we believe from these key public spaces that this development will still be hidden so we believe it will have access to the greenbelt without it being looming or on top of the greenbelt. So in closing, we've approached this project in the spirit of trading S.O.S. Water quality compliance, more public open space and a reduction of impervious [11:35:59 AM] cover. In return for an increase in height and density at a site adjacent to a designated cap metro transfer station in project connect. That's the foundation of this project and we would really appreciate any comments from council on our approach. Thank you. >> So mayor, if I could just add from -- as a city planner this is a very exciting project for us. As we said it's a site that's ripe for redevelopment. It's at a core transit location and it also is a site that, quite frankly, is crying out for redevelopment. So we look forward to working with the applicant on this when we know it's going to be a challenge, but we're excited about the opportunity. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. This is a head's up to council and they're looking for feedback if anybody wants to give them any at this point. We'll begin with Ann. [11:37:03 AM] >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. I want to say this is in my district. It borders on councilmember Ellis's district also. Very close to councilmember tovo, councilmember Renteria's districts also. I have a lot of questions which I will not use up everybody's time today. I just want to make some comments. And then provide some comments in response to the questions that the applicant has asked. And I'll be succinct about it. But let me just say first that I appreciate the efforts that the applicant is making to reach out to the neighbors, the neighborhoods all around this redevelopment as well as with the other groups that are impacted by this, the environmental groups, S.O.S., Barton creek greenbelt. I appreciate their efforts and I appreciate their willingness to get this right. And so I am optimistic that we can get there. [11:38:04 AM] I [indiscernible] Right now. I don't think as proposed it meets the criteria that we need to apply to a place like that, but I am encouraged and it will be challenging as Jerry said, but I am encouraged that we can get to a place that works. So I want to just name a few of the considerations that we need to think about for this height and then quickly speak to questions that Ms. Leonard had asked. So first off, the bottom line is this is the first environmental center, the first green spot from imagine Austin that we've been confronted with and we have to get it right. It is a center node in a water supply and environmental sensitive area. So we have to also get a pud and it's a redevelopment under the S.O.S. Ordinance. So we need to get this right in terms of balancing the community benefit with the request for the additional [11:39:07 AM] size as Ms. Leonard had laid out. So a couple of things. Affordability is key. What's the appropriate level of affordable housing. How can we think about family supportive along this transit center hub. That's going to be very important. I don't think we're there yet. If we're just talking about the minimum of 10% more. Second thing is open green space use in connection to the greenbelt, I appreciate the efforts that have been made there so far. We need to think about that further. Third thing is the environmental impact and the greening of the buildings. We want to minimize the negative impact to the recharge zone of the aquifer and we want to make this a really exciting, cutting edge, living green architectural structures place. Creative space I appreciate Ms. Leonard mentioning that. This is a very exciting opportunity for south Austin to be a space for artists [11:40:08 AM] dedicated retail and outdoor market space for local artists. And finally, the height and the mobility issues as was pointed out is something we have to get right. We're looking at 275 feet. That is much, much taller than anything around. We're talking 25 stories or so. Which is quite a bit of height. It also will set precedence for that four corners in environmental areas. So we have to think about what is the right height there. I think there's general agreement that this is the place for density, it is a place for some height. We can expect height that's taller than anything around it, but 25 stories or so may be too much. We have to balance that against what we're getting for it. And I've heard a lot of concerns and I know Ms. Leonard has to as she mentioned that that's out of proportion to what was needed on this environmental [11:41:08 AM] site. The traffic is something we can't forget. I mean, how do we right size parking requirements, for example for a major transit corridor in an environmentally sensitive area. This is an area we can try out parking reductions that would make sense because it is on a project connect line. We should think about how we do that. The traffic is already a mess at that area right now where it comes in to 71 and 360 on south Lamar. We don't want to exacerbate that and we also want to take opportunities to think about how we can really take advantage of this as a transit hub. So with that said I want to respond to the questions that were asked and then give others an opportunity to speak. I already mentioned that I don't think that we are at the right level right in [11:42:09 AM] terms of affordable housing because and I'd like to talk about that more. I also think there might be some additional work that needs to be done about the right mix of housing versus office versus hotel. I think there's a huge opportunity for this space for affordable housing for people so I think we want to get the right level of affordable housing and I think we need to do as much as we possibly can. There's a lot of feedback I know you have gotten on the environmental aspects of it and I think that S.O.S. For example and save Barton creek are reaching out to my colleagues, but the most important thing and I think you mentioned this is that we have a huge opportunity to address climate change in this area. To look at net zero energy and water. On-site reuse and as you [11:43:09 AM] mentioned shrinking impervious cover. We need to be careful and not double count the redevelopment under the S.O.S. Ordinance which does require a reduction in impervious cover. We don't want to double count that as our community benefit under a pud. Flooding is a concern. We need to think about flooding into the creek is another concern. The height and the mobility. So I'd also like to see from the Lamar side and the neighborhoods on that side. It's absolutely critical as you mentioned what's the impact to the greenbelt but I think we need to see additional views because the greenbelt that we're seeing is just the greenbelt right below the development. There are other aspects of the greenbelt on the other side of 360 that we need to see what kind of views we're looking at. We also need to see what this does on Lamar itself. [11:44:14 AM] We don't want a canyon effect. We have an open structure scale. I think you mentioned this as feedback, this is a huge opportunity for this whole area and we want it to be a draw so we want to have the right mix of retail, office, housing, so it's not just self contained, but so that people who live in this area can come to, will want to come to, can be there so it's really for the whole area. And we have to work on the traffic issues and how you can get there. You can't walk there now. You take your life in your hands if you try to walk there now. So we have a huge opportunity to look at that. The traffic issues this is a question for Jerry. Really willing to understand what is planned by both [11:45:15 AM] projected and the corridor improvement for south Lamar to address the traffic that's there now. And the bottleneck we get there now at the intersections and how we can address that with this redevelopment. So I think those are the key things I wanted to point out. I want to say again that as Jerry said this is pretty much from my perspective, this is pretty much an old shopping center with a lot of concrete. And it's a huge opportunity as you said Jerry to develop this in an exciting way and to get it right, but we really have to think about the environmental aspects, the affordable housing transit line and we have to think about what we're talking about in terms of the height because that is the balance for us in terms of the housing and the environmental aspects of it. [11:46:15 AM] So I know we'll have a lot of conversations. The only question I would have for you right now, Jerry, is I'm assuming -- can you speak to the intersection with project connect and the corridor plan in terms of how that works right now with this redevelopment and what is being done and contemplated to address -- >> We will do that, councilmember. >> Kitchen: Yes. >> What we will do is we will work with annick Beaudet and that office and make them a part of the review team. In addition to Austin transportation department and of course cap metro. But we will work with them closely on this project. This would be the first project that we'll be -- first large project that we will be working on that office on. What we'll do is make them a part of the team who is actually doing the review. >> Kitchen: Okay. Can you give us the timeline and process for us just to [11:47:15 AM] remind folks. >> The applicant cannot submit the actual pud until we're through with the briefing today so after today they can submit the project. It's up to them when they submit the project. I don't know when they're actually going to submit it. Once they actually submit it I anticipate quite a few months of negotiation with the city staff and all the different city departments and outside entities. It will -- I can't give you an exact timeline but it will be several months minimum. We'll go back and forth. We will formulate a staff recommendation and then take it to the environmental board for their recommendation and then we'll take it to the planning commission and then we'll take it back to the city council. There may be other boards and commissions that get involved as well. As we go through we will make that decision. It will probably be quite awhile before it comes back to the city council but I don't know exactly when. >> I would ask that it also goes to the parks board in addition to the environmental board and the planning commission. [11:48:17 AM] And then it's a -- what's the level of approval that's required from the council? >> Well, it's a zoning case so it would just require there be no valid petition, it would require a majority of the council to approve it. >> Is there any additional nuance to the approval level because it's an S.O.S. Redevelopment? >> Yes, I believe that does -- I'd have to go back. I'd refer that to Chris herring ton, but I believe it would require a greater number of votes around the redevelopment ordinance. And also if for some reason the planning commission did not recommend that case it would require a super majority of the council to approve it because it's a pud. >> Kitchen: Because it's coming under S.O.S. As well as under the pud so there are two different aspects. If you can check that for us so we would know that. So I have a lot of questions but I want to give my colleagues an opportunity to ask any questions that they might have. Just reiterate what I said [11:49:19 AM] before. Huge opportunity to get it right. It's not just in some part of south Austin that doesn't impact anybody else. It is like I said before, it's -- it borders on councilmember Ellis's district and mine. It is very close to councilmember tovo's and Renteria's. And just as precedent setting for our entire community because it is the first green environmental node. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. Colleagues,, councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: I'm happy to add my thoughts and it's exciting to see this presentation. I agree with a lot of the points that councilmember kitchen made. When I first thought about developing this area, I am interested in the conversation around -- I have this very similarly in the Y at oak hill where you have parking lots and you have an opportunity to have better water quality protection and do something that's a little more woven [11:50:20 AM] in with the natural environment, which is exciting. One of the other first things I'd thought about is the bicycle connectivity. So I really would like to see the renderings about that because I know there are rapid metro lines right along there that take you down to that shopping center, but if you were to try to tie into the violet crown trail there's not a way to safely do that. And I think having a little more explicit and inviting space for people to be able to get through this area would be a fantastic opportunity to make sure that we are addressing all modes of transportation. I did like that councilmember kitchen talked about the idea of looking at the appropriate level of parking to be available since it will have melt throw rapid, pedestrian infrastructure, bike infrastructure. I'll really eager about that. I'm not sure how I feel right now on the height processing what the community benefits are, but I think it's a really [11:51:21 AM] incredible opportunity to look at what does redevelopment mean in 2021 and how can we make it a space that's really inviting for people and to kind of reenergize and reinvigorate a space that right now is just a lot of cement parking. So I am eager to see how we can move forward with this and what the conversation looks like and how the plan adapts. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues? Councilmember pool and then councilmember tovo. >> Pool: I have a quick question for I guess. Are you looking at any underground passages from the side into [indiscernible]? It looks like there's a fairly wide -- is it an access road off to the west? Or is that Lamar? I couldn't tell the orientation on the map. Could you throw that map back up? Just let me know how you are imagining or how far along you are in imagining if [11:52:23 AM] you're in the site or want to get into the site and you're not in a car, how will you able to transit Lamar and any access roads going down to the loop? >> I'll unmute myself. I can't pull this slide back up, but if somebody else could that would be great. We are anticipating at least a shared use path, perhaps cycle track all the way through the site that would tie into the bicycle improvements already planned for south Lamar and connect it over on the other side on to the access road that goes down the office. So yes, there we go. >> So are you going to go under those traffic lanes? Will you be going under those traffic lanes? >> No tunneling. >> So there isn't any way to [11:53:27 AM] cross horizontally cross the road. You have to follow the trails that go parallel and come back up and around, go to a traffic signal -- >> I think if I'm hearing you right, councilmember pool, because we're cutting out just a hair, once you get to the edge of the site your connectivity would be at grade with traffic. So on the 360 side I think what you would do is go down and we are proposing a shared use path down that access road that goes from our retail site down to the office site. >> Pool: Parallel to the access road, okay. >> Yes. >> Pool: So I am interested -- I know it's really days, but I am interested in what I think it's sand beach, we are looking at doing a tunnel to get up to like fourth street or fifth street because of [11:54:28 AM] the grade changes. So-- the grade change is so steep. I would like to have a conversation about -- I'm sitting here pointing to your side which of course you can't see what I'm pointing out, but where you have the little six green dot trees going off to the west, like would it even be appropriate to put a tunnel so that people could go underneath these lanes of traffic to go to the other side of the road? And then over to Lamar. And I know there are more traffic lights over there, but it's really congested and that spaghetti bowl is really tough and it's not attractive on a bicycle. I wouldn't try it. I would go around and take other routes. So maybe it's not feasible, but I wanted to raise the question this early in the process. To give that timed to settle [11:55:29 AM] and see if there's something that we might be able to accomplish. >> We will take a look at that. >> Pool: That's all I can ask at this point. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, Kathie. >> Tovo: Thank you for the presentation and thank you, councilmember kitchen, for really articulating what I think are some very important areas of consideration as this project continues to talk with neighboring stakeholders and others about what the vision is for this site. I want to be sure I kind of can capture in my head some of the superiority elements. So I wonder if you could just cite for me what you see as the top superiority elements that you are putting forward. And then I know there's been discussion about the affordable housing components, but if you would just again summarize for me what exactly the commitment is to affordable housing and how much of that is on-site. And I share councilmember [11:56:29 AM] kitchen's comments that in my opinion there should be really significant affordable housing here available on-site. >> Sure, happy to. I think our main superiority item is impervious cover. It's really challenging to peel back 36% of this site at impervious cover. So that is the heaviest lift on this project and we believe something that many -- actually, everybody we've talked to is happy with that level of commitment to impervious cover. In terms of other commitments, we are working with cap metro to improve the transit stop on-site. We are proposing connectivity to the greenbelt, which doesn't exist there now and park improvements on-site as well. Right now there's very [11:57:29 AM] little park improvements in gussery park, and we are going to create that trail head as I mentioned as part of that. In terms specifically about affordable housing, as you know the pud ordinance requires 10% of the rental units -- for rental units, 10% of the bonus area. And for ownership units, five percent of the bonus area on-site. And then for nonresidential developments a payment in lieu of seven dollars per square foot right now. What we are offering as superiority at this time is 10% of the bonus area as on- site affordable housing regardless of whether it's rental or ownership. And so we are excited to do that. Also we're proposing all housing on-site without requesting a fee-in-lieu even though most of our bonus square footage is nonresidential. And so that is another [11:58:29 AM] superiority item as well. And we've been working we have been working with the city to understand what income groups they are interested in seeing and working through partnerships, potential partnerships with groups like community foundation or others, habitat for humanity or others. >> Thank you. So I think from what I am understanding, you are going -- at this point, 10 percent of the units be of rental or ownership be affordable so that's a little bit higher than -- it is from five percent to 10 percent for ownership units. I would need kind of better understand glat break down is between ownership and rental as it is contemplated at this stage to really know how significant that is in terms of the number of unit and you are not proposing a fee in lieu for the nonresidential, it would be on-site units as well and then [11:59:32 AM] -- so again, I will need to see kind of what commensurate -- >> Mayor Adler: Kathie, you are muted. >> We can't hear you. >> Oh, really? >> Not any of? It. >> >> Mayor Adler: No. Just the last two sentences. >> The last two sentences. Oh I guess I wuss just saying I would need to know what the contemplation is ownership versus rental to kind of understand how that shift from five percent to ten percent really results, how many units that results in and I guess that would be, I don't think that the ordinance really fully captures this goal but it would be important to me to see those units be really multibedroom units that we are supporting what I heard you describe as the mission of really creating a more family friendly developed [12:00:32 PM] on this important corridor. >> The question -- do you intend to indorpt Jeffrey house? I am just kidding. I have to ask that for my children's steak. We spent many, many years ago there. >> You got muted again. >> I would like. >> Tovo: I would like to understand -- that really was joking about the jumpy house. I really don't expect you to incorporate the jump by house. Impervious cover that's a very significant shift and an important one in this environmentally sensitive area, Jerry can you help me understand how much of that would have been required under conventional zoning if the site is redeveloped? >> Well, councilmember the zoning, would that play a factor in that what would play a factor is the sos redevelopment [12:01:35 PM] ordinance. As long as they comply with that they could get it approved with simple majority of city council. As to the particulars of what would be required under the sos redevelopment ordinance you would have to defer to Chris Barrington for that. Is Chris Harington on the line? >> Tovo: As with all of these different elements that are being -- that are being offered as evidence of superioritily really want the staff report to explain what would be required under conventional zoning or other ordinances versus what is being offered in the pud because our task as decision makers is to evaluate whether the planned development that is being proposed is superior to what could be developed under our existing codes and ordinances so that is really -- that is really just my question here with regard to the impervious cover reduction, how much of that would be required? If this site proceeded not as a [12:02:36 PM] pud but under conventional zoning in accordance with our redevelopment ordinance. >> Councilmember case ask on the call and trying to be moved over right now. I don't know if he has enough information to provide that right now but I know he is on the call and trying to get out -- trying to get on. >> Tovo: And if it is complicated to do that, maybe somebody can just get back to me about what -- I think it was 74 percent or 36 percent impervious cover reduction; is that correct? >> 34 or 36? >> I think it was 36. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> Chris Harington environmental officer so the redevelopment exception would allow them to redevelop the existing footprint of impervious cover without having to reduce the impervious cover at all. 3 would just have to provide water quality treatment and then mitigation land or payment for mitigation land to get to an [12:03:36 PM] equivalent level of impervious cover so they are proposing something different and I would evaluate superior in a different way not not with the question development as a baseline but relative to the current condition effectively and what would be achievable under current code so as was mentioned I think it was very well received by the environmental commission, the reduction of impervious cover that is proposed is a significant superiority in terms of basically just leaving the existing impervious cover since they would be achieving sos levels of water quality treatment under either circumstance. >> Tovo: Thanks for that. It has been a while since we talked about the redevelopment exception so I had forgotten those details. Okay. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Back to the green space and I guess this question is for the developer representative. Back to the green space identification of green space, can you remind me again exactly [12:04:38 PM] I know you talked about the trail head, the connectivity to the greenbelt trail head. >> In terms of the dedication of green -- of land on your tract to green space what was that figure again? >> >> We have 13.7 acres of green space on our site and four park spaces and they will all be publicly accessible and we have proposed that they be privately owned but have a public easement on them mainly for the purposes of controlling the operations and maintenance and so -- and that's on-site, 13.7 ache aers. >> At that think, we can't hear you again. >> Tovo: Sorry. I am having difficulties here today. Do you know what would have been required in terms of acreage under the parkland dedication? And is all of the land sat that [12:05:40 PM] a is the going to be dead died open space developable land on your tract? >> So it is approximately 31 acres, if I recall, I don't have the number right in front of me that would be required by parkland dedication under our estimates, and we -- if we weren't pursuing a pud I think we would be capped at 15 percent of that on-site because we are in a parkland deficient area. And so that's approximately 5.6 acres, I believe. And all of the parkland that we are offering is developable. >> Tovo: Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. So the shift -- so 31 acres under the parkland dedication, 15 percent of that would have been required to be on-site. Okay. Thank you very much. >> And again those are from memory so -- >> Yes. Just to get a sense of scale. [12:06:40 PM] >> Tovo: It is significantly more than what would have been required on-site. >> Yes. Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: About twice, about twice as much. Than required on-site. Thank you for that info. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen and councilmember Ellis. >> Kitchen: I think it would be helpful if you could provide to us -- I know you will do this at some point but sooner rather than later would be helpful for us because there are so many moving fourths. This if you would provide us with the requirements for each, the sos redevelopment ordinance, the parks requirements so we can see the requirements for each and so that table would help clarify -- let me back up. I would like to see a table of what would be required for the sos redevelopment ordinance, what would be required for parks [12:07:42 PM] what would be required for housing, okay? And then I would like to see the list of items that are being put forward as community benefits. What I want to make sure of is that we understand those different parts and we are not double count ago community benefit as something that would be a requirement because there are so many different aspects of this it would be helpful if you could create that list for all of us. Does that make sense what I am asking for, Jerry? >> Yes, it does councilmember and I can work on putting that together. However with the caveat at this time it would be -- the numbers given to us in the development assessment, once the actual application is submitted we would have to look to make sure the numbers matched. Right now -- versus what they actually -- yes. I will -- >> Kitchen: That makes sense but you can at least get us started with with what the requirements say. >> Yes, we can. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Just to add to that there is [12:08:43 PM] additional information in the report that is backed up on the redevelopment exception but we will certainly as is our standard practice bring forward a superiority table that would be a comparison to the current applicable code, what they are proposing and then also just include a line item for the redevelopment exception since it is another yardstick against which we can measure this project. >> Kitchen: Okay. And a question is that is the baseline we are starting with. My understanding is that the original agreement for the tract, for this area had differing heights that were agreed to, like 30 feet or -- I forget what they were. And there were others at expects of that agreement, I think this letter referenced the original agreement that you know, that gave parkland and also gave land for this particular shopping center, but -- I am thinking that our baseline here goes back to that agreement. I want to understand how that [12:09:44 PM] agreement plays into the analysis. >> >> Yes. I will let Jerry speak to the height issues. That wouldn't be me. But certainly looking at the easements that are existing or created on parkland that would allow on infrastructure on what is now city parkland is already an item of discussion for both watershed and the parks department so we would consider any, as we always do, what the existing entitlements are for the development as part of our superiority analysis but I don't know, Jerry, if you if you have anything else on the height question. >> Kitchen: And and by entitlement, you mean what is in the agreement, on the code, because there are covenants on that property. Okay. Thank you. >> Councilmember, with regard to height, per code we would be looking at the existing entitlements under zoning so in this case it would be the 60 feet under the gr zone. >> Kitchen: Jerry why would we not be looking at -- I may have this this wrong I thought there were restricted covenants on the property, why wouldn't we be looking at that. >> I would have to look at those [12:10:45 PM] restrictive covenants we have not gotten to that as part of this review so let me go back and find out more about those. I am just letting you know as the baseline is, based po ten existing zoning so I would have to see if there is a difference between the restrictive covenants and the zoning. I am not that aware of the covenants at this point so I would have to get back to that. >> Kitchen: The reason I am asking because if we are talking about superiority under pud we have to think in terms of what, what is in place now as a restrictive covenant the place right now, because that was all a part of the arrangement that was made for the greenbelt. So it had to do with what was considered to be appropriate around the greenbelt and what was the appropriate trade at that time. We can certainly revisit them but we need to just not set them aside without having a conversation about this em. >> Understood. >> You are on mute but I think I saw my name. [12:11:46 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: I forgot do mention but I wrote down and wanted to make sure I talked about it here, I would like to know more about the walkability. This is the retail mostly going to be on the first floor? Is it going to be a mix of story and how is that going to work so maybe in the future when we talk about this I would like a little more understanding of how that would map out. I think if you are having a walkable transit oriented pud situation that it could be a great opportunity to make sure there are lots of shops and retail and coffee and market space and things like that for people to be able to access. >> Would you like know answer that now or -- we are intending ground floor retail, all around that central green and to the extent that we can support retail connecting it to the transit station as well, transit stop as well. >> That's great. [12:12:47 PM] We don't have that all planned out yet but we com -- we do appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Kathie -- >> Yes. I a add quick follow-up question to what councilmember kitchen was asking Jerry. Jerry, I understand -- I understand your response that you are not -- you haven't reviewed the restrictive covenants, but if the restrictive covenants imposed a height limit on certain tracts I assume that would be the baseline, something in what you said suggested that maybe the -- would you agree with that? >> Yes, I understand what you are getting at, again, I need to look back at the covenants to see exactly what they say, my recollection of the pud ordinance kit establishes the pud ordinance as the existing zoning as opposed to a restriction but I understand the concept that the baseline theory is what the existing entitle is as opposed to the zoning, the [12:13:49 PM] entitlement may be different than the zoning because of a restrictive covenant so I understand exactly what you are getting at but I would have do look at the exact wording of the pud ordinance and what the restrictive ordinance says so that will part of the review when the application is submitted. We will look at that part of it. >> Mayor Adler: You are muted. >> Tovo: I am sorry, I am really not on my game today with tech following. I was saying thanks for the clarification so it sounds that it is not just a question for you and not just a question about what is in the restrictive covenant it is also about what exact language is in the pud ordinance and how that interfaces with the restrictive covenant and I guess let me just say I really -- I think the intent, I would really say that I believe the intent of the pud ordinance in terms of setting the baseline was to kind of [12:14:51 PM] capture it is a baseline capture what is possible on that tract without any -- to pud so I would say the restrictive covenant is related to -- whatever the restrictive covenant is, should be there, should be their base entitle or the entitlement that vectors into what that baseline is determined to be. So we may not - - I will be agreement in on that but I will put that forward as somebody who long, decades ago served on that committee I would say that seems to me to be reflective of the spent of that pud, pud revision. But thanks, Jerry. >> Mayor Adler: Pio. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. This is very exciting for that section of town that you have a, you know, a bit more density on [12:15:53 PM] the apartments and affordable housing. I also would like to find out, you know, this this little corner here has a lot of popular restaurants that people do go. It is considered as affordable services you know, and I hope that you will be able to keep some of those service and restaurants and small businesses on on that location. I notice sometimes we kind of lose the old little restaurants people like to go and eat there and you have a great little Italian restaurant there and some grills and bars that, you find music there, so I hope that if we do this development we do keep these type of affordable services there for the [12:16:53 PM] population. Because it is well -- those places attract a lot of people and you have that little grocery store and makes it, it is more mom and pop stores than the big corporation stores so I hope we keep that when we do go to the, when we go through the development process. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ann. >> Kitchen: Yes. Thank you for mentioning that, councilmember Renteria. I think that goes, Ms. -- I I think that goes to, I know you talked about maintaining the character of south Austin, and councilmember Renteria is mentioning one aspect of that and that goes to my comment I said earlier, we want this to continue to be a space that the neighbors want to go to and so it is not just a space for people that are actually living at the housing there. So one important aspect of that [12:17:53 PM] is really maintaining that accessibility for people you know, with the restaurants that are there and councilmember Renteria said it better than I, but that kind of feel and a access for the people that live around there is really important important. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie pool pool thanks. I wanted to emphasize the points that both Ann and Kathie are making to Jerry about the restrictive covenant and the reason why I want to emphasize and make sure when we are talking about what is what baseline is going to be here that we don't the early information is super important and it needs to be as accurate as what can be built here based on previous covenants and zoning, and if we give the public one reading and come back later and say well we can't do that because we have this [12:18:54 PM] restrictive covenant then they will have two different pieces of information and won't be able able to align and vote so I think we need to be carefully in these reviews to make sure whatever the information is that comes out and Jerry you can help us tremendously with this, is actually what as both Ann and Kathie are saying, was agreed upon at the time that could be built it is a baseline. Does that make sense, Jerry? >> Yes. I understand. >> Kitchen: Okay. Great. Thanks so much. >> Pool: Thanks so much. >> Mayor Adler: Colleague, any other comments on this plan? Okay. I have an exciting plan. It is an important piece of plan, it is an important plan, obviously it has a huge impact locally. Also by all of our planning documents is a regional tract and convergence of a lot of transit, so I hope, my hope is that we have a project here that [12:19:56 PM] is of benefit to and -- benefit to the entire city and I think that this has the opportunity to do that. Anything else? All right. I think we are done with that presentation. Manager, colleagues, it is 12:20. Do you want to pick up one of the other two briefings, homelessness or spending or take an hour break now? We have the executive session with the three personnel matters. We talked about setting a special called meeting to do personnel conversation the follow-up, we were going to do the manager in order to be able to free up time. I guess we could consider doing one -- doing all four of those at the special called. I know they are trying to set up for next week. I am -- I am just throwing that idea out there. [12:20:57 PM] Do you guys want to take a break now door another briefing? >> Take a break now. >> I would say let's not try to do a briefing but perhaps is there anything short on the list we could knock off of of the called items? >> Mayor Adler: Well, we could -- >> Or knock out one of them. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's do that. I think Ann were you going to try to get 12 -- 14 and 20 the if brought up now or something we are just going to postponed until -- >> I could bring it up now. I am open to postponing it if that is the preference or I can give amended language. For my colleagues that is the one that is a follow-up to the resolution we passed about the iconic venues and it is just the document that tale does the transfer of the the underthat were agreed to called for in the resolution. >> Mayor Adler: It is okay. Let's go ahead then and move that to April 8th just because we have stuff coming in. [12:21:57 PM] And you were working on additional language over the -- >> Right. >> Mayor Adler: If you get that out to everybody and he everybody jowled a chance to see that too. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Let's take 14 and 20 the if and postpone them. There wasn't a time constraint with respect to that. >> No. >> Mayor Adler:. >> Then let's just move that over into. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: Mayor, I thought I pulled those too as well and I have some comments. I don't mind them not coming forward today but I have some immediate questions I am going to need to ask today on those. So if we could keep those on the agenda for today. I don't mind it being postponed but if we can keep them on the agenda today to talk about post break that would be with great. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So -- is that just to identify issues on this? Do we try to do there before 12:30? >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's do that then. 14 and 25 and postpone those items and not consider them this with week and pick them up on the eighth. But to highlight issues, Kathie and Ann. >> Tovo: Okay. My issues were just that [12:22:58 PM] language of the ordinance doesn't -- that as proposed doesn't track back to the use of the 2.4 million, if you recall, the resolution that we passed was to -- when we passed it we identified 2.4 million to go towards the iconic music fund. We talked -- not music, the iconic venue fund. We identified source of that, we identified the amount, which was the 2.4 million which is what this is. The language of what we are being asked to prove doesn't track exactly with the resolution. I have agreement from director Briceno, the language needs to be adjusted so it tracks back to the resolution. The other aspect of it is when we gas resolution the resolution spoke to this being a project that would be implemented through the edc, the economic development corporation so the [12:24:01 PM] ordinance that we are being presented with doesn't mention that, it which it needs to mention that funds will be dash the funds will go to the economic development corporation to implement the icon Mick venue program, so the ordinance that is in our backup doesn't say that, I think it says that because that's what we agreed to in the resolution. The other reason for postponing, mayor, is that the agreement between the city council and the economic development council is supposed to come back to us on April 8th so it makes sense to do these items at the same time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Kathie. >> Tovo: Two very separate issues. One is, with regard to the -- there are two grants, the legacy grants and this one for which we [12:25:01 PM] have been getting e-mails from organization whose are concerned about the fact that nonprofit organization accounts not apply, are not eligible as per the guidelines for either one of those grant lines, and when -- and so I have heard from museum and so I guess that is a question for EdD, I see councilmember kitchen nodding her head no but we have touched space with EdD and I think that is the guideline requirement we have heard the one grant, for example, says -- and I think this the original resolution talked about art -- about museums and councilmember kitchen, do you want to -- >> Kitchen: Yes, you talking about a different fund. That is not what this the understood is. >> I am sorry. Go ahead. >> Kitchen: I am sorry. I just wanted to clarify and there is a lot of confusion with the language and I understand that's why the language needs to be clarified. This is not the relief funds that you are talking about and I [12:26:04 PM] agree with you we need to clarify the nonprofits should be allowed to be used in those relief funds. That is not what this is. There is a different resolution. >> I remember that because I was a cosponsor. I think both of them are using the same guidelines that are restricting nonprofits. That was my understanding. So, yes, I am talking about, I am talking about two different grant lines that I believe are both including that restriction, and so I may be wrong about that. This one may not have that restriction, it was my understanding it did. And we have had questions about both grant lines and the restriction against nonprofits and it was my understanding you know, part of the organizations were trying to assist certainly with the legacy grants which is not the ones we are talking about today but I up I am talking about it because it keeps coming up, we had initially talked about the legacy grants as going to organizations a that are [12:27:05 PM] museums, performance spaces and others, most of those are organized as nonprofits so EdD staff, this is is this grant also going to exclude nonprofits nonprofits? >> Good afternoon, council, Briceno, director of development and chief recovery officer. One. >> Harper-madison: For this particular money the iconic venues, the guidelines have not been adopted by council as of yet, so I believe council has the purview unless I am overlooking something to set those guidelines to apply to the eligible institutions as they wish so in this case we can specify they be availability to nonprofits that neat other criteria? Yes, that is correct, I believe so. >> And since I brought it up now even though it is not the -- it [12:28:06 PM] is related enough that's I am going to ask the question anyway. Can you help me understand why nonprofit organizations are excluded from the grants. It does talk about museums performance venues, you know, we are hearing from museums and performance venues, and saying, look, we fall into the, you know, what the resolution specified and we are being told by EdD staff that it was council's desire for nonprofitted to be excluded from those grants. I understand we had grants specifically for nonprofits and that may be part of why staff made that decision, but it is -- it is concerning do me. Councilmember, we are referring back to the guidelines that were approved by council for those particular funds and in those guidelines, nonprofits were [12:29:07 PM] prohibited, council of course could amend the guidelines as they choose. But we are in the implementation of that program -- >> Tovo: Okay, but the council did not -- I think the confusion has arisen because the initial resolution did not speak to nonprofit or 0 for profit status. It spoke to the kinds of organizations we wanted to support and then the staff wrote the guidelines and I didn't realize until people started contacting us that nonprofits were excluded. And I am going to have to look at the backup. I thought I did see something here today in this but it must -- I must be -- okay. In any case, I think it is important as we move forward with this that our iconic venues, don't also have the same exclusion. So director Briceno, is it possible at this point you said you are in implementation stage, I know grant application closed [12:30:07 PM] so at this point, organizations that fall into the category of performance spaces or museums who are nonprofits likely haven't applied. Is that the problem even if we did amend a, even if we did damned guidelines for legacy grants it is too late for those organizations to apply; is that right? >> Councilmember, let me verify the deadline of the application process. I believe that is correct but let me just verify it for you real quick. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. Then my other question speaks to the funding. I just don't want the moment to pass without reminding my colleagues, we have talked -- we have talked a couple of times about the funding -- how do I explain this? The fact that some years we were not collecting 15 percent. We were not designating 15 percent of the hotel occupancy taxes for historic preservation, and our staff [12:31:07 PM] prior to Karla's departure went back and quantified what those amounts would have been, had we been collected that historic preservation money and the amount was significant. And as we have you know, potentially two really significant structures that pay be available for purchase and for which I believe we could use the historic preservation funds, it seems me really important that we get clear on why the numbers, we have more recently been quoted are different from the numbers that we were quoted prior to car la's leaving. I know answer. I know the answer I am getting to that question but I think it is really a policy matter. So I have requested that we have that discussion either in a work session or in an executive session whichever is the appropriate venue. It is a timely conversation and as we talk about you know, looking toward the funding for [12:32:10 PM] this particular grant, I want to be sure again that we get very straight on how much additional funding is available under the -- what would have been designated for historic preservation funding in past years. Does that make any sense? I know it is like way in the weeds for the discussion we are having today, but the more -- the further away we get from the memo that said we have X amount the more concerned I am that we still haven't sorted it out. I just dispute the amount that the memo we received last fall says is available to us, and I think it is really important we have that policy conversation as a counsel before too much time passes. >> Mayor Adler: Rod -- >> Thank you, mayor. Assistant city manager Rodney Gonzales. Councilmember we definitely want to have that conversation, we were waiting for audit to be completed with regard to that funding source .. And as soon as the audit is completed that will five us more information for the conversation. [12:33:10 PM] >> Tovo: Thank you. And I know the storm intervened and that's one of the things that happened but I am getting, again, I don't want -- I don't want like the narrative to become solidified. When is the audit finished? >> My understanding from staff is that it is min enbut we reach out to Corey and her staff again to see if there s'more specific timeline. >> Tovo: Super. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I just wanted to point out to councilmember tovo that when we did pass -- about the nonprofits and there was not staff, I don't remember if it was strictly in Q & a or strictly in work session or in the council meeting, but I did surface that issue and there [12:34:11 PM] was not interest that staff indicated that nonprofits would not be included and there was hot sufficient support to add nonprofits at that point in time. I would still support adding them if there is room to do that, I am not sure, I am assuming that the funding is over subscribed anyway, but I just do want to recall I do -- I did surface that at an earlier stage in the process. >> Councilmember alter, thank you for that, I didn't remember that. The first part of what you said was cut out. I think I understood you said it was either in the question or answer or in the conversation, but I missed like what day. Was that the day that we passed the anchor funding? >> Alter: So the anchor funding is different than this. There is when we did the legacy funding and when we did the venue funding, I raised the question in the guidelines that nonprofits were excluded. And staff provided an answer as [12:35:11 PM] to why they chose not to do that. And I don't remember if I strictly asked a question in Q & a or asked it in either the work session or the other, but I know I asked it, because I am always mindful of the situation that our nonprofits are currently in with respect to the pandemic and looking for ways to support them and there was not support to add nonprofits, did not take a vote but there was no -- can I do believe it was acknowledged they were not going to be. >> Tovo: Okay J tows clarify it may have been in the Q & a and it did not come up for a vote? >> Alter: I do not remember bringing it forward to a vote and I don't remember the very specific rationale that staff provided but there was a discussion of it. >> Tovo: The our -- among the council? >> Mayor Adler: I think that [12:36:11 PM] there were guidelines, probably guidelines that were incorporated into and referenced in the -- in what we approved and I think that is where you will find the fact that this was designated, because there is not enough money to do everything, that this money was designated, designated that way and I think that is where that comes from. >> Tovo: I guess I am trying to drill down, because I know that our businesses that are looking toward that as a source of funding, again, are being told by edt that it was the will of the council to exclude nonprofits and I just -- I didn't remember ever having a conversation about that. And so councilmember alter, I appreciate the info. I think it is important to say I am not sure that there wasn't support for it, I think we just cash I think some of us just completely missed it. So -- >> I do think -- I think it was the recommendation from staff. >> Tovo: Right. >> Alter: Would be the fair [12:37:12 PM] thing to say. >> Tovo: Gotcha, but it sounds like I mid the comments you raised in your work session or I missed the Q & a back and forth where I didn't understand the implications. I will go back and look at the question and answer and you know, aim not sure what there is to be done about it now, and she said it is likely over subscribed but it is unfortunate since we intended those to support museums and others. That was one of the called out reasons for the grant, for legacy grants and so it is a shame that it excluded probably 90 percent of, if not all all of those that Paul in that category I want to make sure as we move forward with the iconic venues that we don't run into the same, although those are more likely to be -- to be for profit venues, there are certainly I think will be some iconic venues that are organized as nonprofits and I want to make sure we don't also exclude those from this grant line. [12:38:12 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: Okay. Maybe -- >> Mayor Adler: I am sorry, Ann warden. >> May I bring us back to items 14 and 25 before we go into any further conversation about this? And I am sure that Veronica will be able to answer your questions outside of this. Thank you. >> Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: We are not going resolve these questions this week. And it is 12:38 now. Let's go to Ann and then to Leslie. >> Yes. I just want to remind people. 14 and 25 is different than what councilmember tovo has been talking about. I don't want us to confuse those funds. And her point is well-taken that for the fund at 14 and 25 are about, we have not decided that program has not been decided upon, so the issue of nonprofits can be addressed, but please I don't want to go back and try to redo that fund because we already voted on it, it is [12:39:14 PM] clearly different funds and that's not what we are talking about. If there is a route to revisit the other two funds, the other legacy funds, I am happy to revisit it with regard to nonprofit but that is not what 14 and 25 are about. >> And I will punctuate what Ann just said with my agreement to that, plus the fact I was really troubled at the time that nonprofits were excluded but it was clear do me we were just having a circular argument on the dais and it wouldn't be resolved. What does bother me though is isn't we didn't specifically take a vote on excluding them the staff decided to exclude them and I think we have an opportunity to with the American rescue plan money that is coming down that specifically has save our state elements in it that we may be able to address this piece, but I am not willing to let it go, I am happy that Ann kitchen, councilmember kitchen has brought the questions for the other -- the other fund, however and I am happy to hold [12:40:14 PM] anymore comment on the legacy stuff until we actually are taking that up. I do want to see some changes to that, though. >> Mayor Adler: It is hard because in all of these spending decisions it is hard because there are so many people that need help, so it will support. The prohibition that -- eligibility criteria associated with the business being a nonprofit is in section 3.1, ineligibility criteria, in the program guidelines. That we approved as part of the funding on this a cash these save matters. And that's what I would like us to revisit and update, especially with the arp funds that are coming our way. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Colleagues anything else on 14 and 25? All right. It is 1240. Let's take an hour break and come back here at one-fourth and we will hit the two briefings [12:41:15 PM] and hit the rest of the pulled items and try to work as quickly as we can. We have an and we executive session items. At this point, so we don't have a segue, can we move the personnel matters, those other three to the special session that we will call to deal with that? And we will cover the city manager at the same time. Okay. Let's go ahead and do that and let's -- let staff, let the folks know. Mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, forgive me, I didn't realize my camera wasn't on I am raising my hand I had one question and it Ann said to move on until we talk to Veronica. I will ask it real quick just in case. The backup says the 2.4 million come from the convention center capital fund but I would like to ask what is the anticipated funding source for that additional $15 million over the [12:42:16 PM] five-year period. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: That's a very good question, mayor pro tem. We asked this question when we passed this item and we were only able to identify the original 2.4. We still feed to identify the underto get to the 15 million and so I don't have an answer yet. I am hoping our staff will come back to us with an answer at some point. Right now when we passed a resolution we were only able to identify the original 2.4 million. >> Thank you, Ann. >> Mayor pro tem and councilmember that is correct, we understand that to be our charge it is a droning look for additional funds, in addition to the 2.4 million. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Staff will go back and look at that. I thought we identified funding [12:43:17 PM] for the 15. >> Mayor, I think you confusing the funds. There are three funds. >> Mayor Adler: Okay 0. >> Two-leg situate the underwe had identified and then the iconic -- >> Mayor Adler: Gotcha. >> Yes. That's one that goes to the edc, yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. For the saves we identified funding for the next one we have not, the 2.4. >> Exactly, exactly. >> Whatever it was. The convention center was available without compromising. >> Mayor Adler: All right, guides, 1240. Let's come back and one torture, let's 1:00 -- we will come back and pick up the two items and start with homelessness and then do the American rescue plan. All right, guys. See you back here at one-fourth. 1:40:00. [12:45:21 PM] . [Music]. [Music]. [1:46:05 PM] >> Mayor adler:greg and Natasha? It gives us a quorum. So here at 1:46, we will go ahead and reconvene the Austin council work session on March 23rd, 2021. And we will begin with presentations and I think that the homelessness presentation is [1:47:06 PM] first. You want to tee that up. >> Thank you, mayor and council. This is an incredibly important topic but today we wanted to take some time to make sure that you saw a memo that our homeless strategy officer sent yesterday. It describes the funding options and the update on homelessness funding for the mayor and council. So this is a very quick presentation of only a couple slides, but we wanted to daylight this in case you haven't had a chance to read that memo, knowing that there will be many future conversations as we move forward. But with that I will turn it over to our homeless strategy officer Diana Greg. >> Thank you, sir. Good morning, may are Adler and mayor pro tem Harper Madison and council members. So today is a very brief update on homelessness. As I will speak about in a moment, we also do have our summit beginning this afternoon in about 13 minutes. [1:48:07 PM] So I will be moving into that meeting fairly soon. But there's a couple of things that I wanted to speak about with going into that planning process and for our discussions as a city overall. Obviously, in a couple of weeks we will be also be briefing council on the heal initiative, but between now, we and the community at large will be engaging in a very significant conversation around our efforts to combat homelessness, not just the city, but with the broad partners across the community. And so we will be convening at 2:00 P.M. For the opening plenary and with business groups and philanthropists and a wide variety of other folks for a week-long virtual summit to address unsheltered homelessness in particular. So the aim of that summit is to [1:49:08 PM] develop concrete goals, a schedule and an implementation plan to significantly reduce unsheltered homelessness in Austin. Of course, the city's resources will play an important role in any strategies that are developed, and so today there are a couple of pieces around the -- our financial strategies and spending on homelessness that I wanted to share with you that I think that both help us to understand where we have been over the last year or so, and where we are headed in the future. So we can go ahead and go to the next slide. The two topics that I'm covering today very briefly first relate to fiscal year-end spending 2020. Around some dollars that were unexpended at the end of the year and some questions have remained around what those [1:50:09 PM] dollars were, why they were unexpended at that point and their disposition. And so we will speak to that. And then, second, I want to give you a brief overview of the programming that we project for the additional $6.5 million in general fund resources that council allocated to Austin public health for this fiscal year. So the slide that you are looking at relates again to the $31 million that was Cal gorized as unspent budget related to homelessness at fiscal year end 2020. That is of a total $73.4 million in our budget that related to homelessness overall. I think that it's important to note that is across departments, and it is also across uses. So these included funds that are intended to prevent [1:51:11 PM] homelessness, funds that support our crisis response in terms of shelter and street outreach, etc. The management of our public spaces in terms of the work that many of our departments do to maintain our public spaces and provide some services to our neighbors in encampments. ! And then, finally, efforts to rehouse those who are experiencing homelessness. So of the $31 million that was unexpended there are two primary categories. One is the dollars that were reallocated and then there are dollars that were encumbered but not expended during that fiscal year. So I'll address the first that during the course of fiscal year 2020, we reallocated about $5.8 million in dollars that had been earmarked for homelessness towards the covid response. [1:52:13 PM] And that related to a variety of things, some of those dollars were saved because of functions that we could not complete during fiscal year 2020 because of covid, therefore, we were able to use them more directly in the response. Some of that response was targeted at people experiencing homelessness and some was used more broadly across the community. So that's the $5.8 million, not quite 20% of the total. Past that we had funds that were either to be spent over a number of years, or were set aside for special purposes. The lion's share of that is 38% of those dollars had been budgeted for ongoing or future capital projects, including affordable housing development, like sparrow at Rutland, that is an upcoming affordable housing project and supportive housing [1:53:17 PM] project, improvements at the arch and the like. We also have multiyear contracts that often correspond to our federal funding, where either that will be a multiyear grant or the fiscal years don't quite line up, so that was just shy of a quarter, or $31 million. We had anti-displacement funds that had been set aside within H.P.D., and we have not yet expended those. H.P.D. Is in the process of engaging their anti- displacement officer, and so those dollars rolled over into the fiscal year 2021 budget and will be utilized in the future. And then, finally, there are $4.8 million in the fiscal year 2020 budget that were set aside in the reserve for pay for success. You may recall that total reserve is $6 million. The other $1.2 million had come [1:54:18 PM] from a previous fiscal year. So I think that, you know, happy to entertain additional questions about the specifics of those sub-categories, but I think that it's important for us to be very transparent about how we're using our funds, how well we're spending down, and so that we have an understanding going forward not only in this fiscal year but as we look to fiscal year 2022 of which of those resources are still -- we still count withth but are already obligated to other purposes, and which were reallocated or are already being spent currently. So I will then move on to the next slide and speak to the $6.5 million in new G.F. Funds that [1:55:18 PM] were allocated to Austin public health for this fiscal year. So those dollars, as you know, were intended to utilize for efforts to combat homelessness with a real priority for creating services that would help permanently re-house folks who were experiencing homelessness. So as we look at those funds we see that the -- in the first year, we will have projects coming online later in the fiscal year. So, for example, we have two hotels currently under contract that we hope that will be functional in the last quarter of the fiscal year. Therefore, we will have a partial year of operations and services for those hotels. And we are looking at some other -- other uses that will come online in the coming [1:56:19 PM] months. Because those projects will not need a full year's budget, it also allows us the ability to fully fund the $3 million that council asked us to set aside for the heal initiative out of this year's fiscal budget. And we then have still not quite $2 million that -- that we have some flexibility around. That could be utilized should we identify an additional hotel during this fiscal year. It could conceivably be utilized for improvements to those hotels should that be necessary. Or for additional rapid re-housing or permanent housing needs. I have included here fiscal year 2022, acknowledging that we have not yet gone into the fiscal year 2022 budget process, because I wanted to show that when we move into a full fiscal year of services, what you see [1:57:21 PM] is that the majority of the $6.5 million is then dedicated to the services and permanent supportive housing. That is the -- probably the most scarce resource in our community so I do think that it is the most strategic use of these dollars overall. And so I would anticipate that over time for a funding source like this, that we would expect to see that be at least a plurality, I guess, of the dollars that we spend for permanent housing out of the A.P.H. Budget. Again, this is just the A.P.H. Budget. But that you would also anticipate seeing rapid rehousing dollars, operations for our hotels, and then some flexible funding that we could utilize to address needs as they come up. I do want to make one additional note before I open it to [1:58:22 PM] questions, that one of the reasons that we're able to concentrate dollars on permanent supportive housing services within this funding mix is when we are able to leverage that partnership of other funders. And in particular the housing authority of the city of Austin recently put out a request for proposal for project-based vouchers for housing first, P.S.H. And while it is the board has not yet approved that funding recommendation, it is on the agenda and we expect to have at least 50 project- based vouchers to support the operations of one of our hotels. So that's really critical. I think that it is an example of a great way for us to partner with our other jurisdictions and utilize our dollars wisely. So given that I am now at 2:00, [1:59:23 PM] I will wrap up. I'm happy to take any questions either now or later. And look forward to ongoing conversation about how we utilize these resources. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, Diana and, again, this was just meant to be an overview of that memo that was sent yesterday. As Diana mentioned there will be a work session briefing at our next meeting April 6th. Specifically around heal and then some additional updates that will come from the summit, that is kicking off as we speak. But I'll pass it back to you, mayor, and with your permission, maybe one or two questions before we excuse Diana to get to that other meeting that she has to present to. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie? >> Tovo: I have several questions about the memo, I'll try to keep it fast. Thank you, Diana, for the update. I see two references to sparrow at Rutland and one is under the [2:00:27 PM] afac, and some is at Rutland and some is for burnest place and later on it talks about $1.9 million having been committed to the sparrow at Rutland. So what is the total amount and is it coming from both of those two sources? >> So there are two sources and they are general obligation funds and housing trust dollars. It gets confusing here. The total commitment to a sparrow is $8 million on the capital fund. $4 million approximately came out of the fiscal year 2020 budget and the rest fell into this fiscal year. So that $4 million, of the $8 million, is out of general obligation bonds and the $1.9 million refers to our commitment to provide operating subsidies or rental subsidies for that building. And that has been critical to the financial health of the [2:01:27 PM] project and also to securing the tax credits that provide a good deal of the gap financing on the capital side. >> Tovo: So four of the eight came from general obligation bonds and four of the eight came from housing trust fund dollars as well as something else -- >> Yeah, let me see if I can do better. I apologize. $8 million in general obligation bonds. Approximately $4 million I believe that were in fiscal year 2020 and the balance in fiscal year 2021 which is not addressed in the memo and $1.9 million is a commitment for operating dollars that comes out of the housing trust fund, the local housing voucher program. >> Tovo: Thank you. And then the renovation of roadway at 3.5 million, do you -- do you have or could you provide us with what the estimate of renovation costs was at the time that we purchased [2:02:28 PM] it? That just seems higher than what we thought that we would spend in renovating it. >> Sure, I do not have that initial -- that initial number at the top of mind but we can certainly get it. And I know that there were some conditions discovered as we moved into the renovation, as will happen sometimes with existing buildings, that increased that cost. But we can absolutely get comparison. >> Tovo: Thank you. And city manager, I would like more information about who on our staff and what level of outside consultants we are using to really get an upfront -- a very clear estimate upfront of what our intended expenses are. We had some conversations about this early on, and I know that echo was indicated that they had that expertise, but I really need to have a better understanding of what kind of assessment that we're doing of these properties before we bought them, before we purchased them, and who on our staff has that expertise and when we don't have that expertise in house, who are we enlisting to provide [2:03:31 PM] that level. And then my last question is what is the timeframe for -- for pay for success -- for launching the permanent supportive housing that was envisioned with the pay for success? I understand that our funding model is changing but we certainly have a high level of need for those units. And so I'm wondering, we passed that several years ago, I'm just wondering where we are in achieving this? >> Correct. I do not have a concrete timeline and I look forward to providing that to you guys. I think that both we and our partners are anxious to get there. What I will say is that in the ongoing conversations, some of the discussion that is happening now is about which of our funders could be ready to begin their current funding during the current fiscal year and that it might be sequenced, right, but we have not worked out sort of [2:04:31 PM] the nuts and the bolts of that yet. So I can commit to coming back to council with a briefing on that. >> I think that you said Ann? >> Mayor Adler: I did say Ann. >> Thank you, Diana. This is very helpful and I look forward to our conversation on April 6th. My question is really for the city manager. This is just a comment as we move into the summit. I think that it would be helpful for us all, us and the community, to understand how they might contribute ideas. I know that it's to be a community conversation but there's not a mechanism at the moment for the community to actually to participate. So I just ask you as you learn more about this to let us know so that we can let our community [2:05:32 PM] members know how to participate. It's hard to in a covid world to do a summit in a way that people would normally participate, so I understand that. But what I'm not clear on is if people have ideas how they contribute them. When the summit is completed I'm excited about getting the ideas that come out of it and using those ideas to help to guide us in the community, but it won't be a guide if there's no one to listen to the community input. So that's what I'm wanting to understand. So, city manager, if you could just help us as this summit unfolds to understand how people have that opportunity to raise thoughts to that. >> Thank you, council member and we'll pass that to folks who are helping to organize this and I give a commitment to you and your colleagues as this [2:06:34 PM] discussion does happen that we're not only providing updates but also creating space within council to have conversations as they unfold as well. >> Mayor Adler: I look forward to that more complete answer too, manager. And the inquiry this is morning, Ann, they have established an email at summit, at austinchamber.com and that's where Mandy will facilitate the summit and we'll receive questions and comments. There will probably be a more complete answer that the manager can give to us but right off the bat that's an email that we can share. And I'm going to hold most of my questions on this, Diana, until the April 6th report because I think that is going to be more complete than we could do here today. And when you come back on April 6th and we're talking about funding for homelessness challenge, which I think that is -- as I go around the city [2:07:34 PM] and I talk to people, more than anything else what people bring to me -- they want to have an immediate addressing of challenges that they see. And they want to have an understanding of long term what is the plan and what is the cost and how long does it take to get there, and how do we measure success along the way. So talking about what we're spending in the context of what it would actually cost to do the job will be real important to me. And I hope that we can get into that. And in that regard, rather than just making programs fit to the allocated sums you have, I'd like to know what it would cost to actually do the heal that the council member kitchen brought up and to extend it if we wanted to actually implement that city-wide. How do we do that? I mean, what is the timeframe and what does it cost? But also the long-term plan with respect to the permanent supportive housing, and how that interrelates to the other things. So if you could make part of [2:08:35 PM] that briefing that's coming up both to address the rescue plan and the discussions with Travis county and what we had talked about identifying the additional source of funding, the T bid and the additional funding categories that come out of the rescue plan that are not part of the city or the state or county dollars. You know, the possibility of T.R.E. With the county where we both put something on a ballot if the public would want to vote for dedicated funds that could only be used for this purpose, I think that would be helpful. And then I have similar questions that I think that Kathie was asking with respect to sparrow and some of the other projects. I would like to have more detail on these items so that I can better understand them, and you don't have to go through them now. But just a lot more detail with respect to those items and then [2:09:38 PM] also how the pay for success dollars relate to whatever the informed recommendation is coming from you after participating in this summit. I don't know if some of these expenses might be picked up by potentially other funders, or what is the -- kind of the -- kind of the collective approach to this when we bring in our partners like the additional dollars they have and echo has additional dollars from the federal government as well as money raised from representative A.O.C. That I know they've indicated a willingness to put at play. And so when you come back on April 6th, I'm hoping that we get also a really broad discussion of what it would take for us to really deal both with the short term and the long term. And then let's see what dollars we need and where they may come from. [2:10:38 PM] But we have to go raise philanthropically or with our partners and the like. >> I look forward to it. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Pio? Councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. What I want to know too is what is the target population that we're focusing on to fill the roadway in. And I know that in the past that, you know, we got into trouble there at the roadway inn because it only had one sink and they had to re-do all of the floors. And then it came up short and we had to add additional funds to it so that they could complete the job there. But I'm very interested on the target population and basically all of the target population, whether they're women with children or S.O.R., and the [2:11:40 PM] strategy behind getting people like that into shelter and into permanent residences. So I'll be interested to see what kind of plan we have that we'll be looking at. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Alison, you want to close this out. >> Alter: Yes, thank you. In the memo, you described the pay for success reserve fund and it's suggesting that the financial mechanism for the project will change, but that the program design will be similar. I was really appreciative of the original financial mechanism and its creativity and I would like to know what that new model is. >> I love the original model as well, having been involved with echo from the beginning. I think that what we ran into -- and you may know a piece of this -- is that for some of the [2:12:40 PM] jurisdictions that repayment mechanism was difficult for them to wrap their heads around in terms of their ability to justify that or to logistically to make it work. The -- at present, the mechanism is likely to be much more of a direct contracting mechanism. The questions that need to be answered center around whether those would be, for example, parallel contracts or whether there might be, for example, some sort of an intergovernmental. And so the -- since there are multiple funders the sequencing and forms of those contracts need to be determined, but the investors are no longer part of the model at this stage, which [2:13:41 PM] does reduce our contraction costs to some degree. And we would be looking at thinking through when we bring in both the public and the private funders, because we have a couple of substantial foundations in the mix. And which pieces of the overall initiatives -- initiative, excuse me, that they fund. >> Alter: So what will be council's engagement in those choices since we have already set aside the money? >> So I think that our assumption is that given the shift in the financial mechanism, if you will, and that transaction, that we would certainly need to come back to council. Whether that would require formal action or not, it is unclear to me at present, partially because we're still in that planning process, but we will certainly do that. >> Alter: But the basic idea of [2:14:41 PM] targeting 200 to 250 chronically homeless individuals with a lot of services and supports, which then alleviates costs of various other systems is still going to be the basic -- >> That is correct. >> Alter: -- Underlying idea? Okay, thank you. And then I don't know if it's you or mayor Adler, if someone could speak a little bit to this summit and the goal of the summit and who is involved. And the -- the role council with respect to that -- obviously, to target and solve homelessness as a community endeavor and something that we need as a community to engage everyone and all organizations and the non-profit and the private sector, etc., but the summit itself is a little bit opaque. And since we're in work session we're not going to be there for the initial plenary, so I'm just [2:15:43 PM] hoping that someone could provide a little bit more clarity on the goals and who is participating. >> Mayor Adler: I think that in December there was a facilitated conversation between echo and the D.A.A. That they organized to try to get past what had been kind of a year's long loggerjam between them about whether or not there would be attention paid to the long-term public supportive housing component, long-term plan and developing a long-term plan which obviously costs a lot but takes a long time to do. And the theory of approaching this more in terms of the immediacy of the encampments that people see. Out of that facilitated conversation, it became apparent that those entities were moving to two very different places than they had been at historically. Creating I think an opportunity to reframe and to join together [2:16:47 PM] to come up with a solution to both of those at the same time that everybody would participate in. They brought in another facilitator out of Houston to try to advance those concepts as well as those new agreements or unions that were developing between some of the service providers and some of the groups that had been working on this. The summit I think is just the next step in trying to see where to an ever increasing the large group where those agreements might be and where there might be commitments both philanthropically or otherwise to really come up with a long-term plan that has goals and measurements along the way, as well as whatever is decided short term. So there's not a plan yet and it's more of a facilitated [2:17:48 PM] conversation. I know they tried really hard to do it at a time when it was on the couple meeting but there's a lot of people involved. But they're going to make it so that it's available to the council, together with the opportunity to be able to communicate directly with the facilitator out of Houston with respect to ideas or thoughts that we'd like to also bring to bear. I would hope that at some point, hopefully within the next couple weeks, there's a kind of a report back of the possible direction or action. I appreciate the involvement manager and your staff in helping with that as well as all of the other organizations in this city that are participating. I'm anxious to see what that is. You know, my belief is that we can't go back. [2:18:50 PM] That wasn't something that worked. But yet I think that there's a desire in the community for us to be able to do something different than what we're doing now and to be able to have for the community a new and different direction I think would be really welcome for us to be able to consider. And I think that's what is growing out of the summit. I don't know, Diane, if there's anything that you would add to that? >> Very briefly, mayor, thank you. I would say -- and I appreciate the question, councilmember alter. You know, I will say that, first, that as I entered this role, you know, something that was a priority for me -- summit or no summit -- is that we as a city and as a broader community needed to be able to clearly to articulate our strategies with some hard numbers around them. Right, where are we headed? How are we getting there? [2:19:51 PM] How are we going to do it? Not to suggest that that is, in fact, importantly not only the city in that leadership role and in that resourcing role. The summit is intended not as starting anew. We have an action plan that council endorsed in 2018, produced by echo. That action plan, however, will be strengthened by some additional specificity around how much we intend to increase our capacity, by when, and who is going -- how we're going to resource it. So I think that, you know, those are fundamentally the pieces that we hope that we come out of this summit with. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie? >> Tovo: I just want to echo council member alter's question [2:20:51 PM] and I think that it was council member kitchen who asked the manager. I think that the mayor has been on the leadership team and some of the city staff have been as well. I think that the rest of the council, manager, as you know because I have indicated this, we have very little information about who is participating and the kinds of activities that are being organized around it. And I'm certainly very eager to learn more and hope that you will make sure that we are -- are made aware of that information. It's a wonderful thing to have community organizations and community members involved in this conversation. And it eventually needs really to be one that involves a broad -- a broad array of individuals and, certainly, it needs to be a conversation about which the rest of your council is aware. >> Absolutely, councilmember. >> Mayor Adler: I also appreciate, Diana, in the memo [2:21:52 PM] that you sent out, a return to the biweekly short briefing to council on progress on this challenge. I think that will be helpful. Alison? >> Alter: I want to say very briefly, thank you to the mayor and Dianna for answering my question there. I think that it's really important for the whole community to come together to meet this challenge. You know, one of the things that we have heard, you know, over and over from consultants is a need to strengthen various elements of our system that are not always the city's functions and that the importance of leveraging funds, not just city funds, ideally state and federal funds as well and philanthropic dollars, because the magnitude of the challenge is big. [2:22:53 PM] The people's lives who are at stake and who are impacted are many. And so, you know, I just want to say I appreciate the people who are devoting time to these questions and, you know, my own feeling is that many of them may -- some of them are experts in the field and have spent a lot more time than we have, but others of them will be people who are entering the conversation, you know, and still catching up to speed. So I'm assuming that some of the summit is going to be stuff that we've already tread, and to the extent that we can bring people together and get everyone up to speed and moving forward with a strategic plan that the community as a whole can move forward, I just want to say that I appreciate the efforts to push in that direction. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie? >> Pool: Thanks. I wanted to make sure that I understand who the convenor of the summit is? On one sound it sounded like the D.A.A. And echo and on the other hand it sounded like it was the [2:23:54 PM] city. It matters who is convening it because they're the ones who are issuing the invitations and so forth. And I had noticed that there was a complete lack of information coming my way as to any aspects of this other than that it was happening, and at one point my staff and I had asked for a formal update on it. And then we did find out from other parties that it wasn't a city-convened summit but that the city, of course, is playing a role. So I don't know who to ask that question of, because I get the idea that none of us are the convenor. >> I think that the convenor was the group in the December facilitated conversation and it's echo and D.A.A. And it would be the chamber, and it would be Lynn Meredith who was brought in to help and me. And the point is really well taken about the -- the inability [2:24:59 PM] thus far for the council to be able to meaningfully participate. I'm lobbying for that within the group. I don't have the control in that room. But I think that this conversation that we're having right now I really appreciate and I think that it would be a value add in that larger conversation. The plenary that is happening today is really to bring at least some other members of the community up to where we already are. It's a pal conversation that people will be watching, Kirk Watson is moderating it, and it goes over and it will reinforce things that -- that the council has been going over in much greater detail over the last year and a half, two years. To teach vocabulary -- >> Pool: That is super helpful and I reiterate that many of us from one time or another have said explicitly that it does have to be the community and actually, frankly, beyond our [2:25:59 PM] community -- it needs to be a region and needs to be a state-wide and a national effort. The city of Austin doesn't have enough money to solve the homelessness problem from the beginning to the end and continue to sustain it forever into the future. Because new people become homeless, unfortunately. So for me the only way really forward on this in any meaningful way is if it is in literal collaboration and coordination with folks everywhere across the board. And so I'm grateful that the city is not going to be seen -- I hope -- as, frankly, the leader, because it's well beyond our capacities. And it gives people a sense that it's only the city that you should look at for any assistance and to lift it up. We have to find a way to push through that wall. And I'm hopeful that that's what one of the major outcomes of this summit will be, because I think that will be a big win for everyone here, not just the dais but the entire city. [2:26:59 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I assure you that was the design with certain benefits and drawbacks and we have identified both of them in this conversation and in the last 10 minutes. Ann? >> Kitchen: Just a final thing. The reason that I raised the question that I did is that I appreciate -- and I think that this is an important effort -- and I appreciate the folks that are putting it on. I just at the end of the day don't want to oversell as a community consensus if there isn't a route for the community to express their opinions. So that's why I ask city manager to just find -- find that route, if you can. Or just pass that along. Like I said, I really appreciate the effort that's being put INT this. It's necessary. I'm glad that as councilmember pool said that it's a community led that is important, but at the end of the day I don't want to be talking about an implementation plan that is a community consensus when the [2:28:00 PM] community didn't have the opportunity to express their thoughts. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, Dianna, thank you. Manager, you want to take us through the briefing. >> Yes, thank you, mayor and council. As we go into the next brief Chicago is also a very substantive one, this is a reflection that since late March of 2020 that we did have staff from across multiple city departments, mainly through our economic development department, that focused on economic recovery. Initially, that work was reactive, given the but since then, through the leadership of our chief economic recovery officer Veronica Briceno city staff have now focused on a more proactive economic recovery framework. One that would be ready to go in the event of a second round of stimulus funding. >> The presentation on the recommended spending plan for the American rescue plan, direct [2:29:01 PM] Briceno will present the economic resiliency framework. I will now turn it over to director Briceno. >> Thank youness sponsor and if we can pull up the first presentation, that would be great. And while they are pulling that up, I will give an overview and turn it over to David gray to talk about the opportunities that were identified in this plan, but before I do, if I could emphasize something that our city manager said. This is the work of opinion, many staff in our city, certainly the whole entire development department buzz was a part of this but more tan that, just about staff from every department the our city had a role in this so kudos to our city employees for tear hard work, putting together something that none of us have ever done before, while dealing personally with the pandemic as well so I especially, I appreciate the talent we have in our at this. Next slide, please. [2:30:02 PM] So a little of our history in the background. As you all recall, a year ago our mayor declared a state of emergency due to covid-19 on March 6th. On March 22nd our city manager established our economic recovery strike team to respond to this pandemic. The strike team has done numerous things including launching economic relief programs and services to support individuals, creative businesses and nonprofits, convening stakeholders to identify meads and recovery opportunities, provide city councilmembers with regular updates on economic response and recovery efforts, discuss economic response and recovery efforts with multiple departments and identify opportunities for economic recovery and resiliency informed by a robust qualitative and quantitative data and metric. Next slide. So the deliverables that were provided by this team we [2:31:02 PM] launched 12 assistant programs, assistance programs and distributed more than $115 million to support [indiscernible] >> Mayor Adler: We lost you. I think you went to mute. >> I think your pet muted your microphone. >> Yes. My cowker muted me. That was not very nice. We distributed more than $115 million to support Austin families, nonprofits and businesses. We created a one stop shop at www.atx recovers.com to serve as a hub of resources. We developed new supportive services -- sorry. I have a cat that really doesn't present to you. My apologies. So we developed new supportive resource services including mental health hot lines, business coaching, et cetera. And we facilitated more than 125 unique stakeholder engagements and administered three surveys. [2:32:03 PM] Next slide. So I won't go into details in each of these bullets but this summarizes the extensive research we performed over the past year including yourself as councilmembers our city department directors, working with our local chambers of commerce, administering surveys and working with numerous and industry focus groups in addition to this our staff heard a quite a bit of one on one feedback from affected parties. Next slide. With that I will turn it over to David gray our communication manager and go over the identified opportunities and who does not have a pet distracting his presentation. >> Thank you, director Briceno and govern mayor and council. It is a pleasure to present to you the 45 opportunities that were identified as part of our economic recovery and resiliency framework and again these 45 [2:33:03 PM] opportunities were identified after more than 125 stakeholder engagement sessions that we held over the course of the last year as well as data and information that we have gathered either from our economic experts, like the John -- of the world and through data we collected through the various programs that we administered over the last year. The 45 opportunities -- each one of those opportunities alliance with one of the strategic outcome areas from strategic direction 2023 so you can see the number of opportunities that Al Ryan with each sd 23 outcome area on your screen. If we go to the next slide, this next slide will show you how we think about the opportunities in terms of themes and so for kind of ease of understanding we took the 45 opportunities and we patched them into one of these seven themes, civic innovation, community enhancement, employee and business assistance, financial support, government [2:34:03 PM] service procurement, health and mental wellness and public infrastructure. If you go to the next slide, the next slide will show you feasibility icons, these feasibility icons are signs of each of the opportunities in the framework, a great icon indicates and the opportunity that will require morale stimulus or dedicated funding the yellow icon represents opportunities that require a city program I can or policy change. And the blue icon ask an icon that represents opportunities that need additional third party partnerships and I just want to pause and quick will I stay a few minute you are going to receive our recommended spending framework each of the items in the economic recovery section of that spinning framework corresponds to an item in this presentation with a green feasibility icon indicator. I also will move through tease 45 opportunities relatively [2:35:03 PM] quickly in the interest of time, so if you have any questions I am happy to take those at the end. We go to the next slide the next slide whether he start with our civic innovation opportunities and again these are the understand that were informed by those stakeholder engagement sessions. The first one on this list is to continue developing partnerships that allow us to secure enhanced covid-19 testing and tracking resources as well as supporting the distribution of the covid-19 vaccine to our historically marginalized groups, the second opportunity centers around establishing formal pathways for city of Austin staff to receive and review innovative ideas from our community and the last is to facilitate creation of financial services for unbanked austinites, especially those living in communities that don't have access to financially serving resources or maybe have an overabundance of payday and predatory lenders in their zip codes. The next slide continues with [2:36:05 PM] additional civic innovation opportunities, including taking steps to formalize our resiliency efforts so we are better prepared for future disasters, unfortunately covid and even the winter storm are not the last disasters that we are going to face so we want to formalize our resiliency efforts .. The next one on the list is launching community chance. These spaces that engage our residents and our creative community in a process of cocreating solutions for local problems. And then finding guys implement those cocreative solutions and then the last one that is part of this list is to support restore reduce the risk of infection at large and live events. The next slide begins the opportunities that we identified under the communication enhancement bucket, these include announcing grants from a centralized city source. We currently have been doing this through atx recovery --.com as our hub and we plan to do [2:37:07 PM] that as long as covid flames our community. The second is continue to create educational resources that help our businesses reopen and reopen safely, keeping employees and customers in our community safe and then the last one on this slide is to create a communications tree that would allow us to work quickly to disseminate important updates regarding covid-19 or other emergencies to our community. The next slide continues with our communication enhancement opportunities. This includes an additional communication tree specifically for our local small businesses. This would be a tree that would give them opportunities to receive information about permitted festivals and events that both small businesses pick able to access for revenue opportunities. The next one on this list is to continue with launching programs and proo -- promoting work organization development opportunities, especially workforce development opportunities aligned with currently available jobs. [2:38:07 PM] Amend living wage paying jobs also and the last one on this list is standard dived our messaging to stakeholders .. And our business patrons which is something we have been doing the collaboration with the emergency operations center and aph staff, homeland security staff and other city departments so we want to continue making sure our messaging is not only standardized but available in numerous languages. The next slid begins with the employee and business assistance opportunities, opportunities that were identified in this category include continuing to assist our local creatives, with streaming content from local arts and cultural organizations and already currently efforts underway to create more opportunities for our local creatives to stream their content. Another opportunity in this category is to continue with our collaborations with partners on work force development to prepare austinites for jobs in current industries but also jobs in newly emerging industries making sure people are set up for work force opportunities and [2:39:08 PM] employment opportunities to come. And then last one on this slide is to continue providing workshops and one on one coaching. That helps our business owners, entrepreneurs and create it was adapt their business models to the covid climate. And as you fight might be aware we have been offering free or rather no cost virtual workshops and one on one coaching to local businesses in our community, and individuals who are interested in learning more about those opportunity should e-mail us at atx recovers@austintexas.gov. >> The next slide continues with our employee and business assistance opportunities and at it includes opportunities such as creating an Austin tool lending library this would allow to borrow tutorials and equipment at no cost. This is both related to covid but also could have long-term resiliency opportunities by empowering residents and communities to be able to grow their own food or learn new skills they can continue to [2:40:10 PM] utilize, even after covid goes away. The next one on this list is to develop a local artist registry 0 do foster more opportunities for Austin create it was to get hired or job opportunities and this is something that our music and entertainment division as well as our other EdD divisions are currently working on on and the last one on this list is to enhance access to affordable and quality childcare. Throughout covid we have been really proud of ourselves in we have been able to work really closely with United Way and other community partners to support and sustain access to high quality and affordable childcare. Childcare is key to economic document and economic development and economic recovery so we want to make sure we enhance act disoas affordable and quality childcare especially for families in household whose currently don't have access to an affordable and high quality childcare center close to where they live or close to where they [2:41:10 PM] work. The next slide continues with additional employee and business assistance opportunities and includes facilitating stronger mentorship opportunities for our business owners. This is particularly important to a lot of our local small business owners who are seeking mentorship opportunities with larger or for established business owners and entrepreneurs in Austin. The text one is facilitating the creation of business cooperatives. Actually last week the economic development department disseminated a press release about a new business cooperate the if program that we are offering at no cost to anyone who is interested so you visit austintexas.gov/edd for more information on that program so this is what we started to implement in some way and the third one on this list is to support existing advocacy efforts and the development of creative coalitions, and with these create, what they do is empower our creative sector professionals to cross promote their work as well as to [2:42:12 PM] collaborate on common issues of importance. And so in short this is a way to don't to invest and support our vital creative ecosystem. The next slide continues with some additional employee assistance opportunities and I promise these are the last ones for this category. And these include offering workforce development scholarships to unemployed or underemployed individuals who commit to working locally in their trained field or sector so we recognize there I can some individuals who fight not be interested in the workforce development opportunities that we provide or that we provide in partnership with a nonprofit and so we want do empower people to make decisions and to pursue careers that are both meaningful to them and that are also in depanned for the local economy. The next one on this list is to bring our house holds with tools and resources to grow their own food. This is not in substitution of trying to attract grossers to communities that are currently [2:43:13 PM] food deserts but is to make sure that we are providing our house holds with the tools and the resources to be able to grow their own food and sustain themselves the last one on this list is continuing to foster collaboration between Austin paced businesses to share goods and services. What this fight look like as an example would be fostering a convenient space, convening a space, let's say a local dry-cleaner and local accountant shop are able to meet and then they decide, hey, I will do your dry cleaning once a month if you help me with my accounting and my bookkeeping and my taxes so this was an opportunity that was actually identified specifically by small business owners in our community to, so we want to thank the small business owners for sharing their input on this one. The next portion of the presentation if you go to the next slide, this deals with the financial support opportunities that were identified through our stakeholder engagements and these include providing [2:44:15 PM] additional financial assistance to individuals households, employees, businesses, and a our nonprofit organizations so we remember to include our nonprofit organizations on the list. And since advising adaptations to produce innovations and improvements to our commercial cites which benefit employees as well as customers. Continuing our dedicated reheave and recovery funding for our vital live music venue I have as well as our musicians and our create it was. And temporaries, creatives. >> And waving certain permits and fees for businesses that are reoening safely. This has a dollar sign next to it because we do recognize if we reduce or waive per pits and fees that will have an impact to the department's budgets so we want to make sure we are leveraging funds to make our city .. And our departments whole as we work through reduced barriers that might hinder some businesses from being able to reopen at all or reopen safely. [2:45:17 PM] >> The next slide focuses on our government procurement opportunities, so this includes entering into the city of Austin master supplier agreement for covid-19 rapid testing, be morgue intention fall about how we increase the amount of city procurement to small and local businesses, and I do want to containing the city manager who invited our department a few months ago to speak with other directors about ways that you can collectively increase the amount of city procurement going to small and local businesses so thank you Mr. City being for being really forward thinking in that regard. And also to procure food from our local restaurants and our businesses to feed insecure households instead of relying on contracts with larger food providers such as the Ciscos of the world. The the next slide focuses on mental health challenges and [2:46:17 PM] opportunities that were identified in the engagement. These include continuing provide enhanced mental health resource for Austin. As you arecall we partnered and launched a people wellness support line towards the end of last year and integral care was also providing enhancement to wellness services and both of those services were very, underutilized so we want to make sure we are supporting people's mental wellness as well as addressing their financial needs. And that same thing we want to continue to provide housing and meals to our covid-19 patients experiencing homelessness, and we want to continue to offer safety trainings and safety guidance to our business owner and our creative professionals so they can reopen safely and one idea that came out of that was also potentially creating a faith reopening certification program which would essentially highlight businesses that have committed to going above and beyond whatever the state pan dates are and really putting the [2:47:19 PM] health and safety of their employees, of their customers and of our community first. The xt slide covers a few additional health and people wellness opportunities and includes continuing to promote our existing health regulation requirements in combination with pacificking and social scansing as an an an initial if the that consumers can easily recognize and continuing to research and invest in innovative technology such as automated contact tracing. The next slide deals with our last thematic area so I promise you are almost at the end. So the next slide should be our public infrastructure opportunity slide. So I will wait for the driver to catch up. There we go. So the public infrastructure opportunities include collaborating with government agencies and community part hers to close the digital divide. We all know that access to internet and access to high quality internet is particularly important last year and that importance will not go away even [2:48:21 PM] when employees return to offices and children return to school so we want to continue our collaboration with our community agencies and groups to close the digital divide in Austin. We also identified opportunities to continue permitting parking spaces and other outdoor spaces for other uses. There is a lot of interest the shop the block program, and so our business community and some of our gone business the residents asked if we we would consider continuing to permit those spaces for other uses. There was and the opportunity that really centered around expediting affordable housing development, opportunities that focused on expediting sidewalk and bike route development which will enhance equitable access to goods and services as well as along with the city's vision zero priorities of reducing fatal and serious injury crashes on our roadways. And expediting temporary rezoning to activate underutilized spaces was an additional opportunity [2:49:22 PM] identified. This includes the last of the 45 opportunities. These are the last ones for public infrastructure and they include allowing flexible timing restrictions for things like marathons at outdoor events, leveraging public works and transportation projects to offer short-term employment and economic security to austinites. Permanently extending and ex-banding the healthy streets program which provides safe options for people to use low traffic areas for activities and last but certainly not least, continuing to find ways to repurpose our city properties to offer short-term benefits for local business owners and creatives. I have two more slides before I hand it back over to director Briceno. The next slide speaks to our strategic anchors. You know, we talked a lot about opportunities. We didn't talk as much in this presentation about implementing all of these opportunities, but as we transition from the community conversations to identify opportunities, and into the community work of [2:50:23 PM] implementing said opportunities, the anchor -- there are certain anchors in which our work is grounded and these are the same anchors from sd 23. Which include leading with equity, affordability, innovation, sustainability and resiliency, for active protection and community trust and relationships. Next slide, please. This last slide is just in terms of our next steps where do we go from here? We have had a year of conversations in virtual -- and virtual dialogue with community members from all backgrounds and all corners of the city, and those conversations are not over. We recognize that the road ahead remains uncertain, we are kind of building the plane as we are flying it so to say and we are using our best, most innovative thinking to guide our steps as we move forward. But we know road ahead is unprecedented so we invite community to visit our speak up Austin page as well as atp recovery.com to read the economy [2:51:26 PM] and recovery framework. And there are more tools on the web page where austinites can provide feedback to director Briceno or myself or other members of our strike team and we want to have on going dialogue with the community and billions providing ongoing updates through the week of Austin page regarding Austin's local economy and want to make sure our community is aware of what unemployment and employment is looking like. Who is still unemployment and who is getting quhoid, what sectors are rebounding and what sectors are continuing to struggle because we know that, number one, recovery is not going to mean the same thing for everybody. We have to be really intentional about helping our post marginalized and historically underserved communities rebound and number 2, we know that just getting back to where we were in February of 2020 is pot good enough, because even in February 2020 we had members of our community who were struggling and so the ongoing updates is our way of being very transparent and providing our [2:52:27 PM] community with the information that folks need to help us all work together to ensuring everybody recovers from covid-19. The last but not least is beginning next month we are going start convening interdepartmental teams. These are teams that will take a deeper dive into each of the opportunities I explained today as well as the feedback that we hope to receive from our community in the coming days and weeks ahead. And begin identifying opportunities that are right for implementation and can be implemented pretty swiftly. Identifying opportunities that might no longer be relevant because the conditions have changed, and identifying new opportunities based on on going conversations with our residents, with our neighboring jurisdictions and of course with all of you, mayor and council. And so with that, I know I said a lot and try toyed say it all quickly but I will hand it back off to either director Briceno or city manager Spencer -- and thank you for your time. .. >> Thank you, David. [2:53:28 PM] And I will see if director Briceno, do you want to quickly -- we will open this up for questions first before we go to the next presentation. Thank you for the reminder W that does the city want to include, Dr. Briceno before we open it for questions. >> I don't think I have anything to add. I am happy to take questions. >> Mayor Adler: I guess I have more of a -- question and I don't know whether the questions should come now or at the end of the next presentation. Obviously, this is -- this represent as lot of work and in terms of the -- in terms of identifying for us kind of focused way of looking at just the depth of needs and chance and opportunities as exists in the city, this is a really orbit document and I see this document as having an application for us [2:54:33 PM] in many different ways. And as we engage in strategic planning effort, to see if we are still prioritizing the right things and in terms of actions that we take as councilmembers may want to approve or work that committees may want to work on, this is a lot of work, and a lot being done. My sense in reading it is that I only wish we could deal with all of these at the same time and at once, but the breadth here is to great to make it so that is not realistically going to be possible if we are trying to do more than just touch things but actually drive them to measures. So I am going to hold off on my comments and hold off introducing the resolution 111, which I think really goes 0 next steps, median next steps with respect to how we approach the [2:55:37 PM] spending of the -- these dollars and other dollars that might become available to us. But I did want to before we passed to recognize I think the value of this work. Anything else, colleagues before we go on to the American rescue plan? Kathie. >> Tovo: Just a quick one. One of the things that captured -- two questions. I was looking for this presentation. I feel as if we may have received it or perhaps we we haven't. We did receive it this morning? Is that one of the two presentations? Okay. I just need find it in my in-box again. Thank you. Mr. Gray, I had a quick question for you about one of the items that you mentioned because I know my staff and I have spoken about it with EdD staff a few times during this last year. I am really glad to see one of the ideas that -- referred to [2:56:38 PM] utility lieferg our local restaurants to help with what you are describing as the eat initiative or other food for individuals experiencing homelessness and I wonder if you had a thought about why, I know it came up a couple of types and my staff has talked to public health and talked to EdD and I know there were some conversations going on. Can you hen us understand what some of the challenges have been in moving forward in that direction and how you would surmount those in the proposal you have brought forward? >> I was not directly involved in those conversations around the initiative I might have to refer to director Briceno or to another colleague, because I want do make sure you get an accurate answer to that question so Dr. Briceno, do you mind if I pass it off to you. >> Sure. Councilmember, we worked closely with the health department on that initiative. I think that as of a lot of our lessons learned from the past year I think moving forward, [2:57:40 PM] working out, making it more of an organized effort in that regard, but we agree with you in that it has been an important connection of our local restaurants to our schools and a great opportunities for our local restaurants to continue to stay afloat in this trying time so I think the biggest challenge sat coming to mind and I will ask -- who is on our call as well to jump in if I am overlooking something. The biggest challenges to relate to having that concerted effort in a more organized effort as we continue forward. >> Well, just to kind of backtrack, we had talked I think including at some work sessions with director Hayden Howard on the dais we had asked you know, could that same model be applied to the Ed dinesh if the so the meals that are being prepared for individuals experiencing homelessness and some of the food .. That utility lives request local framework .. That your framework pow details and that was quite a while ago and I know there was you know, when we followed up there were -- we [2:58:40 PM] would receive the response that you were looking into it, you being the city, I mean, it was a couple of different departments and I think that may be one of the chance, right? It was -- these were -- and with EdD, but it seems to me that idea had come up multiple times and that it was being explored to shift to using that same kind of model for the caregiver meals to use with our own food distribution services that the city of Austin was doing so I am wondering, I am wondering why that didn't move forward and again what the challenges were that didn't allow it to focus forward and how we were going to sure powbt them -- surmount them in the proposal you are bringing forward. >> Councilmember, I don't know enough about the chance that occurred before. I do know as part of you know, they are allowing things at city departments and staff were asked to do last year, you know, we [2:59:42 PM] all made a really good honest effort to do those things and last year we were also really learning, right, thousand respond to covid, what part of our city system were flexible and where can we be innovative and creative and there are a lot more things we know now that quite frankly we didn't know last year and there is new knowledge we have new that we didn't have last year. As part of the where do we go from here with these recommendations, part of that is having more conversations between EdD staff, our city's food manager, and our community partners to say may we recognize there is a need, this quit frankly is something that we have been talking about doing for a while, maybe it has been I lotted by aph, I am not totally sure but how do we get this particular idea off of paper and into implementation and if there are issues that exist whether it is maybe a health regulation or a policy thing or maybe it was a funding thing, then where are [3:00:43 PM] the opportunities for us to bring the resources and the support we need in order to move past toes hurdles and get the program going? So again, I wasn't directly involved in the Ed dinesh I was the and those conversations, I just -- I do know from some of the other places and spaces I have been privileged enough to serve in a there was just a lot of things we didn't know last year that we do have so much more information and a better understanding this year and it just came with us trying to rebound from the sucker punch to the face of covid and now being able to take a little bit more of a proactive response around planning and rolling out projects and programs. And director Briceno I hope I didn't over step or say anything I don't think so please let me know if I have kind of gone off a little bit but I know it is part of our implementation is what we are looking at is capturing the lessons we learned from 2020 and really using those to empower us to do even more programs for the community moving forward in 2021. >> Tovo: Yes, that all makes [3:01:45 PM] sense and I get what you are sake. I understand there is a lot of really tremendous work that had to be done and you had to react to the situation, so all of that makes, you know -- that seems very reasonable. I think that it is -- I am real interested in that program and I think you may have hit on some of it. I don't know if the way in which it is being distributed means it has to be meals and it has -- some of it has to be nonperishables and pain that can and come from the local supply, I don't know, but I am really interested in kind of figuring out just tracking it down, not to say, gosh it should have happened earlier but just tracking it down to try to figure out what were those impediments and how do we get it moving forward in so thanks for those thoughts and we will follow up too with some of the other parties who I know were in that conversation. >> Sure. Our pleasure. >> >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. [3:02:45 PM] , You know,, this is as good a time as any to just pause .. And thank our staff throughout the city who stepped out you know, during last year and really innovated and got up and running all sorts of programs that we had no idea we would need and did it in a super pastime frame and rose to the indication to by strot and innovate and you know, I just want to thank you all for all of that work. Just sort of seeing this now without a chance to fully digest it, I don't know that I fully understand kind of where this takes us from here. Itit sounded like we would be receiving a memo and probably make sense or us to read that and reflect on it, you know, there is well organized into these different buckets but at the same time the ideas are widely varying magnitudes of resources and other pieces which just reflect the variation of the many challenges that we [3:03:49 PM] face, but like I see these all as interesting ideas, I am not sure, you know, if we are being asked to adopt this. If we are being -- like there are procedural questions I have like -- that I would welcome further elaborate on if that is not in the memo, so I can understand what this represents beyond kind of a snapshot of the ideas and the thinking where we are at at this point in terms of what we are being -- what we are being asked. >> Counsels, we have not supplied a me Poe on the subject matter just yet. Do we have quite a bit of documents available on -- Austin page but I am happy to summarize that and provide that in a memo to mayor and council, including next up so you have a clear idea of what is moving forward. I also would like to add, I don't think we said it in our presentation, but this is a than shot. We have a document that goes into tails in every one of these [3:04:50 PM] opportunities, so that will be a useful resource for council as well. >> Alter: Yes. What I am struggling with is we have a lot of different pieces and you know, -- is this like a bucket of things you are saying we want to do all of these things and we want your briefing on council or are these like, this is a menu of things a and then over the course of the next six months we will be deciding which one of these we do? You know, and if we don't want to prioritize one thing but we want to prioritize another we think we should be putting more money in one bucket, like what -- and maybe you are you are not ready for that process and maybe this is just a first step but I am not fully understanding kind of that piece of and maybe we haven't presented that yet and maybe that's why I am not understanding it. And at one point I would appreciate that clarification. >> So we do see this as a guiding document. We see as when we started down [3:05:51 PM] the path of looking at recovery a years ago, honestly, we never thought we would be here a year later but we initially started off with what is our plan? What is our recovery framework looking like? We have been able to build upon that throughout the year as we executed relief programs as we heard fed back from various stakeholders and community builders so we would like to use this as a plan that guides us in terms of any additional dollars that are provided or as we look at solutions that don't require dish resources. In the immediate you will see as we roll into the next presentation we have tied what we are proposing as a spending plan for the federal funds that we have just recently been allocated to use the principles in this plan to identify how we prioritize those dollars so we see that as a continuing effort of having this document provide some guidance in how we prioritize relief and resources to our community. >> Alter: When you say [3:06:52 PM] principles in here, I see buckets and I see ideas, but I am not sure that I see the principles that are beyond what is in our strategic plan. So what are you referring to when you talk about principles? And again I just thought, and this may all with like -- this may be all totally self-evident once I I deal with it but that's what I would like to understand. >> I am sorry. I have a cat light going on now. So maybe principles was the wrong word. We identified them as opportunities in the plan so when we are looking the he host opportunity that fall into the bucket you are talking about then that's where I see our guidance coming as we are moving forward with a spending plan -- any dollars that we identify for recovery. >> Alter: Okay. I am going stay with this and listen to the next presentation and the 111 conversation. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before we get there? [3:07:55 PM] Ann. >> Kitchen: Yes. And I want to -- >> Mayor pro tem, I am going to be moving, so I I am going to lose connection here. Why don't you take over and I will try to get back in by phone. >> Do you have a cue going is. >> Kitchen: I think he called me on. >> Mayor Adler: And then the plan is to get to the American rescue plan, next to that with 111. >> Thank you. Okay. Just so we can move along quickly I do want to -- I do want to echo what my colleagues have said, I really appreciate the amount of work that went into bringing this forward and the thoughtfulness and I know you engaged with a lot of different groups and departments. So I questions are simply -- my question, I share the questions councilmember alter raised just so -- and I will be looking [3:08:56 PM] [indiscernible] The second question is related to how this initiatives or efforts, how this relates to the results that we are trying to get. Do we have an analysis of the problem so to speak we are trying to address? And do we have an analysis of how these efforts are going to get results for us? In other words, you know, we have a goal that -- and we have a fairly highly stated goal, which is good, a high level statement of goal, but how do we know that this set of fish I was the are going to get us there? Is there an analysis that was done or that is maybe coming that we can see, well if we do, you know, five of these ten you know, we are going to get this kind of results or -- anyway, that's what I am looking for, I am trying to connect these [3:09:57 PM] initiatives to the results we are trying to achieve in some kind of objective fashion you know, related to analysis of you know, from a financial perspective or number of jobs perspective or fun of people health perspective, whatever the measures are, because I think that we need something like that in order to to make any decisions about priorities. >> Counsels, I think, at least on my end Y are, your screen froze momentarily so I was unable to hear your first question. For your second question, though, the framework, the complete framework document itself does include a chapter that speaks to performance indicators that we will be monitoring and tracking over time, it includes everything from indicators you are probably really familiar with already, such as unemployment rate and housing market, all the way down to indicators such as self- sufficient at this index to Austin households and appeals, have three months worth of savings in a bank account that [3:10:57 PM] is not a predatory account. And who are those families? Just aggregated by race and zip code and other key data. We have not done the specific type of analysis I think you are asking for which is, you know, how much does that move the needle on any one of these indicators? And I am not totally sure how we would do that type of regression analysis but we have some people the EdD who I Poe probably Poe more than I do. My colleague Casey Smith is probably somewhere laughing because she probably knows how to do it but we are committed to making sure that you know, as any one of these opportunities gets implemented that they are driving us towards demonstrating some realistic out comes tied to the indicators that are included in the recovery document. And then I mentioned during the regs really quickly that every quarter, we might do it bimonthly depending how much data we are able to get and how [3:11:58 PM] quickly we can get the data but at least quarter I are doing an economic update via the speak up Austin page so that up state really meant to give the council and the public a sense of how well our city doing in terms of the indicators as well as you know, the programs that we are implementing whether or not we consider they are having an impact in some of these areas. But I do joys. I missed the first question that you asked so if you don't mind restating it. >> Kitchen: It was really all one question. And so what I am hearing you say that there are indicators to measure the output so to speak and/or outcomes for particular initiatives. But my question is. Do you have a -- to reach each initiative -- and -- that's the part I am not sure if I heard you saying we had -- >> Understood. So the short answer is no. [3:13:00 PM] Or each opportunity we have not established like a clear goal, something like, you know, 50 percent of Austin businesses enroll in a city class within the last six months. There are some indicators that have very clear goals, such as the opportunity around launch ago live music portal so part of the goal there is number one can we get -- and then there are some additional goals that are tied to specific pdd division out comes, such as equity. We want to make sure if there are creatives we are using a live music portal or who are usingn't an artist registry those really reflect the diversity and beauty and richness of our local creative economy. And some of these goals will kind of morph over time and part of the reason why I didn't want to set them in stone today is because the road ahead is still some what uncertain and so we want to make sure that we are being adaptive the our approach to these opportunities so that [3:14:00 PM] we are able to best respond to the real needs of the community. Is that -- I hope that makes sense kitchen no, yes. That is very helpful. I think I am understanding. I would just ask you all to consider taking the next step which is setting those goals. In other words, if we don't know what we are trying to achieve then we may know that we produced 10 widgets but we don't know if we needed 10 you know, to get what our you know, to get what our community needs. So I am hopeful -- so I get it and it is great we are able to measure and we have targets for the individual anybody I was, but that doesn't help me decide which of these to use because I don't know how they they contribute to what we are trying to achieve, so I would -- is that something you all can do or can [3:15:02 PM] you all consider that and just let me know? >> Councilmember, we are happy to evaluate it in that sense, I would add a lot of at we are talking about in the recovery framework rolls into the goals we established as a department as economic development so I think that's a good starting point and we can continue that discussion when we look at economic recovery. When we are talking about the dashboard -- I am sorry, the a presentations we will be doing quarterly that David mentioned I would add to that this whole discussion all of this will be with transparency so we have seen that in the past year of our dashboards, dashboard each one of the relief programs. We want to continue as we are having this data conversation to make sure that we are being France parent so that everyone can see the work sating sat being done in real-time or as close to real- time as possible. We are happy to take a look at establishing goals and how can we make that data more meaningful for you as a council and for us as administrators as we are moving forward. Kitchen okay, well [3:16:06 PM] forward. >> Kitchen: Okay, I will let others ask questions. But the bottom line is okay, you know, bottom line is if I really want us to understand what we're trying to work towards. And I think that's necessary to really know whether we're being successful. >> Thank you, all right, colleagues, anybody else have questions before we move on to the next briefing? Councilmember Fuentes? >> Fuentes: Yeah, just a comment, I really appreciate the robust community engagement that you have laid out here for these dollars. I would suggest when you -- I don't know if I missed this part, but if there is an advisory council that you will be updating or including in the engagement process, if we can be intentional and deliberate about ensuring that we have various and diverse stakeholders as part of that council who represent different perspectives of the everyday austinite, really looking past, you know, not just our chambers of commerce, but other individuals, non-profits, [3:17:07 PM] just having a holistic perspective to provide feedback. I really like the giving the quarterly updates, I think that will go a long way, so just wanted to -- to emphasize that suggestion. Thank you. >> Councilmember, we did include quite a robust group of individuals and we're happy to share that information with your office. We not only had our focus groups that we were very cognizant about making sure that we had all perspectives at the table. But we also met one-on-one with a series of non- profits, of entities to make sure that the -- that this work reflects a diverse perspective in our community. [Multiple voices] >> We will definitely continue to do so. >> If I can quickly go off of that, we literally went through the virtual phone book and sought out people who we know do not engage in city processes and probably don't have any relationship with city hall because those are the voices that we really wanted to hear from. [3:18:07 PM] We knew it was important to hear from our everyday people in addition to our close non-profit partners and our chamber partners. I would also be remiss if I didn't say that the economic recovery and resiliency framework document is completely translated into Spanish. As well as the -- we have an abbreviated version of the document which is also completely translated into Spanish and we are happy to work with our community partners to translate the document into other languages as needed. Typically we translate into about five or six languages, in the interest of time we only got this one into Spanish but we are also happy to provide it in other languages as needed. >> Thank you all very much, really appreciate the presentation and for -- for answering all of our questions, if there are no other questions, it appears that we are ready to move into the American rescue plan presentation. >> Thank you, councilmembers, again, [3:19:07 PM] before we transition I want to commend staff for the incredible work that went into this. As you noted, there was a lot of engagement and discussion with so many stakeholders and I just really appreciate the extensive work that our staff has put into it. Now as we move into this discussion, as you are aware, on March 11th president Biden signed into law the 1.9 trillion rescue plan. As you will see in this presentation, there are many layers of federal funding, not just to cities across the country, but also to local, state and federal agencies and direct assistance to households. This passage of this stimulus plan is welcome news, but it also was previously discussed in the -- in the former administration. But at that time it wasn't clear that any stimulus would be provided at the local level to cities. But as you were briefed, staff have been working in earnest to develop a framework of providing funding for a variety of [3:20:07 PM] community sectors who have been economically suffering through this pandemic. But because of this advance work on the framework as well as having similar discussions with council and allocating the cares act, as well as general fund money, staff was able to develop a recommended spending plan provided to council on March 12th, one day after the American rescue plan was signed into law. Many in our community are unemployed, underemployed, businesses have closed, gone bankrupt or on the brink of financial challenge. Keeping this in mind, our staff did not want to hesitate in providing the recommended spending plan. Because of the breadth of today's briefing, there will be several lead presenters, a chief economic recovery officer Veronica Briseno will kick it off and coordinate presenters from that point forward. I will turn it back over to director Veronica Briseno. >> Thank you, Spencer. So we are happy to be here today to present to you the spending plan for the American rescue plan. We do have a series of presenters. We will start with the [3:21:08 PM] intergovernmental relations office who will be represented by our federal lobbyist [indiscernible] And I'm going to kick it over to him in the interest of time. >> Good afternoon, it's good to see all of you. I haven't seen a lot of you certainly in person for a long time. I'm going to -- this is a very, very broad overview. It's I think a $1.9 trillion bill in five slides. On slide three, if we could advance to slide 3, thank you. This is just a very broad overview of -- of how that $1.9 trillion in the American rescue plan act is allocated. You will notice the biggest chunk of money there is $424 billion to mail $1,400 checks to all taxpayers up to $75,000 for single and [3:22:09 PM] $150,000 for couples. And that's just shy of 22% of the 1.9 trillion. Then the second largest pot of money is the $360 billion in state and local fiscal assistance. That comes in at about 18% of the overall package. And then you will see tax credit to families is a large one, schools and higher education, of course, vaccination and public health. So it's a very broad ranging bill. Next slide, please. Then these are just -- estimated is the key word here. No federal agency has actually done a formula run on any of this, so these are just estimates. But I think they are pretty good estimates and they certainly give us -- we're well in the ballpark. But the city's share of that $360 billion is [3:23:09 PM] $195.8 million. Travis county will receive $247 million from that program. And then both the city and the county will receive a direct allocation, another round of emergency rental assistance, that's on top of the emergency rental assistance that was included in the bill passed at the end of last year. And then the city as a home recipient, there's $5 million in the bill for homelessness prevention and assistance located via the home program. We estimate the city's allocation there is about $11 million. Next slide, please. Then this is just to -- to see -- this kind of -- highlights the breadth of the state and local fiscal assistance. The first four entities there on the list, including the city, will receive a direct allocation from the treasury as -- as their cbdg [3:24:10 PM] entitlement cities, or as in Travis county a county. But you will notice every other incorporated government in the county will receive money, but they will receive it as a suballocation from the state. But you kind of get the idea of the breadth of how that $360 billion is going out. Next slide, please. And then this is just a broad overview, small business assistance, well, not only small business, but mostly small business assistance is a big part of the bill. There's $25 billion in restaurant revitalization fund grants for restaurants, targeted to small restaurants. This bill includes another 1.25 billion, so bringing to 16.125 billion for shut terred venue grants. Again those are small. Includes another 7.25 billion for the paycheck protection program. $15 billion for economic injury disaster loans and then a subset, the -- $8 [3:25:15 PM] billion for airports, including your airport, a subset of that, 800 million of that 8 billion is set aside to assistance for airport concessions which will flow through the city. That's just -- you know, there's another 15 or $16 billion in assistance to the airlines for payroll help. There's provisions in there that -- that provides another nine months of tax cuts per paid sick and paid family leave. Expands that tax credit to local governments, by the way. And then a provision that exempts most of this assistance on this page from federal taxes. Next slide, please. Then another big -- big part of this bill, the $1,400 payments have gotten the bulk of the media coverage, but this -- the first one at the top of this page on aid to households, the child tax credit expansion is starting to get a lot of coverage and rightly so. That's a major one-year [3:26:16 PM] expansion of the child tax credit. There's an expansion of the earned income tax credit. An expansion of the childcare independent tax credit. Those are all just for 2021, the bill includes increased afford air act subsidies for 2021 and 2022 and supplemental funding for a wide away of nutrition assistance program. This is a $1.9 trillion bill. Not included supplemental funding for the childcare development block grant which the Texas workforce commission will get a share of that. Another $500 million on top of the 400 million in the previous bill for water and wastewater utility assistance. There's money for [indiscernible] Low income home energy assistance program. So on. So very wide ranging bill. We have sent both the city staff and then via our weekly report we sent a more detailed summary that's still a little bit of a work in progress, but at this point it's getting to be [3:27:17 PM] pretty comprehensive. One that provides a lot more detail on what's in the bill. Of course, we will be following up as we get more information in sending that to the city. And then I think I would -- I am supposed to pass it on to Diane. Thank you. >> That's correct. Diane, interim budget officer will take it to start discussing the framework for the city of Austin. >> Thank you, Veronica. Thank you, Ralph. Interim budget officer. Thank you for the opportunity to present staff's covid-19 spending framework to you. Next slide, please. Before getting into the meat of the presentation, I want to acknowledge all of the hard work and staff time that went into preparing a plan that we felt would represent council's goals. This work was accomplished not only by the directors listed here, but also many of their staff. And I just wanted to also take that moment to thank them for this work. Next slide. [3:28:23 PM] The spending plan being presented today totals $236.4 million. As Ralph mentioned, the city of Austin will be receiving 195.8 million. Split evenly between this year and -- this fiscal year and next. In addition, there is just over $40 million available in the general fund reserves. Spending on this plan is weighted more heavily towards fy 2021 at 138.5 compared to the 97.9 million in fy 2 '2. When we were developing this plan, we looked to provide as much relief to the community as quickly as possible. Spending plan recommendation commits additional resources to individuals and communities impacted by the covid-19 pandemic. It continues economic support efforts to small businesses, creatives, childcare facilities and non-profits. And it addresses the drastic revenue loss in the hotel occupancy tax, including expected cuts to cultural [3:29:23 PM] arts contracts. Because housing and homelessness assistance is being provided through separate grants, this spending framework does not include these costs; however, director truelove will be discussing those funding sources at the end of this presentation. Included in fy 2 '2is a contingenciment of $39.2 million, which is 20% of the total arp award amount. This unallocated amount can be used in the event that unanticipated needs arise. The same was with the coronavirus relief funds and proved to be very helpful. We were able to respond to those changing needs quickly without difficulty. Next slide. This graph shows the relative funding amounts between each category. Economic recovery is receiving nearly 50% of the total available funds at [3:30:27 PM] $104.6 million. Hot funded services are 38.3 and [indiscernible] Is the framework represents the discretionary funding only. Public health response is shown at 44.3 million because it does not include FEMA's share of those costs and it also doesn't include the -- the cost to provide vaccinations. The total public health costs including the non-discretionary amounts is $126.8 million. The remaining $39 million is the amount being set aside for contingencies or for future allocations. As I mentioned, we currently have $40.6 million in the general fund reserves above the 12% level. I want to take a few minutes to walk through the changes that led to this surplus, when this year's budget was adopted we anticipated [3:31:29 PM] having $113.6 million in reserves at the end of this fiscal year. This amount was based on an estimate of how much revenues we expected to receive and how much our general fund departments would spend in fy '20. Both of these estimates ended up being conservative. The loss in sales tax revenue, while significant, was lower than originally projected. At the same time, savings from the hiring freeze and expanded closures resulted in $10 million in savings. We also have the benefit of the coronavirus relief funds. By offsetting public safety salaries, we were able to reserve $24.9 million for the fy 21 public health costs. In addition Travis county used a portion of their relief funds to reimburse the city for $7.4 million in shared expenses. The impact to the reserves at that time was an increase of $50.7 million. In October, council appropriated funding from the reserves for rise 2.0 and food access relief. [3:32:30 PM] Net impact of those actions was to lower the reserves by $10 million, bringing the total reserve balance that is above the financial policy threshold to $40.6 million. Next slide. A couple of items that I would like to bring to your attention. First, the city still has not received a final determination from FEMA on the eligibility of the cost for the non-congregant shelters or the cost recovery percentage. Of this estimate assumes all non-congress innocent shelter will be reimbursed at 75%. The reserves will drop by $12 million which will reduce the reserve ratio to approximately 11%. Alternatively, if all costs are eligible for full reimbursement, reserves will increase by $4 million. Second, the status provided here does not have the benefit of a completed general fund assessment for [3:33:30 PM] fy 21. Work is currently ongoing to develop revenue and expending estimates and will be part of the financial forecast that you will receive next month. Next slide, next slide, also. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide since we will be reviewing the costs that make up each of these line items over the next couple of slides. However, I do want to mention that the costs for vaccinations are not included in this framework. The vaccines themselves will be procured and distributed by the federal government at no cost to enroll covid-19 vaccine providers of which the city is one. In addition, the work and the associated cost to support the distribution and administration of these vaccines are eligible for 100% public assistance through FEMA. The city estimates it will cost $45.8 million and FEMA has already appropriated $22.8 million of that. Council will be asked to accept and appropriate these funds, the vaccination funds, at a council meeting [3:34:31 PM] in the next few weeks. I also want to note that on this table and in the next few slides, are inclusive of both FEMA's and the city's share of expenses. Next slide. Total emergency management costs are $7.6 million. The bulk of this funding, $7.2 million is for the emergency operations center. The $1.4 million in the protection of vulnerable populations is staff cost associated with the [indiscernible]. This is one of those examples where the funding could accurately be recorded within multiple categories, but in this case either here or in shelters and quarantine facilities. Also $400,000 for the leasing and maintenance of hygiene stations. Testing, the second biggest category totals $21.7 million. It includes lab costs, the running of testing sites, tests and other medical [3:35:31 PM] supplies. Also included here are costs for software enhancements, licenses and it contract labor necessary for data management. Shelters and quarantine facilities are estimated to cost $22.2 million through September. Included are the city's isolation facilities at $9.6 million, the pro lodges at 5.8 million and alternate care site at 6.8 million. This estimate reflects a gradual phasing out of these facilities which we are beginning to see with the closing of the alternate care site. Next slide. Included in the $13.9 million for public health and safety measures is $16 million in staff costs for epidemiology and public health preparedness and another $2.6 million for staffing agencies and overtime. Public information spending includes media buys for public service announcements, targeting families with infants, children and youth. And other hard to reach populations. The final $1.5 million is [3:36:31 PM] for personal protective equipment. The miscellaneous category is primarily the staffing cost for administrative support and community services and finally two items are funded in food assistance, $3.9 million for aid caregiver meals program and $2.5 million for the eat program. Next slide. Just want to note that the estimate of FEMA's contribution was derived in collaboration with staff from Haggerty based on a preliminary assessment of each type of expenditure. However the actual reimbursement amounts will be determined by FEMA upon review of expenditure reports. And I also want to mention that the city and county are currently negotiating a shared cost interlocal. There is the possibility that the city -- the city's expenses could be offset by county participation, however, currently there is insufficient information on [3:37:31 PM] which to base an estimate. Next slide. At this point I'm going to turn this back over to Veronica. >> Thank you, Diane. Council, I will take these next few slides to review the recommended spending plan for the $104.6 million towards economic recovery resources, you will see as I present this information, we took the opportunities that we just discussed in our previous presentation and highlighted how we could prioritize those resources in that -- with that guiding document. So before I move forward, I just wanted to highlight the accomplishments with cares and general reserves that we had during our pandemic. We have distributed more than 115 million and served over 204, 580,000 households and 640 businesses. There's continued need in 2021 we are quite aware of this. 82,990 individuals still [3:38:33 PM] unemployed. There have been 58,200 jobs lost in the leisure and hospitality sector in particular. And there's been about a 35% decrease in business open rates since August 2020, finally about a 65% to 75% decrease in open rate within the leisure and hospitality sector in particular since August 2020. So -- so the -- the good news is the American rescue plan can fund the first two years of economic recovery and resiliency framework. Next slide, please. The first recommendation that we have is in regards to individual assistance, we are recommending that $20 million be located towards -- allocated towards individual assistance, this is within within of our opportunities that ask us to provide financial assistance to individual households and employees. It can be in the form of programs like rise 3.0, also [3:39:33 PM] look to having ways to provide more resources to households in need and the -- the funds can be used for rent, utilities or other financial assistance that are required to meet -- to meet the needs as a result of covid-19. Next slide, the second component is [indiscernible] That we would recommend towards business assistance. This is definitely an opportunity that was listed in the -- in the presentation we just gave. It could go towards things such as -- supporting research to reduce the risk of infection at large events, that could be at the amount of about $100,000. We could continue providing workshops and one-on-one coaching to help business owners, entrepreneurs and create actives adapt business models. This could be done at an additional $2 million. To facilitate the creation of business cooperatives as [3:40:35 PM] David mentioned in the previous presentation at about 400,000 in the seconds year of this framework. Could incentivize adaptations to produce innovations and improvements to commercial sites, which benefit employees and customers, this could be a direct financial support at about $3 million. Could provide additional financial assistance to individuals, households, employees, businesses and non-profits through financial support. So this could be looking at recovery lease tax abatement incentive program, restaurant and [indiscernible] Program and the small business relief grant 2.0 for a total of $27 million. Next slide. Continuation of relief that we could provide directly to businesses, we could allocate some funds to temporarily reduce or waive certain city permits or fees that businesses have to reopen safely. We would recommend about two million towards that. We could expedite temporary [3:41:36 PM] rezoning to activate and [indiscernible] Utilize the space that we estimate about 2 hub thousand dollars. Provide flexible timing restrictions for marathons and other outdoor events, this could be about $200,000. Next slide. We also recommend allocating funds toward childcare assistance. As we all side in this year, the pandemic really unearthed the need for quality childcare in our community, throughout our community. We recommend $4.5 million advocated towards this and this could be provided to our childcare providers for relief. Next slide. Next category is $7.6 million towards community assistance, these are a series of opportunities that really we heard from our stakeholders and looking at how we could leverage support amongst our community. So could be for things such [3:42:39 PM] as $500,000 towards facilitating the creation of financial services for unbanked individuals, create actives, business owners and entrepreneurs. We recommend allocating $100,000 towards -- towards launching an Austin community challenge that engages residents, creative employees and employers in a process of co-creating solutions for local problems. We would recommend using our small business challenge studios as a model. We could create an Austin tool lending library that would allow individuals to access tutorials and borrow equipment at little or no cost. We already have equipment through our Austin public library and telecommunications and regulatory affairs that we would recommend we leverage in this regard, but we would recommend bringing on a temporary employee to coordinate this program. We could also provide households with tools and resources to grow their own food, this would be allocated at $100,000. We could collaborate with government agencies and community partners to close the digital divide. [3:43:39 PM] This would be through public infrastructure and could be through internet access, subscriptions, tablets, digital literacy training and virtual tech support. This could be at -- $6.8 million. I could add this is another area we really saw through the pandemic was an area of great need in our community to making sure that we close that digital divide. Next slide. Creative assistance. We are recommending that $10.1 million be allocated towards providing relief towards our creative industry. We could assist local create actives with streaming content from local arts and cultural organizations. We recommend 500,000 be allocated towards this. We could develop a local artist registry to foster more opportunities for Austin create actives. That would cost about $100,000. Continue dedicated relief and recovery funding for [3:44:41 PM] live music venues, this will be the expansion of awards for the live music preservation fund at $3 million. We recommend providing additional financial assistance to individuals, this could be done for creative sector through our creative worker relief grant 2.0 for the amount of $6.5 million. Next slide. We also recommend providing employee assistance in an amount of 8.5 million. This is an area where we saw great need, especially in the industries most impacted by our -- by the pandemic. So we recommend grants for restaurant and food service workers at the amount of $5.5 million. And also working to continue to provide enhanced mental wellness resources for austinites. This is important towards overall health and mental wellness, we recommend that in the amount of $3 million. Next slide. [3:45:42 PM] We also recommend the continuation of non-profit assistance. We administered a non-profit relief grant this year as council is aware. We recommend having a next round of that and non-profit relief grant 2.0 at the total amount of $8 million. Next slide. We also recommend -- we recommend allocating resources towards workforce development in the amount of $11 million. This would be a series of opportunities, including collaborating with partners on workforce development to prepare austinites for jobs in their current and new industries in the amount of $4 million. We also recommend considering workforce development scholarships for unemployed or underemployed individuals who are committing to work locally in their trained field or sector. We recommend this at the amount of $500,000. We recommend leveraging public works and transportation projects to [3:46:43 PM] offer short term employment and economic security to austinites. In the amount of $1.5 million. And we also recommend the continuation and our expansion of our Austin civilian conservation corps in the amount of $5 million. Next slide. That concludes the economic recovery portion. I will turn it back to Diane to talk about our hotel occupancy tax items. >> Thank you. >> A significant difference between the cares act and the American rescue plan is that arp funds may be used to offset revenue loss in order to enable the governmental entity to provide its normal services. For the city of Austin, one of the hardest hit sources of revenue during this pandemic has been hotel occupancy tax receipts. In fy '20 we selected $42.5 million lower than what was budgeted. For fy '21, this year, we are now estimating collections at $41.9 million based on year to date collections, which is 50% of [3:47:44 PM] the budgeted amount. So to put this in perspective, hot collections are expected to be one third of the prepandemic budgeted amount. For the convention center, they incurred $76 million in revenue losses, which includes not only the hot revenue, but also facility rental, contractor revenue and parking. They did implement significant cost containment strategies to mitigate the massive loss of revenue by significantly reducing operations including scaling back the use of temporaries over time permanent staff and goods and services necessary for running events. They also eliminated contributions from the convention center operating fund to the capital fund. And the department was successful in managing the revenue loss for fy '20 via these measures. However the deepening revenue lost is expected to result in a $31.2 million budget deficit over this year and next. Replacing most of this revenue with federal funding allows the convention center to avoid further reductions [3:48:44 PM] in staffing and program cuts. I little assures they can met debt service requirements, maintain operations and focus on the growth of the hospitality sector. Ultimately be ready to emerge successfully without the use of reserves. In addition to providing the funding to the convention center, there is $20 million for the culture art historic preservation and live music fund, which would fully offset the revenue loss in these funds. Culture arts would receive $7.8 million, this allows us to fully fund this year's contracts and extend the more than 700 contracts one more year. The 10 million allocated to historic preservation fund would allow for one more year of heritage contracts [3:49:46 PM] and also allows us to continue investing in the planned capital projects. The funding for the live music fund would go directly into programs still under development to support Austin's venues, commercial music businesses and musicians, the last topic 245 that I want to cover before turning it over to director truelove are the next steps in this process staff is planning on bringing forward a budget amendment on April 8th to appropriate the $40.6 million in general fund reserves and to accept and appropriate the first half of the arp funds. It was envisioned that -- that staff's recommendation would be used as a basis for council's discussion and possible amendments at that meeting. I also want to acknowledge this plan needed to be adjusted depending on council's decision Thursday on the [indiscernible] Resolution. [3:50:47 PM] Now I turn it over to director truelove. >> Can you hear me? I wanted to cover a few aspects of the American rescue plan directly related to housing and homelessness. The first is approximately 22 million coming our way for continuation of our emergency rental assistance program, which we refer to as rent. We think that based on what we know about this fund so far, the -- the restrictions are going to be -- going to align closely of what we have part of rent 3.0 as we all know launched about a week and a half ago, we should be able to continue on without much interruption as we move forward there. Next slide, please. We are also receiving through the home formula grant, approximately $11 million, that can be used directly to -- to provide services and -- and for homelessness. This can be used for tenant based rental assistance, for development and support of [3:51:48 PM] affordable rental housing pursuant to the home program, transition housing, housing counseling, homelessness prevention services and potentially the acquisition of non-congregant shelters that can be converted to permanent supportive houses which aligns with our motel acquisition strategies. We will be working closely with the homeless strategy office. This will likely require an action plan amendment, so you will see more items for council that will come your way from we can actually make use of these dollars. But we haven't received any federal guidance yet on how this process needs to work yet, so we are on the lookout for that, but we prioritize it once we get the guidance from H.U.D. Next slide. This is a home owner assistance fund coming our way. We don't have a lot of information about this yet. This will be allocated to the state and will be deployed out through tdhca. [3:52:49 PM] That may be money that -- that they ask us to apply for and we deploy through a program at the local level and it could be a program that they deploy at the state level. But it is similar to our emergency rental assistance program, but for home owners can be used for mortgage assistance and related aspects there. We are very excited to see the homeowner assistance fund be considered as part of the American rescue plan. Next slide, please. And lastly, there is -- there is an allocation at the national level of $5 billion for emergency incremental section 8 vouchers to help transition homeless people or people at risk of homelessness to stable housing. These are funds that will carry through till fiscal year '30. They will be located to haca, the housing authority for the city of Austin and the housing authority for Travis county. [3:53:50 PM] We do not know how many vouchers that that will amount to or any details yet. We are hoping to find out in April or may. And we will continue to share information on that. But we are excited to see -- to see any increase in the number of vouchers that are going to be coming the direction of -- of Austin. So thank you for that. Next slide, please. I think we're turning it now back to mayor and council for any discussion. And you have all of the presenters here to -- to provide any assistance that we can -- we can provide. Thank you. >> All right. >> I would add in addition to our presenters, we have a -- some of our co-workers that -- colleagues that can answer any questions if there are questions on items we presented that might be in their departments. Thanks. >> Again, mayor and council, this was a lot of information. We recognize that. A lot of work from staff went into ensuring that we were able to present this to you. In a comprehensive way as we make the considerations going forward about how we [3:54:50 PM] both look at the framework and decisions around funding in the future. But with that I will turn I back to you, mayor, for opening up for questions. >> Mayor Adler: I appreciate that. Let me begin by saying again both this and the last resolution tremendous amount of -- of working -- being exhibited. And then just really appreciate it and -- and -- and up until a couple of weeks ago I would have been all over this as an approach. I think that you did a really good job of taking a look at priorities that the council had identified. In a way that we spent the moneys that came to us last year associated with covid. Moneys now a little bit more flexible, but I think that you did a really good job and you have identified just incredibly important needs that exist in the -- in the community. There's not -- there's not a single recommendation of spending that -- that is not [3:55:52 PM] legitimate and needed and -- and valid and important. And -- and I would like to -- to -- to do all of those things. And more. More of those things. Colleagues lay out -- lay out at the same time or discussing this, the resolution on Thursday, [indiscernible] 11, I appreciate the co-sponsorship of councilmembers tovo and alter and Casar and Fuentes and switch joining in on the bulletin board. What it basically suggests is that -- that we pause just for a second to -- to examine what could be an alternate approach to -- to covid related dollars that are coming to us. And I'll tell you that this was first brought to my attention in the us conference of mayors when I [3:56:53 PM] started hearing about mayors that were stepping forward, either by themselves or regionally in areas where the -- where the city or the county or -- are the same. But also someplaces where cities seem to be joining with counties and they were taking a little bit different approach. They were identifying what was the largest priority. Or a very small group of priorities that they thought was top of mind for most all of the people in their community. But they had never really been able to move off of the front burner. And in part because it's near impossible to ever mask the resources that are necessary to really do that. When I was listening to the mayor of Chicago talk about -- about growing alliance to deal with crime and gun possession and the question they were asking themselves was if we really wanted to just take that off [3:57:55 PM] our challenge list, what would it take for us to do that and does this moment give us that opportunity? Other cities looking at a particular utility infrastructure plan. That they are not able and have not been able to do and they've been dealing with for a long time. Things when they pull their communities always seem to be appear as the top one or two things that their communities identify as do something about -- about this. And in our community, there are just several of those, the one that we have identified as number one, is -- is homelessness. Up there is -- childcare and workforce development, jobs, foods insecurity. What would happen if we were able to actually put the resources necessary to -- to affect the five-year plan to end homelessness in our [3:58:56 PM] community. And to -- to -- to move all of the people in camp sites and in tents out of camp sites and off the streets and into permanent supportive housing. We are on a very real path to the permanent supportive housing. What if we did that. I mean, is that actually a possibility. Could we do that? And in addition to the funds that are coming to us, 195 million, that we have available to us, in a resolution 111 on pages two and three and going over to four a list of lots of other funding programs that I think might be available for some of the things that were listed by staff and -- in the allocation programs, what if we just really took a real focus area on those and went out and a Lyon's [4:00:00 PM] share of those -- lion's share of those things. I know that save our stages application process is taking initial applications in the next two or three weeks, I think. Many of these programs are first come, first serve. $16 billion for save our stages, 25 plus billion dollars for restaurants. Maybe like we did in the past with foundation communities and helping people come back with bigger refunds checks into our community. What if we spent the next two weeks making sure that everybody in our city that was a valid recipient for save our stage money was there on the day the application process opened, our community just hit send. What if we could bring home -- again, it's first [4:01:00 PM] come, first served on restaurants all through the community, we are just prepared and ready to hit send the moment those processes opened. What if we joined with Travis county? Travis county got $195 million compared to the -- estimate compared to our -- I mean $245 million compared to our 145 or 147. The last time around Travis county couldn't invest the money in the city, because you weren't allowed as a county to invest money in an incorporated area. That's not the case this time. That's one of the reasons that Travis county got such a large allocation was based on the population in the city. I was mentioning to the judge that I -- that there are a million people in the city, a million-three in the county that -- that 10/13ths of what was going to the county maybe ought to be considered for expenditures in the city or projects that we could agree on was -- was real important [4:02:03 PM] and I know that to some of the county commissioners, homelessness and mental health support, behavioral support substance used challenges, huge priorities for them, too. What if we combine with each other and we weren't trying to allocate 195, but trying to allocate $400 million? Could we, in fact, take everybody who is in tents off our streets in so many years. I know that we don't -- so this resolution doesn't direct that. It just says hey, before we start spending, what would it look like if we were to really join with Travis county. Other regional partners maybe. Or just Travis county. Because we overlap so much. And we picked one or two or -- whatever it is, that we could pick a truly -- and truly make a generational [4:03:07 PM] transformative change. When we got the original covid dollars we were putting tourniquets over wounds in our city. But we have an opportunity maybe now to actually come out of this virus and -- in a more resilient, in a way that just doesn't provide relief and recovery, but provides for true transformative change. I recognize that we couldn't do that in all of the areas that we would want to do it in, but maybe we could do it in some. Also means that we -- clearly there are some things that rise to such a level of emergency that we have to put the dollars against the public health response, you know, we have to make sure that we still do testing and still have the protective equipment and -- and still have the facilities to -- to isolate [4:04:10 PM] people, protect people. Whatever we need in Austin public health we still need to do. Other programs too, like where there's an emergency. But what if we pause for just a second and engage with Travis county. Could we, in fact, take -- take almost a million challenge or two or three? And really, really move the bar so that -- so that in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years, in 20 years, people look back at this moment and said, you know, that virus was horrible, its health impact was horrible, its economic impact was horrible, but that was also the moment in time when we could do one of our most significant challenges and just fix it. What this says is before we start allocating dollars, let's see what that scenario looks like. Maybe Diana working with the [4:05:12 PM] summit comes out with a plan that actually has a five-year plan to -- to end homelessness or a way to scale, heal up to all of the encampments in the city. Maybe it's a million, 25 million, whatever it is, I don't know what the plan will be, but what if we -- a huge -- if we put a huge component of our dollars towards that. Then we go to St. David's foundation and Seton foundation and the other big donors in our community and say government is willing to put -- put a real significant sum against this challenge, will you meet us on a similar scale? This is our community's challenge to take our goal -- our goal is to take this challenge and fix it or resolve it or provide for it. In ways that -- that we have never had a chance to before and may never have a chance to again. That's what 111 is. [4:06:12 PM] And my hope is that -- that we -- we get our staff -- this is a very different assignment, I recognize, manager, than anything that we have asked staff to do. The work that staff did was very -- was perfectly in line and in keeping with the direction that this council has given as evidenced by the work that we did on the previous [indiscernible]. And I appreciate that work. And a lot of the programs, even if we did 111 might be able to be funded by some of these other various programs that exist, I don't know. But that's what 111 is and that's what I would support is trying to take a -- take a different kind of a more strategic, a little bit longer term, focus on this opportunity that's in front of us. I appreciate the assistance, sponsors and tweaking the ideas and adding to them. For the -- for the [4:07:12 PM] resolution that's in front of us. Pio. >> Renteria: I totally agree with what you have been saying. I just don't know -- I want to be part of the - - resolution, but I don't want to go in violation of any kind of quorum [indiscernible] So but I really support that. You know, we -- especially with the rise money. I don't know if this particular [indiscernible] If there is any restriction to it, like the care act. But, you know, if it is, then we would -- I would definitely like to also work with the county on -- on some -- with the rise money so that -- so that, you know, we have a lot of gentrification going on in Austin and a lot of people are moving out there to the incorporated area. We also need to look out because there are workforce here that comes into our city and it would be great if we can work with the [4:08:13 PM] county and take care of some of the problems that -- during that -- that they are not able to take care of and address. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember Casar and councilmember kitchen. >> Casar: Mayor, thanks for laying that out and I want to speak to the same point. Because I really appreciate all of the sort of immediate disaster work that we did together, especially alongside your team director Veronica Briseno and you director truelove in the -- in March, April, may of last year. And we're still not out of the woods yet. But we -- I think -- it's end incumbent upon us to figure out what the long-term plan is for these dollars. I really support what you have said mayor around making sure that we allocate more of this funding to addressing homelessness, not just the funding set aside for homelessness, not just [4:09:14 PM] city dollars, but also bringing forward and collaborating with the county to really reduce homelessness in a much bigger way than we ever could have before. So I'm really supportive of that. And then I also -- I want to draw attention to the points in the resolution where we want to make sure that the funding that we deliver also -- you know, creates -- well sort of long term transformative change that we need. We have heard for so long that our county jail is the biggest provider of mental health services in our county. It shouldn't be that way and this creates a real opportunity and collaboration with the county to not have the jail be a mental health facility, not have the jail be housing, because we know that we can actually provide better housing and better mental health care than a jail. When we make investments in childcare, of course it's been really important for us to try to save childcare centers, but I think we can make our childcare [4:10:15 PM] investments in a way that we increase the availability and affordability of childcare long term. Essentially that we don't want to just go back to the way things were before this because the way things were before this we all know there still wasn't good enough accessibility or affordability or quality of childcare for everyone. I think the same way about workforce development. If we're going to be making this really significant investment in that area, then I think the 12th should be able to -- the city should be able to ask for a lot more in terms of good jobs, good wages, good benefits from employers that are ultimately benefiting from the workforce development investments that we might make at a greater scale than ever before. It's not just the benefit to the workers, it really also is a benefit to those businesses for us to step in and fund that much more workforce development. I think the same thing about the digital divide investments that you listed here, director Briseno, I'm not suggesting this is what's in your plan, but to [4:11:15 PM] make things simple and [indiscernible] Get people hot spots and more on how we address longer term access to affordable broadband so that again the investments that we make, make long-term change. Instead of just eviction moratoriums, how is it that we create long-term stability for tenants and reducing housing insecurity long term here. Again that's what I see in this resolution, I think that's the opportunity that we have. That opportunity really exists if we pause or together with the county and -- work together with the county and try to focus our investments in a way that makes sort of transformative change. >> Thank you. Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: Okay. I want to add my voice to support as a co-sponsor of 111. I really think that we owe it to the community to -- to stop and take a look at what opportunity we might have. Working in conjunction with the -- with the county to [4:12:16 PM] make some transformative change. So I appreciate you bringing this forward, mayor. I don't think that that -- I think that that -- that effort works in conjunction with what the effort that our staff has put into the current framework that was presented. I think it's a matter of working with the county to see where we can get synergies, and where we can do more, where we can make transformative changes as you have suggested. I do consider our -- our addressing homelessness as a number one priority. We have said that it is for a number of years. And we just -- although we have put a lot of effort behind it, there's more that we need to do and it's not really been our number one priority in terms of how we allocate dollars. So I think that we really need to -- to see if this is an opportunity where we could finally, finally do that. I would encourage that we [4:13:17 PM] also look in the synergies with the other communities that are in Travis county. I understand that their dollar amounts are significantly smaller and they may not have any bandwidths to join with us, but we should at least extend that conversation to see if there are some efforts with pflugerville, Westlake, other -- other entities. Because this is a community-wide issue with regard to homelessness. I appreciate, also, mayor, that you mentioned that there are other needs that we can also consider as part of this process, perhaps. We can think about it. I just want to -- to [indiscernible] Some of them, that is the needs that our creative community has because of the loss in the hot tax dollars. If we could at least make them whole. That would be something that I would want to consider. But -- [multiple voices] -- But anyway. So I -- so I just want to say that I support 111, I [4:14:18 PM] think it's the kind of transformative thinking that we need to be doing right now and I appreciate you >> Mayor Adler: Thanks for joining on as a sponsor. Councilman Renteria, there's not a problem with announcing your cosponsorship at a meeting like this, so thank you for that. Council member pool then council member tovo. >> Pool: Thanks. When I was reading 111 I wanted to -- it occurred to me that the folks who had lost in a really big way and who haven't been a main focus for our financial support over the last year plus our creatives and the cultural funds that were cut because of the lack of hotel occupancy tax coming in to the convention center. I wanted to get some sense of support for and commitment to trying to request those funds to make sure that all of those folks who had planned -- because I think their funding is on a [4:15:20 PM] two-year rolling basis that they were certainly counting on that info. Maybe director bresenio or mayor Adler, one or both of you, can you offer up any sense of commitment to helping our cultural arts funding recipients? >> Mayor Adler: From where I sit I would love to help the cultural arts funding. I think kind of the threshold question for me that I would like to hear from staff is if we were to make a really transformative change in homelessness, what would that be if we were to make one in child care, what does that mean? Because I don't know the answer to that question and would we hope the staff could come back for that. But I recognize what is in job creation and workforce development and food insecurity. I just don't know what it means to make a transformative investment of the kind that in [4:16:21 PM] five, 10, 15 years people will look back and say thank god that investment was made back then because look where we are now as a result of that. But I know that our staff has taken a look at the cultural arts funding and has put in a provision in the work that they have done. I agree with council member kitchen that all that work also comes forward to as we're asking those questions. I just don't know how far we can spread dollars and still make transformative and generational change. Part of that, council member pool, I think is going to be does Travis county want to join with us and to what degree to they want to and what are the joint priorities we can agree with with them. But obviously that was something that was hit real hard and I also think there's money built into some of these other funds that are designated for uses other than the 195 we got that I think would provide potentially some relief to some of those industries and players and I [4:17:21 PM] would want to make sure that as a city we're helping those entities figure out how to leverage those dollars. Because every dollar we bring in that way is a dollar that doesn't have to come out of the 195. >> Pool: So the main thing I would say in response to that is these are contracts that the artists thought that they were going to be funded and we have worked overtime with our staff to backfill and replace funding, financial support for folks who didn't get what they were expecting like, you know, making sure they don't get kicked out of their apartment. That was huge. Helping replace their income. Helping them keep jobs, get training for new jobs. But this one little sector that I would argue brings the vibrancy and the cachet to our city that makes this a real visitable city -- I'm sure it's [4:18:23 PM] not being sledded on by but while we are giving lists of all the different groups and sectors that we want to help, I'm not hearing as much from our local homegrown cultural arts folks who have been relying on their cultural funding through the contract program through EdD for literally decades. So just another purchase for them because these are your neighbors and they are big and small. They're the ballet. They're the opera. They're also the mariachi bands and the yoga studios and the dance troupes. That's Austin and I want to make sure that we reserve a space for them in our planning, in our rhetoric and in our programming and financial allocations. >> Mayor Adler: I hear you. There's nothing in this resolution that takes anything off the table and there's [4:19:23 PM] obviously a sweet spot in my heart for that particular category of funding as well. >> Pool: I think that is for everybody. I just wanted us to step up to the plate and acknowledge that and make that real because they're feeling neglected and overlooked that it's not real. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter. I'm sorry. It was council member tovo was next. Sorry. Thank you. >> Tovo: That's okay. I have a large number of questions and had really hoped we would have an opportunity to dig in and talk about this and some other issues as they relate to the agenda for Thursday. You know, I think -- we've been in our session so long I'm afraid we've run out of time really to have that kind of conversation, so I don't know how we make space for that but I would ask that we do that because I think especially with something this huge I think it [4:20:26 PM] really requires a lot of conversation among us and we can't all have that conversation because of quorum rules and I'm just trying to figure out here how to split my own time between questions to staff about some of the information they provided and my general thoughts about this approach. Let me start with the latter and then I'm going to switch to the former. But I want -- mayor, one, I really appreciate all of the tremendous staff work to provide us with their recommendation for how we might organize our spending around this money. I also really appreciate at the economic development's specific recommendations for their department as well. And I concur with the mayor and others and their perspective on this. I think we do need to pause and really think -- absorb all of the information and really think about how we want to use and invest these installers in transformative change and I [4:21:27 PM] absolutely support a really significant investment in ending homelessness in this community. And we can talk more about how we're going to agree on what those elements are but, you know, we have plenty -- let me just leave it there. I do want to say that I think it's very critical and I think we're still talking about what this language looks like in the resolution but I think it's very critical that we have a process here at the city that helps us identify those other funding options that are beyond this money. And so, for example, the conversation came up around bridging the digital divide. Well, based on my really initial information it looks like there is, you know, separate money coming from the federal government for broadband, you know, and maybe our staff has some information about that. But if that's true, you know, I want to utilize that kind of funding to bridge the digital divide rather than allocate our [4:22:27 PM] portion to do so. The same is true in pretty much all of these categories. We really need a process that is thoughtful. City manager, we need a team -- and you help assemble a team that is broad based, but we need to think about what that process is going to be like that is able to quickly assess all of the other funding so that we're being as strategic as possible. Again, I know your staff have done a lot of that work in coming forward with their recommendations but now we need to meld that with the perspective that the council is asking you to consider as well. One thing that the mayor said that I think needs really immediate attention and that is to what extent can we very quickly, right away stand up navigators to help apply for that money that is becoming available right away. The restaurant funding, the save our stages funding. I mean, I hate to say this but as David gray and others [4:23:30 PM] indicated, they have been doing this all year and I know they must be exhausted but we have yet another opportunity and another challenge of immediately responding and providing, you know, providing some assistance to our community in a way that is -- that really builds on the expertise they've gained over these last years in all of the different programs, including the pandemic programs but also ask them to take on kind of a new challenge. So city manager, what are your thoughts in terms of how quickly we could, as a city, kind of respond to those -- you know, make that our first focus? How we provide some level of navigation services to restaurants and venues and others in our community who could be ready to apply for that funding? And then I have a couple of questions but I think I can limit it to just one after this one. >> Well, thanks, council member. And I know that this has been a conversation about just not within what we can do as a city [4:24:31 PM] but how do we leverage the networks and the partnerships that we have. I'll, after this discussion, get with staff to think of other ways we can leverage our own resources but amplify the communications around these, making sure that we are really aggressive in getting the work out about how people can take advantage of these opportunities. But more importantly we know that there are ways in which we can communicate that might be helpful in how we leverage our partners. Really working with them and using their own networks. I think there might be some things that we'll come back to you and in terms of memo update on what we could be adding to this effort from the city staff. >> Tovo: Yeah, it sounds like it's on a very, very short time-frame. Perhaps we could revisit this again on Thursday in context of the resolution that's on the agenda, kind of what resources could be deployed to this effort. [4:25:33 PM] Are there particular staffs or particular organizations. I think you've identified part of it is just getting the word out to our partner organizations and all the individuals who might benefit from it. But if there is an opportunity to very quickly, you know, provide some level of assistance so that our local folks cannot just apply but can be really successful. You know, that takes some guidance sometimes to be able to really successfully compete on that front. I had just a simple information question. I'm super concerned about one of the pieces of information in this presentation that talks about the FEMA decision with regard to nonshelter. I see this as something that cities across the U.S. Have done and so are they having challenges getting it funded by FEMA as well, reimbursed by [4:26:35 PM] FEMA? >> Thank you, council member, I'll ask Diane to chime in in a second but I did want to leverage this discussion because as you know we continue to be pushing for and then waiting on the additional guidance from our federal partners about how these monies can be used. And then as part of the challenge that we might be seeing and how quickly we can get some of these recommendations back to you because we are still awaiting those parameters. So I would first turn it over to our cfo to describe some of those dynamics and ask Diane to specifically address the question that you raised. >> Thank you, city manager. I think that's an important point. One of the concerns I have with the item 111 as it's written is for staff to come back by April 12. I think there's a small likelihood that we'll even have guidelines from the treasury department on how we can specifically use the $196 million. It was at least a month after [4:27:37 PM] the funds were released to the city for the coronavirus relief funds before we received treasury guidelines. And then for months after we received them they continued to evolve and change. So we're certainly going to be dealing with that dynamic again. Broadly the funds that have been allocated to cities and counties are specifically referred to as the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds are supposed to be used to respond to the covid-19 public health emergency or its negative economic impacts. That's very broad language and the devil will be in the details in regards to how creative we can be in using those funds and applying them to the types of transfsformational investments that are being discussed. And then there is timelines too. While the timeline for spending the funds is much more generous than previously, they need to be expended by December 31st of 2024. There still are time constraints [4:28:39 PM] and there still is a connection to responding to the covid-19 public health emergency but my main point is that I don't know even by April 12 we'll have the treasury guidelines yet. I think everything that staff has proposed to you would have qualified within the guidelines of the coronavirus relief fund and I would strongly suspect that the new guidelines for these funds will be at least as broad as the coronavirus relief fund and certainly broader in some cases, including revenue replacement. I just wanted to put that out there that I think we're going to be limited in terms of coming back and saying here's some ideas of how we can find more transformative programs, short of having those guidelines. >> Tovo: Thanks. I have an idea that I'll share with the mayor on that time-frame. The other thing I wanted to talk about, though, before I forget about the cultural arts. Again and again -- I mean, prior to the pandemic we had lots of [4:29:39 PM] cultural arts and live music venues really facing market pressures and the answer to that -- the longer term answer to that is more for of them to own their own real estate. That's one answer. I hope as we look to assess cultural arts, even outside homelessness, if we think about how we can effect more transformational change in those sectors that would be ideal. To me an investment through the edc of potential real estate in some of the areas where we know we're losing those venues would be more of a sustainable investment than perhaps some of the ways in which we have invested those funds in the past. And then I still have that FEMA question. I'm sorry. Diane, I think you were going to [4:30:40 PM] answer the FEMA question. >> I was going to give you a cursory answer because I'm not the person who has actually been closely involved with it. What I can tell you is that, yes, there have been other entities who have had similar expenditures and they've been approved by FEMA. We have to go through the state FEMA first and they've given us the -- I guess preliminary decision that our non congregate shelters. I know we're appealing to emergency management. That's what we're waiting for is a higher level determination at this point. And I know that our lobbyists are working with FEMA on that. [4:31:41 PM] >> Tovo: Thank you. I assume they're compiling all of the examples in other places outside of Texas that are using their FEMA funding or getting FEMA reimbursements for the same thing. New York City I think has 140 hotels, for example, that they have rented to house individuals who experience homelessness during the pandemic. >> FEMA's guidance is also different among regions. You know, it's not just -- yeah. >> Tovo: Gotcha. Okay. Thank you for that background. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate all the work that went into this framework and as the mayor kind of alluded to three or four weeks ago I would have been all over this and said this is definitely how we need to proceed. But as the arp has materialized and we see the magnitude and the [4:32:42 PM] opportunities that involve all of the many different pots, I think we need to pause and rethink this. And I apologize if I repeat anything that anyone said. I had to step out for about 15 minutes but I feel really strong about this and that's why I'm proud to be a cosponsor on this. I think we're thinking about this a little bit too rigidly and that what we have here is an opportunity to say if we had this extra money what could we solve in our city or what opportunity could we seize. And I don't believe that we have to be strictly constrained by the arp guidelines. We have $40 million in our reserves and that money we can spend on anything we want. And $40 million invested even in homelessness, child care, and workforce development and food security could make a big dent if it was strategically placed. And we know that some of it will [4:33:42 PM] be useful. So I think there's a lot of value in still dreaming and thinking about how we can do this and the opportunity to work cooperatively with the county in ways we have not been able to do, at least since I have been on council and as far as I know is an opportunity that we should seize while we have the cooperation, while we have the interests and we have many, many shared choices here. So I really think that we can move around the deadline but we really should be thinking about stuff. For child care in particular. United Way has a plan. They are modifying their plan in light of the other money that is out there. They have a plan. Like, these are the experts. Success from six has been working on this. They have a plan and we ought to take the time to look at it and see if we invested the amount of money, which may be $20 million, I don't know the exact money that they landed on but we need time to pause on it and if we [4:34:44 PM] could split that between us and the county that would be, you know, amazing. I want to also, you know, reiterate what's been said about the navigators. You know, maybe the answer is, well, we can't get you the answers in two weeks because we're going to spend all of our energy making sure everybody in our city takes down as much as this money as possible, which will leave us the space to be more creative. To me that would be a really possible way that we could go forward in thinking about this. Aisd, I talked with one of the trustees and she said she thought that the superintendent would give us space and would give us computer access and they would be willing to help us with the navigator prospect. You know, I have long been saying that we had to move to more resilience than survival and we rightly chose a mix when we did the cares act spending framework in may and June. But now's the time to think big. Now's the time to really set us up to be resilient and if that [4:35:46 PM] takes a little bit longer time while everyone's getting their tax refunds and other stuff, we need -- we really do need to do this. >> Mayor Adler: Council member [indiscernible]. >> Thank you. Just to build off what the council member was saying. This is a transformative time for us. Thank you, mayor for bringing forward this resolution. There's a lot of synergy between the resolution and the update the staff gave and one I want to bring specific attention to is food insecurity. We saw when the pandemic hit just how much we need to build and create a resilient food system. When the winter storm disaster happened, yet again we saw the gaps and the need to improve on our food system and to fully address it. And so giving us the time to work with our county leaders to come up with a transformative way to deal with food access, [4:36:47 PM] it's incredibly exciting for me, especially as someone who represents a significant portion of del valle that is both within the city and in the county. This is a great opportunity for us to come together and to really innovate and so I'm excited about that opportunity. Also wanted to echo council member pool's sentiments around cultural arts funding and say that I'm also supportive of us figuring out a way to fully fund or cultural arts programming here in Austin. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: With respect to the time deadline in this, the April 12th deadline and could easily be -- Kathie, if you have a better way to handle this. I would just point out that the wording doesn't ask staff to come back with a framework on April 12. It asks staff to come back with a framework but it asks for initial recommendations by the 12th. And it could be that your recommendation, when you come back on the 12th is that we [4:37:48 PM] continue to spend no time on anything other than navigators, at least for another week or two. So it was to give that measure of flexibility to staff to actually think big, to think about what happens if you actually had license to make real transformative change on our biggest priorities. But it does ask you to come back on April 12th and kind of talk through with us what you're thinking or what your initial conversations with Travis county were like or whatever. But I think that the intent is to do this right, just because it's such a huge opportunity to really leverage and do it right. So it wasn't for a final product on the 12th. Yes. >> Tovo: I was just going to say, I think that council member alter and I and you have hit on what I texted you about in terms [4:38:49 PM] of the deadline, the time-frame, that's exactly what I was suggesting that maybe we add some language in there or be -- provide some more direction to the manager about what we would like to see in terms of navigation and kind of a very short time-frame, because that has such an immediate -- we have such an immediate need. Basically I think Alice and you captured kind of where I was going on that, which is that that seems to be the immediate priority. We don't have the guidelines. We need to do some more thinking and absorb about the spending chunk but we know we have other opportunities available for people in our community. Maybe that's the piece that has the real time-frame. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie, if I had seen your text I would have recognized you first. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: On the navigator, [4:39:49 PM] I want to remind people there's a whole range of buckets including the small business loans and those would be helpful for our creative spaces also. I think the navigator idea is great if it can be done in a way that really, you know, is specific to helping people. And we have named different kinds of folks and I didn't want us to forget that the creative sector can apply for those funds too and it's not just music. >> Mayor Adler: Heck, there's even a special fund for community navigators. Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I forgot to mention one thing, which is what I heard Diane mention was that they were going to be bringing some of the health spending forward in April. I just want to be clear, for me the way I'm thinking about it, this is nothing to do with the health bucket. It's sort of the health department has decided we need to spend X amount on health, the $81 million. And I fully expect that we will [4:40:51 PM] spend that and that we have got to defer to the experts on that for the health-related stuff. I would love to see us get more of that reimbursed and whatever but I don't think this process has to slow down any of the health money and I think what it does do is say maybe we're not using our reserves on the health, that we're going to make that decision later and that anything we can use arp money on we're going to use first. So maybe we start spending health money, the arp money on the health stuff, which we know we can spend it on, as far as I can understand. And we hold off on some of the other allocations. But I think that we could move forward with many of the health things that I'm sure has had a lot longer gestation time period in terms of testing and other stuff, you know, of what would need to happen. Obviously, there may be some things in there that might not be the absolute best use of dollars but I'm ready to, on the [4:41:53 PM] health stuff, say, okay, we just have to spend the money to do that to keep our community healthy. So I did want to mention that. And then also on the workforce development, you know, just in terms of, again, emphasizing that I don't know that we are that far from identifying what these transformative things are. If we are freed from the confines of scarcity that we have been operating in, so for workforce development, similarly you highlighted the conservation. There's a plan in there that is in the works. I think it's a little bit more money than what you said but the county also wants to collaborate on that and so that's an opportunity. And then workforce solutions. You know, we put some money into the workforce, the rework now program and they have the whole plan of what has to happen next which would then allow us to train our plumbers, tradesman, [4:42:55 PM] computer scientists, et cetera, which would then impact affordability as well as providing the jobs. And I know there's been a lot of work on the food security issue. It's one I'm less familiar with and if we wanted to add a fifth pillar on the creative sector I think that would be fine, though I think the assumption was that was being covered by certain other buckets that were coming down specifically at this point in time. But we could certainly consider that. So I don't know that for the things, because these are things that we've been dreaming about for a long time, I don't know if steps to get to that place of the general bucket is that far off. >> If I may -- thank you. I just want to address the $40 million in reserve. While in the presentation we talked about the different categories, we didn't necessarily identify which funding source those categories are coming from. And so we actually said that 3.0 -- we used the same [4:44:01 PM] assumptions for this arp money that we did for the coronavirus relief funds so that the $20 million for the rise 3.0 wouldn't have come out of reserves and then the $5 million for the Austin civilian conservation corps would have come out of the reserves. That left $15 million that we were using to fund the rest of the public that was going to come from the arp. I'm just putting that out there so that you're aware that there are certain items in that plan that if we wanted to go forward with we would expect we would be using reserves for them. >> Thank you. That wasn't clear. It sort of said we were spending our $40 million on our health bucket. That's how I read it. I'll look back at it. I appreciate the clarification in there on that. [4:45:04 PM] The other thing I just wanted to go back to my comments earlier about the United Way and ask staff, as you're following up on 111, to be in touch with united Way, the success by six coalition that has been operational for many years and working on these questions and building out a framework to complement it in some really interesting and important ways. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Colleagues, we have 15 minutes left. I don't know if you want to continue discussing this. Morgan, I don't know if there's an executive session item that we really do need to take up today but my guess is we're down to just item no. 2. >> I don't think we have time for the executive session today. >> Mayor Adler: We'll move that last item. E 5 over to Thursday. We're going to pick up E 2, E 3, there will be a special post, a [4:46:06 PM] special-called meeting next week. We're going to go ahead and effect that . Colleagues, do we want to see if we can pull up another pulled item? Does anybody have a pulled item that they have pulled that they desperately really need to elevate to council? Council member Ellis -- [multiple voices] >> Ellis: Atlas 14. I think they will be pretty quick. It's only me that wanted to cover a couple of items. I think I could move through it pretty quickly. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Ellis: They may need to move over. I think it might be Mike Kelly joining us. >> Mayor Adler: Staff, thank you very much. A lot of work on this and a lot of it will be real valuable going forward as well. Manager, do you have someone here to speak on the atlas 14 issue? >> Yeah. He's getting moved over. >> Mayor Adler: After the atlas 14 issue, does someone [4:47:07 PM] have something they really want to have brought up here? Yes, Alison. >> I can probably address the Mecca quickly and I do have a lot of questions on 37 and I'm going to be really uncomfortable voting on it if I don't have that information before. >> Mayor Adler: Let's do that. While we're waiting for the person to come over on atlas 17, do you want to give us your update on the chambers? >> So I pulled this to forecast that on Thursday I'm going to move to withdraw this item and give guidance on a path forward funding Mecca chambers. I had discussion with staff and the heads of the chambers and I would like to allow more time for our Mecca leadership to get together and identify a truly visionary path forward for how we fund and what we expect from our chambers. They are committed to and interested in doing this work together and I will have some more on Thursday. [4:48:08 PM] With respect to withdrawing the item, it's my understanding this will not impact the chamber's contracts for this calendar year. We voted on that in December, they already signed their contracts. They would be looking to have a new contract that would start in March '22 which would be on our agenda in December. So if we fail to come up with an approved funding model then EdD would bring contracts back to council for council discussion and approval in late 2021. Otherwise, we would have come to a solution and we would be approving the general model that would be used for those contracts later in the year. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Manager, is EdD okay with that course of events? >> Mayor, the economic development department, we are okay with that process. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, any questions before we move on? >> Alter: If anyone wants to join us, please let me office know. I just want to be clear that putting a lot of the onus on the [4:49:10 PM] chambers themselves to come up with this model, our staff did a lot of work with this model but through the course of those discussions really saw that there were some opportunities that we hadn't seized and since it's not time sensitive -- >> Mayor Adler: Alison, I'm going to come back to you to highlight the issues that you wanted to highlight on 37. Go ahead. >> Thank you, mayor. I wanted to pull this item just because I know there were so many important things that we were talking about today and that we'll continue to talk about Thursday. I didn't want our floodplain mapping process to kind of get lost in the mix. There's a lot of communities that are worried about this and so I wanted to give watershed protection department a chance to highlight for the public what the general process is going to be, what sort of timeline outreach and how does that affect insurance timing and should people be looking at their insurance policies at this time. >> Very good. Mayor, council members, thank [4:50:10 PM] you. Mike Kelly, assistant director with watershed protection department. The timing of this is very prescient because we're only months away from our traditional storm seasons of may, June in particular, so this is really great timing. Our brief timeline, y'all know that the items on council for Thursday are to move grant money, which we graciously received from the state and from the federal government to assist in our floodplain mapping efforts. We've already started the assignments to do the floodplain mapping. Their engineering study is essentially computer modeling that helps us use the latest information that we have to create the most accurate floodplain models based on the new rainfall information, which is going to be more rainfall, more frequently creating larger floodplains. That effort will start in earnest in may and it will take about 15 months for those [4:51:11 PM] modeling efforts to result in maps. Once we have those maps, then we will be able to go out to the community and begin showing what those maps look like. The maps will then be submitted to the federal emergency management administration to finalize, at which point the flood insurance rate maps would then go into effect. That process, after the city submits them to FEMA, is typically a two to three- year period so we're looking at about a three to four-year period until the flood insurance rates actually are affected by the mapping efforts. That's the ultimate punch line. Until that happens, people who are in the floodplain or who are near a floodplain and are considering flood insurance, now is a good time to think a little bit more strongly about that because the rates will be what they are right now and will not be reflective of future hazards. So a good message out there is [4:52:14 PM] that if you're in a floodplain considering flood insurance, now would be a better time to get it than waiting four years until the maps have been updated and the hazard may have increased. The last point is that we will be conducting public meetings. Our first one is scheduled for the summer and fall of 2021, so probably closer to the fall of 2021, depending on where we're at they will be virtually or potentially in person. And finally, spring/summer of 2023 after we've got all the draft maps done and everything is final and we're submitting it to FEMA, we'll be meeting with the community. That's a summary of where we're at with floodplain mapping related to atlas 14. Happy to answer any questions. >> I really appreciate that and I'm certainly supportive of this item and want people to pay attention that they need to be thinking about how close they are to floodplains. [4:53:16 PM] Even if rates may not change for a few years. [Lost audio] >> Mayor Adler: Paige, your froze. Council member Ellis, thank you for elevating this issue and letting the public know what's going on. If you come back, we'll bring you back. Mike, thank you for that explanation. Alison, do you want to highlight some issues on 37? Paige, I thanked you for elevating. Lost her. Alison, why don't you go ahead. >> Sorry. My internet's been really bad today but I think I finished most of my thought and just wanted to make sure that was on people's radar this week. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for elevating that and giving Mike a chance to explain that to the public. I know there are a lot of people with questions. Alison, what issues on 37 do you want to highlight? >> Alter: So I'm really -- I will try and lay out my questions and sort of where I'm [4:54:20 PM] starting from, saying that I believe in the need for new cadet classes, both from the perspective of maintaining appropriate staffing levels and from the understanding that could change the culture and environment of law enforcement, we need new perspectives, new experiences, and new people at APD. I'm also committed to the transformations and reforms coming from the reimagining public safety process and from the stuff we had in works before that. I have to admit I'm having a hard time understanding item 37 and I'm hearing varying interpretations of what this item actually does and how it is going to be implemented. And it's just not clear to me what this blueprint means. It's not clear to me how passage of this blueprint ensures the implementation of the recommendations and other reports recommendations. We don't have the final recommendations in review from Cole and I'm concerned that we're passing this before we have the final report. And I also just want to know what the accountability levers and action requirements are during this blueprint and the [4:55:22 PM] academy revision process. I have several questions that I'd like to ask to help me to understand it because it may all be in here, I'm just -- it's a different format than we usually use for things and it's a very important subject and I want to make sure that I'm understanding clearly what I'm voting on. So to start, does this item approve the initiation of the 144th cadet class? And what if the standards aren't met and the short-term recommendations are not implemented before the class starts? >> Then the class won't start, council member. I mean, essentially, as the resolution states, this resolution would allow us to commence with the first reimagine cadet academy so long as that academy can be conducted in accord with the objectives in that blueprint. And so we are setting out the path of how we can have this class start but by approving the blueprints you agree with what we are saying will be part of [4:56:23 PM] that transformational process. In terms of the accountability, maintaining to have Krol and their team ensuring that there is that audit, as these things are continuing to move along. We also would be providing regular updates to council in the following weeks and months before any class would start, to make sure all of the recommendations would be implemented. I'll ask if anybody wants to add anything but I also know having [indiscernible] And is actually teaching a class at the university of Texas right now so couldn't be with us but she is taking an active oversight role as well. Acm Mario. >> Assistant city manager of the safety outcome department. The one thing I would add is one of the things that the city manager has added in terms of the assurances that we could put [4:57:23 PM] in place is engaging with an expanding scope of contract with Joyce James, who has been working with the police department and as well is going to be in a position to help put that equity more broadly on our reimagining public safety effort and more specifically there are items within the contract that will help us monitor that recommendations that are being outlined in the blueprint and put in place. So there are more specifics around that clearly. I would be happy to spend some time between now and Thursday to go into more detail with the council member on those aspects. >> Alter: I appreciate that and we can try and find some time. I just think the public -- I'm just hearing so many different inter -- interpretations of what we're doing and what you're laying out is along the lines of what I would be comfortable with but it's not clear from what we're voting on if that's what's happening. I think it's really important that we establish some of this [4:58:24 PM] in public and we can try and put some of our questions in written form as well, you know, so that we can clarify that and formulate some things. This is just not a format that we usually use and so it's confusing. How do we ensure that if the standards aren't met and the short-term recommendations are not implemented that the class doesn't start? And who is making the decision whether the standards have been met? >> Council member, thanks for this. Both through the feedback from our third party evalway -- evaluator and our consultant Joyce James would be doing we would have that recommendation come up to city management if the recommendations have been implemented or not implemented. In that process, as we're committing to, we would be providing updates to council so you would be aware of if we were comfortable moving forward or not moving forward based on what have been done. [4:59:24 PM] But I will also say there is another check point in a budget amendment that would be coming at the appropriate time as long as we're still on this path on the blueprint following all the recommendations. We would still need to come to council for approval of those funds that would be needed. Do you want to add anything? No? Okay. >> Nothing additional on that. >> Alter: And then so there's the short term and there's the long-term recommendations in the Krol report. Following the community review and the independent evaluators' review of 144th class assuming it went forward. So there's a certain amount of faith that goes into starting this academy that says we believe we made enough progress, we believe we have to get [5:00:26 PM] started in order to get moving to address issues in the city but also even to change the academy we have to explore and try some things out. How do we ensure that accountability for the longer term stuff and how do we ensure there is post-class reviews don't just end up getting shelved? >> Thanks for that, council member. I think as an initial step having the council hear what those reviews and evaluation of that class was and then the recommended steps for what additional changes would be needed moving forward and the progress that the department has been making on the longer-term implementations so you would have insights into all of those areas. >> Alter: Okay. So there would be a touch base with council at some point on that and we would have to approve it in the budget in the [5:01:26 PM] next class. >> Again, we want to make sure that you are aware of the progress that has been made that we are working on in the future and the feedback that we receive on the way in which this initial class was conducted. >> Alter: Okay. And what new information are we expected in the final Krol report? There was already a lot of stuff in the preliminary. What are we expecting in the final Krol report in terms of larger buckets that we haven't seen already and what information is Krol waiting to receive from APD to finalize their report and what is the timeline for that report to come to council? >> I'm going to ask our colleagues at APD to help provide some specifics but I think part of it was just the robust discussion that we had here at work session a couple of weeks ago and they wanted to make sure that they were incorporating some of the questions and feedback that council had about other things that if they weren't already addressed in their analysis that [5:02:26 PM] they were able to do so. But I'll see -- it looks like ac gay is on the line if he wants to chime in on any additional things we're waiting for that Krol is expecting. >> Thank you, city manager and council. Troy gay, chief of staff with the Austin police department. I am unaware of anything that they are waiting on receiving the data, although I do know that they are still conducting some interviews. I do know that they are meeting with Dr. Crane, who is on this call here, to answer any questions. This is her first week and we are so excited to have her on board but I know they sent her a list of items that they want to talk to her about so she might be able to provide any additional items that they're needing. >> Hi, yes. Ann. I'm the division manager from [5:03:26 PM] the training for Austin police department. So as chief mentioned, that is true that I've been talking to Krol and basically what they want is to ensure that those initial recommendations were actually putting into place, right? And so we're demonstrating through the blueprint what we've already done and what we're doing to actually put those in place. In terms of background, I'm a policing scholar. However, I'm a feminist criminologist as well so I sort of applaud Austin police department for the willingness to hire a critical lens to be inside the department. And so a lot of the things that have come up in the Krol report and the various other reports are things that I'm familiar with in policing literature and we know that we have to think about ways to change the police training. However, if it is a national discussion, so we're trying to make sure that what we're doing is evidence based, that we're [5:04:27 PM] doing these measures. So the concerns that you have are absolutely valid and we need to build those measures out and be able to report back. And so we see this as a transparent process. I know that maybe it hasn't been historically but it's something that we are looking forward to moving forward to. I have been able to talk to a lot of the staff there and they understand, you know, the recommendations from Krol and really the question I get is how do we do this. So we're taking on this giant amount of work. We're looking forward to it and we expect to be transparent the whole way through. >> Council member, the report is expected at the end of the month. >> Alter: End of March? >> Yes. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Thank you and welcome to the Austin or city of Austin if you are new to Austin. I appreciate hearing from you. And -- um -- city manager, you mentioned that we would be having a budget amendment. Do we have an identified [5:05:29 PM] source for the next cadet academy or a sense of how much that will cost? >> Short answer, councilmember, is yes. And I know that that was [indiscernible] Budget q&a and I believe that has been submitted and published. But I'm going to ask Diane, who I believe authored that response to provide the specifics if she's still on the line. >> I am still on the line so yes. We identified the funding source. We had $6 million set aside from the general fund to provide supplemental retirement funding to our -- to our [indiscernible] And our aprs plans. And so -- so -- so the changes that we had planned on implementing didn't go into effect as quickly as we thought, so we had money left over. The academy cost is expected to be $2.2 million, I [5:06:30 PM] believe. And -- and so we're going to just utilize that funding for it. Because we had included in that -- that supplemental retirement in an ongoing cases we had the funding to fund the rest of the academy that goes over into fy '22 as well. >> Alter: Thank you. Then the blueprint, this might be for Dr. Krigan, I think was her name. It doesn't seem to touch on changes to the paramilitary culture, that was something that I had raised issues across multiple reports. And I see information about adopting adult learning theory components, but I don't see a focus on the underlying paramilitary culture and trying to change that. Can you speak to that? >> Sure. Absolutely. To separate physical fitness from academics so there will no longer be a sort of [5:07:32 PM] behavioral modification which was what it was previously called in terms of within the classroom. That physical fitness will be related to -- to the types of things that they would need to do for this job performance. Right? So we're making sure that that's very carefully aligned when they do do pt that it will actually align to the tests that they will be performing in physical fitness. So in terms of revamping, you're right, that is something that I'm working on. Making sure that the instruction manuals and the cadet manuals realign to the new environment, right? So we are incorporating that the expectations for the -- for the instructors or faculty as we're going to call them will be aligned with -- with this reimagine that we are looking -- that we are moving towards. >> Thank you, I think that's a subject that we can have a much longer discussion. My last question is that I would like to better understand the process and the timeline for replacing the outdated curriculum. [5:08:32 PM] Much what level of curriculum review and revision is expected to take place. I guess by you and your committee before the June class starts. >> Sure, great question. I'm sure that you are aware that a lot of the course work is tcloe mandated. We are making sure that we are hitting the targets so the cadets can actually pass the end test, so that's sort of a first thing that we're concerned about. However, that's not the overarching goal as I am sure you can imagine. What I propose is doing a stratified example among the departments so we are not overburdening the department just on communication or culture, to have the academic review committee, which we are forming I believe is slated to hopefully quo together by the end of the month. Come together by the end of the month. I'm talking to individuals who are interested right now to make sure that we have a community representation and academic representation and then a sworn representation to make sure that we can put [5:09:33 PM] content in perspective. With why we're -- why we're choosing necessarily to teach it within that manner. And so -- so the stratified sample is how we would actually be -- be having it formally reviewed through the public lens. And as well as I'm going through me personally, I'm going through obviously all of the curriculum to ensure before the academy starts to ensure that we understand the dei, railroad talking to the learned skills unit about incorporating more Spanish in everything that they do so that we can have discussions throughout the academy class about -- about they are serving Austin, right? And what is the community of Austin like? So, you know, I think as this unfolds we will be able to give more concrete examples of how we are doing it. But I myself am going through all of their curriculum and then we are working through the more formal process to make sure that it's a stratified [5:10:36 PM] sample and eventually everything will be done. I have been very transparent that we are not trying to tackle all of the curriculum through a formal process of -- of public prior to the June 7th start. There are a lot of departments right now that are revamping their curriculum, including Baltimore police department, and they probably have spent about 18 months to have eight classes open to the public. I by no means think that's going to be our timeline, but I do believe to do this and do it well, we need to take the time and also make sure that we are not just making symbolic gestures to the community, that our curriculum is very good, that we are willing to take the feedback from our committee and incorporate it and demonstrate to them that we are incorporating it. >> Thank you, I appreciate the clear indications. I will submit the -- clarifications. I will submit questions so we can this springs in writing for folks to re-- in [5:11:38 PM] writing so folks to review. I will likely be adding clarification, I have to figure out how one does that given the format of the document, I will try to post those as soon as I have them. But it make take a little while given the format to make it make sense. So I appreciate the conversation, I appreciate the indulgence of going after 5:00 from my colleagues. >> Kathie, if you have 30 seconds or 60 seconds, does that help you or too little time. >> Tovo: It helps me more than zero seconds so I will take it. >> Mayor Adler: Anne, I'm going to ask the same question. >> Kitchen: Mayor, my question is if we're going for keep going that's fine -- >> Mayor Adler: We're not. 30 seconds and then done. >> Kitchen: I have questions, also, when I'm happy to ask on Thursday, I will ask them on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Kitchen: Other arrangements, so I'm late. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie, 30 seconds. >> Tovo: Mine are on other agenda items. I pulled three Rainey items, [5:12:40 PM] I pulled them because we hadn't had an opportunity to talk about them at the work session. It's not going to be a fast conversation on Thursday. I don't know how to resolve that. I just -- I raise it with that in mind. On 64, which is an item I'm bringing forward that I'm super excited about the resilience hubs, I'm going to postpone it to give us more space to talk about it. I know several of you reached out to ask if you could be a co-sponsor, I had indicated to councilmember alter who contacted me first. Councilmember Ellis thank you so much for your suggestion and willingness to co-sponsor, I hope that we can talk in the work sessions and incorporate more of your ideas, thanks for your support on that. I will incorporate the ACC idea. I also just wanted hoped that we would have an opportunity to talk about 64 because I wanted to also highlight another resolution I'm working with several of you on, on food access and creating -- building on some of the food system work that our community and our staff [5:13:40 PM] have done and that is also coming forward at our next council meeting and so I think it's a nice pairing with the resilience hubs. I also think that it reflects a lot of discussion we talked about earlier in terms of investing in sustainable change, investing some of our dollars in sustainable change on city-owned land. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Tovo: The one thing that I really, really wanted to talk about today is 67. In addition to Rainey, how we're going to review as a council the emergency storm and the city response and how the city worked with the community. Several things that I really needed to bring to y'all's attention to get feedback on, which we can't do now. Please take a look at the proposed work plan that's online. You will see I really tried to narrow it very -- very down to just -- just kind of key areas that are related to the city, so that has left out some areas. I also wanted to throw out there we are having some trouble finding time to do [5:14:40 PM] that. So -- so I think after today, I'm going to suggest one alternative just -- let's take a day and try to do these all in one day rather than trying to do two hour blocks in our work sessions because we really need to reserve our work session time to talk about agenda items. So think about that if you have ideas to offer, I guess at this point we'll have to do them on the work session. I didn't have a chance to really talk about my rationale for the work plan, but I'll just leave it there. My hope, general intent, my 30 second summary of my intent is that I'm hoping, you know, all of us I think have recommendations based on what we observed. Our community has recommendations, our boards and commissions come up with some great recommendations, we are all getting recommendations from our constituents. I wanted to use the review and the audit and the community process to kind of slow down and really better understand all of the work that went on behind the scenes and all of the community work and the interactions with the city before we kind of jump to what those recommendations are moving forward. That's my hope that we will use that process to really [5:15:42 PM] discern what worked, what didn't work, what we want to do better and how we need to become more resilient community going forward. So that's the intent behind what I proposed on the -- >> Mayor Adler: Kathie, thank you. With that at 5:15, Greg, did you have something -- >> Casar: One sentence just related to this cadet item. That I will post some amendments that I think will pair with quite a bit of what councilmember alter said to ensure if we do start the cadet class there can be real community confidence that it will really be different and that the goals street out by the community can -- that those things can really happen before we restart a class. >> Mayor Adler: I firmly believe we can achieve both those objectives, thanks for bringing that forward. Yes, Paige? >> I will be fast. I will try to daylight some of my thoughts on 67 on the message board so we can save time today but we can still [5:16:42 PM] communicate on that, just not at this point. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. With that at 5:15, city council work session here on March 23rd, 2021, is adjourned. See you guys on Thursday, look the a the message board.