City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript – 06/07/2021 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 6/7/2021 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 6/7/2021 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. [2:04:23 PM] >> Mayor Adler: . >> Mayor Adler: My speaker is kind of muscled. I didn't understand what you said. >> We're ready in chambers, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Today is June 7, 2021. This is a special called council meeting to look at homelessness and arp spending, related matters. We have a quorum present. We're doing this virtually. [2:05:25 PM] It is, colleagues, 2:05. We have up until 6:00, hard stop then. Maybe we can go until 6:00 if that's the pleasure of council. Then we continue -- this item is before us obviously possible for Tuesday's work session as well as some items on the agenda that relate to this on Thursday as well. We scheduled this at the request of other folks who wanted more time to get more information. So here we are. Manager, I don't know if you and Diana have a presentation or anything you wanted to present to council. >> >> Cronk: We do, mayor. Good afternoon, everyone. As was indicated the last time we gathered, the staff did put an item on the agenda -- on the addendum for this Thursday for you to contemplate looking at allocating the arp funds that we're getting from the federal government so we wanted to review the memo [2:06:26 PM] that accompanied that item and then make sure that we were opening it up for that continued discussion as the mayor mentioned. We do have a presentation that briefly highlights where we were at then, where we're at right now and some key decision points for the council going forward W that I'll turn it over to our chief financial officer Ed van eenoo to start that presentation now. >> I'd start off with a handful of background slides before turning it over to Veronica Briseno to walk you through staff's proposal that we'll be bringing to you on June 10th as the city manager prescribed. Next slide, please. And go right into the next one. Just by way of background, [2:07:29 PM] council, on March 23rd city staff presented an economic recovery and resilience framework to you. We also presented on that day an initial proposal for allocating our allocation of the American rescue plan act funding. That same week council adopted a resolution. On March 25th you adopted that resolution asking staff to revise is the spending framework that we had brought forward and to focus on four priority areas looking for transformation Al changes in those areas, homelessness, childcare, workforce development, work programs and food and housing insecurity. Staff did that work and on may 18th presented a revised American rescue plan act framework based on those four priorities. That same week on may 20th [2:08:29 PM] there was another council resolution directing the city manager to provide recommendations to stabilize the Austin cultural arts and music communities with funding up to $25 million. As mentioned on June 10th, this Thursday, we have several items on the agenda related to arpa funding. Items 77 and 78 are staff items to approve a spending framework for the arpa funds and also to appropriate the remaining portion of the first year of funding. You'll recall that arpa funds are spread across two fiscal years. You've already taken action to approve $44.3 million for immediate public health needs and another $500,000 for staff to help the [2:09:35 PM] community access other federal funds that are available. And this action would appropriate the remainder of the first year funding from the arp funds. Again, those items are on your agenda for Thursday. Item 92 is an item from council directing the city manager to allocate two million dollars of the arpa funds to non-profit relief grant programs for the purpose of supporting Austin's non-profit organizations engaged in arts and culture. If we could go on, I'm sorry, ctm, could you advance us? That's the slide I was just speaking to. Let's go to the next slide. One. Actions asked for in early council resolution, reduce 111 from the March 25th agenda directed us to work with our regional partners. City staff continue to do that. We've had several meetings with austin-travis county. [2:10:36 PM] We've also had various meetings with other central Texas jurisdictions, including the summit to address unsheltered homelessness. We had a round table conversation with the county, Travis county, and central Texas cities, a couple of those. And we've had special called joint meetings with -- between the city council and the Travis county commissioners' court. Our next meeting is scheduled for June 25th, 2021, with local jurisdictions. If we could move on to the next slide then, speaking a little bit about our arpa funds, we received a total of $128.5 million from the federal government for these resources. Again, the funding comes in two traunches. The first tranche we received in may of 2021 and we'll get the next allocation in may of 2022. Each tranche, 50% of the total -- I won't go through [2:11:37 PM] the whole list but you can see the high level eligible uses of funding, a lot of the same types of things that the cares act was responsible for, public health response as well as economic recovery from the business impacts and impacts on individuals that have been caused by the pandemic. One new factor for the arpa is the ability to replace lost public sector revenue, which was not -- which was not allowed under the cares act funding. Let's go on to the next slide. This just gives you a summary of the fiscal arpa allocation of '21 .4 million. I mentioned the 44.3 million for public health services are dedicated to the covid-19 response as well as $500,000 for the navigator program that really leaves [2:12:40 PM] $49.4 million of the fiscal year '21 amount to still be Al indicated. Looking at fiscal year year '21 and '22 there's a total of $21.6 million to be allocated. It's that 126.3 million, the total remaining of our arpa allocation that director Briseno is going to be speaking to next. Not included in the amounts I've talked about so far is an additional $22 million for emergency rental assistance. We'll be receiving those funds in fiscal year 2021. We received received them yet, but we expect to receive them some time later this month. And $11 million energy funding for residents for those experiencing homelessness. Those are separate allocations over the $188.58 million that the city received. So if we can go on to the [2:13:41 PM] next slide and I'm going it turn it over to director bris 17ios to walk us through our -- bris 17 I I don'ts to walk us through priority areas. >> Good afternoon, council. Starting with a backtrack of the priority areas, council, as Ed had mentioned, identified four main priority areas in regards to how we allocate the remaining funds for economic recovery. Those four areas are homelessness, early childhood care and education, workforce development, our jobs for working can class austinites, food and security, as well as any immediate relief needs and public health expenses. We need with different experts in these areas and asked them to identify what that total investment would look like for transformational change in these areas. That total investment if we work towards the ideal [2:14:42 PM] result would come to a total of $732 million. Next slide each go through each of the priority areas in details. We'll start with homelessness and I'm going to turn it over to director gray who is going to walk through this slide. Diana? >> >> Council members, this is -- [inaudible]. As a summary of the overall intended uses of funds under the summit to address unsheltered homelessness. And so as you see here the total for that effort overall projected cost is just over 515 million where about 222 million that we believe are committed or anticipated to date for a gap of 293 million. I'm just going to briefly go lineally buy-in here to [2:15:42 PM] speak to the types of expenditures that we would expect to see in each of these five categories. And then I can answer questions either now or perhaps when director brisenos has completed the presentation. So crisis services we have here outreach and diversion. Diversion being very light touch assistance to help people avoid homelessness essentially when they are at the front door of the system. And outreach to those unshelters individuals to help them connect to services and to housing resources that have been dedicated to them. You will note that this does not include at this time additional shelter or dollars for designated ennative-americans. We know that is a -- encampments. We know that is a priority of council and other members of the community, but it is not a part of this particular budget. The second line item for a total of 203 million are really the meat and potatoes [2:16:44 PM] of our work in re-housing people experiencing homelessness. And so that is rapid re-housing, which is sort of the medium term housing assistance and services usually up to two years. Permanent supportive housing which is that longer term non-time limited assistance for people who are living with disabilitieds and who have been chronicbly chess or homeless over many years as well as targeted prevention for those who have been homeless previously. In order to make those services more effective we're also proposing funding services in several key areas that really do serve to help people stabilize once they are in housing. That is substance use disorder services, employment services using supported employment and assistance in enrolling in benefits requiring a disability designation if [2:17:45 PM] appropriate, etcetera. As we've talked about the summit and our goals, it is not only to perspective more people, but to build a system that is more effective and more efficient and has more capacity to respond effectively to the challenges in front of us. To that end we are recommending funding for workforce recruitment and retention because we know that through this effort we will need to substantially increase the number of staff working at our service providing agencies. That we also want to do some over organizational capacity building and technical assistance with those organizations who may not have been deeply involved in this work at this level previously particular with an eye to improving our equity, outcomes and representation in the field. [2:18:46 PM] And there would be need for additional communications and planning and system management. Finally, the $275 million that you see here is capital investment and I think it's really important to note that this is more than half of the total 515 million, but of course the benefits of those $275 million would be realized over the 20 years plus of any units that we create through the initiative. I will pause there and turn it back over to director brisenos. >> Thank you. Next slide, please. >> Thank you. The next priority to focus on is early childhood care. The total request came at 18.7 million and these requests are broken out on this slide to the services and activities supported by this investment include additional childcare funding to address families changes [2:19:47 PM] and employment status at six million dollars. Sustain and skill infrastructure to increase access to quality childcare at 2-point two million dollars. Plan and implement slowings for identified gaps in the system, and that is that the $2.5 million. Stabilize the childcare workforce at one million dollars. Navigation, workforce development, school age children at $1.7 million, stabilized support to young children outside of full-time care at $.3 million. There's also a request for expanding access to public pre-k with supplemental funding at $1.5 million, as well as expanding the family connect program by 2,000 plus per year of evaluation at $3.5 million. This brings the grand total to $18.7 million in early childcare care. Next slide. The next priority satisfactory jobs in [2:20:47 PM] workforce development. In our conversations with workforce solutions like capital area, the request was for an additional 25 million to work now, which is the program that they have underway at this time and providing workforce development to our community as well as two million dollars for the public sector academy, which is an academy that works specifically at developing workforce within public sector jobs. Next slide. The area of food security is $1.6 million and this is broken into a series of activities including food access needs of $16 million, preparing for food access needs in anticipation of future disasters at $13 million. Planning for equitable and sustainable food system at $2 million. Investing in the food system in ways that [2:21:48 PM] increase food access, community resiliency and equitable prosperity, strengthen the power of households to purchase food at $13 million. Next slide. Then the additional immediate relief needs category of $68.5 million, there is the request for assistance to provide a health center in colony park at $1.5 million. Funding our hotel occupancy programs, our cultural arts fund, historic preservation fund and live music fund would require $20 million. Financial relief to individuals and households, so rise orient or programs similar to those at $21 million. And assistance to businesses and non-profit organizations at $27 million. Next slide. I'm going to transition into [2:22:49 PM] staff's recommendations. This is the information that was presented at your may council meeting. The total amount of 140-point -- 143.6 million as the chart shows how staff has recommended that we apply these funds. And here's the amount broken down by fiscal year and by amounts per category. So for homelessness that would be a 22.4 million in '21. And 61.6 million in 2022 for a total amount of 84 million. For emergency shelter and capacity building we recommend 4.2 million in the first fiscal year and that being the total amount. Early childhood care we recommend a total of 7.5 million, 1.3 million in fiscal year 21 and 6.2 million in fiscal year 22. Jobs in workforce development we recommend [2:23:51 PM] eight million dollars. Food insecurity we recommend $2 million in fiscal year '21 and one million dollars in '22 for a total of three million. The colony park sustainable community health center would be 1.5 million in 2021. Cultural historic and music programs we recommend 10 million to fund the full 20 million and 10 million in each fiscal year. We would recommend that .8 million be put towards rent and rise, which leaves 14.6 million in contingency. This could be used funding for unanticipated health needs or other council priorities. So looking at the -- actually, I'm going to turn this -- Diana if you don't [2:24:51 PM] mind taking this slide I'll pass it over to you. >> I'm happy to, Veronica. As we look at the potential distribution of funds over fiscal year '21 and '22, when you see here is a concentration on some of the core housing programs a pit bit of capital dollars and in particular the system capacity building so that we would begin to work with our providers to understand what they may need to scale up to again building the system that will help them attract and keep and train the professionals that they need to do the work and to support the growth of the system overall. So fiscal year '21 we would be looking at a total of 21.9 million. With the balance coming in fiscal year '22, diversion and outreach is a relatively [2:25:51 PM] small amount of money and then we would come in behind that also with some of the additional services. Remember, of course, that the assumption here is that substantial funds are coming in on the part of our partners as well the council has spoken in particular to partner with a county through university of their arp funds as well as with philanthropy. So there would be some flexibility in terms of how much ended up in each of these buckets, but we believe that the amounts that are shown in fiscal year '21 set us on the best course towards building towards success over the course of the three-year effort. [2:26:52 PM] I'll go ahead on to the next slide and send it on to Veronica or perhaps I will speak to it. In addition, we spoke last week about outside of the $84 million contemplated to support the work of the summit, addressing the immediate needs around creating additional emergency shelter capacity and/or designated encampments, particularly in the face of our ongoing implementation of the camping ordinance as well as an early investment in some of the capacity building that we already spoke to. So this is a 4.2-million-dollar recommendation that would be coming to council apart from the $84 million [inaudible]. Now I will pass it to Veronica. >> Thank you, Diana. If we could move to the next [2:27:53 PM] slide, please. For the remaining priority areas, how the funds could be broken down in early childhood care, the recommendation of 7.5 million. 1.5 of that could be additional childcare to address family's changes in employment status. 1.73 could go towards sustaining scaling innovative infrastructure. .87 would be allocated towards planning and implementing solutions for identified gaps. Half a million could be allocated towards stabilizing the childcare workforce. And 2.9 million could be put towards stabilizing support to young children outside of full-time care. Next slide. In regards to the jobs in workforce development, we [2:28:54 PM] recommend allocating towards this priority area could be applied to work now. This is the program that the city and the county have already supported during the pandemic and workforce solutions is able to scale up as necessary. Next slide. In regards to food insecurity, two million dollars could be allocated towards emergency feeding programs. Five million -- half a million dollars could be recommended towards developing a food system plan and half a million dollars towards the support and development of non-profit and cooperatively owned grocery stores. Next slide. In regards to the immediate relief needs, 1.5 could go towards colony park. 20 million towards the cultural historic preservation and music programs and .8 million [2:29:55 PM] towards financial relief for [indiscernible] And households. 22.3 million P next slide. And that concludes our presentation. We're happy to answer questions. >> You're a mute. >> Is there a presentation on the encampment question 2? I don't want to jump to the end, but wondered if there was another presentation. No? >> It there isn't, mayor, but we're happy to bring up the previous presentation as appropriate. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, colleagues, let's give people a chance to speak. Greg and then Ann? >> Casar: Ed looked like he was going to hop in. >> Van eenoo: Just really quick I wanted to mention if you haven't seen there's a lot of backup material that we have posted for this item [2:30:56 PM] that was added fairly late but we were busily compiling it over the weekend, but pretty much previous resolutions from council, memos and reports and presentations from staff is, various questions and answers we've had on this topic over the last couple of months, proposals from our partner agencies. We've loaded that all into the backup. I did want to highlight because several council members had asked for the initial economic recovery and resiliency framework that staff had proposed back in March as well as the initial staff proposal for allocating the arpa funds. All those items are part of the backup. Then we had a specific request from councilmember tovo about other funding sources such as the waller creek tirz and we had provided budget question responses and memorandums in the past on that so we've included those two items as well in your backup. I just wanted to point out there's a lot of backup information. Not trying to overwhelm you, [2:31:57 PM] but trying to pull all the different documents we have together under one umbrella for you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. Greg? >> Casar: And before I go into my question I do want to thank the staff and Veronica and Diana on this front. I know you have a lot of staff in the background that have worked in March to put together that first recommendation and then we discussed the resilient atx. I forgot if that was in March or April. And coming back and putsing together another set of recommendations for may and then the latest set of work in June. I know it's a lot of work on an important topic. I want to thank all the staff that have been working on this trying to get to a place where council can feel confident moving forward. Thank you for that. My question to you, Veronica, is about that first March recommendation when you first laid out to us the amount of dollars that we should be working with to address recovery and [2:33:00 PM] resiliency moving forward. You included going into reserves. Not using tons of our reserves, but using the amount of reserves that we had above the 12 percent policy. So I know that council is wrestling with what to move forward with here St. Still your recommendation that we use some amount of resources as long as we stay within policy, only use the reserves that are above that percentage? >> This is Ed again. I know that was directed to Veronica, but I would like to chime in on that. I think that the initial framework came from our interim budget officer at the time, Diane Syler, which was to include reserves as part of a broader -- kind of like a covid spending framework part 2. That was in March, we were compiling in February. That was our approach at the time was to include a -- present a framework to council that included the [2:34:01 PM] federal funds as well as local funds because that provided the most flexibility for addressing the community's needs. Where we are in June ahead of the city manager presenting a budget proposal to you and given where we currently are with the trajectory of the pandemic and a vaccine being out there. It seems like fingers crossed that we're in the waning months and weeks of the pandemic. Our recommendation to you would be to have a conversation about allocating reserves to be part of the broader conversation coming up in July when you will have the benefit of all the different moving pieces on the budget which continue to move around in different competing priorities to extend there's a need and desire for the reserves to wait for that and be part of the budget conversation and keep the conversation this week focused on arpa would be our recommendation. [2:35:13 PM] >> Casar: So the staff recommended in March a certain amount on homelessness, a certain amount on childcare, a certain amount on workforce and individual assistance in rise and rent as those were not only balanced with when we talked about reserves, but I think part of the conversation we should have today we then pass the resilient atx resolution asking for an increase in each of those areas. And the staff's latest recommendation increases each of those areas, but then drops the direct assistance and housing dollars by like 95% from 20 million to less than 1 million. And so I think that could be fixed and we have enough money for all these things if we have the conversation about allocation of reserves now, but otherwise we will have passed a resolution asking for an increase in childcare, food, homelessness, workforce and [2:36:14 PM] housing and have done all of those except developed one of them which I think is still a critical need. I am interested as the conversation evolves how we don't is so drastically drop that number. We can talk about it in reserves or talk about it some other way. I am open and interested in whether we talk about setting that money aside and then finding a way in the budget few us if it's actually not as needs as we thought for us to wash that back in and I've been talking with councilmember Renteria about a way to figure out how we can bridge our path there. But I ask that question, colleagues, because it would be useful to know what our starting number is. I didn't want to take us too far down a rabbit hole, but if we were talking about just the federal dollars or whether we're talking about the federal dollars plus some amount of reserve I think will shift the amount we have to work with this week. So I know that Ed, that's your recommendation. Veronica, I don't know if you wanted to chime in from [2:37:14 PM] your office or if there was anything I missed. >> I would add that we are working closely with Ed and with his team on recommendations. [Indiscernible] That there's great need in community. We're certainly happy to work to [inaudible]. >> Mayor Adler: Ann? >> Kitchen: I wanted to ask day Ana to speak to-- Diana to speak to next steps in the process. Perhaps Ed and Veronica need to also. What we're talking about today is similar to what we did with cares, which was approval of our intent to use dollars within certain buckets. And that there are later steps in the process in terms of the specifics about [2:38:15 PM] from in contracts and other aspects of the specifics. So, for example, now I'm going to talk about homelessness in particular because I'm hearing that issue most related to that. I think the issue applies to everything because the way we've typically done things is designated a pot of money without knowing all of the details, but having those details come back to us. Which from my perspective is an appropriate way to do that because we're not actually writing checks today. We don't do that until we approve contracts. So with regard to the dollars proposed to address homelessness, from my perspective what's important about that as we continue to work on details is of course to identify where other funds might be available and to the extent that they are to potentially be able to reduce the amount of arpa [2:39:15 PM] funds that are used in the future but we don't know that yet and we're not expected to know that now and that is something that is part of our due diligence. The other thing that's important about this is to make sure is that we are actually taking a systemic change to our process for homelessness so that requires some additional level of detail as we continue to work on this. And then of course accountability for results which will require some details about -- what are we paying for and how are we measuring results? So to my mind I think it would be -- I have some specific questions for other funds but I'll hold those until later. My question now is to understand the process, at the point in which we -- this Thursday hopefully from my perspective if we approve these buckets of funding for arpa, which includes homelessness, that we are approving them at a level and then we have a next step in the process. And to my mind the next step [2:40:16 PM] with regard to homelessness is for you, Diana or staff to return to us and say okay, were we successful with the community level of support? What did we get in terms of county support for the larger vision or support -- and support from philanthropy. That's one point. And the other point is what are the details in terms of how dollars will be spent and how we will measure results in accountability. So to my mind that's at least a two-step process, maybe a three-step process. So Diana can you speak to as much as you understand at this point what you would be thinking about in terms of a process for bringing us additional details, for bringing us approvals, those kinds of things like we've done with cares. >> Certainly, council member. Then I'd like Ed to step in and speak a little bit more [2:41:18 PM] specifically to process unless I make a mistake. I think it is important over the weekend and last week or so several of the council member offices have been in close communication with folks from the summit really digging into some of the numbers. And clarifying in some cases what some of the questions are that we would like to have answered. So I think we have increasing clarity on that front. We have much of that information and we'll be proceeding to package that for council to review as we move forward. Of course, with the 115-million-dollar budget there is a lot of detail there. So as I understood the messaging from council, there is interesting moving forward but certainly a real value placed on drawing our partners in and on clarity about how the funds will be used. Sand a couple of the questions that I would assume council might want to [2:42:21 PM] contemplate this week would be how much would you say staff, you may move forward with planning to procure for certain services Ora Houston grants, etcetera. And what are is the stopping points. How much would you like the city to spend before we have a checkpoint at which time you want to know that there are other commitments on the table from the partners. So we're certainly happy to structure that with you. And then of course this is one thing that's planned and anything we could do would come back to council in terms of negotiation and execution of any contracts. So I will stop there and hand it over to Ed to clarify any confusion I have created. >> Van eenoo. No, I think that was great. I don't think you created [2:43:21 PM] any confusion. To somewhat repeat what you said, much like a budget, our big budget that you're going to adopt in August is a four billion dollar plus spending plan. We don't spend all the Monday one. We come back to council throughout the year with contracts and additional spending authority to spend the money that you have appropriated. And certainly what will be before you this week should be looked at that in the same way. It's a spending plan or we've been calling it a framework here. This is what we're trying to get from council is what the plan is for spending these funds so over the course of the next three months, six months, nine months, a year, we can be pursuing implementation of these programs, but there would be actions by council and certainly permanent supportive housing would require council approval, entering into contracts would require council approval, but this is the plan that we would be pursuing in the future. [2:44:23 PM] This would drive things that staff were to bring back to council. Again, same as what we do in the regular budget process. I would say maybe one nuanced exception to that is there are some things that are urgent, like the 44.3 million that we came back to you several weeks ago was related to the pandemic that we're dealing with and we really felt we needed these dollars allocated now. There are funds of the funding that we do need now rather than later, specifically the 4.2 this will dollars that Diana talked about with the sheltering capacity and designated encampments and the funding of the navigatessers so we can help the public access the federal funds as much as possible. That might be the only slight difference is that there are some things that we really need to get funding in plalace for before council goes on break. We certainly -- it would be ideal if we could get from [2:45:26 PM] the council some consensus about what the spending plan that you would like to see us proceed with is for the entire arpa, that would help us out as we start crafting our budget recommendation. >> Kitchen: So what I'm hearing then is that there may be two items that we need to think about moving forward with immediately, but with regard to the larger bucket for homelessness and other budget too, we can as a council establish a timeline with you all about where you want checkpoints along the way and what level of detail we want along the way before we actually sign off on expenditures. So what I'm hearing you say, Diana, is that we can come back with that -- we can provide you what our thinking is and what we would like to see. [2:46:27 PM] And also certainly contingent upon -- like the amount even contingent upon the community participating, county and philanthropy. So I think we need to get more specific in terms of what we would like to see, but of what can be done from a process standpoint. So mayor, I have other questions, but I'll wait for others. I have questions related specifically to other -- >> Mayor Adler: I just wanted to give everybody a chance to kind of open where they're thinking and I'll go around and give everybody a chance to do that and have the prerogative to speak next. The arpa money that we're getting, the cities are getting across the area and across the country are pretty much a never before seen opportunity. [2:47:27 PM] To have that much capital ability going to cities and counties. And different cities and counties as we talked about when we about the resiliency resolution are treated differently. There are some cities and counties having to use it to fill revenue gaps in their budgets and Austin for lots of reasons is not in the same position that some of the really pressed jurisdictions are. And that gives us opportunities that those kinds of jurisdictions don't have. When you look around the country there are cities and counties sometimes joining together to -- who are not in that position that are really using this as an opportunity to address a challenge that is long-standing in their community or is big on their community and they've never been able to do what they think they need to do to really handle it because they've never had the resources and people to do [2:48:28 PM] that. So when we consider the resiliency resolution that's kind of -- that's what we said we were looking at. What can we do to take advantage of this incredibly unique moment to really do something that's transformational or maybe take something that is a track that will be with us for a long period of time and take it off the table or put it on a path to be taken off the table. And we passed that resolution and we set priorities to do. I agree with that and we passed that I think unanimously and I'm proud to have been part of that kind of approach to how to use the arpa dollars. We had also talked about being really smart about them too and trying to leverage them with partners. So we've got the biggest bang for the buck or find cost purposes, goals, so we would meet more than one [2:49:33 PM] goal in a spend and all that kind of stuff. I've posted on the message board and you all probably now, but for anyone watching this, a kind of framework that makes some modest tweaks I think to the staff proposal except that it adds the consideration of the reserves for the housing. I think we need to look at that and see is if there's an emergency need for some portion of that if we're going to run out of that money between now and when we come back so at least everyone can take a look at that. But generally speaking it's my understanding it's the same as councilmember kitchen's that it really identifies buckets and it will be the detail that comes in. I see the things that we need to spend right away, but I'm also comfortable adding a check-in point after today's action that's before contracts come back, [2:50:34 PM] especially wherein to the hopelessness part of this. I think we need to make very clear if we're going to do something at this kind of scale that we're doing it as a part of a much larger raise and lift and that scale is contingent on the whole community saying yes, this is the priority and coming in in similar types of scales in the community. Because if that doesn't happen, then I think the whole question of funding in this area needs to come back to the council so that we figure out what we do then if the community is not interested in responding at that scale. It's going to take somebody to go first. And say if the community actually wants to work at this scale, then we're ready to consider that. We need a lot more details on what everybody is doing and governance and all of those kinds of things, but I think it sends something [2:51:35 PM] that would enable us over the next six weeks to really engage our community partners and I think that is real important if we're going to see whether or not the community is ready to do this. Ooze councilmember tovo has frequently pointed out, there's really nothing new in the summit approach that we haven't seen before in the proposals that came from echo and the proposals that came from Barbara poppy, but what has always been missing is W get those proposals, we look at them and we say, well, okay, you're telling us what it's going to take to actually be able to get people off our streets and keep them off our streets and be at equilibrium, but those documents present a number that is so large there's no way for us to really do that. So we haven't. And we get those reports and their constituents and they're saying why didn't you act on the reports that you got? And the answer to that is really simple, I think for me. Is we've never had the resources to be able to do that. We've known what it would [2:52:36 PM] take to really be able to deal with this, but never had the resources so we never really have. So we've never built out the system that echo said we needed, that director poly said we needed, that its experts said we needed, that our staff. We've never built it out and I think that's the answer that the community question so why is this still with us? And so [indiscernible] In our city. My coming in and sending that kind of signal to the community we had a chance to really leverage the dollars in ways that were not able to leverage any of the other dollars on this page as presented by the staff because we're asking the community to come in with a significantly greater lift. But I'm comfortable saying let's see if everybody is willing to really put those kinds of dollars in that bucket and then come bah us [2:53:37 PM] either for community camp or come back to us as you better define what is involved in a spend program at that level. I'm comfortable moving forward with the budget similar to what staff did with the minor tweaks and I point out the changes that are comfortable with us adopting this and saying if we can find additional dollars in additional places that can displace the arp dollars that we might be using that we get those -- we're going to ask staff to try to find other areas so that we can reclaim some of those arp dollars and reallocate them other places. So I think that today for Thursday we have an opportunity to really send kind of a high level message. And I ask my colleagues, given -- what's been happening in our community over the last two years and a community that is asking to us really do something [2:54:39 PM] that is material that addresses a challenge that has now bled over into perceptions of public safety and perceptions of lots of different things that we really have an opportunity now to act in a way that will still preserve our ability to help shape details in the coming months. Continuing on, colleagues. Leslie, do you want to go? >> Pool: Yeah. I wanted to check in with Ed, I think. Ed was saying something about the amount for rent was reduced, but I think that's because it was offset by a significant piece of direct funding from the federal government. So could you maybe address that with the amount of money that he is looking for is in fact from what I gathered from one of the screens being provided it's just coming directly from federal funds for the specific rental assistance [2:55:39 PM] and that I had other questions. >> Van eenoo: There is a -- an additional 22-million-dollar grant the city is going to receive for emergency rental assistance that can only be used for that purpose. >> Right. And is that why the amount -- the latest iteration was reduced in order to accommodate that direct funding? Because it comes out to about the same amount of money. >> Van eenoo: I'll let Veronica speak to it as well. I think more so it was following direction we felt we received from council via the resolution 111 I think in March that spoke to really wanting to see the arpa funding put more towards transformational projects and less towards relief projects. Emergency relief is what our [2:56:41 PM] cares funding really all about and what we thought we heard was to go in a different direction and look more towards transformational projects. So that was certainly a part of it. But you are correct there is $22 million that will be allocated to rental assistance for sure. >> Pool: I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that because we're not actually losing it. In fact, we could possibly be fee-freeing up money in arpa for other things and still meet the mark of rental assistance that had already been established. And I think, Greg, you had set the number. I wanted to ask our staff what if -- I know we are hoping for good results from philanthropy and other governmental entities, contributing what happens if they don't. >> Van eenoo: I'll take a stab at that. That's why we call it a spending plan. We can put forth a plan based on certain assumptions and if the proposed [2:57:41 PM] assumptions don't come to fruition we may have to revisit it. This is obviously Diana's area of expertise, but I would expect if those other sources of funding those play out we want to revisit what we're allocating the $84 million towards. It may still go to homelessness, but it may go towards different things. >> Pool: Okay. That's fair. That's what I would anticipate as well. I think this also speaks to the conversation about which fiscal years are we allocating toward, and I don't think I was hearing Diana or staff. I'm pretty sure I'm not hearing anybody that I sai that we are going to because we don't have those moneys. I mean we kind of know how much we will get but we are specifically encurrently berg the fiscal 22, which .. Then appropriation action will be as Ed described it as when we get [2:58:43 PM] contracts and approve those contracts and actually cut the check; is that correct or are we also actually setting out goals for encurrently ambulances for fiscal '23? And then I would ask, can we do that legally or even need do so? In fact that would be work that is done next year. >> Right. Well you can certainly come up with a plan. Now let me just, slight correction, it is fiscal year '21, so we are in fiscal year 2021 and proposing this week on your June 10th diswroand appropriate $49.4 million of the funds to this new budget that would be expended over the course of this year, and then, the other 94.2 million we won't even receive that until may of 2022, so that funding would have to be appropriated at that time, but F and there is nothing that [2:59:44 PM] says you can't plan for that in the future and that's what we are trying to lay out here, what would be a plan for all of this money, some of which we are already have, and the other half of which we won't get until may of 2022. But even those funds, even that 49 power 4 million we are allocating or that we are proning to appropriate on June 10th .. Those programs and spending would need to come back to council to prepared to enter into contracts or real estate transactions. >> How much of what is proposed is ongoing and how much of it is one time? >> Just one time -- >> Yeah, I mean, you know, this is obviously, these funds have to -- the arp funds need to be spent by September 31st of 2024 [3:00:45 PM] so it all has to be expended with the idea that when these dollars run out, particularly under a three and a half percent revenue cap that we may not be able to sustain those programs or it would take future council action to figure out how in the general fund we are going to ghild funding to continue these programs. A lot of it will need to be on going, particularly in the homelessness arena, a lot of those rams will need to be recurring, if we are going to open up permanent supportive housing units pool right. >> The units themselves of course is a one time expenditure but the operations, maintenance and wrap around services are ongoing. >> Pool: And then the last question I have at this point on this round is, I assume that staff will be giving us a ballpark figure for what the ongoing costs will be, because they become kind of a principle [3:01:46 PM] around which our future budgets, all future council budgets will have to be structured, even if it means changing the numbers, I don't know, of down or whatever, but they have to become as much a part of our ongoing sustained budget, decision making as we have been doing in the past. And that is the part -- that part really gives me can pause when I look at the poker that you gave us of three and a half for the next five years, I don't think we had gotten that estimate of the expenditures here for the -- spending that that this will cause for ongoing services and programs. And that's why I am really encouraged to hear pokes talking about being deliberate, thoughtful and taking time to make some decisions, especially in the context of fiscal '22 which is about six weeks from [3:02:48 PM] now, that we will actually start the public process of our budget for next year and that will also give us a chance for the community to think about what we are doing and give them time to observe it and weigh in too. If there is anybody thinking about passing anything on the tenth and I am not, I may be alone, but one of the reasons why I am not is because I am pretty sure my neighbors next door who have direct access to me don't know anything about what this is going mean, for what it contains and I know they would like to have their voice heard and I would like to give them that, and so I would urge us to continue to think about a deliberate pace being in tandem with our budgeting work that starts just next month and perhaps a larger picture so we can educate the public so they understand what we are doing. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember [3:03:49 PM] Renteria. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. My biggest concern just in the present is that you know, we really definitely don't want to contribute for to the homelessness and if people are -- we really need to address that. So I want to add or whoever can answer, is there a possibility of rental assistance funds running out before we can make a decision when we come back? >> I am looking to see if director truelove was available to help with that conversation. I see Veronica shaking her head no -- >> Had a conflict but -- >> I would love to have that question answered. I am really -- -- -- that would [3:04:58 PM] be a disaster. If we have that happen. >> Remember, we do have staff in the -- >> Did you say you had staff moving over that could answer that question? >> Councilor this is city manager Gonzales here -- Jackman would be -- could answer that question. >> Yes. >> Okay. [Indiscernible] >> >> Mayor Adler: We couldn't really hear you. >> Can you hear me. >> Mayor Adler: Can you hand her -- and just speak and we can understand you better, probably. >> Okay. Can you hear me now? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Thank you. >> Okay. [3:05:59 PM] Thank you. We have, based upon discussions we have been happening probably the last two weeks or so, we are currently -- we have expended about 70 percent of the funds of $24 million funds that have been allocated for emergency rental assistance. We expect that we will spend all of the funds, allocate all of the funds before the end of this month, before the end of June, and one of the things that we have done recently, we changed the program slightly to prioritize households that were five months or more behind on rent and so we have been processing those households to keep people from being evicted in line with the new order on [3:06:59 PM] evictions, and so right now, we are waiting -- and I have also been speaking with the comptroller's office to see when the additional allotment of funds will be deposited until the Citibank account, because right now we -- we do anticipate that funds will be depleted before this month. >> And that is what is really concerning to me and to my colleague Greg, that we will run out of money and that we will end up having people evicted, so I hope that we can really take into consideration of some funding right now and reimburse it back when we get the money back from -- when we get it from the fed, the 22 million. So that we won't have those kind of incidents happening. >> Thank you. >> >> And if I can add, to date, we [3:07:59 PM] serve, we have over 9,000, almost 10,000 households who have applied and we have served just about 4,000 of those who have applied for assistance. So you really feel like, you are going to run out at the end of the -- you feel like you are going to run out at the end of the month. What would happen after that? .. >> The program, we did go on pause previously with our other rental assistance programs, when the funding was depleted we just paused the programs and waited for additional dollars to be allocated. Those funds with each program, after the end of each program we did receive additional funds and we were able to prioritize some households that remained in the pipeline, and so we were able to [3:09:00 PM] prioritize those with additional -- as additional funding came in. >> Renteria: Okay. Does anyone out there know if -- when this $22 million is going to come in and when will we be able to start using it? >> I was going to say, councilmember, certainly a clear follow-up on this discussion, we will do our best do provide some additional clarification the best we can from our federal partners to have some answer as as soon as possible. Hopefully tomorrow, but certainly by your decision making on Thursday. And so we will get that to you as best we can and as soon as we can as well. >> Renteria: Thank you. Great. >> I think all of those questions would be helpful for all of us for the deliberation this is week. >> Mayor Adler: -- Paige Ellis. >> Thank you, major. Pio asked a lot of questions I [3:10:00 PM] was thinking about. When will the money that was allocated run out? I was looking at -- Trenton city site today and notice it was very much at the end of the 15 million that was allotted for rent, 1.0, if you will. I am also curious to know the date of when the federal assistance 22 million will come just .. Just so you add -- I would like to know that as well. Do we have any can firm commitments from any of our county partners? I know some of the spreadsheet talked about an assumption of some sort of match per capita, but I just wasn't aware of how firm that was or if they were waiting for our direction to provide their potential commitments. >> Mayor Adler: -- Workforce and childcare. >> Ellis: I think at the presentation it said staff was having some conversations and I just wasn't sure if that was a [3:11:03 PM] finance staff or other staff. >> I will take a stab at it, but no, I don't think we have any firm commitments, we do have a presentation that was made to the Travis county commissioners court where staff spoke to wanting to continue some of the programs that they had brought forward with cares act funding that were running out and they were going to come forward to the commissioners court with a proposal to continue some of those programs, but the discussion that we are having now this week about allocating, coming up with a spending plan for the remainder of our arpa funds, the indication from that presentation was they were envision ago pretty lengthy public engagement process and quite a bit more dialogue, perhaps not even coming back until January of 2022 with their plan for their transformational projects. So that is my understanding based upon the presentation that was made and conversations we [3:12:03 PM] have had with them and I am not aware of any firmer chips than that at this point in time from Travis county. >> Ellis: Okay. It sounds like we are just working on some of the details of timeline and things like that. And then just -- I just want to say I thought a bit about the relationship between arp and tapping into reserves and I am Leary of tapping into reserves, only because this year, last year has provided emergency after emergency after emergency and I think I am just a little scarred by that and want to be very careful if we are moving forward, moving through our reserves outside of a budget timeline that I understand the everything that it is going to go toward and the need of it. Obviously there is great need in our community and if we end up in a situation where we need rental assistance gap funding to keep the program going so that pokes don't get evicted I am [3:13:05 PM] fully supportive of that. I think we need make every effort necessary to make sure that gap is filled but I just wanted to voice that I kind of have been Leary tapping more into reserves knowing we have hit a point where there is another emergency on top of what we are already trying to recover from and we are not through this pandemic, and so I just have been trying to understand our timeline, the financial components of this and so I have been struggling a lot with how to navigate through that but I just wanted to voice that here. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Kathie. >> Tovo: So I just want to call my colleague's attention to the fact I posted -- first I want to do that. I just want to call my colleagues' attention to the negligent board post I put up this -- today. It talks about several areas where, the forward direction I hope you will support and gets to some of the conversation we [3:14:06 PM] have had about -- and I think I will -- I would like to talk about that and kind of talk through it, but first I am going to start with some questions about the documents that we have received today because I have some questions for staff. So there are some changes, between memo we got on Friday and the presentation we got today, there are some cages and I just want to be sure I am understanding them. So the document that we got today says emergency shelter and capacity building, it seems to track to what was described in the memo as prop B implementation and capacity building. And I assume that is the same line. But could you confirm that? And could somebody explain why a $500,000 decrease. >> I can handle both of those. So one was just terminology. We thought that the latter terminology, emergency shelters but more clear a what we were talking about, what need was so just to provide clarity. The $500,000 change has to do [3:15:09 PM] with that $500,000 is already reflected on slide 19 of your presentation from today. You will see a line under, on slide 19 is about the $84 million for the homelessness spending framework. 3.6 million is for system capacity building so that $500,000 is part of that 3.6 million and S it is now shown there as opposed to -- as part -- had been 4.7 million for the emergency shelters and capacity building, the capacity building is now reflected on slide 19 as part of the 3.6. >> Tovo: -- Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Inside towed get back to that in just a second and I agree with you about the terminology, [3:16:10 PM] though I am still not sure what is funded within this category, compared to some of the other categories .. And I want to spend a little time really understanding this. On the slide 18 from today. This is also slightly different from -- it is not different in the amount but what I don't know is when is the workforce -- when is the $5 million that is included within this 84, when -- pardon me, the $5 million for workforce development intended to be expended? During year 1 or year 2 this is it part of the 22.4 or part of the 61-6? >> I think that might be Diana grade question or we might get back to you with that. >> Tovo: Okay. >> I think it is a Diana question and I am just trying to figure out which slide speaks to that. I believe that is largely the [3:17:11 PM] second fiscal year, 0 councilmember. Yes. In fact, so I am looking now a at, I believe this is slide 19. That breaks down by the school year -- homelessness so if -- where you see other services, substitute server - - services, employment, et cetera, $4.8 million here happening in the second fiscal year but it is important but we want to go ahead and get those core services and the general capacity building moving first, at present it is showing in the second year. >> Tovo: Thank you. Okay. So -- and, Ed, why is there a change in the contingency from Friday to Monday? A contingency I think was at 14 and now it is at 14.6. Yes, that's all part of that same $500,000 issue I was [3:18:11 PM] talking about, we really had that 500,000 for capacity building in there twice, it is part of the 3.6 million and also reflected it as a separate $500,000. We identified that just about an hour before today's meeting and so we decided to make the correction. >> Tovo: Okay. So then I have some general questions about -- and I think this is all -- I am working off last week's presentation. Which is not a good idea. It is a little bit different. In terms of the numbers. So one thing that -- so I was one of the councilmembers that sat down and reviewed some of the more detailed information from the summit and you know, I want to say I really appreciate the consultant and Diana grey your work and the work of several others who pulled that together. There is clearly a lot of detail in forming the numbers that we are talking about here today. [3:19:15 PM] Br in my opinion -- well, I will speak for myself, I am going to need more details associated with each of these categories so that I can be really transparent with the public about what kinds of perhaps are contained within each one of these and how many -- what is our expected number of individuals served. And some of this I have put in my message board post. So among other things, one of my motions is going to be to outline a process to come back to us with that more detailed spending plan later in the summer that explains in these new investments, as the mayor said we are really building on -- we are building on number one our existing plan but also our existing investments and I want -- I want to be able to talk very clearly with the community about you know, here are our current investments in these areas, here are our planned investments, how many -- what is the expected number of individuals that we hope to [3:20:17 PM] serve with these expanded investments to get to have a fuller conversation about what costs might be -- might be accommodated through other funding sources other than arm arpa and to really be .. Able to kind of really touch base with that more expanded, more detailed framework. So I am a not really speaking to the too timing of when we approve that. I know that's a conversation we will have to have but regardless of what we end up doing this week, for me that is you know, I am going to urge us to pass with some direction coming back with that spending -- I am not talking about coming back with the individual allocations to difference individual -- in advance of that I think we need that more detailed plan so we can be very transparent and clear with everyone involved, you know, there is where we are investing, these are the kind of things that are included in crisis services. These are the kind of things included in core housing. I know that detail exists but at [3:21:18 PM] this point I think most of us are just not as familiar as we need to be and I know public is not either. So that is number one. Two, I am also going to be bringing forward, I know Diana you spent a lot of time on it, manager, it is not clear to me whether you have defloyd full rake of -- range of 0 city staff reviewing that work that you would ordinarily doing in making this recommendation to us, and so you know, having some of our -- financials. I would expect this in the same way any other proposal would be. I am not sure it that has happened. So having said that I would like to -- and then there are some other things I will be bringing forward direction on and we can talk an this later. But just while we are talking about this, could you help walk us through a couple -- a couple of questions I have for you. So you talked a little bit about crisis services, diversion and outreach. Where I start to get kind of [3:22:18 PM] confused is in distinguishing between core housing, the capital investments, the other services and I am not sure why we are calling -- why are we calling a it emergency shelter and capacity building? What exactly is emergency shelter and capacity building? So is this the funding, this 4.2, is this funding for December fade camping areas? Is it funding for shelters? Is it contemplated to be any one of those? So if we could kind of go down -- >> Sure. >> Tovo: That is sort of where I would start. What exactly included within emergency shelter and capacity building for 4.2, not exactly. >> Sure. >> Tovo: But a general description of that. >> Absolutely. And just to clarify, councilmember, because of the correction we made around the $500,000, the line item you are seeing for the 4.2 should simply say emergency shelter, the capacity building is actually represented in the over -- >> Tovo: 500,000 moved. >> Correct. >> Tovo: Okay. [3:23:19 PM] >> So my apologies there. >> Tovo: No, no. Thank you for clarifying that. >> Sure. And with when we speak then to the emergency shelter, I mean, crisis -- is what we are talking about, crisis beds, and the sting sun there is these are -- that are necessary for unsheltered population, particularly as we move into more robust implementation of prop B, but they are hot -- so that would include either. It could be conventional shelter, congregate shelter, non-- shelter as we discussed potentially. Creating more -- shelter like to southbridge shelter we are opening, should be opening in the next few days. Or designated encampments. As question pursue various, the various possibilities that we laid outlast week, in the context of the direction council gave us around designated encampments but always keeping in center what our goal is of [3:24:19 PM] course is to give some folks a safe and legal place to be during this time that we are there and not yet housed. >> Tovo: Okay. >> That is what that is. And then do you want me from there to go to the other categories condition the 84 million? >> Tovo: Yes. But maybe I could ask a couple of questions to guide the response. >> Yes. Of course. >> Tovo: One thing that I have been thinking about is the capital investment category, and whether which have any other funds that we might be able to use toward this. And, you know, again I am not sure this is something we are going sort out this week regardless of whether or not we decide to provide that direction this week, but I do think we need sort it out. So for example walnut creek when we have the conversations around the estimated $30 million that might come in through the waller creek tours as I understand it and we got really befuddled in our council conversations and I am sorry can never remember where it landed but I know there [3:25:22 PM] were conversations about we could use that money for capital investments say in shelter but perhaps not in affordable housing and I think we were uncertain where it landed with psh and others but we don't need to get into that now but what I would be interested in seeing is within that capital investment is any of that emergency shelter? Is it all psh? And other dedicated housing units? I guess that is the first question. >> That is -- yes. I apologize. That is all permanent housing. The lion's share is for permanent supportive housing units. There is some portion that is intended or assumed to go toward subdifficultation of the coc set aside units through the rch, rental development assistance program at the Austin housing finance corporation .. As you know we have developers who may [3:26:22 PM] not be creating purpose specific or housing that is limited to permanent supportive housing but who are setting aside units for referral through continuum of care. Right now, an estimate, councilmember, 260 million of the 275, roughly, would be for permanent supportive housing and then the balance is presumed to provide support for additional general cfc -- >> I am sorry, I didn't camp your numbers. >> >> I am looking at a total of 35 million, 35-point -- >> My apologies -- >> Of the city's investment. >> Correct. So I would have to do the math there councilmember, but the vast majority of our capital [3:27:22 PM] dollars would go toward psh with some going toward continuum of care units. Rhga of course already is supporting some continuum of care units through our normal general obligation bond financing. So my expectation would be that of that 35.6 million remember of course 0 that is of course 35.6 of a total of 275, we are anticipating almost, almost $100 million coming in through the state, through tax credits, and their multifamily development loan program. So while you know, we are looking at that more narrow number, we are certainly layering sources to create all of those -- >> Tovo: And I have a question about that but I know one of my colleagues also has raised a good question about breaking that down so I will let her take that up. But can you help me then [3:28:23 PM] understand -- so under -- again just looking at slide 19. It is just a little easier for me right now to look at the immediate arpa allocations rather than, rather than looking at it with the other city funding and the other external and hoped for external funding. So I am really looking at slide mean. So on slide 19 where it talks about core housing programs, it again talks about psh, and then in other services, there are services that I would expect to be included within psh so can you help me distinguish these these categories? >> Certainly. >> What is psh in the core housing program as distinct from the last category and then what are the services in 3 that would not be included in two? >> Yes. >> So the core housing services are the rental supports and the case management services. As opposed to the creation of the bricks and mortar. I think it is important to [3:29:24 PM] distinguish those two categories because as I mentioned before, of course, it is a very substantial investment in the short-term period but that provides with us those deeply affordable units for many, many years going forward. So that's why psh appears in both places. And then in terms of the ancillary services, so what I would say is that in most psh, any case manager or -- serving permanent tenant will be familiar with folks who are dealing with substance use disorders, right, and helping them droact resources, but we frequently do have individuals who need more intensive treatment, perhaps they need in patient, perhaps they need intensive outpatient treatment, those resources are quite scarce. In our community, and so what we are proposing here is to ensure that those more intensive [3:30:26 PM] clinical services are beefed up and are available to this population as satisfied, essentially. We can provide rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing in the absence of that more robust clinical availability, but obviously we will be much more successful if it is present and I would say very similarly, employment services, case managers, work with their clients, by having an explicit supported employment program that, you know, for example, has a work crew, so we know that there is a job and there is a structure there, to support people as they move into employment and gain that work experience is incredibly valuable. Similarly, while case managers typically help people with their benefits, we know that having highly trained specialists who help people in particular achieve the designation of [3:31:27 PM] disability for those benefits, as you know is very difficult, really moves us forward in terms of capturing those benefits, not just for the individual but for the medicaid benefits that allow us to recapture funds through reimbursement to the community. >> Tovo: That is extremely helpful. Thank you. And so I think this is the kind of thing I am hoping we can articulate and then you also had some numbers with the fuller, with the fuller plan that I think would also really help us understand exactly what the general -- beyond just these one line categories. Last question for the moment, though I have a zillion more, the last question I will ask here, there is workforce recruitment and recent built into capacity building and it is 5 million we talked about under workforce. So I would like to understand the difference there and I know one of the things I know I mentioned that I am interested in that my staff and I have been [3:32:29 PM] talking with capital idea about is how we build that 200 -- how we use some of our workforce partners here in the community to help build that out. Would I expect to see that funding for that within system capacity building, workforce recruitment and retention dollars or is that in the jobs and workforce development money -- like where does that show up? And what is the $5 million for homelessness? Is that for individuals who are experiencing homelessness, helping to, or formerly homeless, connecting them with employment and this is 5 million and this is really about building a workforce of case managers? >> >> That's right. Councilmember. So the referenced 5 million was originally also in the workforce ask, if you will, so that was another place that we cleared up to make sure we weren't duplicating, so within .. Those ancillary services, with the [3:33:29 PM] substance abuse services and the benefits enrollment, that employment ask is for people experiencing homelessness. There is part of the system capacity building, it is for what I think you are referring to in partnership potentially with capital idea or others is really working to ensure that we have that pipeline of qualified and experienced professionals to work within this field social workers, caseworkers, et cetera, and that also will require a concerted effort to train a group, et cetera. So that is building the system as opposed to being a direct service which is what the supported employment is for people experiencing homelessness. >> Tovo: So 4.2 of the substance use, of the other [3:34:30 PM] services, 4-point do you have that is employed for individuals experiencing homelessness, so only .6 is the rest of the services? [4.2] >> Remember this is .. A slice of the overall cost, so this -- what we are looking at is the city's portion and so if the city is wanting to explicitly dedicate a substantial amount of money toward the supported employment piece of it for people experiencing homelessness then we would be looking to other sources for the substance abuse disorder and benefits enrollment and other ancillary costs, yes. >> Tovo: Thanks so much. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. And then councilmember Kelly. [3:35:31 PM] >> Alter: Thank you. I think this is an important discussion and I have got a lot of things I want to clarify and ask, so I will try to be as clear as I can. I share the reservations that have been expressed by some of my colleagues about the use of reserves. In the light of the -- what we have over our budget and the legislation that passed, I really feel like we ought to -- we might save our reserves and not jump the gun on there. I hear the concern about the evictions and would like as my colleagues have mentioned to understand if that 22 million will be available soon enough to help us to address anything that may arise. Again I would also say that I would really love some more data on the demand, if we have it, in [3:36:33 PM] talking with Abel it is my understanding that for the smaller scale housing, not multifamily, they are not anticipating a huge eviction crisis. That does not account, though, for the big multifamily units and the older ones but it would be helpful to better understand that. In any case we have the 22 million, but if we were to move that I would want to have a better lay of the land so that we know that. I would support something like what councilmember Renteria suggested if we need a bridge before the 22 million comes through, I think that would be a good idea. I want to make my colleagues aware of some additional proposals. I have heard lots of enthusiasm for supporting children in our community, whether it was early childhood, childcare or after school care, and there are some additional proposals that are not in the staff proposal that I want to make sure you are aware [3:37:35 PM] of, councilmember tovo and I serve on the joint committee with aid and the county and are serving on a subcommittee along with commissioner Travillion and ISD trustee Boswell and we have been working on understanding the county needs and the aid needs with respect with to childcare and opportunities that are there, and there is parallel proposal to the del valle proposal that would extend full day-care to aisd schools. I will post that proposal but if you were to do 15 classrooms for the 3 years, it would be at 2 million, 63,000, roughly to do that. And then there is another piece to that ask that would be for what they are calling expanding their 2 gen program for families [3:38:37 PM] and that would be the 4:30 over the three years, and then in addition there are a couple of programs that our staff did not consider because they were not early childhood so they were not in the zero to six range and I think that they interpreted, as I understand it, they interpreted our direction to mean only the early childhood, so there is some after school program -- to work on the after-school programs that they are interested in, that amounts to, I think -- I am not sure if that is multiyear or just one year but there is another -- 150,000 in there that is not covered from that, and the proposal that is before us introduces additional funding for a great program, family connects that have the folks go and help when there is a newborn in the home. [3:39:37 PM] It is a great program. It doesn't provide the full funding. This is not something that the county has traditionally funded but this also wasn't a part of necessarily the packet of things that we were looking at that had to do with childcare. So I want to make sure we have enough money to do at least our half of the programs that were -- that we are thinking about, our staff did not review the aid ones that I brought before them because it was too late in the process when they did it, but it is something we have been working on with the county and understand that the county is supportive of the that. So I wanted to -- I wanted to make sure that folks were aware of that. And I wanted to ask if you could -- or Kerry, if someone could explain to us how the timing .. Of this will work across the fiscal year end since we are not getting if second fiscal money until may S the -- as long as it is during the fiscal year and [3:40:38 PM] that we would float, somehow float that or do we have to wait until we get the money in may to make any of that second pile of expenditures? But I think folks are assuming that they will have authorization to start October 1st on these things once there are contracts in place and I just want to clarify if that is in fact how this works. >> I think that would somewhat be informed by what happens with the 49.4 million, for council to appropriate those funds and that there was a need to move more quickly on -- you know, if we were to spend all of that money and need to move more quickly I think we could come up with a strategy to do that and reimbursing ourselves with the second tranche of money when it is payable available. But I think it is going to be driven by how quickly the 49 poor 4 million is expended. 49.4 million is expended .. As you talk about that I think folks are assuming they would have access to money starting I know, when you talk about the [3:41:38 PM] breakdown for the childcare being the 1.3 and then the six-point whatever, they are talking about it as if they would have access to that money you know, fairly early on in the fiscal year and if that is not going to be the case then we really need to know that so we can act accordingly. Otherwise what we think we are funding, we are not funding. >> It does make sense, and I think we are going to be able to accommodate that, but let us work on that and we will be ready to continue that conversation tomorrow you know, check in with our comptroller's office but I don't think we are going to have -- I don't think we are going to not be able to meet timelines of needs within the context of when the flow of funds are going to come from the treasury department. I don't think that will be a constraint. >> Alter: Okay. Great. That's what I wanted to confirm. So like -- a good chunk of time over the weekend talking through [3:42:42 PM] the financial -- and appreciate the work and the effort and the vision that is a part of the summit plan and a I appreciate that work. That being said I have more, I am left with more questions than answers and for me as I look forward as to what we are doing, I need to be able to communicate to my constituents exactly what we are investing in and what we are -- and how it is different from what we have done thus far and the details and what we are doing and unless I can meet that test I cannot support you know, a large amount of money going into the homelessness summit. We need to have those answers. I think philanthropy would need have those answers. I already talked to the county commissioner, this he need to have those answers. So I think the success of moving forward depends on much greater clarity on those kind of things. [3:43:43 PM] So let me ask a couple of questions related to that. I asked these last week but I still don't feel like I have a good handle on them. You know, this has been set up we need 515 million. There is 221 that is committed. And we are just going to split the balance, 100, 100, 100, county, city, philanthropy. Well, I understand what that with 221 is and who that is, because we spent a lot of money on homelessness every year, and if over the course of the three years we are spending 200 of that 221 and I have no idea because I don't know the answer, I am not sure that 100 is the right number. Against you for us, so, Diana, can you provide more clarity on that 221? How it is broken down? >> I can, councilmember. So we spoke briefly to this last week and preliminarily I told you at that time of the [3:44:47 PM] 220 million, it was roughly 40 percent, 40 percent, state and then ten percent split between housing authority and some other sources. And so that number for the city is approximately, I believe, $92 million that is currently committed, the clarifying force that these are dollars for the delta, for the new services going forward. This does not include our baseline of services. So we spent a bit of time over the weekend, I apologize, vetting that list of sources as we understand them and should be prepared to provide that to you, the detail of each of those funding sources, whether they are currently committed or anticipated and where they are coming from at the end of this year. >> Alter: I appreciate we are count some of our existing funds toward the delta, does that mean [3:45:47 PM] we haven't committed those funds so we are going to be asked to do additional funds? How do I understand that? >> I apologize because we haven't done the budget yet. >> No. I apologize if I was not clear. These are -- the existing funds we would be counting toward that are for example, about split half- and-half, about $50 million in capital but the 0 council already committed but has not produced units. For example, the dollars that we have committed for investment into the hotel the conversion dollars through our rental housing development program that are supporting deals like -- Rutland, so we have got about $50 million committed or anticipated and actually that also includes the $11 million that is coming down through the American rescue plan act, which is explicitly for the purpose of [3:46:47 PM] serving people --, the operating, the rental and service side, those dollars are made up currently of the new dollars that came down, because of -- through covid, so our emergency solutions grant funds, to the tune of over $10 million. The new six and a half million dollars that is in the Apa budget as of this fiscal year and going forward to the -- for the next two years, as well as the commitment of funds through the housing trust fund for, are ongoing operations of some of our affordable housing. Housing. So those are all dollars that have been committed but still making their way through the pipeline, some of those perhaps are now operational, but of course in the case of capital we are moving toward occupancy. Does that help clarify -- at at [3:47:47 PM] it does. I really will appreciate that when you have that in writing so I can follow the different trails there. Because we spend a lot of money on homelessness and the challenges we have is being able to provide a clear accounting to our constituents about, as what we spent, what we spent it on, B, and you know, what we have accomplished with that money and I think that is all part of this discussion and being able to communicate anything, if we want to make these investments. Another piece that has been puzzling me, because when I look at what else I would like to spend the money on, instead of homelessness, I am interested in spending that money on workforce development, much larger infusion into workforce development, a, increase for the childcare, early childhood as I just mentioned, also interested in some of the work that Kathie has been doing with the [3:48:50 PM] resilience hubs that came out of the emergency declaration. And so me, all of that that prevention as well as the 22 million is prevention, but we don't get credit for that in this model, and yet for so many people we are the entity that provides that prevention that keeps them from becoming homeless, and entering the system in the first place. And I am not seeing must have investment in this system in prevention as I am understanding it play out. So can you help me? I understand there is a piece in this system for targeted prevention and that we have folks who become homeless who if they want to prevent them from becoming homeless again, and that is a real important target for us to make investments on, but I also care about the folks that, you know, councilmember Renteria and Casar were talking about want to make sure they [3:49:51 PM] don't get evicted and to me that is all part of our homelessness strategy and we are spending well over $100 million, if you count all of the things that we are doing, and, you know -- and we count that when we talk about what we spend on homelessness each year. And so I mean, I need to understand how that works in your mind as our homeless strategy officer and where that prevention fits and why it is not a part of the model. >> Yes. Thank you. And this is a bit complex. So I share your value with prevention and rental assistance in general and there are many reasons rental assistance important in addition to keeping people from becoming literally homeless. Right? Because that rent burden creates all kinds of ramifications within a household in terms of [3:50:52 PM] their resourcesness for their other needs in term of the family's stability and education. They hey not become literally homeless, they may end up being doubled up or in substandard housing, et cetera, so I think there is value in this overall rental assistance that is, I think, in our -- when we talk about the homeless response system itself. It gets a little bit slippery, because as we talk about the kinds of things that low-income families need, those who may have housing instability we begin, if anything we can then talk about that as prevention because obviously any support folks receive assistance in their stability. Because the population experiencing rent burden is so large, compared to the population that will eventually become homeless, utilizing our [3:51:56 PM] overall rental assistance dollars, so say our 22 million or 28 million that we had previously and thinking of that squarely within the homeless response system distorts a little bit, because you really don't know which folks might have become homeless overall and the immediate is so great that you could almost you could spend easily $100 million, probably there is that much need, and not have done anything as direct within this population that is already experiencing homelessness or that we know has experienced it before. So to some degree we do draw a line and you have to decide where that is, and that is why that is not in the model overall, is because of it can distort it and it gets really confusing about if we are [3:52:59 PM] spending -- you could spend easily the 500 million and potentially not touch folks who are actually experiencing homelessness. So that is perhaps a clumsy description, councilmember, but it is a distinction that we make, always understanding that the two are just intimately linked. >> Alter: Right. And for me as an elected official who has to make a decision about how to spend the money I am not yet convinced by the model I am better offer spending that money in the homeless versus what I would consider to be prevention, you know, whether it is the workforce or the childcare or those other supports. And then help me understand what portion of this $515 million is going to help us to address the implementation of prop B and the [3:53:59 PM] creation of the shelters so that people have a legal and safe place to go. Because a lot of the community is concerned about how we are going to implement promise pop B and how we are going to provide that shelter and the safe places and aim not seeing that in this system. Eventually, yes, but in the short run, no. >> You are correct. That the $515 million budget does not include the shelter resources. Having said that, the city has already dedicated capital dollars and operating dollars to open up the southbridge shelter, which will happen in the coming weeks, and provide some bridge shelter, some temporary housing. The $4.2 million that has been proposed as an immediate budget amendment, I believe, it is [3:55:03 PM] dedicated explicitly towards that sort of crisis intervention and, again, I think corporately as we move towards this work, we are absolutely inviting our partners, public and private, to work with us on the side of creating more crisis capacity. >> Alter: -- Funding the crisis capacity? >> That is accurate. It is funding diversion. It is funding againing people out of homelessness as quickly as possible and in a stable a means as possible. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: -- >> Thank you. As I mentioned in my message board post the city spend hundreds of millions of dollars to indict address homelessness. I think the effort itself is tremendously worthwhile but I am concerned with what we have shown for it. I requested an excel spreadsheet with all of the homeless [3:56:03 PM] spending over the last five years and quite frankly I was taken aback at the total apples. My office will be seeking clarity on the overall amounts about what we are investing in and what the out comes are to the extent we are able. I would have greater confidence in the 0 proposed spending framework here if we have an external efficiency audit for the last five years of expenditures and programming to better understand whether we are using taxpayer dollars which we have an obligation to be good stewards of to have the most productive outcome. To complete an external audit of homelessness spending we are able to still operate the, instill confidence in our community. I have spoken with community members and stakeholders and they like I do remain skeptical on the spending without a better yuck of how effective previous spending has been. Finally I would like to echo my colleague's comments and concerns about using reserve money and like it to be clear there is not something I can support. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: .. Does [3:57:10 PM] anybody -- mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, I appreciate fit. I will be brief. I want to say a lot of my questions have been answered and a lot of my concerns have been expressed and some of the ones I really wanted to highlight are -- the concerns expressed from my colleagues about dipping into our reserves. That gives me pause. I it is have some concerns about the dollar amount that we are looking specifically to invest in our homelessness mitigation efforts. Much like councilmember alter in my mind's eye the more sustainable investment is around infrastructure. It is sort of addressing the issues that factor into people becoming homeless and people being able to be empowered economically, so I really like the idea of us, giving it considerably more thought and thinking through how do we sort [3:58:10 PM] of fortify the infrastructure. I am looking forward to continued conversations but as it stands right now, I still have lots of concerns about our level of investment and what specifically we are investing in. I don't know who said it earlier, something about you know, how do you know we were successful? Oh, results. Somebody said something about being able to quantify, analyze and determine what our results were. And I am thinking, you know, also being able to establish efficiency. What does that look like. >> And so I just have a lot. I just have a lot more questions and recognize that I don't want to lose an opportunity especially around the one-time funding, but I definitely don't want us to have any redepress later especially around the one-time funding. So that said, some of the priorities have had include our workforce development [3:59:11 PM] component, the childcare component. I haven't heard to date anybody talk about transportation in this conversation. When I think about some of the barriers for folks and some of the elements that exacerbate cyclical poverty, often times with keeping folks from getting their kids to day care and getting the jobs is transportation. So I don't know exactly how to introduce that to this conversation, but I certainly hope that we do. I don't know if I am repeating what another one of my colleagues said about investing in creatives, but that's certainly a priority as well. >> Councilmember Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you. And thank you for looking at this proposal and I want to show you a little bit about the lens that I'm using as we consider this framework. [4:00:11 PM] You know, what I learned during the conversations I had on the campaign trail of my community was for many austinites they were not sure and were not clear on what was being done by Austin city council to address homelessness and to seek actual solutions which as we all know is to create more housing opportunities for our unhoused neighbors. I see this as a moment for us to be bold, and I hesitate to use that word because it shouldn't have to come to this, but to use this moment to fund the system that about the plan has laid out that our community has created together at the summit and they put forth this plan. I realize there was a blueprint laid out by city council, but that certainly was not very clear out in community and so I feel like we have the plan now, we can communicate that plan and we can say, and we're going to fund this plan and here's [4:01:12 PM] how we're going to do it. Here's our investment and of course we're seeking our support as well. So the way I look at this framework is we have to take advantage of this moment to seize it, call it for what it is. It's both a transformative policy but also meeting the needs of our community, which is one, we have many unhoused neighbors who will not have a place to go in a few months, so we have to act urgently in providing actual tangible solutions be and as my colleague says it's about infrastructure. I think the plan leaves out the infrastructure and getting to where we need and building out that system. It's very clear to me the way forward and I think that we'll be able to communicate those details on exactly what that looks like, but I think it would show our community that we are taking action. We have a plan created by the community and how-- [4:02:12 PM] making that call to the community and how they could join us in this effort. And of course looking to our colleagues at travicounty to join nurse this effort. And I wanted to mention that I'm appreciative of staff's proposal on addressing the high priority areas that this council has passed as part of the resilient atx resolution and addressing childcare needs, workforce development, housing insecurity and food insecurity. Certainly I'm excited about some of the things that we can do and I think there's going to be a lot of transformative elements that we can bring back to to our community and to talk about and to really change the landscape here in Austin as we create more resilient systems. We know that there's a pandemic and the winter storm did not affect everyone equally. And we have significant inequities throughout the community and this is a moment for us to be transformative and address those immediate needs. [4:03:15 PM] So I'm serve of the proposal laid out by mayor Adler on the message board and I also posted my comments to that message and so that blends in what I wanted to share with you all today. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I had a couple more questions I wanted to highlight and also just echo what areas have said. What you just said, councilmember Fuentes. We have a huge opportunity here and now is the time to take it. And that is not -- this is not an either or. It's -- I hear my colleagues asking about details because of the importance of due diligence, also the importance of showing results, the importance of accountability and getting results for our investment and dollars. All of those things are [4:04:20 PM] important this is not an either or. We can make this commitment, make a change, an informative change and do it in a responsible way. I have two things I wanted to ask about. First I'm going to be bringing some direction related to specifically the substance abuse treatment services, but also related services like that to some extent the social work, service services. I think it's very important for us to explore collaboration with our health care community and I know that's been done to some extent, but many of the individuals are eligible for medicaid or they may be eligible for the medical assistance program and the kinds of services that are paid for include substance abuse treatment, include social services. And to some extent could include housing. So it's not something that [4:05:21 PM] we can -- this is a collaboration to be built and it's not starting from scratch because I know our community has been working together, but I will be bringing some direction to take that to a deeper level in terms of brainstorming and working closely and collaboratively with our managed care organizations, with central health, with sendero to examine the extent to which they can bring dollars to the table to help us improve substance abuse treatment services in the community as well as to ensure that we are getting reimbursed for every single dollar we can for medicaid, medicare where it applies and also for the M.A.P. Program. I want to thank you, Diana and Ed and everyone including consultants and volunteers that have been working with the group, working on the summit for the financial model that was put together. [4:06:21 PM] I had the chance also to look at those details. I think it is a well thought out financial model. It is important for us to understand the assumptions behind it and to make sure we're comfortable with them. But it does -- it's a very well thought out model and I appreciate the work that was done on that. So I know that there's some assumptions already built into that model with regard to other payer so sources, but I want to understand those more completely and I think that's probably more that we can do over the next number of months to build collaboration there. So just wanted to indicate I'll be bringing some direction in that regard. I wanted to talk more about prevention. I think those are important questions to ask. And Diana, I appreciate the way you responded. I'm also hopeful that our -- not hopeful. I think we can [4:07:21 PM] get to the point where we're identifying people who are actually at risk for homelessness because as you mentioned paying for rental assistance or paying for food access or paying for other kinds of social services does not necessarily do anything to prevent homelessness if they're not targeted in the right way for folks who are actually at risk for becoming homeless. So I would like to see our system become more targeted in that way and there's things that can be done to do that. The other thing to remember is right now we have people living on the streets and so putting dollars towards prevention right now is not going to help the people that are already homeless. So we need to -- to my mind I see this as an opportunity to actually make an investment in those folks that are living on the streets right now and to improve our system so we [4:08:22 PM] don't have as many people living on the streets in the future and they don't live on the streets as long. And I just don't think all the concerns that people are raising are really important concerns but I think we can address them as a community and I think we can come out of this with a much better system and I think we can answer our questions. I think that's going to take time. I am prepared to move forward on Thursday. I am prepared to make a commitment of dollars understanding that there are contingencies associated with it. Because that's what we always do. That's what we've done with the cares fund and done with other funds and I just think we need to move forward. I think the questions that councilmember Kelly are asking are important. I think our community deserves more information about what we have accomplished and we have accomplished a lot but it's difficult to see it all and it needs to be presented in [4:09:22 PM] way that people can see. So I guess I just want to encourage us all to continue to ask the questions and dig into the detail because we need to make sure that we're effective. And I also want to -- let me just ask this question, Diana. And you may not know the answer to this. I know we received a report last summer from Bart poppy as part of the consultant's analysis on the existing system and they had some recommendations to make to improve the system. Do you know if any of those recommendations have been taken into account as part of what we're looking at right now for the vision plan? >> Absolutely. We can city attorney that at some time in the future but if we look at the high level recommendations of the poppy report there are process recommendations and then [4:10:23 PM] there are really sort of production and system recommendations. And almost every single one of the high level investment areas that we are targeting through the summit there's a straight line that can be drawn over to those recommendations as well as other work that is happening at the level in the city and between the city and echo on other important issues. So I'm happy to summarize that as well, but it's very consistent. >> Kitchen: Thank you. That would be helpful. I know one of the things they highlighted is how we could be more effective with our contracting mechanisms and the measures for the results. So I just want to say that I think -- I don't want to be in a community that continues to just say that-- I'm not suggesting that any of you all are saying this, but I don't want to be a community that just [4:11:24 PM] continues to manage homelessness, I want to be a community that actually sets a path to ending homelessness because that's what we need in Austin. And I think we can do that and I don't want us to get bogged down in so many details that we can't move forward. We need to move forward with a commitment and a vision and we need to put in place the mechanisms to make sure that commitment is effective. So that's what I would like to suggest that we think about. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues? Councilmember Casar and then councilmember tovo. >> Casar: Mayor, when I started my comments I didn't know we were making the rounds fully so I want to be clear and that folks see on the message board that I could support the path as you laid out on the message [4:12:25 PM] board today I believe that the commitment on homelessness is really important for us to make because I think it also brings other folks to the table and I do believe and I see the investments that you have made and you see them and they do really reduce homelessness. And if we put this much resource behind it I think we drastically reduce homelessness in the city. As far as the March memo and some of the questions about whether or not the 22 million from the federal government had already been taken into account, my understanding very clearly from that March memo is that there already was the 22 million from the federal government and staff was recommending another 20 in local city attendance for rent or rise so we could get to that 40 million plus number. So to me that is very clearly what the staff recommended on their first pass. I think it's still a minimum of what we need to get done because as Ms. Jack man [4:13:27 PM] mentioned, we have assisted four thousand households and there's 10,000 on the list and that list is only going to grow as the eviction moratorium lapses further here in the next few months. So I appreciate folks' flexibility of us saying let's approximate put together some gap funding between now and July, but frankly I think it's really clear when you look at the numbers and the trajectory that the 22 million from the federal government will not absolutely last us very long and will not get us through the next months as the moratorium lapses. If we want to write something if we don't wind up meaning much of this money it goes into reserves, we can write that up, but I think the federal set aside plus some additional dollars is necessary once we look at the trajectory of the funds. And Mr. Van eenoo you mentioned that in part you all had reduced that allocation in response to atx. The resilient atx resolution [4:14:28 PM] did list housing insecurity as one of the priority areas so is there something I'm missing? What was added in response to resiliency atx on housing insecurity? What in the staff's -- you took out that funding after the resolution, but is there something in the latest recommendation that addresses housing insecurity and an increase in that area. >> I'm going to let Veronica speak to what might be in there to housing insecurity. I had to go back and look at myself the March 21st memorandum that was staff's initial recommendation on the arp fund. That is one of the backup materials in page four and there's a table of what the recommendation was on that time. Just in case if anybody wants to get clarity on what those numbers were. [4:15:28 PM] Sew Veronica, do you have anything to say about the housing insecurity piece? What is in the staff recommendation for that? I wanted to say on the broader -- there's clearly not enough money to meet all the prior needs of the community so I think it's a matter of looking at the resolution which did speak to four priority areas of homelessness, childcare, food insecurity. I think even state understand that area with homelessness being the top priority. So -- >> Casar: And housing insecurity. It did say housing insecurity. >> In one of those four categories, right? >> Council member, I think it was more trying to balance the totality of the at indication knowing that homelessness was listed as the first priority listed and also that it's the biggest -- a large request in institutional change and also knowing that there were federal dollars coming down [4:16:30 PM] for [indiscernible] As well. We were trying to make our best recommendation on how to balance the need and the [inaudible]. >> Casar: Right. So in the staff recommendation for the rescue plan dollars there is $800,000 for housing insecurity. Is that right? >> I'm sorry, that's correct, that's in addition to the other funds that -- as mentioned. >> Casar: Right. So for me I just have a lot of trouble passing something on Thursday given what we know and what I hear everyday when I get calls from constituents about their concerns paying rent that we wouldn't have covered just this baseline need because for me pushing forward on other things that are really important and transformative work to do that I would support, I think we still need to cover the baseline issue. I want to help on childcare, [4:17:30 PM] I want to help with live music and arts and I want to help on our workforce development programs but I don't want somebody to lose their home before we can go to the workforce development program and enjoy live music and art and culture, we have some baseline things that we could -- I think would be really important for us to cover. And I would struggle a lot -- the gap we might face between now and federal dollars, but it wouldn't seem based on current trajectory that we would be having the folks suffering because of the pandemic in their homes. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues? Councilmember tovo, councilmember Fuentes, councilmember alter. >> Tovo: >> Thanks, I put in my [4:18:31 PM] message board post a couple of areas where I would like to see increased funding and I would like to open it up for conversation. One is I would like to see some -- the additional funding that councilmember alter described for childcare. There is no money in this proposal framework for resilience hubs, that was a resolution that we passed recently. Staff were most supposed to come back in June and provide us with information about costs and what it would take to get those pilots. This is I believe our best Tuttle to really make those investments -- this is our best opportunity for us to make those investments in some of the work that we need. So I don't know if colleagues have thoughts on the inclusion of that. We need at least a million. Again, the staff having come forward with a real concrete estimate, but we do -- I know we will need at least [4:19:32 PM] that. The food access, food insecurity budgets line -- I'm not using the right terminology, I think, the staff' terminology, I believe too needs some increased funding. I really appreciate the staff incorporating some of the elements in the food access, several of the food access elements that are included within our resolution are a part of what the staff have provided funding for including the food system planning work. But I believe that number to be a bit low and I guess I would welcome our staff's input on that perhaps at tomorrow's council work session. If they could give us some sense of where we are on that. And I would like to talk a little bit about historic preservation. Our staff proposed that we remr. Renteria some of the hot funding. As I understood their proposal it was in the categories of cultural arts and also historic [4:20:32 PM] preservation. And music. Mayor, your proposal strips out the piece for historic preservation. I'm not sure if all of my colleagues are here, but there are a couple of potential on -- there are at least two very significant historic structures with about owe [inaudible]. We have had conversations as a city and as a council about whether or not there might be an opportunity for the city to acquire those. There are other funding options within historic preservation funding, but in the past there's not been a council will to investigate those. And in particular talking about some of the hotel occupancy tax that has flowed to the convention center and is now in reserves awaiting the [4:21:32 PM] convention center expansion. So I would like to have a real candid conversation on the dais if we are not including any of the recommended funding for historic preservation within the arpa funding I would like to get a sense from my colleagues about what-- whether they would support using some of the hot funding that has been set aside for the convention center. Obviously we can't use the two percent that is designated for convention center expansion, but I believe that the other funding is a possibility. So I throw that out there. We have a executive session to talk about a real estate matter tomorrow and it's relevant to that question as well and we have tomorrow's work session. That's the substance of the question I have for you. I know you have said you would support the mayor's proposal, but the mayor's proposal doesn't include that money for the resilience hubs. I know other of you have spoken about resilience hubs and your commitment to it as well. [4:22:32 PM] Again, I don't know that we're going to have an opportunity within budget to find that funding. If there's an interest in moving forward today outside of -- moving forward this week outside of the budget process, ask concerns me a bit because we have some unfunded needs that really are about recovery and resilience. And if we're not using the rescue plan money to invest in those, then I need some sense of what other options you will support. On that note I will call your attention to another piece of my message board post which talks about kind of coming back at various checkpoints and I talked about the spending plan with regard to homelessness and I think we need to check in after the budget session and a potential reaconfirming/revision of our spending framework. So if there is an interest in moving forward this week [4:23:34 PM] I would -- I am going to advocate that we have some very concrete check-in points where we have an opportunity to take a look at the framework and make any necessary adjustments. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember Fuentes. >> Thank you. And thank you, councilmember tovo, for bringing up the resilience hubs. Certainly I definitely support creating resilience hubs and I see a portion of the food insecurity allotment that would be dedicated to the resilience hubs especially when it comes to food access. So I was thinking that would be inclusive. To your question we need to know what the resilience hubs look like and what we can fund as part of the arpa process and part of the budget process. That is a priority for me in district 2 and I certainly want to make sure that I can [4:24:38 PM] support any way possible. The question I have is around childcare funding for year '21, year '22. I think councilmember alter brought this up last time or pointed out is there a way -- I would be interested in seeing if we can add more funding to year '21 to get more dollars out the door sooner and in preparation for the upcoming school year, especially knowing that this ranch of 49.4 -- tranche of 49.4 million would be going out in 31 Justin. So I just wanted to put that out there. I don't know if staff has some insight as to why we kept it at the 1.3 for this first year spending or if there was any change on it. >> Pardon me, I was looking for my mute button. Council member, I cannot [4:25:39 PM] think of anything on top of mind, but we will follow up with public health and with [indiscernible] And confirm that for you this week. >> Fuentes: Yes, I would be interested if we could move more of the 6.2 to this year. Thank you. >> And then I think it was councilmember alter. >> Thank you. I wanted to go back to the question that Greg raised at the beginning about whether we were comfortable using reserves. I'm not sure there's a majority that is ready to move forward with reserves. I think we need to get that figured out. Even if there is a majority I'm not sure that going forward with 6-5 on whether or not to use reserves is a way forward for us as a council. So, you know, I don't know the best way to do it, if [4:26:41 PM] it's a straw poll or what, but if folks are comfortable using reserves, maybe they can raise their hand. Or if they're not comfortable, I don't know which would be the better way that you would be more comfortable with, mayor, protocolwise. >> We have items that call resolution ifc with respect to reserves so we know that's going to come up for a vote. We can certainly talk about it during work session tomorrow. Or people can give comments now. I think it's an evolving conversation and I think that it's good to have the conversation today, but I think it's going to evolve throughout the week. >> Alter: And then related to that, I wanted to understand -- I have a lot more questions about the summit part, but I wanted to understand the thinking behind the contingency for [4:27:43 PM] staff so first I want to confirm for our 49 million or whatever we had, our 44 million that we had for the health piece are there any contingencies built in that? >> So council member, we did not explicitly build contingency into that 43.3 million. I don't know if acm hayden-howard might want to speak to it, but my understanding is from health that right now they're tracking pretty good on that funding and there may be some savings there, but we need to build contingency -- didn't build contingency explicitly into the recommendation. >> Alter: How did you come up with the 14.1, which is about 10% of the remaining amount? >> You know, kind of like director brisenos said a couple of times, just trying to balance council [4:28:43 PM] priorities and direction we've received looking at the different resolutions. If you went back to the March recommendation from staff it was a much larger amount for contingency but at that time we were much more like right in the heat of the pandemic more. Now we're three months moved on and looking at what we're seeing now it seems like a smaller contingency amount feels prudent to us given what we're seeing in regard to the trajectory of the pandemic and what we're hearing from our health department. >> So what was the original contingency? That was a 20 some -- >> Let me look that up real quick. It was actually 39.2 million was the March recommendation from staff for contingency money. Essentially 23% of the total amount. >> But we also had in that [4:29:46 PM] total a lot more money that we were getting in that as well. >> 195 instead of 188. >> Alter: Okay. So there's seven million that was cut off from that. I just want to highlight from my colleagues that we're not leaving much of a cushion in here in terms of contingency and if we use our reserves there's not much there in terms of we have to deal with another, god forbid. And having been through the last year and a half that we have together, I'm not sure that that's the wisest fiscal move at this point in time. It is much more difficult to pull back the money once it's been put forward in a framework than it is to add it in to address an expense that we need to make as part of our budget process as moving forward. I want to see if other folks have questions and I'll have [4:30:48 PM] some questions. >> Mayor Adler: The hardest decisions we have to make as a council is actually spending dollars and choosing between priorities and this exercise is no different than those because we have so many incredible needs in the community and never enough resources to be able to address that. And I appreciate everything that our colleagues are saying and I don't disagree with anyone with respect to any of the priorities that anybody has mentioned as they all are. But in a budget process like this we obviously have to make choices. Historically the way we make choices as a body going back in time is to take the dollars and touch on the [4:31:48 PM] challenges we have in the community recognizing that the other resources that we're putting against it are really sufficient to really answer those challenges, but we're able to communicate that we hear people and hear the needs and we can put money against that. I continue to be as some others have said an advocate for us actually being a lot more focused right now with these dollars than we have ever been in the past. Recognizing that gives us both the opportunity to be able to make a quantum move on something, which is great but it also means there are other things that have been touched and there are things that don't get touched. When I look out in the community right now and the conversations that people are having, the things that are causing the most angst I believe in the community [4:32:48 PM] right now, the things that when I hear from people are the things that people want us as a body to address most is homelessness. And that makes sense to me because as a community we're doing so incredibly well and we have so many resources to have people in our community that are that level of unfortunate status is really hard. It's hard to internalize, it's hard to see. But I think as a community to me community is saying come and please address this challenge, take advantage of the time and the moment that we're in. Even with that as we've talked about it's way too big for us. We can't do this alone. But what we have in this moment I think is the opportunity to be able to leverage dollars in ways we never leveraged them before and I think that the [4:33:49 PM] opportunity is on homelessness to bring in the foundations in our community and the businesses in our community and other governmentalnesses in our community. This is a unique moment and a unique issue that I think really goes to the character of who we are as a city. I'm also real concerned about where this city if we don't deal with this challenge now while it's still in the scale of the challenge that we can deal with if you look at other cities that have not addressed this in that great a way. The challenge continues to grow and maybe it's not as seen as much, but -- and it just explodes. I don't know what you do if you're Los Angeles or Portland or San Francisco or Seattle because the scale of their challenge is so much bigger than what we're dealing with. I don't know what you do, and when you talk to the people in those cities and ask them what do you wish you had done eight years [4:34:51 PM] ago, 10 years ago? Because that's where we are relative to where they are, the answer always comes back to I wish we had actually dealt with it at scale. On a scale that was still something that we could do something about. I do think this is a real moment and if we don't do this I think the penalty the city will pay for this six, eight years from now will be enormous. I hear and really want to think through a lot of the issues that colleagues have raised on the dais because I think that all good and all valid and many to think through a lot of that. I know right off the bat that having the built in check-in points is something that I would support, building in something that has the staff coming back to us earlier than with contracts is something that I would support with respect [4:35:51 PM] to the homelessness. I think there is a lot of detail still nobody engaged in. I think that as we get more partners if we get more partners investing in that level, they're also going to be partners in that conversation too, but thank we really need to send a signal this week to that community, to the larger community and our city that if people are willing to go to scale, we are. There's always the issue who goes first in those kind of discussions. We want to see the community make the move first, they want to see us make it first. I think we're in a position and have a responsibility to be the leader to suggest to the community that this is the moment and the time and we're willing to operate at scale. You know, we had talked about county commitments and I know they haven't met. I'm now hearing word that they're actually going to be presenting a spending plan [4:36:54 PM] for them to consider a week after we go into our summer session on June 22nd. And there may be more conversations then by the county. I would like to send a signal as to where we are. I don't know, but some of the folks that have come to our staff, our staff relied on with respect to the workforce proposal that we got, I present that they've had conversations with the county and have give indications that they think it's being favorably received. Councilmember Ellis, that was the basis for me and what I was putting in feeling comfortable with putting in a shared [indiscernible] With that workforce and also with childcare. And the proposals that were in there fulfilled 100% of what I thought the workforce and childcare asks to be. I think there's been some emails here that have [4:37:55 PM] updated that by a couple million dollars or something over the last week. And I wasn't aware of that. I now see and I've been able to obtain that. I think there's potential fine tuning work to be done in that. I think there's potential conversation in that. That was a big part of the conversation and in those public meetings and in the summit conversations when they got to the zoom call with several 100 people involved. And I hear what Diane is telling us hear and I've heard so many see that in that call. And if we had all the money in the world we would be doing a lot more to restage for that process. But if you have to prioritize you prioritize on the people that have now just fallen into unsheltered homelessness, trying to get [4:38:56 PM] them to resurrect and get them back as quickly as you can. That if you have a forced choice and I think we do because we don't have enough money for everything that that's the most efficient way. Hopefully we get more efficient as councilmember kitchen said. When you look at cities where this is working well like in Houston and they have their body that as I understand it is sending a three-year plan for you every year, they're constantly adjusting their plan based on where it is that they could get the biggest bang for their dollars as they make adjustments, moving money towards the earlier elements of the process or putting money towards the back end of the process. And I'd expect that we would be doing the same thing here. I am comfortable on the housing insecurity moving forward with rental assistance just because I think that we're uniquely situate adds a city and done really well on evictions thus far. [4:39:56 PM] I think people who lose their homes are the most directly going to end up experiencing homelessness so I support us moving forward with that. I see the conversation we're having about reserves and want to think about what everybody is saying about that too. I also want to recognize that if the staff says 10% is the right reserve balcones canyonlands, then most of the things that are on the spending plan are not susceptible of a reserve component or contingent component, contingency, they're set dollars and we actually spend to those dollars as opposed to spending to the need with the exception of the covid. If we had a 10% contingency on the covid dollars that would turn up another four and a half million dollars from what I had posted on to the board. [4:40:57 PM] In the conversation about reserves and again you want to think about that too, on reservations that many had, we set a reserve policy to be able to have a reserve. We've set that and set that at a percentage for us to be able to deal with. That's what reserves are for. We're not talking about spending my reserves. We're talking about spending money above and beyond those reserves. Which to she a different question than spending now the reserves that we have decided is prudent for us to put aside. Councilmember tovo, yes, I did not put historic preservation in the elements that I laid out. I hear the conversation that I think is going to be ongoing this week and there may be some opportunities that are imperative because they may be lost from a time [4:41:58 PM] basis. And because actually making a generational change on homelessness and being able to respond to what I'm hearing from the community is so important to me and such a high priority, I'm willing to engage in conversations I have not engaged in the past with respect to finding opportunities for us to be able to do that. By saying that we can do something truly transformative and generational or we can do it everywhere. And I go back to the resolution that we passed. We can do it with honorableness. I hope we get a signal this week that we can actually work on over the next six weeks, recognizing that there will be checkpoints and details and lots of other stuff to work out before we actually write any checks. We can do something transformative and generational on the workforce. We can do it on childcare. [4:42:58 PM] We can initiate that on the food insecurity and really protect ourselves with respect to people having and being able to stay in their homes. We can do that and that's what I see in this opportunity is being at once and no other time before chance. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: To be responsive to some of the other questions that were asked, with regard to the resilience hub, I am interested in exploring the extent to which Austin energy and Austin water can help contribute to those resilience hubs. We've had conversations about the emergency response plans for Austin water, for example, and we've had conversations about building into those emergency response plans, mechanisms [4:43:59 PM] for working with the community, which is really the cuts of what we're talking about with resilience hubs. So I think that that's worth exploring. So in response to councilmember tovo's question with regard to that that would be one of the areas that I will be looking to explore because I do agree that was in the report and something that we passed in order to move forward. But that's an area I think is worth looking at. I also agree -- I also agreed that we should be looking into other sources of funds, particular in -- in particular for the really critical historic preservation projects. I do think that I am committed to the rental assistance. I do think for all the reasons we've been talking about that is really [4:45:00 PM] critical. Because I think that I'm willing to give it some thought, but I do think that the program that the mayor laid out on the message board and I think that that funds the appropriate items at the appropriate levels so I'm prepared to move forward with those. I do think that the reserves that we're talking about are not our basic level of reserves. These are over and above what we have targeted as reserves in the past. So I think it's appropriate for these needs to consider those. So I'm prepared to move forward with those. >> Mayor Adler: You can't hear me. Councilmember Fuentes and then councilmember alter. >> Fuentes: Thank you. And just to continue the thread of resilience hubs, I wanted to ask a question to [4:46:03 PM] acm hayden-howard. I think there might be an opportunity for us to take a look at the initial aph a lotment to make sure if there's any room there to dedicate some funds to the creation of those -- the pilot hubs that were laid out in the resolution. I'm particularly looking at the miscellaneous line item that was included in the backup and on the may 6th agenda. It says there was 2.3 earmarked from the American rescue plan for miscellaneous item, which includes community services, disease prevention, healthy equity and community engagement. I just want to get a sense from you if you have any insight as to -- have all of those funds been expended by now or if you foresee any potential there for us to explore putting -- earmarking some funds towards resilience hubs. [4:47:07 PM] >> Stephanie hayden-howard, assistant city manager. As you know that those funds were approved in March of this year and so therefore the initial focus was making sure that we had staffing in place, etcetera, to kind of continue the response. So essentially we're looking at two and a half months' worth of recovery efforts. Staff has started working with agencies to kind of look at the equity piece of it. As you may be aware, staff are starting to really look at efforts of zip codes that may be affected and not have received as many vaccines as other populations. So you're going to need so overlay that with equity efforts as you're doing that planning and they're in the middle of that now. So we'll be definitely [4:48:08 PM] premature to be able to kind of look at what that would look like if you don't allow that plan to be kind of moved forward. You know, not to say in the future, yes, but right now this is just premature. >> Fuentes: Okay. I would like to continue the conversation. Certainly -- thank you, councilmember kitchen, for pointing out Austin water and Austin energy. There's definitely lots of ways for us to get creative in how we fund the resilience hub and certainly want to continue this conversation through the budget process to ensure that we're able to find and dedicate some funding towards the creation of resilience hubs. It's certainly part of our effort to create not only a resilient and safer Austin, but to address some of the inequities that we've seen pop up as a result of the disasters. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember alter, I [4:49:10 PM] recognize and then councilmember tovo. >> Alter: Thank you. I had a question for Ed on the reserves. Is Ed there? >> Van eenoo: I'm here. >> Alter: Great. So as I understand it, often times when we have money to spend on priorities that council has that wasn't previously funded, you know, in all of our past budget years, that money really comes from whatever is left over in the reserves above and beyond what we need moving forward and accounting for the additional reserves that are required in the next budget year, is that correct? >> Van eenoo: Yeah, that's correct and that's always a big part of our budget conversations with council, what reserves do we have above our financial policy threshold and having a lot of discussions about how to best prioritize the use of those reserves. >> Alter: So if we were to encumber those reserves or [4:50:10 PM] whatever the appropriate word is for what we would be doing in the proposal before us from the mayor or from the ifc, what would that do to how we would have to approach budget? >> Van eenoo: If you allocate the reserves this week on June 10th to rental assistance and that will be -- you won't have those reserves available to discuss as part of your budget conversation. >> So we would be really constraining our ability to fund a lot of council priorities that are not in the current budget moving forward is? >> Van eenoo: You would be more constrained for sure. >> Alter: And in my meetings with you and Kathie over the budget, it seems like we are extremely constrained by this budget given the three and a half [4:51:11 PM] percent, you know, budget cap, etcetera. Even if we were to go to eight, which I don't support, we don't have a lot of breathing room this year and the next year and moving forward given the system that we're in. Can you explain a little bit how the reserves could have given us some breathing room? >> Van eenoo: Well, our challenge with three and a half percent revenue cap has to do with recurring expenditures and having recuring revenues sufficient to keep pace with the growth this those recurring revenues. The reserves doesn't really help with that. The reserves are important from a resiliency perspective when you have things like the winter storm and you have things like the pandemic, that was a huge part of our ability to respond as effectively as we have. So they're certainly important from that perspective. But if they don't really help us with the long-term challenge we have of a three and a half percent revenue [4:52:13 PM] cap where our revenues are constrained at a level where they really can't grow sufficient to keep space with our growth and expenditures because the reserves are a one-time source of funding and we don't want to use one-time revenues for ongoing expenses. I think it's really -- it's more so a matter from staff's perspective of council wanting to make decisions now about a significant portion of reserves prior to having the broader budget picture of all the different priorities that we might be getting from different stakeholder groups or from council members. That we'll have as part of our budget process. >> Alter: Thank you. Appreciate that. I had a question. I'm not sure if it's for miss brisenos or for director hayden-howard. There was a portion of the nourish proposal that talked [4:53:14 PM] about something like 42% of the families that are eligible for snap in our community are not accessing that benefit and there was a system set up to help folks to access that. Is that part of what you're proposing to be funded in this three million for food? >> I would have to go back and look at the notes. I don't recall anything being in there about the -- about snap benefits. I know that is some work that was currently happening at the neighborhood centers in the past. So I'll take a closer look at that. I don't recall there being anything for snap in the email. >> In the nourish proposal there is a section that does that and we are currently in an area that there are additional snap benefits going to families that are receiving it and I don't [4:54:15 PM] know what the lead time is for receiving it, but it seems to me that that is funding that could help a lot of our communities that it would be great if we could improve the access for that. This is slightly off topic, but I think it is relevant. I've been talking with Austin energy about their plans for reinstating disconnections and the very long path that they have for their and the process for connecting up with their customers. It seems like there would be a lot of opportunity for the folks who are calling on behalf of Austin energy and working with those customers to connect them up with folks at aph or in the appropriate department who are working on food insecurity and snap to get them signed up at the same time that they're working out their payment plans and their relief from the utility bills. We know that the folks who [4:55:15 PM] are struggling with utility bills are likely to benefit from those programs if they're eligible and so just I'd like to see us -- see if we can take advantage of the unfortunate situation where we have to go back into that situation and Austin energy has developed a very thorough approach to kind of try not to leave people behind and get them connected up with the resources that they need. And I think that the -- my hope is that the work that they do to build that trust with their customers and helping them with providing the relief can also allow us to connect folks with other efforts and jibe up with our navigator system. So I would love to see that move forward. If possible. And then the other question I had was in terms -- I don't know if this is for Ed or for acm hayden-howard. We had talked about when we [4:56:17 PM] passed the covid health part of this funding package that we didn't know how much Travis county would be contributing towards those funds. Do we have a better idea at this point? >> As of today we don't have a better idea of exactly how much that funding is. Austin public health staff have been in conversations with Travis county and we're looking at it kind of through a couple of lens. As you are aware, we have our interlocal agreement which we went that route last year to be able to capture some funds back to the county, but we're also looking at would there be another separate agreement as well. So those conversations have begun but to give you an exact dollar amount we're not at that point yet. [4:57:18 PM] >> Okay. I really do hope that we will come to an agreement where they can contribute to the health costs that Austin public health is undertaking on behalf of Travis county and Austin through some of their funding for arpa. And then lastly, have we received any updates from FEMA with respect to the prolodges and our ability to get those fully reimbursed as has been done in other cities around the country? >> Staff are working on putting all of that together for submission. I know Ed may have a little bit more information than I will, so I'll kind of transfer over to him. >> We're at the same point. FEMA decisions are regional. Our region has said that they're not reimbursable, other regions have and we're continuing to work on that. >> Alter: That's unfortunate. I will let the next person [4:58:18 PM] have a turn. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember tovo, then councilmember kitchen. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. I don't know if we're going to get to encampment questions about designated encampments but I do have some on that front too. I wanted to get clear on one thing. If we have -- this is actually a question about back to the rental assistance. It would be helpful to get a sense of how much -- what the total amount is represented by the '10 thousand individuals who applied for it. And maybe that exists and that's something that the housing committee had. And so if somebody could just share that with me either now or tomorrow at our work session, that would be helpful to know. I'm trying to get a sense -- you know, a sense of the scale and certainly -- I'm certainly going to [4:59:18 PM] support -- to support allocating money for rental assistance and it does seem like it has to happen soon. What I'm struggling with is the reserves question. Though I agree, I am -- I'm going to err on the side of making sure that we identify those funds soon and if that's our only alternative, then I would likely support it. I wanted to ask our staff, if that's not an option or if there is not a council will to provide for that funding out of reserves, what other options might exist? Is there an option -- have we spent all our contingency from the cares funding? I think we have, but I want to just ask that question again because I've forgotten the answer to it. >> The cares funding has been expended. I think one other option for the council to consider would be the contingency [5:00:19 PM] we're proposing for the arp funds, that's $14.6 million. I believe that would probably be a better option. If you want -- it is contingency funds. It has been mentioned on this call our reserves are contingencies for when things -- one of the reasons we keep those reserves is the contingency when things don't go as we expect or unexpected things occur. I think my recommendation -- this is a priority for the majority of council members would be to allocate some of the stayings as a contingency if we don't receive the 22- million-dollar emergency rental assistance in time to continue those programs, those rental assistance programs that we could tap into the arp contingency, the 14.6 million for that purpose. That way you could still have a conversation about any reserves over and above the reserve threshold -- financial policy threshold as part of your budget perhaps >> Tovo: I think that's a good [5:01:23 PM] option. When you said we spent our cares funding that was part of the cares funding, correct? >> Mayor Adler: The deadline was December 30th of 2020 and we pulled out all our funding >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you again for telling us. I'm sorry. I've asked at least twice I like your suggestion of potentially using the contingency funding to tide us over until we get to the 22 million coming in a separate fnd -- funding stream and then we can evaluate if we need some of that 14.6 in addition >> Mayor Adler: It gives us a way to provide surety that the rental assistance programs continue uninterrupted until we can have broader discussions as part of the budget process >> Tovo: Yeah. This is a challenge, trying to [5:02:23 PM] have a conversation about some of these needs outside of our budget process but I'm going to try to -- I don't know where the votes fall on taking this issue up today versus during the budget process so I'm going to proceed as if we're making those decisions this week but I want to make sure we have some plans in place for how to -- how to balance the different needs and check in if we need to and make different decisions after the budget process. Just to close the gap, I appreciate the comments from my colleagues. I went back to the information I have and it's my understanding the food insecurity line in our spending framework is allocated to -- or is intended for emergency feeding needs, food assistance planning -- it does not include money for resilience hubs. I agree Austin energy and water [5:03:25 PM] are good sources to look to for some of the work of the resilience hubs but as I tried to convey in the conversation and resolution a critical part is the community engagement piece. Council member Fuentes, thank you for asking about the funding line -- whether that would be appropriate. It sounds like that would be a challenge but I guess what I'm trying to convey is we don't have the money for the engagement piece which is critical to the success of resilience planning and there will likely be other expenses from cots to bottled waters that are not appropriated expenses for utilities, so we really need to identify funding and if we're not identifying in this process we have to work hard to identify it in the budget or we'll find ourselves in a similar place in the next crisis, which I'm unfortunately pretty certain [5:04:25 PM] we'll have at some point. So that's that on resilience hubs. Now I wanted to ask a question about the waller creek. This leads into the conversation tomorrow about waller creek and I did pull it for tomorrow. Thank you, Ed, for including -- Katy and Casey -- and others who made sure we had that memo attached to our information. The waller creek tirz is anticipated and understand in previous conversations -- it's anticipated to yield $30 million. Ed, can you help me understand when and how that becomes available for use? >> So I think the short answer to that is it most likely becomes available later in the tirz project timeline. Part of what we're saying in [5:05:27 PM] those memorandum responses is that if it's going to be used for affordable housing, permanent supportive housing we're under the same restrictions as we do with certificates of occupation that -- our state considers affordable housing, psh, economic development. So if we're going to use any of the funding, not just the waller creek tif -- if we want to use that for permanent support housing it has to be pay as you go. As tif comes , after debt service goes on any bonds issued, to the extent funds are left available those could be spent on homelessness projects that have been included as part of the homelessness project plan. But for purchasing units we [5:06:27 PM] would have to wait long enough so enough funds had built up over and above debt service requirements so we can use the funds for that purpose. We can't use bonds for that >> Tovo: That's only for units that would be classified for permanent housing, not crisis -- the portion we're talking about shelter and crisis beds I would assume is something we can issue bonds for under the tirz. Is that correct? >> Yeah. We can issue nonvoter approved debt for shelters, if that's what their permanent use will be. We wouldn't be able to convert them later to alternative use. It's sometimes what's discussed >> Tovo: So I need to take your information and the information in the memo and pair it with what we're being asked to do this week, which is sell the bonds for the waller creek -- or some of the bonds -- and figure [5:07:29 PM] out if there's a solution in any of these things for coming up with the funding that's identified as necessary for the increased services and housing for individuals experiencing homelessness. Maybe someone among our staff who understands this better can help us sort this out. I did pull this for tomorrow. It's my understanding that the watt rer Eric -- Waterloo greenway did pull some of their funding early. Having said that, I'm unclear -- maybe, Diana, you can jump in here. It doesn't appear the summit plan includes much of emergency shelter. Is that a fair -- am I understanding that correctly? >> So I think contextually the summit came out of conversations between partners including [5:08:32 PM] chamber, daa, and echo about two parallel things that needed to happen -- one that there needed to be a crisis response. We need Ed -- we needed to have designation of a shelter or permanent encampment. There is an understanding among partners there will be a parallel effort around the crisis resources so we -- for example, we have money, as the city -- new money committed to bridge shelter in the form of south bridge that is not included in the dollars committed in the 515. So you are right but I want to be clear that it is not an oversight. It was a framing that was [5:09:35 PM] chosen. >> Tovo: Okay. I think that's -- thank you for that clarification. I think as we move toward our detailed spending plan in addition to understanding where we're currently making those investments and -- you know, I think every time we talk about this new increased spending we really owe it to our community to do it in the context of the spending that we're already doing. You know, I am really -- I know I -- first of all, can you all hear me? I know we get asked that 90 times a day but I keep getting texts that you can't hear me well, so I'm trying to speak up. I can't count the number of e-mails I get from members of the public asking why we haven't made investments in issues related to homelessness so I would ask each of us when we're talking about the summit plan, when we're talking about new spending, increased spending could we always situate it in [5:10:35 PM] the context of an increase in the number of investments? Mayor, you said it well earlier. We have not been able to sufficiently invest in these areas, but we have made investments. I know that's hard for a community to understand when they see that we have not yet housed each and every one of our neighbors who have experienced homelessness but I think it's important that we communicate clearly with our public about it. So one issue that I'm having and trying to think through the multi-pager -- probably not a one-pager but three or four or five-pager I'll share with my constituents about our funding, existing funding, how the new funding is building on that is that we have to have that emergency shelter piece built in as well. So thanks for that clarification, Diana, that it's intended to be outside of the [5:11:37 PM] summit plan, but it is critically necessary. People need a place to go in crisis. They need a place to go while they're waiting for housing, and so we can't -- whatever our city documents are, really need to include that piece always because it seems to me the crisis services built into the plan are probably not going to be sufficient. So I know with our arpa conversations we have that additional line. But whatever our full communications package is really needs to include that piece as well. We need to think of that spectrum from emergency shelter to housing as well. I know you are but I'm trying to talk through what I think we'll need to communicate to or constituents and to other funders. So thank you very much >> Mayor Adler: Kathie, just to pile on to what you were saying, there's a continuum of housing, and we have the absolute emergency crisis beds at one [5:12:39 PM] end, and we have permanent supportive housing at the other end. While the dollars that you've presented here inn the $515 million -- or $300 million plan doesn't have the emergency crisis component, it does have some of the middle component, which is perhaps short of the permanent supportive housing component and to council member tovo's point, we've kind of wrestled with what funding is and we know what the rule is at one end and at the other end, but I'm not sure we really have spent that much time talking about the middle. And it seems to me the middle component is much more like the emergency crisis bent. It's not economic development. It's trying to stage people so that they get off the street and so that they're not in our emergency rooms and in our jails and the like. So I'd like us to look at that [5:13:40 PM] question as we go into tomorrow's deal as to whether or not there is the capacity or ability to use that funding for some of the housing that is in the middle of that continuum. Further conversations, colleagues? Council member alter? >> Alter: I'm trying to look at one of the slides that was shared with us on the deck for the summit. It was shared with us -- well, it says on the bottom of it working documents presented April 15th. I believe this was given to us -- it's where we get the total calculations for the 240 million operating expenses. I'm having some trouble understanding the calculations. It says 160 million operating [5:14:43 PM] expenses end to end and 26,000 per person per year times 4,000 and when I calculate 26,000 per person per year times 4,000, one year is 104 million and then we're talking about three years, so I just would like to understand where we get the 160 million number. >> I believe I know which slide you're referring to, although I'm not looking at it right now. I think that we can probably do better in terms of clarifying what I think that slide was trying to express in a very succinct way, which is that there are many people -- 3,000-plus -- that will be served with more robust housing services. [5:15:43 PM] But there will be folks also who are rehoused through happened exit or diversion, which is very short- term housing support. So we expect more than 3,000 people to be rehoused over that period. So I think that that particular slide was attempting to speak to the quote, unquote per person house cost but also point out that the apparent cost -- the cost appears to be higher because it's not counting all the folks who are being housed with the lighter touch services. I'll go back and look at that. I think we'll need more detail than was provided. That was at the plenary. The numbers have been refined [5:16:44 PM] since then >> Alter: I understand but it's still the amount underlying the 515. If that is estimated by a couple hundred million dollars -- like, I need to understand -- we're paying the 26,000 for more than one year or we do it for one year and we're done? You know, some portion of those get more than one year, but some of them move on, or what is the assumption that we're making underlying that? Because I'm not -- from the information that I have -- and I understand there's a whole model and I saw a lot of the model, and -- but I want to make sure that we're accounting for things accurately and fully and that we know what we think we're accomplishing. So I would appreciate further information and insight on that piece and how that feeds in. When we had our conversation yesterday, one of the things [5:17:44 PM] that was apparent is that there is a $95 million year four and year five cost that we haven't accounted for, which is important for keeping the system at functional zero after that date. So how -- who is on the hook for that amount of money? Because we don't have $95 million sitting around in our budget that's not already picking up elsewhere. >> So I think part of the way that the summit is framed is that we have an aggressive rehousing effort over the next three years. We are setting the course towards reaching functional zero, essentially, whether that be in five or seven, as we understand the course of the numbers over the three years. There will be sources in place because of course not all of the money for the $515 million is [5:18:46 PM] coming out of arpa. There will be sustainable dollars which the city is dedicating a portion of, already has new money in. But you are right. There will be a delta at the end that we will have to look at. And so there many possible outcomes but one is that we look forward that year four, five, six, seven. It is incumbent on us to build to sustainability. Those would include financing mechanism. I think it's important we start to leverage medicaid much more re rebustly. When we look at what we're focusing arp dollars -- we're [5:19:50 PM] not focusing on supportive housing. While we would like to have maintenance effort in terms of rapid rehousing services, et cetera, if those funding services were to decrease year over year it would not mean someone would become homeless because of that. We wouldn't stop paying their rent when we had program it CLI agreed to doing so. I will say I believe of the 20 or so million we have anticipated and largely committed -- much of that is public housing authority resource and those vouchers are for practical purposes ever green. They do not stop at the three years. They continue into the future for the individuals who hold the vouchers. So we have some sustainable funding sources that we are weaving into the model. [5:20:51 PM] >> Alter: I would love more detail -- I understand we don't know who's paying, you know, what or whatever. But I do need to understand how that gets paid out at the end because it's not a sustainable solution if we don't have a plan. You know? And there are other things we can do. I know the mayor has mentioned that we could consider a TRE and there are options that we have, but we have to plan -- like, you know, and if I was a philanthropist considering this, I would want to know the details and I think the county is very, very concerned, as I think we should be, about using one-time dollars on stuff that has to be, you know, recurring dollars, and so I think it's important that we are forthright and up right about what is going on here. Last thing I want to say is, you know, I was a cosponsor of 111, [5:21:51 PM] the resilient atx resolution. I believe homelessness is a key priority but I also firmly believe child care and work force and the food and housing insecurity are as well. And, you know, I'm not sure we have the balance right, and I am very concerned about the potential commitments of some of the other players in here and would feel a whole lot more comfortable, you know, come Thursday if I was receiving letters from people in the business community saying, yeah, I'm going to step up and fund this, I'm just waiting for you to fund it. Or if I had reassurance from the county that they were ready, you know, to step up. You know, this is a huge amount of money and this is a big ask. It's potentially transformational. But, you know, the sea legs for buying into, well, we'll go [5:22:55 PM] first -- we need stuff floating under us to get there because it's not there right now with the buy-in and some of that is we don't have the details out there. We haven't figured out -- it's no one's fault. We've just set an arbitrary time line and that is making me unnecessarily uncomfortable because I think it's a timeline that we have forced on ourselves. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen? >> Kitchen: Let's see. So I had some questions related to the reserves. So -- Ed, I think that when we're talking -- when we're talking about reserves, we're talking about the amount over the 12 per cent, correct? >> Yeah. Well, I think it was in the [5:23:55 PM] fiscal year '20 budget council changed it to 14 per cent but it was the same year that the pandemic hit and changed everything. But that is currently our policy, is to get to 14 per cent. Historically we've been at 12 per cent >> Kitchen: Okay. Historically we've been at 12 per cent. We changed it to 14 per cent -- what year? Last budget cycle? >> Fiscal year '20 on the heems of the 3-1/2 revenue cap. >> Kitchen: Okay. So that's -- I wanted to remind everyone that that's a relatively new aspect of the reserves. I do think that -- I appreciate what you said earlier, though, which was -- I wanted to make sure I understood it correctly, was to consider -- when you have a double level of reserves in here -- we have reserves related to the public health response. [5:24:55 PM] Is that right? Is that what you were thinking? >> I was saying the opposite of that. The 44.3 million was allocated to different public health needs related to the pandemic. We did not include a separate contingency for the 44.3 million. But in recent conversations with public health staff, they're currently tracking below that expenditure level. Don't have a current estimate but right now they're thinking they're going to have savings out of the funds. If they do, we'd come back to council with that amount and suggestions on where to allocate it >> Kitchen: That's what you were thinking of when you mentioned earlier that might be a possibility >> Yeah. When we had the higher contingency amount back in March we had a lot of uncertainty related to the pandemic and public health needs. Right now we're hearing it seems like there's less of an urge to [5:25:56 PM] have that large of a contingency amount. With that said, the amount we're proposing in this current rendition of the framework is already substantially lower than what we had proposed in March >> Kitchen: Thank you. I appreciate that. I also want to just say that I think the concerns about not having commitments yet from other folks, from the county or the community -- or not having hard commitments, though I know there's been conversations. I think that's not necessary to have right now because we can put in a contingency. I want to remind folks, we are not spending the money now. We can make the commitment subject to a contingency, which is we get funds from the county and the contingency. I think that's a way to handle what has been very appropriately [5:26:56 PM] raised concerns. We will want to revisit how we allocate dollars if we don't get the commitments. We're not spending the dollars now so I think it's appropriate to put a contingency on what we think we'd like to see go in to this. I think that handles the concern. I just wanted to suggest that. I also wanted to suggest when you think of what happens in year five or year four -- you know, the other thing to put that up against is what happens if we don't do anything. Because we continue to have costs that we're paying for right now, so, yes, we need to think about -- I mean, in order for a change in the system to be effective, we need to plan for and think about, you know, what the run rate is at the end of this, you know, kind of more surge approach. What's the run rate after that, but we have to remember what we're working for is a run rate [5:27:57 PM] that's less than what we have right now and we have a run rate right now. We are as a community and -- well, as a city, we are paying quite a bit of dollars right now. And if we don't do something about that, that's going to continue. So I don't think we can compare what happens in, you know -- in those other years against nothing because that's not the right compareson. So you might think about that. I don't know how we do that from a financial perspective but I do think it's important to the conversation and our thinking. And the last thing I would just say to folks -- or this is a question that I have, that I don't expect people to respond to right now, but I would ask my colleagues to just think about it because I'm not quite understanding what people are thinking. If we are talking about not addressing -- or not using some of those dollars that are between the 12 per cent and 14 per cent or that we may not need [5:28:59 PM] for public health, then which of these programs are you all thinking to reduce? Because the way that it's been laid out right now is we need to use some of those dollars in order to address some of the concerns, or which ones of them are you willing to think of with the budget? My top priorities are the homelessness and the rental assistance and then I think we need -- the commitment to music and arts is important, but I would want each of us to answer that because if we're going to continue -- if we're going to continue to talk about, you know, not using reserves then we need to come up with other ways to address those issues or just share -- or share with each other, you know, what we think is not as important. So that -- I'm not expecting people to answer that right now, but that might be helpful for a [5:29:59 PM] conversation on the message board. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool, I think, had her hand raised. Did you want to talk? And then the mayor pro tem >> Pool: To respond to what you were saying about reserves, it's an even bigger issue. Can you guys hear me all right? >> Mayor Adler: Yes >> Pool: The issue is even bigger this year because if we take from reserves and we don't have it, if we don't put it back in H and we need it, when we are outside of a disaster declaration here where we have the ability to consider increasing our revenues above 3-1/2 per cent over the previous year and when we haven't fully absorbed the impacts of house [5:31:00 PM] bill 1925, I think we're -- which is why I'm urging caution. We don't have enough information to make these decisions this week. It is tempting to make these decisions this week because then we don't have to have these conversations anymore. We can move on to something else. I would caution us on that temptation. I don't know what the outcome is going to be, so I don't know about anybody else. I wanted to ask Diana gray about an item, a calculation you have in our memos with regard -- your memos with regard to the sizes of parcel of land we would need and the number of people in tents who could be on the parcels. I think you're saying two acres [5:32:01 PM] for fifty people which would be 25 people per one acre. I wanted to find out if you had calculated how many acres of land you would think we would need going forward just as a starting place in order to operationalize the encampment strategy. I did a little bit of number crunching myself. I mean, it wasn't that difficult, but I wanted to check and see if you had looked at it from that perspective to give us a sense of the size of the acquisition that we would need to make. I think it would depend. I don't know if you're out there listening. I can see your name but not your face. I think we would have to agree on what the number of homeless people who would need the immediate intervention of housing that would include the tents >> I apologize for having my camera off, council member. [5:33:02 PM] I would defer to director Mcnealy with parks and recreation who has been leading our efforts around assessment of the land needs. I knew she was -- >> Pool: Let me stop you right there. I wasn't asking where they would be or anything. I wanted you to tell us based on the calculation that you have in the memo -- I'm just saying 25 people per acre. What is your total number of people you were thinking you would house in the encampments? >> We had not settled on a total number of people who might be accommodated in designated encampments. I think part of that was around the feasibility of finding viable sites but also there, as much as your discussion generally today, there is a difficult conversation about the [5:34:03 PM] amount of money we invest in these temporary sites versus what we are investing in the permanent housing resources. So the 4.2 that was set aside or recommended last week was not -- was really based more on the model of looking at potentially utilizing a hotel going forward >> Pool: Okay. And that wasn't what I was asking either. I just -- I want -- I'm going to say 3,000 people because at some point we may need to house 3,000 people. At 25 people per acre, how many acres are we looking for? >> Council member, I do not think the assumption was made that we would have all of the people experiencing unsheltered homelessness today accommodated in designated encampments at [5:35:04 PM] once >> Pool: Agree. Again, I'm trying to get a sense of the size of the assignment. >> Correct, and I would give you that answer if I had it, but I do not >> Pool: Well, we have about 3,000 people who are homeless we estimate in town. I agree some are housed in some form or fashion but there's also probably more that we don't necessarily -- haven't really accounted for them. I just wanted to get a sense of the size of this responsibility that -- just the size and the amount of land. And when I divide the 3,000 by the 25 I get 120 acres of land. I mean, it's just -- you know, I don't think my calculator was wrong on that. I wanted to -- if you divide it [5:36:07 PM] into square feet per acre and just round it to 43,000, shg it's a little more than 43,000 square feet per acre and divide by 25 per acre, that's about 1750 square feet per person. I wanted us to think about that. The point I'm driving to here, Diana -- because I think the calculation, the four per a hundred acres, 50 per two acres, 25 to one acre is too high. And I think that that specific metric, that calculation will stand in our way of actually being able to provide the land and the locations for the encampments because we are calculating a -- even if you assess a certain percentage for support services, not every person would have 1700 square feet for their tent. That is -- I mean, a modern office -- the amount of space [5:37:09 PM] allocated for an employee is a modern office structure is 100 square feet, if you're lucky. I'm just trying to put it in some kind of regular routine frame for people to understand what it is we're talking about because I think we are setting that goal too high, and I think that will inhibit our being able to succeed, and then I would also point out that the sidewalks around city hall -- folks are not using 1700 square feet for their space. They are pretty much right up against one another, almost to the edge of the sidewalks, and I know for a fact there's a certain sense of security that people feel being that close to one another. I'm a camper. I camp a lot, but it's for recreation. It's not my choice of primary housing, obviously, but we, too, camp in compounds and they tend [5:38:10 PM] to be with people of like interests. And that should be part of the conversation -- that people should be able to create their own community in their social interaction in whatever land we're able to acquire for the encampment and I want to drive home that I think we are setting the bar too high for the amount of land that we might -- if we're even fortunate to find -- >> Thank you. We'll go back to staff and look at the density calculations with that in mind >> Pool: I think that's great. I also want to reiterate that the concept of having regional areas similar to haven for hope, similar for the mobile loafs and fishes -- they have a more general location people go to. I think we might have better success in locating the sites if we can do them geographically [5:39:12 PM] dispersed. Original ordnance did not in fact ordain that each district would have a site. That was given as a proxy for the dispersion around the city but if -- that's another requirement that I want to make sure that we're careful whether we're using it or not because I think that also inhibits our ability to get some successes with finding some of the properties, where people could have the immediate and temporary location for their tents. Had you given any thought to the density factor and the number of acres that would be necessary? >> Yes. At the expense of repeating -- you can hear me? Yes? Okay. Yes. So the recommendation from the entities that running the state-run encampment -- it also [5:40:14 PM] factored in the fact that -- or at least the possibility that the department -- or the city would have to include portable restrooms, portable showers and other portable items that would have to be on that particular space, so while you may be looking at two acres for 50 individuals, it wouldn't be the entire 50 acres that would be utilized for tents because there would be a certain amount of space utilized -- >> Pool: Absolutely. >> Yeah. And also there was a recommendation -- and I'll have to go into my files but there was a recommendation of how much space should be in between each encampment for safety purposes, and I can run, you know -- as Diana said, we can run those calculations for you, council member, so you have a little more detail as to how we came up with those specifics. So you can give me until tomorrow, I can run those calculations >> Pool: That's completely fine. [5:41:14 PM] The point I wanted to make is I think the density calculation deserves a little more scrutiny so it doesn't inadvertently become an obstacle in us succeeding in this strategy, not that we're going to get everybody there and they'll get 2,000 square feet. It's the entire site and there are administration things that are necessary. We need to think of where is the flex in that so we can make really good decisions and make sure we can move forward on some of this. That will also reduce the amount of cost per site. I think if we have more -- if we have a larger contingent per acre than what we're calculating on now. We've got to be able to make -- I think that's one of the ways we may be able to get a little margin. Thanks >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? [5:42:20 PM] >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair. I wanted to bring out or I guess ask a question. Council member tovo, you said something about check points that really intrigued me and I look forward to continuing in that conversation and seeing what that looks like because I think it helps resolve some of my concerns. Mayor, I appreciate that you talked about this process -- I believe you said "Evolutionary." Because even in the course of this conversation, more questions have arisen for me, but then some of my concerns have been addressed as well. So I really do look forward to the continuation of the conversation and the evolution of it. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right, just a couple of things that have been raised that I haven't spoken to so far. I understand the concern about using one-time dollars. I know that's the general principle. I think what sets this apart that is different than that is [5:43:21 PM] that if we do this at the homelessness kind of once in forever opportunity, we have three years to figure that out as opposed to something we'll have to figure out four months from now if it was a one-year spend. And I think that makes it appropriate. I think it's important to recognize what the cost is if we don't do this, as council member kitchen said. I think the line item in the city of Los Angeles budget to maintain homelessness -- I think it doesn't improve their situation, which I think is getting worse, is 1 billion dollars. The line item in their budget this year. We have to do everything we can to make sure we're not giving to the residents and citizens of this city in six to eight years that kind of responsibility. I agree with what council member [5:44:22 PM] kitchen said. I understand the desire to have letters, council member alter. It would be good if we did. I wouldn't stop anybody from joining in at this point, but I think most likely we deal with that by putting in a contingency that says this is what we're willing to do if people will step forward and if people won't step forward at that level, the item comes back to council to consider reallocations. Been a lot of conversation here. Obviously the issues of arp spending, emergency spending, homelessness spending, reserves, arp dollars -- all intertwined. Impossible to have a conversation about any without having conversations about them all. I will continue to liberally [5:45:22 PM] construe germaneness so as to allowness to have that conversation as needed both tomorrow and Thursday, including in terms of the direction that we go. I think it's important to note the resolution with respect to arp spending doesn't actually direct spending. It provides a framework for council -- for council to give a framework to staff and will allow us to be able to give directions that will enable us to deal with the totality of the intertwined issues. One thing we haven't mentioned with respect to this kind of investment in homelessness -- and, Diana, maybe you can speak to this. My understanding is it would be the single largest investment that we've made with respect to mental health support in our city, which is drastically underfunded and substance use issues in our city with the [5:46:25 PM] capacity building of additional funding on the support services for people that are dealing with those challenges. The -- there's a conversation that we have danced around and continue to dance around, but as council member tovo had said, she wanted to raise kind of the conversation about encampments. We really do need to have that conversation so that we can -- and get advice from our staff and from the manager on what is the appropriate thing to be doing in this. My hope is that we're not going to try to find emergency shelters for 3,000 people in our community just because that would be so expensive and, quite frankly, take so much time and resources. It's hard to locate a hotel [5:47:27 PM] conversion from the outside -- that looks like an apartment building. It's going to be even harder to locate an open-air, sanctioned camping area. And the cities that have done that end up investing all their money in that kind of emergency response and the numbers continue to grow and they don't build a system that actually lets them reach equilibrium. From a policy standpoint that seems like the really wrong answer. With proposition B and the vote of the community I think we have the obligation to stop people from camping and tenting in public spaces, and the manager's been charged with that. I think that will result to a lot of people going back to where they were two years ago and part of the sentiment in the election was to return to where we were two years ago. I think that one of the reasons [5:48:30 PM] to do the homelessness issue is so we can get as many people out of those places as quickly as we can, as rapidly as we can into some kind of system that enable them to sustain their lives off the street but I also recognize it probably means a lot of people for an interim period of time are going to go back to doing what they were doing two years ago. My hope is that we find the opportunity to be able to do sanctioned camping or emergency housing or something with respect to at the very least the women that are in the situation just because I think that as described to me and others, the life they have going back to those environments is pretty horrific. But I think we're going to have a lot of people -- I hope that we're doing that kind of work [5:49:32 PM] but then really accelerating our efforts to set up systems that can really take people off of the street. So we need that conversation about what is the encampment plan because I don't think there's a real understanding yet. Meeting of minds among us or with respect to advice we've gotten from staff or with respect to opinions or policy we've given to staff. >> Tovo: Are we posted for that conversation as well tomorrow? >> Mayor Adler: Yes >> Tovo: Okay. Great because I do think we need -- you know, the time is running out for individuals who are going to need that alternative and so I do have some questions and had some questions to jump into on that front, but I can wait until tomorrow if that seems more appropriate let me just say thank you, mayor [5:50:35 PM] pro tem, for commenting on the check points part of mine. There were three I had identified in my message board post. One I had indicated that I, too, want to build out -- I want to bring forward some direction that talks about the contingency issue that some of us have addressed here today. The three check points I think we need to have -- one is in response -- these are the ones I've outlined in the message board post but I'm not so sure how clear it was. We need an opportunity to review, revise -- ie, once we have a better understanding of which commitments are firm, that would be a time to revisit. After or during budget. So my second point was as budgetary and other funding processes might demand. If we get through the budget process, we may have to come [5:51:36 PM] back and revisit this process and identify. If we have made final -- if we have passed the framework this week we may need to come back and the third bullet I identified was prior to receiving the arpa allocation for year two. But I would just ask you and others, like, what are the other -- I'm going to draft that direction for the different points I put in the message board post, but there might be other check points we want to build in there, so I want to throw that out to all of you to kind of think about what might be the other natural checkpoints where we want to take a look -- you know, have it posted for council conversation on a work session or whatnot and really take a look at what our current spending is, what our current needs are, and whether we need to make adjustments. Those are the three I could anticipate but I'm sure there are others >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ann and then the mayor pro tem >> Kitchen: Thank you, council [5:52:37 PM] member tovo. I really appreciate you putting all that together. I would suggest a check point. I'm not sure where it should be but a checkpoint that has coming back to us the anticipated contracts and -- so we could dig into -- what is the scope of services that we might expect of our nonprofit partners that we might be contracting for. And then -- and also, what is the system that we're going to use to measure accountability? So I don't know when you put that checkpoint in there, you know, but might consult with Diana on that. But I think there should be a checkpoint for that somewhere. >> Tovo: Do -- just quickly to clarify, like as in before the contracts appear on our agenda for approval >> Kitchen: Yeah >> Tovo: Maybe before the rfp [5:53:37 PM] or something like that >> Kitchen: Yeah >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem >> Harper-madison: My question was going to be accountability. One of the things I'm very concerned about is after our dispersement of cares act and funding -- I heard some stories about waste -- real problematic concerns about where funds went and how they were regulated and/or the complete lack of accountability after funds were dispersed and I'm just concerned that we need to have more in the way of oversight [5:54:38 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member alter? And colleagues, we're in our last five or six minutes here. Council member alter >> Alter: Thank you. I think this is an important conversation, and as you can see from the questions, there's a lot of things that we still need to get fleshed out, and so I think any sort of check points if we were to decide to move forward this week would be really important. One of the ones that you and I have discussed before, Kathie, is the governance structure. I'm not sure what the checkpoint is because it has never been explained to us what governance structure -- you know, we're committing this and there's all these funds but, you know, who's leading it and all of that and who's managing the funds and what we're delegating and what we're not delegating is not at all clear if we were to succeed [5:55:39 PM] in securing funding from the county and -- in order to move forward. It's not -- not clear to me what that 515 entity is that we're looking at, and, you know, we've entertained in the past some different structures, but I think that's part of the uncertainty right now that we have in this process. >> Mayor Adler: My sense to address that real quickly is there's no determined governance structure and I'm comfortable making our commitment on a structure council approved of. I would imagine there will be other people, too, that want to make sure they approve of the governance structure, including potential funders that will want to make sure they approve of that as well as the community [5:56:40 PM] and people -- the service providers. My understanding is there -- while there's work being initiated to develop options for people to consider, there is no established one nor could anyone be hoisted upon us or adopted that was not something that we approved of. Yes, Kathie? >> Tovo: That's actually a question that hadn't occurred to me as we were making this decision, council member alter, so thanks for raising it. We certainly -- I had brought and this council passed a resolution to create a local government corporation to focus on local homelessness initiatives. That has not happened. I could do another one asking it to be created. That would allow us to invest public funds or private partners [5:57:42 PM] to invest as well. I know there's discussion going on upon the summit participants on what a governance structure should look like. If it's talking about the investment of public dollars, lgc would be about as far afield as I would want to go from the city in making those investments. I will think about that and maybe, council member alter, you can help me think of something to embed along those lines within here. If we're assuming a frame shg wo and hoping to get the money quickly it is the city council and city staff governing the contracts. Am I wrong in that assumption? That does definitely -- that would definitely change some of my thinking about what we're doing and when we're doing it >> You are not incorrect, council member. I don't think -- this does not [5:58:43 PM] presume the city would be taking control. We anticipate collaborative decision making overall, and I think what I would say is that while -- when I think about the overall effort, I could see some pooling of funds in certain scenarios. It is not necessary to have a single entity managing all of the funds for us to be successful in an effort like this. It's just the reality of how the sausage will be made. >> Mayor Adler: It's 5:59. Do we have anything else before we stop? All right. Good conversation today. Thank you. See you guys tomorrow. You get a little bit of a break. Tomorrow we start with the county, two quick briefings -- covid. We're also getting an update on census and then we'll go into our work session. Lots of pulled items tomorrow. And with that, here at 6:00 [5:59:45 PM] o'clock. Colleagues, this meeting is adjourned.