City Council Regular Work Session Transcript – 2/1/2022 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 6 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 2/1/2022 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/1/2022 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:14:53 AM] >> Mayor Adler: We'll go ahead and begin. We'll call to order the work session of the Austin city council. It's February 1st, 2022. It's a hybrid meeting. Some of us are here at city hall, others calling in remotely. It is 9:15 and we are adjourned. A couple of -- I mean, we are -- [laughter]. If only it worked that way. But we're starting. I'll call to order. A Cowell of housekeeping things, Thursday it looks like we could have inclement weather situation. I urge everyone that is signing up to speak or wishing to speak, even those that are intending to sign-up in person to also sign up remotely. And I urge you to consider the remote option this week so as to best protect not only yourselves, but our [9:15:55 AM] staff. The fewer people that we have here testifying live the fewer staff members that need to be here. So again, I'd appreciate if everybody, if they would, would consider signing up remotely. Beyond that, for council members on Thursday I urge you all to consider being remote as well rather than coming down, given the weather situation. Only one of us needs to be here and probably safest for me to be the one that does that. So I'll be here, but no one else needs to be here that meeting on Thursday. All right, with that, colleagues, we have pulled items first and we have two staff reports, and we have an executive session. We're going to start with the pulled items. I don't think it will be very long. We're going to go into the homelessness report. The goal is to do executive [9:16:57 AM] session as concurrent with lunch as we can, so we'll kind of run the day that way, hopefully breaking about noon for lunch and executive session. On pulled items today, I pulled the boards and commissions item just to be able to say out loud. I posted on to the message board my best shot at trying to do committee chairs and intergovernmental. I thank mayor pro tem for her assistance and advise council on this. If anybody has any questions now or wanted to speak to it we could, otherwise it will come up Thursday as the -- as an agenda item with boards and commissions. Does anybody else have any other pulled items? Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Good morning, I just wanted to mention that [9:17:59 AM] I checked with Renee la fair who is on the hate crimes task force. Traditionally we have had three members of the task force. She said there was no problem with five as long as there were not six of us attending so that we had a quorum of council. >> Mayor Adler: I'm excited to see the people who have signed up for that, by the way. When I started the hate crimes task force probably 15 years ago, something like that, the hope was is that it would be a more integral player in coordinating and making sure that people were networking. And I really appreciate the interest of colleagues on that this year. Anybody else on pulled items? Kathie, did you start saying something? >> Tovo: I was just thanking the mayor pro tem for reaching out regarding the hate crimes task force. [9:18:59 AM] And mayor, would you remind us who those five members are going to be? I think I've lost track of -- I know I had hated, but I'd like to be on it, but that also since I've been on it in the past I would defer if there were other council members who wanted to serve on it. >> Mayor Adler: The hate crimes task force members that we have right now are council members Kelly, harper-madison, Fuentes, tovo and alter. >> Tovo: Thank you. I look forward to serving on that again. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? Go ahead, councilmember alter. >> Alter: I had said I was willing to not be official if I needed to, but at least this year I'm likely to be there for every meeting. While we're talking about the hate crimes task force just say that I'm pleased to say that five of us want to participate. Unfortunately we've seen [9:20:01 AM] marked rise in hate crimes over the last couple of years, whether it was anti-asian hate or antisemitic or other forms of hate. And I think it's really important that we as leaders in the community are standing up and saying there's no place for hate in our community. And I think the hate crimes task force has some really important work to continue and to build on and to extend. I look forward to being part of that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Good. And you had noted on your posted that you were good not being formally appointed, but given the quorum issue I thought it best just to put you there. Anything else? Any other pulled items on anything else on our agenda? Hearing none, let's go straight into the reports, briefings. >> Thank you, mayor and council. Good morning, everyone. It is February 1st. [9:21:01 AM] I can't believe this year is already into February, but here we are. And we have two briefings for you this morning on the south central waterfront tax reinvestment zone which is part of a conversation we started last year and then an update on the homelessness related issues. We're going to start with the homelessness related issues and we have our homeless strategy officer, Diana gray, who will walk through the presentation. We also have additional staff online and available to answer questions. As you know, this is a top priority for staff and for this council. Certainly incredible work that's happening on a day-to-day basis by so many different departments across the enterprise alongside of our community partners as well. But with that I'll turn it over to Ms. Gray. >> Thank you, sir. Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem alter and council. We have a briefing for you this morning that I would categorize in three areas. One, I would be giving an update on summit to address homelessness, particularly around fund rising and commitment of funds. [9:22:02 AM] Second, I'll be giving a brief update around the heal initiative. And finally, there are three other items that I wanted to give an update on and preview for council. One is a quick update on the process of the hotel acquisitions are being converted to permanent supportive housing. The second is public space management as related to homelessness encampments and the third is increment weather shelter. So as you recall the summit investment plan called for $515 million in investments to support the following three high level objectives. One was simply to help people. We intend to house an additional 3,000 people over the course of three years and provide other supports to another 2,000 people to help them stabilize in housing. Add concrete housing capacity in the form of 1300 new units. [9:23:03 AM] And finally, build a better system. And that means things like improving our performance management, building capacity in our provider community and improving access and outcomes with an equity lens. Next slide next slide. So when I last reported to council, we had about 75% of the 515 million either committed or anticipated. Since that time we have had another $14 million committed to the effort and are now at approximately 80%. I do want to recognize some of the sources of funding that have come to bear during that time. The St. David's foundation has made a two-million-dollar commitment to support street outreach. The Michael and Susan Dell foundation has made a substantial commitment to community first college, life works. And the federal home loan bank, which is an affordable housing loan source, has [9:24:04 AM] also provided capital to some of the projects we have in the pipeline. So curtly of the 80%. 54% has a hard commitment. 27% is anticipated. Those are funding sources that we feel confident about, but the application process still has to occur for particular projects. And then we are at just over $100 million of funding still to be secured. The leaders of the summit to address unsheltered homelessness now known as finding home atx, have been hard at work. There's a lot of conversations ongoing and we hope to have additional positive news in the coming weeks and months. Next slide, please. So this slide shows a summary of our funding progress across the categories of the summit investment plan. With the estimated remainder to raise shown in gray. And I think this is instructive because the blue [9:25:06 AM] represents city arpa funds which we strategically spread across the categories wanting to get the work started, but also leaving space for private investment and other funders to come in. The Orange are other committed and anticipated funds and then of course as I said the gray is the amount that is to be raised. We -- the greatest gains that we have seen are in capital investments and core housing programs. So much of the private funding that has come in thus far has been in capital for bricks and mortar units and that's reflected in the graph here. We've also made good progress in the core housing programs. Psh and rapid re-housing. 82% of our investment goal is committed in that category. And I should have said that in the capital category we are at over 80% as well. Next slide. So as you recall, as part of [9:26:06 AM] the city's overall $106.7 million, we used across the categories that you saw in the last slide, and we anticipate approximately quarterly coming back to council with an update not only on fund-raising, but also on expenditures. At this time we're fairly early in the game and so we've also had expenditures of approximately 4.8 million, almost entirely in capital. So we're not going to show you a full by line list on expenditures because that's not much at this time. We're now in the process of beginning to deploy the funds. While that spending has been modest today, what we're sharing today is a bit of information about how we expect to deploy the resources. We're routing funds through a number of city departments. We currently project that about 27 million will flow through a bring nation of the housing and planning department. That's mostly capital. [9:27:07 AM] Downtown Austin community court is mostly direct services and some contracted social services. And a couple of other minor allocations with the remaining lion's share of the funds, 79 million being allocated through Austin public health. Also it bears noting that about a quarter of the funds will be invested directly by the city either on capital or staffing for direct services or administration. The other 75% will be deployed through solicitation out to contracted service providers. So with aph being the greatest source or department through which we will deploy funds, I wanted to have akeisha Johnson smothers from aph's community based resource unit come and give you an overview of the series of solicitations that we anticipate to move those dollars into the community. [9:28:12 AM] >> Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem harper-madison, city manager chronic and members of the dais. My name is akeisha Johnson smoothers. I am a community sources resource manager through Austin public health. Can you hear me with this mask on? We're good? Okay. I wanted to present to you the next slide, please. Actually, our plan as it relates to homeless solicitations for social services at Austin public health. Just a quick history, based on the strategic direction 2023, Austin public health already had a plan to solicit our homeless area issue contracts. That funding would be supported by agencies that are currently funded for social services with the homeless issue area but those contracts are expiring. So that those funds will be in the solicitation and those agencies have been notified that their funding will be going into the open [9:29:12 AM] solicitation. Additionally, our federal funds from our emergency solutions grant, esg, will also be a part of that solicitation. But with the addition of arpa funds, the American rescue plan act funds, that gave us a very unique and exciting opportunity to expand our financial impact on homeless -- on the homeless issue area. So with that we decided -- because it was so much funds coming in, we decided to roll our solicitation out in three phases. With the first phase being our housing stabilization phase. This particular phase will host -- actually, it's open now and I'm really, really excited, opened on yesterday. The solicitation is our request for proposal for application to support social services around permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing and supportive services that include landlord outreach and incentives, housing navigation, and moving supply services. [9:30:16 AM] This solicitation, it will house about $53 million in investments, so we are really, really excited, as I stated earlier, it is open. You can access the solicitation via our aph competitions web page. It is slated to be open until March 9th. Our phase 2 solicitation will focus on crisis response. And within this solicitation it will actually be rfp as well, a request for proposal, street outreach and other crisis services that fall within that response. We're still kind of matching up the dollars for that one, but we're hoping to put in approximately 10 to 12 million on that one, and that is slated on open on March 22nd. And in our final phase of the solicitation schedule is our reduction of inflow and other supportive services. And within this phase we seek to ask for proposals [9:31:16 AM] around employment services, behavioral health, benefits access, and capacity building. And again, the funds to support this are still in -- we're still figuring that out but it is slated to be another 10-million- dollar investment, if not more. And that phase is slated to open may 2022. Thank you, and that completes my part of the presentation. >> Thank you, akeisha. She will remain available for any questions you might have at the end of the presentation. So the next briefing topic is the heal initiative. The purpose of the heal initiative is to provide a response to those encampments presenting the greatest public health and public safety risks and resolve those sites by providing occupants with direct access to non-congregate bridge shelter and longer term housing solutions. Heal was initially approved [9:32:17 AM] by council almost exactly a year ago on February 4th and the first encampment relocation occurred about six months ago. After initial funding of three million dollars in fiscal year 2021 we anticipate at least seven and a half million dollars in additional funds this fiscal year through a combination of general funds and arpa dollars. Through which we have set aside six million dollars for heal. Next slide, please. So from inception of the heal initiative, we have served 182 people who have been relocated from six encampment. Our physical year to date, 40 individuals relocated from two encampments and that goes fiscal year goal of 200 persons served. We anticipate that we are on good track to meet that goal at this time and are looking for opportunities to expand [9:33:19 AM] that number if possible. I think the highlights of the initiative thus far is something that's really important is that we've had a 93% rate of acceptance into shelter. In other words, of individuals in encampments that we offer transfer to shelter, 93% have said yes and made that move into shelter, which is I think an important data driven point when we are confronted sometimes with the idea that people experiencing unsheltered homelessness prefer to live in those conditions. We have permanently rehoused 32 to date. We have had some challenges and I think primary among those in our community has been in that an already historic strong, tight rental market, over the last several months we've seen it become even more difficult for our service providers to secure units in the community. So that's extended the time that people stay in bridge shelter before they get into [9:34:19 AM] permanent housing, and of course as long as they are in that bridge shelter bed, that constrains our ability to address more encampments and move more people into shelter. Early on we did have some capacity initials our rapid re-housing program simply because the first four encampments had more individuals than was originally projected through the founding resolution. We believe we've resolved that for now and we are seeking more rapid re-housing providers through the solicitation that akeisha just spoke to. And finally we have some concern about attrition from shelter and we think this is related. The longer people are in shelter before we can get them into permanent housing the more likely we are to lose them from that shelter. We ask our service providers to continue to follow them even after they leave shelter, but of course the ideal scenario is that we're able to keep them in shelter until the time of their permanent re-housing so [9:35:20 AM] that's something we're looking at and will be looking to improve upon as we develop the program further. Next slide, please. I wanted a quick reminder about heal prioritization. Heal I think it's important to establish repeatedly is just a very small subset of the interventions that we have in unsheltered encampments in the city. Unfortunately at present we've not been able to assemble the resources quite yet to be able to offer that permanent housing to everyone who is the subject of enforcement of the camping ordinance and so we're very intentional about focusing on essentially protecting life and so looking at those encampments were the concerns around public health and public safety are the greatest. We have developed a prototype mobile prioritization tool which allows city staff to go into [9:36:20 AM] the encampments and capture information related to the criteria for heal prioritization. There are 40 standardized variables. And currently we have four city departments that are testing and using that tool that includes my division, homeless strategy division, pard, watershed and public works. And we'll continue to refine that over time. Next slide, please. This slide is simply a reminder that the public health and public safety factors that are assessed. And I think it's important to note that four those encampments that we have prioritized now using this tool in most cases there are very substantial risks in multiple categories. So of course there are risks presented in living in an unsheltered condition across the board, but these are [9:37:21 AM] those where we see just a host of issues that we need to address. Next slide, please. All right. So at this time I'd like to preview a number of ongoing projects of interest as well as some emerging interests that council can expect to hear more about over the coming weeks. These include as I mentioned previously the conversion, the hotel conversion projects for permanent supportive housing, the response to unauthorized homeless encampments and cold weather shelter operations. Move to the next slide. So in 2021 council authorized the acquisition of two hotels and we completed those acquisitions during the calendar year '21. Item on I believe this week's or last week's agenda created a non-profit subsidiary of the Austin housing finance corporation, ownership of those hotels will be moved in to those [9:38:24 AM] new non-profit corporations. In terms of a quick update on process, for bungalows at century park, which is the property on burnet road, where we anticipate 60 units of housing, we closed acquisition in July of 2021, integral care is under contract as a service provider and operator. Renovation is on the current council agenda. The funds for integration for integral care, I should say. And we've had 50 vouchers awarded by the city of Austin housing authority which will fund the basic operations of the facility while the city funds services. We have a second hotel in northwest Austin in district 6 on pecan park. That will be approximately 78 units of housing. Final name to be determined. I think it will be sexier than pecan part psh. We closed acquisition of that project in August of 2021 and expect to bring the [9:39:26 AM] funding action for council consideration in March. And with a consideration of a service contract and operating contract with the provider likely in March or April. We have submitted an application for 50 haca vouchers on that project as well. That application went in in on January 17th. So for all of the moving pieces to come together and that includes both completing the renovation and then going through the process with haca to get the vouchers finalized, which does take a bit of time, our projected occupancy for these projects is somewhere between October and December of this year. Next slide. Thank you. So there continue to be many questions and concerns about the management of public spaces as relates to homeless encampments and we do anticipate giving a full briefing at a future time, but today I wanted to give you a general update on public space management and [9:40:27 AM] also give you a related preview of a project that we have underway with performance management and financial services. So while APD has authority to enforce the camping ordinance at any time, typically resolution of unauthorized encampments does require multi-department coordination. We know that vacated encampments that aren't addressed and the sites aren't restored to their former condition are quite likely to be reoccupied, and there are also issues around -- legal issues around the treatment of occupants' belongings that we have to be respectful of. And so in motion cases when there is an encampment of concern it really does require a number of departments to be involved. Since August of 2021, which is when the camping ordinance went into effect, the request for service or encampments have far out stripped capacity of the [9:41:27 AM] city departments to respond. So since that time well over 70 encampments, and that's not including independent APD enforcement, it's not including the heal initiative or sites that have simply been abandoned. Over 70 encampments have been cleared. After an initial focus at underpasses that public works had a -- had cleaning contracts on, there's been a substantial focus on parks and recreation properties where we know there's been a lot of concern. And I think it's important to note that what we're finding is in the larger, particularly more remote sites, often have very complex access where we have to cut down trees to create paths for heavy machinery and are taking in some cases not just multiple days, but sometimes weeks to clear. Just as an indication, I think that's illustrative of the amount of work that's being done, we asked some of our public space partners to provide us with some indication of the amount of [9:42:29 AM] refuse that has been collected from sites in general. Austin resource recovery has 829 tons. Much of that is from just a couple of encampments. Public works, 177 tons is from under -- from overpasses. And Austin watershed 38.5. And so I think that the piece that we want to raise for council is that we know that there's frustration in the community, but there's also very significant strain on budgets, on staff and on services as department's attention is drawn from their other activities as well. We've seen accelerated spend down on our third-party cleanup contracts in some cases. Very often there are multiple avenues for service requests to come in, which can be confusing, can result in duplication of effort and takes a lot of time. And it's further frustrating for field staff because they often will clear an [9:43:30 AM] encampment and they may encounter the same individuals in an encampment that's reestablished just down the road when people leave the encampment that has been addressed. And so there are a lot of things that we need to do to address this issue, providing additional crisis housing and additional permanent housing are huge pieces of that, but what we want to do in addition to those efforts is to also look at the process and the protocols that are in place for city public management staff and see if we can't improve that process and make it more efficient and more effective and less stressful, frankly, for the staff that are doing the work. So next slide, please. To that end in the fall we asked the office of performance management to help us with the process improvement project. For our encampment management. And they began working with us then over the course of [9:44:31 AM] November and December, spent quite a bit of time with the individual departments identifying pain points of which there are many. And we had a couple of planning sessions early this month that identified several potential improvements to the process. The primary of which is a uninight response structure. We needed a clearer sense of how we receive information, how decisions are made, how resources are deployed and how we prioritize where we're doing our where we're going re doing our work, because while I'm confident we will see an improvement, it is going to be over time, and we are going to have to continue to prioritize our sites. So, you can go back to next slide. Thank you. And so this unified response system is our first step. It includes, as I said, coordinated prioritization [9:45:32 AM] resource deployment. Also communication, both with the public and with people experiencing homelessness. And then more robust standardized protocols around some of the serious challenges that are being encountered in the field, like the cleanup of biohazards, treatment of property as I discussed earlier, ensuring that we are adhering to applicable law, et cetera. Eventually, we are definitely seeing a need for some centralized hub for staff resources and increased staff training for those front line workers. And we certainly see some opportunities for technology solutions, but we need to get our process in place before and then identify the technology and data solutions that might support it. That in and of itself is a bit of a longer timeline, so if you go to the next slide, this indicates essentially where we are right now with that unified [9:46:32 AM] response planning. We've identified that as our primary priority and performance management has agreed to continue to work with a smaller group over the coming weeks to devise a system and some protocols. So final item of the briefing is around cold weather shelter. The mayor mentioned at the opening of our meeting this morning that we expect inclement weather this week, and with that, we anticipate activating our cold weather shelter operation, as we do typically during such events. And so, I wanted to give an overview of what that operation looks like, and then also talk a little bit about some potential changes that we see on the horizon. We activate when overnight temperature is freezing, or if it's 35 degrees with rain or [9:47:35 AM] high winds. We communicate via a hotline the public information office at hesm tends to put out a press release. We have reverse text messaging for people experiencing homelessness, and we certainly make use of listserves and other forum in the community for homeless service providers. One Texas center is our embarkation site. Registration is from 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. On-site, we have covid screening. We also offer covid vaccines and flu vaccines on-site. It is staffed by city employees for the most part, with some additional support from integral care and at times echo, but they're not dedicated staff. They are staff that are doing this in addition to their regular duties. When there is a need for a late transfer outside of that 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. Registration time, our public safety partners are instructed to call the hesm duty [9:48:37 AM] officer and help them identify how they can transfer one to shelter. Next slide, please. So the cold weather shelter sites themselves are three parks and recreation centers. We activate those on a rolling basis, as they are needed, depending on how many people arrive. The total capacity of those three recreation centers at present is about 225. That is decreased from our previous capacity pre-covid. Capital metro transports individuals from the embarkation center to those shelters. There is no overnight sheltering at one Texas center. And the release time in the morning is typically around 6:00 A.M. With capital metro transferring people to downtown. If there are not competing activities at the rec centers and the weather continues to be cold, we try to hold people a bit longer when we can. [9:49:39 AM] At the shelters, again, typically staffed by parred staff on top of their regular duties and we to usually have Austin police department on site as well. A few considerations. One is if you heard a consideration of our cold weather shelter operations previously, this may sound a bit different. Historically, much of cold weather shelter operation depended on our faith-based community, who opened up churches and took folks into those churches, provided them with food and volunteers to do the staffing. Because of covid, because many of those volunteers might be of some advanced age and there were more concerns around health, most of those churches elected not to participate at this time at least not at the higher elevated risk levels that we are seeing right now. So the operation has really fallen back onto the city for [9:50:40 AM] this year and to a great degree last year as well. At the same time, we're hearing a lot of community input, concerns about the scope, the scale, and the access to cold weather shelter. So should the temperature threshold be higher because it's still awfully cold at 37 degrees outside? How do people access? Is it reasonable to expect that everyone can make their way downtown? And what is our capacity? So, all of those I think are reasonable questions, but they do have significant resource implications. And the dedicated budget for cold weather shelter is currently zero. So, we've been able over the years to do this with a lot of volunteers, et cetera, and I think that as covid hopefully decreases its intensity, we'll be able to draw the community back into this work. [9:51:41 AM] But I still think that we are really at a point of reconsidering whether our cold weather shelter plan reflects where we are as a community with the size of our unsheltered population and many of the chronic conditions that we see in the unsheltered population, et cetera. So, aph at the direction of director stirrup has begun looking at the possibility of whether we could offer overtime, for example, to exempt staff. But that's just one possibility. And so we are really beginning to try to outline what the options are for enhancing the cold weather shelter operation and what the resource implications might be. And with that, I will pause and I'm happy to take questions. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. [9:52:42 AM] Return the screen to the body. I don't see any hands raised, so I'll kick it off. I have a quick question for the -- one, I wanted to note the slide that shows how well the large fundraise is going, $500 million seemed like an insurmountable task, and at any other time would be. But real opportunity is presented, and ongoing conversations, I understand with some of the other large corporations and foundations in the community. So, good luck in getting that done. Hopefully you can -- we can all close the loop, and thanks to the folks with house Austin atx. >> Finding home atx. [9:53:43 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Finding home atx and the summit group that has people in business and organizations. So thank you to them and to the group that Lynn Meredith is helping to facilitate. I have a question for Keshia and you with respect to the contracts. It's great to see the rfps being administered. It's great to see them going out at scale. It's great having that happen. I'm a little concerned as I look at the chart to see capacity-building only come up in phase 3. And I know that there's going to be an expectation on the street that even with respect to the initial spend of the $53 million, we've institutionalized or incorporated the capacity building component, and I don't know whether that's asking some of the organizations that have been doing this for a long time, and do it very well, as part of [9:54:45 AM] their contracts of the $53 million to help mentor or bring in or expose to some of the folks that would later be hopefully expanding and standing up on their own. But I hope that capacity-building is an integral part of both phase one and phase two, not just waiting until phase three. And if not stated in the rfp, would be put into the contracts with the providers to make sure that we're doing that. Can you talk about capacity building as part of stage one? >> Absolutely. This current phase -- and Diane, I'm going to definitely lean on you as well. This current phase, as in phase one, our homeless strategy division is going to be doing some listening sessions with providers in the community that will speak to -- that will look for what does capacity building mean to you. And that would allow us to see [9:55:46 AM] what the need is and allow us to really shift those particular funds in that direction. And it may be a multitude of things that may come out of these listening sessions, but that's why we did specifically put it in this first phase, because we wanted to do a listening session and see where the need really, really is. In addition to that, we do plan to look at our applicants and see where needs are and discuss with our home less strategy officer as it relates to capacity building that may need to happen today versus in the third phase. So we are definitely -- our plan is to remain open as it relates to that. But we wanted to shape it as much as possible to the listening session so that we make sure that we cover every component of capacity building as well. Diana, did you want to add to that? >> Yeah, actually. Thank you, Keshia. One of the things, when we -- show the slide that talked about the different departments through which we're deploying resources. Outside of the aph process, we are working with the innovation office on a small grants [9:56:49 AM] program, which will launch soon, and that will be smaller grants that are explicitly only capacity-building. So, really looking at letting groups, again subsequent and related to these listening sessions that we're organizing with echo to say here's what we see we need in order to be able to, frankly, effectively apply even for the larger city solicitations, which are substantially more complex. And so those two tracks are happening in parallel, but then there would be the larger capacity building in phase three. We can certainly talk about whether we can integrate it into phase two as well. But there is something happening. >> Mayor Adler: My hope would be phase one as well. So I hope some of the listening sessions happen before you sign contracts in phase one. When phase one contracts come back to the council, I will be asking at that point what is it in these phase one contracts that is promoting capacity [9:57:50 AM] building. So, I think it's really important that we help organizations that might not be as familiar with the process be able to bid and complete applications in phase one as opposed to hearing in phase three that it would have been good in phase one if we had helped them fill out these things. If we get to phase three and it becomes apparent that we really want some of the larger legacy groups that are doing phenomenal work in our community to make part of their required charge, bringing in smaller organizations or mentoring or creating a spot on their staff for capacity-building, our leverage to get them to do that will be part of the phase one contract, and if it's not part of the phase one contract, we may be asking with no leverage for those organizations. [9:58:52 AM] So my hope is that -- and I'll be asking, when the phase one contracts come back, how is this contract bringing in people and building capacity, as opposed to saying we'll do that in phase three, because I'm concerned when we get to phase three, we will have missed a lot of opportunities that we're not going to be able to get back again. So my hope is that you incorporate into the rfp or the contracts those kind of things. Almost all of my questions when phase one comes back, contracts come back to the council, will be about how they're promoting, how we've built into those contracts and institutionalized into those contracts and the process we had in phase one to promote the capacity building, because I think that's a huge -- we can't solve this problem without increasing capacity of everybody, the legacy folks, the new folks. We have an opportunity to really transform the delivery system in [9:59:52 AM] our system, because oftentimes, building capacity is a zero sum game, and you're taking things away from legacy people to create capacity. Here, we're not doing that, because everybody's going to have to be stepping up and expanding. So I just urge you to -- it's good to hear your thinking about it and that will be my focus when those contracts come back. I just wanted to give you a heads up. So thank you for that. >> Duly noted. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, Keshia. On the public space management, a near impossible challenge. I support the policy and the practice of really focusing on doing what it takes to solve this challenge indefinitely. And that means building out the entire system and each of its components, and to build each of its components in scale to all [10:00:54 AM] the other ccomponents, rather than investing in any one part of that and make it out of scale, because the system doesn't work. But I also recognize that the reality is that we don't have enough places for everybody to go, and if we were to create lots of emergency shelter right now, we could do that. We could move a lot of people into that. But we wouldn't then be able to build out the rest of the system and we would be locked in this indefinite time period that some cities have, who have rushed in to deal with that immediate need, and then they can't pull people out the emergency into the rest of the system because the rest of the system is not built out. And I know it's hard, and in a lot of respects, inhumane to not be a home and support services right away. And I recognize that. But I support the policy and the [10:01:54 AM] practice because I think it's going to be a difficult one, two, and three years. But at the end of three years, we'll actually have accomplished something that I'm not sure any city our size has ever done and it's the long-term play, it's the most cost-effective play, it's the best ultimately for the community and the people who are experiencing homelessness or may in the future. I want you to know I support that, but I recognize how hard that is and there's a lot of criticism that's coming in. Unavoidable, I think, but I think you really need to stay true to that direction. That said, we also have to make sure that we have the permission of the community to be able to do this. And by that, I mean kind of the weight of the community, which I think wants us to get people out of tents and the like. So looking at how we do the public space management I think is real important, and I think as you're talking about, you know, the coordinated efforts for cleanup and that kind of [10:02:55 AM] stuff is really good. I also think you need to come up with kind of goals or models or principles. As we operate in shared public space, we recognize that nobody has a claim to that space themselves. I think that looking at the pain points is important. I think trying to make sure that we don't have or minimize camp areas in highly trafficked public use park areas is real important. Because I think there's always going to be tradeoffs, and we have to fig yare out how we get through this next three years until we can actually get everyone. I would urge you and the manager to consider a policy that prioritizes those encampment areas with more than so many tents. Four, six, I don't know what the number would be. Because I think that the visual [10:03:56 AM] massing and the complaints and pain points associated with that means that you're spending a lot of time responding to that rather than doing the good work. But if there was a policy that limited the amount of massing, maybe that would still provide for the people, but allow you greater leeway to really forge ahead and do the work. But I think something has to be done, because I think the concern in the community is that we're moving back to where we were, and in that angst, we saw that angst manifest itself in the discussions and the petition and the election that we have, and I think we have to honor that election and recognize that. So we need to figure out some guiding principles about that and maybe even announce what those guiding principles are so that the community knows. [10:04:56 AM] So if we're going to do something that speaks to mass ING so that the community knows that. But anyhow, difficult area, difficult challenge. It will be until you can build out the system, and I think we just need to weather that and I want you to know that I'll continue to support you in that direction, because long-term, I think that is clearly the way that we need to go. And finally, just real quickly, on the cold winter sheltering, also a really difficult thing because we don't have really the systems built out on that, and the systems we have been relying on that worked really well are not available to us. They had the opportunities to go to some of the shelters, to go to one Texas center. Best as I can tell, we have volunteers there, and their city employees who can be kind of raied from lots of different [10:05:57 AM] places. I just wanted to say thank you again. Not a perfect system, but in the emergency situations, I think really doing yeoman's duty. So, thank you. Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you, I appreciate this overview. It was very helpful. I am concerned with the drought that we're having, about the risks of fire in the encampments. We do have reports of fire and obviously when it's cold, people want to use fire. But it's very often, particularly with the increased numbers who are in our parks, it's very often in high risk areas, they may not even be the areas that are marked as high risk for wildfire in our community. We have reports of fires in [10:06:58 AM] pea's park. What is the process for addressing fire risks in the encampments? Because you can address fire risk without displacing anyone. >> Sure. Certainly want to have the aft I think give a more full response, but I can tell you that aft certainly does -- when there is a report of a fire, if they have the capacity that are not responding to current emergencies, they will go to that encampment. Since August of 2021, they've extinguished 320 encampment fires, which is to say not necessarily a fire that was out of control, but a fire in an encampment, a campfire. At that time, of course, they educate folks in those encampments about how to reduce their fire load. We have periodically had -- when we were still distributing eat bags, for example, distributed [10:07:58 AM] information about reducing fire risks in encampments. It's absolutely an ongoing challenge, and as you said, in these colder months, we certainly see more of that. But AFD is both responding in an emergent situation when they have that capacity, and following up with reports of fires after they've received them, if they didn't have staff available to respond in the moment of the report. But it is, as you can imagine, it is -- you know, it's not just a one-day thing. An encampment -- a campfire might exist over the course of several days. And so, it is something we are working on, and wildfire risk is a part of our consideration, both for heal and for enforcement and clearance of encampments in general. >> Alter: I appreciate that. A while ago, when we had these [10:08:59 AM] conversations, it was apparent that the interdepartmental cooperation was not at the level that it needed to be. How has that been improved so that when AFD is alerted of a fire, the homeless strategy officer, whoever knows about it and vice versa, because at one stage, they were putting out fires, but nobody in the homeless group leadership was knowing about it and vice versa. So how is that improved? >> We have a weekly meeting on Wednesday mornings across departmental meeting, our public space management and hsd, that talk about what's happening in those -- in encampments and prioritizing work. It is true, and it's one of the reasons for the project with officer performance management, that we do not have a seamless information flow across departments. Our individual departments are keeping information. [10:09:59 AM] They are sharing with other departments, but it isn't in an institutionalized or standing format. So that's something that we expect to look at as part of the opm process. >> Alter: Okay. I would really encourage that to happen. To what extent is the wildfire division involved in these discussions? We have an -- you know, we're in a drought. We have extremely high risk of wildfire. Thankfully, we got some rain this week and getting more tomorrow, which was very much needed. We've seen the fire in bastrop. It only takes an ember, and we're preparing for it -- you know, the ring-around, but we have now encampments in places that can create fires in wooded areas that are more central as well. And I think that the tactics for fighting those fires are different, and that doesn't mean that the line person from AFD is going to deal -- to work with the folks in the encampment, has [10:11:01 AM] all that training and understands all that. So I'm concerned that we are deploying our knowledge most effectively to make sure that we are minimizing the risks. >> So wildfire department division has been involved. We can certainly ask for more information about how they are managing that day-to-day, especially when there's a particular encampment of concern, how they're triaing between AFD generally and the wildfire division. >> Alter: Okay. I would just underscore that the risks that we're facing right now, the risks of wildfire change throughout the year, and as we are more in a drought, they get higher. And we have still quite a bit of debris from last winter that's on the ground and dried out, and so conditions are terrifying, frankly. So, I want to make sure that you have them be part of that [10:12:01 AM] conversation on understanding how those risks are changing. Because that priority may need to shift. The risk of wildfire going up at the same time. The other thing that I wanted to ask about, we've had some exchanges, and you raised the issue of the budget today for the cold water -- cold weather shelters, and I appreciate you being straightforward about that. That was really concerning to hear when I learned of that a few weeks ago. And I understand what you're saying with the faith organizations and covid, but I think we do need to figure out some ways forward, particularly as we have these cold weather events. We've been talking a little bit about how folks are notified [10:13:01 AM] within our public safety departments about the opportunities to get folks to shelter, if it's passed the 8:00 P.M. Period, and I will just emphasize -- I think there's more of a need to make sure that that information about how folks who are coming in contact with those experiencing homelessness on a cold night after the apm, how they can connect them up with resources. Our public safety folks need to have really clear guidance on that. They do not have that at this point in time. Please let me know how I can support you as we think about that cold weather shelter piece of it. I think that's important for that. Do we deploy the red cross at all for that? I know the faith organizations are not something that was in- house or whatever. Traditionally, we had red cross volunteers. >> Red cross has I believe not historically been involved in cold weather shelter itself. When we have a weather disaster, they come in. [10:14:02 AM] We've been in conversation with them now about some resources not necessarily their volunteers. But helping us train up additional staff or volunteers et cetera. I did actually want to address -- say something about the budget. I want to be clear that that is not a criticism of the past operation. If a city is able to do something effectively on a zero budget, that's a day for celebration, right? But that is not the situation we are in any longer in terms of the population experiencing unsheltereded homelessness, in terms of covid, and in terms of the thinking, I think, in the interest -- in the community, expanding cold weather shelter, it's just that this is where they're starting from. We are fortunate at this time to have some flexibility and resources via the arpa funds, and so I think we have a way to get started. The city will need to think about what the longer-term resourcing of that operation looks like, but just to say not having a budget is clearly a [10:15:06 AM] limitation. We can, I think, address that and we have some options, but we're going to have to have conversations about what the longer-term resources look like. >> Alter: Sure, it's and it's not exactly zero budget, just other departments are using their budgets for that. >> Correct. >> Alter: I think, city manager, I would really like, with particular attention to the parks department, I would like to really understand how much of their general fund resources that were supposed to be spent on other parks' issues are being devoted to homelessness, a tremendous amount of challenges between covid and helping those who are homeless without any additional -- or very little additional resources to do that. And I believe if we're going to be asking them to do that, whether it's the shelters, having the staffing, et cetera, we need to understand that implication because it does ultimately have an impact on other services as well. I think it's a little bit harder [10:16:08 AM] to do the overall budget for cold weather. But we certainly could be addressing and looking at the impact for the parks department to make them whole moving forward. So I would request that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, council member tovo next, and then council member pool, and then council member kitchen. >> Tovo: Thank you. Thanks for this really comprehensive presentation on a couple different areas that I know certainly my office receives lots of questions about. I have some questions about the public safety -- the public safe management framework. I'll start with the cold weather shelter and some information about heal that I wanted to ask about. So I'm going to start with the cold weather shelter update. Thank you for really providing some history, Ms. Gray, about how these have typically been [10:17:09 AM] handled in the past. I too want to just hope for that day when we have that network of faith-based organizations that are able to assist in this area again and understand that we're not in that place right now. Can you help us understand -- I think it's really important, you know, as we continue to think about how we build a more resilient city, I would like to see us be thoughtful about whether there is an area we need to invest in. And so thank you for highlighting that, that there hasn't been a budget in the past, except in those individual departments, and that we may need to approach it differently and have a different model where there is more training provided across the staff and volunteers, and we have a ready network of people to call on on that. On that front. Is this being coordinated with -- well, Ms. Gray, I guess my first question is, how is -- how are you thinking about the cold [10:18:10 AM] weather shelters in terms of the other kinds of sheltering work that hesm is doing? I know we had a presentation at the joint sub committee last week about resilience, and one of the questions that came up is which areas -- which facilities are being pre-prepared with supplies in the event that we needed warming centers or cooling centers or other kinds of shelters for individuals in the state of a disaster, and it seems like this work should really be knit together, and may be knit together already. But could you speak to that, please? >> Yes, council member. Thank you for bringing that up. I think it's been important for me as I learn this process, to understand to some degree the difference between our standard cold weather shelter operations and winter weather disaster, right? And so cold weather shelter occurs on -- you know, is simply really present about freezing temperatures or near-freezing [10:19:12 AM] temperatures. The way that this is being framed at present, and I do think we have some additional work to think through kind of the linkage when we might roll from one system to the other, is that typically, we would activate cold weather shelter, and that certainly much like last year happened before the larger disaster declaration occurred, and in many cases before we started to have some of the challenges with infrastructure, et cetera, across the city. So, what we're talking about is, you know, should we, for example, exceed the capacity of the existing recreation centers? Would we then have the ability to access the resiliency hubs that have been set up. And I don't think that that has been clearly established yet, but it would certainly make sense to have a clear step-wise plan for even if there hasn't been a disaster declaration in the community, if the need among people experiencing homelessness [10:20:15 AM] in the setting of a weather event exceeds in this case cold weather shelter, could we access some of those other -- that other preparation that has happened. >> Tovo: Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. And I'll dig into that a bit outside of this setting with my staff and with the appropriate departments and with you, because I -- you know, the whole notion of the resilience hub is that they be community spaces in times of disaster and in times of non-disaster. I think we might get the most leverage if these systems are really knit together in some of the ways that you identified. I think that requires a little bit more discussion to see whether you need additional support from the council and kind of helping provide that direction that would knit -- again, would knit those processes together so that we have a shelter. Anyway, I think we have enough on that point, because I have more questions. So I'm excited to see the work that you described with [10:21:15 AM] performance management. You know, just in the last couple weeks, we've received -- my office has received calls about multiple different kinds of situations, primarily happening in parkland, some involving active campfires, and the threat of a wider spread, other kinds of issues, some related to public safety and encounters with happening in those park spaces, including on playgrounds. And so I appreciate the approach of several things, I think, that are really good steps forward. The mobile prioritization that you described that it sounds like all staff working in public space -- in public spaces has access to. And the other challenge that you identified is something that we've identified in our discussions with staff and with constituents, and that that is [10:22:15 AM] that there are multiple points of inputting this information. And so I think this direction is really for the manager. Could you help each of our offices understand what is the best way for us to provide this information to this interdepartmental team, and as we strive for that real high level of organization that Ms. Gray has described, what is the best way to get this information so that we know it's not just going to individual park staff members, if there's a situation involving potential fire risk, that AFD is involved. You know, it's just -- because we have multiple points of input, both for constituents as well as for council offices, I think we're adding to -- you know, we may be adding to some of the challenges you described of overlapping responses and overlapping departments responding in less than coordinated ways. So I'm really happy that we're moving toward a system of more [10:23:18 AM] organization. I think that's really the best way to approach this and to make sure that the city is addressing safety issues both for individuals who are experiencing homelessness, as well as some of the other issues that have arisen. What do you -- could you give me some sense, Ms. Gray, of what some of the timeframe is? The work that you've described on -- let's see. Sorry, I've lost the slide. On slide 15, the process improvement. And actually, let me ask you two questions. What would be -- what do you -- who owns this -- who owns this process? Are you the main -- the lead of all of this work? And if not, who is the lead of all of this work? [10:24:20 AM] What is the estimated timeline for the rollout of these items identified on slide five? And what kind of support do you need from council, whether it's budgetary or policy changes or policy direction. So, three-part question. Leadership, timeline, resources that you might need from council. >> Thank you, council member. So, we did initiate this process and we are the primary sort of staff support with performance management. City managers office raised this and is serving as a sponsor, which we thought was really important, given the diversity of departments that were involved. So I think that has been very positive. We presented to a small group of city managers I believe last week on the process, and we are now assembling a smaller work group to get to that coordinated response structure would look [10:25:22 AM] like. I feel like it would probably be premature for me to give you an anticipated timeline, but I can commit to coming back, council member, and giving you a sense of how we think that will lay out as we begin and dive just a little bit deeper into this. I will tell you that there is absolutely a sense of shared urgency across all of the departments involved. >> Tovo: Great, thank you. I appreciate that information. And manager, I would ask you to provide us with information if there is a need for resources to help move this work forward. I share the sense of urgency and I'm glad that you're approaching it in that way. I also want to be sure that we're supporting our staff, and especially the homeless strategy office in the way that they have a lot of work under their umbrella right now, and if there's a need for additional resources, in any one of these areas, or additional policy direction that you will immediately come to the council [10:26:24 AM] and ask for those resources or that support, and the same goes for the cold weather shelter as well. And I also want to highlight on the reference to public space management, there was also a reference to accelerated drawdown of third party contracts. And so that to me is also potentially an area where we may not have allocated enough resources in that area, and so manager, again, I would ask that you come back to us or let us know today whether that's an area where you are in need of additional financial resources. I have some more questions about shelter and things, but I've taken a lot of the space here right now, so I'll defer those for the moment and if we have time, would love to follow up. Thank you, Ms. Gray, for all of the really critical work that you and your staff are doing. >> Thank you, council member. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member pool, then council member kitchen. [10:27:25 AM] >> Pool: Hi. Thanks, Diana, for being here today and for a good report. I was curious, you know, we got a couple of emails from residents who were concerned about the vans that are camping, not necessarily homeless encampment, but car parking and van parking overnight, and of course, that's not something that is per our ordinance. And I wondered if you were aware of it and what steps we were taking, the city was taking in order to encourage those folks to go elsewhere? >> So, I am aware of that happening previously, and APD going out and addressing it. It sounds like you may be talking about something more recent that has not made it through, or to my email box at present, which is in some ways indicative of needing a unified place to gather all the information. I'm happy to follow up on that. >> Pool: Well, it could be that they've all been moved outer but this was a comment that I got this morning. >> Okay. >> Pool: So if you could, maybe update us on the status, that [10:28:28 AM] would be great. >> Yes. Thank you, council member. >> Pool: Thanks so much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes, thank you. I really appreciate all the work that you and your team are doing, Ms. Gray. I think it's very heartening to see how you are -- you and your team are organizing the work that needs to be done moving forward in a deliberate way that's based on, you know, a plan and really designed to help us get to some sustainable work in this regard. So, I just have a few quick questions. One of them relates -- it's sort of related to the hub, but it's a bit different. I too appreciate the efforts you are making to organize and, you know, have some -- well, basically, to have some organization to how we respond to the public space issues. I am wondering -- this is sort [10:29:30 AM] of related, something that we talked about years ago and at the time it didn't come to fruition for lots of different reasons. But what about the concept of -- and this may not be an immediate thing for you, but I would like to understand if we can put on the list what your thinking is about a hotline. And what I mean by that is a number that the public can call to report issues. There is not a single one right now that I'm aware of, and maybe I'm missing that. But it seems to me -- and I know we talk about 311, and I know 311 does have some categories where they can collect information, but that mechanism doesn't feel to me -- or at least it's not been presented to the community in such a way, is that the number to call if you, a, notice someone on the street [10:30:31 AM] who needs help, or B, have concerns about a camping area, or C, have some other question. So, I know there's challenges with that, because you want to be positioned to respond if we have a place that people can call. I just wanted to ask you what your thinking was. Is that something that you see us working towards as part of organizing our response? >> Council member, I don't think that I'd be prepared to give a policy recommendation today. But I do think that it's an appropriate object of consideration as part of this public space management process, really thinking about how do we want to direct the public to provide information for us, both on the politic space management side, and then potentially, as you say, on the more service side. And so, I'm going to certainly lean on the good research and consideration of performance management of our staff and of [10:31:33 AM] staff and other departments. We're happy to follow up with you on that. >> Kitchen: Okay, that's great. I would like you to factor it in -- the performance management team that's working with you all, to factor that in and think about where and if and what your recommendation might be with regard to that. So, thank you. Let's take a question about the heal initiative. I'm excited about the progress that's been played on it. I hear you in the push-pull, the resources that are in shelter to move to more permanent housing. So I have two specific questions. I'm very pleased to hear that we're on track for the number of [10:32:34 AM] heal locations we have identified to work with this year, which I think you said was 200 individuals and we're about 40 into that 200. So that's good. My question to you is do we have sufficient shelter at this point in time to address all those locations on a regular basis? I guess my question is, I understand that what we want to work towards is people moving into shelter and staying in shelter as short a time as is appropriate for their circumstances before they move to, you know, permanent housing. But we still need enough shelters to do that. And so I'm concerned that we don't have enough. Just want to hear from you what you're thinking in that regard. >> Council member, I share your concern broadly, which is, a, clearly that we don't have enough shelter in the community in general. And that heal is constrained by the number of available shelter [10:33:34 AM] beds. Now, I believe currently that we can reach 200 served this fiscal year with the two existing bridge shelters, but I would really like to see us do more, or I would like to see us use additional bridge shelter capacity for projects that are going straight through coordinated entry and maybe not necessarily through heal. And so we certainly have begun conversations internally with thinking about our options for adding additional shelter to the system. Obviously, that would require council policy and budget decision. But yes, it is something that is on our radar as an important priority for the year. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then my last question is -- let's see, so that was -- oh, I really appreciate also the criteria you put in place which, [10:34:36 AM] just to remind everyone, I think you did, too, it's cross-departmental in terms of identifying what those risks are and what those danger points are, safety points for folks that help identify those locations. Can you help me remember how many are identified at this point that you're working your way through? >> You know, I know that we had staff going through a second -- another cohort of sites recently. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And I don't remember the number of sites to be assessed in that round. So, council member, I'd like to get back to you and I can commit to doing that also by the public health committee meeting briefing next week. >> Kitchen: That's fine, that's fine. Okay, thank you very much for the work that you're doing and for your team. You are doing amazing work. It's very much appreciated. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. [10:35:36 AM] I'm having a hard time understanding the whole -- I mean, we put in a lot of resources in, and it seems like our biggest problem is capacity building. If we haven't been able to figure that out yet and start working on a solution, I think we're going to be at a point where we're investing a lot of our funding and money into services that once the money runs out, we're not going to have anything left. I have, in my district, all along pleasant valley, river view, I mean, I've got -- there's another homeless camp. I mean, it's huge. It's really huge. A lot of people are calling my office. I've addressed this problem with the parks department. Can you let me understand how we're going to address -- get these people out of there? I'm looking at it, it will be a [10:36:40 AM] while before we're going to have the capacity to even make a dent in this problem, and what's going to happen? All these people going to be camping there until we find a place for them? Bridge housing? It's a little bit frustrating. We've been addressing this since 2019. I know covid got in the way and really set us back a couple years. But the downtown commission made a commitment also to house 300 homeless people. I know covid got in the way with that also, but how are we going to be addressing all of these problems? Do y'all have a plan right now where -- I mean, my people are saying when are we going to do address the issues. We addressed the problems at the [10:37:42 AM] library, which I want to thank y'all for that. I worked hard to get that hotel there in my district so that we could address these problems. But we have some people that are out there that are very ill, and I mean, they're just destroying the park. They're littering all over the place. We need to address those kind of issues immediately because we can't have that trash and whatever else is getting deposited out there. You know, right in front of our face where we have all the ballparks, we have development going in that area. I'm just very concerned that we're not building enough units so that we can -- we haven't been able to identify the resources are there. So I'm really concerned, we have a lot of housing -- a lot of [10:38:46 AM] non-profit housing groups that are able to. I know in my district, there's some people sitting on vacant land, just waiting for the resources to get there. The money so they can start building. Building here in Austin takes a two-year -- it's a two-year process. I'm very concerned because that's going to happen, it's going to be two years from now before we're starting to get people into these housing units, and how we're going to be addressing these homeless campsites, because as soon as you close one, they go further down and open another one. That's the way it's been going that I've noted. Some people keep coming back and we clean those out again, they move back further away and they wait for four or five months and then they come back. So if you can tell me how we're going to be addressing these -- what do you need from us so that we can start building these units and identifying all these [10:39:50 AM] shelters? Between us and the county, we're going to be investing almost half a billion dollars. So I want to find out how you -- how we're going to be addressing all of these problems and I really would like to have a timeline. I know how important it is. If we're not telling the public what we're doing, there are going to be some angry people turning to votes and voting people out if we don't address that issue. So if you can tell me or help me understand. >> Thank you, council member. I think the entire community shares the frustration around the issue, around the scope of the issue, and around seeing progress. What I can tell you is we are making progress and that many of the things that we and other [10:40:50 AM] departments brief on are evidence of that and evidence of movement along the way. So we have two hotels that will be operational later this year for a total of 140-plus units. HPD has almost a thousand units between HPD and some of the units that are being funded by the -- by Travis county. We have now bit by bit developed a very robust pipeline or permanent supportive housing and it is just now starting to hit the ground. Keshia described a $53 million rfp. Yes, it will take time to get those programs up and operational. My commitment to you is that we continue to move all of these pieces forward and that we try to communicate as clearly with the community, as we can while we're doing it, understanding the frustration of the community, and frankly, the desperation of the folks who are living unsheltered at this time. [10:41:52 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Renteria: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Kelly and then council member Fuentes, and then council member elless. >> Kelly: Thank you for all the information. I'm really happy to happy to hear about the progress that's been made in this area. It's a problem that we've had in this city and it's nice to see that we're moving towards a solution. One thought that I had while I was listening to my colleagues speak was related to the similar concerns in different park areas, or different areas of the city where it seems to me like a lot of us are getting the same types of concerns from different member of the community, and I'm wondering, city manager, actually, if we might be able to have an internal dashboard where we submit some of these issues and complaints too so that council as a whole can see the progress that's happening related to them in which departments are working on them. Perhaps it could be internal instead of external. Just so that we have a greater sense of the progress being made and we can communicate to our [10:42:54 AM] constituents maybe outside of the calf system. >> Thank you, council member, for that suggestion. I'll certainly talk to staff and get back to you on the best way to communicate those internally to your offices, to staff, as we make forward progress on these important initiatives, and as you noted, to public as well. We'll follow up with your office on that strategy. >> Kelly: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Fuentes. And then council member Ellis. >> Fuentes: Thank you so much for today's presentation. It was super thorough and helpful, and I'm really grateful for all the work that you and your team are doing. I guess my first question is, you know, we often hear from the community, we applaud the city council's commitment for making over 100 million towards reducing homelessness. What would you say is our efforts to date? What I appreciate about your presentation is knowing that I can share with the community that by the end of this year, we'll have two additional hotels [10:43:56 AM] operating, up and running, and that will provide over 138 permanent supporting housing units. And that's a really great message for us to bring back to our community about what is happening with those dollars. Is there anything else that you would share with the community about our commitment? >> So, absolutely. We certainly have other capital projects in the pipeline that aren't hotel conversions, or are hotel conversions that are being carried out by non-profit organizations. So there are many other units in the pipeline. In terms specifically of the arpa funds, those two hotel acquisitions were our first investment. As you recall, we came before council in late October to get approval of the overall spending framework. At that time, that is when we were able to begin working very closely with Keshia Johnson to begin to move the solicitations out into the community. So this first rfp, it is a [10:44:59 AM] combination, of course, of general fund and arpa, but it is mostly arpa. It really represents our first big push of those resources into the community. We, of course, have other ongoing investments as the city, both through general fund and through federal funds that we can detail for you, if you like. >> Fuentes: Thank you. The goal is for us to serve 200 individuals within -- before October. Knowing that it looked like about four encampments were evaluated on average per month. On the one hand, I want to ask, what does our current capacity to scale up our bridge shelters, should we be considering purchasing another bridge shelter? As well as what does the coordinated entry with our partners and providers, what [10:45:59 AM] does that look like. I can't remember if it was good will or Salvation Army or another entity, but we're operating at reduced capacity because of covid. So any information related to their ability and efforts to scale up their capacity as well. >> Right. So our congregate shelters, both front steps and Salvation Army, do continue to operate at limited capacity given our risk stage for covid, and that has been true really almost the entire two years of the pandemic. Yes, certainly expanding another bridge shelter is something that we are considering. In fact, beginning to talk with real estate about what our alternatives might be there. I want to remind council that one of the operating bridge shelters will also be converted to permanent supported housing, purchased with bond funds, so we have to think about our portfolio, its dynamic at this time for a variety of reasons. And I believe you had another [10:47:00 AM] question that I've forgotten, council member. >> Fuentes: That's really helpful. Knowing that front steps and Salvation Army are at reduced -- do we know the extent that they're at? >> Yes. Front steps currently has a capacity of 50. Their capacity is normally 100. And Salvation Army I believe is at 100 of a normal capacity of a little over 200. So they're both at right around 50%. >> Fuentes: Wow. Okay. So once they are able to operate fully, that would add another 150 shelter on opportunities. I think part of what you have listed as phase two crisis response and what we are seeing in our communities is wanting a place available for unhoused neighbors to get to knowing that there is a statewide camping ban right now. >> Correct. >> Fuentes: Any information as to when they will be making considerations to move up to full capacity? >> I really think it's going to depend on our covid risk level, council member. And so over the summer, when we [10:48:02 AM] were, you know, in stage two and three for a little while, we were in active consideration. But of course, that didn't last very long. And so at present, it's not really viable. >> Fuentes: Okay, thank you. And yes, I just wanted to share with you I'm super supportive of us pursuing additional bridge shelter capacity, especially want to do all that we can given the urgency of the situation. The other question I have is around the cold weather shelter. I think you touched on this, just some feedback from the community that I've received is that it closes at 6:00 A.M. And the individuals have leave by this time. Any consideration for us extending it a few hours so that folks are able to stay sheltered? >> I'd very much like for us to be able to extend that. Remember that we are using parks and recreation facilities. And so on -- when we're able to extend, if it remains quite cold, we do. But just as an example of the strain on the city facility, we had a cold weather shelter night [10:49:02 AM] where we released people or got them on the bus at 6:00 A.M. And we had a winter camp at those rec centers at 7:00 A.M. We're using those capacities at their fullest and really trying to balance the needs, but it's difficult. >> Fuentes: Good deal. The last question around the evaluated encampments process. You mentioned that -- are you near the piloting phase of having that process fine-tuned and how the different departments work together in that evaluation? >> So, we -- I mean, we have piloted the tool. We are -- hsd is still staffing up, so we have new positions, of course, posted, et cetera. But do not have those -- the new positions hired as yet. And so it's going to be important that we have capacity to do that. What we're testing is how we can do that with multiple departments but also don't want to place a lot of additional burden on our politic space [10:50:03 AM] management, parks, staff, et cetera. So, as we get that staff onboard and continue to build out this public space management process, I think that will be one of our outputs, how do we -- what is the process and rhythm for assessment of encampments. >> Fuentes: Thank you. And how many team members are you hoping to identify as this point? >> So, council approved seven new positions in this fiscal year's budget, and we also had two other positions that were vacant from the previous fiscal year. And so, I believe that we have seven of those positions still open. In a couple cases, we have temps in place. It's plausible would transition into a permanent position. But lots of team building happening in our world. >> Fuentes: So at this point, you're still operating at half capacity? >> That's about right. >> Fuentes: Okay. Thank you. [10:51:04 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. I appreciate all the work you're doing. I know there's a lot of angles to this and it's not always a topic that a lot of people see action on very quickly, but I know that y'all are working very hard and to really do this right, it takes setting up this infrastructure to be able to address the capacity needs that we have right now. I really liked council member kitchen's idea of kind of a hotline, and it reminded me of a couple years ago when we had the dashboard set up. So I know that -- can you tell me of a timeline where the dashboard might continue to receive more information? I think right now it's got numbers from pre-pandemic. And I know we haven't been able to do the point in time count the way it normally happens over the years. So do you know if that dashboard is going to continue to be updated now that we are getting more units online? >> So, the dashboard draws pretty much all of the data in the dashboard as it has existed, almost all draws from the [10:52:05 AM] homeless management information system, which echo keeps. And so actually echo has launched a new dashboard. I think we can link it to. But we'll check. I understand we've also been looking at the website and understood that that dashboard was dated. And so we can take a look at that. But I think there's also a question of, we may need to point to the echo dashboard to the degree that there are pieces there that they are updating regularly. >> Ellis: Okay. So the units coming online that are city-funded -- >> That certainly would be in-house, so we can look at that. >> Ellis: Okay. I'm very curious about that because I know there's folks that want to see the steps along the way and show your homework and be able to tell people when units are expected to come online. So, you know, we can respond to constituents who reach out to the office, but sometimes people have questions that they don't necessarily reach out to us for, but they still are very curious about the progress that's happening. As far as the hotline, I think that would be really, really helpful, because I know right [10:53:06 AM] now, it doesn't seem like there's many options, other than calling 311, reaching out to a council office, or being able to put in a ticket of some sort through our caste system. So I know what we are hearing a lot is I've told the police, I've told 311, and either people aren't coming out, or they're saying I can't do anything. So can you tell me a little bit about the strategy, just knowing, as we need places for people to be, when folks say, I need an officer to come help this person or there's a situation in conflict with someone experiencing homelessness in a nearby business, how are those conversations playing out and what kind of response should people expect from whether it's integral care or our police officers? >> So, I think that, you know, when we looked at sort of the route of information flow and how resources are being deployed as part of this performance management system, you can imagine what that looked like, [10:54:07 AM] right? We are seeing many folks calling directly, say to the host team. They might already have a contact there. And be able to make a request. Often, it's unclear where that request will go, it will end upcoming to our division and our staff will facilitate that. I will say that, you know, one of the challenges we're having across the enterprising and the community is staffing shortages, right? And so our partners have been very responsive, but they cannot always respond to every single request. And so, you know, integral care is also certainly dealing with substantial staffing shortages. They're a great partner, but, you know, they do outreach and so their ability to visit on a repeated basis is not limitless. So I would just say that, you know, we understand that it is frustrating for folks who want their issue addressed immediately. We see our partners respond and go out into the field, but there [10:55:09 AM] is some level of triage for which calls they can respond to in the immediate timeframe. >> Ellis: And I can appreciate that. Maybe the next phase of that question might be better asked to the city manager. But, you know, we are still getting reports of people saying I'm talking to an officer and they're telling me the council is impeding this work, or saying that we shouldn't be enforcing the camping ban. Can you speak a little bit just about the communications for folks who are reaching out directly to the department and feeling like they're not able to have a situation addressed? >> Absolutely, council member. This is certainly something that is on my radar and I've been in communication with Mariano and the police chief on just how those responses are happening when individuals across the enterprise -- I mean, it could be from the police department, it could be from water shed, it could be from our parks staff, that we need have common [10:56:09 AM] messaging and that the answers need to be clarified on what both the person experiencing homelessness should be expecting and then what the residents around that area might expect as well. So we continue to refine and make sure that those messages are clear and consistent across -- no matter who is saying it, that it's supported by our city management. >> Ellis: Thank you. I really appreciate that. I know, obviously without having a place for people to go, that's where the difficulty lies, and that's what we're really stressing here, is how we create those spaces for people to be safe. And to have a roof over their head. But I know it's tough for some departments that are continually having to go and respond to a situation. You know, I know the circumstance often is, you may be able to help someone one time, but it doesn't mean they don't decide to go back later and continue to have situations where neighbors are trying to have their needs addressed as well. So I know that's tricky, but really appreciate us fine-tuning [10:57:09 AM] the communication so we aren't talking past each other. Where one department is saying one thing and another department is saying another thing. So I do appreciate that. And then as far as -- I appreciate council member pool bringing up the vans and the buses in zilker park. We've been working through that, but what seems to be happening with that situation is it's not necessarily unhoused people that need services. It's folks where that bus or that van is their home and they might be traveling. But we just weren't quite sure, is this a parks and recreation issue? Is this a parking management issue? It kind of brings us back to that question, how do we cross-communicate with departments for situations like that. >> We'll follow up on that issue specifically. I do agree with you. There's some parking enforcement with code, with compliance, so we'll making sure that we are getting council and the community the information on what's appropriate in that space. >> Ellis: I really appreciate that. And then the last thing that I'll just mention is with the [10:58:10 AM] cold weather shelter, do you know what communication is happening with cap metro and maybe some of my other colleagues that are on the board of cap metro may know, too. Obviously, it's hard to print materials for the bus drivers to have, but is there some awareness of the someone gets on the nearest bus route and says I need to get to the cold weather shelter, how does that work from, you know, a constituent, someone unhoused, getting on a bus, how is that communication happening with them and can the bus drivers help them navigate where to get safely? >> Yeah, I'm glad you asked that, council member. So, historically, I mean, I think anecdotally, what we've heard is bus drivers typically would not deny someone a ride to cold weather shelter, if they didn't have a fare. But as of yesterday, we heard from capital metro that they were approving a policy of, you know, allowing folks to get to cold weather shelter with no fare. They are still working out how they communicate that to their drivers and with us to people [10:59:10 AM] experiencing homelessness. But we're very appreciative of them of making that policy decision and will then be working on the communication piece. >> Ellis: That's great to hear. I appreciate y'all thinking through that and making sure that we're seamless as intergovernmental agencies to be able to try to all work together to help individuals in times of need. So, thank you for all the work that you're doing. >> Mayor Adler: Diana, thank you. Manager. Before we move on to the next presentation, I would just put my voice to the request manager that you do everything you can to get that office fully staffed. It's going to be hard for them to do all the work that is there when they're fully staffed. There's so many things that are aggregating. So anything you can do to help facilitate getting that staff with really good people. All right, colleagues. Let's move on now to the next presentation. This is the one on the south central waterfront. [11:00:11 AM] >> Thank you, mayor and council. This is a continuation of a conversation that we started in December, I guess earlier than that, that we last left off in December of last year. And so we were asked to do some additional work, and then tee up some questions and further direction from council on this topic. And so we have a number of presenters from multiple departments with us this morning. But I'm going to firsthand it off to Kamala Veras from our finance department. >> Good morning, everyone. Kamala Veras. Thank you for having us this morning. If you could pull the presentation. Next slide. [11:01:11 AM] Okay. We have -- it looks like there's quite a bit for us to cover this morning, but some of these should be fairly quick to cover. First off, we just want to do a very high level overview of what the structure contains, and I'll pass it over to Rosie to speak to the affordable housing aspects. I will take it back then to speak more specifically to the tiff requirements and scenarios and the funding challenges. Sylvia will be handling the implementation strategy. And I'll wrap it up with the principal decision points that we're hoping the council will be discussing this month and into March. So, next slide. So, when we look at the structure necessary to achieve the south central waterfront vision, our conversation has largely focused on the commitment zone, which is an [11:02:12 AM] important part. But we also want to recognize this Saul part of a bigger plan relative to regulatory and land use needs, our affordable housing approach, the infrastructure plan, and the operating plan. But in continuation of our focus on the tirz, we will continue to do so today. Next. So, I'll pass it to Rosie to speak to the affordable housing policies. >> Good morning, mayor and council. There are two -- Rosie Fila, director of the housing and planning department. There are two ways to think about the policies that are guiding -- >> Mayor Adler: Rosie, can you speak up? >> Yes, of course. I'm sorry. Can you hear me? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> There are two ways to think about the policies that are guiding affordable housing for the south central waterfront area. [11:03:12 AM] The first is to consider what's laid out in the south central waterfront vision framework. Which is that 20% of the housing units within the district should be income he strictive affordable to households earning 60-80% mfi for rental and 100 to 120% median family income for ownership. The vision framework envisions district-wide goal requiring city and developer participation. This would be -- include varying set-aside rates at the personal level, depending on other community benefit contributions that are outlined in the plan. And anticipates partially achieving affordability goals on the only city-owned property within the district, which is one Texas center. Another way to think about the policies that are guiding affordable housing in this area is the city's council adopted tif policy. The tif policy requires participation by the private sector and/or other tax entities and requires that 20% of any [11:04:14 AM] housing developed as part of a tif project plan be income-restricted and affordable to house holds earning up to 60% median family income for rental and 80% median family income for ownership. It is more stringent in terms of funding and developer requirements, and it expects developer participation as opposed to tirz funding all of the affordable housing, which is what we experienced in Mueller. Next slide, please. So, when we think about the tools that we have to help us achieve the affordable housing in the south central area, we turn to the regulatory tools that we have, such as developer incentives, density bonus programs and fee waivers, or anything that may come forward as of hud, which has site- specific developer negotiated agreements. The financial tools we have available to us is first the tax increment reinvestment zone, which could provide funding to help meet the needs for the [11:05:16 AM] income restricted affordable housing. We can utilize voter approved bonds, such as our general obligation bonds. We could utilize housing trust fund. Or federal funding, such as home investment partnership grants. Or looking at our tax credit process. You have many of those items on your agenda Thursday, actually. And we also have the ability of city-owned land. We talked about the land at one Texas center, which will be at least under current plans the surface lot will be developed into income- restricted affordable housing. We anticipate poll 140 units could be viable there. But that could change as more development -- or as the development comes closer into focus. And we could also look at partnerships where Austin finance housing corporation enters into a partnership with a developer to help achieve the income restricted affordable housing, and then, of course, for ownership opportunities, we would look to utilize our [11:06:17 AM] community land trust, where Austin housing finance corporation maintains ownership of the land and then sells any improvement to an income-restricted homeowner. So those are just some of the affordable housing tools that we have available for us. It is still hard to predict what the cost for affordable housing in the south central area might be. It is challenging to estimate. We anticipate poll 2,000 to 3,000 units approximately in this area, which might yield 400-600 affordable units, and that might cost, if you look at an estimate for a per-unit subsidy, it might cost up to $100,000 per unit, and so that looks to be in the neighborhood of 40-60 million in subsidy that might be needed. All of those are very rough [11:07:19 AM] numbers that we're using just to give you somewhat of an order of magnitude for what the affordable housing cost would be if we were looking to subsidize the full 20% of the units at some point in the future. So with that, I will turn it back to Kim. >> We're going to pause just for a second to let ttn move some additional folks over. Okay. Just as a quick reminder, when [11:08:19 AM] it comes to creating reinvestment zone and the associated tax increment financing plan, these are the core requirements. First and foremost, you must verify clear and significant but for criterion, where essentially we are able to note that but for public investment, the development in the area would not occur solely through private investment. Then criterion 4, the but for component, includes but is not limited to present condition substantially impairs growth. Substandard or deteriorating structures. Inadequate sidewalks or street layout or unsanitary or unsafe conditions. Once you create the tirz, the associated tif, and you complete all of the projects or have paid off all of the debt associated with it, you then require the tirz and all property tax revenue that had previously been allocated towards those projects [11:09:20 AM] and needs return back to the city's general coffers for the general fund purposes. Next slide. So, when we first came to council in December, we proposed a 46% contribution rate for the property tax revenue in the zone. This is relative to the but for criterion. Basically, focusing on all the value growth due to that investment, due to the south central waterfront vision, and dedicating it to the project needs in the area. And so that we can hold the general fund harmless in the long-term. We also need to make sure that we're removing the portion of the property tax rate that is associated with project connect and Austin transit partnership. We cannot commit their portion of the tax revenue. So, what we've done here is provide two scenarios to give an [11:10:21 AM] indication of scale. So, at 46%, we have both the with riversouth and without riversouth included in the zone, because that was definitely a point of conversation previously. So we pointed out the cumulative revenue that we expect to collect at a 46% contribution rate over the life of the tirz, and what that correlates to in terms of estimated debt capacity. So with river south, we're estimating about $104 million, and then $95.5 million without river south. On the other end of the spectrum, and at 80% contribution, which is what is a conservative estimate of the portion that we could contribute in its entirety, but still leave out the project connect Austin transit partnership portion, it's basically 100% of the portion of the city's -- portion of the tax revenue. With river south, we're looking at 180.5 million in debt [11:11:23 AM] capacity and 166.5 million without river south. But it's important to note that this -- that debt capacity calculation is based on that entire cumulative revenue. Whatever we would determine are the needs associated with administrative costs or other non-project-related costs for the zone, we would have to subtract that out, and the debt capacity would decrease accordingly. Next slide. And this is information you've seen before. The estimated infrastructure cost. There's six different categories, open spaces, roadway and drainage, screenscapes, utilities, that based on the modified framework estimates that we were completed in 2020, is total of about $277 million. Now, it's important to note that $277 million does not include the administrative expenses that would be required for the Austin economic development corporation to administer the tirz. [11:12:23 AM] It does not include affordable housing or the operation into maintenance of any amenities that would be built as part of this zone. When we look at different financing options to support these infrastructure needs, we can look towards department capital improvement program appropriations, the potential for a new future voter approved bond program, various economic incentive agreements, public private partnerships, a public improvement district or municipal manage district, both of those would require parcel owner support, and the municipal management district also would require state legislative action if we went down that path. The city does have a municipal management district within its boundaries. And then last but certainly not least, the tax increment financing to support these projects. Next slide.. So based on the scale, the two scenarios we gave you for the tax increment financing and then the [11:13:25 AM] estimated project infrastructure cost, there is definitely a funding gap. There's not enough debt capacity for the tirz and for the infrastructure improvement. So when we're looking at how we address that gap, you could consider reducing the scale of the project scope. We would look at negotiating with developers to fund certain improvements such as affordable housing and we can also look to other -- we would prioritize which projects would be covered under the available funding and as the tirz carries on we would monitor its performance and its ability to reduce debt capacity that could fund future project tirz for the project tirz [11:14:27 AM] that could be possibly funded through other financing needs. Next slide. So at this point I will pass it to sylnovia holt-rabb. >> Thank you. Sylnovia holt-rabb with the housing department. I want to talk about relationships between the city and the ead. The city is responsible for putting together the policy tools for the vision plan from a highly conceptual framework to market feasibility. The aedc will have an advisory role to ensure the market will deliver the community benefits as described in the vision. Aedc will provide professional service to implement the south central tirz project plan with city support by the following: Developing deadlines for internal and external [11:15:29 AM] stakeholders, coordinating with the city with utility, street and infrastructure investments. Marketing and promoting the south central waterfront vision. We citing and negotiating voluntary participation of property owners. Supporting applicants through a city process as well as engaging city council, the south central advisory board, stakeholders and media. Next slide. These are just some high level component of the vision plan as well as a chart that arctic plates the roles of the city as well as the aedc. As part of the regulating plan HPD will be adopted and the departments will provide support as needed and the aedc again advises HPD on [11:16:30 AM] the market. Staff supports the aedc and the aedc will coordinate relevant city departments. As mentioned before, community benefit that EdD will coordinate with departments on regulatory and financing tools and the aedc will advise on market feasibility. Again, this is just a chart of information that I have previously mentioned. And the last one I just want to highlight is that the one Texas center redevelopment, sfgt, will support from hbd and bsd will lead the redevelopment to include affordable housing and the aedc will advise as needed. Next slide. Another visual. This is just a Gantt chart of the south central visual implementation plan over the next several months and again we definitely look to [11:17:30 AM] council for governance, as well as working with the various departments on various components, operations, affordable housing as well as the aedc's role and providing advisory and implementation. And Kim, I will turn it back to you. >> So council, staff is here to answer any questions as you begin a more detailed discussion on how you want to do an amended preliminary project and financing plan, but we do want to point out that there's three principal decision points that we're looking for for us to be able to complete that new -- that revised preliminary plan. First, the geographic boundary. Will the council want to include the river south property or not, but also understanding the general fund impact by including in [11:18:31 AM] the tirz base. The project prioritization, staff had determined that the street network was deemed to be the most foundational to support development for the south central waterfront vision and had indicated that as being the first set of projects. So we hope to have discussion from council on what that prioritization ultimately should look like if affordable housing, how it should be included and then if we were to follow the tier approach in general. And then finally that tax increment contribution rate. So the general fund impact from allocating new construction value to the tirz that would have occurred without public investment is what we proposed through that 46% contribution rate but we do understand that council can discuss a rate higher or lower than that. So at this point, next slide, we're done with the staff presentation, and look forward to hearing your comments and your questions. [11:19:38 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues? Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you. I have a variety of questions. I want to start with kind of a large one. The resolution that I brought forward last fall asked about -- asked for a timeline on the regulating plan. And you know, as I'm considering this and what we do next, to me it matters whether we have that regulating plan in place because that is how we'll achieve this vision. So really where I sit right now before we make a commitment to have a public investment of funds in this area I want to know Ta we have all the property owners on board with the vision and the vision is going to be codified through that regulating plan. We have had lots and lots of stops and starts with regard to the regulating plan conversation, and it was my [11:20:39 AM] understanding that a considerable amount of work had been done. We hired a consultant who had done some of that work and then it was halted to be merged within codenext and then, mayor, you brought forward, I think this happened before, you brought forward the resolution to halt work on the land development code and so then there were conversations about whether this work should proceed until we got back to work again. So this is -- it's kind of gone through phases of being married with land development code changes or being separated. And I have no sense at this point of where we are with the work that staff had done, how close we are to having something that the council could take action on with regard to the regulating plan,. And I may have missed the response to that piece of the resolution, but could someone on the call please let us know what is -- when can we expect to be reviewing a regulating plan for the south central waterfront? And then I have questions [11:21:40 AM] about the financing but I can get to that in a minute. >> So this is included in the Gantt chart slide, council member, but I know a lot of information just came before you. But we do anticipate that in July of this year. We are actively working on it and refreshing the information that the changing economic conditions that we've had, I assure you that staff is actively working on this and we anticipate having this to you in July. >> Director truelove, what page is that, please? Apologies if I missed it. >> I don't know -- the slide numbers myself, so I think it's slide 12 that's titled the south central waterfront vision and implementation strategy. You will see that it's looking at the regulating [11:22:41 AM] plan within a three to six-month time period which takes us to July of this year. >> Tovo: Thank you. How much of the regulating plan is in draft form at this point? >> I'm not sure that I would have an answer for that. I can certainly get you that information. We have been working with our partners in economic development to get the information in the regulating plan updated, but I don't know what percentage we're at. I apologize for that. >> I would be real interested in knowing that again because some of it are -- some of what's in the regulating plan I expect are design standards and site development requirements and things of that sort. And again, it was my understanding that we had initiated that work multiple years ago. So if there's a piece of it that is ready to go, I'd be really interested in knowing that? So thanks for that follow-up and thanks for calling my [11:23:42 AM] attention back to page 12. >> Of course, thank you. >> Tovo: I need to look back at the report -- the presentation you just did. There were several points where we talked about Ms. Alvarez you talked about different funding sources and I think director truelove you may have as well. I'm not sure which is the best page to highlight here. I want to ask staff to talk about an element of it. As we've talked about the south central through the years, the tirz was a potential funding source, but it was not the only potential funding source. So thank you for highlighting some of the other potential funding sources that having discussed. And I wonder if staff could bring us back to that slide that had things like the public improvement district and other kinds of ways, other kinds of tools. [11:24:44 AM] I know we have it for affordable housing. I would say the same is true -- the same tools, some of the same tools are available for the other piece. Yeah, that is the -- the one that you just flew through was the affordable housing tools. But there were other kinds of financial mechanisms that had been identified such as capital improvement project. Looking back at the draft that we received, the physical framework funding sources draft from 2020, page 4, identifies funding tools for the overall work, the overall funding improvements. One was identified as the capital improvement program, other were utilities and just a piece of it was -- parse was the tirz. So Ms. Alvarez, could you bring us back to I think it was your section of the slide where you talked about the possibility of using other kinds of funding. [11:25:46 AM] Looking back at the 2020 database there were some very calculated -- the funding assumptions also calculated the developer contributions through street impact fees, parkland dedication fees and I think that totaled will 59.7 million in developer fees based on what that buildout could be. And so as we continue this conversation about the tirz and whether to set it being zero, I would like for us to be mindful of those other potential funding sources and really have an understanding of how this affects our initial funding projections. Can you hear me? I hear lots of little voices. I can't tell if -- >> Mayor Adler: Yes, we can hear you. >> Tovo: I can't tell if I'm talking over someone. Thanks. >> And the slide that the council member was referring to I think is slide 8 if ad wants to -- if av wants to pull that up. [11:26:47 AM] >> Tovo: Thank you, director truelove. >> So council member, you're right, the tif and tirz would be just one option for funding these projects. We definitely have a history with previous tax increment reinvestment Zones where there are a multitude of funding sources in the mix such as was found with the waller creek tunnel and then ultimately the surface level improvements. We had tirz funding as well as voter approved bonds and cip appropriations for the watershed protection department. So there was definitely a mix. So that's absolutely something that we can be looking at as we move forward with the ultimate -- with the development of the revised preliminary plan that we need to bring forward. And it's important for us -- [11:27:48 AM] if council's direction is for us to develop an approach that would pull together these different funding sources in a more detailed manner, we would definitely need to have that figured out before a preliminary plan comes forward again so that when we provide notice to the public about the -- about -- through a public hearing about that revised preliminary plan, they have an opportunity to see all the different components that would be coming into the mix and be able to comment about it accordingly before council takes a vote. >> Tovo: Be, thanks. And can I get a clear sense -- sorry to jump backward, but now I need you to clarify who is the department that's shepherding the regulating plan. That was once in urban design within our planning and zoning department. And give then a good deal of it is technical design standards, site development standards, other kinds of things, I would assume it's still in there, but I [11:28:49 AM] thought a heard a response where you talked about economic development but maybe I'm conflating the two. Housing and planning is responsible for the regulating. >> Tovo: Which division of housing and planning is that? >> The -- >> Mayor Adler: Kathie, I think we can hear Kathie on the dais, but we can't hear you in the well, apparently. >> Tovo: Sorry, in the what? >> Mayor Adler: At the podium. I don't know if there's a way to boost the volume. >> Tovo: Sorry, are you saying you can't hear me at the podium? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Staff can't hear you. >> Mayor, I just turned up the room value and see if that helps. >> Mayor Adler: We've turned up the room volume and see if that helps. >> Tovo: I was asking a question about -- I'll just come down to the dais here in a minute maybe. I was asking the question of which division within housing and planning is leading the work on the [11:29:52 AM] regulatory piece of this south central waterfront. Previously it was the urban design group within planning and zoning. >> So the principal planner on this particular effort is Greg Dutton and he is working collaboratively with our urban design group. >> Tovo: Okay, thank you. And was he previously involved with the urban design group? Was he previously -- I know Allen -- [indiscernible]. He left and he retired and we had someone else. >> I think the regulating plan work was within Allen's sphere and with his retirement that's shifted over to Greg Dutton, neither of them were part of the urban design group, but they do work carvely with them. -- Collaboratively with them. >> Tovo: Okay, thank you. [11:30:53 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Kathie, should I move on? Are you okay? Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. So I have some questions that are a little bit more about the analysis that we got in December than necessarily what's up here, but I'm really trying to understand them. As I understand it, the argument for the but- for piece looks at the absorption rates and looked at what we would have gotten if we didn't have the development. But how does it disentangle what are the impacts of the investments of the 271 plus versus the entitlements? Because we have three things that we're looking at from a policy perspective that we can deploy as we approach this. We have the funding, which is what we're trying to do with the tirz, and the [11:31:55 AM] investments that would come with us. And then we have the regulatory plan as a process. And then we have the entitlements. And it doesn't all come -- I'm just trying to understand how do I know that that additional development in that but-for has been from the investments and not from the entitlements. >> Holtman that we hired to develop that economic feasibility, we specifically asked him to look at it in terms of a baseline and a vision kind of component so we had two versions of what kind of growth and value growth would would have over the life of a tirz if we just let things happen naturally and there wasn't a public investment. And then the other scenario was assuming that the city was making provisions by [11:32:56 AM] that framework and what kind of growth projections would you see from there? So the vision framework was definitely a driver in terms of those projections and therefore the avenue associations and debt capacity. In terms of the entitlements, when he's looking at the plan as a whole, what is kind of envisioned, but when it comes to very specifics about certain entitlements, certain things like that, he's only able to put those into his projections if there's a definite approved plan in the works. Not in the works, but it is a done deal sort of a thing. So because of the timing of all this, and for example with the statesman property that's not a done deal so he's not able to incorporate [11:33:56 AM] the entitlements and is a things you see being discussed in that situation as part of the projections imu he is able to look at projections in its entirety based on the vision and the framework that the plan calls for. >> Alter: So his calculations don't include entitlement increases? >> I'm going to need to understand what assumptions were made in that model with respect to the increase in entitlements, because we can get a lot more growth because we given titlements, we can get a little more growth if we do the investments. We can get more growth if we do the regulatory plan, but the question here is really about the investments piece of it. And it's not clear to me that we really isolated that marginal impact of those investments. So I would like to [11:34:56 AM] understand that better and understand that you may not have that information right now. >> I would need to dig through the report to pull the specifics out. >> Alter: And then heimsath's analysis is an absorption model which is basically telling us how much capacity could be absorbed under certain assumptions, correct? It is however not a financial model from the developer's perspective. Correct? >> Correct. >> Alter: So I would like to see some more financial modeling so that we can understand the choices that the developers are making because it's not clear to me that we have fully captured how somebody who a developer would be approaching the decisions that they're make. We heard from heimsath that there would be a triple net rental rate of 55 to 76 or [11:35:59 AM] something like that dollars and the and the prior 2016 plan had a much lower rate. It's not clear to me that we've updated the analysis to figure out what they could afford and what they would be able to put in to be able to determine whether who has to foot the bill for those investments based on the analysis. I've seen some back of the envelope calculations and they raised some questions that I'd like to understand better. I don't have all the details and I'm not a developer, but if the profit that's there after you're starting with a triple net rent and you have your building costs and your land costs and frankly most of these folks already own this and have owned it for a long time, then there's a question of how much is left over in terms of their income stream and what they could afford to be required to invest. So I think we need to have [11:37:02 AM] that kind of modeling and it's not clear to me that we have that. So I would like to see that as we're assessing. And I don't expect you to give me that now. I'm expressing what I'm going to need to make my decision. And then I wanted to second councilmember tovo's questions about the tirz versus the pid. There's an opportunity to do this through a pid or through a tirz and all sorts of other things, but again with -- absent that financial modeling of what they're doing, it's hard for us to see can they do a pid that would cover good sections. We also need data on the street impact fees that was not there in 2016. There are the internal streets as I understand it that will be covered by the developers, but then they're required under street impact fees to contribute. And I don't understand the magnitude of those [11:38:03 AM] contributions relative to the amount of development that we're talking about. And then the final thing that I want to flag that I will need to have a better understand about is the numbers that we're seeing in I think it was exhibit D where you estimated the cost. Some of those are really multiple, multiples above where they were in 2016. And I think it would be helpful for transparent and the public for us to have a better idea than what is going into the numbers and what we're assuming and to refine those moving forward. So none of those are necessarily specific questions that I'm expecting you to be able to answer today, I just wanted to flag where some of my thinking is going as I'm trying to assess whether this is a smart move for the city or not but that those are elements that I'm going to need data on and I think the [11:39:03 AM] public is asking us for as well. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thanks. I wanted to thank the mayor pro tem for asking those questions. The overinvestment piece is what I would like to dig into and I think that the information that we're going to get from staff on how the calculations were made and it was the financial modeling updated for that, that would be really helpful for me to be able to make a good decision on this project, I really have to get a sense of how in the larger frame, including the revenue cap of three and a half percent on us and how we may be tying the hands of future council members should we need to have general revenue being more nimble and able to respond to circumstances in our community and if we're tying up a big chunk of money that general revenue that is coming from this development into that development when there are other ways to fund [11:40:03 AM] it other than a tirz, I really want to understand that and so that we leave a good legacy for future counselors and the future city of Austin to be able to manage economic crisis that may hit us. And I don't think that that property will ever lose value. It's on the river. In fact, it probably will not only hold its valuation and have a really strong upward trajectory, but it may out pace other parcels. Anything that's downtown is always going to have that kind of a value assessment. So keeping that in mind as we proceed down this road is really a difficult decision because we really are doing some crystal ball casing. Thank you, so much, Kim, for the detailed presentation, the update so the calculations made between 2016 and the heimsath report was really important. I think we just need a little bit more information and appreciate all of the [11:41:03 AM] efforts that you guys are putting towards that end. Thanks. >> Sorry, council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you. I think I have a question on slide 11, the roles and responsibilities of the Austin economic development corporation. How does the community governance play within this -- with this framework that you laid out with the south central waterfront board that we have of volunteer leaders, what is the interplay with that volunteer board with our economic development corporation. >> This will be the role of the Austin economic development corporation to engage the board as well as community, so that will be [11:42:05 AM] their role. >> Fuentes: Can you talk me through what that looks like? >> Interfacing with the board on their thoughts and expectations around the vision plan, advising city staff as well as other departments as we move forward with implementation. >> Fuentes: Okay. So at this point it would be providing updates to the board. There's not any additional checkpoints that would be listed or any action from the board. >> Well, once we have a plan in place we will have more details around what those touch points will be and how often. >> Okay. That's something I would want to learn a little bit more about is what that pip and relationship would look -- what that partnership and relationship would look like. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Kelly. >> Kelly: Thank you. [11:43:05 AM] City manager, I have some concerns about getting the presentations from staff on the day of our briefings. This is more general and applicable to both of our briefings today, but the presentations came into my inbox early this morning and then were posted online for backup. I understand that today is just a briefing and a discussion, but whenever that happens I strongly feel that delaying public disclosure of back of material in advance of a deadline for the public to sign up to testify is a way to prevent us and our colleagues from having adequate time to dispute the staff's materials or even research them. So I'm wondering if we might be able to start getting those briefings sooner so that we can look into it more and then ask questions ahead of time. If that's something you might be able to do. >> I appreciate that concern, council member, and I share T certainly we strive to get information to the public and to council as soon as we are able to. We'll also talk with staff about getting this in phases if you will. So if there is information that we want to put out as backup that we may add to [11:44:05 AM] even in the hours or the night before we can add it on the day of. Knowing that staff is always working to improve and ensure that we are providing the most accurate and up to date information to council. I really appreciate your comment and will brainstorm with staff on how best to move forward -- moving forward in the future. Thank you. >> Kelly: Thank you. And I certainly understand staff has a heavy lift in order to provide us with this information and so I don't want it to come across as being critical, but these are important discussions and I'd like to see some of those improvements made so I appreciate your feedback. I also have several questions like my colleagues related to the tirz briefing. I'm hoping that staff can answer that for us. But like councilmember alter says, there are elements and questions related to what the public is asking for us to ask that will require more research. Other than council q&a is a a place that publicly we can ask those questions or post them for the public to see? [11:45:06 AM] >> Council member, I think the council q&a is probably the best mechanism, but then there's always the memos and official distribution that can be made available as well. >> Kelly: Thank you. I'll ask this one question and I'll send the rest to you all so you can research them more just to be brief today. Can you explain to possibly the public why we're proposing a tirz instead of a public improvement district where developers might pay for the infrastructure? And if there have been any studies done on which approach would be better to take in regards to the south central waterfront? >> So for a public improvement district that does require parcel owner support. And there's two types of pids that we can utilize. There's both operating and maintenance pids as well as development pids. So in the case of an operating maintenance pid, the most recent one that we were discussing is the [11:46:07 AM] downtown pid, the downtown Austin alliance is responsible for managing. And that handles things such as additional cleaning services and the various staffing needs to supplement city services from an operating perspective. And the -- then a development pid, that is where you often see a developer will propose that pid and go through the petition process to garner parcel owner support, which is governed by state law as well as the city's pid policy and then they will utilize those pid funds either to -- depending on the cash flow they might cash fund certain improvements, but most likely they will do debt issuances that the city is also very involved with in approving and for administrative perspective. In both situations the parcel owners are essentially paying an additional tax to support that public improvement district, whether it's an [11:47:07 AM] operations and maintenance or a development one. And that is why it requires a certain degree of parcel owner approval. For the south central waterfront, if there was a -- if a developer arrest another entity wants to bring forward a pid to help support the development needs and investment needs in the area, that is something that can certainly occur, but that would be coming from the outside request as opposed to the city initiating this request. And so we can definitely speak to that as an option, but again it requires that parcel owner support and signoff before that can take place. >> Kelly: Thank you for explaining that. Can you talk about the parcel owner's involvement in the tirz currently and any feedback that you've received from them? >> So in terms of a tirz there's not an additional [11:48:08 AM] tax placed on the parcel owners, but a dedication of the tax revenue. So there's not a signoff that's required by the parcel owners in this case. We have -- I personally have not received any feedback from specific parcel owners. I can't say that there's-- my colleagues, I don't know if they've heard anything, but I have not heard any feedback from parcel owners about the creation of the tirz in that manner. Again, because it wouldn't be an additional tax, they would be paying their taxes as normal, their property property taxes as normal. >> Kelly: Thank you. I'm pondering in my head if it would be good to get their feedback during this process to see what thoughts and feedback they might have, but maybe that's a discussion for another time. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: First I want to say I really appreciate the drill that you all went through last December to put us in the position where we have the [11:49:08 AM] greatest amount of options available to us. That was a lot of work done really quickly and I want to say thanks for that. As we talked about that I really do look coming into this issue is we have a wait board and I don't know what the answer is. And I agree with my colleagues we don't have the information presented yet for us to know. I think there are some real threshold questions that probably we need to really understand well on the dais because I think that a lot of the decisions that will ultimately make follow from it. And I think it begins with a real clear understanding of how we think this area will develop both with and without the capital infusion, capital investment. I think that we're all in agreement that this is a really valuable area whether anything gets invested or not because of its location and where it is. It's really valuable land. [11:50:12 AM] The question isn't whether it's valuable land or will develop, it's a question of would it develop differently if there was a capital infusion. And from what I hear, the folks that have looked at it have said that if you nut a road grid system so that you have smaller blocks, the property in this area will develop significantly differently than if it develops as it sits right now. And it will develop more densely, it will develop with more uses. It will develop in a very different way. There will be entitlements offered to the property if we didn't do anything at all. There will be entitlements to the property if we were in a grid system that wouldn't be offered to the property if we weren't in a grid system. And what we need to understand really well I think is what will this property be if we don't invest those things and then if we do. [11:51:13 AM] And I'm not sure if there's a real understanding of that both especially in the community for people to understand why we're even thinking about this since it is and will always be such valuable property. So I think that will be a really helpful thing to kind of double back and do for the council. There are additionally some other things that we want done. The planning group and the work that found us having a kind of regional park at the place where the bridge is and where the property is. And to better understand the limitations that we have as a city forcing a property owner or requiring a property owner to give us a regional park versus the investment that we as a community need to make if we want a regional park because there's a limit to what we can request as an exaction [11:52:15 AM] or dedication. So again understanding what we would get if we don't put in investment versus what we would get if we did, I think we really need to true that up. Past that I'm not sure where we go. My sense is 20 years from now, 30 years from now we will wish that that area developed with the smaller street grid because testimony change what that part of downtown will look like forever. And I understand why it was that staff said will you look at all the different things that we invest in and that's what you begin with because that will have the greatest impact long-term and that makes sense to me. But how far down that list we go in terms of what we ask for or what we require I think are all things we need information on. In the best world we have the developers paying for as much of this as we can get [11:53:16 AM] developers to pay for as part of them enhancing the value of their own property. At the same time if we ask them to do too much and the property values as it is sitting, while it is valuable, it won't reach the potential and the element return to the general fund that we would want the property to make. So I'm approaching this now with really a whiteboard and I don't know if how much if any should be tirz or pid or bond. And now that we've cleared that aspect of it having a presentation or recommendation from that from our staff that says here's what we think it's going to develop if we don't do anything. This is how we think it will develop if we were to make the investment. This is the delta between those two things, which we [11:54:16 AM] can tax without causing any loss in value to the general fund, but it's a limited amount. And I think it would be helpful to get a recommendation from staff at this point after that true-up on what tools you would recommend that we use and to what scale and to what level. I'm not sure we're going to be able to decide all those things here in the next six weeks or eight weeks in February or March. I think we should go after that as diligently as we can. These are bigger, broader questions and can involve a lot of discussion in the community. I do agree that we should have the opportunity to be moving forward on a regulating plan because it almost seems to be independent of these other questions. And I hope we do that because to a large degree that's going to help define and help us better understand what it is we need to create or not create. So I agree with my colleague, councilmember tovo, in urging that we move [11:55:16 AM] forward on that. I appreciate this process. A lot of questions still to answer. And I appreciate that we're continuing to tee them up now. Further discussion? Councilmember Ellis. And then councilmember Renteria and then councilmember harper-madison. >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. I just have one quick question. Can you talk about if any of this public financing would be used for parking lots or carry parking spaces? I know that we're not here to talk about pud or zoning or anything like that, but I am very curious given the location of this property to being very connected and walkable and bikable and having light rail in the future. So can you talk a little bit about that if any of the parking spaces or parking lot would be part of what this financing covers? >> So the infrastructure project is listed does not include parking lots in. In terms of parking spaces, [11:56:18 AM] I can't say yes or no on that. I think it is relative to what kind of street design would be incorporated in there and I fully admit I am not the staff member that is most owe the one that should be speaking to that. I don't know if that is something that my colleagues need to look at or if it's something we need to dig into. >> I think there's additional information that council would like on that, then that's something that the economic development can dig into and respond on, but it's it's not envisions that there would be park and rides or parking lots that would be part of the infrastructure plan as it's drafted right now. >> Like onstreet parking if that were to be the case? >> That would be something we would have to consult with. Honestly with Austin transportation department. As things are progressing %-@through to see where onstreet parking would be allowed and that the [11:57:18 AM] individual parcels that are developed would include parking on their own. >> Ellis: That's helpful. I may dig into that a little bit more behind the scenes because I'm curious about making sure that this particular location is moving us forward in our conversations about when things are getting built, especially larger areas of land being better coordinated through their buildout that we are trying to move more toward walkable and connected and less away from tons of impervious cover that's not necessarily needed in that area. More space for people in a place like this and in this location. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Sorry. Councilmember Renteria and then councilmember harper-madison. Enrique Solis yes, mayor. And I do have concerns about this project, you know, but -- and I agree a lot on what you were saying about we need to be very careful. [11:58:19 AM] We have cure and Rainey street and that didn't work out. People didn't want to be part of the community benefits so so just built what was allowed for them, and we have very few affordable units out of that place. And then we got the domain, which we probably didn't get any kind of affordable housing on that one. I see these type of projects, I look at it because I know that we have great housing, especially affordable housing. I'm going to be looking at it very closely, it saves 20%, I want to make sure that we'd stick to that number. I would not like to see a bond election for that. [11:59:21 AM] You know, since we're going to be giving out so much entitlement come up with funding on-site for affordable units, not off-site. We do own a couple properties there along Barton springs there on south ferris. So if any of that gets developed, I really want to see the affordable housing come into that, some deeper affordability. So I'm going to be looking at that. I know that we have to be very careful on how we handle this, because it's only to a certain point people are willing to invest, you know, unless they get more entitlement. And they'll just build what the code allows them to. [12:00:24 PM] This is going to be a very hard case, and I'm just going to make sure I hear everything and make my decision when making sure that the areas of affordability, before we sign on, because cure didn't give us anything. And I hate to see that be in an area where they invest all that infrastructure. Saying I'll just stick with my height requirement and my entitlement that I have and just stay there. That's not giving us anything, and then they're enjoying all the benefits. So, I'm really going to keep an eye on this. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, mayor. I appreciate the recognition. I think council member Renteria [12:01:26 PM] might have asked my questions, in which case, what I was going to say is, to council member alter's point, you know, I had similar concerns. I'd very much like to have staff really explore the possibility of closing that financing gap through entitlements. I have questions about regulating the design of the street grid, you know, through a regulating plan that we can adopt. And so, much like council member alter, council member Renteria, I have questions that I'd like to have answered. So I really look forward to continuing the conversation, because there are some things that I really need to have laid very plain for me. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before we go to executive session? Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Yeah, thank you, I want to pick up on something that [12:02:26 PM] council member Renteria mentioned, and that's affordable housing. And looking at -- well, and I also want to back off and say thank you to the staff. I know you've done a tremendous amount of work on this in the last months, especially to kind of tee it up, and I agree with the mayor. I'm glad that we have now the flexibility to talk about it on really whatever timeframe we want. We've gotten a lot of feedback from the public about this over the last few months, and I want to emphasize again we've set up the mechanism, until we make any changes, and we may never make any changes, there is currently no general fund money going toward this tax increment reinvestment zone. We have the option of doing so, but we don't have to, nor have we made any decision to do that. And so I'm really interested in all the questions that you all have raised and the ones I raised earlier about what are the other financial mechanisms, but really, mayor, you nailed it. We need to be able to understand as a council and then to be able to explain to the public what are the implications of [12:03:28 PM] different paths, and if we -- you know, what are the public investments, what is the -- sorry, what is the comprehensive benefits that we can bring in through one financial mechanism and the other, because there are ways that can be developed that are in line with the vision and there are ways that I think we would as a community lose out if the improvements are very independent of one another and not done in a comprehensive fashion, and we have invested lots and lots of community energy, staff energy, public dollars in trying to get this right in such a critical part of our central Austin. So, you know, I'd like to see us take those next steps and make sure that we have that comprehensive vision implemented. To get back to the point that council member Renteria raised with regard to affordable housing, in the presentation [12:04:31 PM] earlier, it was estimated -- I think it was estimated that we could get about 140 units of affordable housing at one Texas center based on I think a 60-foot tower. You know, if we're achieving that goal of 20%, we're really looking to achieve something more like 530 district-wide. And so to me, that really emphasizes the need to make sure that we have affordable housing units on those individual properties as well. The public, we absolutely should be using our public land, not just here, but elsewhere to create those affordable units in this area of the south central water front, it can't only be on one Texas center. So as we have conversations with individual developers and they're asking for increased entitlements, they also -- you know, I am going to be a strong proponent of having those affordable units on those individual sites as well. Otherwise, we will not achieve that 20% goal, which I think is really critical at a minimum. A few questions for staff. [12:05:32 PM] There was an echo northwest study commissioned in 2020, a financial study, and I wonder if we could get an update on where that is and whether we've received it and if not, could you share it with us. And then I have a question about a couple other studies that I just want to be clear what happened. But let me stop there. The echo northwest study commissioned in 2020, is that something you can forward to us? >> I will check on that, and I might be able to get an answer to that while we're still on this item, but I'll have to get back to you if we've moved on beyond this item. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. And I think more recently, there was $150,000 that economic development -- that the economic development department used for financial update with pbl partners and I think the subcontractor was Hrna. And so, that is also work that I'm interested in seeing. I think then EdD commissioned [12:06:33 PM] additional work from Charles, which is part of the financial information we received at the end of last year. But I'm interested in what happened to that $150,000 that was invested. So one is the financial study from echo northwest. It was different from the absorption study. And that $150,000 with qbl partners with subcontractor Hrna on a financial update, some of which, you know, also understanding -- kind of seeing it and understanding how it's combined with or built on -- I'm sorry, preceded the himesath work, among those different financial updates and analyses. >> Council member, we will follow up with more information on that update. We'll send that out to council. >> Tovo: Thank you so much. >> And we'll include the [12:07:35 PM] econorthwest study in that update, it will come from both departments, because I haven't gotten a response yet. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, anything else before we go? Council member alter, mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. I know that staff has done a lot of work on this and I just want to recognize that I think we're -- some of us are getting up to speed sort of on the process and with all that we're juggling and whatnot. There's a lot of merit in the vision for south central, and I think what we're trying to understand are what are the policy levers that we have and how do we put them all together in a package to enact that vision. And what does that look like and what are the tradeoffs and what are the opportunities. So, you know, we're asking a lot of questions, but a lot of people have worked really hard to put together that vision over a long period of time. [12:08:40 PM] I don't want this messy discussion that we're having, as we try to work out the details and the format that we have, to leave people feeling like we don't believe that we need to do something in that part of downtown, but there is a question of, you know, how we get there, that we really have to do our due diligence on, and as we go through this process, we're seeing what the questions are. I want to also point out that we did last year establish our economic development corporation and part of its whole reason to exist was to be able to enable us to operate on a different playing field with respect to developments of the sorts. I did have an amendment when we passed this that was calling out the need for clarifying that and there's some of that in here, but I think there's an opportunity to really take an important role here, and we've also seen through this process that it's very much an interdepartmental - - you know, [12:09:44 PM] Kimberly's up here in the hot seat, you know, but she's from the finance department and not the planning department. And so -- not the economic development department. So we need all of the folks at the table and we have a lot of really creative people who understand their pieces, and we need them all talking together to see what are our options, what are our levers, and what happens when we move this one and we move that one, et cetera. And so I just wanted to end with saying that. Because we are asking a lot of tough questions. But I think we should keep in mind why council member tovo and the mayor have really been pushing us to move forward and trying to figure that out so we can have these conversations and actually take concrete steps that are appropriate and that the community is with us on. >> Mayor Adler: Well said, I think. Thank you. [12:10:45 PM] All right, colleagues, it is 12:10. I would suggest that we break now. Everybody can grab lunch. And then let's get on the executive session together. Does 12:30 work for us to get on to executive session to handle the agenda? Let's do that then. So the city council will now go into -- >> Harper-madison: Mayor. I know 15 minutes seems inconsequential, but could we do 11:45? It's a personal ask. I need 15 more minutes. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let's do that. 12:45, we'll come back. Council member Ellis? >> Ellis: Just a quick question. The pulled item, did we already address that? Or will we need to come back out of executive session? >> Mayor Adler: We've already done pulled items. We have Austin energy that we have to call up no sooner than 1:30. So we'll start at 12:45, see how far we go. We'll make a decision about when [12:11:45 PM] we break for Austin energy or if we can push through the executive session items, but we can make that call together. But we're now going to go into closed session to take up potentially five items per sun to 55107 government code, we're going to discuss legal issues related to e1, airport expansion. E2, the displacement mitigation program. E3, labor negotiations. E6, lawsuits and claims. And then pursuant to 551074 of the government code, we're going to discuss personnel matters related to e5, which is the employees compensation of the city manager. E4 has been withdrawn. So, without objection, I'll see everybody in executive session at 12:45. The time is 12:12 right now. Bye, guys. [1:11:04 PM] . [Music]. [Music]. [1:32:54 PM] S. [Music]. [Music]. [1:45:36 PM] >>> >> >>> [3:29:04 PM] Test test test test test [4:21:08 PM] >> I think we have a quorum between council members kitchen and tovo on the screen and mayor pro tem and council members Ellis and Fuentes. I'm the chair of Austin energy oversight. It is 4:20 in the afternoon. Little later start than we had hoped but I think we'll be able to move through the items expeditiously. If you have questions, please do contact them. There are a couple of -- I think our general manager will run through some rca's -- there are about nine of them at a high level but at any instance you want to dig in, the Austin energy staff is of course available to you. So we are called to order, and [4:22:09 PM] I'd like to call up Mr. Paul robins for three minutes. He is our sole speaker today. If someone could run a clock for three minutes for us today, that would be great. Hi, Paul. Hope you're doing well. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for coming today. Go ahead. >> Good afternoon, council. I'm an environmental activist and consumer advocate. I'll speak about Austin energy's green choice program that theoretically allows customers to purchase 100 per cent renewable energy by playing a charge on the surcharge of the bill. I'm advocating for a major change. I'm asking council to repurpose rechoice to find renewable [4:23:14 PM] energy. Green choice began over 20 years ago. In its prime it was quite successful, tremendously popular. Personally I've been a subscriber for almost 20 years. As a practical matter, though, green choice customers cannot really buy 100 per cent renewable energy because as we know, wind and solar cells are not dispatchable on demand. There's a practical limit to how much intermittent power can be placed on the grid before the economics are untenable. Texas does not have a large amount of dispatchable renewables in the form of biomass compensate. At the same time wind and solar cells are becoming less expensive and the convert to carbon-free power is -- green [4:24:16 PM] choice has out lived its original purpose. We need to develop new technologies. By my estimate this program nets 5 to 6 million a year. That should be repurposed to other forms of dispatchable, renewable energy. Well, this is not a grand sum for a development of advanced energy concepts. This is seed money that will allow Austin energy to leverage larger sums of money and hopefully inspire other climate cities to collaborate with us. The concept could also offer a chance for economic development. Some companies pursuing R and D in Austin or central Texas will be more likely to stay here if the projects are successful and hire more employees. This is going to take awhile to [4:25:18 PM] consider, but I thought I would start the process off today. Thank you for your attention. >> Thanks, Mr. Robins. And I think, mayor, I should have done something about us coming out of executive session. Do you have -- >> Mayor Adler: Not a problem. Just for the record while we were in closed session we discussed issues related to E 2, E 3, and E 6. E 4 was withdrawn and one quick house-keeping matter, I would -- let's all take a look at the message board. Tomorrow night and also Thursday morning it may be if there's a delay of opening in offices we delay the beginning of the council meeting. Take a look Wednesday evening and also Thursday morning. Madame chair, thank you. >> Chair: Thanks so much, mayor. Before I call for a motion to approve the minutes from the [4:26:20 PM] last meeting I wanted to invite Jeff vice to come forward and the general manager and anybody else who is going to participate in this segment here. You all may know that Jeff has served with Austin energy for a really long time, and he's made quite an impression during his service time. And the vice chair, council member tovo, and I had a few words to send him off appropriately. Council member tovo >> Thank you, chair. Jeff, it has been a pleasure to work alongside you and to collaborate with you through the years. You have done such a terrific job of keeping council informed and being our liaison back to Austin energy, and I appreciate your years of service and am interested to hear council member pool read the [4:27:20 PM] proclamation because I think it really captures the spirit that you bring to your work. Thank you for your work -- a rate review and then subsequent rate reviews. And of course the winter storm -- you have done a great job of communicating with council, the constituents and keeping all party ins the communication loop. Thank you for your work and public service. >> Chair: I'll also say I have this gorgeous proclamation to read for Jeff and I just wanted to note that this proclamation was specially written and designed by his colleagues. Be it known that whereas for more than 21 years Jeff has served Austin energy as the notorious governmental [4:28:22 PM] relations and community liaison authority, and whereas Jeff has been a long-time volunteer for the city's mentor and tutor programs, Austin energy science fest, and meals on wheels central Texas, and whereas Jeff has been a leader and valued friend, always willing to support co-workers, also encouraging them not to be naughty, and whereas Jeff has left an indelible imprint at Austin energy and city hall and the city of Austin is grateful for his tireless service, distinguished character and his serenades, chair of this committee and behalf of Steve Adler, I proclaim February 1st, 2022 as Jeff Weiss day. [4:29:24 PM] Congratulations. [Microphone not turned on]. >> Mayor Adler: Jeff, thank you so much. >> Thank you, mayor. Appreciate it, sir. >> I know you're running late. Sorry. >> Mayor Adler: No, no. You've earned this many times over. >> Chair: Thanks and thanks to Jeff for all his really great work. I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes. I see mayor Adler. [4:30:25 PM] Any second? Mayor pro tem? Alter? All in favor of approving the minutes? Looks like that's unanimous on the dais. Thank you. General manager sergeant. Upcoming recommendations for council actions, innovations, events and rewards in your report. Thank you for being here today. >> Good afternoon, madame chair, vice chair and committee members. I'm the general manager of Austin energy. If you could bring up my slides and go to the second. I have nine items for council action. I'll go through those rather quickly. First item is to authorize a five year contract extension and $18 million contract increase. This covers licensing costs and enhancement to the digital self-service customer portal. Next is to authorize execution [4:31:25 PM] of a five year program with electrical systems to provide switch gear for a total amount not to exceed 1.2 million. The next is to authorize two five-year contracts with tech line and westco distribution. Total of 3.5 million dollars. Next is to authorize negotiation of a contract. The study will identify potential system improvements and ensure reliability of power. Next is to authorize negotiation and execution of a 5 year contract with apple one employment. It will provide staffing for 3. 1-1 and utility customer care [4:32:28 PM] teams. Austin is transitions many contract employees to city employees in align with the 2019 resolution. The transition has started and will continue over the life of the contract. Next slide, please. Next item is to offer negotiation with power grid engineering for 6 million. This will provide relay services on an as-needed basis. Austin water is converting manual read meters to advance meters. Continues to -- Ami is expected in 2025. Next is office of real estate for purchase and sale agreement for warehouse. This has been contemplated in the strategic plan. The new facility allows us to [4:33:31 PM] consolidate from various facilities, B including the transition away from Ryan drive. We'll use a similar approach as we did for Austin energy headquarters. There will be a related item for real estate in March for the meter shop. We need that lease -- 1.5 million contract. The contract was authorized on an emergency basis to purchase and install replacement at the energy center. It was damaged during uri. Mueller provides water to the university of Texas research lab. It provides electricity to the children's hospital. Next slide, please. Next I would like to remind the committee of the plan 2022 rate review. Austin energy is required by city financial policy to conduct a rate review to ensure rates are designed to generate [4:34:37 PM] sufficient revenue. Last changed base rates in 2017 when we decreased them by 6.7 per cent. It was a decrease. We are preparing cost of service analysis and public process and will bring forward a recommendation later this year. John Davis, our finance director, will cover the financial position. With that I'll pause and answer any questions you have. >> Chair: Any questions? Looks like you're good. >> Thank you. >> Chair: Next speaker. This is a briefing on our first quarter financials. >> Good afternoon, committee. I'm John Davis, director of finance for Austin energy. I'll give a brief overview for [4:35:37 PM] the quarter ending December 31st, 2021. Next slide. Since the data includes forecasted information. Results will vary for the forecast. For consistency we provided our standard report which presents the financial information followed by a section on market and industry analysis. We highlight some of the trends impacting ae, such as the general manager referred to. Next slide, please. Next slide. In our executive summary we report at the end of the first quarter ended December 31st, 2021. We were generally compliant with all financial policies, although contingency and capital reserve are sitting below the minimums. Once we consider the additional working capital available we exceed the required reserves. [4:36:37 PM] Operating revenue for the first quarter was 359 million, six per cent more than bunlt. Operating expenses were 18 per cent more. Resulted from income operations of 15 million. Increase were due to weather-driven increase in usage for the quarter and timing when expenses were budgeted versus when incurred. We don't illustrate this on the slide but out of the operating revenue we made transfers to support the city as well as other Austin energy specific transfers to cover debt service and fund the cash portion of construction expendituresexpenditures, which nets 4 million versus budget deficiency of 50 million. The cash balance is 286 million, which is a decrease of 118 million from a year ago. Austin energy continues to meet [4:37:39 PM] our target bond rating of aa. We see declines in key metrics that will require a rate change in the near future if we are to maintain that rating. You'll see later in the industry analysis included in your packet that we present a packet of declining sales on per customer basis compounded by the pandemic. This trend will inform and impact our next review and how we structure future retail rates. I'll leave it at that at the end of the executive summary and we'll present this same presentation to the euk on Valentine's day. Happy to answer any questions. >> Chair: Thanks to much. Any questions? Is item four is the first quarter operations briefing. [4:38:41 PM] >> Good afternoon, committee chair, utility oversight committee. I am Sidney Jackson. It's my pleasure to be here today to present the q-1 fiscal year operations report. Q-1 time frame represents the operations performance for the months of October, November, and December from an operation's perspective. These months are critical as they present what is called the shoulder months, meaning the post summer and pre winter season. Also, this time frame is often considered the power plant outage season where power plant maintenance are performed or outages are done to ensure we have readiness for the coming winter season or post December season. Moving to slide two I'll present brief highlights with renewable generation performance and will conclude with a brief review of the [4:39:46 PM] winter storm uri after-action report. Power plant performance remains. Availability is as expected. Austin energy power plant performance was near 100 per cent for the quarter that just ended q-4. However, the current quarter that was completed, performance was as expected but lower than the 100 per cent threshold primarily impacted due to scheduled outages. Lastly on this graphic, reliability and availability of the generation units was at 100 per cent, again confirming the reliability of those units. Moving to slide numb -- to the next slide. This affirms the renewable energy consumption at over 1.5 [4:40:49 PM] million megawatt hours. Slide 11, please. Looking at renewable generation, recall March 2021 was the highest all-time month at 70 per cent threshold. December 2021 we approached that threshold as we reached 60 per cent renewable generation for that month. Robust renewable generation. Moving to slide 17 and I'll conclude with this slide as it is a review of the after-action report. As you're aware winter storm uri was a significant undertaking by the utility to -- in the after-action report there were 19 operational categories, 116 follow-up items and 55 per cent of those items are complete. As many of those initiatives were started immediately following the winter storm. And also, they were started prior to the report's issuance. [4:41:54 PM] 22 per cent are on going. Those actions are in processes and practices. 22 per cent are in progress. Committee chair, that concludes the q-4 report. >> Chair: I think there's a question from the mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Where in here would I find the generational levels for the biofuel plant? >> Biofuels? They're not in the report >> Alter: Okay. >> Is that something you would like us to include -- >> Alter: Now that it's operational, I would be curious. I mean -- >> It's including in the renewable aggregate but not broken out. >> Alter: I don't know how difficult that is or what percentage that is, but I think now that we have that operational it seems like we ought to? >> I can make that available and I will have it [4:42:55 PM] sent out. >> Alter: Can you speak to how that -- the start up in the transition? >> The biofuel -- start up associated with that. The production vp here is here. He can talk to that a little more thoroughly. >> Good afternoon, chair, committee members. So the plant was brought out of seasonal moth ball last may. It's run substantial. We've gotten quite a bit of production. I don't have the number but we can supply that. We've had good output from it over the last nine or so months. >> Alter: Thank you. I think it would be helpful to have more information as you have it. >> Chair: Anything else? [4:43:55 PM] Item 5, Austin energy fire mitigation and vegetation management update. Who do we have for that? >> Good afternoon, chair, vice chair, council members. I'd like to thank you for recognizing Jeff. His incredible contribution to Austin energy and the city is incredible. Thank you for taking the time. Second time I know you have the slide so if you want I can go to any questions or I can go through it. Whichever you would like. >> Chair: Want to see the slides? >> All right. Thank you. I'm vice president of field operations and in response to council member alter's request on a follow-up. At beginning of 2021 I spoke to you and committed to 10 of the high-risk fire mitigation circuits to be completed by the end of the year. She wanted a follow-up on that. [4:44:57 PM] That's what this is. Austin energy has continued a strong partnership with the Austin fire department on wild fire mitigation circuits identified in the area and tracted by the districts they're in. The ten we committed to in 2021 were all complete inned the 2021 -- completed in the 2021 time frame. Some of the challenges we've encountered not only at the end of last year but going into this year -- you gave us the contract on the budget money but trying to find a labor force is continuing to be a challenge. Usually 15 to 20 contract crews each month, depending on labor resources and covid since the crews work in close proximity to each other. We did the 10 we committed to and under that same presence if you'll go to the next slide, please. This shows the ones by area, if there is a district associated with it. Some of the nondistrict [4:45:59 PM] areas -- these were the ten that we did in the 2021 time frame. So maintaining that same view that we presented to you, I wanted to do the same thing for the 2022. Next slide, please. So this is the 2022 circuits that we are looking at at wild fire mitigation in cooperation with Austin fire department as the high risk. These are based currently on the operational presence. Right now that could change depending on circuit changes in the future. These are the one we're concentrating on. 40 of these are complete. We have five we're working right now. I have confidence we'll be able to accomplish these 10 for 2022. And that concludes my presentation if you have any questions. Yes, council member alter? >> Alter: This is a really important program, and I appreciate you providing [4:46:59 PM] details on the things you did. I have a couple of questions. One is, my under standing was that the premise was to complete all of the high-risk, low-reliability circuits by a certain date. Some of these are not as high risk, which is fine. I just want to understand if we were not only completing the 10 by the year but that of the low-risk reliability. >> No, ma'am. I never committed that. We have over 300 circuits. Some are in the wild fire area. What we are doing is more than the ten as we get circuits in but we're basing it on the high risk but looking at underperformed circuits so we can get underreliability as well as wild fire. Sometimes they overlap but not always. As an example this year we're looking at doing 44 circuits [4:47:59 PM] total for the year. We have 10 high risk that are the wild fire. Another 34 we'll look at. Some of those will be a dual -- could be wild fire and -- that's something we look at when we -- >> Alter: We can sit down and have a conversation about that. It was my understanding that the goal was to get the low-reliability circuits, which is not going to be every circuit, done within a shorter period. >> There will be -- if I understand you correctly -- your understanding was to concentrate on the wild fire and underperforming. If that statement is what you're asking, that is true. We are basing our 44 for this year -- they are all either an underperforming circuit or a wild fire risk, so we are doing the ones that are reliability issue or wild fire. Those are the ones we're doing first. At some point it will get down to the ones that we're just [4:49:01 PM] doing vegetation management on that are not a reliability issue, probably didn't have reliability. Those would be at the end of the program. If that is your question, that is correct >> Alter: We can take this off line but my question is there are lines and many of the ones in my district are high wild fire risk and low reliability because the vegetation hasn't been managed well, so those were the ones that were among the groups that my understanding was prioritized and there are several of them on here and that's what I'm trying to understand, where it's done. We'll take that off line. The other piece I would like to be part of this is we are doing this for a reason. It's not just for the high wild fire. It's for the reliability issues, and I would love for you to be able to share with us some of the data that you're seeing by taking these steps with respect to vegetation management that we are improving reliability. It was my understanding anecdotely that you thought you [4:50:02 PM] were seeing changes and there was one line that has been done before this process started before the storm that experienced less issues than storm uri. I don't know if you can speak to that piece of the effectiveness. >> I can speak to the piece we presented to you. I believe that was north on 13. Prior to the vegetation management on it, it was completely ironically in January right before storm uri. On that one there were only three outages during the whole time frame and none for vegetated related. Before -- I know the council is familiar with stek-l 7 which we used to talk about. Now that that's been cleaned up we don't hear about it unless it's equipment. I'd like to get some of the higher ones that were underperforming and show comparison since vegetation management has been done. I think that would be a better [4:51:03 PM] visual. >> Alter: That would be great. I think it's important for us to see the progress that's been made and the difference it's making and that we can achieve both of these goals? >> Yes, ma'am >> Alter: Of securing us vis-a-vis wild fire risk. >> Chair: Any other questions? Council member Fuentes >> Is our strategy completely focused on the circuitcircuits? You mentioned 44 in 2022. Are we taking it by groups for vegetation management? >> It's about a seven-year program to get all the circuits to standard. In that seven years we go in and do a midterm cut on the fast growing. Due to the issues prior to last year on the vegetation requirements, it's going to take us seven years to get back [4:52:04 PM] to a normal cycle. So in seven years from 2021, we will have a normal vegetation cycle, and we can only do so many of those a year, and what we're doing is to -- 44 is driven on total numerical value we have on the circuits. That's where it came from. The challenges and availability is getting the labor out there. We've got the money. We just can't get the workers to do it. We're doing 44 a year. On a seven-year plan we would continue a continuous vegetation cycle where it says at industry standards. >> It would be seven years? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Are there any other scenarios in which we can accelerate our efforts? >> Absolutely. I have the vegetation manager. Since we have the contract dollars, even though we didn't spend it last year, it's still in the contract. As we come out of covid and [4:53:06 PM] labor increases as people start taking the job, we'll start drawing and getting more crews than the 60 we were budgeted for. As we have the opportunity to use the money you gave us to trim this we will accelerate it when we can get the labor. >> Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Chair: Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, chair. Do you have a full list anywhere available? Or can you send that to me? I'm curious since it looks like some of the work -- I appreciate it being laid out but seeing where the high wild fire risks are, it might be helpful to have that information in case constituents reach out and say when is something for me going to be trimmed for the vegetation management part of this? Do you have the plan anywhere? >> We do, but the problem comes in with the same thing with council member alter when we were presenting her circuits. We track by circuit -- when we [4:54:07 PM] were presenting her district. We track by circuit. If you'd like -- if you'd like to get with me separately and we can lay out what the circuits are, we can lay out what's going on. We try to stay one year out on the strategic plan but if the reliability changes and we have more vegetation issues, some of that can change as it goes through. The one-year plan -- anything past that we're waiting to see any reliability changes. I would be happy to work with you on that, council member. >> That would be great. I know of other work Austin energy is doing. >> Absolutely. Reach out and I'll give you whatever information I can give you. >> Ellis: Sounds great. Thank you. >> Chair: Any other questions for Mr. Richards? We will move? >> Thanks for your time. >> Chair: You bet. [4:55:07 PM] Item 6 is the decker creek power station workforce planning item. Good afternoon. >> Hello again. Very quick update on our decker transition. We are on track to retire decker unit two by the end of March 31st. We continued our training and job shadowing program with our team. Since we met with you back in November we've had additional folks take the opportunity to retire as well as new positions within the work force, and with that and with the ones cumulative, we're on track to get at or very close to our numbers that we're targeting currently for the work force post retirement. I do think it's important to remind council that we do have four gas turbines that we'll continue to operate after March 31st. We're not -- you know, closing out the entire site and removing the entire workforce. We are stepping it down and we're on track as we've been and continue to be on trend to [4:56:09 PM] get to the numbers that we're hoping for. >> Chair: Council member tovo, this was an item that we were continuing to track as at your request. You have any questions? >> I don't. Thank you. >> Chair: Anybody else? Thank you. Sounds like we're getting close to finishing up with decker. That's great. Well, general manager sergeant -- anything else you need to offer? Okay. So future items is item number 7 -- our last item. And it's -- does anybody have anything right now you'd like to pass on to me? Yes, mayor? >> Mayor Adler: If we could, we're getting media inquiries about prognosis of power outages or the like with storms coming up. I should probably have addressed this earlier. [4:57:09 PM] Is this something you can address for us? >> I'll do my best. If I can't I have plenty of staff here. >> Mayor Adler: And I think the question is for you or the staff. I think people are remembering what happened a year ago and looking at the storms coming in. Are we in a different place than we were last time? Do you anticipate based on what you're seeing with the weather -- just a measure of comment on that topic for the community. >> Right now all the indications we have from PUC, ercot and the state of Texas is we're in a good position to be prepared for the weather coming in. I know that the state held a press conference today, and they had many people talk in the different areas. But, you know, there's no way [4:58:11 PM] to make a guarantee or promise because it's situational and those situations could change. But with that said, Austin energy is well prepared. We've already established our incident command. We've been in communications, and we are having our teams prepared in stand-by mode and also what we're doing in terms of our generation. As you know, last year during this event, our generation overall performed very well, and the reason you know that is because we were able to reduce our power supply adjustment November 1st by six and a half per cent. I think with the things we've learned in the storm, all the actions completed in the after-action report to date, the attention this has gotten on a state-wide basis and a situation we're looking at that is not an impact from the north pole all the way down to the gulf coast. [4:59:11 PM] It's a different scenario. We are expecting from ercot perspective higher loads and we are looking at what that generation resource. So if the forecast holds, if the generation performs, and if ercot is not in a situation where they need to require a mandated load shed situation, we feel that we're well positioned going into this. I would also say, and I would remind the public, that this really is a community preparedness effort. There are things we need to do. We need to have a plan. We need to practice that plan. We need to stock up on some resources and have extra things, like food and nonperishable food, water, batteries, battery-operated radio. And really get out and know your neighbors. One of the things I'm so proud [5:00:11 PM] of from this community is how everyone came together and looked out for each other. You know what? We made it through. And we are prepared, and we are here and we are standing by and ready. >> Mayor Adler: Great. General manager, thank you very much. Thank you for talking about the precautions we should be taking. I think the one that you -- that also I've seen and we've tried to -- in order to keep people's pipes from freezing best they take a faucet somewhere in the home and turn it on just to drip through. >> There's a strategic way to do that and Austin water on their website has good information on how to do that. The other thing you want to know is how to turn off your water in the event you have a water leak. So you need to go to the main. There's a special key you need and you need to know how to do that. Good reminder. >> Mayor Adler: There's a video on that on your website too. >> That's correct >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Thank you, chair. >> Chair: You bet. [5:01:13 PM] Mayor pro tem and then council member tovo. >> Alter: I wanted to ask for future items if we can talk again about an update on the winter storm after action before it's at a future meeting and the progress you've made. We got a little bit of that today but I think something a little more focused. >> Chair: Council member tovo? >> Yes. This really doesn't apply directly to the Austin energy meeting. It applies to the work session. This morning I was at another work event and missed the intro where you were talking for procedure for Thursday. I will go back and watch that. I wanted to ask if you had provided any guidance to the public about what to watch for if they were intending to come down and provide in- person public comment on Thursday >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for giving us another chance to [5:02:13 PM] mention this at the end of our meeting. What we're doing is we're asking everybody who's signing up to speak to sign up to speak remotely, whether they intended to try to speak in person or not. We know that if someone is not here on Thursday and speaking remotely it means we have less staff that has to come down, and we're asking people to do that, not only for their safety but for the safety of our staff. We've also talked tab possibility that the meeting could start later. We'll try to post that information Wednesday night and if not, early Thursday morning -- some people can see that. The weather is supposed to be bad, so we want everybody to stay home as best they can. I've encouraged everybody on this dais to plan on doing the meeting remotely on Thursday whenever the meeting is called. Thank you, council member tovo. [5:03:15 PM] >> As I bring this meeting to adjournment, I'll note the next meeting for Austin oversight will be -- I would ask our general manager between now and the next meeting if you could give a memo update on how things proceeded if anything untoward happened as we are looking forward to some bad weather later this week. Just keep us in the loop. And we are adjourned at 5:03 for Austin energy utility oversight committee >> Mayor Adler: At 5:03 we're adjourning the city council meeting as well.