City Council Work Session Transcript – 6/7/2022 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 6 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 6/7/2022 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 6/7/2022 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. Part 1 [9:12:39 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. We can hear you. We're going to go ahead and convene the June 7th, 2022 work session, Austin city council. We're in the boards and commissions room. 9:10. We have a quorum present. We have Paige [indiscernible]. It's been suggested to us that we start with the living wage briefing because we're going to lose some people so let's start with that. We can do the pulled items, which may take us awhile today because I think there's actually work to be done with us on those issues to better understand where people are. If we finish and have time before lunch, we can go into executive session, start [9:13:39 AM] today the -- we just have our four appointments going through that personnel reviews. I'm going to be off the dais from noon to 1:00. We could either just be taking a lunch break collectively at that time, or if you wanted to work on executive session I could miss that. But we'll come back this afternoon into this place at 1:00. We can do the homelessness update when we come back. There's a briefing I think that's been handed out. At 1:30, as close to that as we can, we'll go into the Austin energy meeting, which I understand, madam chair, is about an hour we think for that, and that would have us coming back at about 2:30 to finish executive session if we need to do [9:14:42 AM] that executive session. It will be done virtually today. Yes, Mackenzie. >> Kelly: Thank you for the recognition. I wanted to daylight something that's been bothering me a little bit and the constituents about the briefings not being posted online in an amount of time that we're actually able to review them and come up with questions and really dig into the information. I feel like it really puts us day disadvantage on council to not have that information in a timely manner. I know that this morning, for example, at 6:58 A.M. Our briefing came in about the homelessness issue, but there's still no living wage briefing available online. I would liable to ask we have those available 24 hours in advance of the meeting. I would hate to bring forward a resolution to require that, but it would be extremely helpful for myself and the community to have those available. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: That's a good point and it's recurrent. It's something that we have raised collectively. [9:15:43 AM] I join in that request. Yes, councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I'm concerned about the homeless briefing. I don't want that to get squeezed out of time. There's some very important things for us to discuss, including the real estate aspect of it and the potential for new shelter locations. So I was hoping that we would take it this morning. Is it possible -- it's very important that you be there for it, mayor, and I'm concerned that if we -- I'm concerned we're going to run out of time. So is there a reason why you don't want to do it this morning? >> Mayor Adler: Because there are so many things that are important. For Thursday's work we really have to do the pulled items and work through those. But we'll have time and I will be here for that because I want to be here. Obviously it's a huge priority for me. >> Kitchen: Okay. Can we commit to taking it up when we come back from lunch regardless of whether we're finished with the [9:16:43 AM] pulled items? >> Mayor Adler: That's what I was recommending. At 1:00 we turn to that item and have that time before we do the -- >> Kitchen: Even if we're not finished with pulled items I think that will be important. >> Mayor Adler: Let's see where we are on that. We have too many things that are important today, but I understand the importance of that and we're not going to lose that. >> Kitchen: Okay. I mean, I guess -- okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and get started if we can. Manager? >> Mayor and council, good to see everyone this morning. As the mayor mentioned we're going to start today's work session with a briefing from the living wage work group. So as some context as you may know, eight years ago in 2014 the council passed a resolution directing the manager to provide staff support for a stakeholder process to develop recommendations regarding the city's living wage rates and policy. During that process stakeholders met seven times and then provided the recommendation to council. At that time a plan was developed then to increase the living wage from $11.39 [9:17:48 AM] to $15 over five years by 2020. Fast forward to today, earlier this year a living wage stakeholder group convened again and provided an updated recommendation to council. That recommendation was sent via memo from our hr director on April 28th and to councilmember Kelly's point, we should post that in backup and I'll make sure that that happens because I don't believe there's a presentation today, it's just the recommendation of the memo that was given to you on April 28th. But I'll make sure that gets in backup as well. On this time the group met four times and we are here today to receive a briefing on that living wage from members of this community working group. As you know as part of the budget process I will bring forward a compensation package that includes increases to the living wage across the board increases and other compensation recommendations for our hard-working, dedicated city employees. So with that I'm going to turn it over to members of the working group who will walk through their [9:18:50 AM] recommendations. >> It's always something. If it's not on the computer it's here. Good morning, everyone. It is an honor to be here in front of you today. And as you heard from the city manager, we've also passed out the proposal back from 2015. So I wanted to say a little bit about the economic situation in Austin. Though Austin has the best job market in the nation, we know that Austin is suffering from rising housing costs. We know that Austin is no longer ranked one of the top [9:19:50 AM] 10, that Austin has dropped down to 13 and all of that is due to the rising cost of housing. I mention that because we are trying to keep our employees in housing, we're trying to keep them at the workplace and it has become a significant challenge for them. We need to move back to basics. We are taking this opportunity eight years later. The report says that we should have ended at 16.83, and for some reason we never applied the cpi to keep the living wage moving. So our ask for '22 sounds astronomical. We know that the employees are doing more with less. [9:20:52 AM] We know they are working mandatory overtime. We know that we have employees working out of their classification. We have admin staff still taking 911 non-emergency calls. We have park rangers providing support to the youth programs and it goes on and on. We know that arr has a contract because the services are being impacted because we are not able to keep low wage earners. We are losing them to the private sector. We know the private sector is a 20, 22, 24. They don't have to keep the $15. And we are at an all-time vacancy rate of 18% in just [9:21:54 AM] the general fund department. It is time to take care of our house, to take care and restore operations to the stens of Austin. And we need your help to do that. We cannot do anything about inflation. We can't do anything about what it costs to fill up your car. But the one thing we can do, that you can do, you can give your employees the wages needed to survive in this economy. Thank you. >> Good morning, council. My name is Rachel Melendez. I work for unite here. We're a hospitality union. We represent the concessions workers at the airport. I really wanted to spend a couple of minutes sharing a little bit about their experience. I know some of you have [9:22:54 AM] already met with them, you've heard from them directly what it's like there. But really if your flown out of the airport you have seen a lot of the shops are closed, the retail are closed, places you can get a magazine, those places are closed because they are understaffed. We've heard from folks that people are quitting work at the airport because of the demand, because of so many people flying through the airport it is too stressful, they're overwhelmed, they'd rather go work somewhere else to make the same money where it's less demanding. For those of you who don't know they start work at 3:30 in the morning. A lot of times they leave at noon or 2:00 in the afternoon, their whole day is spent at work and they're not able to support their families. That's really the majority of what I wanted to share. I think there's a opportunity for the council to not just affect the lives [9:23:54 AM] of the folks who will be taking home these paychecks, but really raise the floor for the city. So thank you. >> Hell row, everyone, I am the Austin policy director with workers defense and we represent low wage construction workers. And what we've been seeing with our members as well has been that the folks that have been constructing the city, that have been making these fantastic hi-rises, the buildings, the housing we're all in, they are not reaping any of the benefits. Many of our members have lived in Austin and have ended up moving over to Buda to Kyle, other areas in the central -- in the central area so they're able to still continue to work, however not able to live here. And that's why we really support an increase in the minimum wage. Construction workers, especially those on public projects, would be the direct beneficiaries. Twenty-two dollars an hour is a starting place. [9:24:54 AM] We believe that they still -- that it's still not a living wage, however it's something that would be brought back to their families. It's a way for folks to continue to build their lives here in Austin and we really hope that you all support the living wage going up to $22 an hour. >> Good morning. My name is Jeremy Hendrix and I'm with the laborers' international union and also vice-president of the local building trades and I appreciate the invitation this morning to come speak to you. I'll remind you that I've served on every living wage task force before we passed the living wage before 10-1 and Austin has always been behind. Although achieving $15 by twin was early, unfortunately we stopped there. And during the pandemic, whereas Carol said, city workers have worked longer hours to provide services to folks to make sure that they're safe and survive this pandemic. They have been left behind. So not raising the wage [9:25:58 AM] since 2018 is completely unacceptable and I will remind you that this does extend to contracts. Right now we have a lot of competition in the market when it comes to construction. There are huge projects coming up and it's getting harder and harder to find work ers because they candidate afford to live here and we can't afford to pay poverty wages anymore. The dangerous work that they do absolutely deserves better pay and when you have massive projects coming up -- I'll remind you this also extends to project connect. Project connect which now has ballooned to over $10 billion, it will be impossible to find workers. So it's important that we pay the workers to have projects on time and on budget but to ensure we have high quality on those projects and to get the best skilled workers we have to pay the 22- dollar wage and that's still below many crafts. It's a starting point as fab owe la said to make sure we're more competitive and get back on track. I ask you to do the work that's so important and to [9:26:59 AM] use discretionary funding or whatever is at your access. When we are one of the wealthiest cities in America we have to take care of our workers. >> I am the director of St. John's episcopal church and a leader with central Texas interfaith. We've been fating for living wages since 2022. We fought to ensure that companies looking for city incentives required to pay living wage. We were part of the task force that recommended that the city employees would get paid 16.83. That was the recommendation by 2020. It is now 2022 and we're still at 15. City employees are the workers. They are the ones who pick up our trash, they fill the potholes. They're the ones who make sure that our children are safe when they go to the pool. They're the ones who make sure that there are librarians in the library and there's somebody there to encourage children to [9:27:59 AM] read. And they're not just workers. They're also members of our congregations, they're parents in our schools and they're our neighbors. Members of my own congregation are worried whether or not that our city employees whether they will be able to stay here in Austin. The high cost of living makes it difficult for our city employees to live in the city that they work in. Increasing the minimum wage as you heard increases other people's wages, employees who work for companies, that contract with the city, construction workers, as well as employees of companies receiving tax abatement from the city. Causing a positive ripple effect on thousands of people who are struggling to make ends meet. We all on you to increase the city living wages to $2,022 this year. Think about it. That's only a little over 40,000 -- $45,000 a year. As has been said it's not enough, but it's a start. And to add that by 2027 [9:29:00 AM] we're at $27 an hour. >> Does anybody have any questions? I would really advise you to read the proposal we passed out to you because it's like we're doing it again. We did it eight years ago and for whatever reason it didn't move, there was a solid recommendation in there. We had Mr. -- Oh my goodness -- Osterman from mit who helped us and shared a lot of very valuable information at the time and here we are eight years later doing the same thing again, having a committee talking about making a recommendation, looking at the numbers, trying to be smart, but the difference is today we didn't know -- we couldn't have foreseen the [9:30:01 AM] pandemic, we couldn't have foreseen the storm. And those additional stressors have played a big role in where we're at today. But something's got to give. We need more workers. We cannot hire workers. Those who work here, they're done. They're spent, they need your help. We've got to be competitive. We have got to raise the wage for these workers. Please. When you go through the budget process, it's a very large budget and there are a lot of decisions and special programs that people want, I get that, but usually those programs are staffed with workers. And if we can't hire the workers, we can't do your programs. So help us help you to get [9:31:01 AM] things done for this community because these employees, they love working for this community, but they just can't take it anymore. Something has to give, and I think that's the wage. So thank you for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Appreciate the presentation and the workment I know you guys have been working yet again on this as a working group since the beginning of the year. So appreciate the time and effort that all of the dozen plus os that have participated in that and I'm sure I'm not alone in having conveyed to the manager in my conversations with him as a lead-up to the budget that making sure that we're competitive with our employees is the highest personal priority in terms of the budget that is moving forward and coming to us. Colleagues, conversation or comments on this? [9:32:02 AM] Yes. >> Is it on? >> Yes, thank you. >> I greatly appreciate the work of the liveable wage grouping and I appreciate you all sharing this memo that kind of highlights the history of leading up to setting the minimum -- raising the minimum wage to 15 and knowing that we never got to 16.83 and knowing that we've been four years at $15 per hour we've remained stagnant and the impact that has had not only on city operations but the impact it's had on our communities. Colleagues, we know that half of our swimming pools right now are not open because we don't have the lifeguards to fill them. We also know that many of our departments have high vacancy rates. I think I counted nearly 13 departments have a vacancy rate of over 20% at this time. We know this issue is not [9:33:02 AM] unique to the city of Austin. Many industries, companies, sectors, are dealing with labor shortages. So the fact of the matter is that we have to raise the wage in order to ensure that our hard working austinites can not only live in the city, but afford and have a good quality of life and so we can deliver the services needed as a city government. So for me I'm super supportive of raising the liveable wage. I think that is the right thing to do. I think it's the responsible thing for us to do knowing how deep this issue is. So I appreciate the work that has been prepared for us today, one of the questions I have just to better understand why we didn't get to 16.83, and I don't know, city manager, if you're able to speak to this or perhaps our hr director. I wanted to see some context as to the previous working group laid out a pathway for us to reach $15 and then 16.83 and then just knowing [9:34:03 AM] if you could share any insight as to why we've been at 15 for the last four years. >> Thank you, council member. I'll provide some because this was somewhat before my time so I know it was a commitment before I came on board to increase the rate in which we were able to get to 15 so I think that amount came sooner that was anticipated in the working group recommendation and for the previous staff's recommendation. As you know with any budget there are the conversations around are you going to do an increase across the board increases for employees, how do you ensure that there are the levers that you're going to be pulling and again what the manager approaches and what the council adopts on is a case by case and year by year basis. We would have to go through each year to determine why we didn't move past the 15, but as has been noted we've been in a pandemic and had some challenges in just being able to support all of our employees and the hard working staff that we have. [9:35:08 AM] >> Fuentes: I was talking to councilmember Renteria before we started and he mentioned that capmetro will be paying their bus drivers $22 per hour. So knowing just how much other sectors, including public sector, are moving towards lifting the wage. That to me is an issue that I think we as policymakers can have and deliberate in the coming weeks and as part of the budget process. So I look forward to that conversation. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember harper-madison, councilmember kitchen and then councilmember Kelly. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair, I appreciate it. So I couldn't agree more with council member Fuentes's recommendations, but I also have to recognize that -- I think all of us need to recognize that this is not going to be an easy process, not going to be a simple process. So like to your point about the programs that will fall short, the programs that either will continue to exist or not and the people who will continue to live in the city of Austin or not. You know, it sometimes [9:36:08 AM] sounds defeatist when I'm literally telling my constituents on occasion just prepare to move. It sounds terrible, right? But prepare to have to live outside of the city of Austin. Instead of waiting, you know, until you're six months in arrears on your rent, go now because you know you have to go. And that sounds defeatist and it makes my heart to have to say it, but it's drew. So as we're representing some of these really -- we're accepting the difficult truths about nobody being able to anticipate the winter storm, nobody being able to anticipate -- I don't think any of us truly felt the impact that covid has had on our society at large and I don't mean Austin, I don't mean central Texas, I mean internationally. I really don't think any of us have any clue how much it's impacted us. So to say while I recognize that there are some special considerations, it sounds condescending and trust me that is not my attempt. I am saying, though, however, as we move into the [9:37:10 AM] budget process, this is my fourth one and every one has gotten more difficult than the last and every single time -- the last one, for example, our budget office said hey, guys, don't ask for more than one thing. We've got enough for you to ask for one thing. And I asked for one thing, you know? And barely got that. So recognizing that all my colleagues had multiple things that they had had to ask for because these were things that were relative and important. I guess I'm curious and manager maybe you can help me with this, I'm curious at what point do we solve -- this working group, for example, I understand the level of frustration they must experience in saying hey, we already told you guys what our recommendations are years ago. So to have to come back and ask again there's a level of frustration and it possibly -- seems like the city is not behind you. And that's certainly not the case. But when you recognize the wide spectrum of the-- of our constituents. So our constituents are workers, our constituents are private sector workers. Our constituents are private [9:38:11 AM] businesses that have to pay workers, that have to figure out whether or not they can open their doors, that so to figure out if they can stay in business. It's everybody. In our situation where we have to consider everybody and everything that comes out of -- I know it seems like a large budget, but the truth of the money is that money is finite. There's only so much of it. So having to figure out where things go is a part of the difficulty, right? So much of our conversation as of late, especially about housing. I really appreciate that you led with the conversation on how long. It's non-negotiable. That's one thing that we can do that will help our city at large, help our workers at large make our city more affordable to live in. Which to the point about being a relative defeatist having to say you're not going to be able to afford to live her, that has to do with me taking the pulling of our state government and local government and the restrictions and saying you're not going to be able to live here. If we don't make dramatic [9:39:14 AM] bold moves for housing capacity you won't be able to live here. I think it's twofold, manager. One, how do we involve folks who aren't policymakers around housing in a way that is substantive that really helps us as a body to move the needle on producing housing? Yield is not enough and it's affecting everything. We need more housing. But more importantly when I think about our opportunities to involve the community in our discussions around making decisions with the budget, are there any -- I know there's the how would you spend the budget tools, but honestly, I would love to know people who are at risk, people who have to move to niederwald and Georgetown and bastrop county. I would love to know if they had the opportunity to take a look at the list, what would they select as the services that we could do without? What would they select as the programmatic efforts we could do without? What would they select as while I appreciate that this is important in terms of prioritization, it's third [9:40:16 AM] tier, not first or second. I wish the conversation were more collaborative and maybe selfishly at the end of the day when everybody doesn't get what they need, it's not the body that's the bad guy. I want for us as a community to have to say this is our bucket of money. How do we spend it? And everybody has to make tough choices. Everybody has to determine if these resources are finite and something has got to give. And I think not having to be the ultimate say in that, having more contribution from the general community would be helpful. That way it's all of ours. It's not just ours as a body. The otherness of that. The community and the body. I think the otherness is a part of our problem with the ability to work with the community. How do we bring them into the conversation more on affordability, ie housing, and two, the allocation of our budget? >> Obviously a great conversation, council member, and although this [9:41:16 AM] isn't a budget presentation, I look forward to both talking about the ways in which we have engaged with different community stakeholders throughout the budget process so far, our boards and commissions, we've had speak-up Austin and we're going to be having town locals with many of you. So this is just the beginning of how we're going to be working with our community as we make those important decisions around how we're prioritizing our limited resources, especially with a three and a half percent cap that we have to work with. But this is exactly why I love this city, why I know each of you are committed to this work because we have such an engaged community. So I even see the next conversation that we're going to be having on some of the pulled items on affordability is a way to say these are some of those policy decisions, how do we make sure that the community is also engaged in those discussions as well? This is just the start of it and I know that every year we have a robust community engagement process on our budget and I look forward to any other recommendations that you might have and how [9:42:17 AM] we can further engage our community in developing that. >> I appreciate that. I don't think I'm the one to make the recommendations. Honestly, I think it's the working group to make the recommendations about how we can engage the community. Would any of you who presented this morning say that there's been a robust effort to participate on behalf of the workers who obviously need, you know, to not be stuck in this stagnant wage scenario. Are there contributing to the dialogue? Are they dialing into the website that says speak up here or whatever the thing? I just -- I know anecdotal aa lot of my constituents aren't processing in those -- participating in those processes so I wonder how robust it is, the participation. >> I have no idea how many people are participating in this website, but what I can tell you is the people at this table and the people that participate in the living wage task force represent tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of workers, congregationalists and people in this town and throughout the city and central Texas. So a lot of our folks obviously can't afford to live in town. The folks that are working on this construction site [9:43:18 AM] right over here I guarantee you don't live in town. They live in smithville and elsewhere. Affordability is absolutely important, but building apartment complexes, requiring -- I don't care if you require 80% affordability, those are band-aids. Paying people more money is the best ripple effect you can get in the community. Because this not only extends to city employees, people at the airport, but also contracts, it absolutely are going to have ripple effects that will affect hundreds of thousands of workers. So it is absolutely the best decision and investment you could make. I don't know if anyone else wants to add to that. >> Kitchen: Yes, I agree with what my -- what my colleagues are saying. And so there's just a couple of things I want to talk about in a bit more detail. I I agree that housing is important and we're going to [9:44:18 AM] start to work on that. There's a lot more we need to do. I also agree that wages are fundamental. Bottom line is what people can earn for their work. Is fundamental to their ability to live. And so that's key to me. To me, people should have the ability to get paid what they're worth and to live in the community. So I'm wondering -- I'm thinking also -- I know, city manager, that you have made this a priority in terms of focusing on raising wages. I have a couple of comments for you as you go through this process. First off, I think that -- I think we need to do something different this time. We've been talking right now about, you know, previous task forces that we've had that have set a path that we didn't follow, for whatever reason. So to the extent that we seat [9:45:21 AM] path this time, needs to be done differently with some more assurety around it, so that we're not in the same situation that we are today. You know, I understand, of course, that next year, year after that, there may be unforeseen things, but if we just do the same thing that we did last time, we're not moving the ball, you know. So there's that, I want to say. And I also think that hearing from the community is important. But to do that, the public has to understand the tradeoffs. So one of the things that I think is really important in bringing forward some action on this item is to say, city manager, get us to 22. If you can't get us to 22, if that's not feasible, tell us why. And tell us what it would take. Because the kind of feedback that's been suggested, which is great, I really applaud and agree with the importance of the [9:46:23 AM] community being part of this decision-making, to do that, they have to understand what the tradeoffs are. So if we just hear from you that it's not feasible to get to 22 and we don't know why, and we don't know what's the choices, then we as a body and the community as a whole can't say -- they can't say, well, you know, we'd rather pay wages, you know? We'd rather make sure that we're getting folks to a higher level. It's always important to have transparency in the budget process, and we do have a process for that, but the level of transparency, if we can't -- you know, my goal is to get to 22. If it's not feasible to get there, you know, I trust that you will tell us why and what our tradeoffs are, so that we can -- as a body, I think that's our responsibility, as a body to have that conversation. [9:47:23 AM] And it's our responsibility to have that conversation with the community. So I would just ask that you do that. And I want to thank you all for all the effort you've put in this. And I know it's really -- I want to thank you for the effort, which I think just, you know, doesn't say enough, because people are dealing with how they support their families, how they live. That is just huge and something that we need to take to heart. So I want to thank y'all for representing all the tens of thousands of people that you do. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Kelly. >> Kelly: Thank you. Thank you all for being here today. You brought up some points that I had not yet been aware of, and so I appreciate that background information. It will definitely help us with this discussion. I agree with council member harper-madison, in that, on council, we have a lot of different ways to effect affordability in this city, and one of those is building more housing. My rent upon renewal went up hundreds of dollars, and so I'm feeling that effect, just like [9:48:23 AM] thousands of other people across the city, and we really need to build more housing and make it easier for housing to be built here so that the people who are moving here can come here, and the people who are staying here can stay here, at a rate where they're able to live their best lives. The last thing I would like to see happen here is if we do raise the wages for people, it's cutting things, the programs that our council has mitted to. We have a goal right now to house 3,000 individuals experiencing homelessness in three years, and I would hate to go short of that goal because of the fact that we raise wages. And those are things that we do have to consider, especially when our revenue is capped. One thing that you all mentioned was that there was an annual cost of $45,000 a year. Could you help me understand that? Or maybe I misheard you. >> Yes. The $22 an hour is about -- a little over $45,000 a year. So we have these numbers, like oh, they're so big. [9:49:24 AM] But when you actually look at somewhat somebody is earning a year, then you realize why it's so hard for people to live in Austin. >> Kelly: I see. >> So it's very difficult to live in Austin earning a little over $45,000 a year. >> Kelly: Understood. Thank you for clarifying that for me. I'm just curious, city manager, has city staff been able to do an analysis of how much this might cost in our budget? >> Thank you, council member. The memo that was put out by director Hayes, she worked with the budget office and they have a range between 18.2 million and 22.8 million, but those costs do not include sworn employees, and we also have to do additional analysis on the impact on compression. And so, we wanted to make sure that as we move forward with the budget and some of these decisions that are being contemplated here, that we're able to provide as much transparency around some of those decisions as possible. So, we have a general range, but I wanted to put some caveats around that, because it doesn't [9:50:25 AM] include the same increases of 22 for all of our sworn employees and the impact of some of the compression issues. >> Kelly: Okay, thank you very much. Thank you again for being here. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Ellis, mayor pro tem, council member pool, council member tovo. >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. Y'all will have to forgive me for saving my voice for some of the other conversations that we're going to have today. We absolutely cannot expect our city to be one of the best employers in town and to make sure that people can afford to live in this community if we're not going to step up on having competitive wages. Like council member Fuentes said, we have lifeguards we're trying to recruit. We need to make sure we have camp counselors. And it is about making sure that resource recovery has enough employees to make sure that we cannot only just pick up the routine trash and composting, but doing brushy item pickup, when we have situations like, you know, wildfire preparedness [9:51:25 AM] that we're undertaking as a city. So we absolutely have to step up and be a good employer. And I know that year over year, there has been incremental increases in the salaries that people are already receiving, which is very much appreciated. But we've got to make sure that we are recruiting and retaining the absolute best of the best to make us a proud city and a proud employer. So I know this is something that's really important for me. I know that a number of us have met with some of the lifeguards and the people who are advocating to raise that wage. These are really important jobs and we absolutely have to make sure that our pools are open, our libraries are open, and that we continue to employ the best of the best. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Good morning, and thank you for your work every day, and also on this project. Since 2020 when the pandemic [9:52:26 AM] hit, I've been really focused on trying to understand what this means for our workers and our ability to recruit and retain, and, you know, back in January, my colleagues were on a call and we had a conversation about sd23. I said that we needed to add recruitment and retention of our workforce as one of our key prioriies and focus on that. So, you know, for me, keeping our workforce competitive is a high priority, highest priority in the budget. Also been looking eats our 911 workers or victim services, our CDL drivers, et cetera. So I'm really committed to a wage increase. What council member Ellis said, I think it's a how and when question, which is our responsibility as a council to work in collaboration with the city manager and figure out -- I do expect a significant wage increase. I can't tell you whether 22 is [9:53:26 AM] realistic or feasible, but I do expect an increase from 15, and I'm disappointed that we were not able to do it from 15 and want to understand why, and have suggested that we need to have greater transparency in the budget so that council can really see where things are. Achieving this goal is going to be extremely difficult under a 3.5% budget cap. It requires ongoing funding. And so in order to be able to actually realize the recommendations and figure out what timeframe works, we need answers to a lot of questions, and I don't know, city manager, if you're prepared to answer those, but I want to throw out some that I think are really important for us to be able to think about things for this. We're talking about essentially workers who are making 15 to 22. It's unclear from the estimates [9:54:28 AM] at what point it cuts off with compression. So we need to know what portion of our employees are making between 15 and $22. We also need to track where those vacancies are, and are those vacancies tracking to the employees who are in the $15 to $22 range. Anecdotally, there's also a whole lot of people who are above that range who are, you know, also leaving their jobs because of wages. And this proposal doesn't provide them much of a bump in terms of the costs. And we can't leave out those folks. I've been, you know, really immersed in 911 and the folks who are threatening from the emergency communications to leave are people who are making above $22 because they have a lot more experience and they haven't had their wages raised. A $7 increase is a 40% increase for those who are at the lowest level. But what does that mean for somebody who is making $30, who [9:55:28 AM] may be as valuable to the city and very critical? We have a responsibility to be looking at this question and its ramifications all across the spectrum. So we need to understand that. We need to understand what portion of our budget overall is wages, because we're not just talking about general fund. When we do this, it's all of our enterprise funds. What does that mean for rates? We're talking about affordability. At this point, I have no comprehension of what this means with respect to our sworn and our contracts that we're looking to make sure that we are providing livable wages to our ems, our police and fire, which is 60% plus of our general fund alone. And so anything we do for the livable wage has repercussions for those. And financially, we have to balance the budget and come up [9:56:30 AM] with that. For compression, who is included in the estimates for compression? If you go up $7 and you have all these people who are making $28, $29, $30, and they don't get anywhere near that, you create a whole host of challenges that have to be managed and that we cannot ignore because we want 22 and 22. I agree completely with council member kitchen that our community needs to understand the tradeoffs. I think council also needs to understand the tradeoffs. And the tradeoffs might involve people losing their jobs. And so, you know, when we start cutting things, or, you know, it may be that we can't increase the number of ems professionals or police or fire, and then we create extra burdens in those areas. We have to be able to think holistically. It is a big challenge, and the need is real. [9:57:31 AM] But we have a lot of questions that need to be answered. I do want to just reiterate that absolutely believe that we need a significant wage increase and we need a plan to get to a higher livable wage over time. What we can accomplish is going to depend on, you know, getting these questions answered and seeing what the tradeoffs are and making some tough decisions. I'm not prepared to make a decision before I know what those tradeoffs are and get those questions answered. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool. >> Pool: Thanks, and I wanted to thank the living wage work group really sincerely for the work. You've distilled concerns that we all share. Absolutely need to support higher wages across the board. [9:58:32 AM] Part of the reason we don't have a plan to get there is we don't actually know what the cost will be and what the tradeoffs are. My role as a council member is to help make those decisions, which is different than the role that the living wage work group has, which is to advocate, to isolate the specifics, and then to determine recommendations, and then to advocate for them. And you are doing that really well. And I very much appreciate that. It is a spur. And that is, of course, necessary. I do think that some people who are leaving government work, looking for higher wages at, say, a tech company, they'll be back, because working in corporate America is really, really different from working in public service. And you can lose your job in the blink of an eye, and that's not the case here at the city of Austin. We're a really good place to work for a lot of reasons. But, yeah, we need to address the salaries. I like that you were focusing on [9:59:34 AM] the lowest wage earners. That's key. But what I don't see is equal addressing of the midrange. Basically, what I'm calling the middle class. You know, there are a lot of government resources for people who make poverty wages. Or low incomes. There's a lot of programs for these folks. The wealthy don't really need government assistance because they've got enough money that they can make due. But I've been a member of the middle class my entire life, and I don't get any support really from government programs at the bottom, and I don't get any of the tax breaks that the people at the top get. And I think I'm speaking for a majority of city of Austin and government workers. And I've basically worked in government my entire life, with a few exceptions of a non-profit here and a bank actually, for about a year and a half when I first came to Austin. So it's the middle class, the middle wage earners that I really want to see embraced. [10:00:34 AM] So I support what you are doing. I support the mayor pro tem's discussion about the tradeoffs and the need for a plan. I urge that we as a dais look at our middle wage experienced -- I'm going to use the word tenured. I don't necessarily mean tenured, but people who have been here 7 to 10 or more years. They need to see that they are valued, and we do in a capitalist society look at value. Available to people outside of government, which is why I'm saying that I think even though people have gone to corporate America, I think they're going to be coming back. I had a question for -- maybe for our director of human resources, and it has to do with the salary increases that we have gotten annually since we moved the minimum wage up to $15. Did that minimum wage also [10:01:35 AM] reflection the additional 2% and 2.5% or whatever those percentage increases were over the year for the across-the-boards that we've gotten? And if you don't know right now, I'd be happy to get the answer later. But that would address the bottom, so that 15% isn't always 15%, it goes up by whatever the across-the-board is. So that's one question. I think it looks like assistant city manager resenio has an answer. >> Good morning, council member. I'm going to ask director Hayes to answer that question if she has the answer with her. If not, we will certainly get back to you with that answer. She needs one moment. >> Pool: And while she's doing that, I'd just reiterate that we need to retain experienced employees. That is key for me. >> Just while she's doing that, I just want to point out while she gets settled, I want to point out that middle class people who live in Austin, middle class, they're the ones who benefit from the libraries. They're the ones who benefit [10:02:36 AM] from the pools. They're the ones who benefit from all these services. Without them, then they're going to have to find other places for them to purchase those things and they don't have that kind of bandwidth. >> Pool: It sounds like you're agreeing with me. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Yes, I believe your question is the impact of the living wage and the across-the-board. >> Pool: Right, did that move the $15 up sequentially over time? >> So, what we do is we raise the living wage, and then whatever the across-the-board increase is for that year, those employees will receive it as well. So, there are some employees who have not had the opportunity to be here long enough for the across-the-board. It will still be at the $15. >> Pool: And this is where I was going with that. We have never actually raised the minimum up from $15, even though we have given across-the-board raises to staff in a number of years. I think the answer to that is yes. >> Yes. >> Pool: And I think that's part of the issue that the living wage working group may have identified, which is if we had [10:03:37 AM] been raising that $15 up to 15, 23, or whatever the 2.5 or 2 would have been at that time, then we would have progressed more toward that $16, which is what was in the 2014 recommendation. >> Understood. >> Pool: So that's all I'm saying. I just wanted to point that out. >> I would also point out that we also did other things between the time of setting the $15 an hour. We then I think in 2016, we allowed temporary employees to also receive benefits once they've been here for a year. We were able to give the covid bonus. And so we've done other things. But to the point that I think council and the city manager may -- in creating those opportunities, to do other things to address the issues of the moment, we failed to move forward with the 1683. But we were doing other things to try to address those other overarching issues that came up during those periods. >> Pool: And to that point, what is the benefits factor that's [10:04:38 AM] used to add to a person's salary to indicate the true fall of the work contract? >> So you're looking at the total compensation package and the percentage of contributions that the city makes in order to create that total compensation. >> Pool: That's right. >> That's not going to be something I could effectively communicate, but certainly, I can share with both the working group -- by the way, it's been a pleasure to work with them, and council as to the percentages you would need to add to that for total compensation. I appreciate that, council member pool, because as we have this conversation, the total compensation is going to be important, because it's not just what we provide in the hourly salary. It's also the contributions that the city provides in totality to benefits, short-term disability, and the other things that we pay for that create that total package, which we then use to compare and benchmark for competitiveness. >> Pool: At one pong, I think the factor was about 20%, it was 25%, and it may be in the 30s at [10:05:41 AM] this point. >> They're checking right now, so we'll be able to provide that to you. >> Council member pool, can I just add something. I think that's a great point you bring up. Although those 2 or 3% increases have happened, that they haven't affected everyone. I just want to remind everyone that that also means they have not extended to contract employees. >> Pool: Right. >> Construction, all those other things. But also project connect, which has already started. We already have the metro rapid lines going. >> Pool: And I think that's a point that we can dig into and address. >> I also think, if you read the report from 15, you will see that we were very concerned with compression back then. That's why we made some of the decisions that we made, compression. And longevity for employees who have been in the workplace far [10:06:42 AM] long time is all part of this, right? And so we didn't go into this just thinking about this person at the bottom, because when you make a change here, it has a ripple effect as you go through the pay grades. And so that was considered. It was on the table. It was considered eight years ago. It is always, always a priority for this unit. >> Pool: And that's really important that that compression is addressed all the way up through up to a certain point, obviously. And not just like the lower couple of groups in the wage bands. My point is here on that, is that that is not -- a full assessment of that cost is not included in these numbers. And that is what concerns me, because if we are going to move [10:07:42 AM] in this direction, we need to be clear-eyed on the costs. Not only for fiscal '23, but for going forward. And it's the clear-eyed part that is the difficult conversation that's going to happen on the dais and with the council and the city staff. I'm not making any claims or promises or assessments about what that's going to look like, except to say that it won't be simple. And there has been some forecasting of what that could look like. And I think that's accurate. I think mayor pro tem went into good detail on that front. >> As we talk about that 1638, from the first report, our goal was to finish at 1683 or be there by 2020. [10:08:43 AM] We're heading into 2023. So, again, had we used the cpi that we had put, from the first so that we wouldn't be here today, we would be at 17.50. >> Pool: I understand. I understand completely. We cannot subtract out the effects of the pandemic over the last two years, which essentially ground everything to a halt. We didn't know what kind of support we would have from the federal government. We have a sense of it now. We are still trying to pull ourselves out of that situation to see what our revenues are like and what is actually going to continue, because the world is different. >> Yes. I agree. >> Pool: Thank you for that. So I'll just return and I think council member tovo is after me. Retaining experienced employees needs to be fully considered in whatever conversations we have. Going forward, we need a plan for that and we need a way to [10:09:44 AM] sustain the level and grow it. I don't think any of us have any quarrel with any of that. I look forward to continuing that work. Just don't know how fast we're going to be able to get there. But I commit that I will do that work with you. As you know I will. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I think parenthetically, it is good to note, as director Hayes did, that in this period of time, we've made some pretty significant progress of other things. We've extended benefits to the same group of people. We've taken a lot of contract workers that were not getting benefits and converted those into employment positions. So a lot of impactful work. I'm real proud to have been part of a council that was doing things that should have been done a long time after that. [10:10:44 AM] Council member tovo, I think you were next. >> Tovo: Thanks. So, the conversation has gone a lot of different directions and I have a couple things to say about different points that others have raised. I agree with my colleagues, who have mentioned the importance of making sure that we have those robust conversations with the public. I know most of us are probably going to have those public sessions about the budget. As best as we can within that conversation. It does pose authentic questions to the public, because it's really challenging going as a community member before I got on council. In those days, the conversations were kind of like, what would you like to see more of? Everybody wants to see more of everything. That's not a realistic way to approach it. And so I do think it's important, not only to talk about the tradeoffs, but the [10:11:46 AM] impacts. And I've forgotten which of my colleagues mentioned this before, but certainly the living wage - - those of you on the living wage group have mentioned this as well, that, you know, a lot of what our public wants to see more of really depends on having employees to staff it. And so, thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you to my colleague for bringing this forward. I think it's critical that we address wages this cycle and that we do so as aggressively as we're able to within our budgetary limits. I would also ask the city manager to provide us with some information about vacancies. You know, I hear anecdotally about different departments that are struggling. I know I've reached out to some departments and they've said, it's going to be a while until we can do that, it's going to be a while until we can respond because this person is out, or this person is out. We're relying on some contracts for programs that we've typically done in-house in part because of, you know, I'm hearing that there's such a high workload and so many vacancies. But I really don't have a sense -- I don't have a clear picture of what those vacancies are like, and I don't know if I've missed a memo or we just haven't [10:12:47 AM] been provided with that information. But I would ask for that pretty quickly. And also some information about which departments and at which levels. I need it in preparation for the budget, about a couple departments asking for kind of what are the different job titles, some of the programs that fall within that, and where are the vacancies. We're going back and forth with staff about how and whether they'll provide that information. But I do think we need a clear look. In the years that I've been on the council, I think we get -- we've made a lot of really good changes with how the budget is presented, and one of them are the budget hearings. I think they're much more useful these days and much, much more useful for the public who participates, but to some extent, we get less information in the budget. It's a little more challenging to go in and look department by department to see what kinds of [10:13:48 AM] programs are active programs that, you know, maybe the priorities have switched. Some of these programs have been going for decades, and may no longer be the priorities. If those are -- I certainly wouldn't support people losing their jobs, but there may be programs within different departments that we would rather stop and shift the money to wages. And so, this is really, I guess a conversation that will have to -- I mean, it's a little late in the budget to have this particular conversation, but I think if we had more of that information in our budget without having to ask for it through the q&a, I think we'd have a better understanding of where we want to shift priorities. One of the things I do is I go into the budget q&a, I do a tremendous job of this, go through the old budget q&as just to see -- I can tell you, I have a short list of programs that I know we continue to fund year after year after year that are probably not having the impact that putting the dollars into [10:14:49 AM] wages will. And so that's going to be kind of one of my key areas of focus, and I invite those of you who I know do the same work to collaborate on that. So, thank you all for bringing this proposal forward. And I do want to make sure that as we're having these conversations, we're being really clear about what some of those tradeoffs are. I know because homelessness was mentioned earlier, and that is certainly an area that this council has prioritized. It's one my office has prioritized even longer than it's been a council priority, and it's certainly been a priority for the community as well. I just want to remind the public who's listening, that we're funding that additional 3,000. It's an additional 3,000. It's not 3,000 a year. It's an additional 3,000 a year. That work is being funded through the American rescue plan act, and it will not be impacted by the budgetary discussions that we're having right now. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Yeah. Mayor, I have to say that we have failed. We didn't build enough housing [10:15:50 AM] here. We went through the whole process, which was codenext. And we just did not put it through. We could not punch it through. And we're paying for it now. People are moving out of Austin. They cannot afford to live here. And these are your workers. And they're not going to come back to Austin for now $15 an hour. Forget it. That's why we have a shortage. Look at the lifeguards. $500 signing bonus. And we still can't get them. Why? Because they don't live here in Austin anymore. I was telling people -- I said, you know what? You're going to be in a very bad situation if we don't build housing for our workforce people here in Austin. And they've not going to come back. You're fooling yourself. You know, if we did not commit ourselves to build the housing that we need. My neighbor, when she saw the [10:16:53 AM] appraisal, it jumped $300,000. She's not 65, you know, where your school taxes get frozen. She's talking about moving to Mexico now. You know, because the taxes -- I mean, I bought a house down there and I'm only paying $36 a year on my property tax. You can still buy an avocado there for 7 cents. You can drive your car down there for $3.50 a gallon. Why are you -- I mean, these people are not going to come back. We're losing them, and we're going to have to pay a lot more for the service that you want if you want them to come back and take care of your libraries, or your swimming pool guards. I mean, or you want them -- your workers are not coming back. I go to the restaurant, now I have to wait 30 minutes more than I normally would to get service because I cannot find the employees there, because [10:17:54 AM] they're out. Round Rock, Georgetown, pflugerville, they're all in the same situation, because they cannot afford to live in this area. And the further you move working class people, the more reluctant they are to come to Austin, and they're going to find a job. We flayed to be really serious about this. We need to build housing. And we're talking about the 30, 40, 50% mfi people. And if we don't build those homes, you're going to have your labor force here, arguing about 25, $35 here in the next two, three years. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Council member Fuentes and harper-madison. >> Fuentes: Thank you. I appreciate the conversation around housing. I noticed in the 2015 memo from [10:18:54 AM] the previous working group that a housing study was cited as part of the recommendations. It was based on the recommendations, and we know that the average rent here in Austin has gone up 32% to where it's $1,500 for a one-bedroom. So imagine someone who makes $45,000 being able to afford an apartment -- a one-bedroom apartment at $1,500. Or, being able to purchase a home at $550,000, which was the average cited back in January. So I did want to point out how important housing is as part of this conversation. I also wanted to mention, council member tovo, you bring up some excellent points with understanding better the vacancy rate, and having more information. And so colleagues, wanted to draw your attention to that. On next week's agenda, we have an item that is specifically focused on raising the livable wage to 22 and getting us that information that many of us have cited wanting to have more of. So perhaps, you know, we can -- I'll post in the message board, [10:19:54 AM] we can coalesce our questions, so that our hr team is able to provide that information as part of next week's conversation and through the budget process. I also wanted to know in the vacancy report that I received, there is, you know, lots to dig through. We have a position in the aviation department in 2017 that is paid at 117,000. And it's been vacant now for five years. I think there's a lot for us to dig through when we look at Lao can we best allocate our budget so we're able to raise the livable wage at a substantial rate. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member harper-madison. Sorry, hang on one second. >> Tovo: Can I just ask a super quick question? What vacancy report are you referring to? >> Fuentes: It is a -- the budget team, they have monthly vacancy reports, and so we can share that -- we can pass that around. >> Tovo: Is that something that we've been receiving each month, or is that something you specifically requested? [10:20:54 AM] >> Fuentes: I specifically requested. >> We can send it to the entire council. >> Tovo: Thank you. And just as a matter of practice, that's usually the way that works. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Council member harper-madison and council member kitchen. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. I'll be brief. Most of us have mentioned that a plan moving forward is something that we'd all like to see. So I'd very much like to see, in addition to just generally a plan, how do we get to -- that we need to be preparing for now to get us there in 2027. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes. And just quick lip, I want to mention also that I'm bringing an item for next week that relates specifically to the call takers, and the situation with the pay. I know our staff's been working very diligently, as has the police chief on that issue. [10:21:55 AM] I believe there may be some remaining issues, so my intent is to bring in on the addendum for next week also, and we can have that conversation also. >> Mayor Adler: [Indiscernible]>> Kitchen: I'm sorry, what? >> Mayor Adler: Next week? >> Kitchen: There's an issue related to the level of pay for call takers. And there's a lot of complexities around it, but it also relates to the vacancy rates. The bottom line issue is what we're experiencing with the 911 call center and the call takers and the difficulties that we have filling those positions and keeping our level of response at what it needs to be. >> Mayor Adler: Got it. >> Kitchen: So I just want to acknowledge that -- I know the staff's been working on this, at least as of today, I'm not sure we're all the way there. So I'm going to put that on the general dumb, and we'll see how much we've accomplished with what the staff has been able to [10:22:55 AM] do.ddendum, and we'll see how much we've accomplished with what the staff has been able to do. >> Mayor Adler: Great, thank you. And I do note there's an item coming back up on the agenda. I like, as we have been doing, holding your community accountable to the same standards we hold ourselves to. So as we move our number up, we need to make sure we're using our buying power to encourage others, to have others meet us. I couldn't tell whether it would inadvertently have us, if we don't get to 22 right away, requiring the rest of the community get there before we do, which I don't think was the intent, but we can take a look at that so that we're asking people to do everything we do, but not beyond what we do. >> I believe director Hayes had something to add. >> I just want to point out that the initial living wage committee came up with a five-year plan. The one that would have resulted in 1683. What we would propose in the budget this year through the city manager would be also a [10:23:56 AM] five-year plan. Best practice would say after 5 to 7 years, you do want to bring your community in to think about the unintended consequences in community. And so that is intentional to bring them back. And so, the plan would be a five-year plan for you to see and create what that sustainable plan would look like. And then we would then again bring the team back, add new groups to have the discussion again, to maintain the continuity of community input to the process. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate the conversation. I wanted to ask, I think this would be Ms. Hayes. If you could provide us with a memo that lists some of those other wage and benefit changes that we implemented, so that we can have some greater transparency and clarity over those. Some were temporary, some were longer-term. But I think that would be helpful to have that broader picture as part of the [10:24:57 AM] background as we're thinking about things. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Mayor Adler: I also want to let people know that item 65 that's on this agenda, this relates to power purchase agreements and it relates to something the mayor was referencing earlier, which has to do with extending our benefits to contracts, contracted workers. I do support postponing that to next week, the staff has asked me to postpone it to the 16th, which I think makes sense, because we can have that conversation as part of our other conversations. So I will be proposing that we postpone it. Now, I'm doing that with the understanding -- I know that there's been a request for an executive session on this issue. So I'm doing this with the understanding that the executive session will occur on the 14th, not the 16th. [10:25:58 AM] Because having the executive session on the 14th will allow for whatever conversation people wanted to have who asked for that executive session. So we do that on the 14th, and then we postpone the item from this Thursday to the following Thursday, the 16th. So, that's what I'm proposing. And I wanted to let people know that I -- you know, I am supporting postponing that agenda item. >> Mayor Adler: Looks like we can do it on the 14th. I think the director may need to be with us. >> Pool: Not available and her staff are out on the 14th, but the outside council is also not available. When I talked with the city manager and the general manager, in order to find a date that would address everybody's needs, we landed on the 16th. I apologize to my colleague who is bringing this item, that it's not possible to do it on the 14th. But that is actually the situation. [10:27:00 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Kitchen: Then I would like to explore having it on this Thursday. I don't think it's fair to have it the same day that we're trying to vote on it, and I do not support postponing this past the 16th. So we'll work offline to see if we can possibly do it this Thursday. I don't know what the reason was for asking for an executive session, but it's perfectly fine. I respect people's right to have that. But I don't want it to push to the same day that we are going to take up to the item. So let's explore what our options are. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Since it's on this week's agenda, and we have an Austin energy meeting, so I assume our staff are able to participate in today's meeting, I would also be interested in seeing whether it's an option for today. We could hear an executive session on today or Thursday, and at least get some sense of what the legal concerns that our colleagues have raised are. So if that's an option for today, that would be my request. But I concur. I just think we do better when [10:28:02 AM] we have information headed of time on some of these issues. And I don't have a clear sense of -- as a co- sponsor, I don't have a clear sense of what the legal concerns might be. >> Mayor Adler: Can you check on that? >> I don't think we're prepared to do it today, but we can look for Thursday. >> Kitchen: Okay. That will be fine. >> Tovo: Is it possible to hear from our colleagues what their league questions are in an executive session without having a presentation from our staff? >> Pool: If I could interject, I would like to hear from the general manager because she's the one and her staff who are preparing the presentation, including the legal ramifications, and to fast forward this to Thursday is not what I had posted on the message board. I was very clear on the June 16 executive session. I recognize your interest, council member tovo and council member kitchen. But as the chair of the Austin [10:29:03 AM] energy oversight committee, I have made -- taken specific steps and had numerous conversations with our staff to align it all up in order to present the information that is necessary to have, in fact, in executive session. And then there will be time that day to take up the item, which is when it is I had proposed it and I had general agreement on the message board from this from the dais. >> Tovo: Well, to be clear -->> Mayor Adler: -- >> Mayor Adler: Hang on a second. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: As the sponsor of this item, I have no idea what the legal questions are. I have also been talking -- you know, I've also been talking with the with the general manager, as I always would before I would bring anything like that. And I agreed with her to postpone it based on the fact that we would have the conversation in the executive session in a timely way, so that we would not be postponing it [10:30:04 AM] past the 16th. So, I don't see what the problem is about going back and asking her if she's available on Thursday. It's posted for Thursday. I had originally asked her to do it today. But then I -- you know, it was never explained to me. And there was never any conversation. >> Mayor Adler: Let's do this. Let's post it for executive session on Thursday. At the very least, I think it's reasonable to say let's identify the issues. So if we have people that have asked for that, they can let us all know why it is that they've asked for it. So at the very least, we have that information before the week is over. Council member tovo. >> Tovo: And maybe we have that -- thank you. I think that's responsive to the fact that co-sponsors that council member kitchen has brought this forward, and there are co-sponsors who put it on this week's agenda. Can you help me understand who requested the executive session? Were there colleagues who requested it, or was it a request of the staff? [10:31:05 AM] >> Mayor Adler: The chair of the Austin energy requested it. >> Tovo: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: So we'll put it on executive session on Thursday. At the very least, we can elevate at the very least the legal issues that are being looked at. >> Pool: I'm fine with doing that, as far as elevating the questions. I think we need to be aware that the elevation of the issues will then give our staff some time in order to be able to answer. >> Mayor Adler: Correct, correct. Two weeks in a row. >> Pool: Executive session agenda. >> Mayor Adler: That's correct. >> Kitchen: Wait, just a minute. I think what I heard, mayor, it sounds great what you're saying, is we're going to have executive session on the 14th. We will, if the general manager is available, at the minimum, we'll identify what the issues are. >> Mayor Adler: We're going to have it on executive session on June 9th. [10:32:05 AM] This Thursday. >> Kitchen: I'm sorry. >> Mayor Adler: And then we will have it again on the 16th. >> Kitchen: Yeah, I would just ask -- I know the general manager is prepared. I've had a lot of conversations, and I had a lot of conversations with her before I brought this item. So I know she's -- as long as she's available on the 9th, I know that she would -- she's prepared to address them. So let's just check her availability for the 9th as well. At a minimum, we can raise the issues. >> Mayor Adler: That's why I said at a minimum. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: We're just going to call the item up. >> Renteria: Mayor, point of order. Are we still on the hearing here? >> Mayor Adler: We're trying to. Thank you, council member. >> Kitchen: Okay, I think I understand. >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we're done. Thank you very much for being with us here today. All right. It's 10:30. Let's see if we can get through some of the pulled items. Tee them up for conversation. [10:33:05 AM] >> Tovo: Mayor, I'll just reiterate while we're shifting into our next subject, that I do -- I continue to believe that we need to look at our youth wages. We've had some conversations via text back and forth about some of our staff back and forth. We are not keeping up, as I mentioned, in our last council meeting, talking about wages. Our youth programs. Our youth programs -- our summer youth programs pay $8 an hour. If we want to really attract a diverse, broad group of young people to work here at the city for the summer, I think we need to be able to compete with some of the other jobs that will otherwise provide more financial compensation. So again, just a heads-up that I'm having those conversations and hope that we can get to a different path. >> Mayor Adler: That sounds good. And I look forward to seeing the numbers so I can see what it is that we can do and accomplish in this area. All right, colleagues. Let's go to some of the pulled [10:34:08 AM] items. Item number 61 was an item that I pulled. I'm in favor of moving forward with this item. I have some questions with respect to the Greenfield section. It's one that we really have to make sure that we hit well. If we do Greenfield in a way that -- we have to be careful that we don't do Greenfield in a way that just makes it so that we preserve what it is that's existing out there. For example, in the sos areas, we have large tracks -- I'm sorry, large tracks that are just paved over 100%. The Greenfield handled by itself require use of a lot of land for purposes that will ultimately [10:35:08 AM] mean, I fear that none of those tracks will ever redevelop. Which is absolutely the opposite of what we want done. So I think we need to take a look at the things that were associated with the original work that the staff had done, both environmental and beyond to make sure that we're providing the incentive or the opportunity for people to actually take advantage and use those environmental sections. So I'll probably have an amendment that looks at that to make sure that the Greenfield benefit actually gets utilized in the community. >> Tovo: Would you mind -- what clause are you concerned about? >> Mayor Adler: My understanding is that the ifc as it moves forward talks about various aspects of the environmental work. So I don't know which line it is [10:36:12 AM] on that, but my understanding is that this ifc includes in it moving forward with the Greenfield provisions that were part of the environmental work that was Teed up for us to consider. I think for some of the organizations, it's one of the real high priorities. >> Tovo: So the resolution is doing quite a few different things. Identified as priorities for a long while. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by Greenfield. >> Mayor Adler: It's the one -- item number 6 on page 6. >> It's online 136. >> Mayor Adler: Line 136. There it is. It's the ones -- like track corner of 171 in lion oak hill, [10:37:12 AM] which is an area that's 100% impervious cover. The question is how do we encourage a redevelopment on that track in a way that actually -- the green field rules say if you redevelop one of those tracks, you have to come into present day standards. It's not the existing rules. So that's a change. But to take a track like that and come into standards means that a significant part of that property is going to have to be put to those new existing standards. The concern was if we did that alone, no one would ever redevelop any of those tracks. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you for that. I look forward to seeing your amendment and to hearing from our city staff about what the recommendation is on that. >> Mayor Adler: And basically just asking staff for recommendations on how to do that in a way that ensures that the Greenfield standards would actually be used. >> Tovo: Currently it says [10:38:15 AM] require new and developed -- to use as a baseline when calculating drainage requirements and your intent is to bring an amendment that asks for staff to provide us with recommendations for how that could be achieved while ensuring that those sites with 100% impervious cover have an opportunity to redevelop. Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Correct. >> Tovo: All right. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: That was the only reason I pulled that item. Anybody have anything else on item 61? Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: Not a question necessarily, but I just appreciate the conversation, because I know that area not only is extremely environmentally sensitive, but also does have those full end-to-end parking lots that were paved before the sos took place. So we're looking for creative ways to make sure that as things redevelop, they're redeveloped in an environmentally responsible way, and, you know, that people are coming back to the city, for instance, for rezoning, that we're making sure that we get the best community benefit and environmental [10:39:15 AM] protection possible. Thank you for looking into that, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else on this item? Council member vela. >> Vela: I do support the proposal. I support environmentally strong standards. My only concern with it, similar to the mayor's, is that there are no impacts on overall housing costs. That's another issue that has been brought to my attention. And if we are going to implement a stricter standards with regard to water shed and environmental protection, I just think it's important to balance that out with additional entitlements for those same properties that are going up, so that the overall effect is zero on the housing costs. Just given our housing situation, at this time right [10:40:17 AM] now, I cannot support additional costs -- any additional costs on housing. We've got to stop the housing cost increases. >> Mayor Adler: I support you on that, but I think it's something we can do. I think these environmental organizations moving forward are really important. Making sure we're doing them in a way that still allows for the housing supply and the like and items are important, so we do need to take a look at that. >> Tovo: And I'll just call your attention, mayor, as the sponsor of this, I appreciate the opportunity to provide a response to council member vela. The last be it further addresses providing that information about whether there is any impact, but understanding that there are also costs when we don't address these issues in our development and we don't ask developments to guard against things like flooding. There is an impact that accrues to everybody who is part of the system and paying -- you know, whether they're paying costs through their Austin water bill [10:41:18 AM] or through other kinds of paying for the infrastructure that has to come in and clean up some of those issues. So I think there are costs on either side. But in any case, the last be it further resolved addresses that need for additional information, and thanks to council member Renteria for providing some of the wording for that. >> Vela: Thank you, and I completely agree. I know waller creek in my district in particular is in very bad shape. Some of my favorite moments in Austin has been swimming in Barton creek with my kids and my family, and that's a unique pleasure to be able to enjoy and urban water shed like that. I completely support moving forward with stricter environment regulations. I do appreciate that that resolution is in there. >> Tovo: Waller creek runs through my district as well, and there's a real concrete example [10:42:18 AM] of how flooding has impacted housing there because there's significant flooding in one area of Hyde park, and the staff have mitigated it by buying some land from the Alamo draft house, the old baker school in Hyde park, the property that the Alamo bought. One of their proposals was to construct housing in back portion of it. The city of Austin had to require a piece of it to use for -- let me not use the right term, but to help mitigate flooding in that neighborhood. And so what had been intended for affordable housing is now part of our flooding solutions for that area. So when we don't consider these -- when we don't have these as important considerations at the outset, it has impacts that are real, that are financial, that are sometimes going to impact where and how we can do other kinds of housing. [10:43:22 AM] >> I wanted to thank council member tovo and staff for working really hard to put together this resolution in a really thorough way I think is going to have really important seeds for protecting our community and our environment for decades to come. So, thank you. Pleased to be added as a co- sponsor. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo, I appreciate you adding -- that was the section I was looking at. That asks for the analysis on the impact of affordability impact analysis. I hear council member vela also suggesting, in addition to that, to the degree that there are impacts, that we ask staff to tell us how we can mitigate that, how we can still achieve the environmental protections that are envisioned by those ordinances and do it in a way that still has the least impact on housing supply and many other [10:44:22 AM] things that you mentioned. That is the language that I'm taking a look at, to have that also part of that sentiment. >> Tovo: So that's the same kind of thing, asking staff at that section as well to provide recommendations and if there are impacts on costs, to provide recommendations for mitigating those impacts. >> Mayor Adler: Cost or supply, but yes, recommendations that would mitigate them so that we can achieve them both. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I want to thank council member tovo for all the work that her staff's been doing on this and bringing this forward. It's a way to also bring forward some actions that the council has taken in the past, including some actions that we did take around the land development code previously in recognizing the importance of updating a number of these areas. It's very timely for us to be [10:45:23 AM] addressing this right now. I appreciate the conversation everyone is having. I don't think we need to be in a situation where we have to choose between housing and environment. I think it goes together. Appreciate, council member tovo, the language that you're talking about, which will get us the information back from staff about how we both mitigate and how we address the kind of issues that you raise. Thank you for bringing it in that way. >> Mayor Adler: My staff has touched base with me and made sure that I'm not limiting myself just to the language in lines 163. The more appropriate place, I'm being told, might be in the -- in or about the line 150. But it is to express that same sentiment. I'm not sure of the appropriate place. >> Tovo: Okay. [10:46:24 AM] Just to be clear, 150 talks about my expectation, or our expectation, those of the sponsors that we're going to begin with the code amendments that were part of the land development code. Because basically, we've given them a short timeframe. The reason why is that they're already crafted, thanks to council member kitchen's direction, and other directions of previous resolutions. We'll look at your amendments when they come forward. >> Mayor Adler: And I think, council member tovo, that a lot of the things that I understand council member vela asking to look at were also part of that same address on the land development code. I don't think it's necessarily reinventing the wheel on those things. I think that's what was envisioned back then, doing things to enable and to make sure that we were, in fact, getting these environmental advancements in place, and that [10:47:25 AM] people would use them. Without a corresponding impact on housing supplier costs. We will try to work on a language and post. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I just wanted to emphasize that we have -- we can certainly have the conversation again. I'm not saying we can't. I just wanted to remind folks that we had a lot of these conversations. A good part of these recommendations, we already passed. And we passed them in the context of the balancing and mitigation conversations that we had. So if there's other specific things that people feel like we're not addressing, I'd love to hear what those are. So I look forward to the conversation, when we get down to the specifics. >> Mayor Adler: And I think that's right. Earlier, it was a broader conversation. Environmental protections and advancements, in context of a larger work. This is bringing forth the environmental protection component of that, and what we're asking is -- we also take [10:48:25 AM] a look at those things that were part in parcel of this in that larger conversation. That we should also pull together to help ensure that we're not having an adverse effect on supply and the like. >> Kitchen: And I get that. Just wanting to understand what those are. We are also making some progress on the other thing. We still have a lot more to do. Just conversations is not specific. It doesn't help me understand about what we're trying to balance. I think we have proved all those things, too. These are all things I think that were all approved as part of those conversations that we were having. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's go on to the next pulled item. Next pulled item, item number 62. This is the Adu ifc. Mayor pro tem, you pulled this one. >> Alter: Yes. Thank you. I wanted to ask the sponsor some questions, and then after I've asked the sponsors, I wanted to invite staff up. [10:49:28 AM] I think it's really an opportunity for us to look at ads and see how we can make them more -- make it easier for folks to build them co-sponsor several resolutions that we're moving in this direction, many of them led by council member tovo. I do think, though, it's important for openness and transparency that we be really clear about what this resolution would be asking staff to do. I think there's a lot of terms in here and I don't think it's readily apparent to the community what the import is. So the first thing that I wanted to ask, and I think council member Kelly, you were the sponsor, is what does it mean to regulate -- I have my view of what it means, but I want to make sure that we're all on the same page. What does it mean to regulate ads as an accessory use to a primary residential use? [10:50:32 AM] >> Kelly: Thanks for asking that. My staff and council harper-madison's staff also went back and forth with the city legal department quite a bit on this because it doesn't initiate code changes, so a lot of those terms in the resolution are very legalesque, I guess, which doesn't help with a layperson, so I help you raising this. -- I appreciate you raising this. When you have a primary residence, where you spend your time, an accessory use would be for a secondary type location where an Adu is in the backyard, so you could have your family back there. Or you could take care of your grandmother and have them close by. >> Alter: So this doesn't tell me what this changes in the code. >> Could we pull city staff up to explain it in more detail? Thank you. [10:51:35 AM] >> Alter: Mr. Floyd, if you could answer what that means in terms of a code amendment change. >> Sure. Dsd development officer. The way we interpret that language is basically just to give a little context. Adus are currently -- type of Adu that people use the most, called two family residential use. It's not even called Adu in the code. And it's built into the principal use regulations. But we also have other types of ads that are all subject to being significantly changed based on the December resolution from last year. Things like guest houses and on-site worker housing. And those are codified in the general accessory use provisions of the code. And the way we interpret this resolution direction would be to basically pick a lane. Not have them scattered. What it would do is basically [10:52:36 AM] consolidate the regulations within the actual accessory use provisions of the code. And we think that makes sense in terms of putting them all in one place and having the regulations easier to administer and easier to locate. In terms of the substantive impact, either route is fine. As we craft our proposal and begin taking it through the process, we'll work with the law department and HPD. But we think that any of council's policy goals with respect to adus can be affectuated wherever they're in code. If you want to switch lanes and go back to the principal use approach, you'll be able to do that. So we're committed to delivering council substantive set of amendments that do the things laid out in your December resolution as well as your current resolution, in this particular direction provides [10:53:37 AM] guidance as to kind of where in the code they're going to go and how the regulations are going to be expressed. >> Alter: Is there a substantive impact, though, to where you are allowed to build an Adu? Because we currently have areas where you're not allowed to build an Adu. >> Council's direction from December, the resolution from December provides guidance as to, for example, looking at sf 1 and sf 2. All of that can be effectuated through the vehicle that we're talking about now, consolidated the regulations in the accessory use provisions. So we will work with the law department and HPD to craft appropriate amendments. But I think council's direction can be achieved within the accessory use part of the code. [10:54:37 AM] >> One of the things I've identified with ads is it doesn't feel like it's a very streamlined process. There's a lot of different moving parts. And so by moving it into that type of area, it will be a lot more streamlined. >> Alter: And I guess I'm not concerned about streamlining. I don't know that I'm necessarily concerned about the changes for the ads. I just want to make sure I understand what this is directing and how it relates to our previous resolution, which I didn't have in my backup. This resolution I found confusing because I was like, we already did X, Y, and Z. And then there are pieces of it that seem to do other things, but I don't know what those mean substantively. I want to understand what we are substantively saying beyond a cosmetic of where you put this [10:55:38 AM] in -- where you put it in the code. Since it was your resolution, and I have some other -->> Tovo: I have the same questions. I would ask that the last resolution be put in the backup. As you're answering my colleagues' questions, if you could explain how this code amendment differs, because we asked for -- I understand that work is in progress. We asked you to streamline the different kinds of accessory dwellings and the different kinds of second family. I'm not clear on how this differs. If you could address that. >> Sure. So, I think the first resolution from December, it initiated some amendments, but it appeared to leave other things out of the actual initiation. And simply wanted a staff [10:56:43 AM] recommendation. It provides specific guidance on what the form of the regulations take. It provides guidances to how they'll be streamlined and where in the code they'll go, which is kind of the -- asked for a recommendation and didn't include that in the initiated amendments. So when we look at these together, this second resolution I think provides firmer guidance. It would affect the way amendments are provided. If you want to go back to the principal use path where two family residential use is currently regulated in the code, it won't be hard to reformat the amendments in that manner. So basically, the amendments that we would bring through the public process would be sort of codified generally in the family [10:57:44 AM] of code sections that's around 252893. In that area of the code. We would provide all the council provided in December. The preservation bonus. All of those substantive provision, we would find a way to fold in through that context. >> Kitchen: So I think what I hear you saying is the first be it resolved is about structure. Of the actual code. It is not a substantive change. It's about structure of the code. And I hear mayor pro tem perhaps asking what does this do in terms of substance. You need to look at the rest of the be it resolves for some of the substance changes. [10:58:51 AM] If you look at some of the other ones, there are changes related to parking. There are changes related to providing flexibility for where on a lot you locate an Adu. I heard your broader question, which I thought I heard as trying to figure out what this does. You can't just look at the first be it resolved to ask what the substance changes are. So that's my comment. I think it's useful to provide all of these changes. Substance changes as well as the first changes, which really just goes back to putting it all together in the same place, so we can see it more readily, instead of pick and choose, which is one of the problems with the existing land development code. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Again, I do not like to vote on things when I do not understand what they do. [10:59:53 AM] I hear what you're saying that this is a change to structure. I guess what I'm trying to understand is, once you make it an accessory use doesn't that then apply to every residence? Regardless of the other -- I mean, we have the other direction, which I support, and I'm not saying I don't support this. I just want to make sure I'm understanding what it's doing, and I'm not sure that it is strictly a structural formatting thing. And I think we have to be transparent about what we are asking for. >> So I think -- let me try to address what may be one of your concerns. Under the current general accessory use provisions, for example, the guest house that's in that provision, that would not trigger any parking requirements. And we know that that's not council's intent with regard to ads. You're clear on what the parking reductions are in the [11:00:53 AM] resolution. We're clear on what the current parking requirements are for the two-family residential use type of ads. So we would, in crafting the amendments, make sure we make the necessary changes to implement that. There are differences that council desires with respect to the types of ads that would be allowed in different zoning districts. And so that can also be crafted into the accessory use, the general accessory use provision. So we would make sure, in working again with a law department and with HPD, to craft the amendments in a way that adheres to the fairly specific direction that council provided in the December resolution. >> Alter: So you're saying in making the accessory use, you can still differentiate in any way that we wanted to differentiate by moving it there, simply that's not making a determination on where it's [11:01:54 AM] allowed. And again, I'm not saying I don't want it in more places. I just want to understand what this is doing. >> No, we would craft the amendments in a way where the development -- that those would all be crafted according to council's direction, which does vary based on zoning districts. So we would work with law and with HPD, and we would craft amendments that adhere to that. And there are other places within the broad accessory use parts of the code where there is some variation based on zoning district, so that would not be unique to this. We would work to flesh that out. I don't think it would have any unintended consequences, council member alter. >> Alter: Okay. So in consolidating things, you would still be able to differentiate however a policy evolves. It's just placing it in one place. So if somebody says I want to build an Adu, and no matter where they are, they just go to [11:02:55 AM] the one place instead of having to look in multiple places. >> Absolutely. >> Alter: Okay, thank you. I appreciate that clarity. And then, what does the second-to-last be it resolved actually do? It says the city council initiates amendments to city code title 25 to provide for limited modifications to regulations to facilitate construction of ads on lots where strict application of title 25 would prohibit Adu construction. Such modifications would not -- may provide flexibility for locating an Adu in buildable areas of a lot. Council member Kelly? >> Kelly: Thank you. Erica is on the line from our legal department, and I believe she can speak to that as well. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Erica Lopez, assistant city attorney. I believe the intent of that language was as there's multiple [11:03:58 AM] regulations that come into play with an Adu. For example, there may be compliance with a setback compliance. There might be a heritage tree that is impacting the area that could be buildable. I think this was trying to see if there was some places in code where there could be built in an administrative process, where there could be some limited relief from that. That takes place on an individual kind of scale, to allow for the actual construction of an Adu. So if you applied all the regulations cumulatively, that would result in the Adu not being able to be constructed. So this would be kind of tasking staff with the direction to look for areas where some modification would be appropriate, and I think it [11:05:00 AM] would just be very limited, and I think Brent could elaborate on what he envisions in that. >> Ellis: Thank you, Erica. >> So, during the code rewrite process, there were various instructions from council, which staff wasn't always able to implement because these are tricky issues. But there was various directions to try to prioritize regulations and provide for -- if you have a situation, where as Erica described, where there are ways we could administratively build in certain relief valves that would help allow the desired use. And an example might be, for instance, somebody has a lot within a zoning district where you can do an Adu. It's a big enough lot. There aren't any impervious cover issues. But there's an Austin energy easement that prohibits the location of an Adu or there's the critical root zone for a heritage tree. Would there be a way to build into the regulations some limited allowance to move into the setback a little bit? [11:06:01 AM] Would there be a way to build into the regulations a limited allowance to exceed mcmansion a little bit to the minimum extent that that would be necessary to allow an Adu without hurting the heritage tree. We wouldn't ever bring -- without specific direction, we would not bring council an ordinance that varies there to tree regulations. And obviously Austin energy has its easement, so we wouldn't be messing with that. But we would look for ways to provide releech that would allow the location of the Adu within a buildable area. One of the guiding considerations I think would have to be, can we really define these circumstances with precise lairty. We don't want staff in a situation where they're essentially granting a boa variance based on subjective requirements. So I think for those reasons, as Erica said, whatever we would bring council in response to [11:07:02 AM] this would be very limited, and might not do everything that the people would like. Those are the types of scenarios that we would evaluate and see if we could come up with something that would help facilitate ads in those cases, where as Erica said, the cumulative regulations on particular lots have the effect of not allowing them. >> Alter: Okay. So what would come back to us would be actually very specific. It's not a process where then there would be rules that would be separate from council approval. >> One of the things that we would look at is whether there would be a possibility for giving the boa some sort of additional authority with respect to ads. So that would be something we would look at. But with regard to the administrative side, it would be a very clearly defined set of regulations that define the [11:08:03 AM] circumstances in which one regulation is varied a little bit because it's impossible otherwise to locate an Adu on a property that otherwise is in title I. We would leave impervious cover alone. We wouldn't modify lot size. And we wouldn't -- nor again would we modify the heritage tree regulations. But we would look for circumstances where if a critical root zone prohibits an Adu, are there ways that we could locate the Adu elsewhere on the lot. So those are the types of scenarios we would look at. There are difficult issues to address. So again, I think whatever we would bring council would be fairly limited in scope and we would make sure that it's very clearly described and defined. >> Alter: Thank you, I appreciate that. Obviously, there are challenges and everyone on the dais has said that they're committed to [11:09:04 AM] allowing for additional ads and we've taken steps with the goal of making them easier, all of which are not yet available for us to vote on. So I'm going to think about that and see if I have any amendments to that piece there for added clarity. I do want to flag that I will likely have an amendment related to ads and utility regulations. We've been seeing that a lot lately and I think we need to have some better mechanisms related to that. So, don't know exactly what that's going to look like yet, but I just wanted to flag that. >> Kelly: Could you circulate that before Thursday's meeting? >> Alter: I will circulate that as soon as I get it. I don't know exactly when I will. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: Thanks for the questions and conversation so far. So I think I want to understand from staff, and then also from you, council member Kelly, whether it's also -- whether [11:10:04 AM] y'all's understanding is the same. So back in December, we had two resolutions. I would ask our staff to put both of those in backup, the previous ones, the ones that I brought forward with colleagues in December initiated multiple things, including an amendment to city code would allow internal or external ads, and in the course of constructing it, it would ask for options for scaling the size of ads based on lot size, restricting ads as a short-term rental. Various other things. It asked for options about a streamlined definition of accessory dwelling unit that eliminates the distinctions among the different types of the code. I did not understand that you didn't understand that that was to be part of the code amendment. That's interesting information. Did you get back to us with those recommendations? [11:11:05 AM] >> We have not. We certainly can do that. One of the -- I'm glad to get this clarity on the record. We had interpreted the recent direction with regard to sort of codifying ads as an accessory use as sort of essentially directing us to include that within the code amendment. So the revised definitions and all of that would come forward as a package with a substantive amendments in the code amendments that go forward. But council member tovo, if you would like the recommendation with regard to the definition to come separately as a recommendation, we can certainly do that as well. >> Tovo: I was just asking, because it sounded like in your answer to the mayor pro tem, that you were not working on this piece because there wasn't clarity about which we wanted to initiate. And I was just simply pointing out that we asked for you to return with those recommendations for a streamlined definition, including external and internal units, and also for removing [11:12:07 AM] requirements related to age, ability, occupation, or family status by February 1. So, yes. Providing information about how the different -- how the different amendment options would impact -- how they would kind of total out based on different kinds of zone properties. So you clarified with me that we didn't get that information. So how does -- I think I'm still confused about how these work together. Because we initiated that work. It was my understanding from my staff's conversations with you that that work is you should way, that it's coming forward. And so I think I understood from what you were saying that this sort of answers the question that we asked you to provide an answer to, that we asked you to provide recommendations for streamlined definition. We're going to skip over -- if this passes, we're going to skip over that and provide them as an [11:13:08 AM] accessory, by dealing with it as an accessory. I guess I share the same question the mayor pro tem does. I'm not understanding the distinction. But I guess I would ask my colleague, council member Kelly, what do you see as the advantage of having it be an accessory use versus seeing what the other options are? >> Kelly: Having them in the code together like what staff has explained to us is helpful, especially in the community had when they're trying to figure out where to look, I can tell you the land development code is not something I'm an expert in. And even digging into this and to be complementary to what you did in December, was a difficult task. And I know that councilmember harper-madison's office safetied us with. With the code as complicated as it is, I think putting it in one place instead of different places is helpful to not just us as council members, but to community as well. >> Tovo: Sure. I completely agree. I don't think there's anything in the work that preclude it had it from being in the same spot. I don't think we ever talked [11:14:11 AM] about it. I think that's great. What do you see the advantage of having it under accessory use under the code. I'm just wondering what kind of conversations you had that led you to put it right there? >> Kelly: Yeah. Erica, do you want to explain how we came to that conclusion? I think it would be more impactful since we discussed that together, if you talked about it? >> Um I'm sorry, Erica Lopez, assistant city attorney. I think there were kind of multiple places in the code that talk about accessory dwelling units. And as an accessory use if there's already a principal use, there seemed to be two types of ads already authorized under accessory uses. So I think that that was the -- that was a place [11:15:15 AM] where it could easily be put in to the code. And there might be different regulations that apply. I think that it is my understanding that the intent of this is to allow the construction of more adus in more districts and so this was a place in the code where it was kind of based on the principal use and maybe not necessarily the zoning district. >> Tovo: I see. So what we had initiated did extend ads to sf 1 and sf 2. I'm not sure I could answer that question about whether that broadens it or not, but it sounds like you're suggesting it does broaden it to different zoning categories that were not contemplated in the first resolution. Maybe that's a question that we need to take up between [11:16:15 AM] here and Thursday. I'm not understanding -- >> Kelly: If we could let staff speak to that. >> So councilmember tovo, just a couple of things. I'm sorry for the confusion, if any of the confusion is deriving from my comments, I apologize for that, but we would in crafting the amendments, if they're put in accessory use part of the code, we would absolutely adhere to the direction with regard to the differences between zoning districts. This would simply be consolidating the regulations into a single part of the code. And we would make sure that all the other council direction which we're very aware of from the December resolution, is adhered to. And that would involve rewriting those sections which is on the table anyway. You've given us direction appropriately with regard to the on-site work housing, guest housing, all that stuff. So those sections are going to be recrafted in the amendments that we bring [11:17:18 AM] you. With regard to the stream lyoned definition, we had some delay in putting together this ordinance as we waited for and worked with law to process kind of the Acuna ruling, but we have the material for a streamlined definition that we could bring you through a memo fairly quickly if you would like us to do that. When we saw this resolution, we thought it may be desirable rather than to have a recommendation come forward separate from the amendments to just bring it all forward as part of a proposed ordinance. Councilmember tovo, we can certainly provide you a sort of draft, a memo that walks through some recommendations and we can do that very quickly. >> I'll think about it between here and Thursday. I mean, this is on today's agenda and not to be rude about it, but the work was requested back in February. I don't know if this resolution has been in progress since then, but I'm -- I don't know whether it makes sense to have the [11:18:18 AM] streamlined definition come forward or not at this point. I know when we requested is this [indiscernible], the code amendments were in progress. So I'm just trying to understand the order of things here. So I think what I'd like -- so I think what I hear you saying, Brent, is that this resolution builds on, it does not reverse course from the resolution that we've already passed. >> Absolutely not. >> Tovo: So councilmember Kelly, I want to be sure that since you're bringing this forward it's not a staff recommendation, though it sounds like it has some clear elements that the staff have identified. Is that your intent as well? So for example, when we when we initiated the code amendments it was to broad ebb the use of ads along with and tied to the preservation of an existing single-family dwelling. Is that your intent? >> Kelly: What I want you to know real quick before I answer that, I'm other, is [11:19:19 AM] I'm not trying to step on your toes or undo any of the work that you or the rest of the council has done. If anything my purpose in this resolution specifically is to add more fall to our Adu policy as a whole. And to daylight issues that I think that we could really address and change positively for the city. I want to increase housing and I am to remove barriers to housing and I want the resolution to complement yours. I don't want to undo anything that you've worked so hard on. And I can tell that you have some frustration that some of the things you've asked for have not come forward and I'm not trying to make things worse by bringing this forward. I want you to know that. >> Tovo: Sure. And I appreciate your whole interest, which I think the whole council shares, that we're making adus more available throughout the city. So I am simply trying to -- it's great to have more people involved in this work. I'm simply trying to understand because it's been in progress for awhile, I want to make sure that they are working hand in hand and [11:20:22 AM] sometimes it runs off schedule. So I don't fault staff for not having it finished. I know it's coming forward. Andrew Rivera in a good pace. I know our staff are working closely as I understand with preservation Austin which have looked at other cities to really craft that preservation piece of it. I really want to be sure that your understanding is the same as staff. That this is going to build on and have those other provisions as it moves forward. >> Kelly: Absolutely. This took several months for my staff and councilmember harper-madison's staff to figure out and it looks much better than how it started because we included staff and legal in our conversations and had several meetings to ensure that our intent, which is to streamline ads and to remove some of the requirements there, to be sure that they're available to more people at a lower cost, was achieved. And we believe we've achieved that, but for the general public I'm glad that mayor pro tem brought it up. It is hard to understand what the resolution means which is why I've leaned [11:21:22 AM] heavily on staff to show you all that we have had these discussions and that is what our intent is. >> Tovo: So it is your intent to build on the kinds of criteria that were set in the previous one. >> Kelly: Absolutely. >> Tovo: I'm still a little confused about the accessory, but I'll go back to that passage of code and -- >> Kitchen: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Hang on. Councilmember Ellis will be next. >> Tovo: I think it was Erica and Brent both kind of described what kinds of -- you offered some example, Erica, in particular, of the kinds of modifications that might be included in that second to last be it further resolved to craft an Adu and I wanted to ask councilmember Kelly, do you envision -- the examples were what I would regard as minor modifications. Did you have a discussion with the staff about critical environmental features and where those might fit into this? [11:22:24 AM] Would you regard those as minor modifications or would critical environmental features not be one of the things that is modified around? >> Kelly: I believe we need to pay attention to environmental features and that is something that the staff will take into consideration when they come back to us with recommendations. My thoughts specifically about that part of the resolution were things like a second water meter being required. If it's a -- for me I could see justification of if it's a whole family and grandma lives in the back in an Adu, that you don't have a second water meter because you're billing for the same household. Making that optional is something that I saw that could be removed as a barrier. There's significant costs associated with that. When it comes to the environment, and the environment is important and we need to protect that. But some of those limited modifications that staff had recommended could come back to us as a possibility. We're speaking theoretically here. Are important for us to [11:23:25 AM] consider and understand and have discussions about. >> Tovo: Okay. I guess we'll see what those modifications are, but I wanted to get a sense of what kind of modifications you were directing. It was my understanding and maybe we need to get clarity that a second water meter was no longer required. I thought we were talking about this section more about physical -- modifications based on the physical landscape of the site. >> To me that's actually on the building so it's physical. I apologize for the miss interpretation. >> Tovo: It's a question that comes up all the time but I thought our water utility had addressed it. Maybe it's some clarity that we can get by Thursday. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember Ellis? >> Ellis: Thank you, mayor. I remember this language coming up when we were doing the land development code revision about some of the setback issues and being able to preserve the trees and having a little bit of wiggle room with those setbacks. So in my opinion this predates councilmember Kelly's time on the dais, but she's come up with a [11:24:25 AM] creative solution that, yes, has been discussed before, but that's what part of collaboration is about is we can have these conversations again and again and still keep trying to solve the problems. I appreciate her office and councilmember harper-madison's office working so diligently on this. I know this was something in year's past that I've thought about and we get to be here again to vote on this this week to address the situation. You know, this to me is not a conversation where just because we've passed a resolution doesn't mean we can't continue to think about doing this work or think about it from different angles on different timelines because it's important that people know what they can and cannot do with the property that they own. You shouldn't have to hire a lobbyist just because you want to build an accessory dwelling unit. I can't wait to iron out some of the details and see what comes back from the resolution that we passed in December. I think that councilmember Kelly has been really [indiscernible] With this and I appreciate her asking me to co-sponsor. I look forward to supporting [11:25:26 AM] this on Thursday. Tells thank you, councilmember Ellis. >> Mayor Adler: Council member vela and councilmember kitchen. >> Vela: I want to thank councilmember Kelly for bringing forward the resolution. My wife and I just recently built an Adu in our house and it went well, everything is fine, but it is an unnecessarily complicated process. And to the extent that we can streamline it and reduce the costs involved for a family that wants to build an Adu, we should absolutely do that. I think this resolution goes in that direction and I look forward to seeing staff come back to it later. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, mayor. I agree. Ultimately I think that Mr. Loy I can't, you said something earlier that I think appropriately [11:26:26 AM] articulated it. You said this would make it easier to register and administrate and consolidate the regulations which I think is important and one of my staffers pointed out that two of the goals of imagine Austin say that the land development code should achieve two of the bullets, ensure the delivery of efficient services and provide clear guidance in a user friendly format. So that's why I was so happy to be a part of this discussion process because I do think it's complementary. I don't think that one takes away from the other. I do appreciate that the way staff sees it is that you get clear guidance and don't necessarily have to come back to council for additional direction. This feels like it's putting it in a box that you can very easily find a solution. One of the things I want to say, and this may or may not be the time or day to say it, but one of the things I would like to point out is I appreciate you offering me gratitude, but it's not me. It's Lauren Harding in my [11:27:27 AM] office who gets the credit. This is one of the times that we really recognize how much we lean on our staff and their various degrees of subject matter expertise which so happens that she's done this and has been a part of this process and discussion for long enough where she has real clear insight and knowledge which is very important. I think we should probably do a proclamation for council staffers at some point to just really acknowledge how much we appreciate them and the work that they provide for us. So thank you, councilmember Kelly, for bringing this item forward. I think ads really do provide opportunities for smaller, less expensive homes and neighborhoods that are otherwise filled withstand alone houses. I think it would be the only way our family is able to pay the taxes on the expensive teeny- tiny house that we bought in central east Austin. I think one of the terms we hear in this housing discussion is gentle density and in my mind ads really [11:28:27 AM] do represent that gentle density. I'm happy that we're building on the work that councilmember tovo's office brought forward with the previous resolution. I think ads are compact on average. We use 40% energy than a single detached home. That's equivalent to taking nearly 100 cars off the road a year. And Caleb in my office is certainly a part of bringing that talking point forward. I appreciate that you put it in its own lane. If for some other reason these conversations we're having around housing and mobility are directly connected that I appreciate that you inadvertently connected the two. Doing that I think would help offset homeowners' rising costs. We spoke about that earlier today. Anything and everything that we're able to do to offset the costs is important. It fulfills some of our imagine Austin goals in addition to making things simpler. And making it easier for hour constituents to consume. I think it also says that [11:29:29 AM] our land development code should be efficient and should provide clear guidance in a user friendly format. I think we spoke to that earlier about transparency with the budget. Everybody's got to be able to do this, lay people included, relatively new council members included. We should all be able to be a part of the conversation regardless of where we are in the conversation. Just entering it or been here talking about it for 10 years, I think we should all -- the baseline should be similar. And accessible. Ilike how the resolution really does build upon councilmember tovo's December direction and gives staff more flexibility. That's what I heard you and our assistant city attorney say more flexibility, both to be creative and to come back to us with the best Adu ordinance that they can come up with for us to consider at a future date. I want to be sure to reiterate how much we truly do rely on the subject matter expertise of our staffers and just again just [11:30:31 AM] say a deep, grateful thanks to all the staff members both for council and otherwise that had to go through multiple iteration for months to really figure out exactly how to best articulate the information that got brought forward today. Thank you everybody who worked so hard to bring it forward. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I just wanted to say that I also appreciate this resolution as well as the previous one that we passed back in November because I'm looking forward to making significant changes to ads. I want to say thank you to councilmember Kelly for bringing this forward. I think it builds on as R as others have said. The other thing that might be helpful, Brent, is I took a look at -- we had a lot of questions and I did too before I signed on to co-sponsor and I appreciate being a co-sponsor. [11:31:33 AM] The language talks about one specific question, 25-2-893. So for my colleagues who are asking questions about that aspect of it, if you just look at that section, it's just a list. It's just a list of the different things that can be considered accessory uses and it has a couple of those in the list that relate to ads. So it makes sense as a place to consolidate. What might be helpful I think to answer folks's questions is to indicate whether that term, putting it in this section, and I know you guys will know this already and be careful as you write into it, but whether that term as an accessory use is someplace else in the code also that might inadvertently attach something to it that was not intended. I know you probably already know that because you probably know the land development code code like the back of your hand, but in any case if you can point [11:32:34 AM] out to other folks as you're going through this if that term is used in other parts of the code that might be helpful. >> Kelly: Council member, I know that Erica and the law department really looked at the code and she might be able to speak to that now if there are any conflicts. I believe they identified every place in the code according to what our intent was with this resolution so that there wouldn't be any conflicts. >> Kitchen: I trust law to have already done that. I'm saying for my colleagues asking questions about that it might be helpful provide that information. >> Kelly: Gotcha. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. I appreciate this resolution. It's good. Adus is something that there have been numerous resolutions on this through the years and we continue to hone it and make it better every time. I think collectively everybody feels like we've all been working on this and I think the product represents that kind of collective work. So I appreciate this. I think, though, it is [11:33:34 AM] timely to catch up on the resolution that came from councilmember tovo last year because we had thought we would be further along that in this point too. So if this can help bring that forward that would be great. >> Just to clarify for council, at the committee meeting, the housing and planning committee meeting, councilmember tovo I think mentioned that she expected the ordinance would be coming forward in the fall, the code amendments, and that is definitely our plan. So we are on track to do that. And if council would like a memo in advance of that that kind of walks through the ideas for a streamlined definition, we can certainly do that as well. I do think that the currently proposed resolution that is supplemental to the December resolution provides direction where we can consolidate all of those recommendations into the proposed ordinance that would go through the public process and come to council in the fall. But we're certainly -- our work is well advanced. [11:34:35 AM] Multiple staff from different departments have been working on this and so we're certainly happy to provide a preview memo on some of the high level issues or just bring it all forward as a consolidated proposal in the fall. >> Mayor Adler: So this is like the third or fourth time you have made that offer so now I'm going to accept that offer because it sounds as if the work's been done and it won't be a lot of work to generate that kind of interim report. And because we don't want to take you off -- there are so many things on your plate right now, residential and commercial area. We'll be passing this week further things with the compatibility ordinance. As long as it doesn't slow down that work, if you advance the work if you could give us a brief highlight of where you guys are that would always be nice. Thank you. Anybody else have anything else on this? Kathie? >> Tovo: Yeah. I think I would underscore that point. At this point if we've now -- if you're no progress [11:35:35 AM] with the resolution, -- I don't know about the memo, I guess at this point, if it's going to slow down the work. But I think we're going to need to see different options for it before we pass the code amendment. So that was the intent of trying to get that information out. I'm not sure that this -- I don't think that first passage resolves those questions. I know we sort of started our conversation there, but I don't think putting it in accessory use resolves the questions that we asked you to identify in streamlining the definition but I may be wrong and not understanding correctly. I'm look agent that passage and I don't see how moving that to that piece of the code resolves the questions that we asked you to answer. Do you, Brent? >> It's not entirely clear like what streamlined definition means so sort of [11:36:35 AM] consolidating ads as an accessory use to my mind as I read it spoke to the idea of a streamlined definition. However, did I'm mistaken on that we're happy to engage on this issue any way council wishes. I think all the guidance provided by the mayor and our council members has been really helpful and we look forward to bringing council a proposal that achieves all the different objectives that are outlined in the two different resolutions. >> Tovo: Can I just ask do clarification? Where was streamlined not very clear? >> In the December resolution where it talks about bringing recommendations forward two a streamlined definition. All I was saying, councilmember tovo, was the current direction that's proposed in the resolution for Thursday that talks about sort of consolidating ads as accessory uses, to me that dovetailed into that [11:37:36 AM] earlier direction and sort of provided the guidance needed to just bring it all forward as a single ordinance. >> Okay. You provided a long memo recommending some of these things. If there is additional clarity needed for streamlining I think we'll have to go back to the memo that you provided, but to the extent -- just looking at the language that we provided, it was talking about removing the requirements to age, ability, occupation or family status, which in essence are within those different -- we were streamlining because there are different descriptions of an accessory dwelling. Some are restricted by occupation, some are restricted by age and family status, so that is what was meant. I didn't realize there was not clarity on what was meant by streamlined because we did actually define it. If you could take a look at that passage and make sure there are still not questions about what supercell lined means, I think that's really important. I think that's the crux of [11:38:37 AM] that section was to make sure that we still don't have two family dwellings, caregivers' cottage or whatever those were called. That was pretty well spelled out. But if there's need for additional clarity we can certainly provide T and maybe this resolution provides us with the opportunity to do that. But I thought between the resolutions and your memo and the conversations we had that we were pretty clear on what we meant by streamlining. I think it's critical that we get that right. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's move on to the next item. Anybody have anything else on this? >> Kelly: Can I just thank staff for all the work they did to help make this resolution possible? I really appreciate you all being here today to answer questions as well. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Let's move on to item 66. This was pulled by councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair, I'm sorry, I should have done this previously but I'm going to pass around an amendment to item number 66. [11:39:46 AM] Acm Gonzalez I assume you're here to speak to 66? >> Just here to help guide staff that will help answer questions. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. I appreciate that. Who would be the best staff member to speak to this compatibility item? >> So we've got Erica leak from housing and planning development here as well as Rosie truelove from housing and development. >> Harper-madison: Are me here, here or on the screen? Oh, I see them. Thank you. >> Harper-madison: My first question is I would like to more about the process that led to the selection of the proposed distances in the resolution? Were they based on any of our peer cities in particular, and were they [11:40:47 AM] informed by advice from staff? I guess I'd like to know more about how we got to these specific numbers. And back to my previous point about everybody in terms of the baseline, everybody starting at the same level I think it's helpful as a reference for all of us to be on the same point and understand the implications of this. >> Sure. And are you speaking to the distances that were included in the memo sent out on Friday or something else? >> Harper-madison: I'm speaking specifically to the distances that we make reference to when we talk about the threshold? Under those circumstances it would be this height or this distance. I'm speaking of those specific numbers. I think 65 is one of the numbers and 90 is one of the other numbers. I could get you specifically where the language -- give me just a moment. >> Mayor Adler: So I think that's probably a question, councilmember harper-madison, directed to the author and the sponsors because that came from -- >> Harper-madison: Oh, I assumed those numbers were a part of -- like built into [11:41:49 AM] the system. Those specifically came from the sponsors. >> Mayor Adler: Those came from the sponsors that came from the conversations we've had from a council and as a body over the last three years. Most specifically the conversation we had in November, what we were trying to say. If we were going to try and find where an agreement might be that people could agree on and move forward with greater than a six-five vote or seven-four vote what would that be? So it was urging people to talk to people that they ordinarily don't talk to in our subquorums to try to come up with something that would represent not what anybody wanted, but what we could agree on, where the Venn diagrams might cross with the hope of being able to pass something with enough of a group that we [11:42:50 AM] might avoid litigation and all other things so that they can be implemented and used at the same time. The specific changes with respect to 60 to 65 and 40 to 45 came because we had been hearing collectively all of us from folks that were building that the extra five feet, while not having a significant visual impact, would have a significant impact on ability to put in desirable ground floor retail and other kinds of uses. So we also put in as we discussed, if not last November, is we discussed collectively as a body, several weeks ago when we were saying hey, what do people think about these kinds of issues? Would there be agreement on these even though we know that it's not what anybody wants. It goes too far for some people and not far enough for other people. We're just trying to find [11:43:50 AM] that spot. >> Harper-madison: I'm assuming the spokesperson, so I'll direct my questions to you. I think the point I was trying to make is during the course of trying to level set, I wasn't part of the original codenext conversations either as a layperson or even as a council person. Trying to acclimate and get caught up is complex to say the least. I think it's to my benefit as a member of my community and being able to speak in layman's terms to my constituents about this subject that frankly alooted d1 residents have been excluded from. So I think -- most of what I'm attempting to do is be able to speak to them about where the numbers come from. And I think I understood it as you describe it, but that almost sounds like the numbers are arbitrary. I would like to be able to say that based on this is [11:44:50 AM] why we got here as opposed to this was the closest we could get to consensus. I'd like to know if there's -- that doesn't necessarily have to be something that gets answered right now, but eventually I would like to be able to speak more to the numbers and the significance of the numbers. >> Mayor Adler: And I think probably everybody might have different rationals that they each used to come to that place. For me if also included taking a look at percentages of tracks that have been stopped and then taking a look at the kinds of opportunities that would be opened up or unlocked for being able to do this to see whether or not it was sufficiently material as to before. And it seemed that way to me. But I would defer to co-sponsors on this. Mayor pro tem, I don't know if you want to address how you got to the numbers for you. >> Alter: Sure. [11:45:50 AM] I'm just pulling up. So I think we went back to the discussions that we had with codenext and looking at the working group and the zap resolution. These are all found if you go to the message board where we originally posted our proposal. There's some dynamics there. There's some graphs there that show kind of various proposals for compatibility that had been put forward and I think we kind of looked at those different -- those different proposals as a starting point of okay, we've had lots of discussions about these different pieces, which kind of led us to have a range of what we were looking at. And as we talked through that range we landed at particular numbers. [11:46:51 AM] One of the reasons that we differentiated across the larger and the medium corridors was a sense that we didn't feel like the same compatibility rules should apply that we were comfortable with relaxing compatibility more if we designated some corridors as the larger corridors than if we -- than we were on some of the medium corridors. And because we were trying very much not to have it be a street by street process in terms of how we were doing it, we wanted to have, you know, take definitions that we had that were well accepted and established so that it wasn't the street in and the street out, but that there was some underlying planning concept that underlined the particular street choices. It seemed that we should differentiate across those because one of the things [11:47:52 AM] that we had heard throughout the whole process from our community was that not every street was the same and what people were comfortable at on one street was not the same as another and to we had that sort of general idea of how do we do that? If you look, the 150 number for 65 was where zap and the working group were at and the codenext was at 100. And so we kind of said, okay, we'll do 100 on the large corridors but we'll do -- 100 feet or 65 on the larger corridors and we'll do 150 on the medium corridors. So that's where we got the numbers and I think 100 is an easy number to understand having a round number is also important. >> Harper-madison: I appreciate that. I think where I might be failing my constituents, and this is no fault of anybody's but my own, speaking out of turn. I think I might be failing my constituents in that I'm [11:48:54 AM] saying we are relying heavily on the contribution of planning professionals to come up with these numbers. We're relying heavily on comparisons to peer cities, etcetera. And so I want to first of all make sure that that's accurate. I don't want to share inaccuracies. And I really appreciate -- >> Alter: Council member, if I could add, if you would go back to what we put up on the message board originally -- >> Harper-madison: I made note of that. >> Alter: We made note of that with the peer cities and we were also looking at that. >> Harper-madison: It's helpful. >> Alter: That was truly accurate when we did the original analysis. >> Harper-madison: It's very helpful. I was just trying to plain semi rational for some of my questions. I want to make sure I'm sharing the most accurate information possible. I appreciate the collaborative effort that it took for us to arrive here, but I want to make certain that as we move forward that we don't lock ourselves into a single pathway without [11:49:56 AM] having a clearer -- I don't want to say a better picture, but a clearer picture of the trade-off. There's an image I've been using to try to orient myself. And staff, I gave you guys a graph. I wonder if you could pull up that first image for me. Can everybody see that okay? I'm assuming that's a yes. If I'm reading this correctly what we're trying to do with this item is to relax existing compatibility rules through a density bonus program. We're trying to grant extra entitlements in exchange for community benefits. In my mind's eye when we are experiencing a housing crisis like the one we're in that we keep making [11:50:57 AM] reference to, some of the questions that come about for me is whether or not there is nigh greater community benefit than more housing. I think that's the greatest community benefit that we can all hopefully agree on, especially some that's income restricted affordable housing. So what this drawing shows for me is how compatibility mixes the community benefit that we're looking for and the reasoning behind is to protect us from the single-family homes as the larger building. And so when I looked at this, and some of my questions will be influenced by this graph because it is really me trying to make sure I understand entirely before I'm trying to explain to people. When I look at this, I think we know that other cities have much less strict compatibility rules, and they get by. Some of the comparisons that I've been able to make as a layperson is that other [11:51:58 AM] cities will less strict compatibility rules seem to do fine. So I'm, one, trying to understand our heavy restrictions on compatibility and then also to understand that under this proposal we're cutting dozens, dozens of units for the benefit of a few single-family homes. And whether they're occupied by owners or renters or even short-term rentals, I'm trying to understand therition nail there. -- The rationale there. I'm assuming staff would know. >> I think it sounded a little bit like a question maybe for other council members to some extent, but we did want to make sure that all council members are aware that we provided some additional analysis about different compatibility options in a memo that was sent out on Friday. [11:52:59 AM] The title is information and analysis relating to vertical mixed use program. So the last few pages of that attachment speak to the percentage of vmu zoned properties that could potentially reach their current base height or the future potential 90-foot height based on the distance of compatibility standards. So I don't know if we want to bring that up to talk through it. It's sort of a -- sort of a different way to look at what information you've provided. >> Harper-madison: [Inaudible]. I have one more question that I have based on the [11:54:00 AM] [indiscernible] That I've provided. [Inaudible - no mic]. >> Yes. >> Harper-madison: I'll go back and look for that one. But yeah, if others see this as beneficial after this next slide -- [inaudible]. If we could pull up that next image, please. So when we talk about displacement and we know that people are getting priced out, one thing we don't talk about is the hidden displacement that's caused by our inability to build homes for people who just want to live in our city. So I'm really struggling to justify how we shape policy around ensuring that three to five percent more [11:55:01 AM] [indiscernible] What is now likely a four-million-dollar home. So really just trying to think through what our priority is. [Inaudible - no mic]. I guess the question I do have for staff is we have plan professionals on our city staff. I think we should obviously take advantage of the subject matter expertise. So my policy director -- >> Mayor Adler: Natasha, can you turn on your microphone? >> Harper-madison: I'm sorry, I assumed it was on. My policy director helped us construct these graphics during codenext. And while they're still relevant for years later, but during that process, the planning commission to my understanding voted to support compatibility trigger at 100 feet and I can't help but feel like based on the graphics and the answers to the questions [11:56:02 AM] that I've received it feels like we're going backwards in terms of compatibility, in which case I'm proposing that staff take a look at -- I don't know if you guys got a copy of what I passed around. I'm asking that staff take a look at the suite of options and bring us back a comprehensive analysis of each one as a full body so that we can make a data driven decision about what's appropriate when it comes to setting or when not to set the trigger for compatibility. And that's what I passed around. Did everybody get one. >> [Inaudible] >> Harper-madison: No, but I'm happy to. I'm sure y'all are watching. Can y'all email our colleagues a copy of the two graph. >> [Inaudible]. >> Mayor Adler: Or send them to the clerk and the clerk can put them in backup [11:57:04 AM] for today's work session. >> So council member, some of the analysis we have completed already does address at least part of your question. So maybe if council would like to do so we could talk through that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, go ahead. >> Let me send the link. The link to the av folks. Okay. So if we could pull up that memo that we just sent the link to. And Sam Tedford did the analysis so happy to have Sam run through it and then [11:58:05 AM] we can all answer questions. >> While we're waiting to get that pulled up, good morning, everyone, Sam Tedford. I will mention this memo speaks directly to the compatibility of impact on vmu and my understanding is many of the items on item 66 would apply broadly to more properties so this analysis just looks at the impact on vmu zoned properties, not all properties that might otherwise be able to participate in a bonus program and therefore get the compatibility reductions. >> Kitchen: Could I ask one very quick question? Thank you very much for doing this and I'm looking forward to hearing this. When you do it can you just let us know if you're basing it on existing compatibility or the item 66 proposed compatibility or some other just so we can remember? >> Yes, I can try and speak to some of the differences. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> If we could go down to [11:59:05 AM] page 14 I think that might be the most relevant starting place within this memo. We compiled many staff responses to various council q&a related to vertical mixed use. But starting on page 14 you might see this table. If we could make it a little bit larger on the screen. You'll see in our analysis of achievable heights for vmu zoned properties that have not redeveloped since 2010. So that's kind of our starting kind of our starting point. Sites that have the rezoning today and have not redeveloped since 2010 when the program was started. So we can start at our current standards today for compatibility extend 540 feet away from a compatibility triggering property, and so the result is that sites with vmu zoning, only 46% of those properties could reach their base entitled height, so that's what would be allowable under the vmu program today. And 33% of those sites could [12:00:07 PM] potentially achieve that bonus height under vm u2 that has been proposed. So that's kind of our starting point under compatibility standards today. And on the following slides, we don't have to move, you'll just see kind of a visual that represents what these different proposals for compatibility look like, or what staff was considering when we did this analysis. You'll see that there's two separated tables here. One is where we maintain the properties that trigger compatibilities, so those would be on your base zoning. As well as certain land uses, as well as some civic uses. This has been some information not everybody fully understood within the land development code. There's a set of civic uses that can also trigger compatibility on to an adjacent property. Those might be public or private schools, colleges and universities, religious assembly sites. And so those are also uses that can trigger compatibility today. [12:01:08 PM] The table below that, though, is only -- is -- the analysis only for sites that has sf5 zoning today or more restrictive. So we did the analysis for all compatibility triggering uses on the top, and then on the bottom would be only zoning triggers. And you'll see the different versions here, or if compatibility was limited to a certain distance from those compatibility triggering properties. So version one would be limiting the extent of the compatibility to 300 feet from that property, and the resulting impact on the number of vmu zoned sites that could reach their base height, and then their bonus height. So in this way, there's a lot of information here where you can start to compare if we limited, you know, compatibility to 100 feet, for the base height, and then 150 feet, or 250 feet for the bonus height. You can kind of mix and match [12:02:09 PM] and see what percentage of vmu sites would be able to reach. And so that's what this memo has some additional detail. And if you want to scroll, you can see some of the visuals that we provided so that you understand what staff was analyzing specifically. And I'm available to answer questions, if you have any. I have a quick question. Thank you. This is excellent. This is the data I was looking for. So, just help me understand. So, like, where it says -- let me just take one example. Say it takes version 4, for example. So that means what height at 100 feet? >> Each site may have a different base height. The majority of the vmu zoned sites are either cs or Dr, which has a 60-foot base height, so that is the majority, but there are going to be some that would have lower base heights because their base zoning is lr, or lo. And so those are lower, but [12:03:10 PM] they're included there. >> Kitchen: Okay. So, I could read this in most cases. If I'm looking under zoning and land use triggers at the top chart, at version 4, at 100 feet, you're probably talking about a 60-foot height from the base and a 90-foot height for the bonus. But then if I look at the bottom, that's where the use doesn't trigger it, just the zoning triggers it. Same deal. I'm curious about that. Wouldn't -- maybe I need to understand the difference between zoning and land use. Because I would have thought that the top one would trigger more, if you're triggering both zoning and land use. Can you help me understand that? >> That's correct. I think your understanding is correct. So the number of sites that could achieve their -- let's say, just looking at the base zoning height, is increased when [12:04:11 PM] you go to zoning-only triggers in that lower category, because there are fewer sites that have the ability to trigger compatibility onto those properties. >> Kitchen: Higher percentage. >> So more sites could achieve their base height. >> Kitchen: So it could be -- even though the percentage is like 86% at zoning triggers only, it might be a higher number of properties in the 81% zoning and land use. Could that be the -- maybe we could, just as a follow-up item, maybe you could give us the numbers behind the percentages that might help. Your 86% is a higher percentage, but it's of less properties, right? >> No, it is the same number of properties, so it is a higher number of properties, just like you said. But would then be able to reach their base height. >> Kitchen: I apologize. I'm trying to understand. So if we have zoning and land [12:05:12 PM] use triggers, which is the top, that means you would have more properties that would -- oh, I got you now. It's a reverse. Sorry. >> The number of vmu zoned properties are the same in each. It's just the number of surrounding compatibility. >> Kitchen: I got you. I understand. Okay. Sorry. Thanks for working through that with me. >> Mayor Adler: I hate to do this, guys. It is past noon. So, and this is my item, I want to be here for this conversation. We're going to take a break between 12:00 and 1:00. I don't know if you guys want to go into executive session in-person or without me. Or just take a lunch break and then come back here at 1:00. Is that the preference? Let's do that. We're going to take a lunch break. We'll be back here at 1:00. Here at 12:05, we're in recess. [1:10:14 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Homelessness, hopefully we can get that discussion done by 1:30. After Austin energy, we'll come back to these pulled items. I think handling these pulled items is a really good thing to-do. It's going to save us a lot of time Thursday and hopefully direct us. >> Thank you, mayor and council. This is a regular update that we provide to the council and the community on our efforts regarding people experiencing homelessness and the strategies and tools that we have to address them. And I want to both appreciate and thank our incredible staff across many different departments, but led by our chief homeless strategy officer, Diane. >> Thank you. We'll be pulling up the slides here. Thank you, city manager, mayor, mayor pro tem, and council [1:11:14 PM] members. We are happy to be here to give you an update on several elements of our work to address homelessness in the community. But before I start, I do want to acknowledge that I'm joined by folks from our partner departments. We have Laura la Fuente, aph's health equity and community engagement, as well as laquisha Johnson smothers to answer any questions related to their solicitations. Joined also by Michael Gates, with real estate services, and I believe, if we have questions regarding our -- the work on homeless encampment management, Audrey muntz with performance management may be available virtually to answer any questions you might have. So, do we have the slides up? We can move on to the next one. [1:12:17 PM] Thank you. So, the briefing today will cover four topics. The first is an update on the progress of funding the investment plan for the finding home atx initiative, which formerly was referred to as summit to address unsheltered homelessness. The second, which is related to finding home atx, in that section we'll cover the progress of obligating American rescue plan acts that the council has approved for use to address homelessness. In the third section, we'll give an update on efforts to provide organization and infrastructure for the city staff. They're engaged in addressing unsheltered encampments related to the enforcement of the camping and heal initiative. And finally, I'll provide an update specific to heal and the activities and outcomes related to that initiative with some comments from real estate regarding some of the questions that council members have had about the potential for [1:13:19 PM] expanding shelter for that initiative. So, as a reminder, the high level goals of finding home atx include housing an additional 3,000 people over our baseline of folks housed in the community by the end of 2024. And to support those rehousing efforts, we have a goal of creating 1,300 more brick-and-mortar units for people who are exiting homelessness. And finally, we'll be providing prevention services and other social services to approximately another 2,000 additional households. This plan will support a wide spectrum of providers and housing developers, and the overall investment plan for finding home atx is $515 million from all sources, so that includes city, county, state, federal, and private funds. Over half of the funding would be dedicated to capital investment of deeply affordable [1:14:21 PM] housing for this population. And then the balance in programmatic expense, as well as investments in our system, our system infrastructure, the capacity of our non-profits. Just note that given the ramp-up of funding which we'll be talking about further in this presentation, the investments will primarily result in rehousing focused in years two and three. We're beginning now to get the funding on the ground, and so 80% of the goal will occur in years two and three. Next slide. So, we want to answer the questions about where we are on securing funding for the investment plan, and also of the secured and anticipated funds, where are those funds coming from. We currently have identified $422 million, or 82% of the $515 million investment plan resources. And that represents an $8 [1:15:22 PM] million net increase since the last time we briefed council on this in February of 2022. So figure 1 represents the funding that is committed, anticipated as well as the remaining funding gap. Since our last report, we've had -- as I said, an eight-million-dollar net increase with the largest new sources of funding coming from an emergency rental assistance program at the Texas department of housing and community affairs. And as well as private philanthropy with most of those coming from the Austin fc and others. Home atx has been in conversation with a number of likely significant contributors and we'll of course continue to report on that as progress is made. [1:16:37 PM] The next contributor are funds associated with the state of Texas. Much of that is in the form of low income housing tax credits or pass through of federal funding but it is a quarter of the funds that we've secured to date from Travis county, private funders as well as the local housing authorities. Next slide. So as we look at the funding that has been secured or is, we believe, very likely from ongoing funding sources, across the categories of the finding home atx investment plan, we see that our greatest progress has been in the categories of capital investment where we are at 92% of our goal with the remaining gap of about just over $21 million. And in our core housing programs where we are at 83% of our goal with a funding gap of 30.5 million. While the amounts to be [1:17:37 PM] secured are smaller in the other categories shown in this graph, our percentage of the total amount is lower. System capacity we have secured 43% of the funds. Crisis services 69% of the funds and other services that include behavioral health, employment and access to benefits, we've secured 41% of the funds. That gap for those categories ranges between seven and $10 million per category. Finally I'll note that we've included a contingency of $10 million, which would need to be secured and we're monitoring the need for additional funds across our categories. In particular given the steep trajectory of increases in costs in real estate and construction, we think that some increase in capital spending may be needed, but we'll be reporting on that as we move [1:18:39 PM] forward in our quarterly updates to council. The arpa funds are an important part of the overall 15- million-dollar finding home atx investment plan. The table here shows the spending framework that council approved and as I said we'll be providing quarterly updates not only on the progress of finding home atx broadly, but also on the commitment and expenditure of arpa funds that are dedicated to homelessness. I would add that in addition to the briefing today we expect to a briefing to council either today or tomorrow. As of the end of April we had expended approximately $4.8 million of arpa funds, principally in capital related to hotel acquisition. The remainder of the funds [1:19:40 PM] will be distributed through a number of departments and today we'll have updates regarding the solicitation process from both Austin public health where the bulk of our arpa funds will be deployed and then I will give a quick update on some funding that we are deploying through the innovation office. So I'll now turn it over to Laura la Fuente from Austin public health, health equity and public engagement division to talk about the process through Austin public health. >> Sorry, thank you. Good afternoon, Laura la Fuente with Austin public health. Thank you for the opportunity to provide an update. As we've shared before on this slide you will see kind of a plan for our homeless solicitation, phase I was our housing stabilization solicitation. And that solicitation we were soliciting for [1:20:41 PM] permanent supportive housing services, rapid re-housing services and also supportive services. That was approximately $53 million that we were soliciting for community members non-profits to actually apply for funding. That solicitation was released on January 31st. It closed on March 9th and we are anticipating making those award notifications some time this month. Our phase 2 application was our crisis response solicitation. That was related to emergency shelter, street outreach, the day resource center, medical care rethe city services, youth crisis response. That was approximately $9.9 million. And these solicitation amounts are a combination of American rescue plan funding, federal emergency solution grants and homeless and housing service program, so state funding, were all part of the solicitation. That solicitation was released on March 31st. It closed on may 12th and we are anticipating making those notifications some time in the month of July. The most recent [1:21:42 PM] solicitation, which is for supportive services, for that slowing we were looking to specifically focus on employment services, behavioral health supports and also benefit access. That was another $7.5 million for the community to apply. That was just released last week. We are anticipating that that will close on July 7th with award notifications happening in August of 2022. >> Thank you, Laura. I want to thank Laura and akeisha for the tremendous amount of work done on these proposals in a very short time frame. And just to give you a sense, the arpa dollars in these solicitations total approximately 60 million of the total 106.7 million dedicated to homelessness. So very substantial portion of the funds that we want to move toward our efforts in the community for that [1:22:43 PM] purpose. So next I want to speak to a substantially smaller solicitation, but one that we think is really important in terms of supporting our non-profit community, bringing more service providers to the table, and building their capacity. The homeless strategy division has worked with the innovation office to develop a small grants program. That program is specifically targeted to capacity building. So organizational capacity building, particularly for small non-profits, and/or skill building in service delivery where a non-profit might be moving into a new area of service delivery. So the structure of this program is that all selected organizations which we believe may be up to 20, will receive a capacity assessment looking at both their organizational infrastructure and any competencies that they may [1:23:44 PM] need to develop in service provision. They will actually be compensated for participating in that capacity assessment because we know there are many non-profits who are actually operating with a lot of volunteers and their time is valuable. Once that capacity assessment is complete, we will have funding available of up to 37,500 per organization to fund some of the capacity needs that may have been identified through that capacity assessment. The application is designed to be really low barrier. It's quite -- it's pretty simple, and so that application is due June 16th after which we would expect to launch activities you should this initiative some time in July, again in partnership with the innovation office. [1:24:50 PM] So one of the things that council asked us to brief on today was homeless encampment management really encompassing enforcement generally and of course the process we have been engaged in with performance management in the financial services division to help support staff engaged in addressing homeless encampments with more infrastructure, a better system to make it more efficient and I think be very clear about how we're prioritizing the encampments. I think the first thing I want to say is there's been an immense amount of work around addressing unsheltered encampments. Over 100 encampments have been cleared through enforcement since that work began in August of last year. Not including the heal encampments which I'll speak to as well. But we know that we through [1:25:50 PM] that process we've identified some needs for staff to support them in that work. I will mention that as of the end of may, 252 citations have been issued around the camping ordinances, sit-lie and the panhandling that are also included in those ordinances which were approved on if may 1st of last year. And so one of the questions we've had is how does enforcement compare to the heal initiative? And I think the fundamental difference is that we have limited ability to connect individuals directly to shelter and service resources and because we're not able to move people in to bridge shelter or offer that shelter, it often means that there is significant displacement of those individuals from one location to other locations in the community. [1:26:50 PM] Next slide, please. So as I've discussed previously, in the fall we initiated a process to really look at how we could improve the infrastructure and support for staff doing this work. Audrey monks with performance management and financial services, has been guiding that work doing an incredible job, leading the work of over I think 15 departments which we'll look at in a moment, and these are the priorities that that group identified as needs within this system. First among them was creating a central response structure so we had an organized and supported way to determine how we would deploy our resources and then secondly creating a clear system for tracking encampments, prioritizing, identifying resources and organizing response. So those are the two primary [1:27:51 PM] areas that I'm going to speak to today and then -- but we can certainly speak to some of the other work that is underway as well. So this slide shows you the -- all of the departments that have been involved in this process. So really gives a sense of how this issue, homelessness generally, but the impact of and service to unsheltered encampments touches many departments within the city. Next slide, please. So one of the two primary goals or first goals I should say of this process was to establish a central response structure that was cross departmental. And the idea for this was the overall group would be establishing goals and [1:28:53 PM] objectives. We would have clear process for how to do the work and identify policies and procedures that could be shared across the city. So central to this structure is a leadership team and that leadership team is comprised by the departments that are noted here, Austin fire, Austin police department, Austin resource recovery, code, homeless strategy division, parks and recreation, public works and watershed protection. And the idea of the leadership team is that primarily it will be making decisions and approving operational plans that come up from the other sections that are noted here. I will also say that the structure that has been created draws significantly from incident command structure so we were able to work with staff to really think about how we could organize this work for [1:29:54 PM] clarity and clear decision making. So the planning section will predominantly consist of staffed by a program manager one in our division, Austin fire department, Austin police, arr and host and the currently impacted land departments for a particular encampment. So when we'll be looking at -- this is the section, excuse me, that we'll be assessing encampments. We'll talk more about that when we move to the prioritization tool. Gathering that information and making a determination about which camps we need to intervene in which order essentially. The operations and logistics section is activate when had a particular encampment is scheduled for an intervention, whether that is enforcement and clearance or heal. The chief will be the single point of contact from the land-owning department, and [1:30:55 PM] this section will develop the operational plan for the particular encampment with a clear essentially incident commander if you will leader for that particular event producing an operational plan that then is approved by the leadership team. The policy section will have departments that are participating depending on the policy that needs to be developed. For example, we're currently working on a general encampment closure protocol. So we have watershed protection, APD, pard and downtown Austin community court looking at the overall policy for closure but it is anticipated that this group would look at specific policies as well like how we handle belongings and the treatment of bio hazards that we encounter during this work. [1:31:55 PM] I'll move next to a description of the prioritization tool that we have developed for the cross departmental use and I'll just say that I'm very excited about this work. We're looking at a tool which I think is really going to support us in sharing information and understanding the conditions in different encampments and what kind of interventions are needed. So this is a web-based tool, this is an app that is being developed. The idea being that we're able to collect information about a particular encampment so that we understand both sides and the conditions in that encampment. And what we've done is to model this assessment after the tool that we developed for heal. The same questions are asked for both assessments but heal is scored differently [1:32:56 PM] and we're really looking at the health and safety of the occupants of the encampment in those cases. And so the tool will auto score for both scenarios and allow us to both prioritize encampments for heal and to identify those higher priority encampments that are impact the public safety or health more generally. The field testing is underway through the month of June and we expect to be ready to be using that more broadly in July. So I'll move then to the heal initiative which now has affected the closure of nine sites. The first four, of course, were the sites that were identified by council in the original resolution. And since then we have done another five sites. [1:33:57 PM] Most recently Gillis park. Since the inception of the initiative we have transferred 267 individuals from encampments into bridge shelter. This fiscal year that number is 119 and that is against a fiscal year goal of 200 individuals so we are on track to meet that goal. We always report on shelter acceptance rate because we think it's very important to continue to track and to understand that the vast majority of people who are offered transfer to shelter do accept it. To date the acceptance rate is 93%. The current bridge shelter occupancy as of the 17th of may was 123 individuals so this was just after the relocation of Gillis park. And since the beginning of the initiative we have firmly reroused 79 [1:34:59 PM] individuals. One of the things that council explicitly asked us to track for this initiative was demographics to ensure that our approach isn't having unintended consequences in terms of equity. With a particular focus on the percentage of African-Americans being served because that community is so disproportionately impacted by homelessness. So in the overall population of people experiencing homelessness, 37% are African-American and in heal 45% of those individuals served have been African- American. We're going to be looking at this a little more closely. We do know that African-Americans are more likely to be unsheltered when they are homeless, not only to experience homelessness, but more likely to experience unsheltered homelessness. The percent of hispanic and Latino individuals is 15% compared to 26% of people [1:36:00 PM] experiencing homelessness, so similarly we're going to investigate that to understand, is that related to a difference in the population of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness or do we need to be very concerned that somehow we're not reaching encampments that have significant populations of individuals identifying as hispanic or Latino. Our percentage of ratio male to female is 67.3% male compared to roughly 62% in the population. 32.6% female in heal compared to 37.7% in the overall population. So in the next slide I'll pass it to Michael Gates with real estate services and this is related to some questions that council has asked related to the progress and considering options for potentially expanding bridge shelter [1:37:00 PM] through additional acquisition of property. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. Might gel Gates with financial services. This slide here is to explain how the market for the hospitality industry is basically Rosie at this point. It was the case that some of these operators and owners were hanging on by their fingernails. Now the folks calling us a year ago aren't returning our phone calls. It's a perfect confluence of a lack of prospects and to be quite frank, sticker shock. So I don't want to get into any specific numbers, but we are not looking to condemn apparatus, we are acting as a market actor so we are making unsolicited offers to entice hotel owners to sell to us. So the leverage is with them to demand a Freeman that and the asking price -- a premium for that and the asking price has been a significant jump, rap, in what they're looking for. [1:38:03 PM] So just I guess to manage your expectations and it would be helpful to gauge council's appetite. You may recall any substantial public findings over the last couple of hotels. These are income-producing properties so the appraisal process for these is essentially kind of going through the books and seeing what those properties are generating from an income standpoint. You typically go back two years. That is going to be right over, overlapping basically the heart of covid. And again kind of the difference between the agreed upon purchase price given what these things will appraise at, the situations are likely to be exacerbated to go back two years for the appraisals. But anyway, just to go through the bullet points here, the return of the individual business travelers is a big part of the increase. The hotels we're looking for are the extended types, the dual sinks and those frequented by business travelers. [1:39:04 PM] That market is rebounding and the business owners are excited about the prospects. The demand in general, the average daily rate per room has increased -- forecast to increase by 17% this year over last year. And then the basically the average daily rate is driving the revenue per available rooms above 2019 that was pre-pandemic levels. So again, what they're asking for I don't want to get into numbers, but it's going to be pricey and that might cause some financing perspectives, some issues or concern on our end. But that's it for the slide. >> Thank you, Michael. We're happy to answer any questions council members might have at this time. >> Mayor Adler: Any questions? Ann and then Natasha. >> Kitchen: Thank you very [1:40:04 PM] much for the presentation. I appreciate the update. I have some specific questions maybe for Michael or maybe for others. So I hear the challenges in terms of the approach that we have in taking for acquiring hotels for bridge shelter. My understanding is, maybe this is for you, Ms. Gray, we have two shelters operating, the north bridge and the south bridge, and those are the locations for she wanterring folks that are in the heal program as they progress through to permanent housing. I'm wondering what the solution is because is there a different approach, different kinds of properties that we need to look at or what would you suggest? I'm operating under the [1:41:08 PM] premise that we need to acquire another shelter for two reasons. One is that one of these, I can't remember which one, I think the north bridge, is slated to become permanent supportive housing, which we need, which is going to put us behind on the heal initiative once we turn that and lose that for shelter. The other thing is the heal initiative, although certainly a piece that we do, has been a successful piece to date. And one of the things that's working for heal is actually targeting prore locations around the city that are high risk locations so it's a very targeted approach to address those situations. So from my perspective I would like to see us be able to accelerate heal but I see the availability of bridge shelter as a linchpin for our availability to expand. So I guess I see you nodding your head so it's probably [1:42:08 PM] right that it's a linchpin. So my question is what's the next step then? What's the thinking, Mr. Gates, on what we should be doing? Are there different kinds of properties to look at or do you need direction from council in terms of what we can pay or what's the -- what's the thinking? >> Thank you for that question, council member. We are looking at hotels and motels, but also nursing homes as well. And then just kind of any prospects we bring to hso for consideration. One of the ideas Donna and I recently discussed is the prospect of building to spec. Win of the things is when we look for hotels that are for sale we are at the mercy of wherever they lie. So they may not be ideally good with respect to locations, but it's counterbalanced by the delivery of that hotel that can stand up and be renovated much quicker than building to spec. [1:43:08 PM] There's that. I think we were talking about -- I don't want to throw out numbers. So anyway, that might be an option, particularly in your district there's only one hotel and one motel in all of district 5. >> Kitchen: That's right. >> A little shocking. But anyway, to put one in your district we would almost certainly have to build to suit. So that could be an option. I don't know if there are any thoughts about other -- >> Sure. I agree. We need to look at all the otions, but in terms of heal, of course, and addressing the issue in our community more rapidly, timeliness is a priority. So I think that we certainly have been looking at possibilities. I think that real estate, bringing those potential contracts to council in executive session and getting a sense of what the appetite is, what the considerations are in terms of balancing our ability to move quickly with the shifts in the marketplace. [1:44:11 PM] But certainly I think real estate beginning to widen the horizon if you will about other types of properties that might also be able to be deployed quickly, it's just not apparent, right, that there are other properties that are as well suited as hotels might be. >> Kitchen: So what's the timeline? When can we expect to -- when can we expect to start looking at specific options? >> We've got two site visits scheduled for this week, I believe. Two hotel prospects that we'll be making site visits. If any of those get legs, maybe six, seven months if everything goes swimmingly. I'd like to Hege my bets and say possibly eight to nine months more likely time frame. But if we're again pursuing existing hotels that's probably the earliest -- I should say close on something assuming council approval. >> Kitchen: So when would you bring it to council? Because I know there are [1:45:11 PM] several steps before you postpone. I would like to have the conversation about what those are. >> I'd like to get the executive session. I'd say maybe about two months out and then that's assuming we are able to negotiate a property price with the property owner and really to gauge I should have at that point an idea of our internal cost estimate and then to have you guys consider the delta between the potential asking price versus what we have the numbers at internally. And then we'll have to have it formally appraised and -- but if you guys are -- that's something you guys are -- have an appetite for, we can move forward. I mean, ultimately for a lot of these owners we're talking to now it's just money. >> Kitchen: Okay. So thank you for that. I'm trying to nail that down in my mind when we might have an executive session so you can tell us the places that you're looking at. >> So I know the first council meeting after the break is July 28th. Again, assuming these two -- [1:46:11 PM] we still have to walk them and make sure they're going to work, but if either of them do, we could come back that week, Tuesday, and talk about kind of what the owner is looking for. >> Kitchen: Okay. City manager, I've been asking for an executive session. So that we could get specific on the properties. So that first work session or council meeting that we come back in July I'd like to schedule that. >> Absolutely, council member. As the staff have said they are pursuing as many active possibilities as they see and are presented to them and they are aggressively going after them as well and we will not delay in bringing those options to you. Ideally we would have that available for that council meeting and I'm not going to wait and we could even call a special meeting if we have information sooner than that. >> That's on properties you're pursuing. What about the build spec option. >> We have not fully explored that. That was a conversation we [1:47:11 PM] had about that. I think Donna feels that the price to build new remembers the existing price is still the price to build new would exceed what asking for for an existing building. >> I get that, that makes sense. As we take more time to continue to look for places we could have caught up building something. So I would hope that we would simultaneously look at those two options. So we could. >> Most of those tracts of land for EdD for affordable housing efforts. We can have those [1:48:14 PM] conversations about possibly taking them out of the queue and repositioning for shelter. >> Kitchen: Perhaps, city manager, we could I know we've examined those properties for other things but I would like to see the report for city land that could be used to potentially build the spec. I understand and absolutely agree that's not the best course of action, but I also dome want to just take a very long time and at the end of the day not be able to find anything else. It would seem to me we could do some initial analysis at least to understand whether we have some potential land at the same time that you're continuing to pursue the other options. Do you have the bandwidth to do that or is that -- who has to do that? >> It's going to be a multiple departmental conversation but need to get with EdD first and see where [1:49:15 PM] they're at with the first properties. Obviously talk to Diana and get they are input on a promising prospect. We need to get public works also involved. It's going to need to be a comprehensive discussion. >> Kitchen: City manager, I would like that to be done on a simultaneous basis, whoever has to do that. So that I really -- I know our staff is doing everything they can, but it's really feeling like it's running late to me. And it one of our successful initiatives that we need to -- six, seven, eight, nine, month or more lead time. We're already looking at next year most likely before we can add another shelter and that just doesn't work for this initiative. It holds us up having more [1:50:23 PM] existing housing. >> This is a community challenge and I encourage us to look beyond the walls of city hall and beyond our own departments and really work with our partners to expand our shelter capacity. I know that's part of the overall infrastructure that we're trying to create and shore up and -- with people experiencing homelessness, but we do need to make sure that more partners are at the table and thank you for continuing to support those efforts as well from each of your standpoints. >> Kitchen: That's fine. I understand that. We need options. >> Mayor Adler: The same part of the presentation, the sheltering issue? >> Harper-madison: For what it's worth I think that councilmember kitchen covered a lot of my questions. I think the only thing I would add is certainly not to be pessimistic, but I wasn't convinced from the start that the hotel conversion strategy was going to be what sustained us moving forward. I really thought it was a [1:51:24 PM] long shot, frankly. And the more difficulty we got getting into various parts of town I was already sort of looking in the direction of other options. In which case my question to piggyback on councilmember kitchen's question, my question was going to be what are our other options? What's completely not even remotely viable, whether or not this strategy is untenable? I'm certainly not asking you to make that announcement today, but I would appreciate -- I'd rather now than not -- know than not whether the approach that council is taking whether or not the direction we've offered is viable. In which cases to councilmember kitchen's point, Michael, you and I have had this conversation about city held property and assets, district 1 has a lot of them, but two our conversation about distributing housing for formerly homeless people, we want to distribute it citywide. That said, if we are going to be bumping up against the [1:52:27 PM] reality of councilmember kitchen having virtually none in her district but me having a lot in our district, I think it's fair for us to recalibrate based on those hotels. So given the conversation we had earlier with the union folks and labor folks with the difficulty around budget considerations, I think this will be another really difficult conversation where in terms of equity it won't feel equitable. And like one of the things we talked about earlier today was lifeguard shortages. Anecdotally I know a bunch of black kids that signed up, but racism, they don't know how to swim. That was one of the things -- one of the ancillary considerations, you know what I mean. I think in a lot of ways we'll have a lot of those during the course of this conversation. So my hope is that you all just feel at liberty to be entirely candid and say yes, we can do that, no, we can't do that. Yes, that will work, that absolutely won't work, you're wasting your time. I'm hoping we can lean on your expertise to really guide us in the appropriate [1:53:28 PM] direction for offering you all support and I think the only other thing I would add is I think you spoke to it, city manager, about additional partnerships. Obviously as a municipal body we have the opportunity to ask, but I wonder if independently we have the opportunity as council members, as members of these communities that we live in to ask folks to join the fight and if that's the case I think it might be helpful to have a comprehensive list of who we asked, what was their response? Cho who haven't we asked? I think if it's all hands on deck, which I'm hearing that it is, I'd like for us to not duplicate one another's efforts. And thank you all for your effort. I know this has -- not from the start of the conversation, hasn't been an easy solution to try to approach. Thank you for your hard work. I appreciate you all. >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to raise a quick issue and then turn it over to Pio. [1:54:32 PM] >> I agree we need to know what our options are or not. We need to assess them realistically for what we have and absolutely there is an opportunity for other people to help. When you're doing that analysis, it's also important to keep in terms of the context of what we're trying to achieve. I just spent the last week at the United States conference of mayors and there were people there who you might imagine across the country dealing with homelessness because it's such a big cities. The white house had the national director that agency and department and you had a lot of providers and consultants who are working. If you go to websites, the ones that are working with 100 different cities in the country and the like. Also had the chance to discuss what we were doing with them, with those groups and with the office of the secretary of hud who are all real excited and hopeful about what it is that we're trying to do here. In Austin because we're actually building out the system and [1:55:32 PM] the infrastructure to actually solve homelessness, to actually be able to reach net effect of zero citywide and then that's not something a city our size has done. And it is a hard transition to get from here to there. Generally speaking our systems allow us to handle the number of people that are showing up on any given day experiencing homelessness because we can provide services and housing for people and we could reach an equilibrium place generally speaking with what we have now, except that we have this mouse in the middle of the boa that's approximate thousand people on our streets that we're trying to deal with and we need to resolve that mouse so that we can keep our kind of equilibrium going but we have to do it in a way that doesn't spend all our money [1:56:37 PM] immediately sheltering the mouse because we'll never fix the problem, the challenge we have in getting people off the street in a way they'll be able to stay off the streets, which means we have to actually house those people. So there's a balance and I think part of the analysis that councilmember kitchen is asking for and councilmember harper-madison are asking for in terms of realistic and presenting our options is what can we do without compromising or taking our eyes off the ball, which is to actually solve this. And keep that in front of us so that we understand this. To that end we've heard there are lots of different things we can do. The sooner we get the housing online, manager, this is not just a sheltering issue. If we could get some of the homes that the buildings that -- up and online a year, year and a half earlier than they are, that's a huge number of people. [1:57:37 PM] It's a huge expense if we don't have to find a temporary solution or to out size our shelter operation to the rest of the system. So I repeat again and I think our council has passed several resolutions on it. I don't know what that would take to sit down with the project people and say what can we do from a city perspective? Austin energy, water, our development team. How could we sit down and brainstorm with people who are developing these properties and say how could we get them online a year earlier than we might otherwise be able to get them online? Because that I think is the most perfect answer to the question because that's getting people off the streets and out of tents and actually into the heal solution because you're getting them into the homes. So I reiterate the request on that. I don't know if it's a question of resources to move more people into that because I know development services is already tasked, [1:58:38 PM] but I can't think of anything that's a higher priority than trying to get affordable housing projects, coc units, psa units, up and operating in our city much more quickly than would otherwise happen. >> Thank you, mayor. I want to echo that. We're facing a really land price crisis here in Austin also. The evaluation is just gone up through the roof here. I've seen a lot of these hotels and motels that have been empty on the eastside and now they're fixing them all up so people are investing in the hotels now and it's definitely rising up the prices. Double what the rate of increase is going up on property value here in Austin? Have you taken a good look [1:59:39 PM] at the prices that these units are selling for now? >> I don't have an average off the top of my head, and it's all over the map. I mean, particularly in -- there are different factors to do that. For instance, the CBD, those -- given how they're impacted, it's difficult to tackle, but we could derive at an average in the city of Austin proper. >> Renteria: The thing we're facing also is we're land locked now. We can't just go out and annex any property and the increase that's going on here has just gone crazy. I do -- I know that we have done a study in the past about all available city land that could be used for housing so the study has been done. I just really encourage our staff and you guys to go out there and take that and run [2:00:40 PM] with it and see how and how we can build. We're sitting on St. John out there. There's a lot of non-profit groups that are sitting on land, but they don't have the resource to build these units. If we could work together with the housing department and identify all this property so we could start building as fast as we can and hopefully that we can relax some of the density clause and codes that we have so that we can build a lot more. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else before we get to Austin energy? As quickly as we can let's move through those. >> Kelly: Thank you so much for being here. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo, you were next. No, go ahead, she's next. >> Kelly: Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the updates. I have one question and a couple of statements. What is the plan for the programs once we're out of [2:01:41 PM] arpa funding? >> So one of the things we've done is to focus arpa funding on programs that can be downsized. So for example, we're not funding services in permanent supportive housing with arpa funds because we know those are services that need to be sustained. The mayor spoke to our current resourcing likely to be adequate to serve the new people that enter homelessness in a particular year, but we have this large population of people who have been waiting. So it's clear that sort of unmet demand, if you need -- if you will, means we need an influx of resources. So one of the things we're asking providers to do is to look at the ramp-up of these one time funds and then sort of allowing those programs to demobilize. I think that we'll know at the end of these three years [2:02:41 PM] which of those programs are particularly effective and we may want to look at our resource distribution at that point, but we are very clear that with the arpa funds, we have capital investment, which is of course one time, and then with services that this is a one time contract and of course we'll be looking at effectiveness at the end of that road. >> Kelly: Thank you for explaining that. I think it's helpful for the public to be reminded of it as well. And in your presentation you showed the part about the central response structure for homeless encampment management. And I'm glad to see you're leaning on the incident command system for response. It's helpful because public safety follows that everyday anyway. I'm hopeful that new way of working together with assist in a more coordinated response for you all. And real briefly I wanted to thank councilmember kitchen for including me as a sponsor on the heal initiative. Yesterday I had the ability to tour lions gardens and I met an individual who was [2:03:42 PM] previously experiencing homelessness and then housed there as part of that strategy. So it was real humbling and I had this real big sense of pride and I think we all in favor colleagues have a sense of pride knowing that it is effective and it does work and we all did that together. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: >> Tovo: I have a couple of quick questions but first we'll start with where councilmember Kelly and that was on the homelessness encampment management prioritization tool. When you say that it's estimated full implementation in I recall July is that on all of it? So in early July the kind of streamlined process involving the different departments is going to be in place and ready for the -- >> The tool and the central response structure. So the tool is being field tested now. In July we anticipate really [2:04:45 PM] rolling that out assessing a lot of encampments. We've been doing that as we go for heal. And then the centralized response would be stood up. The groups are already meeting, but at that point we would be utilizing the tool to help the teams organize their work by virtue of prioritizing the plans and pass them up to the leadership team to approve and make decisions, etcetera. >> Tovo: I see. >> I think some of these are going to be ongoing because the standardized protocols, for example, we're starting with the really fundamental [2:05:46 PM] closure protocol but we know there are other policies that we'll need to -- that we'll need to identify and define so I think we can come back -- we did in the public health committee last time show that more detailed timeline. We're happy to do that in the next public health committee meeting which I believe is in August. >> Tovo: My other question is one I've asked before and that is about kind of assessing the hotel motel option in terms of structural fitness. I know I've asked this question before and I'm really glad that you're looking at other options on too which I hope will include apartment complexes and other things that should also be in the mix. I think I've understood that you're looking at a range of options not just hotels at this point. I attended a meeting that I'll have to ask the mayor to remind me the name of. It's the group of different non-profits that are working together O Diana, working together to craft the affordable housing [2:06:47 PM] partnerships that the county is sponsoring with their funding. Like the Travis county collaborative. >> Travis county supportive housing collaborative. >> Tovo: Thank you. And Connor Kinney was talking about the new development and the work they're doing. It's very interesting, super interesting collaboration, super interesting conversation, but in talking about the level of construction he used the term that will developments will be built to student level housing levels of durability to it will be manageable. I've asked that question before about hotels. I'd be interested to know how much assessment we've done on that because my sense of it is that probably hotels are not built to that same level. This is well out of my league of expertise but I'm thinking about how people use hotels and they're not used for the most part as ongoing residences. So I wonder if that is just [2:07:49 PM] something we should consider. And when I heard Connor Kinney talking about student levels of durability for ongoing use, I thought I would throw that out there and see if you continued to think through the level of construction and if hotels are our best fit. And if they aren't how are we mitigating that before residents move in? >> Thank you. And first of all, one thing I do want to say is I think that the hotel conversion strategy has been successful it has added a tool to our toolkit for quickly adding capacity and it has many of the hotels that sort of flexibility of we can use this as shelter and then convert it to permanent housing is a real benefit so we know we're not overbuilding shelter for the long-term, we're really adding to that portfolio of housing. What I will say is that certainly we have experience in the community, foundation communities has done several [2:08:49 PM] hotel conversions in the past, but I want to give you one example of something wife done which I think will really help us in terms of the long-term renovation for the hotels. In may, early may, we went with many of the members of the Travis county supportive housing collaborative to visit supportive housing deals in Houston. And this non-profit among many strengths has very strong property management strengths and was really able to go -- we went through the buildings and to say here are the choices we've made, here are some of the different choices we would make now in terms of materials, etcetera. And our operators who are helping us scope the renovation of pecan garden and bungalows at century park, were on those tours. So I think we are really looking at the finishes that are important. I think structurally all of these buildings are built to code. [2:09:50 PM] They will be very similar. A lot of the learnings are about finishes and some of the fittings, etcetera, of the units. >> Tovo: That makes sense. Thank you. That's really interesting. And I assume there are different -- there will be some different needs. Like maybe first floor storage because again people are living there and they may not want to take their bikes and things or strollers. I imagine some of those things are a little bit different from hotel configurations as well. But thank you, that's very useful. >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we're ready to move to Austin energy. Are we ready? Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Pool: Thanks, everybody. >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to adjourn the work session here today at 2:10. We'll reconvene after the Austin energy committee is over. I'll turn it over to you, madam chair. Part 2 >> Mayor Adler: Great. And then at 3:10, we'll go ahead and reconvene the Austin city council meeting here on June 7th, 2022. Colleagues, we have an hour and 50 minutes left. We have yet to finish the discussion on item number 66. Also, potential discussion on 80. We also have the personnel matters for executive session. Do we think we can make enough progress so that we could actually get to executive session today? [3:11:20 PM] Or do we want to let the staff members -- >> Kitchen: Just a reminder, I'll be leaving at 3:45. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's push through these and see if we can get to executive session at 3:45 or 4:00. Let's go back to item number 66. Council member harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. There are two things I was going to ask. In the interest of time, everybody can read. I passed out all the amendments and I think we offered enough in the way of rationale to where you guys can sort of go through and see what amendments I intend to bring forward on item number 66. It is not often that I say that I don't envy being a man, but today I'm going to say it. I don't know how y'all are wearing these sport coats. It's hot in here. Am I the only one who's burning up hot right now? Because I could have my staff bring down a personal fan if it's just me. >> I'll tell someone. >> Harper-madison: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: And it would be helpful -- thank you for handing these out, and thank you, [3:12:23 PM] council member vela, for also handing these out. If people would have any opportunity tomorrow to weigh in and comment on those, on the message board, that might be helpful. If you want to say here are the things we handed out, maybe get a feel for where people are before we convene on Thursday. I know that would be helpful. There were three amendments, both from council members vela and harper-madison. >> Tovo: Would you mind clarifying? I'm not sure I got all the amendments. Were they coming from both of you together? Or individually? >> Harper-madison: Council member vela's are three pages. It says amendment 1, amendment 2, and amendment 3. They're not stapled. And mine are amendment 1, 2, and 3 also, but they're stapled. >> Tovo: I have -->> Mayor Adler: Would you hand these to [3:13:31 PM] Kathie. Would you hand these to Kathie. >> Tovo: Council member vela, I think I need yours. I don't think I have any of yours. Thank you. >> Ellis: Could I also ask putting them on the message board? I've been able to ascertain copy of them, but when you're remote, you can't see what people are handing out. >> Mayor Adler: If you guys can post your amendments to message board, that would be helpful. Can you go ahead and post these in backup? That would be great. Thank you. Can our conversation on 66. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I have a question question. I think it applies to council member vela and harper-madison's amendments. You can put it on the message board, if you're not clear right now. I just want to make sure I understand what the thinking is [3:14:32 PM] by the term transit priority network. And the reason I'm asking that is because there's a lot of different terms out there for project connect, for the bus network. Cap metro has different terms. The city has different terms. I don't know if you intended the same thing. But what y'all are intending with that term. >> Vela: Council member kitchen, looking at the maps on the working group proposal, one of the issues that kind of jumps out at me when I kind of toggle it around on the excellent map that staff rated, the vmu 2 and compatibility map, the transit priority network, seems to include a broader network of streets. And also if we don't include the asmp transit party network, we're really not even touching [3:15:34 PM] anything west of Lamar or anything west of mopac. >> Kitchen: Okay, that's what I wanted to peg it to. Marked as transit priority network. >> Vela: That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: I'll take a look at that. I think the thinking was most of the additional roads that would be picked up are residential in nature. There were also roads, having gone through this experience before, that when they were listed as possibilities created such a concern and alarm. You're really not going to pick up the benefit of this, but prevented us, I think, from being able to move to a conversation on some of the other elements, because we could never get past that. [3:16:38 PM] So we tried to address that with the things that we had picked, and then also calling out certain roads as being non-included. But I'll take another look for me and any office at the roads that are on that list. But I think that's high level where that comes from. Yes. >> Harper-madison: And I've only got five bullets to speak specifically to that. Number one, our imagine Austin corridors were identified in the comprehensive plan that we adopted a decade ago. So while they reflect where back then, they may have been appropriate where growth might happen. I don't think they necessarily tell us anything about today, today's standards. I don't think they tell us where on the ground it would support -- they're supportive of is there more transit friendly development housing specific development. The transit priority network, however, was established by the asmp that we adopted three years ago, in which case, it seemed [3:17:39 PM] more relevant time-wise. To council member vela's point about looking at the stark differences with the mapping. I'm super visual. For me, that stood out as well. It largely overlaps with imagine Austin corridors. It features a more equitable distribution of corridors. I think to the point that you were making, council member vela. Particularly in our higher opportunity neighborhoods in the central city. Lastly, if the idea is to achieve our asmp goals at 50/50, split goals by allowing denser, less car dependent development. I think it makes sense to do that where there is frequent transit service to support that. >> Kitchen: Thank you. That's very helpful. I support a broader coverage, and I've been concerned that when we pegged -- well, you know, when we pegged to just certain transit lines, we don't [3:18:43 PM] get all of town. We particularly don't get the best side of town. We haven't had as much transit opportunity west of mopac. So it's perpetual. This one, we peg to that. And on and on and on. And we don't ever get to our goals of looking at all of Austin. So I support the concept. I'll go back and remind myself where this is. But I certainly support the concept that you're talking about. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: I think it would be helpful if we had a list of -- I mean, I remember it the way you do, mayor. I think the corridors that you all have identified as medium and large are in essence the transit priority corridors minus some of the ones that were causing concerns. [3:19:43 PM] So we're going to very quickly, I think, just return to the very same conversation we had. And I think it's very challenging at this point to try to have this conversation alongside the asmp discussion, alongside the mu2, if we really don't have lists of streets. Op how we get from here to there on Thursday, but I can tell you once the asmp became the measure for how we based land use decisions, there became a lot of concern around asmp. We're probably going to be flooded now with a lot of concerns, again, about the asmp if the definitions are going to trigger compatibility loosening in this other proposal. So, again, I don't know if there are other members of the work group who put forward this proposal who have a sense of what is in the transit priority network that is not in imagine [3:20:44 PM] Austin corridor or a bond construction corridor or other things that were identified in medium and large. >> Vela: Council member pool -- I'm sorry, tovo, just very briefly, the lake Austin boulevard would be one of them. Altorf I think is a a relatively good opportunity area for compatibility limits and additional housing. I believe that 51st street is another one in my district. Again, just thinking about my districts. But again, I would -- the map is really excellent that staff put together where you can toggle those images on and off, and you get a really good sense of the maps that we're looking at. >> Tovo: I'll take a look. So I've had several meetings with my community members -- my [3:21:49 PM] area probably has more vmu 2 than some of the other corridors that we're talking about. And I know that most of the folks I'm talking to are really struggling to understand. In a very quick manner of what the proposal is. Several of the streets you named are also in my district. I would say the more information we can provide, the better. People are really struggling to try to catch up in the midst of multiple other zoning changes in district 9 and various other things. Okay, thank you. Thank you for those couple examples. I'll take a look at the interactive map. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: So, I just would like to understand what streets with commercial zoning constrained by compatibility west of mopac are you trying to pick up? Lake Austin boulevard is imagine [3:22:49 PM] Austin corridor. It is largely governed by the Breckenridge track, which is under UT. It's largely exempt from compatibility. By and large, the streets west of mopac don't have the commercial zoning. So the compatibility constraints there are not the constrainting factor. So I'd be curious to know which streets, beyond lake Austin boulevard, you're trying to get at. This does include jollyville road, for instance. The version that we have does include the frontage road on mopac, also west of mopac. So you may not have them right now, but it would be helpful for you to share that because part of what happens, and we looked at this in our group because we were trying to decide whether to do tpn or imagine Austin. When you move to tpn, you don't [3:23:51 PM] actually have much impact in west Austin, because we don't have the transit, which the tpns were based off of. So you get a whole lot of other neighborhoods in there and makes it more difficult to reach an agreement and those are largely outside of west Austin, where that impact has. This is not the only tool that we have in our tool -- excuse me. To address the density. We have one -- I don't remember if it's this week or next week on the district planning. We have that. We have the whole process with the UT folks. That's going on. [3:24:55 PM] This change is not metropolitan to be the only thing that we're doing as could be evidenced by the things on our agenda.ant to be the only thing that we're doing as could be evidenced by the things on our agenda. The work that we're doing will add a lot of density potentially. So there are opportunities to do things. I think we should not try to make every tool have to fix everywhere. I did want to ask a couple questions of council member harper-madison. I wanted to understand why you wanted to eliminate the asmp level 5 streets, the major highways from being considered larger corridors. >> Harper-madison: I think the simplest answer is because they're highways and I don't want us to prioritize putting multi-family, typically lower income housing on small, crowded loud highways. I think generally speaking, it's not a consideration that we take [3:25:56 PM] often enough. The environmental impact of people living off the highway. That's the easiest way to describe my rationale there. >> Alter: Okay. I think that will take density out of west Austin for that. I think that there have been few occasions where we haven't put increased density along the highway when it's come before us. I think we recently put an mf6 or 90 feet on mopac in my district. We did an lipda in district 1, right off the highway this year. I'm not sure how I can justify why we would have highways having stricter compatibility rules than others. I have constituents who have single family homes right up to mopac, right against the sound barriers as well. So, you know, I just want to be clear, part of the reason we [3:26:57 PM] have that in there is to make sure that we are allowing for some of that density in other parts of town as well. So I just wanted to explain that. And then for amendment 3, I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of part 3D on page 3 of item 66, where we say for any residential or mixed use property on a corridor, allow more flexibility for what could be located in the 25-foot setback, but not including dumpsters. So I want to understand and think through what you're proposing in this a little bit more before Thursday. I feel like there's a lot of things with the rationale, where I might agree with that. But I'm not sure if I agree with the language that was used to convey that. And I kind of feel like the [3:27:57 PM] language that we have in there would allow staff to explore what you're saying with respect to the setback, and I don't want to preclude them from doing the other things that we had in mind when we were doing that. So I just wanted to flag them and think more about that one on that. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's an interesting one, and I want to understand that one better. >> Harper-madison: Do you mind if elaborate a tiny bit about the highway? I gave what I thought was pretty broad explanation, but to be more clear, I think -- so Dr. Bullard, he gave this speech one time about why black and brown kids miss school, and he asked everybody in the room to say why, why, why? And they had all these reasons. But the ultimate reason why black and brown kids miss school the most is asthma. [3:28:57 PM] It's environmental exposure. And so that was one of the things. And just historically, the recognition of, you know, what the implication of highways have, including having housing. Just thinking through our mode access, being right off the highway definitely deters having more people, especially people who really need access to transit, having more mode split options, more biking options, more transit options when they're right off the highway. I think being in the center of a neighborhood with more access around transit and more access around walking and biking options is the ideal. In which case, I think to the point that you were making Earl crore about every tool not suiting every scenario, I'm perfectly open to continuing the dialogue and want to get closer to a place where it doesn't feel [3:29:57 PM] inadvertently like we're adding more in the way of inequity. Hopefully that helps. And to the point about continuing the conversation, I'd be curious to know what staff's thought is, whether or not the additional language that I'm offering somehow, you know, is a deterrent for the language offering in the original. So I look forward to expanding on that conversation. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yeah, I think one thing that's interesting about this conversation is the differences in the city, you know? Along the freeway, along mopac is very different. Been along the freeway and some other parts of the city. And I hear what council member harper-madison is saying, which rings more true in my parts of town. Along the freeway is not a transit corridor. I mean, it's not where we have [3:30:57 PM] identified, you know, a rail line or metro rapid lines and stuff like that. So I was always curious about why I was included in the first place. I understand the reasoning. And I understand and appreciate the effort. You know, I agree with the effort as mayor pro tem explained it. But using that to get further into west Austin is great, but it's not useful for the whole city because of the kinds of things that council member harper-madison is mentioning. So I think we really need to rethink that, a. I'm inclined to strike it also as council member harper-madison is suggesting. But it could use some more conversation. I think we may be agreeing on what we're trying to accomplish here, but we're pointing out some differences across the city that are impacted. So anyway, I'm open to more [3:31:59 PM] conversation. It never made sense to me to include them in the first place. >> Mayor Adler: I think part of the reason -- I think council member harper-madison is proposing an even broader conversation, which is where there's a city, we should allow multi-family uses along highways. >> Kitchen: Well, no, she's very specifically talking about leaving this for this. >> Mayor Adler: No, she did link it to this. What I said is it gives rise to a broader conversation, and the rationale for it, as I understood it, was it's not the appropriate place to put housing, not appropriate place to put faculty family housing. And I want to think through what that -- because we do that now. And we do that in parts of the city. If we're going to do it, then I would probably include it in here. If we're not going to do that, or we think that that's not from [3:32:59 PM] a policy standpoint something that we want to do, then I think that gives rise to that broader question, because it's not -- you know, it seems funny to have higher height on roads like south Lamar than along a highway. It's not the height issue. One of the reasons we'll have the height there is because you can have the height along highways. Unless it's a use that we don't want to have along highways. So I want to be thinking about that question. >> Kitchen: But the point I'm hearing is I thought we were trying -- I get that, and I'm certainly open to more conversation. But I thought we were trying to talk about more housing along places that people can get out of their cars and get on a bus. That's not the case on an access road to a freeway. So that's -- it's two different things. This might be okay to do two [3:34:01 PM] different things. One thing might be pegging to transit. One thing might be pegging to other kinds of corridors that we think are appropriate for -- you know, for housing. >> Mayor Adler: I think in the hearts of that, I think transit is one of the reasons why we pick a road. We pick a road -- it was both higher and transit oriented roads. So I don't think we were just looking for ones that had a line on it. We can't always be sure there's going to be a line on it, because the line's changed. There was something also just about the more intense characteristic of the road itself. In a nonresidential way. I'm saying this is a point that I need to think through because it might be a good point for the reasons that council member harper-madison -- the rationale for the reasons. Council member pool, and then [3:35:02 PM] we'll come back. >> Pool: I guess what I'm unsure about, and the question for me is, if we remove from the level 5, from the larger corridors, that housing is still going to be built on west lake, as we say. It's not going to be built. But if it is built and they do it under these relaxed compatibility opportunities, then they can do more. So unless we are going to say nobody can live as close to the highway as X distance -- in other areas, they're beyond an access road, and then there's green space, and then it's up a hill. It's different in almost every instance. So for me, the question is are we actually saying we don't want anybody to live on these parcels? And I don't think we're saying that. So, I don't understand why we would remove the highways where the projects are going to be [3:36:02 PM] built. We need to capture the additional density in those areas, because it's going to be built there. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you. I wanted to ask staff if you all would care to comment on potentially striking the asmp level 5 streets. I'm just curious what this would potentially do for any of the additional usage we would get out of any of our vmu 2 or any -- by waving the compatibility standards. I'm trying to understand the lens of proposal that we have before us with item 66, what this could do on realizing the full potential. >> I'm fairly certain we wouldn't have vmu along highways right now. Maybe we should start with Sam. >> Kitchen: This is broader than [3:37:05 PM] vmu. >> Right. This is Sam. We have substantial amount of analysis done related to vmu right now. The other propertys that might be implicated, we've not conducted a significant amount of research. But to the other point, I would say that there are vmu parcels that are along asmp level 5 streets due to the way that the neighborhood opt-in, opt-out process initially played out, where core transit corridors were the starting point and some neighborhoods also elected off of highways like Ben while boulevard and 183 to put vmu zoning there. And so there are still some vmu zoned properties that are along asmp level 5 streets at this time. But I don't have data to speak to the implication of removing that on other broader proposals at this time. >> Fuentes: I'm certainly intrigued by this proposal, so I [3:38:06 PM] certainly want to give it more consideration. I thank you for bringing it forward. >> Harper-madison: I just wanted to offer additional clarification. I was not saying let's strike the opportunity to produce housing anywhere. I think we should consider it everywhere. What I was saying was what we incentivize. I'd like us to be more focused and make a priority of us incentivizing transit near -- housing near transit corridors. I'd like for us to take into consideration the implications of not doing so. I was saying more what we incentivize as opposed to what we allow. I think us relaxing parking requirements and transit centric neighborhoods makes way more sense than -- I mean, the parking requirements are lower for I-35 than they are for middle city neighborhoods. [3:39:06 PM] And that doesn't make sense to me. In which case, I think there are other ways for us to accomplish our combined collective mutual goals. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> We're trying to do some on-the-fly comparison of maps. And are looking at imagine Austin corridors and the transit priority network. We don't have anything definitive right now, but based on a very, very quick look while you all were talking, you might want to consider both rather than one or the other, maybe. Just because there are imagine Austin corridors that are not on the transit priority network. So we could maybe do some [3:40:08 PM] screenshots of maps. I think it might be helpful to have you all maybe see where these are. Because I think it's really -- like, I don't know what roads are on the different, you know, clumps that we're talking about. So I think it could be helpful. >> Harper-madison: I think that's a valid point. What Glen's computer was hollering out earlier, was that a member of our staff was pointing out that Duval, for example, one, the ncdd, and two, just because of how close the houses are it wouldn't even apply. Some of the compatibility regulations wouldn't apply there. I do think that map would be helpful. And I also think -- I can't remember which -- I think it was mayor pro tem alter asked about specific streets. I think all of that would be very helpful. >> Mayor Adler: We need to think through this carefully. I'll tell you, I came into this [3:41:10 PM] with a bent to try to do everything I could to increase housing supply. So part of me doesn't want to consider something that takes away housing option. We also talked about housing options and we've asked staff to come back with an ordinance that does that. There's got to be commercial uses along highways. And if we're trying to open up opportunities for residential and there's many different places as we can, we want to do that there, too. So I guess I'm not ready to start changing the policies with respect to opening up housing opportunities yet for highway stuff, but maybe a longer-term or future conversation about whether or not we want to discourage that. But probably, where I come downright flow is I'm not ready -- I want to create housing opportunities wherever I can, because that's our greater harm and risk at this point. [3:42:11 PM] I want to think through it because I haven't had a chance to think through it yet. >> Pool: I just wanted to add to that, mayor, that there's also -- it looks like we almost -- we also might be looking at eliminating support for tax credit projects along level 5 streets, and we don't want to do that. So we need to be really cognizant of what it is we're proposing. I don't want to lose opportunities for tax credit projects. Thank you. >> Tovo: I think for me, I'm going to need to see a list of the streets. I think that may have been -- I'm not sure, council member harper-madison, if that's what you were saying, the specific streets. With the amount of work we have between here and Thursday, I'm just going to need to see a list of streets, please, for the transit priority network that would not be incorporated in the others and are not listed as exceptions. I guess that the question, you've both changed it to [3:43:16 PM] transit priority network. Would that be in combination with the same streets that are called out as exceptions in the proposal that the working group came forward with? Or is that intended to override the exceptions that are called out? >> Vela: I would like to add the transit priority network list to the other ones that were mentioned. There's a lot of overlap, but the transit priority network is a little broader than the other list. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Can I just ask, with the exceptions as noted within the working group proposal, or no exceptions as noted in the working group proposal. Because I think that is -- my sense is that that is -- that's the substance of the difference between what's been identified in the working group proposal and what you're suggesting with the transit priority network. >> Vela: I'm sorry, council member tovo. You have to remind me, which exceptions were in the working group proposal? [3:44:17 PM] >> Tovo: There are a list of streets that are called out from those broader categories. >> Alter: I think you're exactly right. As I recall, the list where we had where we were clarifying that they were accepted, a lot of those streets that were in the transit priority network that were not imagine Austin corridors or bond corridors that were the subject of high level discussion and where we had observed that there were differences on the way to those streets, that separated them from the things that we were calling out as medium corridors. Things like Duval and speedway would be in the transportation network but would not be considered medium corridors in the proposal that we are putting forward. And there is a list of streets that was in the original proposal, which is available on [3:45:17 PM] the message board. We went through quite a lot of discussion in our group to land on the subset of streets that we did, recognizing the many conversations that we had during codenext in the development code, and how all those had played out. And trying to get something done where we could actually accomplish something and move forward with it in a way that would be relatively simple to do. >> Tovo: I had asked about how her amendment interacts with the list. But you've called my attention to something that I had overlooked, which is that there's no longer a list in what you're bringing forward of streets that are accepted. So, is the intent that this resolution is -- has an attachment that is your proposal? Or is that now not part of your proposal that you're bringing [3:46:20 PM] forward? That there are no streets being culled out from the medium and large. >> Alter: Well, there are streets that are not medium or large because they don't fall under the definition. So we chose to put -- we close to use a resolution format rather than an exhibit, but by the definition that we have those streets, are accepted. Because they're not imagine Austin, they're not bond corridors. >> Mayor Adler: So the list was -- a list of streets that we did not think fell within the street categories we had identified. Unless there be any question for the community. We had prepared a list of streets that were subject to a lot of controversy in earlier versions that were not part of the street categories. [3:47:24 PM] It was suggested we didn't need that because they weren't otherwise covered. I don't have a problem with specifically identifying the streets that are not covered. However we do it. Because I think it's good to be able to tell people the street is not part of that. >> Tovo: I apologize that I'm only now noticing the list of streets is gone. I think that is helpful to have in there. >> Kitchen: Mayor, I have to -- >> Renteria: The fire department holds back more affordable housing, because of their setback requirements. And that's another one that's really affecting affordable housing, especially in my district. A lot of commercial in my area. And I try to build a unit -- and [3:48:27 PM] the fire department said no, because they have propane tanks up there, to charge up their little lifters, little motorized. So if we're really going to start looking at compatibility about highways and all that, let's also look at the compatibility setback that's required by the fire department. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Well, I do appreciate the effort that everyone has made. I know the working group is trying really hard to move this forward. I just would like to suggest that the rationale for keeping the highways is a good rationale. But to be consistent, we'd also need to do the transit priority network. It doesn't seem like it's treating the whole city the same, to include highways, but then say we're not going to include the transit priority network, or not going to include [3:49:27 PM] certain streets. We're not looking at problematic streets for the whole city. So I'm much more comfortable tying this to whatever the appropriate rationale is and being consistent with doing that. >> Mayor Adler: Any further conversation? >> Harper-madison: Well, I didn't respond to council member tovo's question, but I think in large part, just gave my response. I'm thinking from a land use policy perspective, from a policy perspective, I think compatibility should speak to the various needs, not necessarily that list of streets. So in my mind's eye, it wasn't in the resolution. So I wasn't considering the list as something to take into consideration. I was thinking broad policy. I just want to be able to put ourselves in a position to make some more policy. I thought smart policy would [3:50:29 PM] allow for all the exceptions to speak for themselves by way of our compatibility requirements. So that was, to answer your question about the streets. >> Mayor Adler: And I would just add that, having gone through this process as we have for the last eight years, the purpose of this exercise is we identified it back in November is to try to find where the Venn diagrams crossed and where we would have kind of agreement. You've seen with street selection, just a tiny piece of the conversations on streets that we've had the last eight years. And if we end up with a discussion about streets, that will be 50% of what it is that we talk about. So, part of the process was trying to get us the big things done, and not necessarily get all the individual streets right. But to enable us to move forward, and then we can edit it or do better. I mean, there's a lot of things that this represents that I do not think represent the best policy decision. [3:51:32 PM] They just don't. But I'm interested in trying to get something done that we can put in place that will survive while you all remaining on council go forth and do great things. All right. Anything else before we go to the next one? >> Tovo: Just super quickly, I think transit priority corridors are going to be a difficulty for me, and I say that as somebody who has frontage of highways as well. These all impact my district and I will have so give some thought, council member Harper Madison, to what you said about compatibility in the highways and removaling level 5.harper-madison, to what you said about compatibility in the highways and removaling level 5. I would suggest if we do have that conversation, or if the future council does, to go back and think about housing on highways. I think we should also re-evaluate what has started to become a council trend of approving housing on industrial tracks, sometimes in the middle of industrially zoned areas. [3:52:34 PM] With industrial uses close nearby. Which there have been several council decisions in that regard. Secondly, I just wanted to mention, I will have some amendments, and I don't know that they'll be out tomorrow. There's just a tremendous amount on the agenda that impacts district 9 that I'm working on. But I do intend to bring forward some amendments related to providing some modeling and visual illustrations, and I appreciate the staff doing what you have done. I think those have been very useful. But I have gotten lots of requests from constituents for kind of 3-d modeling and simple visualizations that really take some model tracks and show us how this would look up in different parts of the city. So those are some of the kinds of amendments that I intend to bring forward. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. >> Tovo: And there are some others, but I'll share those -- >> Mayor Adler: Anything you want to daylight now, that's helpful. >> Tovo: Not today. [3:53:35 PM] If I find them quickly before we move on, I'll mention them. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's move on to the next one. The next one we had pulled was item 80. Vmu 2. Council member kitchen pulled it. She's not with us now. Having made the election to have the homelessness thing come up at 1:00 first. But maybe we can have a conversation about it that she'll be able to go back and take a look at. If anybody wants to address issues on vmu 2. I will say for me, having vmu 2 by right as we laid out last fall, and as the staff came back is real important to me. I think that is the lowest barrier for people being able to step in and make use of it, if it is a zoning place, or it has to go to planning commission. [3:54:40 PM] I just think that we just won't see but a few of these cases. So, having it by right just remains real important to me. But I also recognize that if we're going to make it by right, which is probably the most important thing for me, then I recognize that we'll lose support for doing it by right if we go too far on changing compatibility questions. So for me, I'm comfortable using the same compatibility that we're agreeing to in 66, as the compatibility that ultimately, the vmu 2 properties would be associated with. And it still does really good work. I would urge everybody to take a look at that page 14 that the staff pulled out for us. [3:55:44 PM] And noting that the 100-foot distance, enabling 60 feet at 100 feet on the base vmu is as good as it can get, because vmu doesn't allow anything greater than 60 feet. So compatibility for greater height after that doesn't really change anything, because there isn't vmu height greater than 60 feet. So that gets us to where it is we need to get to. And then on vmu 2, the difference between even saying on the bonus, a difference between 90 feet, 200 feet and 90 feet, at 100 feet, is only an 18% delta. And that 18% is real - - is 18%. I mean, it's real numbers. But I would prioritize making it by right in all kind of vmu and [3:56:46 PM] all kinds of situations, just because I think that will end up with it being used so many more times. I wanted to say that out loud in case Ann watches the videos later. That's where I am. Thank you. Anybody else want to say anything about vmu 2? >> It has all been said. >> Mayor Adler: All been said. >> Vela: I think just lowering the compatibility along the Orange and blue lines is the lowest of low hanging fruit. It reinforces our now multi-billion-dollar investment in project connect. It starts that virtuous cycle of getting people along a light rail line. Also, the parking requirements -- you know, if we're not [3:57:47 PM] prepared as council to, you know, substantially reduce that compatibility, specifically focused along the Orange and. And on the flip side of it, I think that by focusing on the Orange and blue lines in terms of vmu, in terms of compatibility and parking, we are sending a very strong signal to the federal government and department of transportation that we are serious about our transit investment and I think that will help our secure additional federal funding, maximize the amount of federal funding that we are going to get so I guess I don't see it as an either or kind of situation. You know, I think we can do both. I mean, I think we need a broader adjustment of compatibility and I appreciate the working group's proposal and [3:58:48 PM] I look forward to talking about it, but with regard to the light rail lines, I do think we have to go above and beyond what the working group is proposing on that. Too. >> Mayor Adler: And if we can get that without giving up by right from a policy standpoint is something I support for all of the reasons that you gave, but ultimately we need to -- for right for all of the vmu places that are both on and off the blue line, because then they get picked up by item 66, and we don't want those tracks that will be enhanced by a 66 have to go through the zoning case. So I agree with you from a policy standpoint if there is the broader consensus to be able to do that on the blue and Orange line as you make that appeal, and still have it by right, I would be interested in [3:59:49 PM] knowing if there is a consensus to do that. >> Vela: Thank you, mayor and I would support by right, I would support that as well. And there is a lot of passion in this. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Yes. Councilmember tovo. Okay. We are ready to move on to the next item? Okay. Next item tote. >> Tovo: And a that's the homelessness briefing, I meant to ask the question, and feel free to get back to us when you need to, but when is the downtown Austin community court coming back to us? >> Thank you, staff. >> >> Tovo: Thank you. Can I say thank you for butting the Q & a that is relevant to this issue Al together, that was super, super helpful in addition to the other materials, but that was really -- >> And we will try to identify those other times where that would be helpful to you, even in our working -- in the discussion, there were previous [4:00:49 PM] budgets that maybe we can file and make sure those are accessible to council. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> I have seen a draft of some of the -- I asked the staff to continue doing some work and I think there should be a memo update to council in the coming weeks and then there would be a discussion scheduled for work session, a essentially that last week in July, so I will check on that and make sure that I have those dates right, but I know there has been an update memo that was circulating and we are in the process of final lieferg that. >> Tovo: And that, those stakeholder conversations have happened and have fit into the memo and the memo is coming to us so we would be poised for conversation in July? >> Correct. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: And I missed the beginning of what you said? >> Tovo: I wanted to make sure it was on a path to coming back. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Yes. Mayor pro tem. >> This is for other agenda item, this is for other agenda [4:01:51 PM] item comments. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> So I wanted to thank councilmember tovo for bringing item 67 about the halo cameras on sixth street forward and I wanted to, happened, I want to be added as a cosponsor. Is that okay, clerk? And then I wanted to flag for councilmember Ellis that I will have, what I hope will be a friendly amendment for 59 that will be acknowledging the electrification of transportation resolution that we have in the work that is supposed to be underway related to that, which relates directly to the he bike, E bike stuff and we hope to have that up as soon as possible but I think it is mostly a whereas clause in there, so it should be friendly, hopefully. Thank you. >> That sounds great and I look forward to seeing it. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen said that, because she wasn't here for the discussion [4:02:53 PM] on number 80 she had a question or two. She had questions and was going to post them on the message board, so everybody should make sure that we go there to go look at that. Yes, councilmember Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you, I also wanted to flag for councilmember Ellis that I will bring forth what I hope to be a friendly amendment to the E bike resolution, just looking at adding some equity in how we build out our infrastructure related to E bikes, particularly around the stations throughout the city, a and so we will be sure to share that amendment with you once it is ready. >> Mayor Adler: Cool. Anything else? That people want to talk about before we go to executive session? Yes. Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: I thought we were bringing up the conversation on hopelessness and -- I guess not, there was a specific thing councilmember tovo was going to ask. One thing I want to ask and this certainly can be something we discuss moving forward, is what [4:03:55 PM] are our options for just removing every single barrier? There may be to producing the housing for homelessness housing, permanent supportive housing,? I just have questions about how do we just make every barrier go away. >> Mayor Adler: You are talking about development services? >> I am. And you don't have to answer that question right now. It is just something that occurred to me as we were having that conversation and then I was at a luncheon today, you know, where builders and folks in that arena were talking about construction costs, labor costs which made us think about the earlier conversation with the labor folks and just, you know, how all of those things matter in the end, including when you are to produce -- so just, I mean, I obviously would like for that to extend to residential as well. >> Mayor Adler: Roderick, can we do that? Can we prioritize deeply affordable housing, coc housing -- projects? >> Sure. Just a couple of things. There are two council resolution [4:04:55 PM] that are pertinent to this discussion or councilmember requests. The first request is a report from dsd on processing time frames and just so in the context of permitting and so that is in the works and should be coming to council very soon. And the other resolution is to develop some sort of prioritized aspect for permanent supporting housing projects and we have worked with the homeless services office as well as housing and planning .. To develop a recommendation and so that will be coming to council as well. At the heart of it of course when you see this of course that we want to do is target those permits supportive housing projects that have a good quantity of psh, that also have the wrap around services and so that is where a our concern lies so that way it is not one or two within the complex of 300, but rather a good quantity, if you will, of psh that the whole summarize can benefit from. So we are coming guard with that information to council. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. [4:05:56 PM] And I think at this point the housing folks, the homelessness folks, Diana can tell you exactly what projects are that constitute the 1,300 units that we are hoping come online. >> Exactly. >> Mayor Adler: And helping people in the next three years and I think that while there could certainly be addition later we know what those projects are. >> Exactly. And that's why we are working with the homeless services office is because they know those projects and those are the ones we do want to prioritize and then also there is a third piece, and that? Dsd add add position in the current budget year, positioned specifically to help our affordable housing projects in general, get through the process faster, so these are -- this is an individual who helps to bird dog any issues that arise during the application process, so that way they can make process smoother for affordable housing projects. >> Which I really appreciate that. I think I was thinking specifically more radical, just [4:06:57 PM] entire -- [laughter] >> Any barrier whatsoever. If it is for permanent supportive housing and homelessness housing and affordable housing .. Just no barriers whatsoever. I realize as the stretch but that's what I was looking for. >> It is a long discussion because at the heart of it is we have got a lot of regulations that apply and we can't sidestep those regulations. We have to enforce those. Those are ordinances and so it takes of course staff time to review those to ensure that these projects are fully compliant and not every application meets the ordinance as it should. So therein lies the discussion, is when an application doesn't meet the ordinance, to catch it and they send it back to the applicants and say, sorry, but you do not meet the ordinance and so that is unfortunate and, you know, it is a process between the applicant and the staff, slow process, and staff's charge is very important. We have to enforce these regulations. We cannot allow any project not to do that. >> Mayor Adler: But to that end recognizing the importance [4:07:58 PM] and the existential nature of what we are dealing with here for the city's survival, if we should change some ordinances with respect to these kind of properties, if they are getting hung up in a place and say everybody is getting hung up on this one, change this ordinance, if this is where -- I don't think the priority that the council has with respect to getting these things done fast and faster than fast is being reflected and -- don't feel bound by an ordinance, say do you want to change this ordinance? Or if it is a staffing issue or if it is a prioritization issue, if it is more people, I mean, we are trying to figure out to how do we take a year off the process? Because if we can get these units up a year early from what we are being told from the developers is that, you know, if we have a three-year rose and a year and a half of it is taken up in development process with the city, so if we have meetings every Monday and we brought in all of this the department heads and everybody was working on the [4:08:59 PM] applications at the same time or we helped people get through their applications so they didn't have to go back and forth as much, I mean -- >> And I totally understand that. A lot of these regulations are rooted in 0 council policy, and so therein lies -- >> Mayor Adler: Bring it back to us. We are saying if you can't get them out a year earlier don't feel like you are bound to anything, give us the opportunity to be able to make changes so we can get these things online a year faster. That's what we are asking for. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor -- >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> #02: I would say that doesn't extend to health and safety of occupants for workers who might be on the site who are doing the building. I mean, it is one thing to do away with everything. We wipe everything out and then there are no protections. >> Mayor Adler: I wasn't saying we were going to -- I wasn't saying wipe it all out. >> No. That is what -- some of the conversation was how do we eliminate all of the ordinances and regulations and the bars and the barriers and I am saying that, question, we also have to acknowledge that there are reasons for some of them and I [4:10:01 PM] don't think any of us spend to be saying that we would do away with health and safety and with protection -- >> Mayor Adler: No, no. They are all important. >> They are all important and they are there for a reason. >> Mayor Adler: I just wanted to come back and say, do you want to speed this up by five months this is a change you would make and the council could look at it and say well we are clearly not going to make that change. >> And we may need to make sure we are not sending a signal to anybody in the community that we are contemplating even looking at eliminating every single ordinance in order to have things just get built. Then it is all ticky-tacky and doesn't last. And there are all kinds of issues. >> Mayor Adler: No one is proposing that. >> That is excellent. I know I would not be -- didn't think that was really what was being said here. I wanted to confirm that and firm that up. >> Mayor Adler:. >> Excellent. Thank you all. >> Mayor Adler: All right. It is 4:10. We are going to add scrowrp this meeting at 4:15. Let's see if we can get into executive session. >> So we are not adjourning. >> Mayor Adler: What? [4:11:01 PM] >> We are recessing. >> Mayor Adler: We are recessing. Yes. Sorry. Recessing so we can go into executive session. And in that regard, -- virtual. It has to be virtual. We are now going to go to closed session to take up four items. Pursuant to the government code whether he discuss personnel matters related to items e-1, 2, 3, 4, which are performance compensation benefits for the city clerk, city auditor, municipal court clerk and the manager, without objection here at 4:11 we will two into executive session. See you all in five minutes. [Executive session] [4:58:00 PM] >> We are out of closed session. >> I was just making sure. >> Okay. We're out of closed session. We discussed personnel issues related to items e1, e2, e3, and e4. The time is 4:58 and this -- we're going to go ahead and adjourn the Austin city council work session here on June 7th, 2022. Thanks a lot.