City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 8/11/2022 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 6 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 8/11/2022 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/11/2022 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. [10:08:27 AM] >> Mayor Adler: We will go ahead and convene the Austin city council budget work session. Also the special emergency called emergency meeting concerning the emergency order that's been entered. Hey, guys. Also concerning the emergency order entered on monkeypox. The time is 10:08. Today is August 11th, 2022. We have a quorum. Everyone is present. Council member harper-madison, I see her name remotely. I haven't heard from her yet, but we have a [10:24:59 AM] >> Mayor Adler: We have a quorum present. We're going to continue on with the meeting at 10:24. As I was saying, when we went offline, we're going to first consider the emergency item. I was giving really quickly the background of the county judge have entered emergency orders related to monkeypox, a disease that's really painful. It's now spreading out of initial communities. It's a concern for all of us, especially in a world right now that has insufficient vaccines to be able to deal with this disease. Which means it's really incumbent upon all of us to really take precautions, change our behaviors, so as to make sure that we're protected. Chances of getting this are not really good. It's small. But if you do get it, it is really painful. So we urge everybody to take precautions, people living here, all the people that will be coming in festivals as we enter [10:26:01 AM] into the fall. Everybody should minimize the number of sexual partners they have and physical contact in this environment. We do have the emergency order first to raise awareness and to spread the message that we just talked about. We also do an emergency order like this so that we're in line for reimbursement for funding, should that opportunity present to us. And also, we do this to communicate to the federal government the emergency situation we're facing and the need for us to get greater amounts of medicine and vaccines. Director stirrup, I think is with us in the call. I'd seen her earlier. I've seen her name. I don't know if she's physically with us. Before I make the motion to approve this, and colleagues, when the mayor enters an emergency order like that, it's good for seven days. And then it has to come to the council. [10:27:01 AM] The reason we're considering this as an emergency item is because this is the only time our council meets within that seven-day period of time, so we have to take action in order to be able to extend it. Commissioners court is taking similar action, if they have not already. But director, do you want to say something to the community about the monkeypox? >> Good morning, mayor and council. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. You summed it up rather nicely. You know, it's one of those things where we just need people to be proactive about measures that they can take to keep themselves safe. You've outlined it pretty plainly. Masking is always a good thing. Making sure that you have information about sexual partners, limiting prolonged skin-to-skin contact. All of those measures that we [10:28:05 AM] know that are about our preventative health are things that we can do to keep ourselves safe. Vaccine is limited. It's currently not available for pre-exposure methods. And so that means you can't walk up to Walgreens to get yourself a shot preemptively. The limited supply means that it's only available for those who have exhibited symptoms, have a known exposure, and have some testing that shows that they're positive for a type of orthopox. So we're following those guidelines. Janet is here, if there's questions about that. But what we really need the community to do is to take their safety into their own hands, in the same way that you put that seat belt on in the morning when you commute to work, practice those measures that the mayor and I just discussed, and we can stay on the right side of this. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. In our backup is a resolution [10:29:07 AM] that would extend the emergency order. Is there a motion to pass that resolution? Council member Ellis makes that motion. Council member Fuentes seconds that motion. Is called budget. . . . We will go into executive session, either to talk about the budget or to talk about the [10:30:08 AM] election, if there are any issues for people. But that's where we are. So I'm going to start by first inviting speakers to speak this morning. I think we had four or five people to speak. If the clerk's here. Are these all people that are here in-person? >> Mayor, all the speakers are here in person. First speaker is Monica Guzman, speaking on item 2. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Remember, this is not general conversation on the budget. This is on the -- this is on the question of the parkland dedication, which is in front of us and available to us. I certainly would let people talk about the monkeypox effort if they wanted to speak on that as well. And if there was an issue that arose, we could have taken a [10:31:09 AM] revote on that. I'll open that up for people to speak in. If there's interest, we'll call for a revote in that. But let's go ahead. >> Alter: Mayor, I just want to clarify. I believe that item 2 was set up as an item, if we needed it, to waive the planning commission's recommendation. They were able to make a recommendation. We just got it. So we don't need to move forward with item 2. Ms. Guzman is welcome to speak about parkland dedication, but I just wanted to clarify that that was put on our agenda to allow us to take action, if they were not able to make a recommendation. The planning commission spent several hours on this, and appreciate their work, and that item, as I understand it can be withdrawn, unless there is another recommendation. >> Mayor Adler: We don't take that motion because we don't need to. >> Alter: I was just explaining that for the public since she was listed to speak for that one. >> Mayor Adler: No, I appreciate that. That's good. We do have a public hearing on [10:32:09 AM] this item. It's item number 3. So we'll also entertain people that want to speak to the issue of the parkland dedication as part of that noticed public hearing. But, Ms. Guzman, is she with us? >> I don't see her here. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Next speaker. >> The next speaker is Roy Waley on 2 and 3. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> James Templeton is on deck for items 2 and 3. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Waley. >> Howdy, y'all, and good morning. On the parkland dedication ordinance, Sierra club is in favor of this overall. I have not seen the final recommendations. I was watching the PC meeting the other night and didn't get to see the end of it, so I don't know what the final recommendations were, aside from conversations I've had with a [10:33:10 AM] couple of commissioners. But all in all, yes, and I also would say that the saver springs group is in favor of this. But Sierra club is. But we [10:35:02 AM] >> Alter: To ensure that we have the resources to purchase pocket parks, trails, et cetera, where the growth is happening, and to extent that the growth is happening along our corridors, there will be funding in those areas. It is designated to be spent in a certain number of areas around the city, and it's the money that's in those areas that feeds to those areas, and there's rules about how far from a given property it can be for that money to be invested. And so, it is precisely what the parkland dedication ordinance is set up to be able to do. Thank you for being here, Mr. Waley. >> And if I could request that I get a copy of the final recommendations for Sierra club, I would appreciate that. I understand y'all just now have received them; is that correct? >> Alter: If we can make sure that's posted to, that would be great. >> Yeah, pony express, carrier pigeon, however y'all want to deliver it will be fine. [10:36:02 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Got it. Thank you. Next speaker. >> James Templeton. Andrew hornman for item 3. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler: You have to sign up. We have rules about signing up. Is there anybody else that's signed up to speak? >> That concludes the speakers. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. All right. Those are the speakers that we have that have signed up? We'll turn it over to budget staff. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Carrie Lang, budget officer for the city and financial services department. We thank you for this time as we continue discussion on the [10:37:03 AM] fiscal year 2023 proposed budget. This morning, we have prepared a presentation with several departments with Diana gray as the lead from the homeless strategy office to discuss homeless encampment cleanup budgets, as it pertains to the coming proposed budget. So with that, I'll turn it over to Diana and the team. >> Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem, and council members. As you know, among the many ways that we work on the issue of homelessness in the city, in addition to our housing and our social services, we do spend a significant amount of time and resources on the management of public spaces. Many departments are involved in this work. We have at least 15 departments that touch the public space management piece of this directly, but today, we're going to be talking about the work and [10:38:05 AM] some of the third party contracts we had specific to the four primary departments that are really boots on the ground engaged in cleanup efforts for areas that may be occupied by encampments of unsheltered individuals. We'll also be talking, in addition to the budgets of those specific departments, looking at the contract vehicles that we have in place right now, which in several cases multiple departments participate in. So we'll be giving a summary there. I think the high level message that I'd like to start with is that you will have heard -- and indeed, I believe heard on Tuesday from parks and recreation that cleanup had been a significant burden on their budget over the past year, and they had been able to utilize some vacancy savings for additional cleanup. But the other departments do show increases in their cleanup [10:39:07 AM] budgets, to the tune of about a million dollars for the coming fiscal year, and that is before we commit potentially some American rescue plan act dollars through a workforce development line item that could conceivably increase those contract amounts. So I think that we are looking at an increase in resources that should diminish the budgetary pressure, we hope, on parks and recreation and some of the other departments. With that, I'm going to have each department director or assistant director give a quick overview -- go on to the next slide, please. So we'll hear from Austin resource recovery, water shed protection department, parks and recreation department, and public works department, and then we'll give a quick summary of those third party vendor contracts that I referred to before. With that, I will turn it over to director Ken snipes. [10:40:13 AM] >> Good morning, mayor, council, mayor pro tem. Thank you. Director Ken snipes, Austin resource recovery. Next slide, please. So the major focus areas for Austin resource recovery is supporting other departments across the city as we conduct citywide cleanups of homeless encampments. We also conduct a number of one-off encampment cleanups as well in support of APD activities. The budget for this work during the fy22 period was $1.6 million. We also contributed $300,000 to Austin public health in support of the work that the other one's foundation does, and then another $375,000 to public works to help support the work that takes place under the overpasses. And the balance of that, the funding for the year includes things like landfill costs, other activities and other [10:41:14 AM] things that we support. Both our own internal activities and also other departments. For fy23, the proposed budget is almost $2.4 million. That includes continuing to provide the $375,000 to public works. We're committing $1.2 million for the department to do work on pard property. That money would come from the clean community fee. And that shows a transfer to support that of $770,000 for the period. Any questions? >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you very much. Yes, council member pool. Hang on, one second. Sorry. >> Pool: I just wanted to thank you and your staff for stepping up to the plate so robustly to help with the fees needed for our encampment cleanups. It really made a huge [10:42:15 AM] difference. We had a bit of a short fall, and you guys have filled it really beautifully. And I just wanted to thank you publicly, you and your staff. >> Absolutely. Thank you, council member. >> Pool: Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, council member kitchen. >> Mayor Adler: I echo council member pool's thanks. Really do appreciate that. I'm wondering, can you spend a minute and just talk to us how these funds are expended? I guess I just want to talk a bit about -- so for -- I know some members of the public have asked me what exactly are we doing, you know, in terms of cleanups. And primarily, I've heard concerns about how we go in and let folks know that cleanup is going to occur, and what steps we take to ensure that people are not separated from their property. So, can you speak to that for a minute? I know we've talked about that [10:43:16 AM] before. But it would be helpful if you could speak to that again. >> Sure, council member kitchen. So a typical cleanup starts with notification where staff goes out, they connect with the members of the communities. It also includes opportunities to help them connect with services. We provide an opportunity to help them store their personal belongings through one of the programs that we manage called the violet keep safe storage program. So we do take a pretty robust effort in trying to make sure that we don't separate people from their personal belongings or their cherished keep sakes, for example, as we've talked about before. As the team continues to do that work, the outreach team, the teams that support the cleanup effort are coordinating things that might consider the terrain, how many people are in an encampment, the size of an encampment, are all considerations that are taken into account, and then once the cleanup begins, there's typically no members there on the site once those activities commence. [10:44:19 AM] >> Kitchen: If this procedure is written down somewhere, you can just refer me to that. So if I'm a member of the public and I want to see what the process is, is that -- is there a written document anywhere? >> There is, and we're actually in the process of revamping those a bit, so we can get those to you. >> Kitchen: Okay. The kinds of things I'm interested in understanding that I would assume you would have in a written document is how much notice, you know, in terms of time. And what staff provides notice. And, you know, some specifics about how they do it. I assume that they go onsite and talk to people. But I'd want to understand that, too. There's a lot of challenges with that, of course, catching everyone so that everybody knows -- everybody who's living at a particular site knows when and what is going to occur. So I know it can be challenging to make sure and catch everybody because they may not be there. But I'd like to understand the specifics of all that. [10:45:20 AM] >> Absolutely, and that's laid out in the procedures, and we can certainly get those to you. >> Kitchen: Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, director. I appreciate your work on this. This shows the importance of, you know, this moment in our budgetary process. I know in 2019 was when I carried the budget amendment to carry forward the clean community fee. And so through the workforce first program, and then trying to expand that into a clean creeks crew. I think there's been a lot of innovative collaboration with the other one's foundation and some of the folks you work with. I know you work very hard to maintain a good level of service and to make sure that we've got the pickup and brush item pickups happening on a regular basis. I know that's been a lot over the past few years, especially during the winter storm. And really appreciate that work. The only question, I would say, is if folks want to bring something to the department's attention that is specific about litter in creeks that may or may [10:46:21 AM] not be related to encampments, what's the best way? I know we reach out to you on the back end when we get reports, but is there another process for folks that just see something in their community and want to make sure that you and your team are aware of it? >> Typically, the most consistent way to do that is through the 311 process, for a number of reasons. One of the most important is it allows us to keep track of the data, our response times, and to be able to use that data going forward, we may add certain locations that come up frequently to some sort of recurring process for review. So that would typically be the process that we would recommend. From time to time, people will call us directly, and if they do that, we still respond. But the most efficient and effective way is to use the 311 system. >> Ellis: Okay. That's great. I know there's a lot of folks that may see something near them and just repeatedly say to themselves this needs to be cleaned up, this needs to be cleaned up, and just not be aware that there's a process to it, and that you've got a crew ready to be able to, you know, circle through the community and make sure that those creek beds are being cleaned up in a timely [10:47:23 AM] fashion. So I appreciate all the work that you and your team are doing. >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Let's continue. Let's go through the entire report, because I think that some of the questions may relate to multiple departments. So I think let's get through the whole presentation. >> Excellent. So we will turn it over to director Jorge morales with the water shed protection department. >> Good evening, mayor and council. Can you all hear me? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Okay, thank you. My name is Jorge morales. I'm the director of the watershed protection department. I do have my assistant director here, if we get into questions after the presentation. But to cover our slides, I want to focus -- the main purpose for the cleanups for the water shed department are related to water shed protection lands that we protect. Many of them are buyout lands, but we also have infrastructure, open waterways, creeks that are part of what we focus on as part of our mission to maintain clean. So for our encampment, in fy22, [10:48:24 AM] our budget was increased slightly through a budget rider, so we added additional funds to the two contracts managed by public health. Our total budget is 1.44 million. About 576,000 in the contract for the enterprise professional service inc., that's a contractor that we have through a multi-year contract. You'll see the numbers don't add up. The budget was set, but because of the need, the demand, we ended up moving into year two or three of the contract amount we had with psi. So we went ahead and requested the full amount of authority we had for the entire contract to be able to provide the services for not only the work we do, because other departments also use the authority under the watershed contract currently. For next year, for the fy23 budget, we currently also have increased our budget to 1.38 million, and you'll see that we increased the contract amount [10:49:24 AM] that we'll need under the psi contract. We'll be doing that in collaboration with other departments as the larger needs arise. We also are maintaining the same Toof amount contract through the aph contract as well. And just to be clear, Toof assists us with encampment cleanup, but they do a lot of land vegetation cleanup as well, not solely encampment cleanup work. So that's basically the fy22 and fy23 budget for the watershed protection department. Once we conclude the presentation, we'll be happy to take questions from you. Thank you. >> Thank you, director morales. We'll move on then to parks and recreation. >> Good morning, council members. Kimberly Mcnealy, director of [10:50:26 AM] the parks and recreation department. So the parks and recreation department, as we told you on Tuesday, has the following information to share. In 2022, fy2022, we have a base budget of 374,000, and that base budget is inclusive of a single position that helps us coordinate outreach services within the parks system. We call that person an outreach coordinator. $108,000 of that base budget is committed to the cleanup contract with aph to be able to help fund cleanups within the parks system, and then the rest of that funding, the remaining balance is contractuals and commodities for equipment and supplies and things associated with cleanup. As I told you on Tuesday, we had some money through vacancy savings that we directed towards cleanup crews and also for security, and then in 2023, our proposed budget is that same base budget, it's a little bit [10:51:27 AM] elevated because of the base cost drivers, but it's the same configuration of funding allocations for the coordinator for the cleanup, and also for the contractuals and commodities. And that aph and the homeless strategy division has committed that $200,000 in arpa funding. And I believe earlier, you may have seen a presentation from Austin resource recovery, and you had seen in the allocation for the clean community fee of the 1.2 million that we spoke about on Tuesday. And that concludes my portion of the presentation. >> Thank you, director Mcnealy. The final departmental presentation will be the public works department. >> Good morning, mayor and council. [10:52:27 AM] I'm the director for public works. We're the fourth partner that works in this area. As you all know, in February 2019, we were notified by txdot that they would no longer be cleaning the areas underneath the underpasss, so we assume that, start that may 2019, and we've been doing that to date. There are 58 locations that we currently service, but we also have supplemental sites working with the other team members. But our main focus is in the right of way, which is from sidewalk to sidewalk. Our focus is also to make sure that it's safe, that none of the debris gets in the right of way that could cause harm to the people living there, or the people surrounding. To date, we've serviced 1,839 sites and picked up about 1,400 tons of material. Our budget is stable. We have $220,000 as contributed. We do manage the contract and our partner, A.R., helps fund and also works with us under that concontract, and we have two full-time employees that help do [10:53:33 AM] the information and coordinate services. Any questions? >> We can move on to the last slide. So, you've heard from four departments today who are daily involved in the management of public spaces and cleanups of encampments. In some cases, there are encampments that have been abandoned. Others where there has been enforcement, and still others where there may be cleanups around existing encampments. The three contract sources listed here represent the largest contracts that we have and the contribution of the four departments you've heard from, as well as aph, to those contract amounts. So Austin public health, as you likely know, has managed a contract with the other ones foundation, who employs people with lived experience of homelessness, and do work in a variety of public spaces, as you've heard, both parks and in watershed properties. We are actually in the process [10:54:36 AM] of resoliciting that contract at present. The solicitation has closed. So we do not have the final amount, nor can we confirm who the vendor would be, but it is a social service contract. It is limited to employing people who are experiencing homelessness, and we added $3 million of arpa funds to that overall solicitation for employment services for people experiencing homelessness. So you see here, just over $780,000 that is definitely going to be utilized for cleanup purposes. We anticipate with the arpa resources there that the total contract amount would be as much or more as in previous years. But we'll need to wait for the formal outcome of the solicitation. And then there's the psi contract managed by watershed, the relief enterprise of Texas contract managed by public works, and in the footnote here, [10:55:37 AM] you'll note that as director snipes mentioned, there's an additional $1.2 million in Austin resource recovery clean community fee funds that we'll be contracted in fiscal year 23, whether through one of these contracting processes for the existing contracts or separate solicitation. We'll let the department directors detail for you, if you're interested. And we are ready to take questions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Colleagues? Council member pool. >> Pool: I just wanted one more time to say thanks to Austin resource recovery, that gap between the 300,000 and the 1.2 million was identified early on, and during the spring and leading up to today, my team worked very closely with director snipes and his folks [10:56:40 AM] and our budget office and a number of staff members to bring that home and support the work that the city staff wanted to do. But having the additional encouragement to find the additional funds was significant in us getting to that higher number. Colleagues, you'll note that I am not bringing any budget amendments this year myself. I'm not leading on any of them, although I am supporting many of them. Some of that is due to the fact that I had deployed my staff to do some work in advance of this week to get some of these things more fully fleshed out, and we were just fortunate that these were all missions that everybody was very focused on and supportive of, so we were able to get these into the budget. And just a heartfelt deep thanks to everybody who worked with my team on this and a couple of other items on this over the last couple of months. I so appreciate the hard work. We have additional revenues in front of us to deploy [10:57:41 AM] appropriately and responsibly, and I look forward to those additional conversations. But I did want to make sure that we acknowledge that the staff is also able to step up to fill some of these gaps in advance of the additional work we'll be doing from the dais. Thanks, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Colleagues, questions on the cleanup issue? Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. I want to ask you a question about, is the state offering any kind of support at all? Are there any grants out there to help clean up? We have a lot of state property here, including underpasses, where we have seen a lot of trash accumulate in the past. So I was just wondering, is the state offering any kind of financial support? >> I'm not aware of any, council member. >> Renteria: That's the really [10:58:43 AM] sad part of the state here not supporting us. You know, we're doing a lot of service in cleaning up, and all we get from the state is criticism and no support. But I really want to thank your department and all the other departments for their effort of keeping the city clean. And I want to thank you for that. >> Thank you, sir. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Kelly, and then council member tovo. >> Kelly: Thank you, and thank you, council member, Renteria. You brought up a good point about the state. I was wondering if you were aware of any funds coming from counties that might be able to assist with some of these cleanup efforts. >> I'm sorry, funds coming from -- >> Kelly: Counties, such as Travis county, Hayes county, Williamson county, since some of the individuals who are unsheltered experiencing homelessness also reside in the county. >> So, I think we can certainly ask Travis county or the other counties whether what their expenditures might look like on that. I don't have data on that at present, council member. >> Kelly: Okay. [10:59:43 AM] That's all I had. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks for this presentation. This is very helpful to see how it falls out across departments, and I know some of our departments, like pard and watershed -- I think watershed actually brought us a contract long before we were having these kind of global conversations around it. They brought us a contract to consider and an idea to consider as part of our budget process to invest in making sure that we're cleaning our creeks. That was some time ago. I just want to be sure I'm understanding kind of what the total picture is. So as I accounted for it, in 2022, it looks like across these departments, we invested $4,317,930 in cleanups. Is that about right? And then we're looking at 4,553,962. So it seemed like it was going to be a higher increase, but it looks like it's only about a $200,000 increase. [11:00:47 AM] >> So I may want to let budget or the department speak to this. I do want to say the budget was lower in the past, but pard utilized vacancy savings that were not intended to cover the difference. The other thing I do want to mention is that in the contracts that we're showing here are the largest contracts with the largest contributors. We do see other departments contribute and draw on those contracts, on the authority at times, Austin water, Austin energy, when they have a site that may need service. I do believe that overall, the budgeted amount is higher. We did have expenditures that exceeded budget for cleanup activities in 2022. >> Tovo: Thank you, and I had a question about that with regard to pard. And what I think I understood from what you just explained is that there may be an Austin energy site that needs cleanup. They're not using -- they will -- when they do that, are they just using the spending [11:01:48 AM] authority, or are they -- or is that activity actually charged to whatever department is stepping in to assist. >> Yeah, so I'd like to either let probably director morales or public works department speak to the mechanics of that. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Council member tovo, yes. Our contracts have an authority in the contract amount. We allow other funding sources like Austin energy or pard to use our contract authority as well. So like Diane said earlier, our budgets have been lower because of the demand, the need we've gone up and expended more, found other savings to be able to cover more. And that's precisely why our contract that we brought before y'all last year will be coming back soon to ask for an increase in authority, because we've already reached the authority of a multi-year contract, because we had to use that authority from years out because of the demand. Our budget did increase for fy23, but it's also just keeping up with the added funding that we did expend already in '22. [11:02:51 AM] >> Tovo: So in the instance I described, where Austin energy -- where there's an Austin energy site, they're using spending authority, but the work is being performed on an Austin energy site. Is Austin energy then reimbursing that department? Are they using the spending authority, but using their own dollars? >> That's correct. They use their own funding source. We never exchange funding sources. It's one contract that they are allowed to use through their Austin energy funding source. >> Tovo: Okay, thanks. That's very, very helpful. Thank you. But in terms of like overall expenditures, we're looking at them in that 4,317,000? If we wanted to know how much we spend as a city in various different departments, that would be -- that would cover, that's the total. >> Council member, I think that's a close approximation. There may be some areas in which particular these one-off situations where another department may move some money, you know, into a contract. [11:03:52 AM] That number could be slightly increased or decreased, but I think it's quite close. >> Tovo: Thanks. And, you know, in talking about -- several of my colleagues brought up the txdot situation, and can you remind me -- I know you mentioned it in your presentation, or someone did, public works did mention the year that the state indicated that they were no longer going to maintain their property. What year was that? >> Council member, James snows, interim director, public works. It was February 2019 that we advised. We picked it up on may 2019 and we continue it to date. Now, I want to make one correction here. Txdot is still a partner helping us do some of the cleanups, but they don't have dedicated funding. We do have a master service agreement with them, as far as for maintenance. So they do do some areas for us, but we specifically focus on the underpasses. >> Tovo: And Mr. Snow, director snow, do you -- would you say [11:04:53 AM] that 200,000 -- is that 200,000 primarily being focused on the state properties? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: You know, I remember having conversations about this at the time, and I think I would want to revisit -- maybe I'll do this outside of an executive session, but it might be worth having a conversation about that in a legal -- from a legal perspective. >> The 200,000 initially was for those 57 areas. We have been -- since you've all seen that we've had a down ramp of people underneath the underpasses, we've been utilizing that money for other one off sites that have been done, not just txdot sites. >> Tovo: That's helpful. >> If there's anything in the right of way, we do it. Similar to what director morales said, even though we saw the need go down in the underpasses, we kept the authority open, so other departments -- or if there's something else in the right of way that we could work with, we would take care of. So we saw that need, because as we've seen people in other places, so we utilize the contract as best as possible and [11:05:56 AM] keep flexibility so that if it's not funding that we can use, we can use it. >> Tovo: Thank you. Thanks very much. Among other things, I think this really -- we always get questions, and by always, I mean probably once or twice a week I either get an email about or I see on social media questions about why, you know, in the perspective of some, why the city is not maintaining these spaces, whether they're talking about a parks space, or an underpass. And I think this indicates that you have multiple city departments. And lots of funding aimed at making sure that our public spaces are clean and sanitary for all who use them. So it's certainly a commitment that the city has. You know, we'll see, I guess, whether the need is beyond what -- beyond the funding level that's been allocated. But I appreciate all the departments working together to continue to increase it and to try to meet that need. I am concerned. In looking through parts, and I think we kind of had this conversation to some extent the other day. Pard has really shouldered a lot of the expense of this work, and [11:06:58 AM] I'm really concerned that they spent an additional $975,000 last year that they hadn't contemplated, and that really comes directly at the expense of public programs in our parks, or our recreation centers, and, you know, as we go through next week and the budget, I wonder, as there are parks amounts that come forward, I hope we keep that in mind. This isn't entirely about bumping up those amendments that I'm bringing forward, but it does seem to me that overall pard -- you know, this is well outside the mission, doing -- this is kind of well outside their mission, and I think we might consider that very large expenditure that they made. And then I guess just to get back to the question that I think council member kitchen was asking director snipes about where people should call or how people should call, I hope that we're moving toward that place in the process reconsideration where we'll be able to tell people, kind of a one-stop shop, [11:08:01 AM] so that an ordinary austinite doesn't have to figure out, is this a park site, is this a txdot, not calling council offices saying, you know, we really need to be able to have it appear to be seamless from the public's perspective. So even if it's more complicated on our city side. And I know you're working on that. I just wanted to invite you to say a little bit about the progress there and what it will look like from the perspective of the constituent. >> Yes. Thank you, council member. And I appreciate you asking this. We're really excited. As you know, we've been planning for several months around an organizational structure, I think, that will let us streamline our approach to this work to have better information to be clear about why and how we're prioritizing sites to be addressed. And so we expect to essentially turn on that homeless encampment management team formally with a new structure and some new tools. Probably by the end of the month. That is using a mobile [11:09:01 AM] encampment assessment tool that will allow our public space partners to capture information about the conditions in those encampments. The unit of analysis here is not so much -- we're not working at the individual level, but looking at the health and safety conditions in the encampments. And then tracking sort of which encampments are coming to the top first for us to work on, both in terms of cleanup, in terms of heal, et cetera. And I think one of the things, you know, that we -- among the tasks we have as we launch this structure is looking at those citywide protocols, as director snipes mentioned, and also we know thinking about the communication flow. Right now, we believe that the most effective way is 311, because we are able to track it more clearly. That comes in through another department. There's no centralized way for us to kind of have visibility into that, but it is certainly [11:10:04 AM] on our agenda of items that we'll be working on in this larger structure over the upcoming months. >> Tovo: That's great to hear. Thank you. And, you know, the mayor made this point on Tuesday. Maybe others did as well. You know, the way to end homelessness is by investing in housing, and I know that you are leading that charge here at the city of Austin. I want to thank you for that. I hope that, you know, five years from now, the council is going to take a look at the budget for cleanups and find that it's maybe -- who knows, maybe even at zero, because we've done such a good job of housing individuals. No one wants to live in a park or under an alley, under an overpass or in an alley. So this is, I hope, an area of our budget that will disappear in the years to come so that all of our neighbors have safe and stable housing. >> Mayor Adler: I guess we already recognized council member Kelly, so council member [11:11:05 AM] kitchen and council member vela. >> Kitchen: Mayor, I'm not certain if this is the time to ask these questions, or Diane, I'm not certain. I have questions about other aspects of the budget related to the homeless response system, not specifically on this. >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you hold that until we get to all these questions, but before we let Diana go, we'll open it up more broadly on homelessness. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Council member vela. >> Vela: Just a few broader questions. So, the majority of camps are then along watersheds, underpasses, and parks. I mean, is that the situation? >> I think, yes. If you take those three areas, you would probably capture the majority of encampments of unsheltered individuals. >> Vela: And what about outside of those areas? What other places do you see where people are camping? >> I mean, we sometimes see folks on private lands. We see them on public lands that [11:12:08 AM] may be undeveloped, but are not parkland, is not uncommon. And so we'll say also that the Austin resource recovery's work and staffing is more flexible. So, you know, we're looking at sort of these combination of resources being cognizant of where funds can be spent, depending on the funding source. To date, we've been able to cover the various scenarios that we've encountered. >> Vela: And any sense in terms of looking at the population and where they are? Any sense of kind of a percentage breakdown as to, you know, how many are in watersheds, how many are in underpasses, how many are in parks? >> I don't think I would hazard a percentage breakdown, but I will say that since the beginning of the enforcement of both our local and state camping bans, that the number of folks, as people will have appreciated, underpasses has decreased. And we probably are seeing an [11:13:09 AM] increased number in wooded areas to include parks and other underdeveloped areas. >> Vela: Got it. And that definitely tracks with the anecdotal, you know, reports, and just observations from the community. And then another -- you know, I often get asked, I mean, this is probably the number one question that, when I'm out and about and people are talking politics, is what's going to happen, you know, with homelessness, what's going on, what is the city doing. Is there -- and again, I can kind of go through and say, well, you know, we're doing this, and focus on the pipeline, and so on and so forth. But is there a one best location where, you know, we can respond and say this is kind of a comprehensive list of what the city is doing in terms of cleanups, in terms of housing, in terms of support services? Any one spot that you would recommend? >> Sure. So, we are in the process of [11:14:09 AM] looking at the website, and so that will be one site. The other place I would say is the echo website. So ending community homelessness coalition maintains dashboards, not only about what the city is doing, but what's happening in the community at large. >> Vela: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. >> Mayor Adler: Just to follow up. I mean, obviously, a lot of money being spent on cleanup, which is real important. The ability to be able to be addressing the challenge of homelessness for people in our community. Perhaps this is its most visible point. So it's a point where the public is looking and gauging how we're doing with the more long-term, but still short-time goal to end homelessness in the city. So I agree with my colleagues that you have to take the entire context into play. [11:15:10 AM] Certainly I see the same social media posts and get the same inquiries in my office with respect to areas where we need to be doing better, and I urge the public to continue to reach out to our offices, my office, and your office so that those places can be prioritized and we can bring help to people that are living in our community. But I will also point out that I think that all the different staffs are doing a really good job with the resources that they have, given the scale of the challenge that they face. Obviously, the issue of homelessness, the big issue in our community, it took most of our attention and most of the community's attention for a long period of time. I really appreciate the work that you're doing, not only on cleanup, the work that the other staffs are doing, departments are doing on that, but the broader and longer-term effort, which we'll probably get into questions to actually end homelessness in the city. [11:16:11 AM] Recognizing that we have a challenge. We don't want to be on the same path as L.A. And San Francisco and Seattle and the like. And I think it's worth noting that while this was an issue, that became front and center or more than probably anything else in our community, which drove us, I think, in part to have the resolve and the will to spend the resources we had to prioritize this to actually end homelessness. This is not the main issue in the mayor's race in our city. It continues to be the number one issue in that race. I think at the same time that we're recognizing and identifying areas where we need to do better, it's also important for us to take just a moment to recognize the progress that we are making on this, a real significant challenge. [11:17:14 AM] Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: I think this question fits here. Good morning. Can you help me understand what happens after a heal site has completed the process in terms of enforcement? >> So, once for -- so, of course, for heal sites, we go in, we do outreach there. [11:18:51 AM] ... Or landscaping that sort of reactivates the space in another way. So there were plantings as well as other things at lady bird lake as examples. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate this. And I want to move a little bit further on this question and maybe some of my colleagues have had different experiences than we've had. And I want to preface this that I think that the heal initiative is a great initiative. I was proud to co-sponsor that initiative. And I think it's really important. But there seems to be some elements that are missing once the side has been cleaned or we've used it as a heal site and provided the transition to housing, both with respect to the cleanup issues but also in terms of the presence of camping and other related issues. The site I want to bring up is 183 and oak knoll. That site has gone through [11:19:52 AM] the entire process but camping has been recurring on and off and it's not clear to me we have an organized method for responding and it's not necessarily like 15 people that are showing up to recur, it's a small number which would potentially be manageable. Fanned you will bear with me I want to share an email because this bears on the question of bringing in the district reps and how that's working. So we received this email on July 12th. Sorry to bother you, but the guy came back to the intersection right after I emailed you. I thought it was just temporary, but he's totally moved in again and is living underneath the 183 overpass with his trash spread out below. I called 311 last week and also left a message at APD for our district representative today. There's nothing more we can do as we've called 311 and APD as we've been advised to do. From what our APD district representative officer said when I spoke with him a few weeks ago, this won't be cleaned up by the city anymore has txdot does that now which is maybe every [11:20:53 AM] four to six weeks. The camper is the same guy who has been there for well over two years and continues to come back within a day or two after everything is removed. Since oak knoll is part of the heal initiative is there anything that can be done since he is a repeat violator and he's received two violations. It's not only that he trashes the area, but when he's panhandling at the intersection he's very aggressive and unstable. APD and 311 said they would let the homeless office know but I don't see where they've done anything. In the prior email that we got on June 30th the constituent explained I want to let you know that the underpass was cleaned up on 6-28. The guy had carts, a baby car seat, junk over the last week. Our APD district representative officer also called me back the same day to let me know when was txdot who did the cleanup. He updated me that cleanup is now the responsibility of the transit regional majority due to the construction on the toll way thrown mopac and I-35. He said they only come out [11:21:54 AM] four to six weeks but it was not a city of Austin cleanup anymore. He mentioned thank you now a construction zone so camping is not allowed but I'm not sure how that will be monitored other than the workers reporting campers. I know that doesn't help much at Braker because they seem to be camping around the equipment that has been moved in. Our APD district representative officer also said they issued a violation to the guy on Tuesday, which is seize she could one at the intersection. He said gate is the same way at the intersection that was cleaned up by the city a few weeks ago so it sounds like he was given his first violation then. Our APD district representative was so nice and took the same thing to mention everything that I mentioned above. He said oak knoll is still a heal intersection and to continue to report conditions to 311. The guy was back with his pallet, bike and pretty drunk, but he was gone this morning so I guess it will be up to us to report it to 311. And the following is what we received when we contacted staff about this site. I'm no longer monitoring [11:22:55 AM] this intersection for returning population. I can pass this on to APD. But I suspect you would get a swifter response if you get directly with them. Do you have a preference? So now we have a heal site that has been completed, we have multiple instances of recurring camping and people have been told to contact 311 and that the hso will be notified, but they tell my office that they warrant involved. Then we have APD involved and they give multiple citations which my office has verified with APD this is true and yet the person is still there. They receive multiple citations and even worse I can't tell they've been caced with services in any way. This doesn't seem to be an example of a functional system. As we are considering an increase in funding to components of this can you help me understand how our system is responding to these types of situations and what my office needs to do to get a response that connects the person with services and ensures compliance with prop B and the contours of the heal initiative? And I know that's a lot. I'm happy to give it to you in writing. We've been going round and round and round and I don't [11:23:58 AM] know that we're alone and I think we're all doing this in our own situations. And as we're talking about more money we need to surface the problems and we have tried to do this in many our forums as I understand it. So I would like to understand, you know, how we make this functional if we're going to give more money. >> So yes. And it is a lot there. And I think I need to understand -- there are many questions there, right? Enforcement is Austin police department. One of the reasons we have created the structure and are launching it is that when the heal initiative was started we did not have a community-wide ban on public camping, right? We -- it was in the parks, etcetera. But those were the sites we were talking about. We are faced with an immense [11:25:03 AM] inflow of information about encampments, etcetera, and staff is doing their best and we are creating a structure that is going to allow us to effectively prioritize sites D that mean that we can guarantee that is single person at a particular site is going to be gone tomorrow? Probably not. Because we're not just talking about the resources for heal, which is to house people, right? And that piece is really not related to the problem that you're talking about, right? Which is enforcement and cleanup, I believe. To also outreach perhaps. We will be utilizing this system to be clearer about how that information comes in, what happens and to some degree I think we do have to be honest about we're making huge progress but management of expectation that the individual has been cited. [11:26:03 AM] There has been enforcement. The enforcement of the ordinance in that case is a citation. So there may be further enforcement but it is a class C misdemeanor currently. So I understand the frustration. We receive, you know, tons of it everyday as well and I think we can be clearer, but I think we want to be realistic about what we can tell the public we will be able to do, always striving for improved performance. >> Alter: I appreciate that and I realize that I put you on the spot, but we're trying to make those budget decisions and we're doing it in a really tight time frame and there's not exactly a lot of opportunity to have gazillion separate meetings once we've had the budget. I do think that there are multiple issues here, though. And I'm not just talking about enforcement or cleanup. It not clear if this person [11:27:04 AM] had been connected with services and whether -- because it seems to be a recurrence of one individual in particular, although there are others who are coming. But you just said that txdot is not doing any cleanups and now APD is telling them it's not the city's responsibility, it's txdot. >> Just to clarify, I said there was no funding for us for cleanups. That was the specific question that was asked. I wish I would have been more clear. >> Alter: We've been told at other times that there's a lack of clarity over who's responsible and who they should be -- who people should be contacting, whether it's our office or others. And we have had this constant back and forth and everything for three years now where one department tells us it's the other one, the other one tells us it's the other one and nobody seems to be talking to each other. And I know you're working hard on that, but I don't know anymore how I'm supposed to get-- how we [11:28:04 AM] address the issues that are being raised because we get caught in this vortex and it's groundhog day every single time. And we're talking about, you know, more resources and more resources. We need to get this to function better. I don't know if my colleagues have had similar experiences if they have gotten figured out ways to navigate it. I would appreciate hearing that and perhaps we can get some focus on this heal site as we bring this to your attention. And I will share this -- the emails with you so you can take a closer look. I don't expect you to resolve this and we know the problems are very real and not only can not tell my [11:29:04 AM] constituents what happens on a heal site with enforcement after the fact, I'm struggling to be able to articulate how we're currently able to tell people that we're complying with our state and local ordinances that say is camping is not allowed. And I just -- it's challenging. >> Kitchen: Yes, thank you, mayor pro tem, for raising that issue and thank you, Ms. Grey, for your response. I do want to share a perspective. The heal initiative -- with all due respect, the heal initiative doesn't stop with the housing. The initiative that we passed had a component for placemaking for the places that are heal locations. And so that is our responsibility. That is not an APD [11:30:08 AM] enforcement issue. So it is part of heal. And so I think we haven't yet found a way to deal with that. Some locations are working and some are not. What we desperately need is a -- when we plan a heal location, the placemaking at the end should be part of that planning. And there should be funding for the placemaking aspect of it too. So for example you mentioned the library. That worked, there were plantings. In the Menchaca area that was there is there were poles to delineate the pedestrian and bike area? But what's missing is when we plan a heal site it doesn't stop at focus being moved and going to shelter [11:31:09 AM] and then working. There has to be a plan for the location. Now, I'm understanding from previous efforts that -- from previous reports that there was an effort going on develop the placemaking. I'm not sure what the status is now. I understand that for each heal initiative the departments will be charged with the responsibility for addressing that heal location. So for example it is under an overpass that would be the transportation department. If it's -- which would be -- which would be the example that the mayor pro tem brought up. [11:32:12 AM] So here's a question, do the departments have funding to address placemaking at heal sites? >> There is no funding set site for heal sites. They may have in their budgets funds that have already been set aside for that particular site depending on where it is or funds they can draw on. So in the operations that we have established when we have a heal site or any other site that will have some intervention that an operational plan is developed. And I think what we agreed is particularly for those that are heal sites there would be a piece of that that spoke to the repairs at that site given that there is no dedicated funding for this effort, that would be dependent on the resources available to that land [11:33:14 AM] owning department or in the case of Terrazas there was work with the community and at Buford tower the trail foundation I believe invested some funds in some beautification there. >> Kitchen: I would like to know for each heal site to date which department is the lead department for the placemaking. I would like to know that and I would like to know from each of those departments what funds they have available to address placemaking in that location. And then I would like to understand for each site what is the plan for placemaking in that site. I realize that, Ms. Gray, that you are in a position where you're relying on other departments for their responsibility in their budget. I wonder if you could pull that together. Because this is a budget question. I don't think our departments -- I'd like to [11:34:15 AM] understand from our departments what their challenges are and it could be that they need some funding specifically for each heal site when placemaking comes up. But we cannot leave -- that is part of what is the heal site -- the heal initiative is designed to do because it's to work with the community. So our community is totally frustrated. I get what you're saying, mayor pro tem. And it just -- it just -- it just does not help in terms of demonstrating the value of the heal initiative if we've left off a piece of it that's a very important piece. So Ms. Lange that's what I'd like to have. I'm going to put it in writing right now. I would like to have that information in time for us to consideration if there's one or more departments that need dedicated funding for heal. I understand that placemaking is challenging and some of these locations [11:35:16 AM] are more challenging than others in terms of what the options are. We had some conversation the other day about parks and signage, for example. And you know, that was in a different context that was more -- I think it was the way findings, but we also had a conversation about signage related to camping. So that's an example. If pard is responsible for a location and they need signage we need to make sure there's money in the budget to do that. So let me say I totally appreciate how challenging putting in place a new program like the heal initiative has been and I am very pleased at the progress that has been made in helping people get into shelter and into permanent housing. I think there's a lot of really good efforts and good solid successful results there. But like the mayor pro tem is saying we need to address the whole thing. [11:36:17 AM] So I'd like to understand those things. And then we can have a discussion a as a dais about what can we do. Is there a department that needs some funding that's dedicated for that. I want to hear from those departments on what their challenges are too. So thank you very much. >> Tovo: Thank you. In the event any of my constituents are listening I just want to assure them that I know that we have situations like the one that some of my colleagues have referenced throughout district 9 and just be assured that I've had many an email pretty much one week to various folks, whether it's our city manager or do Diana. I know that you all be working on figuring out how best to respond to these situations and I think you addressed it. We have encampments in multiple places and it's very, very challenging to understand -- to have the resources and the staff capacity, and I appreciate your work continuing to address this and continuing to refine and improve the [11:37:18 AM] process. I do want to say, councilmember kitchen, I understand what you're saying about placemaking and I think that is an important element in the design that you brought forward with heal. We've never really discussed how to address it with regard to heal sites that are not like the Buford tower. I'll give you the example of one in my district which was a heal site in west Bouldin creek I've mentioned before. It was a subject of heal. There was a lag in terms of getting some of the items that had been left behind once individuals were placed in to bridge shelter. There was a fire that resulted. I think it was then I assume eventually cleared. We're not that far out and it is now an encampment again and I'm getting repeated emails from neighbors in that area who have gone -- gloved up and gone in there and tried to address some of the cleaning but they are concerned about fires and they're concerned about again the accumulation of -- we have to figure out [11:38:19 AM] what to do in these areas where we're just going to be back in the same situation a couple of months later if there's not some addressing, and it's not -- it is an area that's very, very different than some of the others that we're talking about. So I think it's sooner rather than later because I want to make sure that our progress with heal is not just -- we want to be able to then house individuals in another area and not be repeating the same kind of cleanup there. I also think we had a conversation on Tuesday about signage, and I think there were some different thoughts expressed about what that signage might be. But I do think -- I think especially in circumstances like that where a site has been part of heal there really needs to be signage that says this is not an area where camping is allowed. You may not cook -- I think that we do need to start putting the kinds of signs up here and there to remind people what the rules are and what the expectations [11:39:19 AM] are and certainly what some of the dangers are. And cooking or starting a fire in one of our greenbelts especially right now is extremely, extremely dangerous to the individuals in closest proximity at that encampment as well as their neighbors in other parts of the area. So I hope that we're moving to that as well in addition to what you're talking about, but placemaking may not be -- I guess my point is placemaking may not be appropriate to some of the hillsides, but we still need a solution there. >> Kitchen: But my definition of placemaking, I'm sorry, they shouldn't -- I shouldn't have used a term like that. What I mean is what works for a particular site to do exactly what you just said. And so -- which is really how do you change the configuration and can you change the configuration of a specific site? In some cases it may be signage, in some cases it might be something else. >> Tovo: May I say one more thing, mayor? We had a conversation yesterday with some of our APD representatives and others. The other challenge here, [11:40:21 AM] and this is one that I think our city staff face everyday as they approach some of these areas and some of the individuals living in these areas. There's no place to tell people to go. So at the end of the day, and I've heard this from staff in multiple departments. I won't call out those departments now. But we are sitting on the dais, we're not out in the fields, explaining to individuals that they can't be in a certain park or they can't be at the renaissance market or they can't be on the sidewalk and being pace spaced with a question where should I go instead? And we have had conversations on this dais. I brought forward, say, the resolution about creating safe camping areas, one in every district. And several people expressed very publicly that they didn't want to see sanctioned camping areas. So this is -- until we create sanctioned -- until we have enough housing which obviously should be our focus and should be our goal that everybody in this city have access to a safe and [11:41:23 AM] stable house. Until we get to that point I really think that this city and this city council needs to address setting up sanctioned camping areas so those individuals on the street, our city staff who are interacting with individuals experiencing homelessness, have someplace to tell them to go. Because what we have in essence are unsanctioned camping areas all over the city. And they're not safe and they don't have access to restrooms and it's frankly unconscionable. So I hope that we -- when I say we, it may not be several of us here on the dais to have that conversation, but I do think -- I do think that it's a conversation that we should reengage, that the city should reengage. And urban alchemy has experience in this. They talked to us about that as part of their conversation last week about the arch and that may be something that makes sense to pursue. >> Kelly: Thank you. From what I've heard here, and this is a very [11:42:24 AM] complicated issue, and we have made progress towards some of our council goals. I do want to just briefly highlight there is a park in my district, tanglewood park on rustic rock drive, is very close to a middle school, canyon vista middle school. And I have been getting floods of emails from concerned constituents who are worried about that park. They have gone into the park to try and help those individuals who are experiencing homelessness, but it can be frustrating sometimes when we put in a community assistance form the information we get back from our district representatives or even your office as a whole. I do want to express gratitude towards your office for being responsive and for our district representatives. We are in a very tough position and the heal initiative has helped us reach a lot of our housing goals on council so for that I'm appreciative. Back to councilmember tovo's point about the sanctioned encampments, that's a conversation that I would [11:43:24 AM] like to bring up again to talk about because we do know from -- I know from going into the homeless encampments with the con tables office that there are people who will not take or accept housing but they still need a safe place to be where they can access resources to help lift them out of their situation if that's what they would like to do. So I would like to see that discussion again or maybe even a briefing on what our options might be. But thank you very much for listening to our feedback. Appreciate it. >> Mayor Adler: The cleanup conversation in the camp areas obviously are recurring conversation for us and for things we've asked you and staff to take a look at. And it is, and I agree with my colleagues that having anybody camping in this city and tent is absolutely unconscionable. And the question is how do we get out of that and how quickie can we get out of [11:44:24 AM] that and what's the best path to ensure we get there. Just to double pack and I'll address it in a second, it's been the recommendation of your office so far that we don't invest a lot of money in sanctioned camp areas, is that correct? >> The feedback that we gave council last summer if I'm not mistaken when this was last on the table is should that be a direction council wanted us to take, it was going to take resources and time. So citing, sanctioned encampments, much more dives than shelters even and shelters are very difficult to cite. We identified zoning issues, so it was not simply point to a pr sell of land and turn it into a sanctioned encampment, but it would -- typically the sites that we had identified, city-owned sites, would have had to go through rezoning. And that the cost was comparable in some cases to shelter from an operational standpoint. Obviously not quite so much from a capital standpoint. So we are seeing Esperanza [11:45:28 AM] community is expanding. It is essentially a sanctioned encampment run by a non-profit. We -- you know, they are seeking additional operating funds. We have had an open solicitation for crisis funding. So there could conceivably be some of our support in the expansion of camp he is Esperanza, but again, it is one option, but I want to caution because I think sometimes when we think let's have sanctioned encampments, if we had that in each district we still need to accommodate 250 in each of those to shelter the population. That's a large site and not without insignificant cost. So I think for us we had kind of come to the end of the assessment of city-owned property and presented those best options to the city, felt like there were other ways for us to create [11:46:29 AM] shelter more quickly, which we did. We set up north bridge and south bridge shelters that same summer. So it is -- I think it's not a hard no. The amenities tend to be richer in a shelter, non-congregate shelter in particular than sanctioned encampment, but we have to really look at what it costs and what the timeline is rather than assuming it is going to be quick and inexpensive. >> Mayor Adler: And it's hard to do and we have some cities that have focused on sanctioned encampment solutions and many of those cities are kind of trapped in that. Now they're just feeding all their money to sustain a growing number of sanged camp areas as opposed to actually housing people and keeping them off the street. At the same time I think it is part of the solution and certainly the work that Esperanza is doing is really valuable too. I just don't want us to lose sight of the fact that it's within our reach to get on a path to end homelessness rather than just deal with [11:47:30 AM] it. And I don't know if there are other -- I recognize the need too to perhaps invest more money in areas where we're dealing with the camp areas because we're all hearing from that from our constituents and the like. And I don't know where that would be in looking at the budget. I wouldn't want to take dollars away from actually working to end homelessness to get it done. I look at it and I don't know if it makes any sense at all, but the civilian conservation corps, the first iteration of that was to intended to hire people who were experiencing homelessness and we were hiring them to help with cleanup and activities and the like. It grew as a concept for me in terms of -- >> Alter: That's actually not true. >> Mayor Adler: Just a second. The civilian conservation corps and a lot of the work now is being done by kids in the American youth works. But I have asked for the objective numbers and Kimberly, I appreciate the material I got. [11:48:31 AM] That's mostly qualitative work. I'm still looking at how many people are we talking about? How many kids or people do we have out? Are they moving to other kinds of jobs? So at some point I'd still like to get that objective information. But I wonder if part of the funding for that program, that is in part designed to work like the civilian conservation corps did back -- if this is where we're getting so many calls, if this is where our council offices are getting such a volume. And I think that it is, maybe there's a way to make sure that this program in addition to the fire protection work or other things -- and again, that's why I wanted a little more information from it, may be part of that effort should be also hiring people that are experiencing homelessness to help with [11:49:33 AM] some of the. Return of encampment areas that we have in the city. But I'm looking for more information on that to see whether or not that's something that's viable for us to consider as a council? >> Alter: Can I say something? Because the hccc was not created for homelessness. It was something that the foundation was doing and that was supported from the clean community fees and councilmember Ellis and councilmember pool are working on that civilian conservation core was to help people who were impacted by the pandemic. Now, obviously they could become homeless if they had no job, but it was not particularly targeted at that. That doesn't mean we couldn't engage with the partnership between acccc and homeless strategy to be looking at placemaking in these heal initiatives. It's not precluded in any way from hiring homeless people who are experiencing homelessness, but that is [11:50:33 AM] not the focus of that project. That is more the two projects. And it is two different projects that I don't want to get mixed up. And we have pivoted from providing support for folks who are impacted by the pandemic to equitable green job pathways and there are certainly ways that one could think about contributions to that and also there are ways that city departments who want to share funding might be able to deploy the people who are engaged in the core to assist with these projects. But we just want to make sure we're not conflating two different projects. >> Mayor Adler: And I'm happy to hear that you're open to taking a look at that priority. I know from what I see is it's a real concern in an emergency way. I know that the conversations that we had is we were setting up probably different ones of us had [11:51:33 AM] different goals in mind and priorities in mind that was being set up and the conversation we had when we were talking the arpa dollars and moving into places to help people that were most impacted. For me that was -- we were talking about that in the context of. That part of that budget where we were dealing with people experiencing homelessness as opposed to youth which I think is really a good program too, not so much impacted by covid at the time. But in any event regardless of how we got here, I'm happy that you're open to taking a look at whether or not this might be a place given the emergency situations we have where it might be able to address more than one possible need. [11:52:34 AM] >> Alter: There was some really interesting feedback we got from the corps members who had the experience of working in parks where they were interacting with people who were experiencing homelessness. So I think we have to be mindful of the experiences that they're expressing about the work and the nature of the work and making sure that we're engaging them in ways that are consistent with the process and taking into consideration the feedback that the corps members themselves have given us in that regard. .>> Mayor Adler: Council member vela. >> Vela: I wanted to say what I experienced at home Depot property which was days after I took office and on the other side, the westside of I-35, which was also I believe a heal [11:53:34 AM] initiative targeting to move, is that correct? >> East of I-35, but one was to the west of the home Depot and one was to the east of the Home Depot. >> Vela: And it was a very difficult situation. Everybody is there was housed and to this date, although -- and again, I have to give props to the homeless strategy office, APD, Austin resource recovery, parks also there's a small St. John's neighborhood park there, a fence was put up to restrict the land, undeveloped land to where all the camping was taking place. Or like someone has cut through the fence. But the situation has been substantially improved. I know how much work was involved to make that happen [11:54:35 AM] and I appreciate it. I know it's not perfect, I drive by there and I see folks that are setting up, hanging out, whatever the case may be. But in my experience and in the other heal initiative sites that I have seen, while again it may not be 100% of the elimination of camping, the disturbance, the cleanliness, there is a measure of kind of order that has been brought back. And of course housing for their folks that did not have shelter before, so I wanted to give staff lots of credit for their hard work and their program. Just pivoting back to the legal campsite sanctioned campsite, I agree with councilmember tovo's comments and with the mayor's comments as well. I've had this conversation with Diana and I completely agree with the focus and that it needs to be on [11:55:36 AM] housing. That said, just through my conversations with different folks that are involved in housing the homeless, in working with them, providing services, it's hard to imagine that at some point there's not going to be -- even if we build a lot of housing, a residual population of folks or that that at least kind of cycle in and out of homelessness. And I would rather have them in a -- in a primitive but safe campsite, public campsite, than in the woods, you know, behind the park and those kinds of situations. So I understand how difficult it's going to be, but I do think that -- I am willing to return to that conversation and say hey, I think we need at least one and where is it going to be, how much money do we want to invest in it. I just wanted to say that. [11:56:37 AM] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: I think what we've been able to determine over this conversation is obviously there's still much greater need than being able to truly keep people from falling into homelessness and truly get people into the housing that they need connected to the services they need. I think one of the other issues that we have in looking at sanctioned encampments in particular is that we don't have a good experience to point to. We don't have a success to say here's how we did it and therefore any time there's an encampment suggested especially if it's really close to a neighborhood, people are going to have a lot of questions. And we don't have an example to point to to say this was safe, this is how it worked, we were able to help this many people exit homelessness and get back on their feet. And in my experience in representing one of the areas where one of the encampments was suggested is that there were a lot of [11:57:39 AM] questions that couldn't be answered. And there were a lot of fears that couldn't be appeased through any sort of planning process. You said the zoning didn't match. Do we have the right budget to make sure we have the right security personnel to ensure the people not in the encampment and people in the encampment are safe and healthy and have access to the services they need. We had situations like there's no sidewalk to get to the bus stop. How are people going to be able to truly access other services that are not on site because my district doesn't have a lot of bus service. So there's just some real honest implications and questions and answers that I think people are going to want to know before they would be truly okay with trying something out. And I think any of us are going to deal with this. If there's options for sanged encampments. But I do think if there were a community that stepped up and found a spot near them and said we're willing to try this, you know, we are [11:58:39 AM] okay with being the beta test and trying to do something that maybe we could figure out our way and how to make that template work. But I think any neighborhood that just says here is a plot of land and we might deploy a sanctioned encampment, as much as we tried, can we truly commit that everyone is going to be safe both in and outside of the encampment? And we're going to get those questions and you should be prepared for them. So if it's community led and I think the right resources available it could work, but I think there is a lot of fear for folks that see open vacant land and are probably imagining that one day there could be something sprung on them that they haven't had time to provide input or to truly vet their questions and make sure that this is -- this is the right strategy for any community that's trying to be served by this. So there may be some folks that step up. I love the work that they're doing at camp Esperanza. The city manager had done a budget unveiling at [11:59:40 AM] community first in years past and I got to go on a trip and see how they work with tiny homes and community gardens and art studios. And there are some success stories. And maybe our private and non-profit partnerships can really step up in this way and try to find something that is going to make meaningful change in this. But I think trying to transition from, there's encampments that shouldn't be here, and we keep calling these different departments and getting answers, and saying now we're just going to put a fence up and concentrate this type of situation, I haven't seen that we've been able to solve it on the outside, in fear that trying to concentrate it is not necessarily going to set us up for success either. So I really hope there are some solid methods on both ends of making sure people don't fall into homelessness, people have access to healthcare, job training, you know, housing once they fall into homelessness or couch surfing. There's definitely some big wins, I think, that we could step up and do here. But the idea of encampments is [12:00:41 PM] something that is going to be highly volatile any time that it is suggested, if it's not community-led, and something where people are offering space and offering to be a part of the community that tries to make this work. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: My topic is a little bit different. I do want to talk about the heal shelter before we finish. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Kitchen: Colleagues, I distributed a number of days back a budget amendment I'm bringing for the heal shelter, for continued funding to complete the year for the north shelter. So, I'm going to give my best statement about what I think is happening, and then Ms. Gray, if you have anything you want to add to it. So, basically, you know, we have two shelters right now for heal, which allows us to serve approximately 200 people a year. [12:01:46 PM] What is happening with us -- what is happening to the shelter capacity is we are scheduled to lose -- I don't know if it's half, but to lose one of those shelters, which will cause us to reduce potentially as much as half the number of people we can serve through heal in this next year. The north shelter has always been intended to convert to permanent supported housing, and that's a good thing. And that is scheduled for, I don't know, March or so. Anyway, sometime halfway through the year, that shelter is not going to be a shelter anymore. It's going to go to permanent supported housing and we won't have a shelter available and we will need to replace that shelter. That's another activity that's under way and we'll be able to find one. But the other issue that I'm trying to address is the fact that the funding to operate that [12:02:48 PM] second shelter is not a full year funding. It is only partial year funding. So, we have to add dollars into the budget if we want a second shelter to operate for an entire year. So I'm proposing that. I proposed general fund or arpa funds. I don't know if there's even any funds available in arpa for this. But I do believe that we've got to find the funds, because I don't want to see us dropping the number of folks. As it is, the heal initiative is -- you know, is -- it's a successful initiative. We've showed good results. It's only serving 200 people a year. There's a lot of other activity that has to occur. We're not doing everything that we need to do with heal. But I certainly don't want to see us drop that to under 200 people a year. That would really be going backwards. So I just wanted to bring that to y'all's attention. We've been working with Ms. Gray. I don't know if she wants to add [12:03:51 PM] anything right now. I'm not positive what the potential source of funds are, but I'm bringing it as a budget rider for general funds ongoing, if that's what we need to do. So if you want to add anything, Ms. Gray, I appreciate all the work on this with your office. >> Yes. I will say the current operating funds for northridge, we are using the emergency solution grant. >> Kitchen: Okay, that's what it is. >> CV, because we knew that it was a temporary operation or time limited. The arpa funds, for operations of a new shelter would be a significant portion of our overall arpa homeless spend plan or investment plan, and it would require likely council to come back and alter that plan. We have a solicitation that is already closed for crisis services, for community-based crisis services, which includes outreach in shelter, et cetera. [12:04:52 PM] And so at that time, most of our crisis dollars, we offered to the community. So, right now, I would say there is not an obvious source of arpa funds sitting there, but council could look at the spend plan. However, if we're going to do this, one presumes in this is a long-term city operation, and would need a general fund support to have sustainable operations into the future. >> Kitchen: It's about 1.7 -- 1.8 million -- >> For the six months. >> Kitchen: For the six months. Now, I guess what I'd just like to say is we're reaching a point -- this is not new. This is not a new program, this is not a new level of capacity. This is continuing current capacity. What we're facing now is we were able to start some of this capacity with one-time funds, and we're now at the point where those one-time funds are not available anymore. So what I'm hearing you say is [12:05:55 PM] there's not 1.8 million available in the arpa spending fund that we could use to finish this out for this year and consider general funds next year. >> Not without drawing it from some other spending area that council had previously approved. That's correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. Well, I'd like -- you know, I prefer not to do that, if we can get it from the general fund, but I'd like to understand that better, because I'm not remembering what all those buckets are that are already dedicated and what they're dedicated to. I just wanted to raise that in case anybody had any questions about it while Ms. Gray was here. >> Mayor Adler: I'd say just generally speaking, providing for that measure of support is something that I do support. I want to make sure we're not taking funding away from a spending component that actually has us solving the challenge, because I think in the long-term, we can't do that. I mean, we need to take the challenge off the table so that we're not having to spend money anywhere on it. [12:06:56 PM] But to take a look at that and see if there's anything that meets that bill. At the same time you're looking at that, Ms. Gray, my understanding is that as we have ramped up to actually end this challenge and build out the infrastructure and the operating system, there's a lot more organization and administration, obviously, to be able to do. There was something in the budget -- we've made some of our partners like echo, I think, $200,000 a year and have been doing that in a flat kind of way for a decade or something like that. There was some additional money that was put into the budget to actually scale your offices and your partners -- your support of partners that had actually helped administer this larger effort to actually end homelessness. But last year, the dollars were taken away from that purpose or put to cold weather shelters. Money may have been moved. >> Yeah, I would characterize it [12:07:59 PM] a little bit differently. Let me ensure that I understand, mayor. In the arpa budget, we set aside dollars for system capacity building, and that could include things like funding for -- >> Mayor Adler: Let me finish the question and then you can respond to the whole thing. So in addition to the request that council member kitchen is making, one of the other things separately I would like you to take a look at that I think is also a need is making sure that we're sufficiently covering that support function. And I think historically, there's been a couple hundred thousand dollars. I think it's been suggested that that is 200,000 to $400,000 shy from where it is we need to be. There was some money in the budget to kind of cover that before, but it was used for other places. But the need to make sure that, since we're investing so much of our resources to take care of this challenge, and to take it off the table, so that the city and the future councils don't have to deal with it, we need to make sure that the effort works. So one of the things I also want [12:09:00 PM] you to take a look at and advise us on is whether or not there's a need for us to find that fund, and fund that as well. >> Absolutely. Thank you, sir. >> Mayor Adler: Did I have that -- >> We'll clarify the sources of funds, I think, but I would agree that, you know, echo in particular, among others, is a really critical partner. They do things that are federally mandated in their role as a lead agency in our community and their funding has been flat for many years now. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you for bringing this budget amendment forward on ensuring that the heal initiative is able to maintain services as we need it maintained. I am supportive of us exploring, taking a look at the arpa dollars, see if we can draw those dollars to utilize for [12:10:00 PM] this. To me, it's just about responding to the moment that we're in, and we have an initiative that has been proven successful and one that I want to ensure continues to remain successful in helping our unhoused. And so I just wanted to reiterate my support for your amendment and I look forward to continued conversations. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, we don't have to spend our time dealing with just with homelessness. I'm sure there are other areas that people want to ask questions about, too. I thank you so much for spending time today as the other staff offices that you've brought with us. >> I just wanted to take a second to thank the folks involved with us. They meet every week to deal with the homeless encampment issues, all of these dozen departments, and it's really important that they work carefully with the dollars that council has appropriated, and it's not an easy job, and I hope that when these issues come up before, that this communication and other things that we've done [12:11:00 PM] will help you also champion that work and be able to articulate a little bit better about what the work is that they are doing. So, thanks so much. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Did you lay out a plan for today, like when we're taking a lunch break, if we're having any executive sessions? >> Mayor Adler: We didn't talk specifically about lunch break. Might be time to do that. But what we did say was that we were going to get the presentations from staff, and then we would bring it to the dais. So we had as much time to be able to do that, to daylight things and ask further questions, or to be able to speak to one another. I did point out that we had the opportunity to do executive session and we do. But probably later in the day, so that we get some time together on the dais. Did you have any other presentations today? Carrie. >> Yes. We are finalizing the presentation to be prepared to [12:12:03 PM] talk about the memo and staff amendments that are going to be coming forth next week. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. You're still preparing that, or you're ready on that? >> I think we're almost done. Let me check. >> Mayor Adler: You want to do that after lunch? >> We're good. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Colleagues, do we want to get this presentation, and then break for lunch so that we have this information to be able to see? >> Kitchen: I think this is a long presentation, because we're going to have a lot of questions. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't mean for it to be over, I just thought if they made the presentation, and then over lunch, people could be formulating their questions. But if we don't want to do it that way, we could break for lunch, get the presentation. >> Kitchen: I'd rather wait. >> Mayor Adler: People would rather break for lunch now? I think that's where people's heads are. So, it's 12:11 right now. How about if we come back at 1:00. We'll do that presentation. We'll do questions. Hopefully we then get to the dais. We do have some questions about executive session. But let's see if we can handle that toward the end of the day. >> Alter: Mayor, will the fire chief be here after lunch to ask [12:13:04 PM] questions about the fire stations? Or should we ask them now, at least to get the basic -- >> Mayor Adler: Chief, can you come back? >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Thank you very much, sir. All right. We'll see you back here at 1:00. We'll start with the staff presentation. [Recess] [1:10:42 PM] [Music] [Music] [1:16:21 PM] >> >> >> [1:18:26 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to go ahead and reconvene the city council budget work session today here on August 11th, 2022. The time is 1:18 and we have a quorum. We're going to begin this afternoon with staff continuing its presentation talking about its budget amendments and any other things it wants to speak about. And thin we're going to bring it back up to the dais for more general questions and things that people want to share about what they're doing in their offices. We'll do an executive session if necessary late in the day. As soon as staff has done its presentation and we've asked the questions associated with that we're going to go to the chief so we can discuss the fire station. >> Thank you, mayor. Kerri Lange, budget officer FSD. Next slide, please. So in the email that I sent to you all last night we [1:19:27 PM] discussed the projections, any changes that we're projecting as staff amendments. As you can see here we are showing increased revenue projections for sales tax revenue and increased property tax revenue for fiscal year '23. That results in increased available funding in our budget stabilization reserve fund, 7.3 million in -- excuse me. In sales tax revenue projections. These are one-time, as well as increase available funds due to savings that parks and recreation department is seeing in this year's allocation for accc. And then additional funding for the police department and their projected costs for helicopter maintenance that they are deferring to fiscal year 24. Finally we are seeing anticipated new revenue reimbursements as far as new [1:20:30 PM] expenditures as far as -- let me back up. We're seeing new revenue potential in regards to covid-related expenses that we've had in previous fiscal years that we are anticipating reimbursements from in fiscal year '23. Next slide, please. In regard to expenditures regarding staff amendments, we are anticipating coming forward with one position in the housing and planning department to work in the community land trust program, and this is at a cost of $75,000. And then we have the budget stabilization fund, the savings that we're anticipating for this year from parks and recreation department we are going to reallocate the same amount for next year through the bsrf. And then finally, $14.65 million to allow for liability reserve to pay for legal settlements that we [1:21:31 PM] have. Next slide, please. So when we look at the total impact of the total available funds, the additional expenditures we have, additional revenue requirements that you see here, that gives us a net availability of funding for fiscal year '23 of $20.3 million for discussion. Next slide. So all of these changes that we've talked through in our memo and presentation does result in a change in our reflection of the forecast or horizon for the city. We do anticipate a $12.2 million of surplus in fiscal year '23. Our projections are showing much better results in the out years showing '8.2-million-dollar surplus in fiscal year 27ment and this is just based on our revenue changes. We have not changed at this point any of our base expenditures or base assumptions for coming growth for the years other than the ones we've [1:22:32 PM] mentioned today. Next slide, please. Is on this is our continued projections of the impact to the typical ratepayer. This is the non-senior impact. And you will see that the projected increase total is 3.7%. We have amended the base according to the conversation on Tuesday regarding Austin energy in their current proposed rate so you will see that change here. And we also noted that it would not be approved yet until after the proposed budget to address those concerns. So overall the total yearly impact that we're looking at is $167.88, a 3.7% increase for the non-senior ratepayer. If you go to the next slide, please, this one focuses on the senior disabled ratepayer and you will notice that the impact there is a 5.4%. I would want to point out when you look at the property tax bill portion of [1:23:33 PM] this, their property tax is lower but their rate does show an increased growth. That is primarily because the senior exemption amount has not changed so it's going against the changes that you see in the market and the median to show those differences. But the overall increase is $209.40. I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues? Councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: Yes, Kerri, do the exemptions to the transportation fee for seniors if they don't have a vehicle still in effect? >> Yes, that is still available. >> Renteria: So what would seniors -- people that don't have vehicles need to do? Do you know? >> I will have to check. I believe if they call in to 311 and make a request, there is a process that they have to go to, but I would have to check with the department and staff to see [1:24:33 PM] what that full process is. >> Renteria: Okay. If you can I would appreciate that. Thank you. .>> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thank you about the senior exemption piece. Could you walk us through a little bit if we were to increase the exemption? I think it's 113,000 off the property tax bill, if they were to increase that, do we have any numbers on what that impact would be? Would it affect the 5.4% increase and is that something that we could or should do at this juncture in the budget process or is that something that we should give direction and do after the first of the year so it could be part of the calculation for next year? >> I am going to defer to Ed or Eric to talk through those details. >> Pool: That's great, thanks so much. >> Kitchen: And mayor, if I could speak to that too. I think we as quickly as -- Ed, can you speak to the [1:25:34 PM] fact that we don't have to wait until the first of the year? You and I had a conversation about when we could do it. I haven't had a chance to share that, I just learned that. >> Pool: And that is what I'm asking there. >> Mayor Adler: Hold on. Let's go ahead and let Ed talk. >> Pool: Some procedural things. >> Yes, Ed van eenoo, fee conditional officer. So mayor and council you can under state law raise the senior exemption. There is no deadline for when you can do it, but it is to the benefit of the city financially if you do it prior to the tax rate setting process. Since we've already calculated our voter approval rate for fiscal year '23, we've already noticed that rate, council, you've already set the maximum rate, any increase in the exception from this point on would result in a general fund loss, but if you were to do that any time after the end of the fiscal year, if you were to do it in October, November, December or January, if you were to give direction to staff to increase the senior [1:26:35 PM] exemption for fiscal year 24, then it gets rolled into our calculation of those rates and it would not result in a general fund impact. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Further questions with the staff's sheet? Councilmember kitchen and then the mayor pro tem. >> Kitchen: Yes, speaking about moving forward with the senior tax exemption so that we could address the impact of the housing bond. That's one of the things I mentioned when I proposed the amendment to move the housing bond to 350 million, but given the timing that Mr. Van eenoo just shared with me, I intend to bring a direction to raise the senior tax exemption, but to raise it after the beginning of the fiscal year. I'll work on the wording and have that available to folks, but I think that this [1:27:36 PM] council can vote on that so we can proceed to do that, but we will do it in a way that doesn't impact our budget. So I will -- and that's not binding future -- it's not -- we're not taking action to bind future councils because we're making the change ourselves. If my understanding is correct we can change the senior tax exemption any time we choose during a year. We don't have to do it in any particular time. So I will make that -- I'll make that proposed language available for people to see and consider when I get that done and put it on the message board. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mayor pro tem and then we'll come back over. >> Alter: Did you want to close out something on senior homestead? I don't mind if she finishes on that comment? >> Pool: I appreciate that. I think that's the direction to go. And I appreciate my colleague bringing that action to us for approval and I am supportive of that. [1:28:37 PM] Councilmember kitchen, I'd be happy to add my name to your direction. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. So there's a lot of good news in this memo and I appreciate that. I want to drill down a little bit more so that I have a greater understanding about what we're forecasting and some other pieces. So for the sales tax we just got reports yesterday I guess for June, is that right, or for August. For July. >> For June. >> Alter: Okay. And how much above what we were forecasting for June did those receipts come? >> That was about a 20% increase, three and a half million. >> Alter: Okay. And then that would be -- so we got three and a half million more so there's another three and a half million that's projected in sales tax revenue for July, [1:29:39 PM] August and September for this fiscal year? >> We did increase our projections for the next three months to better align a little bit more with what we're seeing. However, we are still -- we remain conservative because we know that we're not going to the exact amounts that were increased that we saw in June because we know that sales tax is very volatile and we want to be sure that we're careful in how we make these projections, but we did increase our projections from what was proposed to get to the 7.3 that we're projecting for the end of the year. >> Alter: Okay. And you basically added that amount to your projection for next year? >> Correct. >> Alter: Okay. So I would maybe like to have an opportunity to meet with someone to go through some of those numbers. I don't know if my colleagues want to go through it at the level that I want to if I can see if we can make that happen tomorrow or later today if we have it. I'd appreciate that. >> Okay. [1:30:39 PM] >> Alter: Okay. And then as I understand it, in -- in this amount of the 20 million that's available you have a chart in there that has the projections and if I understand correctly what you wrote in here and what you just said, the Rosie picture with the surpluses does not contemplate us spending any of the money, of the ongoing money. So beyond what the staff is recommending in their budget amendment. >> No, that includes the availability money, the 20 million that's available for you all to expend. >> Alter: So that -- I want to be really clear on here. So if we spend this 20 million, we will have the same chart? >> Yes. We have the 12.2 that is available for ongoing and the remaining 7.3, 7.9 [1:31:39 PM] that's one time. >> Alter: Okay. But if I spend 12.2 in ongoing, by the time I get five years out with a surplus of 8.2, I'm down four million, right? >> Hi, Eric Nelson, division chief from financial services. The 12.2 million in ongoing is not baked into the forecast. So any ongoing dollar you spend would reduce that 7.8 million or -- 8 millionish surplus in fy27. >> Alter: So the bar chart that we have that looks rosy and good does not include spending any money other than 20 million, at least of the ongoing, of the ongoing part. >> Exactly. You might remember in prior years even when we had funds people for the year we urged you to spend it one time not to expend the deficit in out years. Now we're showing a surplus in the out years, but any ongoing spending you have in [1:32:41 PM] 2023 with reduce that surplus in the out years. >> Alter: Okay. And this chart does not project are increases for the two fire stations in terms of personnel? >> That's correct. >> Alter: And what does it assume with respect to ems? >> As far as the pending contract negotiation or staffing levels? >> Alter: Staffing levels. >> I believe it's just the base staffing levels. >> Alter: And then there was information in -- I'm assuming it includes your assumptions previously stated for police. >> That's exactly right. >> Alter: Okay. So in the past you have recommended that we not spend money that we have. How do we think about from a budget staff perspective what are you recommending in terms of how we think about this funding? >> I think we continue -- our continued recommendation is to be conservative because of the impact in the [1:33:42 PM] out years. So when we look at the available funds thinking of how we can use those more than one time recommendations so that the ongoing impact doesn't impact our level of deficit out years. Obviously there is some availability for ongoing but as Eric said any expenditure that we include that's ongoing will impact our -- our structural balance in the out years. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. And I have some questions that I would probably like to go over in executive session related to some legal questions with the budget and I'll take those up there. My last question has to do with the taxpayer impact statement. So from all accounts we have more property tax, more sales tax revenue, slightly lower fee for Austin energy that's included, but yet the [1:34:42 PM] property tax bill is higher insofar as it's a lower reduction on there. So we've had all of these things moving in the positive direction and then our taxpayer statement says we're now charging more in taxes. It's still a reduction. And I notice the fee didn't change. I'm trying to understand how to explain to folks that all those good things happen and then our taxpayer impact statement says that instead of paying $110.55 less as a median taxpayer you're now paying 50.64 less as a median taxpayer, and obviously it's even less for the seniors. So help me understand how to explain that, what happened. >> Sure. So that number is the sequence of two factors, the tax rate and the projected median value. So with respect to the median value versus the noticed roll, certification came in higher because in between when they noticed [1:35:43 PM] the roll and certification, tcad particularly added -- processed a number of new homestead exemptions. Now a new homestead that first qualifies for the exemption isn't going to have had that 10% approval cap protection over the years so it will become on at something much closer to market value. That drove the median up on on the tax rate side tcad had projected four percent of the roll to protest loss and the actual certification was eight percent loss. The city's overall taxable value went from 22 billionish to about 218 billion because we're generating the same amount of revenue. Relative to the values it rove drove the tax rate up. We were projecting the voter approval rate and the official voter approval rate came in at 4627. So due to those two factors the projected typical [1:36:44 PM] residents's property tax bill is higher than it was in the proposed budget. >> Alter: Okay. That's challenging to explain in a way that people can understand. So there are two factors, the tax rate and median value. Median value going up, that's just because prices are going up and you added a whole bunch of people who just sold their house to the rolls. Tell me again why the tax rate had to go up? Because there was protests that were sustained? >> Yeah. So we have a revenue cap so we essentially get to raise the same amount of money almost regardless of what happens with total values. And as of the proposed budget based on what tcad was telling us we thought that total value would come in in the ttt -- 222 billion range. Tcad ended up losing more value in between March and April and end of July so values came in at about $218 billion. Since we can generate the same amount of revenue from [1:37:45 PM] that lower value it drives the tax rate up. >> Alter: Okay. And what are the risks of losing more value because the protests are not done? >> Actually, pretty low because tcad certified as of the 25th they had 93% of the roll resolved. And then the rest that hasn't been resolved state law requires that they use either the value that the protesting property has declared they think their property is worth or the prior value, whichever is less. So generally speaking we should come in a little better than the certification number in terms of what we actually end up going on. >> Alter: And when does that get posted? >> It doesn't exactly get posted. Every few months tcad releases a new supplement. The roll is sort of a living entity in that protests are always being processed. So we tend to look when we're generating our estimate for the current year in February and March [1:38:45 PM] we have a much better sense when real bills have come in. >> Alter: So the 4627, that will be constant once we pass the budget or does that -- >> That's constant because -- yeah. We use the official certified roll which was released on July 25th to drive the official tax rate calculations, which have been conducted and agreed upon with the county assessor/collector. And they've been noticed and that's what informed your passage of the maximum tax rate. >> Alter: Okay. And the maximum tax rate included the -- we set that up to be the amount that would give us the 3.5%. >> That's correct. >> Alter: Not a particular number. And then so that difference, though, that rate can't go down once we pass the budget. It can't go down or up once we pass the budget. >> That's the voter approval rate which is the maximum rate you could pass without triggering an automatic election. >> Alter: I mean the 46.27 won't change. >> Correct. [1:39:45 PM] >> Alter: But if they bring in more revenue than what the individuals were sayingthey should be assessed, then that's additional revenue that comes in to the city? >> Yep, that's correct. And that's reflected in the fact that with usually have a slight positive in terms of our estimate versus our budgeted value for property tax. >> Alter: Would it be correct if we talked about the median at the level we had in the prior version, the 448,000, that would still be going up from what it was because now we have a higher tax rate? >> I see. It's possible. My sense -- I could get a roll in November, say, and check the results any time. Any guess is that that median won't move too much, one is because it's amalgamating so many properties and finding that median. And two, because probably the sort of bigger variances in the outstanding value [1:40:47 PM] under protests are likely to be more commercial in industrial properties? Vault that was helpful and I was asking a different question or trying to ask a different question, which was if I looked at the person who had a 448,000 rather than a 443,000, what would their annual dollar change be? I'm just still counterintuitive to being that we have all this money coming in and we're charging more. >> We can run that calculation for you. >> Alter: That would be helpful. >> One thing I will say is that this isn't a perfect measure in terms of looking at year over year because the universe of homesteads is growing. Really even the 448 was 11-point something% growth, but if you have an actual home said you constant grow by more than 10% in state law in your assessed. There's many different ways we could run the calculation. We're always trying to dial into what our typical homeowner is that we defined as the median and we pulled [1:41:48 PM] right off the rolls. But there are complications around the margins. >> Alter: So this is not a -- this is a number measuring a thing, but it may not always be measuring the same thing because if you were a homestead that was capped at 10% and you were that person, you would still be at another -- >> Exactly. >> Alter: All right. I have more questions, but I think I will concede it for other folks. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: I wanted just to get another read on this process that you were just describing for the mayor pro tem about the protests and how we pretty much know what the dollar value is for the rolls this year. We know that while sales and purchases have slowed down somewhat, it's still pretty robust in Austin. Would you expect the same sort of scenario to repeat itself next year, that we may have a similar situation? >> Yeah, so in terms of the sales tax growth, I mean, to [1:42:50 PM] be perfectly blunt, the level of growth we're seeing is a little bit scary because we don't want to chase it because I know it's not sustainable. So -- also there's some fears about the economy softening and inflation starting to bite into real income. In the short-term inflation will help your sales tax because price levels are higher, but when that translates into real pressure on income growth, it's going to reduce spending when we see a little dip. So what we've done for fy23 is we're budgeted at about .5.% growth and that is the average prior to the distortions of the pandemic and subsequent bounce back. >> Pool: And what do you think about growth in the property tax receipts? >> Well, so again, with respect to the property tax, we're going to end up with about three and a half percent more revenue from property tax in both years as a result of that revenue cap, assuming council approves that voter approval rate. And then the other major lever is the new [1:43:52 PM] construction. New construction is down about a billion dollars versus the prior year, and we're expecting that to dip a little next year. But those updated projections are baked into that forecast graph. >> Pool: And so the graph that was in the presentation still pretty much holds for the numbers that you have in there? >> Yeah. Those are our latest greatest revenue projections all baked into that. >> Pool: Thank you so much. Thanks, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: So I can understand the chart and the $20 million that we have in net available funds, just over $12 million in one-time funding and just over eight million dollars in gr funding. Is that right? It's the other way around? Okay. That's right. So that I understand the ongoing funding, the $12 million, is that all of those two things? [1:44:54 PM] >> Yes, those are based on the calculations for property tax and sales tax. >> Together that totals the 12,000,237. Okay. And then there were total reserve changes available funding of just over 25 million. One component of that was covid reimbursement. What's the balance of that? >> That is the one-time sales and -- the sales tax that flows into one time for this year that flows into the one time for next year. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So that's not pulling any money out of reserves. Or the reserves that were originally proposed as the base budget. The $25 million is covid plus the one time sales tax monies? >> Right. The one time sales tax funds for this year flows down into reserves and so that's what you see in the bsrl. >> Mayor Adler: Right. So the $25 million doesn't have us spending any of the base reserves, the 14% reserves? >> Correct. >> Mayor Adler: It's the additional money for>> Mayor Adler: And then [1:46:00 PM] the additional expenses, the $74 million was for that additional fte -- >> 74,000? >> Mayor Adler: Yes, 74,000. And then the additional expenditures was for legal settlements, and also for the Austin civilian conservation corps? >> Right. So, the vsrf had funding for 3.6 million for the accc Austin civilian conservation corps for this year for parks and recreation. They are generating savings that are not going to expand that full amount, so you'll see in the dsrf in '22 that will reallocate in '23 that exact amount. >> Mayor Adler: Why is there savings associated with that? >> I believe, as they were implementing the program, they have done some of the contracts or encumbered some of the funds, but they have not been able to expend all of the funds that were allocated this year. I will have to have Kimberly [1:47:01 PM] come up to speak about the details of that. >> Mayor Adler: Kimberly, while you're here, could you help us understand what the movements are? >> So, the building out of the program, the research, figuring out who we could partner with, being able to understand the structure of the program took a little more time than the team had thought. So therefore, we have the bones of the program, and we're ready to allocate the funding to each of those. But it just took more time than we anticipated to be able to allocate the funds appropriately. Exactly what Carrie said, just using different words. >> Mayor Adler: So this was money that was already appropriated, but just hasn't been spent. So all we're doing is now spending the money that was previously allocated. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: Is that right? Is it coming from a different funding source? >> No, it's still coming from the same funding source, but the way that we allocate the dsrf is through at one time. So what will happen is it will be swept away and go down to [1:48:02 PM] reserves. What we're doing is reallocating it again next year, the same amount. So it's a wash. >> Mayor Adler: It wasn't swept out of the balance stabilization fund. It's carried over and then swept out until the next year. Got it. And then the additional reserve requirement, the 10,394 was just a function of the differing amounts because of the spending. >> Correct. >> Mayor Adler: Got it. Okay, thank you. Council member kitchen, and then mayor pro tem. >> Kitchen: My apologies. I was a little late getting back. So I think I'm understanding. So the table summarized the net impact of the planned amendments, plus the adjustments that are being made based on the sales tax and other things. So basically, what this is telling us is we have available for spending -- for funding the 20.3 million on that chart. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. And it's divided between approximately 12.1 and ongoing [1:49:06 PM] 8.1 and one time. Is that right? >> Yes. >> Kitchen: So this council could choose to allocate additional funding for all of that 20 million. The caveat that we talked about earlier is just being aware that, to the extent that we expend the 12.1, which is the ongoing, that will change the chart. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. So, the chart -- what the chart does, is it gives us as much as we know at this point in time, about our projections into the future, correct? Okay. So, there are other intervening -- okay. So there are other intervening factors each year that can impact where we end up, right? So this is just our best guess at the moment on where we would be in fiscal year '26 and '27. So, for example, we had originally projected a deficit in that outyear based on our [1:50:07 PM] budget, and now with this -- you know, with this new information, we're projecting a surplus. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. So if we could spend -- we could decide to allocate because of the priorities that we have, we could decide to allocate all of that 12.1. We may or may not be impacting the -- we may or may not be impacting where we end up in 26-27. It might appear that we would, but we would have intervening factors in the next couple of years, there's just no way of knowing how much we would be impacting. I mean, we may choose to be more conservative with it, but -- >> Right. >> Kitchen: But what we also had presented to us, a budget that showed a deficit. So I guess the point I'm trying [1:51:08 PM] to make is we do have the discretion to allocate that entire 12.1 to ongoing expenses, if we so choose, based on the priorities that we have. Now, there's a lot of discussion we have to have on what those are. But we could do that. >> You absolutely could. And our recommendation is to look at how you do that, because we anticipate with the projections of revenue growth, that that will expand the full 12 million this year, will result in a deficit. We don't know what that deficit would be. Like we said, several variables that will impact that. But our best projection at this point would indicate that we cause a deficit in the out-years. >> Kitchen: But how much of a deficit? >> We don't know what that would be at this point. Once we know how you want to expend the funds, then we could run the chart and see what that impact would be. >> Kitchen: Okay, but we could -- so if we choose to expend all those funds in one time, then we wouldn't be projecting a deficit. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: So we could spend the 12.1 and just designate it [1:52:09 PM] for one time, or for pilot programs, or for other things like that, that we wouldn't have to renew, as well as the 8.1, if we chose to do that. I mean, just because it's in the ongoing bucket doesn't mean we have to designate those funds for ongoing expenses. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. All right. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem and then council member Fuentes. >> Alter: I'll be really quick. I just wanted to respond to your question, mayor. When we did the arpa, we had general fund and we had arpa dollars that were allocated to do the whole bucket. At one point, it was determined that for legal reasons, because of the requirements of arpa, it was cleaner to have the accc funded more from the general fund, so other programs that were funded through arpa are just not in our budget, and this was arpa funding that was not all meant to be spent, so I don't think it's an underspend, per se, as this was allocated other three or four years, and [1:53:11 PM] it just needs to be rolled over because of the way that it was chosen to fund differently than arpa. >> Mayor Adler: That's what I understood them to say as well. Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you. Thank you, council member kitchen, for your line of comments. I do just want to remind this dais that one of the resolutions that we passed unanimously was - about raising the living wage, and the budget proposal had it at an $18, and I'm bringing forward an amendment that seeks to raise it to a $20 minimum wage for city employees. So I have two questions. Do you all have any information regarding if we were to raise it to a $20 minimum wage, how that would impact our budget forecast for the out- years? >> Yes. We included -- well, I think we'll have to go back and look at the starting the $20 next year in '23 versus an option that showed it starting in a later year to see what that [1:54:11 PM] impact is, but that is something -- I believe we're already working on it, but we can probably get that to you. >> Fuentes: Okay, great. Colleagues, as a reminder, I think the assessment -- the approximate that was given to us to raise it to $20 would be 5 to 10 million in ongoing funds, correct? >> Correct. >> Fuentes: Okay. So I was very pleasantly surprised to see a 12 million in ongoing available. I think that's great for us. Last question is on enterprise funds. Do we have an estimate on how much it would cost to raise the wage? >> We are still finalizing that impact, and hope to get that to you in the next day, or by today. I think we're really close to having that done. >> Fuentes: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member vela. >> Vela: Just to clarify on page [1:55:11 PM] 2 of the memo. It says amend the fy23 expenditure budget by adding a transfer to the liability reserve fund for the payment of legal settlements. That transfer will go directly from the emergency reserve [1:56:12 PM] >> Tovo: Is that something that's possible? >> Without knowing how much will be expended ongoing, we would need to know what the foundation is before we can run the numbers to see what the impact would be on the out-years. >> Tovo: I'm wondering if it's possible just to pick a couple different scenarios of how much we would potentially be considering in ongoing? >> So, increments? >> Tovo: Yes, thanks. Sorry. I'm not articulating myself well. >> Mayor Adler: I would support that request as well. Just picking numbers. You know, 5 million, 10 million, just something so that we get a feel for the impact. Further questions on these pages? Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: As part of that, I think that would be helpful to see. Do we have a tally at the moment of the proposals that people have put forward for funding? Because that might help inform [1:57:15 PM] the different scenarios that you bring back to us. >> We are still actively receiving amendments, and so we've received a couple. Tomorrow is the deadline. And so we don't have -- I don't think we have a full enough tally to run based on what we've received so far. >> Kitchen: But that's what we really need to know. So I wouldn't want you to run several scenarios, and then us be in one of those scenarios doesn't include or account for the different priorities that people have identified as important. So, tomorrow, you'll have, at least what people have put forward so far, even if they haven't completed it, if they can give us all an idea of the dollar amounts they're talking about, then you could run it with that in mind, not that that would be the only scenario, but at least would give us -- I mean, I think -- I agree, we need several scenarios. It's just one of the things I want to know is, of the various priorities that all of us have [1:58:17 PM] identified, what does that translate into, you know, in terms of this chart that we're looking at. Am I making sense? >> I think we can still get there, if we just run the different potential buckets, because it will address up to the 12 that's available, because it will address every possibility, if you all decide to expend the full amount that is ongoing, or any portion below that. >> Mayor Adler: Maybe for council member kitchen's point, maybe it's more than two points. Maybe we do 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10, something like that. >> Right. Yes. >> Kitchen: Yeah, because, when are you going to tally up what everybody has posted? >> We have asked for all amendments that is possible by the end of business tomorrow, so that we can do as much vetting as possible, have a list to you by Monday. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any other questions on this [1:59:17 PM] before we go to the chief? Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: Not a question. I'll just say that would be helpful, and I know it's kind of like a cart and a horse, where we need to know what kind of buckets we're looking at, and what is ongoing. What is one-time funding. But at the same time, I know we're still getting some questions rolling out on the budget q&a. And so as we've been editing our amendments and budget riders, sometimes we're finding things that can be covered or are covered, and so we're amending what is a change in financial need versus what is just a redirection of funds or something we don't need to bring at all because it's being handled on the staff side. So I think over the next days, it will be really informative to know what exactly we're working with, and what exactly the colleagues have been trying to propose. But I know this is a really hard part of budget where you're trying to figure out exactly which dollars are needed and where we need to appropriate them. But I would appreciate the incremental thresholds to be presented to us. [2:00:22 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Could you also give us a projection, if we were to set a tax rate of 45.19 versus the 46.27, what that would do, so that we could provide a similar level of tax relief as was proposed originally. >> Sure. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I'm sure we're going to come back to you guys leer in just a second, but let's talk about fire stations, or fire generally. Chief, thank you for joining us. >> Absolutely, Mr. Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for your patience in staying with us this morning. >> Oh, absolutely. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, madam mayor pro tem. My name is George baker, fire chief for the great city of Austin fire department. Hello. I don't have a presentation. I'm just here to answer any questions. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you. Colleagues, I posted to the [2:01:23 PM] message board earlier this morning. I plan to bring forward an amendment for staff to proceed with the construction of the good night ranch fire station. It is -- would not have an impact on the operating budget. It is in our capital budget. And this construction was on the spending plan for last year, not included in this year's proposed budget due to concerns about staffing. However, this amendment seeks to -- for us to move forward with the construction of the good night ranch fire ems station, and then we can have the conversation about staffing during next year's budget process. So that's what my amendment seeks to do. Chief, my question for you is if you could speak a little bit about response times that we're seeing in southeast, and perhaps, you know, the benefit of us moving forward with constructing the good night ranch station. >> Absolutely. I do have some data, if I can get my data sheet. [2:02:24 PM] >> Fuentes: And colleagues, as a reminder, this effort to build five new fire stations through predates my time on council. From my understanding, came back in 2016, and that we're at least ten years behind where we should be with our safety infrastructure. So this really is seeking to keep up with the needs of a growing city to ensure that our safety instructor is on track, and we are experiencing explosive growth right now, so certainly there is a significant demand for us to have a fire ems station. >> Absolutely. Thank you very much, ma'am. Right now, I will go -- target goal is eight minutes response time citywide. In that particular area, we've done approximately 12 minutes, which is not acceptable. That area really has outgrown the pace of the fire department capability response to that area. So again, we are at 12- minute response time. The goal is eight minutes. [2:03:27 PM] >> Fuentes: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member Kelly. >> Kelly: Thank you. And thank you, council member Fuentes, for inviting me to co-sponsor that with you. So, in regards to response times, is the lack of response affecting homeowners in the area via their iso rating at all? >> At this point, I don't believe it has an impact on iso ratings. We just did an iso rating update, and I think we're at iso class 1 waiting right now. But it can have an impact if we do not correct it by the time iso decides to come back and revisit us and ask us to produce more data. >> Kelly: Thank you for that. Iso is insurance service owner rating organization. It's used as a national standard for that sort of thing. I want to switch gears just a little bit, if you have a second. >> Absolutely. >> Kelly: The canyon creek fire station, which is the fifth of the five stations planned to be [2:04:30 PM] constructed. I'm not clear on the funding that's available in this budget for that. But my understanding is that there are sufficient funds for design work but not construction. >> To my understanding, it's been reported to me, we have $3 million for the design phase, but the transgression fund and estimate has not been developed at this time. >> Kelly: And is the design work currently in process, or is that on hold right now? >> I think it's on process. >> Council member, Richard Mendoza, interim transportation director. Permanent public works director. The design work for canyon creek right now has been halted. You know, pending further conversation on staffing. But we have begun the preliminary. We've also been partnering with APD since we're going to share that proposed site. So we do have the consultants onboard, and it would be a very quick manner to go ahead and resume that work. >> Kelly: Thank you. [2:05:31 PM] Did you have something that you wanted to add? I saw that you walked up. >> Yeah, I just wanted to add the context. When staff was preparing budget, obviously, you saw it in the proposed budget. We were not projecting as much revenue as we are now, and we had concerns about moving forward with the construction of fire stations. If we weren't sure we would be able to afford the operations and maintenance. The chief could probably speak more about the individual stations we're talking about. But a one-company station is about a $2 million annual cost. If it's a two-company station, you're at about $4 million annually, and maybe another million dollars if there's an ems unit there as well. It's the operations of these stations with limited resources that is a challenge, and so we really wanted to have this conversation with council about the prioritization of this, and looking at that five-year financial forecast, and how does 4, 5, $6 million annually to run these fire stations fit into that forecast and your priorities. But that's why we just kind of [2:06:32 PM] put on pause these stations until we can have this conversation seeking council direction that you do want us to proceed knowing that it does have long-term financial consequences and we have limited resources. >> Kelly: Thank you. Chief baker, could you maybe speak to some of the response times in that area? Because I know that 620 is right there along the corridor with a lot of vegetation and trees, and I just want to make sure that we're taking as much care of those areas that are prone to wildfires as we can by having response times that are safe for the community, and that will limit damage to the community by having a swifter response time. >> So for the canyon creek area, it's 10 minutes and 54 seconds. So approximately 11 minutes response time. Again, eight-minute response time. That's counting the dispatch time and the members rolling out and getting dressed. [2:07:33 PM] Thank you. >> Kelly: I know that they're having excited about the opportunity to have that in their area, because it's been lacking that sort of response for so long. I officially believe that from a district perspective, we need to provide our response to that time, as well as council member Fuentes's side of town. Thank you very much. That's all I have right now. >> Yes, ma'am. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem, then council member Ellis, did you raise your hand? Council member Ellis and council member pool. And then I'll go. >> Alter: Thank you. So, I wanted to ask about the canyon creek as well. My understanding is that the site is joint with APD; is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Alter: So if we halt the design process from the fire ems side, which is -- my understanding is that money's not in the budget, it's just halted from a procedural perspective. My first question is, is the process simply halted, or is the [2:08:36 PM] money not there. >> Thank you, council member. We are fully funded for the canyon creek 620 station. >> Alter: Okay. So we would just need to provide direction to move forward with the design. >> That's correct. >> Alter: Okay. How does that work if we are doing a -- this actually may be probably more for director Mendoza, because it's across units and construction. But how does that work, if you want to be moving forward with the police station, which is very much needed as well, and you don't do the design for the other two. >> Thank you for your question. They share the site. They do not share the facility. So the design work for AFD is continuing on and it's not being affected by the work on the fire station itself. >> Alter: Is the property big enough? >> Yes. >> Alter: It is? This is sort of newly on the border of my district, so I'm getting up to speed on it. Okay. So that's helpful. [2:09:36 PM] And do we know the ems response times and what those schools are, across the two stations? >> I do not have ems response time. >> Alter: Okay. City manager, is that something we can get, the ems response times in both of those areas. So I was on the dais, council member Fuentes. I made the motion to extend it from two to five stations because of the difficulties, the third station is in process, and we'll back up and running during this fiscal year, and particularly of help to mine and council member Ellis's district where there's high wildfire. I am totally supportive of moving forward with these stations, but I do think that we have to plan the o&m. So if we can also -- I think we have a couple questions already in the q&a, but if we need to plan 5 million of o&m for a station over this time horizoner we need to understand that, and [2:10:36 PM] it would not be responsible to move forward with construction if we're not prepared to move forward with the o&m, and we have to prepare for that. One of the things, I hope that we would consider as we moved forward with this discussion, and obviously we just got this news this morning, just to frame how we're thinking about it. There were a lot of choices that were made in order to get us a sound budget in the first place. Where some cuts were made such as these fire houses that might not have been made if we had the funding picture that we have now, that have already -- you know, these were also with resolutions. I know several of us have amendments that are from resolutions, and we have to think through all the different pieces. I'm not sure that we can say that we want a fire house and build it, that we're not going to plan for the funding of it and we're going to create a deficit. So I think we have to definitely think about that. [2:11:37 PM] We had a dispatch equity study with some recommendations with respect to ems and fire that we need >> Mayor Adler: Have you all had a chance to speak yet on this issue? So council member Ellis, council member pool, council member harper-madison, and then I'll go. >> And the chief is on the line. I believe he can answer the response time questions when the time comes. [2:12:37 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Chief, you want to answer that question? The question was what was the ems response time in that area. >> Alter: In both areas. >> I'll have to pull that number for you. I'll have to do that now and I can get it back to you momentarily. >> Alter: Thank you. Two areas where the new stations will be built. Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: I'd like to find a way to continue building out these stations. I know they take some time, but when they come online, it's the least that we can do for the community to make sure that we have adequate response time. And I understand that comes with the need for staffing as well. So, ideally, you wouldn't have a station finished if you don't have the person powered to staff it. But at the same time, if we wait until we have the person power, then we're still sitting on our heals trying to get these stations open. As someone who represents the area that has the new Travis country fire station, I know [2:13:38 PM] that opened last October, and it took us until I think our last council meeting to make sure we had the appropriate private easement agreement to make sure they could change how the speed bumps and the speed cushions were operating, so that it was fully functioning. So I know that these are complicated, but I just really worry that, you know, if we don't figure out a way to get this done in a timely fashion, that we do have neighborhoods with extreme wildfire risk and the risk isn't going to go down. So I definitely want to find a way to do this, and I -- as mayor pro tem alter was mentioning, she's familiarizing herself with one that is closer into her district now, and I have the same thing, where the 360 and Davenport station has been a conversation we've been having. And so I just want to make sure, is that one going to be open on time, and fully staffed when it's open. Are you aware? >> To my knowledge, it is. >> Thank you, council member. Yes. Luke 360 Davenport, we have [2:14:40 PM] scheduled to be complete in February '24. It's about 30 days ahead of our planned schedule. >> Ellis: Thank you. That's really good to hear. >> Alter: February 23, isn't it? >> Ellis: February '23? >> Alter: Because I think you're ahead of schedule. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool. >> Pool: So I had a question about the staffing of the fire station. We're building it, but we don't have the $2 million for staffing. What kind of timeline do you anticipate if we were to proceed with, for example, the good night ranch? >> For good night ranch, we estimate that we can have the staffing for that location -- I believe we said the fall of '23. >> Pool: And how does that track with the completion of the station? >> Mr. Mendoza can speak better on that, but I believe the long-term date is February of '24, if not the fall of '23. For good night ranch. February of '24. [2:15:41 PM] >> Pool: Okay. One of them you said was February of '24, but then it was February of '23. Is that the one at 360. >> 360 Davenport is February '23. >> Pool: Okay, and then good night is looking like -- >> Good night ranch would be 12 to 14 months after we get the construction authorization. So if we get the authorization with the fy23 budget completion for good night ranch will be around December of '23. If we wait for a mid-year cip budget amendment at the first of the calendar year, it would put it around February and March of '24. >> Pool: About four to six months later. >> Yeah. >> Pool: Depending on the - - okay. All right. And then I have a question for the chief. Thank you, director Mendoza. >> Don't go too far. >> Pool: We got front row seats for everybody. I wanted to talk about the ladder, the aerial ladder. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Pool: The council had [2:16:44 PM] struggled for the last couple, three maybe budget years to try to figure out where the money would come, both to get the equipment and then to bring the staffing online. Can you give me an update on where we're at with that? >> I'm not sure where we are as a city with the staffing for the area. I know we do not -- we have not received the funding for the area. We bought the truck itself. We have not been provided the ftes to support that truck. So what we did, we took the new truck, put it in service, and put another truck out. But we do not have the staffing for the truck that council purchased. And I think that's for station 50. >> Pool: So talk to me a little bit about that. We have the equipment. >> We just don't have the people. So if you ask -- are you asking me when we're going to have the [2:17:45 PM] people for it? As soon as council authorizes it. >> Pool: And what would that cost? >> It costs 1.7 million to staff the area truck. >> Pool: And how long has that been pending? How long have we been having that conversation? I think it predates you. >> I think it's a year and a half, two years, plus or minus. >> Pool: Does that predate you coming in as chief? >> No, ma'am. It doesn't. >> Pool: So if you had to pick your favorite child, which really isn't a fair question, I suppose, because the area ladder is one function, one cost, and one implementation date, and building a station is a completely different animal. They're both necessary. >> I'd build the fire station. [2:18:46 PM] >> Pool: You would build the fire station. >> The area will only cover one part of the city. The fire station covers the city with a 12-minute response time. >> Pool: And the response time piece is key here. That's really helpful. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member harper- madison. Can you hear me, council member harper-madison? Council member harper-madison, I don't think you can hear me. >> Harper-madison: My apologies. So, yes. I think most of my questions were answered. There was one question about the design period for the stations that wasn't answered by way of being asked. You'll have to forgive me. It's the end of a sleepover, and so everybody's transitioning out literally right now. So the question was around the timeline for completion of the designs phase. >> For which station, ma'am, are [2:19:47 PM] you referring to? >> I can't hear you, chief. Can you speak up, please? >> For which station, good night ranch or canyon creek station you're referring to? >> Harper-madison: Both. >> Thank you, council member. For good night ranch, the design -- >> I'm so sorry, guys. I can't hear you on my end. >> How is this. Is this better? >> Slightly. >> So, good night ranch is currently at 95% design. Almost 100%. And for the 620 station, the fifth station were in preliminary design approximately 5-10%. >> Harper-madison: I appreciate that response. I'm sorry, but it doesn't answer my question about timeline. 95% means 5% less, which means -- >> For good night ranch, the design will be complete in October. And if we do resume the design [2:20:47 PM] work on the fifth and final station, that design will be complete by the summer of '23. >> Harper- madison: Thank you. I appreciate that response. And then the other question was more for Ed than it is for the chief. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead and ask it. >> Harper-madison: So for the '22-'23 proposed budget, staff didn't project sufficient funds in future years to sustain the ongoing operations cost of additional stations. I'm trying to figure out what potential funding mechanisms or options are available to the city. I think I heard a part of it earlier, but might have missed a portion. So you'll have to forgive me if there's some duplication. >> The funding out of the fire station is going to be recurring funding, of course. At the time we put the budget together, we were not projecting sufficient funds to be able to [2:21:48 PM] operate these stations. Of course, as you saw earlier today from Carrie, our sales taxes and property taxes have both come in quite a bit higher than what we were hoping for. And so that financial picture has changed. But yes, it would be things like sales taxes, property taxes, general fund revenues that we use to fund a fire station. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. I have a question about public safety generally, but also some specifically. Let me begin with police. I'm in favor -- you can't hear? >> Harper- madison: I just accidentally unmuted myself. That was not for you. Apologies. >> Mayor Adler: All right. No problem. I'm in favor of us filling the funded but not filled police [2:22:48 PM] positions as rapidly as we can consistent with our policies and direction. And I appreciate being part of a council that voted for direction to staff that said if there's going to be a move to complert classes or have more classes, let's make sure that we bring in some third party to help monitor that, make sure we're doing what we needed to do. I appreciate staff's efforts in those regards, and anticipate that coming back to council as that resolution is provided. I think it's really important that we fill those positions that have been funded, but are vacant. There was something that I had heard the police suggested about civilianizing six sworn positions in the realtime crime center. So as to free up six sworn positions so that they might be [2:23:49 PM] able to fill. I don't know -- and I'm not asking for a response right now, but I would like to -- since I'm just raising this, if someone could take a look at that and response back to council, whether or not that's a way for us to get some more officers on the street, in the positions, I would like to know that. >> Ray areyano. I would be glad to go back and see what that proposal was and report back to council. >> Mayor Adler: That would be great. Thank you. And I know that there are some additional requests for police going out. I think council member Kelly was going to bring at least one of those to us. Fire department. You have the fire stations that you're asking for, that we have discussed here. But we also have the aerial and the ladder truck issue, which we had spoken about in the past, and you have spoken to the council about that is also something that would be [2:24:52 PM] important for future councils, if not this council to consider being able to bring onboard. And I also see with ems there's the request for air packs and other kinds of things. There's an email that went out to all of us from the crime commission today that listed some of those priorities as well as public safety needs that we have in the city, and certainly we have needs in all our departments that aren't being met. But here's my specific question. And I think it's for Ed with respect to this report. There's a mention in the memo that you sent out about the five-year forecast, the chart we're seeing that shows the surpluses are not surpluses as having taken into account an additional 130-some-odd police on top of and in addition to the 200-some-odd of funded but unfilled positions; is that [2:25:57 PM] right? >> That is correct. We have that into the forecast in fiscal year 25. I believe it's an additional 25 and 35 and 45 and then 55, a total of 135 over the five-year projection. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. We haven't debated that public priority -- that public safety priority relative to the other public safety priorities that we have and it doesn't make sense for us necessarily to have that debate this year, because we're going to do everything we can to try and fill the funded, but unfilled positions. So it's not - - even if we appropriated more money for new police officer positions, we couldn't put them on the ground anyhow. If there's anything we can be doing to increase the police presence in our budget this year, if there's something we should be considering, please bring that forward to us consistent with the cultural directions and the academy directions that we had. [2:26:57 PM] But when we approve this budget, are we approving the five-year fiscal plan in any way? >> That's not something that council -- it's something that changes every year. But that's -- you know, staff's forecast of the future. So I don't view you as approving the budget as being necessarily an endorsement of that financial forecast. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I just didn't know if there was something about five years that was also approved. But as I look at it and as we're trying to figure out here if we do the fire station, does that result in a gap in year five. That in part depends on whether or not we're going to -- or subsequent councils are going to add another 130 police officer positions. I mean, it might be that we could add the fire department positions or other ongoing expenses, still within the chart you have, because you have built into that chart a considerable public safety expenditure that [2:28:00 PM] is not yet in our one-time spending; is that right? >> That's right. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So if we were to think about that as a council, not as a future expenditure that already decided to spend that in one particular public safety way, we could do something this year in public safety and still not mess up that chart, if we were making a decision about competing priorities in public safety; is that right? >> Absolutely. There's a lot of different ways you can look at a forecast. You can look at a forecast as just, we want nothing in it, but just basic expenditures. Here's the budget that's proposed or the budget that's adopted by council for fiscal year '23. And just that budget going forward for labor incrazes and things of that nature. What does that look like. You could do a forecast where everything on council's wish list is included in the forecast, and we'll have a big deficit, but we could build that forecast. And, you know, what we did here in this case was just basically a base forecast with that one [2:29:01 PM] addition of the police officers. But if council wants us to show them a forecast with it just being that base scenario, we can absolutely do that. You know, as one of those scenarios we've already talked about. >> Mayor Adler: And that might be a possibility, but I also wanted colleagues to know as they're looking at alternatives, and I wasn't recommending any one over another, I was just pointing out that should this council want to do the fire stations and fund them this year with the one-time dollars, it won't necessarily widen the gap in year five because you're assuming bringing in more public safety fte positions than is represented by the fire stations to start with. Council member tovo, and then council member Kelly, then the mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Mayor, can I ask you a question about one of the elements you talked about, the proposal to convert civilian folks. It seems like we got information [2:30:02 PM] in our budget q&a about that. I just wanted to invite anybody who had any recollection of where that information was covered. We got some correspondence that was curious. >> Mayor Adler: It seemed to be a way that there could get six more officers on the streets. >> Tovo: I thought that was definitely worth exploring. Whatever information we got about it, I had some questions. You referenced a couple other things, that if colleagues are bringing amendments on that topic, it would be great to air them now while we're talking about public safety, if that's all right with you. >> Mayor Adler: We could certainly bring those out. [2:31:02 PM] I wasn't saying that people were bringing those amendments. Other than the one that council member Kelly had and I think the one that council member Fuentes has had. Those were other things, I wasn't sure if anybody has stepped forward on those or not. >> Tovo: So council member Fuentes's is the fire station. I've missed your message board post, council member Kelly. It would be helpful if we could rapid fire share if there are amendments coming forward. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo is saying -- once we let the chief sit down. I think that makes sense. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I think we mentioned some time before that at some time during this meeting, not limited by topic, we would just have each person go through and -- >> Mayor Adler: And we'll do that. We're going to try to surface those thing. [2:32:02 PM] Does anybody have any additional questions for the chief or for the presentation? >> Tovo: While we have some public safety folks, if there are some -- I agree with you on that, but maybe we could hit any public safety ones while we're talking about public safety. I just think we do better. >> Mayor Adler: And I said I was going to do that. >> Tovo: I just wanted to explain to council member kitchen. It's just while we're talking about public safety. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Kelly. >> Kelly: You mentioned me bringing something forward. I'm guessing that you're talking about the license plate readers. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't know if this was still coming forward this way. >> Kelly: Yes, it is coming forward as a resolution. I do have my staff looking into continuing the design of the canyon creek fire station, which I do intend on bringing forward, once we fully research it. We should have it ready tomorrow. And there are a couple more items, but I haven't gotten back the questions to the budget q&a yet. And so I don't have any information prepared. I do have a question for chief baker to kind of switch gears. Station 25. I drove by there the other day [2:33:08 PM] after I left my grandma's house, checking on her. It's still undergoing renovations. Do you have an update? >> I do not have an update. I can have something sent to your office. I want to be accurate. >> Kelly: That would be great. I know it's impacting response times just a little bit, but not by much the way that you all were able to move the crews around. An update for my office would be great. Thank you. >> Sure, absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: I think the ems chief may have some response time numbers for us. >> Yes, I do. The current average response time for the good night ranch region is ten minutes and 34 seconds. And the average -- the average response team for the canyon creek area is eight minutes and 51 seconds. That's our current modeling. And then we move forward to model what the difference would be. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Chief, can you speak to what the time goals are for ems, which may be different than [2:34:11 PM] fire? >> Yes, our main goal was to be on scene for an emergency within ten minutes. The median response time provided are amongst all of our various thing, and I'd have to break that down. I can give you a detailed report, that based on priorities, they have several different prorlts of calls and we use different criteria and different response time criteria, depending how life-threatening those calls are. >> Alter: So these would be fire and ems stations and the bulk of our calls are actually medical. So can you speak from your perspective to the value of these ems stations, given your knowledge. >> Sure. The good night ranch area -- was discussed earlier, it's a rapidly growing area. We are seeing an increase in volume and calls from that perspective. To give you a sense. [2:35:11 PM] We saw about a 25% -- 20% increase between 2020 and 2021 in the volume of calls we're seeing in the good night ranch region. We have relocated one of our ambulances that were budgeted last year into one of our stations by the southwest branch library. But it has just placed some of our other units that are now housing outside. So the ability for us to move that to further down in that region where good night ranch is would be absolutely help us increase our response times. In the canyon creek area, we have not been able to keep up with the volume. We don't have additional resources to shift to that area and we do anticipate -- I'm sorry, the canyon creek region. >> Alter: Thank you. And for both chiefs, are these two -- do these two sites remain the areas that would be the highest targets from what you're seeing from your data? [2:36:14 PM] Beyond the fact that the 360 one is not operational. And I know the Travis county just came onboard. >> Are you referring to -- go ahead. >> I can only see the council member, mayor pro tem. >> Are you referring to, if I'm not mistaken, the highest areas as far as response time needs? >> Alter: Yeah. >> That's correct. Good night ranch and canyon creek at this time, we are not able to meet the eight minutes response time. >> Alter: I just wanted to confirm, since we did this analysis almost five years ago now that that was still -- that those remain a priority. You know, priorities can change over time, and I just want to reconfirm from your expertise and your knowledge at this point that -- >> As far as fire concerns, they're still the top priority. >> Alter: Okay. And for ems? >> Yes. Based on the data that we currently have, they are well positioned for the growth that we're going to be seeing and the volume changes that we see, particularly in the good night ranch area. [2:37:15 PM] >> Alter: Thank you. And I don't know if other people have questions for the chief. I do have several public safety amendments when appropriate. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. While we have -- yes, council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: I just wanted to bring up two points on any delays. If there were any delays on the good night ranch fire station. It is my understanding -- well, we all know that costs are going up, when it comes to building. Especially with supplies and with labor. But director Mendoza, do you know -- or chief baker, do you know how much it would cost if we were to delay the good night ranch fire station construction? >> Thank you, council member. We saw an escalation in construction costs, which is not dissimilar from other major projects around the city. For the good night ranch, on the order from spring, we estimated construction costs around 15 million. Our last conversations with the design builder, that number is [2:38:17 PM] now around 18. So, yeah, that's about a 20, 25% escalation in about three or four months. >> Fuentes: Yeah. So, colleagues, I am concerned about any further delays, how that might impact the total price. And so I really would like for us to move forward with construction. It's my understanding that ems has a rotaing unit that they could house in the station once it's completed, and that we could even do a reserve engine at the station once it's completed. So there would potentially -- or, there is and could be a use for the fire and ems stations. >> We cannot do a reserve apparatus at good night ranch once it's completed. I'm sorry. I'll take that back. We can do a reserve. I'm thinking about what we were having today. We'll put the apparatus in there. I'm sorry. Madam mayor pro tem, we have an increase of 19% double in six years for good night ranch. I do not have the data for canyon creek, but I'm pretty [2:39:17 PM] sure it's about the same. >> Alter: If you could get us that for both stations, I think it would be really helpful. >> Absolutely. >> Alter: Because if we do decide to move forward with these, which I wish we had had a more public conversation before the budget was proposed on these, you know, to really be able to look at the data and share on that, you know, it's important for us to see that data and to understand the value that could be added. Public safety is one of our prime responsibilities. >> Sure. >> Fuentes: Thank you. And no further questions on my end. I just wanted to make sure that we are aware that there is a financial implication, if we continue any further delays on construction. Thank you. [2:40:19 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. While we have the chief, any questions for the chief. And then we're going to go into daylighting public safety items. Chief, I'm going to let you go ahead and sit down. >> Sit down or leave? >> Mayor Adler: Sit down for just one second. I'm not going to let you go until we're done with public safety. I'm going to take advantage of the fact that you're here. But now would be a good time, colleagues, to daylight other budget amendments or directions that people might be bringing in public safety. The only one I had, really, was to address the five-year forecast to say that, hey, we're going to put aside a certain amount of money for public safety in the future, and we'll let the folks then decide what is the appropriate way to do that based on their priorities at that time, and the moment at that time. And then the second one, depending what we hear back from staff, that concept of civilianizing six sworn ftes in the realtime crisis center, so that sworn officers can be moved out. And to check with public safety and the police chief to see if that's something that something he would operationally like to be able to do. [2:41:21 PM] Council member vela. >> Vela: Working off of your questions regarding the 135 APD officers that were programming into the budget, I would like to see a clean projection without kind of planned APD hires. I mean, I know multiple departments have staffing plans, and I would like to see that projection just based on current budget. Like a baseline budget and not incorporating future hires or future anticipated hires. I just think that helps us make more of an apples to apples comparison as opposed to kind of anticipating the hiring of additional staff. That may or may not happen in the future. So that would be my only request to the city manager and the budget office. And honestly, I didn't quite catch, is there a reason that APD is there? And for example, the fire department is not. Ems. Other anticipated kind of staff plans are not rolled into that? [2:42:22 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I think that would be a question for the manager or for Ed. >> The question was specific to our five-year financial forecast, why did we include some physician positions for APD. >> Vela: In the memo in particular, I know the prior memo that you had, the August 10th memo has that line that says expenditure projections reflect all known and anticipated cost increases as well as the addition of 135 sworn police officer positions in the later years, according to the APD staffing plan, which -- again, I understand. But my -- again, without knowing, I would imagine that there are multiple staffing plans that would anticipate additional, you know, positions down the road. >> Yeah, not just in public safety, right? There's departments have additional staffing plans. Oftentimes, I don't know if I'd want to say always, but oftentimes, we will present the five-year financial forecast as just that straight-based forecast. This is just the budget that we currently have, or the budget we're proposing, and what does [2:43:28 PM] that forecast look like. Didn't reflect some additional public safety positions particularly in light of the fact that we have added positions in the police department for a while. In light of the financial picture we were seeing, though, we couldn't fit everything into the forecast. We even had conversations about tax rate elections, and if we had to go that way to fund some public safety positions. Things like fire ems stations. A nice tangible thing to be able to go to the voters and say, hey, because of the 3.5% revenue cap, in order to fund some of these critical needs, to call for a tax rate election. So that was just some of our thinking, while we're recognizing the importance, like we've heard up there, of public safety, wanting to recognize that and reflect that in this forecast. But, you know, we also wanted to present a forecast that didn't show massive deficits into the out-years. We want to be able to present a forecast that showed that we were trying our best to remain within our projected resources. Importantly, those projected resources have improved, but at the time, again, we were looking at deficits and struggling with [2:44:29 PM] how we were going to fund things in the future. >> Vela: I very much appreciate that. Just for clarity's sake, I would appreciate a baseline, and then maybe alternative scenario. You know, one that would include, for example, core agencies of thinking about APD, fire, ems, staffing plans, or something to that effect, just to kind of help us with our analysis. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> And I think it would be helpful maybe, one of the things I'm hearing now a couple times about different forecast scenarios. So I think if we could have some more conversation about that, because you know, there's an infinite number of scenarios we could run. And so if we could try to boil it down to three or four scenarios with some clarity of what council would like to see staff go back and run, we're happy to do those. >> Vela: The most important one would be your straight baseline scenario. Then, two or three other scenarios, with whatever suggestions that the city manager thinks -- budget staff [2:45:29 PM] think are most appropriate. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem, and then council member Kelly. >> Alter: Don't go anywhere. I want to talk about my amendments in a second, but I had one other question that you can clarify for me. We've been talking with audit and finance committee as a working group relative to pensions and making sure that our coerce system is secure. Buzz the forecast include what needs to be there for, you know, what we've been discussing? >> It does, but it doesn't include anything yet. So if those reforms are -- if the coers reforms that we've been talking about and we've been working hand in hand with coers are successfully passed, they would become effective January of 2024. So there would be funding that would be needed in the fy24 budget. We have funding in the fy23 budget just for our current required contributions, but all the reforms we've been talking [2:46:29 PM] about would be next fiscal year. >> Alter: And are they forecasted? >> They are. Including the apr reforms that have already been approved, the coerz reforms that we anticipate getting in place. Council has voluntarily been providing additional funding already. So that additional funding that's going to be required to get that straightened out is not going to be as steep as it was for police. But we do have that baked into our forecast. >> Alter: Okay. That's what I wanted to clarify. So I have several amendments that are almost ready to be posted that I want to talk about, and then I want to come back to the public safety bucket idea, because I think there's a lot of -- I have a lot of interest in that. So, I've mentioned that I'm going to be putting forward an amendment to implement the financial portion of the recommendations from perf that we can quantify at this point in time. That's the police economic research forum, the [2:47:31 PM] comprehensive sexual assault evaluation. You got a memo last week detailing that. We've been working with staff to get, you know, what those numbers would look like. Together with that, there was a grant from the sexual assault kit grant that is not continuing, that would be funding additional positions likely with safe, but the amendment will say a local non-profit. That would be put into aph to be able to continue those services to our sexual assault victims. And one or more of you have come up to me about co-sponsoring. But if other folks want to co-sponsor that, please let me know. We are putting forward an amendment related to our response to hate following our resolution in November for a public education campaign. And again, you're welcome to talk with me about that. And a third one that we have is a budget rider for ems. [2:48:33 PM] I think many of us on this dais, if not all of us, are concerned that we need to be providing greater renumeration to our ems professionals, both sworn and unsworn. And we've had some opportunities given some processes that we set in motion last budget, namely with respect to the billing and the revenue system. So this rider, first of all, says to continue the work with the billing and revenue system, and to -- creates reporting mechanisms so that we will basically -- every other month get reports on that to audit and finance committee. It secondly says that the council believes that this extra revenue should be deployed to invest in our ems system, and ask city manager to provide an incentive pay structure or other mechanisms, whether within the contract or beyond, that allows that to happen. And thirdly ask the city manager [2:49:33 PM] to come back in January and recommend whether we should be increasing our ems fees, which we are allowed to do based on the cost of service study. It doesn't say to do it, it just says come back and make a recommendation at that point in time. And we have been vetting this with the chief and with our labor negotiator, and they are both fine with it. And then we may have a fourth one related to the office of chief medical officer. We're trying to get some clarity on whether the money to do the billing system for the work that we're already doing, which is saving lives. And I will just point out that we had a paramedic practitioner who helped our lifeguards at Ramsey save a 30-year-old who drowned -- who was drowning in the pool, and the paramedic practitioners were really important for saving that person's life, to be able to do some more advanced care on scene. So, the question there is, is the billing system -- and we are waiting to get clarity if that [2:50:34 PM] is already taken care of in the budget. And I'm still working out my thoughts on the fire ems stations, but that might be something that we could take care of in a bucket that we sort of said, this is a bucket for public safety staffing needs, which might include additional personnel. It might include the opportunity for some additional funding with respect to how we increase the salaries of our public safety professionals. I will just remind us that something like 70% of our general fund employees are in public safety. They're not covered by the increases in the wages, the ones who are sworn. I may have that percentage off because there's non-sworn, too. But it's a really high percentage that are sworn that are not covered with these wage increases, and they're dealing with inflation and other things as well, and so we need to find -- to make sure what we're planning what we need for those conversations, we are in arbitration with the fire union, et cetera, and we need to [2:51:36 PM] prudently plan so that we make sure that we're delivering to our public safety profession untils as well. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Anybody else want to daylight any other public safety stuff we haven't already discussed? Council member kitchen, then council member Kelly. >> Kitchen: I think -- well, one of these -- I think I highlighted Tuesday, and that was the 911 call takers. Who are, you know, part of APD. But they're civilian. And it's direction, not [2:52:49 PM] so there's that. The second thing is one that I posted today, that I haven't talked about before. And that is a -- that is a pilot related to personal attendants, and it's designed to address the response that our ems professionals and our fire professionals often have to engage in, because there's a tremendous shortage of -- a tremendous shortage of personal attendants in the community, and so we have folks in the community that often need assistance with just simple things like getting in and out of a wheelchair, getting in and out of bed, dressing, things like that. And they end up, when they don't have that -- when they don't have that assistance available to them calling ems or calling [2:53:49 PM] fire. So this is a pilot program that was proposed to us by adp. Council member Kelly and I are working with Austin public health and ems as well as adp and other stakeholders to propose a pilot program. I have posted the rider on the message board today. So, that is one-time funding. It's being put forward as a pilot for one-time funding that we can then determine the effectiveness of it from a public safety and emergency response perspective. It's really in the nature of a prevention activity. It's a shift, as we've done with other programs, so that we're really paying attention to what kind of services will actually prevent difficulties and reduce the level of emergency response [2:54:50 PM] that we might have to engage in. So I invite folks to look at that. It's on the message board. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Kelly. >> Kelly: Thank you. So, one of the budget riders that I was bringing forward is very similar to the one that I brought last year. Colleagues, you may remember the modified cadet academy rider that I brought forward, which was to only allow for that modified academy funding was already available in APD's budget. It's a already concerning to me that there are 170 APD operational vacancies and 132 patrol officer vacancies. So, this would help with that. APD last year changed the modified terminology to the transitional officer program, and my understanding is that did commence with eight officers from departments where they already had the basic peace officer certifications. They're going through that now. So I wanted to daylight that. And then council member kitchen, thank you for involving me in your personal attendants rider. [2:55:51 PM] It's really important to me, having come from -- before I was on council, I worked at several different personal care agencies, where I was a client care coordinator, and I would go out and do assessments on individuals who needed help in-home with their care. And I had the on-call phone as one of my responsibilities, and caregivers would call out last minute because they work for multiple agencies because they're given more -- it's an hourly rate to go work somewhere else, which really puts a family in a disadvantage if they're expected to go to work, or they need to take care of their kids, and the one thing I used to tell families is that you can't take care of the person that you love who needs that help and assistance, that's really above and beyond what you can typically give, unless you help yourself. And so this really fills a critical gap in need. I'm so thankful that you invited me to help co-sponsor that. And mayor pro tem, thank you for your continued focus on ems billing. I've heard you talk about it over the last year and a half. I've been sitting up here with you, and I'm really glad that you've taken that really to [2:56:52 PM] where it needs to be for the betterment of the city. We are leaving money on the table, and I appreciate you moving forward with that. So, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Yes. I do have another, in addition to the good night ranch, budget amendment, I have another budget amendment which is focused on paramedics at the airport. Currently, the airport does pay fire to have fire on hand, and what we're trying to do is increase our paramedic support at the airport from the aviation enterprise departmental budget, and that would add about three paramedics, and then also looking at adding a dedicated room at the airport for patients with medical emergencies. I think this is going to be really important, especially as we expand our airport and we're seeing a lot more passenger activity, and that would be another amendment that I plan to bring forward. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member pool. >> Pool: I wanted to express support for that amendment for [2:57:53 PM] ems to be sited out at the airport. Council member Fuentes, my understanding is currently if our medics need to go into the airport in order to address an emergency, they have to go through security screening. And that simply delays their being able to get to the scene where they are needed. So we absolutely -- I'm glad that this was brought to our attention. We absolutely need to do something about that. And housing them on the site, much like fire already is, makes a lot of sense. We do a lot of co- location between ems and fire. So I'm very supportive of that effort. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Any other public safety to daylight? Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Yes. I've asked some questions about Austin code, and I'm still working through those answers, so I'm not sure yet whether I'll have anything to propose, in particular with regard to their requested additional 13 ftes. We had kind of a vigorous conversation around it last [2:58:55 PM] year, and there is a need. This year, the proposal is for administrative positions, rather than inspector positions. So I think we still have not solved -- we really still haven't solved for the fact that in the programs, where we need evening hours, like short-term rentals and others, we don't have code inspected -- there's schedule for code inspectors is not matching up. And so that continues to be a need, and I really also have an interest in seeing some stronger -- stronger penalties and stronger actions with regard to the repeat offender program. And those are just changes we've been asking for for a long time that we haven't seen. So, just noting, I'm not sure what that action might be. That's just not work I've completed yet. We're working through it. But just, I want to notify my colleagues that that's where I'm thinking, and it may or may not be done by tomorrow. [2:59:59 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: And then I think council member Renteria has something on that point. And then I have one other moment, but I'm happy to yield for the moment if he wants to comment on that. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Yes, I do have some information on that point. >> We've been having a lot of history with strs and complaints that residents have especially in a commercial area, which is a concerning thing for me. I believe that apartment complex can now use up to 25% of their units for short-term rentals, but the biggest following up on all those complaints, what I found out is the biggest problem is the repeaters, the ones that are constantly repeating and getting complaints. It's a long process to take them to court. They just don't have enough administrative personnel to deal with the caseload that is -- [3:00:59 PM] that they have that's why I'm also supporting the increase in administrative role if they're going to use it for that purpose, and that's what I'm really feeling like that we've got these people out there that are repeating -- repeatedly violating the code, and they assume that they get a citation and they can either appeal it through the court system, which takes a long time, or also now they can just pay the fine because the fine is so low. The amount of money that they're making off of these units, that sometimes is more than $100,000 a year. I really want to address that issue and make sure we get out there and put a stop to the violations. They could require more administrative personnel to do the paperwork, file the complaints through court, and I'm going to be supporting it. [3:02:05 PM] >> Tovo: I have gotten information from Austin code, and I may agree with you councilmember when I have really worked through that information, but what I remember and I have the transcripts in my big stack in front of me. I just haven't had a chance to review them yet. This council in turning down the request for additional staff last year asked them to come forward with a plan for improving in some of the areas, and I do not believe we ever received that plan. I'm super reluctant to just approve additional resources without having some sense of how these things are going to be fixed. I believe it was 2015 when we first started talking about the better enforcement of short-term rental, and we just are -- I'm answering the same kind of emails now that I was then. It's just -- I can't understand why. I understand there are some challenges with the [3:03:05 PM] administrative process, but there are some other major issues that I am not clear on why we can't -- why we can't better enforce, like, for example, when we have short-term rental owners that do not have a permit that continue to advertise their properties. Why are they allowed to continue -- why are we as a municipality not able to shut them down and just simply -- I can't answer that. At a minimum, what I hope to have time to do is provide some level of budget direction or make some of these contingent positions contingent on really getting concrete plans to fix those issues. That's one thing. The other is I have an amendment coming forward on resilience hub tool kit. This is noted on our -- we passed this on our council agenda resolution to include money in the budget. We're leveraging the force of the community to get those resilient hubs throughout our [3:04:07 PM] city, and I cited in that resolution the example of Barcelona, which was able to within one year to use existing resource -- existing facilities and community groups to get resilience hubs within every household of their city. We have the ability while we're doing this great work on creating resilience hubs. We have an opportunity, and I think an obligation, to make sure that we are empowering communities to set up those resilience hubs in other areas. Our first resilience hubs are primarily going to be in the -- are exclusively going to be in the eastern eastern crescent, and -- in our list of unmet needs, it was noted as under-developments. We clarified there's no money [3:05:07 PM] allocated in the budget specifically for that need. I don't know what that amount would be, and so we've asked some questions, but I do intend to bring forward an amendment for some level of funding to make sure that we have some funding to get that done this next year. I think that's it in this area. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else in this area before we go to other areas? >> Tovo: Especially with the resilience hubs, which I have given you some sense of what that will look like, if you would like to be on that, please let me know. >> Mayor Adler: Let's open it up beyond public safety right now. Questions for Carrie and Ed, staff, other people, but also to other amendments for direction? >> Mayor. I might just ask, is it okay if our fire chief and chief of [3:06:10 PM] staff are free to go, or do we have more questions for them? >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for hanging with us this long, and thank you for noticing that. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: P colleagues, I think I have -- I joined with councilmember tovo and kitchen and others on the adc, and I want to be part of the effort to do that. If there's general fund moans we can find, that would be great. If we can find alternate money, that would be great. I continue to explore taking a look at the areas to fund it. I'll be meeting with staff and trying to answer some questions, but one way or another, I think it's real important that we figure out how to fund them administratively. At least going for at least another year. Hopefully the year after. As I had indicated earlier, I'm [3:07:11 PM] going to bring back something working with councilmember pool on council compensation and member pool on council compensation and retirement. So there is maintained compression that we know exists between the highest paid staffers and city council members themselves and also retirement at the same level that retirement is offered to other city employees. Still working on effective date of that, so if anybody has any thoughts and wants to reach out to me or council member pool on that, that would be a good thing to do. We're quorum members. Then, also, the questions that are raised with director gray figuring out how to get the supplemental fund for echo. There's been a lot of administrative work, so we make sure as we expand capacity we're [3:08:12 PM] actually doing it in a way that is going to work for us. I'll probably bring a rider with reference to the tourers policy. We talked about what's happened with tourers. Does it just go away? Does it identify new or additional projects? We had talked about just having a general policy that said absent other council action. Otherwise, it would be spent on affordability of homelessness and housing that impacted that district. That is accounted by default scenario if there's additional dollars. I am also toying with, and this is something I always raise at budget time, and I'm always told that it's too late to do at budget time. I have to think about it earlier. We've all run into that kind of thing. I think it might make sense for us to have our staff take a look at a one-pager that would go in [3:09:13 PM] utility bills. That would explain and provide context for whatever action council took with respect to the budget, be able to identify what increases or decreases were the city component of that budget. Also, to point out things like if people don't have a car, they can avoid paying the tuf, but to provide notice to residents in our community about ways they might be able to do things to help save themselves on fees and expenses. We haven't always think about that now and wish we were sending out something other than the combined tax notice that goes out from the appraisal district because I think there's just so much more information that our community should get. I'm not going to be ordering it, but asking for staff to come back to council early enough next year so that that council can decide whether or not that's something that they want to do. Then, I need to take a look and [3:10:15 PM] considering the civilian conservation corps, which I think is a really good program, we had set it up as a pilot, as we often set up pilots with one-time funding. I would really like to see the naldz. Not suggesting we do anything different. I suggest we do go ahead and fund it again. I would like to see the analysis of -- I would like to see if that's the best use of those funds. Whether there are competing uses or ways we can make the program better, and I would like to take a look at whether some of those dollars can be spent to hire people experiencing homelessness to actually help with clean-up and encampment work. I'll be taking a look at that issue. >> I'm sorry. I'm also working on an edc, as I mentioned the other day, amendment. I missed what you just said about what you are working on. >> Mayor Adler: I assumed that at some point we'll merge these [3:11:16 PM] things. I said maybe general fund, if there are other funds we could find to do that, but as a last resort, if there's no other funds, I'm taking a look at ters funding, and I will be meeting with staff to try to figure whether or not that's doable or not. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you. I will say I've been looking at a couple of different funding sources and awaiting some questions, but I would share at the moment I think sales tax -- the sales tax production is probably our best option for this year. So, it sounds like that's what you are describing too as a possibility. >> Mayor Adler: I'm saying one way or another at this point. >> Tovo: Do you have a sense of the amount? I know what they have said they need and -- >> Mayor Adler: They said what they need on an ongoing basis. I've asked them to take another look at that number because the projects are going to get more defined, and we just really want to get them started. I don't know that number, but I think you're in my sub-quorum on this, so as both of us continue [3:12:16 PM] to try to figure out what that is. >> Tovo: I have a number, but it was less than what they requested, and I am not sure what it enables them -- >> Mayor Adler: I think the number is less than what they were requesting if I'm looking at a shorter term perspective. >> Tovo: Since we're talking about this, I'll just mention, as I have said, I'm bringing forward a resolution hopefully on the next agenda that is somewhat related and talks about how we handle real estate transactions, and I know a few of you have indicated that you want to work on this, and among the recommendations, I'm going to make, are some related to the city properties on edc. That may be a budget direction I bring forward, or it may just be part of that resolution that I'm bringing forward. I think it relates to the effort that you are describing, mayor, or that you have undertaken that many of us on this dias share is to make sure that our economic development corporation has the resources it needs to be successful and is able to perform the scope that we set [3:13:17 PM] forward, which is to really manage and to develop our city-owned real estate assets in addition to being involved in other transactions out in the community. >> Mayor Adler: Further stuff? >> Can you just clarify one thing? >> I couldn't hear what you said on the homelessness. >> Mayor Adler: We'll go to somebody else to lay out theirs, and then we'll invite questions from what they did. Questions for me on what I laid out? Mayor protem and then council member pool. >> I didn't hear the part about redirecting funds for homelessness. >> Mayor Adler: In terms of the civilian conservation corps, I was looking at whether in their work plan the things they're working on, whether we should also add to that [3:14:18 PM] assistance with respect to encampment response and whether or not we should be looking at also talking about hiring an additional cohort of people or participating or supporting homelessness. >> Mayor, there's quite a bit of information that was shared with us in the story map about the experiences that they had when they were working in the parks when they are doing this. I think it's really relevant to what you are talking about for the kind of training and the groups, and their experiences with that. I'm not sure that I would add that at this point in time. We have a study that just came out from U.T. On what needs to be hang for green job pathways. While there is a conservation element for cleaning up encampments, it's not exactly setting them up for a future job, which is really what this program is supposed to be doing the way that it's transitioning from the pandemic is to be able [3:15:21 PM] to do the jobs that are in the equity plan that are contributing to our climate goals. That doesn't mean that that work is not important, but it is not something where the training and the development, et cetera, is really at the level for that particular program. I think that having talked with the participants about their experiences in the parks and what not, I'm not sure that that is the appropriate group to be deploying in that particular way, and we have plenty of other work for them to be done and we have set the ground work with the study from U.T. That did a study. There was one other study that really laid out a whole type of framework and perimeters so that this can be done equitably and sets people up for success. I'm not sure adding that because we're looking for funding for that when we have a program [3:16:23 PM] with -- that's already doing that work, and they have people who are trained and able to do that. I'm not sure that that would be something that would be an appropriate use. That doesn't mean the work doesn't need to be done, but I don't think that applies to that program writ large. >> Mayor Adler: I want to learn more, so if you have any studies that I should say, send them to me or post them on the board so everybody can see. That would be really, really helpful. I know that I was anticipating -- >> The report just came out today, so I forgive you for -- it's not like -- I don't know if it's totally -- the U.T. Report, we've been trying to get them to get it out sooner. The story map thing, we can probably get you a link to that. We had a reception here at city hall. It was full all the way going up there with people who had either participated in the program or were involved in doing the story mapping and lots of environmental organizations here celebrating the work of the conservation corps, but it was also really a frank conversation [3:17:23 PM] about how do we make this training equitable, and what's involved, and their experiences working in those parks where they were doing clean-ups was a big part of what they were expressing and so I would be really hesitant to add that. >> Mayor Adler: I wasn't challenging the work that was done by the initiative because it sounds like it's really good. I'm trying to learn and catch up. I know that I was anticipating the pilot and then some kind of review or study from staff that would come back and talk to us about the number of people that were involved and what's happened to them and what's been in their pathways. We've gotten kind of a qualitative assessment generally of the work that's done, and you have talked about that, but I was looking for something that was different from that. There was a presentation that was made to the environmental commission in April of 1991 that contains some of those objective numbers. I asked my staff to try and see if they're updating those numbers so we can see that. Part of it was not saying that the work they're doing isn't good work because it's great [3:18:24 PM] work. Part of it is just learning a lot more about the people that are involved, and part of it is saying we've also talked about a civilian conservation corps in the context of hiring people that are experiencing homelessness, and we certainly know we have a need. We've discussed it here this morning on the dias, and it's something that is a really high concern for lots of people in our community. It's a high visibility issue, so I'm trying to learn as much as I can. Send me as much information as you can. We've asked staff to give us additional information, and then I'll come back and report. I would love to work with you on that too. I don't have a quorum on this issue. Council member kitchen. More questions for me? >> Kitchen: I think -- I would be interested, too, in what you are talking about with regard to the civilian conservation corps. I'm thinking of it more from the perspective of -- I just don't [3:19:25 PM] know enough about the program, but I would like to understand where and how someone becomes involved in the program because it seems to me that the program should be open to people experiencing homelessness, people that go into the yield program or other people going through other programs because job stability and the ability to -- job stability and advancement, which I this I is one of the things that this program is designed for, which is really important, is something that should be open to people experiencing homelessness also. They're not any different than anyone else in terms of their ability to learn and develop a career. If that's the aspect you're talking about, that would make sense to me. >> Mayor Adler: I apologize. I said I was coming to you next, and then I didn't do that. Council member pool. >> Pool: That's great. I wanted to hop on your request for staff to prepare an insert [3:20:25 PM] for the utility bill that describes what we're doing or what we're not doing. I think that's really smart. I think it gets in front of -- it lets us describe and explain what we're doing and so we retain that authority, which I think is appropriate. I also want just to mention I was looking at the Travis cad site yesterday for their taxpayer transparency. They had this new approach to putting up property tax values, and it is really difficult to follow. I had figured that whole system out years and years ago, and then I found myself yesterday totally flummoxed because the information I was looking for wasn't on there. It's there probably somewhere, but I can't find the individual taxing rates for each taxing jurisdiction, and that's always been on there in the past, but now they're just telling you the total amount of taxes that you owe to each taxing entity, and they have changed all that information going back. I'm hoping I was looking at [3:21:25 PM] something completely inaccurately or that it's all operator error on my part, but I wanted to mention that because if indeed that has changed that system at the central appraisal district, then there will be even more questions that people are asking about how they are being -- their properties are valued and the tax rates that are being attached to them and anything that the city can do as soon as possible as you are suggesting I think would be a real benefit to everyone. Thanks. >> It's a good point. Thank you. Anything else for me before we go to the next person? I'll just say on that point that there is a lot of great information that comes in those inserts from the utility bills. They do have to be printed quite a bit earlier so they can't do it in real-time as you act here, and that will take a bit. We do advertise about the tuf, if you are 56 and don't have cars. That comes in that insert already. Yeah, it's a lot of good information. >> Mayor Adler: Good to know. If there are no more questions for me, then we'll let somebody else kind of lay out the things [3:22:28 PM] that they have. Council member Funt esand then. >> Fuentes: We have the good night ranch fire ems station. I also posted on the message board an amendment to initiate an enhanced library card pilot program. We would join other cities that have similar programs essentially a form of municipal id. This work long predates me. I think then mayor pro tem Sheryl Cole started the ground work for developing municipal id and is now what we've seen is peemt -- [3:23:37 PM] looking at -- I talked about the -- having paramedics at the airport in case of capacity there. Also, joining council member Ellis on a reproductive health amendment and then potentially seeking to add more funds in that effort, and then last but not least, we are looking at a tenant relocation amendment to add funds either directly to the tenant relocation fund, which is a fund that has been established by council, but does not currently have any funds to it, or perhaps identifying alternatives for us in order to get this money out sooner. We are seeing active displacement happening throughout the city. My district, we have the congress mobile home community. We've had 40 families displaced. A few families are participating in the income pilot program so, I'm very happy to see that move forward. But, there is still a lot more work to be done. Those are the budget amendments [3:24:37 PM] that I'll be bringing forth. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Any questions for council member Fuentes? Mayor pro tem. >> I don't know if this is a question for you, but as we try and Fick out how we increase the wage, I think we need to have better understanding for our swarm employees versus our civilian employees and the breakdown because as we raise the other wage, we also have to be able to account for things in our contracts. It isn't so much a question for you as a statement for staff. Is there a way to get civilian and swarm within our public safety departments, and then what's the number of people and the total amount of wages in each or something because it's just -- I'm having a lot of trouble understanding that we say it's -- I don't remember what the additional amount is for general fund, but then it doesn't take into consideration [3:25:38 PM] all of sworn and what percentage of our general fund employees are sworn, and I'm just having trouble trying to figure out what we're not accounting for as we try to do better by our civilian employees. >> Mayor Adler: We need to pass that on to our hr department, but I think the sworn aspect can be done very quickly because I don't think there's too many in the making less than $20 an hour. We'll pass that on to hr and the staffing numbers. Off the cuff, it's probably around 45ers approximate much the general fund staffing positions or public safety positions. >> I feel like we're not accounting for something, and I want to make sure that we do that. Yes to what you are saying, but also kind of even just a gross [3:26:42 PM] total of we have this number of sworn professionals and the total amount of wages they're getting is this much and this many of them make less than $20 or make less than the amount that, I don't know, is probably 25 with the compression, but are impacted. Our ems professionals will be quite impacted by that if you go up to 20 and then do compression from there. I can talk to you afterwards if it's clear, but there's a piece here that I'm just -- we had -- >> Mayor Adler: I think it will be helpful if we talked afterwards, but I'm confident we can get the numbers for you. >> Mayor pro tem: I don't want to make a goose chase either. Let's clarify with that, and then what are you preparing? I know council member Fuentes asked earlier with respect to enterprise funds, but presumably at one point somebody said it was $25 million more. >> Mayor Adler: That number that was thrown out on Tuesday was a mistake. That number that got thrown out [3:27:42 PM] was the cost of the 4% wage increase, and I've seen some numbers where I expect the enterprise cost of $20 to be about $4 million to $5 million. I think it's going to be in that range. What I don't know yet is how much is already included in the budget to get us to 18, and then how much more do we need to get to the 20? The $20 from scratch, the $20 compared to the 15 was $4 million to $5 million. >> Mayor pro tem: Would there be impacts? >> We're working on that for council member Fuentes. It's a little tip of the hand. >> >> Some of the fees already had the $15 to $18 increase included. They should have had the 15 to 18, but dwoent get to change the enterprise ones without accounting for the revenue to pay for it. I just -- earlier we heard $25 [3:28:43 PM] million, which would certainly have affected what they were taking in. I wanted to make sure we have that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool next. >> Pool: The first one I'm going to bring is a redirection of the abortion logistics funding, so this is the line item that council member pool and I have worked on for the past couple of years together. >> Since this is redirecting a line item that already exists, I'm going to bring mine as a rider, and I know that council member Fuentes is working on adding some more funds in a similar vein and has some new ideas that we've been working out. That will be an amendment >> I didn't hear you. Abortion logistics. The next one is lifeguard bonuses. These were able to be funded out of vacancy savings, and so my rider is going to direct the city manager to come back at an appropriate time to let us know the circumstances. [3:29:43 PM] If those vacancies are going to be happening again and if we can make sure we know that dollar amount and if they need council action to bless those lifeguard bonuses again. That's going to be a rider at this point in time with a due date for the information requested. The third rider would be about the continuity of service for individuals who formerly worked for the city and have departed and ways we can incentivize that institutional knowledge and expertise to come back into our community and back into our city services. The $150,000 that the parks department is requesting, the second one will be a parks facility safety and security line item, so we are working through the numbers on that particular one, and then the third one will be the incentive pay eligibility, which we think will have a will -- will affect the budget. We want to make sure that we're prepared to bring that as an [3:30:45 PM] amendment if needed. I also wanted to daylight some of the things on the message board that we have confirmed are baked into the budget include vision zero traffic enforcement, supporting neighborhood speed mitigation, fully implementing the living streets and block party program, maintaining funding for gun locks and safe storage education campaigns, e-bike rebates. We have a question out for the cleaner coalition funding, which has been included in years past, but I'm just waiting for confirmation of that one. I think that does it for me. There's a couple of other things that we might be bringing as the agenda meetings come back since they might need a little bit more work to iron out exactly what the direction is and what the impacts might be. Those are the ones that I'm planning on bringing forward. Three riders and three amendments at this point. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for that. Colleagues, I was going through, and there were two things that I had that I failed to mention. The first one of them is a rider [3:31:46 PM] that speaks to the stipends, so wellinged E we could create a fund that could be strategically placed by Joya in case we want to consider that as an option as we're looking at staff pay and salaries. Then, the second one is the -- there are a lot of organizations in the city that are all trying to do ticketing and back of house and insurance and support. The long center said that they're willing to basically create a co-op for those organizations, which made a lot less expensive for them. Somebody else to handle their ticketing and the like. They're willing to put money towards it if we would help. I'm taking a look at that one as well. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I had a question for council member Ellis. I missed the third one of your amendments or maybe it was the second one. I got the nature play and the incentives. What was the other one? >> Kitchen: You missed the one [3:32:47 PM] in the middle. The parks and recreation facility safety and security line item. They've wanted to make sure there's a point person for safety and security measures, and that might include vehicle as well to make sure they can get where they need to be, soer would looking at how -- where those funds would come from. >> I think it might be a question for you or somebody. I noticed council member Ellis that they are calling some of them on amendments and some of them riders. I probably need to redo mine. I was calling mine all riderses. Do we need to specify? Do we need to make a distinction on what we call them? Is it amendments if it costs money and riders if it doesn't? >> Kitchen: That's how I've been doing it, so correct me if that's not the case. >> Moving funds from one area to another, and increasing staff would be -- things directing us on things you want done with the budget as it's been approved for [3:33:49 PM] riders. >> Pool: I might as well ask this question. We have a deadline request for when we post. We've all been putting various things on our message board. Is there a way that you want us to do this so it will be easier for y'all? Do we really need to put them all on one message board post, or do we email them to y'all? What's the best way? >> Did we discuss that? >> Mayor Adler: We have an individual in the budget office that's coordinating them. If you can send them to Brad Sinclair. He will email them all out to you. >> Mayor, I think you -- oh, you added -- of the two you just added, I would like to participate with you on the co-op for the arts. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member [3:34:52 PM] Fuentes and council member pool, thank you. Yes. >> Just very quickly. I know when we first started the conversation around the budget riders that staff had asked that we do them similar to iscs, be it resolved so that we had our language really clear and locked in so there was no confusion. I just wanted to mention that here because that's the format that I am using is they're going to have it resolved with very specific details. >> As a body, we decided not to require that of one another. Certainly the more information and data you can give is -- >> I had a question, council member Ellis. I had to step off the dias for a minute. Can you tell me how the safety position that you are describing fits within their kind of existing staff? I know we haven't talked about this in a long time, but once [3:35:54 PM] upon a time there was an audit about how hard handled safety checks on their playground equipment. There must be some staff. How many staff do they currently have with regard to safety, and where would this fit into the existing? >> I'll ask the director to answer that since she's here. I know that she worked with the parks foundation on what some of the outstanding requests were going to be. We tried to confirm if there were any other positions that could be migrated, but it seems like that wasn't feasible. We decided to take this route. >> We do have an individual that is dedicated to playground safety, but what we are looking for is we have things like fire suppression, aed systems, lighting security systems, alarms, all those sorts of things that are associated with both facilities and parks, and we have no dedicated individual to help see if there's consistency or to do any sort of evaluation as to whether this current configuration of safety [3:36:55 PM] measures is actually doing what it's supposed to do. Are the cameras working, those sorts of things? Hopefully that ABCs the question. >> That's very, very helpful. Thank you. >> Mayor pro tem. Mayor pro tem: In addition to the public safety items that we were talking about, I've mentioned it before. I'm putting forward the two -- to make the hcc appointments that frees up park ranger position and natural resource position. For those working on the signage, we find -- and then I might be putting forward a grant rider for the innovation office. We have a lot of opportunities for grants that we leave on the table because we don't have anybody tasked with writing grants, and innovation offices poised to be able to see that, and I think that would bring back a lot of money for the city [3:37:56 PM] and to some of these programs that are departmental and are in an important way without a huge amount of cost, and I like to see us try that, but I have to figure that out. I don't know if I will have that one ready for tomorrow. Then, I have some questions on workforce that I need to ask staff to be able to finalize that, and I think it's something that we need to surface for everyone. I don't know if there's somebody that I can ask some workforce questions because I'm trying to determine how the economic development department is addressing workforce. Is there anyone who can answer some of those questions, or we can bring up? I'm concerned that -- is there somebody who can? Otherwise, I can lay out my concern, and we can -- >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you lay out the questions, and then Ann can see if they can readily answer them, and who might be [3:38:57 PM] able to answer them. >> As the budget questions in the Q & a, I think about workforce, and it looks to me like we are using the arpa funding that we allocated to be supplemental workforce funding to be replacing our workforce funding in this budget. That concerns me because it was meant, and I think the council was intending for them to supplement their workforce commitments. Not supplant them. I want to get some clarity on that. So I want staff to confirm is any spending on workforce development from EdD's budget fiscal year '22/kwae 23 using general fund dollars or using a funding source other than arpa, and how much funding fiscal year '22/'23 is sourced from non-arpa funds. I'm not comfortable if the arpa funds were used to keep the [3:39:58 PM] status quo in our workforce funding. That was meant to be above and beyond funding to meet particular challenges. I don't know what my amendment is yet because I can't understand what they did, and I hope I'm wrong. It seems like that's where we are. >> Mayor Adler: We have somebody moving over from economic development so they can participate. As soon as they're on the screen, we can go to that question. >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you go ahead and ask the next question. >> I think those are the ones. >> Mayor Adler: Suzanna may be with us. [3:40:58 PM] >> Good afternoon. Suzanna with the economic development department. Can you hear me? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Did you hear the question? >> Can you please repeat the question, mayor pro tem? >> Mayor pro tem: I'm trying to determine how the economic development department is adjusting the priority of workforce, and I want to understand what is being spent in the EdD's workforce spending this year that is non-arpa funds, and what is arpa funds? It seems like we're doing the same thing we were doing all along. It's confusing because arpa funding is sort of like off-budget, but it's on budget at the same time. >> I think that is the breakdown between arpa and general funds. I want to make sure I'm [3:41:58 PM] consistent with what we stated. I believe the majority of what we are spending is arpa, coming from arpa funds because we received a lot of arpa funding for workforce development, but we are also spending some general funds, and I want to check our numbers before I convey that for you. >> My concern is that we're not doing more than we did last year or if it was the year before in terms of our budget with respect to workforce development, even though that money was not budgeted to supplement -- it was not bunled to supplant money, but was to be supplemental to address the workforce needs. I need to know relative to prior years what you were spending and what's arpa and what's not arpa. At this point we can't tell that, and I'm -- we've put $15 million in there. I know there was a little bit [3:43:00 PM] that was spent on a capital idea, sort of emergency to get some additional nurses. It seems like the other money just sort of substituted other money in their budget. I need to figure that out, whatever the question is, to know the answer to that. That's what I'm trig to understand. >> How many years back do you want us to go back from what our normal funding has been from workforce development outside of any sort of federal response or additional response? >> Probably to 2015 so it's not subject to covid. I need to know what specifically EdD is spending on workforce [3:44:01 PM] because that's where the money from arpa was allocated. I don't know to know what aph is doing on workforce because it's EdD's money that seems to be -- EdD seems to be using arpa instead of their money. From what I can tell. I may be totally wrong. I'm concerned. >> Mayor pro tem: We also continued to do some one-year hold-over periods with certain contractors that we worked with in the -- currently to get us through the current with new contracts that we are pulling forth with council in September. I do want to also outline those contracts, those one-year contracts, that are basically hold- over contracts to get us through the solicitation, and I want to identify those contracts and then how much money we've spent under those contracts, and I believe that is our regular funding that is outside of arpa. [3:45:06 PM] >> Maybe go back the last five years is what my staff is telling me would be -- it's just are the arpa funds helping us to go beyond our normal activities is what I'm trying to understand, and there is an rfp out that is a mix mum of award of $2 million, and that puts organizations below what we would have been getting in previous years. We're not seeing the amounts in the budget. >> I'm surprised it's not there, but we will revisit that question. >> Mayor pro tem: The table we have only gives us what the arpa breakdown was, and it includes -- yeah, it only is what the arpa had. [3:46:10 PM] >> There should have been another column for ongoing, which is non-arpa. >> Mayor pro tem: In the print-out I received it's not on there. How much in general fund is being budgeted on workforce and EdD this fiscal year and specifically the general fund kind of dollars. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for the clarification. We will revisit that response. >> Mayor pro tem: If other people have things, if it's possible to get -- I don't know if it's possible to get someone from the innovation office to speak about what the grant would allow them to do. That would be great. While someone else is talking, if they can check. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: I appreciate being able to go next. I'm going to have to leave to pick up my daughter down the street, and then I'll be back. If we have lots of questions, I might have to table them for a [3:47:12 PM] little while. I mentioned a couple earlier today. Other amendments that I'm working on. One is to create -- I think I may have mentioned this Tuesday to create an additional fte for mayor and council offices to provide us with a little bit of more flex -- a little more flexibility if you have individuals who want to job share and other things, like if you have extra funding, but you don't necessarily have an fte. This would solve that issue. I am bringing forward a budget amendment that is following up -- boy, this is complicated. We passed a resolution in June allocating funding for the rainy historic district place keeping elements with a stakeholder process to begin soon. This year's budget includes an allocation of the rainy fund to achieve that. There will be an accompanying. Where he need to make an amendment to allow us to spend more than $200,000 a year. [3:48:12 PM] For some reason the ordinance was set to say $200,000 would transfer in every year, and that's all we would spend. The fund has more money than that, and we're going to have an ordinance saying we can spend up to the full balance, which is either 500 plus dollars or $700,000 plus. That's an ordinance and a budget amendment. Resilience I mentioned. Code I mentioned. I am considering bringing forward an amendment to restore additional funding to the homeless wellness center. This is something I had introduced with -- I had brought forward a resolution that the council supported with the mayor. Also, you were a sponsor on that item. This is a program that the Austin alliance had suggested. We expanded the funding for individuals experiencing homelessness in the downtown area who were part of the dak waiting list for mental health resources that are received at oak terrace. The downtown Austin alliance has reduced their financial contribution to that program, [3:49:13 PM] and so I may bring forward an amendment to restore some of it. I really intended to ask our homeless strategy officer about that and about the dap funding earlier today. At one point we had the dap as one of our topics for today, and somehow we didn't get to it. If there's an appropriate time at some point today, I do have some questions for staff about that. I think I'm missing some others. Let's see. Oh, yes. I'm missing a lot of them. There's a budget amendment for $350,000 to create summer camps in Spanish or duolanguage. This was a commission to do that -- our commission on immigrant affairs suggested that, and I think it's something that we have had conversations with our parks and recreation department about. It was not something they could achieve this summer for a variety of reasons, but I would like to see them do it for next summer. That's I think a pretty low cost [3:50:14 PM] with a really high benefit. We have a budget amendment for interior renovations for the house right next to the convention center. Convention center through their capital budget had renovated the exterior of it. If we renovate the interior, I think that provides the convention center with another venue. Especially important if they do undertake an extensive renovation or expansion of their existing site that provides them with a small but some venue over there, and I think it also offers opportunities for programming for other city departments as well. I have an amendment for security 24/7 security costs for the museums also across from the convention center. This is something I think we talked about most budget cycles. We provided some security through a complicated funding source a few years ago, but they [3:51:17 PM] continue to have lots of incidents at the museums and need additional security there. Code I mentioned. I have an amendment coming forward to increase the budget for the sobering center. The budget for the sobering center is really relying on projections that were done prior to the sobering center opening, and so it's created -- it's really created kind of a funding challenge year after year for the sobering center. The sobering center is doing a great job of diversifying its funding and raising private donations and increasing number of grants, but still needs some additional support. Will still need support from the city. That's part of our financial contribution to that local government corporation. This amendment for $233,000 will really get them to where they had requested to be. There was some confusion. They had submitted several years ago updated projections. [3:52:17 PM] They never apparently got loaded into the city system. They're always lagging a little bit behind where their actual costs are. I have an amendment. I hope that we can discuss it. I don't know when since we're almost out of time here today. We had a request from, I believe, from central Texas to, did I'm sorry. This is in response to my budget rider from last year. I think had done last year a budget rider asking our staff to look at what it would cost to provide cost of living increases to our social service agencies that are being supported through contracts, and we got back some information, and I may bring forward an amendment related to that to try to get social service employees up to working for our contracts up to cost of living. Next is a budget amendment [3:53:19 PM] related to restoring funding for critical after-school programs. Namely being primetime and victory tutorial. I have a budget amendment that would be a revenue generator, and I am looking at a couple of revenue generating ideas. This is one. Our city hall parking garage continues to be so far under market in terms of its rates that I think we really need to address it. For one thing, it is revenue that the city should be receiving that we're not. That money is dedicated right now to building facilities, building repairs here, and so I'm going to propose that anything above the current rates is designated for a particular purpose. Possibly for some of the youth programs that I discussed earlier. Just, I'll share with you that -- well, when you see the amendment, you'll see how totally off market we are here at our parking garage. [3:54:19 PM] This is, by the way, not intended to make any changes to those who are using city hall. If you are here for a city purpose, you'll still get free parking. It's really just about those who are parking here who are going other places. Then I mentioned the youth programs. We got some updated information. Thank you so much to our hr staff. Accounting apparently has decided to increase youth wages from $8 to $13. So I'm bringing forward a budget amendment to increase it to $13, but also to do what I described doing on Tuesday to provide our staff with budget direction to continue to do that market study to see how competitive that is next year and consider increase it beyond 13. I have some other budget direction beyond those. Tenant relocation. [3:55:20 PM] Nexus study to direct. We currently have funding, but have not completed that nexus study, and I can provide more information. This budget direction would direct staff to go forward and do that nexus study. Then there's budget -- proposing budget direction to do a program that I'm really excited about. A couple of years ago in the tml publication that we all get in our office, I read about a program in while, Texas, and it is a program that employs individuals with intellectual disabilities. I believe they are youth in Wiley, and my staff has been really considerable time talking with while, talking with hr and ISD talking about rolling out a program here at the city of Austin and so I am -- this [3:56:21 PM] budget direction has no impact, no financial impact because the departments that would be participating believe that they can accommodate it within their existing budget, but it would just memorialize this pilot program, and it is providing a transitional vocational preparation for students with intellectual disabilities or developmental disabilities, and aid already has an office that participates with private employers to do this work. You'll see in the budget direction what kind of resources aid would be willing to provide if this program gets started. I can talk about it more at our budget, but I think it's a really exciting direction for the city of Austin. I think it's going to be a great benefit to city and to the students that participate and will also be a good role model for other public entities. [3:57:21 PM] That's it. If you have questions, I may need to table some of them until I get back. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: We don't have to talk about this here, but I will want to talk about the tenant relocation nexus study. >> Kitchen: I would love to be able to did that. My understanding -- and I could be totally wrong about this. I might not be remembering, but I thought legal told us we weren't authorized to do a nexus study. If that's the case, I would like to have the conversation in executive city session. >> Tovo: That could be done in executive session. >> Mayor Adler: Any questions for council member tovo? Let's go to the next one. Council member -- >> Tovo: I think I have shared this with some of you y'all. [3:58:36 PM] We in the city of Austin don't have a veteran service coordinator, and even though in 2021 we passed a resolution directing the city manager to explore the flexibility of establishing a veteran and military affair office. The one that we used to have, it got transferred over from the human resource department to the civil rights office, and then that position got reclassified as a civil rights investigator. We lost the only veteran coordinator that we had, so that's why I'm bringing this budget amendment so that we can hire someone that can go out and do the outreach work for our veterans here in this community in city of Austin and coordinate with the county, the state, and the federal government, and to inform all our service personnel [3:59:37 PM] and the opportunity and the services available to them. You know, the army command control station here in Austin, I think that we're losing out on a lot of available resources that we could use to help our veterans here in Austin. That could be my budget amendment. >> Mayor Adler: Any questions for council member. I would be interested in being a co-sponsor to the veteran services coordinator position. That's something we've off and on worked on together, says and I think it's pastime to do something like that. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I would like to participate with you as well on that. Any further discussion? Questions for council member padia. Who else has stuff for us here? Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Okay. [4:00:40 PM] I posted a list on the message board, and I will update that with further information, but I believe everything is listed, so I'll just run through them quickly. In terms of budget amendments, I've got the amendment related to the heel program, the shelter operations, which we've already discussed. I have a budget related to district level planning. This is for ongoing funds to provide staffing to our housing and planning department. It is to implement the resolution that council passed earlier this year, which called for funding to implement the district level planning. The third thing is the personal attendance pilot, which is one-time funding which I mentioned earlier. The fourth one is an age-friendly fte, which is ongoing funding to add an fte to our age-friendly office to help [4:01:41 PM] us maintain our age-friendly status. You all may remember a number of years back we did our commission on seniors did the work that was necessary to obtain recognition as an age-friendly city. We are in danger of losing that designation. We have not made sufficient progress on all the recommendations that have been made, and we really just need another fte. That's -- this is in response to requests and recommendations from the commission on seniors. The fifth thing is a homeless response system public education program. We haven't talked about that yet either. That's a one-time expense. From time to time we talked about how important it is for the public to understand and really have information about our homeless response system, although our Pio office and our [4:02:41 PM] homeless service -- our homeless office does the best they can. They really need -- they are really operating not in the comprehensive way. I'll provide more information about that, but I think we need a more comprehensive homeless response system. This is one-time funding to hire the resources to help us develop that public education program. Budget riders that don't have a budget impact. I mentioned before the 9-1-1 call takers directions to report progress on addressing the vacancy rate. Senior tax exemptions, senior disabled tax exemption. We discussed that earlier to raise the exemption level to address potential increased cost from housing bond, and the third one that I may add has to do with Austin cares, and that's really just a direction to our budget office to find a way to [4:03:43 PM] identify in our budget in the future and to report the results of this program, and Austin cares is the 9-1- 1 call center access to clinicians in the call center. It's a cross-departmental program. It's nationally recognized. Because it is cross-departmental, we don't -- you can't find it in the budget, and it's very difficult to understand and locate information about how the program is doing. This will be direction around about addressing that for future budgets. I have also signed on to a number of other -- a number of other amendments and riders I want to highlight just a few of those. Raising the living wage to $20 an hour and working with council member Fuentes on that one. The aedc funding, working with mayor and council member tovo on that one. Park shade structures, working [4:04:46 PM] with council men Avala on that one. Tenant relocation fund, working with councilmen Fuentes on that one. I'm also supporting the number of other ones that other council members are bringing. Those are just a few highlights. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Mayor, I think the innovation office is -- >> Mayor Adler: That's right. Dave is here with the innovation office. >> Mr. -- I think Serena is going to answer the question because -- >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Serena. >> Hello, council, and thank you for allowing me to address you today. We certainly appreciate the consideration of this position for a grants rule within the innovation office. As you know, we are an office that serves other entities within the city. We are an office of service, and we would be certainly wanting to, if passed, consider how this [4:05:47 PM] role could be a service in a couple of different directions. That may be placed with current capacity need or of stressors around the topic of grants. That could certainly include looking at how this position could help scale up our staff across departments in terms of finding grants, writing grants of value, and grant opportunities and increase the success in going after those opportunities as well as facilitating cross- departmental collaboration on open opportunities so that people can work across silos to approach the opportunities that may be of interest to the city. We certainly recognize that council has an innovative spirit many times in order to address innovative solutions. We need to be looking at all opportunities for funding that may be on the table and may be out there, so this is something that we would want to take into [4:06:52 PM] consideration if we were to be able to shape this kind of role as well as working with the -- in collaboration with the finance and comptroller's office to think about how this work could help promote and play a role in tracking requirements and recording where, that is necessary to make sure we don't incur audits and that we shape our work in the best way possible. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: I'm very supportive of this fte. There's federal funding that is coming down the pipeline, and having a staff member write these grants will help us scale our efforts. I'm curious, how would our offices work with this potential fte, and I guess more broadly, how did council office's work with grant applications? [4:07:52 PM] Is it something that you emailed to the acn and say, hey, check out this grant opportunity and look into it? It's a general question. >> Happy to address that. Yes, you would work with our office. You could at any time email us and it would be assigned to the right person. Start with the city manager. >> Fuentes: Great. Thank you for that clarification. I'm certainly supportive of this fte to focus on grant writing and would love to co-sponsor the effort if possible. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem, I would:to join you on that as well. >> We'll try to get it done tomorrow. We may notted have all the numbers perfect, but we'll write something up for that. I think there's a lot of grant opportunities that are out there that they require not just writing the grant, but they also require coordination, and they require work after the fact, and it is really helpful to have [4:08:52 PM] people within offices. Particularly when we have an office like the ini don't he Vegas office that has a bird's eye view over all of our departments, and is now working in conjunction also with our equity and our sustainability office and I think there's a fourth one in there that I'm forgetting that collectively it could help us on a lot of our interdepartmental activities, although we wouldn't be limiting it to those offices. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, council member. >> Just a few. The big one is the rental assistance. I would like to add $5 million of one-time funding for rental assistance. I very much appreciate the city manager's proposal that already includes a substantial amount and that also includes the legal [4:09:54 PM] services and relocation assistance, but we, I believe, had a much higher amount last year the need is still very great, and in particular, my district is really feeling a lot of pressure and seeing some dislocation. I also see this as an investment in really in our anti-homelessness efforts. So many people are just one illness, one car accident away from real uncertainty and trouble. I will be bringing that for one-time fund. Another one is for a lifeguard position. Currently we don't have any full-time lifeguards. Even if a lifeguard is working all year-round, they're classified as a temporary employee. The current budget, I believe, has four positions according to [4:10:54 PM] information from our parks department. They have the capacity, the need, basically, 30 people to be able to operate and run our year-round pools. I will be asking, and we're working on the details of this right now for about 15 to 20 additional -- some of the money for that will come from the temporary, and the money allocated for the temporary positions. Some of it are new ftes. That's another item. Just in terms of labor fairness, I think if someone is working year-round, let's go ahead and make them full-time employ with full benefits. It's an issue that's been discussed for a while, and I would like to direct fund it for [4:11:55 PM] about $125,000 and then direct Austin public health to essentially design an rfp. What dough we need to know? What do we need to look at in and around the fayette power plant to make sure that the environment is safe around there. The plant has provided cheap electricity for the people of Austin and the region for many, many decades, and I just want to -- I feel an obligation to make sure that the folks that live around the power plant are taken care of, and I just want to know what is going on there. Then, finally, there will be a direction to staff with regard to shading our playgrounds, basketball courts. Any other type of court throughout our parks. [4:12:55 PM] I would like to thank council member kitchen for helping me with getting the direction on that just right. I think we've got it, and actually, directoror mcneily sent me a really great initial document where they're already looking at the parks and seeing where there is some shade, some natural shade, where there's already a cover. Again, you just am impressed with staff's ability to put something together in such a short time frame. I know that document will be refined and will be improved, but I'm excited about that, and I look forward to improving the kind of quality and usability of our parks year-round. >> Mayor Adler: Questions for council member Avala? Council member Fuentes? >> Fuentes: Can you share that report so we can take a look at our areas? >> Avala: I will. [4:13:56 PM] I'll send it to folks, or I'll pull in a second. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool. >> Pool: I wanted to ask to be added on the lifeguard full-time around -- year-round, and then I was curious on the fayette power plant. That's in fayette county. I know we have a portion of the power plant, and we're working on -- we have been working on trying to extricate ourselves from the agreement with the lcra, which is problematical. Since this is in a different county and our jurisdiction does not go beyond the boundary of the portion of the power plant that we happen to own and operate, what efforts reach outreach and so forth do you know of with elected officials in fayette county and the residents there to get a sense on what their take is on this? [4:14:56 PM] >> Avali: There have been a number of -- I've talked to a handful of folks about that who have experience out in fayette county and who have worked with the community about this issue. There have been a number of efforts in the past, but as part of the budget amendment, I want to make sure that we are doing outreach and that we do have essentially buy-in from the local community so we're not just Keefe going in and deck taking. I do want to make sure it is a cooperative effort and not something where kind of, you know, there's an outsider coming in to tell folks what to do. >> We actually have no jurisdiction, so beyond the boundary line, so does the outreach that you are talking about include the commissioners in that county, and any elective city level officials? >> Avala: My sense was to put outreach generally and not [4:15:59 PM] identify, but I am definitely open to more kind of specific guidance to, again, Austin public health or whoever will be ultimately conducting the research to see exactly define that guidance, define that outreach. >> Usually when we get involved in trying to ascertain what position of a community is we have stakeholder groups, and we are very explicit in all the levels of involvement and make sure we include a broad array of people. So in this case I would want us to be even more sensitive to the fact that issues could arise because we are involving ourselves in situations. There could be a situation where there is, in fact, some scientific basis for the health concerns and so forth. We certainly would want to surface that, and I think [4:16:59 PM] fayette county officials also would want to know that. I think there is commonality of impression E intention and purpose. I think that's the direction that we highlight that, that we are not intending to come in and big foot them because that could have a negative repercussion that could squash good work that we might be able to lead on. >> I completely agree, council member pool. I, again -- there's so much out there both in terms of filings and other prior reports. I've talked to a handful have people about apparently like the fayette ground water had done a study. Maybe a decade or two ago. There's also been some litigation that also has a lot of data. There's kind of a lot to build on, but yes, I think that we absolutely have to get some buy-in from local stakeholders just as we would in just about everything that we do. [4:18:00 PM] I know we are very committed to an outreach and engagement and getting input and I would like to take that same tact with this project. >> The collaboration piece is really important, and it might actually make the difference in how successful we are. >> I hope so. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Two things. Colleagues, I want to just mention as we go through the budget next week on some of the things people will be proposing. It's to spend money. There may be proposals where people are trying to save money or find money. We consider those separately. If you find money, you don't necessarily get to identify where it goes to. Those are independent decisions. We provide those questions. We move to the council that certain found dollars be used in a certain way. It doesn't necessarily have to have. That happens at the will of the council. The second thing I would like to [4:19:01 PM] ask is -- we would ask for this at one point. I think you may have already done part of it. I just wanted to get staff to tell us what we were spending relative to the proposal that came from some of the community groups at $75 million proposal. Something that indicates to us one of those things that are covered in the budget would be helpful. Further comments? Questions on -- council member -- first. >> I did not talk about the animal services behaviorist item that I'm bringing forward, which was actually in a resolution from 2010. The recommendation to hire an animal behaviorist was approved at the time, and we have not had one in our animal services organization since then. It's a specialized physician that's critical in evaluating [4:20:01 PM] dogs with behavior challenges and hemming us to stay a no-kill city. We are in the middle of an annual services office efficiency audit, and so there is a little piece in this that I'm bringing forward that actually has the initiation of a search for the position to occur after the efficiency audit or by the end of 2023, whichever occurs first. We also want to make sure by bringing this forward that the animal center director and staff work with the animal advisory commission and stakeholders while they're developing a comprehensive approach to this position with the scope of the position in mind before moving forward to initiate that search. I think that's a very important key piece, and I'm thankful for my colleagues who supported me on this and brought together some of the information, thank you very much council member pool, for helping with this. >> Pool: I just wanted to make sure I was on that item. I think I am, right? >> Mayor Adler: I think [4:21:02 PM] council member -- >> Pool: Thank you. >> I forgot to mention two other areas. One is -- one I haven't resolved whether and how I might bring forward an amendment or direction, but we are -- as you all know, we had a work group that looked at in sourcing jobs in the custodial and security areas. Especially those jobs that are consistent needs for the city and we set some criteria of consistent needs and I can't remember the other criteria. Basically that was the up shot. We made some good progress on this last year primarily through a budget amendment that I had brought that the council passed. We are in conversations with our building facilities staff and our purchasing staff about whether there's an ability to make more progress. I understand that the current job climate has made filling some of those positions challenging. That's sort of where I am in my evaluation at the moment and trying to figure out whether an amendment would be -- would [4:22:02 PM] affect any actual changes given that -- given the job situation. It may just be further direction. The other element of budget direction that I'm bringing forward is one that director mcneily, we haven't talked with you about. I've asked some questions in the Q & a about venue rentals. About 20 years ago, and I'm not sure when this stopped, some of our facilities were available for rentals. There may have been one or two others that are no longer kind of among the portfolio of places that you can rent within the city of ahs animal service. If you are having a party or a wedding or some other event. I wanted to talk about what the [4:23:03 PM] process is going to be like next week for our budget session so we can get a clear sense of how we're going to take up items. I would propose that we take up foeshl revenue generating items first so we can -- what we have agreement on, and we know what money we have to spend. I guess that's a conversation for the council, and I think we can have it today. It helps us organize our materials. I think if we know the order in which we're going to take things up and kind of what staff are going to do and just talking through that, even if we just do it briefly would be really helpful. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Mayor pro tem: I wanted to say I'm still interested in having a short executive session on the budget revenue. I think it would be important for us to have the budget. I think it would be important to do that today so that we can go out thinking about do that. >> Mayor Adler: We will. >> Mayor pro tem: We got the PC recommendations roughly this morning or last night for item [4:24:08 PM] three, so I -- item two we don't have to take up because we have the planning commission. I would suggest we postpone item three to next week, and we can decide how we proceed wunks we've had a little bit of time tomorrow and what not to digest what the funding commission proposed and to connect with parks on that. I would move to postpone three to next week. >> Mayor Adler: Any objection to post poening this item until next week? Hearing no objection, we're going to postpone item number three until next week. We'll have a hearing and give people an opportunity to speak on it today because we'll be notice for possible action. I appreciate you describing in terms of let's figure out whether we're ready to do it next week based on the workload and the like. Certainly it should come back to us no later than September 1st. Let's talk next week about whether we handle it next week or whether we put it off until then. Postpone it until the 17th. [4:25:16 PM] Three it being postponed. Colleagues, other things that people want to daylight or questions to ask? I would propose we generally follow the kind of process we've done where we break it into three things. We talk about where we want to spend, what we want to give direction to and where we find revenue. I think we may have a threshold question with respect to the budget. Let's see what happens in executive session. That would be the first place we start so we would have that base budget. Probably when we go through it, we'll do it the way we've done it in the past. We'll see if what things have a critical mass of people behind them with the understanding that as we go through the budget process, we don't actually make final decisions until the very end, so people can vote to say I want this to be among the final things we talk about even if they're not going to vote on those things to be part of what's in the final, but being able to limit the number of [4:26:16 PM] things that are at play and what we're discussing, we try to do. We'll do it that same kind of way. Council member pool, and then we'll come back. >> Pool: In the past one of our staff has helped you us with a spreadsheet to have a running toemt total. I think originally it was our budget staff that did that, but then maybe one of our folks was doing it. At any rate, whoever has the band width to handle that, that would be great. >> Mayor Adler: We asked at our work session if they would do that, and they will. The budget sheet they're going to do is going to be an internal-facing spreadsheet as opposed to an excel spreadsheet. If we want to publish it publicly, we're going to have to print it and post it in the morning. When we take a lunch break and maybe at the end of the evening. >> And that will be a running total as we amend or change or shift monies around? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. [4:27:17 PM] >> Thanks. >> You identified those three elements. That's helpful. Can we start with any revenue ideas just so we have a sense have how much? >> Mayor Adler: Sure. We'll do the budget first and then take a look at the revenue items, and then we'll look at the spending items and have a directions E direction. >> Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem: >> Mayor pro tem: As I prepare my budget rider, can you confirm that staff are putting -- it's not clear to me that the fees for ocmo are in there. Can you confirm that they are part of your amendment? >> Mayor Adler: Confirm what? I didn't hear. >> The ocmo fees were not -- I didn't see them in the budget, but they were supposed to be moved under ems or maybe they're under ems. >> Mayor Adler: They were removed from a stand-alone ocmo fee schedule, and they'll get put back into the fee schedule. >> Mayor pro tem: I want to [4:28:18 PM] make sure that's something you are taking care of. >> Mayor Adler: They're on the list. Council member Madison. >> Madison: The questions -- not questions at all. I sort of laid out my stuff as well. We unanimously passed a resolution around historic preservation items. That's one of the things I'm bringing forward, as you all know. I put it on the message board to propose an amendment to the fee schedule to, one, maintain the current fiscal year 22 fee amount for parkland dedication fees for the duration of fiscal year '23 and then, two, to allocate the $160,000 in one-time funds to the housing and planning department for the fiscal year '22 and '23 budget and page two of the equity based [4:29:18 PM] historical plan. I appreciate council member kitchen and pool and Arent rentaria. You could also say I really, really appreciate all the work that staff has put into the base budget to include funding for a fair amount of council's previously passed resolutions. It makes all of our jobs easier, so that's all I have to contribute to the conversation. If there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them, but I feel like those are both pretty straight forward. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I would like to join you in that historic preservation completing the phase two of the east side plan. Equity plan. Thank you. Yes. >> Thank you for inviting me to be on the historic study. I know that we've gotten a considerable amount of email asking for a higher amount, and I know from conversations from my staff's conversations with [4:30:20 PM] your staff why the amount that you are bringing forward is a little different and I support your proposals. I wondered if I could invite you to sort of explain in case any members of the public who have advocated for that are listening why there's a difference there. >> Absolutely. We're looking to make up the unmet need essentially. There was an original ask of a certain amount. Part of it was met. The other part was not. We're looking to make up that unmet need. There is $160,000 for community engagement consultant. That's for 12 community ambassadors, and it pays for working group members and marketing and reach truly a broader audience. We know how important it is that know's contributions are considered to these conversations, and then $140,000 for a full-time employee in the historic preservation office to manage the execution strategy and really roll out the plan. [4:31:21 PM] The historic preservation office currently has two fte vacancies. Therefore, we are not requesting funds for an additional fte to be allocated at this time. I think long story short, if folks are asking why not more, it really just comes down to trying to make the most of our finite resources and certainly anybody listening to this conversation that we've been having today, you realize that there are so many needs in that the ten of us, we all have something that we're bringing forward, and a part of our obligation, I think, to our city-wide and outside of our districts is to bring as much good as we can with our finite resources. >> I hope the door is closed. There's flies in here all of a sudden. [Laughing] >> Mayor Adler: All right. We should close the doors in here too. >> I quit. [Laughing] >> Mayor Adler: Do we have [4:32:22 PM] anything before we go into executive session? Then let's go into executive session. City council and I will go into closed session to take up two items pursuant to 55107 of the code. We'll discuss legal issues related to item 4, budget matters item 5, the November 2022 election. Without objection, we're going to do this remotely. I'll see you all here on the computers. It is 4:30 right now. Let's gather together again at 4:40. That will give people a quick break, but at 20 'til, please try to make that so we can move along. See you at 20 'til. [Break] [5:16:21 PM] [ ♪ Music playing ♪ ] [5:30:32 PM] >> Mayor Adler: We're out of closed session and closed session to discuss legal issues related to items 4 and 5. I'm going to go ahead and adjourn this budget work session (indiscernible) Thank you.