City Council Work Session Meeting Transcript – 10/25/2022 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 10/25/2022 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 10/25/2022 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:14:26 AM] >> Mayor Adler: We're going to go ahead and convene city council work session with some action today on Tuesday, October 25th, 2022. We're in the boards and commissions room here at city hall. It is 9:14 A.M. We have a quorum present. Councilmember harper-madison is with us virtually. Councilmember Ellis not yet with us on the dais. The rest present. Colleagues, I'm going to suggest that we begin today by taking the one action we election so that we make sure that we get that done as we're noticed to do. And then it would be my intent to call up the colony park tirz because we'll lose some of the people [9:15:28 AM] associated with that. After the colony park tirz I see us pulling up the 911 briefing because I know that's an exigent issue for many people. I think probably all of us have been communicating with city management on this issue. And then pulled items, there are a fair number of pulled items today, most of which I pulled, but most of those pulled items will take just a minute or two. I just wanted to touch base to download some information and certainly give people a chance to comment if them to. But I think at least the things that I pulled will go pretty quickly on the pulled agenda. And then doubling back then at that point for the [9:16:28 AM] briefings on the animal services and on the bicycle trail pathway network issue. So with that let's go ahead and start. The first thing we need to do is to take an action on item number 1 to approve an ordinance amending the election ordinance ordering the November 8th general and special municipal election. We're going to add exhibits that adopt English and Spanish versions of the ordinances calling the election establishing the ballot language. Is there a motion to approve this item number 1? Council member Fuentes makes the motion, councilmember pool seconds the motion. Is there any discussion? All right. Let's take a vote? Those in favor of -- yes, councilmember harper-madison, did you want to say something? Let's take a vote. Those in favor please raise your hand. [9:17:29 AM] Those opposed? I'm showing it unanimous with councilmember Ellis off the dais. Are there any speakers that would like to be here to speak on this issue this morning? Our one action item? I don't think we have anybody that's signed up. No one has signed up. Want to make sure no one is here. Okay. The vote was 10-0 with councilmember Ellis gone. Let's work our way through the items this morning and begin with the colony park tirz. >> Thank you, mayor and council. Just to set the stage, on October 21st, 2021, you adopted an implementation plan for establishing a tax investment reinvestment zone for colony park and then you adopted a financing plan and funding source strategy recommendations for council [9:18:29 AM] to consider. Today's briefing is responsive to both resolutions. The colony park project is being vetted by the staff development department and staff from there have worked to find a funding source and strategy plan. I want to note on November 3rd you will conduct a public hearing to consider an ordinance creating tirz number 20 for the colony park project. Today's briefing is led by our finance department Kim Oliveras and I will turn the presentation over to Kim. >> Good morning, council. Kim Oliveras, deputy cfo. I am thrilled to be here today to present to you the colony park tax increment reinvestment zone. [9:19:31 AM] So today's discussion, we have quite a few items to cover. First we'll provide an overview of the resolution that was passed this past March. And the status of the various directions, the various direction points in that resolution. Then I'll pass it over to Zenobia to speak to the site and history as well as the sustainable community plan. At which point we will switch gears to talk about the financing plan and then next steps. So first off the resolution. The resolution included a variety of direction. First and foremost was to bring back a financing plan to council no later than the end of the calendar year 2022, which we are doing today. It also directed us to bring forward the master development agreement to council for consideration to provide council an update on the colony park project, submitting a formal request to Travis county as well as Austin transit partnership [9:20:32 AM] for its participation in the tirz. Requesting departments to provide capital improvement project funds for the area volumes considering actions to facilitate various recommendations from the phase I report and collaboration with other entities relative to creating a sustainable framework of displacement mitigation. So three of those seven items have been completed and after this morning that will be at four. For the mda and last two items, those will come later and I will let sylnovia speak to that as we move forward. And I'll pass it to her for the colony park site and history. >> Thank you, Kim. Sylnovia holt-rabb, director of the economic development department. The city has had almost a 50 year history with this site, beginning in 1973 when it was annexed by the city of Austin. Between 2001 and 2018 we've taken various actions. [9:21:33 AM] We've purchased 258 acres of the site, 50 which was dedicated to parkland to create the colony park district park. Turner Roberts recreation center and Overton elementary school were built. We then subsequently had to built a multipurpose building in 2013. And in 2012 through 2014 the master plan by neighborhood housing was conducted. And transitioned over to the economic development department in 2015. And in 2018 bonds were passed to create the colony park district pool. Next slide. So let's talk about some of the resource gaps that this site faces. Unlike typical neighborhoods, this site east of 183, the coolest library is university hill, about 2.5 miles. [9:22:33 AM] There is an H.E.B. Grocer at braille and 183 as well as -- Springdale and 183 as well as Mueller, but it is some distance. Medical center is about nine miles and again, rosewood Zaragoza medical center is quite a distance and of course no bank on this side. Once this development is complete it will provide access to these resources as well as jobs for existing as well as new residents. Next slide. I want to talk about what the sustainable community plan includes. Again, 208 acres of city owned land. The council, we thank you for approving the master plan pud in 2014, which called for mixed use and mixed income, residential and commercial development. The stakeholders have put in [9:23:35 AM] more than 10 years, more than 10 years of strong community stakeholder engagement for an equitable development and improved access. The master plan development partner is catellus and was selected after a solicitation process. We have engaged them in an exclusive negotiation agreement which we have done due diligence to ensure the development and costs. And today as Kim mentioned, we're going to be proposing a funding and phasing plan framework. Next slide. Planning and engagement, again, this community has been doing this for more than 10 years, more than 10 years. In 2012 we won a sustainable challenge grant to provide planning. The colony park team conducted robust community outreach and engagement, [9:24:35 AM] more than just in the emails, but doing door to door knocking to engage their community to find out what it is they would like. They have done visioning and development, and again, the council approved the master plan design guidelines, pud zoning district and amendments to the imagine Austin plan in 2014. And again this year through the city EdD has been working closely with catellus and the colony park core team on input and implementing this master plan. According to the eight pillars of need as articulated by the community. Next slide. And what are these eight pillars of need identified by the community? They are resources that are typical in other neighborhoods that they want [9:25:35 AM] access to. Healthy food resources, improved health care resources, mobility connectivity and safe community access. They want open spaces and active parks. They want economic violentty for their community as well as worse housing. All of this to make a complete community and finally, access to city resources. And why is this important? Just a few stats to bring it home. The per capita income for this area is about $19,000 compared to -- which is about 50% past Austin metro area. The median household income about $58,000, which is about 70% of the Austin metro area. Poverty is a very deep concern of this community. 19% of the residents live in [9:26:36 AM] poverty, nearly twice the rate of Austin metro area. Yes, 66% of the residents have graduated from high school compared to 90% of the Austin metro area. And about 16% of the residents have obtained a bachelor's degree and it's lower compared to the 40% of the Austin metro area. So just wanted to highlight what this community wants as pillars. Next slide. So what have we done in the E and a phase I. We've refreshed the draft master plan. We've increased the density in attempts to lower the infrastructure cost. As Kim mentioned, we're going to leverage the city participation plan and all of this will result in a reduction of cost of infrastructure of around $25 million P but to achieve this it will require rezoning. Next slide. [9:27:39 AM] So when this sustainable community is deplete, when the 208 acres is finally built out, it will include 230,000 of mixed use office and institutional space. 130,000 of commercial retail space, approximately 1900 homes and apartments of which 20% will be affordable. And finally, at completion, the value of $780 million back to the taxol. Next slide. This project will also have some economic and community benefits. Again as mentioned before, it will include market rate as well as affordable workforce housing, jobs in this area, almost 3,000 construction jobs and 1200 permanent jobs, as well as parks, open space and trails [9:28:39 AM] of over 53 acres. And this development will be built to green building standards. So now I will turn it back over to Kim to walk through the financing of how we achieve all of this. >> Okay. So now we get to the brass tacks. How are we going to pay for this? For the benefit of community I do have some overview slides of tifs. I know council you are very aware of how a tif works, but I want to make sure that anybody who is watching and listening is as well. So first, what is a tif? So it's a financing tool that the Texas tax code allows for that encourages economic development within a very defined geographic area or zone. All of the future property value from that zone, the assessed value, growth, in excess of the base -- so once you establish the tirz, that is the base year and [9:29:40 AM] any growth beyond that is captured for the tirz. You can use some or all of that increment to promote new private development in the zone, but you typically do that by investing in public infrastructure. Once the zone's term ends all of that real property tax revenue plus that basin crept returns back to the local government for its general purposes so it would return to the general fund. In Texas only a city or a county can designate reinvestment zone. So there are serious you're statutory requirements for tax investment reinvestment Zones. It would not curly solely through public visit but for that investment. It's included but not limited to the present conditions, substantially impairs growth, there are substandard structures, inadequate sidewalks, street layouts or sanitary or [9:30:41 AM] unsafe conditions. In the case of these 208 acres all of this applies. It very, very clearly meets the but-for criteria. Once all of the project costs in the tirz have been paid for or any debt associated with the tirz is retired, then the tirz ends. The property tax revenue then returns to the city for general purposes. So in addition to the state statutory requirements there's also council adopted tif policy. And those major provisions include that the project financing plan must include participation of the private sector or another taxing entity. The city must include a rigorous but-for analysis and any housing development in the project plan must provide for at least 20% of the units to be affordable housing for households at or blow 60% for rental and 80% spoke ownership. And any bonds for tif development are subject to [9:31:41 AM] tests for debt service requirements and so on. For the colony park tirz, the action that is planned for November 3rd would establish not only the tirz and set the base year for 2022 and the termination date would be the end of 2043. It is in compliance with city policy because it will provide 20% affordable housing. Because this is all city-owned land, the base value is zero. And upon zone termination we're actually estimating over $987 million of value. Through this project because of our partnership with catellus as that proper we're able to utilize a cash reimbursement approach as opposed to incurring debt. That means every bit of the property tax revenue collected within the zone will go back into it for project cost and so we don't have to set aside anything for interest payments that you would have with debt service. We are proposing a 90% [9:32:43 AM] increment. In this case like I noted before, there is zero value, so every penny of this zone is associated with a but-for aspect. But we are proposing 90% because there will be, as the project progresses, there will be needs, particularly with the parks trails, for us to be putting towards certain operating costs to it. So we're setting aside that 10% to be able to support those expenditures and any ftes, contractuals, commodities of the sort. Through the 90% increment, we're estimating $81 million in revenue. As you can see here in the early years, it's slow growth but as catellus will start doing their work, they do the land sales and the development, you see it very quickly picks up into over eight million dollars per year towards the end of the tirz. So the capital stack ultimately is not just from [9:33:44 AM] the tirz. There's $257 million in infrastructure needs. First the largest portion of that funding will come from the land sale revenue. As takedowns occur we're anticipating $155 million will go towards those projects. Then with the tax increment financing we're estimating again $81 million. We've also included an anticipated five million dollars from the affordable housing bond that will be election next month. We have minimized that amount significantly on purpose just so we don't have significant reliance on it in general, but also if something were to happen -- if that bond program does not pass it's a much smaller amount of funds that we would need to find other sources to support. If that bond election does not pass we will obviously come back to council as quickly as possible with alternative options. The -- in addition to the dependence on the election, we will still go through the application process, the housing and planning [9:34:45 AM] department has in place for all affordable housing projects so this will not receive any sort of special treatment, it will follow special procedures and that was also how things were handled in the Mueller development for its affordable housing projects. Then we also have another six million dollars coming from department capital budgets, particularly from the watershed protection department and then finally the developer will be proposing and administering a pid, a public improvement district, to help with construction costs. The uses of funds are plentiful. They range from roadways to parks and trails to electric needs, drainage, water, wastewater, gas, land proliferation and permits and so on. In a development of this size there are extensive infrastructure needs and costs associated with that, but as you can see through this capital stack we've been able to arrange a setup that will cover all of those costs. It is also important to note that this funding is reliant on the pud. We will be coming back for additional action for the pud, so it focuses on [9:35:45 AM] rearranging current densities within the area and using -- it will create a more efficient land plan that can support all this public infrastructure,. Sylnovia mentioned the increased density so that pud amendment will support that, and accordingly all the funding behind this. We wanted to provide also just one example of the project, the infrastructure projects that we'll be supported by this capital stack. In particular colony loop drive. Right now colony loop drive literally has two stubs on each end and the entire middle is missing. And you can see here the -- in the photos there is an aerial photo where you can see where it starts and ends and then we were doing a bus tour just the other day so we added some additional photos of the current condition. Folks in the area have created their own pathway. They're trekking across the open space, which it's a very beautiful area, but it's not ideal by any means. It also creates challenges for access overall to the [9:36:46 AM] various amenities that currently exist in the area. So through the colony loop drive, the proposed project, it addresses multiple needs in the area and also the pillars of need that sylnovia referenced. So by completing colony loop drive, it will provide a multi-modal street that provides very clear and safe access to the recreation center, the elementary school, park, health care services and existing neighborhoods. It will have a complete street approach and provide enhanced crossings for all the missing and/or existing sections. So at this point just an overview of next steps. So today of course we're here for the council briefing. November 3rd will be a packed day related to colony park. First for the tirz, there will be a public hearing and then there will be the request for council to take action on an ordinance that establishes the tirz, appoints the board, which would be council as typical [9:37:47 AM] with our other tirz's and also approves the preliminary project and financing plan. There will also be an item to approve an amendment to the Ena that will extend the term of the Ena to allow for us to negotiate with catellus on the mda. It will continue our preconstruction and due diligence tasks and it will also initiate the pud rezoning. And finally, there will be an item related to approving outside legal counsel to support each of these actions. So again, I do want to thank all of my colleagues with economic development, financial services, but in particular -- and catellus, but in particular the community, Ms. Scott and all the crew, that they're here with us today. They are -- have waited far more than patiently and I am thrilled for us to be able to bring this to you today. And again on November 3rd. And we're here for any questions you have. [9:38:47 AM] Catellus and Ms. Scott as well as neighborhood representatives. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate it. Unfortunately I can't be in the room with you all, but I am in the building so I can feel all that energy coming out of the room way upstairs. I just wanted to offer the opportunity for Ms. Scott and Ms. Wright and some of the community advocates to really properly express the relief they feel after -- sylnovia I appreciate that you said 10 years and the way you said it was impactful in the way that I hope you intended for it to be. So I would like very much if you would like for them to come up and share a few words with the body. >> Good morning, mayor and council. There are not words to express how I feel right now. I'm usually not a teary [9:39:48 AM] person, but that's what I feel now. This was our vision and we went on the premise that a people without a vision perish. And our community was and still is perishing. So this will allow us to be able to continue to live in the area that we love. We love this area. Each of us here could have moved somewhere else, but we have stayed the course. So this is a vision that we've had. It's been a long time coming. Each of you should have received a letter from me early this morning. We've been three two -- actually, three mayors and three councils to try and get this done. And this was after we knew the process that we had to go through because for years we did not know what the process was with working with the city of Austin. And so we are very thankful that this council will get us to where we need to be. [9:40:50 AM] This is not about those of us who are here. We're past that stage in our life. This is about our children and our grandchildren and our great grandchildren. So we want to leave-- we're all told that when we come we needed to leave a better place. And so that's what we are trying to do with our community is leave a better place for each of our children that will remain in the area. So we thank you. It's onward through the fog. But we have made it, we see the light at the tunnel so we will continue to work. You know, there's going to come a time that I'm not going to be here, somebody else will be sitting here before you. And I hope that time is real soon. [Laughter]. Because there are other things that I actually would like to do! But we're so grateful and we're thankful we have the support of the community. Ms. Miller, as I kid, she [9:41:50 AM] would say she's my ride or die. Wherever I showed up, she was there. We just kind of helped each other. We have Ms. Williams who has been a neighbor out in the community for over close to 50 years. We have former principal of lbj high school who has always supported us, and the new principal of lbj high school, Dr. Joseph Welch. And Mr. Tolliver who is with the lbj neighborhood association who has always supported us. And we've all formed kind of a collective because there's just a few of us that can do this. You know, working people are not able to attend meetings. And so we're not able to do this until we've retired. I was at a meeting yesterday at the library, strategic planning, because we don't have a library east of 183. So when you sign off on this plan, there are other things that you have to sign off on to make this community a [9:42:53 AM] complete community, but we are appreciative, we thank you. I said before the commissioners' court that I'm a woman of faith, and I was taught never ever to give up. And one of my scriptures is "I was young, but now I'm old, I've never seen the right us forsaken or be seen begging bread much. It's time for us to stop having to beg. We need this. Thank you. [Applause]. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember harper-madison, did you want to say anything? More? >> Harper-madison: Thank you, mayor. I appreciate the offer. Do you mind allowing for a colleague to go before me? I -- I like Ms. Scott am often tearful and she got me if you wouldn't mind giving [9:43:55 AM] me a few minutes. >> Mayor Adler: I appreciate the staff ago work on this as well as the other partners. You know, I wasn't sure how you were going to get from here to there on this project, and you have. And you needed to because the -- Barbara Scott and the community have been such strong advocates, sustained, continual for such a long period of time, well before my participation on this dais. But I will say that from the moment I arrived on this dais, and I feel like it was within minutes when Ms. Scott was explaining to me why it was we needed to get here and has been just a continual and constructive advocate at a time when for many people the path and the hope was not apparent. [9:44:57 AM] But Ms. Scott and her colleagues just always believed and insisted that this project get done and get launched. You've brought together some of the community folks that we have all seen a bunch of over time. I've gotten a text this morning from Ashton Cumberbatch who wishes he was here with you. He was with me on the first day when I opened up my office, and was for me one of my teachers and a constant advocate. So I just want to thank him, wherever he is, for his work. But there were just so many people involved in this. But I think you were right, Ms. Scott, as you turn really [9:45:57 AM] quickly from the celebration of what I anticipate we will be approving on November 3rd, to recognize that that is just the first step, and that there is still a lot of action and activity that needs to take place. What's happening now is that the path is clearly defined, and now it has to get executed, and there's nothing necessarily certain about the execution. So, the advocacy of the community and the neighborhood is important. But, quite frankly, you have made advocacy of this project something that is not just advocacy coming from east Austin or from this part of town. You have turned the entire city into an advocate for this project. I just want to congratulate you and everyone for getting to this place. I look forward to voting for [9:46:59 AM] this and I want to especially recognize the leadership of my colleague, council member harper-madison, who somehow or another managed to make colony park part of every conversation that we had on anything. We could be passing something that wasn't even remotely related to this, and council harper- madison would be raising her hand and saying, now, how do we put colony park into this? So, congratulations, council member harper-madison. I know this is something that has been one of your highest priorities. And quite frankly, without your push as well as some of the community's, I'm not sure we would be here today. Congratulations to you as well. Council member Renteria. Council member pool. >> Renteria: I also want to say thank you to my colleague. You know, it's -- the reality is, when it comes to east Austin [9:48:02 AM] projects, they do take a long time. I remember when I was in the community development, we were discussing the park and this was in the '90s and early 2000s. In order to get anything done in east Austin, it usually takes 25 years or more. We fought the same battle in saltio, and the M.A.T., mexican-american cultural center. It took us over 20 years to get these projects done. We've been fighting for this for years. And I want to say to the colony park residents and the staff, congratulations. Let's not keep our guards down, because it's the beginning, it's not the end. I'll be here also to speak for y'all if something goes wrong. [9:49:06 AM] But thank you. >> Pool: I wanted to congratulate our good friends at colony park and remember the early days when we had the eastern crescent conversations and a convening of a large group of people that really did start to throw that fabric out there to pull everybody together on the long walk forward. It does take a while when the projects are really big and complicated. I have to think that the results are all the more sweet because of the effort that had to be expended. I did want to ask one detail question of our staff on the tirz. Would that be an election or is that a vote of the council? >> It will be a vote of council. No action is necessary. So, on November 3rd, we'll have the public hearing and then the ordinance will be presented for your consideration to adopt it. >> Pool: That's great. Thank you so much. [9:50:08 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Also wanted to share our gratitude to our finance department for bringing forward this financing plan, and to Ms. Scott and the neighbors for their fierce advocacy. I am excited to be part of this milestone moment to help support the financing plan that's coming forward. I certainly, as someone who represents an eastern crescent community, I know that our eastern crescent communities are bound together by shared values and needs. I would just note that certainly when the affordable housing bond passes, that I would be supportive of increasing the amount from the affordable housing bond to spur the development of colony park. So, just wanted to share my support for that as well. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. I too am excited to be able to take this step forward and congratulate those of you who have been advocating tirelessly and fearlessly and recognize the work of council member [9:51:09 AM] harper-madison on this. I do have a couple questions, because I want to make sure that we are funding this properly. So, a good chunk of the funds is the land sale revenue. We obviously own the property, but can you go into more detail about the assumptions that are in that and how that's working? >> So our partner has run projections on the approximate transaction fees that will occur from land sales, and it's based on their forecast. And so, as in previous development, property will be taken down and it will be sold, and then those revenues will be spurred back into the development. >> Alter: Okay. So, in the diagram, it is the part that's not the park here is all for sale beyond the central health and the roadways? >> Yes. >> Alter: Okay. [9:52:14 AM] With respect to the pud, I don't think that's posted yet for us. Can you speak a little bit to what we would anticipate in the pud changes? >> Increased density in terms of the lot size and home size. So we would need to bring that back to council. There would be some changes. We will have more detail once we come back, but it's based on research that we've done in partnership with cutelis. >> Alter: Okay. And then in terms of the infrastructure, when you do the 90%, that leaves the 10%. And you mentioned parks, but you didn't mention public safety. What are the plans for public safety? What are the needs with respect to fire and police stations in that area? >> For public safety needs, because the timing of the development is stretched out [9:53:14 AM] over so many years, we do have time to be able to work those details out. There's not a need for any additional stations. But we would be able to address those, if that comes about. At this point, we're really -- the main operating needs will revolve around parks, and then the roadway's right of way. So through both property tax as well as like tough revenues and the sort, those items will all be covered as the development picks up. >> Alter: Thank you. And I wasn't able to pull up the wildfire hub. Is this in a high wildfire risk area? >> That is a good question. We can do some research on that and get back to you. >> Alter: Okay. And the reason that I'm asking is that as we move forward, the next stage is with the master development agreement. If it's a high risk area, we want to make sure that you're following that so that the [9:54:15 AM] buildings will be hardened. Sometimes people think that the risk is only in one part of town, and we have a ring around our city. The vegetation that leads to the different parts of the city is different, but the risks are high all around. And we have probably adopted the code since you started this process. And what we've been finding is that the earlier we adopt the elements of that code into the buildings, and into the process, and into the design, then it is cost neutral. But you don't want to have to retrofit that into the process sort of later. And I just wanted to flag that in case it wasn't -- but thank you, I look forward to reviewing the materials and moving forward on this. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member [9:55:15 AM] Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you. I think this came on my radar 2015-2016 when a lot of the public meetings were happening to figure out who the partner was going to be to build this. It's also surprising to see it taking this long. I know that a lot of these big projects need this level of detail and this level of effort on city staff's side and on the community's side. But I'm really excited to be a part of this moment over the next couple of weeks. I have one brief question for staff. Do you know generally if the expected mix of single family missing middle or apartments is going to stay the same, or if there's been any recalibration of that as we see the pud come back to us? >> So that will be part of our nde negotiations and we will bring that back as part of the pud. So, yes. >> Ellis: Okay. Sounds good. I look forward to seeing that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you. And I want to also extend my [9:56:16 AM] thanks to our staff for seeing this work to this point, but really to extend my huge thanks to the community members who have been active advocates for colony park for years. And, you know, there was a moment on this slide that talked about the development of a multi-purpose building, and that multi-purpose building was constructed because the gym failed. And no one knew the gym failed until the council offices were called and invited us to go see that, and the students at Overton elementary had been practicing in portable buildings. They'd been having their P.E. Classes in a portable building, which I had an opportunity to go see at the same time as well. The community has been powerful advocates in for the children in that community, so I appreciate your advocacy and I'm excited to [9:57:17 AM] be able to vote for this next week and to see this plan moving forward. I do have a couple questions about the assessments. One of the funding options on here, one of the funding mechanisms is the public improvement district. And is that an assessment -- as I understand, that's usually an assessment that will go to everybody who lives in that area; is that accurate? And is there a time period where that ends? Or is that just in perpetuity? >> There will definitely be an end date to that. I would think of it similar to when would we issue bonds and there's the life of the bond, and we pay those off. So it would be a similar kind of situation once that's paid off, the page would expire. >> Tovo: And 10 million is the estimate, or is that the max? >> That's just the estimated needed amount to cover that, [9:58:17 AM] based on the various funding sources we have. >> Tovo: So potentially more bond funding was mentioned, and that could I assume help improve the public improvement district, which could come back to council in future months when some of us are going to be gone. That might be something worth considering. So I have a question about how that works with individuals in the affordable units. Are they receiving the same assessment as the other residents, or is that intended? >> The multi-family structures will be part of the assessment in other developments that we've done, but we can definitely look in to the affordable unit components. So we'll definitely take a look at that to see how we can mitigate that, if possible. >> Tovo: That would be great. [9:59:18 AM] Are for the for sale units, are some of those affordable as well? I think we had a slide on it. >> There will be a mix of affordable multi-family and single family. >> Tovo: And so those would be subject to the public improvement district. I would suggest that there be some thinking about that, so that that assessment doesn't fall at the same rate onto those individuals in affordable units. We've been having a conversation at our housing and planning committee meeting about assessments and how -- and homeowner fees and how to make sure with ownership units especially that those don't make it unaffordable for somebody to stay in there. I think I mentioned this to my colleagues, but I wanted to let you know that the UT law clinic is working with my office on a project this spliced ING semester looking at that, and looking at some of the laws that relate to that, and are going to propose to us some options. So, working closely with the housing department and closely with my office on this project, [10:00:18 AM] and I think they're going to propose some different alternatives for how we might andal those assessments differently. And so there is a great opportunity to make sure that we're thinking about that at the outset and how to keep those units affordable. The other thing I would note is that we've learned a lot from the Miller units that we know, director holt knows, making sure that we're in close communication about those evaluations so that that doesn't become an impediment for individuals and families in our affordable units to stay in there. Is that part of the work that you're already doing? >> Yes, that will be part of our -- we've learned from that project, so we will take those lessons forward. >> Tovo: Great. The right to return policy, the preference policy, will that be something that we have piloted within our housing that we're creating within the city of Austin, and will that be an element for our affordable units where there's a preference for families and individuals who are [10:01:21 AM] -- have generational ties to the city of Austin and have either been displaced from the city of Austin, or have a high likelihood of being displaced? >> Hi. Leslie, director of planning. We're happy to work with cutelis on our right of return policy to see if that's something that they can incorporate as they are moving forward and look forward to seeing what kind of affordable units will be brought into the development. >> Tovo: And so that is a policy within our Austin housing and finance corporation, correct? Within our affordable units that are flow being created. >> I don't know that I would say every development uses the right of return. And so that's why I would want to talk to them about what that would entail and how we would incorporate that into how they bring projects forward. But we're happy to make the connection on that issue. >> Tovo: I think that would be a [10:02:21 AM] real value, especially knowing the way in which gentrification has really impacted people's ability to stay, especially in east Austin. So I think it would be a great, great development to have the preference policy deployed. >> And to be clear, our preference policy is what we utilize when Austin housing finance corporation is developing properties, but in this case, they're going to be brought to us, so to speak. And so we'll looker to ward to having those conversations. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you very much. Huge thanks to the community and to our staff. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Sorry, I had one more follow-up question. Who services the colony park area for fires? Is it an esd or AFD? >> It's city. >> Alter: Okay. Because I did confirm, it's in [10:03:21 AM] the urban interface. So we need to make sure we understand what those response times are, and I will be making sure in the pud that it is following the rules. So just want to make sure that we flag that so that can be smoother at that point. Great, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Council member harper-madison, you want to close us out? >> Harper-madison: I'd like to, thank you. There's a lot of super awesome nice things that I'd like to say, but then there's also some pretty important and impact -- council member tovo, you kicked it off for you when you said the thing about displacement and gentrification and sort of right to return policy. I think all those things are really critical and important. But if I may, just recognizing over the course of the last four years how many instances of displacement and gentrification did not just happen. They were 30, 20, 25, 15 years in the making. There are a lot of folks for [10:04:23 AM] whom, you know, my constituents paid off their 30-year mortgages by renting their homes for 27 years, and then got kicked out as soon as the property was valuable enough. So I'd like to take the opportunity to say gentrification doesn't happen overnight. It is a long, deliberate, strategic process, and we as a municipality have an obligation to stay gentriication and displacement, and that doesn't happen as a result of reacting to it. We have to preempt it. So I really appreciate council member Renteria, you making note of how long this process has been, how long saltio was. And that's a real good opportunity to say that I hope in your retirement that you and this lawyer having to come before council to fuss at us about Walter E. Long or what we're doing with fleet services or any of the other developments in district 1 that, you know, if given the opportunity. [10:05:24 AM] So, thank you to staff. Thank you to the community. Thank you to my predecessor and her peers who have been fighting for longer than I even considered municipal policy and opportunity for me to serve. So, thank you to everybody. All the thank yous. But also, recognizing that benign neglect is everybody's problem. And I really appreciate, mayor, that you pointed out that everybody came out for colony park. Everybody's been heeding the cry and the call, and very patient for me for bringing colony park up in every single solitary meeting, recognizing the level of importance and commitment that far too many in the community had to the project. So, I'm happy, but I'm also hopeful that we've learned some lessons, and that we do take the opportunity to solidify the colony park and lakeside CDC, give them more power. Offer them the opportunity to walk them through some capacity building, so that they can be more effective in the area. [10:06:27 AM] The inquiry that I made to the city manager's office about community development corporations and that eastern part of district 1, I'd like to have more conversations, about whether or not it would be appropriate to develop more of those. I'd like to have more conversations with this body, with this new body, if I get the opportunity to serve, about land trusts and about acquisition dollars that we could use right now to preempt gentrification and displacement, so build in some perpetual affordability from the start, before what we know is going to happen, that the development of east and 183, we know exactly what that looks like. Anybody who's been in Austin for more than 20 years knows what it looks like because you watch it happen in central east Austin. So I'm saying right now, we have an opportunity to get out in front of it. If we make that commitment, that is an opportunity we took a hold of. If we don't make that commitment, then it is nobody's fault but our own that we didn't [10:07:29 AM] commit in 2022 to what the future of far east district 1 looks like. We had a chance. I don't want us to miss it. So I would be remiss to not bring that up. I'd also like to say, you know, the benign neglect extends beyond giant projects like colony park. You know, when I visit rec centers in my district, there's a rec center between mine and council member Renteria's district, where we went for a community event, they didn't have a net on the basketball goal. No net on the basketball goal. That's a pard facility with no net on the basketball goal. I can't tell you how frequently my constituents come to me and talk to us about our student athletes tearing up their ankles and knees and other parts of their bodies because of substandard, sub par conditions for their fields where they're supposed to be engaging in extracurricular activities that teach them about team sports and being a team player, and being physically fit and healthy and [10:08:30 AM] getting out and getting fresh air. You know, all those things are great, but if the fields have potholes all over them and our student athletes are getting injured, then we also have the commitment that we need to make all over the east side about those kinds of issues that are prominent and prolific, and we hear about them. So I hope that the extension of the care and concern around these areas of Austin that have been neglected, that do suffer from benign neglect all over the place, I hope that the entire city of Austin sees this as our charge and recognizes that we're all parts of Austin, and don't let a part of town languish in disrepair. I can't overstate how excited I am to vote for this item. This represents a huge moment in a very long effort to finally bring substantial investments to a part of down that frankly has been overlooked for far too many decades. The community pulled through. [10:09:31 AM] They came through. They find a way, like we always do, but we shouldn't have to. And so I really appreciate that moving forward the conversation is going to change to actual practical application of what it is that I hope we all vote for. This has been a long time coming. It literally took place with tears from a lot of different people to get us here. A giant thank you to community advocates who have been pushing relentlessly for so long. To our staff for coming up with this innovative plan. I want to make sure to put some emphasis there. They had to get innovative. Some of the private partners that we thought we'd get, we didn't get. Some of our other elected bodies didn't help us when we thought they might. And so, our staff, the city of Austin staff, had to figure it out. And I really appreciate that they took the opportunity to do it and made the commitment to robust effort, to finally kick start what will be a truly transformational investment in our eastern crescent. [10:10:33 AM] For now, suffice it to say that I am over the moon with what I see in my mind's eye as one of the most important items affecting district 1 since I took office. Now that I can put a big green check mark, I'm ready for the next and hope to get the same level of support and commitment from our colleagues and our city. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Thank you very much, staff. Great job. Ms. Scott. And to the others, congratulations. Manager, we're going to go to the 911, and then we'll go to some pulled items. [10:11:36 AM] While the folks are leaving, colleague, I've handed out version 4 for item number 32. This was in response to -- this is the item that dealt with offsets, and contains the language we indicated we would put on when we were meeting two weeks ago. It includes some amendments suggested by council member pool and mayor pro tem alter in her message board post. It was attached to the message board post and will be included in backup for this item. Also handed out some amendments on the environmental resolution that I'm sure we'll be talking about. And please note that there's two amendments, there's one on the front and one on the back. Also posted. >> Okay, mayor, council. [10:12:37 AM] Next, we're going to hear a briefing on our recruitment and retention of our emergency communications area, and I just want to begin by assuring you that this issue has my full attention, and I have been meeting regularly with our assistant city manager and Ariano as well as the chief and our hr director to make sure that not only are we addressing the immediate concerns that we are seeing in this area, but also the longer-term strategies that we need to really right-size and fix the situation overall. We're not going to compromise our community's safety, and I want to reassure you that this is of critical importance, and when our community calls 911, they deserve a response and a quick response. Before I turn it over to the chief to start the briefing, I want to thank our council members who have really led the way on this issue for some time. We have been working diligently on these challenges for over a year. We know that these recruitment and retention strategies are things that we need to really roll up our sleeves and look at [10:13:38 AM] different ways to address it, but this is not necessarily a new issue, but we are seeing the challenges continue. I want to thank the chief and Ms. Hayes, the director of hr. They have addressed this in different ways to incentivize our current staff to stay onboard, but also to recruit the best staff going forward. I therefore want to thank our hard working staff. We have incredible folks that work in our communications department, and they do the hard work that are taking the calls to address the needs of our community. And then, finally, I'll make this ask to our community. Hopefully you hear some things in today's presentation that may incentivize you to applying for this job. We need you. We are offering great benefits. We're a strong community and a family here at the city of Austin and we would love to have you onboard. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to chief chicone. [10:14:38 AM] >> I appreciate the opportunity to get in front of you and talk about this very important topic, and just like the manager was saying, I think that it's important today that I paint a realistic picture of where we're at with our emergency communications section. But also all the hard work that is going into making things better and some of the gains that we have made during that time, which I think that could not be overlooked. We've been very focused on this issue going back to 2021. You know, it's extremely concerning that we've lost so many of our emergency communications personnel and have had such difficulty in replacing them. I hope today to give you an overview of where we stand with the problems in the section, and then highlight the measures that we are taking to remedy the problem. You know, first, I have to start by stating that this issue is [10:15:38 AM] not unique to the city of Austin or to our community. Some of the remedies are being tried in other big cities, big and small. And some have seen mixed results. That's not an excuse for where we are today. I want everyone to know that I am very focused on this issue, that it is very important to me, to our department, that we kind of right the ship, and I'm not going to allow us to compromise the safety of the citizens of Austin. We just had three of the busiest weekends of the year coming into this week. Two weekends of Austin city limits music festival. And then, of course, this past weekend with the f1 race. We were able to manage successfully the safety for all of those events. And this is a testament to the [10:16:39 AM] amazing men and women of the Austin police department, both sworn and civilian, and importantly, our great emergency communication personnel that worked tirelessly through each one of those weekends. So, let me kind of outline where we find ourselves and where the issues really are. We've seen a steady decline in number of emergency communication personnel. And this has been for a variety of reasons. As you all know, pay has been an issue. I'm going to talk today about how we have addressed that. I think that the bigger -- one of the bigger issues really for our city is affordability in Austin, and that is also driving this conversation. Also, the burnout and the stress that comes with the job. We cannot ignore that. I think that for many, they certainly see a lot of value in the position. They want to be there, but the added stressors that have been compounded because we've lost so many people, we have mandatory overtime, and really, the amount [10:17:41 AM] of workload for each individual employee in the center cannot be overstated, and that is causing, just on a day by day basis, a little bit more burnout. So I'm going to talk about the measures and how we're addressing that as well. We have 22 police dispatcher vacancies. This has led to longer hold times when someone is waiting to have an answer to their 911 call, as well as sometimes having to double police dispatchers for -- double up sectors for one -- you know, our normal is having one dispatcher for one police sector, and we've had to, at times, double up sectors because we just don't have enough dispatchers. None of these situations obviously is ideal. With regards to our emergency communication answer rates, the most recent average time that I received to answer a 911 call is [10:18:42 AM] 150 seconds, which is a 2.5 minutes. That is obviously a very long time to wait for someone to answer a 911 call. The industry best standard is to answer 90% of the calls within 15 seconds. And I'd like to highlight that we met that standard 65.5% of the time, which means that two out of every three calls that came in to our center were answered within 15 seconds. So, I think that that is a significant thing to highlight. We can't lose sight of that. But we have to continue to increase our staffing for all of the reasons that we've talked about, to maintain that very high level of customer service. We'll soon be rolling out an informational campaign regarding recruiting, as well as an informational campaign on educating the public on making good decisions about when they should call 911 versus when they should call 311. So we're hoping to really [10:19:47 AM] highlight that and have people make the right call, because in the end, that could mean a few less calls that are actually coming in to 911. And more information on that coming in the following weeks. So now that's a very high level, very quickly talked about what the issues are, I'd like to talk about what we're doing to kind of turn the situation around. My department has been working very closely with director Hayes and the human resources department on issues related to compensation. We made significant strides. If we could, if we could pull up the presentation, it's about five slides. Very short. But I wanted to just kind of talk about strategically, what are we trying to do to, again, turn the situation around. It's very hard for me to read that screen, so I brought a copy. I'm going to look at it here. So the first thing I want to [10:20:50 AM] highlight is that we have made pay increases. So, effective September 25th, as of that pay period, and based on the market study that we had done, 100% of our call takers and 98% of our police dispatchers were making above the market median. We have raised the entry pay levels for call taker, 26%, as well as the entry level to 24.42 an hour for dispatcher. As I said, we have raised overall the overall pay for all of our employees. We have, in the call taker range -- I'm sorry, in the call taker job title, 7% are earning a salary over the 75th percentile [10:21:51 AM] of the market, and for police dispatchers, 31% are earning over the 75th percentile. And with the study that I asked director Hayes in hrd to conduct with regard to compression and where we will be headed in the very near future, we will have -- those numbers will increase quite a bit, including about 1/3 of our both call takers and dispatchers will be in that highest quartile of the market. That demonstrates the commitment that the city and DPD has made to the value of all these employees and making sure that we understand them, that they feel that support every day. Next slide, please. [10:22:53 AM] With regard to, what can we do on top of that. We have instituted what we refer to as a first responder stipend. For having a T Cole license, which is one of the requirements, and because of that requirement, actually makes hiring just a little bit harder because it is a higher standard to meet, we felt that it was important to honor that. And we have instituted a 1,800 annual stipend, which translates to $150 a month extra in every one of our emergency communication personnel's check. As well as a retention bonus. So, beginning -- we actually instituted that earlier this year. It is a $3,000 bonus that's paid out over the period of one year. We've already made the first payment on that, which came at the 90th day. There's another one that will come at the 180th day. And then finally, at one year of employment. So that again shows that we are trying to hang on to those folks that we already have, because [10:23:56 AM] bringing new people on is obviously very important. What is more important is the people that we have there in the center, and that we continue to take care of those folks. If I could get the next slide. With regard to recruiting and hiring, we have, again, just talking about -- we've increased the entry pay rates for those positions and that has translated into an increase in the number of applicants that we have seen for both positions. What we've seen is that many of those applicants do not follow through in the process, not responding to the calls. We call them to get a job interview. Or at some point, and I'm going to talk about the process in just a moment, they find themselves falling out of the process. But I think it's important within the last six weeks, we have hired more call takers and dispatchers than we have all [10:24:58 AM] year. I've hired three brand-new call takers. We have two police dispatchers that just came out of training and are now in the floor. And I have two more police dispatchers that are beginning the training at the end of the month. That's seven new personnel. I hate to say it, but that is the most that we have had in quite some time. But this is how we start this process. This is how we begin to gain ground and we gain momentum. So I'm very proud of the fact that we've been able to do that. The application process itself, we've worked with hrd and with our own staff, leadership staff the emergency communications center, on decreasing the amount of time that it takes to process a new hire, down from 90 days, or basically 12 weeks, down to eight to ten weeks. So, again, trying to get people through that process much quicker. We've doubled the size of our recruiting staff in the center [10:25:58 AM] so that we have more people that are actually actively on a full-time basis recruiting, as well as doing the background investigations that are required for the position. I've talked about the tcol standards, Texas commission on law enforcement. They have to meet the same standards as a sworn police officer to come on, because they're looking at the same information, criminal justice information. So that means these extra come payments, including criminal background checks, there is a statement that must be evaluated as part of the background check, a psychological examination, a drug screening, and a skills test to be able to perform all of the essential functions of an emergency communicator, telecommunicator. This is the last slide. So, I think that -- you know, I want to talk a little bit about some of the unconventional things that we have done, just [10:27:00 AM] recognizing that two and a half minutes is too long to wait for someone to answer a 911 call. And that is, we have looked at those who have cole licenses and have the requisite skills. We specifically chose sargents, because those at the officer, detective, and corporal rank are really helping us to fill our ranks right now on taking 911 calls. Actually, in cars responding to 911 calls. So, I had greater bandwidth to be able to pull some sergeants to do it on an overtime basis in the call center. We've already trained 13 police sergeants, and they are now in the next phase and beginning to take calls. And then I have six more police sergeants that are in this next training cadre and will be beginning their training. [10:28:01 AM] We looked through our ranks and identified those police officers who already had experience dispatching, and I have a number of them. This slide indicates two. I got an update this morning that one more has been identified and has agreed to participate. So I'm going to have three officers that were previously dispatchers that will be going back into our center to assist with dispatching duties. So that's 22 more people that we have coming in that are going to help offset all of those vacancies that I was just talking about. With regard to recruiting, some of the unconventional measures that I've been talking about are -- and you can take that down now. Thank you. Some of the other unconventional measures are at our recruiting boost that we have for the police officers, we now have recruiters for 911. And even if someone indicates, you know, I really don't think I want to be a police officer. Have you thought about becoming a dispatcher or a call taker? They show up at the training [10:29:02 AM] academy, and when they have the physical exam to become a police officer, there are some that cannot complete that exam. But they still have the hard to serve. And so we are kind of pulling them aside when they fall out of that process and saying, we're hiring in our 911 call center. And if you'd like to come and do that, we can do that as well. We have cadets that fall out during the class. They have the option, so long as they're falling out for our reason beyond their control or something that they need to improve upon. We can recycle them into a future class, but during that gap, we can pull them in, we can retain them as city employees and move them over to our 911 call center and start teaching. We have one cadet right now that is doing that. So all of these are the different kind of -- I would call them outside the box, unconventional kind of measures that we've never had to do before. But that we're trying to be very [10:30:02 AM] -- you know, very deliberate, very intentional on addressing the issue. So finally, I'd like to talk about what we're doing to continue to support our emergency communications staff. The compression issue is one that I've heard consistently. It continues. So I've been working with director Hayes, and we -- I commissioned a study that will increase pay for many of our current employees to address the compression issue. So, that is going to be briefed out fully within the next month. And should be implemented on the last pay period of the month, so they'll see it in their first check in December. That will, to some degree, for different employees, it will affect them differently, based [10:31:03 AM] on how many years of service they have, where they were originally zoned, because moving them back to those original Zones. So, some will see bigger pay increases than others. But I think it's important to note that overall, based on, you know, as an average, based on the pay adjustments that we've already made, the employees in the center have seen a 13.6% pay increase, which is not insignificant. I talked about what a high stress job it is. And recognizing that sometime back, we actually placed a permanent victim services counselor in the center and that counselor is available to all of our employees to work on because we recognize the vicarious trauma that they experience because of taking these calls over and over, as well as PTSD, which we know is real. So, we have a licensed clinical [10:32:04 AM] counselor that is in there that cannot only provide counseling services, but clinical services to our employees. We've reduced the amount of mandatory overtime that our employees have to work, because we know that is causing further stress and further burnout. So, again, what we're doing is reducing the mandatory overtime for each individual employee, bringing in these additional employees to offset so that we don't impact the call times. And then finally, we continue to examine how we can provide further incentives, financial and otherwise, to our current employees that show how they're valued. I'd like to just kind of conclude my opening remarks by highlighting that while we have and will continue to talk extensively about the difficulties of the job, we cannot lose sight of its importance and the satisfaction that our employees get when doing this job. And I really want to highlight what the manager said earlier. We're hiring. This is an incredible place to [10:33:05 AM] work, and I'm talking not just about the call center, I'm talking about the city of Austin. We value our employees. I will do everything that I can to make sure that they're fully supported by coming back here to this body as well as to our community at large, so that they can understand the rigors of the job and make sure that we are valuing those employees appropriately. The satisfaction from the work is the reason that our folks keep coming back. The ones who are still there understand the -- you know, that they are helping this community, that they are literally saving lives by helping people that are on the phone with 911, and they want to help keep our community and our city safe. We must continue to show that they're valued, which I think that we've shown with all the measures we discussed here today, we will continue to do, we will continue to support them, and we will not fail in our mission to keep this [10:34:07 AM] community safe. That concludes my opening remarks and I'm glad to take questions. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you, chief. Appreciate you going over all this with us. And I know this is something that's been important to you, to you and your staff, as well as the folks that provide the services for us. And as you said, this is a service they can be proud of. It is a very tough job. And I know that the whole council is really interested in this. So, mayor, I have one overarching question and two smaller questions, or more specific questions, because I want to leave time for my colleagues to ask questions also, because I know everyone is concerned about this. So, two detailed questions first, and then I want to ask you an overarching question. The first question is, have you considered sign-on bonuses? [10:35:08 AM] >> I have discussed with director Hayes about sign-on bonuses. They're a little bit more complicated than retention bonuses. But we are -- as a matter of fact, not just with director Hayes, but with my own assistant director in the department of finance, we're looking within our budget to see how we can do that and those discussions continue to advance. >> Kitchen: Do you all think that that would be helpful? >> I think that every measure that we take can't hurt. So, you know, even if it means that I'm only signing a handful more people, I just showed a handful that we've already brought onboard. So the more handfuls that I get like that, I think is going to put us in a better place. >> Kitchen: How long will it take to assess what bonuses can be given, and the two-part question to that is, what barriers are you encountering to put that in place? >> You know, the barriers I [10:36:10 AM] think are kind of on the hr side, and perhaps on the compensation side. For me, it's locating the money in my budget to be able to do it. As high a priority it is for this, I'm locating that money to be able to do it. So I will -- you know, for the police department's part, I certainly will be at the table, and will work with legal, with compensation, and with hrd to see if we can clear the hurdles. >> Kitchen: Okay. City manager, I don't know if hr is here. Perhaps we could get an idea of what those barriers might be. Again, my purpose here is to think through if there's something you need from council to be of assistance as you look at these. And also to do that very quickly. So, if there are barriers that are going to take some time and there's something the council can do to address that more immediately, we want to be here to partner with you to help that. Can you speak to the barriers to [10:37:10 AM] sign-on bonuses? And the timeline that might take. >> Joya Hayes, director of human resources. As it relates to bonuses, I wouldn't necessarily call it barriers to this process. Depending on the amount of the amount of bonus, how it would be paid out, the tax implication. Also from a legal perspective, if someone does not stay for the full period that you define, the legal ramifications of getting those funds back and how we roll that out over a period of time to minimize the need for payback. We prioritized the 911 dispatcher area, and so as it relates to timeline, as soon as the department establishes the criteria, we review that criteria to ensure that we were able to do it. Payroll also has the responsibility of cross-referencing those who get bonuses with child support, and they have to -- that takes a couple of weeks for payroll to [10:38:12 AM] confirm whose money would need to be withdrawn. So overall, I would say it would probably take about three pay periods, which is about a month and a half from the time we receive it from the time we're able to get it implemented and put it out. >> Kitchen: Okay. So, does that mean in December, do y'all think? >> Well, I think that, council member, we have to make a decision on the criteria, as director Hayes was saying. So, over what period of time do we want to pay that out over. How much is the individual bonus going to be, because I want it to be effective. And then do we want to give one or multiple. So those are the decisions that we're talking about right now. I don't feel comfortable committing to a strong timeline right now and disappointing. I just know it's a top priority. >> Kitchen: Okay. I'm going to ask one overarching question and let -- I know others have questions, too. Stepping back for a minute from [10:39:12 AM] the big picture, I'd like to understand what you all are projecting. So, in other words, as you said, you've hired -- I think it was seven more and that's been in a recent number of months. So, that would seem to indicate that some of the actions that have been taken, or perhaps all the actions, are producing results. But I wanted to understand what level of analysis has occurred to really project whether we're we are on the projection to fill those vacancies, and by when. Do you have that type of analysis done, and can you share that with us? >> I have not engaged, for instance, our data analysts to be able to make that kind of a projection. But what I can tell you is that based on the number of applications, which have risen, based on the number of people that we've actually onboarded, which has risen, and then, you know, I'm going to draw a little bit of a comparison, because [10:40:13 AM] we're experiencing the same thing on the sworn side. I think that if we're ever going to make, you know, a dent, if we're going to turn the tide and really start seeing the number of vacancies decrease, I have to show that value to people who are here, so that they stay. And that's what many of the measures that I've talked about today. That is a little bit of an unknown. Because, again, it is a stressful job. It's a tough job. It's a job that gives a ton of satisfaction, though, and that's why we have people continue to do it. So, you know, what can I do to make that job a little bit easier? What can we do to fairly compensate our employees, so that we don't have any more leaving. Because once that happens, then all these people are only going to increase and make the job easier for everybody. We have not done the level of analysis that you're talking about, however. >> Kitchen: Okay. I understand that. I would like to see some analysis. I want to understand what's the [10:41:13 AM] timeline that we're looking at and what's the projection. In other words, we know we have a certain number of people applying. We know that there's a fairly large drop-off for lots of reasons between applying and hiring. We need to have some kind of a projection about when we might get those positions filled or sufficient positions filled to get back to our best practice. And so as a council, and I think the community needs to see that. And then that's something we can track. And see if we're meeting those projections. So, city manager, I would ask that you all do that and assist the chief and hr, because I think hr needs to be involved. To make those projections. Mayor, I'll defer to others right now. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for that. >> Kelly: I requested this [10:42:14 AM] meeting, and I appreciate that you're here to speak to us about that. With the vacancies at the rate that the chief told us about, and answer rate far below the standard for 911 calls and an average hold time for callers to be at 150 seconds, we're in a crisis. And so I'm thankful that my colleagues have chosen to address it today. My understanding is that optimal efficiency in a public safety communications center requires excess capacity. So a center where employees are always busy and cannot respond to the unexpected is difficult for me to feel comfortable with. Thank you for laying out what you're doing to move forward to help with that. In particular, a few weeks ago when I visited the 911 communications center, I sat with the call taker who was taking call after call, clearly controlling the chaos on the other side of the phone call. We had a short moment to talk about what it was like to work there, and her biggest concern was the pay. Despite her years of service, they were not making as much as someone who would be starting as new, so thank you for working with hrd to address that compression issue. I've read through many documents the city has provided us related to the call center, including [10:43:15 AM] listening to the workforce survey, which I'm sure you've seen. I noticed some of the individuals who separated from the call center did so due to a lack of childcare options. Have you explored having a childcare center out there at ctec? >> Not specifically at ctec. However, we are discussing childcare options for all of our police employees. It's not just obviously a problem just for our call takers. We have police officers also that have voiced the same thing, and particularly single parents, it makes it really tough working shift work. So we would look for childcare solutions really for all of our employees, and that's something we're talking about. >> Kelly: Okay. Thank you. And my last question, because I could talk about this forever, is about our backup emergency communications center. I know you and I spoke about that. In an absolute emergency, and everything goes down, my understanding is it goes to [10:44:16 AM] Austin, because they're the only area in the state that can actually take that capacity for a short period of time. But have you ever considered maybe some of our overflow calls going to another communications center in the region? >> So, we have discussed -- the backup center is, you know, just like you said, we lose power, and all of a sudden, our phones aren't working. Those calls will roll over to another backup facility. Whether that is Austin, we've had backup calls that have rolled over to Williamson county. Whatever center it is, they all find themselves in the same place where we are. I think I started my comments kind of with, you know, this is not a unique phenomenon to Austin. Other major cities are experiencing the same issues with hiring and retention of emergency communication personnel. And so, I think that it would be -- you know, they're already strained, and then you roll our calls over, which places even further strain on them. In other words, if we were a [10:45:18 AM] backup center, I wouldn't want those calls rolling over to us right now. >> Kelly: That makes sense. We were just thinking about outside-the-box solutions. I appreciate you explaining it to us. And again, thank you to my colleagues for your leadership on this item for the last year or so. We continue to struggle, and I'm thankful for the employees that we do have at the call center, because they are needed in our community. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: I think that probably everybody on this dais has reached out to you and/or the manager on this issue for a period of time, reflecting the elevation of this issue in the community. And it's something that we've seen grow over time, going back as early as the spring when we were talking about changing the pay and doing the analysis that was done in the spring, following up with changes that [10:46:19 AM] we did just before and during the budget process. We were told, let's wait to see how these things work out before we go further. I think it's real important that we come back and fit. I think the actions that you're taking now demonstrate the immediacy and you are yhency of this need. So I found myself looking at the presentation and looking at the work, and seeing that it's good that we would be going from 7% of the 911 call takers going from the top 75% -- the top 25% in pay to third, and I think that's good. My immediate thought is, that's not enough. It ought to be twice that in order to compete. [10:47:20 AM] I realized that for me, and I know that I have violated this on numerous occasions, because I have been emailing in suggestions and thoughts on how to fix it. I don't want to prescribe, I don't want to participate in prescribing to you what it is that you need to do. I think it's real important for us and for everybody to give you suggestions on how to get that done. Manager, ultimately you're responsible for making sure that there's responsiveness in 911 to the 15-second time that's set. And you need to do whatever it is that you need to do, and from my seat here, I'll continue to send you suggestions. But at the end of the day, you're the one that's held responsible, so you need to do whatever it takes to fix that, because it's not fixed now. I mean, some of the things that were suggested make really good sense to me. Bringing in people that we can put into those chairs while you [10:48:21 AM] fill those chairs makes really good sense. Moving dollars, increasing the dollars to be able to respond makes sense. If the chief doesn't have enough money in his budget to handle it, then I think it's really, you need to take a look at the overall city budget and come back to the council with a budget amendment that says this is a priority now, so we really need to move dollars here. The chief shouldn't be in a position I think where he says I have a possible solution to this, but I can't do it because I don't have the money to be able to do it. Because there's a lot of money in the city budget, and I think if we looked at all the priorities, this council would support you. At the end of the day, you need to get us to that timeframe. >> The chief did not say we didn't have the budget for it. [10:49:22 AM] We are just looking a tea how we can implement that. But I have continuously, through the chief, and our assistant city manager, that we will explore every option. We will make what recommendations need to happen to right size this situation, so they have my full support. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. First, I want to thank our call takers and our dispatchers for the work that they do day in and day out to keep our community safe. I also want to thank you for speaking up and speaking out, because you care about our ability to serve our community. I've been raising the alarm on this since at least last summer, 2021. When we had a budget rider with respect to the compensation study. We tried to change the pay back then. We were told to do a study. And that everything would work out. You know, this is over a year later, and a lot of these things are just going into place now. And I have to say, manager, that that's frustrating. [10:50:23 AM] This is our core responsibility. And, yes, this is a problem all over the country. But we had a lot of lead time, and I don't think we took enough advantage of the lead time. That being said, I'm heartened by some of the steps that you're talking about today. One of the things that I have really learned in listening to the dispatchers and talking with our union is that this is about compensation, but it's also about communication. It's also about feeling valued. I shouldn't be getting texts from people saying, we don't know anything about this compression study. That should be communicated to our workers that this is going on and that you are addressing it, that you are aware of the problem. We had retention bonuses that were late in being paid out, and nobody was told that this is coming late. It's not clear that it was [10:51:23 AM] addressed in a way that made people feel like they were valued. It is not enough to just do a retention bonus. You've got to get it to them on time, in a timely manner, and communicate when it's coming. So I'm glad to hear you say that you really understand that we have to fall our employees. But that communication has to happen. It has to happen from the top. Hr has to be acted upon, and we have some work to do in that regard. And what efforts have been made to to communicate that to our staff. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem. So, I couldn't agree with you more. I think that we had some missteps in the way that the raises and what that was going to look like, the rezonings previously were rolled out. [10:52:24 AM] And it did lead to confusion and frustration with our employees. We don't want to repeat that mistake. So, as the compression study is finalized, we will be doing what we did kind of on the back end of the last one, which is meeting with all of the managers at the center to fully brief out, have a chart staff out there fully brief out what it is, and importantly, what it isn't, so that we're -- you know, you don't have that disappointment because people thought that it was going to be more than what it was. The process itself and what exactly the study is going to bear out, I have not seen the final draft of that study yet. I know that director Hayes and her staff are working diligently on it. And as I receive it, then I will be making sure that it is communicated to our employees effectively. >> Alter: Thank you. I just want to underscore that we've been having conversations [10:53:25 AM] about the compression issues and the need for the increases in pay for over a year. So it was supposed to be addressed when the compensation study went in to -- in fact, we raised the issues, raised them again. So, it is frustrating to not see this. And I think it's frustrating for the employees as well. They need to see that. On the recruiting aspect, it was news to me that we have now devoted recruiters. That's great. Again, it's not clear to me what we're doing on recruiting is being conveyed to the employees who are in there now. It's not clear to me that we are taking advantage of their ideas and their thoughts or even their ability, you know, to help recruit. So, can you speak a little bit more about what resources are being devoted to recruiting? >> So, we have four individuals that are assigned full-time to our emergency communications section that I would say is part [10:54:25 AM] of our recruiting/background function. Two of them are assigned. We have two full-time employees, and then two temporary employees that we have brought on to assist with that. They are plugged in with the cpio effort right now, because we're really pushing a citywide effort on hiring overall to be part of that. As well as, we have done some things that we haven't had to do before, and going back historically, we've had good numbers of applicants, but we need to increase those applicants. So we're now advertising in many of the trade publications for emergency communications workers. We are also doing things on social media that is more targeted, and because we know that that is one of the most effective things that we can do. And then some of the more conventional things that we are looking at, which is print and media ads, and putting things on [10:55:26 AM] the sides of billboards, buses, taxis, and all of those we have not instituted those, but that will be part of the larger -- potentially the larger overall city effort. We are out there more than we've ever been trying to actively recruit folks and I think that the increase number of applications has shown that to some degree that's more prudent. >> Alter: I'm really glad to hear that. When I looked back on the staffing study that council member Kelly had let on us getting, one of the things it revealed was the high level of vacancy, almost double what we're seeing with the sworn staff. So I think it's long overdue to put in the investment into the recruiting for the staff. So I definitely want to see that. The last thing that I want to flag is that would welcome to have a conversation with you about the 311 versus 911. We've had some other conversations that I'm not going [10:56:27 AM] to introduce here to the conversation today, but there are some elements of that that I think we still need to fix before we go out and do another push on that. So I want to continue that conversation. City manager, this is urgent. I think we've all conveyed that. As the mayor suggested, the buck stops with you. And this needs to improve and we need to see that happen. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Fuentes, then council member tovo, council member Ellis. Council member Renteria. And then council member harper-madison. >> Fuentes: Thanks. Chief, I'm trying to get a better understanding of what exactly -- like, what are the expectations here? So you highlighted that you have -- you've hired seven new staff, right? To help with answering our [10:57:29 AM] calls. How much would our hold time decrease? What's a reasonable expectation for a hold? >> I don't have the answer to that question right now, council member. I can see if that is -- if we can figure that out. That's again on that data analysis side. Now, just understanding that every 911 call is a little bit different. Some can be handled in a minute and some we have that last many minutes. And my -- so that analysis is a bit more difficult to conduct, I think. But I'm not saying that it can't be done. Maybe looking at our average call time that we have and applying that. So that's something that I can work on. >> Fuentes: I'm trying to get a sense of how many more staff do we need to get to that national benchmark of 15-second hold time [10:58:30 AM] for a call. >> Going back to 2018, we met that standard over 99% of the time when we were flush. So we're really at about 65% of the time right now. If we can fill those vacancies, we can get back to that standard. >> Fuentes: So what are the other additional short-term strategies that we should be considering so that we have more people available to answer the calls? >> Well, I was talking about the unconventional measures that we've taken, including sworn staff back, is going to help. Some of the different things that we're doing now, including retention in sign-on bonuses, retention already having been in sign-on -- you know, kind of in the wings. And, you know, these are all things that we've never had to do before, and that are -- again, I'm referring to as being kind of unconventional. I think those are the things -- [10:59:31 AM] and certainly, if this council has really good ideas, we're willing to consider them. >> Fuentes: So, the recruitment and the pay, that will take time. That's still weeks out before we see additional people on the floor answering calls. And the county has their own personnel there answering calls. And I read a news clip that says that they didn't have any staffing vacancy issues at the county side. Are you aware of that? How is it that the county is not facing shortages versus the city? >> Well, I think that the county -- I don't know the exact number they have. But I know it's pretty small. As compared to the number of APD employees that they have. I speak regularly with sheriff Hernandez on her staffing issues, and I can tell you I [11:00:31 AM] know that Travis county on the sworn side is struggling, just like we are. And I can't imagine -- we have not spoken about our civilian staff, but I can't imagine that they are not experiencing the same issues as we are. So I know they, like us, prioritize different functions over others and have to do that to maintain public safety. Same thing that we're doing. And, you know, that's probably the best that I can give you. I think that the county would probably need to be able to answer, because I don't know exactly how many employees they have. >> Fuentes: Okay. Have we had conversations with the county and having them -- I know we talked about perhaps getting the constables involved to see if they can help answering calls. >> Yes, you and I had a conversation about maybe the constables coming in and doing the same thing that our sworn staff is doing, perhaps on a contract basis. I I took that to our leadership team at the communication center and they're considering that now to see if it can be implemented, and if it makes sense to implement it. Like, would it be better to [11:01:33 AM] simply train more of our staff, because I described the 19 sergeants that I have right now, I have more that still want to do it. But my training capacity, the classes to train call takers and dispatchers, is necessarily small. Each cadre is only about 6 or 7 people, because they have to have individualized attention during the training. So it's not like I can bring in a class of 30 and train them all at once. >> Fuentes: So if you brought in constable deputies, they would have to go through the training as well? >> They would still have to go through the training, correct. >> Fuentes: So that's another issue, if it's a matter of capacity, you're saying room capacity of the training. >> No, it isn't the physical space. It is -- the training is so individualized. I have to spend so much individual time with each person, that I can't do a 30-person class. I've got to do classes that are about six to eight people, so that they each get the individual time and the [11:02:33 AM] repetitions and everything to be able to get them out on the floor more quickly. >> Fuentes: Uh-huh. I guess my comments to our city leadership and our executive team is that if there is -- if we have constable deputies who have the cole certification, I think we should pursue conversations with them to help us provide immediate relief. Rather than continuing to tap into our sergeants and their efforts. I would like that conversation prioritized if possible. The other question I have is around pay. So I know, director Hayes, you mentioned the market study. From my understanding, dispatchers in Williamson county make $27.54 per hour. Our range is still between 22 to 24. Can you speak to why the -- I mean, I know this is an average for the market. But I think this really illustrates that we have an individual who is interested in answering 911 calls, they can [11:03:35 AM] just work in Williamson county and still receive higher pay. So have we done all that we can to increase pay in a way that is competitive with our region? >> Yes. Joya Hayes, hr director. Yes, we have. I think one of the changes I'm always going to face -- >> Mayor Adler: Is your microphone on? >> I believe it is. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. >> I think one of the challenges that we're going to continue to face is there will be individuals in the region that may individually make more money. When we look at our top zone 4, we are at the 75 percentile, but that's also based on time and position, education, and experience. And so there may be someone who makes more money, and they are comparing themselves to people that are coming in at entry level. We did, during our market analysis -- and I just want to remind you. It usually takes us six months to do it. We try to finish it in three so that we could get those pay evaluated and implemented as quickly as possible. In doing that, I specifically [11:04:35 AM] went back and added all of the surrounding msa cities to that study so that I can ensure that we were being as competitive as possible. There are some opportunities for the chief to look at some other pay incentives to be more competitive. I think you all discussed some of those today. And so, certainly, as the chief makes decisions relative to those incentives that may make us more and more competitive, hrd will quickly do the analysis and adjust as they see fit. >> Fuentes: Right. Okay. Yeah. I do want to highlight that if we are trying to hire individuals, you know, that is a huge issue, if they can go to Williamson county and have a higher starting pay. On the topic of a sign-on bonus, I would like us to further consider that. I understand what you're saying about -- they may -- employees may only be with us for a few months. But, again, in situations as urgent as answering a 911 call, I imagine that paying overtime for other personnel to answer [11:05:36 AM] the calls is probably the equivalent of what a sign-on bonus would be or a sign-on stipend. I think that further consideration needs to happen on the sign-on efforts. Lastly, the topic on mental health. You mentioned that there is a victims services counselor on staff. I received some feedback that perhaps people aren't as comfortable sharing what they're going through with a peer and that there used to be a counselor -- an outside counselor or services available where personnel can make appointments. Can you shed some light on additional mental health services? >> So, we still have that. I have two counselors that are on staff with the police department. Actually, they're falling kind of under the umbrella of ocmo now, the medical director's office, to provide counseling services as part of the -- for [11:06:36 AM] all of our police employees. So that's outside of the center, and people can do that. We have our employee assistance program through the city, as well as supporting, you know, private counselors if folks want to do that. They still have the ability to use sick leave for a lot of this, and fmla. So we support all of those things to make sure -- like I said, we're valuing our employees and making sure we're taking care of their physical and mental health. >> Fuentes: Okay, thank you. One last question. I take to heart my colleagues saying that they've been working on this issue for over a year now. So, in looking at what got us to this point, I want to understand how can we avoid situations like this from happening again. So, I want to ask you, director Hayes, you know, based on your experience on these conversations happening for over a year, what are some lessons learned or takeaways for us as policymakers to have on our [11:07:37 AM] radar so that we're not in dire crisis situation level at this point? What can we do differently? >> Thank you for that question. I'll share with you, in the 20 years I've been doing human resources, I have to put in perspective that the last two years has been a crisis internationally. And so, as a person who engages public sector daily, we have a network of hr community, not only within Texas, but nationally as we address these issues in public sector. I just have to begin with the reality that I think the staff, I think the council are all working towards the same goal of addressing these critical issues. But of course, as your hr director who's responsible for addressing this crisis citywide, I will tell you that every single department in the city of Austin will probably come to this table and tell you about this crisis and about what we're doing. And so, to directly answer your question relative to being proactive, I think this city has probably been more proactive as possible. I think what we could do to be [11:08:37 AM] better is to communicate more with council the realities of what we're doing, how we're doing it. We in the last year, while we certainly have not met the mark to alleviate these kinds of issues, but we have done unprecedented work. And in an attempt not to burn out the staff who does the work. To attempt to do analysis, to do it quickly, to be fair and equitable, to also look at the financial impact, to look at incentives. We were the first city in Texas to do many of the incentive programs in many cities around Texas calling us. But we have gotten national attention. I've gotten national attention on the work that we've done in the city of Austin to address these issues. So, while I don't want to underplay the crisis that we're in, nor do I want to underplay the critical responsibility that we, human resources, and all directors have in addressing these issues, I think we have to also put in concept the realities that we're trying to deal with citywide. As soon as this conversation is over, many of you are going to call me about other critical issues and other departments as [11:09:37 AM] it relates to pay. In this particular area, we've moved as quickly as we could. I think our bigger challenge, and we have altered the hr processes and procedures in an effort to think outside the box. Our goal is for it to not come to you. Our goal is for you to not worry that we haven't been proactive. We haven't looked for unorthodox ways to address this pay crisis. We have. And so, I think proactively moving forward, we can be better at communicating to you, here's what we have proactively done. As we do the job fairs around the city, we've increased those. Many of you all have participated with us. 911 has done that. We need to be clear, here are the jobs that the country is having problems with. Here are those trends, and I think we did some outside analysis. And even the auditor's office came to evaluate, what can we do better? How are we missing the mark? On all of those analysis, the city of Austin has not only met, but exceeded the expectations of [11:10:37 AM] trying to be proactive in those areas. So, one, I mean, it's the optimism that comes with hr. This is a crisis, but our city is doing better, and we are trying to do more. What I'd like to do, council member, is to be more proactive in communicating to you the things that we're trying to do, so that you don't have to hear it in a reactive space and know -- and feel comfortable and much more confident that we are taking those necessary steps to move us forward in predicting what your needs are. Right now, chief, I think as we predict forward, we're recognizing that in the process of hiring, where people are falling out, we are reaching out to different entities in the city to assist, and people passing the typing test faster to do other things. So we're creating support systems for those who may be interested in these positions so that they can be better prepared to follow through on the cole responsibilities. We're also reaching out to universities. And so, certainly, if council sees and knows of entities of people who may be interested, proactively tell us that so that we can go out and reach those [11:11:39 AM] entities to potentially increase the number of candidates that are eligible to take on these positions. And so, I guess in totality, a more cooperative, collaborative relationship. Let me know when you've got concerns and issues of where we are. I'll do my best to make sure that I try to address those, so that we don't find ourselves in spaces where in the midst of the crisis, we're trying to come up with those solutions. >> Fuentes: Thank you. >> Just to add to that, council member, I think we can also do a better job of engaging you and your networks. You know, each of you have incredible relationships with community members. I know that you are out in the community on an ongoing basis. And so, how do we ensure that you have the information to help us recruit? We are all in this together, and we all want to make sure that we have incredible city staff that are providing these resources for our community, and we can certainly do a better job of using you and your own connections to help alleviate that. Thank you. >> Tovo: Thank you. I have just a couple of [11:12:41 AM] questions that have been asked to follow up on a couple of other ones. So chief, you said in 2018 the department was flush. I think you used the term flush. Can you provide us with maybe not right now, but a sense in the days ahead of how that -- how and when the vacancies arose? I think I had asked for this in my post -- my response to councilmember kitchen's but it would be helpful and maybe some of my colleagues may have that information from the work they've done. But I really need to get a clear picture of when it became clear that it was becoming -- reaching crisis levels. And I just want to say we've gotten some feedback from community members about how could we let this happen as a council. I really appreciate our council members who have taken leadership in this area and have raised the alarm and done budget measures and things, but I want to underscore that this is really on your side of the house, manager. [11:13:41 AM] It really should not be a council matter to kind of keep up with staffing and to sound an alarm about this. So I would like to just emphasize that that this needs to be something that -- yeah, that it should not take a council response to prompt action on that. So I don't know what measures might be put in place to look at that, certainly that's something that happens during the budget when we have an opportunity to see what vacancies look like and the staffing and the requests for funding for different departments, but that might be something that needs to happen at least in the departments where it's really reaching crisis levels or has reached crisis levels that that happens maybe every six months. So it's good, thank you, colleagues, for adding this to today's agenda for discussion. Chief, thanks for the conversation about all the innovative things that you and hr are trying. [11:14:41 AM] I think that's great. And I appreciate your work on that. I am interested in the childcare piece because I think we've had an opportunity to talk about that in the past and it has certainly come up as a need. And I wondered where you are in that process? And too, and I know this happened during covid, many of us were engaged or at least several of us on this dais were engaged in conversations about childcare and the need for shift workers in other city departments as well to have access to childcare so that they could continue to come to do their work for the city of Austin. So we know this is a need that was especially present during the pandemic, but is also critically important for some of our city staff family year-round. So have you met with success by 6. Is it something that your staff is working closely with our childcare experts to see if there are solutions that can present? >> So thank you, council member. I want us to take a step back to answer your first question before I talk about [11:15:44 AM] childcare. So just anecdotally without having an analysis of each, for instance, exit survey of the people, what we saw during 2019 and 2020 and what has been termed the great resignation, is numbers of positions that were opening up in private industry that just paid more than we did. And that's where we saw people that were in our call-taking center departing for of the health care industry, for the tech industry, for those kind of positions where they were able to make a little bit more. That then exacerbated the problem with that burnout and stress. So that was kind of at the beginning now what we see is people who are leaving because of there are not enough staff in there to keep it successfully running. >> Tovo: That's helpful. As director hays said, this is clearly the last several years have been extraordinary and have put lots of new and additional [11:16:44 AM] and more intense demands on our public servants so that is not surprising that we've seen an exodus in multiple departments. I concur with my colleagues that said financial incentives as you're pursuing are really appropriate. I've also had an opportunity to be over there and listened to the 911 call takers and that was before this recent crisis and it seemed like an extraordinarily stressful and intense job. I left that day thinking, boy, we are so fortunate that there are people willing to step up and do this work because it seems, just from my very limited view of it, extraordinarily, extraordinarily challenging. So thank you. I want to add my thanks to all of those staff members who are performing that job to keep -- help keep all of us safe. >> Thank you, council member. On the childcare issue I can tell you that this is one that it's fairly new. Again, we're looking aunt conventional measures to be able to draw applicants to the Austin police [11:17:45 AM] department. And really it was a conversation that started on the sworn side. As we are trying to draw people in from other -- maybe other jurisdictions, other cities, other states, to come and be an Austin police officer, we started saying okay, the straight compensation is one thing, but can we assist in other ways where we have seen costs rising, including housing, including childcare. So those are the two areas where we're looking at. Would it make sense, for instance, to build a dorm? The Texas department of public safety actually houses their cadets for the time during the week. They go home on the weekends. So would that be a possibility before you uproot our family and bring them to Austin, right? Or childcare, R, which we've heard from all across our departments sworn and civilian is an issue, particularly like I said for our single parents that are trying to work shift work. So those conversations are [11:18:45 AM] still early and we have not engaged some of our experts yet. >> Tovo: Well, thank you. I'll have to give some thought on how best to support that conversation because it really does seem like a need for especially single parents in various other kinds of roles here at the city of Austin too, manager. I was thinking about this last night as I was listening to the storms and saw that there were a large number of outages in our area. And if you're a single parent working to repair lines throughout the city of Austin you were out last night and had you to find some solution if you're a parent. So my guess is we have needs throughout our entire department that maybe director hays can help identify with regard to many of our workers who start work long before most conventional childcare facilities open from arr to many other city departments where their day is not starting at the conventional seven A.M. Dropoff. >> And the health department [11:19:46 AM] I believe is also looking as an initial to look at childcare citywide. As you all recall, council member Fuentes asked us to go back and look at employees and the issues that are most prevalent. We're almost done with that one, childcare, elderly care, are prevalent on that list as W as we get that report we'll roll that out and provide you additional information. We have partnered with -- when I say partnered, it's unofficial. We reach out and find those those day care facilities that have those non-traditional schedules. Some of those have closed unfortunately during the pandemic that were here our hospitals that were 24/7 day cares, hourly day care to people don't didn't have to make full-time commitment to those day cares and those that opened up prior to. I can assure you from the entry level to top executives we all struggle with the realities of how to get that job done with children. And so that's continuing to be a priority. [11:20:48 AM] And we go to that and the other initiatives that you've brought up with culture and consistency, give me an opportunity to do that analysis. We will not only bring up the issues and concerns, but we'll talk through some issues and support that we can provide. We're expecting that -- I think we'll be done with that survey how long from now? >> [Inaudible]. >> Hopefully in the next month or so. I can provide you more detail on what is heart of the concerns overall for our culture, workplace and what support systems your employees are asking for. >> Tovo: That's great. I look forward to seeing that data. My guess is that probably given -- I remember having this conversation with you where you and your staff members during the pandemic about individuals who needed childcare. Drop in and emergency childcare. Midpiece is that part the of the solution is probably for the city to set up something like that for employees just because otherwise we're dependent on the private [11:21:52 AM] sector and childcare, even conventional childcare, is a hard business to stay in and sustain. And drop-in services doesn't give you the regular contracts that are going to be financially beneficial to keep it afloat. >> And I think the health department is working on it. I don't want to speak to that, but I certainly can provide the details of the initiative and how far they are along -- >> Tovo: That would be really helpful. Thank you very much, chief and director hays for addressing this crisis. >> [Inaudible - no mic]. >> Thank you, mayor. Can you tell me if the requirement about cole is a state requirement or a local ordinance? >> It's a state law. >> Is that due to the sensitive information aspect of the job? >> That's correct. A number of sessions ago the legislature said these folks are looking at the same thing as police officers, which is criminal justice information. We need to hold them to the same standard. >> Fuentes: Okay. That's helpful to know. And compared to peer cities, [11:22:53 AM] I know there was a look at pay, but do you know if training timelines are a part of that or affordability when we look at employing a call taker in Austin versus San Antonio? It looks like pay was looked at, but can you tell me anything else about training timelines? >> That to my knowledge was not part of the market study but I'll let the director step back up. >> That's correct. We do look at the cost of living msa piece that is really something that we utilize as a component for our across the board. So as we came to you this year with the four percent it took into consideration that cost of living piece. The market study specifically looks at the job based on scope and responsibility. So we list out that scope responsibility. We send that out to the consultant, sends that out to ensure that there is an equal review of scope and responsibility and based on that. And then we add additional cities that we may want to. As I talk to you all about your study, looking at California and some of the [11:23:53 AM] other competitive spaces where we know that cost of living is higher, we're trying to pull more of those cities in. Councilmember Ellis, if you remember we talked a little bit the fact that one of the reasons we did not add to our original market study was the local analysis because those cities are smaller and it sometimes screws the market because we're looking at entities that have one to four people versus the 100 plus that we have. But we do do that so it does have some impact with this particular study that we completed on cost because we looked at that animas area in addition to those benchmark closer cities in relation to the scope of work. I would say this last market was more in alignment with looking at those considerations because it was a focus on the msa versus just those competitors that are compared to us in size and scope. >> Was that in reference to the training timelines or how much does it cost to live in city and therefore is your pay competitive? >> It looks at the market [11:24:53 AM] components, education, experience, scope of work. As it relates to training I'll have to yield back to the chief in armies of how that is done in those particular spaces. >> I want to make sure I understand, councils. You mean the amount time it talks to train a dispatcher? >> Yes. >> I'm sure my staff is familiar with what other cities are doing, like fort Worth, San Antonio, Dallas, what it takes to train their folks. I don't know what that is. That's something I would have to bring back and how we compare? >> Ellis: Okay. I remember this conversation coming up when we were trying to make sure the people that you she want your time transition planning stayed here for work for Austin police department and I'm wondering if the same thing is happening with call takers where people are getting good training here and going to another city or if other cities are easier so they're just not coming to Austin? >> I have not heard that particular problem because every call center I'm sure does it just a little bit differently. That's why to council member Fuentes's point when we were talking about can we bring [11:25:55 AM] in some other folks, they still have to go. And even though they may be a call taker somewhere else, they still have to go through our training. Same thing with police officers, they have to go through -- we have a modified transitional officer program and things like that. So we'd have to apply a little bit of analysis and see whether that's happening or not. >> Ellis: Okay. That's helpful and I know wife been switching and jumping between timeline pay and affordability of other cities. I can't help but notice we're talking about the cost of housing, the cost of transportation, the cost of childcare. And we talk about this with every department so this really is on council and on our constituents to really tell us what they want to see, how we need to address that so that we can make sure that we have people here in Austin able to afford doing this work. So I know that's not necessarily something that the hr director or the chief of police can solve. That's on city council, but these same issues are coming up no matter which department we're talking about. Are there any specific skill [11:26:55 AM] sets or professional bah bounds that make a good call taker or dispatcher that you might want us to champion that they need to come and see if they're going to be a good call taker for you? >> Sure. So the ability -- we have to be able to -- a couple of things come to mind right away. The ability -- I know that several council members have been on the call taking floor before and have seen the complexity, for instance, in being a dispatcher and each one of the dispatchers has at least six computer screens, large computer monitors directly in front of them and they're having to monitor all of them. They're listening to radio traffic. They're running people for warrants and vehicles stolen and all those things. Being able to multi-task in a kind of stressful environment is a huge skill. And that's not something necessarily that we can teach. We can hone certainly and we can help people to get there, but people have to show the aptitude for that. A typing test is administered to see how many words per minute people can type, so both on the call [11:27:56 AM] taking and dispatching side it's important to be able to type quickly so that I can move on to whatever the next stage is. And all of those -- and the director mentioned earlier we're looking at like workforce solutions to see can we -- even before they apply for that job, if there's an interest in it, can we get them into a program, a city program, that might be able to be able to build that skill before they are putting in their application. I know -- neighbor that's what she's going to talk O he owe maybe that's what she's going to talk about. >> You covered it all. >> Those are the kind of skills that are important and the skills are one thing, making sure that we have individuals that are applying that can meet all of the -- it's just a high bar, right? When it comes to you cannot -- you can't have a criminal history coming on and being one of our call takers or dispatchers. And even some times what are minor offenses are [11:28:56 AM] disqualified under Texas commission on law enforcement. So again that's something that we struggle with on both sworn and civilian side. >> Ellis: Thank you for that. I appreciated you mentioning the great resignation. It's been mentioned that a lot of departments are seeing this. I can only imagine this is anecdotalliment I met someone years ago, maybe 2019, who was a retired detective and talked about the mental load of what the job included and having to deal with sensitive situations and really traumatic situations that do burn people out. So I can only imagine through the pandemic there's a lot of people that burnt out not taking 911 calls, people that burnt out, nurses are burnt out, teachers are burnt out. Everybody is burnt U let's face it. So I really appreciate you bringing that up because we obviously want to have a fully staffed and as quick of responses as we possibly can, but understanding that we're in 2022 and people are [11:29:58 AM] still kind of rebuilding what their future looks like. I'll just close by saying I appreciate the thinking outside the box really trying to see what it is that can be handled administratively or come to council for policy or financial approval, I think this is one thing we obviously know, we care about a lot. Everyone up here wants to make sure we're responding quickly and I appreciate you thinking outside the box. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Renteria and then councilmember harper-madison. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. I've been talking with the union president and some of the recruits and it seems like one of the biggest problems we're having here is housing. And I'm glad you brought up about the dorm because that conversation always goes back about recruitment as the high cost of housing here in Austin. Everyone here that rents [11:30:58 AM] knows that the rent went up from four to $600 in one year. This year, which is outrageous. We don't have enough housing that people can afford. And when they have to move out, and I keep telling people over and over that they're not going to come back into Austin, you will have to pay a lot for them to be able to afford to live here. And that's the cost of having a successful city that we're having. But I'm very interested on some of the conversation I had with the union president that they have some land that is available and they're willing to, if we the city would help them build dorms for their new recruits because it's expensive. You don't know whether you're going to make it and you don't want to move your family down here. So how would that be possible? Can the city pay for or look into whether we can finance [11:32:01 AM] or develop housing for just recruits and not be in violation of any kind of housing rules? >> Appreciate you bringing that up, council member. Housing is not only important throughout the city, but when we talk about teachers being able to live in Austin and the same with nurses and practitioners that are in hospitals, we will be having those discussions, trying to get creative as you've talked through. We have a strategic facilities governance team that is looking at these and they're providing updates to our audit and finance committee, but I will take this as a cue to roll up our sleeves even more and see what other creative opportunities we have to develop workforce housing for our own staff. >> Renteria: That would be great because that's always been a big concern of mine that we're not building enough affordable units here in Austin to maintain our workers here. And I keep saying that same thing over and over. If we don't build enough [11:33:03 AM] housing here and they can't leave here, they will leave Austin and move to some area where it's affordable and they're not going to come back. We don't have the public transportation that's needed to address those kind of issues yet. We're working very hard. But until we do we need to. And even when we do we still need more affordable units. And if we could help out just one department if they're willing to donate their land to do those kind of units for dorms for their recruits, because it's very hard. You just don't want to bring your family here and now either you have a mortgage over there that you have to pay and then you have to pay for rent here, it's not going to happen. So we really need to start addressing the housing issues for our recruits. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember harper-madison. Harper- madison thank you, mayor, but I almost don't need to speak after [11:34:05 AM] councilmember Renteria spoke. Recently when I took a tour on the east coast and went to Boston and Baltimore, they were looking at taking city assets and using those to house city employees and offering it as part of the package. So essentially I asked how they came to determine what the value of -- was of all the staffing that they weren't able to fill because of the cost of housing and they were calculating a formula sort of building it and the expense of not having enough staff. And it came out to where it was the benefit of the city overall financially, it was more efficient to how long city geez. Employees. So to councilmember Renteria's question about workforce housing and that goes beyond our call center employees. I don't know if y'all remember me telling you about having a city employee come to one of our town halls who works for the city of Austin, but for all intents and purposes is a [11:35:06 AM] homeless person right now. He's sleeping on a friend's sofa because he can't afford to live in the city of Austin. I think the broader conversation around affordable housing for our employees is critical in nature. So there's that -- then there's the other question we have, I don't know if you addressed it, chief. Thinking through -- one thing I wanted to note was I wonder if all of our constituents understand the difference between the call center and dispatch. And if there is a distinct delineation. I wonder if it might be helpful to describe for them what that difference is. >> Certainly -- >> Harper-madison: I'm sorry? >> I'm sorry, go ahead, ma'am. >> Harper-madison: And the second thing there is do you recall -- in the earlier days around covid, Dr. Escott, who he did the call to be a national resource now, but when we had him exclusively to ourselves, he was talking a lot about the medical director and moving [11:36:07 AM] into his role around the early days of our experience with covid, he was talking a lot about a national recalibration around dispatch. I just wonder where that national -- it sounded like this unilateral push to fix dispatch across the board nationally. I wonder where that conversation landed? >> Just answering that second question first, I don't know where that led. I haven't had any personal conversations with Dr. Escott about that, but I certainly think it's important that we are looking at what is a national best practice. Does it make sense to pivot? And then what does that pivot look like as far as training and additional personnel that would be necessary and would require some analysis and risk versus benefit. So I'll certainly have that conversation with Dr. Escott to see what he was referencing. With regard to the call taking center, I refer -- so we have the combined [11:37:10 AM] transportation and emergency communication center that we refer to as ctecc. Within that center we have both call takers that are answering with the 911 calls as well as dispatchers. They sit in the same building and essentially in the same space with one another and communicate -- there's a nucleus right in the center which is our leadership team and the supervisors that are overseeing the entire operation. And as we have calls that become very labor intensive, such as a large I like a large structure fire and a closure of I-35 like a large crash, they can move resources within the center to be able to address so we have enough dispatchers and if we're opening up additional channels and doing things like that that we can do that. [11:38:10 AM] But they all sit in the same center and there are some that are trained on both sides, on call taking and on dispatching. And some that have graduated from one to the other because that is their preference to be a call taker versus a dispatcher or vice versa. Each one has a skill set and -- but they sit in the same center. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember kitchen and council member Fuentes. >> Kitchen: Thank you, chief and city manager. Just a question or comment to add on to the request I made earlier to analyze and project -- to analyze and project the rate of our hiring versus our vacancies and give us an idea of given the package of things that you all are working on, your best estimate about when we will reach the level where we -- where we have filled [11:39:11 AM] those vacancies. As part of that could you also analyze or share with us any analysis you've already done for the reasons for the dropoff between people who -- between people applying and being hired? We've talked a lot and in response to people's questions anecdotally about what those are, so I know you have some idea of why people don't make it from application so hiring. We've also talked about the time period that that takes, eight to 10 weeks. I'd like to see what data we have and understand what you have. And I know there may be challenges in getting that data because in all instances you might not know why someone didn't carry through. But I would like to see what we know about what those reasons are so that I can match that with what we're doing about that. >> We'll see that we can do. >> Mayor Adler: Council [11:40:11 AM] member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: I wanted to add some comments on the conversation around workforce housing. I had the opportunity to work with Atlanta for a national league of cities conference and we received a briefing from the greater crime division and the Atlanta police. And the greater Atlanta crime division offers housing. And they're targeted in areas of the community and it's a great way to have officers live in the community they serve. So perhaps it's a conversation for us to have with the greater Austin crime commission on any partnerships on workforce housing. I have one other question for you, chief that perhaps employees don't know about the licensed counselors. So if we can -- I just wanted to confirm, because you mentioned that there are licensed counselors available. >> So we have one victim services counselor who is a [11:41:13 AM] licensed clinical social worker that is assigned to cttecc. We also have Dr. Logan and Dr. Duran, two different psychologists that work for the city, work for the -- are supporting our police employees that R. Also available and then the other measures that we talked about as well. So it's a few different routes that an employee can take depending on their level of comfort. >> I think that's great about the psychologist and I would just ask if we could make sure that the division knows about these options available. Certainly that would be helpful. >> Absolutely. >> Fuentes: Thank you. >> If I may, mayor, and I'll turn to the chief if he has any concluding remarks. As I stated we take this very seriously and you have my full commitment that we are doing everything we can to address the immediate challenge and the long-term challenges that we have seen and our emergency communications area. This is something that we will continue to update [11:42:14 AM] council on and the results of these strategies that we've been putting in place and then obviously come to you if we need additional resources or support or direction, but we want to assure you that there is nothing more important than being able to keep the response times as quickly as possible and to keep our community safe. I want to thank the chief and the director for the countless hours on this. They know how important it is for staff and community and for those of us here on council. Chief? >> Thank you, manager. I've made a lot of commitments as the police chief related to public safety. The first point of contact for our citizens is a 911 call. And some times can make a difference between saving a life or not. I remain as strongly committed as ever to public safety. We are moving the needle. The things that we are doing, yes, they take time to implement and train and time to effectively recruit. [11:43:16 AM] But we have not kind of taken our foot off the gas at all when it comes to this. We are more committed than ever to making sure that we can meet the challenge of our growing city and our growing community and I commit that we're not going to let public safety flag because of the issues that we're having. We're going to continue. >> Chief, I appreciate that. Manager, I appreciate that. Obviously the concern is something that the council has been pushing on for over a year. A lot of circumstances and challenges have gotten even more stream. I appreciate the steps and I appreciate thinking outside of the box. I imagine we'll all keep pitching you ideas and thoughts and suggestions, but again, ultimately at the end of the day you just have to fix this. I think it might be appropriate if you could give the council an update, at least a written update in and around Thanksgiving. And if needed then the council could ask for [11:44:16 AM] another briefing at our work session or a council meeting. But it may not be necessary. So if you could give us a written report in and around Thanksgiving, then the council can decide whether to ask to speak on this issue the first couple of weeks of December. All right, chief, thank you. And thanks to the hr staff. Joya, thank you. Colleagues, on pulled items, to move through those, we have councilmember tovo and -- and the mayor pro tem that are not here. Just going through the ones I pulled here, some of them quickly, item number 23 is one of two tenant measures that are set to be considered. One of the -- at least setting times to talk. The organizing one I see council member vela has [11:45:17 AM] posted something to the message board so I appreciate that. On the opportunity to cure, this is the second one, this is basically an ordinance that says that if a landlord is going to evict a tenant as concerns something that is curable, the tenant be given a short period of time in order to be able to cure the problem. As a practical matter it's something that most all landlords do anyhow because it's the right thing to do and it makes a lot more sense for the tenant to be able to cure both for the tenant and for the landlord. I'm working with the stakeholders now on both sides of this. I'll probably be working on and posting a resolution of this that's somewhere in between what the different attacks want in this. By doing that I may not please anybody, but I'll hit the mark and make a [11:46:17 AM] recommendation to its dais on where I think the appropriate place for us to be is -- to be in, to protect the city and also setting a time frame where in the relatively short future we can evaluate it and decide whether to expandit or go further. Yes, council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Mayor, are you thinking about postponing the right to cure for next week or would this be up for consideration? >> Mayor Adler: I'd like to get it passed so I'll be posting something as early today on that. And really the two -- three operable factors are obviously the industry people want it to be just volunteer and not a required right to cure. I support a mandatory right to cure. Some of the stakeholders have requested a 21 day period to cure. I'll probably going to recommend to the dais we do something less than 21 days. Just because I think that [11:47:18 AM] the opportunity to cure should exist but not necessarily extend that deep. In order to get support of some of the stakeholders which I think would be important going to the legislative session, I may propose an exclusion to certain units that are really small units in terms of the number of units that are involved. But with a provision that this be evaluated in six months to ascertain whether or not it actually creates the harm and the problems that some. Stakeholders think might exist. And if not with an eye to expanding the application if the problems and concerns are not generated. And there was one more that escapes me right now and I'll try to remember while people are making comments. >> Fuentes: Thank you. I look forward to seeing the amendments that you bring forward and considering them. I'm also working on [11:48:18 AM] amendment to the right to cure that is modeled on what is being done in San Antonio, which is when the notice is issued that there's also a one pager that's attached to that notice that provides a list of resources available to our tenants so we're also working on that. >> Mayor Adler: That sounds great. I'd like to work with you on this if our offices are not already doing that. Council member vela. >> Vela: Looking forward to seeing those items on Thursday. And I just wanted to mention that with regard to the right to organization we have essentially all the stakeholders on board, the Austin apartment association, bass statutory requirements, housing realtors and Austin justice coalition have all agreed on the language and I just wanted to thank Stephanie trinn from your office, mayor, and Ramy from my [11:49:19 AM] office and talking about the item and hopefully moving it forward is Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Appreciate your leadership on this and your ability to actually find a compromise that people were willing to sign off on. We're only part the way there on the cure issue, but I would like it to move forward. The other one was there was a concern raised by some of the stakeholders that if the tenant has the same violation over and over again, like an unauthorized guest, there ought to be a different resolution than saying every month you have to kick out the guest and then the guest comes back. So it's that kind of thing that I think people in good faith really aren't going to do anyhow, but we can provide for it in the same ordinance that we are imposing this ability to cure, which good landlords are doing anyhow, and maybe some other small edits. We'll get those posted just as quickly as we can. [11:50:22 AM] The next thing I have here, I'm going to hold off on minority-owned and women-owned business enterprise until the mayor pro tem is back because she also pulled these items. I had pulled them because I think that when you look at the study is it would suggest that we're doing everything that we could and should do with respect to minority hiring because we're hitting the marks. At the same time I think there's probably still a concern with certain businesses and opportunities that might help with us expanding this not only to subs, but to generals and/or taking a look at whether we should be looking at non-life-threatening non-race related factors such as economics and other things that might actually bring the folks most in need further assistance and help that this kind of program can do. So we'll -- I'll call this up later in case the mayor [11:51:22 AM] pro tem is back. But I'd be looking at bringing amendments to do something like that, not in changing possible we have now, manager, but in asking you and the staff to take a look at that and bring this back to the next council so that they have an alternative way to take a look at this. On item number -- we'll hold 41 because councilmember tovo is not here. On item number 42, remember this was the one that there wasn't a vote to -- enough votes to postpone it last week but I postponed it anyhow to give people a chance and try to address the concerns that were raised on the dais. And appreciate the additional work from councilmember pool, which I think doubly and Tripoli addresses some of the concerns that were -- I think we're all on the same page, it was making sure that it actually articulated the policy well. It's been posted, version four has been handed out, and I appreciate the colleagues that are going on [11:52:23 AM] the message board to indicate support. And I'd appreciate others doing that so as we go into the meeting people know that it's being supported. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes, and thank you for postponing it. It gave us time to add this additional language to make it clear. I'll go on the message board, but I think I'm fine with the additional language because what it's telling me is the intent is -- the intent is to look at offsets and I want to be clear that staff this had this, it is not about amendmenting anything we had in the past. It's not retrospective, so thank you for doing that. >> Mayor Adler: Absolutely. And we have handled the language several different ways. It's not amending, undermining, altering. I don't remember the language we have, we put in a whole bunch of them. But I think you're right, I think now that's clear. I appreciate your support and I appreciate others going on the message board [11:53:24 AM] and we can move through that item more quickly than on Thursday. The last item was item 45. This is pulled also by councilmember pool relating to the environment. I've handed out a message sheet that basically does two things. The first one was to say, as you will recall last week, as you'll recall, some of the items in the environmental ordinance, I think most of us thought needed to undergo a broader review to measure the impacts so that we can in fact pass and achieve the really significant environmental protections that are offered because we want to achieve them. But at the same time, manager, bringing in other offices that are not environmental offices, development offices or housing office or other [11:54:24 AM] stakeholders that can speak to offset so we're not and a future council is not put in a position to choose because we don't want to choose. We don't think we have to choose and we think we can achieve all the environmental suggestions. And I think that we've gotten a memo from staff that there was one -- it was on some of the big items on the buffer, the 400-foot buffer. Staff at that point I think sent us a memo suggesting that that one also be postponed. That was kind of the open question. So my motion sheet does that. I don't know if I still need to do that or not, but it was prepared before we had seen the memo from staff, and I appreciate staff's further consideration of this. It also specifically says that as part of the postponement it will go through that kind of phase 2 analysis that we had talked about to make sure that we [11:55:26 AM] that is part of the interdepartmental or stakeholder review that happens. And the second amendment that subsequent to work session today I would like for staff and manager to get back to us if possible. We've heard a lot of questions about the criteria manual. Some of the changes you really can't tell what's going to be the impact or what it is we're improving because it says see criteria manual. Except there is no criteria manual set so we don't know what those things are. We had adopted a process for the transportation changes that involved at least some measure of stakeholder involvement and notice with respect to criteria manual. I think that worked really, really well because when we got into adopting the transportation manual there weren't a lot of unknowns and everybody was kind of celebrating together. So that second mission sheet on the back side says basically do the same [11:56:28 AM] process here that you did for the transportation ordinance with respect to adopting the criteria manual. If it's a concern with that if you could reach out and let me know. Councilmember pool, you also pulled this item. >> Pool: Yeah, the item is pretty complex and I thought we would all benefit from hearing a a briefing. On our environmental officer Katie coin is here today and I would like to ask her to come up and take us through what we're voting on this week, what we're not voting on this week and give us an idea of the list of items that we can expect in the coming months. >> That would be good. >> Pool: If you're prepared, come on up. And while they're getting prepared I wanted to ask you, mayor, on your motion sheet number 2 where you mention in the development of the criteria manual you mentioned amendments relating to functional green and green storm water [11:57:28 AM] infrastructure. I think we need to check on that, but I believe those rules already do exist. So we may be able to skip past that -- >> Mayor Adler: So the notes from my staff after talking to your staff indicate to me, so if it's not appropriate then we would take that up. >> Pool: Just makes it easier, yeah. Okay, thanks. >> Kitchen: Can I understand that? Are you talking about taking that out? >> Pool: We already have rules for green -- >> Kitchen: I thought so, yeah. >> Pool: So there isn't a need to say let's get rules for them because they already exist. We just wanted on to check. >> Mayor Adler: This would be on the back side, motion sheet number 2. >> Pool: This is the short one and the long one. >> Kitchen: It would be deleting that. >> Pool: Jim sure staff will make it really, really nice. Ms. Coyne and Ms. Johnson. Good to see you. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Katie Coyne, environmental speaker. Thank you for taking time to speak with us today. We're very excited to what [11:58:29 AM] we've got for y'all and the items that we're certainly in support of getting more time to make sure we're doing our due diligence. Wanted to give you more background before I dive in. In the last three months we've attended or been posted for over 14 different boards, mixes or city council meetings. We've tried to do a lot of work to work with a lot of stakeholders and to this right. There were initially two phases spelled out in the resolution. Per the mayor's request, initially we already punted green field detention as well as urban steep slope detention to phase 2. We per planning commission's recommendation and lots of stakeholder feedback are suggesting that functional green not disincentiving missing middle, get pushed to phase 2 or sooner as well. And we will be working on a timeline to be clear about when you can expect to see balk with all of these items and working with other departments that we will certainly need to work with to make sure we're on the same page. The last item that is most [11:59:29 AM] recent to be shifted to at least staff support of pushing to phase 2 is protections of the Colorado river downstream of longhorn dam. You still have two ordinance packages in front you still have two packages. I'm happy to answer questions if it's useful. So, what's left? The first thing I want to talk about, this is something that's a long time coming. It's a best practice. I wouldn't even call it a paradigm shift. It's really solidifying, codifying what best practice is in community today. So it's saying that for water quality compliance, you have to use green storm water infrastructure in most scenarios. There are carve-outs. And let me just talk a little bit about how that's defined already. We have conventional controls and we have green storm water infrastructure. It's something that you can only [12:00:30 PM] use in very limited scenarios, because it's no longer best practice. We know that best practice is to have controls that do multiple things, not just one thing. Mitigating urban heat. Economic benefits to having these controls be integrated into a site and better designed in a greener way. They're better for urban wildlife habitat. They're better in terms of the benefits to mental and physical health of our community members and there's science behind that. So all of those co-benefits are what we need to think about, especially in a place where land costs as much as it does in Austin, how every acre does more. Just a few statistics on green storm water infrastructure. The criteria is already in our criteria manual for this. It's been in place for a long time. It's been designed by engineers who are licensed. It's been used for many, many years. [12:01:30 PM] So, since 2013 green storm water infrastructure has exceeded conventional controls in the private sector. And for city projects, since 2007, based on council direction, we have been prioritizing using green storm water infrastructure. The carve-outs that exist for this item include, if you have a site that's over 90% impervious cover, you can still use conventional controls. If you have a site that is draining more ten acres, you can use conventional controls. We're talking about larger, more regional systems. If you have a site that has a potentially high pollutant load, you can use conventional controls by right. You can also use an administrative variance process if there's specific site constraints that limit your ability to use green storm water infrastructure. That said, biofiltration ponds are a centralized control that are in the bucket of green storm water infrastructure. [12:02:31 PM] They generally take up around the same footprint as sediment filtration pond. So, in terms of the actual footprint on a site, we're not seeing a whole lot of difference there. The last thing I will say is in urban water sheds, we also have a payment in lieu program. So there's an additional option, and we can elaborate on what criteria you need to meet to be able to use the payment in lieu program that is another way to comply with this code. The last thing I'll say is we did do a lot of planning to look at the impacts of this. We know that for instance, 80% of our affordability in lock projects would already comply with this code. So, without this being on the books. They're either doing payment in lieu, or they're already complying with green storm water infrastructure, as best practiced. So that's green storm water infrastructure. That's the first piece. Second piece is related to the drainage of surface parking [12:03:32 PM] lots, to medians and landscaped areas. So, this is a common sense thing. We don't want to have curbs that keep us from having water running into landscaped areas and medians and parking lots. We've removed a curb requirement. We've removed a storm water irrigation requirement. And we've clarified that we want this to happen where feasible. Which is a streamlining from current practice. And so there's an existing piece of this code that talks about a metric for the goal of how much storm water runs off into these areas. It's hard to quantify. It's hard to review. We're actually making this more simple and allowing for more flexibility, but removing requirements that hinder our ability to do this. Third, no in-channel detention. These are detention basins or depension ponds that are put in the middle of a tributary or a creek.tention ponds that are put in [12:04:32 PM] the middle of a tributary or a creek. It's something that in the last five years, we have one example of these being built. It is not widely used at all. It is very difficult to engineer and it disturbs the ecology of our creeks and tributaries in a way that is really hard to go back from. This limits the private sector from using in-channel detention. It still allows us in public-private partnerships and city projects to use this as a last resort in scenarios where it might make sense, but this is really just not best practice, and is in my mind another cleanup opportunity seeing as it's not widely used today. All right, fourth. Currently, there's wetland protections everywhere in the city except downtown. Wetland protection for lady bird lake is one of the things that's proposed in this. This would extend wetland protection to the critical water quality zone of the lake. It would still exclude the other areas of downtown. Some of the other minor code amendments were things provoce [12:05:34 PM] re posed during codenext. Draft. They are simplifications, streamlinings, reorgs, clarifications, things that actually make the development process cleaner and more clear. One particular item I wanted to call out, we are clarifying that cisterns, for instance, don't have to count toward your impervious coverage police station. So we're trying to make it easier to develop in a green way. And last, I can expand more on the Colorado river protections, and I'll just briefly say that the proposal as it stood was to expand the hazard zone analysis to 400 feet from 100 feet of the ordinary high water mark, to expand the critical water zone from 400 feet, and the reason why we think there is important that I don't want to undersell you the importance of this, is because we know that there are already assets that are being impacted by erosion issues downstream of longhorn dam. [12:06:38 PM] There's $60 million estimated for repairs to follow lane access to -- that is necessary for critical wastewater and energy facilities. We're talking about almost two million in repairs to Tillery streets. We're talking talking about buyouts of homes. We're talking about needing to decommission a pond that is too close to areas that are eroding on the bank. That said, we want to do our due diligence, especially when it comes to generational wealth building and the implications of equity on east side residents. And so, that extension of that timeline is not because we don't think this is a huge priority, but because we want to make sure we're engaging in the right way. Even in best practice. Just wanted to close by saying, there are a few things beyond just the phase 2 items that we've already offered to talk about that are less about code and more about actions we want to take. So, our internal recommendation [12:07:38 PM] from our equity team as well as the planning commission cited the idea of development of a cost- sharing program for affordable developments for us to be able to use some city funds to help offset compliance with water quality and drainage requirements. So, that's something that we're working with legal, we're working with housing and planning folks on a program that would help to mitigate costs of some of these compliance issues. We're also developing scope for a full equity assessment of environmental code, and that's something that's particularly important. We've heard feedback again and again about how important it is to make sure that we have equitable environmental regs in this city, and that we're looking at east side protections in a way that we really haven't historically. And so that is something that we'll be working on in addition to folding all of that in to our strategic plan. So, in closing, what is left in this, in my mind, doesn't have substantive impacts in terms of affordability, development costs, et cetera. It's a long time coming. [12:08:41 PM] The green storm water infrastructure piece, for instance, is something that I think should have been on the books a long time ago. We've been talking about that for over ten years. But we are still very excited about the impact of these items, and we're happy that we have a little bit more time to make sure we're doing all the other pieces in the best way possible. So, thank you. >> Pool: Katie, I wanted to check with you. The requirements for compaction after construction, is that still on that list? >> Yes. Liz Dawson, water shed protection. That is part of the cleanup changes, yes. >> Pool: And you mentioned cleanup. I know there are a number of housekeeping changes in here that are really important to do . When we say housekeeping, it makes it sound like we're being dismissive of it, but sometimes that is really the oil in the engine that makes things move forward without too much friction. So we've got a cleanup in the redevelopment section, some code language on roadway ditches is being cleaned up. [12:09:41 PM] We've got department names on who can administratively approve changes as being cleaned up. There's a reshuffling of lake requirements for critical water quality zone section that's being cleaned up. Code pertaining to trails is being cleaned up. Along with the protections for wetlands and the parking lot runoff, and I think removing the curb so the water can absorb into the landscape is a brilliant idea. And the in-channel detention in the basins, unless there's a capital project where no other basis is available is really important, too. I wanted to highlight those in addition to what Katie has mentioned, to hopefully explain a little more fully about the things that we do hope can be approved. This Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: I appreciate that. I think that was really helpful. I just want to reiterate, too, by suggesting that we do the additional analysis, it was not any indication that I don't [12:10:43 PM] recognize the best practices, even on the -- even the 400 foot, it's something absolutely we need to do as a city downstream of the dam. It's just urging, here, as manager, we've done in other areas before, that would be really helpful if we hear from other departments too on these in addition to the stakeholders, because sometimes it brings an additional perspective, and I know that you were in the awkward place presenting to the planning commission when they were saying, can we consider some offsets. But you weren't able to do that because of the limited nature of the direction that the council had given, because it was too focused down to allow that. So, I appreciate the recommendation, and I intend -- hopefully we just double back on that, so at the next council, if not this council, probably at this point the next council, is able to effect these as soon as possible. [12:11:43 PM] But consider things like with the 400 foot, there's some properties that the buffer covers the entire property, because it extends to the opposite side of first street. So that's going to be a taking of somebody, so we need that to assess that there be some properties -- potential taking of properties. We also have some people where there's going to be a lot of property that's taken by this. And we may be able to obviate those kinds of claims, or at least assist if we were to allow transfer of development and entitlements in that area to somewhere else on the property. But those kinds of ideas and suggestions, and I don't mean necessarily those, because I haven't studied them either. But just to give you a chance to be able to, you and the city at large, to be able to address that. >> Pool: So we will have two versions inning backup, and the one includes the protections that you were just talking about, and version 2 excludes them, so that staff can do the [12:12:44 PM] additional time. And from a conversation that we've had so far, and staff's interest in doing more work, I think if I make a motion, I will make a motion for version 2, which would align with the comments that you're making. And that our staff have made. So version 2. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. I do support your motion that you made on the critical quality on longhorn dam. I know that this area has been neglected for years. Especially further down from the top. This needs a lot of love. It was a big industrial site, a big industrial dump site, should I say. And it's still being used as one like that. And we do really need to look at cleaning all of that up. [12:13:45 PM] My biggest concern was my constituents, and I've heard a lot from them here lately about them losing their economic ability and their generational wealth that they have here and their investments. Some of these houses have owners have been here over 60 years. So it's very alarming when it came out. And so I'm glad that y'all are taking the path, the second way, so that we can get all the stakeholders, so that we can have a discussion. But we know that we need the infrastructure on the other side of Chavez. A lot of that is just going directly into the creek, and we need to really address that issue, because it's causing a lot of erosion. There's been a lot of complaints about the lack of infrastructure to take care of these type of problems. [12:14:46 PM] I know it's going to be a very expensive investment, but there's a lot of growth going in there, and we've got a lot of potential. We've got a hotel there, we've got low-income apartments there that's going to be coming down, and no telling what else. It's an area that's going to develop, and I'm sure that we would recover our costs through all this development that's going to be happening down there. So, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right, colleagues. Thank you very much for this. Council member vela. >> Vela: I just wanted to -- we're working on a handful of amendments. We've been working with staff on them. Not anything major, just trying to make sure to build in some flexibility. One of them, for example, is the potential credit for the use of pervious cement with the [12:15:52 PM] percentage that's impervious. I'll be posting those on the message board as soon as possible. I just want to thank staff so much for working with us, and I also wanted to reiterate -- I know council member pool mentioned it. But something as simple as the taking the curbs off of the landscaping. I mean, honestly, that seems like it would save money and add additional environmental benefit, a small change, but an important one. And again, I appreciate staff for bringing those kinds of items before us. >> Pool: Could you be sure to post your -- that would be great. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you very much. Colleagues, it is 12:15. We still have to cover -- and I recommend we do it after lunch, and after executive session, we're going to do a short executive session. But after lunch, we'll do the pulled items, the mwwe programs. Also council member tovo's [12:16:53 PM] property ifc that she's pulled. Those two presentations. But first, staff has asked to speak with us with respect to the tenant organizing issue, item number 25. So, it's 12:15 now. I'm going to recommend that we grab lunch and get settled, and at 12:30 remotely, we convene the executive session. Hopefully we can take care of that. 12:30-12:45. And then let's reconvene the work session to do the other items, say, at 1:00. That sound okay? >> Fuentes: Mayor, do we know what time the Dutch bike presentation will be? >> Mayor Adler: We could lead the presentation, we could do the two pulled items and do the presentations. But we'll be doing it -- >> Fuentes: I don't know if we have a time certain with them. >> We didn't have a time certain, but I know they have a guest in from the Netherlands. [12:17:55 PM] >> Mayor Adler: If that's the case, then we'll go ahead and start with that presentation. All right. And maybe we'll do the pulled items, and the last presentation. >> Pool: So, really quick, just to go over the pulled items, 34, 45, 41. Start with the bikeway briefing. >> Mayor Adler: Start with the bikeway, then do potentially 34, 35. >> Pool: And the animal services. >> Mayor Adler: 41 and the animal sessions. >> Pool: And 12:30 for executive session. >> Kitchen: Mayor, I'm sorry. What are we doing on executive session? >> Mayor Adler: About the organizing. >> Council member, I can follow up with you, too. This is something I can maybe send a memo out as well. >> Kitchen: Well, you could send [12:18:55 PM] a memo out. That would be fine. But basically, it was follow-up on the fact that we had -- there had been a recommendation made -- not recommendation, but discussed in the past the civilian positions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Kitchen: That changed along the way, but we never got an explanation about that. It was part of the conversation about -- you know, we pulled out -- we made the forensics free standing. We were also at that time talking about making the call center free standing. And so we just need an update on what happened with that. >> Just the short answer is those conversations continue. We have not pulled it out because if we did at this point in time, we would be in violation of the state law. And so, it's kind of a matter of when, and we're continuing to discuss it internally. >> Kitchen: Okay. We just need an update on that. >> I'll provide a thorough memo. [12:19:55 PM] >> Mayor Adler: We're now going to go into closed session, to take up one item. Council will discuss legal issues related to item number 25, ordinance amending city code with reference to tenant organizing. Without objection, we will go into executive session. We'll convene remotely at 12:30, and we'll endeavor to be back in open session at 1:00. The time is 12:20 right now. [12:49:32 PM] [Executive session] [1:13:14 PM] >>> >> >>> [2:03:30 PM] >> Alter: Yesterday I had the pleasure of hosting bike nine here at city hall and they gave some notes to thank us and I named to share some of those with you. So I'll pass them around and after everyone has seen them if you would like to keep one, please keep one. They're really cute. They thank us for things like our parks and our good job and it's always good to have young people come to city hall and be engaged. So I wanted to share those. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. It's my understanding, mayor pro tem, is that you put a lot of them on the dais there at city hall and some of them felt actually pretty comfortable sitting there. [Laughter]. >> Alter: Yeah. They particularly liked the microphones. But they didn't get to touch them. [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: That happens to all of us when we make it on to the dais, I think. Okay. We're going to go ahead and reconvene. We're out of closed session. In closed session we discussed legal issues [2:04:30 PM] related to item number 25,. It is 2:04 and we're going to go ahead and reconvene. Can you make councilmember pool a panelist? She can't turn on her camera or her mic. So she can join us. We have a quorum that's present. We'll start with the bicycle action -- presentation. We're going to try to hit the pulled items and then we'll conclude with the animal services presentation. Manager? >> Would you like for me to kick us off? >> Go ahead. >> Fantastic. I'm very excited about this next item. We are celebrating 10 years since the first think bike workshop that set the city of Austin on a course to [2:05:32 PM] incorporate key Dutch mobility principles into our very own bicycle network. Ideas such as focusing on the practical short trips that people are more like will I to take on bike and building for more comfort to attract the most amount of people to cycling. I had a chance to visit the Netherlands in 2019 with councilmember harper-madison and I know council member Fuentes has recently been able to experience that trip as well. I found it informative in the number of people who cycle and what that does to make a neighborhood, city, entire country more liveable. One of my most memorable experiences there was getting passed by a woman I believe to be 80 years old and I just love that as people are more mobile and more inclined to ride their bike in safer bicycle network capacities, it's a great way to stay connected to your friends, your support network and just to get out and be physical and stay healthy for a nice long life. Today 10 years since that pivotal workshop in 2012 here in Austin we now have [2:06:33 PM] 236 miles of all ages and abilities bikeways and more than 16 protected intersections. But we have a lot more to do. I invite my colleagues to share briefly their experiences as well. I think councilmember harper-madison, I see you are here. Would you like to make the next remarks and if council member Fuentes would like to she about that trip or any other colleagues, I invite that commentary now. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. I appreciate it. I would like to share some remarks, but I'd like to start with a video and this is something I comment about often when I tell people about the experience. Getting to see it, there's nothing like seeing and feeling and experiencing comprehensive mobility. And I remember that really beautiful, well dressed older woman passing you up distinctly. [Laughter]. I really appreciated having that experience as well. But I think ctm is prepared to show y'all a short clip of a video that I took while we were abroad. [2:07:50 PM] I just found myself pretty consistency fascinated by watching all the modes of transportation happen at the same time with very little queue. It was like it was just a part of the cadence of how people moved through the city. It was just interesting and definitely inspirational. And one of the things I recognized as we were on the trip is how frequently people talked about having to make the sacrifice, to make the commitment to building a city that was built for pedestrians. There were a couple of instances where they talked about, you know, having to sacrifice investments that they had already made on infrastructure when they realized it just wasn't the path forward. And they changed course and recalibrated and this is what you get out of that. And I hope we can take some inspiration from it. Thank you, I appreciate that. Council member Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you, councilmember harper- madison. I too have a video recap of [2:08:51 PM] my experience, but I would encourage you to check out my social media channels for that recap. And it was particularly of the urban mobility study tour that I had the opportunity to experience in the Netherlands just a few weeks ago. First I want to give a special shout-out to Lillian and alaska for all their support and guidance and assistance. I joined other U.S. Officials on that trip to better understanding infrastructure that they have in the Netherlands and to see the connection of what it truly means to have a people-oriented community. That 10-minute city, which I firmly believe that Austin should become where everyone has access to their grocery store and their park and workplace all within 10 minutes, and just really having and understanding the importance of street design. I did see a fair amount of parking garages, so I feel like I could probably talk to you at length of all the different styles of parking garages and how that looks. But it's exciting because when we have project connect [2:09:53 PM] here N Austin and whenever that gets built, the opportunity we have in that first and last mile of connection. So truly, thank y'all for that experience. I am excited for the policy work that my office and I will undertake in the coming years to better support our bikeway network here in Austin and looking to hearing the update. >> Ellis: Thank you. And I remember one of the other informational pieces I learned while in the nether lands was because whether cyclists are tolerated in a space or if they're invited into a space where you feel like people of all ages and abilities can utilize this space and kids can ride their bike along their parents and still be safe in this place. And it just so happened that some of the community led efforts to partner with project connect and add another mobility bond was first brought to my attention and so I think there was something really immersive about being in that moment and having our community at home saying they want more spaces like this really made me say while we're doing project connect, let's go big and add in more of that first [2:10:54 PM] mile, last mile connectivity and really fill in the gaps. So with that it's my pleasure to have Nathan Wilkes with the Austin transportation department and Richard. The city's esteemed guest from the Netherlands to give us a quick view over of the city's accomplishments this past 10 years and what we have to look forward to as we kick off the think bike 2022 workshop tomorrow. >> Thank you, council member, interim transportation director Richard Mendoza. I'm going to cablely hand it over to our esteemed guest Richard teravas. >> Thank you. I'm very happy to be here again after 10 years, we're sitting in the same room, to meet you all to start the think bike network 10 years ago. It was amazing work you did in this city. And hopefully we can aspire for the second step. [2:12:02 PM] >> I will kick off the presentation and really excited to share this back to you all. And the Dutch delegation here, because they gave us kind of the gift of their well-found wisdom and knowledge about how they're integrated mobility systems work. And we listened really well, I think. And I think we made an amazing thing happen and y'all are certainly part of that story and happy to reflect that back to you all as well. Is the clicker working? So we'll cover the beginning in 2012. The story since and then just a little preview of what we're kind of tackling in the mix of the atx walk bike roll update which includes the bike plan and the issues we're facing today. So I'll let Richard take us back in time to what happened in 2012. >> Thank you, Nathan. [2:13:04 PM] This is a picture of the situation before. You only see some paint on the street so it's [indiscernible] Cycle. The next step is able to cycle and the next is to make it affordable for all ages and abilities. So 2012 in the city where I live, Chris Riley and Monique Beaudet were there. They say it's very quiet and safe, like cycling in a [indiscernible]. So I believe it is very good from the U.S. Coming to our Dutch cities to see how it can be done. It's the same table. >> Same day, October 25th. >> But more gray hair, together with three other people, annick from the city. And a lot of people behind. [2:14:04 PM] So those are all the people from the city and the consultants who worked very hard the last 10 years in this city to make it bikable for the first step. So some impressions of the workshop, hard working two days, very nice to see and hard working in the night sometimes. And we do the same tomorrow. And bike riding, so you have some very nice cycle tracks already around the water, the lake, lady bird. Yeah, it was nice to see the city and look at what is good and what can be better. And to make our cities in 40 years better. So I think 100 years ago it was better cycling in the U.S. Than in the Netherlands, so it was the final 40 years, but now we are 40% of all the trips in the city are made by bike. And now we are making the [2:15:06 PM] second [indiscernible] By the electric bike, the mayor of your city, together with the queen on the Orange bike from New Zealand. So the -- all ages and abilities, so everyone on the bike, 80 years, 90 years. So research from the U.S. Says that 60 people of people from Austin will ride a bike on the protected bike lane. Looking for optimal mix, we are integrated thinkers and integrated planners and we work together. So tomorrow we are thinking about how public transit and bike. We are thinking the best bike plan is [indiscernible] So we think also about the cause and cycling and walking to feed the transit and to make it better on the short distances. So it's possible to reach the goal of 15% up until two miles and we are 40%, but it's not everywhere flat in [2:16:08 PM] the city. It's nice. I think it's reachable. And the short trips you see the map here with mopac and the interstate highway with the east and north-south trips between the university, one of the biggest in the U.S. To the downtown area. So a lot of opportunities to step over from car to bike. And also investing in cycling is also good for the car. If you get rid of the short car trips in the city it's also good for the capacity of the streets androids. And feeder transit, tomorrow Eric will give the workshop about feeding the transit within two miles from every station and you're working very hard in the city with transit lines. I'm very proud of it. And in 10 years we've come back to see all the realized things. [2:17:08 PM] This is an example and another workshop is about road safety so some intersections can be made better. So we have an example of the two level roundabout with the upper level in red so you are actually using the red color without conflicts with the car. So that can be one of the solutions in your city. So the challenge is to make cycling convenient, practical and safe. 10 years ago we made some networks, so they thought it strange to make a network for cars, but yeah, we are thinking about integrating networks and also the combination of transit and bike. And the thing is in the middle there's no exits, no catchment area and there's the university. But in the meantime you make the transit lines also [indiscernible] The university. And we had another workshop 10 years ago, south Lamar corridor, to make it [2:18:11 PM] affordable for the people to cross the road and cycling and walking, including the full right-of-way and also some ideas for the development, people. >> All right. So I wanted to briefly cover kind of what was covered in that workshop because it really became the pillars of what we took on after that. So this is kind of a footnote but right after the workshops, the national color for bike lanes was chosen to be green, which I don't know how you do that in concrete or asphalt. It maybe looks like sewage. So we chose to go Dutch, so that's just a funny anecdote. Third street was the first place we put that on the ground, wand the transportation criteria manual that we just adopted that's now our standard color. So in the 2014 bike plan we crafted this kind of policy pivot from the 2009 bike plan that was how do we have the city Mike bicycling better, and we flipped it around to say how can cycling as a tool make the [2:19:11 PM] city better and meet the city's goals. And that's going to a big focus of this workshop in 2022. We envision that first all ages and abilities network, which was protected bike lanes, plus neighborhood quiet streets plus crossing major intersections plus urban trails. And they told us to catch shortcuts but I couldn't figure out the units that he had on the slide so we made our own and this is where the short trips are. And we planned a network on top of those short trips. We also looked at feeding transit. This is the like lane stop so that interradius is the walking radius and 16 times Billinger is the bicycling radius. So north Lamar, south congress, montopolis blue line, how can we feed transit more effectively with bicycle radius in addition to walking radius. We also looked at how fast can we make the change. So this was in 2014 we didn't have the 2016 bond or [2:20:11 PM] anything like that, but we looked at Sivia and in three years they achieved the share that Portland, Oregon did over 20 years of investment and it's because they built an all ages and abilities bike network and they had a huge bike share and they did it very quickly. So we said we wanted to model on that kind of paradigm. If you can go to the next slide. So we did an analysis on if we cut the 15% of short trips under three miles by bicycle, where that network was, we found that we could reduce the number of motor vehicle trips to the downtown by seven percent. Next slide. We looked at that at that time the north mopac -- the north mopac project, the managed lane project was a 200-million-dollar regional project that also brought about 20,000 trips, motor vehicle trips to downtown. Investing in the whole bicycle network, not just a project, was very equal in terms of cost benefit as that network investment. [2:21:13 PM] Next. But it also came with all these other additional benefits beyond pure mobility. So direct savings costs to people that are traveling, health benefits, carbon benefits and next slide, please. So know the modern era -- next. So in the buildup to the 2016 bond, the number one request through the mobility atx public engagement was fully funding that all ages and abilities network. So 2016 we voted as a community on $720 million, our most Progressive at the time mobility bond. Huge testament to a lot of people here. And that really started this age of the programs where instead of named projects, these are programs and I'll talk more about it in a second. And then in 2020, we reuped that again and said that we had more to do and this was an even more Progressive type of mix of infrastructure at 420 million. This chart is amazing because it shows in the [2:22:14 PM] green line the cumulative investment for bicycle and trail in the city's history back to 1998. And you can see in 2016 it eclipsed everything before that. In 2020 bumped it up nearly again. So we're on this exponential growth of trying to tackle this infrastructure that wasn't invested in. And you can see the foundation before that leap was our participation in the green line project which brought us the first study tours. The think bike event in 2013 and the bicycle plan adoption in 2014 that laid the foundation to us getting there. So the programs I feel particularly passionate about this, this is the age of 2016 and 2020 bonds. So programs instead of named projects generally because named projects have a place when you start talking about some big ones. But programs follow the prioritization plans, they're flexible to seasonal opportunity. We can write 100 page white paper on how powerful this can be in the modern age of these programs. [2:23:15 PM] It allows for accountability and transparency and trust building with the public to we do what we say and we deliver that and we warranty our work. And it allows like the specialization to build capacity building in these areas. It's very tricky to build these integrated mobility system to we have a teamwork woulding on urban trails, we have a team working on trails. These are all unique issues. We really depend on our public engagement and public processes for project development. This is one of the things I'm most proud of and a huge credit to lord darrenfield our program manager, annick Beaudet who chartered the public processes before. 200 projects over the last 15 years that had public engagements. One 30 miles of streets not one of them removed. All of them made better because we listen hard when we take ideas to the public. So this is a quick kind of time lapse of what the [2:24:16 PM] network was like. So back in 2010, 2012, this is again to the all aims and abilities standards. So your 80- year-old grandparents should be able to bike with your eight-year-old kid. And you can see the network is deeply fragmented. It doesn't exist. There's not options for people to get from a to B. So Mueller development first section, 2012, a protected bike lane. They've done an amazing job there. So I'm going to share pictures of what things look like before, which some of us may not remember. So this is west campus Rio grande and we've got somebody emoting to us with a video of use rates in west campus that look like another country. 2012 to 2014 you can see a lot of things coming online. The drag used to look like this back when I was in college. Now it looks like this. I think it's going to change again in the not too distant future. So walnut creek trail, great eight mile trial, the Obamacare of course, that [2:25:16 PM] was a did example of a named project. 2014 to 2016 you can see things starting -- this is right when we found out that we have a lot more resource. Take the Dutch advice of spending more money on bikes. Third street, y'all remember your front door. This is what it used to look like, one and two-way, three and four lanes. Now it looks like this obviously. 2016 to 2018 you can see we're really starting to ramp up the program. It takes a long time to hire the staff, build the capacity, start developing the projects, conduct those public transportations. This is the brink over Barton creek along mopac, solving a big barrier to the southwest. Huge kudos to txdot. This was like a 15-million-dollar grant funded collaboration with them. 2020 you can see the effect of the 2016 bond now, like the dashed lines here are stuff that's active, but not on the ground. Again back in the Mueller development, this is Zach Scott street, the new [2:26:18 PM] section. And this is the retrofit on the old section that was first built 10 years prior and all the kids and family is biking to map he willwood elementary and it's amazing to see a picture like that. That was sent to us. Shoal creek boulevard used to look like this. Now it looks like this. Intersections, we spend more money on intersections, they're trickier, so we have this nice get coverage and have quality. Have our cake and eat it too. Y'all were a huge part of this one, but it's hard to remember what it was like on congress before 2020, right? On the bridge. This was the cone version. Y'all told us to do it very quickly. And then we were painting it. This was right next to the ghost bike memorial. And we're working to make it even better. Terry road down in dove springs this was a four and five lane neighborhood street with kids living like front doors, 50 to 60 miles per hour travel speeds. And this is what it's like [2:27:19 PM] now. Much calmer, more appropriate street. Plaza saltillo, big collaboration with capmetro to get this right. They shifted their tracks for us. They moved the private development envelope a little and now this is what it looks like. We've got affordable housing in that development as well. Downtown station, and in 2020 we met our 50% all anxiety and ability buildout goal six months late, right in the middle of a pandemic with supply shortages, but I feel really proud that we were able to bend and ramp up the production of all those projects and conversations to meet that. So from 2020 to 2022, even more projects. Peyton gin and Ohlen, this is in north Austin. This is an amazing transformation, rain gardens, protected bike lanes, lots of great response from the community ambassadors as part of atx [2:28:20 PM] walk bike roll as people talk about this intersection. Yager lane, I know some of you are watching this very closely. I think we had a public meeting and two weeks later we had amazing partners that are very quick in the way they can make things happen. We were in construction. This had no sidewalk and some serious safety issues. Longhorn dam, this is a picture from the '80s when the Jersey barriers went in because somebody drove off -- out that guardrail. This is what it was like for decades. Because of that incident, narrow non-ada sidewalks and this is what we were able to do with our programmatic approaches. 2022-24 so we're now looking into the future and some exciting things to look at, longhorn dam wishbone bridge is almost 90% designed right now. It's going to have a tunnel to Guerrero park. We did the south Lamar corridor plan or the first visions of it, which became a real corridor plan which [2:29:21 PM] became a half billion dollar corridor program on nine corridors and those are going to construction, this is a rendering for south Lamar. Congress bridge obviously was in the -- congress avenue was in the 2020 bond so like this next step will likely be a reality taking what y'all asked us to do for the next level. And then with project connect and then with project connect, planning how we feed transit with our programmatic approaches is a very exciting time. So, kind of wrapping up here, this is Amsterdam's bike network. These are all the same scales. New Amsterdam, which is new York. Their bike network and ours will not be so different in terms of how fine grain, and the quality will be higher. But we'll be getting there. And just really quickly, on think bike 2022. So the Dutch have heard it now, but we'll have 145 community members of all different stripes, city staff, and we'll get to tell this story about [2:30:22 PM] this amazing kind of transformation and where the knowledge came from. We'll let the Dutch give us a 2.0 workshop. And the three workshops that we're going to take on is with walk bike roll, we've been hearing about all these other intersectional planning issues. So, affordability, land use, climate, shade. Those are the kind of things, how we connect to transit. And then infrastructure safe system. So we have a vision zero office now. We didn't have that ten years ago, and the Dutch are the best in the world at the safe systems approach. And then last, how do we feed transit with bikes. And to close, of course, a picture of a very famous bike ride. This is internationally famous. But thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. >> Fuentes: I will say that was a real thing when I was in the Netherlands. Everyone would bring up, oh, your mayor rode the bike with our queen. [2:31:28 PM] >> Thank you so much for the presentation. I'll just have a couple more closing comments. I know there's colleagues that will have other statements. But that design of the longhorn dam bridge moved so fast, I swear, someone had the plans in their back pocket, and the second there was money to do it, someone just said, I've already thought about this. So we really appreciate people moving fast on that. I do want to acknowledge, you know, it does take community partners. It's going to take txdot. It's going to take campo getting more involved in this type of planning. The central Texas regional mobility authority and, of course, the project connect team really making sure that we're looking at creative ways to not be excluding bikes and pedestrians from these public spaces, because the roads are public spaces as well. I know I have various specific projects to my district that people love, like the bridge over Barton creek, the violet crown trail, and I have folks all the way as far south as meridian trying to advocate for using the shared use path. So I know we all have community members that are continually [2:32:29 PM] coming up with good ideas for this type of infrastructure. But I just, above all else, just want to thank our community that keeps supporting transportation bonds and mobility bonds, because without their support, they're really just ideas. But people are really starting to accept that this is a safe space for them, and that they can get more creative with their smaller trips. >> Mayor Adler: This is an incredible presentation, and I'm happy that you've gathered this all in one place to be able to show the timeline. You know, congratulations to the staff, not only for getting this done, but as I recall, when we did the 2016 bond, there was a lot of discussion about how quickly we could get that placed, and the council's instruction was to get it all done in eight years. And there were a lot of people that didn't think that that would happen. But it's happening, and it's happening pretty close to the [2:33:29 PM] schedule. And it's happening in a way that is extraordinarily transparent and open for everyone to be able to see. I'm not sure we've had a bond that could be tracked in realtime the way that the 2016 bond was set up. And I think it's become kind of the model for how we report bonding in other disciplines. But everybody had some pictures, and you had the pictures, council member harper-madison. I have three I wanted to show, if ctm could pull those up. I also had the opportunity to make the trip to northern Europe to do a bicycle tour with the secretary of transportation and with the then mayor of south Bend, now the secretary of transportation. You had a picture, if you pull that one back up. You go to the other two. Oops. We missed it there for a second. There are two that show the [2:34:30 PM] bicycle garage. There was a picture that you had in the packet that I just want to draw attention to. That's a good picture. There was a similar one -- those two for just a second. The discussion with respect to bicycles and whether people would ride them in Texas is something that we have discussed for ten years since it started back in 2012. In doing that trip, I was always taken by the pictures of what it looked like in Amsterdam in the early '70s and in the late '60s, where the city was as car-centric as Austin. Had the same kind of congestion issues that we have. And there's nothing just inherent about those countries or that part of the world. But when a community gets [2:35:31 PM] together, and I think precipitated in northern Europe by some pretty tragic accidents involving children, to make the bicycle network safe, and then realizing as soon as it became safe, everybody started using it. This is a structured parking garage in Amsterdam with I think 27,000 bicycles in it. If you go to the other picture of the same thing. It's just -- it's an amazing thing to see. I'm sure that everybody sees it on their tour, but it just goes to show what good utilization looks like, when something is safe for people to use. And the recurrent thing that you always hear when you start talking about Amsterdam or Copenhagen or Oslo is that that's not Texas. But again, the pictures in Oslo and in Copenhagen in the late '60s and early '70s, the traffic on the streets look exactly like it, like it is in Austin. But you always hear the question [2:36:31 PM] that -- well, you know, we can't ride bicycles in Texas because it's too hot to do that. Now you can show the next picture, because I carried this in my wallet and kept showing it to people for four years straight. This is a street in Amsterdam, in the snow. And people are out -- it's just a question of making sure you wear the right clothes. But still, the system -- the system still works. Thank you. And you can take the pictures off. The chart that you show, that shows the level of bicycle mobility choice being made, being virtually constant at just over 1% in our city, all the way from 1990 until, you know, up to eight to ten years ago, and contrast that picture with the other slide. You don't have any page numbers on your slide, or I would call out page numbers. But just the real increase that started occurring with the 2016 [2:37:35 PM] bond. As you recall, when we did the 2016 bond, and did it at $720 million, there was a lot of -- that was a really -- a moment of decision and choice for the city. Up to that point, cumulatively, in the preceding 20 years, our city had done about $632 million in bond funding for transportation projects in total, cumulatively for a 20-year period of time. And as I recall, when we were doing the 2016 bond, there was a lot of discussion about first, should we do it at all? And if we did it, what should the amount be? And there were a lot of people then that were suggesting that it should be $100 million, or $150 million. But the community and this council, it's council and the beginning of the 10-1 council elected to go to $720 million, which was incredibly ambitious project at the time, more than [2:38:35 PM] we had done in the preceding 20 years, all at once. And it passed overwhelmingly in our community, and I'm excited to see the pictures of what's going to happen, as that 2016 bond gets built out through 2024. And following it up in 2018 for the bond. The bond in 2020, I really appreciate the leadership, council member Ellis has chaired the mobility committee. Council member kitchen has chaired the mobility committee for the first six years of the 10-1 council. But then the entire council, the members that have served on campo and on transportation and pushed this agenda, the members that have served on cap metro and have pushed this. I think it is correct to refer to this period as the golden age of mobility for this city in terms of advancements. When we were looking at the bicycle network in 2014-2015, it was almost aspirational. [2:39:36 PM] We had people that were beginning to see what it could be and planning that started, but the decisions that we've made accelerated the completion of that from something that would have been maybe into the 2030s to a place where 50% of the network has been built out at this point, and the projection is that in may 2025 will complete the entire 400 miles in the network. It's something to be really, really proud of. When we look back at the 10-1 council and the contributions that it's made to this city, and certainly everything we did was built on the shoulders of actions and planning that came before us. But in this period of time, when you look back at the 10-1 council, the work we did with mobility and mobility choices in advancing the city, working with the staff motivated to deliver that to the community, has been [2:40:40 PM] absolutely remarkable. I've had the opportunity to accept on behalf of this city awards associated with that work. We're recognized for that work, and it's just really proud to have been a part of that. Congratulations to the staff. Thank you for the mentorship that's come to us from the Netherlands. And I'll just conclude with the picture of me and the queen. Amazing to see her get on a bicycle, long dress, high-heeled shoes, jumping on top of the bicycle. My staff, as I explained to the group over lunch, was incredibly nervous about me doing that bicycle ride. And their concern was really simple. My only instruction was don't ever bicycle in front of the queen. And the reason for that was that they knew that I would probably fall off, and when I fell off, [2:41:41 PM] they didn't want me to disturb the queen and cause her to fall off. So I always had to stay like half a bicycle behind her for that. And I managed to make it. The queen, of course, made it. And she was incredibly gracious and everything that you would want a queen to be. Council member kitchen, and then council member Renteria. >> Kitchen: Thank you, mayor. I'm just very proud of what everyone together has done, you know, with our staff and all of us on council. As you mentioned, the bond that really kicked off a lot of what we did. I can't say anything more other than I do want to point out just two projects. One of them is the Barton hills bicycle way on Barton hills drive, and I'm very, very proud of that. That was put in place after a [2:42:44 PM] really horrible accident. And the -- it's really helped slow down the road, plus it's just a great connection through the neighborhood to the south and to the north. And so I really appreciate the efforts that our staff did to get that in place so quickly. I have to give kudos to county member Renteria. He and I have been working for a long time on berkstrom spur, and we're finally to the point where that's going to be a mixed use area or trail and we're going to have bicycle and pedestrian and other things along it and I'm very excited about that. So, council member Renteria, I know you've been working on that for a very long time, and I'm pleased we're getting to the point where we're going to see it happen. So, thank you to everybody. [2:43:44 PM] >> Renteria: I want to thank my colleagues for supporting this with that bond election in 2016, and the voters. That convinced me to buy my bike. I have an electric one. I'm 72 years old, so I have bad knees. So I bought my bike, and last month, I exceeded my goal. I completed 4,000 miles on my electric bike. So thank you for building such beautiful structure on the longhorn bike path. We started that two years into my council, and they came and said it was just a simple bridge connected from one point to the other. And I said, this is great. We really need it. It's not safe to ride your bike, and that's one of the videos there that shows you how narrow that little -- I had to get out and walk across that bridge, [2:44:44 PM] because pedestrians were also jogging back and forth on that. When we went to the voters to do that improvement, they came back with that wishbone. My goodness, our plan was only going to be $3 million. This one, the voters said no, we want a $14 million one. So, they passed it. I was so happy, you know, that it passed. People really want to see this kind of infrastructure to make sure that safety comes first for everyone, including our children. And that's what's most important, you know, that scares the parents the most is having their children riding a bicycle in a very unsafe environment. And this is very important, that we continue that. I feel so good knowing that when [2:45:45 PM] I leave the dais, there's going to be people pushing it on. For those that are going to stay on, thank you very much, because I'm just waiting for that whole improvement to happen. The waller creek, and also the green line that's going on the east side, and connecting to go valley and that line out there. So, we're putting a lot of resources in there, and our goal is to include all of those lines. So, thank you. For a 72- year-old man that's had a lot of health problems, it saved my life. Let me tell you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else on this? Thank you very much. Congratulations to you and to everybody in the back rooms that are working on this. Great job. >> Yeah. So acknowledge, there's literally a village. Those bonds built the capacity [2:46:45 PM] to do the work. There are, like, literally hundreds of people working to shift the way we think and develop our mobility system. So, it's a pleasure to work with all of them. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right, let's hit some of the pulled items and then we'll get to the last presentation. Colleagues, we have gone over some of the pulled items, but certainly we had some members that weren't here, in case you wanted to raise anything. Item number 23, the ability to cure was the topic of the executive session. I also indicated that as part of that conversation that I would be pulling in the other tenant one, probably with a compromise on the issue of establishing the right to cure, but having less than the 21 days proposed by some stakeholders. [2:47:46 PM] Perhaps limiting its application to units above a certain size, at least for six months, to assess whether or not there are, in fact, problems or challenges, allowing for further work after that. If there's not putting in a provision that does not allow the cost to cure to repeated violations, like bringing in unauthorized guests or something like that. We're working on the wording on that. But we'll hopefully post something this afternoon or tomorrow. I think it's going to have the agreement of some of the stakeholders on both sides. Maybe not everybody. But what I'll recommend to the dais as the sweet spot. >> Tovo: Mayor, can I just ask for clarification? I'm sorry, I had to step off the dais. I went to the Austin Ed fund luncheon. Just to be clear, you talked about this earlier and laid out this proposal so we can go back? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Tovo: Okay, great. I'll go back to the tape and watch that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: We also briefly [2:48:47 PM] went over the balancing development requirement issue, and the people who were here this morning spoke in favor of it. No one identified any ongoing concerns that weren't addressed in the rewrite. And then we also hit 45 where staff was recommending that we push into the phase 2 analysis the downstream -- the dam downstream buffer, and I handed out an amendment that I would be bringing as I did this morning. Both 1 and 2. Council member pool pointed out that in number 2 it didn't need to say the green infrastructure. Those regs are already established. She's correct about that. So, we'll publish a v2 of that motion that takes out the green [2:49:49 PM] infrastructure. And that's how far we'd gotten this morning. >> Tovo: So, can staff advise me about the rules process? It's been a while since we talked about it. I'm not sure -- mayor, I have to give a little thought, and maybe you can just give me one or two lines. I don't want to backtrack us. But since the rules don't come back to council, can you help me understand exactly what you're suggesting here? Are you suggesting that we take some of these out of the ordinance process and put into rules? >> Mayor Adler: What I was suggesting was that in some of the ordinances we're approving, the standard says see the criteria manual. Except there is no criteria manual. It hasn't been developed yet. So there's no notices as to what they would be. So the questions that I'm hearing from people are similar to the questions I heard back when we were doing the transportation ordinance we passed. So we adopted at that time a procedure for doing the criteria manual associated with the transportation. And it worked really well. It was an open process. People got notice. [2:50:54 PM] There was an airing of issues. So basically, all that does is pull back here exactly the same process that we do that worked so well in the development of transportation criteria manual. >> Tovo: Okay. I understand that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: And as another piece of it, you're saying that the requirements wouldn't take effect until the rules are finalized? >> Mayor Adler: Correct. The same process. It's identical, as best we could to what we did in transportation. >> Tovo: All right. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Yep. Mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. I had a lunch commitment as well. I wanted to just -- for 42, I really appreciate the amendments and the clarity that was added with your co-sponsor. I'm not sure whose was which in the last version, but I think that added a lot of clarity, which I really appreciated. [2:51:55 PM] I'm not sure if I'm going to have the amendment or not. I do want to throw out a particular case that I think is challenging within this framework to think about. And that is the urban interface code, which is designed to help us to harden structures that are in the wildland urban interface. And, you know, what we're finding is we implemented -- it's not particularly extra costly, and you won't be able to get insurance if you're not doing this. But I'm not sure if I want to give offsets for more development in the wildlife urban interface for following the code to harden when the problem is that you shouldn't be building in those areas in the first place. And so, I don't know how to -- and it is within the last two years that it would have been implemented depending on how you define that. I'm concerned about how you [2:52:56 PM] handle that one, because I don't want to suddenly unleash a whole lot more development in one area, where we might have zoning, assuming particular con astronauts or other kinds of things. And I don't -- I'm not sure how to address that within the confines of that, and I think there's also stuff that happens in floodplain areas, you know, particularly in the south where the regulations are not just some, you know, wish list of council. They're really about public safety. And so, I don't know exactly how within the framework that you've laid out, how to -- how do we address that? Because they're very much public safety. At their core, both cases are extreme, and we don't necessarily want to be incentivizing more development in those areas just for the sake of more development. So I don't know if you have more [2:53:57 PM] thoughts on that. >> Mayor Adler: Hadn't thought about this until you raised it. I think that's a really good point, though. I think we could probably come up with language that says to the staff, as they're developing this framework, to be sensitive to that issue and to give us whatever the appropriate recommendation is with respect to those kinds of situations. But let's specifically call it out so that staff specifically has to address that fact pattern. >> Alter: Yeah, I mean, or they're not going in and adding in offsets in those areas. It's going to be a lot of work to do this, and I think as we're trying to prioritize things, I'm not sure that the added value of adding more development in those areas and trying to do that is necessarily going to be where that added value is. >> Mayor Adler: Totally clear, including the ability for staff to say we shouldn't be adding any new development in this area. What they would come back with, I don't know, and I don't want to prescribe it. But I hear exactly what you're [2:54:57 PM] saying. I think that's a really good point, and I think we could ask staff to be mindful of exactly what it is that you're identifying. >> Alter: Great, thank you. And I have not yet had a chance to talk with staff about version 4 and how they would implement it, and I'm hoping to have some of those conversations tomorrow to understand that and appreciate your responses on the message board. Please know that in my questions, I'm trying to get this so that we are providing really clear direction, you're not going to be here to see this implemented. And so we do need to make sure that the direction we're providing is clear enough so it has the intended effect where we can all agree that we don't have to pit affordability and the environment against one another. So I'll be looking at those kinds of things. Please let me know -- sounds like you may come up with a way [2:56:00 PM] forward that fits with your frame. So if you want to maybe put that on the message board, and I can edit that, because I think -- you understand the concern. But I think you understand the way your draft is written better than I do. So I don't want to mess with it too much in that regard. >> Mayor Adler: We'll go ahead and try to post something. Who knows, it could show up in public communications. >> Alter: You may, but you're always welcome. And then while I have the floor, I just wanted to flag for folks another item. So for item 24, I think which is the appointment for the atp nominee, we have a unanimous decision. We are almost ready to announce it. We just have to get through the process of doing background checks and we're still waiting on that. And we will have that posted and I'm assuming that we would [2:57:01 PM] probably vote on it on November 3rd, so that people have the opportunity to review, which has been our intention. We're waiting for three different bodies and different things. But we are very close to having that ready to go public. We would want you to have the time to review that for the November 3rd, unless council member Ellis wants to add anything. >> Ellis: No, you covered it quite well. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes. I want to thank the mayor pro tem and council member Ellis as well as the two board members from cap metro. I know it's a lot of work to go through the applications and go through an interview process. So, I want you all to know that we appreciate the recommendation that you all are going to make to us. It sounds like from what you're saying, in order to give the [2:58:05 PM] public some time to look at it, that we won't be voting on it on Thursday. Did I hear that right? >> Alter: That's correct, because our intention has always been to give as much time as possible. We can't really go beyond the 3rd without creating some challenges for the person to be able to attend the next atp meeting. So we would prefer to vote next week and it is my hope that we will have it in the next day or so. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. >> Alter: Then I will just add, I don't know if we have time today. I still want to throw out the potential need to have an alternate or somebody appointed to atp for the interim with the new council between December, January, February. >> Kitchen: I'd like to speak to that, mayor, if I can. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Go ahead, Ann. [2:59:05 PM] >> Kitchen: I hear that suggestion, mayor pro tem. I would want to ask our mayor if he would just continue, because we're really only talking about a month. That would be the January atp board meeting. If that. I don't even know if there is a January one. But if there is, I would expect the next council to move very quickly on that appointment. So I don't think we need to appoint an interim person. I would want to just ask the mayor to continue his service. It's much better to have someone -- well, of course the mayor's been -- I really appreciate your service, mayor. You've been entrenched in this. Actually a major player in getting project connect passed. So I would just hope that if you're willing and able, if there is a January meeting, if you would continue that. >> Alter: I think we need to check the bylaws on that, because I'm not sure where the bylaws legally allow us to do that. >> Kitchen: They do. They would allow. The appointment from the city [3:00:06 PM] council does not have be a council member. So, those bylaws would allow the mayor to continue if he was interested in doing that. So, yeah, those bylaws, we deliberately wrote those bylaws so that they don't require the city council to appoint a council member. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool. >> Pool: I think it would be great if you could continue on that one additional month. It may be a burden, depending on what you had planned to do in that month. On the other hand, for the public's benefit, you've been there from before day one. And for that one month, if there were any way you might be able to participate in that meeting, I certainly would appreciate that going forward. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. I appreciate that. Let me check. [3:01:06 PM] Let me talk to Diane. Let's continue that conversation. Thank you very much. >> Alter: And for the record, I wasn't kicking you out. I just wanted to make sure we were not without council representation in this critical time. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't feel like you were kicking me out. Council member vela. >> Vela: Very wise, mayor, to check with Diane. >> Mayor Adler: All right. So, we'll proceed on. But thank you. There's the minority, and items that both you and I pulled. I had said at a really high level as we were pulling this to be considered. I'm sure that there was someone that came and visited me as there was some person who visited other people, I'm sure, that pointed out this analysis that we're seeing purports to [3:02:11 PM] say that we're doing a really good job with respect to women minority hiring, based on the way that they do the analysis and the cohorts. But has raised the question as to whether or not they're actually getting to the people that we most want to be able to get to. And perhaps there's a better way to get to the real need by focusing on factors or criteria that relate more to economics than race or minority status. I said that I wanted to make sure what we passed, even in the interim period of time, asked staff to come back to the next council to be able to make a recommendation as to whether or not that would be a good way for us to be able to proceed. You also had pulled it, mayor [3:03:14 PM] pro tem. >> Alter: Yeah, I had also pulled this. I mentioned what my amendment would be there. I've been working with the procurement office and also talking with the smbr office. And what I'm going to do is provide direction -- I'm sorry, I don't have the language today. To explore adding a small local business enterprise preference that would be at the prime contract level. So what we've seen is with our mwpr -- sorry, I never get the initials right, so I'm just going to pretend I got them right. That we are actually succeeding with our goal. And so, we now have an opportunity to think differently about our prime contract levels [3:04:15 PM] consistent with the legal precedent and what other cities are doing in Texas, and this would be providing direction to bring that back at the same time that we come back with our subcontracting goals that are part of the mwe program. And what that looks like is something to the effect of that you have a small business, local preference and you use things like mwe or hub or dbe or there's also lgbtq and disability designations that are already out there, where people have these qualify indications that make them small, and you can add the local and you can figure out the appropriate definition of the local. And we believe that you can legally do that as a next evolution to our process to help us support our small and local businesses, because part of what we're seeing in this data is a [3:05:16 PM] migration to a broader area. So that would be direction for when you take the next step with the disparities. We've been working with procurement on that language and we'll work with legal once we have something clearer to show. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I don't know if you were quorumed on this issue. If you'd share your work, I appreciate that. >> Alter: Sure. >> Mayor Adler: Thanks. That was my only comment. The last item that we pulled, council member tovo, you pulled the property ifc. >> Tovo: I did, thanks. This is my resolution. I know that I posted a revised version on the message board. I can't remember if that was last week or the week before. [3:06:17 PM] There was another one posted this morning, and I just really pulled it for questions or comments or to welcome a conversation around it. Council member pool, I know, did submit some questions. I'm happy to talk through those, if it seems use lea to answer those questions that you submitted through the q&a process. They were very similar to some that the staff raised through time as well. >> Mayor Adler: Has the staff commented on the versions you posted today? >> Tovo: They have not. I think we have another meeting scheduled. >> Mayor Adler: Is staff going to comment on the version that was posted today? >> Yes. I know that they were getting feedback from a few different departments and I'm hoping to have that by the end of the day, but I'll refer to Ms. Gonzalez on when staff will have an update on those comments. But we can utilize this time to take feedback from staff as well. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Rodney Gonzalez, assistant city manager. We received the posted version 4 [3:07:18 PM] and it's our intention to collect staff comments and then to share those with council member tovo and the co-sponsors for the resolution. >> Mayor Adler: Can you share them with the whole council. >> We certainly can. >> Mayor Adler: Do you have any comments you want to share now? Where's staff on this? >> Where we are is we continued to work with council member tovo's office to share our concerns and we appreciate council member tovo and her staff addressing those concerns, and so it's an iterative process, I would say, based on the meetings that we've had, the back and forth sharing of concerns. And so I'd say that we are still working through the concerns. All of them haven't been resolved. We certainly appreciate council member tovo and her staff's attempt to resolve those concerns. >> Mayor Adler: Any questions or comments? >> Tovo: If I could tell one anecdote. One concern that I've heard, and [3:08:18 PM] I appreciate it from staff, and I would welcome suggestions for how to improve it. There are concerns about the slowing down the process. And I would say as a framing, you know, there are a couple points that I would just -- I don't want to repeat myself, but I do want to make sure that I have an opportunity to frame this. To me, this is about setting in place a framework that allows for early conversations with our city council, as much transparency with the public as possible, so that they can evaluate proposals as they come forward, and really making sure that we have consistent and fair processes when we're looking at the utilization of our land. There are a lot of good policies and practices in place already with regard to real estate. This is an attempt to to bring some consistency around them. One concern that I think has come up in every one of our conversations and we've attempted to address it by making changes, we've attempted to address it by offering [3:09:18 PM] clarification, we've attempted to really emphasize language that explains the manager has always the discretion of offering a recommendation to skip elements of the process or to do things differently. That element of discretion we've written into the draft I don't know how many times. That's one reason why it keeps getting longer and longer. You keep adding language to make it clear that there are alternatives. I want to address for a minute the question about timing. By talking about winnebago. This is winnebago lane. It's had a long and storied past, and I'll summarize it really quickly. In 2014, pard posted for council action an item to create a dog park there. The council talked about it, and there was considerable concern about doing a dog park there, and one of my colleagues had a concern about doing a dog park [3:10:18 PM] there because of its lack of transportation. It's in kind of out en route to the airport, sort of off Burleson, as I recall. I'd been out there a bunch of times, but not recently. It's not too far from our hazardous waste site. So that ended the conversation for the next two years. So, here you've had staff go through. Our park staff spent, I assume, considerable time and effort bringing forward a proposal to create this use on that tract. That was, I think, the first conversation with council, is when it arrived on the agenda. That whole -- all of that work was totally halted and turned down because the council at the point they got involved said, we don't want to use the tract for this purpose. We want to postpone it and continue talking about it. It just went away. That conversation didn't get postponed. It just went away. In 2016, it arrived back on our agenda, and many of us were on the dais at this point, and it was a contract for sale to an individual who I assume had participated in a process that, [3:11:20 PM] again, required a significant amount of staff time and expertise and energy and resources. And, you know, our staff time is a taxpayer resource. So now you've had two total big processes to do something with winnebago lane, and the council again, it was a close vote. But we turned down that sale, and instead proceeded with a resolution I had brought to consider the use of that site for affordable housing. Two years later, we had tried to secure a relationship with art space through the resolution I had brought. That didn't work out for a variety of reasons. In 2018, another resolution came forward, and I'm forgetting now, I think it was former council member Delia Garza, who brought forward the resolution. It was in her district. To urban roots. So, you know, you have two totally -- I mean, this is just one example. I think we have a lot of processes that are working. This is an example of how the [3:12:21 PM] lack of council input at the outset resulted in two very lengthy processes that ultimately were not how we ended up using that land. So, respectfully, I would say having that council input at the outset of a real estate project instead of at the end I think is very valuable. I saw that happen. Maybe I've already given this example. I've talked about this with our city staff, with our manager, so many times, I can't remember, have I given the -- well, let me give two other quick examples. One is the Austin energy headquarters. And the council said, have you done a cost benefit analysis? Have you looked at leasing facilities? Have you done five or six other things? And that ended that conversation for a while. We now have an Austin energy headquarters that is not the same one that was contemplated the first time. Purchasing land around sand hill. [3:13:22 PM] Arrived on our agenda without any previous conversations about the need for additional land around that Austin energy site. The council had a conversation at the work session and that never came back to council again. I mean, we raised concerns at the work session, why do we need this land? There are -- you know, those are just a couple of the examples I've seen where there was a lot of time and expertise afforded on our staff side, where I think a little council conversation up front might have helped. A very different process was the one with the sea home parking garage. I think I have talked about there one before here. Have I? No. Nobody remembers. Anyway, there were conversations -- okay. There were conversations with the council before that process advanced, and that never came forward as a proposal. So I do think the process we're setting up and outlining has lots of flexibility built in, but it does some basic guidelines on how those [3:14:23 PM] conversations should transpire here at the city that I hope will be in a really effective use of staff time and resources and council tame and resources as well, and really get us getting working around a set of consistent practices. >> Alter: Thank you to council member tovo and your staff and the other staff who have been working together on this resolution, and I'm pleased to co-sponsor it. I just want to underscore what council member tovo just said. I think this is really designed to ultimately give us better products and to learn from what we've learned over many years. 12 years, I think, at this point. And to avoid mistakes that we've made in the past so that we move [3:15:25 PM] forward in the best interests of our community, and we do avoid some of the challenging discussions at the end of the process and we take care of those much, much earlier. I think there's opportunity to do that. In the quorum, I look forward to leering comments and digesting those and seeing where we can move things forward. I think it is the proper level of guidance and it provides a lot of guardrails, both on the process, but also opportunities for the city manager to deviate as appropriate while articulating why he's choosing to do that. So it's not a question why. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool. >> Pool: I did submit questions at the end of last week, and I appreciate getting those answers from staff earlier today. And then I also was given a set [3:16:27 PM] of answers from council member tovo's stuff, too, but I haven't had time to look at the two different sets of answers. Nor have it had time to go through the latest version, which I understand it's an iterative work in progress. But there one also has significant changes to the last one, which it was either version 2 or 3 that my questions were based on. And so what I don't now know is where my questions fall with regard to this latest version. And it's -- you know, I guess we could walk through all the lines and parse it and talk about it today. I would rather have conversations with the staff separately, so that I can dig in on the headlines that I'm looking at specifically. Others may have different issues [3:17:28 PM] that they want to look at it individually. The sense that I have from this as it has developed, and I have no -- I'm not a member of the sub quorum, and there has been no real staff input, from what I've been able to get, until this today, these answers today. What I -- the impressions that I'm getting are a couple -- three things. One, it's a very clear effort, and quite possibly a really good effort on my colleagues' part to create a framework and a process for these real estate transactions for the city of Austin in perpetuity. So that's one thing. The next thing that I am [3:18:29 PM] gathering from the conversations is that staff is very uncertain at this point. What, in fact, the actual outcomes this document, if we were to put this into policy, would have on our operations going forward, other than it seems like it adds layers and time, which also translates into money, which could inhibit the nimbleness and the agility that the city strives for, because I would not say that we're necessarily incredibly nimble or agile. But we try to be. It also introduces levels of public review at times where we haven't done that in the past and it may, in fact, be helpful [3:19:31 PM] from the city's perspective to do it, which is not to say that information can't be public at all, but at certain junctures, it is not necessarily helpful to the work that we're trying, especially in real estate issues that we're trying to complete. I could dig in today on the analysis that this clearly deserves. And I won't do that. None of us have that much time, but I will continue with my staff, to talk with staff, now that I am able to kind of get a sense of what this looks like, more concretely. The third thing that I have a sense of is that this is not going to be brought to a vote on Thursday, which I think that's great, because I know I won't be [3:20:34 PM] ready. So there's not an affirmation of that. So the intention by my colleague, it's good to know that she does intend to bring this to a vote on Thursday. I can tell you at this point that I am exceedingly reluctant to agree to this document at this point, primarily because of the size of it, because of the impacts on the staff and our procedures and our policies going forward, and the fact that I still don't have a real sense of where this is what this will do. It is still a work in process. So I just wanted to signal to everyone my extremely reluctance, which is not to say that this isn't something we should continue to look at and talk about and dig into. But I doubt this would be in any kind of form or fashion that I could reliably and responsibly [3:21:35 PM] vote on on Thursday. >> Tovo: Mayor, may I get -- >> Mayor Adler: Let me let other people get to some things, and then you'll have a chance. >> Fuentes: I'm with council member pool on this. I will just add that I want to make sure that whatever policies we're adopting as council members allow us to be responsive to our community. What may work in one district may not work in another district, and if you have folks coming to their council member saying we know exactly what we want for this project and we want it to look this way, I think it's really important that we as council members have that leverage to deliver projects that are meaningful for the folks that are most directly impacted by it. So, I agree with council member pool on everything that she said. I would prefer to have more time to review it since it is a beefy document, it's very long. And we don't all have the capacity to be able to follow [3:22:35 PM] the entire conversation through all of the multiple versions. And so I want to make sure that if we're going to vote on something, we know exactly what we're voting on and we've had time for our own constituents to read through the most current versions as well and be able to talk to us about them. >> Mayor Adler: Council member vela? >> Vela: Just briefly, I'm in the same place as council member pool and Ellis. I'll keep it very short. I'm skeptical that there's a need for this, and I'm not sure that the bureaucratic entanglements outweigh the benefits. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member tovo. >> Tovo: So, I wonder -- this is the third time I've pulled it for the work session. It's been posted for weeks, in part to encourage conversations here at the work session. And I understand it's late in the day and we still have one more presentation. But I would invite, council member vela, for you to maybe share some of your reservations. Because I've given one example. [3:23:37 PM] I know in the past we've talked about -- how quite a bit of what we've experienced together and in the years before I think are really -- this is an attempt to address them through a process that is consistent. I can give more examples, but I think I'd like to start, Leslie, council member pool, with your questions, if I may. Let me say that the questions -- well, let me step back and say, the resolution that is before the council on Thursday is very much the same resolution that I brought forward two meetings ago. I posted it with the indication that I was going to postpone it. This will be the third meeting it's posted on. And the edits and revisions that have been made are really attempts to address the concerns that the staff have raised, [3:24:38 PM] which you have highlighted multiple of them. Your questions are similar to the ones that the staff -- very similar wording even to some of the questions that the staff have asked through time with regard to the airport and others. So I would say that the revisions and edits that have been made have been attempts to address many of these issues. And so perhaps it would be useful to kind of talk through some of those. I would ask if there are so, for example, does this inhibit staff's able to exercise their expert judgment. It does not. We are the body that is responsible for making decisions about the acquisition and disposition of the city's real estate. And it sets out a process for getting council that input. Council member Ellis, I hear what you're saying about constituent input. And that's clearly very important. I don't think there's anything [3:25:38 PM] in this resolution that would undermine that. Were there particular examples of language within the resolution that are giving you concern? Because it's not attempting -- this resolution doesn't change that process in in way. It simply puts in more process for how we're going to undertake those conversations. >> Ellis: It's just more of allowing for general flexibility and representation. >> Tovo: I guess I would invite you if you could take a look at the sections about community input, because that is built into the resolution. It's not -- it is not undermining that in any way. And again, there is flexibility throughout the whole resolution. There is always flexibility for the manager to diverge from the [3:26:39 PM] process. >> Tovo: I'll just continue going on. >> Kitchen: Mayor, when you have a minute. >> Tovo: Council member pool, I heard you say something about staff input. >> Pool: I think there was some discussion about getting briefed on this by the staff. They are here today and they still haven't really talked about it. >> Tovo: I see. You meant you receiving staff input, or the council? >> Pool: Both, actually. I think there was conversation with you and the mayor on the dais as well. That was a concern to me. [3:27:45 PM] >> Tovo: I will say the staff did provide those comments. They are based on an earlier draft. Again, I would respectfully ask, colleagues, my staff have worked extraordinarily hard on this. I have worked hard on this. My co-sponsors are working hard on this. I would really like to hear either here or on the message board if there are specific passages that you feel are not providing flexibility or specific examples of some of the concerns you have, that would be very helpful for me, because we have worked extensively. I don't think we will be able to assuage all of the staff's concerns, but I would say there are good reasons for all of the provisions that we have in here, and I just gave you one example of a process that could have been, you know, years of repeated attempts to do something with the tract that [3:28:46 PM] could have been handled very differently if there had been a conversation with the staff, with the council first. So, number two, council member pool, you were talking -- you referenced the affordable housing percentage. We used the percentage that came with the conversations around health south. There is very clear language in there, and we have clarified to make sure that there's no confusion, that that is indeed something that the manager can recommend against. And so there is very clear language in there that talks about that. >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to hear what council member kitchen's comment is? >> Kitchen: Sure. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen? >> Kitchen: Yes. I hear the concerns that people are raising. I would urge you all to work with council member tovo on those. I've been talking with her about the concerns that I have. My concerns relate to, not unlike -- it's not exactly the same concern, but the mayor pro tem raised concerns about -- [3:29:51 PM] well, I'm misremembering that. I think what I'm saying is that I've been working with council member tovo to make certain that some items related to real estate that were very clear that we don't -- that we don't slow down those processes. And I think she has some language in there about processes that have already begun with certain locations. I forget exactly what all those are. But I think she's addressing the concerns that I had raised, things that were already in process continue on those processes, and that this was more prospective going forward. So I would just urge everybody -- I know it's a long resolution, but I think it's designed to strike that right balance between getting comments early on, as well as getting [3:30:52 PM] public comments so we can use efficiently and quickly with the use of city property. >> Mayor Adler: I think some of our colleagues are waiting to hear from staff in order to begin their work. Are you prepared to give us a review of this at this point to explain your reservations? >> The review that we could give, of course, is based off of the last version that was posted. We now have a new version. And so we're collecting those comments. We intend to collect those by the end of today. And then, of course, make sure that they're in good form. Then we can distribute those to council tomorrow. So we aren't prepared to talk about version 4, which is in front of us now. But we certainly have worked to share comments on version 3, and then also council member pool had some questions about version 3, and those have been posted to the q&a. But I think if council is ready to talk about version 4, we are not at that point, ready to talk about version 4. >> Mayor Adler: And you posted [3:31:53 PM] your comments to version 3 as well; did you not? >> Yes. >> Fuentes: When I look at item 41 on the agenda, it's the original version. There's no version 3 posted. There's no additional backup. So even trying to follow this conversation, I don't see council member pool's question that she posed anywhere I can access it to follow along. Do we know where we can pull this information up? >> They were posted on the message board. By council member tovo, yes. >> Tovo: They won't be in the q&a I guess until they've released the q&a. >> Oh, the q&a, yes. Okay. >> Fuentes: Is that from last council meeting's q&a? >> Pool: This was today. >> Mayor Adler: So there was a q&a response filed last Friday, I think, that was the initial staff comments to version 3. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Was there a public posting of version 3? [3:32:53 PM] >> Yes, through the message board. >> Mayor Adler: So council member tovo published version 3 on the message board. The staff did comments to version 3 last Friday in the q&a. Council member pool asked some questions sense consequently, which were answered today in q&a. With reference to version 3, which was published I think a week or so ago by council member tovo. And for version 4, I think you post today; is that correct? >> Tovo: Yes. And, I'll say, you know, again, as I'm looking through the edits, you asked a question about the airport. I've now added in language specific to the airport. You know, some of -- I would say most of the edits that were in 4 [3:33:53 PM] that are not in 3 are attempts to try to address the concerns that the staff have continued to raise. Council member kitchen refers to one very early on, I think in our first staff meeting, the staff asked if I intended for this to apply to colony park, St. John's, Ryan drive. I said absolutely not. Those are in process. You will see in the q&a that they posted last week, they've indicated their concerns about this resolution, applying to projects like that, and made it very clear it didn't. However, we have now added in projects such as colony park, Ryan drive. I would say it's not taken any new directions for the most part, it's really just continuing to come up with alternative language or alternative processes. [3:34:54 PM] We're doing our best to try to mitigate as many of the staff's concerns as possible, while still having a process that's consistent. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything further on this? All right. Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Alter: I would just, you know, ask colleagues to read through the resolution. I think that significant changes have been made in consultation with staff. I think this has been one of the resolutions where we've worked particularly closely with staff to address concerns in great depth. So part of the resolution I think is longer is to spell out things that we thought would be obvious so that we would have no question from staff on them. And so I think that when you actually read it, you will see that it is quite far along in [3:35:55 PM] addressing things. >> Mayor Adler: All right. With that, I think we've covered all of the business here today. Staff, thank you. We look forward to answers when we are ready. It is 3:35 and -- oh, another presentation. I'm jumping the gun. We have another presentation on animal services. >> Fuentes: Council member kitchen and I had some additional questions for the city manager regarding the 911 call center, and some operational questions. I don't know if acm is available to help answer those questions, or if the city manager will be able to speak to them. >> You raise them, and I'll walk with you. If I can do it before we adjourn, or separately. >> Fuentes: Sure. In relation to civilian oversight of the 911 call takers and the process -- I think one, historical knowledge on it. I think at one point, it was a council directive and there was some reallocation of resources. I want to see what the status was on that. >> Yeah. I think it was maybe right after you left, but right before we [3:36:55 PM] broke for lunch, I did mention that I would be following up with the memo that would update the council on that status. We are still moving in that direction. However, if we were to do that now, we would be in violation of that state law. And so, I just wanted to give you a status update on all the elements of that. And council member kitchen pulled me aside and had some additional questions that I wanted to incorporate into that update. >> Fuentes: Yeah. I think that was in relation to an executive session on it. The questions I have are not around funding. It's just more about management of the center. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Want to pull up the next presentation? Council member kitchen, did you have another question? >> Kitchen: I was going to echo -- we talked about the memo. I think the memo's a good idea, but I wanted to just distinguish that there's two questions really. One question is the question of [3:37:59 PM] moving the 911 call center into independent area out of the police department. That's a different issue. The other issue that I think council member Fuentes is talking about, what we had talked about a while back, about a civilian leadership of that department. I see them as two different issues. So I just wanted to clarify that. >> Understood. Thank you. >> Okay. Our last presentation today is an update on animal services. This is a chance for our director and team to provide some overview of both where we've been, what we're going, and some of the incredible accomplishments led by council. This was a request from the council. And so I wanted to create this space for our animal service director to provide this overview. Dr. Bland. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Good afternoon, mayor and council. It's been a long day. [3:39:01 PM] I'm don Blanche with animal services for city of Austin. I want to start today with a presentation -- thank you. First of all, our mission statement, being a municipal shelter, we've tried to encompass all of our duties. So they're quite large. Basically, to cement up, our job is to provide a safety net for those animals that truly need our services and find outcops for those that do not have owners, while protecting the community as the rabies control authority. Just a little side note. Austin, if you look at the map for the state of Texas, we have the highest number of rabies exposures in the state. It's because of our bats. So, that's something that we can add to our list. On our services provided, we're not just contained to catching animals and then adopting them [3:40:03 PM] out. There's a wide array of services that animal services provides for the residents of Austin, and the unincorporated areas of Travis county through an Ila with the county. Besides caring for animals that arrive at the shelter, we proactively work with the community to keep animals in the homes where they're loved and cared for. Aso has developed many innovative programs through the years, and provides services that many municipal shelters do not. So, we have led the charge for many years on services that are replicated throughout the united States. One of the things that I think we can be very proud of is something that I'm not aware of any other city besides Austin that does that, and after hours emergency care. If after the shelter is closed, you as a citizen saw an animal that was injured, hit by a car, you can take that to one of our emergency clinics and the city pays for that out of our budget. So that's something that no other city offers citizens. [3:41:06 PM] A little history. I'd like to start with. Animal services had some major milestones. In 2010, was when the council adopted the 34-point no-kill implementation plan. And at that time, they put a moratorium on killing animals when there were empty cages and kennels. This document provided the roadmap for Austin to become a no-kill city. At that time, Austin animal center had a live exit rate of only 69%. In 2011 was when actually the center first hit that 90% live exit rate, and no kill is described as having a live outcome percentage of 90% or greater. It was at that time also that the animal center moved from the town lake center on Caesar Chavez to Betty dunkerly campus that we share with Austin public health. 60 kennels remained in use at [3:42:09 PM] the tlac council at that time because we didn't have enough in the new building at that time. So we were behind the curve at the very beginning. In 2012, animal services split off from department within Austin public health and became our own office. We still rely on them for our purchasing, it, and some accounting support. It was also that year in 2014 that animal control transition, to a solutions-based model, rather than the traditional model that catching dogs, impounding them, and we try to find solutions on why these animals are out in the community and work with those owners to keep them in the homes where they're loved and cared for instead of impounding them. [3:43:10 PM] We were able to include a kennel expansion, including 44 additional kennels. We also at that time added some additional play yards for customer interactions. In 2019, after many years of hitting a 96% live exit rate or greater, the council changed the mandate to a 95% live exit rate for us. And just last month, our 97.68 was our live exit percentage for September, despite all the situations we've had with our overcrowding. One of the biggest issues that the current shelter is, it's not designed to be a no-kill facility. There were only two surgical tables when this facility was built. The recovery space was only for [3:44:12 PM] one recovery kennel for surgery for a large dog. And that is our population that we have the most of. So, over the years, staff has modified the building to change it around, to meet the needs so that we can maintain what we're, you know, trying to accomplish here. Currently, we are expanding our large dog surgery kennels. We're adding an additional ten kennels, and that's a project that is ongoing. So we'll be able to do more surgeries for larger dogs at a time, rather than having to piecemeal them out and try to find a place to put them. I'd like to touch base on staffing and volunteering real quick. The last fiscal year, we had 115 budgeted full-time employees with two of those positions being part-time. Thanks to the city management and council for adding six additional positions this fiscal year. That will give us 121 full-time [3:45:13 PM] staff. These positions are going to help us provide service to our area residents, and it will also boost our staffing considerably, because over the past six years , we've only received eight positions. So getting six, and this career was definitely a milestone for us. We still have a gap in our shelter in terms of animal care. We provide the daily cleaning and feeding. But we supplement all of this with 57 temporary part- time positions. And so far, 41 of those are filled currently. Last fiscal year, we had -- let me start back and say, during the pandemic, you know, we lost a lot of volunteers. They selected to stay home for health reasons, and we understand that. And we've been really working diligently to try to increase those volunteer hours again. Last fiscal year, we ended up with 43,665 volunteer hours. [3:46:15 PM] That is compared to -- before the pandemic in fy19, we had 34,879 volunteer hours. So we actually increased our volunteer hours this past fiscal year over what we had done previously before the pandemic. So that was something that we really worked hard on and it's continuing to pay off. One of the most important things volunteers do is the dog walking and the kennel cleaning with cats and the socializing with cats. We have lots of people that sign up for that. We have other roles that we need help in that don't get as much traction. But, you know, volunteers, they couldn't make it in animal welfare without them. Since 2019, aso has been able to create many new programs and improve processes to increase pet reunification, with little [3:47:16 PM] or more resources or help from local partners. Some of these I'd like to share, some of the highlights, we had created during the pandemic a neonatal nursery. We took one of our outdoor nurseries and enclosed that. We had nine neonatal care kennels previously, and through this expansion, we were able to add 27 neonatal care kennels, which really helped improve our process. Friends of animal Austin care center helped with a purchase we call -- the building we call the caddyshack. That building was added to our facility campus, able to expand the number that we could hold in there. One of the things we're most proud of is, we were the first department in the city to use the chat bot feature. And we put that on as a [3:48:17 PM] necessity, because we were getting so many questions through emails from our constituents, and it's taking lots of staff to answer these on an ongoing basis. And our chat bot was added, and can get answers, and it's very quick, and it eliminated all that backlog of email and the customers are getting their questions answered on the fly, and that's been something that has really helped us -- ctm did a great job on working with us on that, in addressing our needs, and coming up with a solution. Our neighborhood level program continues to do a lot of work in our community working with the neighborhoods on what their needs are. And what can we do to help keep these families together? We work with staff -- our staff works with these individuals when they call us to surrounder [3:49:17 PM] a novel. And we work with them to find out the reason why.ender a novel. And we work with them to find out the reason why. Is there a resource we can provide. We have a lot of success with that. Sometimes it's very simple fixes that they might be a first-time pet owner and they might need a little help teaching that cat how to use the litter box, just things that we can solve over the phone a lot of times. And so our goal is to try to help them. And if it might be food or supplies, or sometimes it's medical care that we can give them vouchers for training, or medical services that some of our friends of Austin animal center can help sponsor. We did do a program with microchip scanners through all of our Austin fire departments and our parks and recreation centers. So to try to keep those pets in the neighborhood where they're found, without coming 20 miles away, you can go to one of these [3:50:18 PM] locations and have your microchip -- the animal you found scanned. If it has a microchip, there's procedures there that you can contact the microchip companies and reunite that pet without ever having to make the drive to the animal center. And that's one of the things that we really hope that the politic can take advantage of now that the pandemic is starting to lighten up and people are becoming more mobile again. We also developed a lot of programs to help pets get reunited. We have a lost and found text program that you can text, and we can send you step by step, our pet reunification guide that we created to get those animals back to those homes. We know that most pets are found within a thousand feet of their homes. So staying in the neighborhood really does help that tremendously. On a national level, shelters across the nation are seeing the same thing that we're seeing [3:51:18 PM] here in Texas and here locally as well. More animals are being surrendered to housing, and the cost to care for those animals. Shelters are not seeing the same number of adoptions and rescue pools than they had in previous years. This has resulted in longer stays for animals in shelters, and it affects shelter capacity. Ultimately, these shelters have had to make some very difficult decisions on space, and here in our large municipal shelters here in Texas, having to be euthanized for space, and we have not at this point. We averted that fact by doing a lot of innovative things and keeping animals in pop-up crates, in lieu of doing that. With the pandemic, there was also a limit on the number of Spain neuters that have been [3:52:20 PM] done during that time, because the vet clinics were not doing the spay and neuter surgeries that they had done previously. We've definitely seen an increase in the puppies and kittens this year, kind of like left over from that time, and we really want to see those be able to come back around and start doing more and more spay and neuters in the community again. Locally, as many municipal shelters, we've seen increased shelters. Some of them are the cost to maintain pets. Including cost and ability for veterinarian care. We've seen an increase in surrenders and decreased adoptions. As the only location for the city of Austin, we have a large jurisdiction to maintain. You know, someone could need some assistance, and it could take them, you know, 20 miles trip one-way to get to us, and that -- with traffic, it could be quite extensive. [3:53:24 PM] That is one of our stumbling blocks as well. There are many times that we hit barriers to getting animals reclaimed, when there's no microchips. We find that we have a low reclaim rate when animals are in the shelter, because they're not microchipped. If we can keep those animals that aren't microchipped in their neighborhood, we have a much higher percentage of getting them home. We did a study during the pandemic from March of 2020 to July of 2021 that all the people that found reports, we surveyed those folks, and they specifically asked our questions, and we found that 39% of the animals that were kept in their community, they were successful at finding them homes. Finding their home. Of that, 41% of them were found, their homes, the very first day. [3:54:24 PM] On day 4, there were still 16% being found -- finding their homes. And that's what our pet reunification guide talks about, the steps you can follow. And it's one of the models that our animal control officers has used for years. We know that animals -- you can kind of run them back home and you'll follow them home, and when you get there, you can knock on the door and say, hey, your pet's out. A lot of times they don't even notice that. But you could find out why that pet is getting out. And what can we do to help you. And that's where we offer some assistance. Some of our challenges here at our operations, as I stated, were the only -- you know, one shelter location. We've outgrown a facility that was not designed to be a no-kill facility, and we were short on kennel space when we moved in at the very beginning. We've seen a decrease of transfers to our in-state partners. And our intake is out-pacing our [3:55:24 PM] outcomes. While we have really been able to increase the cat adoptions, we still cannot get the medium-to-large dog outcomes greater than the incomes. We're seeing longer lengths of stay. Our fosters and adopters are very specific in the type of animals that they're requesting for their homes. Most of our resources are spent on caring for the animals that are in our service, rather than on programs to help animals stay in homes. To reach no-kill status, it takes the whole entire community, and y'all are very aware of that. What Austin has done through the years. The organization itself has to adapt in order to succeed. Our rescue partners are a significant part of helping us stay afloat, especially when our populations surge. We have over 150 rescue partners, both in-state and out of state that help our overall [3:56:26 PM] mission find viable outcomes for the animals in our care. We have agreements with non-profits that support us, like our friends of Austin animal center. They provide funding for things that we might not be able to -- they provide funding for vouchers, for people that adopt, for behavior issues, or for medical issues of the pet that they might have. They also -- we have partnership with classic canines that will sponsor medical care for animals that are adopted or fostered that are eight years of age or older. We also have a program where we have outreach staff that works with the transient and people experiencing homelessness animals. They provide supplies, they set up appointments for spay and neuter. We make sure that they're vaccinated. And what they need to have to maintain their pet in that -- where it's cared for and needs [3:57:27 PM] to be, we're also -- it's also very instrumental, because when a pet does get lost, they're easy to reunite, because they're very aware of the pet ownership in those communities. And it works so well with them. Help from our community is an absolute need in order to keep animals and find homes for them. I mentioned that we determined that we know keeping animals in our community is a model that our animal protection officers have done for many, many years, and during the pandemic, we asked the citizens to help with that, and it was very successful. I think it's, you know, noteworthy that taking a few moments to knock on a door, it's very beneficial. Just quick little story. We had some people that picked up a dog out of a front yard and brought it to our shelter. Thank goodness it had a microchip and we were able to [3:58:28 PM] scan it, and we called the owner. They were in their home. If they'd have knocked on the door, that dog would have never had to come the 15 miles to us. So they thought they were doing something really good, but if you take that extra step and just knock on a door, you'll probably not have to make that 15 or that happens quite a bit and we were fortunate that happened to be micro chipped. Some of the next steps, I know I've covered a lot of information quickly, its been late, but moving forward, the animal services offices, we're going to continue to concentrate on growing our foster and volunteer programs. We did reestablish our championship program. That is a program where volunteers and staff champion long-stay dogs to promote their adoptions. During the pandemic it fell off and we've reinstated that and we're hopeful to get a lot of success from that. It's something the volunteers and staff really [3:59:28 PM] wanted to bring back. We're going to continue to work with our customer service staff to push them into the kennels. We have upgraded the wi-fi in our kennels and we have ordered tablets for those animal care workers to work in the kennels. If you are in the kennel helping someone, you can answer questions about that dog, you can process their application right there on the spot without them having to come into the lobby even. We did do a consultation with a veterinarian behaviorist who just left last week and we're waiting on the results to try to maximize what we can do with some of our challenged animals with the resources that we currently have. And we're working on innovative ways to try to increase adoptions and rescues locally. And we want to continue to vet out all of the innovative ideas that continue to come from staff and volunteers and the public to see what we can [4:00:32 PM] incorporate into our system to continue to move forward and make it the best that we can. I thank you all for your time, and if anyone has any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them. >> Mayor Adler: Colleagues, any questions? Councilmember vela. >> Vela: Thank you for the presentation. I know that there's been some capacity issues, you know, recently, and I was wondering in terms of the causes of the capacity issues, you know, where are we with that and how -- what changes could we make from a policy perspective to help alleviate some of those capacity issues. >> Thank you, councilmember. One of the things that we have seen are, you know, the rescues in our state have [4:01:32 PM] gotten full themselves, and so they were unable to pull animals from us that we historically had counted on each month. And during the pandemic, you know, a lot of animals went into homes very quickly at the beginning and then the shelters all started filling back up slowly. Then when the world opened back up, our shelter was already full. So finding animals in the community and bringing them to us continued to, you know, one of the things that by the directives out there, we could euthanize for space, we chose not to. It was a difficult decision to put the staff having to keep animals in crates and kennels. It's stressful to the animals, stressful to the staff. But when you look at what our community expects, you know, so we felt that that's [4:02:32 PM] the step we had to go forward to. One of the things that we as a community can do is what we've seen other communities do. There are communities like port Lucia, Florida that has an 80% ownership return rate. They do microchipping. One of the things they have started at the beginning, unfortunately in Austin most people think the first thing you need to do is take the animal to the shelter. Their philosophy has said that's the last thing you need to do. Let's see if I can knock on a few doors before I take it to the shelter. I think there's a lot the community can do if they will follow our reunification ideas. One of the things that we're seeing right now, we're seeing a lot of animals that are being surrendered to us because of housing issues. [4:03:34 PM] It used to, you know, you just had to pay an annual pet deposit. Now we're seeing monthly pet rent. In our public housing, 30 pounds is the limit for an animal that you can put in public housing. So we're seeing a lot of stumbling blocks besides the pet care. We see pets that are being surrendered because of the surgeries, and they are very expensive. >> Vela: I can tell that your animal control officers are very committed to the reunification. I did a ride-along with one of your officers and when we did run into a couple of dogs in the university hills area, you know, we went and knocked on a bunch of doors to see if anybody knows the dogs, they were a neighbor's dogs. You could tell they were friendly dogs that got out and were having the time of their lives. We've talked about it with my staff and the mandatory [4:04:36 PM] microchipping, and no penalty. Just making sure that every animal that comes through the animal center, everybody has got to just announce it, you know, chip it, the vets will -- that way when you first get a puppy, you take it to the vet, the vet is going to be you have to microchip. You have to promote that as much as possible so we can reunify. I think that's a great policy and we want to bring something forward with regard to that. I'll say one thing that I noticed on the tour of the animal center were those dogs, again mostly your big dogs with your bite histories, that had, you know, I think some of them were like 700 [inaudible] In the animal center. Some of the animals had a multi-bite history, had potentially even bitten staff. Very, very -- that's a real tough one. I completely support the [4:05:36 PM] no-kill shelter concept, but, you know, my heart really breaks for an animal that has been in a cage for, you know, 600, 800 days or something like that. And again, from a resource perspective, I just, you know, it's hard for me to say that's a good use of city resources to keep that animal penned up, to feed it, to care for it, medical care, all those things like that. Again, I know there are difficult choices to be made, but I do -- you know, sanctuaries are great. The Austin animal center is not an animal sanctuary. It's got a role to play and we have to be good stewards of taxpayer money and we're going to have to I think at some opponent make those difficult calls about, you know, what we do in those kinds of situations when we've got essentially an unadoptable animal. [4:06:37 PM] Again, I know some folks would be there is no unadoptable animal, there's a lot of training, but that requires a lot of resources and time and effort put in. So anyway, I appreciate your efforts. I appreciate the efforts of all the staff at the Austin animal center. I know they very dedicated. I know they are doing their best, but we'll be -- you know, we'll be thinking about that. On that same note, any recommendations from, you know, your point of view in terms of what we could do here on council to help the shelter better function? >> Well, just remember us next year in the budget. When staffing issues come up, we could always use some more staff. We do have currently 20 officers that cover the whole area of Travis county in our jurisdiction, and we [4:07:40 PM] just were given two additional so that's going to help us tremendously. Just last year alone, those officers have to deal with over 2500 bite investigations. So that takes a lot of time besides just the loose and stray, so sometimes priorities that the community -- what might be a priority for that individual is not in the whole big picture of things what our priority might be. Because rabies is a very serious topic. That's priority one versus something a stay can find might be a priority three. We're going to do a lot more education to our community on ways they can help us out and ways that we can keep them safe. And you are correct that we do have a lot of dogs that -- I think there was 57 bites -- 57 dogs on site right now that have bite history. There's someone out there, but it's just how long and how to find them, it's very [4:08:41 PM] difficult, long, lengthy process. >> Vela: I appreciate that and I think the councilmembers kitchen and harper-madison have some questions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, mayor. Appreciate it. Thank you for this presentation. I appreciate it. I wanted to share with you a couple of emails that we've received that I would like to get your insights on and then just get your advice on how we as a body can move forward with being in alignment with what you presented in slide number 12 where it says being no kill is going to have to take a village. I've so frequently thought about all the -- >> Can you try again? >> Harper-madison: -- All the additional support. In this case so this email from a constituent says last year lots of roaming dogs, mostly loose, some off leash, animal control is obviously overwhelmed and underfunded. I get those a lot. [4:09:42 PM] This is the one that concerned me. I currently have a lost dog sitting in my backyard. Animal control told me there was nothing they could do and that I -- it was basically on me whatever happened to the dog. I would advocate for you as my rep to push for more funding and better animal controls. Obviously we responded to her, at which point she tried to take the dog to aac this afternoon and they refused and told me it was my responsibility to take care of this dog for an indefinite amount of time before they could maybe do an intake. I told them I had no space to do so and when I told them I was leaving the dog with them because she's not mine, they threatened to charge me with abandonment. So I won't go on, but I do you want to bring up this is not the first of this -- this email went on for several emails several days with the same constituent and I'm curious what advice [4:10:42 PM] you would offer us when we receive that type of email and is this an appropriate response to a constituent attempting to surrender a dog they've found loose wandering in their neighborhood. >> Thank you, councilmember. One of the things that we try to work on is, you know, you heard me say we have our 2500 bites so that does take a priority. If people will either text us, go to the website, look at the pet reunification guide, and they are step by step on telling you what you need to do when you see that animal that is loose. A well-cared for pet is -- you know, if it's skinny, injured pet, that's a different priority for us. But if you see an animal that you see in your neighborhood, it's probably because it is in that neighborhood at some opponent somewhere. If you follow the pet reunification guide, we tell them to knock on some doors, walk it around the neighborhood. A lot of times a dog will [4:11:43 PM] walk you to its home. If you want to take a proactive part in trying to find that dog's home, if you make a decision to trap the dog, then it's, you know, not going to be able to go home. And what we try to tell you is we will try to get to you when we can. Of course, unfortunately when we were in a space crisis when we didn't have room for animals and we were having to tell people we'll put you on the list, we'll get to you when we can, because when we have space available. You know, ten dogs went out yesterday, we'll be able to take ten in today. We had actually maximized our crate space. We had 69 animals in pop-up crates. The timing for her was not very well. If someone does take ownership of a dog and -- or if it's your own dog and you do abandon that, that is something that the animal [4:12:45 PM] cruelty division works on with the police department. If someone came to our campus, we would advise them not to do that. And if we could -- and I do know that the case you are making reference to, we did reach out and animal protection actually did go to her house that afternoon and picked the dog up. You know, we try to get the citizens assistance in helping us when at all possible. And I know, you know, there's different philosophy in terms of if you want -- the old model of pick up anything and bring it in was what was being done prior to 2011. When you go into no kill and trying to save the animals, you have to make some sort of a shift to get some assistance because both of those models don't work. You can't pick up every [4:13:45 PM] stray dog and rely on animal protection to try to find its home. You know, there's a balance that you have to achieve. >> Harper-madison: Director, I don't mean to be abrupt, but where I am it's about to get loud. I want to follow up there. I hope very much that my colleagues have as much concern about this being our standard in terms of protocol. I can't help but immediately think about the equity issues involved with a constituent who may not have digital access to find this checklist that you make reference to. A person who may not be literate to be able to follow the step-by-step guide that you make reference to. And then maybe most importantly the implications of involving law enforcement in people's lives as a result of them trying to be a good samaritan brings me the kind of pause and concern that I think we need to discuss as a body very soon. So I appreciate you really just confirming for me that this is, in fact, protocol [4:14:47 PM] and that we have not, in fact, thought about the implications for some of our -- for some of our constituents. This is potentially very life altering and dangerous policy. >> If someone calls 311 and says that they have a stray dog, then it is dispatched to the animal protection officers, and they do get a call back. So you don't have to have technology to be able to get the program and work through it step by step. They will be contacted by the animal protection officer. Through the phone system. >> Harper- madison: I do appreciate that this is what you have to work with. I will just say that it is wholly insufficient, in my opinion. And I'd like very much to continue this conversation moving forward. So thank you very much for answering my questions. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Adler: Anything [4:15:48 PM] else on this topic? Councilmember kitchen, go ahead. >> Kitchen: Just a quick question to go back to a conversation we were having and also I wanted to thank you, councilmember harper-madison, I share that concern that you raised. But going back to the earlier conversations about, you know, about the concerns about locking animals away, that's a concern of my also. I am wondering what it would take to work with those animals more. In other words, what is needed in terms of resources so that we are certain to work with them more so that we have the opportunity not to just consider them to be -- I forget what the earlier words we were using, but I wouldn't want to consider them to be a lost cause, so to speak. So what do we do to work with animals and what do we need to do to work with them more so that we're not just [4:16:49 PM] locking them away in crates? >> Thank you, councilmember. We do have an enrichment program. We have always relied on one of our partners that has a full behavior modification program to pull five animals from us a month. We work with these animals within, you know, the limited staff that we do have. So we don't have behavior modification. We do have enrichment, we do play groups, we do work with them and try to get them comfortable so that they can become adoptable. We try everything within our resources. That's one of the reasons that we had veterinarian behaviorists come in and evaluate our program to be able to tell us here's what you can do within your limitations and here's what you need to do if you want to make the most beneficial changes. So we are waiting on those results from that and I'll [4:17:49 PM] be more than happy to share that with your office. >> Kitchen: So what you were saying is that we don't have a -- can you explain that more? We don't have a behavior -- >> We do not have a behavior modification program at the shelter. We've always relied on our rescue partner that has a full behavior modification program to pull the behavior dogs from us. >> Kitchen: I remember some conversation, maybe it wasn't about that specifically, but I thought that councilmember Kelly had proposed something like that and I thought that it was in the works. In other words, I thought it was something that slated to happen. It looks like she probably knows more about this, so... >> If you could, councilmember kitchen, I had brought it before an animal behaviorist in the budget. However, because of the audit that's currently underway, we as a council decided it would be best to make it for next year's [4:18:50 PM] budget, following the findings of the audit. That's my understanding. And director bland, is that your understanding as well? >> Yes, ma'am, it is. >> We desperately need an animal behaviorist so I'm looking for the results of the audit so we can bring that to fruition. >> Kitchen: Thank you, councilmember Kelly. I wanted us to be clear that is a recognized need and it's something that [inaudible] And didn't want it to just say that we weren't going to have that. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks very much for the presentation. This is very interesting. I have a few questions. I am also super concerned about the exchange we just had, councilmember harper-madison, thank you for sharing that information from your constituent. I see the language about taking in animals on an [4:19:50 PM] emergency basis and I think we probably need to define that for the public so that folks understand it. But I'm also really concerned about what was described in terms of their potentially being police action against somebody who -- well, really my colleague or tick you late that -- articulated that, so I don't know when that conversation transpired, but I'm on board, I think it's a significant concern. I wanted to say also just a couple things. One is I'm really super glad director bland to see that you are open again on Sundays. That's great. It looks like you are open for adoptions on Sundays; is that correct? >> We are. >> Tovo: That's super and just wanted to say I've spent a lot of time, probably more time -- well, I spent a lot of time over there and you have incredible volunteers and incredible staff, and despite some of the challenges, especially in recent months with such a high number of animals, they are always super helpful and super engaged and it is an extraordinary example of a place where tons and tons of [4:20:52 PM] people come as you've demonstrated with your numbers, but it's clear on any given day of the week it's just alive with volunteer services. So thank you on behalf of, you know, just thank you to all of those -- all the volunteers who work there but also the staff who are just doing their jobs day in and day out under sometimes really challenging circumstances. A couple things I just wanted to harken back to. I submitted some budget questions that got answered after the budget because I submitted them so late in the process, but wanted to have that information as we continued to talk about animal services. And then I also did some budget direction. And the budget direction I think part of it is you being here today is responding to some of the updates. But I wanted to ask you, director bland, about a few of those things and just to encourage you. I just did the B on. T and -- bot and found the text and those are all very [4:21:53 PM] useful features. A few weeks ago I found a dog running through the neighborhood, actually limping through the neighborhood and several neighbors and I got together and I was starting to panic knowing there were no in-takes, but we were able to find the owner. We were glad to return it to the owner. It needed to be inside and not outside. So in my budget direction, I had asked for there to be some information posted online and as well in the animal center itself explaining what I think is somewhat of a shift in process with regard to stray holds. And I'm not sure that that's happened. It doesn't look like it's happened online, but it is -- I've witnessed because I've spent time there, I've witnessed several times where people have gotten pretty frustrated of not understanding what it means for an animal to be in a [4:22:55 PM] stray hold. I'll use myself as an example. During that period of time where that animal doesn't necessarily belong to the center, they are in the stray hold period and it's a couple days before they can become available for adoption, and I've seen, you know, in the time I've spent there, I've seen multiple people not understanding you can still put in an application during that period of time. And I saw one man really frustrated and upset because he thought he had waited for the day that animal could be adopted and it had already been spoken for by an organization. I know you are doing everything you can and thinking innovatively about how to increase our adoptions and I think clarifying some of that information for the public would be helpful. I asked a volunteer during one of my many visits and because I don't know if it has changed or just not something all the volunteers understand, they didn't know that either, that you could put in an application during that stray hold period. [4:23:57 PM] The other point that I asked you to consider in your budget direction is how to -- how to really balance the opportunities for local individuals, especially when it comes to small dogs. And this too comes not just from my own experience but also from the experience watching other folks go who are primarily interested in small dogs and may only be allowed to have small dogs because of the situation you describe, they need to have a 30-pound or under. In my experience, those dogs, and I checked my anecdotal experience with both the volunteers and staff members I've talked to over several months, and they confirm that that's true. That the actual small dogs, not like puppies of large breeds, but small dogs tend to be -- tend to have an application on them pretty soon after they arrive at the shelter even while they are in that stray hold period of time and very often it's from a foster organization, a foster agency. So if you are a regular person, if you don't know [4:24:57 PM] the system and don't go back repeatedly, you might have trouble finding a small dog if you are looking and you might get frustrated. I've known a couple people who did because they kept putting in applications but it was always too late. There was always a rescue organization in front of them. So have you done some thinking about how to better -- my budget direction asked you to think about better balancing the opportunities here. Let me give you one example. I saw a dog by the time I saw it it already had a rescue organization who had spoken for it. A couple days later I happened to be there when the foster -- when the rescue organization came, and they were adopting just that one dog. They had driven in from a rescue organization in Wimberley to pick up their one dog. Is there a way to, for example, encourage those rescue organizations, if you are coming to get one of our small dogs, you will also -- we would like to ask you to [4:25:59 PM] take in a couple larger dogs as well. And in part I'm asking this because as I look at it, you're adopting -- the majority of the small dogs are going to rescue organizations for the current fiscal year, I think 514 small breed dogs were adopted, and during the same period of time, 664 small breed dogs were adopted to rescue organizations. So have you thought about, one, ways to prioritize local families to keep those folks coming back? I'm concerned that people who are coming to the shelter might be frustrated and we really want them to walk the halls and come back and adopt dogs there. And if they, one, don't understand the process, or two, you know, find that they are having challenges finding -- finding dogs especially, you know, getting their applications in, that might frustrate potential adopters. And three, can we better [4:27:00 PM] utilize some of those rescue organizations, you know, just in some cases at least, just adopting small dogs. Can you make it part of the requirements that they also take some of the large dogs, which are not the dogs that are -- they are the dogs councilmember vela was talking about that are in there a year or month. We have small dogs really challenging if you are looking for a small dog finding one, and the large dogs tend to be there for a long time. I think you understand the question. >> I do. And we have worked with rescue partners and several of our out-of-state partners have actually taken our long-stay dogs that have been there 800 days or more. We've worked with some of those folks that have resources for behavior modification and what they can take in their system. We also work with them to say, okay, you take these two large dogs, if you want the small dog. We do have that relationship with so that we do work with [4:28:00 PM] those transport partners. There are some breed rescues that are specific for small and that's their niche and that's all they would pull. But one of the things that we do is we did implement the pre-adoption process again that had been dropped, you know, years ago. So that, you know, so people like you, I think you actually -- the one you just received, you got it when it's off its stay hold because you put an application in ahead of time. That is an option. One of the things we did implement is we do not allow any rescue to pull an animal until seven days. So it has to be within our system on seven days before they can pull. Currently our average for a rescue to pull is 20.7 days. That's the average length of time that an animal has stayed in there average-wise. Any small dog has to be on site for seven days. >> Tovo: Help me understand that. And you are right, since we're talking about it, that [4:29:02 PM] was the third -- this third dog, the first two, you know, were almost immediately upon arrival rescue groups had put in applications. And I just happened to be there -- I just happened to be there when that dog arrived. Pretty soon after. And then we were there the next morning to put in our application. But I think, you know, and I learned that process from spending a lot of time there. So I guess what I'm saying is, I've seen other folks looking for those smaller dogs become frustrated with the process because they don't understand it. And so that's I think providing some more explanation for how that happens would be useful. And then I'm glad to hear, it sounds like you are adjusting your process because what we have, I think, and I confirmed this with our staff, the most highly adoptable dogs tend to be spoken for very quickly, very often as the numbers show by our rescue organizations. And so if that's going to [4:30:02 PM] continue to happen, then I think they should be asked as it sounds like you are doing with out-of-state dogs to -- state groups, to also take some of the dogs that are less adoptable. But what do you mean by the seven days? I thought they had the same ability. In fact, they can reserve those animals as soon as they come in on the stray hold. >> We changed our standard operating procedure after we had your concerns, that any rescue organization, they can't pull anything until it's been on site for seven days. So they -- that gives the public the community to adopt those animals first. I can tell you here recently, we have seen cute puppies and cute dogs sit there for a couple weeks with nobody adopting them. People are just not adopting like they were. But we still implemented that, so they have to be on site seven days before they have the ability to tag them. >> Tovo: That's an [4:31:03 PM] extremely significant change. That other process that's been in place for years, so thank you, that's a very significant change. And now I think -- I have to start visiting again to try to promote some of those others -- >> There is the cough yet in that sop -- caveat, if it's a medical issue, if there's a rescue organization that wants to take and treat that animal. You normally don't have someone willing to come in and immediately send six or $8,000 on a surgery when they adopt a dog. Those kind of dogs do get to bypass that on an exception basis. >> Tovo: That's interesting. The budget direction we passed council was just general, could you think about recommendations for better balancing it. That's a very interesting response and you have the ability to change it again if it's not working and you suddenly have lots of animals not going. But thank you, that's very [4:32:04 PM] helpful. And I also noticed that recently you updated the dashboard to show where -- what the in-takes are like with a pie chart so the public can clearly see what level the center is at. So that too I think is very helpful information for the public. Thank you. >> That tells me you've been on our website since yesterday. It's just been up since yesterday. >> Tovo: I was doing it as I was sitting here. >> We did put, you know, basically for our cats and small dogs and large dogs, in-take what our numbers are so it's very easy for the public to see you are overcapacity on large dogs, but that's where you might need help from me adopting. Or I better see what I can do to find this animal's home. We thought that would be a good indicator to let the public know and it's updated every hour. >> Tovo: That's great. [4:33:05 PM] And my last suggestion, you have a great mobile van. And I look forward to seeing it out among the community and please rely on the council as a source if you are going out as a resource if you are going out with your mobile van, please let us know and we can help you promote it so we can maybe drive potential adopters there. And manager, at various times we've talked about city departments taking on animals and having them on site for people to see at our rec centers or at other places. Recently we had a suggestion from a constituent that I sent on to director bland to maybe have animals, one or two, at different fire stations. So I just throw that out as a potential idea of continuing to think creatively about how we can support director bland and the animal center throughout the organization in getting animals into places where they might encounter families that would be interested in adopting them. [4:34:09 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I think that's our agenda for today. >> I just want to thank director bland and the great work from the animal services area. If there is one ask, I mean certainly it's continue to spread the word. We are always asking our council offices to ensure that we're amplifying those messages because it does take this whole community to make sure we remain the no-kill city we've always been proud of. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Director, thank you. You are in a high-profile agency. Thank you very much for your work. We're going to adjourn the meeting here at 4:34. See you all on Thursday.