Mobility Committee (MOBC) Regular meeting Transcript – 3/2/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 3/2/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/2/2023 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. [1:08:13 PM] Start. I can have everyone take their seats. I will now call to order these regularly scheduled mobility committee meeting. I am joined also by the vice chair of housing and planning. Ryan alter , who in just a few minutes we'll be calling that meeting to order. It is 108 pm I am Paige Ellis. I'm the mayor, pro tem and chair of the mobility committee. I am joined also by vice chairs. Oh, qadri. Council member Natasha harper-madison and council member of Vanessa Fuentes from the mobility committee. We are here in city hall chambers and I will call the meeting to order Ryan, would you like to call housing and planning to order? All right. Good afternoon. I am council member, Ryan alter vice chair of the housing and planning committee. We are meeting in city hall council chambers on March the 2nd 2023 in [1:09:15 PM] conjunction with the mobility committee. It is now 109 and I call the meeting to order council member qadri is present counts. Chair harper-madison is present virtually and I believe with that we have a quorum. We are also joined by council member Alison alter, and I know that council member Tito Velo was here and it's probably going to be joining us shortly, so we'll go ahead and get started. This is a really exciting and special moment for these committees to be meeting jointly , the E T O D process was actually started. I was happy to be a co sponsor, but council member harper-madison and her team were the ones who really got this process started. What is so interesting about this type of program is that it's kept metro that is the grant recipient to do work and talk about what our transit oriented developments and as we move forward as a community, with building out project, connect and looking at future transportation and land use [1:10:16 PM] planning. How do we mitigate and prevent displacement? How do we make sure we have live work play communities. And how do we do? T O D planning moving forward with a keen eye on the equity component of it, and so staff has been working for I think years at this point to really work through. What does equity T O D look like? How is that going to work for our community? And what do we need to be mindful of and factor in as our city continues to grow and as we continue to fight climate change through good land use and transportation planning, so we're gonna spend the bulk of these first two hours on just the E T O D items of each of the agendas and then subsequently we will adjourn the housing and planning folks so that they can go about the rest of their commitments for the day and we will pick up the rest of the items that are on the mobility committee agenda. And that should run us from about 3 to 4 o'clock and we hope to not have people here too late as the [1:11:17 PM] weather starts to roll in, and people need to start being mindful of making sure they are safe at home and not traveling on the roads when the weather comes in. So on that note, we have some public speakers signed up to speak. I believe we have five speakers who are all signed up on the T O D. We go ahead and call those names. Natalie friendly. Here she comes. Good afternoon. Good afternoon council. Thank you for your service. The E T O D policy plan report is only half done in that it focuses admirably. I might add. On aspirational community benefits, but unfortunately it does not address real community costs. Todd jumped from a focus on rail lines to include bus [1:12:18 PM] stops as anchors for it oddest stations with gateway and midway areas that will make existing single family housing nonconforming overnight. Todd's goals are aspirational. And yet you are being asked to accept the public policy plan, which fails to plan for and around human costs and constraints. The research underpinning it, Todd. Doesn't lay out the impacts on single family homeowners nor provide downstream analyses of 2nd and 3rd order effects of these impacts on homeowners referencing the $300 million displacement funds is no substitute for omitting to conduct deep empirical replicable professional standard downstream analysis on those who will bear the costs. Ignoring the impacts on single family homeowners across Austin across [1:13:19 PM] Austin, east west north south, harm sauce tonight's across all racial, ethnic categories. Income levels and age groups. Homeowners throughout Austin have these and other questions. Willie Todd keep middle class homeowners. From being able to access equity in their homes. How will this affect you? Locked loans can middle class homeowners make repairs on their homes? Can they build home additions for multigenerational families and aging in place will eat taught hamper homeowners obtaining insurance policies. How will he taught effect Travis county property appraisals. There will be no do overs for unanticipated consequences. These are the same problems code next had which also tonight's roundly opposed and state courts ruled against. Surely Austin has pub, the public administration and planning expertise and the will to find a solution to our affordability problems without [1:14:19 PM] creating divisive zero sum outcomes for hundreds of thousands of austinites. Please reject the sudden last minute equating of bus stops to train stations and focus. You're planning on rail lines vote against the potentially harming of hundreds of thousands of austinites through premature planning conclusions that failed to address impacts to all of Austin's homeowners. Thank you for your consideration. The best. Next speaker is hands magnetism. Good afternoon committee members and council members. A second. What was just . Said. When Natalie and this is very similar to Vladimir Putin taking over Ukraine, I mean you are intending to take people's property without compensation. [1:15:19 PM] It's inverse condemnation, and this is gonna lead to a lot of lawsuits in federal court. State courts. I mean, it's insanity. You need to revise this and reject. Voting for this, next week. It's just insanity. Thank you. Next speaker is Leslie. Curran's. Council members. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. I just want to say building intensive density along a limited capacity bus route. Is inappropriate. Bus routes along burnet road, in particular, lack independent right of way, meaning that they are stuck in the traffic that everybody else is stuck in and are limited in their carrying capacity and like trains, constantly increasing [1:16:21 PM] density along burnet road, will slow traffic and make commuting by bus actually more difficult. The E T O D D process planning process has been flood. I am an impacted homeowner in the targeted area, and I am just now hearing about this only through the grapevine, to be honest with you. The majority of impacted homeowners still have absolutely no idea what plans you have for them and their homes. You discuss among yourselves very technical topics that include jargon and assumptions about what results. Your decisions will have. I just want to remind you that you are messing with real people's lives. In a very direct and personal way. These types of radical changes are not something that should be taken lightly without much consideration of the realistic pros and cons of the proposal. I hope that you will accept the [1:17:22 PM] need to listen to the communities that your plans will radically alter. This E T. R D process needs to slow down and involved impacted neighborhoods so that the best decisions can be made. This has not been and inclusive process. Including bus routes in the E T O D density is overreach and will have negative consequences. Traffic will increase. But with history as a guide, affordable housing will not materialize. For example, a one bedroom apartment in the mini one of many newly built large huge apartment complexes on burnet road. Lisa's 1st $1700 per month that is not affordable , adding more of these new, large, expensive apartments will not help low income citizens, which appears to be the goal here. I'm asking you to remove bus routes from this et de plan and remove the E T O D approval [1:18:23 PM] from the consent agenda. Next week, please. It is much too early to approve this flawed plan, which has come out of a very flawed process in my opinion. Current plan has been rushed and not vetted. There are many, many unanswered questions that we all have about the impacts on us personally. And impacted communities have been kept in the dark. Please. I'm asking you just to take more time to get this right. Thank you very much. Next speaker is Mary Farrell. And Charles before we continue. I just want to note for the record that council member chito Vella has joined us from the housing and planning committee. Oh that's right. Our unofficial member. And ex [1:19:23 PM] officio. That's right. Shall I proceed? Good afternoon. I'm Mary pharaoh. I live in district seven. And, hearing. You talk about how many years that staff has been working on this? I chuckled a little bit because one of our neighbors yesterday said what is E Todd? And can I get a vaccine for it? So there really is a lot of questions still about what is going on with you, Todd. First I want to say I agree as probably most reasonable people do about a need for equitable and affordable housing. It is noble , worthwhile and necessary. But like our previous speakers, I believe that the rush to usher in some of these changes has meant less effective outcomes and a troubling disregard for residents in established neighborhoods. And I will say it has been troubling to hear that. Some of us have been [1:20:24 PM] characterized as having too much influence over land policy because we live in established neighborhoods. For those of you who espouse the need for broad involvement and transparency. That that is most concerning to me that there seems to be and have been at times and active effort to exclude citizen participation as to effectiveness. What I've observed is that large scale development in which lowest income earners are unable to qualify to purchase units and others are likely to find as our previous speaker said only one bedroom units available to rent making them untenable for families. Beyond that developers are commonly given the option to pay a fee in lieu of actually including affordable units on site. Meaning that the original justification for allowing these big structures to be built adjacent to establish homes which affordable housing on [1:21:25 PM] transit lines turns out to be deceptive. This is not an organic approach to providing needed homes. Instead, it seems to be a path toward dismantling neighborhoods that have nurtured Austin's growth for decades. So in an ironic twist, it may well result in enforced displacement of homes of people who flee living in the shadow of 90 ft buildings, lugo looming over their backyards. Quite many questions should be more thoroughly researched and address before putting forward a plan that essentially seems to rebrand and expand code next. Most reasonable and caring people. Want affordable housing to be provided in Austin, but a well researched analysis of the impact of the population increases you would usher into areas that rely on aging utility infrastructure and, yes, even traffic congestion. Because not everyone is going to ride the bus. For the sake of a future [1:22:29 PM] that everyone can support. We would ask that you please pause this plan until there has been adequate consideration given thank you. Next speaker is Janice Rankin. Good afternoon chair, women and committee members and congratulations to the new council members, you surely have jumped into the deep end of the pool. I am James Rankin, a resident of district seven. Since 1992 my background includes 10 years of serving as [1:23:30 PM] legislative support staff for a highly respected legislator on the house transportation committee. I appreciate you allowing me to speak. It is challenged since we may be about to see staff presentations that were not made available to the public as backup for the agenda notice that were posted for today. In short, I want to say that the scope of the Todd policy plan is overly broad, and it represents a major policy direction and paradigm shift for Austin. It does not need to be put on a consent agenda, and its decision at this point would be premature. As recently as February, new metro rapid routes have been delayed until 2035 2025. Pardon me. The recommendations too dense if I neighborhoods are based on incomplete community engagement process, remember this people are your stakeholders. Only 994 respondents were tracked in a three phase community engagement process that started after the June 2021 ordinance, and that [1:24:34 PM] process was still underway. As of yesterday, there were virtual presentations being given at 6:30 P.M. The community engagement was done during the peak of the pandemic, and mainly virtually, which excluded residents who lacked digital literacy and or digital access. It appears there were no town hall meetings so that council members could hear candidly from the public in their own districts, if adopted at all, the Todd policy plan should be associated with rail routes and not rely on changeable bus routes. These committees and the council should cast Antley monitor the use and purpose of specific expenditures in dollars and cents, not just summaries of the hard palate program planning funds already received. Specifically there have been about four million or a little more received through the past week. And the question is for what purposes? What is the funding been used for? Have we been paying consultants? How we've been buying ad space? Have we been doing media buys? What has this money been used for? [1:25:35 PM] Four. There should not be any rush to adopt an eat on policy plan when the plans for project connect have not been solidified enough to submit a federal grant application for capital funds. Since the people of Austin were allowed to vote on the project. Connect proposal. Why not let the people vote on the Todd proposal? This is a wide ranging land use proposal similar to code next. Let's not spend money on pushing a policy for an unjustified outcome, which would be reclassifying bus rapid transit routes to high capacity. Roots in the interest of transparency and improved planning processes. Please postpone consideration of the retard policy plan and reevaluate the concept and its impact. And all the people of Boston, especially homeowners and small business owners. Ah remain available for questions if you have any thank you. Thank you. Next speaker Monica Guzman. [1:26:44 PM] Monica Guzman. Sure that is all the speakers. Okay. Thank you. And thank you to our speakers who came today. I wanted to turn it over to council member harper-madison. I know this was your original resolution. Would you like to say anything at this point? Thank you, Jerry. Appreciate it. Excuse me. I appreciate that very much. I would like to say something. I'm first of all, just thank you. Especially you and staff for helping us set up this meeting to conduct the meeting. Thank you colleagues for being present. Thank you. Council member altar for already being the leading candidate for best vice chair of the year, two days in a row, special called joint meeting of the housing and mobility committees. It's a new and unique opportunity for our council. We often look at our policies from a singular vantage point. Just one perspective, [1:27:44 PM] which ultimately, frankly hampers our desired outcomes. That is why mayor pro tem Ellis and I, we had this particular issue as it's coming up the equitable development of our historic investments in transit . We could spend today reviewing it both from a mobility, perspective and a housing outcome. But I think we owe it to the other council colleagues and to our community that we leave it here today with us that we leave, frankly, here today with a sharper and more fine tuned set of recommendations for the detailed policy plan. That was what we promised when we said we would postpone the item and bring it back, and that is what I'm hopeful that we can do it next week's council meeting. We're joined by the city and cap metro staff and several community experts that we've invited to provide recommendations. I really strongly encourage our staff and these experts to be as pointed and as directed as possible when it comes to the ways that the top policy will either succeed or fail in opening up more parts [1:28:46 PM] of town to more people and to ensuring that Austin is more diverse and more accessible to future generations, and I can't quite see chambers, but I'm assuming that you've heard the presentations. The. From our citizens are from our residents . And I want you to take the opportunity where you're able to address their testimony. Some of the fears that they expressed and speak candidly to where we actually are in the process because I think I heard some things that I don't know that are entirely factual. In which case I'd like very much for as we move forward through a conversation around equity and around transit and around reconciliation of systems infrastructure that is historically racist, historically rooted in Jim crow era redline racism. We are addressing that as a city because we as a community have acknowledged it is. Critical it is imperative that we speak to [1:29:46 PM] one another candidly about the reconciliation process. So this E type process this equitable transit oriented development is intended to address the wrongs of the past. The slow to respond in the middle where we're retrofitting a major metropolitan city with our transit infrastructure. So today , where we all have similar investments in what our city looks like moving forward. It's 2023 like my baby asked me. What does Austin 2080 look like? We all have to be thinking about that some of us will be here. Some of us won't but we need to think about it from the perspective of the people who 100% will be here. The people who aren't even born yet that's super building our transit infrastructure for so as a reminder colleagues I wanted to say that we are not posted to vote on recommendations today, but I assure you that I will be taking feedback and insights from today's meeting and sharing what I believe to be critical changes to the policy plan. On [1:30:48 PM] our message board between now and the next council meeting. I also encourage encourage, rather all of us to do the same for Steph sake. And certainly, you know, we can move the critical initiative that we're working on to the next step. In my opinion , so thank you. Mayor. Pretend for guiding us through this briefing through the discussion and recommendations today. Thank you. And thank you for your work on this throughout the years, I will lay out the general framework of how the next phases of the conversation today will go. We're going to have an overview of the E T O D work and relationship with the project, connect folks, and that will be spoken to by Rosie. True love, the director of our housing and planning department and sharmila Mukherjee, cat metro E V P planning and development. We will then move into E T O D policy, the details, implications and implementation and that's going to be given by the Todt team through housing and planning department. Then E. T O D policy plan engagement [1:31:49 PM] process to date, and that will be given by Anna land from cat metro. And we will lastly have a community partner roundtable and everyone's going to get about 5 to 7 minutes to detail anything that they want to say about that and are invited. Speakers are a vases are through project connect community advisory committee and housing works. Bill Mckinley with transit forward Paulette gibbons with U L I, Jake Wagman from UT Austin and joao Paulo Connolly from 80 X mobility coalition. And then we've reserved some time for discussion. And Q and a so in order for us to get through the number of presentations that we have ahead of us all. Recommend that we save our questions and answers for the end. Unless there is something pretty quick and of clarifying nature that might need to be asked in the moment and then we will finish our discussion up hopefully by three o'clock P. M so that we can move on to the rest of the agenda items on the mobility committee schedule. I will also [1:32:50 PM] point your attention to the documents for this, and the backups and presentation is going to be located on the mobility committee page, and I don't believe it's on the housing and planning committee. Paige. So look on the mobility one for that. And then I posted three links that were sent to us from U L I that will be referenced today and I posted those personally onto our message board threads if you want to look at those PDFs, those will also be available to you. So on that note, I will open it up to the overview of E T O D work and the relationship to project connect. Him. Thank you so much. Rosie. True love and the director of the housing and planning department for the city of Austin. Thank you again for hosting this meeting this joint meeting and setting aside the time to better understand why Andy toady policy plan is important for our community. This is a critical time project connect as a once in a generation investment in our community, and we have the chance to develop in ways that not only improve our climate our mobility and our quality of [1:33:51 PM] life. We also have the chance through project connect to address historic inequities in our community with both better transportation access, but also with more housing, especially affordable housing. And increased access to economic opportunities to enable all members of our community to thrive. The goal of our briefing today is to provide you with an overview of the equitable transit oriented development policy plan what it will help to accomplish and why it is important to have counsel act now to implement the code quickly ahead of design and construction of the project connect system. In order to guide public and private development. Typically land use is in place before or in tandem with decisions about infrastructure investment. In this sense, we are already behind as a community and preparing for the success of project connect, so accepting the policy plan and moving forward into more detailed planning and implementation expeditiously is important. These corridors and station areas are already seeing redevelopment interest today, so [1:34:53 PM] getting ahead of that with updated council Paul with updated city policy and procedures is key to shaping equitable outcomes in cohesively supporting transit investments and community members. Once E. T O D is accepted council policy direction staff will be able to use that guidance and land use and zoning decisions, preventing a case where lag time could mean decisions that are not supportive of Ito D and are made in the next. Sorry excuse me are made in the next several months that work to cross purposes for are you toady goals. We're very excited to be here and to participate in the conversation. I want to turn it over now to sharmila with cap metro. Thank you, Rosie. Thank you, city council and the mobility committee for this opportunity. I'm sure mila sharmila Mukherjee , executive vice president, planning and development of cap metro. And I would start by saying this is a new, unique, [1:35:54 PM] transformational, almost a generational opportunity that we have in front of us. Many other communities, have gone through the same path of bringing light trail, into their cities and Austin. Is at the precipice of that we have this time to plan for transit oriented development in a way that is context sensitive. Scalable. And attainable for Austin. Why do we need to do this? And I transit agency is not typically the entity that guides this process . We do not have land use authority city of Austin does. We are here to provide a helping hand. And we were very fortunate to be able to receive four successive three successive for altogether F T 80 ud planning grants to support this effort. Cap metro is committed to in [1:36:56 PM] hand in hand with Austin transit partnership in city of Austin to make sure that the future light rail that comes to Austin really helps benefit the citizens of Austin and able to correct some of the historical transportation development mistakes that have. That we are here to transform with this generational opportunities. The $3.15 million that if T a gave to the city of Boston cap metric through cat metro to Austin. It is being used. Possibly one of the most efficient, prudent and collaborative manner that could support and be almost presented as a template for how multi agency collaboration to should take place. I personally have taken participated in ft. A lessons learned to talk about it. And I will pass it on to Anna land to talk about all of the engagement. That led to the [1:37:56 PM] development of this E hard plan it was co created. Driven project, both by city of Austin and cap metro and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. It's great. Thank you for that overview. And I think we have an island coming up later in the agenda. I think we're going to shift to the, to one or cook in principle in the housing and planning department. Perfect. Thank you. Hello good afternoon. Council members. Committee members, mayor pro tem . My name is Warner cook is Rosie said, and I'm really happy to have this chance to get even deeper dive and provide some answers to questions that we heard today and that we've been hearing from council offices and community members related to equitable T O D. I'm gonna walk us through what the actual draft [1:38:56 PM] resolution would do if council were to approve it on March 9th because that has been a big topic of question. The purpose of the policy plan, as outlined in the original resolution room council is to create a big picture framework and guidelines for how to start thinking about planning in the future for our transit investments to be successful, and for our community members of all backgrounds to thrive. We know that transit brings a lot of new opportunities to Austin. But it also can create additional displacement pressure and end up harming folks. So in order to not repeat this pattern of harm, and instead work to start repairing it, the eatin policy plan offers a high level guidance on ways we could improve these equitable outcomes that we're looking for. For current and future residents of Austin. In order to provide equitable outcomes. Six E T O D goals were developed through our analysis and community engagement efforts, which animal talk about afterwards. These six [1:39:59 PM] goals will be the guiding stars so that we hold ourselves and our partners and our community accountable to striving towards as we continue developing around project connect. These are going to be the lenses through which we consider how to implement chito D and check to make sure that we are any time we're making a decision about investments, programs or regulations. It's furthering these six goals. Specifically on March 9th. We're asking counsel in the draft resolution as it's been posted for four things first is to accept the E T O D policy plan. Initiate stationary, a planning in the north east Austin district plan. Initiate amendments to the imagine Austin comprehensive plan and initiate amendments to the land development code. And I'm going to walk through each of these four things in a little bit more detail now. So accepting the policy plan. What does accepting the policy plan? Do we found a lot of questions about that? So I want to dispel [1:40:59 PM] some confusion I know is out there. It is a policy document. It represents our best thinking on how we can reach those six E T O D goals in the future. That we want near our transit stations. It's basically a framework. One way I like to talk about it is thinking about it as the framework. We have the tools in the toolbox in the policy toolkit. They're not every tool as we know for every project is going to be right, just like with every tool in the policy toolbox. There'll be some stations where tools apply. Some tools might apply differently across different stations, and so it's really important to think about it as a menu of options. That council is directing staff to go explore more work with our community members more to understand what those tools could be and come back for future implementation. So what's the plan does not do is automatically apply those tools on March 9th it it just that's not how it's posted. That's not how it's written. The other things that it doesn't do is change city budget or funding [1:42:01 PM] on March 9th, you know, the budget is the budget and without amendments to it, there's not going to be any new funding or any reprioritizing of funding towards this effort. And the last thing that this is something I've heard a lot. The accepting the policy plan does not change anyone in Austin zoning or regulations on any parcels on March 9th. What the draft resolution ask counsel to do is initiate that process to look at it and initiating that process which we think could take. A year a year and a half, to really work through some of those amendments with our community and analyze what the impacts would be, as some of the speakers this morning, said, that's that's how you get from idea to reality, but the reality doesn't come until there's notice petitions, public hearings that planning commission and council and ultimately adoption so nothing on the ninth. Is any of those things I just mentioned. It does not change zoning. So then, if on the ninth we're not changing anything. What? Why are we [1:43:02 PM] taking action on the ninth? Right so we still need to work towards implementing the plan. Accepting the plan says this is the direction we want to go and implementing. The plans means this is how we're actually going to take those steps forward. What staff is envisioning is a two step parallel approach. So we've got system wide tools and items that will do for implementation. And then also geographically specific items. This parallel approach helps us efficiently and quickly start work towards the equitable outcomes and meeting our six goals broadly in Austin with a system where you approach but at the same time making sure that implementation proposals are tailored and geographically specific through that approach. And I've also gotten some questions about whether a system wide approach would just be, applied everywhere or if it has to happen first in the geographic station planning cabin second or vice versa. So I want to clarify that we're talking about both of these things that the geographic station planning and the system [1:44:03 PM] wide approach is moving forward in the next few years on on parallel tracks. We don't. We don't want to see it as an either or we really feel like it's a both, and that's that's the kind of urgency or community has expressed to us. And just because something is part of a system wide approach. It doesn't mean that it's going to be blanket or it's going to apply the same way in every single stationary. That's that's not what we mean. When we say system. Wine. The next part of the draft resolution on March. 9th is initiating station area planning in the 11th station areas within the northeast Austin district planning boundary. This is an example of that geographically specific approach. I was just talking about we've already kicked off some vision plans with the north Lamar and south congress transit centers and I think some of the some of the speakers today mentioned that we had a workshop last night. We did. We had workshops for those geographic areas on the 28th and the first where we got really great more in depth local knowledge about what people like to celebrate [1:45:03 PM] what what brings them culture? What they would like to see improved in those neighborhoods . So if you're in one of those neighborhoods, please go to project. Connect .com slash projects slash E T O D. There's more engagement in those two stationary is going on now and survey opened through March 21st. But looking at this map, you can see that we're talking about different parts of town. We're also talking about different kinds of transit service. And that was another thing that came up was whether it should be rail or also include the metro rapid services and as council directed staff and its initial resolution in June, 2021. Were were to look at this full system. This initial investment of project connect. It doesn't mean that it's going to look the same in every type of transit service, but we want to see equitable outcomes, whether it's a real stop or a bus stop. By working through all these different types early, we'll get a chance to kind of get that under our belt to see what works in different parts of Austin or for different transit [1:46:04 PM] types, so it's not a predetermined outcome on in any of these areas. The third thing that council is asked to do on March 9th with the draft resolution is initiate amendments to the comprehensive plan. Imagine Austin. Our current growth concept map, which is on the screen in front of you does not account for the project and connect system. We've learned more about the transit investments in the last few years, and they're not reflected in our growth concept. Council decides on March 9th two vote to begin amendment process for imagine Austin it would allow staff to start looking at how to incorporate E T O D into the comp plan, including with community input on how to do that. We would take that input and craft any proposed amendments to imagine Austin and then go through the formal engagement or the formal amendment process, which is laid out in our city charter once that is eventually incorporated . If counsel would you know, ultimately adopt those proposed amendments, staff would be able [1:47:05 PM] to start using E T O D typology as one piece of information when we think about requests for plan amendments and zoning cases in the future within station areas. And then the last thing and probably the thing I've gotten the most questions about so far is what is the land development code amendments that council would be asked to initiate on March 9th. And I already discussed a little bit about the different flavors of those at the February 21st work session, but I'm gonna dive into even more detail right now. So. To understand what the proposed amendments are. You kind of also need to know what the current amendments are work or the current code says about T, O D and Austin and I'm definitely gonna launch into what the E T O D overlay is as well. So today, the city's land development code spells out the process for traditional Todt planning and regulations, the traditional toad approach previously used to date categorized, each defined Todt into one of a few different [1:48:07 PM] classifications and spelled out specifically how dense and intense it should be. Should it be a regional center and a town center, etcetera. With E T O D. We're taking a more people centered approach rather than the built form being the major focus. And so the regulations we know are only one way to get us towards our E T O D goals. We want to look at these current regulations as well because we also only have nine red line or parking ride sites as designated T. O. D. S in Austin. And we know from councils direction that you're interested in us looking across the cat metro project connects system to consider other services as well. So to make our code more reflective of this et de approach we've been working on staff is proposing a few different updates to the current code regulations. This would include updating the list of stations to the 98 station areas that are in the E T O D policy plan per council guidance. We also consider whether the existing initial or interim regulations still makes sense [1:49:08 PM] for Austin and whether they really help us reach those six E T O D goals. And maybe they need to be tweaked more to get to our equitable outcomes we're looking for so we envision community input as part of that process as well. We also want to look at the two step planning process and I'll talk about what the two step traditional process used to look like in a little bit. To make sure it reflects how we're actually going to do that geographic stationary, a planning going forward. The last type of land development code amendment staff is recommending for initiate and on March 9th is to create the overlay one of the tools and the policy toolkit. The overlay is not defined yet, and we think it could take as I said, at least a year year and a half or more to really do the analysis and the deep community engagement necessary to craft and apply this tool. When we were when we would go and craft this overlay, we would also be looking at the guiding factors being equity. Those six goals that I talked about and community engagement to make [1:50:10 PM] sure that it's going to meet what we're looking for as a community, and when I talk about crafting, there's a few four bullets they're about. Like, what do I mean to actually create an E T O D overlay? You have to think about what benefits we're going to be asking for in exchange for what additional entitlements and that's going to be a community conversation. Are going to think about where and how to map it. And that's also part of the conversation. And then we have to think about how does it interact with all the existing stuff that's in Austin today in plans and regulations, and that's also part of the conversation. So that's why I say it's going to take a lot of work, and it's going to take some time. This is not going to be created overnight. So we've also gotten a lot of questions that talk about like the voluntary word that's in the plan, and I recognize that that probably caused some confusion the way that we were in that in the plan document. People have been asking whether it means it's opt in or opt out, you know, could a whole neighborhood say we don't want to do E T O D or something like that? And the [1:51:11 PM] answer is no. This is not going to be a process where entire parts of the city can just opt out of being part of the equitable outcomes that austinites want. That would not be an equitable approach. That localized feedback on where it makes sense in a neighborhood is really, really valuable, but we know if we only listen to that kind of feedback, we're not going to have the chance. To really reach our equity goals, right if we just leave parts of the city from from doing their part, I've also heard concerns that the overlay would require redevelopment that like as soon as on March 9th that's passed. Then there's this overlay, and it makes you redevelopment. Your property that's never been the case. Any property owner at any time can choose what they would like to do with their property. Including not anything exactly what it is today. If you choose to redevelop, you can use your based zoning. You don't have to use any of the additional bonus programs that may or may not apply to your property. So even if you have a V in your zoning string today, you don't have to use the right. You can use your [1:52:12 PM] based zoning, so I wanted to clarify that and then the idea that it would automatically be applied again. The answer is no on council. Voting for E T O D resolution on March, 9th would initiate the process to start looking at this tool, but it is not automatically start it being applied today. So if you want staff to look into this further than then please vote for that on the ninth, but when the proposal comes back at the end of the process and our analysis and engagement council will be able to vote on it. Amend it even flat out. Rejected as has always been, you know your will as a dais. Okay so that was a lot on the system wide approach is now I'm gonna dig in a little bit more to the geographic approach. Like what does a T O D E T O D planning process look like we just kicked off the two in north and south, are are asking for some more to be started in north east Austin. And what is that, like? So our current T O D regulations in the [1:53:12 PM] land development code of a really prescriptive way of how we do Todt planning for traditional totes. And so the first thing is there's initial regulations as soon as a T O D is mapped onto a parcel. There's initial regulations that apply the governor things like building setbacks and kind of parking restrictions. They don't do much, but they do just like a little bit to make sure that the pedestrian environment is a little bit more friendly in a duty the second or the so that's kind of the immediate step. I called it subzero step one is to go with the community to craft a station area plan. This is going to set up the vision, but it's not a regulating document it gets amended into existing neighborhood plans. But it's not going to change anybody's owning and then the second step of the traditional processes the regulating plan, and this basically creates. A new zoning framework. You know, you get dash T O D two years owning string and you have to go to the [1:54:12 PM] regulating plan to see what you know you can actually do with your property. So in contrast to that current process that E T O D process that we're looking for. Is not quite the same. We still think that there could be used in interim regulations that apply system. Why hence why staff is asking for the chance to go look at those and see what works. And we also think something like this overlay bonus program that would apply system wide could be really useful to support our goals again. It might be an all station areas, but it might not be on all parcels. What staff really knows is that this vision plan that, that we've done in the past is a really valuable tool to understand what geographic areas are interested in for the future of their community. And getting the implementation of that plan has always been, you know, a little bit of a challenge, so there's lots of ways to implement plans. One of them is regulations. But there's other things like investments and setting up community partnerships and programs. Of these natures new [1:55:15 PM] supports for small businesses. Those are not regulations, so we recognize that because the theory is trying to take a really holistic look at how to implement the vision for a station area. It's not going to be the case in every time in every station that new regulations are needed in that in that area. Can I ask a question real quickly? Go ahead. On your interim regulations that apply system wide and I'm sorry if you said this, and I just missed it. Land use regulations or not. Let me go back to this slide really quick. So this is what's in our current duty regulations. We don't exactly have an idea yet. What needs to be updated in that or not, but it it does prohibit certain uses . So something like, really large surface parking lot would be prohibited right? And it also talks about setbacks and making sure building entrances you know, are close to the sidewalk and easily accessible. So does [1:56:17 PM] that answer your question a little bit to look at those uses and make sure that there is still the right users. If we updated those my and then you may get this somewhere else. I'm sorry if I'm jumping the gun here, but one of the things in the near term that I want to make sure it's somewhere in this process. It is. Coordination with a T P a and with others to make sure that we are taking the action we need to take as a council. When it comes to land use decisions in order to not score so poorly on federal metrics that determine the funding we're going to get. So if we're you know, I see it both one. If we're going to make these investments, we need to have the decision or the type of housing and land use around them that actually make it a good investment. We don't waste that [1:57:18 PM] money, but to we also want to be prudent with the taxpayers dollars and want to get as many federal dollars as we can. And right now in my discussions with 80, P and others were scoring horribly when it comes to these lines. And so I want to make sure we don't wait until we're building the station. To make those changes, but that we are somewhere in this process. Recognizing changes we might need to make today so that we qualify. For dollars. To get the lines bill. Yeah. Councilor I just want to reiterate that point that that let's not put the cart before the horse. You know the number one goal of the transitory in development is to get writers on the line to build housing around the stations. You know, I just, you know exactly. I understand there's a lot of work to do, but we target we're [1:58:19 PM] talking about a lot of things. We're not talking about that. And so that is the number one priority. If we don't do well on that we don't get federal dollars if we don't get federal dollars. You know the line is not going to be what we wanted to be. If the line is not what we wanted to be. We don't have that benevolent cycle that creates the resources that allows us to support the people that you know are threatened or displaced. So I really appreciate council member Ryan. I'll just point and I just want to reiterate that I agree with those and which just add the caveat that allowing people to be in our community and not have to be car dependent is a big high level goal from this and so it's not just about driving ridership, but it is about better air quality, less congestion. You know, more space for trees and people, unless you know less of the concrete. So if I would just add that extra layer to you know that that angle of it there any other questions? Okay thank you. And we have been collaborating really closely. We have people here from cat metro and at P [1:59:20 PM] today that can even better speak to the actual timeline for grant scoring. I know is on everybody's mind. Jen pine is with us. So great question for when we get to the Q and a, but I do want you to understand that there's both, there's a criteria that talks about kind of what's on the ground today. What are the population? What are the jobs? You know that that ft looks at, and then there's also a criteria that talks about what policies in place. What could be there? In the future and so E T. O D. I would definitely fit that second category of like the if it's accepted. What what could be there in the future? But the sooner that one implements E T O D and starts actually moving through some of those next steps and action items, the more likely it has a chance to like impact that first criteria about what's on the ground today so that we can talk more about that in the Q and a because I know that that's really a lot of interest. So I know that we got that we got a little bit behind, but I'm glad for the question. I really appreciate it. I also [2:00:21 PM] wanted. I think I covered yes, this I wanted to talk about relationships, the other work. You know, there's been other work that council has been working to do to try to ensure that project connect is successful, recent code amendments but also existing plans and regulations that are along the lines. And so we've gotten some questions about how that would relate to E T O D station area planning or what about district level planning? Are we only doing planning in the station areas? And so I wanted to make sure that folks knew that, in addition to E. T O D station areas were also planning to do these other small area and district level. And when it makes sense, incorporate et ot like for north east Austin , where there are stops, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be applied to areas that don't have these transit investments coming to it. And then we're we are going to need to consider how these different recent amendments or existing plans and things are going to factor into some of the policy tools as we start to develop those, so that is also very much on staff's mind. And then back to maybe a [2:01:23 PM] little bit of your point. Council members? What is the timeline? What are and what things we are. We are already doing that support. E T. O D. So based on our staff capacity, understanding the processes that we have to go through, like procurement and the code amendments and charter requirements as well as how long it takes to actually do engagement in station areas and start to develop a vision. This is kind of our best thinking on a potential timeline for some of those implementation steps I talked about today, the top two would be some of those system wide approaches the bottom to being some of those geographic specific approaches. And this has been coordinated with our partners at Austin transit partnership and project connect office here at the city as well as cap metro to understand you know what the timelines are for light rail design and grant funding submittal. Then my last slide here for those that are wondering like, what are we already doing? Are we doing anything today? The answer is definitely yes. The housing and [2:02:24 PM] planning department has while we've been working on this overall framework, we've still already started doing some implementation things that support project connect and support these eto O D goals, especially through general obligation bonds, or the 300 million with anti displacement funding that's been approved. So there's just a handful of things I know that director true love gave you all a really good comprehensive overview at the housing and planning committee on Tuesday and touched on a few of these things that housing and planning department does, so we would also be happy to answer some questions. Later on about those. Thank you. Can I ask, and I don't know. If you're the right person to ask this question. It's from the draft document something that jumped out to me. I want to make sure I'm reading it correctly, first and foremost, but then if there is lessons learned or why we see this. There's some Paige 10. It's talking about commuting and car ownership. Shifts. And the statement is that in. Census [2:03:30 PM] tracts where we have T O D S that transit ridership to work in these census tracts of study have seen significant reduction. Instead of an increase that's correct, and I wanted to understand if that's if we have looked at that, and said. Trying to understand why why is that happening? And clearly something we're doing is not quite working. So have we. Figured out maybe to go in a different direction a little bit on Summers or I'm just trying. There's probably a lot of factors. Why that, is the case. But you're correct that in census tracks that contain our three adopted todos we have seen a decrease in folks taking transit to work between 2010 and 2020. Census data numbers and so some of the things that could be at play. There are that it's still really easy. To drive and park a car. Another thing that could be in play is that there [2:04:30 PM] are fewer people with families, fewer low income people that are renting or owning. Units in these theories, we those are other facts that are in the little brief analysis that we did there. So these shifting demographics and kind of commuting patterns are not what we'd hoped to see out of our toads, which is another reason that we're looking at a new approach for eat toads, because that's that's not going to actually help us reach. Our climate goals and our congestion, mitigation goals and things. Yeah I allow a couple more questions, but we still have two whole sections of presentations to get through before Q and a. I guess I could wait. Yeah I could. I could wait until Q and a. Then I've quite a few questions. There was just a lot of information, and we may end up not having time for Q and a. If we ask all our questions on the first presentation. Oh great. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that turns [2:05:31 PM] us over to Anna land. Principal planner at cat metro. And we're going to hear about the engagement process to date. Welcome. Good afternoon council members chair and vice chair. My name is Anna land. I am a T O D manager at cat metro. I'm very happy here today to talk to our engagement process. In equitable approach to duty would not be so without intentional, meaningful and inclusive community engagement. So a cornerstone maybe next slide, please. Thank you a cornerstone of our engagement process is facilitates, facilitating that community input through the planning process to define equity and also to help us establish what equitable outcomes are needed across the station areas. This project differs in its approach because it has added additional weight to voice is not included and past multigenerational planning [2:06:31 PM] efforts, so in essence, turning up the volume on key community voices and also compensating them for their time and knowledge. We have a variety of engagement touch point some of the more traditional outreach such as the public meetings, stakeholder presentations, tabling and surveys worked really well in the past, but we acknowledge that these are not reaching deep enough into our communities. Our writers are residents, so we focus our engagement towards more targeted peer to peer approach. And we do that through regular CC briefings. We have focus groups with grass top grassroots residents, one on one interviews as well as community connectors. It's like, please. The community connectors and CC working group , I think deserves a shout out the csc or the community advisory committee is formed to advise project connect on issues of equity and anti displacement [2:07:32 PM] . They formed an eternity working group with us that we meet at least monthly, if not more regularly, depending on the project status. Do not just reviewed documents or decisions that are already made, but they roll up their sleeves and they're in the sausage making process alongside us. We also have 12 community connectors recruited from a pool of over 151 applicants. They represent seven out of the 10 districts in Austin, and they have extensive community organizing background and they range they represent a range of us nights from locals to New York transplants from retirees to students. And they really help us reach deeper into their network and participate in events that we as Kathmandu may not have the ability to attend. So with them. We have reached over 330 additional people for engagement and intend to over 40 different events. Next slide, please. Our engagement timeline [2:08:35 PM] is quite extensive. We have devoted significant staff and resources to make sure that we have the deepest reach as possible. So there are four total engagement faces that corresponds to keep project deliverables. The first one we kicked off in 2021, we focused on defining chito D goals that Warner showed earlier. And we delivered case studies of comparable studies from different cities around the country. In the next phase. We wanted to verify those schools with the community and discuss introduced policy and from then we delivered an existing conditions. Dashboard which is publicly accessible through the project, connect website where you're allowed to go in and look at the key demographic characteristics. Land use real estate of those impacted neighborhoods. In the third phase, which is divided into three and B, but this really consists of the Ito D policy plan. We went out and engage [2:09:36 PM] community on policy and program application, as well as the station type apologies. From this side of engagement. We deliver the policy toolkit, which is incorporated as part of the policy plan, as well as the priority tool dashboard, which is an enact interactive publicly a sex accessible dashboard that shows the, existing conditions of the area and also the missing missing pieces that makes it a complete neighborhood and also in the current stage. We're in face for delivering station area vision plan, which is currently ongoing asset today, still and this spring going forward, we hope to deliver the station area vision plans for north of March transit center and south congress transit center. As well as the east Riverside corridor update and releasing the details. The final report. For our engagement. We try to engage [2:10:37 PM] and let the public note this project through a variety of ways. We have surveys. We have social media blast from city of Boston and cabinet. Trow lot of tabling events. We printed out bus cards go inside our busses with qr codes that will lead to the project website or to the existing survey. We reach out to grass, top and grassroots organizations. We even have UT students involved in part of the engagement. And as Warner said, we had a public workshop as of 6 30 last night, this list was blasted to over 7000 people, so everyone who signed up to stay connected to project connects should have received an invitation to sign up and register. Oh. So in terms of basic stats for public workshops , we've held six citywide, sessions with over 321 participants. We have had 40 sessions of focus groups with 243 participants over 2300 [2:11:39 PM] counting. Survey responses over 40 organized events monthly, sexy et de working groups as well as regular presentations, the committees and commissions. And continuously attending E T O D connectors, events and outreach. Outreach places, and I want to acknowledge that a lot of these happened during the pandemic. We tried our best with virtual outreach and we try to be flexible with our time offering sessions in morning evening in Spanish, only with S L. Only all of those are accessible during every single public workshop. Next week. The two D policy plan. Engagement was not a quick process. It took us about five months through multiple vetting and public workshops and surveys and focus groups to get to where we are today. We started with about 75 tools that were provided by our consultants, and better dooms [2:12:39 PM] through all internal stakeholders. City agencies department C. A. C connectors and we whittled them down to 51 tools. Then we further workshop those tools with stakeholders and then we went out in the public. We had surveys asking folks how they feel about certain policies. As applies the area. We continue with focus groups. We had interviews with different agency implementation leads. Small businesses, developers both affordable and market. Then we went another round of betting with all of the stakeholders, and now we have it down to 46 tools. These 46 tools are meant to be aspirational and very high level and buildable upon the future, so this is not just be all and end all and with these 46 tools again, we went back to the community. We had public surveys and focus groups. To talk through priority and applicability, and this ended with the E T O D summit and [2:13:39 PM] input through the speak up Austin process. We've heard from many people, so this is just a very small representation of some of the key things in these areas that we've heard, one of the most important and most popular policy is advocacy for more affordable ground floor lease for smaller businesses and more flexibility and permitted ground floor uses. People were very concerned about. There are a lot of programs to help with assistance, but the barrier in application is very high, especially for business owners, whose primary English is a language is not English. Concerned that they need ongoing support versus just one off funding. Expansion of certain construction interruption fund that's already in place. Also just direct rent relief. And also we have comments that we cannot forget the small business. Such as food trucks. And how they're impacted during the construction. Thanks. Slide, [2:14:40 PM] please. For housing the number one thing we've heard is the barrier of entry to apply for affordable housing is just too high. I myself took a trial. I apply for one of the development and the application was over 70 pages long and it required a lot of information, and it was even a tough application for me to go through. The we heard that the city really needs to take a stance on providing high affordable housing goals. Concerned that as fast as we're trying to implement E T O D policy that the regulation is simply not fast enough to keep up with the market. We've heard that there are a lot of support for homeowners. But what about renters? And not affordable housing also doesn't mean that we always have to build new buildings, but we can use some of the funds to revitalize the existing stock. And creative ways to add affordable housing, such as more co ops or [2:15:41 PM] individually, sis. Of course, in every conversation, we hear grumbling about tax breaks for home owners, as well as direct down payment assistance. Next life, please. In terms of transportation. We heard the most that people need to have a safer environment, getting to their station and walking home. We need more reliable service and people have expressed interest in transit stipend cards where you can use it to, you know, use a variety of transportation modes. We need to have enough parking rights near these key station modes. So that we encourage people to actually get on the trains and busses and we need to think about maybe expanding our network and partnering with large employers so that you can half bus passes and attract staff to convert to transit. And of course, safety features like we need more lighting or overpasses. We need to provide shading and provide water fountains at the stations. [2:16:43 PM] Next slide, please. Healthy neighborhoods, the number one thing we hear, and almost every single engagement is that we need to have dependable childcare and childcare grants. We need to have places around stations for civic places for libraries for parks. We need to have less concrete unless impermeable surfaces. We should have a lot more community and put in this design and planning of the station areas. And I like this comment. A lot make pedestrians visible in this process. Next, please. In terms of employment. We should attract a diverse pool of businesses, not just maybe the concentrated tech businesses, but quality also means jobs that provide healthcare and retirement. We heard that we should provide job training with a CD and other schools so that the local folks can train as needed and [2:17:44 PM] transition into permanent staff. Project connect is a very large project and also that we need to have a dependent transit so that people are able to get to their job and back on time. Next, please. This is my last slide and again. This is a very small example of how we incorporated public input into our toolkit. The toolkit has been tweaked many times we have added tools based on community input. We've also taken away tools that worked really well in other cities, but that are not really applicable to Austin. So some of the example for example, there are a lot of proponents for stuff density by right, so this is a tool that we added in based on recommendations from city to city staff and the C C. We have the equity scorecard fortuity project, which is a really great idea to keep track of our development. As it pertains to our six goals. This is a conversation that's already [2:18:45 PM] starting between the three agencies. So we already started implementing that there were some tools that were removed as well, for example, including parking in the F a. If F a R calendar for two of these Zones because they felt that this is too big of a jump for current requirements, and it may be a barrier to obtain financing to build new development, so we skilled it back and introduce more of a faced approach. We have also removed affordable housing replacement ordinances because legally in Texas, we cannot do that. And some smaller ideas such as the shop local campaigns because it requires a lot of resources without the greatest impact on return. We'll be happy to answer later on the question. You have any specific question on how we incorporated public engagement and voices into the policy toolkit. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. We really appreciate it. We have also added that into the message board post as a link will try to [2:19:45 PM] make sure everything's included in the backup for mobility committee later, but we know a lot of people were working very hard on getting these presentations created for us. The final section is going to be the community partner, rapid roundtable. So let's invite up a vase. I see a vase up there, bill. I see you. Paulette. Paulette is participating remotely. We see you do you want to test your microphone just to make sure we can hear you. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes it's very low, but it is working. Yeah. Why don't y'all come up and sit down? We tried to give you all enough chairs and then Jake Wagman and Giampaolo Connolly. I know I saw J P. Bless you. [2:20:46 PM] I don't know that we've ever needed infrastructure here in chambers to accommodate all of the voices that we invited to come be a part of this conversation. Let's start with the vase. Let's give you about five minutes to speak a bit about this process and your involvement. Do I need to? I don't know that that might be working. Is it? Okay there we go. Thanks so thank you chairs and thank you, everybody for giving us this opportunity. My name is services Har. I serve as Jeff. The community advisory committee for project connect, providing guidance to the Austin transit partnership city of Austin and capital metro on all issues related to project connect that include equity and added displacement. I'll just start off by saying how much we appreciate staffs partnership and work on the community engagement of this work. The community advisory committee from the start is and I was laying out that timeline. We've been involved in that conversation. We formally working group. That was part of this work reminder that the csc is community members who voluntarily served to guide this [2:21:47 PM] work and so we were part of this process from early on. We also really appreciate their work on really this time, making an engaged effort of working with the most impacted folks. Communities of color working class folks in our city who are often not included in this work was done multiple ways, but most supreme, it was done through the work of the community connectors who were actually community members from impacted communities who were provided stipends. To do this work in their neighborhoods and their communities. Bring that feedback, and I think that's very meaningful and worth reminding everybody off and we really focused on making sure that folks with disabilities folks with different abilities, looking at seniors, all of those pieces are very much part of this conversation. The second part of this is really a reminder. This is already mentioned by our staff from the community advisory committees perspective. Duty planning is really, really critical because it is really important for the work that we're doing with the fda on getting grant applications in, so we want to make sure that we have the ability to rely on federal funds [2:22:48 PM] to complete this work and enhance what are local voters have already provided us with. We also really wanted tank staff for their work on looking at the work of complete communities, so simply not just looking at our regular metrics of duties, but looking at equitable T O D and councils guidance in this regard of making sure that we're looking at things more broadly, and I think that in itself is an important aspect to remember. However one thing that we want to mention this is coming from a recent, recommendation that the csc made. I just want to point out to a commitment to accountability, and this includes meeting goals, making realistic promises, delivering on deadlines in a timely manner and engaging with the community and from our perspective, what this means is that although this is a great plan, we do have a little bit of worry in terms of really making sure that while we have a broad dual kit, we are very conscious and realistic in our commitment to the community of seeing what are pieces that can move forward right now. What can not and I'll talk a little bit about what we can do in that [2:23:48 PM] regard. The biggest one, perhaps, from our perspective is really distinguishing between what tools are regulatory nature and what our subsidy based. That's a big question we have because we know that certain tools will require subsidies that are already available certain might require subsidies that are actually, not something that exists in our city infrastructure right now, and some of regulatory in the sense that they can be enacted by council at their will, without a fiscal impact, so I think that might be something for us to consider very seriously. I also want to say that we really from the csc's perspective in our anti displacement work as well. We are really guiding to say that we should be while we're working on all these station years, and it's very critical to look at its system wide for federal competitiveness. We also want to make sure that we are prioritizing the light rail, fixed route bus, rapid and other infrastructural priorities that are going in place right now, particularly as we move fast, some of these key decisions around alignments and stations how do we make the most of get the most bang for our buck for really focusing on those areas [2:24:49 PM] for us for planning where we can actually start seeing some changes on infrastructure as well? And while we, you know, really want to focus on the areas that are threatened with the risk of displacement. We understand that we will be utilizing the $300 million for anti displacement from project connect for some of this purpose. We also want to really acknowledge that those funds are not enough by any means. As we're doing this work in year three. We're realizing that the time horizon for those funds is shortened. The volume of those funds is short, so we will have to leverage other pieces of funding that are available in resources that are available. Also the conversations that we had in the working group with our staff was really how critical it is to create housing and employing capacities that support transit around station areas for 64 successful transit system, and this is critical from multiple perspectives. From the sixties perspective, one key pieces. We are very much interested in having a successful project connect. And [2:25:49 PM] in part of that is ensuring that their enough writers around the system to actually be able to use it. So those housing capacities in blank capacities are really important to make that work. It's also important from the perspective affordability, really making sure that there's more opportunities for people to access the transit system and lastly, also, from a perspective of sort of having more design and well designed, walkable and different spaces, ensuring that we have that around our station areas to provide those infrastructural improvements that are necessary. We also want to really focus on while we're looking at displacement risk in certain parts of the city, but really focusing on housing and high opportunity areas as well, particularly areas that have been historically exclusionary, and you'll see this in the typology, that our staff has developed and we had a pretty robust conversation about this to really ensure that this is a part of addressing our segregate segregating practices in the past and our commitment as a community to affirmatively further fair housing. How do we [2:26:50 PM] really make sure that we're focused on high opportunity areas and expanding more housing and employment capacities there so more people in our community can access them. The csc also talked very significantly about parking reform reform, and this includes not just looking at seeing how we can really move towards more robust parking reform, but also seeing if we can decouple housing and parking , really, from an affordability perspective, allow more folks do not have to pay for parking and rather for housing so that they can access parts of our city. And this again, you know is an important perspective, both from affordability and former ability do housing capacity, but also in terms of really ensuring there were maximizing transit usage if we really want to make sure that we have workable transit. We want to make sure that people around there are not incentivized. Do you know have cars and I'll give an example if you've ever, you know, taking the red line do the grass view station you get off in the first thing you see is surface parking and do parking garages. And what [2:27:51 PM] we see is essentially that we've created drd where we're disincentivize people to use that transit system and for the people who use the transit system, we're really creating a quality of public space. That is not perfect for them because you're having to crisscross against multiple parking lots to get to your eventual destinations. In terms of mapping duties. I really do want to mention that it is really critical to address not just traditional walk shed metrics that have historically been used in the past, but we had a pretty robust conversation from a presentation that's happening on the bike roll adx work. Walked by Kroll 80 X work and seeing. How do we really look at bike sheds as well? So what this may look like? Is that for, for rapid systems? We're talking about up to one mile out from the station area and for light rail. This can go up to two miles out from station area so really seeing how can we do some more robust planning around station? You guys do support not just walk ability, but also by ability. And having those pieces in I'm sure coming to the end of [2:28:51 PM] my diamond. L'd stop there. But I will say again, you know, thinking stuff for the work that they did on engaging with the community. It really was a very engaged process, and we particularly as a community, prioritize, working with those who will be most impacted by this particularly those at risk of displacement. Thank you. Chair. Thank you for that. Let's go. Don't know if it matters which order we go in. Let's go with professor Wegman next. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jake Wegman. I'm on the faculty of the community regional planning program in the school of architecture. U. T. And thanks thanks to all of you for the opportunity to comment today on this important work that you're all doing. And these remarks, of course, are my opinions only and don't represent those of you T so I'm just going to start with a little tough love. And you know, I think council member of Bella was suggesting this earlier but the fact is transit oriented development is hard. For over 30 years it's been something like the holy grail of [2:29:53 PM] urban planning across the united States. But unfortunately, aside from a handful of cases that you hear about over and over again truly successful T O D has been much more common and Canada or Mexico or or overseas and has been here in the us and of course, true, E. Todd is even rare than successful. T O D. So in the spirit of cheering for what the city and cat metro and 80 P 80 P are all trying to do. Let me offer three suggestions. So first I urge some focus and in the planning efforts, and I, I'm surprising myself to find you know some agreement with some of the commentary earlier but as I read the policy plan, I am a little worried that the E. Todd planning peanut butter, it could be spread too thin. For you know, for instance, I'm I'm somewhat skeptical that new rapid bus stops and of themselves are likely to attract new development that wouldn't [2:30:54 PM] otherwise take place. There isn't much evidence that even true brt bus rapid transit tracks development, the U. S. And of course, that's not what the rapid bus improvements will be they will be very useful. I just I don't know that they will end of themselves induced development. So that's just something to think about, it is really hard, in my view, better to do less in the most promising locations and to do it well, rather than try to do everything and then risk not accomplishing very much. My second quaint is recommendation is to get value capture financing mechanisms in place as soon as possible. Don't wait until you've completed the planning work. Because you're gonna really need these dollars within specific station areas. Anti displacement, phones and others. Existing city sources have very important roles to play, but as a vase was was saying before, there are a lot [2:31:55 PM] of other demands on them other than just E. T. O D. And then density bonuses can also play an important role in some cases, but they are a delicate mechanism and they're highly sensitive to both location and to fluctuations and the business cycle and housing market. So they're unlikely to get us to a Mueller like share of. Let's call it 25. Below market rate housing within a given station area. And in my view to do that the city is going to need to capture the property value. Uplift that's already happening right now is director true of mentioned earlier. It's already happening around the most development. Ready station areas in the city is going to need to stockpile. What I think could be tens of millions of dollars in city subsidies needed to make really Todd possible and in some of the station areas if you do it right if you get that value capture mechanism in place that [2:32:56 PM] instead of pitting market rate housing and below market rate housing against each other in a zero sum tradeoff, dynamic. If you do it right. You're joining them at the hip and start and creating a virtuous cycle. If you get it right than building a market rate condo development next to a station can work towards E Todd rather than against it. It would just mean that there would be more tax dollars pouring into the city's coffers that can subsidize a nonprofit to build below market housing, and that same station area or maybe it can be used to acquire a key parcel when it comes up for sale, so that's available to transfer to a nonprofit several years down the line. In my view, it doesn't matter if the market rate and below market rates our units are in the same buildings so long as the city's meaning its overall goals of affordability levels and unit type mix within the station areas. In other words, so long as the E is being put in [2:33:57 PM] the tear into E Todd. And I have thoughts about how best to do this value capture, but for reasons of time I won't get into it now. And then my last suggestion is to don't just do E. Todd planning. Also do E. Todd. Urban design, in my view will be well worth the cost. In some cases, the city can and should go even beyond that, and got into the E tide land development business. For the best results. The city is going to need to steer the ship on designing the public realm around these new stations, defining any new streets or other public spaces that need to be built. And designating the building parcels that will get built out. This I think is the great lesson from the success of Mueller the best results in terms of public realm and mix of uses and affordability come when the city dictates the terms and then make sure that developers whether they're for profit or nonprofit. Proposed projects that align with the city's vision. The city needs to keep a [2:34:57 PM] firm hand on the tiller. What developers execute the city's vision for each station area piece by piece, rather than leaving it to those developers to provide the vision themselves. So just to sum up finally T O D is hard and Todd is even harder. To succeed. I think my view the city should do three things. First focus limited capacity for planning efforts on the most promising station areas, which will likely be light rail station areas. Second get value capture mechanisms in place as soon as possible before we know what's going to be happening around those promising locations. And finally steer the ship on station area, urban design and even land development rather than waiting for the developers to do it for you. Thank you for your important work shaping the future of Austin and thanks for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. Thank you for your comments, Dr Wegman. JP, do you want to go next? That would be. [2:35:59 PM] Ah that's fine. My comments will be quite so polished, but I just wanted to share my perspective on the process, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here and do so. Ah I am also a member of the community advisory committee for project connecting was able to participate in the focus groups for this process that resulted in this, in this policy document, and I do want to make a few comments on the focus groups and the process that got us here. I think the you know, somewhat contrary to some of what was said a little earlier this afternoon, the focus groups actually had a really strong, intentional effort to bring in and include voices that are seldom included in these planning processes. So there were actually people of color at the table from low income and working class communities. A lot of time was given to really hear people out here their issues. There was a diversity of perspectives represented in those rooms. Those conversations where we're long there was passionate discussion. There was a lot of wealth of input and [2:37:00 PM] perspectives that were gathered through that process, and I don't want us to lose sight of that fact. Some really good engagement did take place to get us here. There are also some, you know questions and concerns that I still have with regards to kind of what resulted, which I think is a very powerful document full of wonderful tools that everybody likes to see that one wants. Does not many people want to see some things that the community needs and wants. However, we don't want to get people's hopes up right and talk about all of these amazing tools and products and things that we can deliver and then not deliver, not be able to deliver those tools, so I think we have to have a lot of clarity when we say okay, well, we have these typology is and we have this very wide box of very tools that we have. It's I think it's important what the part that we weren't able to really kind of get through. As as focus groups together was how the process of [2:38:02 PM] matching the typology is to the tools takes place when you have limited resources, limited time and you have to pick priorities and then when certain parts of certain tools, as was noted here will require possibly even more deeper engagement that could take over a year. And then other tools can be implemented. You know much more quickly. Do you walk away with kind of an uneven process where you're doing certain things very quickly and other things. You don't do it. All right. So I think one of the things that I hope council can provide is really clear. Focus direction around goals and around what you want to see this look like because you know, I think this conversation about like we have had decreasing ridership in R T O D areas and I think a lot of that results. What I call kind of a compromise urbanism that we have here in Austin, where we try to not quite do too much of this one thing or try to do a little bit of that, and a little bit of this and then what we end up with is, you know a bunch of new [2:39:03 PM] office buildings with giant parking garages and you know, we bike racks next to a road where people are still driving at 50 miles an hour and all this kind of like middle of the road stuff that doesn't quite meet the needs of pedestrians or transit riders but also isn't quite affordable for renters. So I think this need to be really focused and intentional and say, this is what we want to see. We want to see stuff that looks like this, and I think that is kind of what's missing in this large toolbox of concepts. So I hope that council can at least help steer and focus things in that direction a little bit more, and I just wanted to make two more comments. One is the C a. C is really interested to see the land acquisition dollars in the anti displacement money from project connect, be applied focused specifically in the areas where we're going to see these new todos emerge and I can't emphasize enough the importance of coordinating between the teams working on land acquisition and the team's thinking about and planning for these toads and at least making sure that we own some land in [2:40:04 PM] these areas so that we can do exactly the things that professor Wegman is talking about. And so I just wanted to emphasize that in the last point , I'll make hope I'm not over. Time is around the parking piece . I think there was a lot of really strong, passionate discourse about how we can't have T O D S with just tons of parking everywhere wide parking spaces, parking garages. It has been noted that even when you eliminate parking requirements, they're still heavy incentives on the market to deliver parking . So you know, looking at you know the proposal of not only eliminating parking minimums, which I think is an absolute baseline. Must we can't have part minimum parking mandates anywhere. Surrounding new public transit infrastructure that we're investing in. But also, you know the question about capping parking, and, you know other incentives to reduce the amount of parking the market develops. My only concern there is when we had these [2:41:05 PM] conversations afterwards. What what? What? What what? What? What emerged in the report was this concept of the three tiers for parking which wasn't which I think is one way of getting at or translating some of what we discussed in in in the discussion, but the question about the three tiers as well. How is what applied where, right and what are the ultimate factors that lead us to pick a certain phased tier for parking reduction? And that's again an area where I hope to see really bold, assertive leadership from our elected officials and from council around. Well, you know, we really want to see you know as little parking as possible in the areas immediately adjacent to new public transit stations, and I hope that we can walk away with a policy plan that really provides some assertive guidance and direction of that in that direction as well. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Connolly. I appreciate your comments. We've got bill Mckinley next. And then Paulette gibbons will be our last speaker. And we've got some [2:42:05 PM] time for Q and a after that. Thank you, madam chair. I had a power point presentation is that possible to show oh, staff didn't get it. The best practices. So, madam here, let me let me start while he's bringing that up. My name's bill. I'm with transit forward. We're in Austin based nonprofit with a mission of educating and engaging our fellow citizens about transit in general with a real focus on project connect, and people asked. Why the heck are you here talking about housing and I'll say for the last 67 months, I've had more conversations about housing and housing density. Than actual transit systems itself because of the critical nature that housing has and making transit systems work, the more people you have living close to transit, the better system is going to be and so we've been really engaging in these discussions. We thank you very much for the opportunity to come talk with you today. There are in the presentation and I'll just go over that. You all have it in front of you. There's actually language in there. From [2:43:06 PM] the federal transit agency talking about the things that council member Ryan alter and council member of L. A. We're talking about. Documenting how critical the federal government looks at housing policy when determining how much money to give to a community. So we are going to be asking the federal government to fund roughly half of project connect, the more we do to get more folks affordably living and working near transit stops, the more money we are likely to get and really make sure we're maximizing the investment of our fellow austinites moving forward. I think that's a critical thing that can't really be ignored. I think the number of as if I'm correctly as they look at 35 units per acre within a half mile. I believe that's right within a half mile of a transit stop, so that's really what we should probably be getting too right and that's really what we need to kind of look forward to. So if you go to the next couple of slides that's all right. So if you go to the next slide, you'll see this is there specific land use criteria that [2:44:07 PM] they put in their, directions for local governments. If you go to the next slide, you can actually see they talk about housing and economic development specifically as part of their metrics as well. And so that really talks about doing more vm us more businesses near these transit stops, and that's why those things are critical. I will also say, madam chair a couple more things before I moved to the best practices. We had a discussion just on Monday about the integration of workforce and trying to make project connect work. And I know council member Alison alter was there. I know Ben was there when he was off. But the first thing that that the folks from cat metro Austin transit partnership , the unions and the workforce solutions talked about in terms of getting workers was a lack of affordable housing for workers. Came up absolutely first thing, right? So if we want the workers in our town, they're gonna be building things like project connect. We've got to have housing for them, and that's really important. Second thing is from affordability aspect. If you all read the Austin chronicle today, you saw a article we put in there really documenting how the ability to [2:45:08 PM] give up a car is the most concrete thing we can do to increase affordability here in Austin, you give up $10,000 a year. If you do that. That's why this stuff is critical. If you go to the next slide, please I'll just go through these really quickly. We did some research. You're gonna see a lot of the same things that we talked about by the panel and the presentations earlier. This is what we found from other communities in terms of best practices moving forward, so if you go to the next slide this is just a small example of the goals that JP was talking about that they did in 2016 for the bay area rapid transit in the in the San Francisco area. There's about eight more of those lines. I couldn't really fit it onto the power point. Have you read anything but this is just a small example. And you can see, they said. We want X amount of houses by this date. And this state X amount of them should be affordable this amount of grocery stores or healthcare facilities should be in those general areas. If you look at the amount of affordability, it's certainly on if you guys look at that link on there, you can see their full slate setting [2:46:08 PM] those goals is very important. Next slide, please. Public land use, and this was mentioned. I believe by Ms tan from cat metro. Using public land to set the stage and the dark also talked about as well to make sure that there is an ability to set affordability. Metrics is really important. You can go to that link and see what they've done in the bay area. Twin cities, they have it in their transit systems guidelines that they will use extra land for housing in Seattle state law in Washington actually requires excess land to be used for affordable housing. And they've worked that into their policy where they're transit board actually recently transferred 10 sites to the city to develop affordable housing and in salt Lake City. They do this as well. Next slide, please. You can also look and this is something that I passed on to the community advisory committee for project connect as well. Doing these, revolving loan funds for affordable housing developers where you can give people the findings financing that they need at lower interest rates as long as you hit a kind of affordability metrics. That is [2:47:09 PM] something that a lot of places around the country looking at. There's some good examples there and the three folks at the bottom. Those three organizations are really helping lead the way in these types of conversations. Next slide, please. This is critical. And I think the Raleigh. One is probably the best one to look at right now because they did what y'all are considering right now, and they passed their E Todd plan in 2020, but within, I think six or seven months, they then pass the zoning overlays for bus rapid transit that allowed for more density to be built along the zoning corridors . If you look at Saint Paul, they actually adopted new zoning overlays a long time ago, and I think it's basically the minimum you can build is five stories along transit corridors. And so these folks have actually been looking and saying, look, we need to do more density along these transit quarters for all these reasons, and here's what they've done next slide, please. Talking about parking the best. The best example I have in that is Denver. That's actually a from an interview with folks in Denver talking about. Hey, we [2:48:09 PM] keep talking about parking. Everyone says we need parking to be able to get financing all these other things, and he's like, no, we got rid and lessened a lot of parking restrictions and actually was better for affordable housing residence because they don't need cars a lot more. And for all the reasons that were described before the more you can actually lessen the parking requirements and actually add more housing. And that people can use transit in these areas. That's the whole point. I can travel without getting heart. The better. It is for a lot of folks for a lot of reasons. The bay area did that as part of their metrics that you saw the first time Saint Paul got completely rid of them. They do not have parking minimums at all. And then Salt Lake's transit agency actually include that in their scoring metrics, which I'll go to next. And if you go to the next slide how do you accountability? How do you work accountability into your processes and Salt Lake City has this great web tool where they actually their transit agency. Now they encompass a lot of different municipalities. Right so they basically go to every station and they say there are these scoring metrics. We are going to set up the scores for [2:49:09 PM] all these different things, including parking right, but also zoning overlays, affordability, etcetera, and so on mixed use because of the economic development that can happen there those sorts of things so just as you all consider this plan. It's great, but a plan without an implementation strategy is just a bunch of wishes. Right and we just encourage you to look at these different places that have done a license and I had to talk with with Rosie. True love the other day. I know we've been talking with cat nature. They're doing a lot of these things as well. But as you all look into this, it's something to look at. Thank you very much for your time. Madam chair. I appreciate that our last speaker is going to be poulet givens, the executive director of U L. I, and then vice chair. Qadri and council member Fuentes. I know had their hands raised earlier, and I apologize for it looks like we're going to run a bit over time. But if folks can stick around, we'd love to have the conversation go a little bit longer before we take up the rest of mobility committee meeting items. Pretty much just confirm. Are you able to hear me? Okay yes, it's still a little quiet. Maybe we can turn [2:50:10 PM] up the volume here in chambers. I'll speak as well. We as I can , and perfect hold up. So first off for those of you not familiar with you, ally your lie , Austin's private urban land institute. We are global global organization. Our mission is to shape the future the built environment for transformative impacts worldwide. We are not an advocacy organization. We are researching education base, and so therefore my comments today are going to becoming focus mostly humming by comparing the document to the documents that council member Alice put out that I had spent in these are white papers that had come from our transportation affordability, strategic councils. That are local. You'll I Austin. A strategic councils. I want to start by saying that I'm very excited about the work that is going into, look at you [2:51:11 PM] two RDS for Austin. We? I heard , speaker once that started, global, you allies transit oriented development product council, and so it's a little sad that we have to do E. T O. D. S because a lot of what's being discussed is what we envisioned in T RDS originally, and they just didn't necessarily go that way and so to be purposeful. About making sure that would transit oriented development is reaching the goals is very important and what a lot of what's listed in this document is really what makes the transit. We're into development. Successful. Looking at the document, they said. That's the trd affordability and access. I want to reference the current two step process to say that is a very slow process. There's a lot of identify T RDS are currently stuck in the first step. And don't move onto the second step unless there is a developer showing interest in developing in that area. And so [2:52:12 PM] , with this opportunity that we know we're getting such a growth in transit to be working simultaneously as project connect is being built, provides such an opportunity to be ahead with planning and to get the, the overlays defined at each station. Prior to development occurring that station and that also helps with having development interest in that area, but to make sure the development that's occurring aligns with the goals of what is envisioned for those for those overlays. It is good, to identify what commitments you want across all the T. O D S. There's going to be a list of items that you want to have. Regardless of, you know, across the theories to make sure they're all, successful and I would say probably, and I'll talk about this in a bit, but the importance of having a small [2:53:13 PM] local businesses within those tds as an example. Along with the speed of the process. There's also the coordinated permitting speed within a T O D, or E T O D. Currently the permian process within Austin everyone everyone knows is slow . And so it does hit the larger tr D S even more than other projects because of the additional overlays, and therefore to identify and worked with the departments to see how that can also be sped up because the goal here is to get as much housing around transit as possible and quickly, too. Also looking at you know, there's mentioned within the document about compatibility, and but looking at how items such as compatibility coordinate with items such as F a. R has gained reducing compatibility requirements but not having matching requirements on F a. R [2:54:14 PM] does create where you don't reach the goals that you're hoping to reach. I also want to talk about the locations I we are very excited to see that the bus in the intersection locations are also listed for possible E T. O D S. And this document. I mentioned the T RDS for four billion as a tool for affordability and access. Points out the opportunity. Even before project connect was, was voted on that there is opportunity for transit oriented development at the intersection of high frequency each transit so high frequency bus service. And so there we do believe that there is opportunity to have that density. There was comment earlier about concern about developers really building that area with that takes is a commitment from the city that there will continue to be transit in that area, and that includes items such as having the dedicated bus lanes having the pull off the side and the [2:55:17 PM] curb changes and that helps show that commitment, but also it's a little bit of the chicken and the egg as sensors already high frequency transmitter area there is an opportunity for T O D, but also as the training and developments are built. That then provides more writers for the busses as possible in the future that those bus lines could end up being real lines. And so it is a little bit to make that commitment so that you don't have development already occurring in that area that does not meet the goals of E T. Or do you would have. One concern along these lines is, though, is document has a lot of reference in the tools to the cost being staff time. And, you know when you say it once that doesn't sound like huge expense, but self time is an expense. And there is a long long list of high priority. Stations to look [2:56:20 PM] at. And so the question is you have the staff time to go through all that. I think it's important to make the Tim. To put in the dedication to have staff to work on this and possibly increased staff in order to help make this vision occur. We're in a window of opportunity and getting this work done well in fancy project connect, really being completed , or, you know, well underway even is very important for the success to be realized. So the importance of including both local business and daily businesses. The daily business is, of course, are important that making sure people don't get into their cars. I would say the daycare is one of the most important is one of when apparently leaves to drive their child to daycare. They don't drive back home to get on a bus or train they continue on to their work going on with their [2:57:22 PM] day and so, looking at opportunities, for how to incentivize having these services. This includes opportunities for, having a tax incentives and I would recommend this for an areas the model that's already in place where the city is a master of tenants , such as what's occurring on second street. That might be a consideration in a way as a way to make sure that you have these services within the developments that you're trying to make successful. There we need to work. Overall development community needs to get past the concept that empty spaces are worth more than those filled with low rent tenants. And so, therefore having incentives tied in or had it having the, having tax breaks help get past that view as well. Also in some part [2:58:23 PM] of that was just talking about it comes from the paper sustainable region of inclusive communities. The importance and they're also looks at pedestrian centric design and tying into surrounding neighborhoods. Well , obviously we want everyone that lives in a trd to be writing the transit would be great to get the people in the neighborhoods to be writing the transit as well. And so, therefore really having great connection, watch shed. The third paper was on watershed that having the watch Shea connectivity between. Time. What do we do about parking? Park and rides are an option to get people from the neighborhood to take the transit. Looking at where the so if there are parking rides, that really should be a partnership between cat metro city and the developer [2:59:24 PM] . One thing that also the part that such parking and we're talking gradually, but having that be a district parking helps incentivize the developer, not including as much parking overall and the reason for that is actually the funding and have funding comes into parking that a lot of funding resources do you require there to be parking , even when there aren't parking minimums? But when developers able to point to while there's this nearby parking that helps and I'm not saying you build the developers parking. I don't want that to be. This communication, but it does allow for them to have something to help with getting that that alternate funding to get funding without having the parking included, but it does also provide opportunity for having the neighborhoods be more likely to use the transit. An example that is pressed you station. And that area's alive. Brentwood in crestview, considered too far to walk on a hot day to get to press few [3:00:25 PM] station having more connectivity helps. I want to do a quick time . Check. We've got some folks think that have some questions lined up. Do you wanna wrap up the remainder of your thoughts and we can very close? Sorry. Thank you. That's all right. We're gonna shoot your input. And so, the last thing is the affordable housing affordability is, and many cities, obviously, but one of the big things is that within these, to not have the fan liu, there's not going to be a better place to put affordability, then at transit oriented development and so the importance of making sure that that's actually built rather than having a feeling blue is going to have the greatest impact. And then also instant buying options for ownership. A lot of times when we talked affordability rental is the automatic assumption and so including ownership, as incentive options, would be, would help overall for a lot of [3:01:26 PM] our communities. And that was it . So thank you very much. We appreciate it. Glad you can join. Let's go with vice chair qadri and then council member Fuentes. Thank you, just a general question, and anyone can kind of come up and answer this, but the resolution that council passed that initiated it. Todd called for a quote. Action oriented policy document. Can someone help us better than your son was specific actions, aside from additional planning are in this document. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Stevie Greathouse division manager, housing and planning department working with Warner on the E Todd project, so the document has a list of actions both actions that we could take in the form of the policy toolkit. But then there is actually a section of the, equitable itty itty policy plan that is up for consideration that actually has a specific set of sort of next steps that staff [3:02:28 PM] is recommending. For actions and those include really as sort of presented and Warner cook's presentation, initiation of amendments to the imagine Austin plan initiation of small area planning at particular locations and then initiation of the work to develop some sort of the regulatory pieces of it with the equitable Todt overlay that's being proposed. In addition to that there are many other actions described in the policy toolkit that our actions that either other portions of the housing and planning department are already working on, with respect to investing in, affordable housing, making investments in community initiated solutions around anti displacement work and then work that our fellow departments are doing at transportation with respect to investing in infrastructure that can support sort of the connectivity at the stations. Investments that are economic development department is making around small business retention creation. So many of [3:03:29 PM] the policy tools are actually in some cases already being implemented in other cases would need additional resources. Additional community bandwidth in order to implement, so that's just a sample of the actions. And then one more question. Is there any way to benchmark? The goals of this document to other city aspirations, such as vision zero housing blueprint goals, etcetera, so we have worked and within the policy toolkit itself . There are suggestions for metrics that would be used to judge kind of how we're doing towards those goals, and Warner can speak to them in more detail if you need it, but the metrics have been designed to try to take advantage of that additional or that existing measurement that we are doing against some of our other city goals. So the metrics that are in the Utah policy plan have been designed to work in concert with other city metrics and make sure that we're not kind of reinventing the wheel. Thank you . One less last set of questions . If I can. This is for the amazing panel that just went my [3:04:32 PM] biggest concern as it relates to district nine. Watching this presentation is affirmatively, furthering fair housing and getting more deep affordability and high opportunity areas like Cara district district nine can can. One of you will explain more about how the many of options for each title be applied during the stationary a process and then another and then have another question. But I'll ask that one first. Appreciate that I'll start and I think our staff could speak more to how it will be applied. But I think our hope is that we really are focused on this. We're hoping you know, while we understand that there's certain station areas that are within our displacement risk, typology. We understand that they have risk and we've sort of calculating assess this over the years, and we will use those spaces as you guys for investment around these different strategies. At the same time, it's really important to focus on expanding more housing, including affordable housing and high opportunity areas. And to be honest, I think it's important to highlight that decent moving first. I not gonna speak for staff. But as I looked [3:05:33 PM] through the station paradies action, really, the stations that are being fired ice for us do not fall within that high opportunity category there really do fall within more the displacement risk category, and while we want to focus on that we want to be really working to make sure that we are affirmatively furthering fair housing in our city and this frankly means really expanding housing in parts of our city, where we have historically been exclusionary, and that's honestly something that came from our equity. Duelfer project connect where community catalysts very clearly mentioned areas that they called years of historical exclusion. And how do we make sure that we overcome those legacies of racism from our past? To really make sure that we're expanding more housing there? And that includes affordable housing, but that also includes just housing in general, more other kinds of opportunities around small businesses, etcetera as well. I don't know fathers have things to add. Great and then my last question can can you also speak on how you're balancing act of the timeline for stationary planning between higher opportunity areas and the areas in high risk of displacement, [3:06:34 PM] and I promise that's my last question. I'm sorry. Could you repeat that question, counselor ? I guess it's not my last question. Can you speak on how you're balancing the timeline for station area planning between high opportunity areas and areas and high risk of displacement? I mean, I if I understand your question correctly again, I think the idea would be really we are trying to do we should be doing planning in both areas at the same time, really ensuring that while we're focusing on some hybrid, the areas that we think are within displacement risk. We're also prioritizing areas for planning that are within high opportunity areas and I do want to be cautious of the way I used the word planning because I don't want to imply. Planning in the sense of small year planning or regulating plans, development that has happened in the city traditionally, right, I we've had regularly plans that have taken 5 to 6 years. It would be unrealistic to demand that as we heard from multiple speakers. There's a sense of urgency to adopt these before sort of the market forces completely take over. So what I'm saying planning. I really mean an [3:07:34 PM] expedited process that allows us to build on what the work that has happened in the past. And taking that forward. And of course, the big part of that is how do we identify areas of that it will be certain stations, particularly that are in high opportunity areas do not have risk of displacement actually have high market demand, but do not have a lot of housing capacity today. How do we utilize those areas to expand more housing without displacing people directly? Thank you actually had to that. Councilor. Is that right? Madam chair councilor council member quadri , I think to put this more bluntly. I think we need to walk and chew gum at the same time on both of those things because both of those areas are where workers are at our meeting on Monday, the hr director Donna Simmons for cat metro, said that 70% of their mechanics don't live in the Austin area. They live in but. They live in north Round Rock they commute in with cars to work on the busses that we require here, right, so we really need to make sure we're keeping the folks that are in those areas from being displaced [3:08:35 PM] because they tend to be workers and we need to make sure we're building more new units in dense communities with affordability metrics so that they can use those transit resources. And I know sharmila wanted to say something. Yes I just wanted to take this opportunity to clarify clarify piece that when we started thinking about T O D planning to support project. Connect prop a. That was exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to walk and chew gum at the same time. On one hand, we have looked at looked at value capture options and kind of having to Torian successful T O D B up. An instrument for equitable Todt to sort of have those two efforts come together ? So to answer your question. We are working with Austin transit partnership which came out of, you know project connect with city of Austin and cap metro came together here's and this process is entirely joint, so as that process moved forward as we identified. What are the height [3:09:37 PM] sort of high capacity high destination transportation node for the future light rail. Those are also the priority areas for station area plans. The reason we focused on south Lamar in north north Omar transit center in south congress. Those two are capped metro owned center. We thought there's a good solid template for the transit agency to put forth in support of the initiative that's moving forward , so we have an opportunity to make a difference here. We want to focus on ridership because that makes light rail successful and someone mentioned today. I think it's Paul it that today's br T. Is. Light rail potentially in future 2040 2045, so we shouldn't lose that vision that are high transportation nodes are transportation corridors. They really have to work together. And as a system light rail is only a piece of it [3:10:37 PM] right. We are pursuing Todd. Brodie planning. To also be very competitive. And, federal new starts reading criteria because land use and economic development play a very strong role in our competitiveness and that all of those pieces come together. Thank you, council member Fuentes and then vice chair, alter or chito? Bella thank you. Thank you. Chair. I will limit my questions to two questions. Given the time that we have just want thanks for staying over by the way. Thank you to everyone who presented today. My question is for our housing team, and I didn't catch the name of the presenter. But if or whomever if you can both come out thank you. That'd be great. I really want to appreciate how you laid out your presentation and addressing what the E Todd framework seeks to do and what it does not seek to do one area that I want to highlight that is a goal of the E T O D planning process is the preservation of affordable housing. In addition to [3:11:38 PM] increasing affordable housing supply along our airlines, and so that preservation piece is keen and the question I have for you is in reference to the remarks that Mr Mckinley laid out for us and thank you for your presentation. I found that very helpful will likely be reaching out to have more. Detailed conversation with you. He highlighted the importance of an implementation strategy and they eat Todd framework that is before council. It does have some metrics cited, but they're still very broad and somewhat vague. You know, a metric cited is increased the level of intensity of affordable housing . But you know how much you know what percentage by and where exactly and those are the details that you know, based on what was shared to us earlier would help us, you know, set us up for success and gets to what my colleague councilman qadri was mentioning about the action part of us doing all that we can with the urgency knowing that [3:12:39 PM] the project connect line system , the map is already out there. You know, there's a lot of speculation happening. I was out of my community with the double a community coalition has received. Some of the anti displacement dollars and we were doing some community mapping and we can already see the changes set in along our community that will be along the purple brt line. So my question is, can you speak to what does the implementation strategy look like for us? When does that come before? Council recognizing that you know, this council also proposed and adopted a strategic housing blueprint. We are not on track. On meeting the housing goals that we laid out by saying we're going to reach X number of housing and X number by each district. So how can like what have we learned from the housing blueprint? And what can we do differently with an implementation strategy with concrete goals of actually implementing this framework? Yeah, thank you for that question. Council member. And I'll speak to the E T O D kind of goal setting and target [3:13:39 PM] setting. And then all that our director or deputy director speak a little bit more broadly to our our general housing strategy, right? Because todos are only in one part of our community. So in the draft resolution, where I laid out all those different things you're being asked to. Those are things that demand counsel to initiate them, basically, or that we've heard previously in the case of station area planning, that council really wants to be the one to take the step to start. Manning process, right? And in some cases, it's the charter or code that actually says you know that there are other things in the policy toolkit specifically to that. I'm thinking about setting a mode split goal and setting high affordable housing goals. Those are two tools in the toolkit. That staff doesn't need counsel's permission to start working on those, so they weren't laid out in the draft resolution. But I think if the if portions of the implementation strategy that are in our next step section, like some of those are really important, and I'm hearing from our community roundtable today [3:14:40 PM] and from council then you know, maybe it's important to highlight that in the draft resolution, or I want people to know that there there are other things that staff can be doing that we've put in that next steps like setting those modes, split and housing goals. And then can we expect or, you know, as part of those next steps once this is adopted that that staff will develop those, those more concrete goals. Yes and I would say that it would be beneficial for me and my team on the team to understand what of the implementation steps, the ones I either laid out or the other ones that are in that section of the plan. Is the top priority because of course we have staffing constraints and things right. So if that actually needs to move the top, that would be useful information for my team to have. Thank you. Mandy Demeo , deputy director of the housing and planning department. I did want to speak a little bit to the strategic housing blueprint. And the goals that were [3:15:41 PM] developed during that process. And the district wide goals were really developed with the idea of proximity to transportation in mind. Each district has different goals, based on both needs as well as access to public transportation. Of course , the strategic housing blueprint was adopted in 2017. This was before project connect , but we do have the at the time we had the SNP the strategic mobility plan in place the bones of that, and so we staff started in 2018 with the 2018 affordable housing bonds. Already looking at how we can align our affordable housing investments. With the project connect lines, including the brt or the purple line, one of those all of our subsidy, our rental housing development assistance. We prioritize housing in proximity within a quarter mile or half mile of a project connects. Stop. In addition for the 100 [3:16:42 PM] million out of the 250 million, in the 2018 affordable housing bonds, I will note that Boston housing finance corporation has affectively committed 100% of that $100 million. We've purchased approximately 60 acres of vacant land. And it is all in relationship to project connect, including council member as you know. 5900 south pleasant valley , which is vacant personal of land that was on the news recently because we are starting community engagement to do a solicitation. Hfc purchased that property with the general obligation bonds. And we're gonna do a solicitation to find the best developer to develop both rental. And ownership housing on that site, so we have been even in anticipation of project connect. We've been using our resources to really align and leverage every dollar. We have to get the most affordable housing that is [3:17:42 PM] possible in concert with project connect. Thank you. Thank you, Mandy, and just in light of time, we'll just stay awake with my next question was and we'll follow up with staff and more information, but it is getting to workforce housing wanted. Think through, you know, what can we do that sets up and leverages the bond dollars that we have available and, and work with our school district. The universities the county on developing a very specific and intentional strategy for workforce housing. Thank you for that question. It's very timely because of course, was it last week we passed the item from council the resolution regarding student housing, which is something we're very tuned into and have are on the verge of purchasing an existing, naturally occurring affordable housing. In proximity to one of our institutions of higher learning along south congress. We're very excited about that, with respect to partnerships to ensure that our public servants [3:18:44 PM] are teachers or firefighters, kind of what we consider traditional workforce. I will say that all of our bond dollars , so our direct subsidy for rental housing is committed to folks at or below 50% median family income and our ownership dollars are committed to 80% of below median family income. However one thing we have done in recent years is really looked at truly mixed income developments going from all the way at 30% median family income up to market rate housing in one development we do hfc has a partnership right off south congress retreated north bluff and we partnered with affordable central Texas you may be familiar with they are a nonprofit they run a private equity fund that is focused on naturally occurring affordable housing. Singh and really serving that workforce community kind of landing in that 60% 80% 100% median family income. We partnered with them through a subsidiary of hfc, and we now [3:19:45 PM] own that 240 unit apartment complex again. The units range from 30% we have 40% 50% 60% I think some 70 8100 and 20 and then market so it's all in one location. And we are looking at doing similar types of projects like this. With affordable central Texas and other partners , in order to ensure that we have a range of housing options , and again in proximity to project connect, so it checks multiple boxes. Thank you. Wrapping up questions council member vela. The quick can't have a couple of thoughts, removing the parking minimum, the removing the parking and forget that was on the first slide. Where that was kind of I just wanted to kind of understand the thinking, I guess behind that, because that sure seems to be counter to the core of what we're trying to do with. The E T. O D, and I'm just [3:20:47 PM] wondering why that was removed. So Warner cook with the housing and planning department again, our current T O D regulations in the parking sections they allow up to a 60% reduction. For whatever the parking would usually be for development in a T O D so they don't even actually allow today for 100% parking reduction. This is that getting to your point in the policy toolkit. We looked at a three phase approach, which would be eliminating minimums. And then eventually establishing maximums and then considering whether the floor area ratio of above ground structured parking should count towards the overall floor ratio. Because I'm my concern with a phased in slow approaches that we're gonna end up with a bunch of parking built in the in the areas and that is counter to our goals there. I just I feel like if there's one place that we can be really [3:21:47 PM] aggressive where I feel like there might be, you know, universal support on council would be, you know, going really strong on parking within the T. O D S the only the only thing I would add to that is that we do recognize that there is a need for some members of our community for some trips to still have cars. That's something that came up a lot in our engagement was this fear of parking maximum meaning that folks wouldn't have access to get to where they are. So there's another tool in the toolkit point, folks towards which is the community car program. That was an idea that was kind of generated from our fruitful discussion. So thanks before we went really, really aggressive on parking. We need to think about what other strategies would support our community members to get there on that same level of aggression that you're talking about. Okay understood. How and that said we have a city. That's 95% you know, very, very parking friendly and over parked we're not talking about that 95% were talking about this tiny fraction [3:22:49 PM] within that city. And I just think that if I mean if there's a place to go to be aggressive on parking within the city if it's not in the D, O D that I just I'm not sure than where it would be. And last question I saw this mention. And I don't know if some of the panelists can speak to it also on the soft density within. Ah the as a tool to be applied and again. I was just wondering what the thought was kind of behind that. My first blush reaction to it was I'm all for soft density. I don't see how that's appropriate for the E T O D environment. I mean to me, that's a tool that would be more kind of in my house in my neighborhood, you know what I mean? Very suburban kind of style neighborhood. What where is the soft density coming from and so I think that's a really good example of a tool that we would need to do more to understand. Where would most apply the idea behind that tool ? Is that in council's resolution to us, they asked us to increase not just affordable [3:23:49 PM] housing, but also housing capacity in general in the station areas to support ridership, so some of the housing related tools of the zoning tools aren't necessarily for the affordable housing. It's to get to that other part of council's resolution to us, which asked for mhm general that but but you're right. I do not think that soft density by right is definitely appropriate everywhere. We that is an idea and a tool in the toolbox and something that we would need to do a lot more analysis that we haven't had the time to do yet on thank you and I just, you know, like, said good tool. Themes not as ambitious as we would need to invest. Did you have any thoughts? Sorry. Okay and I just wanted to throw this out there too. I mean, I think are most successful, affordable housing program was probably the university neighborhood overlay . I mean, just in terms of raw number of units generated and I mean, when you look at the streetscape and like you know what we want to see. And I like [3:24:49 PM] jps question. What do we want to see? What do we want these areas to look like? I want them to look like west campus. I mean, I think west campus has done an excellent job with the streetscapes with trees with, you know, the environment that has been created their, and again looking at where how I want to model with the affordability. I mean, I think it's a 10% I can't remember the details of the U. N O. And also, you know, like I think it's like two pages long. I mean the actual code amendment itself. So process simplicity. I think we've also got to be aggressive with our targets and focus on those broader, you know. Got to get the housing density there. Got to get the ridership there got to make these, you know centers of commercial and residential activity. Thank you , chair. Thank you. And I want to acknowledge that Paulette has her hand raised. Would you like to make a quick response? Yes, I just want to say in some cities that soft density is used as a ring around the T O D for transition and provides opportunity for the missing middle housing. I know town homes were listed as part of, [3:25:50 PM] what's part of the soft density? Thank you for that. Vesco ahead. I want to do a quick time checks 3 25 and I've got more mobility committee items before they make me get out of this chair at four o'clock, so, yes, go ahead, Steve. By right from our perspective is a conversation to be had, further away from the station in close proximity to station we really should be looking at higher housing capacities than soft density. That is something that I think is more appropriate for within that bike shed when we're talking about two mile three mile radius is from that further away from the station, you had becomes more appropriate to have those housing capacities at the station years like bill was saying. The fda report clearly says more than 35, plus dwelling units per acre. If we do you know, 2.2 persons is the sort of nation average I believe is that's around 75 persons were acres. So within that first mile, we really should be looking at maximizing those housing capacities do really [3:26:51 PM] lead to eat dot success based on the fda guidance that we have thank you for that. And with the increase in the E bike rebates that Austin energy recently announced, I think that's an important aspect of that first mile last mile of really being seamless with how people access transportation. Council member harper-madison. Did you have a question? Or did you wanna help close this out when the time is right? No that's not necessarily appreciate it. I think council member alter best year ultra can can close this out. But I did have a question Warner really, really appreciated your presentation. And I just wanted to make sure that I heard you, right. Because something that has occurred to me was, you know , can we just eliminate parking requirements altogether for each Todd's? And because we haven't had that conversation yet? It was something that occurred to me. I think I heard you say that that's not an option. That's [3:27:51 PM] something about 60% they wouldn't. That's not quite how I would characterize a council member. Okay. The council has the option to initiate any code amendments, land development codes, Andy, Todd's or other as well as the planning commission , to cover things like parking reductions. Staffs were test staffs recommended tool regarding parking based on the community engagement we did is this three phased approach. Decide. Help. Answer your question. It does. There was a specific percentage that you said that I think you said something about 60% yes, sorry. That was in reference to the current code today. So if somebody comes in and is building in one of our three adopted T O D S today, they can reduce their parking requirements up to 60. I believe thank you. Just two quick comments and questions. I have two quick comments. Because I know around short on time. Mostly for staff. As. As you [3:28:58 PM] know, we have lots of ideas on lots of housing related topics, and as we put them forward and think about these things it would be. We wouldn't be doing the right thing if we passed a bunch of stuff that runs right in conflict. With what we're trying to do with the E T O D work and so to the extent that what we're doing, can build into what you are trying to do, or that would be incompatible. Please reach out and talk to us about that so that we don't create conflicts needlessly. And maybe set things in motion that would be very difficult to undo around these areas, so that's just item number one item number two as it relates to creating targets and metrics. We often talk about units and units are an easy metric, but I want to also be cognizant of those types [3:29:58 PM] of units units for families versus they single, you know, efficiency or studio. Those are serving very different people and so yielding something that's 25 family units versus 50. Studios you know, we might be serving more people through the 25 the 50 and so making sure that the metrics we set are cognizant of the different people that we serve so that is just a quick aside and that's all I got. I appreciate that vice chair. Do we have any very last second comments or questions before the housing and planning committee adjourns? One less question. Minor question. Can, either. And any other panelists can. Can you respond to the parking question from my from my perspective? Sure I'll let you look on the L just say [3:30:59 PM] quickly. I think from the perspective we really wanted to see more aggressive, honestly, policy around barking and so really parking maximums or what we're interested in and we're really looking at from two perspectives. Consumer altar was saying one is that concern of just making sure that we don't create parking today, including structural parking. That we will not be able to get rid of for the next 50 years. Frankly so if we set minimums today and allow parking, we're worried about what that does to quality of space in urban design, but also to the housing capacity and affordability, so we're really looking at something more can do parking maximums and I'll be honest, I think in the csc working group conversations we were really pushing for that. I know staff is looking at a broader list of stakeholders, but that was definitely I think we're a lot of cse members are inward. I don't know Mr Gandhi. You just said, but staff is proposing three tiers unless I'm misreading the document. Tier one. The baseline is the elimination of parking minimums , and that's great. That's a [3:32:01 PM] great place to start a minimum. We know based on experiments in the city, and everywhere in the country that a site with no parking minimums is still a site with way too much parking for any kind of meaningful T O D. So the question is, how do we get to the other two tiers? The tier where we're actually talking about the caps on parking, and that is what's meaningful. There's no world in Austin, Texas. Where we're actually going to be doing anything really aggressive or meaningful on parking unless we push hard, because the desire the default, the status quo is to build an excess and an abundance of parking. You know, we saw that in plaza south zo. We see that in every major station area, so if we don't take really proactive action on this, we will end up with way too much parking and we will end up with drivers and I last thing I'm gonna say on this I believe in this very passionately because the city of Austin made me a driver. I was a core transit user my whole life. I grew up riding the bus and the train. I moved here. I lived on a transit [3:33:01 PM] line. I rode the bus every day to work. It was great. I was forced to move further out because of price concerns. So I moved further south and I didn't live on a high access transit line, and I had to buy a car. The city of Boston encouraged me to learn how to drive and turned me into a habitual driver now. On weaning my I'm I'm learning to just depend on transit again , right? But are that that the point is that my personal story is a perfect example of how are planning decisions really shape behavior, and so we plan to create a city of future drivers , or we plan to create a city of future tries it writers at some point we have to make a pretty bold decision on that front. Thank you. Thank you. J P I think you just made are closing remarks for us. And with with that, I want to thank you for letting us hijack your transportation meeting transit meeting and, I if there are no objections to adjourning, just the housing and planning portion of this meeting. We it is 3 33, [3:34:04 PM] and we stand adjourned to let you carry on your business. Thank you, everyone for joining us. I know we wanted to just daylight. The long conversations that have been happening for many years around housing and transit and project connects. So thanks. We'll do a quick change of staff will let our housing and planning staff go. We've got a couple of items on for the rest of the mobility committee. We've got minutes to adopt from the last meeting. Let me hang on. Let me pull up my notes. Here we go. Let's go ahead and ask for a motion to approve the minutes of the January 19th mobility committee vice chair qadri makes that motion seconded by council member harper-madison . Without any objections. We will approve those minutes. Item number three. I will just say that our our beloved former chair. Sorry guys could job. [3:35:07 PM] Take your conversations outside, please? Excuse me, everyone. We we love you. And we love your passion. But could you, have your have your chit chat outside ? We love you and we know you'll be back. For item number three. Our beloved utc commission chair Mario champion is rolling off of the urban transportation commission. We want to extend our well wishes and gratitude for all of his years of service. The new chair is Susan somers. She's unable to attend us to attend the meeting with us today , but we just wanted to make that announcement for item number three. Which essentially is not going to be taken up. I will ask. I know we have two briefings posted one on the mobility annual plan and one on the 80 X walk. Bike role also have item number six, the assistant city manager strategic mobility outcome. Do you feel the need to identify? Okay [3:36:07 PM] there's there is a PDF and back up with some really great work that's going on in this strategic outcome for mobility, so I will just tell you to reference the backup online. And with the time we have left, do we have it in us to take up both items? Okay I'm getting a thumbs up from Laura. Dear infield, let's let's hammer through. And we'll see when they pulled me out of this chair. And in the interest of time, we'd be happy to offer a brief brief F Y I on the mobility annual plan. If that would help, would be great. Thank you. Yes. Transition to the 80 X walk by Groll update. Yeah. Thank you so much for having this on the agenda. We will be briefing. My colleagues will join me shortly, too. Per present their pieces on the urban trails, sidewalks and bike weighs plan. Portions of this effort. I'll just say it was just an extraordinary confluence of mobility, land use, themes this afternoon, and I think this is 11 within that mix, to look [3:37:07 PM] at build out of our bike way urban trail and sidewalk plans and to Mr Connelly's moving remarks really one of the centering themes we heard through this two year process with our community is this gripping affordability and anti and displacement crisis? And how can these plans and these this infrastructure benefit and help to blend those those forces and really be part of a virtuous solution? And we, came to the very focused conclusion that you know, in order to really achieve equitable transportation outcomes. We really need to work in concert with our colleagues, many of whom presented today on the all of the integrated planning that is required to offer those affordable options and those equitable transportation choices. Such that people, can have have choices in how they get around and we think of mobility as that basic human right. That doesn't necessarily burden someone to car ownership. The other Keith [3:38:10 PM] email offer at the just at the top is that these plans are being updated in concert with the Austin strategic mobility plan. So what you'll see our key strategies within the SNP that will be updated to reflect the motel plans and the motor plans. Vice versa are being updated to reflect the latest SNP updates. So there's really nice synergies with both. And among the themes of those kind of concurrent updates is really around transportation. Affordability. Sure, no problem. And, and there's a number of strategies, including the E bike subsidy that was mentioned earlier, lighting and many other strategies to really improve or address transportation. Affordability within the motor plans, as well as a redoubled effort to, do more integrated, planning again with our colleagues in the climate, space and housing space to really understand how all of these tools can address the bigger policies of our city. I did go [3:39:13 PM] through quite a bit of that and not in reference to the slides but happy to circle back to any of these all just simply yield my time over two or and thanked us to talk about the urban trails plan now followed by John Eastman and Nathan marks the sidewalks and bike ways. Thank you, Laura. Afternoon everyone I'm an Desanctis. I am the acting urban trails program manager and I will be speaking specifically to the urban trails plan. So our last urban trails plan was adopted in 2014, and since then we've been working to implement that proposed network with this plan. We are updating the proposed network based on fieldwork and community feedback. Additionally we are updating how the network is prioritized with a new, data driven method based on public input in city policies. I tried on this slide shows the factors that go into that new prioritization methodology as you can see, there's three top methods, that those three [3:40:15 PM] factors are whether the network will improve access across major barriers such as highways, creeks, railroad crossings and rivers. Whether trails are near high capacity transit. And whether trails are near key neighborhood destinations. On the slide. This is our proposed network and tier one trails or what is shown in dark green. And these are, the trails that we would like to implement in the near term. The tier two and tier three trails are still very important, but we are approaching them more opportunistically overtime, which basically means if we have partnerships that we can leverage or if redevelopment occurs. So as we implement the trails. We're also looking at the equity and affordability implications. We heard concerns from communities that urban trails cause displacement and as data on this is very limited. As part of the plan we are one of our recommendations is to study [3:41:15 PM] those displacement impacts near trails and develop an action plan to mitigate we also want to partner with existing anti displacement work that's happening all across the city. Then building on success of 80 X walk by control. White walk by girl ambassador. Excuse me. We recommend hiring community ambassadors specific to urban trails. We need to be sure we're not only building trails but teaching folks how to use them and ensuring everyone is comfortable using them. And that's what those ambassadors could help with. We also think programming is key, and the PO can act as a resource on the trail and also recommends place making and temporary activation place making can bring in local artists and community members and the temporary activation brings focus in new users to the trail and hopefully creates users of the trail going forward. And lastly, but maybe most importantly, we need maintenance and the trail plan. Update includes an Ada transition plan and an outline for proactive maintenance going forward. That I will hand it over to John Eastman. Thank you. All right. Thank you. John Eastman sidewalk and special projects division man, division manager here to talk about the sidewalks, crossings and shared streets playing and really the updated plan. Is oriented around three overarching strategies prioritizing equity. I mean, we've talked about that a lot. It was really encouraging to hear all the conversations. [3:42:54 PM] Providing safe, comfortable, accessible pedestrian passage along and across every public street and collaborating with public and private partners using a complete streets approach. So the plant process started. Through an analysis of our existing network, using equity analysis Zones, and looking at those areas with particularly vulnerable populations. What we found is a disproportionate share of our pedestrian high injury network and a disproportionate share of our adapts, in in safe crossings were within those focuses daisies. We did find some encouraging trends that we think are a result of the equity focused, prioritization model that came out of the 2009 sidewalk plan. The overall extents and condition of the sidewalk network or slightly better within the focus. He, Aziz. There's also been a fair [3:43:57 PM] amount of improvement in our sidewalk network in the last six years since the plan was updated in 2016, the network has grown from 2400 miles to 2800 miles and gone from 16% functionally acceptable 32% functionally acceptable so we've made a lot of progress, but that's still a long, long ways to go to get to a really equitable transportation system where people who by choice or by necessity need to walk to their destinations have the opportunity to do so. So how does this plan help get us there to that that more equitable transportation system. It really takes, a very pragmatic and context sensitive approach, and so it continues to, plan on having sidewalks on both sides of most streets, while also recognizing that in certain retrofit areas in lower volume [3:44:59 PM] street, lower traffic volumes, streets a sidewalk on one side of the street may be sufficient. And then for those areas that are very low traffic volume residential streets, taking a more sustainable lower cost and much faster to implement approach, by implementing shared streets. So in doing so we can vision getting to complete citywide pedestrian network and something like a 20 to 30 year timeframe rather than the current timeframe of building out something on the order of magnitude of 1500 miles of sidewalks, which we anticipate would take close to 100 years, so very practical, pragmatic approach to get us to, you know , sidewalks where we really need them, and safe pedestrian access in every neighborhood citywide. The context sensitive approach [3:46:00 PM] is also going to be used to improve almost 2000 crossings throughout the city. Lot of lot of great work has been done in recent years, and we're going to build on the work of safe routes to school, healthy streets, vision zero and, living streets , which I think, I it's just some amazing work that's being done in Austin right now. The updated plan name really reflects the three key elements that are going to make up that that complete pedestrian network sidewalks, crossings and shared streets. And to make sure that we were transparent and accountable. We've included high level metrics. To make sure we get there and with that and turn it over to Nathan Wilkes to talk about the bicycle plan. Alright Nathan Wilkes, with the transportation department and managed by bicycle infrastructure. Program and [3:47:00 PM] we've. We're updating the bicycle plan. Last updated in 2014. That plan was the plan that yeah, innovated or cut up to reality that painted bike lanes are not good enough. All ages and abilities facilities are necessary to capture you know, instead of just 15% of the population, 55 to 60, plus percent of the population is interested and willing to write in those safe facilities separated from traffic. So in this plan, there's as as you've heard with all the conversation. Or huge focus on again kind of expanding that all ages network and giving people mobility choice. So that's the first central challenge of making our streets safe. It's still huge task. I'll talk a bit about the expansion of the network vision in this plan, but the second challenge just to say a little more about who has access to the mobility choice. If you're [3:48:01 PM] displaced or the only place you can afford to live as a flag locked development off 969. And there's no destinations in sight. It doesn't matter what we do to 969. It doesn't matter what we do to that street within that neighborhood. You don't have access to mobility choice. So the equity around who gets to have access to these, you know, powerful mobility choices. Is a major kind of equity outcome that that we're focused on. Raising the flag needs to be ah! Thoughtful. So the. All ages and abilities network. It was originally a 400 mile network and the 2014 plans. So we celebrated building out 50% of that mileage back in 2021. Ah only six months late. Which was great to hit a planning goal that was ambitious like that, we grew that network when we adopted the S and P, and we've grown it again in our recommendations in this plan, so it's now 1000 mile network, and [3:49:02 PM] we'll have much more, kind of ambitious mileage targets of expanding that network and giving people access to where they need to go. We co developed and tested with the public through our process, three prioritization themes. The 2014 plan was focused on putting a basic backbone of how how you could traverse the city. By bicycling and scoot ring. Ah tricycle Ng and this time we tested the ideas of access to neighborhood destinations, which was the top a city wide access, which was a close second and then connections to nature, which was also highly supported, but the third, so we're going to consider all three of those themes is really legitimate frames of how we might criticize projects. And also in this plan update. We've developed a gis model for the first time to help help data driven decision making around. Where to pick projects. Are. These are other focus areas [3:50:05 PM] that were really highlighting in this planning effort. We've talked a lot about just the need to manage affordability. Displacement on the city wide scale. You all know well that this is the top ah constituent issue across the whole city. It's no longer traffic and mobility. Which was the issue of the time of the 2014 plan. We've it echoing John. It was super awesome to hear the session before and all the E T. O D and I presented to the E T O D community advisory group, so that second bullet about integrated land affordability, mobility, anti displacement, planning, transit planning like us working outside of our silos. You were hearing about bike sheds soft density in the bike shed outside the kind of critical density of the station area. The two mile by catchment like I was talking about the two mile bike catchment and, you know, we need to break down the silos and be talking about all of our shared tools. Feeding transit is a huge thing that we [3:51:07 PM] can do with bicycle scooter. Ah, networks and, ah! You know, bicycling and scattering is works well beyond the walking radius that two mile radius is a 16 times land area. So when you start start talking about number of units, how we can articulate density, how how we can feed transit with people. These networks can have a big implication and we're ready to prioritize projects around around those areas. Ah E bikes is another kind of big one. As you all know, and interesting statistic. A 3rd 3rd of the bike sold in the us now our E bikes. Half of the pike sold in the Netherlands. Our E bikes. Really kind of expand opportunity to be more inclusive about who can, you know people with families, people that aren't ah! Physically used to riding a bicycle can can take the opportunity. Climate plan in [3:52:09 PM] terms of integrated planning. We had a, land planning, land and transportation planning climate implementation workshop, and they were talking about the gap in what we've known strategies to get to our climate goals and what our goals actually are, really kind of bringing up for me like how much more we need to be sharing tools and be kind of bold together to achieve those ambitious targets. We heard in the planning effort about, improving the quality of flex posts this week. We've heard a lot about ah, flexible, so I just want to be really clear. We're in this plan approach. We are balancing building quickly, which includes a lot of flex posts, but also looking at incremental strategies to build higher quality intersections. And happy to take questions about that later. And better support services. We heard about daycares. There's a lot of things that affect ah, vulnerable populations and anything that helps support them will help generate equitable [3:53:11 PM] mobility outcomes as well. So we're at the tail end of our boards and commissions kind of series. The plans are all up for public comment. People are commenting up voting will be looking at what we might need to fine tune in the plans before we come back to, planning commission and then counsel in the April may timeframe. Like Laura said, we're coming back to counsel with the S and P, like the mapping and recommendations for the bike network will be embedded in the S and P. And just to wrap up. We think it's been really positive and synergistic to bring all three of these modes together. They're all short range mobility tools that 0 to 3 plus miles. They're all vulnerable users. They share a lot in common. Studies show that people are happy and healthier when we can integrate this and in daily life. These, these are all important ways of achieving the Austin strategic mobility plans, mode shift goals. And giving people you [3:54:14 PM] know everyone, the opportunity to choose how they get around is a really important thing, because not everybody has access to a car. They might be younger , older not to be able to afford it. Or may does not want that and in terms of lifestyle choice. And then lastly, we talked about just supporting each other's planning efforts and broader goals and just being kind of more active and engaged partners. To get our broad city outcomes and happy to take questions. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have any questions from the committee members? Thank you don't see any hands up. Thank you, and we'll make sure the we'll make sure to double check back up and make sure those links are in there for everybody to access the public feedback portion of this next presentation is not going to council is just a briefing, and we're being briefing council members individually. I suggest we just do that. Okay since you do the time, so we'll continue to reach out to your offices and [3:55:15 PM] brief you. All this is that we pull together our annual plan on making sure we're coordinated on capital projects. So we want to just brief y'all. On that, but we can do that individually. Thank you. I appreciate that and helping helping to save us some time. Today the mobility annual plan is a really cool integrated map where you can see all the different investments that are happening and you can turn on and off the layers to see what's happening in your your neck of Austin. So it's a it's a really cool plan and they will be looking for there's more time for public comment on that one. Okay little more time for public comment on the mobility annual plan. And on that note. I think we got through. All of our items today are really appreciate everybody who was able to join us either online in person asking questions coming to present. I know it's a big commitment to help share the good work going on in the community. And as you can tell, we could probably talk about these topics all day today. So I look forward to further in the conversation and future meetings. Thanks y'all. I will adjourn the meeting at 3 56.