City Council Work Session Transcript – 5/30/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/30/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/30/2023 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. [9:00:18 AM] in our present virtually. And so we have like say we have a quorum. It is may 30th, 2023. It's 9:00 in the morning. We are meeting in this work session in the Austin city council chambers and that's at Austin city hall 301 west second street in Austin, Texas, as members, the order that I anticipate will go in is we will go into an executive closed session as soon as I talk my way through this order that we're going in the next thing we will do is bring up the project, connect briefing and any discussion related to pool. Item number 72, we will then have an update on the resilience offices, accomplishments and strategy. We will then have a discussion or briefing on items 36, then 45, and then 71. Are there any questions about that? All right [9:01:19 AM] , then the city council will now go into a closed session to take up one item pursuant. To section 551.07, one of the Texas government code. The city council will discuss legal issues related to E one project connect Wright. Is there any objection to going into executive session on the item that was announced? Hearing none. The council will now go into executive session for members of the public. I don't anticipate this taking a full hour, but Wright anticipate that what we will do is take up the project, connect briefing at 10:00 or earlier. But we will we will do everything. If we're not done by 10:00, we will come out and we'll start the briefing at that point in time. Thanks, everybody. Seeing a little bit. [10:11:35 AM] Do we know. They're both on on the line. Okay, good. Thank you . Good morning, mayor. Thank you for taking. I appreciate it. I can't see city hall, but I'm definitely hearing you. Well I'm going to call back to order the Austin city council. It is 10:12 A.M. We are out of our executive or closed session members before we get to discussing the light rail implementation plan and hearing this briefing, let's just take a moment to reflect that Austin light rail did survive the legislative session. As you all know, legislation was filed during this session. The session ended yesterday and the legislation was filed was [10:12:36 AM] expressly intended to overturn the will of Austin voters and kill project connect. There were multiple reasons given they shifted from the filing of the legislation all the way up to last week. But the goal was always to prevent project connect. It was admitted to us and it was evidenced by how the bill progressed throughout the legislative session. We negotiated in good faith with the objective of protecting this long sought community investment for generations to come. If the deal that was made in the house had been honored, there would be legislation today. But as I said, that didn't go along with what everybody was attempting to do, which was make sure that we didn't go forward with project connect. There was a hazel, a Jesus dilly drafted attorney general advisory opinion that while that isn't law, it was to try to it was used to justify why a proposed amendment that [10:13:38 AM] essentially rewrote the house version of the bill and would have prohibited the lawful financing of Austin light rail. We worked with representative Busey in the house delegation and we were able to stop that amended version of the bill. Ann and now, maybe ironically, we have a clearer path forward thanks to that same attorney general opinion and advice. The governor has called a special session this issue is not on the governor's call. However, we will be vigilant, but we could also and we anticipate, see litigation Ann, particularly from those who lost the election in 2020 and attempted to use the legislature to undermine the will of the voters. But for now , we are going to take a deep breath, take mature, thoughtful action to move the voters vision forward promptly. And we can continue to look forward to the day when light rail is up and running in Austin, Texas. The [10:14:40 AM] Austin light rail implementation plan we're discussing today is the joint recommendation on the joint recommendation Ann of the staff from the city of Austin capital, metro and atp. Today we'll have at the table briefing us almost 100 years of planning and or engineering experience in working on big, complex transit projects. Of course, you can add to that the hundreds and hundreds more years of staff and consultant expertise that's been involved in this this recommendation that we're hearing is based on their technical expertise as well as the extensive public feedback Mok that was received during the six week community engagement process on March 21st. We started with five alignment options plus two ways to cross the lake and a key decision about whether light rail would be elevated through downtown or run along the streets. More than [10:15:43 AM] 7000 community members weighed in on these options. Luz over the course of the community engagement process and with additional knell technical analysis, this option that we're going to hear about emerge as the clear choice for the joint staffs in addition, the community advisory committee has also endorsed this option and after the staff presentation, we'll call up the chair of the cac to discuss the recommendation of the cac. For my perspective, staff has done all three staffs, everybody that's been involved in this has done a stellar job over the last several months to develop the options for light rail and to engage the community on what option will work best. And I want to thank them before we even get started for their great work done under trying circumstances as a community, we have taken on an endeavor as big and complex as delivering a light rail system, and we have never done that before. This is [10:16:46 AM] an enormous challenge and we all need to be flexible. We need to be nimble, and we need to be open to new information so that we don't get in the way of delivering light rail to our community. But it's good to be at this point. And with that, I will turn it over to the panel to give us the briefing. Singh thank you, mayor and Brodie with the city of Austin project connect office. As mayor and council, we're pleased to be here this morning. As the mayor pointed out, the tripathi staff, we have Andy Schabowski from capital metro, Jennifer Pyne and Lindsay wood from Austin transit partnership and myself from the city of Austin here to present the light rail, implement action plan to you, have a discussion Ann. Also here is Courtney Chavez, who led our community engagement process over the last Burt last two months. Really as well as Peter Mullan, chief of architecture for atp, and Anna martin from transportation and public works should there be any [10:17:46 AM] specific questions on those items? And I'm going to hand it over to Lindsay to get us started. Thank you. All right. Good morning, mayor and council . We are excited to be here today to present this recommendation for the first phase of Austin's light rail. We're going to start with an overview of this recommendation , Ann, and then talk about how we got here and the rationale behind it. So this this first phase, the light rail is within a dedicated transit way in in the entire limits of this from 38th street along Guadalupe, continuing south and turning on third street to then connect at Trinity and cross lady bird lake and continue south to oltorf on south congress and to the east to yellow jacket along east Riverside drive. This option has coverage to the north, the south [10:18:47 AM] and the east, laying the foundation Ann for future extensions and includes connections to key destinations and access to opportunities along the way, including health care at the medical district along near 38th education, both at UT and ACC Riverside employment at key employment centers in multiple locations along the corridors and housing, including affordable housing. I went to highlight that this option is on street. As you can see in some of these pictures here, creating a visible and accessible system that people will be able to really see how they can connect to. And also zo, as I mentioned, the cronk Singh at Trinity street across bts, lady bird lake. So I want to talk a little bit about how we got here. We started this process with more questions than [10:19:48 AM] answers. We completed an analysis that was built on the foundation of collaboration across the professional expertise of the atp cap metro and city staff and very importantly, was informed by community input and really want to highlight that process. Less of having a conversation with our community in that six week engage period, which we kicked off on March 21st. We presented five different options for the first phase of Austin's light rail. We conducted more than 90 meeting burns during that time period and interactions with more than 8000 people. And that doesn't include what was virtual and on our website, with nearly 20,000 views. And we ultimately received more than 5000 formal comments. We used multilingual community stations and one of at [10:20:51 AM] least my greatest source sources of pride during this process was the repeated conversations that we had with people we didn't talk to people just once, but especially in those communities and in areas where there was deep concerns and lots of questions, we came back time and time again and continued to listen to the feedback that we got. In some cases, in many cases, think about things differently and came back to those citizens with as many answers as we could possibly provide. And that led us to a place of having alignment with our community that supports this recommendation and as highlighted here, we heard from several groups that actually reached the same conclusion Ann that we did. We did not ask any of these groups to submit a formal recommendation. Ann and we are truly grateful for the [10:21:52 AM] time that they invested in their own analysis of considering the data and all of the options in front of them and, and how they really rolled up their sleeves and worked with us and asked us some really hard questions along the way that helped us come to the right outcome for our community. We especially want to highlight our community advisory committee that that challenged us and pulled us forward and helped us reach an option that we feel best serves this community. So with that, Jen is going to talk us through some of the rationale and the planning data behind this recommendation . Good morning. So one of the key missions of this project is to provide access to opportunities, opportunities for jobs, for education, for health care, so to think about that, we considered overall ridership, but we also considered the composition of that ridership and who and where we would be [10:22:55 AM] serving along the line. So with the recommended project, one of our goals was to serve affordable housing to the best of our ability and to serve areas with populations with lower incomes, to serve people who are not only using transit now, but who would really benefit from transit. That is convenient and will connect them to jobs and other destinations across Austin. So to do that work, we worked very closely with our our tripathi team, but also with the city's departments of planning and housing to consider these topics. S so the principle of providing service to areas that have been historically underinvested in was one we were thoughtful of throughout this process that is a consideration that is in our joint powers agreement that really highlights outcomes for those priority populations. But it's also something that we heard very clearly in the public input. We heard that that's an important principle to be served [10:23:57 AM] . So overall, taking a look at population density and jobs both now and in the future, a key goal for us with this project was to connect areas of high population density with jobs and with historically underinvested areas and to knit them together in central Austin. Another key principle for us was thinking about how the light rail would fit into the existing and the future transit network. Our goal is to have a really well working, interconnected transit network with light rail as a part that is feeding the bus network and the bus network in turn feeds it. So this is a key part really of trying to meet the goal, the mode shift goals that are laid out in the comp to the extent that we can provide service, that's very convenient to as many people as possible, that's going to allow people to choose transit out. In [10:24:57 AM] particular, this the recommended project makes some key connections that we think are important. One is with the metro rapid service, some of which exists, but also currently under construction, particularly at pleasant valley and Riverside. Also with the Trinity crossing that allows us to closely connect with the red line and the future green line commuter service at downtown station. With that, I'm going to pass it over to Andy to talk a little bit more. Good morning, mayor. City council specific to the crossings at Trinity. And first street, the Trinity crossing, as said, gives us good connectivity to both the red line and the future green line, as well as also to the gold line. It provides for more stations which will allow us some better connectivity between our existing bus network and the new light rail line. And as we move over to first street, first street crossing, as we took a look at it, it's already a very complex crossing. There's a lot [10:25:58 AM] of bus traffic already or bus movements already on that alignment. There are a lot of vehicle use, other modes, uses, uses. There as you cross Cesar Chavez. Cesar Chavez is today a pinch point in the city and we thought as we looked into it and we added light rail to that that it would be very impactful to that that that intersection on both the north shore at the Cesar Chavez side, as well as on the south side, where in the alignments we we're looking at we actually get some conflicting movements between light rail busses and vehicles. And as the operating entity of the of the tri party, it brings us pause in the amount of impact that we would cause, not only to the light rail system and its reliability, but also in cases where something might have gone wrong, either with a vehicle side or on a on a light rail side. The general impact to the city itself. So we felt strongly, we felt that the of the two crossings at Trinity was much less impactful than that at first street with that turn it back to Jen. So as you see here [10:27:03 AM] with this recommendation, Ann, I want to highlight a few of the key characteristics of this. First phase and then also talk about what's next and what we have highlighted as priority extensions. So in this first phase, laying the foundation for expansion in all three directions, north, south and east, and as part of that, getting as close as we can to the airport to facilitate a connection there. And that is one thing that we heard almost universally across multiple knell groups in the community when asked that question of prioritizing airport connected Katy, many didn't prioritize it necessarily as the first phase, but they all thought it was important and wanted to kind of have a pathway to making that connection. And this option builds new infrastructure to serve historically underinvested areas and connect people with jobs, as well as creating new [10:28:04 AM] ones. So the extension that you see highlighted here, the priority extensions include a segment from 38th to crestview, as well as from yellow jacket to the airport. And these priority extensions were based on recurring themes from community input and priorities. And what we heard was important to people. They also are identified Eid based on opportunities to integrate with other planned regional projects, such as the red line grade separation at crestview, and lowering that at the capmetro is actively seeking funding to construct in the future and the airport expansion and development program and finding a way to create as seamless as possible experience for our multimodal customers. The other opportunity that these extensions can present is to leverage additional funding sources in order to accelerate [10:29:05 AM] these extensions potentially into the first phase. So that leaves us with our next steps as highlighted here. We have the council meeting this week on the first the capmetro board work session, where we will present this recommendation to the capmetro board. This Friday and then our joint partnership meeting on June 6th with and with that, we stand ready and available to answer your questions. Council members. Any questions or comments? Councilmember qadri great. Well, you know, first and foremost, I'm so excited that we're at this point and I'm very grateful to you all, to atp, to capmetro zo for everyone who's played their part in making this light rail dream, you know, that much [10:30:05 AM] closer of being a reality in the city. I think the proposal alignment gets us more to more parts of town. It lays the foundation to build out a bigger network and create better connections and access, you know, in the future of the city. And I think, you know, representing district nine, representing the downtown probably the most important piece of our of our light rail system is the downtown section Ann. I think everything hinges on how we get people into and out of and around our downtown. You know, for decades, we've prioritized driving over all other modes. And I think this is our chance to really flip the script. So I really once again want to say thank you for all y'all's hard work. I think both of the proposed alignments in downtown will be far better than what we have now. But but I have a few questions to ask and you know, a lot of them have to do with the decision to cross along Trinity, you know, how the how the decision to cross along Trinity was made and why it was [10:31:06 AM] made now rather than later. But for a really quick questions or they might be long questions, they might not be that quick question. Number one, you know, it still remains unclear to me how you all address the lake crossings in the in the community engagement process. So if you all can kind of talk on that. We started this community engagement process, not Wright intending to you need to make a decision on the location of the lake crossings, thinking that that we needed to know more. And through this process that situation evolved. We heard from community Katy we were asked a lot of hard questions that required us to do more analysis and to dive into a lot of those issues and by the completion of this engagement process, we heard feedback from many different groups and also [10:32:07 AM] through our own technical analysis to help answer many of the questions that we received. We have come to the conclusion that that the there are some stark differences in community outcomes and ultimately in our professional expertise. We believe that the Trinity crossing best serves those community outcomes with a closer connection Ann to the red line with close access to both residential pool and employment densities and projected growth on the east side of downtown and also avoiding those bus and traffic operational impacts that Andy mentioned a little bit about earlier at the south first crossing option that we didn't know as much about at the beginning of the process. Great and then do you guys have a detailed analysis of the of the cost difference between the two crossing options? So our our [10:33:08 AM] draft cost estimates have been reported in a range that can account for many unknowns at this early level of design and can account for either river crossing option. The Trinity cross is roughly a quarter of a mile longer. Overall if you truly compare them apples to apples and use all common endpoints. So it's a little bit longer, but not materially so to impact our ability to accomplish other elements of the project outside of this downtown segment. So they are all within that cost range for either crossing location. Got it. Would you be able to get our offices the analysis of the cost differences? We would be happy to sit down and yes, answer questions on those differences. Great. I love that. Two more questions. How do you navigate these 290 degree turns without drastically slowing down services is a worry and a [10:34:09 AM] question of mine, actually. Andy, do you want to talk about that from an operational perspective? I think first of all, I think first off, one thing is to we are looking at ways of mitigating those curves, especially we can to reduce the impact on the actual intersection itself, the use of leaning into technology, utilizing good signal system and a rail side that entered into it works well with the existing intersection Ann network and the signalization within our city. Learning from other people's mistakes, other agencies that run at grade and learning from what they did right and taking those experiences of the party and all we're bringing forward to make sure in a design phase we look and take care of those things and a lot has to do with now in the design process really digging in and fully understanding what we got to do and how we handle the curves and how we best use technology on the train to speak to technology . On the on the intersection side, to work our way through those two curves. I hope I [10:35:10 AM] answered your question. Yeah, okay. I appreciate that. And then my last question, Ann are the proposed station location? Burns are they set in stone or is there, you know, is there more fluidity in that? And they're subject to change if possible. I'll respond to that one. Yeah, there we've identified generalized station locations, but we are at a very early stage of design and so we anticipate doing quite a bit of refinement of exactly where the stations fit in and the alignment as design progresses, as. Okay, great. Any other comments? Councilmember Allison alter thank you. Good morning and appreciate all the work that has gone to get us here today and this evolution. I did want to ask one question about the downtown Ann area and the lack of a stop between congress and 15th street, which seems to be somewhat longer than the distance, at least in blocks. It may not be geographically and Ann. And is it still possible to [10:36:14 AM] add a station between those? And what was the logic of not having one? So yes, it is possible to look at that. We can't say with certainty that it's possible to accomplish it. There are topography, challenges. There are difficult slopes to manage in that area that may be challenging to get a relatively flat station lower located in there. And that's the primary reason why there wasn't one identified in the early plan. But we did hear that question and feedback from some other groups as well. And we do agree to look into it and fully answer that question and understand the viability of any additional stations in that area. Thank you. And then can someone speak to sort of today we're looking at the light rail aspect of project connect and there's the metro rapids, but then there's also the park and rides and the other aspect S of it that are not part of what would be moving [10:37:16 AM] forward with over the next week. Can you speak to how that process is going to work moving forward? Please so right now we have so right now we have ppb expo in construction and we're working towards completing that . We are also as an agency looking at a five year service, use that and I assume that was pleasant valley, but yes, pleasant and exponents sorry, pleasant valley and expo. We also are engaging in a development of a five year service plan which, inclusive of doing. Destiny Ann and origin studies and really looking at what our network now looks like as we come out of covid, instead of saying pre covid, post covid, really what is the demographic looks? And then as we look through that service plan, build in when we do gold, when we move forward with the other other project connect pieces as they fold into an overall service plan for the agency. Can you speak specifically to the future plans for connecting areas, say to the west or folks who are not on that spine? How they connect [10:38:17 AM] in? I can't specifically speak exactly to that. It's all part of a new service plan. But if you like, we can sit down with you and go through that with some of the planning folks over at metro. So I'm a little bit on the operating side. It's kind of my wheelhouse, so I apologize. But if you like, we can most definitely sit with staff and go through that with you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Councilmember pool. Thanks mayor. I thought I would just take the opportunity Fauci since my colleague brought up the more robust kind of bus system discussion and just offer a little bit of information, mainly for the public. So I don't have a question right now for this panel. Is it okay to go? Sure. Okay well, we're going to be looking at approvals for the first phase of the Austin light rail and the conversation is about expanding bus service [10:39:19 AM] to fill in the gaps, both during the build out of light rail and probably into the future as the city of Austin moves more robustly toward transit. We need to make the system more robust to meet that need and specifically Leslie the connecting during the initial phase has been brought up a number of times, both on the dais in work session and as a capital metro board member on that body. And my two colleagues here, council member vela and the mayor pro tem and I serve on capmetro. So I just thought I would let everybody know I'm working with some of my colleagues and staff and project connect community advisory committee and I see the chair is sitting out of, as Azar is with us today, Shea he's the chair of the community advisory committee. We're exploring opportunities to partner with capmetro to align existing transit services with the Austin [10:40:21 AM] light rail implementation plan to fill in the gaps for the priority extension. Ann and the future Austin light rail route. So I'll be working on this with the mayor. My fellow metro board members on the dais, and council member Fuentes, who has expressed an interest in the issue. I intend for us to craft a path for collaboration Ann between our transportation department here at the city and at capmetro in consultation with the community advisory committee , which was pulled together as part of the supporting structure to the Austin transit partnership. And this is all in aid of enhancing existing transit services. And to serve the current and future community needs for transit. I really look forward to working with all my colleagues on this and I think this is a necessary chapter and addition to the work that we will be doing with light rail. Thank you, mayor, for those [10:41:21 AM] watching and may not know how the Austin transit partnership, which is represented at the table and giving giving us part of this briefing, the Austin transit partnership is a partnership ship of capital metro, which has three, as has been pointed out by councilmember pool, three members of the city council, councilmember pool councilmember vela and the mayor pro tem that also sit on capital metro and the city council. The city of Austin represented by the city council. And we have a represent tentative and that's me on the atp board of directors for those that wonder how this alphabet soup ends up actually working, I'll call on the mayor pro tem and then councilmember Fuentes. Thanks, mayor. Maybe for that June 6th meeting. We need a flow chart of exactly how the board makeup works and how the responsibilities work. I think that's always helpful to revisit in this conversation. I'm very excited to see a recommendation coming forward. I'm happy to see [10:42:22 AM] something that is going to serve UT is going to serve east Riverside is coming down into south Austin. My first question is going to be what discussions are happening about potential smaller parking rides, for instance, with the oltorf stop? Are there conversations with adjacent parking lot landowners for folks who live south and really want to utilize transit once it's built? But have to drive there essentially to be able to utilize this system? Yes, we will as part of this process and next phase of moving the project forward, we will analyze park and ride opportunities at each of the first phase endpoints. So in the map of the option, you see one at yellow jacket. The reason that one's already identified is because it was part of the previous planning efforts. But as we move this recommendation forward, we will do similar planning at each of the other endpoints, and that ties back to that ties back into, as capmetro is doing, their their overall service plan, taking a look at origin of destinations, how we [10:43:23 AM] fit our existing network to the changes that are to the new alignment and just make it all as interconnected as we can possibly make it. I appreciate that and I know in one of the previous iterations there was a flex segment south of oltorf, and now we see there's two flex segments north of 38th street. Can you tell me financially what's the likelihood that we can get to 45th or even further ? I know I'm excited about that, but we've got to trust the finance folks who are crunching those numbers and really trying to make sure we get as close to crestview as possible to beef up the ridership access. It's hard to give a likelihood because that's really the objective of the next phase of the project to advance design concepts and have greater certainty in in the design elements. And some of those unknowns becoming knowns. But that is, is part of these priority extensions. Burns and if we have the funding available [10:44:25 AM] based on the designs as they move forward and certain risks becoming known Ann then we can look at incorporating those into the first phase and also leveraging any additional potential funding opportunities such as coordination with some of these other projects that we can integrate with. Okay. So is there any likelihood we can get more yellow and more gold color on the map at this point in time? I think we all share that desire to serve as as much as we can serve and must maintain a project that we know we can deliver and fulfill on those commitments. Butts but we will do everything we can as we advance the project. Okay. I appreciate that. I know I was pushing, so I'm pretty excited about it. I appreciated council member qadri questions about the river crossings. I've been able to learn a little bit more just about how the traffic engineering and how the operations for capmetro would work. Is there still opportunity to carry both forward through the environmental process just [10:45:27 AM] to make sure folks? S I know that's a really tight area and I want to make sure folks feel like their voices are being heard in that public outreach, which I know that you all did pretty thoroughly. But just trying to make sure we're not making design decisions at this point in time that will exclude the ability to switch gears for that really tight space in the future. Can you talk about the opportunity for that potentially to move forward side by side? I can talk about that a little bit. So you know, our recommendation was to advance and is to advance the Trinity crossing and to take that through Nepa. And that was just based on, as we said, some of our all of our analysis and expertise and work in other areas of the country on what is going to be the most robust based option from a ridership and other perspectives as well. So the reason that we did not recommend taking both through to Nepa really has to do with a lot of the schedule, risk and considerations that that would [10:46:28 AM] require. For example, a lot of the design work on first street would have to be advanced to a place that would allow us to take it through Nepa, and that could add another six months to our schedule. And so but the main concern there is not just doing that so much as we wouldn't recommend doing that and incurring those kind of costs and schedule pool implications for an option that is not advantageous from a ridership potential or an environmental potential or an operational potential. Okay I appreciate knowing more about that because I know there was conversation about the tight 90 degree angles. Obviously there's a conversation about getting folks to and from the convention center because that's a place where a lot of folks who will travel here are going to go to as a destination. And also just looking at the river crossing area as if it were to come up south first and look at that. So I'm going to look more into it. And I appreciate y'all's work on that. And I think the last the last question that I'll ask is [10:47:30 AM] about the number of locations burns that are yet to be determined. Is there any way for you all to identify are there certain station locations on the map? And will any more be added or how that will play out as you move forward with the planning and by locations, you mean station locations? Yes okay. Yes. Sorry. So there there have been that councilmember alter mentioned a desire to look into additional stations downtown. Ann given the spacing between the congress station and the 15th street station. And we will be looking into the viability of that. We don't currently have any other additional station locations that have been identified for analysis, but part of the environmental process is to look at the environmental impacts around every station and in that can sometimes result in changes to station locations. Burns if some impact that we become aware of, [10:48:31 AM] we may need to look at alternate lives and that is part of the process. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor pro tem councilmember Fuentes. Thank you. I also want to echo my colleagues sentiments and to share my appreciation and gratitude. Jude and mark my excitement that we are now at the stage where we get to vote on the first phase of implementing project connect. I know Austin Wright spoke very loudly and clearly when austinites voted for this transformational transit system, so it's exciting to be able to share and to show how we intend to deliver it. I also want to appreciate the over 5000 austinites who provided comments that helped inform this recommended Burt phase of project connect. I can tell that you all really incorporated the comments that were provided. You know, the very the scenarios that were the five scenarios that were initially released did not include the segment from oltorf to stassney. And so [10:49:31 AM] seeing that on the map and knowing that it is, you know, part of the consideration for the next phase of implementation, I think really will go a long way. Councilmember pool, you mentioned earlier about wanting to bring forward an ifc next month, that that takes into consideration, you know, how else are we going to connect the rest of our transit system to the spine of Austin light rail I think that's going to be really important because some of the questions that I've been having and asking staff through the conversation that me and my team have had have been how do we get an enhanced metro rapid for the 801 down south and taking it from oltorf all the way down to slaughter you know, what other ways can we provide connectivity and some of the and I look forward to working with you. Councilmember pool, because some of the direction that I would like to include Eid is for city staff to take a look at what other ways can we provide enhanced service, whether that includes signal prioritization, Ann bus pull outs marked lane, [10:50:35 AM] dedicated lanes like what are all of the other ways that we can help ensure that we have an efficient and comprehensive transit system for everyone in Austin, regardless of where you live in our city. So I look forward to working with you on that. I did want to focus in on a couple of segments from yellow jacket to the airport because as you all mentioned, that was one of the more common themes that came out from the feedback from the community was wanting that connectivity to the airport. Airport is located in district two, so I wanted to ask about what do you all envision as those potential funding sources that we should that the city should be taking a look at to help with that segment, that connecting that segment? Eid thank you for that question. I think you know, speaking on behalf of the partnership, as Lindsay pointed out, we did hear a lot about the airport during community engagement and so much so that it is part of our [10:51:35 AM] priority extension recommendation. And I think we can follow up with your office. My best my we don't have a full analysis on funding sources at this point, but we're happy to follow up with your office once we've done some more research on what might be a good fit. We know that there are a lot of sources out there and we have to get creative and innovative. We need to involve interim director Smith on those conversations as well. Consider the airport expansion program. So we will definitely follow up with your office on that question. Thank you. And in the meantime, you have it marked as perhaps some shuttle services from yellow jacket to the airport. Can you go into a little bit more detail of what that might look like? Just looking at what else we can put out there, what other types of services we can just to beef up some of the headways where we get more reliability and more more service opportunities to go through that corridor. So nothing definitive at this point [10:52:35 AM] , but it is something that we're going to be looking at developing and see what we can add into the network. So more so that when we do unveil the Austin light rail knell, there will be some sort of shuttle service or other enhanced service going from yellow jacket to the airport. That is part of the plan. Ann yes, it is something that is part of our service planning as we move forward, making sure we do connections from all the different endpoints as best we can to leverage our existing network to make connectivity to the library system. Okay and you mentioned the five year service plan. Can you share with us when that is up for an update? That's actually the process we're going through now. The first portion of it is doing a origin and destination survey that takes a little bit of time and the planning group in capmetro is actually going to work through that over over the coming months . Now that we have an alignment that was an important key element to that, we can make sure that we're really using it as a spine that yet said to really build into it, get the connections burns and best [10:53:36 AM] leverage both light rail and our bus network as we move forward. So that will be over the next 6 to 9 months in which we're going through the development of that. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember councilmember Ryan alter. I want to pick up a little bit on the discussion of the priority extensions and just how the decision is made. Let's say we end up having the money to either get to the airport or go to 45th or Ken lane. How is that decision made of which one we choose? That may be greatly informed by the type of funding source and what that funding source may be used for. If for example, if we find funding that could help us integrate with the airport expansion and development program, then that intuitively is where that would be spent. So I think largely that answer will come from where the money comes from. And what if the money comes from our contingency that we know we got [10:54:37 AM] it right? And so we have just our own money, not airport money, not other. How do we need to give direction on which one we prefer or how does that decision? I think that would depend. So let's say there are additional funds under spent that we could build more as part of the first phase without any additional funding source. It would really depend on the amount of funding. For example, if it were a relatively smaller amount, it probably wouldn't get us all the way to the airport. It might get us to one additional station which which could be 45th, for example. So I think it will depend on what that amount of funding is. Okay. Thank you, councilmember vela. First of all, I just wanted to want to thank you all. Ultimately, I think we have a [10:55:39 AM] good plan that has wide spread support. It's been a long, difficult route getting here through a pandemic and cost concerns and legislative concerns and whatnot. But it's exciting to see us at the stage where we're on the verge of deciding on a first stage light rail implementation Ann plan. And it's also really very heartening and exciting to see so many community groups lining up in support of whether beforehand, you know, whether you saw the a lot of different groups, the community advisory committee and particular making that recommendation. Ann so many people also talking about the priority extension to crestview and the opportunities that at crestview. It's great to see that listed in the priority extension as well. And so I just wanted to say thank you to you all and your teams for a lot of work and analysis to get to this [10:56:40 AM] point. I know there's a lot left to do in terms of work and analysis, but just to get to this kind of a pretty close to a consensus, this first stage light rail implement action is a big step for Austin. And I mean, I know the mayor tried to do this back in 2000. Was it was a very similar plan. And you know, so again, it's just so exciting to be on the verge of actually getting a light rail funded and passed and ready to go in Austin . That said, I did want to ask a little bit about crestview in particular. My understanding Singh, based on a communications from atp, is that the extension from 38th street to crestview is going to be. About $600 million, and that would be not including any kind of grade separation of [10:57:44 AM] the red line. Is that is that what y'all are looking at? Yes, that's correct. And any sense of how much the grade separation on of the red line, assuming that we were going to bury it there, any sense of how much that's going to be? 250 to $300 million depending upon final design? What and again, I know the airport is a priority extension as well as as crestview. Can you talk a little bit about what that means in terms of the plan of any kind of funding or financing for it? Again, specifically, I'm looking at at the crestview extension, I think that will just really, really help a lot of people in the north. Austin in north Lamar, it would allow them to take the 801. Or whatever its successor line is. You know, when the when the light rail is open and transfer it to light rail at crestview station. And I just think that would generally speaking really help mobility for a lot of the poor and [10:58:46 AM] working class folks in the north Lamar area. So what what is the kind of the possibility or what is kind of the thinking on the priority light rail extensions? Luz so we will be evaluating, investigating, doing everything we can to identify any potential additional funding sources. And by that I mean grants funding, partnerships, other places that we can leverage additional dollars to potentially accelerate those extensions into a first phase. If we don't identify those funding, then they become a priority extension in the next phase. So as as of this moment, then the budget as shown the actual first stage light rail is in other words, we've got the money to build that out and Eid we're we're comfortable with making that [10:59:46 AM] statement. The priority light rail extensions Ann are not actually funded at this moment. Yes. The extension burns are not funded as part of the first phase without finding additional funding sources to accelerate them. And will those priority extensions be going into the Nepa process? Do you want to. So that's something we need to work through with fta or the federal transit administration is, at the end of the day, the Nepa process in that document are theirs. So we actually we're meeting with them this week and we'll continue to do so to work through that. That item. So I guess my only concern is that if we do find funds for those projects, then we would have to essentially re initiate a Nepa process, a separate Nepa process for those extensions. If we don't have them, you know, kind of bundled in with the first stage, I think we have a few options that way. And part of it depends on when funding is identified and we're ready to go [11:00:49 AM] . So again, we'll be thinking about that and always trying to think ahead so that we're ready . You know, we want to be ready when we have funding to be able to implement the priority extensions. Yeah and that would I would just urge really, again , not knowing a whole lot about exactly what the Nepa process entails. You know, the more of the process we can get into this current Nepa process, I feel that would really facilitate them to really be priority extensions where everything is, you know, if everything is ready to go except for the money, then we can figure out that piece. But it if we don't have those kind of pre approvals and you know, again, we're looking at a longer administrative process to work through. So the only thing I would say is I would urge those both projects which have, as you all mentioned, substantial public support to be included, to be kind of pre approved if at all possible. And with that said, I don't have a [11:01:50 AM] lot of the one other thing that just in speaking to folks about the different crossings and I've spoken to capmetro about this extensively was the potential traffic impacts in terms of not just vehicle traffic, but also bus traffic Mok at the south first crossing Singh, you know, I will will catch the bus frequently at other public square or that kind of fourth in lavaca, Ann and you know, there's probably a bus coming every two minutes or so. You know, whether it's the ten or the 20 or the 801, or whichever one is coming through there. What were the concerns with potential traffic impact of a surface crossing at south first and Cesar Chavez? Well, you're going to add to that now. Every 2.5 minutes or so, a light rail vehicle going through there. It's a little longer than a bus. And so it's a reasonably complex [11:02:52 AM] intersection itself. Now you're asking every every one of those modes needs a little bit of intersection time. And with the volumes that go through that that point, just just just enough time in the clock face to give everything equally so you end up slowing the whole intersection down. So it'll it'll be a real it's already a pinch point vehicular Lee you add light rail, it'll become a pinch point of the light rail system as well. And, and again my anecdotal understand Singh from just, you know, hanging out in this area for so often is that a lot of the westbound traffic on Cesar Chavez you know coming from let's say mopac and points farther west is dissipates let's say by the time you get to, you know, turns on San Antonio or turns on, you know, lavaca or Guadalupe or south congress, I guess is the Trinity crossing there. Consider it to be kind of a less traffic , in other words, less complex crossing. Yeah less so, yes. We [11:03:53 AM] all we all agree. Yes the volumes are lower for the Trinity crossing and actually, we've looked at some interesting Ann data that shows where people go zo downtown in reference to where they enter downtown and in general, they sort of stay on this side that they enter in. They're not going all the way across downtown and so the Trinity crossing, as, as you note, sort of intuitively doesn't have as much traffic coming from, say, mopac. And the area's entering downtown from the west, but it has more coming from I-35, which is an opportune Katy actually, to leverage some of the planned improvements with the I-35 expansion that will redistribute some of that east west traffic on the east side of Cesar Chavez to fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. So not only [11:04:54 AM] does it have lower volumes at Trinity, but those volumes may even be we have more opportunity to mitigate the impact there by leveraging the plans of I-35 on the east side. All right. Well again, thank you all for your your work, your efforts. It's I think we've got a good product and looking forward to moving it through the through the process . Thank you, councilmember members, as I indicated earlier, we're going to bring up the chair of the community advisory committee. Y'all just stay there in case somebody has something. If you don't mind, I apologize, but if you don't mind. And Alves is are, as has been pointed out previously, is the chair of the cac. And as you all know. But I want the public to also understand the community advisory committee is found rational to the creation of the Austin transit partnership and has done a lot of work through [11:05:57 AM] this year in getting us to where we are. So we're pleased that you're here to address this and tell us your thoughts about the plan. Thank you, mayor. Council members, as the mayor mentioned , my name is Harris serve as chair of the project connect community advisory committee and the community advisory committee was able to really engage in this conversation. Ann around the first phase of Austin light rail and make a recommended action. And the recommendation that we made is very much aligned with what staff has presented as its option. And I'll speak a little bit to that, but I also want to say a lot of the things that we were thinking about and encouraging our decision makers to delve into, I'm seeing that on the dais today. So big. Thank you to all of you for your leadership on this. So we were able to pass a unanimous recommendation that looked at two separate options. One of them is very much under consideration today. And our first piece was really committing to the overall vision for light rail that we had set in 2020. And we do see that in the recommendation from staff very clearly. And from the conversation today as well. We [11:06:58 AM] were very clear that we really wanted to move ahead with an on street option. Ann the biggest reason being really that it supports the most amount of riders. And that's one of the things that we wanted to focus on. But it also allows more seamless connections with our other transit modes, including active transportation. Ann it enhances accessibility for and minimizes impact on folks with disabilities or who might be using a stroller. And it also leads to a much more vibrant street level urban scape that we can engage with. I also want to say that while the cac was forwarding two options, we were really focused on the 38th to altdorf and then do yellow jacket option because this option by the data that we had been able to look at, serves the most amount of black, indigenous and people of color in our community. So in some ways this is perhaps a strong lead into an equitable lens of including folks in east Austin who have historically not been able to be serviced by a number of different amenities as one, of course option that comes with it is looking at a maintenance facility in east Austin. And so [11:08:00 AM] the community advisory committee and the memo that we had shared with you all and other decision makers really focuses on looking at how do we mitigate any impacts associated with the maintenance facility, but also at the same time provide some active contributions to the community there. And I think we were able to have a very good conversation amongst our cac, including we have two folks who are from the Dallas neighborhood and Ms. Susana Almanza and Mr. Noah Elias and we were able to work very closely with them. So big thank you to them and the community there. We would also say that the selected light rail option has to be aligned with our existing bus and active transportation networks and also to really map it with our land use policies, affordable housing opportunities and anti-displacement efforts. So again, I think I'm seeing that conversation here today. So thank you all for focusing on that. One of the last things I'll just say is that the cac really wants to thank the Austin transit partnership capmetro and the city of Austin staff. I think they've all been amazing. We've really been able to engage with them for honestly at this [11:09:01 AM] point over a year and some of these questions, they were very responsive in terms of sharing data, answering all of our questions really puzzling through some of the more complex pieces. And we also really want to thank them for the great community engagement effort that they've done. I know council has already appreciated this, but they really have done a superior job in engaging with the community on a very difficult issue. So I really want to thank them and all of our staff for their work on that. Lastly I'll say looking at the item under consideration for Thursday, there's work to be done around looking at the joint powers agreement, working with the tri party to streamline some of those things and I'm very excited to see that the community advisory committee has had multiple points recommended that we really focus on looking at the Austin transit partnership as the independent organization that can work on these issues, but also see how can we make our overall work with the tri party much more seamless. So we can advance this project forward. So that's all my comments and thank you, mayor. Well, thank you. We appreciate your comments. Does anybody have any questions or [11:10:02 AM] comments for the chair of the committee? Yes, mayor pro tem, just clarifying. I want to make sure I heard it correctly. Has the cac provided their recommendation Ann or are you going to issue one soon? We have already provided recommendation. We had recommended essentially furthering two options. One was the one that's under consideration. One was the north Lamar yellow jacket, and we really saw superiority in both those options. So what staff has presented, I would say, is very much aligned with what we have suggested. Okay thank you. Great. Thank you. Mayor pro tem , councilmember Fuentes, did you have your hand up? Yes, I just wanted to thank you for being here today with us and for all the work that he does on behalf of the cac committee. Just generally, any considerations that you think council should keep top of mind as we move forward? I think in addition to the work that's happening here, I would definitely say the conversation that councilmember pool and you had already mentioned looking at how do we align our transit service in the future? And, you know, Mr. Sadowski had mentioned as well, how do we keep that work going and then lastly, really, as we're bringing forth affordable housing investments and [11:11:04 AM] displacement investments and land use policies, how do we make sure that those are aligned with this first phase of light rail so we can leverage all of these opportunities together? Wonderful thank you. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Thank you again for your service. We appreciate you very much. Members, I'll point out that we have in the audience with us the executive director of Austin transit partnership, Greg Connolly, and he's got some additional staff with him, unless someone has additional questions or comments from the panel, we'll end this agenda item with that, we say thank you very much for all the work you've done and Mr. Connolly and others, Mr. Azar, thank you for what you've done and we'll move to the next agenda item. Thank you all very much. Members the plan is to now call up an update on the resilience offices, accomplishments and strategy. [11:12:04 AM] Then we'll go to item 36, 45 and 71. Councilmember Allison alter. I may have a couple questions on 48. I know staff are not here because I wasn't able to pull it before Shaw oh, I'm sorry. Did I didn't know that you had pool I didn't. I said I wasn't able to pull it in time because of memorial day. Okay well then we'll put that after item 71 Walkes. Welcome good morning. Good morning. Mayor and council Rodney Gonzales assistant city manager Laura Patino, our chief resiliency officer, is here today to provide a briefing to council on the on Austin's resiliency strategy process. Laura will also review the accomplishments of the resiliency team to date, as well as talk about the immediate work in front of the team. There you go. That y'all can hear me? Great. Good morning, mayor. Council my name is Laura Benigno [11:13:05 AM] and I'm the chief resilience officer for the city of Austin. It's my pleasure to be here today to give you an introductory presentation of Austin's resilience efforts. This is a series of presentations, so today will be the first one where we will focus on the accomplishments in bringing folks together to create a collective definition of resilience and really identify the key next steps. So today I'll introduce to council Austin's resilience challenges and a definition which have resulted from a year of analysis and consultation with multiple stakeholders. Then we'll focus on Austin's resilience strategy development process. I will provide an overview of the accomplishment butts to date and the key areas of focus. And finally, I'll conclude with the key next steps. We'll leave some time for questions at the end as well. And again, I want to emphasize that this is a first [11:14:05 AM] step in a series of presentations, and today we'll focus on Ann getting us all on the same page so that in the next presentation we can get a little more tactical. There we go. So first, in order to understand and where we are headed, we must first get on the same page about Austin and Austin city council's efforts and commitment to resilience. My position as a chief resilience officer was created through resolution number. 2020 0507-022 in may of 2020, which directs the city manager to create a resilience office, develop and implement an equitable resilience and comprehensive resilience plan Ann and formalize partnerships with global networks, communities and private partners along the way. Winter storm uri, which really served as the city's catalytic event, was a clear reminder for the need and urgency for [11:15:06 AM] transformation in our city. Over the years. And after the initial resolution, Ann council has brought forth multiple resolutions that address resilience, including climate resilience, disaster, resilience and more. We have even gone further ahead and are now looking at more programmatic and tactical aspects of resilience like resilience hubs. All of this has led to my onboarding as the chief resilience officer last year in April of 2022, I do want to emphasize that planning for resilience requires a robust and thoughtful process in order to start tackling our most pressing challenges. While we know that there are many actions that we can move forward now, there have been multiple resolutions since the initial resolution that is listed on on this slide and that focus on resilience and that many departments are already working on their own resilience efforts and actions. First and foremost, we need to guide our resilience [11:16:08 AM] work, which comes through the development of the plan Eid this will guide the growth and priorities of the office and the city in terms of resilience. Pio so let's take a step back to look at what resources means in Austin. We know we're not starting from scratch. Paige there are many global best practice aces and we are applying the vetted frameworks that have been used globally, globally and are being represented in other cities across the world to our own planning processes. Because of this, we know the building resilience requires cities to address both shocks and stressors in an integrate Eid way as a city, we cannot ask individuals Ralls our facilities , our systems to prepare, respond, recover from, for example, a winter storm. If there are underlying stresses that limit people's ability to thrive. Zohaib we must look at the system and understand what's holding us back at different [11:17:09 AM] scales. Both individuals, neighborhoods and our city. And systems. So before we dive deeper into. The ongoing work, it's important to step back and understand what urban resilience means. Mopac pool definitions have been utilized over the years within the city and globally. When I first arrived, I reviewed multiple documents and plans and interviewed multiple individuals internally and externally. And to no surprise, we all have different definitions of resilience. In order for us to further develop a plan Ann, we must understand how we define it in our communities and that is through the shocks and the stresses that we face. So some example Ralls of shocks are disasters that literally break the system. They disrupt our way of life. Examples include flooding power outages, protests and some [11:18:10 AM] others that are listed on this slide that are applicable to Austin. Stresses on the other hand, are the slow moving pressures that are felt in the community day to day. This means the pressures that limit our individuals, our city and our regional ability to prepare and respond, adapt and thrive. These include economic inequality, poor access to health care, to trauma, climate change. These put pressures on our community and exacerbate inequities over time. So what does all of this actually mean for Austin? This graphic is really an excerpt of the report that was released in may of 2020, 2023. This year with a memo of the efforts to date overall Austin's history. Residents have dealt with numerous shocks and numerous stresses. And despite these challenges, Austin has continued to grow in area and population. [11:19:10 AM] Ann Ann has also continued to adapt in ways that have transformed our communities. As we can see that as these shocks and stresses increase in frequency and Austin continues to grow, we must tackle these pressures to ensure that all Austin's butts can envision a future for themselves and their families. While this snapshot Burt depicts some of the major shocks and stresses in Austin Ann, it doesn't reflect the deep cascading impacts that these have had over time and continue to have. So hence, with this information of our shocks and stresses that we have gathered, we were able to create at the office of resilience mission to build the capacity of all austinites our communities, institutions, businesses, ages and systems within our city to prepare for and withstand, adapt and thrive, no matter what kind of shocks and stresses we face. [11:20:11 AM] And threaten our way of life. So what's next? Well, over the past Wright 12 months, we looked at over 12 different plans and. I think it went forward a little bit. There we go. We've looked at 12 different plans, leverage, engagement of over 21,000 austinites and looked at 113 different city documents, resolution options, memorandums and more to understand the way resilience was mentioned, we looked at imagine Austin, for example, the climate equity plan, the housing blueprint and so many more. We also complemented it with additional data sources and sets and validated this data with our community advisory committee, city staff and external partners as these resulted in the collective outlook for Austin. Now I don't want to go into detail about these individual [11:21:14 AM] shocks and stresses because there are data points that we are looking into further Ann and to understand how we tackle resilience through the resilience lens. This data is included again in our report that was released in may of this year, which provides a high level summary of our resilience challenges and provides a framework for action and community engagement. Some of the highlights are there is more and more people moving to Austin. There are stark differences in life expectancy and economic inequality by race and location in our city and education attainment is also significantly different between the east and the west. Our city is getting hotter. We are also losing more and more green space displacement is increasing. We have encountered more service disruption burns and these have a likelihood of increasing as well. We have more flooding and we're expecting more food [11:22:15 AM] insecurity due to loss of agricultural land production. The question becomes what do we do with this information for our planning? We're using a two step process. The initial findings of this of the analysis have created a framework that was released earlier in may in which you received a memo. I invite you to read through this document and spread the word. We will be returning to you to council to present the details of what this framework entails. But it's important to remember that this is only the beginning . Singh we're kicking off a robust community engagement process that will help us get through to objectives. The first, identify the initiatives that we need to keep moving forward that already exist and the second co-design, new initiatives that will propel us forward to address the challenges that I mentioned before. Shaw this will take us into June of 2024, getting us to [11:23:16 AM] our comprehensive strategy, which will have specific actions that can be taken forward by each department as well as external partners to advance resilience. The goal through this process is that it's not an internal city plan or document rather, it contains actions that we all, as austinites, can all get behind, have co-created and can take on to build resilience and transformation. So I want to conclude on the things that we have moved forward over the past year along with the planning process that I briefly discussed in the past year, along with kicking off the development of the resilience strategy to comply with the directives of the initial resilience resolution, we have also inherited the resilience hubs program from the office of sustainability. We have developed equity guiding principles with the support of our community task force. We have engaged over 200 different community organizations burns in [11:24:16 AM] the process. This also includes leaders, businesses and nonprofits. We have assembled a team to support in emergency activations as we have secured funding through a partnership with JPMorgan chase to support the first phase of the strategy development. And we have launched our first resilience framework for action in may. But our work, of course, doesn't stop here. The immediate next steps for resilience for the resilience office will continue to, on our planning process to finalize a strategy and are also zo outlined that we're also outlined on the slide. We'll also kick off our community engagement process as previously described through a series of working groups. Information sessions surveys and even a potential celebration. We would also like to work with you and each of you to engage in your district's and to understand what is your resilience priority. So stay tuned so that [11:25:18 AM] we can get on one on ones with you all we have started and will continue the inter-department working groups and interagency coordinate action on climate resilience. This includes pursuing and leveraging funding, advancing projects and aligning implementation actions of the climate resilience and action plan for city assets and operations. We will continue our work to tackle urban heat with partners like the university of Texas and go Austin, vamos Austin as a key example of a case study on climate adaptation in planning and implementation, we will integrate economic resilience in all our conversations with equity, disaster and climate resilience as they do not exist in silos and are needed to support each other and the last few things that we'll focus on is we will continue the implementation of the $3 million in arpa funding that we receive for resilience hubs. This includes the implementation of backup power [11:26:18 AM] at some of these facilities and we provide quarterly updates regarding resilience hubs to the joint subcommittee for Austin independent school district, Travis county and the city of Austin, Ann. And finally, we the last on the point that I want to add is that we look forward to obtaining our membership as one of the participating cities in the global resilient cities network. Many cities are looking to Austin for guidance and we have the opportunity to share our the work that is taking place in our city and by our office, our sister departments and regionally spearheaded by council's vision to create a more resilient Austin. So with that, I invite you to share the word. I'll be looking forward to having one on one conversation sessions with each of you to identify your district priorities. Co develop strategies and that will inform the resilience plan. Ann and as I mentioned before, we do plan to come back to provide more details on the framework, the [11:27:18 AM] detailed community engagement and how you can stay involved as part of this second series of the presentation. Thank you. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Councilmember Kelly is joining us virtually, and she would like to speak or ask a question. So I'll recognize councilmember Kelly. Yes, thank you, mayor, and thank you, staff, for this great presentation. Ann. I'm actually virtual today because I'm at the Texas emergency management conference in fort Worth. And as many of you know, emergency management and preparedness is near and dear to my heart. And what I really enjoyed about this presentation is that it really falls in line with presidential policy directive eight, which goes alongside with our national preparedness goals, which describe five mission areas prevention, protection, mitigation, response and recovery. And within all of those is 32 different activities and their core capabilities, which address the greatest risks to our country. Two of those 32 areas are risk and disaster resilience assessments and [11:28:19 AM] community resilience and within all that, I just want to say that FEMA did a study me and they showed that $6 is saved for every $1 paid for towards mitigation. And so long term, I can really see these resilience hubs and the resiliency of our city helping save the taxpayer money. And I really appreciate all the work that you and your team are putting into this. I know that it is probably a mountain load of work for you all to do, but ultimately it's really going to help our community, not just in money saved, but being able to really just be resilient after a disaster or an incident that occurs in the community. So with that, I just wanted to ask how you're working with our homeland security and emergency management department to move this forward. If you could go a little bit deeper into that than what you did in your presentation, that would be really helpful information. Absolutely thank you, [11:29:19 AM] councilmember, for that question . There are multiple ways in which we're engaging with our homeland security and emergency management office on one end, specifically with the resilience hubs we are coordinating with them and their staff to look at resilience hubs in terms of what they can do before and after a disaster and how and how they operate specifically during a disaster. We know that we have facilities that are are capable of serving as different functions during a disaster. And so there's there are representatives within our working groups from the homeland security and emergency management office that advise us on how we can integrate how shelters, how feeding distribution sites, post a disaster, are embedded into the work of ultimately setting up these pilot resilience hubs on the other end, we're also involved in supporting the homeland security emergency management on multiple aspects, [11:30:21 AM] including the food and water emergency appendix. We have involved them as well in our comprehensive resilience planning process because we know that as we talk about resilience , this disaster resilience is a key portion of everything that we'll need to look at. And then final D, the last portion that I want to mention in terms of how we work with our homeland security and emergency management office is really understanding what are are the immediate actions that we can take now that have resulted from a after action reviews where there is that merger between Ann mitigation preparedness and mitigation and overall comprehensive resilience in terms of how our team and the resilience office can help accelerate those efforts as well . That's fantastic and I'm really glad to hear it. I'm looking forward to meeting with your office and learning more about what you're doing to keep Austin more resilient. Thank you so much. Thank you. [11:31:22 AM] Councilmember councilmember pool , thanks, mayor. I had asked that this briefing be scheduled for us today and Ms. Patino offering the report. It is a really is really timely for all of us. It's been a year since we hired a resilience officer. I thought the update and introduction for the new council members and other city staff was important. Swint resilience can conjure up different meanings for each one of us and how we as a city can be resil cient can be just as nebulous as it's a newer concept. Resiliency it's like sustainability was many years ago, and the briefing that Ms. Patino gave us this morning, Singh, I hope, has clarified the importance of resilience strategies and how all of our city departments can benefit. So I just have two quick questions . Once the city of Austin [11:32:24 AM] resilience plan is created, how long do you anticipate it will take for the departments to work these concepts into their program? Singh great question. It really depends on specifically the actions that are identified. One of the things that was very clear and that we have incorporated in the development one of the principles and the development of the strategy is that we cannot wait for a full plan to be developed in order to start implementing resilience initiatives and so we've been incorporating a planning while doing approach that allows us to continue to our comprehensive plan to identify those longer term actions and in the meantime, work with department and key departments to accelerate their resilience efforts. One of those key examples is, for example, resilience hubs that has allowed us to work with departments like Austin public health, the homeland security and emergency management office, and a few others to bring in, bring in [11:33:26 AM] together and try to leverage Paige the work that is already ongoing so that we can get the services that community Luz need in order to prepare for and recover from disasters. One of the one of the examples of how this has helped over the past year was in the recovery of winter storm Mario when we set up the multi multi multi-agency resource centers and we were able to leverage the work that was had been done for resilience hubs to implement that in the recovery of the past winter weather event, we also are meeting regularly with our city departments and staff to understand ways in which a lot of them are already be implementing resilience actions and we haven't called them as such. And so how we can package those together so that as we develop a plan, we know of the existing actions that we need to continue moving forward and so again, to long way to answer your question, there will be some immediate actions that are [11:34:27 AM] already taking place and things that we can start moving forward once the plan is released and then some longer term actions that will help guide us moving forward. That's really great. And we can see from your presentation and your answers how staff is operational, rising and taking action on the policies that the council has crafted and passed out in previous in previous meetings. My last question is expanding a little bit on your cross-departmental work. Can you tell us how the resilience office is collaborating with both Austin energy and Austin water? Yes so we have developed a series of interdepartmental working groups on the different components and elements that we're focusing on with resilience, the first being the resilience planning efforts. We have members of Austin energy included in in in our broader [11:35:28 AM] community advisory committee and we also have the working group set up for climate resilience, specifically that is that those that series of working groups, internal departmental working groups, was created to really address the goals and outcomes put out in the climate resilience and action plan for city assets and operations. And so over the past year, we've gathered different departments, including Austin energy and Austin water, to come and tackle the specific goals outlined in that plan. And we are meeting now quarterly to be able to align in terms of how we leverage our projects, how we look at activation, how we look at emergency operations and how we also look at future funding opportunities that are coming down from the federal government as well. Yeah. Mayor I mean, to build on what Laura just talked [11:36:30 AM] about, councilmember pool, the issue of trying to put these into these reports into two pieces was to get from the tactical, which is really what our department's going to incorporate these pieces into what they what they will do. I think that will be a subsequent report as we get a little further detail in terms of development of this plan. But what's also important is that we identify, you know, too often the city has wanted to step in and do everything Singh. And the fact is, is the way Laura's approached this in terms of a community effort is to identify a community assets and resources that we could tap at a central point to figure out how we get the community back on its feet, whatever, with whatever disruption may have come our way. Plus some of the systemic issues that she mentions which are going to need ongoing work on our behalf. So that's really important. And I think the more we can Ann build a robust response, resilience, if you will, in our community at the neighborhood level, the better [11:37:31 AM] we will off, we will be as we face future crises. And I appreciate it so much. City manager the work that our resilience officer and her and her office, which we hope will will expand a bit during budget. We're looking at some initiatives there to make sure that she has the staffing that she needs to go forward. And thank you so much for the presentation. She's told me she has too many people in her office. Oh, no. Is that right? Councilmember Fuentes, then councilmember Allison alter and then councilmember qadri. Thank you. Thank you, miss Patino, for your presentation today. I'm excited about it. Not only the briefing that you provided us and the information you shared, but I guess first I wanted to acknowledge something for our city manager. No knowing that what we're working toward is a blueprint for resiliency for our community. I think about the blueprint that we have for housing, and one that set out a [11:38:34 AM] ten year goal of producing 60,000 affordable units. We've only produced a little, I think 7500 so far. So we are way behind trend and that's within four years. Councilmember alter and I, Ryan alter and I have some policy proposals for consideration next week that seek to address our housing supply issue. But I, I raise that city manager to say as we develop this blueprint, if there's a way that we can caution against developing something, as we did with our housing blueprint, that we are so out of step with at this point, you know, and so I just want to mark that and councilmember. That's exactly right. I think and I can't speak specifically about the housing, but some of the system issues, if they're not addressed, aren't addressed in the plan. You you will have created a system that can't produce that result. I mean you will you will you've set a goal rather, that the system can't. You've got to go [11:39:34 AM] change the system. And I think that's what Laura is doing with respect to this to try to figure out what those that hard work is and I know that that's what we're trying to do through the development review process is what are the things that we can do to unleash the creativity of the system to produce those housing units in addition to the funding that we've the voters have authorized? So those are things that have to be done that we've not done in a in a systematic way in the past. That's right. Thank you. And I really appreciate the acknowledgment of all of the stresses and shocks that Austin ites have gone through in recent years. I mean, just having the opportunity to have those community conversations, conversations, I think is very fruitful and beneficial to our community to acknowledge what we've endured. And you know, including for historic floods within our city in the last ten years. And also what you pointed out that we Luz on average 16 acres of farmland every single day in Travis county. That's important information that we need to talk about. And have a conversation of what we can be [11:40:34 AM] doing to ensure that we have a more resilient city. And lastly , I just wanted to, as you have your workshops and the training opportunities for our community, I'd love to volunteer district to and to work with you on what that might look like. So just wanted to appreciate your work and, and to say that I look forward to working with you. Thank you. Councilmember thanks. Councilmember. Councilmember Allison alter and then councilmember qadri. Good morning, miss Patino. Thank you for your presentation. I'm really looking forward to also seeing the broader plan. I want to go back to sort of the comments earlier from councilmember pool and also from Garza about your staffing. Can you remind us your current staffing situation for your office. Sure. So there is the resilience officer. We have one position on loan from the office of sustainability and we have [11:41:34 AM] been able to leverage funding from our external partners, the university of Texas, as well as fuze core, to bring two additional staff until June of 2020 or sorry, December of 2020. For thank you. So that's not a lot of staff to do. The task that we've asked you and obviously it's a lot of departments that will be helping to do that. Just do want to underscore that as something that we need to be thinking about. And your work really is very important also for the Austin climate equity plan implementation, which I continue to believe that we have under resourced and underinvested, given the magnitude of the challenge that we're trying to meet. And I think we need to really identify where we need to be making those investments and how we how we manage our whole system to accomplish those goals . And I think your office together with the office of sustainability, has a really key role in that. So so I did want [11:42:35 AM] to underscore that. I also wanted to make sure that I was on your radar screen that one of the casualties of this very strange legislative session is, is our parkland dedication Ralls and that has been our existing rules have been a really key way for us to address climate change by putting parks where we're growing. Also, a key aspect of equity making, since a lot of the development is happening on the east side, the legislation, colleagues, if you're not familiar with essentially guts, our ability to secure a parkland actual land and undermines the ability to collect the fees at a level that would actually allow us to purchase land without a whole lot of bonding to go with it. So I just want to flag that as you're thinking about it, the challenges that need to be addressed. Burt in the tactical plan and also with the interdepartmental planning, you know, I think we were hoping it wouldn't pass, but it did and it [11:43:37 AM] still has to be signed by the governor. But assuming he signs it, we are really going to need to be planning for what's going to take that place. Access to parkland was one of the few measures that we had within our strategic direction 23, where we actually were moving the needle, and that had a lot to do with the parkland dedication rules that we had. So I wanted to make sure that that was on your your radar. And then I wanted to ask about how we are collaborating with the county, because I know that there are several commissioners there who are really focused on on emergency preparedness and resilience. And obviously you're not there resilience officer, but as we're as we're trying to accomplish this, I think that relationship in particular with Travis county and others is important. We have representation from Travis county on multiple all of our efforts that were leading forward Eid, and that includes representation from transportation, natural resources, from health and human [11:44:39 AM] services, as well as from their oem, the collaboration with Travis county. So we meet monthly with that team and we also have just delivered a very similar presentation Ann to county staff so that they're aware of our efforts and are able to bring them on board as we continue the co-creation and co-design of strategies as we kick off our community engagement process. So they're very and from a more tactical lens and perspective, we are plugged in with the staff at Travis county that are implementing Singh and are looking at resilience initiatives as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember qadri. Thank you, mayor. As one of the new council members, just wanted to congratulate you on about a year on the job. Did have two real quick questions. The first question was, you know, I'm curious if the Austin food plan [11:45:41 AM] will be incorporated into the report as well. You know you know, relating to food and security during during disasters . Absolutely. So we are working hand in hand with the office of sustainability, the Austin food resilience plan being one of those efforts that is moving in parallel Al to ours. And so we are working to embed the two plans with each other as as as they relate to each other and a few additional other planning efforts as well that we started conversations with. For example , are the rain, the rain, two river, the watershed planning process. We are including it in terms of how we develop our resilience plan and what relates and what elements can be brought into that plan as well, as well as imagine Austin so again, we meet weekly and bi weekly with the different departments and embed them into the different elements of whether it's the comprehensive resilience planning, specifically with neighborhood resilience hubs, [11:46:42 AM] effort or the overarching Singh city climate city assets and operations plan for climate resilience. Great thank you. And then I know a lot of cities here in Texas around the country are are working on using their ev busses to be stationed in areas during disaster so they could be used as charging stations. Is that something Austin's looking to do? Absolutely. We've had conversations with capmetro about the opportunity of deploying busses to neighborhood resilience hubs and other areas to serve as cooling centers, to serve as charging centers as well in areas before, during and after disaster. Great. Thank you . Any other questions or comments? Thank thank you very much. Members that will take us to an item item number 36 for a discussion on item number 36. And I'll ask the city clerk to come up and talk to us. [11:47:52 AM] Hello mayor and council. Myrna and the clerk's office. With me is Caroline Webster with the law department. And we're here to respond to any questions you have on the council procedures. Councilmembers I knew there were some questions on this, so that's why I went ahead and pulled it. Councilmember Kelly, I'll recognize you. Thank you very much, mayor. And thank you, Myrna and Caroline for being here. So when I was reviewing Singh Toma, it became pretty apparent to me that there's really no difference between what kind of meeting or agenda item the public is entitled to speak on. If you look at section 551.007, it says a governmental body shall allow each member of the public who desires to address the body regarding an item on an agenda for an open meeting of the body to address the body regarding the item at the meeting. And it goes on and on and on. I'm just concerned that our proposal posed rules could violate the section of that act. Specifically when it comes to briefings. And so I was [11:48:55 AM] hoping maybe legal could talk to us more about that and hopefully it doesn't. I'm just concerned because the Texas open meetings act, at least from what I've read, doesn't distinguish which which agenda items people can speak on or not on. It does not. But I'll recognize the city attorney. Thank you. The way the open meetings act operates is we're required to let the public speak on items when the council is taking an action. If there's just a conversation at the work session, then the council does not is not required to allow the public to speak on that. There's been a lot of conversation within the Texas municipal league, other cities around the state and that's that's the interpretation we have. And we're comfortable with that. Okay. So just it's only when the council is taking action that we are required to allow the public to speak perfect. That answers my question. Thank you so much. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Yes. Councilmember Allison alter, then councilmember Fuentes. I have [11:49:55 AM] several, so maybe I'll ask a couple and then. I'm sorry, say that again. I have several, so maybe I'll ask a couple. And then. And then other people can ask. So I had some clarifications that I wanted because, for instance, we don't meet every Thursday rey I know we at some point take a vote that we're counseling those other meetings, but it just still seems odd to say that we're going to meet every Thursday by our rules. And then cancel them. I just wanted one suggestion that had been made with regard to that because that had been flagged would be that we amend that so that that it says that the council will establish a calendar Shaw and that way we could establish a calendar and it wouldn't say, you had to do it every week and then have to back off of it exactly the way you suggested. So that would probably solve that because then you could amend the calendar as you go along if need be. Like we've recently done. Thank you. And I think it's still good to say [11:50:57 AM] that our general meeting date is Thursday, but but I think that would that would help. And then I understand the desire to try to limit our briefings. To two to. But I'm wondering, so that's in section G of that Thursday council meeting. Section two, it says not more than two briefings may be placed on a council meeting agenda is that different than the work session? I think I'm getting a little confused across the agenda for the council meeting and the work session as this is laid out. No the it's always been historically, it's always been two. There are always exceptions. I know that when I worked as the agenda manager, it was always two. But there were times where we required Eid three or up to four, either on a council work session day and additional on a council meeting day. So that is just in writing . It's not set in stone. It is a [11:52:00 AM] there are exceptions. It would be up to the city manager and the council members on depending on how busy or how excuse me, big the agenda is for that day. So does G apply to work session and the council meeting day? Both both. Okay so that that concerns me because we do executive session. Those seem to be briefings too. They're just in executive session. So we're kind of violating that all the time. I understand that we'd like that to be our goal, but I'm uncomfortable with having stuff in there that we know that we're regularly violating. But I agree that there's a need for a goal there. And then it says a council member may place an item on a work session agenda for the purpose of discussion and identifying three other council members who wish to place the item directly on a council agenda or discussion identifying [11:53:03 AM] three other council members who wish to open the item for public comment at a council meeting. Singh. I had understood that the practice was that you needed a second to place something on the work session agenda, and this seems to be that one person can. I'm happy to address that actually think this is a part of the rules that we could change because we're not the council hasn't been following this. Exactly. And so there's a policy discussion about what you want to do. But this language is not a lot of this a good bit of this language has been not followed since the pandemic. So I think it's this is a great time. And I appreciate the clerk raising this as an issue, too. To clarify. And we can you all can make some changes if you'd like to that. Okay so I'll raise that issue. I don't know what the process is for fixing this for Thursday. I have felt over the [11:54:05 AM] last period that as we've come out of covid, that we're not necessarily giving the community enough time to speak to us in an organized way. We used to allow for donated time that was valuable for us to allow people to provide us with a presentation that was long enough to actually communicate really Shea the concerns in a particular way. I don't know if folks share that concern. I also am uncomfortable with the notion that an item may not exceed 90 minutes. I'm not sure that we want to limit debate if there are that many people who are there. I don't think we've done that in the past. And again, I'm just reacting to what was on the paper. I know that none of my colleagues necessarily put this forward, but those are concerns that that I have. I realize that since covid, we haven't necessarily allowed for the donating time and we had done that because it was hard to do with the online speaking. And I think it might be that you only get donating time if you're the [11:55:06 AM] person donating and you are in the chambers itself. I don't know if that would be possible, but but I think that I find that the public communication is valuable and I'm not sure that with the time limits that we've gone to, etcetera, that we're really providing those opportunities for comment in the way that we should. And I will leave it for that for now. Thank you. Councilmember Fuentes thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Allison alter. I also had similar sentiments. I think that there are a lot of changes that were made because of the pandemic and some of the changes were incredible. We are now able to offer testimony Rainey via phone and that has increased participation, especially for folks who live on the outer edges of our city. So I appreciate the additions that were made, but I think some of the proposals that are laid out before us today to update our rules, I need a little bit more consideration. So would like to [11:56:07 AM] propose to my colleagues if folks would Eid be amenable to a postponement of this item to the following week, June 8th. So that we can have more conversations amongst each other on on these rules for our city clerk Rios, do you were did council members weigh in on these changes that you proposed here or or can you share how you came to these proposals? Sure so during my evaluation, I mentioned I presented them to all of you and also sent you a copy for review. The purpose for us bringing these forward are just that the pandemic. We are now more meeting in a hybrid setting and we still have the old rules from the pre pandemic and so our office receives a lot of inquiries regarding, you know, speaker registration and I don't have a document that I can reference and say these are the [11:57:09 AM] rules. And so basically it is practice that I have to defer to and I don't see that we'll ever go back to all in person. So I made it, you know, now that we have new management, I requested if we can revisit these and get them up to date specifically with regard to public comment because that affects our office and so that's where we're at. But with regard to public comment and being in a hybrid version, I mean, a setting, it's very difficult with remote speakers to allow donation of time. The it's possible to do it . The vendor is able to do it, but that would require for us to create a batch for every single number. And as you can see, we already have four staff members here managing that process during a council meeting. And so it and the technology that you see that, you know, we have people hang up or Luz [11:58:10 AM] connection. So zo it would just be very difficult to manage. And that's why we are requesting that, you know, that not change . That's what I have for now. Thank you for that. And I know you mentioned this before Shaw, but the red line version of the changes, the proposed rules that are in the red line version Ann that is coming from your those are your recommendations. So you didn't have council, didn't like you didn't have council members working with you to know I provided those. And there were several questions from some council offices that were, you know, we responded to. And it was it was fine. It had to do with the shell and the calendar. The meeting dates or meeting every week. And the explanation for that is that there is a charter provision that states, you know, that we follow. And so we have the council approves a [11:59:11 AM] yearly calendar year, and there is a column which I also attached to the email for your review that states they are canceled meetings so that addresses the charter piece so that we are compliant Eid and the rationale right now for a resident to sign up for the noon general comment period, that timeline, it used to be one week in advance and now I think it's proposed at two weeks in advance. Can you share more about that proposal? Well, it's as far as I mean, I can remember it's been 14 days for someone to register on a new for the noon public communication portion on the agenda. It's on a first come, first serve. One thing that did change in 2017, the last time these procedures were were revised are that a if someone speaks on during a noon [12:00:15 PM] public communication, they have to stay, you know, sit out for the remainder three additional meetings before they can speak again, because we used to have the same people register, you know, to speak and always able to, you know, to speak. So we wanted to allow others to an opportunity to speak on any topic of their choice during this period. So that is what changed. But it's 14 days in advance. On a first come, first serve basis. Okay. Yeah. And I know I mean, the reason why, you know, we're going over the details because this is a very important part of our democratic process, you know, setting the rules for how our community engages and how they are able to participate and provide input. So, you know, colleagues, if anyone else is interested or I should ask our city clerk, is there any impact that any consequence to us delaying this to the following week to give us more time to review and have conversations with you about it? No no. We've been waiting a few years, so I don't think another week will for that matter, if we [12:01:16 PM] need more time, it would you could even wait beyond that, because we're not going to have any meetings after this meeting for some time. So there's not a rush in that regard. Eid because we don't vote at this work session. What I would suggest is that if there's going to be an effort to postpone that, we allow for that at the at the regular scheduled meeting and we'll look forward to that. The way we pull things off the agenda and have motions and it might even be on the consent agenda as a postponement to a date certain in that regard. I would also suggest that one of the things that might be helpful knell with regard to how we move forward on that is if people have questions or thoughts about specific items in the green line version that we actually have in the red line version that we have is to make those comments on the message board, because that will allow us to comment [12:02:17 PM] back and forth, if any of us have a comment back and forth. But it will also allow the clerk to maybe be able to clarify why there's thought behind something that she made a suggested change on. But if there's a desire to postpone, we'll just take that up at the at the council meeting . And also, I did some research this weekend, and so it dates back to 2011. I pulled all of those links. I'm happy to send that information to you so that you have the history behind it and how it went from code and pool to a standalone procedures document. So and all the conversation burns and meetings that were presentations so great . Does anybody else want to comment on this at this point in time? Have any more questions? Thank you very much. Appreciate what you're doing and we'll look forward to the next steps in this item. Number 45, I'll recognize council member Ryan alter and then whoever is staff [12:03:20 PM] that's going to be available for us to have this discussion. Ann thank you, mayor. I am bringing this resolution and pulled it to give a little both context, but also make you aware of an amendment that will be coming on Thursday. Shea just some background on this. There are a few projects that are permanent supportive housing projects related to finding home at that are partnering with the housing authority of Travis county in order to provide those units here in town. We have to provide this is technically it's a waiver or we have to let them operate within the city limits. And so that's what this resolution does, is we have also been in or contacted by a development and councilmember Fuentes's district, as well as a couple in councilmember [12:04:21 PM] Velasquez's district that also provide some great, affordable housing opportunities. And so we plan to add those to this on Thursday. Rey and I think some conversations are also being had about potentially some others. But should that happen? Ann I'll be sure to make everybody aware on the message board and disseminate the changes as as quickly as I can. So that is really that unless anybody has any questions. Councilmember pool thanks, mayor. I've had a number of conversations with members of the housing community and our staff, and so I there were a number of questions that arose in reading the ifc. That's item 45. So I have several questions. They'll be answered in the Q and a probably tomorrow. And I'd like to hear from staff about the projects listed in the resolution. Ann first, I want to share my [12:05:21 PM] concerns over several critical issues. So let me go through these and then we'll have staff speak to the to the proposals. So the first concern for me is process housing project S seeking city subsidy and council support go through a vetting process. Bartz a due diligence with our housing staff. This ensures that council priorities are being met along with firm commitments to affordability levels. That process is not happening here, which concerns me. And I need to understand why. Second is the use of the public facilities corporation tool. That's the FCC's that you'll see listed. They may be used to structure these projects. We do not yet have an established policy around what justifies city subsidies and tax breaks for these folks within in the city limits. That also concerns me. The request for [12:06:23 PM] city funds is a relatively new development, and it seems to be considerable and potentially endless. And so I'd like to stress a few points moving forward. It is critical that staff develop a proper set of criteria and process for approving PFC projects and establishing criteria for outside public housing authorities that are operating within our jurisdiction. Ann we do not currently have that, and I will say as a side note, I think that conversation burns about this have been going on in the community for a couple of years, but I don't think our staff was actually brought into the conversation until relatively recently and I don't think the dais has been brought into it at all, except for maybe a couple of exceptions. The criteria should assess the affordability levels provided the longevity of affordability provided the nondescript station and tenant protections provided processes for monitoring, [12:07:25 PM] compliance that are included and aligned with the goals of the Austin strategic housing blueprint that was mentioned earlier today. How important that blueprint is. Generally, if projects are located within the city of Austin and are receiving benefits from us, we should hold them to our standards of or affordability levels. And the number of units across the projects. I understand the three projects named in item 45 are proposing to provide permanent supportive housing, but there may also be subsidies extended for market rate portions of the projects. So this is where proper staff vetting is so important and it's missing. I'm also concerned about what may be high closing and annual fees if we are subsidizing a project and offering tax benefits, I'd like to make sure and I think the Dyess would agree that we all [12:08:27 PM] need to be sure those dollars are being spent for actual affordable units. Luz and finally, I'm working on an amendment that would direct the city manager to develop that necessary criteria that holds these projects to our standards. I'll post that to the message board as soon as it's ready. So I'd like to ask our housing staff now to help us understand the regular process of review. The one that they are involved in, and what we gain from that process. And as a part of those responses, please, staff, help us understand if there is anything preventing the three projects listed in the resolution from going through the city. Staff review now. Thank you. Good morning. Rosie truelove, director of the housing department, deputy director Mandy Dimeo is here with me. And we're happy to answer some of the questions here. And we will be working on a full written response to the [12:09:28 PM] questions that have come from your office, hopefully by tomorrow morning at the latest. We are in the early stages of developing a process with our partners at the housing authority of Travis county and the housing authority for the city of Austin to ensure that we do have a good mechanism to properly vet the projects that are coming forward in this particular case, these projects are in the process of working with the housing authority of Travis county and they do require formal action by the city council to allow those projects to happen within the housing authority of the city of Austin's jurisdiction. We were not brought into this conversation until the last week or two. There are a number of other projects that council member Ryan alter just brought up that he's potentially looking to amend and add. We don't know exactly what those projects even are, so there's a lot of conversations that are happening that were not being brought into. We very much value the [12:10:28 PM] opportunity to look at these particular developments to ensure that we are getting the community benefit that we think is appropriate for removing these projects off the tax rolls. I'm going to allow Mandy Demayo to give some additional information and to perhaps talk about the challenges of the PFC process and where we're at with with state legislation on that. Mandy Demayo deputy director so just to start with the three items that are currently being contemplated, item 45, the three properties, those are all part of the Travis county collaborative. And as Rosie mentioned, the Travis county collaborative is a collaborative Ann that involves seven nonprofit organizations, burns they have worked closely with Travis county and the Travis county commissioners court in order to create a structure whereby mix income, housing could potentially offset the cost of supporting permanent [12:11:29 PM] supportive housing across these. It's actually six different sites right now. Travis county has committed to $50 million in arpa funds to make these projects a reality. You all, as Austin housing finance corporation Ann have also committed a variety of funds to these seven different projects, including $4 million to the urban league. 3.4 million to family elder care. $6 million to a safe 60 unit safe alliance project. And then you have on Thursday's agenda the two additional projects that are part of the collaborative one with lifeworks for $8 million and another one for a little over $6 million with caritas. The normal process would have been should have been had these projects not come to us piecemeal, that that you all as the city council would have been brought into the conversations around the structure of the [12:12:30 PM] Travis county collaborative and the various funding sources. Again that did not happen. We only recently learned about the efc structure that was being utilized, a subsidiary of housing authority of Travis county or hatzi, to provide the tax exemption in this very limited circumstance. We met with Ryan council member Ryan alter's staff members, and because this has been in the works for a couple of years and because these are very needed permanent supportive housing units, we as staff are supportive of those three projects moving forward. However, as council member Ryan alter mentioned, we are learning every day for new projects that are coming down the pike. A lot of these projects are on a fast track because of pending legislation at the state legislature. You all may know that there have been enormous abuse of the PFC loophole across the state of Texas. The [12:13:30 PM] legislature feature has reigned that in in current legislation hb 2071, we are actually supportive of that legislation. Ann Ann and we are waiting for that to go into effect. It will, in fact require should apfc structure go forward deep affordability. Right now, the. Affordability levels are 50. At 50% of the units at 80% or below median family income. And some of the projects that council member Ryan alter mentioned, two of them. We have have a week ago Monday, we learned of them and we have had an opportunity to very quickly vet and review to and we have enormous concerns about those projects. The 80% units based on our analysis are actually be higher in some cases than market rate at nearby my new class a properties is in addition, one of the properties does have because of [12:14:31 PM] affordability unlocked and no because of vmu two the vertical mixed use two it does have 15% of the units at 60% or below median family income, which presumably would enable it to fit into the new PFC legislation. But I will note that that 15% at 60% or below zo is in exchange for already increased entitlements under the vmu two. So this isn't necessarily above and beyond what would be required anyway. We have a wide range of concerns that we honestly have not had the opportunity to vet as Rosie mentioned, we've had a preliminary meeting with the housing authority of the city of Austin, hatzi housing authority of Travis county and us R.F.C. Austin housing finance corporation Ann to lay out a roadmap. We're going to be meeting monthly really talking about what our shared community values are and what our expectations are for affordable housing. Certainly within the [12:15:32 PM] city of Austin's jurisdiction. Happy to answer more questions. As Rosie mentioned, we are Shaw digging into council member pool had nine nine very specific questions. We've reached out to our third party partners to try to gather some of that information and some of that information we have in house. We plan to have full responses by tomorrow morning. Thank you so much. I think it's really important to note that staff had not been included in the conversations about fcs or the agreement for our hats to work in collaboration with Harker. You can't collaborate if you haven't already had the conversation about how you're going to collaborate. So I appreciate staff saying that they are willing to allow the three projects effects that were in item 45 to go forward. But I would say that I think we really need to exercise specific diligence around those, even if [12:16:34 PM] they do pass. And also I would very much like a briefing later for once, there is some agreement with Kathie on what it looks like for the collaboration with the city via mayor. Councilmember hucker yeah. Mayor council members when, when I was briefed on this item, I gathered that it was routine and it clearly it's not even the three that are on this resolution. If they opened the floodgate to whatever that floodgate looks like, I think we owe it to the staff to go back and evaluate all this and put the framework together so that all these all these worthy projects are considered under a certain process which everybody can compete or so we understand. The public commitment plus the need to achieve the objective of affordable housing. And so I just would want the council to consider that because even if we said the three and then we found out that there's a bunch of [12:17:35 PM] others out there, I just think we need to probably take a step back and really understand how all these pieces fit together. And I would just say to that city manager, I agree with you. And I also don't like being put in a position where we might provide a different measuring stick for three projects and then a more a stricter one or a different one for any other coming forward. It really does feel a bit of favoritism and that that concerns me. So I appreciate what you're saying about reviewing all of them. And I think very much our goal on the staff side is to be able to have the opportunity to review all these. We know we need all of the affordable housing we can get in Austin, Texas. We're not trying to put up roadblocks or or or be a burden or an administrative stop up on anything. We just want the opportunity to ensure that what we're doing makes sense, that we're getting adequate levels of affordability and other considerations for the entitlements that are on the table. So I one of the [12:18:38 PM] properties that I think you're Mr. Councilmember alter was talking about is one that we had in fact talked to the developer about, and they said that July was great and we could have plenty of time to evaluate it and then came back to learn that they needed it, you know, added to this particular item that's on the agenda today, which doesn't tie staff's hands and doesn't give us the opportunity to really give it the consideration that it deserves. Councilman Ryan alter so I'd like to address a few of the things that have been discussed here. First and foremost, most I've been talking to my staff here. They said that they have been talking to you. So the represent mentation that you're just finding out about these is a little disappointing to me because they did talk to you so we can figure out why there's that disconnect. But I'm that's just thing number one. Number two, as we talk about the landscape of fcs, there was a new piece of legislation, Ann, [12:19:38 PM] that was brought and passed and it was passed by more than two thirds of both bodies. And so as soon as it's signed by the governor, it will be in place. This is not a runaround. And to get in before September first, that piece of legislation and that law will be in place in a matter of weeks. And these will have to follow that. So this is not some you know, rush to beat the clock. I also want to just give some context about what these projects actually are. So first and foremost, we have the three on the item. The county has invested a significant amount of money as they have indicated in these projects, acts as part of the collaborative and finding home atx and so the county chose to work with the housing authority of Travis county perfectly. You know, their money, they they can choose their partner and Eid they have of as part of this partnership. If they are going [12:20:38 PM] to continue to invest money in homeless and permanent supportive housing within the city limits, we need to be a good partner in return. We can't expect them to help us out in this endeavor that we have set ourselves on. If we are going to hold up projects that they are trying to do something of a shared goal. So that's that's as it relates to the three items that we have for these other projects that are being discussed. Eid they are not some some market. I don't even know how. Let me let me give you some numbers for one of them. The one that's in councilmember Velasquez district. It's 101 units of that 101 units more than half of those are affordable. 20% of them are at 50. Mfi we almost never see that [12:21:38 PM] level of affordability. Another almost 20% of them are at 60% or five. So these is and then the rest that are affordable are at 80. That is more stringent than what the new law is going to require. The new law requires 10% at 60 and 40% at 80. So what we have are projects that are going above and beyond as it relates to some of these other projects that were discussing. We have once again a situation where more than 50% of the units are affordable and of those, they're not just at 80, but they average out to 62 or 65% in various regards. So these once again, Ann, we can come up with a framework and I think we should for how the housing authority of the city of Austin approves these projects. Butts but to sit here and say that projects that are more than 50% [12:22:40 PM] of the units are at around 60. Mfi that we as a council don't want to allow those projects to go forward. I think that's I wholly disagree. If this is a priority of this council of providing truly affordable housing, this is how we do it. And so I just want to emphasize that once again, we're not rushing through things. I've met with some of these individuals. And if we can bring it to the 20th to get a decision that's fine. But we have an entity that is this process has taken so long Singh that they risk going bankrupt if they can't move forward. And so we have hundreds of units that could be affordable that we could say yes to. And so that's what I'm trying to do is give us that [12:23:41 PM] opportunity to say yes. And if we need to come up with future framework, I'm all for it. But I want to give a little context to what this item is all about. Councilmember Fuentes thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ryan alter. I appreciate your comments and I'm right there with you and acknowledge Singh the unique needs that we have as a city and why we should prioritize as our affordable housing. I mentioned earlier that this city council approved a strategic housing blueprint of producing 60,000 affordable homes within ten years. We are way behind that mark, and so we should not we should definitely be looking at if it's a process , a procedure and within our city administration, we should definitely be taking a closer look at at that process and what it entails for the project. In my district, I will say we are working on a separate agreement to ensure that it is complied with the state law that was just passed. But again, what was laid [12:24:42 PM] out to me was that there was a misunderstanding at Travis county and it was an administrative gap within the process. And so that is why we were wanting to see if we could add it in to councilmember alter's resolution. But to ensure that we are doing all that we can with our compliance checks, with tenant protections , Luz and ensuring the community benefits portion, we're going to do a separate agreement or that's the conversation we're having now. So I know we having a separate agreement might not be the preferred route. But, you know, again, Ann under the lens of trying to expedite affordable housing for the residents of Austin in light of the housing crisis that we're in, is the objective that I have. Thank you . And councilmember both councilmember alter and councilmember Fuentes, I don't think are really our comments are not to say we don't want to achieve the goals of the council [12:25:42 PM] on affordability. The way I found out about these extra projects was Friday. I ran into somebody in the hallway and they told me that there was this issue and I passed it along to the housing staff saying, you know, there's folks are out here talking to us members of council about this item and so it's not to say we don't want to do it. We just we want a chance to study it so we know how it all fits together. And if there is a financing issue that we got to sit down with the representatives to see what what the real concern is so that if that's something that needs to get done by the 8th of June, we maybe perhaps do that. But again, when this item was on the agenda, I was at least and I know it's my fault, I should have I should have drilled down to get the detail because I was told it's a routine item. Ann and just from hearing from the conversation right now, it's a little bit beyond it's a little bit more than routine. I mean, won't get done just means it needs some study and staff remains supportive of the three that are posted right now so it's adding the additional [12:26:43 PM] projects and council member alter you're absolutely correct. We have been talking to your team since you initially came up with the proposed posting of this item. It's the projects themselves and the developers themselves that we have not been in communication with until two weeks ago, and we just need additional time to be able to ensure that we're appropriately be endorsing items that we should be endorsing and we don't know about. And I'm not sure we know about all the projects either that you mentioned because there were some in councilmember Velasquez's district that don't sound at all familiar to us. Sure. Well, let's let's get together again. We'll go through every single one and we can figure out if they meet Walkes what you want them to meet. Ann and we'll let everybody know how that meeting goes. Sounds good, councilmember. Councilmember alter and then I'll come to councilmember pool. Thank you. And it would be helpful. City manager, if you can also make sure that we understand for Thursday kind of what your [12:27:44 PM] recommendation is at this point, because I'm now confused over the three because I thought you said that there was two of those three that you weren't sure of at one point in your comments. So and now you're saying you're sure of all three, but maybe it was some of the extra ones. So we'll get some clarity. I may may have misunderstood and we're happy to clarify in the Q and a that we're working on for councilmember pool. Okay. Thank you. And then the last thing that I wanted to just say is that this sounds like a procedural step to make sure that we are proceeding Singh with due diligence. S and I want to I just want to adamantly say that I'm very thrilled that Travis county has decided to devote a considerable amount of resources to permanent supportive housing and for affordable housing within the confines of Austin. I think that's relative. Leslie new set up. And so I think we have to go through the growing pains of figuring out how to do that and make that happen and to facilitate it. And we need to do [12:28:45 PM] that with due diligence. But I don't want this conversation which is about doing our due diligence to lose sight of the important and historic investments that they're making and how how valuable these affordable housing projects are going to be for us in meeting our housing goals and meeting the needs of our community. And I and I think that our staff agree with that. I just want to make sure that in this conversation Ann if Travis county is watching that they understand that we are we do very much appreciate those investments. Absolutely wonderful. Councilmember pool, did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah and agree with in in all respects specifically to councilmember Allison alter was saying this isn't about providing affordable housing in our community. We are all very strongly working in that direction. I'm concerned. And there's a there's a project potentially in there's a potential project in district seven, but when I hear that the [12:29:47 PM] rents that would be offered by projects through the fcs end up being more expensive because there essentially market rate than what is being provided elsewhere in the district, then I then I have red flags. There's a significant amount of money at at issue here. $50 million from from Travis county and. 2627 million, nearly 27 million from 27 million from the city of Austin. And that's not small change. Paige we want that money to go to providing deeply affordable units within in the city of Austin. We need to make sure that they do. That's what the due diligence that I'm, I'm hoping to get from staff will provide. That's the assurances that I certainly need before voting on these things, as we always do in all of our contract [12:30:47 PM] agreement. S we want to be sure that they have been vetted completely and appropriately. And I think staff for falling back and doing that work now so that we can see what we have for Thursday and then all of this information should come to the entire dais. I know you'll be working. Certainly with the author of this, ifc, but please know that every last one of us here needs to have all of that same information. We rely on you for that. Thank you. Absolutely thank you. Thank you. That will take us to item. Number 71. Councilmember Kelly. I'll recognize you as the person that pulled item 71. Thank you. It's my understanding that item 71 was brought forward to amend our previous council action related to license plate readers, and as such, I have questions for staff if they're available. Mayor, I'm [12:31:47 PM] sorry to interrupt. Is that for 71 or for item 71? 48? Okay. Maybe I just wrote mine down wrong 71 and then we'll go to 48. Okay. Because it was pulled on the dais. Yeah. 48 is occupancy limits, right? Yes yes. Please ask your questions, councilmember. Thank you. And is that. That's chief Greenwalt, correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay thank you so much, chief Greenwalt. I know you've dedicated a lot of time to this discussion, and I think for some of our newer council members, it's really important to lay out the process related to an investigation Ann and a timeline of when data might be used for license plate readers or related to license plate readers. Could you please explain perhaps kind of the timeline of how a typical investigation goes and at what point you would typically learn throughout an investigation to even access license plate reader data? Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for calling us here to answer these questions. I want to make sure everybody has a [12:32:49 PM] good understanding of how these types of situations work and how these investigations unfold before we move forward. There are a number of different ways the investigation may unfold. Sometimes we have information about where a crime occurred and what license plate we're looking for immediately. Sometimes that comes days later, sometimes it might be weeks or months later. So the retention period really comes into play in those types of investigation. Burns where we don't find out for a week or two what license plate we're looking for because we need to know where that vehicle is or where it has been in order to solve the crime. But also, I think what's important to realize, specifically with the retention periods is we may know on day one what our suspect vehicle is , what the description is with the license plate is. But in order to find the suspect, we have to have as much historical data as possible. So I brought together I brought with me today three examples of cases that are real examples that happen here in Austin, Texas, that kind of talk about the difference between what a seven day and a 30 day retention policy he would give us. As far as results, keep [12:33:49 PM] in mind, these are just three off the top of our heads that we turned around in a quick fashion if we wanted to do a deeper dive, there would be dozens and dozens of these examples. Over the four years that we had the lp's from 2016 to 2020. But these are just three quick examples. In 2016, there was a murder in east Austin. We got the license plate and description of the vehicle on day one. There was witnesses there that were able to give us the license plate of the vehicle. The investigators were able to use the license plate reader system to put that vehicle's license plate into the database. And look, historically at the information to see where that vehicle was. It was registered to an address in cedar creek, Texas. But the vehicle was not where it was registered to be on paper, we got information from that database that was in the 2 to 3 week time frame. So it would have been lost with a seven day time frame. We still had it because it was within 30 days and we're able to go to that address, which happened to be the suspect's new girlfriend's house. And they were able to take that person into custody as he was loading up baggage in his [12:34:50 PM] luggage because he was planning on fleeing the country. He would have been gone to Mexico had it not been for our retention policy at the time, at the same exact situation happened today, with a seven day period, that person would be gone and it would be more difficult to bring them back across the border to face justice. In that case, again, in 2016, we had a serial rapist that was kidnaping young women in north Austin and bringing them to central Austin to rape them. He had four separate cases where he had kidnaped, robbed and sexually assaulted various women. And again, very similarly, that specific investigation spanned across the whole year, several months. And we were able to find a vehicle description on one of the last cases where it happened on the exact day that we got the license plate information, we issued a warrant for his arrest and we started the investigation on where that vehicle might be. And once again, we had to have data in order to find that suspect that was outside the seven day period. We just don't know ahead of time if seven days is going to capture this data or if it's not going to capture the [12:35:52 PM] data. We also have a situation on a lot of our success stories that we gave in previous work sessions and previous public safety committees and commissions where there was two individuals in 2019 that were trying to kidnap young girls at a bus stop. I think in the 8 to 10 age group, they were trying to kidnap the girls to sexually assault them. One of the girls got away, gave a license plate that, again, that license plate was not where it was registered to be. Oftentimes, criminals don't park the license their vehicles in front of where they're registered to be. Oftentimes they're no longer actually owned by the same people. It was only through the use of the license plate reader system that we're able to find that vehicle at the address of the other suspect, whom we had not identified, we would not have found it if it weren't for the license plate reader system, which again was outside the seven day retention period proposed in this in this resolution amendment, they gave a full a full confession. And if it were not for us finding them and stopping them, they were going to continue to find more people to sexually assault. I think it's important to kind of just put into context that it's [12:36:53 PM] the opinion or the recommendation of the Austin police department that we have a one year retention period. We want as much historical data to find our suspects and provide justice to our victims as possible. When we went through this process last year, we were in a position of compromise and we were told we're not going to pass with the year. You can have 30 days or you can have nothing. We took 30 days because 30 days is better than nothing. We made that compromise last fall. So since that resolution passed in September, we have been diligently working with our community input sessions with the Pio to try to put enforce a policy that abides by that resolution. And we were expecting the city council to abide by the resolution as well . We feel like 30 days is what the citizens of Austin deserve. We feel like 30 days is what our citizens need in order to solve the crimes that they have. If there's any questions or any confusion or misunderstanding about how the system works, we can do demonstrations. We can come back and answer any questions that people have. I [12:37:54 PM] just want to make sure that any decisions that are made by the council that impact the safety of our citizens are done fully educated on how the system works and not because of some sort of misunderstanding. Thank you. I really appreciate that recap there. You had mentioned Eid in your statement just now that it's the opinion that the Austin police department would like a one year retention period before this came, before council. Could you let me know what the price for retention period was for this data? It was one year. Okay thank you. And do you know what a nationwide average for police departments who have license plate readers might look like? Have you looked at other policies and seen what other cities have as their standard for data retention? They're slowly moving from the longer retention periods to a 30 day system. 30 day seems to be the national standard. As a matter of fact, the contract that we're asking council to approve on June 8th has a 30 day standard policy that they that they retain data for. The only way [12:38:55 PM] that they'll actually go around that 30 day period is if there's a local law ordinance mandating that it go past 30 days. So all of the customers that they have over 3000 cities nationwide, several cities in Texas, Houston , Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, several other cities around the nation all have that are using flock have 30 days. Okay and you did a plethora of community listening sessions and got a lot of community feedback, including in addition to that collaboration, you did with the oppo's office at any point, was it discussed about a seven day retention policy in lieu of the 30 days, or was it just the 30 days, seven days never came up? Okay thank you. Council and colleagues, I feel very uncomfortable moving forward with an item for seven days of retention when we haven't had the same type of community engagement or feedback related to that specifically. And then also, I know that personally I have struggled since seeing this item on Friday with my ability [12:39:57 PM] to really communicate to the public about an item that would really directly impact the safety and well- being of people in the community. And I cannot in good faith, connect to my constituents or people in the community to simply change direction to council or from council through a resolution related to a seven day retention Ann policy. That's not what the council moved forward with last year. And while I understand the concerns that some council members have, without giving it that same public feedback and communication process, I just don't feel comfortable with it. Thank you. Thank you. Manager yeah. Mayor council members, I think the chief is exactly right in terms of the process that we've used used last year and then the discussion to get it to 30 days, we compromised. But let me just indicate that with respect to as I understand the resolution and discussion is that seven days would be for a [12:40:59 PM] year. The pilot, if you will. And even though that's not our recommendation, if we get a year's worth of data that shows how it works and what doesn't work, and as long as we can come back to the Austin city council and say, this is where this this seven day period has has fallen short, and here's how it's fallen short. And so that you then have the opportunity to provide the direction to move that to 30 days where we're we're as a matter of compromise , as you know, even though it's against our recommendation Ann, we understand that that might be the will of the council. And if it is, we will try to make it work and then we'll be in good faith, bring you the information Ann, so that you, once you have that information, you can make additional changes to get us back to that 30 day period that we had previously agreed to. Mayor pro tem I appreciate that input. City manager on your ability to try to work with everything that we decide as a council. I I might suggest that if we stay with with 30 days, we might be able to tell better [12:42:00 PM] what we were able to catch within seven days and whether a majority of the instances that the department is looking to solve, we're falling in that seven day period. Or if there were outliers that I'm afraid we would miss the information if we stop with seven, we won't have the data about would we have caught it on day 8 or 14 or, you know, 20, whatever that number would be? I appreciate this item coming to us, and I just remember how the conversation got started, which was a number of us sat down with the sexual assault detectives and the crime counselors for victim services. And one of the first things that was mentioned was just the ability to be able to catch the people who are repeat offenders was kind of the low hanging fruit that came out of that conversation. Ann and that was a number of months ago. So my question will be, how did this conversation play out at the public safety? The commission meeting? Was that recommended at 30 days or was there some other alternative that was presented to them? The public safety commission that we did most [12:43:01 PM] recently listened to my explanation of the policy, how we incorporated ideas from the community, input sessions, from the office of police oversight and Joyce James consulting. They had some follow up questions and then they unanimously agreed to recommend that we pass it with the 30 days. They never talked about a lower retention period. And sorry to interrupt, but to your point, you make a very good point. After a year, pilot program was seven days. We're going to be able to tell you what we didn't solve, but we won't really know the value, too, of what we could have solved if it won't be wouldn't be for the actual data being there right. And I know we've been having this conversation with, you know, advocates on both sides of this issue, the folks who really want to see the license plate readers reinstated and folks who are very worried about how they might be used and what kind of data might be collected and who has access to that information. And so I know this was a lengthy topic that we debated a couple months ago when we determined that 30 days was where we were going to lie. And so I think because we've had that conversation with the public for so long, I'm [12:44:01 PM] comfortable with staying with 30 days and happy to have those audits and, you know, routine reports given to us so that we can reevaluate that at a later point in time. Thank you, mayor pro tem councilmember Ryan alter. Thank you very much, mayor. And I'll tell you all this has been one of, if not the most difficult items and subjects haven't been here that long. But the time I have been here, my concern and the reason why I'm bringing this item, how how we got here, sir, is that I am concerned, learned that if we don't make a change to the 30 day policy, we will have zero data because we will not have this program. And so if we want to be able to approve this contract and actually have this [12:45:04 PM] tool be available for our police officers, who I think are you know, to the chief's point, it's a valuable tool. This is a way for us to get there. And there are always things we can do that would have led to catching, you know, additional perpetrators of crimes. Right? If we had cameras at every corner throughout the city, we would catch more people than we do today. But there are Singh liberty concerns, practical concerns. And so we have to figure out what's the right balance. And that's what I've tried to do here, is find a period of time where the tool will be useful. Knell butts but also respect, concern burns throughout the public of this. And we can come back in a year and see how it has worked, how it hasn't worked, but that is [12:46:06 PM] how we have arrived here. And I want to thank the chief for answering all my questions. Luz and you know, to your credit and point, how we got here was exactly how council told you to get here. So y'all did not do anything wrong in the process that was just how we are, where we are. And so I want to be able for right now, as we all know, we have 300 vacancies within APD and this is one way to help fill some of those gaps. And I know you will always Luz like you said, a year is what you're looking for and I respect that. That's your job to want that. I just believe it's our job to do the best we can. And I think this is the best we can. I'm going to call on council member Kelly to close us. Thank you. Yeah I actually and thank you, [12:47:06 PM] council member Ryan alter for explain Singh I guess your perspective on this item and why you brought it forward. I'm just curious how you landed on seven days and what kind of rationale went into that. Absolutely my button. Absolutely after I spoke with the chief, we were trying to figure out an amount of time based on certain just really anecdotal. It'll how long does it take from either interviewing somebody or arresting somebody or just to work the system? And one of the conversations we had was, you know, it could be 48 hours before you are able to even get somebody that from from the moment you learn about it to when you would potentially run the license plate, you know, it could be a it's not an instantaneous deal. And so a week seemed to be capturing some of that time lag. If we did 24 hours or 48 hours, that that wouldn't quite be long enough. And so seven days was where we [12:48:10 PM] landed. I understand that. I'm wondering, you know, is it since it seems like we are in a place where we might be able to compromise again because of the new council coming in and different things being added to this with what assistant chief Greenwalt told us earlier in my first line of questioning, if perhaps the balance of the dice would be a little bit more than seven days, maybe we go halfway between 0 and 30 days to 15 days since butts chief Greenwalt mentioned that sometimes it could take up to two weeks to know to search for information. Is that something maybe the author might be amenable to? If I were to bring forward an amendment, I can tell you that if you if such an amendment was passed, it is my belief that the ultimate tool itself and the contract that we have to approve for it would not be approved. Okay. Well, I appreciate that input and thank you for answering my questions. I still firmly believe that this is a [12:49:11 PM] tool that the community needs. And the more time that we have the more data we will have in order to see if it is effective or not. Thank you very much. Thank you, mayor. Mayor I just you know, we had a lot of conversation burns over the last year plus about this. And I know some of my colleagues really leaned into this to try to create a policy that would be a model policy. And I've heard some of those folks say that this would be a model policy. You know, our staff have also leaned in with the community. I have to agree with council member Ellis and going back to one of the initial conversations that launched some of the search to see if we could reinstate this and also remembering what happened in 20 and how it was removed in the first place. You know, I would really encourage you to talk to some of our detectives and the folks working in the sex crimes unit before you vote on Thursday and [12:50:11 PM] understand and that they are short staffed. This is a tool that helps them enormously with their job to address people who are committing sexual assault, who could go on to commit another sexual assault, or if they're not apprehended, they could go on to kidnap these other things. We have put in an enormous amount of safeguards as Ann. And I think we need to try this now. I don't know where the year got landed on for the pilot either. Shaw you know, it seems to me that if this is a tool that's working, you ought to be able to look at it after three months and say something one way or another about how how it's doing. You have some historical data, but I think we there are reasons for things that we care about that we're we're asking for this data. Some of the other issues are addressed, I think in the other rules Luz and I think [12:51:13 PM] I'm going to have a lot of trouble. Pool for the sexual assault victims in particular and other victims as they need to have this tool. It's a tool that we need. Thank you. Sorry just wanted to make a the members of the public. We will finish today. Just wanted to make a quick comment that there are numerous Luz private license plate readers located across the city in garages and all kinds of toll roads and all kinds of different locations. And the police can always, with a warrant, subpoena that information and pull any kind of data based on any license plate . And as far as I'm aware, the private companies have no timeline where they have to dispose of it or anything like that. So again, there's multiple I think, tools available to the police when conducting [12:52:14 PM] investigations. Criminal investigate options. You know, the holding their own license plate reader data. Obviously is a very, very powerful one. But given also the potential citywide expansion, you know, I think when we debated this last year, we were talking about, I think, a limited number of units. There were a limited number of vehicles that were equipped with it and there were only a limited number of stationary units. Now, given the contract and where we're going toward essentially every APD unit is going to be a license plate reading vehicle and the data that they're collecting is going to be very robust, which is fine. I completely understand that. I completely fine with it. But the reality is that the civil liberties implications, I think, can become more serious when you're capturing just about every vehicle in the city of Austin and establishing essentially the whereabouts of every person in the city of Austin and putting it in a police database. Which are you know, I know the safeguards are there. I completely believe and [12:53:17 PM] know they're going to do their best to safeguard that. But as we've seen with, you know, national security databases, CIA databases, all of a sudden, you know, stuff gets out and that kind of data is always abused to . So I just wanted to reiterate , especially the fact that there are numerous tools that the police also have access to in in criminal investigations outside of just their own reserved and recorded data. Thank you, councilmember. Anybody else want to be heard on this item? All right. We'll move to item number 48. I'll recognize councilmember Allison alter, who pulled the item. Thank you. And I apologize that I didn't get a chance with the holiday to pull it sooner. Shaw. I understand. And the goal and the rationale for the item. I did want to get a sense, though, in practice how it would work and what the differences were. So do you have like an example pool in mind? Mr. Qadri , of your limiting the occupancy [12:54:17 PM] limits and then you're going to operate under the property maintenance code rules that you're saying that's going to provide that safeguard. And I'm trying to understand what that means in practice. It's a little bit better and trying to understand how to think about that because as I understood it, the occupancy limits were put in place to address some particular challenges. I understand the rationale and the concern to open up more housing Singh but I but I don't totally think in 70ft !S limits and I'm trying to understand how that how that plays out. Councilmember qadri yeah, I'm going to defer to staff. I think someone was going to get up and say something. Yeah yeah. Thank you. You heard the question. I think I understand what the question is . Trish link with the law department. Councilmember alter the property maintenance code [12:55:18 PM] standard of 70ft !S for a bedroom or 120 plus $50 when you go above three adults. Is the standard that we apply to every sleeping unit in the city. The 25 to 511, which is our dwelling unit occupancy limit. So I like to refer to it as our zoning occupancy limit because it focuses on the number of unrelated adults. Our property maintenance code is strictly adults, while our without qualifying, whether they're related or not. And then the 25 to 511 is for unrelated. What that would mean is if council essentially repeals 25 to 511, you would be limited by the number of based on your square footage of the bedrooms. I understand that. I'm just trying to understand in practice, like I don't think in square footage of bedrooms, the occupancy limits are very clear here. And [12:56:18 PM] then when you start transitioning and trying to understand in practice what that would mean for some given scenarios that we would see play out, because I know there's a long history for implementing these limits. There was a reason for implementing it and I don't want us to move forward and have unintended consequences. So I think in practice, the way I so the Austin code now under dsd enforces our dwelling unit occupancy limit and the property maintenance code. So in order for them to determine whether a violation exists, they will without the zoning occupancy limit. So the unrelated number, they would be looking at the square footage and calculating how many adults could be sleeping in that room. So that's how you would determine the occupancy limit for that particular dwelling. So if you have two bedrooms and it will fit three adults, then you could have up to six adults living in that dwelling under the 25 to [12:57:21 PM] 511 standard. And you could potentially have six adults if they are all related Eid if they are unrelated, that is where we do the limitations of four. If you're within what is known as the mcmansion boundaries and the property was constructed after our March of 2014. Aside from that, it's generally six unrelated. Thank you again. It would be really helpful. And I'll ask some questions in the q&a to get some more specific kind of examples. The other question I had was, is how does this impact short term rental limits? It does not. Currently, our only limitation on occupancy for short term rentals is the property maintenance code. They were removed from 25 to 5 11 in 20 1516 timeframe. They we had council adopted specific occupancy limits for short term rentals and those unfortunately were struck down by the court of appeals. Okay. So this won't, [12:58:21 PM] that's really helpful. So this wouldn't change anything for short term rentals? That's a question I've been getting so this wouldn't affect that because those limits were already shot down. They were and they were already removed from 25 to 511. So we actually created short term rentals specific occupancy limits in addition to the property maintenance code. Okay if we had occupancy limits, they would not apply, though they couldn't apply to short term rentals as they were applying equally to everyone. What we apply right now is the property maintenance code that everyone has to follow . Okay, but that was not my question. My question was if we decided we had removed it from the occupancy limits, but we have not explored whether we could have an occupancy limit and have it apply to short term rentals, we would need to have further conversation and analysis on that particular question. Okay. Thank you. I'm [12:59:22 PM] going to be doing some more research and hopefully I'll have some additional questions on Thursday. And again, I want to just be clear. I totally understand the underlying concern of providing some more opportunities for housing. But I but I do think there are some unintended consequences that come from this that I want to make sure that we are thinking about and I think going back and looking at the history of how we got here in the first place is important. But obviously there have been consequences of that change as well that we want to look at. But but I do do have some concerns that I want to think through and talk about. Councilmember pool maybe miss link can come back up. I wanted to ask a couple of questions. One of them around the enforcement of occupancy, sea level Ralls. How's that been working. The property maintenance code piece, it's [1:00:22 PM] very objective. Staff can just measure a room and say how many adults are here when it comes to the 25 to 2511 standard, they do have to determine whether or not individuals are related. And we will take individuals at face value when they tell us that they're related. How many how many investigators burns on an occupancy levels have we had in the last year? I would have to check with staff, but I can just say that generally speaking, if they can be hard to essentially we would have to prove a negative. We have to prove that they're not related. And that's we also have a very broad standard of what related is in our code because we recognize domestic partnerships. And so it's challenging. So we actually looking at a situation rotation in our code and in law where we have some restrictions that are difficult to identify by maybe even more difficult to enforce. [1:01:24 PM] And that may be one reason I'm trying to articulate why we are bringing this change through this. Ifc that would be one advantage if we have just the single occupancy limit, it would be it would be helpful for the public to know what that is. And that's something that they can even measure on their own. And then two, it's very objective as opposed to getting into the conversation about whether individuals are related. So we might be on a better, brighter line, legal knell landscape through these changes than we are currently. I think we're we're, we're what we have on the books is lawful. However, I'm not sure from an enforcement standpoint that we necessarily get the biggest bang for the buck out of that limitation. Okay. So it's the operational piece that really is what we're dealing with, correct? Okay. Thank you. Thanks, mayor councilmember Kelly, thank you. [1:02:26 PM] I appreciate this. Quite like my colleague have stated earlier, I've done some extensive research related to this item too. I wanted to really understand how we got to where we are. Shaw and so I'm wondering Singh Trish, when you talk about 25 to 511, does that include our fire code standard in that part of the code? No councilmember that is strictly our zoning occupancy. So it is based on whether or not individuals are related. Our protection from a fire code standpoint or from our property maintenance code, those would still be intact and those are in a different part of the land development code. Could you please let me know what those are in regards to the fire code? I'm curious. It was my understanding that a lot of this conversation happened when councilmember Martinez was around. And as we all know, he used to be a firefighter. And so I think the fire code definitely has a role in what we're discussing. Singh as a follow [1:03:26 PM] up, I can do a response for questions and answers, and we'll actually check in with dsd and have them assist me with that. Okay. If that could go to all of council, that would be great. I'm also curious, do we know how much staff time this is currently takes or could take in order to enforce or not enforce ? I would need the director of dsd to answer that question. Ann okay. If you could just include that, I guess, in your, your answers back to council, that would be helpful. And then my final question is, have any studies been done to determine any sort of impacts related to repealing this ordinance? And my question is, I'm really concerned, about unintended consequence ounces might much like my colleagues who've spoken already, councilmember, could you repeat your question? I apologize. Sorry. No, that's okay. Have any studies been done [1:04:27 PM] to determine the impact on repealing the ordinance? Not that I am aware of. I will say when it comes to 25, 2511 because it is a zoning regulation, we are required to give reasonable accommodations. We have to handle that a little bit differently because of the type of regulation Ann that it is. Our property maintenance code, which is the 70ft !S or the 120 plus 50ft !S for more than three adults is a standard that we follow. And we've council adopted it several years ago and it was consistent and supported by a variety of stakeholder tirz. Okay. And then I guess one last question. Sorry, everybody , that brings up the stakeholder process related to if this ordinance were to pass, if any stakeholder feedback would be included in that change or if [1:05:29 PM] that's even a possibility. So the resolution as proposed would direct the manager to move forward with the code amendment as it goes to the planning commission and comes to council. There will be opportunity for the public to share their concerns about changing this occupancy limit. Okay thank you very much, everyone. Councilmember qadri. Yeah, I just want to I want to say thank you to my colleagues that have expressed their concerns and I also want to thank the many folks who have called and emailed our office and might have emailed other folks with offices on this issue. I've said this before, I read every email I read every mean tweet and nice tweet. So I've I've read it all . And I just want to say, you know, this is and I just want to also reaffirm this is just the initiation. There's going to be multiple public opportunities for folks to be heard as a code amendment works its way through boards and commissions. You know, the concerns everyone has is are valid. But, you know, as it's been said and will be said [1:06:31 PM] and I'm looking forward to the discussion on Thursday, you know, the city is going to continue to enforce the occupancy limits in the building code and they're based on square footage per person. And they prevent health and safety issues related to overcrowding and then the building the building code requirements that we have are aligned with federal guidelines for occupancy limits. So like I said, everyone's concerns are righteous and right and valid, but, you know, we you know, and we're very welcome to hear them, but we hope to extinguish any any any concerns on Thursday. Great thank you council member members. Is there anything else on this item? Is there anything else anyone would like to bring up at this work session? It's been a good, thorough work session. Thank you all. Without objection, we're adjourned. Eid. It is. 1:07 P.M.