City Council Budget Adoption Meeting Transcript – 8/16/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 8/16/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/16/2023 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. [9:59:30 AM] We are a-t-x-n the City of Austin's Government Access Channel it's 10:00 and I will call to order the meeting of the Austin city council. It is August 16th, 2023. As I indicated, at 10:00 in the morning, we are meeting at the Austin city council chambers in Austin city hall, which is located at 301 west [10:00:31 AM] second street in Austin, Texas. And we have a quorum of the city council present. Members. What I'd like to do is run through the order of the day, both for you and the public. I posted this on the message board yesterday and I think it's still holds today. We will open the public hearings for agenda items one one through six. We will have public comment on all of the items on the agenda, including the public hearings for items one through six, item eight, which is the actual budget item and the items from council. We will then take up votes on items and we'll take those up in the following order. This will be at the completion of public comment. Item three. Item seven. And by the way, item seven incorporates action from items two for four, five, five and six. As I indicated, item [10:01:31 AM] eight is the budget, and I'll call it up next. There will there's a attachment in the backup that reflects additions and deletions to the budget document that was previously provided to council. And that's the one we've been working from since the city manager provided it as a draft budget on July 14th. The motion I will seek will be to adopt the fiscal year 2023 2024 budget, including the appendix. I'll note that at that point in time, if there are amendments to the main budget motion, we will take those up at that time. I will also call for comments after the motion. Second, and if there are amendments after those amendments have been discussed, debated and either adopted or not, and there will be an opportunity for council members to address the budget and address any additions and deletions that may have been offered and are now part of the appendix or attachment. Once item eight is finished. We will [10:02:34 AM] address items nine nine, then ten and 11 and I'll probably ask for all those to be taken up together. However, if there's an amendment that's going to be proposed for any of them, then that item will be carved out. And I would I don't have any indication that there is an amendment that's going to be offered to items nine, ten and 11. So if you do anticipate that you will do that, please let me know after we do nine, ten and 11, we will then take up item 12, followed by item one, then we will go to item 13 after item 13, we will take up items from council. We will take those items up as a consent agenda. If someone wants to pull one of the items from council, please let me know that in advance. If someone has proposed amendments, please let me know in advance. I will call for council comments on the items from council after [10:03:35 AM] a motion and second on the consent agenda of ifc's at the conclusion of the ifc's. I'll recess the council meeting and we will convene the Austin housing finance corporation upon completion of the hfc agenda. We will adjourn that board of directors meeting. I will then call to order the Miller local government corporation meeting and when that agenda is complete, will adjourn that meeting at which point I will call back to order the Austin city council meeting. And at that time we hopefully will be in a position where we where we adjourn the city council meeting. Anybody any questions of that. Okay. I have it all written down here, so if anybody needs it, I can give it to you. All right. Without objection, then I'll open the public hearings on items one through six. Item one is the proposed [10:04:36 AM] property ad valorem tax rate for the city of Austin. Item two is the proposed rate and fee changes for Austin resource recovery. Item three is the water and wastewater impact fee, land use assumptions and capital improvement plan. Item four is the proposed rate and fee changes for Austin energy. Item five is the proposed rate and fee changes for Austin water. Item six, a drainage charge rate change for watershed protection for the watershed protection department. As I've indicated, we will also will have testimony on all of these items and we will also take public comment on all other agenda items, including item eight, which is the budget items from council and any other items. So with that, I will turn to our city clerk and call on you to help us get through the public testimony and public comment. >> Thank you, mayor. We do have [10:05:36 AM] some Spanish speakers today, so I'd ask if the interpreter could please come down to the podium. We do have a Spanish speaker that is calling in remotely, so I'm going to call that speaker first. And then move to the few that are in person. Thank you. Jose mourinho. >> Jose escucha. Hola. Hola. Soy Garza. Permite interpreter. Por favor. Q dos TREs pausa para poder interpreter Lynn si. Okay. Gracias. Adelante. >> Hola. One of Diaz MI nombre es Moreno. >> Good morning. My name is Jose mourinho. >> So street to cuatro de de villa. >> I am a resident of district four with council member Davila . So members are alianza, the [10:06:39 AM] vecinos Nogales. Por favor. Toma miembro de la vecinos in Nogales . I am a member of the alliance of tenants and neighbors, a homeless tenants and neighbors. >> Recommendations de GABA. >> We are in support of Galvez recommendations. >> He does principal fondo de rehabilitation. The for the city to finance the relocation fund. Of $500,000. For tenants that are displaced by developers. Como pasamos momentos dificil like my neighbors and myself who [10:07:39 AM] are going through a difficult moment. In our city. I look at personas. >> Austin does not have affordable places for people that earn little money. For local. Last year we went through eviction. >> El Caso and we fought this case. There are sole. Personas thanks to creemos. Continua, por favor. Gracias. Gracias Carmen. As all. Vimos can almost now see, la Renta. >> Thanks to Carmen and soul and [10:08:40 AM] other people. We were able to win the case. But even then, rents are very expensive. >> But otro Lugar fondos de la ciudad para nada. >> We look for city funds, but we couldn't find any. For homeless tenants. >> I will not see salima even then we pull through with efforts. When I see a Puerto, we pull through our la propuesta por favor de GABA queremos. >> Please, we ask you to support guavas proposal. For but de la [10:09:43 AM] fondos in our so there be funds available for homeless tenants. The demand of Ara. Thank you in advance for what you are going to do. >> What support we are on because we trust that you will take care of us and support us. Gracias. Por attention. >> Thank you for your attention . Can I see us? >> Mayor, I'm going to move to O. Does mayor. I'm going to move into the in person Spanish speakers. There are three. I'm going to call your names. If you could please come down towards the front near the interpreter. Bertha Hernandez. Judith Diaz, Mary Lou. Fructose O. Bertha Hernandez. Judith Diaz. Mary Lou [10:10:45 AM] fructose fruit to. Oh, so sorry if I said that wrong. My last. Seven decisions when I started para todos mis iberia in the spring on the NUESTRA representante de la senorita Vanessa Fuentes, your era recipient, pilot de ingresos garantizar dos quiero Una grande rendition para MI Vida I personas realidad necesitan ayuda personas como un gran problema. Mijo ayuda en todo E tuvo underarm cerebral efectos. El Caso de la casa. E Kathie [10:11:50 AM] todo el no contar con Una ayuda . >> No con ninguna ayuda solo la ciudad de los fondos de stabilization para familias Una gran ayuda para MI poco trabajo para cuidado Ya socios. Yola no tamales, pupusas. Yes por decision recipe del del pilot de ingresos estados yes en estos fondos para seguir necesitas como Yo por favor boton de los fondos de stabilization para familias Jackie familias ahora [10:12:55 AM] por los altos ingresos de Renta el bill de la Luz E de la comida también por favor fondos para los tacos. The los busses para packs aquatica Ninos para la preparacion para disastrous también en la de GABA por favor . >> Good afternoon and blessings for all. My name is Berta Hernandez and I live in dove springs. My representative is Vanessa Fuentes. I was one of the recipients of the guaranteed income pilot program and I want to say what a great blessing it was in my life. There are people who really need help, people like me who are in big trouble. My son was the only one who helped me with everything, and he had a stroke that affected his mobility. He was the one who provided for the household, and he did everything and he did not [10:13:57 AM] have any help except for the help of the family stabilization funds, which was a big help for me since I did not work either to take care of him, since I did not work either to take care of him and his children. I help him by selling tamales and pupusas. I am very grateful for the blessing I received from the guaranteed income pilot program , and I hope that these funds are granted again to continue helping families in need. Please vote in favor of the family stabilization funds that helped many families who are now struggling to the to the high cost of rent, electricity and food. And also, please assign funds for roofs on bus stops and for water parks that children need and also for disaster preparation. And please also support java's proposal. Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. [10:14:57 AM] >> Judith Diaz. Marylou. Mayor. It doesn't look like they're here. That concludes the Spanish speakers, so I'll go ahead and move in. Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. Appreciate your helping. >> Robert Lilly speaking on item one. And following Robert Paul Robbins speaking on item. Four Robert. Okay. We're going to move to remote and then we'll go back to in person. Maria. Sorry Maria Romero. >> Can you hear me? Yes. [10:15:59 AM] >> Oh, okay. Thank you so much. Good morning. My name is Maria Romero. I live in district six. My family and I were displaced from district three. We're members of the renters and unhoused neighbors alliance, where we personally experienced the risk of homelessness. I'm calling to support equity actions, community investment, budget and gave us recommendations for the city to put aside $500,000 in the tenant relocation fund for renters who are displaced by developers. The city needs to put the money up to renters. Don't have to wait for developers to add funds, but so much displacement going on and the rising rent prices. I feel like the least we could do is fund rental assistance and the tenant relocation fund for people like my friend Jose who just spoke, who was displaced from old homestead last year. He had to organize for compensation. I feel like compensation should have been given. It shouldn't have taken [10:16:59 AM] him like organizing and having a fight as their community was about to be torn down. They should have, you know, that should have been in place. And I feel like it was shameful that the city did create a fund, but there was no money in those funds. That funding needs to be there to make sure that people won't end up homeless and have to suffer or have anxiety trying to figure out where they're going to live, whether they have to cut down on their grocery money to afford rent. I feel like we live in the one of the richest countries and cities in the entire world to be in this situation and I ask that you please, please, please, you know , listen to god was recommendations for the city to put $500,000 in the. Five $500,000 in the tenant relocation fund for renters who are displaced by developers? Because there's a lot of us like that out there. And I thank you so much for your time. [10:18:00 AM] >> Thank you. >> Susan pentel on item eight and 21. >> I am disappointed that you didn't add any additional money for emergency preparedness for extreme weather events. >> This is a very important issue in the community. The community investment budget requested 11.6 million more for this. And you didn't add any money at all. Every when these events happen. We've had two very serious events in the last few years, city council and mayor say this is horrible. We have to do more. We have to respond to this. And every year at budget time, you don't allocate enough money. And when these events happen, we are always underprepared. I appreciate council member Kelly's resolution, but there's no additional money included in [10:19:01 AM] it, and I think it's a very least you owe the community an explanation as to why you are not adding any money for this. Those events are life or death situations for people who are living on the street and also for many others who lose power are medically vulnerable. They don't have a place to go. So those are very serious events and should be one of the highest priority cities for the city council. I also support moving 911 out of the police department and increasing salaries for ems and I oppose the rate increases . We had high rate increases last year. Thank you. >> Thank you. Monica Guzman. >> Item. Eight >> Can you hear me? I've got a [10:20:03 AM] question. Throat. Can y'all hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. >> Okay. Thank you. Good morning , mayor and council. I'm Monica Guzman, policy director at Garza. Go Austin. Vamos, Austin. Let me start by thanking the council members with whom Garza and Garza residents met over the past two weeks. Thank you for moving us forward outside of the budget process. Council member Allison alter regarding waiving pool fees, our residents clearly realized they were being listened to and heard. I want to thank all the council members whose amendments make it clear they were listening. Council member vela council member Fuentes Velasco is and sorry, I don't have the full list of the others because I have been out ill, but thank you for your amendment making it clear you have listened to the community. You listen to the Garza residents and I hope that we see [10:21:05 AM] that come through. In the end, when you approve this, that we can see actual money in place for residents who are risking displacement due to redevelopment. That we see money in increase amount for aid, public support specialist whether they ask for it or not. Money for early childhood care providers as well as the parents. While I appreciate council member pointed this amendment about waiving fees to for expansion or building from the ground up, but unfortunately did not help the home based providers. So we are hoping to see funding coming through for them as well. That pretty much it. Thank you. >> Thank you. Get well soon. >> Juan Benitez, item. Nine eight. >> Good morning. My name is Juan Benitez. I am the chief advancement officer for Texas health action. And our program kind clinic. We have an [10:22:06 AM] expertise in serving and providing health care to lgbtq plus people and people impacted by HIV. Council member Velasquez filed an amendment to use budget to fund community HIV and testing and treatment investing and community testing isn't just a public health issue, it is also an equity issue. Lgbtq plus community continue to be the most disproportionately impacted by HIV and stis. So for us to live up to our values of building an equitable city for our community, we must also invest in access to health care for lgbtqi plus communities, including sti testing and treatment. Last year, Ken clinic provided free testing for stis to over 11,000 austinites through our community walk in testing program, and this was a 176% increase from 2021. What's even more alarming is that 1 in 5 patients coming through walk-in testing came back reactive for an sti, and while stis continue to rise, unfortunately help isn't coming. There are currently no additional federal or state [10:23:06 AM] resources to combat rising rates of stis. So it's all local governments to fund this work and support community organizations on the front lines that are providing testing. I ask that you ensure that council member Velasquez amendment to fund community HIV and fta testing and treatment is adopted into the budget. Thank you. Thank you. >> David king. Item. Eight >> Thank you. My name is David king. I'm calling to ask you to please support the following. A proposed city of Austin budget recommendations from Austin. Vamos Austin, please invest 500,000 for tenant notification and relocation assistance to help low income families and voluntarily displaced by redevelopment. Invest $3.5 million for families stabilization grants to help low income families at risk of involuntary displacement in west 1.25 million for early childhood education and development to help our children and future generations invest. $2 million [10:24:06 AM] for heat mitigation and heat and cooling centers to help families endure extreme weather. Please support councilmember Bayless shade structure amendment and council member Allison alter's amendment to waive pool fees outside the budget process. Please support these additional recommendations. $800,000 for the equity office $300,000 for climate equity plan implementation. $11.6 million for inclement weather, wildfires and crisis. Community crisis response 4% wage increase for ems workers. $5.9 million for workforce development $2 million for food sovereignty and food for low income families 300,000 for estate and probate. Planning for seniors. $1 million for parks maintenance, equity, safety and restoration. And please move the 911 service from apt APD to an independent department. Thank you for considering my comments and thank you for your service. >> Noel Davis item. Eight [10:25:09 AM] >> Hi, this is Noel Davis. I'm in district two and I want to thank all the council members who have made amendments, proposed amendments that are in line with the community investment budget, grateful to all of you. And I want to urge council to fully fund the community investment budget and all the pieces that have not been funded yet, including the wage increases for ems, the resilience hubs making the 911 call center independent of Austin police department. There's a whole wonderful budget. I know council is familiar with and I encourage you to please fully fund that community investment budget. Thank you. >> Rebecca Elizondo. Hi, my name is Rebecca Elizondo. >> I'm a senior program director for any baby can, any baby candidate central Texas nonprofit that partners with families to overcome obstacles and achieve well-being. Our [10:26:09 AM] agency's main office is located within district four. However, as a home visiting organization, our services stretch across all districts within the city and the county. Today, I speak on behalf of the families collaborative within, which includes any way we can often division, campfire, central Texas community schools. Jeremiah program, the literacy coalition of central Texas staff alliance, the ymca of Austin and the success by six coalition. We are in support of council member agencies. Budget amendment to include a 20% cost of living increase to all early childhood contracts for fy 24 and the upcoming solicitation in raising a family is hard and everyone reaches a point where they need help. That's where our collaborative comes in. Last year, the collaborative served over 2000 children and families across Austin and Travis county under the age of six, all living below 200% of the federal poverty guideline. Our services span from parent education, prenatal support, early [10:27:11 AM] childhood intervention, mental health screenings, adult education and much more. Our services provide in the home and all across locations convenient to families. Our Austin public health contract has remained flat funded since 2018, despite a 30% increase in program costs. We are doing more or much more with less and that is unsustainable. We respectfully request that the council include a cost of living increase in our our six month contract for fy 24, along with 20% increase to the upcoming solicitation for early childhood services. We must ensure our staff are adequately compensated. Last year, our turnover rate was 24, which led to much less staff delivering services performance outcomes were met and an increase will help us overcome the turnover rate, provide competitive wages to attract. >> Thank you. >> Our time has expired. >> Staff thank you. [10:28:12 AM] >> Thank you for your time. >> Jessica Robertson. Item. Eight >> Hi, I'm Jeff Robertson. I live in district seven. I wanted to thank all the council members for their support and work on the amendments that the city received. The community investment budget and its collaborators and stakeholders have brought forward what I hope is that there is still room in our hearts, minds and in the city to consider fully funding the other pieces so that we can meet real identified and immediate needs of our of austinites and that would come from not increasing our reserve. That is money that we need now. That is money that we've identified could be put to use to help increase the value excuse me, the quality of life that we desperately need. And I also severely support moving 901 out of APD, aligning police pay with the council direction and [10:29:14 AM] pulling excess civilian training positions out of APD. Any police, any increase in police funding that is not legally required at this time will be like throwing water on a grease fire. And I think that APD has a lot more that they can do internally to correct their to course. Correct right now, before we make any more concession to them that we can't reverse. So once again, thank you so much for your work on this and for your time. >> Thank you. >> Kesha, prince item. Eight >> Hi, my name is Kesha. Prince >> I'm in district one. Previously in district three. I support the things that is proposing the tenant notification and relocation. I was almost displaced, but the county commissioners came in and [10:30:16 AM] gave money to relocate us after we were damaged during the year. Storm that process had a very negative effect and if there had been funds available, it would have made it a lot easier for a lot of families. The guaranteed income program is very important and it helps a lot of people, but the relocation assistance, when developers are coming in and displace young people is a very, very important and I hope that you will put as much money as possible, 500,000 or more in there to help people. But it's not a good feeling being displaced and having no money and knowing and being potentially homeless. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Katrina >> Kissinger item. Eight Katrina . >> Kissinger from district [10:31:17 AM] three. I am calling in to oppose the city manager's budget for item eight. >> I think it's ridiculous, the idea that we would put money into our reserves when there are real people who would benefit from money directly and really immediate way. I think it's also ridiculous the idea of increasing the police budget I to support relocating 911 away from APD and yeah making decisions that serves the real needs of the residents of Austin instead of lining our coffers for the future. >> Thank you. >> Locally money's item. Eight >> Hi. >> I am, >> I live in district nine and I work in district nine. My name is Lucy Muniz. I also work with jc in district nine. I just want to say thank you to all the city council members who've made the [10:32:18 AM] amendments. To the city budget, but we still need to make changes to not increase APD budget by 26 million and to support workforce development crisis oriented safety and security, severe weather and community crisis response and in support of moving the 911 call center response out of APD, we need to keep making the right amendments to better serve the most vulnerable in our community. They're not there yet and need to keep working together to get there. Thank you , Victoria Miller. >> Item eight. >> Hi, my name is Victoria Miller and I'm from district five. >> I'm speaking in support of the community investment budget and against increasing the police budget and the budget reserves. I have someone in my own family who face addiction and incarceration and [10:33:18 AM] homelessness in that order. >> And she had a very hard time right here in Austin when she was in the mental space to get her life on track. >> She had a very hard time finding the help that she needed as far as finding rehab and a job and a place to live. And so to me, it would feel like a bit of a slap in the face to get such a high permanent increase for policing when the allocation for social programs are so much less and there is such a need for those. Also just knowing that Austin voters overwhelmingly passed the police oversight act, I would just ask the council members to stand behind the people and the voters of the city that you represent. >> Thank you so praxis item. Eight >> Good morning. My name is sol praxis. I live in district [10:34:18 AM] three. I'm a member of the renters and unhoused neighbors alliance. I'm calling to support equity actions. Community investment budget and Garvey's recommendation specifically for the city to put 500,000 in the tenant relocation fund for renters who are displaced by developers. When the neighbors at old homestead demanded that journeyman group developer displacing them, give them compensation to avoid homelessness, the corporate reps told them to apply for the city's tenant relocation fund. Of course, the city had created a fund without a funding mechanism, so the renters had to fight for compensation first, the developer said a thousand per household was fair and some city staff told the renters to accept the offer. So while dealing with severe stress from the displaced that caused one elderly immigrant renter to plunge into a depression, the neighbors organized to demand fair housing and or fair compensation to be honest, we shouldn't be displacing people, period. The city should have collaborated with a nonprofit to buy the property and keep people in their homes. However since the city council seems to be bent on facilitating the displacement of working class people of color, the least you [10:35:19 AM] can do is give them a chance to stay in the city with some compensation and given the track record of for profit developers , the city needs to fund $500,000 up front, up front, rather than put renters in the position of waiting for the developers to add funds. I also work in the streets and the impact of having no rental assistance resources into little access to resilience hub through so long has been deaths, homelessness and family separation. One family who lived in Mueller flats had no help being behind on rent and living in mold infested conditions that should have caused the management company to owe them rent. But they were evicted with debt owed to the property. Unfortunately, they got in touch with me right before the eviction and we contacted every local nonprofit and agency and their city council member and other city council. After we went to foundation communities, they were told all that was available was help for them to learn to budget their finances. I fundraised for a short time so they could have a hotel through mutual aid, but it looked like they were possibly going to get housing or shelter. However the list were too long at foundation community, ithaca and other public housing. So this couple, [10:36:21 AM] their kids and their dogs, went to the street. They were in brutal heat for a week. They would come get showers at community home. Thank you. And once when they were doing that, their dog died from heat exhaustion. >> Anthony Delfino, item. Eight >> Good morning. Council mayor speaking today as a concerned citizen against the city manager's original proposed budget and in favor of the cib and some of the amendments that have been proposed recently by council members. I'm urging city council to do the right thing and invest in our community, such as health care and housing for all of our community members. As well as not allowing police to skirt the responsibility of oversight. That was a voted on by the community by absorbing jobs and inflating their budget, but instead using those funds to bolster more appropriate and safer crisis intervention [10:37:23 AM] methods, including paramedics and as well, the funding should be used for increased case management and health care and social services that would prevent many of these emergencies and crises before they happen. Additionally, I'd just like to highlight two amendments that were proposed by my district city council representative Natasha harper-madison. Specifically her amendment to provide residential substance use treatment for individuals experiencing homelessness, as well as the mobile court pilot proposal for the downtown Austin community court, which aims to increase access to case managers and prevent our unhoused neighbors from entering the criminal justice system. These amendments directly reflect the values of our community and they would provide much needed services that would increase the well-being of our community and make everybody safer and happier . Thank you. Myra gumbo videos. [10:38:27 AM] >> Hey, good morning, mayor. Council members. Mr. Garza my name is Myra or gumbo videos I use they them pronouns. I'm a member of Austin dsa and asked me 1624 a resident of district three, and I'm speaking on behalf of myself against item eight. I'm disappointed I can't join y'all in the chambers today, but I'm even more disappointed that we keep doing this song and dance and it kind of feels like the community is starting to sound like a broken record at this point. Calling and demanding an end to austerity in the city budget when we have so many more pressing issues and we can't afford to be pinching pennies in the community investment budget APD's history of police brutality has cost us taxpayers over $73 million. But you want to inflate their budget by another 32, which is money we can never get back for desperately needed social programs. You talk about public safety, then you want to move $39 million to the general fund reserve. So we should be spending that on 7.8 million for tenants stabilization, 1.3 on family stabilization grants on drink spiking test kits and sti testing on homeless services and [10:39:27 AM] permanent supportive housing on sheltered bus stops and heating and cooling shelters during extreme temperatures. That is public safety. You want to spend another 7 million on a down payment for an inaccessible building off a busy highway that no one asked for, just so you can force city employees back to the office right before text blows up. 35 for the expansion project. That's not even public safety. That's just a waste of money. You should focus on improving the employee benefits package is added personal holidays and a better cost of living adjustment. Please stop being anti-worker. Please stop being anti homeless. Please stop being austere. Start funding real necessities, real public safety and real progress. Thank you. And good day. I yield my time. >> Frank nester item. Eight >> Hi, my name is frank loud and proud. District one member of dsa. Homeowner and union member . And I'm also calling to mention that these budget proposals that involve throwing [10:40:28 AM] money into a general fund, throwing money into the police or ignoring things like rent stabilization and housing stabilization and affordable child care, this all seems like the kind of budget that you put together at the state. It seems like the kind of budget that Greg Abbott would put together. I understand that that's where you're experience most recently has been from, but we need to improve. That's not the kind of budget we want to run every time we throw money into general funds that it takes them away from city services. Every time we throw money into policing, it takes money away from city services police that have once again shot a child, police that have once again pledged to not use beanbags when they keep using them. Police said it once again raided the wrong house. It's something that we can do to change right now in this meeting, I want to thank the city council members that have been proposing amendments that follow the community investment bond budget. And I would encourage you to continue and [10:41:29 AM] pass those amendments. Thank you . >> Jackie Goodman. Item 15. >> Thank you, mayor. Mayor pro tem, councilman Fuentes and council members. >> I'm Jackie Goodman speaking in support of two budget areas and item eight supporting councilmember Fuentes item 15. >> I support a fully funded and staff planning and development, so I hope that's reality. This year there's a great deal to do . The city charter mandates on going planning with a master plan initiative that visited no longer than a 1010 year span. And we're at the end of that time frame. It requires community participation and critical staff support that inclusion hasn't happened in a very long time, and it's generated polarization and an informed general public. We are still, though, a city of problem [10:42:30 AM] solvers with experience and expertise long, unwelcomed and untapped. So we need to use this initiative, not only to work at a sustainable, livable urban future, but to put counter productive interaction and name-calling behind us. We actually are all in this together. We need to respect that and respect each other. Second, I hope that you will support all of recommendations to you include the family stabilization fund. It's a direct application of actually a very small grant that's so valuable to lower income economic pressures. Then third, thank to all the co-sponsors on council member Fuentes item number 15, this is the armadillo park neighborhood, armadillo road water tower mural project. So this thing on the symbol and [10:43:32 AM] connection to the legendary venues and musicians and music artists and art of a breakout renaissance. The creative community was here where many called home in old south Austin . So I'm asking you that from you guys. >> Tem thank you very much. It's good to hear from you and thank you for your email as well. >> Jake weber item 17. Jake weber, could you please unmute. I'm sorry if I called you to kill Jordan Middlebrooks speaking on item 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21. >> Hi there. My name is Jordan Middlebrooks. I live in district four. >> I'm calling in support of [10:44:33 AM] community investment budget and I wanted to thank the council members who have already filed amendments to fund community initiatives aligned to the community investment budget council members. Harper-madison Fuentes Velasquez, vela, Ryan, outlaw, Allison outlaw and quadra. These amendments are improvements. However, there's still not enough and I'm asking you all to please sponsor fund and take action to support moving the 911 call center out of APD to support severe weather and community crisis response, which has been increasing every year to support crisis oriented safety and security and workforce development for black, indigenous and people of color in Austin and employment opportunities for people with criminal histories. I'm also asking for there to be no increase to the police budget as this is something that we can never undo. And I'm asking that we maintain the 14% going into the reserve instead of increasing it to 17% if we're willing to decrease the people of Austin's especially marginalized communities, [10:45:33 AM] likelihood of survival and ability to thrive in Austin long term by defunding programs and initiatives aligns with the community investment budget. We're not putting the people's best interest first. So in summary, I'm asking you to please fund these programs proposed by the community investment budget to not increase the police budget and to not increase the percentage that we're putting into reserves so that we can fund and keep supporting the thriving programs that we have to support our our city. Thank you. And I waive the rest of my time. Jake weber, item 17. >> Jake, are you there? Could you please unmute. Mayor that concludes all the remote speakers that we have. So I can go ahead and transition back to in person if you'd like. [10:46:34 AM] >> Thank you. Please >> Since the interpreter is still here, I want to give one more chance to the two other Spanish speakers that signed up . Judith Diaz, Mary Lou fructose siesta key and el frente. Judith Diaz, Lou Rosa. Okay, thank you , Robert. Lily item one, followed by Paul Robbins. Please come to the front of your name is called. >> Good morning, ladies and gentlemen mayor and this August body. Once again, I come before you to make my sentiments known. I'm with grassroots leadership Texas advocates for justice and I'm a formerly incarcerated person who is now transitioning back into society and making the best goal of that that I possibly can with the help of my [10:47:35 AM] organization and the people that support me in this community. I want to thank the council members who have thus far made amendment that reflect a sensitive city to the population and to the interests of the community that have already been expressed in the community investment budget. I want to again thank you for showing compassion for people who are less fortunate and don't have the means to support or advocate for themselves with that said, I just want to quickly state that coming from New York City, born in the 1970s, I was very taken aback by the conditions under which I was forced to live. I didn't know why my community looked as ravaged as it did. I learned later that there was one gentleman that Jesus Garza reminds me of and his name is Robert Moses. Robert Moses wanted to invest in property one and to invest in projects and did not invest in the people. As a result of that, I grew up in a community that looked like Beirut, Lebanon. I urge you, [10:48:35 AM] fellow council members, to listen to the community and to show interest in the people and best in those elements of the community investment budget that have not yet been funded and do not. I urge you, do not give any more funding to the police. The police only respond after crime. It is conditions and poverty and circumstances and policy that creates those very conditions of poverty. Thank you. Thank you. >> Paul Robbins. Item four, followed by Phyllis Everett and Jen Ramos is your name is called. >> If you would please come down, even if you're not the one that's speaking, please come down and take one of these seats up front. So that we'll be able to move in out of respect for the people that are following you as speakers will be able to move more efficiently. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Robbins, for waiting. While I said that mayor and council, though, the summer statistics for Austin [10:49:37 AM] energy are not complete, it is likely that due to the increase in electric rates and brutally hot record hot summer, many austinites may see the highest electric bills, at least in nominal dollars in the city's history. >> I have to suggest for rate relief the first is to the extent legally possible, to stop paying franchise fees to wealthy cities out of sight of Austin that do not need them. Second, if there is a surplus of revenue over what is anticipated, give half of it back to ratepayers in the form of relief. I am also here to ask again for a comprehensive audit of the customer assistance program, which has experienced repeated [10:50:38 AM] problems since it was changed in 2013. Recently you received a glowing letter from Austin energy singing about the dramatic increases in participate due to changes in the computerized enrollment. At the same time, I got contacted by a friend of mine, caught up in the new enrollment asking me why on Earth she was enrolled and it took her a long bureaucratic process to get an enrolled. And this is the second person who has contacted me telling me about this kind of situation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The program is not transparent. The people running the program are complacent and it needs an audit. I I'm out of time. I [10:51:39 AM] appreciate your attention. Thank you. Mr. Robbins. >> Phyllis Everett and then Jen Ramos. Fill >> Phyllis Everett, saffron trust women's foundation. I'm here on behalf of support of councilwoman Fuentes. Family stabilization program up together, a nonprofit organization, has been working for over two decades to alleviate poverty by partnering with governments, philanthropy and community organizations. Their approach is unique and revolutionary. The direct financial support has been critical component of the strategy for saffron trust, whose aim is to cycle families out of poverty. The intersection of financial stress and health outcomes is a critical area of concern, particularly among black women in Austin. This proposal seeks to explore the relation between financial stress, the allostatic load and the negative health outcomes to families that we serve. The proposal will allow us to [10:52:39 AM] investigate the families. The proposal will allow us to investigate the families granted financial relief. We have the opportunity to see the impact of the financial stress on the mental and physical health created chronic stress known as the elastic load. We aim to identify specific stressors contributing to this issue and developing targeting interventions to alleviate them. Over the last year, the women who have enrolled in the 2022 and a 2023 diversion program with funds from up together and the city have embraced educational opportunities, attended financial literacy program, change food patterns and eating practices, embrace arts culture and have a strong desire to have a to have a more of a life outcome. Up together holds the blueprint to reducing poverty in Austin through its unique approach to poverty alleviation by focusing on these three demographics which are underprivileged families, [10:53:40 AM] communities, communities lacking access to basic health care and individuals who lack resources or knowledge for sustainable community development. Up together is able to address the root causes of poverty in a comprehensive manner. Thank you. Thank you. >> Jen Ramos. Mayor, we just received word that there are Spanish speakers that have arrived. So if you don't mind, I'm going to ask the interpreter, come back to the podium and then I believe Judith Diaz and Mary Lou virtuoso are here. Please come on down. Okay okay. So buenos dias, MI Diaz pertenece distrito. [10:54:42 AM] >> Numero TREs representantes. Jose Miguel. Anwar Velasquez. >> Good morning. My name is Judy Diaz. I belong to district number three and my representative is Jose Miguel Anwar Velasquez. >> Gracia Cada uno de los presentes por la oportunidad Yo tengo. >> Thanks to each one of you here for the opportunity given to me. >> Represent comunidad in particular the organization misma en espanol. Significa mujer is inspired actions. >> I'm here representing my community and particularly the organization misma, which stands for in Spanish, stands for women inspired by dreams, goals and actions. >> La cual es Una comunidad mujeres trabajadores de la con en los derechos liberals, which is building a community of women domestic workers who are empowered with knowledge about labor rights. Estoy aqui con la [10:55:44 AM] unica mission de da conocer ustedes el importante trabajo teniendo a la polgar el programa de family stabilization también para la continue la cual es teniendo un grande impact on me comunidad I am here with the sole mission of making you aware of the important hard work you're doing by supporting the families stabilization program and also for its continuity which was which has had a great impact in my community. Yes, it's misma canal para el de a miembros de la comunidad encontrar Una crisis financiera . >> One of them is misma, who was a channel to carefully choose members in the community who were in financial stress and gracias de fondo la necesidad. Continuar ustedes el Pilar de NUESTRA comunidad se Fuerte. Thanks to this fund we were able to solve with the needs already mentioned and as you continue to [10:56:44 AM] support it, the pillar of our community grows stronger. >> So este supuesto todos Cada uno de nosotros Pero Una cosa me gustaria can all be Q es el impact teniendo los dejo con esto. >> We know that this budget concerns each one of us, but there's one thing I wish you would not forget, and that's the impact they're having on everyone. >> Senores, continue de la grande mission. Toca Cada uno de ustedes estan represented in aqui esto es también la estar del Pueblo ustedes subo gracias . >> So I will leave you with this gentleman. May we made the great mission that falls into each of you who are seated here. Continue and that is to exercise the law and the well-being of the people who entrusted you with your with their vote. Thank you. [10:57:52 AM] >> Hola. >> Buenos dias. My name is Maria oso. >> Represent misma vengo el distrito dos. >> Good morning. My name is Marylou fructose. I always represent mis and I live in district number. Two >> Para companero de este comento estoy aqui in a la propuesta de Minda de la Vanessa Fuentes in apoyo Al programa de este familiar. >> I'm here to support by my friend just said, but also to support the amendment proposed by council member Vanessa Fuentes to support the family stabilization program. >> La de la comunidad se escuchar de todo todos los miembros del Consiglio voting for our de este Linda. >> I'm here to ask today that you hear the voice of the community and know that all [10:58:53 AM] council members will vote in favor of this amendment. >> El pasado Ang escuchado por parte de otros miembros el impact positive de este programa impacto como el poder de mantener un taco sobre sus families E comida en las Mesas. >> You have heard from others from other members the positive impact that this program has had impact such as being able to keep a roof over our heads and food on our tables. >> Necesitamos cuesta comida Familia continuously como ciudad queremos seguir siendo un Lugar conocido como Una ciudad a motiva Progressive Olympia. >> We need that this family civilization to continue and we want to continue being a city that is known for being innovative, Progressive and clean. >> Muchas gracias a todos [10:59:54 AM] ustedes aqui present les decimos de parte de la comunidad de Austin, Texas todo nuestro Pueblo inova. Gracias, Vanessa. >> So thanks everyone on all of you that are here in the name of the Austin, Texas community. And again, I want to thank Vanessa for your support. Thank you. >> Gracias. Thank you. >> As the mayor mentioned, I'm going to call several names when your name is called. Please come down and take a seat in one of the seats in the front and head up to the podium. Jen Ramos. Robert Corbin, Sabrina fuller. If your name has been called, please come on down. >> Please come forward and just state your name. >> Sabrina fuller. Thank you. My name is Sabrina. Can I start? Yes my name is Sabrina fuller. And my family are residents of district nine. I am here in [11:00:55 AM] speak of support of the community investment budget proposed by equity action and urge you not to sacrifice vital community services by pumping more and more money into the already over inflated APD budget in general reserves fund. I am currently disabled on, and if I were to call 911 right now, I have no idea when I would receive help. That is unacceptable. What is even worse is the cost of diverting funding away from public services to fund 32 more million dollars of police spending and the already $73 million in the police that police misconduct has already caused. Austin there is irreparable harm to my community members whose very existence is criminal ized by not funding needed services. Instead of investing in these current services, Austin has consistently continued to waste taxpayer dollars on ineffective and dangerous policing. So I ask you, do you truly represent the Austin people or are you complicit in the genocide of my most vulnerable neighbors? Thank [11:01:56 AM] you, Robert Corbin, a wiser Daniela silva. >> Good morning. >> Equity action atx put out pages of talking points about mostly good ideas, but omits the good idea of increasing APD's budget equity action and council can get monies for all good ideas by one. Eliminate our city's unfair taxing policy that rewards haves and insults, have nots, subsidizes the richer and screws poor. The homestead exemption allowance have nots are struggling renters who pay that portion of their landlords taxes from which privilege haves homeowners are exempted are a grave injustice. Two eliminate animal services. Costly, destructive pro kill no kill policies. Equity action declares a bizarre desire to make sure we remain a no kill city to improve equity, one would presume [11:02:59 AM] hogwash. No kill does nothing for improving equity unless you're referring to the increasing stock equity of shareholder leaders in America's pet industry who appreciatively give back by offering and financing no kill and other pro dog legislation. Taking our city, our parks, our waters, the world's poorest and the planet off the cliff of equity action should get upset that by my estimates within Austin 20 to $40 million each year spent to save dogs who then get fed by competing with the world's poorest peoples for the choices, chops, which drives up cost hunger, malnutrition and burdens the planet's poorest add to that the burning of rainforest lands and their animal inhabitants, megadeth. I once read that 20% of all meat raised is fed to other animals. No kill is waging war against the poorest and most vulnerable equity action should rise up and wake up. Demand that Austin's no kill policy be killed. Reckoning lies the real [11:04:01 AM] greedy gorillas in the room. And it is not our police protectors. Thank you. >> A wiser Danny silva, Kathleen Mitchell. Please come down and state your name at the podium. >> Good morning. Council mayor. City manager. My name is Daniela silva. My pronouns are she they and I'm a resident of district three. I would really like to begin by thanking the council members who have worked so diligently to do the heavy lift of advocating for the various community investment budget amendments and making sure that they get funded to their highest extent. I know that this was not an easy lift and I just want to begin with gratitude. That being said, this budget poses a stark contradiction. It alleges a need to increase the city's financial flexibility through the reserve [11:05:02 AM] fund at the same time that it proposes a large increase to the police budget, which can never be reversed due to state law. That would decrease the city's financial flexibility. So which is it? Because the math isn't mapping there? While I'm incredibly grateful for the amendments that various council members have proposed, gold stars were symbolically given out for cutting the funding amount of their amendments from the beginning. Many amendments didn't even make it into the budget via baseline or amendment, including an increase in funding for parent support, specialist funding for permanent supportive housing services and community led inclement weather response. Yes, these are things, these are emergencies that need to be addressed today, not next year, when maybe there's another emergency or the year after that. People are in dire need of support now, now. So how can we be advocating for squirreling away $40 million when at least $12 million in community needs remain completely unaddressed? [11:06:03 AM] It is imperative to lower the percentage that is set aside in reserves to 16 at the very most to fund what remains unfunded. And that being said, these items must be addressed. Not today, not in six months, not in a mid-year process. These items to make sure that there is a continuity and funding in a continuity in services must be funded. Today, we, the community , we want to give you a gold star and you have to earn it. Thank you. >> Kathleen Mitchell corby thank you very much. Corby Castro, Pam Madeira. >> Hi. Thank you so much. I'm Kathy Mitchell with equity action. So I guess you're hearing from us all at once. I I want to speak to a couple of process issues and I'll be brief . This budget process has been [11:07:03 AM] uniquely difficult because very little has been heard from the departments because from the beginning this was sort of laid out as a no growth departmental process. As you all know, that it I want to give an example. The departments were talking about their needs before a certain point when they stopped and I was at a community meeting where our library folks, probably not the director kind of openly spoke about the radical wait times for ebooks, our children. And if you've met any of all of our children, you know, they read on devices. I actually have started reading on devices as my husband only reads on devices. People are waiting weeks and months for a book license. This is the kind of [11:08:05 AM] thing that is simple to solve. Is it great that the current economy of books requires libraries to pay for e- book licenses? No I don't agree with that. General economic foundation. But do I think that our libraries should be able to buy enough licenses so that children are not waiting weeks and months and parents are not having to find alternatives for books that their children need to read? No, we can solve that. We can solve that today. That is one of the things that was cut from the beginning. We put a million having heard that 2 million would be better, we put a million after due consideration to all the other unmet needs in this community. And then we brought it to you and said, this is the kind of thing you should be funding. >> Thank you. >> We need to we need to stop the process where it is. Mr. [11:09:06 AM] Mayor, if I may, can we allow her to complete her statement, please? >> Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. We believe that where this budget is this morning, there are even more unmet needs than there were last night. And that you all need to take a pause. And the very best starting point for that pause is to go back to that reserve fund conversation that was never had reduce that reserve fund percentage to something that allows you to fund the most important unmet needs in this community today. And you're going to hear more of those now and then reconvene within. Thank you. Thank you, Cody corby, jastrow, Pam Adair, and then oasis are. >> Good morning, mayor and council. >> My name is corby jastrow, a resident of district ten, past president and executive board member of the greater Austin crime commission. The greater [11:10:07 AM] Austin crime commission encourages all council members to strongly support the funding increases for public safety, and the manager's proposed budget understaffed ems, fire and police departments put our community at risk in this budget increase is much needed. First step toward addressing those issues. This budget increases our public safety investments, improves public safety outcomes , increases transparency and continues to help address our ongoing public safety staffing needs. APD has 331 true vacancies. Again, APD has 331 true vacancies and has 113 operational vacancies as our first responders work tirelessly to keep this city safe and the crime commission will always encourage council members to continue to give our first responders the resources to do their jobs. Voting for this budget is a strong first step toward addressing our public safety staffing needs, and I thank you for your support on [11:11:07 AM] this budget increase. Thank you. Thank you. >> Pam Madeira, a vice is are and then Seneca Savoy. Good morning mayor. >> Council. Pam Madeira I'm a resident of district ten and I'm the current vice chair of the Austin crime commission. Thank you to the mayor of the council, the city manager and city staff are working so hard this summer to propose essential investment that's needed in public safety for our community. Who is so desperate for additional resources and help right now supporting this budget will increase transparency in the police department, restore human resources and the positions for data reporting will improve. The Austin police department's efficiency and lead to more transparency and oversight for both the elected officials and the community as well. These these positions will not impact [11:12:08 AM] the investigations by the Austin office of police oversight, which go through internal affairs. As you all know, we are facing historic staffing issues right now that are unprecedented in our community. And this is our opportunity to improve public safety for our community . So voting for the manager's proposed budget really signals that that that this community stands behind the citizens who desperately need the APD and other support of the various resources. So we appreciate your time on this and encourage your support of the manager's proposed budget. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Oh, nice Seneca. And then Catherine Mcardle and please state your name at the podium. Mayor council members. >> My name is Vassar and I serve on the leadership team of planning our communities today I'm here to ask you that we do fund at least $4.2 million [11:13:08 AM] towards council member vilas Dennis stabilization funds item. Currently, as I understand, there's only 1.6 million that is being proposed. This does not even get us through to the end of the year by our own staff's understanding, we need 12 million this year. If you fund 4.2 million this year, we can combine it with funds from last year to extend it. And I know there's a conversation about a mid-year amendment, but let me be clear, I have deep concern about that for two reasons. First, our staff and our consultants are going to spread the money. What that means is we're not going to be able to get to a mid-year amendment to fulfill gaps. We will stretch those dollars further, which means we will pause and take at times clients who will be eligible for funds, who will need the funds desperately will not get the assistance they need because we did not budget those funds today. Secondly even as of last year, though, you all some of you all work to get $8 [11:14:09 AM] million for those funds. In the past year, we have five months. We intake has stopped because we did not get our contracts done on time. I just want to be very clear with available funds, we have had services that are not being provided and what faith can we have that we will somehow be able to get a mid-year budget amendment, make sure the money is available, authorize the contract, work on it and sign the contract and make sure our contractor can get the money done with a mid-year budget amendment. If we're running out of funds. I know these are difficult decisions and for those who know me, know that I take these conversations very seriously and I'm not emotional about these things, but focus on what what needs to be done. I'm sadly here to tell you today that 1.6 million, as proposed, will harm people. How will we tell people, those who are eligible, those who need services that they're needs were paused because we needed to put funds in the reserve? Thank you all very much. Thank you. [11:15:10 AM] >> Seneca Savoy, Catherine Mcardle, Jamie Kim. >> I keep forgetting if there's a start. Hi, I'm Seneca Savoy. I am with equity action. I'm a resident of district for resident of Austin for all but three years of my life. And this already started on what came first to mind. Ultimately a huge amount of the expansion of this budget is the amount going into reserve funds. The idea, of course, to save up for a rainy day. However the compounding interest or the amount of savings you get off of this is not really commensurate to what we're cutting because a lot of the things that were cutting first amongst them as well, sorry, permanent supportive housing as well as rental assistance are things that produce greater costs down the line and the compounding cost are greater than the rates of savings. Right. So the cost to rehouse someone who's been [11:16:11 AM] chronically homeless is ten times higher than rapid rehousing. Right. And it's even greater savings if you're able to have rental stabilization to prevent someone from needing to be rehoused in the first place. That five month backlog he's talking about, that's putting people into states of crisis where they can eventually become chronically homeless in ways where it'll cost us tens of thousands more per person to get them rehoused. That's not fiscally conservative. That's just sticking your head in the sand. Chia member vilas amendments are intelligent as are ones from many of the other council members. Chief among them Fuentes by targeting some of the money up front directly at people who we know are high risk, who are likely to become cost to both the city and the county beforehand, we not only save money the long term because we're doing the cheaper thing instead of the expensive thing. Right. But the human cost, right. Because the difference between almost getting evicted, [11:17:13 AM] being evicted and then sleeping outside in 110 degree weather are pretty drastically different in terms of the psychic cost to the individuals involved. Right. So but even before you consider these are human beings who are going through terrible suffering, you're saving money by just keeping people in their homes. Thank you. Thank you. >> Catherine Mcardle, Jamie Kim, and then crystal Maher. Hi. My name is Catherine Mcardle and I live in district nine. I'm speaking today to urge council to adopt as much of the community investment budget as possible. >> Thank you to the several council members who have been working to do this in recent weeks. Because of that work, the budget has already come far from the initial proposed version that sought to undermine Austin's advances in equity and justice. But there's still a long way to go. Specifically, I urge council to reject the proposal to increase the city's [11:18:13 AM] reserve fund, which would cost almost $40 million that could otherwise be spent on programs that would directly benefit Austin residents. As many other speakers today have asked for funding for. We already have the largest reserve in Texas. It doesn't need to be padded further. Second, I plead for you to move the 911 call center out of APD's oversight. The budget is already providing APD far more than in last year's budget and you're all well aware that increases to APD can never be reversed. Please keep APD's budget the same as it was last year. Moving the 911 call center under a different department can help do that and a change in leadership of the call center can go a long way to alleviating the many challenges the center has been facing. If I have to call 911 for a medical emergency or a fire, I want to be sure that my call will be taken quickly and the ems or the fire department will be able to come help me quickly. I've been hearing that that has not been happening with the call center under APD, and it's time for a change. Finally I urge you to support council member Taylor's [11:19:13 AM] amendment to increase funding for free spay and neuter services for Austin pets due to the very poor leadership at Austin animal center. The shelter has been in crisis mode for years. Free spay and neuter services won't fix everything, but it can at least help reduce the number of puppies that end up at the shelter. And at this point, anything helps them. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Jamie. >> Kim, crystal, mayor Alicia Castillo. If you're here, please come on down and state your name at the podium. Okay. One more time. Jamie. Kim crystal. Mayor Alicia Castillo. You Alvin Sanderson. Don Donna Hoffman. Meng ki. Please state your name at the podium as well. Thank you [11:20:20 AM] for allowing me to talk today. >> My name is Alvin Sanderson. I'm an unhoused austinite and I'm 68 years old. I I'm here to tell you some great things that are happening in our city. And I need your help. I have a dear friend right now. She's on the edge of death. I know what's coming about, and I don't want to plan her funeral, and I need to get her help. I need y'all's help to do that so I don't have to plan her funeral. She's heavily addicted to narcotics that I'm trying to get to. I have a kit that I can save her life. If at that moment that she ods and this is about overdose deaths that are occurring in our city and it's not acceptable, we allow them to die when we can [11:21:21 AM] save them with that narcan kit. I got several of them right here and it's saving people's lives and I'm trying to save college. I don't want to see that. I don't want to go through her death and I can help her and I'm asking you to help me get out there with harm reduction alliance. And what they're doing is trying to save lives. And I'm asking you to help me save kobe's life. And others like her by supporting me supporting this as the people behind me do it. The same time. This is personal to me. All the budget amendments that you're trying to come up with, it's about people. Well, it's about me. And I asked you to really have a have a thought in your head that you can do something to help save people's lives. Please open the doors and [11:22:23 AM] get more people to sit there and help us save other people. Thank you. You have a great day. >> Donna Hoffman. Many, many Christina Garza. Donna Hoffman, are you here, monkey? I hope I'm saying that right. Christina Garza. Edward Franz. >> Hello. My name is monkey and I'm with up together, a nonprofit that trusts and invests in communities and with unrestricted cash payments. I am also a resident of district seven. I am here today to support the family stabilization grant program up together is a nonprofit organization that for over two decades has partnered with government, philanthropy and community organizations to distribute cash directly to families while learning how they work together in community to achieve their goals. We began investing in individuals and [11:23:24 AM] families in central Texas in 2018, and since then, in partnership with local philanthropy and the city of Austin, have invested over $18 million in more than 8000 households in Austin at the start of the covid 19 pandemic. Up together partnered with Austin public health to distribute emergency relief cash payments totaling over $11.2 million to over 5000 households over two weeks. Up together received over 50,000 applications. And from that pool , utilize a lottery system to select households based on the eligibility criteria set by the city. This criteria include a zip code income, covid 19 related hardship and other assistance received from the existing guaranteed income pilot that the city is funding. Now, the evaluation is revealing a significant positive impact on factors such as housing, food and mental health. Six months in most pilot participants use the funds to pay rent and meet other basic needs. Many pilot participants caught up on rent and were less likely to be concerned about eviction. They are also making progress towards [11:24:25 AM] their long term goals and participants are making planned short term time to gain longer term financial and household stability. Once the pilot ends. Preliminary findings are showing positive results, and we expect results to only become more significant as the payments conclude. The family stabilization grant is a vital tool to address poverty and make sure Austin residents can stay in their homes, reach their goals and thrive with the cost of living increasing sharply in our city, families experiencing financial hardship need direct assistance. Now. I urge you to adopt the budget to include $1.3 million to the family stability grant program. Thank you. >> Christina Garza. Edward Franz . Sean Oliver. >> Good morning. My name is Alicia Castillo. I was late when you first called me, but yeah, my name is Alicia. I'm a policy analyst and I'm here today as a representative of equity action. I serve on the board there and [11:25:27 AM] I've been spending this morning crunching numbers. There's some , you know, new things that have come out. And so I've been I've been doing a lot of math. I just ran out from doing that here. And so I'm seeing that you all have made incredible efforts and presented really wonderful amendments and shown that you really have heard us. Hundreds of people showed up and testified about the items that they care most about. And we're seeing some of that in here. And we're still seeing a little bit of a shortfall. So I just want to say that there are a couple of opportunities. Number one, in the office of the city auditor report on the reserve is that 16.7% recommendation. I want to note that the audit report itself says that cities that they reviewed with reserve policies that were lower than that, it says a few things, but they may have wished to prioritize spending on resident services. So that is one opportunity that's before us right now. If we can do a little bit of tweaking of that reserve fund percentage change to kind of compromise here and bring us down to something a little bit [11:26:27 AM] that will free up just a little bit more money to serve some of those really pressing needs that we have today. Something closer to 15 or 15.5, rather than this full, you know, nearly 17% amount that would do a lot to help. But we also have another opportunity that hasn't been talked a lot about today, and that's making sure that we can keep the police budget as flat as possible because due to state law, that's something we can never change and leaves us a little bit inflexible in the future. One of the ways that we can do that and help keep it cost neutral is by moving the 911 call center out of the Austin police department. We have call centers for three one, one for ems and you know, this call center. When folks are waiting on the line for ten minutes, 15 minutes to get to someone when they're in an emergency, many of those being mental health emergencies, what if we had a call center that was really focused on that, had the staffing that they need and perhaps is independent or run by a department that isn't struggling as much with staffing [11:27:28 AM] and recruitment as APD is. Thank you so much for your time. >> Christina Garza, Edward Franz , Sean Oliver, please go ahead and come forward and just state your name at the podium. >> My name is Edward Franz and I'm representing atx peace and district four. Thank you, council members, for letting us speak about. I'm personally speaking for one of the amendments to increase the office of violence prevention funding for community violence intervention. It is important and one of the reasons why we think that this funding should be increased is because we have story after story after story about what this is doing in our communities that are facing the most violence and the most guns and the most homicides, which unfortunately are disproportion communities of color. Something needs to be done about that. And I want to tell you, the story of a man named Guzman guzmn got shot in a drive by in Austin at a car show where he was just [11:28:28 AM] hanging out with friends. He was surrounded by other high risk individuals and took a bullet into the stomach. And it is still lodged in his hip to this day, they cannot remove it for fear it might hurt him. He has four kids and a wife. He lost his job, was going to be homeless. We met up with him after the shooting because we knew that there was going to be victims and that we wanted to make sure that we're one. No retaliations in this in this event, but two, we wanted to take care of the victims and make sure that they recovered well. We met Guzman, helped him get temporary housing on his way to get permanent housing. We provided him with work. We provide him with the job. We provided him with the ability to get his driver's license, which he had never had at the age of 39. Let me think about that. Something small like that. We were able to give to him. He was so influential in those high risk individuals when we were hanging around him. We realize how influential he was and we grabbed him and said, would you like to be a part of what we're doing here at atx? He said, I never thought anybody would ask [11:29:30 AM] me to be a part of something that special to help people stop from going down the route I went. This man sold drugs his entire life and now he is a trusted messenger at atx peace and has brought in seven high risk individuals that would have been shooters or would have been shot in the last two months. Thank you for your time and I just ask that you will vote for this amendment. Thank you. Thank you. >> Sean Oliver, Myrtle Carter. Sherwin Patton. >> If your name has been called , please make your way to the front. Out of respect for those who are speaking after you. If you'll be here. That way we can operate and more efficiently for those folks that are following you, thanks for letting me interrupt you. Go ahead, sir. >> Good morning. My name is Sean Oliver and I'm here as a community coordinator for life and nu, representing the atx peace amendment from councilman Velez Vasquez, vela and councilwoman harper-madison [11:30:30 AM] myself being an individual who served over 27 years of incarceration after having committed an act of gun violence being afforded an opportunity to go into different communities around Austin on the east side and the south side to make a difference with individuals that I intimately understand. Since coming to Austin, I've seen the landscape. I've seen the music festivals, but I've also seen genuinely good people who want to make a difference concerning community violence. Every day we wake up as a team of atx peace, the thought process is what is the value of a life? There not only people being killed, but there are people being affected by watching people being killed. We have had opportunities to get ahead in some instances and when we do our job well, no one knows about it. Today is an opportunity for us to make a difference by not only [11:31:31 AM] supporting this amendment, but actually putting faces to people that you may never see. But zip codes that you represent. People will stop violent acts when provided the resources when they come into contact with men like Mr. Guzman, myself and other individuals that make up atx peace. But there's a necessity for resources. There's a necessity to put people from those communities in those communities to work, and the same individuals who have been formerly incarcerated can return to these communities to make a great difference. I thank you for your time, as I've been afforded by the great state of Texas, to appear before you to continue to make a difference. Any vote that you make concerning this amendment is a life saved. And what value does that have? Thank you. Thank you, sir. >> Myrtle Carter. Sherwin [11:32:31 AM] Patton. Richard Robinson. Good morning. >> My name is Myrtle Carter. I'm with life. And you and I also work with atcs peace. I speak today in the need of atx peace from the district and the schools and from the children in the communities where they see gun violence being used and then they to think that's the way that it should happen and that the guns are being placed in their hands because that's all they know. So I think this is an opportunity for us to see this amendment passed so that we're able to take the guns out of the hands of the students and allow them to know that there are other ways to solve violence besides guns. And they don't have to rob, kill, steal or kill each other. Most of all, that's what we're seeing most mostly now. And it's an opportunity for us to be able to be in our schools and encourage our students to understand that there's other things that they can be doing besides gun violence. Thank you. >> Thank you. Sherwin Patton, [11:33:33 AM] Richard Robinson, Selena Robinson. >> Well, good morning. First of all, I want to start off by saying that I have my brother and friend, pastor Alan Ramirez , standing with me. He's not signed up to speak, but we're standing together because both of us cares so much about this city and we care so much about the people who are disproportionately affected by violence in this city. And we're working together as a part of the atx peace. I work with life and new restorative justice, but we're partnering with jail to jobs, and it's because of Jose Vasquez, our so councilman vela and also Natasha harper-madison , who coauthored or co-sponsored this amendment for us to actually get more funding for violence prevention. And now I'm going to share why it's so important for us to do this. We are in schools throughout this city and in one school in [11:34:34 AM] particular that's in southeast Austin, we have had four guns removed from students and not forcibly, but because they disclosed to us that they had those guns and had intent to use them and that was because we had trusted messengers that are on those campuses that are everyday building relation ships in order to prevent violence from happening in the first place. Now if we don't take steps intentionally to prevent violence, then violence will happen and will happen in our communities and in our schools. Now there's a few things that I just wanted to list out real quickly that we would use this funding for one more trusted messengers in the streets and in our schools to ensure that we're able to have a larger footprint and prevent violence before it happens. The second thing is mental health supports for our students. We already have mental health therapists, but we want to provide more for our communities. And then the last thing that we want to do also is we want to provide training for [11:35:35 AM] people who want to be a part of this movement for change. We have people who have transitioned from a life of violence, who want to prevent violence, and that is what it's is all about, is how can we bring the heart of god into this conversation and prevent violence from happening in our community. Thank you all. Thank you. >> Richard Robinson, Selena Robertson and Richard Sanders. And please state your name of the podium as well. >> Good morning, mayor and council members. My name is Richard Robinson. I'm a passionate advocate for the arts, peace, community violence initiative, a groundbreaking movement taking root right here in Austin, Texas. This initiative isn't just a fleeting idea. It's a community driven force fueled by community members that have the desire to see change. Today, I invite you to envision the profound impact that CVI can have on our city, especially when you view it through the lenses of our vital city infrastructure, transportation. Considering for [11:36:35 AM] a moment the pulse of the thriving city. It's economic vibrancy and the tapestry of life it weaves in. And transportation systems are the very arteries that nourish the pulse, propelling growth, fostering connectivity and opening the doors to the world's opportunities from the seamless flow of public transportation to the steady rhythm of commercial transport. Every mode is the cornerstone or cornerstone of our city's infrastructure, ensuring that we are not limited by geographical boundaries. Now imagine Austin without a busting connection, without the seamless movements of people and goods that reach far beyond our grasp. It's a vision of isolation, a missed potential, a city constrained by its own limitations. Now let's bridge the vision with the purpose of atk's piece. Just as the city economics thrives when transportation thrives, so do our communities flourish. When violence reduces? Atk peace is the catalyst for change. A powerful vehicle steering us away from the path of discourse [11:37:37 AM] towards the future of unity and safety through the community. Violence intervention initiative. We are not just reducing violence. We are engineering in an environment where people and every individual can thrive, where their families can flourish without fear, and where every corner of our city becomes a canvas for growth. In essence, atk's piece is the infrastructure of hope, solidarity and progress is just not a program. It's a lifeline, one that paves the way for a brighter future. So we ask that you help join us to transform the journey together so that we can build a city where every step forward is a step towards prosperity and peace. Thank you. Thank you. >> Celina Robinson. Richard Sanders. Barry Jones. >> Hello, I'm Celina Robinson. I'm one of the tenants that atk's piece has helped out. I I [11:38:40 AM] think that if you help our movement, it'll help out. As far as in our youth. There's have been a lot of gun. They've saved us from a lot of gun violence as recently when we had the swat out, I think a week ago and they were hiding a fugitive. They came to our aid and helped us out. I think that there joining our community will be a great help. They've helped out, numerous of students that is in that community that had selling drugs and numerous some things that they've been doing there as far as and other people, there that, that had just moved out due to their help because of the gun violence that our community [11:39:42 AM] we need at peace. And I ask that you help them, help us, fund them so that they can help out more of that community as well. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Richard Sanders, Barry Jones , Michael Halliburton. >> Hello. Council members. My name is Barry Jones. I'm a volunteer leader with Texas harm reduction alliance, which is a project organized people living on our streets. I'm here to support a couple of amendments and a resolution. The amendment is by Ryan alter, number four and the resolution is by zo qadri. Item agenda item number 17. Both of these support permanent housing for the homeless. I'm also asking for support for an amendment by Ryan alter number three, which increases funds for housing case managers. So I became homeless [11:40:45 AM] almost nine years ago. In that time, I slept out virtually every night. I've been on the coordinated assessment list for more than six years. I've applied for multiple housing programs. They've been on several housing project lists. In spite of all this, I'm still homeless and have little prospect of housing in the near future. To give you some idea of what it means to be homeless, last night the temperature was 101 degrees after sundown in this kind of heat, many of my nights are spent lying awake in a pool of sweat trying to get some sleep so I can get up and do what I need to do the next morning, people die from this kind of heat. Everybody. Well knows people die from the kind of cold that we've been having recently in our winters. Hygiene is a constant struggle and I've had guns fired close to my camp several times this summer. I know the situation is insane for many of your homeless neighbors . Austin desperately needs more [11:41:45 AM] permanent supportive housing is also critically important issue of housing case managers. If you're not familiar with how the case housing case, if you're not familiar with how the housing process works, you need to have a case manager before you can even start applying the very lengthy process to obtain housing. In fact, most people find out very little about housing process before they get a case manager. If you ask them many Austin's homeless are currently waiting for case management. >> I'm sorry, sir, but all right . Thank you. >> Thank you. Council members Richard Sanders, Michael Halliburton. >> Vernon Harmon. >> Good day. Council my name is Michael Halliburton. I'm in district nine today. I want to [11:42:47 AM] speak about a solution. The solution for Houston. Austin, Texas. Homelessness issues. I'm here today to offer solutions for the unhoused problem of Austin, Texas, and our nation as a whole. What $32 million invested in homelessness and harm reduction can generate for the city of Houston? Safety security and a large return on investment in the unhoused population of Austin. My solution not only solve the issue of temporary housing for the homeless, but in addition will generate revenue for the city of Austin, creating jobs, delivering substantial equity, stake in a corporate solution for the unhoused, please visit Halliburton. Dash enterprises.com. What is Halliburton enterprises? It is a [11:43:47 AM] rent to invest. Well building strategy that creates that incorporates renting as an investment for our clients. We live to no risks to their monthly investment. This website envisions a clear path to the solution of homelessness, temporary housing and insecurities that the city of Austin faces. If this council city council would like further detail proposal laying out the step by step approach to mitigate these issues of homelessness and harm reduction, please don't hesitate to contact me. The earliest convenience. Let us work together to put the scourge of homelessness behind us. Thank you, mayor pro tem. >> Can we get somebody to adjust the mic situation? Thank you. Yeah our mic is a little sensitive. >> Is Richard Sanders here? Okay [11:44:52 AM] I'm going to move on. Vernon Jarman, Julia hatch, eight track ex. Please say your name at the podium. Yes ma'am. >> Hi. My name is Vernon Jarman . I'm one of the leaders in the hra organization. I would like to thank y'all for letting me speak today about these amendments that that will be voting on. Be voting on amendments six by city, by city council member Mr. Velazquez one time I was getting off the bus at saint David's hospital and me and the bus drivers started to talk about this woman laying on the high pavement. I told him since he was on a three minute break, I think this woman is dead. But don't remember which one of us call 901. But the one thing that got me was how long she been there and nobody noticed her. There and what this meant and what this amendment it would help with substantive issues HIV, AIDS and homelessness and the other [11:45:54 AM] amendment. Other amendment in the other amendment is amendment three by city council member Mr. Ryan alter this amendment will help with getting the need to assist in finding permanent housing for the from the warehouse that we're about to put people in to live and that the program that point to homelessness in the right direction. I would like to thank y'all I'd like to thank Kirk Mary Wilson for cleaning up saint John and building that new housing project for the homeless project out there. And thank you. I very much. Have a nice day. Thank you, sir. >> Julia hatch, a track. >> Eli Cortez. >> Good morning. My name is Julia hatch and I'm a head guard with city of Austin lifeguards. I'd like to implement leadership courses for head guards managers and supervisors for increased expertise. I like to have more protection of job security for [11:46:55 AM] lifeguards as it's uncomfortable as currently we are at will employees. I'd also like to get termination appeals processes as well. A majority of lifeguards are about to be or are in college and we would like to see if qualified lifeguards in need can get education assistance, especially with ACC large. Lastly, thank you. Council member villa for submitting the proposal for more full time lifeguards. I support this. Thank you, mayor and city council for approving full time lifeguards last year. Bonuses and raise living wage. So as to hire enough lifeguards to open all of city Austin pools to our community, especially during this heat wave. Thank you for your time. >> Eight track Eli Cortez. Janice bugout. >> Hello, my name is track. Excuse me. Hello. My name is [11:47:56 AM] eight track and I'm a member of the Texas harm reduction alliance leadership team. Almost three weeks ago now, I saved a man's life at republic square. Didn't know his name. Just another familiar face from the skate park. He fell out and I immediately took off to get something that I always have on me. But not that day. I didn't have any narcan. It took almost five minutes for a member of the downtown Austin alliance to get a dose. And right as I'm finishing administering that first dose, I see an old man running towards me with what I register later as a box of narcan. So I hit him again in the other nostril. And as I'm pulling back, I see APD coming up to take over ems over there unloading everything I ended up telling four different people in some kind of uniform around me that I administered two doses of narcan, all the while trying to slow down my heart rate because I knew this was not the time for an anxiety attack and I had to keep it together just a little [11:48:56 AM] while longer. As as soon as I heard ems say, okay, he's waking up now, I grabbed my things and I left. I went to a little spot off shoal creek, smoke the last of my weed and my cigarets and I cried. I cried for several reasons, most of which was the adrenaline dump. But the main reason was it was too close. Some buddy almost died and grabbed my tablet. I'm so sorry . I saw Jason almost two weeks later. He was in the hospital for three days. He begged to see social services, but because he went to Dell Seton on a drug overdose and all he had was map the only thing the hospital gave him was a list of cooling centers, which, for those of you who don't know, is just a list of rec centers and libraries that stay open just a little bit later, I spoke last time about how I became homeless, that the need for permanent supportive housing would be a great benefit for not just me, but hundreds of unhoused austinites who, for one reason or another, just need some stability in their lives [11:49:56 AM] because there's nothing stable about being on the streets that is why the amendment number four put forth by Ryan alter, amendment number six and item 17 put forth by zo quadri means so much. Thank you all for y'all's time. >> Eli Cortez, Janice bacow, Christopher Hamilton. If you're here, please come on down and don't forget to state your name at the podium. >> Good morning, council. This is Texas harm reduction alliance , and we have a letter that we're going to be delivering today. I thank you for that. >> It's a letter I. >> I hope it's not contagious. Well take the letter. >> Could you please state your name? I'm sorry. [11:50:57 AM] >> My name is Eli Cortez, and we are the members of the Texas harm reduction alliance. We are people experiencing homelessness , people impacted by the drug war and mass incarceration over these last few weeks, you've heard from our members, you've heard from our leaders about the importance and the need right now for money, for housing, money for harm reduction and money to end overdoses in Austin . With 600 households facing eviction in Austin, five over 5000 people experiencing homelessness and 417 overdose deaths last year. We know that it's absolutely critical that we take action now. We want to be here and say thank you to council members. Qadri alter Ryan alter Velasquez, Fuentes and harper-madison for listening to the things that we brought forward for putting forward amendments that I apologize that reflect the needs that we've been mentioning and bringing up these past couple of weeks. And we're here today to deliver a letter with signatures from our community members that attended our last town hall asking you all to please continue to [11:51:57 AM] support the amendments. They are detailed in that letter for you so that you know exactly what it is that we're asking for support for and just to really, really encourage you all to do that. And the second piece of that is we know that we need those amendments today. And there's two ways that y'all can take action immediately to find the funds available for that. We don't need to see another 32 million go to the police force that already has $444 million available to them. We don't need to add more money to a reserve fund that is for later rainy day. This is the rainy day. You can see right behind me how it's rainy day and why we need the things that we need immediately. So again, we want to thank you all for your collaboration and for listening to your community. And we want to encourage you all to continue to support that by continuing to support the amendments that are listed in that letter. So thank you all so much today. All right, Janice, book out, Christopher Hamilton, Steven Tamayo, if you're here, please come on down. >> And please state your name at the mic. [11:52:58 AM] >> Janice, book out, director of Earth day Austin and co-founder of community resilience trust. In my therapy sessions, I've learned that I'm not a warrior. I am a truth teller. I don't come here to fight, but I do come to hold up a mirror. So I want to start by thanking counsel for the work you've done to championing the community investment budget. We see it, and I'm here to encourage you to see it through what you do when you don't have to determines what you'll be when you can no longer help it. The truth transcends the author, and this truth applies here. It is much more humane and economically sustainable to nurture a child than it is to imprison. Then the diversity and cultural lifeblood of a community is lost through decisions made with short term policies and priorities. And community trust is much more expensive when you have to buy it rather than have it already. There are so many groups standing together here making sure you hear every point. And mine is to focus on parks. Another truth to tell is that city departments are basically [11:53:59 AM] not to speak until spoken to. Some can't even comment directly on the council q&a when the parks department was asked for input, it was not clear that park maintenance wasn't included in the budget. So please add 500,000 for park maintenance. If they had been asked, they would have said they would have underscored the missing pieces to their budget and how important part maintenance is. Now, I'm going to quote myself because I had to say it too fast last time. When you look at the community energy spent on the community investment budget, I hope you see the collective wisdom, knowledge and commitment to a city that works for everyone. We are a pain in your. This is true. We are also an extension of your capacity to serve with the pressures of climate change increasing, we need to invest in our resilience . The community investment budget does that. Thank you. Everything for everything that you're doing to support it. >> Christopher Hamilton. Steven [11:55:00 AM] Tamayo. Bethany Carson. >> Good morning. My name is Christopher Hamilton. >> I'm a resident of district ten and the chief executive officer of the nonprofit Texas health action. And I'm here to speak in favor of council member Velasquez amendment for increased sti testing and treatment. We operate the kind clinic, among other programs in Texas that provide health services. Coin clinic focuses on sexual health and a significant amount of testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, as well as other services like HIV prep. The largest number of patients we take care of reside in Austin and Travis county in July, we shared our community health report detailing activities of our walk in testing center. We provided over 11,000 sti testing visits last year, up 176% from the year prior to 20. 1 in 5 people tested reactive for an [11:56:00 AM] sti. And that's high. If you're wondering through our community health program, we are connecting with communities that have traditionally had difficulty accessing health care and that are disproportionately impacted by stis and HIV. We understand there are a lot of very important amendments that you have heard about today, and we ask the council to consider this amendment as part of our city's health, a core part of our city's health, and to continue to build an Austin that does not leave anyone behind. And strives to offer the best quality of life for all our residents. The demand for sti testing and treatment in Austin is what we are seeing across Texas and across our country. Compounds with the population growth of our city. Amid all this increase in demand is a decline in funding at federal and state levels. It is going to be Austin that has to step up [11:57:02 AM] and take care of austinites and ask you to consider this amendment. Thank you, Stephen Tamayo. >> Bethany Carson, Gina harmony . >> Good morning. My name is Stephen Tamayo. I am a native Austin and I live in district four. >> I'm also the director of community health for Texas health action. In our program kind clinic, I oversee kind clinics, walk in center where we offer free HIV sti testing and treatment. And last year we provided free testing and treatment to over 11,000 austinites, which is an increase in 176% from the last year. I've worked in HIV prevention for over a decade now, and I've never seen numbers like that from one single community based organization. And we probably anticipate exceeding that number again this year. There has been a significant rise in demand for testing as well as an increase in positivity rates at Ken clinic. 20% of our patients test positive for stis and most of these infections are in young, black and Latino lgbtq+ people, people from communities that continue to be [11:58:03 AM] disproportionately impacted. Stis are treatable. HIV is a manageable condition, yet there is still so much stigma and shame and just getting tested, let alone testing positive. And there is a lack of resources available. Most full panel sti testing costs upwards of at least $150, if not more. Coupled the financial burden with worsening symptoms inflicting pain on people's bodies and you have a recipe for disaster. We are the only place in Austin where patients can get tested and treated for stis for free the same day without an appointment. Austin needs to make an investment in community sti testing and treatment. There are currently no additional federal or state resources available to combat rising rates of infection. Its own local governments, like the city of Austin, to step in and fund these services. Please ensure that council member Velasquez is amendment to fund community HIV and sti testing and treatment is adopted into the budget. Thank you, Bethany Carson. >> Gina harmony shaman purse skin. Good afternoon. Council. >> My name is Bethany Carson [11:59:04 AM] with grassroots leadership and today I want to address the city manager's no. Zero pronouncement from the work session. Instead of $40 million to increase the reserve fund, we must acknowledge that there are people in crisis in Austin now, this is the rainy day for people who are being impacted by the dramatic increase in housing prices over the last several years, increasing the reserves. When you've heard these heartbreaking stories from your constituents and city staff today about residents present needs raises the question whose crises matter is it only those who can afford to invest in the ups and downs of the stock market? Or do the people struggling now also matter to this city? Additionally, we should not be rewarding an agency that has cost taxpayers $73 million through their illegal, violent conduct toward people who they're supposed to protect by increasing their budget by $34 million. I'm asking you to look into the core budget of APD and find places where your constituents have already suggested cuts through the reimagine public safety process so that at the very [12:00:07 PM] least, this budget is not increased. Together, these changes would free up over $70 million to fund amendments aligned with the community investment budget. In other words, see I dinero, we must fully fund these amendments, including the family stabilization fund, immigrant legal services, tenant stabilization and relocation assistance, and permanent supportive housing and case management. Thank you. All right , Gina harmony, Charmaine person , Garrett Neves. >> Hi. >> Council members, press media, city managers and all peoples impacted by the homeless epidemic. Harm reduction services and advocates to reduce the fallout from the opioid crisis now turn deadly was the introduction of fentanyl and even more deadly car fentanyl. My name is Gina Harmon. I'm a leader at the Texas harm reduction alliance. I'm also an ex-felon. I have seven tdc [12:01:09 PM] numbers. About seven years ago, I changed my life around because of the monies allocated by this city or something, and we changed and I want to advocate that I'm sorry I'm so nervous this is the first time I've ever talked. >> Okay? I have personal experience with homelessness, mass incarceration and was cured of hep C by the enable to obtain treatment by having map and insurance that allowed me to give the cure. Please support Kim Velasquez amendment number six and allocate the $604,000 for substance use continuum of care and harm reduction services. I personally was able to stop 83 overdoses in the last 12 months. That's 83 families that are still together. That's 83 lives that are intact and [12:02:12 PM] able to perhaps pull together. That's 83 funerals that we didn't have to pay for. That's 83 votes that you still have. That's 83 people I brought back from death. Thank you. Thank you. We have to have narcan. We have to have narcan. We have to have harm reduction. You don't understand what it's like, what it's like out there to have people screaming and yelling, somebody dying, somebody dying. Gigi. Mama. Gigi, please come help them. You the only one who knows how to give cpr. You have to educate people how to get proper cpr. >> You can't call 911. >> There's no time for that. Thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. >> May I? I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time and the bravery and the courage it took to step to that podium and speak for the first time. And you're not the only one. There's a lot of faces in this room that I've never seen [12:03:13 PM] before. And I'm really happy that the usual cast of characters are not taken up chambers today. I love that there are people who have never done this before who took the time and the opportunity and the courage it takes to step to that podium. Thank you. Thank you. >> Shaman person Alicia torres. Rylan Mack, Scott high city council and mayor. >> Good to be here today with you. >> My name is shaman person. I am a leader at the harm reduction alliance and I'm here to talk about the budget I have been housed in the past eight years on a voucher. It saved my life and allowed me more Independence and my Independence in charge of my life. And as a taxpayer supporting psa voucher programs which are under funded thing. We don't seem to ever have enough money. We may need more funding. Council member [12:04:14 PM] qadri number 17 is a good example. I believe that supportive housing services included, including the inner workings of pch, housing such as proper staff supplies and caseworkers, number six and qadri services funding and the let's see council member alter for the 1.5 million. I'll go to psa and these proposals to amendments by alter qadri are good start passing the amendments. Please pass these amendments and I stated my anger last week and I said this is a mess. You are leaders. You need to clean up this mess. But if you give us the chance, we can help you. Thank you. Thank you. >> Alicia torres, Rylan maxout. [12:05:15 PM] Giampaolo Connolly. >> Hello everyone. >> My name is Alicia torres. >> I just want to start with naming we're not robots before you were representatives, you were people probably came to a couple of meetings like this. We've heard a lot of things that today that have that we should not normalize. Hearing >> And I'm going to take up a whole minute just really honoring the bravery that a lot of people have brought up here about the harms that happen when we choose to prioritize and invest in things other than our community and show you the power of time and of your vote. [12:06:57 PM] That is a minute, a minute that can make a big minute, that can make a big difference in someone's life between life and death. >> Again, we're not robots. We should not be normalizing the hearing of people dying because of heat related issues, because they could not get the resources they need. We are not. I had a whole thing, but I will leave it with we are not in a deficit. We are not a port city. We do not believe so. Do not believe that lie. What we are is a city that is choosing to continue to jump on the hamster wheel and chronically not invest in solution that get a root cause at root causes of issues and center the well-being of all people in just a selected few. Continue. Show us what your show us with your vote today. Whose interests you represent, who you believe build things and has a place in the city. Vote in anything that represents and gets us closer to the community investment budget. Thank you, Rylan maxout Zhao hello, Connolly. >> Joe bland. Mayor Watson. [12:08:02 PM] >> The illustrious members of council. My name is Alan Culp. Why don't you step up to the microphone, sir? We certainly. There you go. >> I apologize. I found out about this meeting yesterday. >> If you're voting today, I'd like to speak for whatever, 27 years as of July, 21st, I've been traveling this great nation researching homelessness. >> Excuse me, sir. >> Plus states. >> No, ma'am. I won't be excused. Could you state your name? Alan Culp. >> Yes, mayor. He's not been registered voting on this. >> I know what I'm talking about. I traveled. I'm sorry if you're not registered. >> If you're not registered to speak. No, we. We really need to follow the rules when you have this many people. I appreciate. 30 plus. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you being here real quick. Yes thank you very much. >> January Richland, maxout, are you here? >> I'm sorry, sir. Thank you. [12:09:05 PM] You just need to register when you want to speak. >> Joe Powell, Connelly, Joe bland, and then Pete Inman. My third column with the general. >> All I. I know it's collective faults. What do you officer so we all so council members. Well my was. Systems are broken in this town. >> My name is Daryl Paulo Connolly. I now reside in district one. And first of all, I want to thank the council offices that worked hard on community investment budget priorities, and that really fought for them. I want to thank council member Ryan alter for championing our unhoused brothers and sisters, people experiencing homelessness in this community. And I want to thank the effort put into [12:10:06 PM] fighting for project based vouchers so that our investments can be successful. I want to thank council member qadri for fighting for service dollars for psa, which are major need and will be a growing system need in the future and those cannot be postponed or put off to a mid-year amendment. I want to thank council member harper-madison for fighting for new entry beds which will provide recovery and supportive services in east Austin. A desperate need in this community . I want to thank all the offices that championed crucial needs in the budget. The only gold star you should be trying to win is the gold star given to you by the community and by those who voted for you and elected you. That is the gold star that this council should be fighting for, and that is the gold star that some of y'all will win today. But council must take ownership and leadership in providing the solutions that the community has been fighting for . So saying central health ought to be paying for this and hud will pay for that and aid ought to be paying for this and the [12:11:06 PM] county should be doing more is to perpetuate a politics of buck passing. And when you perpetuate a politics of buck passing, all those other entities can do the same. What this community needs is not buck passing. What this community needs is leadership and the fundamental assignment before you today is to decide what the city of Austin is doing with its budget. That is what you are elected for, not to decide what central health is going to do or what the county is going to do or what hud ought to be doing. So don't miss the assignment that has been put before this council today. What will enable this community to survive a crisis is not a large mountain of reserves, but the long term investment that will make this community more resilient and prepared for crisis. Increasing reserves does not make this community more resilient. Thank you. Joe bland . >> Pete Inman, pastor Billy Mcclendon. Members of council, thank you for allowing me to come to speak. >> I'm here today to speak in [12:12:07 PM] favor of the 80 piece initiative . There's two entities involved jailed to jobs and life anew. I've been associated with served with supported both those entities for approximately a decade here in Austin. I've seen firsthand the work they do taking young kids out of the juvenile court system and giving them jobs, job training, character development, giving them a start. The same thing for life anew, being preemptive in our schools, talking to the teachers about the kids that may be at risk and getting involved with them and their parents and so these are great. The great entities that deserve your support and will do a great job for our city. Preempting crime. Thank you. >> Thank you, Pete Inman, pastor Billy Mclendon, Scott flack. [12:13:11 PM] >> And please say your name at the podium. >> This is Pete Inman. >> I grew up here. >> You know, for folks who don't come down here very much, I just want to say there are a lot of people that love and admire and respect y'all and pray for you all. And I think this is one thing we can all agree on in this room, and that is fully supporting at peace. We are, I think, as a community, very expectant of this success they are having and will have in the future. These are people in life anew, in jail to jobs that have rolled up their sleeves and done the work in the background off camera for many, many years. As brother bland said, they have been in this for decades. They know how to do it. It's hard work and they do it behind the scenes. And I think we need to honor them by investing in them . A few weeks ago, right here in this room, we talked about the different dimensions of public safety and it seems like there's [12:14:11 PM] not a better one than this. As an example of that. So, again, please fully fund this massively important cbi movement. And I'm kind of tempted to turn over the rest of the time to that moment of peace and just mimic that sister that turned over the mic because it felt pretty good. God bless you all. Thank you, pastor Billy Scott flack, Thomas downing. >> Good afternoon. My name is Billy Mclendon and I am the senior pastor of the saint James Baptist church here in the city. For now, 30 years. And I'm also a chaplain at APD for now, ten years. And I stand in collaboration with other pastors. I have leaders who are supporting the 86 of a CVI initiative to help save our people, the gospel of Jesus Christ. John 316 for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever [12:15:11 PM] believeth in him should not perish. But have everlasting life and that saint James, we have an initiative called god is in love with you no matter what you have done or what you are doing, god died for the least and the best. And so this program will help our people, people of color and all people to stay out of jail to prevent violence. I've been preaching now 51 years. I'm a man of color . I just turned 72 years old. And I understand the dynamics of what the gospel of liberation will do. But the bible says faith without works is dead. And so we need financing to help these programs. And I know you will do the best, Austin, if not the greatest city, if one of the greatest cities in the world, and the council. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. I councilperson miss Madison and I know you will do the right thing and help in these initiatives to better help Austin be and [12:16:12 PM] continue to be the best city in the world. Thank you for your time and you do a great job and we are praying for you. The community of faith is praying for our city that god will intervene and get the glory. And again, thank you for your time and I hope you have a blessed day. Thank you. >> Thank you, pastor Scott slack , Thomas downing, Ebony Hardaway . >> My name is Tom downing. I'm co-chair of the racial justice task force of university united methodist church and a resident of district five jewish scripture commands us to give open handedly to those in need. Christian scripture proclaims that whatever we do for the poorest among us shows what we truly feel for the god we claim to worship. Muslim scripture warns us not to claim to be religious while we deny our neighbors the necessities of life. I could quote similar [12:17:13 PM] teachings from all the world's religions and from compassionate nonbelievers as well. The 15 amendments to the city budget proposed by members of this council make a good start at caring for the most decent among us. They provide aid for school children and parents and underprivileged neighborhood for families in danger of eviction for people who've lost their homes and for people who are ill or physically or mentally. But there's more to be done. And three important protections for communities still remain without adequate funding. Severe weather and community crisis response programs beyond what communities groups can provide resilience hubs and disadvantage neighborhoods to provide safety and security for those affected by such crises and workforce development programs. To support people of color and persons with criminal history so they can find employment which makes use of their talents and benefits us all. What we need more than a cutback to basics. A bigger police budget or an overgrown reserve fund is a budget that [12:18:15 PM] shows that we are the compassionate and caring people we are called to be. Thank you. Scott flack. >> Ebony Hardaway, Michael Hardaway. >> Scott flack just had to leave out a few moments ago, but he did a recording and we can do it. >> We can't do it. That way. >> All right. Thank you. Thank you. Ebony Hardaway, Michael Hardaway Sr, Sharon vein. How y'all doing? >> Michael Hargis by the way, thank you, everybody, for the time to present today in front of you all. >> I'm just speaking on behalf of supporting atcs, peace, life of new restored of justice and jail. The jobs I have actually had the privilege of actually working closely with these organizations and supporting them. And I truly believe with the growth that we're seeing here in Austin, I believe programs like this and resources [12:19:16 PM] can bring more greater things to Austin. I know we're known for being number one in this and that it would be amazing to know that we're also one of the safest cities here in America. So I truly hope that we all can continue to support atcs because I I'm actually a resident of district one. I'm from Austin, born and raised. I've been back three years and I, like I said, I truly believe with as you heard from everyone today, the way that the economy is changing and with inflation, we will probably continue to see a rise in violence. But if we come together and, you know, have more unity, as they say, I heard that saying it takes a village. The more we come together as a village, the more we can prevent the violence that we see here in our community. But thank you. And I appreciate your time. >> Thank you, sir. >> Ebony Hardaway, are you here ? Sharon Bain, Susanna Carranza . [12:20:21 PM] Good morning. >> My name is Sharon van and I'm a co-founder of atx kind, a grassroots grassroots advocacy group originally formed to organize the 2021 rally for kindness at the capitol in response to a growing spike in hate incidents in Austin. >> Thank you to those council members who approved initial funding last year for the city's we all belong campaign, which launched July 21st and continue with the last weekend as party at the people's house event. I am here today to ask you to support continued funding for this initiative through council member Allison alter's budget amendment, which would preserve existing funding for the efforts . >> Simply put, the work has just begun. >> There is so much more to do. We need more refinements to the city's reporting portal and continued monitoring via the city's new hate crimes dashboard and continued perception surveys of all communities around public [12:21:22 PM] safety. Additional outreach through district events as well as far better engagement of all marginalized populations here in Austin in this work and better training around far right groups use of social media to spread their messages of hate and recruit new members. We've just had a very public launch and commitment from the city and hate is not going away. >> Here in Austin, just recently we've seen swastika graffiti at a historic black school in montpelier ahead of the neighborhood's juneteenth celebration. >> Vandalism at Austin's naacp offices and most recently, another anti-semitic firing event in a north Austin neighborhood. I implore you to preserve this funding and keep this important work going to fight these kinds of incidents and support. Austinites from all marginalized communities. Please follow up the pledges of we all belong with action. Thank you. >> Susanna Carranza, Chaz Moore, [12:22:23 PM] Michael ward. If I've called your name, please come down and state your name at the podium. >> Hi, my name is Susanna Carranza. I live in district nine. I actually have lived in district. Nine since 2005 and been calling Austin my home ever since. >> I've seen the explosion of growth. >> The city has experienced and you know, with and with it the growing pains. >> I oppose this budget item number 18 because it really fails to address the community needs. >> I support the amendments that my council member and many others have put that try to bridge the gap with the projects proposed in the community investment budget. I urge you to do more. You really have an [12:23:24 PM] opportunity to make all a more equitable city by investing in things that help the people that need most in the city. Two things that we can do to find more money is really do not increase the police budget and also do not increase the resource reserve allocation. >> So we have crisis. >> Now let's use it now. >> And there are many programs, many more programs proposed in the community invested investment, budget, budget, including things that prevent homelessness, things that help people in climate and other crisis situations. That and we know we're going to see climate emergencies more often because that's what we're seeing everywhere in the country. >> So we're ready to really need to put a lot of money there. >> And right now, a lot of it is left to community organizations . I also applaud the work of [12:24:26 PM] reentry of citizen citizens in the society. And Austin would do well if could fund that fully. Again, you have an opportunity. You have an obligation to really help the people that need the most. Thank you. Cha more Michael ward, Brian register if I've called your name, can you please come down to the front? >> Let's try one more time. Chaz more. Michael ward Brian register. Rebecca Aguilar. Kim Patton. David Johnson. I'm going to keep going until I see someone stand up. Maria Rosa. Anthony Carrillo. Ma'am, are you [12:25:27 PM] coming down to speak? All right. Please state your name at the podium. >> Good afternoon. My name is Rebecca Aguilar and I am one of the trusted employees with life. I knew that works inside of the school district. I am currently in one of the east side high schools and we have experienced a lot of gun violence. We have already had four removals last school year. We're already into the second school year. The school year, second day, and we already had one removal of a weapon yesterday. So we collaborate and we partnership a lot with atx. We work collaborative live to support not only inside of the schools, but also outside in our communities to keep our schools from the school to prison pipeline to the pipeline of success. So we're just asking that you continue to fund us and to make a difference in our community, to stop the violence and keep our children from the jails. Thank you. [12:26:33 PM] >> Good afternoon. My name is Kim Padden. I'm with life new and at peace, and I come to speak as well in agreement with all the others who spoke on on atx peace. My journey started inside of the Travis county jail, working with men who were violent men, gun violence, murder, assaults. And so I so wholly agree with funding more for atx because when I was in that jail I saw the 17 year Olds to 24 year Olds who had not completed high school but had these violent charges on their background. And that's just not where they should be. And so in order to stop this violence, we had to sit down and have conversation. And so with me working in there by myself, if I had to bring in volunteers to come in and help me with helping these individual understand that violence is not the way. And so now that I'm outside of the jail , started the nonprofit life in new is so important that we have [12:27:33 PM] these incredible messengers. But in order to have more incredible messengers, we have to have the funding. And so I understand the funding is not always easy to come by. But in order to stop this violence, we do have to build more relationships, but we have to have more people on the ground doing the work. And so that's why at peace is here. We're on the ground on the work and I just thank you all for even thinking about funding us even more. Have a great afternoon. I'm going to repeat some of the names I called earlier. >> Chaz Moore, Michael ward, Brian register. And please just state your name before you start speaking. I'm Chaz Moore, Austin justice coalition. >> I was going to do some talking points like everybody does when it comes to these things. You all are going to do the thing where you just look at me and act like you can't have human emotion because that's the game we play at city council. But, you know, I don't I don't I just I just don't care at this [12:28:35 PM] point. I think it's real simple. There is a lot of things happening in the city. And one of the one of not the only way, but one of the only ways that we can help alleviate some of this stuff is by spending money. So right now in a time where we know we need housing or we know we have people that are dying because of drug overdoses and we can save lives with narcan, you know, workforce development, all these things. This is not the time to save for a rainy day because just like somebody said earlier, that rainy day is today. Also, I've been hearing rumors that you all are trying to rush people out of here and vote on this budget today. I pray to Beyonce that that's not true. I hope you all take the time needed to make sound judgment and take all the time you possibly have, which I believe is another three days to make sure you have the most morally, ethically sound budget to make sure that everybody are as many people in the city. At [12:29:36 PM] least 84% of people in the city have the things they need. And then I'll just leave on this note because I think it's kind of important and I'm a little bit of a history nerd. In five years will be the centennial of the 1928 master plan. Most of you all know what that is. That's when the city or folks that occupied seats similar to yours made a deal that this was the site for blacks and Latinos and everything else was for the powers that be. A lot of the 1928 master plan happened because of backroom deals and a bunch of shady going on and I think I really hope we can kind of avoid some of that by not doing the same and making the same mistakes back then. Today right. So I hope you all listen to the people that are outside working very hard to make sure we have a sound and equitable and just budget to make sure we don't keep making the same mistakes as we've been doing for the past hundred years. >> Thank you, sir. Michael ward, Brian register, David Johnson. [12:30:40 PM] >> I, I have some documents I'd like to give to council. >> And you doesn't want to give a speech. >> Could you please state your name as well? >> Yes, my name is Michael ward Jr. I am the president and CEO of Austin urban technology movement. I predominantly focus on workforce development, technology, education and digital equity. And I sit on several different boards that do just that right now. What the clerk is passing out is the Austin chamber of commerce jobs report that was just released for July. So July was released. Looking back at the previous years, and there's two main things I wanted to highlight for you all. The first thing I want to say is thank you for the work I've put on the amendments to the city budget. I see the work focused around health care, around housing, around homelessness, and really making sure that we're moving the needle forward. However a lot of [12:31:41 PM] those services I see in the amendments are short term fixes . So I want to remind mayor Watson a conversation you and I had. >> I want to say last year before you were in office about workforce development and the importance of workforce development. >> So now I want to share with all the council members some stats to kind of back that up. So look, in the Austin chamber of commerce for the leading industries, I circled two sections for you. One is information, the other one is professional businesses and services. I wanted to show you that those are two largest sectors that had a percent increase across all other sectors. When you're looking at information, you see an increase in percent change in Austin for 3. When you look at Texas, it's close to 6% between 6 and 7. When you're looking at professional services, they mirrored that because when we talk about information today, it's a very narrow scope in the eyes of the government. They think of information as it that's not what the private sector does. Private sector looks at it as just a subcomponent of technology, which is why you see that [12:32:42 PM] increase in professional services is skyrocketing. Any other industries? Because startups here in Austin, the growing tech industry, they're in professional and business services. When you look at the chart below, it shows you the monthly job growth by sector. It shows you private goods producing private service providing and government. If you look from July of last year to July of this year, the biggest change across every single month except for two has been private service. So I urge you to please invest in workforce development, because after all this with the budget will be back here next year asking to workforce development to fund those people. Thank you. Thank you, sir. >> Brian register, are you here ? David Johnson Maria Reza Anthony Carrillo. Angela Valenzuela. Welcome. [12:33:46 PM] >> How are you doing? >> Thank you for the opportunity to speak about my experience opening a daycare center here in Austin. My name is Anthony Carrillo. I'm here to speak on behalf of the budget adoption amendment that will allocate funding towards helping with city fees. Associate with opening a center here. >> The idea of opening our own little school sparked in 2017 by the very tough time that my wife and I had finding a child care center for our daughter. >> We saw a need for quality child care here in Austin, and we were very surprised that there were not more options. In a thriving city like ours, the problem of finding childcare in Austin has not just perpetuated since we had the idea it's actually gotten harder for most parents to find after seeing excuse me, after seeing many daycare centers in our area that used to be residences, we decided to become part of the solution and bought a residential property. In 2019, our intentions were to create the best quality childcare that we could provide for our own children and other and other neighborhood families. Upon embarking on this journey, we were blindsided by two unknown [12:34:46 PM] barriers to entry that took us by complete surprise. The first was the city regulations that made it extremely hard to start a daycare center. I have a background in multi-location retail and it was almost impossible for me to navigate moving forward without the help of permitting consultants and other other council. If someone from my background in business had a hard time, a career teacher who dreamed of opening their own center has a totally vertical wall to climb. Thankfully, this center took a huge this council took a huge step towards addressing the first barrier by making that process so much easier. Earlier this year, the resolution passed by council in February was so needed and it will make it much easier for the career teacher who dreams of building their own small business in Austin. The second barrier to entry entry that I alluded to are the city fees that make it cost prohibitive to open a small center. The economics only makes sense if you're a big company with lots of students in a commercial space, a quick example of costs we saw for an existing structure with no proposed construction to anywhere. From 12 to $22,000 in [12:35:50 PM] city fees alone for a conditional use permit or rezone that includes commercial building permit, city inspections. Et cetera. If you're if you don't work at the city zoning commission every single day, you're going to have to pay lobbyists or a lawyer or a or a consultant to help you with permitting. It's really expensive. Encourage the city to vote for that. Thank you. >> Thank you, Angela Valenzuela, Chris Harris, Savannah Lee. >> Yes. Thank you for this opportunity to talk in support of the budget amendment amendment for academic means. Eagle innovate and it is a Saturday academy and a summer program that is now entering its 10th year. >> We thank in particular council member Fuentes and co-sponsors vela and qadri for their endorsement of this amendment. >> We're also thankful to council members Fuentes, Velasquez and qadri for attending our aztec kids code camp and their staff as well, attending the last of 3 or 3 [12:36:51 PM] weeks summer camp graduations that we had this summer. >> Many thanks as well from council members. >> Harper Madison and Ed Adler for their encouraging words of support and mayor Watson as well. I've enjoyed our conversations about the importance of coding and how it can lead to careers in technology. Just abundant. Thanks to city council for working with us were a formal three way legal contract, a partnership with the Austin independent school district with the Mexican American cultural center. So the city of Austin parks and recreation department , and then our community based organization that is called grupo, we were formed in 2013 to address issues of biliteracy problems that we had in our schools, in particular in east Austin. And so that's how we started and we are also addressing the issue, the policy issue of teacher retention in aid in 2014. We are since then have been physically located and [12:37:52 PM] identified with the Mac, although right now during the restoration we're at Sanchez elementary, katya Guzman is our program director and Maria does our program coordinator. This is a groundbreaking, groundbreaking program that serves a low income, largely immigrant youth in Austin with bilingual certified aid teachers. The benefits to the city are cultivate in a diverse and talented workforce. That's creative technologically savvy and culturally aware. We're also about strengthening community bonds, bringing together families, students, educators and community members, and solidifying Austin's reputation as the hub for innovation and cutting edge educational initiatives. Thank you so much, Chris Harris. >> Savannah Lee, Keisha Guzman. >> Hi everyone. Chris Harris district nine with Austin. Cisco and equity action. Thanks to the efforts of this community and [12:38:52 PM] council, we now have a budget proposal that includes community violence, intervention, harm reduction services, family stabilization, grant funding, carver library and museum funding expanded after school programing, language access, immigrant legal services expanded HIV and sti testing and treatment. Residential treatment services. Spay and neuter funding, shade structures maintain victim services, counselors and mental health. Jail diversion and thanks to the efforts of this community and council, we now have a budget that does not include sidelining and disempowering the offices of equity, civil rights, sustainability and resilience. These are undoubtedly huge accomplished efforts that will help people in this community and should be celebrated at. And while we continue to have a budget that threatens transparency by moving hr and Pio positions into APD, and that adds data positions into our police department without the trust of this community, we must call this budget misguide while we continue to have a budget [12:39:55 PM] that does not adequately fund permanent supportive housing. Both vouchers and wraparound services, rental assistance and tenant stabilization in park maintenance and restoration, inclement weather response ebooks, workforce development, parent support, special resilience hubs, estate and probate planning for seniors, and many other priorities. We cannot call this budget a success. And while we have a city budget that fails to fund all of these immense needs in our community, while putting upwards of $70 million into reserves and police pay and benefits where it can never again be used for resident services ever again. We must call this budget unjust, and I urge you to push back on increasing the reserve fund pending a real public conversation about the merits of an increase. I urge you to offset any required raises to the police budget to keep it as flat as possible. And I urge you to lean in to your both your immense power and responsibility you hold as elected officials [12:40:55 PM] charged with distributing our public dollars to know that you have the power to save lives, maintain and restore dignity and create a safer and more just city for all. Thank you, Savannah Lee, Keisha Guzman and please state your name. >> Hello. Okay hi. My name is katya Guzman, and Dr. Valenzuela just introduced me. I am the program director of academic quality. Today I'm here to voice my support for the budget amendment presented by council member Fuentes to expand funding for academic quality. I want to expand my gratitude for the opportunity to speak with you about gaussian aztec code this summer, and also to say thank you to council members. Velasquez Fuentes and qadri for attending our graduations and the remaining council members for their active engagement with us during town hall meetings as city code. So serves as an independent indigenous stem program catering to second to eighth grade students attending [12:41:56 PM] Austin ISD schools. Students are acquiring coding skills, designing their own video games, exploring pathways in tech, all while immersing themselves in indigenous traditions and cultural history. From the pilot funding of $215,000 we received last summer, 170,000 was directed towards the summer initiative. This funding allowed us to engage 150 students, primarily coming from an indigenous immigrant, latinx, black and emergent bilingual backgrounds. We were able to buy computers, increase staff from 4 to 6 teachers, provide five distinct field trips, cover food and class materials and host three graduations. According to survey results from the summer, 74% of students stated that this was their first summer coding camp and 91 expressed their interest in continuing the program. Lastly, Austin ISD used to fully fund academia from 2013 to 2019. However, due to gentrification, school districts get a reduction in funds when enrollment rates drop due to parents. No longer enrolling their students in public schools [12:42:56 PM] . Austin ISD interim superintenden matthias. I wholeheartedly support academic equity and if they had the funds, they would fund our program. So I ask that you vote in favor for the investment of communities that are actively empowering children and educators in Austin. An additional funding will help us reimburse the commitment and relationships that we have formed with our community. We appreciate your support and thank you for your time. >> Savannah Lee, are you here? Okay the next few speakers are speaking on multiple items. Zenobia Joseph, eight, 17 and 21 follow, followed by Scott Cobb for eight and 18. If your name's been called, please come on down. Ben Suda be 18, 19, 20. And if you just please state your name and the microphone. >> Good afternoon. My name is Ben sidibé. >> Thank you, mayor. Mayor pro [12:43:57 PM] tem. Council members. I'm the I'm the president of afscme. >> 1624. That's the union that represents the workers at city of Austin and Travis county. >> And I wanted to thank the sponsors and co sponsors of those items. >> 18, 19 and 20. >> Just briefly, you know, 18 providing a third personal holiday to city workers. As a county employee, I get three personal holidays this is a good thing. It is a way to stay competitive with the other major employers in our area. For 19, you know, eliminating, waiting periods for people to be able to use their accrued vacation. >> One of the ways government pays their public servants is, yes, through salaries, but also through vacation time and benefits. The city would never dream of paying someone and then telling them, well, you can't spend your money yet. >> Why do we do it with with vacation and accrued time? And for 20? This is the one that I [12:44:57 PM] really excites me looking for ways to find better ways to support our workers who have who have child care needs, finding that that information that helps make us have well informed decisions when it comes to meeting that very critical need that as we know who it impacts in our work in our society. So yes, please, definitely look into that study for increased childcare stipends, looking for where there is a need for childcare amongst your workforce. Thank you for your time, Zenobia Joseph Scott Cobb for items eight and 18 on deck will be Sam kirsch. >> Hello, my name is Scott Cobb and I want to thank councilman Taylor for the proposal to add seven more additional full time lifeguards. It made a real difference in opening all the pools this year. Next year, we're going to open two [12:45:57 PM] additional new pools, and we're going to need even more lifeguards. So seven more full time will help. We also need bonuses, training, bonuses that we had this year. And also want to talk about an issue that concerns a lot of our lifeguards . This is a photo of the staff toilet at Barton springs. You see this sign right here? That is the extent of the bilingual life guard program at Barton springs. It is a sign that has some Spanish to English phrases that are useful at the pools. >> Temporary lifeguards do not get bilingual pay, although every day we interact with thousands of people, 10,000 people at Barton springs every day. >> I have rescued someone I could not communicate with effectively and I had to get a coworker to come over and do it. That coworker should get be eligible for the bilingual stipend pay. If you have 100 lifeguard cards next summer, it would cost you $41,583 to fund [12:47:00 PM] bilingual stipend pay. They could teach bilingual lessons. Kid shows little ten little children in their own language how to swim. If you have more lifeguards, you advertise for bilingual lifeguards, you will help the children at the pools who later grow up to be lifeguards. And they will learn how to swim and save their lives . We need bilingual pay. There's an amendment for holiday pay, an extra holiday for regular employees. That's great. We don't get any holidays. I don't know why. I guess we don't count. I'm a veteran. Veterans day is a holiday. Juneteenth is a holiday. I think we should look into that. About the bilingual pay. If you don't put it into the budget right now, I suggest you do what you do with dental insurance. Last year you couldn't have the funds you directed the city manager to find the funds. Thank you very much. Thank you. [12:48:02 PM] >> Sam kirsch, speaking for $14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21. >> My name is Sam kirsch. I'm a resident of district five. I meant to sign up on item eight. I do support all those items. When interim city manager Garza with CEO of ascension, the austerity he imposed on workers there led to conditions so horrific that union that nurses saw no other choice but to unionize, to fight for their own basic dignity. The city of Austin is not another business for Jesus Garza to destroy, nor is it a slush fund to help out his real estate buddies with a $7 million down payment on an office building with poor transit access. Well, he's trying to unnecessarily force city workers into office building office buildings. Furthermore for increasing the reserves from 14 to 17% in one year is a blatant attempt to withhold our taxpayer money from spending the community desperately needs every single percentage point is $13 million. [12:49:04 PM] That cannot be spent on fully funding real public safety amendments. Austin has the largest reserves in Texas, and the city will continue to grow. The ongoing zoning reforms will bring in more revenue, keeping the reserves at 14% will not harm the city's credit rating. There's no excuse, absolutely no excuse, no valid reason to increase the general reserves. Thank you very much. Zenobia Joseph, are you here? >> Okay. The next few speakers are speaking on item 21. Yasmin Smith, Luke curry, Peter cartwright. If you're here, can you please come on down? Let me try those one more time. Yasmin Smith. Luke curry, Peter cartwright. And if you could just state your name at the podium. Yeah, go ahead, sir. >> Please come forward and just [12:50:04 PM] state your name for us. >> Yes, sir. >> How y'all doing today? My name is Luke curry. >> I spoke with some of y'all before I seen some of y'all faces. >> I'm with the Austin urban league. I'm a U.S. See member, unhoused community council. I go out every day. I'm boots on grounds. I go out in the woods. I go out in the streets. >> I go out in the parks. I go out and we deliver water for dehydration attacks. We doing that, we pass out so much water per day. But I want to talk about the cold winter resilient that we had when we had the cold winter shelters. We did good last year for that. During the winter, I see more with the transportation part of trying to get everybody to the centers, to the rec centers. I see more that we needed more blankets, more food, more we needed more in general. And speaking, I'm on hands with everything I talk about and I have lived experience. So what I'm saying is that we did need more help. [12:51:04 PM] We need more bodies, we needed more funding because because of the commitment to Austin, you know, I'm a true house tonight. I'm born and raised here and I see a difference in this city is growing. And most of the time we want them. Why the homeless just keeps coming and keeps coming at the rehouse so many people over here and how so many people over here. But it's just Austin, you know, Austin is like that. It brings in tourists. It brings in people being a true house. Tonight, I know this. I have experience. I go out in the fields every day and I do the work. But most of all, I do know that during the cold winter shelter, we did. We did real good. But I see that we could have used a little bit more help. Really. We really had the transportation we're working with the city that you know, the roads were slippery. It was ice on the roads. So more help, more bodies, more fun than would have been helpful in that in that area. We could have done a lot more, you know, and with the [12:52:06 PM] water right now and in the heat, during the heat, we go out every day and pass our water all over Austin. You know, every day. And I mean, it's not and that makes me feel good. But thanks for letting me share. >> Thank you. Mr. Curry. Yes >> Jasmine Smith, Peter cartwright, Paul king. And that's fourth generation austinite, right? >> Luke fourth generation austinite who's out here doing y'all's job right, making sure your constituents have what they need. >> Again. And I appreciate y'all looking at me this time. >> Jasmine Smith, vice president of justice and advocacy Austin area urban league, standing in collaboration and coalition with the equity action pack. And you're going to hear tons of things today about where we should be spending our money from our colleagues. But as Luke just mentioned, and where we have been cemented for the past couple of months and the last couple of years since February, I'm going to pull over again on inclement weather response. Okay [12:53:07 PM] you have people dying on your streets when it is too cold and too hot and it is us as the community groups that are left to deal with that devastation. All we're asking for is for you to fund the health and safety of your constituents. >> Okay. Now I want to acknowledge the evolutions in the base budget. >> Okay? I want to make sure we give credit where credit is due, but it still falls short. All right. You guys sitting up here playing with this budget like you're playing house when some of us don't have houses, it is your constituents dying on the street. Is your constituents suffering from heat stroke? Is your constituents pleading and begging and sobbing? >> When we arrive for them with water, it is your responsibility . >> Take it seriously. Don't increase or retreat. The proposal for the increase to reserves and instead I know this might be controversial. Instead of planning for a crisis for [12:54:08 PM] those whom you believe are worthy, I would ask you to focus on the crisis of today. Instead of increasing the reserves. I know this is controversial. Why don't you use our money on our people, your constituents, and their health and safety so they aren't dying in dusty tents by themselves? Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Peter cartwright. Paul king, Marsha collard. >> Good afternoon. >> I'm Paul king, a citizen of district three and a voice for the unhoused community council at the Austin area urban league, Texas. >> Weather is known for its extremes and unpredictable city, making a dire existence even more dire. >> I've worked in the cold weather shelters and warming stations and been an integral part of aol's effort to donate over 2000 gallons of water this summer to the unhoused [12:55:09 PM] population. >> Sadly, it's not enough. As it's now stands, we are slapping a band-aid on a bullet wound and reassuring ourselves that we have solved the problem. It's time to stop pretending. Out of sight, out of mind does not work when the reality is that there are hundreds of unhoused human beings in our city and that you could even and more than you can even fathom, pushed right up to the edge of that cliff. At this very moment, just one bad week away from the same predicament. I was one of them priced out of my apartment after my rent more than doubled with no warning and my job ceased to exist during the pandemic. $7.1 million can make a difference in many of the lives of the unhoused. By easing the burdens and the extremes of Texas weather, awareness, compassion and community is the solution. We want shelters for the freezing cold and desolate nights. More places to stay out of the sweltering heat with access to clean water. Bus tickets for the unhoused from being stranded far from help and a way to track who's getting the help, a warm meal, a safe place to stay and mental health [12:56:10 PM] support. Support are all an integral part of what could be offered. Austin used to be a city where we dug deep to help one another. It's time to bring that back or we risk for ever losing the soul of what this city once was. Human beings deserve better than being swept under the rug, no matter their socio socioeconomic standing or whatever else is involved. They are still people in need. Appreciate your time. Peter cartwright. >> Marsha collard. Are either of you here? Okay, then on item 20, I have Harvey franks. Harvey franks? Are you here? Yes, I am. Oh, perfect. >> Good evening. Honorable council members. It's a pleasure to be here today. My name is Harvey franks. I'm a master gardener and I'm speaking as a steward of this plant. And I'm [12:57:11 PM] speaking as an original citizen of Austin. And the things that I'm really speaking on today is in support of our community budget initiative, in particular . I'm very concerned about affordable housing and Austin. It is something that affects people of all socio economic backgrounds, all races. It is very important to have affordable housing and particular to even city of Austin workers that may not even be able to afford to live within their city and be able to do their jobs. Another thing that I'm advocating for is full time positions for our community garden coordination, because teaching about horticulture and saving the environment and helping people to supplement their food, food and their income by being able to grow food at home is very important to me. I'm also an advocate for the carver museum carver library [12:58:12 PM] , but in particular the carver museum. It is such a benefit to all members of the community providing services, education, open gardening classes, all different types of creative classes for our community. And I just want to thank each and one of you council members. We support you. We all are here because we want a better Austin and I want to employ and say I appreciate you all and everything you do and just help us all to be a better citizen for Austin. We all want Austin to be somewhere that people can be proud of. And if we can help people have better services, we'll have a better Austin for us all. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you, mayor. >> That concludes all the speakers for this agenda. >> Thank you very much. We've now heard from all the speakers that have signed up either for the public hearings or public comment on other agenda items. And I want to thank everybody on behalf of the council for the level of participation that we enjoyed today with unless [12:59:14 PM] there's objection, we will close the public hearings on item one, two, three, four, five and six. Without objection, the public hearings are closed on items one through six members. That will take us to item number three will take up item number three to approve an ordinance adopting the update to the city of Austin water and wastewater impact fee land use assumptions and capital improvement plan. We already conducted as we just completed the conducting of the public hearing on this item. Is there a motion to adopt the city of Austin water and wastewater impact fee, land use assumptions and capital improvement plan? The mayor pro tem moves adoption. Is there a second? It's seconded by council member Natasha council member harper-madison. Is there any objection? Is there any discussion on the item, any [1:00:16 PM] objection to the item without objection. Item number three is adopted with council member Kelly being shown voting no. Item number. Seven members. As I pointed out earlier in the day, item number seven includes the action for items to two, four, five and six. We just closed the public hearings on items two, four, five and six. Item number seven is an ordinance authorizing fees, fines and other charges to be set or charged by the city for fiscal. Year 2023 to 2024. Is there a council member pool moves adoption of the ordinance for fees, fines and other charges. It is seconded by the mayor pro tem. Is there any discussion on item number seven? Council member Allison alter I would like to be seen as voting no on [1:01:18 PM] the proposed rate and fee changes for Austin energy. All right. This is a roll call vote. This is item number seven requires a roll call vote. So you'll be shown voting no in that regard. Okay thank you. >> And I'm voting no on the Austin energy. >> I got it. I got it. What we'll do is by the was I just indicated this is a roll we are required by Texas law to have a roll call vote on this item. So so, madam clerk, I'd ask you to call the roll. >> Mayor Watson. >> I, mayor pro tem Ellis yes. >> Council member harper-madison I council member. Fuentes. I council member. Velasquez I council member. >> Vela I council member. >> Ryan Ryan alter I council member. >> Kelly nay council member pool [1:02:19 PM] yes. >> Council member qadri I council member Allison alter. >> I would like to be no on the Austin energy part. >> Yes, on the rest. >> For the record. Council member Allison alter is being shown voting. I on items. To two, five and six and voting no as it applies to item number. Four there being nine eyes in favor, one in opposition and one in opposition to item number four. Item number seven is adopted. Members that will take us to item number eight, which is the budget and before we get [1:03:19 PM] into the consideration of the budget, I thought I'd take just a second for us to review last week's meeting, including the framework that was created to help us get to this spot today. First of all, I want to say thanks to the council, thanks to the city manager and our finance staff, actually, thanks to all of our staff, this is actually how the process is supposed to work, where the in in the form of government that we have, where the manager lays out a proposed budget and then the budget is discussed by the council. We've had a transparent process where we laid out potential amendments, where we could have a discussion about them and then there's been discussion about is there a way to get those changes, additions, deletions, whatever they might be into the budget. And then last week, one of the things that we also did was finance staff identified final changes to the projected revenues for [1:04:20 PM] the proposed budget, and these changes fell into two categories. And I want to make sure I get these right because we tend to. But 7.3 million was increased in ongoing revenue or is that the 7.7? I've seen it both ways. 7.7 is ongoing and 7.3 million is in was an increase in one time revenue. New as I indicated just a second ago, council members submitted numerous proposed amendments to the budget and each of those amendments was laid out in our meeting last week and discussed by council questions were asked. We also discussed a framework for analyzing the amendments and we were utilize the following decision tree. We would identify overlap between budget proposed budget amendments and critical unmet or partially met department needs. And there are [1:05:20 PM] clearly some areas that this council identified that match previously known unmet organizational needs. We also said that we would critically evaluate departmental budgets to assess which amendments could be accomplished without the need to appropriate additional funding in cases where amendments needed additional review, we there was a proposal for partial year funding or a mid-year check in to determine if the need were still unmet and to identify the highest impact amendments within the council. Priorities of affordable city resiliency, homelessness, public safety and quality of life. Over the last week, our professional staff has analyzed each of the council's proposed amendments against this framework and they last night sent out of their funding recommendation. My understanding is that they met with each council member individually to discuss the recommendation and incorporate feedback into the [1:06:20 PM] final recommendation where it was possible. Staff's funding recommends has been included in backup as attachment a. I also want to call one important note that applies to some of the amendments. There are instances where a proposed amendment points to a specific contract, actor or provider for whom additional funding is intended. It's important to note that if an amendment is adopted, we are agreeing to increase the budget for the purpose. It's that it's stated in the amendment. But the selection of a specific vendor or contractor or supplier will be subject to a competitive procurement process. Is there anything the city attorney wants to add to any of this? Yes. Okay manager, I'll recognize you. Is there anything you or your staff want to add before we start talking about and considering the budget? No, I think we've had a long week or three days of [1:07:22 PM] discussion with both the staff internally as well as with members of council, and I think we're looking forward to once the motions on the table to be able to answer questions and to provide additional information where there may be some additional information that's needed for the council to understand all of the elements and all the amendments and how the budget works. Council, as I indicated. Thank you. Manager as, as I indicated before, what I would like to do if there's no objection, is get an amendment. I'm sorry, a motion, get a motion. You guys got me all thinking about amendments all the time. Get a motion and the motion would be to adopt the city's fiscal year 2023, 2024 budget, including. Appendix or attached a which you have all been provided. Council member [1:08:23 PM] Harper Madison moves adoption. It is seconded by the mayor pro tem that will then take us to if there are any proposed amend amounts to the motion. And it's my understanding that there are a couple of proposed amendments . And so I'm going to try to recognize people in the order that I understand that the amendments may have come forward, including even as we sit here today, councilmember vela, I would recognize you first. >> Thank you. Mayor I would just a clarification on on these are amendments to the attachment. >> That would be a yes. What we now have on the table is a motion to approve the budget, [1:09:25 PM] including the attached a so any amendment that you want to make could be made to the either attachment a or the budget. And you'd be I mean the original budget document that we were given back on the 14th. >> Got it. I have a few questions for staff before I would. That's great. >> Lay out an amendment of the first ones would be with regard to the sobering center and Austin public health. >> I was wondering if we could chat about those funds. >> Go ahead and ask your question and we'll see if they can be answered by the people in front of us. And if not, we'll get others here. Got it. >> I we've discussed with Austin public health with regard to an additional 149,000 that would go toward the sobering center for capacity building and to help their their holdover program. [1:10:25 PM] There are potentially grant funds available both through an earmark that congressman Doggett secured with regard to substance abuse, potentially also with regard to the opioid settlement funds. In other words, the discussion was, is there a way that we could fund a $149,000 for the sobering center without tapping the general fund and the guidance or the response that I got from staff was essentially, yes, but the details were still pending with regard to kind of the limitations, the potential kind of the eligibility requirements and or the reporting requirements with regard to those two sources of funds. >> So I just really wanted to get a ask staff a couple of questions on that. And just get a commitment because it's not explicitly in the budget, but if we could just get a commitment [1:11:26 PM] that we would use either the Doggett earmark and or the opioid settlement money and just as an aside, I did speak to congressman Doggett office. >> The earmark was not originally targeted toward the sobering center, but he's familiar with the sobering centers work. >> He supports the sobering centers work, and he is fine with the $149,000 going toward the sobering center council member. >> And if I need a lifeline, do you have that? Answer it. >> I see our public health staff is coming. >> All right. There's a hopefully speak to that grant question. >> I think the answer is excuse me, I had to run from the second floor. >> Good morning. >> Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. There you go. >> Adrian Sturrup Austin public health. I didn't take my step class this morning, but I think I just got it in. So we were able to identify funds in our existing allocations to support the sobering center. >> Okay. I just wanted to get [1:12:28 PM] that a commitment from staff with that. I don't think there's any need to make any amendment. We'll continue to work on that as a as a the year goes on. >> Thank you. Have anything else ? >> There is the I'm not sure if this is appropriate time or not. I have direction that actually we're still finalizing on the ten stabilization fund AIDS that are the $1.6 million that is in attachment a I also have some questions with regard to the move of the human resources folks to APD. >> I don't know if we should tackle that. The questions around the open record stuff may be a kind of a longer conversation. So I don't know if we should let me let me move through potential amendments. >> Got it. And I'll do that and then we'll come back if that's if it's appropriate to do that now or maybe even at an additional a different meeting. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. The next proposed amendment, as I [1:13:30 PM] understand it, is an amendment from council member Ryan alter and the draft that we have is laid draft or alter eight and I don't know whether that's the only one he is that assignment you don't either. Oh that's it. That's okay so I'll recognize councilmember Ryan alter thank you mayor. >> This is the item I posted about last night on the message board. It connects individuals dealing with domestic violence with a safe place to go when shelters like safe are full. The funding that was anticipated for this item fell through late in the process. And as I mentioned in my post, I was would not have brought this forward if it if I'd anticipated that it was going to come at the expense of the other amendments that everyone offered through the process. But in talking with the manager, he has indicated that we are able to fund this out of APD's budgeted amount. And so it will not have an impact on anything in the exhibit a [1:14:31 PM] spreadsheet. So with that, I appreciate the manager's help with this and, and move adoption of our our alter eight. >> Let me let me ask councilmember if I could just a second talking to Carrie earlier today and head in as much as we're going to be folding it into the appropriation that's already before you, that is the police department's budget. Right. I think we get direction what you just said, direction in terms of to fund this within the existing envelope and an amendment may not be necessary, but I'll defer to the experts to determine whether in fact it is completely necessary. Thank you. >> Manager. Carrie Lang budget officer, financial services department. I think when we begin looking at this item and was informed of this item, we thought that there would be savings in another area within the APD budget. However I don't think that that is realized. We were initially looking at the calculations of some of the proposed items and we do not have that savings in those [1:15:31 PM] calculations. I think that we would have to look at additional means with the number of items that we're asking APD to cover in their budget at this time. Okay thank you. >> Councilmember Allison alter. >> So you're saying that there's not many in the APD's budget to cover it or. >> My understanding, right, right now is within their current appropriation, they do not have the additional dollars for this full 250. There may be dollars for a portion of it, but I don't know what that full portion is at the moment. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Councilman Ryan, I'll ask you a question. The about that and I apologize if I missed it when you laid it out, but if a portion of that can be absorbed but not all of it, is this something that we could revisit at a later point in time? And what what part of what has been [1:16:33 PM] discussed and would be a different approach to budgeting and different about how we've done budgeting. But but in order to avoid having to put full money into something that then can't be spent right or well for whatever reason it isn't spent, that what what we've considered doing is that at mid- year, just as it applies to this budget, not we're not going to have a whole new budget process, but as it applies to this budget, this council, through the manager and the professional staff, would look at items to see if they if we need course corrections as we go forward and actually have a thoughtful process to that. And I'll commit as the mayor and presiding officer that will make sure that that that happens and the manager is also committed. But if it's if it's partially funded and can be looked at [1:17:34 PM] later in the year, do we need the amendment right? >> This is a little different than what we're what I was finally told on, on how this would work and that I was only offering this as a because that was how it was instructed to me to do so that but I'm happy to give direction and do that way for it to be not through an amendment. It's a short answer. So I'm confident that the manager will help us get to where we need to go on this. >> So there's no motion. Thank you, councilmember. There's no motion on proposed amendment. Are alter number eight. Thank you, members. The next proposed amendment that I think I have in the right order is an amendment by council member. A proposed amendment by council member Velasquez. The document that I have in front of me that I believe is the up to date document is labeled Velasquez [1:18:35 PM] for budget amendment version two. And it shows the spending of money in the one time category as opposed to what we'd seen earlier in the ongoing category. And if that's the case, then I'll recognize councilmember Velasco is on his proposed amendment. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So Velasquez amendment number four, the amendment proposes an increase of. $613,942 to support parent support specialists. I wouldn't be asking to dip into stable reserve funds if I didn't know exactly how valued this resources to our community with the withdrawal of Esser funds imminent, eight of the 73 existing parent support specialists will not be funded beyond the year 2324. Austin I-s-d parent support specialist support the most vulnerable children and families in our community. As Austin becomes increased, unaffordable, unaffordable, particularly for families. The role of a says [1:19:37 PM] only becomes more crucial making retaining qualified staff essential. The need for help with help with most frequently our housing support and homelessness prevention access to food and school attendance. All of these fundamental needs can determine or change a child and family's trajectory in life. Both immediate and future. The city provides a range of supportive programs for lower income. Austinites but getting information and resources to people who need it most comes with a range of challenges, including time navigating the digital divide, language access, literacy and social capital says are the our trusted community messengers who bridge the gaps between people in need and the services designed to help them. This week, aid sent $854 million back to the state in recapture. We as a city, county and district need to step up and stand in the gap by funding this resource funding resources like sdrs. So that we can address the [1:20:38 PM] challenges faced by inner city kids and families. Thank you. Also every each council member should have received a letter direct from the superintendent confirming this. Ask councilmember Velazquez moves adoption of Velazquez proposed amendment number one. >> It's seconded by council member harper- madison councilmember Allison alter. Did you have a question? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you had your hand up before we vote on this amendment. I'll call for discussion, but I would also want to ask a question of our finance staff in attachment a in order to accommodate some of the proposed work from last week and proposals from last week. The reserve fund was dropped from. [1:21:38 PM] 17% to 16.7. Is that correct? >> Yes, that's correct. And help me do some math here. >> And this could be dangerous for both of us, as I understand it, 1, a 10th of a percent gives us $1.3 million. Is that correct ? So if we were at if we're at 16.7 and it's reduce it to 16.6, that would mean there's an additional $1.3 million. Is that right? >> That's correct. >> Members, as I understand it, we have this proposed amendment, which is. $613,942. We're going to take up councilmember qadri proposed amendment next, which is. Yeah, get get over there. [1:22:39 PM] You know how fast I can go sometimes, which is $100,000. My math puts us at 713 nine at that point that would also allow us. To pay for the 250 that's in councilmember Ryan alter's proposed amendment. And make sure that that's covered. If there are no other amendments that are going to cost money, I don't know of any other amendments that haven't cost money. But when I sat down today, I didn't know of these amendments. So I want to make sure that that's the case before I make a suggestion. Is there are there any other amendments other than the Velasquez amendment we're considering the qadri amendment that I will call up next. And then if we wanted to go back to council member Ryan alters, council member villa mayor, I do have I know we [1:23:41 PM] just spoke about a brief but some direction on the $1.6 million that's in the base budget with regard to coming back and looking at it, we're finally doing that right now. >> But I would like to offer. >> That's not new money. >> No, it's not new money. >> It would just be direction to just the way you want the money spent. >> Yes. And instructions to come and report back. >> Sure, sure. Okay. Fair enough. I'm glad you clarified that. Councilmember Allison alter. >> Thank you. I just wanted to flag that. I would like to just clarify one more time on 911 that we are addressing the wage increases, but I don't I think it's addressed. >> So I don't think we need money. But but before we vote on the budget, do you want to have that conversation? >> That's why I've set it up this way. So please or whoever has the answer to that question, deference to expertise or mills or mills, please ask thank you. >> I just we've we've had a lot [1:24:43 PM] of conversations as a dais about the importance of making sure that we have full staffing in our 911 communications center. >> You and I have had several conversations ations and I understand things are in the works. >> But as we adopt the budget today, I want to hear from you some final assurances before we do so that we are we are taking the step, the next steps necessary that we think will make a difference so that we can reduce those vacancies. >> Well, I think thank you. >> And I think our conversation yesterday did follow up and we are probably days away now, maybe 2 or 3 days away from final izing the steps we've taken for the pay progression. >> We called it a career progression. >> We know we can absorb that in this in this proposed budget. And I think, as I said, I think I said it last week that we're probably 6 to 7, maybe eight months away, depending on our recruiting and our success in recruiting and retention to be [1:25:44 PM] 100% staffed in that center. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Thank you, chief. Appreciate it. All right. Yes mayor pro tem , just a quick question on these two two amendments that are in front of us is, is there absolutely no way that some of this could be incorporated with the dollars currently allocated ? That's a reasonable question. >> Have we turned over every couch cushion before we go into the stabilization reserves for these two? >> So if you don't mind, I'll ask the question this way of the manager and staff on the Velasquez amendment proposed amendment, which is at. 613, $942, is there a way for a all or part of that to be absorbed, or is it something that requires that it be fully funded and we find full funding at the time of the amendment. And or carry? [1:26:47 PM] >> Yeah, sure. I mean, and this is always the concern of us conservative financial staff once we start down the slippery slope of we can figure out a way to make that work in this big budget of ours. >> This would be a public health expense. >> I think that's most likely asking a lot of the public health department to try to commit to $613,000 in their existing appropriate stations, and it's about a 50% increase in what we currently fund for the parent support specialists. >> But that is just off the cuff without going back to the department. >> And you know, and this is about how do you manage your budget over the course of the year. So the more and more things that that the departments agree to, just we'll figure it out. You know, the way that looks pragmatically is, well, I've got a position that just came vacant. I'm going to have to hold it, hold it vacant for another month or two to free up the money to cover what I committed. So it's kind of just how do you actively manage your budget? And it just creates more limitations on what the departments can do over the course of the year. But it's just off the cuff. I think that's a lot to ask our health [1:27:48 PM] department to try to absorb. But of course, there's not an exact science either. And that's why I say it's a bit of a slippery slope when we start down, you know, trying to find ways to accommodate council's directions within the resource that we have, but not get in our neck out there too far where we can't live up to those commitment or we have to make bad decisions in regards to, you know, holding positions vacant and things like that. Right. >> Thank you. Let me ask a question also as we go forward on this. I've played with the number purposely so that we would all know the numbers, but the other day, Mr. Benigno, you were asked a question about the 17, and I can't remember what the question was, but I do remember what the answer was. And the answer was that. You could have at 1.6, seven, you reached the what was the actual standard. For the standard that is used in your profession and in in municipalities about the [1:28:50 PM] appropriate level for a reserve ? My question is, is I hear that right? And there's 1.67 the number that you would want to be at and not drop below in order to meet the standards. >> The standard is not less than two months, which equates to 16.6, 7. >> All right. So one point. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm saying that my I told you the math would get messed up. I knew what you meant. Yeah, you're right. 16.7. I apologize, guys. The other thing that I want to ask about is on this. When we're talking about going below 16.7, I know there's a lot of talk about doing things right now. And we've heard some of that testimony today. And I don't want to minimize that in any way. But as I understand it, part of the reason to have a reserve at 16.7 is, for example [1:29:52 PM] , the report y'all gave us last week on on sales tax and the fact that we saw a pretty dramatic drop in the recovery of sales tax revenue and what that might mean for the economy. Yes today we held a press conference and, you know, as mayor, I declared Austin in a disaster mode with regard to the potential for wildfires. And that would if we needed to and we had problems with that, that would come out of the reserve as well. All. And many of the people that might fall on the hardest are the people that many folks today testified they want us to help address. Would you comment on that for sure? >> And you're hitting on several of the things for why we have reserves and why staff is recommend to increase them. One is just that the revenue instability of sales taxes, which is our second largest [1:30:53 PM] source of revenue and it goes up and down with the economy. We can't control that in the same way that we can control our property tax collections through the tax rate that you all support. So you know, to mitigate against that, we have a budget stabilization reserve fund and when you look at that in terms of the 3.5% revenue cap, we're very limited in how we would adjust our budget spending. If we do have a recession and sales taxes decline. So that's one reason for it. Of course, the increased frequency of disasters that we've seen through the pandemic and through the winter storms, the ice storms and the cost of responding to those storms and the lengthy time it takes to get reimbursed from FEMA when there is a disaster declaration. That increased frequency was another part of our thinking to recommending to increase the reserves. You mentioned the government finance officers association and their recommendation of not less than two months, which gets you to that 16.7. And then the rating [1:31:57 PM] agencies just trying to maintain the highest credit rating that we can. We have recently been downgraded by two rating agencies, and we believe that increasing our reserves will help us at least maintain the ratings we currently have and hopefully someday get back to the highest rating that we can achieve, which would be aa. So those are those are really the reasons that we propose that. >> Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Velasquez, let me ask is, is the amendment form that you've completed specifically states that the proposed source of funding would come from the stabilization reserve fund? That's part of your motion, correct. All right . Other questions or discussion with regard to the Velasquez amendment? No number one, councilmember Ryan alter, thank you for trying to finagle this and make it work. >> I really appreciate the work on that. My one question is, [1:32:58 PM] doesn't say I'm going to vote for it. I know I is do as it relates to the $15 million for the FEMA reimbursement is there any I know we can't see into the future, but is there a guess based on our prior interaction with FEMA, if we think that's going to come through this year or is it more likely to fall into fiscal 25? >> I think it's definitely more likely to fall into fiscal year 25. We're still working to get reimbursed for the pandemic. So FEMA is a slow process. >> Yes, that's very helpful. Thank you. >> And we are assuming a certain level of reimbursements from from FEMA through the pandemic in fiscal year 24. And then over the course of the of the five year forecast. So we are assuming that in our in our in our forecast. But not expecting to see reimbursed from FEMA related to winter storm. Mara this year. It just takes time. >> Further questions or discussion with regard to [1:33:59 PM] Velasquez amendment. Yes. Councilmember Fuentes, thank you. >> And thank you, councilmember Velasquez, for bringing this forward. >> I'm proud to be a co-sponsor on this item. I have a question for staff. >> Is there an I well, just an id representative of available right now might be a question for esd. >> Okay. >> Well, if staff might know with this funding allocation of an additional 600,000, would that increase the amount of sources that are available to the school district? >> In other words, are they adding more pieces to cover the additional title one schools and or would this funding be used to increase the pay for pieces? >> Good afternoon, Adrian of Austin public health. Thank you for the question. During the normal contract management process, yes, the department was not made aware of this need and [1:35:01 PM] so we don't have any of the information to answer your question. Okay thank you. >> Thank you. >> Other questions or discussion ? Council members? The vote will be on the I'm sorry, councilmember Kelly. >> Thank you, mayor. Just I just want to clarify so that I heard that correctly. >> The base motion here is to use the reserve money to support this item. >> Is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. >> The motion is for an expenditure. Of $613,942. And the way that would be budgeted, that need would or that proposal would be met is by reducing the budget stabilization reserve fund and the budget stabilization reserve fund as currently sits. At 16.7% as made in the main motion, which was to [1:36:02 PM] adopt the budget, including attachment. >> A okay, thank you for that clarification. >> I thought I had followed all that correctly, but I just wanted to make sure. So I'm very uncomfortable with lowering our reserve fund based on all the information that we just heard from Mr. Van van eenoo and from the city manager. So I will not be able to support this item. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember members. The vote will be on Velasquez proposed amendment. All those in favor of the amendment, please raise your hand. All those oppose. Raise your hand. All those abstaining. Councilmember alter, did you vote? I'm my co-sponsor, so I [1:37:06 PM] voted for it. Okay. I didn't see your hand. I apologize. There being eight votes in favor, three votes in opposition, those being count member Kelly, councilmember pool and the mayor. The motion to amend is adopted. That will take us. To qadri proposed amendment. Thank you. I recognize councilmember qadri. >> Thank you, mayor. Yeah it's a revised amendment number four around the fair housing and Ada education support. We've learned about the challenges of our city and our providers are facing to carry out fair housing in our region. Unfortunately, doesn't look like the city is going to be able to step in and fix that this year. We removed fair housing testing from our budget amendment, which was originally at 350,000. So we're now we're looking for about 100,000 because our city is still in great need for fair housing, education and support in the face of discrimination in both housing and employment. And just [1:38:07 PM] want to thank my co-sponsors on this harper-madison Velasquez, Avila and Ryan alter and with that, I move passage of the amendment motion's been made by councilmember qadri and seconded by councilmember harper-madison to adopt proposed qadri amendment number. One discussion councilmember Allison alter just wanted to clarify, I understand that if we go to 16 on 0.66, we're at the two months and that's less than the 16.7. >> But can you clarify that if we were at 16.66 versus 16.6, what that delta would be? Because 16.6 and 16.66 are not the same. I just want to know what that delta would be. Yeah >> So the original package before you had you right at 16.70 to go to the two month standard, which would be 16.67. That's almost exactly $400,000. [1:39:12 PM] >> So that one just one more time. >> So it's $400,000 because it's a little over $130,000 per point, zero 1. So at that point, zero 3% would be about $400,000. >> Okay. Thank you. And along those lines, if you go a full. Full ten, that takes you not 400,000, but it takes you 1.3. >> Is that right? >> That's correct. And after the last amendment, we're sitting at 16.6, five, 4% okay. >> So members of the discussion , any additional discussion with regard to qadri proposed amendment number one? Yes councilmember vela. [1:40:13 PM] >> Councilmember, I know that the Austin tenants council previously handled some of this fair housing work. >> Councilmember qadri would this be bringing some of that in-house or is this a design to also contract out the fair housing work that I think Austin tenants council was previously doing? >> If someone from the office of civil rights is here, I think they could better answer that question. But but all I know is that testing is no longer part of this. Okay. That that helps answer it. So. Good afternoon. >> Thank you. Tamala Saldana, interim director. >> And I also have the civil rights administrator with me, Beverly Davis. >> This is not to supplement the work for Austin tenant council. It's additional work to support additional funds to support the [1:41:13 PM] ongoing efforts that we have with her to promote housing and fair housing in the city of Austin. >> So this is this would be within the office of civil rights within our office of civil rights, to promote the fair housing and anti discrimination efforts, education for tenants and residents of the city of Austin. >> Yes, that's correct. >> Thank you. That was the only clarification I need. Thank you. Thank you. >> Additional questions or discussion. All right. Hearing none, the vote will be on the adoption of qadri amendment as we've been discussing it. All those in favor of the motion indicate by raising your hand all those opposed. Raise your hand. They're being. I still don't know how you're voting. I mean, I'm abstaining, which you haven't. Okay well, my goodness, I think somebody else is doing all support it. Okay. So they're being again. We're being eight [1:42:18 PM] vote, seven votes in favor, two votes in opposition and one abstention. The two votes in opposition are councilman Kelly and the mayor. And the one abstention is council member Allison alter. For the record, the motion to amend is adopted. I'm sorry. Three people. Yeah well, we're just doing math here today, guys. I mean, all I gotta do is add to 11 on this and I'm messing it up, so I'm sorry seven three to 1 to 3 being council member Kelly councilmember pool and the mayor. And then one abstention and that being council member Allison alter. Are there any other proposed amendments. Or do you have an amendment that will change the numbers in the budget? >> I don't have an amendment that will change the numbers in [1:43:18 PM] the budget. I do have the vela is a 12 with regard to the air folks at APD. >> And again, I don't know when is the appropriate time. >> Hang on one second. Let me let me I want to make sure I understand what it is that you want to do. The are these questions that you want to ask or do you have a proposed amendment to the budget? >> It's a it is moving. >> This is the vela 12 amendment that would move that would keep the air employees in particular in the human resources department. It has no financial impact, as far as I'm aware. >> It's budget neutral, but it now I now understand what it is. >> If you'd like to do you want to offer that as an amendment? >> I would. >> Okay. Motion has been made by [1:44:18 PM] councilmember vela to offer that is amendment at second by councilmember qadri. Discussion on the item. >> And so I have the. I'm not interested in the administra active or management. Those are not my concerns. My concerns are with any potential open records, impacts of this amendment. And so I had some questions really more for law than anybody else with regards to the potential open records implications of that and you have the floor. Thank you, mayor. Actually, first off, though, with with regard to the are there other departments? Because I know that and this is my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong, that in 2018 or so that we moved the personnel from APD to human resources and then now we're we're going to potentially move them back into APD. [1:45:19 PM] >> Are there other departments that have their own hr units within the department? >> I'm not familiar with the structure of administrative support that we provide are in different departments. Yeah. >> Ad ran down or had a quick look into that. So he's got an answer for that. So let me just ask hr specifically. >> Every major, every large department has their own human resources, folks, roughly any department over 50 personnel is going to have their own hr personnel, ranging from maybe 1 or 2 to a dozen, depending upon the size of the department. The smaller groups, the individual offices use corporate hr function for their for their hr needs. >> So hr for the department acts as the human resources staffing for the smaller departments. But the larger departments have hr staff embedded within them. >> Correct. >> And the hr staff that are in [1:46:20 PM] the departments, are they answering to the department head or are they answering to the human resources director? They answer to the department director, but they do work under the corporate human resources department guidelines and quality controls, you know, so required for recruiting, complying with civil service, reclassification of positions. >> There's an oversight role for all of those things from the corporate human resources department. >> Okay. Thank you very much. And is it that that's similar? I know the building services and the Pio are also kind of part of this move, but is that a similar arrangement with regard to staff from building services and staff from the different public information officers? >> It's similar, not quite as uniform. So departments that have a lot of facilities will have their own building maintenance staff. So the library, parks and recreation and Austin energy, Austin water public health, aviation, they all have ems, they all have their own maintenance crews. It's a little bit of a [1:47:20 PM] partnership. So the maintenance crews, the departments have will do a lot of the simpler routine maintenance while they'll still go to building services for a major renovation or construction job. In regards to public information is probably somewhere in between, maybe not as uniform for departments to have their own public information special. It's not as uniform as hr, at least, but certainly common for the larger departments to have their own public information function. >> Thank you very much. The important to know with regard to the potential open records impact of this move. >> And let me start actually just kind of at the top of the chapter one, 43.089 is the relevant statute that governs a civil service and records, you know, it says that may say there's a that that the department may have a G file which contains certain personnel [1:48:20 PM] information. I mean what does that that may mean is the very existence of the G file, is that a discretionary. So it's a council, the 143 G file material , you know, under the statute. >> 143 G we don't put material that, for example, is an allegation of misconduct that does not result in a finding of misconduct, but it cannot go into the a file. >> That's the other one. So if there weren't a G file, there's no place for it to go. >> So there are other records that are included in the G file, but we do not read that as saying that, that it's may that is discretionary because you want to you want the chief to have those records available. >> So essentially, when we talk about 143 G material, we're talking about those things that are confidential by law, by state law. And I think what's most important in in this conversation is it doesn't matter where the people sit, it doesn't matter which department they're sitting in. The documents that we're releasing [1:49:20 PM] are governed by the nature of those documents, the substance of the documents. So when we look at them, either it's in the personnel file within the hr department or it's from the personnel, the G file material. It depends on what's in there, whether or not it's going to be released. >> So in other words, the so whether it is the human resources department or the police department that holds the records, you're saying that the civil service rules apply regardless of who is holding those records? >> That's right. I mean, they're governed by what what they substantively contain. So I think the confusion may be because the hr folks were within APD at some point, they were moved out to hr, corporate and now they're moving back. It doesn't matter. They're still doing the same work and the documents are treated the same way. >> And the statute in a does provide, it says the department or the department head or the department heads designee in a again, where does that come [1:50:23 PM] from? And I remember there was a memo recently kind of designating basically the hr director as the head of or for purposes of chapter 143. >> Well, the director of the director of civil service is the hr director. So for the statute, when they talk about the director, that's what they're talking about. Okay. >> And with regard to the types of material, because I a long time ago now, I was at the open records department of the attorney general's office and I guess there was a sense that that police civil service records were I either a material or G material. Is that like is that the case? I mean, where everything has to be categorized as a or G or how does that that how is that division made? Because when I look at G, I don't see a an explicit kind of [1:51:26 PM] list of documents that have to go in. G it's again, this the department may create a G file that shall that that, that may contain certain records, right? >> I think that may be a longer conversation council member. But I there are differences between the G file and the other materials and I think for purposes of the conversation that the public is very much interested in is usually the G file material, meaning the material that is confidential by law and it is because there's not been a discipline and there's state law that governs us. But I again, want to emphasize that it doesn't matter where the people sit, where the pieces of paper are sitting there governed by that state law. And we follow that state law. >> So. So are there any records that okay, there's also and again, I know we're going to get a little bit technical, but there's the subsection B, which to me, B is the mandatory part of the civil service records where it says that a complaint that is filed against a police [1:52:27 PM] officer where there is no disciplinary action, either it's sustained or there's no disciplinary action taken, that that and again, I don't have the statute in front of me, but that is essentially confidential. Is the in other words, is that we share the confidentiality confidential is coming from from that subchapter B, you know, in other words, what does B cover that G doesn't cover? Or how does like how do bag interact? >> Well, under the. 143.089, the personnel file will be says a letter or memorandum or document relating to alleged misconduct by a firefighter or police officer may not be placed in the person's personnel file. If the employee and department determines that there is insufficient evidence to sustain the charge of misconduct. That's where the confidentiality comes from. Its in section B, so it [1:53:27 PM] can't go into the personnel file that's kept by the hr civil service director because my sense of it and again, I know this is not necessarily reflected this is not a heavily litigated area. >> So there's a very limited number of, I think, court cases and attorney general opinions in this area. You know, my sense of it is that a is telling us everything in a is public. You know, all the documents that a lists out are by default public, which are commendation discipline that is found to be sustained or allegations that are found to be sustained. And then annual evaluation is then be made takes everything that makes us sustained complaints, confidential, then I guess G is kind of this I'm not sure what G [1:54:29 PM] covers it again, I know that there are a lot of police records that that we wouldn't want to release and that are I mean, I think about like their initial evaluations, you know, the background checks with their friends and family when people are first hiring on as a police officers. I think about mental health evaluations also that we're making sure that the officers are are fit to be police officers. But that's where I guess the G file. I mean, I understand that that you read it as as as mandatory, although it does say may and that's where I'm just kind of having trouble, you know, squaring, you know, exactly what the statute is doing. And what it's covering. >> It may not be the most artfully written, but I will tell you and I know that assistant city manager mills may want to talk about the operational here, but what we always will do is maintain the confidentiality of the information that we have to maintain pursuant to be. [1:55:31 PM] Obviously, there are other confidential things that all of our personnel files have that concern. Our social security number or family matters, you know, those kinds of things. But that's the distinction we use. And again, it doesn't matter where people are sitting who are handling the files, it depends on what the substance of the documents are. >> And with regard to and honestly, I don't know how many kind of relevant documents that hr is going to have with regard to kind of the police misconduct and complaints and those kinds of issues. My sense would be that would be more in the chain of command and or with the office of police oversight is the office of police oversight. And likewise, any documentation that that that they have any investigations that they have, what's the status of those types of records? >> Again, it would be the same, but it also with with the office of police oversight does depend on the contract with the police . If there's negotiations that we can see. That's one of the [1:56:32 PM] things that's important about negotiating the contract is you can change those regulations and give different authority. >> And that's an excellent point . City attorney there, I remember in one of the complain recently or one of the disciplinary action, there was one of the high profile ones that I think was subject to one of the transparency provisions in the negotiated contract there. The opa recommendation, which I believe was for discipline, was made public, even though the officer was ultimately not disciplined. And so it was a non sustained complaint. But you know, the epo did release their analysis and version of the events without the contract, what would be the status of those types of investigations by appeal? >> Right. That's what I was just saying. The when we had the negotiated contract in place, that gave the authority to release that document without that negotiated contract, there is no ability to do that. Oh so [1:57:34 PM] opposed documents are covered just like everybody else's G file means G fall B file would mean B file. >> And so currently opposed investigations of alleged misconduct are made confidential under chapter 143 unless they result in disciplinary conduct or discipline for the police officer. >> That's correct. Okay. >> I. The passage of the apoa I think was a strong signal from the community in favor of the maximum transparency within the police department with regard to really any and all documents. [1:58:34 PM] But I, I we've been digging into this. I appreciate the answers city attorney and I will be bringing hopefully soon an item with regard to kind of implementation. It's in the idea stage right now just to be frank it's not in the any kind of drafting stage at this point. But I would like to get a handle on what kind of the limits and contours of chapter 143. I would like to get a better and kind of complete understanding of the apoa and I until we get there. I'm hesitant to make any any personnel changes that again I'm unclear if they if it would affect anything. I understand that that the city's position is that it wouldn't. I think that's [1:59:36 PM] extremely fair position. But until all I personally am there, I would like to hold off on the transfer. For the time being and thus I will go ahead and offer my amendment. To basically postpone the transfer of those positions at this time. >> Councilmember Kelly, thank you. >> You you know, based on what in this probably another question for legal. >> So, miss Morgan, if you could respond based on what I heard that council member from district four say, he's bringing this forward as an amendment to the budget, but it sounds to me more like it's policy and I'm just wondering if this can come forward as an amendment, because I haven't seen anything posted anywhere. My constituents hadn't had a chance to weigh in and to be quite honest, I feel very uncomfortable bringing this [2:00:36 PM] during the budget when we haven't had that robust discussion and there are no other co-sponsors, whereas the rest of our ifc's needed co-sponsors. Could you maybe explain that to us? And then I have a couple more questions. >> I think Ed Benigno is trying to jump in, so I'm gonna let him start. Yeah, I just didn't want to jump ahead of the city attorney, but this would need to be a budget amendment because what it's doing is moving personnel so while the dollar amounts will stay the same because of how the cost allocation works, this removes positions from the police department's budget. >> So you'll see the police department, fte count go down and you'll see the fte count of building services and public information and human resources go up. And that does require an amendment from council to the budget. >> And let me weigh in a little bit and do this in a thoughtful way. Under the council manager form of government. And 21 years ago, when something like this would be offered, it would be [2:01:38 PM] consent and routine. And that's because, as under the charter, the manager has complete and total control over personnel policies. There have been several items that I've tried to do this budget where you've asked me to delay and really that that while you have that power and you have that policy capability, it really undermines this form of government and I just have to tell you, just frankly, this is not a whoever sits in this seat after I leave has to be able to move the boxes the way they need to move them so that this organization is responsive and meets the demands not just of certain public, but all the public and I just want to say that for the record that that really makes me uncomfortable about some of these discussions that we're having. And I understand you've got people have been asking us to take a look at this, but I just need you for the council to understand under this form of government, these things, not just this one, but others that have happened, you know, which [2:02:38 PM] ones those are. It really is concerning for me. >> Thank you for that. And then it could maybe the interim city manager, Bruce mills, come down and talk about potential impacts. >> Podium. >> Oh. Oh, hi. Welcome. >> You can see me, huh? >> I just want if I could if I could just comment and Jesus made the point about, I guess more the Pio and maintenance and being those departments, but the short time I've been here, the biggest impact I see council and councilmember vela, I know we've talked about a little bit briefly is the operational side in nature. >> I don't even know the number of staff that APD has, but when the first couple of weeks I was here, I think I pointed out it was it was a dramatic impact to officers not getting paid, not meeting payroll and the logistics of that. And I'm not blaming anybody, but I think it's the when we add that bureaucracy or that level of bureaucracy, by having the police departments H.R. And [2:03:39 PM] payroll and all those sections reporting back to corporate hr disconnected and housed in the police department was very, first of all, very inefficient and completely ineffective. When we moved it back, I mean, I was getting complaints from officers and again, we're in a complete different time right now where officers are working multiple shifts overtime and the coding and it's complicated on a good day and it's extremely complicated. Now, during these trying times and even keeping staff in hr, they were already shorthanded. So I would urge you to keep I really the all three of those functions, but particularly the hr right now in and let it reside in APD answering to the chief. And the problem at the time was the police chief felt kind of hamstrung and would try to get answers from his sitting in his building hr to answer payroll question from his staff and [2:04:41 PM] couldn't get a call back because they were they had other obligations reporting to their own hr directors. So it was very , very complicated and we didn't meet payroll with officers because of that. And we put it back at the direction of the manager. And it's been and it's been effective. >> And I completely appreciate that. I understand the management concerns. Like I said, my concerns are not and it's good to know that the major departments do have H.R. Embedded within them. I you know, if that works for the other departments, it could work better for APD. My concern would solely be the potential open records impact. Again I understand that the city attorney's position I'm not quite there. That's basically I'd like to get a little bit more time to under stand and vet like for example, I don't know at this point what records hr holds that could be relevant to [2:05:44 PM] kind of any disciplinary. I don't know if they do hold those kinds of records again, if they don't have those kinds of records that that also will relieve a lot of the concerns over transparency. But honestly, at this point, right now, I don't know. We've been kind of grappling with the law and trying to get my head around what the what the law is and where it applies. That's where I'm coming from and that's where I would I would ask to hold off on this change until we can get there and until we can look into it. Just a little bit more. >> Councilmember Kelly, you still have the floor. Oh thank you very much. >> You know, based on everything that we've heard today, the fact that even through our speakers today, we didn't hear much about this topic. I haven't gotten a lot of emails about it or had communication with my constituents about any concerns. I would urge my council colleagues to listen to our interim city manager and to continue to keep those positions where they are. I think there's [2:06:45 PM] a lot of need. I've heard from officers directly about the problems with process payroll, and my hope is that by bringing hr into these positions at APD, they'll be able to focus on that and to help support the department. And I would just say to my colleague in district four, I hear your concerns and I understand why why you're considering this, but I also hear that you don't have all the information that you need currently, so I would encourage you to get that and maybe come back later with with some kind of council action if you deem it appropriate. But I can't support this today. Thank you. >> Other comments. Any other questions? I'll say for the record that a lot of us went to a lot of trouble to make sure that the Apa was allowed to go to the voters and we work very hard to make sure it could go to the voters with some controversy surrounding that. And as a result of that, I'm not going to [2:07:46 PM] I believe I will always work very hard to make sure that we are maximizing as best we can under the circumstances and subject to state law. The Apa, I feel very strongly about that. That being said, in this instance, I don't believe that the change, as we've heard, makes a change in openness and transparency and because it really relate that's the specifically relates to operational issues and management. I can't be in favor of the amendment and I want to be really clear that is not a statement that you don't stand for the Apa. You can stand for the Apa, you can defend it and die on that hill. But this amendment is not having the [2:08:47 PM] impact on that. And so I want to be very clear about what my vote is. Any other discussion at this point? Mr. Chief, I could comment one more time. >> Maybe offer a compromise, guys, if I could council even I think you said open records. The questions you're asking the city attorney on a and G and shales and maze. I'm wondering if we had what we could do was any open records request that came through the police department could if you kept it as it is, could be vetted by hr, corporate H.R. Before they're released or not released. Would that would that solve the problem for now? >> So I think I'm not sure. And that's where I kind of I come down on because I'm not 100% sure. I know that there are folks with a lot of concerns about the potential effects on transparency. I think and I'm just not. And that's where it's kind of like more to pause so we [2:09:49 PM] can I'm not going to speak for him so I can better understand this move, get comfortable with the idea that it has no impact on transparency or records access. I think once we're there , I'm fine with moving the positions into APD. But again, until we until I feel like I've got that certainty that this is not going to be a way this is not going to negatively impact transparency and thus accountability. I'm just not there yet. >> As city attorney, I just want to comment. >> Well, I was based on what maybe I wasn't clear. >> What I'm saying is keep is lit is let all H all powers or public information request retain, keep those retained in corporate law and carve that out and keep everything else at APD is what I'm suggesting. >> And council I just wanted to [2:10:50 PM] add, of course, just so it's clear for the public, any time that we withhold information when we get a public information request, we must ask the attorney general. It's a it's a permission only. We don't get to withhold it just because we want to. So the law department is always involved in those those things. We're always asking permission. >> Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I will say that from my experience at the attorney general's office and we looked at the public information handbook, we've been trying to really vet this as much as we possibly can. There is it's really it's either a or G, it's either a or G, it's our rg. I'm not sure the statute actually kind of spells that out. And like the city attorney said, it's not a very well written statute. But anyway, that's just kind of where I am right now. >> Councilmember qadri yeah, just a quick comment. >> I mean, I just want to echo councilman villa's concerns and his hesitancy. I think I share a lot of that and I think when whatever it may be that we often bring up on this dais, I think it's important to be sure about it before moving forward. And [2:11:52 PM] I'll be I'll be voting in with the councilmember on this one. >> Any further discussion? The motion is to adopt the proposed amendment. All those in favor raise your hand. All those opposed, raise your hand. There being seven votes in favor of the amendment four in opposition that being council members pool alter Kelly and the mayor. The motion to amend is adopted are there any other amendments? Councilmember Ryan alter a couple questions for budget to determine whether or not I want to revisit the one we didn't. >> Just a couple questions, if I may. >> Sure appreciate it. Is this the beginning of that filibuster ? >> This is not this is going to [2:12:53 PM] be real short and to the point, Carrie. What how many officers are we calculating for the one time bonus. >> I believe we use that calculation at. At 1550. >> In that time or 50. >> And can you tell me how many sworn personnel we currently have? I I've calculated it to be 1489, but I could be wrong. >> We have 1483. However we also have, I believe, some cadet academies that will be graduating in the next. I think it's in the end of December and in September for that will add to that number. >> That's my next question. >> How many do we currently have in the. >> It's coming. Give me one second. Trying to. [2:14:08 PM] There will be additional 50 between the two classes that are going on right now. >> So that's a total of 51. >> There'll be 51. >> 51. Okay. So putting those together, that's 1534. And you said we have budgeted 1553 1550. >> Okay. >> So even if we don't lose any more officers and we graduate all our cadets will be funded. We have funding for 16 more officers than we have on the books in terms of potentially. >> Correct? Yes. Okay >> Well, members, I'm gonna make this short and sweet. I would like to offer it as is. I believe that when we get to January 1st, we are going to have more money budgeted than we will have personnel for this item. And so I would would I commit to in the midyear process [2:15:09 PM] looking at where APD's budget is in terms of what that number actually turned out to be and if we need to do some kind of true up, I will be the first one to do it. But I am in discussions with with the manager and based on this information, I believe we are going to have some wiggle room within that budget. Both on this and potentially the cadet bonuses that are budgeted for over 2.5 million. If we hit all those goals. So I, I would wait. But we can't go backwards to help these families get into shelter. You know, it's the need is too important today. And so I would like to offer my amendment number eight as is from the police department members. >> Councilmember alter has moved to adopt alter amendment number one. It's labeled draft or alter eight on the yellow sheet that you have in front of you is [2:16:09 PM] there. It's seconded by councilmember Velasquez, the source of funding that he's proposing as part of the amendment is APD funding that currently exists in the budget. Is there any further discussion on this amendment? Councilmember Allison alter councilmember Ryan alter, would you be willing to amend it to say for money that is in APD's budget but not in victim services, budget? >> Absolutely. I don't want to rob Peter to pay Paul. Thank you . Yes, thank you. For clarification purposes, the amendment councilmember Kelly and I'll get you just a second. >> I want to make sure I've got for clarification purposes, the source of funds for the [2:17:09 PM] amendment is the Austin police department budget, but not money. That's currently in victim services. Is that correct, councilmember alter that's correct. Thank you. All right. Council member Kelly, I'll recognize you. >> Thank you. I'd like a reminder on how much the amendment would ask for and then a question that I have as a follow up to that. >> It's $250,000. >> Okay. So this this funding would not put us in any kind of jeopardy with the state, with the law about taking money out of the police budget. >> Now, the argument that's being made and we'll see is, is that there's money enough in the budget to absorb it. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Now, you had a is that the only question you had? >> Yes. That was both my questions. >> Thank you. I just want to make sure mayor. Yes >> Where I do want to clarify that people coming at me from all directions. >> Go ahead with this with this [2:18:10 PM] direction, because it's in the current appropriation of the police department. >> It is not changing any dollar . So it's not a budget amendment . It is direction to use current appropriate. And so we are not changing any of the new investments that we have currently. >> Okay. I guess the question I've got in order to make sure hang on a second, is if you're suggesting that there's no need for the amendment, this discussion would be sufficient enough for the for management to go forward with it with now that we've had this discussion and, you know, I'm kind of inclined to want there to be an amendment or a vote so that the manager has clear direction as opposed to a councilmember Ryan alter [2:19:11 PM] just went without having to vote . And I don't mean it that I don't mean it bad. I mean just, you know, I want. But do you feel comfortable manager that you have the direction as long as I don't have to move it to H.R, I think I'm going to be fine. >> Yeah, I'm fine with that. >> Councilmember Allison alter, huh? The bless you, councilmember pool. >> Your explanation was the question that I had, and so I don't have a question. >> All right, well, we do have a motion to amend on the table. Is there a motion. To is there a motion to postpone on consideration of alter amendment number one until August 16th, 2024? >> Sure. Or I'll just put it on [2:20:14 PM] the table. Whatever you like. >> There you go. Seconded I'll see. Yeah, well, it's the only one he's laid out. It's labeled as alternate. I is there a second to the motion to table second by councilmember pool? Is there any objection? Hearing none. The motion to table is adopted. Members, are there any other amendments? >> No amendment. A mayor, just a some direction. >> All right. Well what I would like to do if it's okay with you, councilmember vela, is now go to comment. If there are no other amendments and we have in front of us a proposed budget, including attachment a as as amended. I would go to comments of council and allow council to make comments unless there's another amendment. I just want to make sure I'm recognizing everybody wants to make an amendment. Councilmember harper- madison do you want to make an amendment? All right. [2:21:14 PM] Councilmember Kelly because you're virtual. I want to make sure I'm not ignoring you. Do you have anything you want to add before we go to comments? >> I'll just make my comments through a statement. My voice is really bad, and so I don't want to overextend myself. Thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate that. All right. With that being the case, we're done being recognized for amendments. I'm now going to go to comments of council and anticipate of a vote that we will take on the budget , including attachment a as amended. And I'll recognize councilmember harper-madison. Thank you, mayor. >> I appreciate it. >> Mayor and colleagues, I'm so proud to support several items in this budget that without the participation, education and advocacy of so many of the advocates I see in the room today, advocacy of countless residents and advocates, they would likely not have made it into our budget to the hundreds of residents who participated in our commissions. >> Our work sessions, our town [2:22:15 PM] halls. >> Even when it got spicy, you'll showed up and you showed up and you made an impact on our city. And that's what democracy looks like. It's not always fun or easy. To the many volunteers of the community who got involved in this budget process. >> Thank you. >> I want to highlight several critical amendments to this year's budget that will have an immediate and lasting impact on district one and the city of Austin as a whole. Increased funding for and a launch of a mobile community court. I'm proud to propose along with my co-sponsors, council member vela Kelly qadri and the mayor pro tem, a groundbreaking initiative in our city's budget allocation by dedicating new funds to the downtown Austin community court and our base budget, we simultaneous are also launching this program that indicates that we're taking significant steps towards inclusivity and accessibility and our justice [2:23:15 PM] system. This mobile community court pilot program aims to empower our residents by enabling them to receive, solve classy misdemeanors and facilitate vital connections to caseworkers across all corners of the city, transcending the limitations of our downtown centric approach, the pilot program holds immense promise, particularly in our low income and unhoused community members. By reaching out to communities that are often underserved, we demonstrate as a city and as a body our commitment to equality and social justice increased funding and support for the carver. I'm excited that the city manager listened and acted on the community involvement budgets ask for increased funding for the carver by allocating $400,000 in additional funds. We will be supporting the invaluable programs and operations of the carver. [2:24:15 PM] >> The carver serves as a vital resource to the community. >> It's a museum. It's an event space and frankly, it's an after school space. This funding will allow the addition of one new employee to address the immediate and pressing needs of the center collaborative funding for expanded residential treatment facilities by securing this funding, we're not just investing in bricks and mortar, but in the health and recovery of individual in need. This residential treatment facility will play a pivotal role in providing much needed support and treatment to those battling addiction. Providing this gap funding demonstrates this council's commitment to compassionate care and lasting impact. These funds will be used in collaboration with Travis county for projects that are otherwise ineligible for the traditional source or the traditional sources of housing funds. This facility holds the potential to transform lives by [2:25:15 PM] adding 40 additional and essential treatment beds and acquiring the property that ensures that this facility thrives as a place for healing and renewal and perpetuity. Increase funding for community violence, intervention and child care, support for city employees . I happen to know for a fact, through my ability to have established relations with people who work for the city of Austin. This is critical. I have a member of my staff who I hope he doesn't mind me disclosing this literally pays $1,500 a month for a little, teeny tiny baby to get child care. Child care is critical and essential, and it's one of the things that we can offer our city employees as is a critical need. So I want to thank my colleague, neighbor and council member Velasquez, for allowing my team and I to support your initiative in this additional $500,000 in community [2:26:17 PM] violence intervention, $1 million in essential child care, support for city employees earning below the average salary targeted investments like this will ensure that Austin is a safe place, that working families can still live in support for increased spay and neuter funding. Thank you, councilmember vela, for your work to increase the expansion of no cost spay and neuter services for pets in our community. I also think this is a critical way to address the need and prevention that we need . This significant invest will empower our nonprofit partners to introduce an additional two free spay and neuter per days per week, effective addressing the growing demand for the essential services. In closing, it has been said many times in this chamber over the last month by community members and council members alike that this budget is absolutely a reflection of [2:27:18 PM] our priorities as a city. And I think it's obvious to anyone who has watched the process and reviews of the budget that our priorities are not uniform. They are not all alike. And each of us brings the perspective of our districts that we represent and our lived experiences, and the mayor's case, all of those are mixed in one big pot. But I do think this budget does not reflect each of my priorities. It does not encompass all the needs and wants of my neighborhoods where the 90 plus thousand people that I represent in district one, it does include increased funding for the carver . It does include 40 new residential treatment beds. It does include a mobile community court. It does good at a time. And in a state that it seems like those with more power are limiting our ability to do good. The budget does not end today. We have to go out and implement [2:28:19 PM] and prove the doubters and the desires that these funds are well spent and impactful. Once again, we do have even more work to do to show them that our needs are equal and equal to an and greater than their wants. I'm committed to that work as I know many of you are as well. I'm committed to see that these funds make the necessary impact . And with that, I'd like to thank the mayor and on my colleagues for their efforts here and thank all the community members who participated in this process. I know it's not easy and sometimes making that sacrifice to contribute to democracy is in fact a sacrifice . So thank you all. I really appreciate it. >> Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember councilmember Fuentes and I'll come over there. >> Thank you. >> I, too, also want to start off by thanking our community for showing up and participating in the city of Austin's budget process. All of our board and commissioners and everyone who [2:29:22 PM] made their voice heard. I especially love listening to the different testimony from people in our communities who shared about the experiences that they've had, particularly with participating in the family stabilization grant program. So it was really great to hear about the success that that program is having in our community and the need that we still have. >> I believe they mentioned that when the program first started, they had over 50,000 applications for about 135 slots. >> So that definitely gets to the level of affordable crisis that we're in as a city. And so I'm proud that the amendments that I brought forward that were really focused on affordable city, on providing stabilization , on expanding access to child care, on increasing wages for early childhood childhood educators were adopted and incorporated into this year's budget process. And lastly, I want to thank our city staff for their hard work during this budget process. And of course, our district two team for all of their hard work in in the development of our amendments [2:30:22 PM] and policy analysis and for spearheading our efforts. And so I really am appreciative for everyone's hard work. Thank you. >> Councilmember Fuentes, councilmember Ryan alter, then councilmember qadri. >> Thank you very much, mayor. I do want to start by thanking the manager and staff for y'all's tireless work preparing this budget manager, usa. No idea. Nero Perot gracias por un poco de Nero. You you took to heart our concerns and priorities as well as those of the public and shaped a final document that makes meaningful investments in our community. You also heard our concerns about the equity civil rights, sustainability and resilience officer. And I want to thank you for agreeing to work with us in the future to find the most effective way for these offices to successfully carry out their important mission. I also want to take a moment to thank you, mayor, for your work throughout this [2:31:22 PM] process. It has been well structured so that we could all have the space to lay out our priorities and work toward a positive fiscal impact and on that point, I also want to recognize your creating as much space as possible for council to do and advance our shared goals . I know you're not offering amendments wasn't because you don't have priorities. You care deeply about. And I respect the difficulty of putting our priorities in front and center. And even again, this afternoon helping the freshman corner over here. And so I just want to thank you for doing that. Thank you. I would also be remiss if I didn't thank the hard work of my entire office for their diligence throughout this process. At the end of the day, this budget is a significant investment in our community investments in people. It advances many important priorities we share, including investments in water forward affordable housing, including increases for our planning [2:32:23 PM] department so that they can successfully implement the affordability resolutions we have passed over this past six month, continuing expansion of the customer assistance program, improved resilience and laying the groundwork for future items such as burying power lines and a transfer station that will allow us to move forward on an electric garbage fleet. It also includes many of the additional investments that I and my colleagues and the public felt must be made to address homelessness. These investments are investments in human lives, just the other day there was an individual a block from here who was sleeping on the sidewalk and people walk by them. One walk by and one by one only to discover later that this individual had in fact died. We are talking about huge individuals and we can prevent more stories like [2:33:23 PM] this, which is why I offered multiple amendments to advance innovative and proven methods to get our unhoused neighbors into housing. And I'm proud to say we are making these investments, including a dispersed delivery of services through the use of technology diversion and rapid exit funding, helping tenants organize and stay in their homes and increasing our psa in very low income housing capacity. I'm also thrilled we were able to include my amendment to address our critical need for more trees, especially in east Austin . And lastly, I want to thank my colleagues for the many amendments that you all have offered that make us stronger as a community, especially expanding for within ems increase rental assistance, investing in our families, protecting us from wildfires and as councilmember harper- madison discussed, bridging that gap for a new entry is going to be critical. These are just a few of the many investments we're making in our community through this budget. But today is not [2:34:26 PM] the end, but rather the beginning. Spending money is not an accomplishment. Getting results for the community is. That's the hard work. We start today and I look forward to working with my colleagues and staff to do just that. >> Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember councilmember qadri, you recognized. >> Thank you, mayor. Would it be okay if I ask a quick question before I make a statement and this is for the city manager and I thought about this as I was taking notes of what I'm going to say. But is it is the expectation that when we're making mid-year budget amendments that that money is going to be pulled from the reserves? Or where is that money going to come from? >> Well, first of all, yes, we are talking about doing mid-year adjustments. We talked about that and that is to be determined. It depends on, one, what the demands are for us to do the additional services that may be required of us as a city, and then and also to make the commitment that we've made, at least on a couple of items that [2:35:27 PM] we do want to reconsider or actually consider whether additional resources are needed . And then we'll have to figure out where that money comes from. That'll be our job to kind of sort through that. Great. And I think there is a worry that sales tax has starting to soften on us. It may not stay on that trend. It may change. So there's a lot of variables that we'll have to take into consideration . And you know, and if we get other governmental entities to step in and do some stuff that would save us some money that we might be able to get there, great. >> Thank you. Manager. Well I don't know any Spanish, so I'm not going to be able to top Ryan . But but I do want to thank the community for all their work, you know, coming to us, talking to each each of us at our at our respective budget town halls. I want to thank all the community groups that really have fought towards a robust and Progressive budget that that will help everyone. And I think councilmember alter mentioned the case of the unhoused individual, and that's unfortunately a story that rings true and has been ringing true for far too long in this city. [2:36:29 PM] So my hope is that the items that we're able to get through this budget really help people. And I think that's our policy. And our budget should always be kind of molded. I want to thank staff for all their work during this budget cycle, especially Carrie. I'm going to keep giving Carrie a lot of shout outs, but from coming to all the budget town halls to all the late nights at city hall, I think you called me at like very late at night. I was I was already sleeping. So I want to thank you for your tireless work. I want to thank the nine staff who worked really hard on this. Melissa Natalie, and Sarah on a lot of our budget amendments. College food access, supporting homeless service providers, wraparound services for us, save sixth street initiative, mental health diversion and the housing education. There were a lot of really important issues and I want to thank the rest of the Dyas on all their work, [2:37:30 PM] especially the quorum that I was able to be a part of. But but I also want to highlight the jobs, not finished. There are a lot of issues that need a lot more time and a lot more work, whether it be homelessness or housing parks or public safety. The job's not finished. And I think that's a that's a general feel of the rest of this council. So I'm looking forward to the rest of this year and the many years ahead. >> Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember qadri, mayor pro tem, and then councilmember Velasquez. >> Thank you, mayor. I'm not sure if anyone had bets on what time we might wrap things up today, but in true Watson fashion, you're moving us along pretty quickly. I'm really excited about I had a bet, so let's go now. >> We were warned not to include you. >> Really excited about the amendments that we were able to get baked in. >> We've got the equitable transit oriented development planners that are going to be joining the team that were very excited. This is a process that's been ongoing for a number of years between myself and councilmember harper-madison [2:38:32 PM] trying to make sure that as project connect is built, that we are doing everything we can to make sure that that system functions well and that as few people are displaced as possible by some of the transportation investments that are going to be made through that project. So the equitable tod process is something that's going to be really important for the community to be heard about how they want to make sure they have access to these improve movements and to make sure that we've got our applications scoring high enough at the federal level to truly leverage as much federal grant matching as we possibly can. Cat metro has done a lot of work on this. The folks in the project connect office have been focused on this very diligently. And it's the city's part to make sure we step up and we have the appropriate level of planning in the community as as this project unfolds. We've got another one about park security measures. We went ahead and really adjusted some of the language you know, I brought this forward to specifically address issues with the circle metro park and having unauthorized vehicles go in and [2:39:33 PM] tear up the soccer fields. So we're going to be working with the parks and recreation department on how to best improve that facility so that that is no longer happening, but wanted to keep the language broad enough that if there were additional funds in this pot of money to go and help other parks across the city, that it was flexible enough to be able to accommodate that need. So I look forward to getting an update on that in six months from the director of parks and recreation department. Just wanted to get that on the record. But we know that everyone working on this knows there's an issue to be addressed and we want to make sure we've got the appropriate security levels in our parks. We also are now going to have more parks, maintenance positions. So this is something that a huge need has been identified. I know we all care about our park system and making sure that we've got the appropriate level of funding and maintenance for the park space itself. Our facilities and other grounds types of work that we know is needed in our park system. So we're glad to be able to increase their funding [2:40:34 PM] considerably this year. And the last amendment that I brought forward was to restore the full funding of a program that I care a lot about the city for the past few years has been issuing free gun locks for people who want to participate in that program, as well as a safe storage education campaign to help minimize the impacts of gun violence on our community and especially unnecessary injuries or death with accidental firearm discharges. And so we're very excited that this program is going to be continuing. We also have asked questions about multifamily composting. It's my understanding that next month, council will be taking up the ordinance for multiphase composting. After a years long beta testing program to make sure that folks in multifamily, like apartments that I live in and condos and other living structures of that nature that don't currently participate in the multi in the composting that single family homes have the [2:41:34 PM] ability to participate in citywide. We are also expanding the living streets program. So this is something that was brought out of healthy streets from 2020 and has continued expanding into things like block parties and play streets and continuing to try to make sure that the roads this the streets in neighborhoods that are safe for people to be able to utilize for a block party are indeed public space. And we want to make sure the public has safe access to be able to enjoy each other's company and better get to know their neighbors and just have a good place for kids to be able to play. And we've also verified that the reproductive health and wellness items that myself, councilmember Fuentes, harper- madison pool along the way have done a lot to make sure that the city is a good team player and doing what we can for folks who need to access health and wellness and education. We've also seen an expansion of our clean creeks crew along the way. There is bond funding for a lot of mobility projects that are baked into this year's budget that don't always get a [2:42:36 PM] big highlight as we start going through these amendments. But are indeed very important to our community and we always appreciate them supporting our ability to do bonding for mobility improvements. And my last note, I want to thank council member Allison alter for working with us on the land management plan and the wildfire risk that is addressed through this program. You know, these are really, really important, especially in district eight, as we look at our open space, you know, public lands and places that may not be accessible to people, but that makes it even harder for folks to go in and clear out debris and wildfire risk issues that are very close to some of the neighborhoods that I represent. So I appreciate all the work that the council members have done. I'm also going to give Kerry Lang a shout out because she was at our district eight budget town hall, and I appreciate all of my constituents that were able to come and have their questions answered and provide feedback on what they would like to see out of this year's budget. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem councilmember Velasquez, then council member vela, and then council member Allison alter. [2:43:38 PM] >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to echo all the thank you so I won't run down the list of every single person that's been thanked, but I do appreciate the community. I also the community staff for putting up with us, especially me and all the all the shifting it took to get some of my stuff in the budget. Greatly appreciated and for helping us host our, our our town hall. I want to thank my team Jalen Victoria eudora and my chief Lizette, who I've been driving crazy for the last 3 or 4 weeks as far as staff, I especially want to thank director Sturrup who found me some last minute money for substance use continuum of care . Today has been very heavy for me. While I am honored and humbled to humbled to represent my hometown on this diocese, and while I put a lot of love in consideration in every single amendment, we offered the community violence intervention program is very personal to me and it helps me keep a promise. In four days, it'll be the 14th anniversary of my brother poncho's murder at 2 A.M. On [2:44:41 PM] August 20th, 2009. A man drove up to my mother's house and shot and killed my little brother. I promised my brother then that I would make things better for kids like us. They grew up in east Austin and I firmly believe that it takes the hood to save the hood in preventions programs , preventing gun violence, preventing youth violence and supporting for healing in the community by trusted messengers. And this money begins that journey. And I want to thank everybody on this Dyess for working with me on all of my amendments. And at peace for helping me with with this amendment and add Taylor Trevino, who first brought it to my attention. Moms demand action . Thank you. And I just want to say I love you, poncho. >> Thank you. Councilmember Velasquez, councilmember vela can pass poncho. Again. >> Thank you to everybody. Staff [2:45:42 PM] it's there's so much hard work that goes on. I appreciate it so much. There's just been so much back and forth keeping everybody just on their toes. Thank y'all. So much. Budget staff. But beyond that, the department staff, my own staff, everybody, just the city manager and his staff, the city attorney, it's we have really good staff here in Austin. And sometimes, you know, there's a lot of anger and frustration and people, you know, vent and stuff. But honestly, in my year and a half here on the dais, we have people that really love the city and work so hard for it, work so hard to make it a better place. I appreciate you and I recognize that work. Shade we got $2 million for the shade in parks all around the city. Oh, god, I'm so excited about that. I can't wait to see those start covering playgrounds and basketball courts and those types of facilities. You know, I attended a conference in phenix [2:46:43 PM] on on heat ready cities and this is absolutely emergency shelter is a critical component of that resilience in our utilities the critical component of that. But things like shade, things like how we design in our buildings, those kinds of things are also critical. We need to look at this more comprehensively. But putting that $2 billion toward shade, I think is a very, very important first step. Although no council member, Fuentes apparently just told me that San Antonio put like $20 million toward shade. So we can't let them run up us like that. Spay neuter. >> I'm not taking any more minutes, spay and neuter. >> It's a critical component. We get so many communications about the animal shelter and the problems with the animal shelter. People are very passionate about animal rights and about our our stray dogs and cats and Guinea pigs and all the other critters that that animal [2:47:43 PM] control officers find. We're not going to get that problem under control. We're not going to successfully have a no kill shelter unless we invest in spay and neuter programs, unless we do the microchip program so that we can get the pets back to their rightful owners. That's a really I think that's a wise investment in the future of our animal shelter and of the general health and well-being of animals in Austin, Travis county, the mental health diversion center that that both council member qadri and I had had twin amendments basically for that important step. So many of, I think, the city of Austin's resources go toward folks that really are struggling with mental health issues that that take a lot of ems resources, that take a lot of fire department resources, that take a lot of APD resources. We need to do better so that our our first responders can can focus on can can shift their [2:48:44 PM] work toward other folks. And so the folks that are struggling with mental health issues can get the help they need can in a better environment not in a jail. Again, we'll see where that goes with the county. But I'm proud that the that the city will stand shoulder to shoulder with the county and make an investment in mental health diversion. That's a that's a really important piece. And I'm I'm so glad that the city and the region really is moving in that direction. The planning dollars we have invested a lot in our planning. The council had a lot of amendments. We have budgeted substantial amounts of money to make sure that those amendments get done as as soon as they possibly can. Again, a thank you to staff and to the council for really committing to getting the many code amendments that we've passed done as as soon as we possibly can, and then tenant stabilization prior to the pandemic. I don't know if the city really had any money [2:49:45 PM] dedicated toward tenant stabilization, dedicated toward helping folks avoid eviction, helping them in to fight evictions. We have just invested tremendously in that area. This year. We will have a total not just this next fiscal year, but starting now and with a contract signed, we have a total of $9.4 million dedicated to tenant stabilization. That is an important investment, I think signals that this council is serious about investing in our community and wants to provide as much tenant stabilization as we can possibly provide. We're very excited about that and on that note, I don't want to it's not just going to be somebody. But I do have a couple of quick questions on that for the city manager, the and I know we budgeted 1.6 additional million dollars in in addition to the [2:50:46 PM] $7.8 million that was already budgeted. I know the city manager that that when somebody has a contract, they're going to start administering it, I think imminently. You know, it could start this week. And I just wanted to make sure that we are monitoring that contra act so that we have enough funds to sustain it through out the fiscal year 2000 and 24. >> We understand that that's the your request, your direction. I think that's the sentiment of the council as a whole. And so we have that in our in our bag of what work needs to get done this fiscal year. And if there is something that comes up during the course of the year that is causing or concern, we'll report back. As you've indicated in back in January to let you know how that is coming along. >> I very much appreciate that. My office will be monitor that contract and that program very closely. What I don't want to do [2:51:48 PM] and I think what the problem has been in the past and again, it's not really anybody's fault or anybody's problem, but, you know, the monies from the federal government came in kind of unsteady tranches of cash. And so the program would start and then it would stop and then it would start and then it would stop. And so I just want to make sure that we have a steady and continuous program so that the nonprofits they're administering the program can also they can't be just letting people go and then hiring back on. You know, we have to kind of commit and keep a steady flow of money out there and then again, I look forward to taking a look at it. That program down the road and adjusting as needed. Thankfully we've got we've got plenty of reserves to again thank you all very much. Thank you to the mayor and the city manager. Appreciate all of y'all's leadership and hard work. >> Thank you. Councilmember vela, councilmember Allison alter, then councilmember pool. >> Thank you. This is my seventh [2:52:51 PM] budget, so I'm going to really try and be brief, because if I try to list everything that I had planted within the budget over the last seven cycles, it would take a really long time. And I know that we are we are all eager to move forward. But as we come to a close, I want to express my sincere appreciation to our budget office and our financial services staff for your monumental efforts. As always, it's always a pleasure to witness your brilliance and your patience. And this budget season is no different. So thank you very, very much. I also want to say thank you to the city manager and all of my colleagues , especially my new colleagues who have now gone through your first budget adoption process. So congratulations to our first years. We don't use the term freshman. I have learned now that I have a first year about to start in college. So we're going to call you first years. You're not a first year. So yeah [2:53:52 PM] , I don't feel like a first year, but thank you. Last shortly I want to extend my thanks to my district ten team, especially to Ashley Richardson, my budget director, my chief of staff, Katina Mitchell, for their diligent work as well as to each and every district ten constituent and Austin resident who contributed their ideas and priorities. It's been really great to see so many people engage in how we should move forward. The budget process, from my experience, is never easy, but it is a key part of what we were elected to do to amend and approve a budget that reflects the values of the communities we represent and serve. I feel satisfied that we are poised to adopt a budget that makes our community safer, stronger and more prepared to address our community's challenges. But I would be remiss if I didn't say that we know we have storms on the horizon. Our fiscal projections appear challenging in the coming years, we'll have hard choices to make, and I really do look forward to making them together with all of you. Thank you. [2:54:53 PM] >> Thank you. Councilmember councilmember pool, am I the last one or are you going to speak? I've got about 20 minutes. Okay. I'm done. Well that sounds good. >> This is my ninth budget and every year I think maybe it'll be a little bit easier because I have kind of a sense of the rhythms and what to expect. And every year I'm amazed anew at how unique every single budget process is that that I've gone through. And I would imagine from the city staff's perspective, as you all are doing, the necessary and expert spadework to dig into the details to get us to this place, you probably also look and see many patterns, but also know how individual sized each fiscal year preparation and execution ends up being so. So I want to [2:55:55 PM] thank you. Staff and city manager for your amazing staff and the excellent work that you all brought to us to pull this messy effort into some kind of recognizable shape. 5.5 billion and counting is an incredible amount of money. We are delivering significant levels of service into every single corner of our community. And the folks who came to talk to us today, I'm really kind of sorry that many of them have left so that because they're not hearing hearing us, thank them for their input and to tie up all of the disparate edges and explain what all it is that we will be doing throughout our community for the next 365 days. I think there may be only just seeing kind of the [2:56:57 PM] tips of the grasses and there's so much at the root. So mayor, thanks so much for your expert leadership in pulling us all together. I think at some point yesterday there were some of us who weren't entirely sure that we'd be able to give this a wrap in the one day. But that's always a really hopeful bit of aspiration. And it looks like if we all stop, including me, stop talking, we may be able to bring that home before the sun goes down. So thank you to my colleagues on this dais, in particular, our new gentleman and to the colleagues that I have worked with over the years . Shorter and longer numbers of years, really, really appreciate the privilege to sit up here and do this hard work, to have such great outcomes with each and every one of you. Thank you, mayor. Thank councilmember. >> Thank you. Council. Council the motion in front of you is to adopt the city's fiscal year [2:57:59 PM] 2023 2024 budget, including attachment a as amended. This is a roll call vote. I'll call on the city clerk, call the roll. >> Mayor Watson. >> I mayor pro tem Ellis I council member Harper Madison I council member Fuentes I council member Velasquez I council member. >> Vela I council member Ryan alter I council member. Kelly nay council member Poole yes. Council member qadri I council member Allison alter I there being ten eyes and one no council member Kelly the motion is adopted and the 2023 2024 fiscal year budget is adopted. >> We'll now go to items nine, ten and 11 members. I intend to [2:58:59 PM] take up items nine, ten and 11 together unless someone tells me they have a proposed amendment to nine, 10 or 11. Councilmember Allison alter I don't have an amend moment. >> I just want to confirm that the sheets that we're looking at capture the additional position from our amendments. >> Fair enough, members, you've I was going to point out in item number nine, you have a yellow sheet labeled version two. And on item number 11, you also have a sheet labeled version two. You've heard councilmember Allison alter's question. I'll recognize you, Mr. Van Eno or the manager to answer the question. >> You guys understand the question? >> Yeah, that reflects the changes. Okay. >> That satisfy your request. All right, then the motion would be to adopt items nine, ten and 11 together. Nine and 11 being [2:59:59 PM] version two. Council member qadri moves adoption councilmember Ryan alter seconds the motion. Is there any discussion? Without objection. Items number item numbers nine, ten and 11 are adopted. Members will go to item number 12. Item number. 12 is to ratify the property tax increase reflected in the budget as is required by state law. This is not a the vote on the tax rate. We will take a separate vote on the tax rate after this vote. Is there a motion to ratify the property tax increase reflected in the fiscal year 2023 2024 budget, including the attachment a as adopted that was passed by the council today. Council member pool moves adoption. Is there a [3:01:02 PM] second councilmember qadri seconds. The motion is there discussion on the motion hearing none. Is there objection to adoption of the motion other than council member Kelly voting no without objection. Item number 12 is adopted with council member Kelly voting no. Item number 13 we will now take up 13. It's related to a contract with health service corporation. Is there a motion to adopt item number 13? I'm sorry, did I? I sure did. Members, I skipped item number one when I went to 13. And I apologize for that item number one is to approve an ordinance adopting and levying a property which is our ad valorem tax rate for the city of Austin. Austin for fiscal year 2023, 2024. As [3:02:03 PM] you know, we already conducted the public hearing for this item today. State law requires this to be a roll call vote and requires the motion to be made as follows. So the motion that I will accept will be that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 45.8 $0.08 per $100 valuation, which is effectively a 3.4% increase in the tax rate. You're going to correct me. >> Sorry, but yes, van Eno gave me these numbers yesterday. So it's okay. >> 44.5, $0.08. >> Well, thank goodness you're there. If any note had me going even higher. So let me here's the motion, folks. Yeah yeah. I'm looking at all three of them. Yeah, that's right. The property, the motion is that the [3:03:04 PM] property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 44.8 $0.08 per $100. Valuation. >> 44.58. >> My goodness. >> 40 458. >> 44.58 40 458. All right and 3.4, is that right? Yes. All right. Because I'm going to say it again. And if you crack me, I'm going. All right. The motion is that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 44.5 $0.08 per $100. Value which is effectively. A 3.4% increase in the tax rate. Is there a second? The motion is made by councilmember Poole. Is there a second? It's seconded by council member qadri. Did discussion members, as I indicated, this is a roll call vote. City clerk will you please [3:04:04 PM] call the roll? >> Mayor Watson I mayor pro tem Ellis I council member harper-madison I council member Fuentes I council member. Velasquez I council member. Vela I council member Ryan alter I council member. Kelly nay council member Poole yes. Council member qadri I council member Allison alter. Yay they're being ten eyes and council member Kelly voting no. >> The motion is adopted now we'll go to item number 13, which is, as I indicated, a contract with health care service corporation. Is there a motion to adopt item number 13? Oh, we're like, we're going to get stuck now. Yeah. The mayor pro tem moves to adopt item 13. It's seconded by Allison alter. Is there discussion on this item? Is there any objection there being no objection. Item number 13 is adopted. We'll now [3:05:07 PM] go to items 14 through 21 members. As I indicated earlier today, I would take up items 14 through 21 as a consent agenda. Let me ask, is there anyone wishing to pull any of the items 14 through 21 off of the consent agenda? Councilmember Fuentes. >> Yes. I'd like to pull item 21 for questions. Okay >> Item number 21 will be pulled off of the consent agenda. So the consent agenda will be items 14 through 20. Is it so is there anyone wishing to be shown abstaining from items 14 through 20? Anyone wishing to be shown recusing themselves on items 14 through 20 council member Kelly I have you being shown voting no on item number 17. Is that all? Okay. Is there anyone wishing to be shown voting no on any of the [3:06:08 PM] other item? Any of the items? Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda? Councilmember Fuentes moves to adopt the consent agenda as read. It's seconded by councilmember harper-madison. Is there any objection without objection. Items 14 through 20 or adopted as a consent agenda, with council member Kelly being shown voting no on item number 17? >> Mayor I have some comments on one of the items. >> Fair enough. I I should have done that and I apologize. Please go. >> Thank you. >> And thank you, colleagues for your support on item 15, which is about creating and bringing a mural to the armadillo park water tank. It's a defunct water storage tank and we see it as an opportunity to bring some public art to south central, south Austin. And I want to thank our armadillo park neighborhood for all of their work and advocacy and bringing this idea forward. It truly is rooted in the community, and I think we'll go a long way and creating a landmark. And I icon for south [3:07:09 PM] austinites and mayor pro tem Jackie Goodman gave me some some suggested talking points on people to acknowledge and I want to make sure that that we include these individuals. These are artists who live in the area. Eddie Wilson, Jim Franklin, Michael priest, guy, Jake. They are artists who live in the south Austin area. And what we want to ensure are engaged with as the process is, as as the process moves forward in creating this mural and what we know is that for many austinites who would come back from the old armadillo world headquarters or from the vulcan gas company, you know, legendary music venues on their way back to south Austin, they would see this water tank. And so this is a really great opportunity for us to make that connection for austinites to connect the community with our thriving music scene. And I'm excited [3:08:10 PM] about it. Moving forward. >> Councilmember Allison alter, thank you. >> I'm really pleased to adopt item 14. This is a resolution that sets a goal of making 20 472 important ems programs that we have the collaborative care communication center for and the paramedic practitioners program . Both of these enable us to address low acuity care needs without sending an ambulance or without transporting to an emergency room. These programs help avoid strain at our hospitals. They provide cost savings for us, for the community, for the hospitals and most importantly, they provide increased access to health care. Once implement these programs, being 24 over seven is going to free up our ambulances and improve response times. This is the key to how we grow our ems system as we grow without having to build a station on every corner. I want to hear, [3:09:13 PM] acknowledge the leadership of Dr. Escott, who has been innovative in rethinking and how we deliver our care, how we do it more effectively, how we do it at a much higher level and really appreciate his leadership as our chief medical officer. I also want to acknowledge chief Luckritz, who I believe also shares this vision of how we are going to. I love seeing you guys back there who who shares this vision of really trying to address the low acuity care. So that when you need an ambulance for one of those high acuity situations, those trauma situations where you have to get to the hospital, we have an ambulance available. This is really important, particularly for those of us who represent areas that are more on the outskirts of the city, because our ambulances are being pulled in to deal with low acuity situations in the center of the city. And then when we have [3:10:13 PM] someone who has a heart attack, they're not available. And so this is one of the solutions that we are implementing. And so I'm pleased that my colleagues have leaned into this to make this be 24 seven by next budget . And the city manager has committed to work with chief Luckritz and Dr. Escott to partner with central health, to partner with our hospitals to help fund this program. Hopefully as an example of how we can work with the other folks and still get the stuff done that we need to get done. So thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember councilmember qadri mayor, I just want to speak really quickly on on item 17. >> First, I'm going to start off with the with the thank you's. I want to thank Melissa Bieler from the d9 staff for working tirelessly on this and making this a reality. And I want to thank my co sponsors, Ryan alter councilmember Velasquez harper-madison Fuentes in order to achieve our community goals, we need to make sure we [3:11:15 PM] prioritize our available resources, coordinated entry is the national best practice, and according to the us interagency council on homelessness, the only federal agency with the sole mission focused on preventing and preventing and ending homelessness in America, an ineffective homeless response system should include coordinated entry. If we want to help people on the streets intense in green belts, we need we need to ensure we are getting housing units online that will prioritize these folks, ensuring as many psa units as possible are participating in court. Inventory is a step in the right direction, signaling to our community that we are committed to ensuring our bond dollars help those who need it the most. I'm really excited that we were able to get this this past. >> Thank you. Council member. Council member, mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, mayor. I'm very excited that we are passing items 18 and 19 today. Item 18 is adding a third personal holiday for city employees as the gentleman spoke about [3:12:15 PM] earlier during the public comment. County employees have already had this. So I think this is just part of making sure that we're doing everything we can to attract good candidates to be employees of the city. And item 19 is about when employees who have been hired can use their vacation pay so they can accrue vacation hours as soon as they start working through the normal process, but just weren't able to utilize any of those vacation days for six months. And so we know that's really hard on families who have birthday parties to go to or graduations or weddings or other things that come up for a family to be able to deal with. And so we hope that this is one extra thing to show our appreciation to the employees. This builds upon some of their recruitment and retention policies that we've talked about over the past few years, like when we increased minimum wage during the last budget cycle and kicked off the process to make sure that temporary employees can participate in the city's dental plan. And so that is now something that is moving forward with this budget again, we want [3:13:16 PM] to make sure that as one of the largest employers in town, that we're also one of the best employers in town. I know competition is tough, so we wanted to make sure we showed our appreciation to the employees who come to work every day and really provide all the city services that we talk about in a budget, because you're the ones that our community is really relating to each day and seeing you show up and help with the city services that we promise to give to the community . So that's a big thank you to everyone who works for the city of Austin. Thanks mayor pro tem. >> Anyone else wish to be heard on the consent agenda? We'll go to item number 21. And before I take a motion, councilmember Fuentes, I'll recognize you for your questions. You indicated you had. >> Yes. The questions were for the author of item 21, councilmember Kelly and or staff. If they're available as well. Last year I brought forward a budget writer that was around increasing funding for emergency sheltering in our city, especially during our severe weather events. And as [3:14:17 PM] part of that budget directed, it included some direction that called for a plan around severe weather emergency excuse me, on the city's cold weather shelter programs and called for a calendar based emergency shelter response plan and also provided some direction on engaging with culturally competent training, making sure that the community was involved in the creation of that plan and ensuring that that we were exploring partnership. And so I guess my first question for councilmember Kelly is to understand how this ifc builds off of that work. And the intent with this policy. Well thank you for that, councilmember Fuentes I do want to let you know that you brought forward a potential amendment to the resolution, which I did incorporate into the version two, which was posted and circulated. >> As far as the progress on your previous council action, I can't speak to that because it [3:15:19 PM] was put before staff. I do know that in the last year I brought forward and we passed as a council the extreme weather sheltering policy and that has yet to come to fruition. I'm not sure when the next update from staff is going to be. What I do know is that the intent of this resolution is to continue through the process. We've seen over the last couple of extreme weather events that are under sheltered and unhoused population is not getting this level of service or care that they need. We've heard from outspoken in and rightly so, advocates for the individuals who are experiencing those situations that are more needs to be done and so this is not to take away from anything that you've put forward, but to build on it and to ensure that we get this over the finish line because it has taken us way too long to get to this point. And I know that we need to continue the progress. So I'd be interested in hearing from staff as well as to what the progress is on what you've been working [3:16:19 PM] on. >> Let me we understand this resolution and then the resolution that you have. Councilmember Fuentes, passed. But what we'll do is we'll put together one communication that says where we're at with this. I know recently the council authorized us to purchase the generators. That was one component of making sure that what their warming centers were, that they'd be able to run with power. So we owe you a complete report. And I'm going to ask Ken snipes, our director of haysom, to be able to put that together with all the different agencies of the city to address both councilmember Kelly's resolution , as well as the one that you had given to us earlier. And it includes also language services. We talked about that yesterday and councilmember Miller's offices. And so we need to make sure that we've got, as comprehensive as we can. So when we do have another extreme weather event, we're able to competently deal with all the different communities that we have in this city. >> Thank you, manager. I appreciate that. And certainly what I was trying to better understand if an additional policy is needed and what are the gaps in the why behind it. And so I wanted to make sure we [3:17:19 PM] created this space for us to talk about it, to get an update on where we're at with the emergency shelter response plan, but also to understand what still remains, what are the needs that still remain. And so certainly I think a memo update would be helpful. >> As a corollary to that, I'll point out that council approved the opening of the Marshall marshaling yard and having the organization endeavors, I think was going to operate that and that was going to begin originally that was going to begin at the end of this month. However, a lot of work is going in by the staff so that what's going to happen is as early as Monday, it will be open for a couple of reasons. One is for extreme weather and have a place for people to go. Second, it's a priority of the cities with regard to mitigating wildfire risk. And so I'm real pleased. I want to thank the staff for helping speed that emergency shelter up. So with that being said, are all your questions [3:18:20 PM] answered? >> Yes, unless staff would like to speak to it now, I will wait on the memo. Okay >> Fair enough. Is there a motion to adopt item number 21? Oh, I'm sorry. Councilmember Kelly. You moved to adopt her. You want to talk? >> I moved to adopt. I'm about done talking for the day, sir. All right. >> We all are getting mayor pro tem seconds. The motion to adopt item number 21. Without objection, item number 21 is adopted. What are you looking for? Okay all right. With without objection, we will recess the meeting of the Austin city council at two at 3:19 P.M. [3:22:00 PM] With that objection, I will reconvene the meeting of the Austin city council will it is. 3:27 P.M. Members I'm sorry. Well, I can't see. 322 yeah. Yeah somebody got 330 in the says yeah, somebody got 330 in the pool. So they don't want me to push that. It's 322 for the record members we're getting ready to adjourn. I'll ask if there's any additional comments. I'd like to just say that I want to thank much, like my colleagues have done, all of the public participants, all the participants that have participated in one way or another, whether it's been through email or being here and testifying and being part of public comment or at the different town halls. We couldn't do this without that [3:23:23 PM] public participation. And I appreciate that. And I also want to reiterate something that I said last week and in my message board post just yesterday this budget process has been a very collaborative process and I think it is revealed how we can make city hall and local government work and work well. So I want to say thank you to all of the council each one of you. I want to say a special thanks to the city manager, the finance staff and all of the other professional staff that we are so blessed at the city of Austin to have working for us. We couldn't do this. You've worked very hard and we couldn't have done this without you. All of us ought to be pretty proud and I'll just end it by saying, nice work, folks. With that being said, without objection, we will adjourn the meeting of the Austin city council and it is 3:24 P.M. Thanks everybody.