Audit and Finance Committee (AFC) meeting Transcript – 5/22/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/22/2024 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/22/2024 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. [9:32:26 AM] good morning. Is at ten ready? Good morning. My name is Alison alter, and I'm chair of the audit and finance committee. I'm joined here by my vice chair, Leslie pool and council member Ryan alter on the dais. Council member Mckenzie Kelly is virtual. And then I think council member Fuentes will also be joining us virtual. It is may 22nd, 2024 at 9:32 A.M, and we're convening in the chambers, we have several folks signed up to speak, so we will begin with public communication. Please. Our first speaker is remote, I believe. And you're going to call then and council member Fuentes is here. Are you going to call the speakers? >> Ashley, can you unmute on your end? >> I think I'm unmuted. >> Yes you are. Please proceed. [9:33:26 AM] >> Yes you are. Please proceed. >> Hi. Good morning. My name is Ashley fisher and I'm speaking on behalf of the trail conservancy today on item number five, the briefing on the parks maintenance budget. The trail conservancy is proud to be a partner of the city. We have stepped up to provide important maintenance and improvements to the butler trail. But we know that other park spaces also need help. We ask for the city to do what they can to increase the overall parks maintenance budget, and staff to provide crucial maintenance that all so that all austinites can enjoy abundant and well maintained park spaces without new maintenance dollars and positions each year, service levels for maintenance will decrease across the city as existing physicians are tasked with more hours per fte. We thank the finance committee for their attention to this issue, and we emphasize the need for more maintenance positions and funding for parks. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, miss fisher, next speaker mark may. Welcome, Mr. [9:34:27 AM] speaker mark may. Welcome, Mr. Mayor. >> Good morning. My name is mark. May I live in d5? And I'm a frequent user of the park. I also donate my time to our parks, and I've given money to both the trail conservancy and apf to support our parks. I want to talk to you today to a request that you audit some of your budget assumptions that you know will impact park funding. I know over the last few years we've let park funding drop, as we all thought. We had these nonprofit partners to help fill the gap. I've seen a picture of many of you every year holding the big check from acl. I thought as you did, that this money went to our parks each and every year. So maybe it was okay to not fill every vacancy at [9:35:28 AM] to not fill every vacancy at pard or or give them a budget increase year over year. However, recent work appears to call this assumption into question, and I'm asking you to audit some of these nonprofits to help understand if this model is working and compensating for the park budget and staffing shortfalls. I'd like to talk about apf as it's as it's easy to talk about without any slides. So every year we get the big check from acl. We know this check is coming every year, and we have a pretty good idea of how how much it is. So as a voter and donor to apf, I expect we should have a list of park projects funded each year. That's about equal to the check from acl. As we all know, many of our parks are in need of the basics. Bathrooms water and shade. A review of apf finances shows it's not even close to this expectation. There was $1.7 million of park project performed outside zilker in 2022. This should have at least [9:36:31 AM] 2022. This should have at least been six $1 million by my by my count, where did the money go? We need your help to actually understand, but it appears 1.5 million went to salaries, so 1.7 million spent outside zilker, 1.5 million in salaries. Does that raise any flags with you? I guarantee you it will raise flag with your voters and with donors to apf. Where else did the money go? Well, it looks like it went to the bank. Apf had $22 million in the bank the same year. This is literally years of income from acl that should have been spent in our parks. So part is withering. Our parks are suffering. Apf is getting rich and sitting on $22 million. So I'm asking you to audit and figure out what's going on. When I paid $1,000 to attend party of the parks last year and gave even more money at paddles up, [9:37:32 AM] even more money at paddles up, the same night, I expected the money to be spent on our parks and not put in the bank, or spent on salary. His police perform an audit on these nonprofit partners and figure out why so much money is not being spent on the parks before you finalize park funding. Thank you, thank you. >> Next speaker, Kayla Reese. >> Good morning. I'm Kayla Reese. I'm the advocacy manager with Austin parks foundation, and I just wanted to thank the audit and finance committee for looking at the maintenance needs that park is in need of right now. This is a crucial issue for austinites. We know that there's a big goal to have, parks within walking distance, and maintaining those parks and other facilities is crucial for all austinites to be able to use the parkland. Part has been tasked with maintaining crucial land without the subsequent increase in fts for their [9:38:33 AM] increase in fts for their maintenance positions, and we've also opened a lot more developed facilities like palmer highland, Duncan. There's pools opening up soon, all great things, and we want to make sure that part is being supported in their need to maintain these new facilities that are being developed and opened for everyone's use. Without an increase in fts, we will continue to see a decrease in service levels across the city, and that will impact all districts, new parks and existing parks as well as maintenance of land for future facilities. We know that acquiring land is crucial to make sure that future generations have a good place to live in Austin, and part of that is also maintaining that land, 311 data has shown increases year after year in calls for more maintenance on parkland. So we want to make sure and ask y'all as the city council representatives to increase parks maintenance fts this year. Thank you again for looking at this important issue. And please add more fts to the park maintenance team. Thank you. [9:39:35 AM] maintenance team. Thank you. >> Ted, sift. >> Good morning. >> Thank you for this opportunity to appear, I'm. I'm here to speak about item five as well. And you'll hear more from the finance staff and maybe park staff, but I'm here personally and on behalf of the Austin outside coalition of for profit and nonprofit organizations to advocate for more parks maintenance funding, big kudos, kudos to the city council, as well as park for increasing the, salaries and pay of park maintenance workers from $12 an hour to $20 an hour in the in the last decade, which at least gets closer to what the cost of living is in Austin. Also, big kudos to parks for acquiring almost 500 acres of additional [9:40:36 AM] almost 500 acres of additional parkland over just the last two years, but that requires more funding for maintenance workers and more, more Pritchard funding for maintenance and operations. As park's current level of maintenance is measured in their own criteria as level three or for mowing, that's 21 days, per mowing cycle, this achieves a rating of 43rd out of 100 cities in the tpl park score. And it happens to be the day this year that the new park score for 2024 will be issued. We'll see if that's any better. Hopefully, the budget for next year will include more funding for parks maintenance. Thank you. >> Mike kennerty. Diana proctor. >> Good morning. My name is [9:41:46 AM] >> Good morning. My name is Diana proctor. I am an amateur analyst of the open data budget for the parks department. I'm a business owner. I have a degree in math. But I may say some things that are not exactly correct. But I'm hoping to give you my understanding for my studies. The transportation department, as I understand it, is an enterprise department. It does not depend on the general fund. The Pritchard budget is a hybrid, as I understand it. It relies on the general fund, but it produces revenue like the enterprise department. Revenue is deposited into four categories the general fund, the parks capital improvement project fund, the golf fund and park nonprofits. For this reason, understanding the park budget is like trying to fill a bathtub, while four drains on the bottom are all open, it's [9:42:47 AM] the bottom are all open, it's difficult to understand the park budget. It is not transparent to the general public, but it also creates a system of incentives and disincentives regarding revenue. It's an analytical complication for me, a lack of fiscal transparency for the public, but it has resulted in mixed messages to pard about how they should manage revenue streams. For example, if acl fest pays a small rental fee for using zilker park, or if trail of lights pays no maintenance and no rental fees to use zilker park, it doesn't impact the park budget. It is simply a loss of potential revenue to the general fund and. Please consider making a systemic structural change to the Pritchard accounting procedures to address it more like an enterprise department. It would make analysis of parks [9:43:48 AM] It would make analysis of parks budgets simpler for everyone and more importantly, it would shift incentives toward pardes, capture of revenue sources. And it would disincentivize shifting revenue sources to the park. Nonprofits which is the current model and appears to have no cap on those incentives. Thank you. >> Daniel Cappleman. >> Good morning. Good morning. Committee members, my name is Daniel Cappleman. I'm here today on behalf of the shoal creek conservancy to encourage you to support additional operations and maintenance funding for the parks and recreation department. Shoal creek runs through several parks through north and central Austin, and is one of the most heavily used and visited green spaces in the city. And in order to keep these spaces safe, comfortable and clean for park [9:44:49 AM] comfortable and clean for park and trail users, operations and maintenance funding is critical, at shoal creek conservancy right now, we're in the process of we're currently advocating for additional assets along the trail, including benches, shade, lighting, trash and recycling receptacles, and pet waste stations, which are, especially important for the health of the water and the water quality, and we have a lot of work that we've done with the city to come up with action plans to make sure that shoal creek moves towards a fishbowl and swimmable creek, it's contact recreation safe. And in order to do that, we do need additional pet weigh stations and different, ways to address the cleanliness of the park, so these additional assets will require additional operations, maintenance staff and resources to maintain. Thank you for considering these needs. And we look forward to finding solutions moving forward. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mike kennerty. Chair. That concludes speakers. [9:45:53 AM] concludes speakers. >> Thank you. Thank you to everyone who came out this morning, to speak with us about our our parks. And recreation department, we are going to take, some of the items on this morning's agenda a little bit out of order. We're going to move first to, approve the minutes, but we're going to take the ace appointments at the end. So items two, and six, because we need to go into executive session. It's up to you guys. >> It's just there if you need it. Okay, we'll, we'll we'll take it up at the end and we can decide if we need to go into executive session or not, then, so the first item will be to approve the minutes of the special called audit and finance meeting of may 10th. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from council member Ryan alter? Seconded by council member pool? If there are no objections, we will approve the minutes. Thank [9:46:54 AM] will approve the minutes. Thank you. So we're going to come back to item two. So next up is item three, the city auditor integrity unit. Fiscal year 2024 update. >> Good morning, council members. My name is Brian Malloy. I really appreciate the chance to speak with you this morning. I'm the chief of investigations, which means I oversee the integrity unit, and I'll be discussing all our activities so far this fiscal year 2024. Specifically, we'll go over allegation trends that we've seen so far this year and then investigations we've completed. And then what investigations are ongoing. So far this year we've received 184 different allegations, at this point last year we were at 182. So we're very close to the pace we're on last year. And as you can see on the chart here, last year we finished with 316. That's because usually in the summer we see an uptick in allegations per month coming in. So I fully expect at the end of this fiscal year we'll be on that average of around 312. We've had for over the last three years. Now, looking at the [9:47:55 AM] three years. Now, looking at the jurisdiction of who could look into the allegations that are coming into our office this year, we had an uptick. Usually we're right around one third within the integrity unit's jurisdiction of fraud, waste and abuse. City code violations and two thirds outside of our jurisdiction. We've had a significant uptick to 42% within our jurisdiction, leaving 58 outside of our jurisdiction. Of the ones in our jurisdiction. The most frequently reported was abuse, followed by deception and misrepresentation. That's a larger category that includes fraud. If you've seen any of our previous fraud investigations, followed by misuse and conflict of interest of the allegations that are outside our jurisdiction, by far the most common is hr related issues that can be general hr things, as well as the more serious harassment, discrimination and retaliation fit into that group as well. And then a little bit of a drop down. But the next most common outside our jurisdiction issue is operational issues, which is basically how departments operate. Those issues either get referred to the departments or to human resource department. Looking at how people reported at our office, 61% of our reporters this year chose to be [9:48:56 AM] reporters this year chose to be anonymous, and that falls right in line with best practices. If you want to know what issues are going on in your entity, you've got to give people a chance to report anonymously because they usually fear retaliation and that's why the bulk of our reporters choose to be anonymous. And then you got to give people a lot of different ways that they can report to you. If you want to hear all the concerns that are out there, we try to give people an online reporting form, an email address and a hotline where they can all report to us anonymously, on top of just reaching out directly to us, a physical drop box or even mailing to our office of all those avenues, the online reporting form is by far the most popular, with two thirds of our allegations coming in that way. The next most common is actually 17% used direct investigator conduct contact. That's going to be an email or a phone call directly to one of the investigators on the team or myself. I always like to call out that one, because it shows how much trust those individuals actually have in the team. It's usually someone who's been involved in a prior investigation or made an allegation at some point in the past, they developed some trust in how we handled it and how we protected their anonymity, and [9:49:57 AM] protected their anonymity, and now they feel more comfortable when they contact us directly. Finally the whistleblower hotline came in at 7. So that was the third most common avenue for people to report to our office. Now, looking at where are these allegations in the city in prior years, I always like to focus or not like to, but in prior years I reported based on percentage of total allegations. So you can see that column on my left there on the slide. It's parks and recreation was at 12. They would have had the most Austin water, 9, Austin energy seven and transportation public works also 7. Now that gets skewed because different departments are have vastly different number of employees. And so I've been looking to how other entities report allegations. And I've come across this allegations per 1000 employees as a benchmarking way. And when you factor in that allegations per 1000 employees, that actually changes the entire list. And so the departments that are getting the most allegations so far this year are actually human resources, with 42 allegations per 1000 employees, followed by animal services with 37, and then building services 32, and then a bit of a drop down to Austin resource recovery with 15. And [9:50:58 AM] resource recovery with 15. And if you just want to see like a comparison, I ran those allegations per 1000 employees for those departments that just represented the largest percentage of allegations. And you can see that really drops down to six per 1000 for parks and rec, ten for Austin water, five for Austin energy and nine for transportation public works. Now, what does this all mean? Don't know for sure yet. I'm still looking for the best benchmark comparison for an entity like the city of Austin. A lot of the benchmarking I've seen for how to evaluate allegations per 1000 employees has been private sector focused, but we're definitely gonna share these numbers with the ethics and compliance officer now that the city has one, and work with him to figure out what the implications for the city can be and how better to measure it going forward. All right, moving on to investigations. We've completed so far this year, as of today's date, we've completed five investigations. Two were substantiated and resulted in public reports, two were inconclusive and one was unsubstantiated. This number is a little bit below where we're typically at this point in the year. But I think that's just ebb and flow of how investigations have played out. And by the end of the year, [9:51:59 AM] And by the end of the year, we'll be at our normal number, which is somewhere north of ten investigations completed of the two, that issue, resulted in public reports being issued. When was that public health and was it misuse case and the other one was that forensic science department. And that was a fraud and misuse case. Both resulted in employee separation, just goes to show that the management of each of these departments are taking our findings seriously. And taking the appropriate accountability action. And I'd like to finish with what, investigations are currently ongoing. We have 11 open investigations right now, majority of which I think we'll finish in this fiscal year. So I'll be reporting on those in November across seven departments. And the most frequent issues that are popping up in in those investigation are fraud, abuse, misuse and conflict of interest, which are, year over year, the most common allegations we're looking into. And then I'm happy to take any questions. But I also always take any opportunity to show anyone who's watching how to report to our office if they have concerns about city operations. So there's a hotline, email and Ed where you can find our online reporting form. Thank you. [9:53:00 AM] form. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. And, Mr. Mueller can you just explain what falls generally under something that falls under the auditor and what what doesn't and what happens if somebody reports something to you and it's not under your jurisdiction ? >> Ann for sure. So what fits under our jurisdiction? We always like to say fraud, waste and abuse, but it's section 2762 of city code, sometimes referred to as the code of conduct. And so that's going to be a lot of prohibitions about what city employees and city officials can do, and they generally are like abusing your position, abusing, your access to, city information for personal benefit, misusing city resources again for personal benefit, conflicts of interest, when you're making a decision in your public capacity , where you should just be thinking about what's best for the city, what are your job responsibilities? But that decision is going to have an economic impact to you or someone very close to you in your life. And then fraud has several different or several subset definitions, but that's going to be falsifying city [9:54:00 AM] going to be falsifying city records, usually financial records, and often the person doing that is doing that to benefit themselves. So that's the core of what we're looking into. And then if you report anything to our office that's more of an hr concern or operational concern, we're going to record that in our system to make sure it gets tracked and counted. And then we will communicate whatever was shared with us to the relevant party in the city, who could better look into it, whether it's the human resource department or any of the individual departments, we can still protect the anonymity of the reporter. In that situation, we don't have to share their name unless their reporter tells us they're fine with us sharing their name. And then that usually helps whoever referring it to better investigate that concern. >> Great. >> Thank you, Mr. Malloy. Colleagues, any questions? Council member Kelly, thank you. >> And thank you so much for that really important presentation, I'm just wondering if you know the timeline for completing any ongoing investigations and issuing subsequent reports, it's really hard to, guarantee a timeline, just because when you think an investigation is done, somebody brings some new information to [9:55:01 AM] brings some new information to the table. Oftentimes it's the subject I'm trying to share some information that might find a exculpate at the last moment. Then you have to vet all that. But we should be publishing. I can tell you we are on a reporting timeline for our next report to come out later this month. We just need the department to write the department response once they give it to us, we'll send that email that we always send to mayor and council. So you guys see it first, and then we'll publish it the next day. And if all goes well with with the department response, we'll be publishing it the last day of this month. >> Thank you very much, colleagues. >> Any other questions, thank you, Mr. Malloy. I appreciate the additional snapshot looking at per thousand. I think that's really important, that we understand it, that it's not simply a percentage of the total complaints that happen, but also a function of the number. Number of people employed by a department. I think that's a really important additional perspective for us to have in looking, and assessing the work that you're doing. So thank you [9:56:02 AM] that you're doing. So thank you very much to you and your unit. >> Thank you. >> All right. So our next item is item number four which is a911 special report that, I, initiated together with council member Fuentes. And I'll just remind folks that special reports are not audits, this is when council members can ask the auditor's office to look into a particular issue for about 40 hours worth of, of work, for something that we're trying to understand better or that we think would help a department, address a concern, that we have, and I'll let the auditors report on this briefly and then we will have, staff come up, but, you know, this this really came out of my experience in February of 2023, when I waited on line for 28 minutes for 911 during a [9:57:02 AM] 28 minutes for 911 during a street racing, incident and began to try to understand, you know, how are we handling when we get, situations where our 911 call center has too many calls coming in at once? We all know that there's cell phones everywhere, and sometimes we do get these situations. And I wanted to understand what we were doing and kind of what what happens if someone's trying to call ems at the same time this is going on, etc, so please go ahead from the auditor's office. >> All right. Good morning, my name is Frances Riley, and I was the auditor in charge for this special request, we sought to answer four questions, so first, how often does Austin 911 experience high demand, what actions does Austin have in place to respond to high demand? What actions do other cities and communication centers use to scale operations and adjust to meet high capacity or high demand, and how do high demand [9:58:03 AM] demand, and how do high demand events impact wait times for callers? So to answer that first question, how often does Austin 911 operations experience high demand, APD does not have a defined threshold for high demand, as such, they don't track days of high demand, so our office answered this question by by looking at the average call volume, from fall of 2021 through fall of 2023, and calculating a range Paige, that we could then consider sort of normal, our data came from the emergency call tracking system, which is known as Eckert's, and the data show that daily call volumes fluctuate quite a bit, but they generally fall within a range that we [9:59:05 AM] fall within a range that we could consider normal, and so on this graph, that's the, blue line between the two, two, dashed green lines or the sort of normal call volumes. We found that there were 30 days, above that normal range. So when we zoom in on 2023, you can see that volumes generally increased , for the, you know, roughly first half of 20, 23 and then start to dip back down, we did have, four days that were of especially large spikes in call volumes called out there. And we'll get to those in a little bit. So the next question is what actions does Austin have in place to meet high demand, APD's call taking and dispatch process [10:00:07 AM] call taking and dispatch process is the same regardless of call volume, the basic process as it would be experienced by a caller is that when they call 911, either they get a call taker, immediately, or if the lines are busy, they'll get a voice recording asking them to please hold for the next call taker and not hang up, once they reach the call taker, the call taker will ask which public safety department they need, and then start to collect information. Calls are processed in the order which they are received, and if a caller hangs up before reaching a call taker, that call taker will call them back, something also important for, for this question is that APD uses something known as the erlang calculator to estimate the number of call takers they need. And this is basically [10:01:09 AM] need. And this is basically based on off of, their anticipated, demand. And things like processing times for calls. APD will schedule additional call takers for predicted days and times of high demand, and then for the, unpredicted times, APD can use either voluntary or mandatory overtime. So the next part of our, special request looked at what other cities and communication centers use to scale operations, we looked at some comparable cities. So Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Denver and Portland. And looked at what they use all cities, including Austin, use over time, some of the other [10:02:10 AM] over time, some of the other strategies we found were using abridged call taking scripts, transferring non-emergency calls, so for instance, Portland will transfer, transfer less severe ems calls to a third party ambulance company, and then using ai for emergency purposes. And this is really an emerging area, and so there's not a lot of examples of cities, using this, fully. I guess that's really exploratory at this point. So in one example, though, Denver is looking at a way that they can use, ai to, create a geofence around an incident and then, automatically [10:03:11 AM] incident and then, automatically notify callers from within that geofenced area, that they're already aware of an issue, and we'd also like to note that Austin is already using limited ai, for non-emergency calls. The last question we answered was hi, how do high demand events, affect wait times for callers, so, so, unsurprisingly, wait times for callers, tend to be longer as call volumes increase, when we looked at the data from fall of 2021 to the fall of 2023, APD has been below, the standard of 90% of calls answered within 15 seconds or less, for callers, this means a longer wait to reach a call [10:04:12 AM] longer wait to reach a call taker. And you know, if a unit is needed to be dispatched a longer wait for that. While wait times generally correlate Ed, with call volumes, our sample of some of the highest, call volume days shows us that that's not always the case. So in this example from January 1st call volume was concentrated in, the wee hours of the morning. So that blue line is call volume, and as you can see, the wait times in Orange, were correspondingly high, early in the morning. But then as, call volumes again, that blue line dropped later in the morning and throughout the day, we still saw, periodic spikes of high wait times, and from the ekhardt data, we're not able to see, [10:05:15 AM] data, we're not able to see, like, the nature of calls to help us understand why, wait times might have spiked and to see what else is going on, from that, the other takeaway, from those for high volume, call days , was that while most calls were answered in, you know, pretty quickly within that 15 seconds, so the green, part of the bar on , on the slide, almost a quarter of calls took two minutes or more to answer, and so this, this example on the screen is from January 1st, but we saw pretty similar patterns, distribute patterns for April 20th and June 17th as well, February first was the other day. We looked at in depth, and it was an exception, three quarters of calls were answered within 15 seconds, and only 2% of calls took over two minutes. [10:06:17 AM] of calls took over two minutes. So sort of the, the but for the three days that were similar, the pattern was was about half of calls were answered in 15 seconds, another quarter were answered in 16 seconds to about two minutes. And then the remaining quarter were answered in over two minutes, and again, we couldn't see from the data what might account for that, with that, that's my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. And then staff from APD is also here. >> Thank you, Mr. Riley, you know, so part of the reason that we, you know, asked for this report, was that 911 is just the most basic service that we offer, as a government and, you know, we have been struggling since at least 2021, with our staffing and our response times. I know in summer of 21, I had a [10:07:19 AM] I know in summer of 21, I had a budget amendment to do a compensation study, you know, trying to do this and, and many of us on the dais in our own turn have been trying to push forward, to address issues. And so we have asked staff to come and speak to us both about, you know, the high call volume and responses, but also, give us a short update on, you know, where we are with respect to staffing and response times as well. So thank you. Mr. Riley. Will will bring you back up if we if we need you, Mr. Mills is going to come up and introduce the police staff. >> Good morning. Council. How are you all this morning? If Bruce mills, interim assistant city manager. I don't have a presentation, but I kind of build on the auditor's comments and also the data that I've asked the lieutenant and the chief to present to you all. We heard you loud and clear. I think when I came back, her Jesus and I came back in March last year, the, we put a lot of [10:08:20 AM] last year, the, we put a lot of focus in kind of the point you just made about staffing compensation and with y'all's help and in the approval process, last budget year made a lot of progress with the compensation side as well as kind of a career path that lieutenant or chief mason can speak to. And just briefing this morning on the successes that we're seeing have seen and are continue to see, with our with our not only calls being handled, but the staffing, in both 911 and dispatch, they can probably tell you better than I can, but I think right now they're averaging the 92, 90, 91, 92. And sometimes higher, calls answered in 15 seconds, which obviously is over our goal. And I'd like to continue that. But mainly just wanted to say that the direction that we received last year has taken us a long ways with the with your help with the, with the staffing . [10:09:22 AM] . >> Thank you. With with all due respect, we've been providing this, direction for three years. And many of the steps we, we had taken were, were initiated, and needed to be needed to be implemented, good morning. >> Good morning ma'am. Good morning. Council. My name is James mason. I'm one of the assistant chiefs. Also have lieutenant columbo who's over, directly over our communications, division. And I just wanted to express thank you for your interest in being able to make sure we have adequate staffing as well as the adequate tools to be able to answer 911 calls, I just want to take a brief minute while before we answer any type of questions. You have may about the report, but a lot has changed, a lot of good things, starting with the city manager's office. Council, being able to support us. And I just want lieutenant to be able to brag about our team a little bit, from from our recruiting to our training to our individuals out there in the field, being able to get people, certified and get them up to speed and get them properly trained to be able to do this job and to be able to help people, which is ultimately [10:10:24 AM] help people, which is ultimately our end goal. But I just want her to be able to talk about the numbers of where we were and where we are now, and how we've moved forward in a positive direction. >> Thanks, chief. Good morning. My name is Maria Kalina. I'm the lieutenant over the emergency communications division, excuse me, I'd like. Chief said we've made enormous strides since March of last year as far as our staffing is concerned, right now I'm sitting at 19 call taker vacancies out of 104. And we have 12 dispatcher vacancies out of 75. Of note, some of those call taker vacancies that we have are only due to movement in the career progression program. So they the employees are leaving from the call taker side to further their careers in the emergency communications, which is, in my opinion, a very positive step toward maintaining our employees, to keeping them in the division, and to provide them with a, a goal, a career path. They can look forward to being with the division for their entire career for, we are maintaining at 90% or above [10:11:26 AM] maintaining at 90% or above answer rate on a consistent basis for the last several months, that is, it shows basically every day that I go into the operations floor, the morale that is in the building. Now, the time that they get to take breaks in between these emergency calls, they're smiling. They feel empowered and they feel, valued. And I've seen so much over the last year and a half that, I wanted to just take a minute to, to talk about all the success that we have. Our recruiters are constantly going to, fairs. They go to job fairs, they go to high schools, they go to anything, and everything that we're invited to. We show up. We want, kids graduating from high school to know that they have a career with us immediately upon graduation, we are really looking forward to, the next steps as far as, maintaining our 100% staffing. That's that's the [10:12:29 AM] 100% staffing. That's that's the goal, right, is to get to that place, but we have made so much improvement in that category over the last year and a half, I'm extremely proud of the employees and everybody associated with the division. >> Thank you, I think that all of us here are recognize the value and importance of our, our first responders and 911 and appreciate all the work that went in. And, you know council also took many, many steps even before March of last year to set in motion these changes that took a long time to make happen. And, you know, they're coming to fruition because of your work, lieutenant, and the work of your staff, you know, we did renovations over there, but I know that I've talked with you many times, and I know how much you care. Care about your staff, I have some special some questions about the report, but I'm going to let my colleagues, speak. Council member Fuentes [10:13:30 AM] speak. Council member Fuentes and then council member Kelly. >> Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. And, I'm wondering if we could hear from lieutenant Colunga about any adjustments to policy or perhaps the development of a policy for when we do have a high volume call incident, just any any feedback from receiving the special report and next steps that the department is considering? >> We're always looking for ways to improve the division. The department as a whole, the one of the good hings that I, that I took away from the audit was the ability to reach out to these other, communications centers and talk about some of the similar, similar problems that we're all facing, I was lucky to say that we're actually moving much faster than some of them have been moving as far as staffing is, when we talk about technology use and things like that, it's always at the [10:14:30 AM] that, it's always at the forefront of what we do. I think it's important that we balance the use of technology and leveraging it for our business need, but also remembering that it's the people, it's the connection that the person has on the line with the nine one call taker. That's the most important part of what what my staff does. That's an invaluable thing that you can't take away by the use of technology. And so as we look towards the future of leveraging these things, I think we have to balance them and be very careful about how we implement them. So that they're improving the citizens experience with 911 and not hindering it, hindering it with, potential downfalls from them. >> Yeah. I mean, I, you know, this report has been out for a few months now, and so I definitely want to see some consideration for developing a policy for when we do have those high volume incidents. You know, one of the strategies that we saw from one of the cities that was, reviewed is that the call takers will adjust the call script right when there is lots of calls coming in during a [10:15:31 AM] of calls coming in during a certain time frame. So anything you know, to your point, like we just want to make sure that if someone's having an emergency, if there is an urgent situation, that immediately someone is picking up that call within that first 15 seconds. And so I think knowing that there are tangible strategies out there for our department to be considering, though, I'm hoping that we can can move towards implementing some of those recommendations and of course, have adjustments to fit our operations and our community, with that customization. So certainly would we'll be looking to see what updates are made come budget time. I will say I have had some conversations around our mental health operations that I want to dig into at a at a later time, but appreciate the report that was done. And thank you, councilmember alter, for leading on on this front. >> One thing to that, just one thing that's been a is going to be a real positive thing for us in the future, is our [10:16:32 AM] in the future, is our progression plan is the fact that individuals now have the opportunity. And like Elsie just talked about, they have the opportunity to be dual trained. So if the fact that we're getting a large number of 911 calls, a supervisor on the on the floor can actually recognize that, and we can actually adjust people to where we need them temporarily and then put them back to their positions. So and that's one thing that that's a positive about the plan. That wasn't a factor because we had just individual jobs. And now they're you know, they can be combined if they're if they're dual trained, if they're capable of doing that. So that that's been that's been a positive thing for us to be able to move forward in the future and stuff like having issues like that. So >> Council member Kelly, thank you. >> And thank you, chair alter, for leading on this. I know that it has been a long and hard lift for us to get to where we are today, but I do want to thank the leadership at APD as well as assistant city manager mills, who actually started his career in the city as a dispatcher. And I think that really leans into [10:17:33 AM] I think that really leans into the, an overall knowledge of what needed to get done so that we could be where we are today, I do have a question for APD, though, and we talked a little bit about technology or upgrades to that. Is there anything that you all have seen that would assist you better, or any kind of process improvements that are currently under consideration that could help you scale more effectively during times of high call volume. >> I haven't seen anything that isn't really, really new technology wise that specifically addresses that, I think that the that we're in the stage of, the technology coming out with the potential for what it could be, what it could be used for. But we haven't seen I haven't seen any cities actually implement it. As the auditor's office talked about, the Denver project isn't slated until 2025. And in my conversations with them, they specifically said they know that there's there are [10:18:34 AM] they know that there's there are going to be hiccups. They're they're they're they know that it may not work exactly as they think. They don't really know what it's going to look like at this point. And I think that's just kind of where we are, right now with with us, as far as technology goes, we just don't know, how well it's going to work or what it's going to actually do to help our process at this point. >> Okay, I guess thank you for that. I guess a follow up would be any technology that's proposed. Would that have to be approved by capcom prior to us utilizing it? I know that came it started to bubble up when I brought forward my resolution about the text to 911 or, the language translation ifc several years ago. >> Yes. So we are moving into a new call handling solution. It's intrado viper that should be implemented in Austin. The latest projections for that that I have for our department will be sometime in September. Our originally was slated for July, but things have been pushed back in the smaller agencies. And so [10:19:34 AM] in the smaller agencies. And so we're they want to make sure that it works before we implement it in a larger city like Austin, one of the good things that's coming is a secondary software that's being added on top of the new call handling solution is something called rapid deploy, and it will have a much more robust text to 911 language interpretation service than we currently have. So that's that's exciting. And so we'll get to have, many more people be able to utilize no matter what their language is, that technology in the city. So that is also on the way as well. >> Thank you. Do we know if, entrata. Viper or rapid deploy have any sort of ability to, scale during high call volumes or anything like that, or is it just unknown until we implement it? >> I've reached out to capcom for that specific question, and I haven't gotten a response yet, I'd like to know if something similar to. So the Denver product is their call handling solution. It's not it's not something that they added on. It's the actual, call software basically, so I'd like to see if intrado even has that capability [10:20:38 AM] intrado even has that capability or what it looks like for us to even be able to utilize it. I just don't know. >> Okay. Well, I'm on the capcom executive committee. I'm happy to also reach out. And if I find out, I'll I'll circle back and let you know. But thank you so much for answering my questions. And thank you for all the hard work that you and your team do on a regular basis down there. One of my favorite things to do is to go visit the call taking floor. So I appreciate y'all's hospitality when I'm there. >> Thank you. >> And we always we're always looking at new new software and new type of technology that's out there, what three words was never implemented or hadn't been implemented in the past? It is now, it's been a huge help for officers as well as individuals when they can't say they're in the middle of the greenbelt and don't know where they are, we can actually find them. You know, either, you know, through ground troops or the air troops and stuff like that. So it's been a huge we're always looking at technology to be able to advance us, and we're definitely watching Denver very closely to see where the ai type of tool will come into place, no doubt that it's going to. And as we all know, progress moves forward [10:21:40 AM] all know, progress moves forward without us if we don't move with it. So we're definitely going to move in the right direction and implement everything we can to be able to, you know, give better customer service to everybody out there for the citizens and our visitors of Austin. >> Thank you, do you guys have any questions before I ask them? Thank you, so I want to go back to the high volume situation, you know, I know that the auditor's office didn't choose the I think it was February 20th of 23 when we had the street racing. We had the high volume, it doesn't look from the graph that it fell even into what they categorized as high volume. And you can have high volume in one hour. And the day still not be a high volume day. If I had been calling ems during that 30 minutes, I would not have been able to get through and if I had a cardiac arrest, I would have died, we have got to figure out a way to make sure that when we have these high call volumes that we and especially when [10:22:42 AM] that we and especially when they're coming from the same incident, that there are mechanisms for people to get through to 911, especially if they're not calling about that incident or to help people who are in those situations hang up and know that we have it under control, I understand that there are issues with the technology. This is not, a problem that only impacts 911 call centers. There are call centers all over the world. They have to have special, you know, procedures and processes for dealing with this bulk arrival. This high volume, I appreciate I appreciate the report. I appreciate the conversation. I think that we need to make sure that you have the resources that you need, either from the data analysis to make sure you have the right data to know you know, okay, what what have been our high volume call hours, where we've been swamped, where we're [10:23:43 AM] we've been swamped, where we're getting, you know, these really long call waits. You need to have the support so that you can implement the technology. If you had simply put on a message that says you've reached 911, you know, whatever the regular message is, and then said, if you're calling about this event at Lamar and whatever, we're aware of it and we're on the scene that is, you know, I mean, that's simply switching a voicemail on and then people hang up because they know, you know, about something where you have 50 people calling at once, when you have a storm. That was another situation where we keep hearing from constituents that when we have these big storms, 911 gets overwhelmed and they can't call about the tree that's blocking the street, or even if there's an electrical pole, they can't get through, so, you know, we need to have we need to have some protocols for these situations that differ from our normal situations, because it's [10:24:43 AM] normal situations, because it's not just APD that has to respond. We're not even getting through to be able to be dispatched for ems or fire. If you if you can't get through to the call, and it just doesn't seem like we have, yet leaned in from a resource perspective into getting you the technology that you need. And it may be that, you know, as police officers, you didn't go into this because you knew everything about technology. We may need to get, you know, assistance to you to rethink sort of the technology. I've had some conversations in the last few days that have just astonished me about what our cad system is like for 911, and I haven't had a chance to deep dive deep down. But, you know, I'm hearing things like our 911 for ems fire and police. You can't even you can't even track that. It's the same call without doing that manually. You know, if we're sending all of them. So [10:25:44 AM] if we're sending all of them. So there's some real technology needs here, that I think I would ask, you know, assistant city manager mills to lean into that, just like you leaned in to finishing off the process that we started before you got here to you know, fix, the pay and doing the recruiting and the other, other processes. And you did lean in, and I want to thank you, for your leadership in pushing that forward. But but I do think it's important to understand, that, that many of us on council were pushing that and trying to get that through. And from my perspective, that's why we fired the city manager was he wasn't taking this seriously. So I do think that that we need we need to have a little bit more, attention here. And I would ask, assistant city manager mills to, to work with the 911 call center and get you the resources that you need to be able to address this, and, and really encourage you to do some more of that data analysis, because I think you're going to [10:26:45 AM] because I think you're going to find that a lot of the times when you have these really high volume waits, you have these short spurts of high volume, and we have no mechanisms to address them. And people's lives are at stake. So assistant city manager mills, is that something you can follow up on? >> Yes. >> Great. >> We hear you loud and clear and, and agree that I think technology is a it's an obstacle. I know we talk about capcom and some of the way that technology has to feed into our systems, but we do want to I the frustration in the part about, you're in that center and you know that the emergency is over here with ems, but the but the clog in the line is over here at 911. And that's a technology we've got to figure out how to fix that. And we are focused on that. >> Thank you. >> And there are you know, there are models in the world where they have fixed this. And we may have to think outside of the [10:27:45 AM] have to think outside of the box. So thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you to your staff, who who keep us safe every day. We appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Okay, our next item is item number five, which is a briefing on parks and recreation grounds maintenance, budget, staffing and service levels. And I believe that we have Eric Nelson from the financial services department, and, and maybe liana from part. He'll be speaking, this work grows out of some questions that we've been asking from my office, about park maintenance. I think we've all felt that we're not where we need to be. And we tried to get some numbers behind that to understand what our service levels were, and the budget office in part, put a lot of work in to get, the start of a model for us to, to give it a better handle on our maintenance. And, since we don't have a, an environment committee or a committee for parks to present to we, we decided we would have them present to us. Thank you. Good morning. [10:28:46 AM] Thank you. Good morning. >> Good morning. Council members- , Eric Nelson, financial services department, I think council member alter summed it up, very well, but yeah, she asked us to look into the grounds maintenance team, I think we all know that we've added a lot of park acreage to parks portfolio, and we wanted to see if, ground maintenance service levels and staffing levels have kept up with that expansion. So, I'm joined today by, liana karliova from parks and she'll come up later to discuss, pardes, targeted service levels for different levels of development in our parks and how they arrived at that and where they'd like to get. And I also have Steven Lynette here. He's actually been detailed, to the budget office to help us with capital this budget season. But he was instrumental in his role at Pritchard and helping to develop this model, as was Lauren Gaetano, so we created a model to try to get at what staffing [10:29:50 AM] to try to get at what staffing and service levels were like when we compared fy 2014 and fy 2023, that gave us a decade of growth to compare against. I don't want to suggest that fy 2014 represented any kind of idealized level of service. It was just a point of comparison, we don't have records of exactly , what the frequency of services were in 2014. So we started with what we're doing now, and then we applied that back to 2014 to drive out, the number of ftes that would have been required and compared that against how many ftes part actually had at that time for this team. Just as an overview of this unit, the budget for grounds maintenance has actually increased pretty significantly over the ten years, and that's largely been driven by, the big increase in the living wage over that time. We've added five net ftes. [10:30:52 AM] We've added five net ftes. Pritchard did an internal transfer of a couple out. So that's been almost a 5% increase there. And then when we talk about that expansion in in new parkland under management that's grown by about 645 acres, or about 4. So when we're building out the model, we couldn't do it on a park level because every park is pretty diverse in terms of its amenities and uses. So we broke it down to the individual services that go into servicing all our parks across the portfolio, and they're broadly classed into a mowing team, a servicing team and a maintenance team. You can see here the average time assumptions that we use to drive the model for those various teams. And then we use those assumptions times the frequency we're performing them to arrive at a total annual fte requirement in terms of labor hours. So to cut to the chase, in fy 2023, part had 110 [10:31:56 AM] in fy 2023, part had 110 authorized ftes. When we apply the time assumptions we have now to the amenities and acres that were under management back in 2014, it shows that you'd need 96 ftes. However over pardes, total staffing back in 2014 was 105 authorized ftes. So they had nine additional ftes and labor capacity back then, which strong they were able to, provide a higher level of service frequency at that time. Leona will be back to discuss this, in more depth, but this is pardes classification of what they're ideal levels of service for each level of park would be. And so we used, these targets to try to drive out what the actual, effects of, of that difference [10:32:58 AM] effects of, of that difference in ftes between those two years has been. So you can see we estimate that back in 2014, we were able to, maintain at least some parks at a level two, level of mowing frequency, which means every 2 to 3 weeks, I think it averages about 16 days over the course of the year, depending on where you are in the growing season. Whereas now we're not doing any parks at that level, and we've seen a big increase in in the level three maintenance. On, the servicing team side, we've seen a decline, mainly from going to every day to having to go to five days per week on some of our restroom and litter, trash and recycling, servicing. So again, we wanted to dig into what was really driving this, because on the surface, we had a 4% increase in acres under management, and we [10:33:59 AM] acres under management, and we had added almost 5% to their fte count. So it seemed like we were keeping pace on the surface with, the new acreage, and in fact, new acreage usually doesn't have a huge labor demand because Luz it's usually unimproved. So we dug into those acres and all that acreage being added only added about 3.3 fte, equivalent to the total labor demand each year. So looking into it more, what we've discovered is really it's as part improves its existing parkland, through various capital programs. They're improving, a lot of our parks to a higher level of service on that 1 to 4 scale. And they're also, adding new amenities all the time. And so we've not quite kept pace with their ability to service all these new amenities and, and, and improvements. Now, I'd like, liana to come up and [10:35:02 AM] I'd like, liana to come up and she can take you through, part idealized service levels and where they'd like to get. Thank you. >> Good morning. I'm liana karlivka, and I serve as the assistant director for the parks and recreation department. As part of my responsibilities, I oversee operations and maintenance. Also planning and development is, fall under my supervision. So we are to discuss how frequently we should, the tasks be performed. And, the parks and recreation department has defined four levels of service, and these are based on the level of development, the level of development is determined by both the number of park amenities and the development [10:36:02 AM] amenities and the development level of the surrounding neighborhood. And as you can see, we have level one, which is parks of any size with a playground or high level of development. And level two is parks of any size without a playground and medium level of development and all the right of ways. Level three is parks of any size without a playground and low levels of development, and level four are the undeveloped parks. So what are the expectations of service and what is the frequency in which city staff and the public expect tasks to be performed at the different levels of development? So Eric had a slide and I will refer to it, also that discussed those frequency, expectations. I would like to note that this [10:37:03 AM] would like to note that this expectations are based on staff experience, on best practices, as well as comments that we received from the public. Sometimes in terms of emails, 311 tickets, phone calls, citizen assistant, communications, and even code violations. I would like to, note also that, temporary employees and overtime hours, they are used each year for a number of, different in a number of different ways. And these are a lot of times to get us closer to the established levels of service, especially in the high seasons spring, summer and fall. And from Eric's slides, if you recall, you saw that level one and level two are very hard to achieve where we are able to use [10:38:04 AM] achieve where we are able to use temporary employees to supplement our maintenance staff in order to be able to get there because, zilker auditorium, shores and other parks that are so, inundated with visitors day in and day out, they are being serviced at level one. Temporary employees are also covering for vacancies, and they also help us catch up after weather events, like the ice storm that we had last year. So there is a decision that needs to be made and that is, the city can staff to a defined level of service or service to the level of budgeted staff. There is obviously a difference between those two. And part is currently doing the latter. We are, servicing to the [10:39:04 AM] latter. We are, servicing to the latter, to the level of the budgeted staff. Ideally, the service levels should be set by the level of development. Next slide. So what are the expectations for service, and are these expectations realistic, the city of Austin has been growing at a fast pace that has been slowing down the last year. But the current population is about a million. So this is growth of more than 8% during the last decade. And that comes with many more visitors at the parks and increased density, or new neighborhoods that are coming to our neighborhood, parks everywhere. In addition, the city of Austin has set up goals for a family friendly city and a [10:40:05 AM] for a family friendly city and a child friendly and child friendly neighborhoods, and that is that. That means that we have to provide access to parks that are so that they are within walking distance of every resident, and that walking distance has been established as quarter mile for our urban core and half a mile outside the urban core. The trust for public land, Ted ziff actually mentioned this morning that, today is the day that the parks core comes out. Last year, we were ranked 41, among the 100 largest cities. This year we are 40 for the trust for public land is ranking the 100 largest cities in the us. The cities are evaluated in five park categories that include the percentage of residents who live [10:41:07 AM] percentage of residents who live within a ten minute walk from a park, the percentage of city land that is used for parks compared between neighborhoods by race and by income. The per capita spending on parks. So that is how much a city is investing in the park system. The number of park amenities available to, foster healthy include and bright, vibrant communities. And where are the parks most needed? So equity is certainly, it has a large component on how the park score is coming. And of course, all of these categories are things that we are discussing and how we are developing and maintaining our parkland. So to meet all of these goals and to meet the council mandates, the department has to continue to acquire land and to develop parks so that we [10:42:08 AM] and to develop parks so that we activate the acquired land this year and next year. We have a number of neighborhood parks that are being completed, Eric mentioned what has happened over the last decade. We have actually a lot of development going on now, and we have plenty of neighborhood parks that are being finished or will finish within the next few months, including browney, highland, Pomerleau, Duncan, Wortley, springwoods, and others. We have pools that will be finished at the end of this, some year and in the fall, colony park and givens facilities that are, getting renovated or the next phase of development of expansion, like the Mac or carver, new bathhouses and restrooms, miles of trails and [10:43:09 AM] restrooms, miles of trails and hundreds of acres of new parkland. Acquisitions and I would like to just, stay for a minute or less for land banking because because it is a strategy to acquire land. When there is an opportunity, we have a willing seller. That is not necessarily true at any time, or where it is still affordable, even in parts of Austin that do not have a significant population yet. But they are growing. And to keep the land undeveloped until funding is available and personnel resources become available. So this is a critical planning tool to meet future demands for our children and grandchildren. Foreign. Next slide. So this is you. You saw that the service frequency. And you can see this [10:44:11 AM] frequency. And you can see this is what has been established. And this is the level that we are trying to meet. Day in and day out. I would like to note that this proposed methodology, is only for the three teams that were discussed. So it is about mowing, cleaning and maintenance because they tend to be where the most, perceived value lies for the public. And and where we cut the grass, we pick up the, the trash and we fix what is broken. So we started there. But once that is, we are all comfortable with that. Or we get a direction about this methodology being valid to be, used in the future, we can expand to, to other teams within the maintenance group or in [10:45:13 AM] the maintenance group or in other, other, areas within the department and all the financial information that you saw earlier, have been adjusted appropriately for only this, three teams. So I would like to recognize Steven Linette and Lauren Gaetano, on my team for working collaboratively with the budget office and everyone in the budget office that helped us create this proof of concept for the formula. And thank you for the opportunity to present this work. >> Thank you. I'm going to let my colleagues go first. I have a lot of questions, but go ahead. Councilmember Ileana, I just had two quick questions for you, on your scheduling for mowing, for example, with our grow Zones once called no mow Zones, but grow Zones does that what what effect do the grow Zones have on [10:46:13 AM] effect do the grow Zones have on your scheduling criteria? >> It's a positive effect, we obviously, do those usually twice a year. And what do you mean by do those? >> Do you mean you you mow the grow Zones twice a year or. >> Yes, we mow the grow Zones twice a year, and by increasing those we are removing acres of managed land from the daily service, I would like to say that there is we need to when we establish the, no mow Zones, we need to also follow up with education of the public, in some cases, we do receive communications that we are not keeping up with maintenance, and we haven't mowed for weeks or months. So it is important to understand and educate of what is the value of having those, [10:47:14 AM] is the value of having those, natural Zones and why we are not going to mow them as frequently as the rest of the parkland. >> And do we have, contractors who come in and, and handle the mowing, or is this staff? >> It is just staff until, before the pandemic, we actually had contracts, but during the pandemic, it became obvious that they would not be. They were not able to meet the requirements. And afterwards they were never reestablished because the costs were much higher than what the department could afford. >> And you're not talking about maintaining the cemetery grounds, is that correct? No >> Correct. >> Okay. Because I think we do use contractors for the cemeteries, but that's okay. We're not talking about the cemeteries. They're they're separate and then my second question is around homeless encampment cleanup. Is that reflected in your numbers. >> It is reflected to a very limited, degree, we last year [10:48:17 AM] limited, degree, we last year during budget, we were given four, ten positions for one year, and the maintenance team decided that the best use for this for ten positions was to assign them full time for, homeless encampment cleanup. But these were only for small and medium size encampments and ones that are vacated. So this is now we're using this four member team to go out every day. And that actually is allowing us to catch up more with that work. And the maintenance staff does not have to, spend more time on a daily basis for trash and debris that may be available. So this positions, though, are available until the end of September. So starting in October, we won't have them. [10:49:19 AM] October, we won't have them. >> So the city had this cadre of four temporary positions. They were deployed over to work exclusively with homelessness, homeless camp cleanups. And then they were shifted back over to work on parks specific activities. So it sounds like you actually need two cohorts, both of those those types of work need to be covered. Is that so? Is that accurate? And if so, is that reflected in in the request for additional staffing and budget? >> No. It is not reflected, so that those four positions, the ten positions, it's I don't believe that it is reflected in the request. The 16 positions that Eric mentioned, these were only based on the regular maintenance tasks. >> Okay. Would the four temporary are the four temp positions inside the 16 fte request? No. How would you cover [10:50:22 AM] request? No. How would you cover that work, that would be a tough decision to make in October, but it will depend on whether cancer will be able to extend that for another year or make a different decision. >> Okay, so the renewal of the temps, funding and staffing is still it's still on the table. I guess we'll see when we when we get the budget. Okay. Well, chair, thank you, you know, we're all really concerned about this and have been. I mean, I can't think of a time that we weren't concerned about this. And, the pandemic did take a bunch of wind out of everybody's sails. So it's important to continue with the staffing up, with the hiring and the retention of good staff to do this work and the expansion into those areas where we have [10:51:23 AM] those areas where we have increased needs and a shortfall. So, chair, I appreciate you and council member Ryan alter for putting this on on the agenda and highlighting really clearly the work ahead. >> Thank you. >> So we'll talk a little bit more. I just want to say, you know, part of why we did this was we need to get some numbers behind this intuition that we all have, and what was presented today gives some of that. And I think we're going to have some more conversation about that. Council member Ryan alter. >> Thank you all very much. I, I think it's interesting when we talk about the pandemic and, and the effects it had here, and I think one of the other big effects, I think, was that it showed the public the immense social value of our parks and open spaces. And so, the irony that in that time we actually ended up taking a hit to our ability to maintain these spaces is, it's really unfortunate, but hopefully we're charting a path [10:52:25 AM] hopefully we're charting a path down today to, to get back to where we need to be. I, I feel like there's kind of one big element left out of this in that we talk about this formula, we talk about where we were, but applying that to today, what what is the need today? I feel like we haven't hit on that and we need to understand what staffing levels are needed so that we can do what is being proposed here today. So can one of you all speak to that? When we drove out, things based on that chart with levels one through four and the ideal idealized level of service, I think we're in the neighborhood of 190 fte equivalents, versus [10:53:25 AM] of 190 fte equivalents, versus is the 110 authorized ones, and within that are there is that purely just for me, maintenance personnel. >> You know, individuals? Yep. >> It's just for the grounds maintenance team doing those those tasks. We itemized and do we you know, we're not going to I imagine grow by adults in one budget. >> But do we have either a plan to get to where we need to be or even this first step of as we're developing the budget, what the request is from Pritchard to help us? >> Yeah, we have asked departments to submit their requests, obviously, you remember from forecast that we're having a tough budget year, as always in the, in the srb2 era, so, you know, it's a known issue. It's not just this department. Everyone like you know, if we ran this model for every department, I don't know about the magnitude, but we'd have similar stories. And, we [10:54:26 AM] have similar stories. And, we don't have the revenue to fund it all, so we have to make tough decisions. But I, I want to echo what Lana said about I think it was good to go through this, exercise and develop this model so at least we can have a rationale, fairly objective conversation about where we are and where we want to get. >> Yeah. Well, I think that hits right on a larger discussion that we need to have have as policymakers of do we need to take some more extreme steps as it relates to our parks to make sure the funding is there right. Do we need to explore what, others have done, whether it's in vein of a parks district or a, you know, multiple pids or even a future funding source that is consistent because, you know, you are correct that parks are not the only ones feeling this pinch, but, to see a almost need, a need of an almost [10:55:29 AM] need, a need of an almost doubling of our staff to keep up with maintenance, I think that is should send off some, some pretty big, alarm bells that that this isn't going to be beyond just a normal budget increment year over year over year. When one of the it's related, but one of the things that was mentioned was around land banking and the ability to do that when the, when the need or when the opportunity arises, what type of funds does pard have remaining from previous bonds to do that? And I don't know if that's for you or defer to Lana or or Steven, whoever feels more capable than me of answering that. >> So we were fortunate in the last bond in 2018 to get a sizable amount for acquisition. Burns. So and we have been good [10:56:32 AM] Burns. So and we have been good at proceeding with those so that funding is almost exhausted, or it is allocated to the last few plant acquisitions. That funding had also been supplemented by parkland dedication funds, and that actually allowed us to go way further, the last few years we do have so for bonds, it's only a very limited amount for parkland dedication. This is the last year that we will be able to have, funding come in, with the legislation, we anticipate that it's going to be a significant reduction, at least for the next three years, and then hopefully we the funding may reestablish to an extent, and, everything else would be for a potential bond in the [10:57:33 AM] for a potential bond in the future whenever it is to come. >> And, and my understanding was that and we talked about our six year cycle back, at our last work session. But that 2018 bond, it was envisioned to be six years. So it's not surprising that you've exhausted it because we're at the end of that six year period. So I think, you know, that's a real another kind of big glaring need. And, you know, we as a city have lots of needs, but the ability to grab land, especially right now when prices are deflated, which almost never happens in the city of Austin, is something that I think we also are going to need to have further conversations about to make sure you can meet those opportunities when they arise. I wanted to also ask, as it relates to the conversation of enforcement in our parks. You know, I, hear a lot from my constituents about whether it's individuals camping in parks or [10:58:33 AM] individuals camping in parks or or certain activity occurring in a park that that they are, trying to figure out how we enforce those rules. And so where does that fall in this conversation of need added staffing to, to enforce those rules? >> Kymberley Mcneely, serving as the parks and recreation director. So enforcement for the parks system. Right. We have rangers, I believe 21 of them. I could look that number up real quick. Those individuals have the a level of authority of voluntary compliance. Please do not do the thing that you're doing that is not appropriate, and they are able to, issue parking tickets. All other enforcement that would require a parking ticket or I'm sorry, require ticketing or, unfortunately, perhaps an arrest or a criminal trespass. Notice those are at the level of authority of our colleagues in APD. And so while we work very closely with them, for those for [10:59:34 AM] closely with them, for those for the APD to help us, hit some of the hot spots, it's at their level of authority. So that's how we're able to enforce things when it comes to encampments. We work with the homeless strategy office through the process that has been established to very systematically let individuals know that they need to move on. And then, of course, the enforcement comes with that entire team of individuals to help, move, remove those encampments and then clean those spaces up as, as liana had, had described. >> Have you all had discussions about utilizing cameras or other technology to, to kind of be a force multiplier for the people you don't have? So that one person can look at eight parks at once instead of and in fact, we did some of that last year with our vacancy savings. >> We were able to and will be bringing in some cameras only for the summertime time for some of it. And we have some other strategies and we actually have [11:00:34 AM] strategies and we actually have a study that will help us understand how to make our spaces more secure, however, we didn't have the vacancy savings this year, so we were unable to bring in the same number of cameras as as we had in the years past. But we have we will be doing that for the summer season, what we call. And that's usually when we have, majority of the bad behaviors. There's an uptick in people who come to the park system and then just because of the number of individuals, there's a higher percentage of behaviors that are not desired in the park. So therefore, those cameras and lights are most useful in summertime. Okay. >> When y'all are making maintenance decisions, when you don't have the staffing that you need, how does that work in determining what gets pushed to the side? Is it that there are certain areas that are priorities that they're going to stay on schedule? Or do you kind of just have a master list and we just go down the list and as as quickly as we get to it is as quickly as we get to it. What is [11:01:37 AM] quickly as we get to it. What is how do we balance that need versus what we have? Sure. >> So I think that it, I think that to answer that question, it's very reactive. I think that it depends upon the number of things that are happening on that particular day. And what that particular environment looks like. And so are we having, you know, are we having a huge festival that's coming in downtown on south by southwest, and we know they're going to be using certain areas, and we have limited resources, and we know we have ten things that we have to do. Where are we going to put them in order to make sure that the city, is taking care of their the local needs as well as, you know, providing a good look for our, for being a place where visitors want to come. And so I think it really depends upon day by day. So I'm giving you really a non-answer, but I'm letting you know that our team evaluates what's going on on that particular week or that particular part of the of the season as they try to make those decisions. Obviously, in the summer, if we have to make [11:02:37 AM] summer, if we have to make decisions about where we're going to mow and we have swimming pools that people are going to go to, we're going to make sure those spaces are mowed so that people can get to the swimming pools versus maybe somewhere else in our park system. But it's really dependent upon the season and what might be happening. >> Okay, well, I kind of want to end where a little bit where we started in figuring out, you know, you have this large unmet need and what what is our goal here? Right. If as we talk about strategic direction and measurable targets, you know, what is the goal as it relates to our parks? And in this, area, the maintenance of our parks, you know, do we want to achieve, you know, a level one of service for all our parks that qualify should 80% of our parks receive that? You know, we need to have goals in place so that when we're making budget decisions, we can say, well, it will take ten ftes to accomplish this. And so we know how we move that [11:03:37 AM] so we know how we move that along. And so, as, as we have those conversations in the future, I just really appreciate understanding how we tie the need to the outcome so that we can make the right decisions and so there are ideal stand and target goals for maintenance. >> And these are really requiring a lot of, personnel. And some of them are if we have a developed park that people are visiting, we should be having eyes on it every single day. And we need to take care of the land. We are not close to that at this point. We have an assigned level of service for every single park. So that's what we are targeting on a daily basis, but as kymberley said, we may have some unusual events that we need to take care of, or [11:04:38 AM] that we need to take care of, or we may have rain, which means that we cannot go out. And by the way, the grass is going to grow faster. So and we also have a very dedicated workforce. So they will do as much as they can the following days. And our temp employees are helping with that as well. But it's not sufficient. So as a first step, I think from my perspective would be to be able to go to a level with resources that we can meet, the service levels that we have established, that, that we are going to be able to go to the level one parks every single day, that we will be able to have restrooms every at least five days a week, playgrounds need to be looked at every single day. So meeting that has been a challenge. Now because we don't have sufficient, [11:05:40 AM] don't have sufficient, personnel, my thinking is that this would be the first step, and we could see, I mean, that would be a huge, improvement. >> Okay. Well, thank you very much. That's that's all I have for now. >> Thank you. Council member alter, colleagues online. Do you have questions before I ask mine , so in the conversations that we had, about this going back to October and November, we got the material back in January, there was a number about what we needed to get up to the 2014 year level service. Can someone tell us that, please? Relative to where we are now? >> What? What the model showed is that we were in 2014. We had, the equivalent of nine employees worth of additional capacity at [11:06:43 AM] worth of additional capacity at the same service levels. So we'd have to translate that based on the expanded number of acres and amenities now. So it'll be a little bit more than that. Nine I don't know the exact number, probably in the 10 to 12 range. >> So, I can tell you the exact number. It would be. 19.6 fte and we had five that were added. So it's 14.6 fte. Just to get us back to the service levels we had in 2014. >> I do have to say that is I think from what I sent and that that 19.6, has been we've revised that down because we had to adjust for some employees that were transferred out. So that is we're down to, a difference of ten hours minus the five we added. So a net of five instead of 14.6, so I'd [11:07:43 AM] five instead of 14.6, so I'd like to meet with you after this. We're not going to figure that out in here. We've had you know, we had homeless folks moved out. We still have to deal with the homeless people experiencing homeless who are who are living in our parks, and the aftermath that's in our parks, you know, so I'm not sure. Sure which ones are moved out, that we're talking about here, because that work is still that work is still there, I'm going to ask that staff, make sure that in the backup for audit and finance that our community has the slide presentation that was shared with us on Monday, which has the slide that was not in here that I saw today, that explains that if we were going to be at the staffing level today from fiscal year 2024, where we have 110 ftes, that we would need 190 ftes, I think what we're hearing, we heard from my colleagues, is that we need this [11:08:43 AM] colleagues, is that we need this data. We need to understand what the choices are that we are making. We need to set goals. We can't do that if we're not given the information, this is information that our community, we had 6 or 7 people show up today to speak to the need for maintenance, they deserve to have accurate data, they deserve to understand that if we were at the ideal service level, we would need to have 80 additional ftes. Now, none of us up here think we're going to get 80 additional ftes this year. We have part staff asking for 16 more, we ought to be able to try and meet that need. I understand that we have a lot of needs across other, departments, but when you set up a fire house, you have the staffing to serve the, you know, to, to staff that firehouse and you have the staffing to do the cleaning. You have all of that, and we are clearly not doing that, and I appreciate that. You know, the [11:09:44 AM] appreciate that. You know, the budget staff and part are working to give us the data, but if we're going to do the data, then we need to really, really clearly communicate to our colleagues and other folks that we are not delivering the maintenance levels that we aspire to in our parks, and in that, in that chart, that was, in the graph, in the in the presentation that was given to us on Monday, there's a lot more detail about where we are on the service levels. And I think people need, to see that, so and I know you're just the messenger , Eric, I just am I'm frustrated that we asked for this, in part so that we would be able to have clarity on what we need for parks maintenance, and yet the, the punch line is missing from the presentation that is given to us today, and if we need 80 more staffers, that's almost double. As council member alter said, we need a plan to get there. And assistant city [11:10:45 AM] there. And assistant city manager hayden-howard, I'm going to ask you with our our interim director, as we move forward and through the budget process to, to come back to us and tell us what is our plan, we're not going to get to 80 quickly. And maybe 80 is not where we're going, but we need we need some goals on our levels of service. We need we need to understand that, the other part that I want to, to raise is that, what's missing from these calculations, so these calculations focus on mowing and restrooms and litter, we just lost we just spent 3 million plus on our trees because we don't take care of our trees in our parks, except for every 60 years, we need to have in here. You know, what is the maintenance for the forestry within our parks, we have a land management plan. It's not fully budgeted to be taken care of, that is part of what we need to do. So we don't have the [11:11:46 AM] do. So we don't have the wildfire risk. I mean, there's things you still should be doing on these lands, and we don't have a sense of where we should be aspiring to or what our goals are and what we should be doing are the facilities. Maintenance is, you know, our facilities maintenance captured here. >> They are not, I think, as Lana said, we're treating this as a proof of concept grounds maintenance, I think was the specific ask. So we built this out and our hope would be to apply it to the rest of, park services as possible to kind of get this more objective. Look at across the board. >> Okay, graffiti graffiti is one of those ones that we had to back out because they back out is the wrong word to facilitate a true apples to apples comparison, they had been moved out since 2014, and I hadn't realized that before. >> They've been moved out of maintenance or they've been to a separate unit. >> So they're a different team. They're not part of the grounds maintenance team that we're [11:12:47 AM] maintenance team that we're looking at. >> Okay. And horticulture, they're not in there. >> It's just those services that we outlined, the mowing, servicing and maintenance team. >> Okay. So, assistant city manager hayden-howard, I would ask that you work with your staff, and I'm doing it this way just because the directors and about to transition, if you work with your staff to make sure that we get a model that really helps us to understand, where we should be and, and has some sense of, of our goals of how we're going to get there, for, for the breadth of the maintenance needs. We have people who are working day in and day out, and I'm grateful that we've been able to give them, so many raises since 2014. But you know, part of what they really need is they need other people doing the work so that they're not so stressed and that they feel like they can deliver the quality, that they know that we all, we all need, and then in the current budget, when you presented the fiscal process, you, mentioned there were a few [11:13:48 AM] you, mentioned there were a few things that you were considering for cost drivers. I believe those were two parks in the Mac, but and maybe the carver. But there are other things that are coming online the neighborhood parks and all of that. How are those being accounted for? >> Yeah, generally, like you referenced the fire station. So it's a discrete new major facility like the Mac. We will include in the baseline Ann, costs and staffing associated with that, but it's sort of this more minor organic, ongoing development that doesn't get picked up. Just because if we did that across the board and we called it all baseline, we wouldn't have anything left or we'd have even more red ink. >> Okay. >> But but like, we have these neighborhood parks coming on. There's no adjustment for the maintenance needs of them. >> Well, in terms of just the land, we have added staff over time. I think we calculated that the new acreage was was equal to 3.3, ftes. And we've added an [11:14:52 AM] 3.3, ftes. And we've added an add of five, so we have been keeping up when we looked at it just on that acreage level, but we didn't have the model to dig into this. All the actual pace of work orders has increased relative to our staffing or, being able to dig into the mowing frequency at this level of detail and tie it to a service level. So we haven't had the objective backup to justify that. >> Okay, I mean, that's why we asked for the model in the first place, was to begin to get the objective data. And I understand that you can't have the objective data all, all at once and that you need you need a proof of concept. But now that we have the proof of concept and the proof of concept already with the minimal amount of things that we've included says we need 80 staffers to get to the level of service that many of us would seem to think is basic, we need to keep making sure we have the other the other pieces, and that when we do go forward with the budget that we clearly have, a plan there and [11:15:52 AM] clearly have, a plan there and that, that's transparent in that process, and I appreciate Eric, I know that you worked with Steven and, and liana and the other staff on this, and I think this is an important step, but it does bring clarity and it does, you know, mean that we have some work, to do here. And I'm troubled if you're saying this same process is everywhere because there are few departments where we have, I think, generally had an across the board, council feeling that we weren't doing enough, on sort of basic on basic needs and I shouldn't say I have any objective data to back that up. >> It's just a general sense. Everyone loved to do more. That's all I was trying to say. >> I understand that, I understand that, well, if colleagues, do we have any more questions, thank you. And miss hayden-howard, we can we can make sure that we follow up on the next steps. That would be, great. Appreciate everyone coming out today, to advocate. And if we can make sure we have [11:16:54 AM] And if we can make sure we have the right material in the backup , that would be. That would be great, thank you very much. >> Thank you, our last items are the ace items. Item two and six, and since we are coming up to our 1130 time, might first ask if there if staff is comfortable telling us what the choices are before us and then we can decide. I know there's one staff appointment and then there's one other opening, if there's a staff recommendation on on how we proceed, if we open that up or if it's a staff person for that other position, if we could know that and if we need to go to executive session, we can, but maybe. >> Good morning, council members, Kim Olivares, deputy cfo, we do have a recommendation for, one appointment today. Anthony Segarra, our deputy director of economic development department, as you may recall, council expanded the number of, spots on the board for ace. And so this fills one of those new [11:17:55 AM] so this fills one of those new vacancies, there is another board member that has indicated their desire to move on, so the in terms of a process, I don't have a specific recommendation at this time. I'm happy to discuss that, and I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have, to, to help develop that. >> Okay. So that so the open slot though is intended to be the community's lot. That's not the additional staff slot. >> There's no requirement in the bylaws about what I misspoke okay. Yeah. So it's the ace board. Slots are just slots, there's no allocation between city staff or non city staff, there's a component that notes how a city staff member may no longer serve on the board if they leave city employment. But there's but that's that's the only clear, so we're we to appoint Mr. Segura then how many city employees would be on the [11:18:56 AM] city employees would be on the board? Would he be the fourth? >> He's the fourth. >> Okay. Sorry, I needed and I think that was I think that was, what what we had discussed was the plan. >> So my suggestion is that I will entertain a motion to move Mr. Segura's nomination forward to the full council to be appointed to the ace board, with direction to the clerk staff to initiate an application process, for the open seat on the ace board. And I want to thank miss Thomas for serving. And I think she's agreed to serve until we fill the position as best that she can, and so we will have an open call for that other seat. And I would ask my colleagues to encourage people, you know, including your newsletter, that application process, once we have that out, assuming that's something that the miss Oliver's you can work with the clerk to, [11:19:57 AM] you can work with the clerk to, to set up a process for that application. I don't know if we've done that in a while, so council member pool makes that motion, seconded by council member Ryan Alyssa. There are no objections, that motion will be adopted. Thank you, Mr. Segura, for your willingness to serve, and we, then will move to our last item, which is future items . >> I don't have any. >> Sorry, so we do not have a June meeting. We do have meetings in July and August. And at those meetings we have several audit items. So between the two meetings, there are six audit reports that we expect to present to you, and, I can list those out, but we're looking at kind of we have a little time [11:20:58 AM] kind of we have a little time before that audit committee. So we're looking at which ones make sense to bring sooner and which ones can wait until the August meeting. So I expect three at each of those meetings. >> Thank you. >> And those range from scooter enforcement to employee reimbursements, retention a host , a host of issues, that that may be on there, and then, we will likely also have a human capital management briefing from human resources. And the August meeting is the goal, and, yeah. So, colleagues, if there are other things that you would like added, to the agenda, council member Kelly. >> Yes, thank you for the space. I was thinking back to our last meeting where we talked about the fire, retirement system. And I know that we got to hear from the actuary from the city, but we didn't have the opportunity to hear from the actuary from the retirement system. I just think it would be great to be able to hear from them if we could put them into a future meeting for some sort of presentation, just to have a [11:21:59 AM] presentation, just to have a balanced view of what's going on over there, thank you. And if the financial services department can help us make that happen, we will have to juggle a little bit over timing, the July meeting is going to be is may be really full. So we'll just we'll just have to figure out what the timing and, and do our best to make it happen this summer. >> Thank you. >> Anything else? Okay. Well, with that, we will adjourn at 1122. Thank you, everyone, for a productive meeting.