Audit and Finance Committee (AFC) meeting Transcript – 8/28/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 8/28/2024 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/28/2024 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. [9:30:04 AM] You're watching a-t-x-n the City of Austin's Government Access Channel agenda. Good morning, Mr. [9:32:09 AM] agenda. Good morning, Mr. Robbins. You have three minutes. >> Thank you. >> You bet. >> Members at the last council meeting, you asked that city staff working on gas related issues meet with members of the resource management commission to discuss the rate case and also to discuss a way forward on the commission's request to expand our purview to advise council on gas utilities for members of our commission attended an hour long meeting with several city staff members and its outside legal counsel on this case. The meeting went well enough and the problem was, and is that we were four people out of about 218,000 residential customers, public input on th huge rate increase has been limited to a bare minimum. The public has one chance to speak tomorrow at a hearing with no [9:33:11 AM] tomorrow at a hearing with no time certain, and that until today was scantly published. I urge council to set another hearing. One for a time certain, and let the public know better. When this is, Texas gas service itself has a large email list of its customers that it can use for this purpose. Second, we have not yet met with staff on finding agreement on expanding our commission's purview to gas utilities, because staff has been busy with the city budget. It is my intention, however, to have this meeting before the audit committee's next meeting, and despite our restricted purview, the resource management commission does have scope. On to comment on how the rate is [9:34:12 AM] to comment on how the rate is structured. Could you cue the next slide? Now, this shows more than doubling in rates in six years. Next slide. And we can't comment on whether the doubling is legitimate. But we can, comment on how the rate is distributed. So we recommended first that the current gargantuan monthly fee be cut in half. Second, that a three tiered rate structure be set up with Progressive tiers charging more for increased consumption, similar to what there is for Austin energy and Austin water. And third, that the unexplained and misguided proposal by the utility to have two alternative residential rates be dismissed. Regarding the rates themselves, I can express my own opinion, [9:35:12 AM] I can express my own opinion, the proposed rate will create 105% increase since 2019. Strategies to reduce this rate would include reduction of the rate of return charging higher capital recovery fees, disallowing frivolous capital costs that the council never approved, and eliminating the rate decreases for large customers. Thank you. >> Thanks. Mr. Robbins, and just for the public's benefit, the topic that Mr. Robbins is speaking on relates to the city of Austin's, rate case in front of actually, it's a consortium of, entities that the city of Austin is one of in front of the Texas railroad commission, and so we have limited abilities to, to scope things out. But I very much appreciate Mr. Robbins coming and talking about that [9:36:14 AM] coming and talking about that with us today. I see that our chair has joined us. Allison alter is remote and also council member Vanessa Fuentes is with us today. We have no other speakers from the public here today, so we'll move on to approval of minutes. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes of the audit and finance committee meeting of July 23rd, 2024? Thank you. Council member Fuentes with a second from council member Ryan alter. Are there any changes or corrections to these minutes, are there any objections to approving them? Hearing none. These meeting minutes for the last meeting are approved unanimously. Our next item, number two, recommendations for appointment of a member to the Austin convention enterprises board. And who do we have here to discuss this, miss? Miss Thomas. >> Diana Thomas, deputy cfo, we [9:37:16 AM] >> Diana Thomas, deputy cfo, we would like to appoint Margaret Shaw to this position. Margaret N employee with the city of Austin's financial services department and our redevelopment services division, Margaret was hoping to join us remotely today. She's not. She's feeling a little bit under the weather, but I don't see her online. >> I know that she had indicated that she was available. Is she able to join us online? >> We're attempting to connect with her. Okay. Right now, if it hasn't been successful. >> All right. Do I have any, any discussion on this? Is there a motion to approve this item to appoint Margaret Shaw. Thank you. Chair. Allison alter makes that motion, and council member Mckenzie Kelly is a second. Is there any additional conversation on this, are there any objections to appointing Margaret Shaw to the Austin convention center board? Hearing none. This is unanimously approved. Thank you everyone. Item number three. Boards and [9:38:18 AM] Item number three. Boards and commissions, special request report. This was requested by council member Ryan alter and council member Allison alter. Do we have a presentation on this item? Weo. Is this Kelsey Thompson? Yes. Welcome. >> Hi. >> Good morning. My name is Kelsey Thompson. I was the manager of this special request, which we originally published in April of 2023. At the time that we were doing this work, there were 93 boards and commissions on the city's website. We determined to focus specifically on the 55 that are outlined in city code, and we looked at vacancies three months or longer and other attendance issues, meetings and cancellations, recommendations and how board members communicate with council. I'll just focus on a couple of these, but if there's any more detail you'd like me to [9:39:18 AM] any more detail you'd like me to go into, more than happy to do so. So for vacancies from November 2021 to December 2022, we saw that there was a 5% average monthly vacancy rate. And while that's relatively low, we did see that there were 55 seats that were vacant for more than three months. And the average length of time those seats were vacant was six months, and there were six boards that had multiple of these long term vacancies, which can make it more difficult for them to meet quorum for meetings. The boards that are codified, they're required to meet at least quarterly. Most boards say that they'll meet monthly, and we saw that on average between 2021 and 2022, they had about nine meetings per year, with a cancellation rate of 27 to 28%. There were four boards in each year that did not meet that requirement to meet quarterly for recommendations over the years that we reviewed, the boards issued 414. There were 15 that submitted no recommendations and 99% of the recommendations. We determined to be within scope of the board's bylaws. We also did a little bit of peer city analysis. We looked at how many boards Austin has compared to [9:40:20 AM] boards Austin has compared to several other cities, and we did see that there were two boards that had a process to periodically review the boards and determine if they should remain active or not. And that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions. >> That's great. What questions might we have? Yes. >> Council member Ryan alter, thank you very much, vice chair, and I appreciate the work y'all did on this. I know this started as a special request from council member harper-madison and council member Vila. So really appreciate y'all coming forward. I was curious just to add a little context to this. If the clerk's office is present and could just also give a little information on kind of their support role and how much time that takes in our boards and commissions process? >> Absolutely. Thank you. I'm Stephanie hall, I'm the assistant city clerk in the clerk's office, and I'm kind of coordinate the boards and commissions. >> We did have a presentation as well. >> I don't know if you wanted me to go through that, but I can just highlight some of the things that you kind of addressed just to the [9:41:21 AM] addressed just to the presentation that we had was just to respond to some of the questions that were asked from our perspective, how we, how we see those the, the one about the attendance violations and the vacancies are our goal is to work really closely with council offices when those violations happen in those vacancies. So we send out reports monthly about that, about what what is outstanding. And what we might need, we do find that sometimes filling those positions can be a little bit challenging because the applicant pool might not be there. It might be difficult to find qualified or interested applicants. We do typically notice an increase in application submissions when a council office were to reach out to the community, and say, we'd like some more applicants. So we have noticed that. And then with theurnover of, these terms in February, we are going to be working with the corp. I wanted to say cpio, but the corporate public information office to kind of get that out and get some some more interest to talk about the attendance requirements in city code, they're extremely important to ensure that boards and commissions meet together. They [9:42:22 AM] commissions meet together. They have the ability and a quorum to meet, but it can be quite challenging to track that attendance when considering cancellations and when considering special called meetings. There's also kind of a grace period to report that attendance. It can be difficult for a liaison to keep track of all that and get correctly to us. The other thing is, is dependent on these staff liaisons W have other roles within their department. We do try various methods in which to encourage that reporting. We send out reminders, etc. And this is something that's on our radar and we have included in our preferred qualifications for a requisition that we're working on for a new agenda project regarding the meeting, cancellation and frequencies. What we find is that most boards and commissions actually meet monthly, even though code requires them to meet quarterly, they prefer a monthly meeting, and that if there is a cancellation, it's usually due to a lack of quorum. That's probably the most common. And then additionally, there might be because they don't have any pressing items. There are a few other things that occasionally happen. We do notify mayor and council if a board or commission is continuing consistently not [9:43:23 AM] is continuing consistently not meeting and then we certainly notify the audit and finance committee if someone has reached six months of not meeting. That's very rare, but it has happened and we bring that up. And then the audit and finance committee has an opportunity to discuss whether they should continue that board or not. When talking about the scope of boards and commissions and their recommendations, I think that's something that we notice in our office that stands out, something that was noted in the report when they were talking about the recommendations, the recommendations that were submitted, if they're within or without of the scope. I think that's really tricky when talking about the bylaws. So most of the boards and commissions are advisory bylaws and recommendations is how they talk to council and how they communicate. But as mentioned in the report, the bylaws are not super consistent. There was a standard bylaw template that was used when we transitioned to the ten one system. So everyone has that standard, but there's not necessarily a standard for how their scope or their mission is outlined. And that can cause a little bit of confusion. There are other questions that we saw were how do they communicate with council? We, as the office of city clerk, encourage board and commission members to [9:44:24 AM] and commission members to communicate with their council offices to let them know what's going in the boards or commission or raise areas of concern. So that is something that we proactively encourage the members to do. Some of the challenges that the auditor's report noted in the data collection is some of the things that we also know. One of the biggest things is some of the information to get from staff liaisons can be difficult or challenging. There's also a really high turnover in the staff liaison. Sometimes that information is delayed, it's nonexistent, or it's just inconsistent. This past year, the clerk's office has hired three positions full time positions in our office to be staff liaisons for about 14 commissions. We're really optimistic of this. So far, we've had some really good feedback. There's been some hurdles, of course, but we're hoping to streamline that process and develop some management systems for including attendance tracking. That might be more beneficial. And then council member, you had mentioned how much time and support are we offering, just as some numbers to kind of keep in mind, I'm the assistant city clerk. I spend about 50% of my [9:45:24 AM] clerk. I spend about 50% of my time working on boards and commissions. We also have a full time program coordinator in office. We have two customer solutions coordinators. There are about 70% of time doing postings, and they provide training. And then we have the three full time business process specialists. I did pull up the staff liaison roster. This is this changes because of the high turnover. But there's about 95 staff liaisons throughout all the departments. And then 51 executive liaisons. That's yes. It's quite a lot of support. >> Well and it is a lot. And then I you know when I was reviewing this material, what stuck out to me when you start adding up the number of boards and commissions we have, the number of appointments there, it amounts to almost a thousand people. When fully, fully appointed. And that can be really useful for a lot of issues. But, you know, when I came to office and was trying to make some of these appointments, it struck me, as you know, are we are these boards and commissions still active in their initial role? You know, [9:46:27 AM] their initial role? You know, have you mentioned about the some of the other cities? Look at whether it's like a sunset process or an occasional look at are these boards and commissions still needed or serving their original purpose. And I think that is something that I would be interested in exploring to figure out, you know, is the scope we've had the discussion with the resource management commission here. What is their proper scope? Should are there overlapping scopes and maybe to help avoid some of these lack of quorum issues, should two boards or commissions be merged into one? I just think it would. It would behoove us to help with some of the administrative issues as well as, you know, the, the lack of quorum that we do unfortunately see and that staff time that goes, wasted. And so I don't know what what the right answer is. I don't have a, you know, a set agenda here today. But I did want to have this discussion to see if this is [9:47:28 AM] discussion to see if this is something that my colleagues and the council will be interested in exploring and just are our boards and commissions functioning like we would like them to, to or should we maybe tweak here and there to make them better serve and fulfill their role as public citizens who want to be engaged and really are helping us? >> So I'll thanks for the comments and I'll note that the boards and commissions function is solely a council responsibility. >> These are our appointees and we create the different boards and commissions through our formal actions. So it's certainly within our purview to review, and or have some kind of a sunset process. You may all want to look back at the commission on commissions that occurred before 2014, so that when the ten one council came in in 2015, there was a shift in [9:48:28 AM] in 2015, there was a shift in how many people were on the boards and commissions as appointees. There was a review of which commissions and boards were still active, and offering good service to the council. As advisors. They are our advisors on issues, I remember the attempt to streamline and formalize and standardize the bylaws, and that work continues. I remember the difficulty that we encountered in eliminating different boards and commissions. So once created, oftentimes it's hard to end, but that doesn't mean that it's not a good effort to have that kind of an assessment and analysis. And I certainly would commend those continuing on in 2025, especially with new members of council, to have a look, see at that and pare down if it's necessary, things tend to grow and expand more than they tend to contract. So, but a good [9:49:29 AM] to contract. So, but a good assessment on whether these are viable and useful boards is certainly a really smart thing to do. So thanks for bringing that up. Yes chair Allison alter. >> Good morning, you know, I just want to sort of second what mayor pro tem pool said that, you know, it is valuable, I think, to look at these. It was done, before the switch to ten one. And it I think it was useful. We probably do for something like that whether or not that is a commission on commissions or it is a subgroup of council that makes a proposal, I'm not sure which would be more effective, because I think ultimately council has to decide which of these commissions are useful to our work and if they're not useful, you know, whether whether there's some other value to those groups meeting that might, might be important, but I'm not I'm not sure which would be the [9:50:29 AM] I'm not sure which would be the most effective way to do that, but I do think there's absolutely value in looking at it. And for those who are who are going to be here beyond, January 25th, I think that would be useful, to look at. >> Thank you. Chair alter. Council member. Fuentes. >> Yes. Just also wanted to share my sentiments that I think especially since we're coming up on ten years of the ten one system being in place. And with this volume of boards and commissions that we have in place, I certainly would also recommend would be interesting council member Ryan alter, if you're interested in leading on an effort to take a look at our structures. And I certainly am supportive of a sunset provision, I think it makes sense for us to have something in place so that we're continuously evaluating and calibrating the advice that we're seeking from our volunteer appointees. And then the other thing, too, and I appreciate this, report, is that I don't know if our commissions know that the requirement is to at [9:51:31 AM] that the requirement is to at least meet quarterly. When I served on the commission, I thought it was a monthly requirement. So I'm wondering if that information will help with attendance as well, knowing that it's not required to be every month, but thank you. >> These are all good comments and looks like there's some good work ahead for the council. Thank you Kelsey for the presentation and Stephanie for giving us some insights, okay. There's one more comment. Council member Kelly. >> Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate the feedback from my colleagues and the feedback from the clerk's office and the auditor on this topic. It was something I dug into about two years ago. And, I'll definitely share some of my research and what I looked into with council member Ryan alter after the meeting, but I look forward to the continued work that we have ahead of us in this regard, and ensuring that we have the best public participation available here in the community. >> Thanks so much. Our next item, item number four, is the coerce funding policy. [9:52:31 AM] coerce funding policy. >> Good morning. Chair. Vice chair, committee members Belinda weaver, city treasurer I'm here to present the city of Austin employees retirement systems funding policy. We have a presentation. >> That. >> We're going to take a little moment here to pull up the presentation. Welcome, miss weaver. Sorry for the bobble. And I'll note that the executive director of the city of Austin employee retirement system is also with us here today. Hi, Chris. >> Madam chair. >> Yes, council member. Fuentes, [9:53:32 AM] >> Yes, council member. Fuentes, I did have a question about the item regarding the ace board appointee. >> I know we passed. We adopted that item, but I had a question for staff. So when it's appropriate to post it, do you want to ask it now. >> And that's a recommendation to the council for approval later. >> Thank you. Yes. Thank you. I know we are appointing Margaret Shaw, a city of Austin employee, but I think at our last council meeting, we talked about a process for a non city staff related appointee. So I wanted to see how does this recommendation pair up with the previous conversation we had, we certainly have talked about what that process might look like. >> We have a process that we put in place for appointing members to the pension boards, and thought we might use something similar where we do a public outreach for people who have the skill set that we're looking for, and then bring those appointments to this committee and then to the full council. So I'll be working with kymberley Olivares in the financial services department, and we will bring back a process for your review and consideration. [9:54:32 AM] review and consideration. >> So with the recommendation of Margaret Shaw, being a city of Austin employee, what would be the makeup of the ace board with city staff versus a community? >> I don't have that information right off the top of my head. I believe it's five city staff and two non staff at the moment, but I'll have to confirm that and get back with you. >> Okay. >> I do have concerns about it being so city staff heavy. I think it's important that we have non city affiliated appointees on the ace board, especially knowing that it's a supermajority city staff. I would have some concerns. >> So but happy to have that conversation with the full dais. Great. Thank you. >> Looks like they have the [9:55:34 AM] >> Looks like they have the presentation up. So I'll continue on. Thank you. >> Thanks. Miss weaver. >> And I'm trying to maneuver. There we go. Okay. So the funding policy in and of itself is a requirement of state law for public retirement systems in the state. Section 802 of the Texas government code lays out the funding policy specifications. And specifically, it does state that the funding policy shall be jointly developed and adopted by both the public retirement system and the governmental entity public retirement system. In this state in this circumstance, is the city of Austin's employees retirement system and the city of Austin. I did want to note that this joint development and adoption of the funding policy concept is actually something that wa recently added to the statute, I did also want to make the committee aware that development of this funding policy truly has [9:56:36 AM] of this funding policy truly has been collaborative between the city and cause. As council member pool stated, we do have the executive director with tirz with us here today, Chris Hansen Anand I just wanted to say thank you for both being proactive and engaging with the city early on and during the development of this process. So two additional points. Notated here from a statutory requirement perspective, the written funding lilicy must detail a plan for achieving a funded ratio of the system that's equal to or greater than 100%. And then also that revision of the policy to reflect any significant changes be done. So in a timely fashion. Cohrs did have an existing funding policy in place. I believe it was established back in 2014. However due to recent legislative changes, there are modifications that need to be made to the funding policy so that it does now align with the [9:57:37 AM] that it does now align with the recently approved legislation. I have listed here the primary objective of the coerced funding policy. This is right at the beginning of the funding policy. It's very broad statement, all encompassing with detail supporting it within the actual policy itself. I kind of hone in on that, achieve and maintain defended ratio equal to or greater than 100%, which is in line with those statutory requirements. I mentioned a moment ago. And then the primary reason for the revisions to the existing coerced policy, again, is the recently approved legislation from the last legislative session in the 88th legislature, sb 1444, or what I refer to as the coerced legislation, was passed. I know the committee is very familiar with this, and there's been presentations and audit and finances very much involved in pension matters for the city and [9:58:37 AM] pension matters for the city and although there are many facets to sb 1444, I do have listed here some higher level primary points from the legislation that were incorporated into the funding policy. The first of which is the implementation of that actuarially determined contribution funding model and the carving out of that legacy liability and putting it on that fixed payment plan. And then finally, that contribution increases for both the employer and the employee. Risk sharing associated with that corridors. And then maximum thresholds as well. And then finally, this timeline was developed by coworkers and the city for approval of the funding policy. As you can see here, in June, the coerced benefit and services committee reviewed and made a recommendation to the full board of trustees for approval of the funding policy. I am here today for this August date, presenting to audit and finance for consideration and hopefully recommendation to the full city [9:59:40 AM] recommendation to the full city council for approval of the funding policy in September. The coerced board of trustees will have an item on their agenda for approval of the funding policy and then in October, there will be an item on city council for approval of the funding policy, as well, upon approval of the cause, board of trustees and approval of the city council of this funding policy, Cohrs will then submit the funding policy to the Texas pension review board, as required by law. And that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to entertain any questions. And I'll probably I'll go ahead and invite Chris Hansen up. >> Come on up to the microphone, Chris. That'd be great. Any questions for miss weaver or Mr. Hansen? I will say, as the city of Austin appointee to the board, that the board and the staff at tirz have worked, for a while on defining and updating the funding policy and I think that we're doing some pretty good work over there. The goal, of [10:00:41 AM] work over there. The goal, of course, is to make sure that the fund remains robust and can pay the retirement, for our valued employees and, and we are meeting the mark, yes. >> Council member Ryan alter I don't have a question, madam vice chair, but I do just want to acknowledge. I know you've done a lot of hard work on the cause board. And just for our employees. And this is a very technical, challenging topic that, I know you have have dove into headfirst. And so I just want to acknowledge that work and say a much appreciated, we're going to miss that voice come 2025. But I just wanted to say thank you for the work on behalf of the employees who are going to rely on this for many, many decades. So I think it's just important to acknowledge that. >> Well, that's real kind. Thank you. Thank you. Council member. Mr. Hansen, did you have anything that you wanted to offer or, [10:01:42 AM] offer or, >> Thank you. Christopher Hansen executive director, city of Austin employees retirement system the only other thing I would echo from miss weaver's presentation is that this was developed in line with Texas pension review board funding policy guidelines. So a lot of what's in there, mirrors the legislation as well as is in line with what the pension review board wants to see in these funding policies. So, very excited about the work that's done. And it was done in a very collaborative effort. And really appreciate the city's support in working with us. It's been a great partnership. So thank you. >> Great. >> I agree with that. It has been really good work. Yes. Council member Allison alder, thank you, >> I just wanted to also acknowledge our staff's work, you know, this is the second of the of the three pensions that we have, you know, revamped to make it more sound. We did a the police retirement system fund, a few years ago, obviously this one was done last legislative session, and this is the policy [10:02:43 AM] session, and this is the policy update to go with that. And I'm looking forward to, similar process for the fire pension this spring. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any other comments? Good work all around and I look forward to, continuing with the funding policy in front of the board next, next month. >> Mayor pro tem. >> Yes. If the if the committee could please take action to move this forward to the full council. Yes, we sure can. Is there a motion to approve this and move the recommendation to council? I see our chair is making that motion. Allison alter and its second by council member Ryan alter. Are there any objections to adopting this motion? Hearing none. The motion is adopted. Thank you all. I think our last two items are briefings. First one is the citywide employee retention [10:03:45 AM] citywide employee retention audit, and that is Keith Salas. And then after Mr. Salas will be the scooter enforcement audit and that will be Patrick Johnson. Mr. Salas, welcome. I think your mic is off. >> I was just saying it's actually going to be Mrs. Triplette, who's presenting. >> Oh very good. Welcome. Hi >> Okay. >> So good morning. My name is Jasmine Triplett, and I was the audit lead on this project. So I would first like to take a second and thank our team for all the work they've done in this area. But I also want to give a special thank you to the human resources department for all their work in this space in general, and their collaboration with us on this project. Our audit objective was to determine if the city's retention policies and practices are in line with our peers and if they reduce turnover. So why does employee retention matter? Oyees are a crucial part of our ability to [10:04:46 AM] a crucial part of our ability to provide quality services to all austinites. Anytime an employee leaves the city, that department then has to take time and resources to rehire and get the new person up to speed. This can have productivity and financial implications, according to the society for human resources management, the cost of replacing an employee can be 3 to 4 times that employee salary. What that looks like is an employee making $50,000, costing the city $150,000 to replace them. Magnify that to a citywide Leve and you can see that some of the potential impacts would be immense. So what you see on the screen right now is our turnover rates over the past seven years. As you can see, there's been some fluctuations. But over the past couplars, our turnover rate has decreased. For some context, our peers exist between 10% and 15%. This is other large Texas metropolitan cities. So with regards to our turnover rate, we are doing better than our peers. The city of Austin doesn't have a specific retention strategy. [10:05:47 AM] a specific retention strategy. Instead, we view everything that we provide to our city employees as our retention strategy. This is referred to as our total rewards package. So it includes everything like compensation, benefits, professional development opportunities, awards and recognition programs, and a variety of other things. For this audit, we looked specifically at these components that make up our total rewards package to determine which things are helping the city and which things are pushing employees to look for work elsewhere. This brings us to our first finding. Our first finding is focused on currently, what can the city do or what is the city currently doing that's helping us retain our employees? And what is the city doing that might be pushing employees to look for work elsewhere? What we found is that employees are generally satisfied with our benefits, but they feel that our career, our compensation efforts and our career progression opportunities, in addition to the changes to the telework policy in 2023, are some of the things that have pushed them to look for work elsewhere. So, as I mentioned, employees love our [10:06:47 AM] I mentioned, employees love our benefits. The city offers very competitive benefits with regards to our peers, and one of the reasons that this is, is because our benefits are growing. So we offer our standard package of medical, dental, vision, paid time off, sick leave. But we also have added a third personal holiday. Recognize juneteenth as an official holiday, and done things like increase the paid parental leave from 6 to 12 weeks. While employers are generally satisfied with our benefits, they're almost equally dissatisfied with our compensation approach. We looked into that a bit and we found four main things can be contributing to this. The first is that Austin's pay is not structured to meet Austin's high cost of living. In reality, our pay is structured to be in line with our peers. The challenge is that, according to the economic policy institute, Austin has the highest cost of living in Texas. So while our payay be in line with our peers, our cost of living is not. Additionally, the city provides cost of living adjustments every year. But over the past couple of years, the [10:07:48 AM] the past couple of years, the inflation rate has been higher than our cost of living adjustment, which can make it difficult for our employees to buy the necessities they need to live in Austin. Third, the city does provide market studies. These market studies occur roughly every 3 to 4 years, but they tend to be focused specifically on positions that exist across multiple departments, positions that are existing in specific departments like a veterinarian or a parks ground assistant, may be left out of these positions. Out of these market studies. These departments do have the ability to request a market study for the positions, but they may have to fund them. And lastly, the city offers retention incentives. These are usually financial stipends added to an employee's pay for positions that are hard to fill. You usually find this when they have high turnover or difficulty finding people to join. These positions. Most departments don't have these retention incentives, and most departments with high turnover don't have these retention incentives. Departments also noted we also found employees found that our career progression opportunities [10:08:50 AM] career progression opportunities are an area where the city can improve. One of the things the city does in this space is using career progression plans. What you see on the screen is an example of one of the city's career progression plans. These plans allow employees to come in at, say, the trainee level and once they reach the minimum skills and qualifications, they're able to move to an a, a, B, and a C, you'll see that the code supervisor position is off to the side because at some point not everybody can be a supervisor, and you do have to go through the competitive process for that. These career progression plans allow multiple people to go through and grow in their department. The problem is a good bit of our departments have positions similar to financial analyst 1234 science and marketing technicians 123. Librarian 123. These sort of progression positions where you can see there's a clear delineation of this comes after this, this comes after that. But they don't have a career progression plan. So what that looks like is an employee say a financial analyst, one who wants to move up to a two is either going to have to wait for someone to leave the position in [10:09:50 AM] someone to leave the position in their department, retire, or find a similar position in another department, or find a similar position outside of the city for employees, this can lead to stagnation and general feelings that they're not able to grow within the city or in their department that they've already invested time and resources into. As I mentioned before, any time an employee leaves their department, they then have to take that time, the department to rehire that person, get them up to speed, in addition to the new person getting up to speed in the new area. Lastly, employees noted that they were dissatisfied with the changes, particularly the decreased flexibility of the 2023 telework policy. During the covid 19 pandemic. As many of you know, the city allowed many employees that could work remotely to work remotely and many of those employees did that. Roughly 50% of our population, our city employees, are able to work remotely 80% of the time during the change policy last year, we required our employees to come in 50% of the time, that looks like coming in five days out of a ten day work period, and department [10:10:50 AM] work period, and department directors to come in five days out of the week. For many employees, telework has become more of a priority, even more than salary and benefits. It's the work life balance. It's the ability to do a lot of more things with their families without spending so much time commuting. It also is helpful with our environmental goals and traffic safety. One thing I would like to note is that we found that 50% of our employees live outside of the city limits during this telework policy, during the covid 19, we allowed our employees to live anywhere in the state of Texas. So for these 50% of employees that live outside of Austin, there may be challenges with them having to commute every single day. I'm going to go back. Okay, so just a quick recap. Finding one is looking at the things that the city is currently doing. We are doing absolutely fantastic with regards to our benefits and our employees love it. Some areas that we can improve are our compensation, career [10:11:52 AM] compensation, career progression, opportunities and the telework policy. Increasing flexibility there, leading into finding two. Finding two is focused more long term. What can we do to make sure that we're on track and that we know what employees want and that we're investing in the areas that matter most? And we found that the city is not effectively using our data to target these measures. And we're not tracking the success of our retention incentives. One of the things that we could do better at is capturing our employee feedback. So best practices recommend that employers capture the perspective of employees that currently work for them, and the perspective of employees that are leaving and use this perspectives to guide their efforts. Moving forward. We found that we capture this information and are listening to the workforce survey. We capture the perspective of employees that are currently here, and in our exit survey, we capture the perspective of employees that are leaving. However, we have cut most of the pay and benefit questions from the listening to the workforce survey. And as we just talked about pay and benefits are crucial to employees. So by not capturing this information, we're missing out on crucial pieces of [10:12:53 AM] out on crucial pieces of information that will let us know what exactly our employees value or how they're feeling about what we're currently offering. Additionally we found that many of the departments that we spoke to felt that the questions asked in the exit survey were vague. Not enough people were using them altogether. It required. It led to many departments creating their own department specific exit surveys, as opposed to using the one that the city provides. If we're collecting this data, it should be used to help guide our efforts. Lastly, we found that we are really lacking in our monitoring and evaluation of the things that we're currently doing. So many of our peers set turnover goals. Some of them are city wide, like a 10% city wide goal, a 15% city wide gold, etc. Some cities have specific turnover goals, say for their it department or their audit staff. Maybe it is 6%, maybe audit is 10%, etc. Austin isn't doing either of these things. This leaves us a little out of whack for things that we can do to track us moving forward. Additionally, we're not measuring the success of our [10:13:54 AM] measuring the success of our initiatives of our incentives. I mentioned a bit more earlier about these retention incentives. These financial stipends that were paying out in investing in our employees. But we don't necessarily know when they've started and we're not capturing if they've been successful. This is a missed opportunity to revamp these incentives or see if they're working and continue moving with them forward. So although the city of Austin is doing great, we just have two main recommendations that are essentially focused on one. What can we do to continue to reevaluate the strategies that we have identified growth areas and bring these informations to council so that you guys are aware of what our employees value the most at the moment. And then two, have a plan to continue to collect and use our data to guide future efforts moving forward. If we collect it, we should use it a bit more and I will open it up to questions. That was the end of our presentation. >> I think the human resources department is here to respond, but before we bring them up, that staff up and do we have any questions for the auditor, miss Triplett? [10:14:55 AM] Triplett? >> Yes, yes. >> Chair alter. >> Thank you, I was wondering, to what degree did you look at this? Disaggregated by department. Because that's been my experience, that there are certain departments that have had periods of very high vacancies, that are often really critical workers, and that sort of this average view doesn't necessarily give us a look at that. So I'm thinking here, for instance, of the 911 call takers or Austin waters, experience at their treatment plants, aviation experience, for instance, where there's a lot very high levels of vacancy that are not captured in this view. >> Absolutely. So at the back of the report, we have what we call appendix a, which is also in the slide deck. I think it's the very, very last slide past the [10:15:57 AM] very, very last slide past the questions slide. But we did look at we focused we focused primarily on our citywide turnover rates. But we also did look at department turnover rates. And we can pull up a second. Oh here we oh that's very small. But yes we did look at it over that same time period. And seeing that there are some departments that have higher turnover rates historically, like animal services hovering around 19%, and some of them that have been doing a bit better if fluctuated over time, with some departments having rough times and some departments getting better over, does it relate to how technical the job is? >> For example, with the water utility? Those are pretty specific. Hiring criteria. So it would maybe be a little difficult to find folks who are available and interested. But is it the difficulties revolve around how technical the jobs are? >> We didn't look specifically at that. We did talk to some of these types of departments with more technical positions, and [10:16:58 AM] more technical positions, and they did mention that it is a factor that can make recruiting and retaining a little difficult. But we didn't go specifically into the detail and conduct that analysis on if the more technical positions are struggling more than administrative positions for example. >> That's interesting that that y'all didn't dig into that I would think that that would be a pretty important piece of the information here, rather than a broad brush saying that we have a couple of departments that don't seem to be able to recruit and retain. We need to understand why that is. Any other questions? Why don't we invite human resources up to give us a response? Okay. Thank you. >> Oh, sorry. >> Good morning Susan Sims, human resources director here at the city of Austin, we appreciate the work that the auditor's office does. It's always good to have a temperature check as to how we're doing and the efficacy. And absolutely. Another set of [10:18:00 AM] And absolutely. Another set of eyes on our information, couple couple highlights for us, if you look at the chart and we were where we were with turnover and where we are now, public sector very generally works in double digits, that's a very common, as you can see, with some of our, other sister cities here in the state that are of comparable size double digits in general, and as an overall turnover rate is very common to know at the city of Austin, we're in the single digits is a really exciting thing. We're really celebrating. For us, that is and it's a partnership. It's a city wide collaboration, as is retention in general. You know, and I think that's a little bit of what they're discussing. It's departmental efforts, it's human resources, departmental efforts, it's compensation, it's benefits. It's things we can do together. Career progression incentives. Those are very important. And Ken career progression series are also, as [10:19:00 AM] progression series are also, as you note, something that can really motivate as well. So, I think we're very excited about the informat discussed today. I think there's a lot of partnerships that we can continue to even bring down our levels, even more. You talk about some of the departments that have a higher turnover rate. We work very specifically with them because you're right, there's a story, there's a story with each of those departments and whether it's technical skills, whether it's growing our own, whether it's apprenticeship programs, it's cadet programs and the public safety departments. It's something that we're constantly looking at, constantly partnering with each of those departments. Sometimes you'll look at these double digits and couple of the departments, and you kind of look at it industry wide as well. You know, some of those are you can't get as many paramedics anymore. You know, we got to grow our own, you know, some of those types of reflections that we do. But it's nothing that we're stagnant on. [10:20:02 AM] nothing that we're stagnant on. It's things that we are very invested in to make sure that we decrease, that turnover and, and really increase engagement. One thing I want to touch on, surveys, and we have Michelle torres with us today, surveys have changed quite a bit, in the human resources and organizational world, a lot of times they measure employee engagement and what that does is talk about connection with our our leadership. It talks about connection with the organization, absolutely touches on compensation and benefits and the overall employee experience, I think, and the ability to participate, be included and be heard. And I think it's really great to have Michelle on board with us, because it's going to be a nice, iteration of how we can connect in our survey with our employees to continue to get meaningful data in all of those different areas, that we can bring these numbers even better next year. So that's those are [10:21:02 AM] next year. So that's those are those are my thoughts on. Great. >> Thank you so much, >> It does help to kind of get a sense of the context that we're working within and the changes that the world has experienced since the pandemic and trying to come back from that, I think we are still we are still shaking off the effects of the pandemic. And some of them, I don't think we will ever actually emerge from. I think they have changed how we conduct our business in some ways that that have changed forever. >> Very profound changes. I think you'll see just in the working world today, you know, that telework is a component of what people expect. And, you know, it's something that I know we're looking at as an organization very, very closely. >> Yeah, that's a challenge for a public service entity. It is all governmental entities. Our jobs are very often direct service to our clients, and that's difficult to do remotely. >> So important to keep that public purpose. First and foremost, the reason we're here to serve the people that we are [10:22:03 AM] to serve the people that we are here, that we're their foundation and so it's important to have that ability to connect for sure. >> Agreed. What kind of questions might we haveor hr? Yes. Council member Ryan alter and then council member Fuentes, thank you very much. >> I want to talk about, the pay question for a moment. You know, councilmember Fuentes has has championed getting us to that $22 an hour living wage, and we're so close to that, and we wouldn't be without that work. But where when we talk about the, the market analysis is that a looking at our, our region, you know, the Austin area or are we comparing ourselves to Dallas, Houston, you know, when we're looking at comparisons for certain jobs, how are we comparing to figure out what is the right wage or Rebecca [10:23:04 AM] the right wage or Rebecca Kennedy with human resources? >> We look at various factors. Some are similar cities in Texas and even out of Texas, and then some is published data. So what we do is we traditionally will hire a consultant to help us pull that information. And what they do is they'll take a look at what actual saaries are in other cities that are comparable and the published data. And then we apply a geographic differential to it, because we know living in Austin and working in Austin is different than in other areas of the state. So once they apply those geographic differentials, we look at it and we say, okay, this is what other people are making, and we make sure that our salary grades match to whatever that range is there. One of the things that I do want to mention is, in the report, they were looking at entry to salary and the way that we pay our new employees that come in, excuse me, is that we look at their experience. And so if you come to come to the city with experience, you're going to make more than what you'll see as those entry level salaries, because we are paying more based on that experience. And so with [10:24:05 AM] on that experience. And so with the market studies, what we do is we look at benchmark jobs across the city. So there's going to be some that we won't look at every single title every time we do a market. But what we'll do is we'll look at different job families and we'll pull a couple of benchmark titles that are then impacted, either the ones above and below. So if that one benchmark title is impacted to increase, then the rest of the family will go as well. And so that's how we generally pull the comparator data for those markets. >> And do we have a policy of once we get those data that we're going to be at whatever that level is, or a certain percentage better, or, you know, let's just say that you do the market study and an electrician is $60,000, is our policy that we're going to pay 60,000, or is it we're going to be 5% better, or how do we use those data to actually set how we're going to get people in the door when we get the data back? >> And they say this is the market median. So this is the [10:25:07 AM] market median. So this is the median that they find in the market. We put our, our salary based on that market median. So we'll say we try not to lead the market. We try not to lag the market. There are certain times when we do have positions that are hard to fill, that we do work with those departments and say, okay, based on this, we're looking at increasing what that entry rate might be, because a lot of the times it's with those entries when we're bringing people in, we do that right now with our 911 call takers. We know that we were having issues bringing people in, and so we're paying a dollar over what that minimum rate is just because we're looking at it saying we need to make sure that we're being competitive in our market and so we'll work with the departments as they bring forward those certain titles that we're having issues with hiring. >> Okay. >> And in your response, you noted for the on the telework piece that we're we're looking at it. What what does that mean. Yeah. Can you give us a little more clarity on that okay. >> We definitely can. So as as everyone is aware 50% telework 50% in office. So we know that and the heavy lifting was done. [10:26:09 AM] and the heavy lifting was done. And present. There are a couple titles that are exempt from that, based on hard to fill or based on the nature of their. So with our new with Mr. Broadnax at the at the helm, here we are doing we have done some focus groups, and those focus groups have given us different information to look at. We continue with some more focus groups this month. So we've looked at managers and supervisors. That will be this month. We've had a group of directors, hr managers, affinity groups as well. And so we've gotten quite a lot of very valuable input looking at increasing the amount of time out of office. So, a little bit more telework time, potentially looking at 6040. How would that feel? How would that look? And right now it's important at this juncture in the program to allow departments to manage their schedules for their own departmental efficiency and effectiveness. So we're also looking at putting that [10:27:10 AM] looking at putting that responsibility back in the departments and any appeals and types of things that they need to do with regards to the how they serve their constituents and their people seeking services. Those questions should be answered and deliberated within the department. At this point. And so we're looking at different things qualitatively like and hoping in the next couple of months that we can have something together and ready to, to share. Great. >> Well, I hope that y'all are also talking to you know, beneath the director and assistant director level. But to the frontline workers who I, you know, I've spoken with a few and the flexibility that they had, as this report mentions, is worth more than whatever raise we can give them. You know, the number is staggering that more than half of our employees are living outside the city. We all know what it's like to drive in and around the city, and sometimes you can't pay anybody enough to drive on mopac or I-35, but it is such an [10:28:11 AM] I-35, but it is such an opportunity in my mind for us to be able to keep our valuable city employees at a very low, low cost and even sometimes savings, because we're not going to have to pay for the office space. So I look forward to hearing what the hr department is going to be recommending. >> Thank you. Council member. Council member. Fuentes. >> Thank you. >> I just wanted to also echo my support for us increasing our telework policy. I'm thrilled to hear that you're doing focus groups. I think it makes a lot of sense for us to recalibrate it. You know, going from 80% of employees doing telework to 50% doing telework was kind of is a big jump, and so any way we can calibrate that, towards more manageable so that we're competitive, we've made significant inroads in addressing our staffing vacancy issues, I think it will help us remain competitive on that end. The audit also flagged a number of data related recommendations, [10:29:13 AM] of data related recommendations, including the exit survey, ensuring that departments are reviewing the exit surveys. I would be interested in reading exit surveys for mayor and council office if we have those available, but can you speak to how the hr department will be incorporating some of those recommendations in workday? >> There is a part of workday that you can, in an automated fashion, send an exit interview survey. We have so much email now. Everyone knows we get everything through email, and it does have that capacity. Having been through the implementation before, there are some nuances. I think that we could look to implement that. I think people would benefit from in that new, hcm system. So, that would be something I would recommend, we have and implement moving forward for sure. And it can get more real time data. It gets out to the people who, you know, we don't make people fill it out, but at least they can receive [10:30:14 AM] but at least they can receive it. And if they'd like to fill it out they can, you know, come back and give us that data and we can learn from that and make any necessary changes. >> So yes, I like that. Thank you, and then my last question is around the high turnover rate. Just looking at the chart that you showed, knowing that the Austin animal services division has nearly 20% turnover rate, can you speak to any strategies practices that we can be looking for at that particular department? >> I can't, I think, Rebecca, do you have any insight on that? Well, and I just want to mention so with the animal services department, they have around a little over 100 employees. >> So when you're seeing a 20% turnover rate, it's around 20 employees. And so as we quantify what that looks like we can help review that and deep dive into where those positions are. Are they animal workers are some of it more the other professional staff like where is it that we can help? Because I know we've been working with them pretty [10:31:15 AM] been working with them pretty closely about filling some of their key professional roles. They were just able to hire a veterinarian, which was really exciting for, for the department. But we'll we'll continue to work with them on some of those strategies when we are able to look and deep dive into who we're seeing as the where the turnover is lying within them. >> The number also reflects an average from 2018 to 2023. So maybe if we drill down to just this fiscal, maybe it might show us something different because we've done quite a few efforts like I said, we partner with the departments, we want them to have staff and be able to be productive and meet the needs of their customers and people coming in to seek services. So maybe that maybe that is just a little bit, you know, different. So maybe I can bring that to you. In this past fiscal year. >> Very good. And one last comment I wanted to make regarding the telework policy, as you take a look at the policy for the city, is consideration for employees who don't have a choice, don't have an option, and whether or not they can work remotely, whether that's through an additional pay incentive or benefit, I would be very open [10:32:19 AM] benefit, I would be very open and supportive to you as well. Okay. >>Nk you. >> Thank you. I did note council member alter, I know, raised her hand, >> Great. Yes. Councilmember Allison alter thank you, >> I wanted to ask. So in the audit, this may be for the auditor's office. You use the term turnover, and I just want to make sure because I'm looking at the vacancy chart, that was in the budget q&a, and obviously the turnover numbers are for a five year period, and the vacancy numbers in the Q and a for budget are kind of one year. But but does the turnover measure something different than the average of the vacancy rates. What what is that actually measuring. >> So our turnover the numbers that you see in this report include all separations voluntary and voluntary and retirements. >> Okay, >> So that is just the percentage of their employees that have cycled through, as opposed to looking at how many [10:33:20 AM] opposed to looking at how many positions they have vacant. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Okay. So those are slightly different measures because if you, you know, if you look at the vacancy rates, some of those rates are much lower than some of these outliers, like animal services, but they apparently have high turnover even when they're they're able to hire people. But then they have high turnover okay. So that that is that is important. I was wondering for hr, you know, one of the things that we've seen over the years is it takes a really long time. Once a problem gets to a certain point to address it, whether it's CDL drivers in are or whether it's the 911 call takers, what do we have set up in terms of early warning systems, to be able to address things more quickly than we've seen over the last several years. >> We partner pretty closely with departments, and they're [10:34:22 AM] with departments, and they're really I think our first line that will bring issues to us when we see them, that's one thing that we've been working a lot more closely with departments on. I would say almost probably within the last two years, because we saw many of the issues come based on the pandemic and then we started working with some of these, retention plans that you see that were noted in the audit. Some of these with like the commercial drivers in rr that came about because of the pandemic and working with their leadership, who was in place at the time to ensure that we had something in place to try to retain these CDL drivers because there was such an increase in in private sector, needing those drivers. And so we work with them. I do feel that when and director Saenz mentioned the human capital management system workday that we're putting in place, the reporting capabilities in that are just going to be far beyond what we have right now. So we're going to be able to see different things within that system that I think will help us as we start to notice trends and departments [10:35:22 AM] to notice trends and departments which have different job titles, even across the city, that will be able to put in place different, programs or pay programs are different things that might be able to retain employees into those positions or even increase, applicants into those positions. >> And so I appreciate that. I still am concerned about whether we have the effective response to those early warnings. So in the case you just gave of the CDL drivers, I remember having to do a resolution to say, we need you to fix this. And by the time it reaches us, it's gotten to a level where it should have already been begunoo be addressed. You know, by hr. Same thing with 911. We, you know, ha doultiple resolutions to kind of push that along. And it took years to get to a point where there was responses. And I would like for us to learn from those experiences. And I know not everyone who's on this panel involved in those processes, but I think there's some things to learn about, you know, what we were hearing and how slowly, slowly we responded. And so I'd [10:36:22 AM] slowly we responded. And so I'd like for us to make sure that we have a that we have really learned from those experiences, and B that we are, you know, taking seriously we see these canaries in the coal mine that we are addressing things proactively, because often it's things that take time and certifications and other things. And once you get into a certain level of ho, it's really, really hard to get out. >> I had I had had the opportunity to meet with, Richard Mchale, you know, out at rr and, the CDL program, I think is everyone probably many people probably in here know the parameters of the program had changed. And so, with that omnibus transportation act, they, we have different standards and different training periods, and they've done such a wonderful job in ramping up, growing our own and making some temporary programs available to fill in. And I was I was really impressed. And I've just been [10:37:23 AM] impressed. And I've just been here three months, but it was so nice to see such effort in growing our own and making sure that pipeline is right there, we will absolutely do as you say. Learn from the times where we've been. I think we are definitely in the post covid environment. And with the economy settling down just a little bit, not knock on wood, I don't know if I said that out loud, but, with things settling down a little bit, we are able to make some good decisions that give us foundational programs that can be there to, like Rebecca said, at a dollar an hour, the 911 operators are always something nationally that are a difficult position to fill based on the nature of their 24 over seven work and the nature of the calls and how the immediacy of channel one works, it is really intense, and you're talking someone through an act of burglary happening in their home, and some people are equipped for [10:38:23 AM] some people are equipped for that and some aren't, you know, and there's quite a, there's a lot of moving parts to some of the positions that have that higher turnover. But please rest assured, we will learn from where we've been and work to not be in that position and to be as proactive as we are now to make sure that those spots are being fulfilled. Yeah >> And can you also speak to the item on our agenda for various compensation studies, and in particular how that's going to help us, explore whether we should move away from this cy of being at 50% for compensation when we do the compensation studies. >> So the item on the agenda is specific to hiring three different firms that will provide compensation consultation for the city, it replaces an existing contract that we have that was just with one vendor. And this opens it up. One of the things that we are looking at is a overhaul of the compensation system, and having one of those vendors that will be on that, that item [10:39:24 AM] will be on that, that item provide us with additional information on how we can revamp our compensation system to look at all of the pieces, including where we are paying people, the current philosophy of the market median. If we need to shift that different pay structures, retention incentives, how we do the establishing base, pay for new employees and then pay structures across the organization to include if it makes sense, having different pay scales for our utilities and our our city wide titles. So we're we're this will thisapproval will allow us to move forward with those to really have that overhaul of what we do right now with our compensation structures. >> If I could build on, I just go ahead, I would I would really like to build on that 50% target, in compensation, creation philosophy, etc. Most plans aim for 50%, which is market. So 50% are paying more, 50% are paying less. That's that's the market rate. Most compensation plan struct [10:40:25 AM] compensation plan struct ranges are built on that. So the 95 to 105% of market using market as a median, establishing minimum and maximum pay of a range. But we can and what Rebecca touched on there is the ability to set that median in thverhaul of the system at a higher rate. But of course, that comes with you know, different, you know, action reactions. So when you're changing that, we have to be eyes wide open. And the cost out of what that would be to not cause compression and be able to administer the plan in the most fair way. As possible. So I just wanted to mention that is that is a widely used, widely known, way to approach compensation and yeah, I just wanted to mention that. So I appreciate that. >> But there, you know, we've seen this be a real challenge for our utilities. We've seen it be a real challenge for our 911 call takers. Austin is, you know, among the highest cost of [10:41:27 AM] know, among the highest cost of living areas within the comparison suite. And so it's not clear that we are actually landing where we where we need to serve our employees and retain them. And as as the audit noted, there's a lot of costs of that turnover, that we're not, you know, factoring in as we as we think about this, so I would strongly favor adjusting that level to a certain degree, and really, favor, you know, ggregating some of these processes by our utilities who are in a very different market, when they're trying to fill positions that are highly technical in nature. Et cetera, so, you know, as my colleagues have spoken to, telework, I also want to speak to the importance of adjusting in this particular area. I think, you know, it has hamstrung us in a numr of areas. I understand the compression and the other pieces and absolutely agree with you that we should address them. But I think that that we really do need to rethink where we should [10:42:28 AM] need to rethink where we should be as a city given given who Austin is. Thank you. >> Sounds like our staff has some good work ahead of it. And, is there anything else on the employee retention study? This audit. All right. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our last, briefing, item number six is the scooter enforcement audit. Hello, Patrick. How are you? Welcome. >> Thank you so much. >> Floor is yours. >> My name is Patrick Johnson. Oops. I need this, Henry katumba led our team's work on this project. I'm pleased to present the results of our work today, we'll wait for the slides, but. >> Go ahead. They'll catch up to [10:43:33 AM] >> Go ahead. They'll catch up to you. >> Sure, just for a little background on on electric scooters or e- scooters, as they're called, they first arrived in Austin in April of 2018, the city established an enforcement program, which is led by staff and the transportation and public works department. In the last five years, users have taken about 18 million trips on these devices. Whoops. All right. Our first of three findings centers on challenges associated with the city's ability to get complete and reliable data to inform decisions about e-scooter safety. This finding is not unique to Austin. Several peer cities cited issues getting good data. And a national sorry, a national transportation safety board study outlined three main challenges related to e-scooter safety nationally. These include access to complete, reliable data coding issues that make it hard to correctly identify when e-scooters are involved in incidents, and the study also cited poor quality tripata. [10:44:33 AM] cited poor quality tripata. The city requires our e-scooter providers to report both trip data and information about collisions. The city receives fairly robust trip data, however, it appears the reported collision data is not complete. For example, the numbers on this slide show reported figures from the last two years. One provider reported 340 collisions from about 4 million trips. The other provider reported no collisions, with over 2 million trips. Providers and city staff told us there's not a common definition of key terms, including collision, which may account for some of the differences in reporting. Also providers rely on users to report any collisions or injuries that they ve, but this is not always done. Without reliable safety data from providers, we look to see if the city was exploring other sources for safety data. For example, public safety agencies and hospitals may collect information about e-scooter collisions. We noted [10:45:33 AM] e-scooter collisions. We noted vision zero team in transportation and public works had reached out for some of this data, but we didn't see a specific process in place for the e-scooter team to collect data from these sources. Also, another challenge with this data is that it may not be coded consistently to identify rentable e-scooters. For example, the data may include information about personal scooters or even Vespa style motorized scooters, which make it difficult to isolate data about e-scooter incidents. The impacts of not having reliable safety data, as the city does not have the information it needs to reliably know the number and severity of e-scooter collisions. It's also unable to identify safety trends or compare safety among e-scooter providers, or even with other mobility modes. This makes it difficult to know what actions are needed to improve safety and educate the public. Our second finding centers on coordination challenges that couldmpmpact enforcement efforts and [10:46:34 AM] enforcement efforts and relationships. Among the many e-scooter stakeholders in our community. For example, there are multiple parties involved involved in e-scooter activities. This includes the users themselves, the providers, also the city departments that have enforcement responsibilities. For example, the Austin police department is responsible for moving violations and transportation of public works. Right of way staff are responsible for issues such as e-scooter parking. One issue, we noted was that field enforcement staff do not communicate directly with the providers, and the reporting loop can cause some delays in field, staff noted they don't always have time to go back and make sure reported issues are resolved. This is due to staffing and workload challenges, and we also heard that from APD as a reason why they don't do proactive enforcement on moving violations. We also noted delays in making e-scooter rule updates. This is due to the changing nature of the e-scooter operations. It's a fairly new business. Sevalal [10:47:35 AM] fairly new business. Sevalal companies have entered and exited Austin over the last few years. Also, an update identified last year was delayed to all C city management to provide some input. We heard we also heard concerns about transparency in rolling out these updates earlier this year, the urban transportation commission called for more robust public engagement, and we heard similar feedback from the providers as well, fostering engagement among stakeholders can help the city better understand issues and balance needs across the community. Our third finding centers on a comparison of Austin's rules framework with frameworks in other cities. We looked at e-scooter operations in eight other cities. While there are some specific rural differences, including speed limits and when the scooters can be used, the overall enforcement framework was similar in each city. We included a chart of this comparison in the report. Based on these findings, we issued recommendations. First, the transportation of public works [10:48:35 AM] transportation of public works director should work with e-scooter stakeholders to ensure the city has the data it needs to guide informed operational and policy decisions for example, this can include defining what a collision is for reporting purposes and working with others to establish again that coding that can identify e-scooters in some of the some of the data. Second, the director should engage regularly with e-scooter stakeholders to ensure the program is meeting the needs of the community. This includes an open and transparent process for identifying issues and possible solutions. Management has agreed with the recommendations and I'm happy to answer any questions. >> I had a quick question on the timing. >> E-scooters have been in our community for a while, and these issues, started, you know, when they first arrived. The city has been trying to get standardized compliance from all of the e-scooter companies with varying degrees of success. Is that is that right? [10:49:38 AM] that right? >> That's our understanding. And again, I think just the number of companies that have come through, I know management's here and they come and have better information. >> But the different companies come and go as Wright come and go. >> Right. It's and just sort of, you know, how folks have have used them and city's reaction to that. >> Do we get a sense that the companies are interested in public safety and working with the city and recognizing the values that we have for the safety of our of our populace? I would defer to management on on to give you a better answer on that. >> I know when we talk to them again, right. They did talk about safety. We did talk about some of the reportissues. I think everyone that we talked to talked about challenges in getting good, good data. And again, this isn't only in Austin, this is an industry wide thing. Correct. And all all the cities I think that we talked to told us essentially the same thing. >> I'd like to hear from management. But I also just want to say that talk is talk. And really we need to see actual [10:50:40 AM] really we need to see actual concrete action from getting, getting the data. >> We need to actually inform those. >> Good morning gentlemen. Welcome. >> Good morning, madam vice chair. Madam chair, remotely I think your mic is now. >> It's on. >> Good morning, madam vice chair. Madam chair remotely. Richard Mendoza, director for transportation and public works. I want to start by thanking director stokes and her staff for helping us with this review of our micro mobility management services, which includes service scooters. I'm also joined by interim assistant director Dan Albrecht to my right, as well as our parking and shared mobility services division, manor division manager Joseph Al [10:51:40 AM] division manager Joseph Al hajiri, and so in terms of the two stated recommendations, our department and, and myself, we agree and support both recommendations, in terms of the first recommendations regarding the quality and integrity of the data that we receive working with our scooter vendors to help inform our operational and management decisions. I recognize that while they seem to like scooters, have been in Austin for a while, but relative to all other, you know, institutional mobility modes, it's been they're still an infant, sector of mobility. And while we do currently collect data, I do expect over time that those data sources andegrity will improve, to help us make more effective operational decisions going forward. And I look forward to working with the vendors continuously and other [10:52:41 AM] vendors continuously and other stakeholders, to analyze, not just usage data, but safety data. First and foremost, as your director for transportation public works, the public safety is paramount in my responsible role here. And I want to state that because while I do support the second recommendation in being more transparent and inclusive of stakeholders and vendors and meeting regularly with them as we make these operational decisions to, you know, fully realize the benefit of these devices while ensuring the safety of the public. Last year, we were I was presented with a number of challenges with managing these devices, first being safety, I had direct conversations with medical professionals in our area, heads of trauma centers at our prominent hospitals. And they [10:53:41 AM] prominent hospitals. And they shared with me, observations of what they've seen in terms of the some of the injuries that were coming into their trauma centers that were a direct result of using these devices, I also had challenges with the general, custodian and proliferation and, and concentration of these devices around the city, which led to, you know, an unsightly city. And right away, some of the scooters and had, you know, inappropriately placed in some of our waterways leading to environmental concerns and, and then also Ada compliance. I have a responsibility to ensure that our public rights of way are available to all users. And abilities. And so, for that matter, while it may see that seem that some of the changes I instituted and the stakeholder involvement process was condensed, I felt a responsibility to take action. And, you know, institute some of [10:54:43 AM] And, you know, institute some of those tighter management protocols, now, I did meet with these vendors in person and my conference room and, did receive some of the feedback at that time, we had three vendors. We're down to two now. And I did make some allowances from my original recommended management changes. One of those allowances was hours of operation, in my conversations with medical professionals, many of the more severe injuries from scooters happened in the late night hours. And you can imagine in the downtown area, folks in less mental capacity coming out of the our our entertainment district, you know, that was impacting that. So initially I recommended suspending operations of scooters between the late night hours. I was reminded by our vendors that much of our service staff utilize these devices to get to and from work, and so our our [10:55:45 AM] and from work, and so our our wait staff, while they rely on these, I compromise and said, well, what if we just reduce the speed limit within the downtown core? Late night late hours from 15 down to ten? And so that was, you know, received also on the number of devices I initially proposed reducing by half the number of permitted devices in our community, listening to the vendors, I relaxed that somewhat to a third. Right now, I think we're only second to another peer city in the number of permitted devices. I think Seattle, I made allowances for special events. They reminded me that, you know, this is a very valuable, mobility means for getting folks, safely and, to acl to south by southwest. And so I made allowances that allowed them to increase the number of devices for those permitted large special events. And then I made a commitment to [10:56:45 AM] And then I made a commitment to come back and review these rules within six months. And so that six months is approaching. And I look forward to collecting the data from this last six months. On the usage and safety, working with the vendors and then going through all the other stakeholder, council offices, utc mobility committee to ensure that going forward that we have a, you know, a wholesome and safe and quality micromobility service for our community. >> Have we figured out where scooters are permitted on the sidewalks or on the streets in terms of where they are permitted to be operated, >> There are some areas, like around the state capitol, that they're geofence from permitting. They're not permitted to operate on lady bird trail, for obvious reasons. The smaller diameter of the wheels will chew up the granite, and there may be a couple of other areas that are geo fenced and specifically, initially I saw scooters operating on [10:57:47 AM] saw scooters operating on sidewalks, and then it seemed like they were in the streets. >> So is there any provision regarding, regulating where they operate on streets or on sidewalks? >> I'm going T ask my division manager. I'll, Mr. Al hajiri to respond. >> Yes. Joseph qadri park enterprise manager, they are allowed to, you know, both ride on sidewalk and then technically street. Now, we do advise them to, you know, use a bike lane or, you know, protected path. As much as we can, but right now, any part of the right of way is as long as they use it safely, they are allowed to use. >> And what are the protocols with regard to like a car needs to, give seed way for a like a bicycle or a pedestrian. Are those same standards in play for scooters and that they give way to pedestrians? Yes. >> That's correct, and the providers also provide do, [10:58:48 AM] providers also provide do, safety checks within their applications themselves. And remind, that pedestrians do come first. It's also a part of our core, model for getting out to the community information, that, you know, pedestrians do come first, and to heed that as you're using devices around the city, have we had better compliance with regard to where the scooters are left, yes, I think we have corrals or something like that. >> Yes, we started increasing the number of corrals, around since director Mendoza's recent protocols, >> We're also working with the providers on new technology for forced parking, so to put people in those corrals where we want them to end their rides, and we're seeing some great results from that. And so we'll continue to roll that out more in those areas that we see high activity use in rides at. >> Are we finding fewer scooters being tossed into, into the river? >> Actually, no, we've we've done a really good job working with our watershed protection [10:59:48 AM] with our watershed protection department as well as Austin 311, those are emergency calls. So as soon as we get them, it goes straight to the providers, and they go out and retrieve those devices, our staff also does audits to ensure that they get retrieved quickly. And if not, we take action with the providers to ensure that they do. >> And what kind of speed limits? If a scooter is operating on a sidewalk? Are those speed limits expected to be lower than if they are in a bike path or protected bike lane, >> That's a great question. I think that's something that the industry would like to go to in the future, technology is kind of limiting to that through geofencing and some of the, you know, issues with gps and the way that works, and especially with tall buildings and other environmental factors that come with that, you know, but right now we do a standard, you know, speed currently. So that's 15 miles an hour, and, but the device itself, as you slow down or you speed up, do you have a governing effect on it? So they [11:00:51 AM] governing effect on it? So they don't just like, go real fast. They steadily go. >> You mentioned director Mendoza that you had asked for. You had a compromise reducing the 15 mile an hour down to ten miles an hour in the late or early late night, early morning time frames to have you found compliance broadly with the scooter companies? >> I have not received any feedback that that presented a problem or we've had a lot of out of compliance what we require, how that's affected is, they can operationally speed limit those devices within their, their each vendor's controlling software and that's how we assure compliance. >> And will you see that data? When will you receive some kind of specific evidence that the mile an hour limitation has been lowered during those hours. And that is a compromise that you've asked them for. So will they be [11:01:52 AM] asked them for. So will they be able to prove that up right. >> And I guess yeah. Yes. We're we're currently collecting data from that. So one of the things with geofencing and reducing speeds we have to be careful of is including safety for the riders itself. Right. Going through intersections, going through other places, so we strategically have placed, the reduced speeds in certain areas and we, we expand them out slowly, so right now, sixth street, east sixth street, of course, some of the high pedestrian areas that we see, we try to reduce those speeds down, and they're collecting data to understand if there's, you know, collisions or other issues like in that, in that regard, they also do feedback surveys on their apps themselves as an additional safety feature that they do have is, you know, of course, people coming out of the entertainment district during that time of night, you know, they want to make sure that the safe enough to be able to ride a device. So they actually have a little test on there that tests them to see if ey're able to actually use the device before they're able to do it, it's kind of a safety [11:02:54 AM] it, it's kind of a safety protocol to help with that. So as we continue to do these things, we're increasing the safety protocols that we have in place. But we want to make sure that we're collecting the right data to understand this next six months, that if these reduced speed limits are actually helping. >> Yeah, I would think it would be in the best interest of the scooter companies to make sure that their product is safe for folks to ride, and so that they they will ride them and do so without being injured, any other questions? All right. Anything else? For the good of the cause. All right, gentlemen, thank you. Thank you for the briefing. And our last item is just to take a scan for items for our next meeting. And since I'm kind of filling in as chair, I would ask that you all submit any items that you would like for the next agenda to the chair's office. All right. Anything else for today? Well, thanks, staff, for coming along with me on this [11:03:55 AM] coming along with me on this ride today, and good to see everybody remotely. And this meeting is adjourned at, what is it, 11:04 A.M.