Audit and Finance Committee (AFC) Meeting Transcript – 10/9/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 10/9/2024 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 10/9/2024 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. [9:31:47 AM] Good morning everyone. It is October 9th. My name is Alison alter and I am chair of the audit and finance committee. I would like to call this meeting to order at 931. Joining me on the dais here is council members Vanessa Fuentes and council member Ryan alter. And on the virtual dais, we have mayor pro tem pool vice chair. Good morning everyone. We are going to hopefully have a have a speedy meeting this morning and we are going to begin with citizen communication. And our first speaker will be Diana proctor. And you have three minutes. Good morning. >> Hello I'm Diana proctor I have submitted to the city auditor's office an 80 page summary of my research into the trail of lights foundation and the parks department auditor. Case number 3727. The city auditors who interviewed me [9:32:48 AM] auditors who interviewed me thanked me for the detail by supplying clear evidence and simple requests, I believe that my audit request could be completed in a reasonable amount of time. A copy was sent to you this week by email. A few interesting details from my research. I explained that council may have performed an incorrect procedure when waiving park use fees on consent prior to 2023. Not only does this procedure appear to be technically incorrect, based on a 2002 resolution, but without council reading, the fine print of the executed annual contract, council waived the nonrefundable portion of the park. Use fees 25%, a value of over $126,000. In just the past four years. In other words, the park director and council may have been responsible for lost potential revenue to the general fund of between 126,000 and $506,000 in just the past four years. Next, the organizer has never paid the [9:33:49 AM] the organizer has never paid the tiered special event maintenance fee for ticketed events in zilker park. Why next? The park department's ticket manifest fails to meet requirements of the contract. It fails to show the price per ticket sold in each admission category is the parks department hiding the fact that the organizer is overcharging for general admission and receiving admission revenue on free nights when they are prohibited from charging parks, administrative oversight of the event deserves to be examined by the city auditor. While council waived over $684,000 from 2020 to 2023. The trail of lights foundation profit and loss statements reveal that the organizer earned over 1.4 million in profit. That's after paying all expenses and all salaries in just the most recent four years. Profit was more than twice the value of fee waivers. An audit could determine whether the fee waivers are appropriate. My [9:34:50 AM] waivers are appropriate. My audit request does not mention the social injustice of the vip and vip admission features of the walk through style of event. However, I do broach the subject of the drive through event described in council approved ordinance number 2020 0917107. It was a successful adaptation created during the covid pandemic. Now would be a good time to take a step back and examine pard and council practices to be able to reassure the public that council is prudent with taxpayer dollars. Thank you. >> Thank you, miss director mark may. >> All right. Hi, my name is mark may and I live in d5. I have reviewed the trail of [9:35:51 AM] have reviewed the trail of lights documents that you have seen, and I believe there's a strong case that the trail of lights is not a meeting. Multiple terms of their contract. I'm not asking you to throw all nonprofits out of the park. And I'm not here to imply that the nonprofits are bad people. All I'm asking is when you are, when you are shown clear, documented evidence of a single nonprofit not meeting multiple terms of their contract that you take action on behalf of the taxpayers of Austin. If you review the things that you saw from miss proctor, you will find billing for tickets and parking in 2023. That's well, more than the limit set by the contract. You'll also find that pas did not bill the required per ticket fee to trail of lights, which looks to cost the [9:36:51 AM] lights, which looks to cost the city of Austin hundreds of thousands of dollars. You will also find trail of lights charged admission on more than half of the nights, which is explicitly not part of their contract. Where? Where was the oversight on the part of the city? The profit and loss from the trail of lights shows that they have $1.4 million in positive cash flow for the last four years combined, while while enjoying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer subsidized fee waivers that you granted, this is at the same time part is terribly underfunded and you are all fighting to find funds for just basic city services. Your choice to take action will inform the other nonprofits that partner with other city, from health care to those that support the unhoused, to contracts with the [9:37:51 AM] unhoused, to contracts with the city. Have any any meaning. If partners ignore the contract, overcharge the public and underpay the city, does anyone on council care this is an opportunity to send a message to all of the nonprofits that that the city partners with, and also show voters that you do care? Send a message by your action. You make many difficult choices as as part of the council asking for an audit for the trail of lights is not one of them. Thank you. >> Chris flores. Good morning, esteemed council members. [9:38:53 AM] members. >> My name is Chris flores from district ten. I'm coming to you today to ask you to ask the city manager to direct audit, finance and legal staff to review all of the city's agreements with park nonprofits. And I suggest they be reviewed annually. And I'll explain why these agreements should be made uniform. Today. We understand we have mous, we have Poma's, and then we have no agreement at all. The contract should be made public. The public has a right to know how much money is being made by park activators, especially since their services are not a public need like park maintenance is in this month's issue of free the free trade magazine is a two page spread about acl titled luxury without limits. I invite you to read it from the perspective of working class austinites. I'll quote from the article in the early days, a one day pass cost just $25, granting [9:39:56 AM] day pass cost just $25, granting access to a modest park. However, as the festival's popularity grew, so did the scale of the event. In 2019, the festival introduced tiered ticketing with gaplus, which provides access to private lounges, air conditioned restrooms, and full service bars. Acl now offers five luxury experiences. The most exclusive is a sky bungalow for $30,000. My friend Diana proctor has done a deep study of the trail of lights and found serious issues. No one at the city can foresee how the festivals are monetizing events from year to year. A contract with a ticket manifesto of $25 per person is fairly simple to review an event with hundreds of prices and half a million attendees is hard to assess. I trust in the in the capability and the knowledge of our audit and finance and legal [9:40:57 AM] our audit and finance and legal department, and I would like to ask them to take a look at these things in my city. Works class, I learned that the city auditor recently found cases in the health sector where nonprofits have defrauded the city. Nonprofits do not have halos. They must be scrutinized just like any other city contractor. Thank you very much. >> Are there any other speakers? No. Okay. Thank you. Thank you to all our speakers. And if you haven't already sent that material also to our pr director, please do so. So item number one is approval of the minutes from the August 28th meeting. Do I have a motion to approve the move? The minutes. So moved by council member Ryan alter, seconded by council member Fuentes. If there are no objections, we will adopt the minutes from the August 28th audit and finance meeting. Thank you. Next item is item number two, which is to amend the [9:42:00 AM] two, which is to amend the remaining 2024 audit and finance committee dates and colleagues. The proposal is to reschedule from November 13th to November 12th to accommodate the national league of cities conference that many of us are attending. And then the second is to reschedule from December 18th to December 11th to accommodate winter holiday schedules. And just to make sure that we have a quorum and don't end up with a last meeting with not enough folks here, do I have a motion to amend the calendar to move to November 12th and to December 11th for the meetings? >> Sure. Council member. >> So my committee meetings I serve as vice chair of the transportation infrastructure committee. And we're our meetings on Tuesday the 12th. So I will still be out that day. But I just wanted to flag it for reference. >> Okay, I'll make the motion if no one else has. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem pool do I have a second from council [9:43:01 AM] do I have a second from council member Ryan alter with no objections. That motion passes. Thank you. Next up is our discussion and possible action on the calendar year 2025 audit plan. I will just remind folks that we have moved our audit plan to be calendar year rather than fiscal year. And this will then, once we do adopt it, if we decide to adopt it today, it can go on to council or we can take another meeting if we need to. Good morning. >> Good morning. >> Jason Darby, deputy city auditor. I'm here to present the draft calendar year 25 audit plan. You can see it here on your screen. I apologize for the small font. We have three different types of projects that are included on the plan. The first are carryover projects. Those are projects from our calendar year 24 plan that we've initiated. They're at varying stages of completion, and we envision completing those most of those in early 2025. But we've included them on the plan [9:44:03 AM] we've included them on the plan because just to highlight all of the work that we'll be doing next year, then we have eight new audits that you can see on the plan. If you could scroll just a little bit, please. In addition to those eight audits, we've made room for five special requests. We always budget for special requests, but to be more transparent, we've included them here on the plan and you can see the audit topics that covers a wide range of risks facing the city, including it controls. We have an aviation project coming out of our risk assessment. Patrick will present more on that in a little bit. City code requires us to look into lobbyist compliance every three years. It's come time for us to do that. And we've hit a number of other projects, including speed reduction efforts and public safety employee mental health. We've also at the end, included two alternate projects pedestrian safety and citywide contract management. There's the possibility that a couple of our carryovers could end a little bit early. It's not guaranteed. So in the event that we do exit those projects early, we've included alternates to show you [9:45:03 AM] included alternates to show you what topics will work on in place of those carryover projects carrying into next year. With that, I can answer any questions that you might have. >> Thank you. I had when we did the review of the proposed plan, there was an item on there for looking at our grant writing capabilities, and I it looks like Daniel Coletta from the innovation office is here. And when we spoke about it, I was told that that was underway. But my understanding is there had been proposals for grant work, but not necessarily action. So I wanted to give Mr. Coletta a moment. If he's willing to do that, to speak to what they have proposed and where that is in the process. Thank you, council member, committee, for having me. I we have done some some assessment and looking at the grant processes in the city, and we've proposed some improvements to the grant application process [9:46:05 AM] to the grant application process and management, as well as build some tools to help people look for and assess grants. We're working with city manager's office to understand which one of those we might develop and implement over the coming year that could range from anything from those process improvements all the way up through creating a dedicated like grant capability or team to work on those, but unsure of which one of those will go forward. Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't hear the last sentence. Unsure of which one of those will go forward. Yeah, we're still assessing which ones. >> Okay, so at this point we know that we're not doing all that. We can for grant writing. So doing an audit to show us that we need to do more is not helpful. We have a proposal colleagues from our innovation office that's working its way through the city manager's office, which could be very helpful, but it is not yet funded or the path forward is not determined. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. So I might ask that we I know that our November [9:47:07 AM] we I know that our November agenda is very full. I will maybe have some conversations with the city manager's office and we can figure out whether we need to have a presentation of what the opportunities are so that council can see that, or whether that's a memo about what's possible and what would be the appropriate next step. I do think this is a risk that we have and that we're not securing as many grants as we could be, and I don't think I'm alone in in feeling that way. I did in several budgets ago. I did secure a position within the innovation office to help support grant work. But I think much more needs to be done. Mayor pro tem pool did you have a comment for Mr. Pallotta? I did thank you. >> I just my team had reached out to understand what was going on and why that item was not on this list, because it was on [9:48:07 AM] this list, because it was on there originally. And my understanding is work is happening and is going apace, but it's not complete yet. And the city manager wanted to get further down the road with a more complete document. And it may be that that everything that is being looked for from council will be contained in the procedures that are crafted. And if, Mr. Clark, if I'm saying your name right, I hope so. Could speak to that, please. I think the work is underway, essentially. Right. Go ahead. >> Yes. The work is underway to figure out which of those improvements and plans will put in place. Those details are not fully pulled together yet, and I don't have I'm just not aware of the timeframe of when those will be available. But it is. It is currently underway. >> Yes. And that was the point. I wanted to emphasize, because we are all looking for a good, robust grants coordinator [9:49:08 AM] robust grants coordinator coordination around the grants, and I didn't want the public to be left with any impression. Maybe that it wasn't happening because it sounds like the work is happening. It's just not ready to go yet. >> Mayor pro tem pool that's why we invited Mr. Coletta here to speak, because we knew it was underway. And to clarify that. But I think even though it doesn't, it's not appropriate for it to continue on the audit plan. I think it is important. And a responsibility of this committee to make sure that that work moves forward. When we do the audits, we're asking them to identify what the risks are. I think we all agree that there is an opportunity here for us to be securing more funds. And we invited Mr. Coletta to highlight that there is work being done and to I think, allow us each, as you and councilmember Fuentes have already done and I have done, and I'm sure that council member Ryan also agrees that we believe that the city manager [9:50:09 AM] believe that the city manager should be moving forward with addressing this opportunity. And I'm glad there's a plan, but we need to take the next steps. And what I was really trying to highlight is that I will have another conversation with the city manager's office about what are the appropriate next steps, and see whether we need to have a conversation in December to learn more about what those plans might be so that we can weigh in more, but give them an opportunity to keep moving that forward so thank you. Are there other comments? >> And I even was going to see if we could get a sense, maybe in the next few meetings about what a timeline might be in, because I'm thinking that knowing the amount of work that's being done and still to be done, it may not be until next year that it's finalized. And I want to make sure that the monitoring continues because the diocese is concerned. All of us would like to see improvements around accessing grant funds, obviously, and this will keep it [9:51:11 AM] obviously, and this will keep it on on all of our wavelengths. Thank you. >> Council member Ryan alder I just want to echo couldn't have said it better myself. >> So I will echo your statements and I look forward to see how we can utilize your office to better leverage the funds available. >> Thank you, thank you. So we will be in touch after we have a chance to talk to the city manager's office. And I don't know if we have anyone representing the city manager's office who's who's down here or if you're watching, you know, four of us have just really clearly stated that this is important to us. And so I want that to move forward. Are there any other comments on the audit plan? I just want to highlight that we are going to be celebrating cybersecurity awareness month on Thursday, and we haven't already to the [9:52:11 AM] we haven't already to the auditor's office. Please join us for that. And to my colleagues, please join us for that. I really want to just highlight the work that we've been doing with our our critical infrastructure and it controls. That is a new project related to the cybersecurity work is very important, and I really appreciate the work that the auditor's office is doing. And the folks in iso and ctm who are responding and pushing this work forward. I also want to highlight the flood preparation audit that's on this list. I think that's also a very important one. And there's several other carryovers that are important, including the extreme heat preparedness vice chair pool. >> Thanks. I did have one last question on the audit plan, Corey, is Corey there? >> It's Mr. Darby. >> Hi, Jason. Hello. On the lobbyist reports, the special [9:53:13 AM] lobbyist reports, the special audit that's on the list for next year is different from the quarterly reports. Or is it how is it different from the quarterly reports that we were getting, which we have shifted that reporting since it looked like there were no indications of lack of compliance? My understanding is this is maybe digging somewhat deeper or what is the difference between what the reporting was before and the special audit? >> Sure. The previously we were confirming that the lobbyists that had self-reported were in compliance with what was expected. And now we'll be digging deeper to see if there are any individuals or entities that should have been self reporting, should have been in compliance, but were not. So this will be a deeper dive than what we've done in the past. >> That's great. I'm glad you all are doing that, and I won't be on the dais to see the [9:54:14 AM] be on the dais to see the results, but maybe I can read about them. They'll be public documents. So thank you so much. >> It'll be on our web page and I misspoke earlier. Cathy Harrison will be doing our aviation presentation shortly. >> Thank you. Any other comments on the plan? So we have the option. You know often we do it that it's you know, we see it one meeting and then the next meeting we adopt it. But I don't think there's any objections. So I believe that we are posted to take action. Is there a motion to move this forward to the full dais? Council member Fuentes moves approval to move forward, and vice chair pool seconds it to move it forward to the full dais as proposed. When you do that, when it does go forward, just, you know, we will likely be asking about the grant process to have, you know, some further clarity on that as part of the q&a, just for awareness for the city manager's office as [9:55:15 AM] for the city manager's office as well. Thank you. Our next item is item four, which is the results of the aviation risk assessment audit and Cathy Harrison, I believe will be presenting that. Thank you. Yes. >> Good morning committee members. >> My name is Cathy Harrison. I'm the audit lead on this project. And I'll be giving this presentation to give some background, the city's aviation department is responsible for managing the airport and employs both full time and contracted employees. Although the airport was built to accommodate 11 million passengers per year, the total number has grown to more than 22 passengers per year. As shown on this slide. Aviation has struggled to meet the growing demand and has struggled to recruit, hire and retain staff at all levels, resulting in an employee vacancy rate that's around 20%. The aviation department started a $4 billion, multi-year airport expansion and [9:56:16 AM] multi-year airport expansion and development program that's focused on increasing capacity to meet current and future airport needs. What's a risk assessment? A risk assessment is done in each audit to help us focus our work on the highest risk areas. In this project, we conducted a risk assessment of the entire aviation department. We did this to bring visibility to the top risk areas, to identify audits for the current and future audit plans, and so aviation can start working on improvements to complete this risk assessment, we summarized information collected across each division in aviation, we conducted almost 50 interviews, reviewed documents, analyzed data observed on site operations, and surveyed nine pier airports. We used this information to assess a wide range of risks that could impact airport operations to zero. In on the top three risks facing the airport and since the goal of this risk assessment was to [9:57:18 AM] of this risk assessment was to identify the top risks, the no recommendations were issued. These are the top three risks facing aviation. First is contract and vendor management. As mentioned, aviation started a multi-year airport expansion that's focused on increasing airport capacity. So in recent years, the total number of contracts and contractors has increased while aviation continues to experience staffing challenges. With that, we've identified audits to improve the contract and vendor management processes. Second is asset management and maintenance. Given the focus on development and aviation staffing challenges, it's been hard for aviation to manage and maintain existing assets, so we identified audits to improve the asset management process. Third is emergency management and safety. This is an area that is regulated and aviation is in compliance. However, we found that aviation has limited [9:58:20 AM] that aviation has limited emergency staff and there's been several safety incidences in the last few years. So we identified audits that could improve their emergency management and safety processes to make sure aviation and the city can do everything we can do to keep everyone safe. Remember, this is a risk assessment. So no recommendations were issued. These top risks will be considered in our annual audit planning process, which may result in future audits during our review, we also found that most pier airports as set for Austin, have staffed internal audit function. Aviation said they're working with the city's human resources department to staff an internal audit function that will be supplemented with audits conducted by external auditors. This concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you, miss Harrison, and I appreciate you emphasizing that this is not an audit, that this is a special project that [9:59:20 AM] this is a special project that we do when we go into a particular area of the city to assess kind of these are the big risks where we might want to do additional work. And so, you know, I think it's just really we just need to be clear that this is not an audit and they're not findings. This is part of the work of how the auditor's office functions is you first go in and you identify where the risks are, and then you prioritize which risks you're going to look at first. And so I just it's not something we've done in a little while. So I just wanted to underscore that colleagues do you have questions, mayor pro tem pool and also miss badawi, did you have any thing that you want to say or just respond? If there are questions, you'll just respond to questions. Okay. Thank you. Vice chair pool then council member Fuentes, thank you for the risk assessment. >> I just wanted to say for future contemplation and maybe [10:00:21 AM] future contemplation and maybe gis Lang out at aviation can give some thought to maybe bringing on an internal auditor specific to aviation, given the large amount of work and the financial resources that are flowing through there, in order to accomplish all that work over the next few years, that might that might be really wise. Thanks. >> Thank you. I believe that miss Harrison said in her remarks that they were they were working with hr D to do just to do just that. >> Council member Fuentes, thank you. That was the first thing I was going to highlight that the aviation department previously had a team of internal auditors. So it makes sense that we bring that back. But I would like to invite our director badawi to speak to the second area on asset management and maintenance. It was highlighted in this report that the aviation department does not appear to have a clear strategy on how to [10:01:22 AM] have a clear strategy on how to maintain assets. And can you speak a little bit to what the airport now having this as part of the report, how you all plan to address this? >> Yes. Good morning. Aviation director ghizlane badawi. The biggest struggle that we face in the recent years is the growth and the utilization of our infrastructure. We do have a strategy. We developed this back in 2019. That's the master plan. We did assess all the operational areas, identified what deficient, what was sufficient with the growth that we faced in the past two years and the utilization for example, the average industry standard for the utilization of Gates is between 4 and 6. Our utilization is at eight turns per gate. So all those jet bridges, given the utilization we are right now working on changing all the jet bridges and also taking advantage of this opportunity to upgrade them to climate control jet bridges to enhance the passenger experience. So we have a strategy, but the growth [10:02:24 AM] a strategy, but the growth pushed us beyond that strategy. We reevaluated last year all the operational areas and identified those assets that will be reaching end of life either today or next year, and opted for replacing them rather than refurbishing them, and will be more than happy to schedule a meeting and provide more information about this area. >> Thank you. And the other area on risk area number three. That was highlighted here, emergency management and safety. We know that we've had two tragic worker fatalities at the airport. We've had a couple of near collisions with aircraft at the airport. So of course, for me as the representative of the area, safety is top of mind. And we've made some significant progress. We now have an ems unit on site to provide emergency response. I heard from a city employee recently that the paramedic that was there at the airport was able to help him when he was experiencing some heart [10:03:25 AM] experiencing some heart problems. And so I know from from firsthand experience, hearing directly from constituents how important it's been for us to have that unit there. But what else can we be doing? Should we be doing to further enhance our emergency response efforts at the airport? >> As the auditors mentioned, we're focused on emergency management. We added two positions to the budget. One is a coordinator and one is an officer. We struggle to fill the positions we use different titles in the past, but we worked with hr to establish an officer, and we're currently in the hiring process and finalizing that to bring new staff to assist us enhance that. Currently, we have staff that are assigned duties as assigned to that function. So from a compliance perspective, we're compliant with the FAA regulation. We have we have like a committee that's focused on the emergency response. But we want to enhance that by adding the staffing. And as far as the [10:04:27 AM] the staffing. And as far as the safety we made changes this year. You mentioned ems. In addition to that, we've been working with the FAA to add additional equipment to enhance the safety of the runways and the taxiways. We implemented the temporary ramp control is working and operational, and we're working on the final solution for ramp control. >> Thank you. So much, councilmember Ryan Alyssa. >> I was curious how you are managing your contracts presently. The risk assessment noted that y'all are handling some other departments are handling others. What typically are the types of contracts that y'all are not handling? And is that because you you don't want to you don't have the staffing to what just what's the. >> So currently we have 55 aviation contracts, 78 contracts that are specific to aviation. But we participate in over 200 [10:05:29 AM] But we participate in over 200 city wide contracts, citywide contracts are contracts where, for example, we get soaps for our restrooms. We get toilet paper for the restrooms, or we get for example, water or parts for some of the equipment. Those are the city wide contracts. We have a monitoring team within the airport, and they do manage and monitor our aviation contracts. Additionally, on the construction contracts, those are managed by multiple departments. So we have smaller. They manage the compliance with the dbe program, have capital delivery. They also manage some components of those construction contracts. Then we have also the city financial services procurement department. They provide the oversight of those contracts. We're working on issuing an rfp in the next week or so to hire a contractor that will look at the whole process holistically and look at [10:06:30 AM] holistically and look at internal controls and audits functions, even though we have other city departments looking at that as a sponsor department, we're putting this additional control in place. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Doctor badawi, can you speak to what the current vacancy level is at the airport? >> It's 17%. We just received the report yesterday. >> Okay. And are there particular. So that's good news. That's in the right direction. So congratulations on that. Are there particular areas though that are much higher. So I know that we saw when we were looking at water that there was for a time really large vacancies at our water treatment plants. Do you have particular areas that have extra high vacancies at this point? >> Yes. It's our maintenance, our trade and maintenance, and we're working with hrt. We did conduct a market study, compared the compensation and the titles against other 11 airports. We did that benchmarking. We [10:07:30 AM] did that benchmarking. We implemented phase one of the market that impacted the current aviation titles. And we're working on phase two, which is establishing new airport titles for our maintenance. >> Okay. And when you did the benchmark study, were you able to benchmark it only to 50%, or were you able to benchmark it to higher level of market? >> For our I think the city policy is 50% okay percentile. >> Again, I don't know if we have anybody from the city manager's office, but maybe miss Thomas can convey this. We've had this conversation multiple times with respect to air D and our enterprise units, but really just generally I'm not sure that council is in agreement that we should be having our benchmark be to 50% of market when we are in Austin, especially when we've [10:08:30 AM] in Austin, especially when we've had trouble hiring. And I don't know if that is a policy that needs to come back through audit and finance. We've we've raised it multiple times and we've been told it was being looked at, but we haven't seen it and we continue to see the vacancies at our enterprise fund organizations in particular. You know, we are looking right now to do a police contract, and we are trying to be, you know, number one, I don't quite understand why if we're seeing these vacancies, we're not trying to do the same thing when we have the market data. So perhaps somebody can let us know what the next step is for addressing that policy. It's been one that we've heard multiple times from our enterprise funds. And if that's something we need to take up with, or the council needs to take up an audit and finance come January, I think it's something that we can't just let continue to let linger, because [10:09:31 AM] continue to let linger, because we can't fill those positions. If we're setting it at 50% of market. So are there other aspects of the policy that may be hurdles at this point that we need to be thinking about? >> No, we're working with hr, we're making good progress. We completed phase one, and right now we're focused on establishing those those new titles for operational positions and maintenance positions. And this step will help us moving forward. >> Okay. Thank you. Council member I just have a quick clarifying question. >> The 20% vacancy rate is that for the 600 plus city of Austin employees, or is that for the all of 8000 contractors? >> No, this is just for the aviation employees. The 674. >> Okay. And it's at 17% now. So 17. >> Very good. They're making progress. Good. Thank you. >> I'm only correcting you because we're making progress. We want to we want to acknowledge that. We want to acknowledge that okay. Great. Any other questions for miss badawi? Thank you very much and [10:10:32 AM] badawi? Thank you very much and appreciate the auditors office's work. And look forward to the additional work and hopefully, this process as you're building out rebuilding the audit team at the airport will be helpful and that the auditor's office can be helpful as you as you build that. >> No thank you. And I'm committed to creating and establishing the audit function. I started at the aviation department as an internal auditor, so auditing is important to me. Great. >> Thank you very much. And then our last item is to identify items to be discussed at future meetings. Stokes. >> Okay. We have a long list that decided to reload right as I walked up here. >> So give me just a second. Give me just one more second. [10:11:34 AM] Give me just one more second. >> I have that list of you go ahead. >> And pulling that up, I just wanted to mention, and I should have mentioned this when miss badawi was here, our director badawi highlighted that the vacancies that we do have at the airport are largely in the skilled trade positions and maintenance positions. And so I'm looking to bring forward direction on an item that we have on tomorrow's council agenda regarding the infrastructure academy, to see what we can do with that effort, with infrastructure academy to prioritize the airport. Currently, that item is for Austin water and Austin energy related positions. But clearly we have a need with our other enterprise departments. So I just wanted to flag it for colleagues since we'll be discussing that on Thursday. >> Thank you. I think right now that's because Austin water and Austin energy have have funding that's there, but hopefully the airport could also contribute. That'd be great. >> Stokes and I have my list. Thank you. Yeah. So we have a [10:12:37 AM] Thank you. Yeah. So we have a briefing on the status of audit recommendations. That's something we're trying to do every or actually we're required to do and are bringing to you every six months. So that's really giving you an update on all past recommendations. We also have are expecting to have a executive session specifically for cybersecurity. So that's to get an update. There were a couple items related to the budget that were supposed to come back to audit finance committee, as well as some work that we've been doing in our office, and some follow up work on prior recommendations you all have heard about related to cybersecurity. So all of that and then we have items related to the ems billing process. I think that's something that we've we've had a briefing here at on finance before. And so this is to give an update also related to Austin fire department overtime costs. This also came through the budget process. The human capital management system, an update on where that is at coming from hrt and financial services and also ctm. And then we have an employee reimbursement audit, a [10:13:39 AM] employee reimbursement audit, a briefing on local and small business procurement programs, which is an update, I believe also from a couple of months ago. And last but not least, discussion and possible action on the audit committee schedule for next year. While the body won't necessarily be the same body, we do want to try to lay out what the dates will be for next calendar year after. After the full council approves the council meeting dates. So all of that, some of those items could slide so we could move things from November to December. I think we need to have a meeting to talk about that and look at that. But that is what I have on the list for now. >> And there's also some executive sessions related to secure cybersecurity, correct? Yeah. Three items. So colleagues, for those of you who are going to be present at our November meeting, please, if possible, be prepared that we might go to 12. It's an extremely packed agenda, unlike today, and we don't want to [10:14:41 AM] today, and we don't want to leave everything for December. So to the extent possible, if you can extend to noon on your calendar and if you can't, if you can, let us know, that would be that would be great. We will try to run as efficient a meeting as possible, and we'll look at, you know, the right order. But some of the pieces may take a bit of may take a bit of time. So thank you, miss stokes. And with that it is 10:15 A.M. And I will adjourn this meeting. Thank you everyone for being here.