City Council Work Session Transcript – 11/18/2025 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 11/18/2025 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 11/18/2025 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:00:34 AM] Council members good morning everybody. It's 9:00 in the morning on November 18th, 2025, and I will call to order the Austin city council work session. We have. Well, I can't really call us to order. >> They're two coming up right now. >> Okay, hang on one second. >> Council member Siegel was. Oh, he's here, he's here. >> Oh, there he is. 12345. We got we have a quorum present, so I will go ahead and call us to order. What I'm going to do is I'll walk through what the. The plan for the day is. We also have an Austin energy oversight committee meeting, and we're going to take it up before we actually take up the substance of the work session. But I want to walk through what the day will look like so that everybody will know as soon as we get through this little informational part, I will turn it over to chair vela, who is chair of the Austin energy oversight committee. We will take up that item. Once that is [9:01:35 AM] complete, then we will come back and we will reconvene the Austin city council, and that is when we will here we will hear the issues for briefing, and we will hear from speakers. What we will do is we will call the speakers up on the item. So we I know we have somebody signed up, for example, on item 4848. We will call somebody, call that person up at that point in time. I also want to say for the record that item B one, which is a briefing regarding the development assessment for a proposed planned unit development, or pud, located at 1100 west Cesar Chavez street and north Lamar boulevard, within the lady bird lake watershed urban watershed, that item is postponed. That item is postponed. So if you're paying attention because that's the briefing you wanted to hear about, that item will not be taken up today. Once we are [9:02:35 AM] finished with the budget discussion, we'll go to the budget discussion after after we hear. And the way we're going to do the budget discussion is I will have our professional staff come up. I will have a couple of questions just to set things up, at which point we will have a presentation from them, and that's when we will go to the speakers, because we thought it was in the best interest of everyone to hear what the presentation is before the speakers, because it may change what you think or what you say. I also want to say, for the record, and I will say this over and over again, many of you that follow stuff like this religiously will get tired of hearing me say this, but I'm going to say it over and over again because I'm trying to get notice out to everybody. Is that in addition to the meeting that we're having today, we're going to have additional opportunities for the public to speak on the proposed budget amendments tomorrow, starting at 10:00 in the morning, we [9:03:35 AM] have a council meeting, which will begin with a presentation on the proposed amended budget, and it will continue at 3 P.M. With a public hearing on the proposed amended budget. So on Wednesday, we will have another presentation on the budget. And at 3:00, we will have a public hearing on the proposed amended budget. If you're interested in speaking on the proposed amendment. Budget amended budget, I highly encourage you to do so. At the 3 P.M. Public hearing tomorrow. On Wednesday, online. Online registration for that meeting closes at noon today, with in-person registration closing tomorrow at 9:15 A.M. Let me say that again tomorrow, Wednesday, we will have a public hearing on the proposed budget amendments at 3:00. Online registration. Online registration for that meeting closes at noon today, [9:04:38 AM] with in-person registration closing tomorrow at 915 on Thursday the 20th. So the day after tomorrow, starting at 10 A.M. We will have a council meeting at which council will be taking up the items to vote on amending the budget and adopting the updated tax rate ordinance in in response to prop Q not being approved, we will be taking speakers on the 20th as well, but it's looking like it's going to be a long council meeting. I just want to let everybody know. That's why I'm highlighting, and I want to continue to highlight the opportunity for people interested in speaking on the budget amendments to do so at the public hearing tomorrow, the 19th, if you can. We also have posted council meetings for Friday the 21st this coming Friday, Monday the 24th and Tuesday the 25th. However, for members of the public, I want [9:05:39 AM] to emphasize that those meetings will only be held if the council does not get to the needed number of votes in favor of the proposed budget amendments beforehand. In other words, on Thursday, and as a result of not having the needed number of votes, we will have to have additional meetings. So we have posted those meetings for the budget ordinance to pass by the required votes. If council gets the needed votes before any of those meetings, we will be canceling those remaining meetings. So in other words, if the council has all of the votes to pass on all three readings, the budget on Thursday, then we will not have the the meetings that are that we're posting for Friday, Monday and Tuesday. That is being done to make sure we're properly posted and make sure we're in a position to vote on the budget amendments. Also on the 20th, if the count, which [9:06:41 AM] is Thursday at the regular meeting, if the council can't get to a vote on the amended budget before the end of the day, which is 1030, if the council can't get to the amended budget, a vote on the amended budget before the end of the day, we would recess that meeting to the next day, which is Friday, which we have done before. But it is not the custom and practice of this council to vote on big items like this late at night. We are. We will come back the next day if that happens. If we recess the Thursday meeting in order to come back on Friday. If that happens, we will cancel the separate meeting posted for Friday so that we don't have two overlapping meetings. And if we recess, there will not be speaking again on Friday. The [9:07:41 AM] speaking for the Thursday meeting will occur on Thursday. To sum up, if you want to be guaranteed an opportunity to speak on the proposed budget amendments and you're not signed up to speak today, you can speak at the council meeting on the 19th or the 20th, but I highly encourage that you sign up and speak Wednesday, which is tomorrow, and again, online registration for that meeting closes at noon today, with in-person registration closing tomorrow at 915. Council members, any questions before we recess? And yes, mayor pro tem. >> Yes, the fire contract. When will that briefing take place? >> It will take place after we do the Austin energy oversight committee meeting. Okay. >> Very good. Thank you. >> All right. And I want to make sure apparently, I didn't say what I was in my head, which probably is a good thing most of the time. But in this case it's not. And that is the [9:08:44 AM] item that I indicated was being postponed. And for the record, that is item B one, which is the pud briefing, the development assessment assessment item B one will be postponed to December 9th. It will be postponed to December 9th. With that, unless there's objection, we will recess at 9:09 A.M. The Austin city council work session so that the mayor, the chair chair vela, will be in a position to call to order the Austin energy oversight committee meeting. Without objection, we are recessed at 909. >> Thank you very much, councilmember vela. I'll call back to order at 10:00 the 10:00 am, the work session of the Austin city council members. As I've indicated, what we'll do now is we will have a briefing with regard to the budget, proposed budget amendments. So I'm looking for any movement. Well, that's right, we're going to have you're right. The fire contract. Well I hope they're that close. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What we're going to do is, is we're going [10:01:31 AM] to hear from the speaker on the fire contract and that and that, because we don't have the need to take up the briefing on that. Is that correct? That that that's the recommendation. Yeah. Why don't you come up and give us a brief status of where we are and that that'll work. >> Thank you. >> Please come forward. >> Thank you. Mayor Roxanna Stevens, deputy labor relations officer. We have on the agenda today an item that was pulled from the regular agenda on the fire tentative agreement between the city of Austin and the afa. I do it, I do have a presentation. I'm not going to go through it right now. What I'm going to do is give an update. But the presentation that outlines all of the elements of the tentative agreement that had been agreed [10:02:32 AM] to and were negotiated, are uploaded in the backup documents, and I'll make sure that they're available to the public. And the powerpoint that outlines all the summary of the tentative agreement is available to everybody. And if you can look through that, and I will go through that at a later time, if there's any other questions, what I would like to do is give a brief update on where we are with the tentative agreement. We did negotiate that for a course of 60 days. That began on July 30th, and we reached the tentative agreement on September 25th. After we reached a tentative agreement, we agreed to mediation on a few details that we needed to work out with regard to the major issues that we had agreed to. The tentative agreement was published on October 24th, 2025, but upon the announcement of the tentative agreement agreement that we made on September 25th, 2025, the afa had announced that they had launched a petition for a [10:03:32 AM] charter amendment regarding the four person staffing that goes beyond what the current four person staffing ordinance is, by including a significant budget limitation that does not currently exist. When we negotiated the tentative agreement, the city was under the understanding that we were addressing all outstanding issues and moving forward into a new era of working together and cohesively with the afa. Obviously, with the charter, proposed charter amendment, there are outstanding issues and the city would like the opportunity to explore solutions to get us all on the same page and achieve labor peace with the afa and between the city. Before the council considers the tentative agreement, we would like to seek direction from the mayor and the city council to request that the afa meet us back at the table, at the bargaining table, to address the issues that are brought forth by the afa's proposed charter amendment in an effort to resolve those issues through the collective bargaining process and the collective bargaining agreement. If the [10:04:33 AM] afa had an issue with the staffing, which is a mandatory subject of bargaining, we believe is a city, that they should have brought it to the bargaining table as an outstanding issue, but they didn't and instead bypassed the collective bargaining process without giving the city an opportunity to be able to discuss and bargain the issue. Although the tentative agreement was negotiated with the assumption that a four person staffing ordinance would be in place, the additional significant budget limitations sought by the proposed charter amendment was not considered in the negotiations. The afa only brought that proposed charter amendment after we had already completed our negotiations and announced a tentative agreement. So what we're looking for today is at our recommendation is, number one, we did negotiate a great contract, but there are still outstanding issues, and we would like the opportunity to be able to try to resolve those within the collective bargaining process. And so what we're seeing right now is a is a direction to do that. Our [10:05:33 AM] recommendation is that before the council consider it, that we be given an opportunity and that we have a request and direction from the council to go and try to get those issues resolved at the table before the council finalizes and considers their tentative agreement. >> Thank you ma'am, I know it's likely that members of the council will also have questions, but let me let me start off and see if I can get some clarity on a couple of things. One is. The I know the timeline. We know what also happened. We know we had a tentative agreement or believed we had a tentative agreement on October 24th, and then almost immediately thereafter, it was announced that there was going to be an effort to get a charter provision change. And what I'm interested this question is that I'm interested in is the interpretation of the charter provision change that's [10:06:33 AM] been mentioned. And what we saw and we've seen the language of the proposed charter amendment, how it is, how you're interpreting that for purposes of determining deciding that it plays a role in bargaining. >> It does play a role in bargaining because of when we sat at the table. We believe that we were negotiating all outstanding issues. And at the because of the timing of the announcement of the launch of the petition for a charter amendment based on the four person staffing, obviously, four person staffing was an issue for the afa, and we believe they should have brought it as an outstanding issue because it is a mandatory subject of bargaining. >> And that's and that. >> That. >> If I might interrupt you there, that's I want to I want to get clarity. That's twice that. You've mentioned a mandatory issue of bargaining. Would you describe what you mean by that and why this falls within the mandatory issue. >> The statute 174 allows for [10:07:37 AM] bargaining between the afa, which is an association, and the city on several mandatory subjects, that being hours, wages and working conditions and staffing falls under the working conditions. Mandatory subject to bargaining. >> Thank you. Thank you for that explanation. It's very clear. And I'll just say I'll open it up for questions here in just a second. But but what I'll also say is that the purpose, as I understand and see the purpose of collective bargaining is it is so that we can get all of it taken care of. And when it's indicated that there's there is an agreement, a tentative as it may be, but that's what you always have, something that's a tentative agreement until it becomes a final agreement, when you have a tentative agreement and then almost immediately or told, wait, there's other there's something else that we're going to do that's we're going to and we're going to do it outside of the bargaining, what I would [10:08:39 AM] like to see is us back at the table where we can do that in a collective bargaining agreement. That is the purpose of that process. It is what we were all doing in good faith. And and as a council, the council was looking forward to the opportunity to be able to vote on that. I'm glad to have clarity about the specificity, because if you read the language, it's pretty specific. The language. What I mean is the language of the proposed charter amendment. So as as we as she's asked for, she's asking for direction about whether or not she should publicly ask and we should bring back for public negotiation on the in the collective bargaining agreement process this item so that we can get to a complete collective bargaining agreement and be able to move forward as a city. So thank you for that. [10:09:40 AM] Mayor pro tem then, council member Ellis. >> Thank you. Colleagues. I originally pulled this item because we have a very packed week this week with looking at the budget, but also we had a tentative agreement with our fire union in the city up for approval, and I originally pulled it to go through the financials, you know, understanding the financial forecast for the city, how this contract, which I believe is about 68 million over four years, how that interplays with any with the budget that we are slated to adopt this week tentatively and understand those dynamics clearly, there have been changes that have changed since the tentative agreement has been reached, and I'm just trying to understand what that means and how it interplays with the budget proposal that we also have before us for consideration. So can you, Roxanne, can you talk us through the specific provision in the charter amendment that is of concern as it relates to staffing and its financial implications, what that would mean to the budget [10:10:40 AM] of the city? >> Yes. So when we bargained the contract and we were making sure that we understood the environment in which we were bargaining, including the budgetary environment, the costing of the contract and the and and we were negotiating a new reduced work week schedule. We needed to make sure we took into account the staffing. In fact, the tentative agreement also has where we're increasing our firefighter authorized strength in order to to implement that Austin schedule. We took all of that into consideration with the charter amendment did after we came to the immediately after we came to the tentative agreement, was at an additional element that was not that is not currently included in the four person staffing ordinance or currently does not exist as a budgetary limitation. And that is there is a section in there, and I believe it's section B that states that the city manager or the city itself cannot close [10:11:42 AM] brown out hall, pause or prevent a an apparatus or a fire station from from being taken out of service. And that is until certain criteria are met and the criteria are pretty substantial, meaning that the way that I read it is that you must take away from every everywhere else in the city before you would touch the fire department, and I would I would seek to ask clarity on that at the negotiation table. That's really what what we want to talk about. What are they trying to accomplish? Because the city is willing to talk about it and willing to do that. And that's what the negotiation table is for. Did that answer your question, mayor pro tem? >> Yes, because and thank you, because I have a copy of the proposed charter petition that says a reasons unless the city of Austin can demonstrate a severe financial crisis that impairs its ability to meet its obligations to provide essential police, fire, emergency medical and [10:12:43 AM] infrastructure services, I mean, that is I mean, those are broad categories. And so. >> Yes, and in my discussion with Bob nix, who's the president of the afa, when I was seeking clarity on what that meant, basically it was that you that you, the city would have to be closing and taking away from all other departments or infrastructure, police, fire, ems before they would be able to touch the fire department. >> You know, particularly the infrastructure services. You know, I would argue that our city workers are part of the human infrastructure of the city. So there's I mean, this is it's open to interpretation. So I. >> Do. >> Understand the value of going back to the bargaining table in good faith to have those conversations. And, I mean, this is an unprecedented proposal, am I right? That's correct. Okay. And and so the contract, the tentative agreement, which we know that [10:13:44 AM] the union is currently also voting on this week, that can you just give some high level overview for the community who's tuning in on what the the benefits of the of the agreement to the city and what it entails? >> Yes. Now the benefit, you know, a benefit of an entire public safety agreement are always across the board that it it improves opportunities for recruitment and retention. It enhances the hiring and promotions. There's a competitive pay package that we are a premier department that people want to come work for. And we also with the tentative agreement, we're offering a competitive, modified, reduced work schedule and the four year agreement would be would provide stability for the city of Austin and the firefighters themselves. When we address all the outstanding issues now, the highlights are that. That we have a more robust hiring process and a more streamlined promotional process, meaning [10:14:44 AM] that we will be able to recruit from surrounding areas and throughout the state of Texas and be able to have just like ems and police have, have tests being done simultaneously, but in different locations. It's not just one test in one area, and it provides the ability of the chief to be able to recruit from a different area and focus on on areas if needed. The the big issue here, or the big benefit that we have negotiated, which is actually a transformative contract, is that we were able to give some very significant cost of living or, excuse me, across the board wage increases. We adjusted the wage the the first year wage scale so that we address the entry level firefighters to make it more enticing for recruits to be to want to apply. And we can recruit. We also had competitive pay increases [10:15:45 AM] throughout the four year contract after that. In addition to that, which is the big piece of this is we had negotiated what we call the Austin schedule. It is a transformative schedule that gives firefighters three days off in between their shifts. It is a23. It's a13, two, three, meaning they have they work one day, have three days off, work two days, and then have three days off. And it repeats that what that essentially did was reduce their work schedule from an average of a 52 to 53 hour work week to a 49.8 workweek. And it gives them more time to rest, gives them more time to spend time with their families, and it gives them more time to recuperate in between schedules. We also have, along with that, the opportunity to have an alternative schedule for, if requested by a firefighter to accommodate for hardship, such as child care or family care, if they cannot utilize or or participate in the Austin schedule, that they still have [10:16:47 AM] the 2448 schedule available to them that they currently are on. That is a huge deal because it is the first major metropolitan city in the in the state of Texas to have a schedule such as that, and the city of Austin would have the the least amount of hours per week worked by firefighters. We would have the lowest work schedule per as far as hours. >> And and to be clear, this contract assumes a four person staffing model so funded at a level of four person staffing. >> That is correct. When we negotiated the contract, we negotiated it under the the context of the current environment in which the four person staffing ordinance is is standing right now. We costed it, we staffed it, and we assumed a four person staffing ordinance was in place. >> Okay. Good deal. Thank you for the information. >> We didn't assume the budget limitation. That's that's the that's the the difference. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem, [10:17:48 AM] councilmember followed by councilmember Siegel and councilmember Laine. >> Thank you. I think she hit the nail on the head with, you know what what my first question was going to be, which is if we already have four person staffing, how is the charter amendment going above and beyond that? So I appreciate you bringing some clarity into that. The fire association right now has their voting open already. >> That's correct. >> And does what they're voting on right now exactly match what was agreed upon in the tentative agreement? >> Yes. There was an issue that we had worked out with them. They did initially were going to vote on a the tentative agreement we agreed to and then an alternative contract that had not been agreed to. But we have worked out that issue, and my understanding is that I have not confirmed yet, but my understanding in the communication from the afe is that the afe membership was voting on the tentative agreement that you have before you today. >> Okay, that's really helpful. I'm glad to hear that. I know there are some great things in this tentative agreement, including the better schedule of hours, testing location [10:18:48 AM] options like the police department is able to utilize. We're not. Everybody has to come into Austin, Texas to be able to take the test that recruiters can go out into different communities and administer those tests up front. I just want to daylight. I fully support us continuing our four person staffing. I know that during our first round of budget adoption, there was a call to the fact that we have this four person staffing ordinance. I think it was widely adopted in 2018. And so I think the what we have to keep at the forefront of our mind is that having having that staffing level commitment is safer for firefighters and safer for the communities that those trucks are going to to assess those calls. And so I do think it's creative at whatever level for us to be able to continue that commitment. But I know there's a couple other considerations, especially around how we balance funding with other departments and especially public safety departments. So I know that the some of the folks that work alongside the police department had a staffing initiative on a couple of years ago, and there [10:19:48 AM] was a lot of concern about what that what that staffing level was going to mean for the entire city budget overall. And as we move through our conversations this week, we're obviously seeing we're in another spot where we're going to have to make some hard decisions on priorities. I want to make sure that we're protecting our all of our public safety employees, whether they're police, fire or ems, and make sure that we're doing what we can as a city council to uphold those departments, including mental health services as well. I just know it's difficult for us to figure out how these dollars are going to land at the end of the day, but really want to make sure we can get this sorted out, because I don't like for us to get to the 11th hour and then have moments where something needs to be adjusted, because I think it creates confusion in the general public. And I want to make sure that folks know we're moving forward together and trying to sort these things out. >> Thank you. Councilmember. >> Councilmember Siegel, followed by councilmember Laine. >> Thank you, mayor. And thank you so much, miss Stevens, for all your work in getting this this deal in front of us and for your entire team. A lot of [10:20:50 AM] what I was going to say has already been said by my colleagues, but I just want to reiterate that I think I speak for all 11 of us, that we want fair compensation and safe working conditions for our firefighters, firefighters. We know how important they are. They're on call for us 24 over seven. My own experience I was a school teacher in Brooklyn, New York on September 11th, 2001, and so you couldn't be in New York in that moment and not have undying appreciation and respect for firefighters. And all that said, we are in this very tough fiscal environment. Right? And, you know, the background of Texas law that allows collective bargaining with firefighters, with public safety unions, the whole purpose of that, and the mayor alluded to it, is to buy labor peace. The idea that when we approve a four year deal, which I have no doubt we will when the time is right, that we want to know that we have assurance that that costs are locked in and this this proposed ballot measure. And if the staff want to put on the screen, I did give them a copy of it. I guess it's not really legible from that point of view. But, you know, it locks in four person staffing, which I'll say I'm [10:21:50 AM] comfortable with. But this subsection B, the way I read it and this might be, you know, somewhat extreme reading, but the way it looks to me is that in future years, if we're in a fiscal pinch in the city of Austin, we would have to close every park, every pool, every housing program, every health program before we close a single fire station for a single day. And that would just tie the hands of future city councils of the community in a way that I don't think is fair. And so I would love to get a deal that truly buys us labor, peace. And miss Stevens, if your team is willing to go back to the table and try to see if we can get everything together in one deal and queue it up for a vote, I would very much like to see that. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember. Laine. >> Thank you, first of all, for all of the effort you've done, made in this negotiating process. And I think some very, very important progress has been made and it has been hard fought on both sides. My colleagues have already said [10:22:50 AM] much of what was on my mind and asked the questions that I had. So I will I will keep this relatively short. In this moment when voters have said loud and clear with the failure of the TRE, that we need to be doing more with what we have, I believe that they are very strongly also telling us as a council that they do not want us to make financial commitments, that we can see that we will not be able to keep, and so on that note, I believe I know the answer to this question, but I will ask you, I by the time we look at the contract as currently negotiated, the policy related related to the four person staffing and now the what it sounds like is a surprise. After negotiations are complete, charter amendment language. I am reading this to say that we as a council would have our our hands tied if we saw financial [10:23:52 AM] issues on the horizon as it related to fire, and we would not be able to take such basic management steps and policy direction until the city of Austin was in a severe financial crisis or catastrophic emergency response conditions exist. Is it accurate to say that the boxes that have been put around, if this charter amendment language passes and the contract is already approved by the time that happens, will, will, will leave us in a position where we have to watch our city go into financial crisis before being able to consider improvements and revisions related to these items. >> The the way that the language is written, that's exactly what it says, the severe financial crisis and that you would have to be be closing or taking away from other departments before you were to touch the fire department. [10:24:53 AM] >> And so it's completely speaking for myself. It's completely unacceptable to for me to sign a contract, knowing that that will put us in the position of having to be in financial ruin before we can take action. So I also support returning to the negotiating table with an effort to get all of the constraints into the contract as we agree on them. And I will also say, as it relates to the trust that our public safety agencies have in this city and this city council, I would say that signing this agreement as it stands, knowing that the charter amendment language is out there, is actually extremely destabilizing and would not serve us. What I know so many of us on this dais want is to get back to a position of mutual trust and working towards the needs of our community and our city within the financial realities that are very real. So that's my that is my guidance. Thanks. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember, councilmember. [10:25:53 AM] Vela. >> I have if we do go back to bargaining, there are two elements that I was, I wanted to ask you about or just kind of give my $0.02. The first, I'll pick up where councilmember Laine left off. You know, I think many words are open to lots of interpretation, but it's that impairs. Right. What does that really mean in terms of, you know, we could say that if we're $1 short in the budget that impairs our ability to fund any of our departments, similarly for $100 million short. So if, as you're describing that the intent is around shared sacrifice, you know, it's not just the fire department that is having cuts, but we are seeing cuts in other departments that makes sense. That's I think that that's how we budget anyways. We don't look to cut our public safety entities necessarily, before we [10:26:53 AM] look to other things that may not be as high a priority. So as you're having that discussion, if there is a way to to frame it more in just a, you know, whether it's proportions here and there or just something that that talks about that shared element, I think that that is more in line with what what makes sense, although I still think, you know, that is ultimately a council and manager decision that we need to be able to respond to in the moment, because you never quite know. The second is on page 94. It's the portion of the contract addressing if we have a TRE and the TRE fails. And what I want, what I was hoping you all could have kind of further refinement is around the word necessary. You know, for this, the city council or the cfo for the city shall recommend any adjustments necessary to the funding [10:27:54 AM] obligations set forth. And I think, once again, almost like impair what truly does necessary mean, does necessary mean that it's only necessary if everything else is not funded, is necessary shared pain? Just if we could get some kind of clarity on or just remove necessary. And here are here's how we would adjust this in line with any other portion of the budget. So if if you do end up going back to the table, just hoping you could look at those two particular elements. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember vela. Councilmember duchen. >> This. >> And council member Ellis alluded to it a bit ago, but this charter amendment reminds me a lot of the the police. And it wasn't a charter amendment. Actually, I think it was an ordinance, again, kind of trying to tie the hand of [10:28:55 AM] council and force a certain level of of staffing and spending. And Austin voters, I think, very wisely rejected that ordinance. And I feel the same way about this charter amendment. Even worse, because the charter amendment, I mean, we can amend an ordinance in two years after a passage, a ballot initiative, ordinance, charter amendment. This would be here forever. Doesn't matter how technology changes, it doesn't matter how, you know, fire department rules and practices change. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. It would survive just forever and ever. This attempt to kind of micromanage the fire department via a charter amendment just it's just a horrible idea and would create a severe economic concerns, I think, down the road. So I just wanted to to echo my colleagues and say that we absolutely need to go back to the bargaining table. And honestly, I just don't see how [10:29:56 AM] we can approve a contract when there's a charter amendment of this type out there. To me, until I know what the kind of playing field is going to be, we we, we can't kind of engage and finally approve a contract. But I appreciate your efforts, and I appreciate very much the efforts of the labor relations team. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember. >> Thank you. Mayor. First, I want to just say my tremendous thanks for all of your efforts updating us. And on this process for the last couple of weeks. One question that I'm curious about, which is how atypical in your experience, has this process been where there is sort of a parallel negotiation or other tactics that are going on outside of the standard bargaining process that you've undertaken? Have you seen this before in this space? >> No. When for collective bargaining, there was a statutory requirement of good faith, and that's how we [10:30:58 AM] operate. And we will operate under the good faith bargaining process. Under chapter 174 of collective bargaining. We are there to address all of the outstanding issues and utilize that process. In this particular process, I have not seen where we're at the bargaining table. And immediately there's another process. You know, the the process was bypassed in such a way to try to get obtain another, you know, another benefit or gain on another issue. So from the city side, we're always sitting there in good faith. We want to talk about all the issues. We wanted the opportunity to bargain them, get clarity on them, find the intent, and potentially get a resolution included in the contract so that everyone is on the same page. >> So just to clarify, in the course of any of the labor negotiations you've had with any of the unions, you've sort of never run into this situation before. >> I personally have not. >> Okay. >> All right. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Councilmember. All right. I think that's all everybody has wanted to speak. [10:32:01 AM] Let me in this section by saying and echoing what you've heard from several of the council members. And I and I agree that we can speak for all of us, that we really appreciate the very professional, excellent work that you all have brought to the table and the way you've kept us up to speed and informed about this. You've done a really outstanding job and we're very, very appreciative of that. This is an unusual circumstance that when you have what is known as a tentative agreement, that fairly recent after that, almost immediately after that, there's an effort to do something that should have been bargained at the table. It seems to me at least, that you have, because you've heard from so many of the individual council members. You have direction about trying to get back to the table. And unless [10:33:01 AM] somebody jumps in quickly and tells me I'm I'm interpreting that wrong, I think you and I are in agreement on what the interpretation is. >> Yes. >> Mayor, and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> Great. Thank you all and council members. Anything else before we go to the next item? Again, thank you very much for your very good work. >> Thank you, mayor. >> And council. >> All right. That will take us to the budget presentation. And our professional financial staff will come forward while they're coming. I'm sorry. I've this this has been a day. Every time I've started something, somebody interrupted me and told me I was wrong and they were right. We have two speakers on this item, so let's let's hear the speakers on the firefighter item. >> For item 48, we have Kathy Mitchell and Mario Cantu. [10:34:05 AM] >> If you're here, please come forward. >> Yes. Cathy here. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> City council. >> As a citizen. >> Of Austin, Texas, I just want to speak briefly from a citizen standpoint. >> State your name, please. >> Mario Cantu. >> Thank you. >> Budgets and public safety intertwine all the time. It can be very difficult for those to to work together. And sometimes it can be very easy for them to work together, meaning that you can budget for fire, you can budget for ems or police or for the library very easily. I think at some point in time you have to figure out who you're going to budget for and why are you budgeting for that? The [10:35:07 AM] national standard is my understanding, for fire is going to be a four person team on a truck, got two men, two two in and two out. So if you go to a fire, they go to your house. There's going to be two in, there's going to be two out. If you drop that standard down to three, who knows what's going to happen? I can almost say that as a firefighter and firefighters, that if there's a child that is yelling inside that house, one of them's going to go in or both are going to go in to rescue that child. So that's that's the national standard for firefighters. And if I'm wrong about that, any firefighters here, please correct me. The national standard is set. It will not change. It's a goal not a penalty for noncompliance. Cities can and will justify not following the standard. It's only during a tragedy that people ask why are we not [10:36:09 AM] following standard practices? All I ask is for the firefighters association and for the city to go back and have some conversations and talk this out. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir, miss Mitchell. Miss Mitchell. Okay. I'm sorry about that. All right. Those are all the people who signed up on that item. So. But thank you, Mr. Conjunto, for being here. We will now go to the budget presentation. So I'll and I'll let you get all the way seated this time. As they're coming forward. Members and members of the public, I want to remind what I told you I would repeat over and over again, because I want to make sure that the public has an opportunity to be heard. Once we have had this presentation today, we will then go through the public comment period on [10:37:10 AM] this item. But I wanted everybody to be able to hear this presentation before they comment, so that it might inform and influence what they had to say. Tomorrow, starting at 10:00, we'll have a council meeting, and we will begin with the presentation again on the proposed amended budget. And we will continue that at 3 P.M. Tomorrow with a public hearing on the proposed amended budget. I mentioned that again, because online registration for that meeting closes at noon today in person. Registration closes tomorrow at 9:15 A.M. So if you would like to be heard. And that's the meeting, I would highly encourage everyone that wants to be heard for you to please sign up so that you can be heard. Tomorrow at 3:00 pm. We will also have a meeting on Thursday. We will also have a meeting on Thursday. Where? But it's a full it's a full council meeting where one of the agenda items is the budget. So [10:38:10 AM] tomorrow is a good opportunity to be heard and I encourage everybody to do that. Also. Council, I'll remind everybody that with this abbreviated mechanism we have for passing the budget, we're still shooting for a target of 10 A.M. Tomorrow for proposed amendments, 10 A.M. Tomorrow for proposed amendments, so that we'll all have a chance to look at them before the Thursday meeting. And of course, our professional staff will also have a chance to look at them and give us any input, including financial input. In addition to that, we posted a there was a post last night on the message board. It's a suggestion that what we do as we go forward here to try to have a coordinated set of meetings on this, is that we establish for staff what the priorities of the council might be as we go forward, so that they're then in a position knowing what the priorities of [10:39:12 AM] the council are, for them to look for where the money is. If the if there is money that would be able to fund those things, the idea being that it's difficult on all the departments to have 11 of us swarming, trying to find money, and it might not, and maybe not understanding the code, maybe not understanding where the where the the process in which that money is being spent, things of that nature. But turn to the manager and the manager staff, the professional staff to ask them to help us find money, even if it means cuts, and it will mean cuts in certain other areas. But they can bring those forward to us, and we can then make decisions based upon those proposals. So with that being said, I will now, yes, mayor pro tem. >> I have a question on the message board post that you and council members vela, alter, Laine and qadri posted last night regarding the direction on areas to review for funding. [10:40:14 AM] And so I don't know if I should ask those now or gain insight from you all on the direction you're providing. Or if I should wait until after the presentation. >> Well then why don't you try it now? If we need to have the presentation, I'll defer to that. >> Okay. On vacancy savings across general fund departments with non-sworn personnel and staggered hiring, can you please explain more about that and the differences between non-sworn and sworn? >> Well, yes, I think I can, but here's what I would. I'm glad you asked the question, because now I know where you want to go on that. That is one of the things that I have encouraged. I've been encouraging people to not try to determine where the money is going to come from until they can make recommendations, and that is a perfect example of that. How you would define certain terms there. Now, I think that the definition of terms is, if you're a sworn officer in our in our one of our departments, then that [10:41:15 AM] would not be included. It would be vacancy savings that might be there for people that aren't sworn officers. They are civilians. I think is the easiest way of saying that. But again, that's why I would prefer that the professional staff come back with how you could actually even use vacancy savings, because there's some lack of clarity about how that even returns money. >> Right. And I appreciate the direction that you're providing the staff, but I'm just trying to understand the intention with narrowing the vacancy savings to non-sworn versus sworn. I mean, just knowing our vacancy rates across the sworn departments and so wanting to have a full consideration of what that might look like. Vacancy savings, of course, is just a one time. Yes area for us to pull money from. Recognizing that that is our funding is available for one year. And so I just want to understand what are all the options on the table. And if we're providing direction to staff, wouldn't it be, you know, [10:42:17 AM] wouldn't help us in having a robust consideration of all the different areas where we could pull funding from? >> Yeah. And that is, again, I want to go back to what I the way I was saying that at the beginning of this, I think that's the better. What you just said may be the if I interpret it the right way is the better approach, which is for us to establish within the confines of the proposal, things we would prioritize, maybe differently. In other words, our homeless services. If if we as a council say to the professional staff, what we would prefer is to see more money in this proposed budget amendment, going to homeless services or going to ems, we put those out to you as priorities. Now, instead of us having a discussion about vacancies and whether or not that provides enough money to cover all those things, we're asking you to make recommendations to us about [10:43:18 AM] where those other cuts might come or savings might come, whatever is the way to get the revenue to pay for it as opposed. And I think it's okay for us to say. And by the way, could we could we save some money on vacancy? Right. Do that. But it would be better for them who know the intricacies of those and those details to come back to us, as opposed to us thinking we're going to be able to find all of those and add it up to whatever. So so. I agree, I was hesitant. I'll be candid about two things that you've asked. One is I'm hesitant for us to say, oh, and here's we're giving you direction on where to look for the money. We might make suggestions. Would this be a good place? But I would rather them bring it to us. And in talking with the manager, I think that that they would rather that too, because I think they're hearing from [10:44:18 AM] departments and others that are getting phone calls. And then the second thing I would say about that is that I think they're going to be in a better position to find more money than us trying to figure that out. So I think we're. >> Yeah, I'm. >> Just expanding that direction just because I agree. Like knowing the priorities of council would be great to have recommendations from staff on where to identify that funding from vacancy savings across the board. And the other question I had is contracts in general fund departments. Would this area for that you all provide as direction to review for funding? Would that be inclusive of ftes? >> Yeah, it'd be across the board. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Again. I was probably the least since I'm answering the question on behalf of anybody. If anybody of a sub quorum, if others have something they want to say, you ought to feel comfortable saying it. But I [10:45:18 AM] was probably the least inclined to even put that in the message board post, because, again, I think it would be better to say, here's a suggestion as opposed to direction. You guys bring back what you think would help us if we if we want to reprioritize what the manager has recommended as amendments to the budget. >> Very good. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember Ellis. >> Just wanted to add in a very quick point on the topic around vacancy savings. We brought an item number 76 that speaks to this. It's a compilation of a couple of different strategies that I've seen work through budgetary processes over the years, and one of them is about vacant positions. And we also call for a dashboard that's publicly facing to be created. Just so it's really transparent to the public how we're doing with vacancies within any department. But we did add in language that speaks to any group that's covered by collective bargaining or meet and confer agreements, specifically because we know those staffing levels and those departments, it can take very, [10:46:19 AM] you know, a lot of months for them to get their cadets trained up and get everybody graduated. And so we knew there were some sensitivities around, you know, what current staffing is, what future staffing is. And the departments that have, you know, very specific needs and capabilities that need to be addressed, such as the fire department we were just talking about. So I want to point people to that so they can take a look. There may be a couple other ideas that we gather along the way that we decide to add in between here and Thursday, but we'll post any of that to the message board if folks want to take a look. >> Great. Thank you. Councilmember. All right, miss Lang. >> Good morning, mayor and council Kerri Lang, director of budget and organizational excellence. I did want to speak to the conversation that was being had about vacancy savings and to clarify that vacancy savings is a budgeting tool. And and making adjustments to vacancy savings means you're making adjustments to the budget total. But to see a savings, it would be reducing or eliminating those positions. And so there's a conversation I think we need to make sure we [10:47:20 AM] have to understand that you won't necessarily see reductions from vacancy savings, but you'll just see how the budget is adjusted. And so if there are positions or areas that you want us to look at, we'll look at those areas. But it will likely be a conversation of what positions would be reduced or eliminated in order to generate a level of savings. >> Thank you. >> And again, what we'll do is we will have a presentation by the staff and then we will go to public comment. >> So thank you all. I, I will start, as I always do, with a timeline. As the mayor mentioned, we are asking that if you have amendments or whether or not this conversation will lead to some areas of focus or priorities, we ask that we have that by tomorrow at at 10 A.M. And then the the another work session will happen tomorrow, as well as the public hearing at 3 P.M. Tomorrow. And then the projection is to adopt the [10:48:23 AM] amended budget at this Thursday's council meeting, with additional readings on the 21st and 24th. So as we start the conversation on where we are today and why we are here with the prop Q outcome, it automatically takes us to the voter approval rate for our property tax rate, which is the 52 401 $0.07. This reduces our general fund revenue for fiscal year 26 $110 million. And so we're here to have this conversation on how we will balance the general fund going forward with that reduced revenue. Wanted to note that our debt service rate is not changing. As you all know, the tax rate is made up of the maintenance and operations rate, as well as the debt service rate. And the debt service portion of our tax rate will not change. So when when we [10:49:25 AM] send out the memo on the seventh, we had a discussion on what the recommendations were, what the changes were for, for the budget. And there were there was a color coded amendment or attachment available for that memo. And so I want to just kind of talk through what those changes are. So anything that's in the budget document or the attachment exhibit a that says maintained, those are items that were included in the budget and they are not being changed from what was included in the adopted budget. On August 13th. They are revenue neutral items or have no general fund revenue impact. And so those items are in black and exhibit a. What we want to focus on was really working on restoring general fund balance. So as I mentioned, there was a with the reduced revenue of 110 million, we had to make some adjustments to reduce our expenses at that level. And in [10:50:26 AM] order to do that, what we did was eliminate the transfer to reserves. It was as part of the adopted budget. There was a $40.5 million transfer to reserves. We reversed that or eliminated that. We also restored, if you remember, in the proposed budget, it was a $14.1 million transfer from reserves to the general fund in order to help us balance for for this fiscal year. In addition to that, we have identified reductions, appropriate reductions from the approved budget across several areas, and we'll walk through those reductions over the next several slides. The next two slides really walk through how we compare the proposed amendment budget versus the approved budget. And this is at a very high level at the department level, showing the changes for each department compared to the approved budget to the amended budget that we presented or we put out on the seventh. And I want to make note of one in particular. I [10:51:29 AM] think there's been some questions about the homeless strategy office, their operating budget, that change that you see there, that indicates a $3.6 million increase is because of the $5 million budget for the marshaling yard that has been moved into hzo, as well as the reduction of those 12 programmatic and support staff that was a part of the approved budget. And so that $3.7 million that you see there is the net change for the operating side of the homeless strategy office. And then we also have a breakout of all the changes that you'll see in the social service contracts earlier. I think we showed that as a as one line item of all the social service contracts. We want to make sure we broke it out by department. So you can see the change per department. This next slide looks very similar, but the numbers are a little different because we are showing the proposed amended budget [10:52:29 AM] compared to the fiscal year 25 amendment budget. So budget over budget year, fiscal year over fiscal year. What would these changes look like. It is a $58.4 million increase overall to the general fund departments, a 4.1% increase. And again, it shows the differences that you'll see between for each of the departments compared to the previous fiscal year. This slide here just talks through or shows again a pie chart of the general fund departments, the breakout and the percentages of each of each department. We talk about this every year as we talk through the budget, showing the the portion that is public safety compared to the other community services as well as the social service contracts. And then of course, we have our transfers and others that just looks at how we support our support services and internal services funds in in the general fund. [10:53:32 AM] These next several slides you've seen before as we presented the proposed budget. And I just want to make sure we walk through the changes that we are anticipated for fiscal year 26, as well as what is planned for fiscal year 27. As you all know, a 4% increase has been put in place for civilian employees. Also, for employees who make less than $53,000 in lieu of that 4%, up to a $2,120 increase in wages. Again, the living wage has been put in place for $22.05. There is no insurance increase for for the city contribution for health insurance. And then we do have some funding for market studies for this coming year. And of course, the city retirement contributions. And we'll talk about 27 a little bit more in detail a little bit later. But to note that there is no planned increase for wages in fiscal year 27, and we are still showing some of the increases for living wage [10:54:34 AM] health insurance will have an increase. And then we do have some market studies planned for 27. For the sworn cost drivers. And when you look at the proposed amended, it is continuing the increases for sworn based on their contract. So ems will see a 3% increase police a 6% fire. We do have the planned 5.7 funding for the tentative agreement, and then no increase for the sworn health insurance for fiscal year 26 each year, or for 27. Each of those contracts are are planned on having the 3% for ems, 5% increase for for police. And then there's an incremental increase for the retirement fund for the fire department. Our support services allocations for the general fund includes 6.8 for support services. Our technology or [10:55:35 AM] also technology management is 6.4 million setec, which is our combined transportation, emergency and community communication centers, a 1 million increase. And then we have other allocations at 3.8. The total overall increase for fiscal year 26 for internal services is 18 million, for fiscal year, 27 for fiscal year 26. Excuse me. So these next several slides will go into a little bit more detail on the department budgets and what increases you'll see for the department changes, adjustments you'll see for the departments budgets compared to fiscal year 25, ems is going to continue funding. Actually, ems and fire will have continued funding for the canyon creek fire ems station. That station opened in fiscal year 25. And this is just the annualized cost for those positions. And for that operation fire, we continue to have the $8.3 million reduction in fire overtime, as well as [10:56:36 AM] fire has received wage adjustments for the tentative agreement that will be put into the fire contract as well. And then the $280,000 for wildfire shelters and equipment for fire. As we mentioned in the proposed budget, forensic science will be receiving five positions for their warehouse. Municipal court is seeing a reduction overall as the elimination of positions based on the Travis county interlocal agreement on booking and then police during the adoption of the budget. That interlocal agreement with Travis county on central booking and intake was moved to the fund level. So you see that $16.1 million reduction in the police departmental contract, I mean, departmental budget overall, police also has a $9 million reduction in overtime based on the staffing remodel that that has happened starting in fiscal year 25 and is continuing. And then the $500,000 savings from the blue Santa warehouse moving to a city facility. Looking at the [10:57:40 AM] homeless strategies and operations department. We also have the $5 million that we have mentioned, based on the certified tax roll, that $5 million of additional revenue that is going to fund the marshaling yard in fiscal year 26. We also have the 3 million from the housing trust fund as a one time funding to get the full funding for the marshaling yard, 3.5 million is for continued operations of the eighth street shelter, as well as 12 new positions for outreach in the homeless strategy office. Housing is 3.7 million in the housing trust fund for housing vouchers. Local housing vouchers. There are some changes or adjustments in the housing in the housing trust fund in regards to their tax and estate planning. There's a $540,000 budget for that. And then, as well as a elimination or reduction of what was planned for housing [10:58:42 AM] trust fund for displacement mitigation plans. Those funds have been identified in the housing department's cip fund to use to to fund that displacement mitigation plan, and then the emergency rental assistance. There was a planned $400,000 additional investment for this fiscal year, and that has been removed for the planning department. It was proposed to have two positions for fiscal year 26. We've changed that to one position. And then in animal services, there have been no changes from the proposed budget. When we compare to fiscal year 25, there is still the two animal services officers, protection officers and support staff. And then in arts, culture, music and entertainment. We are adjusting that to three positions for fiscal year 26, compared to the five that was originally proposed. Parks and recreation. It was originally proposed for 60 positions for $6 million. That has been [10:59:42 AM] reduced to 20 positions for 2 million, continued to have funding for the 20 positions that were received in fiscal year 25. That's annualized funding for those 20 positions at 517,000. And then there is the new investment compared to last fiscal year for maintenance for youth field, youth athletic fields and the two positions for colony park pool and aquatics facilities. Our libraries will receive additional funding for security staffing, as well as funding for materials acquisition. And then we we have begun to implement the recycled reads. The change from that program from one location to across the system. And then finally, public health is seeing the reduction because of the move from a rented facility to a city facility. This next slide speaks to the social service contract changes. As we mentioned in the memo, for this fiscal year, we're making some adjustments to the social [11:00:43 AM] service contracts. We are reducing non-homeless strategy and operations contracts by 10%, so that we can reallocate those dollars to some of the areas that were of priority to the council. Within homeless service. So we are also making a reduction of 4% or 1.5 million to their existing contracts so that they can again re-appropriate or reallocate to other areas. The second part of this slide walks through what changes are anticipated or proposed that that is, instead of the 12 million for rapid rehousing, there will be 1 million that will be appropriated for rapid rehousing, bridge and bridge shelters and hill will receive $750,000 instead of the 3 million that was originally proposed or adopted. There are $650,000 for rapid rehousing, that is, for those those positions that were in community court that was [11:01:44 AM] previously funded by arpa, those are now those will now be funded through through the general fund. And then diversion is $500,000. There's $500,000 also for navigation. And then the Charlie center will receive $27,000 for for the showers. Other changes in the social service contracts will include $500,000 expansion for sobering center, as well as the family justice center is proposed to receive $250,000 and then $500,000 for readiness for reentry to the workforce. The reductions, or the changes in the nonsocial service? None. Zo social service contracts. We're looking at those as across the board changes, and so it's not going to be for one specific contract, but we'll evenly disperse that 10% reduction across all the contracts. So when we look at our reserves, as I mentioned earlier, we reversed the 40.5 [11:02:46 AM] million transfer to reserves that was included in the approved budget. We are using $14.1 million of reserves in order to help balance the fiscal year 26 budget, as well as when we look at what is allocated in the budget stabilization reserve fund. We we had we did include the $600,000 or excuse me, what was reversed was the $600,000 for landlord engagement, the homelessness prevention, as well as the workforce reentry. Those are all part of the one time some of those items have been moved to ongoing for fiscal year 26, and then for maintaining some of the ongoing maintaining some of the one time is the reappropriation of the $898,000 in fiscal year 25, it was $1.2 million. The capital delivery services department used a portion of that, but we reallocated the 898 to continue to plan for the [11:03:48 AM] bond program and then the continued second half of the fire cadet academy that was begun in fiscal year 25. And then finally, the continued replacement of the self-contained breathing apparatus for the firefighters will continue that replacement in fiscal year 26. So continued conversation on our general fund reserves. As you can see, the general fund reserves is at $233.2 million. That's the budgeted year end reserves balance that we're anticipating. That's a 15.7% reserves compared to we would need another, or it is $19.1 million below the 17% reserve policy that we have. Moving forward to fiscal year 27. As we mentioned during the proposed budget conversations, there are some [11:04:48 AM] significant changes or reductions that we are anticipating in fiscal year 27. In order to balance, that includes $16.8 million reduction in the social service contract funding. When you look at the $3 million increase that we that we're anticipating for marshaling yard, once we receive the certified tax roll in that 5 million extra dollars in fiscal year 25, as we roll that through the out years and roll that through fiscal year 27, we did have a $3 million additional revenue available in fiscal year 27. So we're using that to fully fund the marshaling yard ongoing at the total $8 million for fiscal year 27. We are not anticipating civilian wage increases. And there are there are a couple of elimination of transfers from the general fund that we've talked about. One is the housing transfer housing trust fund transfer, as well as the capital rehabilitation fund transfer. So this next slide is [11:05:53 AM] our chart that we we show each year of our of our conversation about the budget. This is our forecast, our updated forecast based on the amended proposed, we would be balanced in fiscal year 26 and 27. We do begin seeing a deficit in fiscal year 28 of 30 million, which grows to 37.4 by fiscal year 30. And then finally, we have our major rates and fees, and this shows all of our rates and fees from our major enterprise departments, as well as what we anticipate on the property tax bill. With the change of us going back to the voter approval rate, you see that the increase for fiscal year 26, particularly on the property tax bill, is $8.73 for fiscal year 26. And then there's another increase, fiscal year 27 planned of $13.74. With that, [11:06:55 AM] I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Great members. My suggestion would be that we go ahead to public comment. Hang on to your questions. The. Think about them, simmer on them and hear from the we'll hear first from the public, and then we'll come back and have our full discussion. Great. Thank you all if that's okay with you. All good. Thanks. >> We're going to start with remote speakers. We have one who needs translation. It's Maria morales and she'll get four minutes. >> Senora Maria estamos escuchando. >> Buenos dias. >> Buenos dias. Adelante. >> MI nombre es Maria morales [11:07:57 AM] morales. Solo quiero pedirle, por favor. Votan por el articulo. Siento TREs. >> My name is Maria morales. And I'm going to ask you, please, to vote for the item 113. >> Para un plan O programa financiero para asegurarse de de inundaciones para ayudar en NUESTRA comunidad. >> For a plan about insurance and flood insurance that can help our community. >> También para poder ayudar con recursos de la ciudad Y poder recuperar en Caso de alguna inundacion. >> Also to resources for the city so we can recover in case there is a flood. [11:09:00 AM] >> Aborto de la siento. >> Please vote in favor of item 113. >> También por el articulo siento. Quince policias. >> Also for item 115 to establish policies. >> Para poder ampliar los programas ante desplazamientos Y educacion financiera. >> So we can increase the programs. Protection so we can increase the programs about anti- displacement financial education. We need protection. >> Proprietarios para prevenir el desplazamiento de las families de recursos. >> So we can prevent the displacement of families that have low income. >> Todos. Lo siento. Gracias. [11:10:04 AM] >> Please vote in favor of item 115. Thank you very much. >> If I can share with the caller the caller, Maria. Muchas gracias por Amar. Vamos la programa para la seguranca para la invasion. So Esta aprobado para el consejo también el programa de anti-displacement. Yes. >> I supported Mr. Morales on a talking points. Those are not the ones that she was supposed to speak. I think there was some confusion. I'm about to email them to council. >> Very good. >> Thank you. >> Next speaker. >> Next speaker is Ivana Neri. >> Hey everyone. My name is Ivana. I am senior director of partnerships at up together and a resident of district four. I'm here today on behalf of of together and our members to ask you to maintain the city. $1.3 million investment in the [11:11:04 AM] family stabilization grant program. You have funded this initiative for two years, and it is delivering urgent, tangible and measurable, measurable results since 2018, with your support of together has distributed over $20 million to more than 8000 households. Families earning under $30,000 a year, many of whom are severely housing housing cost burden. Your investment has helped them stay housed, reduce debt, care for their children, and avoid crisis that ultimately caused the city far more. In our most recent cohort, 96% use the cash for basic needs like housing, food and caregiving. 44% of those behind of those behind on rent caught up within six months. Beyond the numbers, we have seen families avoid eviction, keep stable employment and reduce financial financial distress outcomes that cost the city far more than if they were not addressed early. This program is efficient, community centered and proven to stabilize [11:12:05 AM] families before they reach a breaking point. Yet the draft budget proposes cutting the funding entirely. This will leave nearly 100 families behind without support at the time when housing affordability challenge continues to rise, it will also undermine the local authority we work hard to protect during the last legislative session. If you're serious about long term equity, housing stability and trust in us Austin residents to make the best decisions for their families, we cannot walk away from these from something that's actually working. I ask you to restore the $1.3 million for the stabilization grant. Thank you. >> Next is Camila foster. >> Hello. My name is Lena foster and I am calling, just in general, with concern over the budget and the fact that you guys created a budget, assuming that the the voters would allow that large of an [11:13:08 AM] increase of their tax rate, it seems counterproductive. And it definitely should. You should have created a budget with the existing budget constraints. Instead of expecting us to give you an extra $110 million and make up whatever shortfalls you've had. Also, I'm just really curious where all this money is going. I get you all have been giving some breakdowns, but it seems that the city is definitely due for an audit. The city manager's budget recommends cutting $38 million from social services, and lacks transparency and specificity that the voters of Austin want. What must be funded are the city employees harm reduction funding, the office of public of police oversight increases to inclement weather, disaster response, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing and rental assistance. Fully [11:14:11 AM] funding ems workforce. Reentry. Reentry development. Trauma recovery center, the Williamson child advocacy center, family stabilization grants, legal and mental health support for immigrant community. What can be reduced? The police contract taking back one half of the vacancies from the police, could free up considerable money for ems and social services. I also just wanted to point out, when the argument is made, that you're constrained from taking that money from the police contract. There is a clause in the police contract that allows for the contract to be renegotiated. >> Thank you very much. >> The. >> Next is soul praxis. Soul, [11:15:11 AM] are you there? >> Just go to the next one. >> Jennifer Robichaux. >> Good morning, city council, this is Jen Robichaux, district two resident, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. First, I would like to commend mayor pro tem on her amendment to fund ems for finding real cuts, reducing contracts, bringing work in-house and trimming non-essentials. I think this is the exact kind of discipline thinking that we need to solve these budget issues. My primary concern in the proposed budget is that it draws from our reserves, building our reserves above 17% was one of the approved budgets major successes. It protects our credit rating and our future. We should not touch our reserves. Instead, we need to find additional savings elsewhere in the budget. Secondly, I respectfully [11:16:12 AM] disagree with the mayor's heavy focus on homelessness services as basic services. Many residents have lost confidence in the primary recipients of these contracts, especially when we see these groups funding an election to raise our taxes while receiving millions in contracts in return. In short, we worry about conflicts of interest. Public safety and ems serve everyone, including those experiencing homelessness, and they also deliver a clearer return on our investment. Austin should help local people in crisis not become a magnet for homelessness nationwide. In that spirit, I'm curious why we're not seeing cuts in offices such as the city clerk, the development services, fleet management services, the mayor and council offices, small and minority business resources or transportation and public works. I also don't think that we're making significant enough cuts in public health or technology services. All of these areas [11:17:12 AM] grew 10 to 40% year over year, far above the budget average, especially in terms of contractual and transfers. And these seem like places to look again as you move forward. Please protect our reserves. Thank you. >> Carmen Lianes. Carmen, are you there? >> Okay, okay. >> Okay. That concludes the remote speakers. We'll start with in-person speakers next. Orlowski Shaw. Trey Salinas, Mel leblanc. If you can make your way up to the front. >> If your name has been called, please come forward and grab a seat and you can begin when you're ready. Please just state your name for the record. >> Hi, I'm Orlowski Shaw and I'm the president of the united [11:18:13 AM] workers of integral care and a frontline mental health provider. I'm here to ask that in the final fiscal year 26 budget, you do two things. First, make no cuts to integral care contracts and second, provide permanent funding for 24 over seven Escott. Integral care is not an add on. It is a core public safety and public health infrastructure. Our programs keep people out of ers, out of jails and out of encampments, systems that are far more expensive than community mental health care. Right now, there is a proposed 10% cut to social service contracts and a 4% cut to contracts with the homeless strategy office, and we still have no clear information on which contracts are affected. The fact that this is still unknown is a major red flag, especially after the city promised more transparency in this process. We need to know if these are integral contracts and if they are, these cuts must be reversed. Our services have already been hit by federal grant cuts and reductions in state funding. By cutting our services, we are pushing our mental health and homeless system to collapse at the very moment when we have real solutions in the pipeline. Second, Escott needs permanent 24 over seven funding. When [11:19:16 AM] someone is suicidal, experiencing psychosis or in deep distress. The Wright responder is a mental health clinician. Mcat workers de-escalate, stabilize, and connect people to ongoing care crises. Don't stop at 5 P.M. If cat isn't funded 24 over seven. The gap is filled by APD and ers, the most expensive and often least appropriate options. If Austin is serious about modern public safety, 24 over seven mental health crisis response must be treated as basic infrastructure, just like 24 over seven fire and ems coverage. Finally, I want to stress the solution is not to balance this budget on the backs of programs that are actually running and clearly need expansion. We're asking you to look across all departments for funds that can be responsibly reappropriated, such as areas like APD vacancies, where dollars can be moved without hurting the community or the city's labor force. Thank you. >> Good morning council. My name is Mel leblanc. I'm a resident of district one. I'm here on behalf of vocal Texas today. Recently, vocal staff and leaders were here talking [11:20:16 AM] to you about the cruel, ineffective and expensive encampment sweeps the city has been doing alongside dps. You heard from folks who have been directly impacted by those who shared how they lost everything, and how they were not connected to services, and we urge you to invest in those services rather than policing. Sadly, it seems like the voices of those directly impacted individuals who bravely shared their stories were ignored. And as you may have noticed, it's just me here today. We cannot in good conscience have asked our leaders to come back again to share their stories publicly, lay out their trauma, only for it to to fall on ears that don't listen. You now have an opportunity to reassess our resource allocation and our message remains the same. Policing and criminalization will not end homelessness, as you heard last week, or I guess two weeks ago, ticketing and arresting is only moving people around and making it harder for people to get back on their feet. Instead of using APD to respond to homelessness, we must fund services and housing. I want you all to rethink what public safety means to the community. The budget you rushed to put forward does not [11:21:17 AM] prioritize real safety, meaning funding funding for ems to ensure faster times in an emergency, harm reduction to address our overdose crisis, housing and services for our unhoused neighbors, and to ensure people can get off the streets safely. We have heard on the dais please pick what you want the most housing, shelter or services. And the answer is no that we're not going to pick. We're not willing to pit services against each other and fight over scraps. When APD gets over almost 40% of our budget, we are here with the community coalition asking that you allocate $30 million from APD staff vacancies to fund a portion of the life saving services that will actually help people in Austin, cutting all other departments while making no change to the already bloated police budget is irresponsible, both morally and logically. Do not double down on your financial commitments to the police at the expense of everything else. >> Thank you, thank you. >> Good morning mayor and council. My name is trey Salinas and I am here as the [11:22:18 AM] vice chair for the Austin chamber of commerce. We're here to speak briefly. Thank you for your time and appreciate your hard work. Our request is the same as it was before. We we ask that you prioritize funding for basic services, which includes full funding for public safety, maintaining homelessness response. And we look forward to the discussions on the efficiency study and applaud the city manager for getting started on that. We saw recently that there's, I believe, an rfp out on the street. Thank you for your time. >> Next, we have brydan Summers, Sharon Blythe, Michelle manning, Scott, Savannah Lee and Cole weaver. >> Hi. Good morning, mayor and council. I'm Brian Summers. I'm the president of aacme 1624, the union for city of Austin and Travis county employees. I want to bring to you today our union's goals for this budget process after the failure of [11:23:18 AM] prop Q, executive board convened and set the following five priorities one. No rifts, no reduction in force. Not this year, not next year. Our members livelihoods and the services they provide to our community are of paramount importance. I've heard several times over the past couple of weeks that there are assurances there are no rifts in this budget, and I'm going to take that assurance at its word. And if the goal for getting through the financial squeeze and organizational changes that are coming up is about efficiency and not reducing our work, our workforce, then we're on the same page. But if that's not how things unfold after this budget is passed, we will be looking to city council for accountability to make sure we hold true to the budget that you actually adopt. Two we want the Progressive Colas, the 4% across the board with the 2124 people under 53,000. We appreciate that that's been in the proposed budget. I want to point out that this is really a historic change for our city, where we're finally paying the people that make the least amount of money more in the raises. We'd like to see that in coming years. Also, I want [11:24:18 AM] to strongly emphasize that a 0% cost of living raise next year is not acceptable. Three we'd like to see the bad weather pay and the stipend for workers ineligible for telework included back in the budget. Those people deserve that compensation. They've been working a lot of difficult jobs for a long time. Four we'd like you to evaluate where the city can find money from the police budget in a time of financial crisis. Serious budget deliberations mean looking at the department with over 30% of the budget. How can we find ways to ensure that they maintain a high level of operation? But we can also divert some of that money to critical services. And five public servants must be good stewards of public dollars. This starts at council offices. It starts at the city manager's office and it carries to every department. Let's look at unnecessary services. Let's let's invest in our workforce. Because if we're looking for efficiency and optimization, we're going to get it through our workers. So we've got two priorities that we see in the budget we think we can get to. Third, if you look at the other ones. So we're really hoping that you will explore those this week. The city is counting [11:25:19 AM] on you to maintain the Austin that we all care about. Thank you. >> Good morning y'all. Thanks for having us. My name is Savannah. I'm the director of policy and operations at equity action, and I'm a resident of district one. And a November 6th statement, mayor Watson mentioned that the failure of prop Q translated to an ask from voters to return to basic services and basic budgeting. While I see the voters mandate differently, if I follow the logic provided, I simply can't see spending nearly 40% of the city's available revenue on police funding as basic budgeting. Any budget that spends 40% of its general funding on a single expense isn't a healthy one. And yet, here we are. The implication that basic services and basic budgeting means funding police while making steep cuts to F parks, ems, fire and housing is not only disappointing to see, but it also is just entirely off base when it comes to public safety in Austin. We've had this conversation before and we know what keeps us safe. It's a program that programs that keep folks housed, fed and healthy. It's vaccine access and quick ems response, and clean and well-maintained [11:26:20 AM] community spaces. To choose to primarily fund law enforcement is to choose to only deal with harm after it happens, as opposed to investing in preventing harm in the first place. Is that the kind of city that we want to be? There are roughly 330 vacancies at APD under state law. We are currently allowed to reduce the police budget back down to around 513 million, the same amount as last fiscal year. Cutting just 100 of these vacancies can bring back bring back enough funding for us to fund 24 over seven mental health response, the trauma recovery center, rapid rehousing, food pantries for schools, child advocacy centers and more. At risk of sounding hyperbolic, the choice is quite literally between feeding hungry people and funding vacant positions at APD. I know what kind of city I want to live in, and after a very lengthy budget process here with you all, I believe that you do too. Equity action demands that you reduce police funding in order to pay for the things people in the city quite literally cannot live without. To me, that feels pretty basic. Thank you. >> Miss Blythe. >> My name is. >> Sharon Blythe. I'm a resident of district six. I've [11:27:22 AM] kind of grown old by coming down to the city council and not having any activity or any concern about you all doing actually what you need to be doing. I can see nothing in that proposed 26 now that proctoru didn't pass that that changed. You need to dig deeper into your budgets of the peripheral of departments by having a performance audit. Look where the money. I mean, I'm I'm a victim of this city, not because of that, because it started years and years and years ago where I championed the upkeep of city cemeteries for years and years and years, finally got the city council to understand the importance of them. And now you're going to cut $5.2 million out of the parks budget, which will probably affect the cemeteries now. I was just challenged by [11:28:22 AM] your by your guard out there. I think his name is bb. He challenges me every time I come to city council because I am required to drink water in here, and he had me dump my water out of my container, said, I've got to use your container, which I don't know whether that has been changed or what kind of water is in that thing. And it was ridiculous for him to do that. I'm tired of being challenged by your employees, especially your guards out here. People are sick. They need your medicine. I had money, medicine in that bottle. I had to go dump it because of bb. I'm not going to fill my water bottle with this thing out there. You've got that. I don't know whether that's pure water or what is in there. Please do not listen to these people that want to always say, we need to fund homelessness, cut the police budget. That's ridiculous. >> Thank you, Mr. Black. >> Consider the people. [11:29:24 AM] >> Yes, sir. >> My name is Cole weaver. I'm speaking as a member of united workers of integral care. I stood before the dais last year when this council voted to pass an immensely expensive police budget. It was soul crushing, not only because I foresaw it causing the financial crisis we're in now where essential services are on the line. But I personally felt devalued by that. The city of Austin would rather prioritize first responders that pose a threat to black and autistic individuals like myself and the clients that I serve through integral care. This predicament is unacceptable. Despite that, I still shout out to canvass for prop Q because I believe it was the city's chance to define what care means for our community. I was so demoralized when voters rejected it that I shed tears. For the first time in over three years, I was ready to give up on everything in this city. However, I was reminded by members of the community that I'm still needed in the fight for a better Austin. Therefore, I am holding on to hope by standing before the dais again to ask that this council does the right thing this time. Fix the mess you [11:30:25 AM] created by reappropriating whatever funding you can from the police department towards alternative forms of public safety that actually work like 24 seven and ems also do not cause unnecessary mass layoffs at integral care by gutting social service contracts. No matter what budget this council will adopt, people will suffer and or literally die. If there are deep cuts to the housing programs and social services do not cost this community more grief because our hearts cannot bear much more. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good morning council. My name is Michelle Escott and I am a resident of district seven and a member of undoing white supremacy Austin. I support reclaiming the proposed increase to the police budget as allowed by state law, in order to restore funding to the many core social services that are now being threatened with cuts due to the failed TRE election. I was one of many who stood before council but a few months ago to advocate for the continued funding of the family stabilization grants that so [11:31:26 AM] many Austin families were using to remain solvent in these perilous times of severe government defunding. Now that this revised budget proposal strips out all funding to this program, the progress these families were making toward financial solvency will abruptly come to an end. This is but one of the many disgraceful failures that that will occur due to the sham of doomed options, the people of this city were forced to choose between vulnerable, poor and the citizens of this city that deserve the funds earmarked for the safety net of services. This budget was supposed to provide, not the police. In the words of the highly esteemed human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, who perhaps not so coincidentally spoke at our renowned paramount theater here in Austin just last night, quote, the opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice. End quote. I urge you all to use this moment as elected servants of [11:32:26 AM] this city to let justice prevail this time. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next, we have Lisa serrano. Susana Olmos. Mary Elizabeth, no, Ellis, crystal. Erickson. Collins. >> Your name has been called. Please come forward, miss Amanda. You can go ahead and begin. >> Good morning, mayor and city council members. I'm Susana Almanza with poder. First I would like to thank councilman Marc duchen for taking a stand with the people in voting against prop Q. Prop Q would have increased the displacement of low income and people of color. The 20% tax rate would have negatively impacted owners, renters, and small businesses, and especially low income and people of color. Fortunately, Austin residents realize the negative impacts of prop Q and defeated the measure. Council needs to listen to the public [11:33:28 AM] about reducing spending. The tax rate has already been set. The tax bills can be sent out without adopting the budget, and the budget can be amended by city council at any time. So there's not an impending crisis. Let's address the solutions to funding all essential programs and our projects for Austin residents, the following are solutions one. The capital project cap institute already has significant funding in the 2026 budget. The 41 million for work on the foundation pillars should be halted. Proceeding with this project would run the total cost over $1 billion cap and this should be canceled. Number two, council members should need to cancel the rail project and its tax authorization. Council needs to suspend the transfer payment to atp and the city's own slice of the Pio contacts supporting the rail project. You should create a new authorization that would fund citywide, on demand micro [11:34:30 AM] transit service and integration with funding. Expansion of the rapid bus system. Three council members. You can also reverse the course of the convention center for the congress. Urban design initiative is another frill you should review. Is it really an essential project? The other thing is you need to freeze your own raises. Thank you and let's work together. >> Please, ma'am, please go ahead. >> Hello, my name is Mary. Last name Elizabeth. I live in district one, and I'd like to tell you what I've observed about homelessness. I am not homeless. I've known a man who is not housed for 3 or 4 years. He's white. He's in his 50s, [11:35:31 AM] blond. He's a little guy. He's not much bigger than me. He's upbeat, friendly. He has a speech impediment. He walks with purpose. He has an old ankle injury. So he limps some of the time. He's always pretty clean. He's not shabby. His clothing isn't torn or dirty. He's been he's been stable, which is remarkable because he's been living in a homeless camp. He has maintained sobriety over the 3 or 4 years I've known him. After a long period of alcoholism and substance abuse, he wants to get his driver's license back, as well as housing. He gets occasional odd jobs. About two [11:36:31 AM] weeks ago, the homeless camp was cleared out by Austin police department. This was requested by a developer who had just bought the land. All of the people living in the camp were taken to jail. They were there for two days. When David came back to the camp, he found debris from the residents all over. Everything he had was missing and all the trees had been cut down. >> Thank you. I appreciate you being here today. Yes, ma'am. >> Hello. >> Hello, my name is crystal Erickson. Collins. I'm a member of undoing white supremacy Austin. But I'm speaking today on behalf of myself. Austin is a deeply unaffordable city. And the decisions you are making make it more so. Your proposed [11:37:32 AM] amended budget does not make sense. It cuts services that help people afford to live here, like the family stabilization grants, while at the same time increasing the police budget more than is required by hb 1900 when they can't even fill their vacancies. This is nonsense, since you will not be able to reduce their budget in the future. Thus, more and more of the budget goes to bloating policing versus community services, decreasing the quality of life and making it less affordable. What makes us safe? When folks have stable housing, we are more safe when folks have when they can get response from ems or Austin fire department. We are more safe. When they get mental health services. We are more safe when we have accountability through the [11:38:33 AM] police oversight department, we are more safe. Austinites have spoken to this at every budget hearing. Lastly, please be fair in your budget and line item. The native American cultural center and give it parity with the others. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Can I add one statement? >> I'm sorry ma'am, your time is expired. >> Next we have Carlos pinion, Valerie Minyard, David Cruz, Darlene Lewis, Jennifer Devito, and Susie chase. >> Good morning, city council. Good morning mayor. My name is Noah Elias. I am the land justice director at Beaudet. I am from montopolis in district three. So this proposed budget makes major cuts to basic services, about $38 million. I believe that housing and affordability is what needs to [11:39:33 AM] be addressed, and our workers and their families need to be prioritized. So every day we see increases in the cost of living and we see our neighbors suffer the consequences. And your proposed budget makes things worse for them. I want to echo what was said before that we need to protect city jobs. We need to fund harm reduction, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing and other services that help our neighbors stay in the community. We also need to fund parks and other programs for families. This city is losing a lot of families, a lot of kids, and we can see that with the school closures. And I ask you, why would you want to fund cap and stitch? Why would you want to fund the convention center and other wasteful spending? And at the same time you're cutting basic services. So we need a budget that supports our community. We don't need a new convention center. We don't need the cap and stitch and other wasteful spending. This budget process also needs to be needs to give the community [11:40:34 AM] enough time and a voice so that they can be heard and give their input. This process does not allow the community members to shape this budget. So we need a better a more transparent process because the community voices are not heard. Thank you. >> Good morning, mayor and council members. My name is Valerie Menard and I live in district one. I'm here today to ask you to be thoughtful and creative in your deliberations over revising the 20 2526 budget. On November 4th, voters in Austin sent you a clear message. We do the math. We did not accept the threat of cutting programs that improve our quality of life on the chopping block. If we did not impose a property tax increase on ourselves, we rejected that. The budget that you approved was the best you staff and city manager could offer. But we also let you know that we had taken notice of irresponsible spending on projects that were executed without the transparency that we expected of this body. For instance, whose idea was it to create a new logo? Who said we needed [11:41:35 AM] new a new convention center? And who seriously believes that we need to invest in and maintain gardens and plazas on top of an interstate? The failure of prop Q also sent notice to this body that you can fill this room with people who will testify in support of ordinances and projects you support, but at the end of the day, you're out of touch. What matters most to Austin residents? Affordability, quality of life. A council that listens. We have lost trust in your commitment to public service, and we need to see that reaffirmed. The proposed budget is unacceptable and, I might add, vindictive. The slash and burn approach taken by staff seems to say this is what you get for not doing what we asked you to do. How can staff propose 5 million in cuts to our parks? While this body insists on moving forward with cap and ditch, that will require 50 million plus to maintain every year? This is too hard a pill to swallow. Stop trying to find ways to fund this boondoggle and focus instead on funding the programs you would cut with this budget. I'm asking this body to take your time, try harder, be more thoughtful and creative. When [11:42:37 AM] you look at approving a budget that doesn't punish us but shows that you hurt us, thank you. >> Good morning mayor and council. My name is David Cruz. I'm a city worker and a member of the board of aacme local 1624. I'm here on my own time. As city workers, we know best how our work lifts up our community. We know that public health workers keep our families healthy. We know that ems is there for us in an emergency. We know that integral care is one of the most important actors in the homelessness services ecosystem, and do invaluable work with our unhoused neighbors, and we know that cutting these services will make lives worse for community members already struggling to afford health care, housing, and basic needs, I would like to reaffirm our commitment to our community partners and the demands they've stated here today. City workers are all too familiar with the hard choices that need to be made in tough fiscal times. With the failure of prop Q, most of us are already making those hard choices. Being responsible stewards of [11:43:38 AM] public dollars, making plans to deal with cuts, figuring out how to do more with less and less every day. And we're doing this amidst whispers and fears that riffs are coming mid-year and next year. Despite assurances from this council and from the budget office, it's hard to do your job. Facing the fear of being cast out into the most brutal job market in recent years, the budget office in this council is continuing to look for areas for cost savings. One of these will rightfully be vacancies, but if this council is going to push some departments to lose vacancies, we believe that all departments should be held to that standard, including those covered by meet and confer agreements. This council owes it to the community and to city workers to take on the hard work of fiscal responsibility and make hard choices, not just look for low hanging fruit. That level of discipline will be needed to protect critical services for working people and maintain funding for current city workers, not just in this year, but for in the years to [11:44:39 AM] come. Thank you. >> Good morning mayor council, thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Darlene Lewis, and I'm the chief operating officer at the Williamson county children's advocacy center at the children's advocacy center. Our mission is to provide hope, healing, and justice to children and families who have experienced physical and sexual abuse, witnessed domestic violence, and endured traumatic incidences such as a child's death or gun violence. We're available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, providing evidence based, trauma. Informed services were codified by state law, including that one children's advocacy center per county, and we coordinate directly with our law enforcement prosecutors through our mou and working protocols to ensure that every child receives comprehensive, child centric response. The Williamson county children's advocacy center provides [11:45:39 AM] critical services, including forensic interviews, where a child can tell about the intimate details about their abuse, medical exams where we are able to collect evidence and document crimes that have occurred, as well as providing ongoing mental health services to a child to ensure that the child understands that they're okay, and not everyone can tell what's happened to them by looking at them, and also long term family advocacy, providing education and recognizing reporting body and internet safety programs to our children. K through 12. The city of Austin's population within Williamson county includes more than 70,000 residents and is very comparable to our other large cities and areas that we serve. It's important that every year that hundreds of children and families from Austin, they rely on our services. And we do this in cooperation with Austin police department and dps. The city support is a vital role in maintaining our service quality, making sure that we have highly qualified teams that can respond to these types of abuse. These funding from the city would ensure that we have the [11:46:41 AM] sustainability to ensure that those services for our children, for forensic medical exams and mental health services. We respectfully request this Austin city council to include the Williamson county children's advocacy center in the city budget. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mayor. >> May I have a point of personal privilege? >> Sure. >> Thank you. >> Darlene. >> Yes. >> I want to thank you for coming out today again. I know it is there. You've been here a number of times making the same request. I want to thank you for opening your center for me to tour. And I know that that invitation is open to any council member who would like to see firsthand the services being provided. And for those of you who don't know about the incredible work that the center does, helping children who have been abused receive the justice they deserve, while minimizing the risk of being retraumatized and providing lifetime support to those families. I personally was very surprised to see that the funding for this agency was cut again, even though 10% of the children served have Austin [11:47:41 AM] addresses, and a full 60% of my district resides in Williamson county. Meanwhile, the Travis county counterpart, the center for child protection, has already received 2.2 million over five years for the same purpose, and a contract for the next five years was just renewed. Colleagues, this is for you. You heard that right. Ten years of stable funding for compassionate, effective collection of evidence in Austin's Travis county child abuse cases. While funding for the Williamson county counterpart is slashed to $0 once again, leaving Austin as the only city in Williamson county that fails to support the center. Darlene and everyone who can hear me right now, I assure you that restoring this financial support is a top priority for me, as it should be for all of us, because effective, compassionate investigation of the abuse experienced by Austin's children should not depend on the county in which they reside. Thank you for coming again. I know that you will continue to do so as often as is necessary as well. I will also continue to speak out on this issue. [11:48:41 AM] >> Thank you, thank you. Okay. >> Good morning. My name is Jennifer Devito and I'm also at the Williamson county children's advocacy center. I'm the chief program officer, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk. We work very closely with Austin pd, as well as dcfs and prosecutors, to make sure every child receives a coordinated response and timely support. Over the past two fiscal years, our center has served a significant number of Austin children. In fiscal year 24, 189 children, and in fiscal year 25, 82 children received forensic interviews. When you combine forensic interviews, family advocacy, medical exams, mental health services and mdt case reviews, that's 1073 services in fiscal year 24 and 690 services in fiscal year 25. Supporting hundreds of Austin families through hope, healing, and justice. These are children who might otherwise face delays in interviews, medical exams or trauma therapy. Our team ensures every child, regardless of where the abuse occurred, receives compassionate, [11:49:42 AM] coordinated care. There is also a significant likelihood of long term suffering among victims who do not receive services. Research shows that individuals who experience childhood maltreatment are more than twice as likely to experience homelessness as adults. This underscores the importance of early intervention to prevent these outcomes. Although we may, we serve many Austin children, we currently receive no funding from the city of Austin. Our medical and mental health and forensic staff are absorbing this increased workload. Without a dedicated funding stream, the city investment would strengthen collaboration with APD and prosecutors, ensure timely forensic interviews and medical care, expand access to trauma therapy for families facing long waitlists, and support a center available 24 over seven. Because we know abuse doesn't happen only between 9 to 5, we ask the city of Austin. Include the cassie in the city's budget to sustain these services. These are your children, too, and they deserve the same access to healing and justice as every child in our community. [11:50:42 AM] Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Good morning. Mayor, mayor pro tem, council members, city manager and city attorney. My name is Susie chase. I'm a district ten constituent. I'm a former staff member for two council offices, and for over four years, I've had the pleasure of working with animal advocates in Austin and my role at Austin pets alive. In September of this year, we heard the mayor and some council members expressed strongly that animal advocates in Austin need to work together. We heard you loud and clear and we agree. Since that time, a coalition has been created by different shelters and rescue organizations. We've been meeting twice a week with the mission of working together to support the city's shelter and the next Austin animal services director. We invited the greater Austin community to a town hall a few weeks ago at Austin community college, and the coalition is hosting a workshop this Thursday, open to the public and designed to listen to all voices. I'm speaking on behalf of the coalition about the proposed budget, because we are respectfully asking for this budget to include the restoration of the life saving programs at Austin animal services that were approved by mayor and council in 2011, but [11:51:43 AM] have been removed over the past five years. Additionally, we collectively support the $218,000 salary for the next animal services director in this budget if and only if that person has experience in an open intake, no kill shelter, and if everyone in the community is invited to open meetings to listen to the finalists for this high profile position that will directly impact Austin's animals for many years ahead. And speaking on behalf of Austin pets alive, our nonprofit is always looking for opportunities to support the people and pets in our community who need the most assistance. Austin pets alive is once again joining the central Texas food bank on Monday, November 24th for a drive through food distribution event at the Delco center. We will be prepared to provide pet food to over 750 Austin families, and Austin pets alive invites you to join us and volunteer on Monday morning. Please reach out to me if you and your staff are interested in joining us on Monday, and thank you for your time. >> We have a remote speaker back on the line, Carmen Lianes. [11:52:46 AM] >> Hello, this is Carmen Lianes. I'm the executive director for Austin vamos, Austin and a district nine resident. Thank you. Mayor, city council, mayor pro tem, for your service in this difficult time of financial austerity. Thank you for making the space to hear us and deep, deep gratitude to all of the first responders, social service providers, and other community helpers who have been making things work in this community. When we do have shortages in the critical resources that we need, equity is going to be so important in every decision that we make. I think it's so important for us to remember that this budget is only one piece of the pie. You'll hear people talk about the convention center. You'll hear people talk about those pillars for captain stitch. That probably won't be funded by our government for many years to come. You've heard people talk about project connect and a project that has shown no real improved transit for anyone living in north and [11:53:47 AM] south Austin, or areas where more and more of your folks have to commute because they can't live in the central city. And we will be redirected because today's conversation is really about this general budget, and it's just one piece of that pie. But the reality is that the referendum you saw in this vote represents the overall lack of trust and accountability and transparency, and the fact that the word affordability has run thin. It's worthless when we hear it over and over again and we don't see the votes to support it. So with that, I hope that you will consider those other pieces of funding. Take it seriously, lean in and ask your experts how to peel off the $500,000 here. The 2.5 million, which is a drop in the bucket of the 185 you transfer every year for project connect, and the 300 million we were promised for anti-displacement find 2.5. Bend it in the one mile radius of the project connect line. You could spend [11:54:48 AM] it all on rental assistance, but take it seriously. >> Thank you, miss Lianes. >> Back to in-person speakers. We have Ellen Jefferson, Marion Sanchez. Adrian Macias, Janice Bookout, and Hans maverick. >> Whoever wants to begin. >> Janice Bookout, district four. Thank you for your work. My mom always reminds me not to overextend myself before my basic needs are met. Why? Because if you don't, the human financial cost, human and financial cost will eventually cause a collapse. Austin is set to spend big money on future liabilities at a time when the already strained social safety net is under attack. The cap [11:55:50 AM] and stitch is an unnecessary extra expense that doesn't fix what's broken. When you consider operating costs, the convention center will be a net loss over the next 10 to 20 years, transitioning solid assets to the new logo is an easy cost savings. You've got the digital assets. The physical transition can wait. Do not increase the police budget at a time when there are vacancies anyway. Do not invest in massive sweeps, removing critical documents and warming supplies before winter, and also increasing the cost of shelter during inclement weather. Pause. The next phases of project connects until we get our social safety net stabilized. Countless studies show that investing in the social safety net has a significant human impact and financial return. It reduces hospital admissions, reduces crime, gets people out of dependency on the system, and many other benefits you've heard about today. It's a net gain in the financial sense and more importantly, in the human sense. 71% of the people here today representing districts [11:56:51 AM] one through five are against the budget as written. And across districts only one supported today. Beyond that, speak up Austin's survey of over 812 residents show overwhelming community alignment with the cib's focus on the social safety net, and even more so among those experiencing low incomes. Over the next four days, austinites will get to see where the real priorities of council are. Are they with the health and well-being of our people, or are your priorities elsewhere? Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Good afternoon council. My name is Marianne Sanchez. I work in district three and I live in district one. On behalf of Beaudet, I wish to first express our full support of public spending that actually directly serves our communities. Unfortunately, the city insists upon prioritizing non-essential pet projects while leaving crucial resources and programs underfunded on a $6 billion budget, no less. Putting forward prop Q was fundamentally deceptive. It [11:57:52 AM] held these critical resources and programs hostage by threatening that failure to pass, it would force the city to cut basic services, all while blaming federal cuts for your poor management of taxpayer dollars. Fortunately, Austin voters overwhelmingly said enough is enough. Recognizing prop Q not only as an intimidation tactic that it was, but more critically, as the final nail in the coffin for many of our longtime residents and community members that are already on the edge of displacement, the reality that the majority of us live in is increasingly turbulent. Asking our already struggling communities to make up the supposed difference, while squandering $104 million on the cap and stitch project, $1 million on a logo and $1.6 billion on an outmoded convention center was unjustifiable and tone deaf. Once voters made their stance clear, you claimed you heard us, but the millions and millions of dollars in unwarranted cuts to social services, ems, AFD, [11:58:53 AM] aph, and parks and rec that you're now proposing prove otherwise. Looking forward, I ask that the city works to mend its failure to maintain fiscal responsibility and therefore our trust as your constituents. We are all being forced to live within our means. It's time that the city does too. Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Hello. Mayor and city council members. My name is Adrian Macias and I'm with porter. I am requesting that you not cut any essential programs. Instead, you should cut the following non-essential programs. The cap and stitch the rail project. The new convention center, the congress urban design initiative. And you should not accept a raise. Thank you. >> Good afternoon, mayor Watson. Mayor pro tem Fuentes, council members. My name is Hans maverick. I'm a resident of district ten, and I work as a policy and research organizer [11:59:55 AM] at grassroots leadership here in Austin. This morning, I read a story in the American statesman headlined Austin city council face a showdown over public safety cuts. I take issue with that headline and the story that followed it, because it conflated policing, together with ems and firefighting as aspects of public safety. I listened to Bryan Stevenson last night, as another speaker noted, and I think he would agree with me that we need to push back on the narrative that people who carry guns and tasers are a necessary part of public safety. What I have observed is that that aspect of public safety targets black and brown and poor people, disproportionately people who are most in need of the support of the city. What I would like to see the city do instead, in light of the defeat of the tax rate increase, is a more humane and more cost [12:00:56 PM] effective approach to funding, which is to choose to finance services that prevent people from getting arrested in the first place. This means helping people with prior criminal legal system involvement get and keep good paying jobs. It means supporting people who have substance use disorders, people with mental health challenges, and people who are undocumented. It also means not spending any money on oppressive ai surveillance technology, including, but not limited to, automatic license plate readers. So please do not increase the APD budget over last fiscal year. Instead, please prioritize services that benefit the most challenged members of our community. Thank you. >> Next up is Peter hunt, Monica Guzman, kaiba white. Mario Cantu, Kathy Mitchell. [12:02:03 PM] >> I'll just get started. Hello, council. My name is Peter hunt. I'm a constituent of district ten. One lesson from the failure of the TRE is that the police contract has already done substantial harm to the financial flexibility of the city general fund. Council needs to address this now and to the fullest extent possible. As you've heard previously, you'll hear again. And as I'm going to say now, there are hundreds of vacancies currently at APD. These vacancies do nothing to induce demand to fill them. They will result in immediate harm when these budget cuts hit austinites, who will suffer from longer ems wait times and less access to social and health services. Last night, councilmember Velazquez said, quite rightly, that our welfare services are essential services and these are the services that are currently under threat. Removing these APD vacancies wouldn't even involve a reduction in force or a reduction in pay. We also just heard about the afe agreement and worries about tying our hands financially. That is [12:03:04 PM] precisely what happens with any increase to the police budget, particularly in this time of budget constraints and cuts. That 12.8 million increase we saw from last year to this year, that's hand tied money and that shouldn't happen. The quiet part in a lot of these budget discussions is that the hard conversations we're having now are going to get harder next year, and that things are only going to get tighter and more difficult. And I appreciate that. We've been encouraged to look further into the future, and I think that's all the more reason why we should not expect the police budget to increase from last year to this year. That's money that's going to be tied down, and it's only going to make things more difficult for council in the years to come. Not just this year, not just next year, but for the next five and ten years. Our priority must be the same as it was before prop Q, which is to fund the important, the essential health and social services of the city. You heard a broad coalition of people, myself included, come forward to advocate for those then, and [12:04:04 PM] we're doing the same now. Thank you. >> Good morning, mayor and council. I'm Monica Guzman, policy director at Garza. I'm starting with a resident statement. Good morning. I am Maria morales morales, a resident of district two. In August, you approved a budget with basic and critical needs that were contingent on the election results. Voters rejected proposition Q and the updated budget recommendations proposed by the city manager for fiscal 26 are not equitable. I urge you to listen to residents, community organizations like Garza and the community investment budget coalition. It is essential to fund the family stabilization grant, legal and mental health services for the immigrant community and Austin public health and social service contracts. The city council must consider these and other critical priorities, and invest and invest our resources in these efforts to ensure the well-being and safety of Austin. Thank you. Garza. Thanks. Mayor pro tem Fuentes and council members Velazquez and Siegel [12:05:05 PM] for their budget town hall last night. We have questions that were not shared in the current political climate. More residents lives are being disrupted and are afraid to take their children to school, go to work, or even go to a food distribution event. More people are being targeted based on the color of their skin or the language they speak. Would you move $1.5 million to social services to ensure funding for legal and mental health services for our immigrant community? Many residents continue to struggle with increasing cost of food, rising housing costs and eviction rates. And while the federal shutdown ended on November the 12th, there is still the threat of another. And while snap is to be funded through September 2026, the rate of reloading benefits varies from state to state, and there is always the possibility the funding will not go through September 2026. Would you move 1.3 million to fund the family stabilization grant and the flood insurance subsidy? Pilot 83 homeowners submitted interest and will [12:06:05 PM] likely qualify. Would you move up to $100,000 to pay flood insurance premiums or benefits for homeowners who are deemed eligible? Thank you. >> Hello, mayor, council members, I'm kaiba white speaking on behalf of public citizen's Texas office. Thank you. I realize that this is a difficult situation that you're in, but I do want to specifically advocate for the retention of the two new positions that were included in the budget for the climate action and resilience office, and thank you. All are well aware that that office has not received additional staffing in many years, despite having their scope expanding and frankly, the need expanding. It is a climate crisis. We cannot say that we are prioritizing climate and environment and not allow for additional staffing to actually do the work. Also, these two positions, one of them is an energy manager position. It is literally a [12:07:07 PM] position that will save the city money. It is to look at the city buildings and an ongoing basis. Look for opportunities to install solar, improve energy efficiency at those buildings, upgrade hvac systems. We hear all the time about deferred maintenance that maintenance is costing money to the city, right? So this one position for just over $100,000 is going to save much more money than that. Please find a vacancy somewhere in another department to fill that in the other position, the sustainability program manager also will make better use of the city's existing expenditures. The purpose of that position is to create more environmentally sustainable purchasing for the purchasing that the city is already doing. So we can be using our tax dollars, our public money, more effectively by not just meeting whatever the need is we need, you know, paper or whatever it [12:08:09 PM] is. We can buy that in a more sustainable way. We don't necessarily have to spend more money. So please find vacancies or other places so you can retain those positions. Thank you. >> My name is Kathy Mitchell and I am a little old retired lady from Dion. At this point I am here because when we need as much money as you need right now for the social services that are critical to public safety and public good. There is no other place to go besides the police budget. That is where all the money is and much of it is locked in to this commitment that we have on empty positions. So you've heard people say, you know, we have more than 300 vacant [12:09:09 PM] positions. Yes, we do, but more than that, we have given everything a fair try to recruit to fill those positions. There are voices in this community that are crying out, fill the positions. Yes, but to do that, we have to get accountability out of the police department to make changes at the police academy that they have been decidedly unwilling to do. There have been millions spent on consultants. We have listened to cadets. Cadets have sued the city. We've gotten a lot of information about what needs to change there, and I sat through a devastating trial last week, sat in the audience and listened to APD representing the city, speak about all the details as to why the training [12:10:14 PM] teaches officers to do what that officer did. It was terrible. It shouldn't be happening. And it's no wonder that attrition is over 50%. >> Mario two d3 wanted to focus on just a few things on the budget. I noticed on ems that they're looking for 12 sworn personnel. They're also looking for ems unit and 2026 fiscal year also 27. And then there's ems communications, increase in staffing levels in ems communications to support the growth in 911 calls includes for sworn personnel. So if you ask me that is a need. Well, we need it. Yes. Is that forecasting for the future. Yes. So you got all those three checks. There was one other thing that I noticed on the budget. There's a thing called [12:11:14 PM] living streets. It has better barricades. And this, from my understanding, is this works with the neighborhoods. That budget is $250,000. So I go back to what the mayor has said earlier. And, mayor, you know, you've been here before. You have the experience. I believe that the citizens of Austin put you there where you're at right now, today, because of your experience as as a mayor before and as experience with the state. And I what I heard earlier was a very good thing, you know, what is it that we need? And maybe that's something that you need to communicate with the other city council members. And just to kind of offset that with the experience of, of just you alone, we do have other council members that have experience, maybe not as much as you do, but they do have experience. And so I ask for each and every one of y'all to work together in making sure that this all [12:12:15 PM] gets worked out. Another thing is, we also need to protect the children. We need to help children, and we need to help the moms as well. Thank you. >> Our final group of speakers are Alicia Castillo, Charles Moore, Garrett Neves, and Kate Moore. >> Good afternoon. >> My name is Alicia Hudson. Oh, cute. Thank you. My name is Alicia Castillo. Good afternoon. I'm here representing the Texas civil rights project, where we've actually seen a recent increase in intakes about police brutality in Austin, which actually tracks with the recent report of a 60% increase in complaints of excessive use of force from the Austin police department just this year, 60% increase. But that is just one [12:13:18 PM] of the, you know, reasons that I'm coming here today and asking or really joining the chorus of folks saying that our recommendation is that we cut vacancies in APD. But I also want to add the recommendation that city council reconsider the option of renegotiating the police contract, which will preserve some of our fiscal health for many years to come. We understand that this year is already settled, but it what we're looking at right now represents a protection of the police budget and the future of police salaries at the cost of everyone else. And. While we disagree with the memo that you all received on the seventh, just on its face, I sat through many, many, many hours of those police contract negotiations. And my understanding is that the clause in section four of the police contract was designed to prevent what's happening in this exact moment, where a TRE fails and [12:14:19 PM] everything is on the chopping block except the police. The clause is there so that we can reconsider the police budget. And my understanding is that it's city council's decision and city council's discretion about whether or not that happens, rather than another person within the city. It's up to you all. So I would ask that you do genuinely consider that option of renegotiating the police contract, because the people of Austin really, really need that. And the people of Austin who are suffering as a result of federal cuts, they're also suffering at the hands of APD. >> Mr. Moore. >> Good morning y'all. I had this thing written, but then I think about all the times I speak how that's not me. And although city hall has changed a lot, I refuse to change with it. And, you know, Peter and Mary, the folks from guava have [12:15:20 PM] said all this amazing stuff, but I'm slightly agitated because by this time right now, I would have smoking two cigars up at this little cigar lounge and Round Rock. And I haven't had that. And I think I'm agitated by the fact that I've sacrificed my cigars to potentially talk to a city council. That does not seem to listen to people anymore. Couple the fact that I haven't had my cigars this morning, along with this amazing article that I saw brant Bingaman Wright in the title, kind of threw me for a loop. It says with the failed with the failure, prop Q Austin is entering into this austerity era. And brant, if you're watching or listening, great article, but the word austerity gave me some pause, because I think austerity assumes that there's going to be leadership. And I don't think we've seen leadership in terms of budget [12:16:21 PM] from this city council or in terms of budget for city council for quite some time. I think we saw leadership with zo, whose only person to vote against this. So thank you, zo. And I just want people to to know that this is the same city council that proposed prop Q and said, we're going to fight to get it through. Then they did very little to convince people to do it. So hopefully you listen to the people that have talked to you today and somebody takes some courage, some discipline to lead us into a budget that makes sense and, and force people to collaborate together so we can get back to the Austin that we used to be, because. >> Thank you, Mr. Moore. >> Whatever. >> Hi. My name is Kate Moore. I'm the vice president of strategy with echo. I wish I could be here under better circumstances, but we appreciate the steadfast focus of mayor Watson, mayor pro tem [12:17:21 PM] Fuentes and everyone on the dais to increase resources to support people ending their homelessness. This continues to be a priority for our community to solve, and your leadership is critical and deeply appreciated, regardless of any election outcome. We need to keep our focus on ending this humanitarian crisis. There are thousands of people who slept outside in our community last night and will again tonight. We owe it to them in this moment to not shy away from our commitment to ending homelessness, but to double down on it. Most importantly, we can't lose ground, echo stated. The system report, published last month, shows measurable progress in growing and improving our system to serve more people and serve them more effectively, we should continue to look for ways to improve efficiencies in our system to ensure every dollar spent is meaningfully invested in stability. But we should not do is jeopardize the services people are currently receiving to get and stay housed long term. We can't move backwards now. It feels like we say this a lot these days, but it's more important than ever to recommit to our goals as a community. Last week, the [12:18:23 PM] federal government released new priorities for federal homelessness funding. The new priorities cap funding for housing projects, meaning we stand to lose 70% of what we typically typically expect for housing to end people's homelessness. We estimate this could be between 7.5 million and $10 million of lost permanent housing funding for our community. To be clear, it can't just be up to the city of Austin to help fill in this funding gap, echo stands ready to continue our work with council and the homeless strategies and operations office to bring together federal, state, county and private partners. We must move together to meet the goals laid out in the guidelines to grow our homelessness response system so that this council approved at the beginning of the year, ending homelessness is achievable and this election should not alter the path we are on to achieve it. >> Thank you very much. Hello. [12:19:24 PM] >> My name is Garrett Neves. I am in. District five and I am here to ask you to use your full. >> Authority to get the. >> Money from the only place that the money can come, which is the big huge police budget. And to understand that. >> The people. >> Of the city will be behind you. I know that. >> There are powerful interests, that are in corporate interests, and it's tough to to vote to. Control the budget. But I want to tell you that I'll help you. I retired in on February 1st, and I've been active ever since. In my community organizing people, having doing relational [12:20:27 PM] organizing. And I will be able to turn out votes for you if you can stand up to the police. Thank you. >> Mayor. That concludes all speakers. >> Members, as you heard, that concludes all the speakers that have signed up to be part of the public comment at this work session. What I'm going to recommend, unless there's objection, is that we recess until 1:00 and then come back, and that's when we can start our discussion and any additional questions we have. The professional staff. Is that cool with everybody. All right. With then without objection, the city council stands in recess until promptly at 1:00. Thank you all for being here. And thank you for speaking. [12:52:23 PM] Faster than you. Nobody has it better than you. Better than you. Better than you. Nobody has it better than you. Better than you. Better than you. [1:00:20 PM] It's 1:00 on November 18th, 2025 and I will call back to order the Austin city council after a brief recess. Let me just say for for council members doing planning that item E one, which was an executive session to discuss legal issues related to a petition initiated or ordinance concerning the Austin convention center. The city attorney's office has withdrawn that item, so we will not be going into an executive session with that. It's now time for us to talk a little bit about the budget. Having heard public comment. So I'll ask if you would like to be heard if you'd let me know by getting in the queue here. And what I'll do is I'll recognize you in that way and I'll, I know everybody's got questions, and some may have lots of questions, but [1:01:21 PM] I'll try to do is the way I've done in the past is we'll go through a I'll try to make sure everybody gets an opportunity to speak. So the first round of questions, you know, I'll watch the clock and I may miss this by a little bit, but because I'm not setting stopwatches and that kind of thing. But I'll, I'll try to keep it about 15 minutes. And if I quietly stand up, wrap it up, but I'll come back to you. It's just I want to make sure that everybody has a chance to to ask questions. I want to ask a couple questions and I'll hit their button. Yet I'm assuming nobody questions after I gave that little speech. So, so. But but I want to make I want to have some clarity on a couple of things. One is people suggest that, and I've seen this suggested many times that the money that is part of what we're doing with the convention center is money that we ought to just pause and not [1:02:21 PM] do the convention center and take that money and put it into this budget. Miss Lang, could you or any of you respond to our ability to use that money in this budget? >> Sure. Thank you. Mayor. In regards to the convention center, in particular, the funding for the convention center is through the hotel occupancy tax. And there are there are restrictions on how those funds can be used. They can only be used for tourism and convention and hotel industries. And that means they cannot be used for our general fund operations. And so that's why the dollars that are being used for the expansion of the convention center cannot be redirected to the general fund because of those restrictions of how we use hot taxes. >> Okay. Another one that gets brought up from time to time is this council has looked at trying to future proof the cap, [1:03:23 PM] the idea of of work that's going on with I-35. And and so it gets generalized in reference to the cap and stitch. But use that use use that money to plug holes in the budget that you might have. Could you address that please? >> Sure. Similar to the convention center, the city as a whole, we have various funding sources. And so cap and stitch is funded. The the dollars that have been identified are through certificates of obligation. And those are debt instrument used to do capital projects. And those dollars cannot be used for again general operations. >> And then today we heard a couple of people make reference to in fact, somebody some were very specific about taking a specific amount of money out of project connect and plugging a hole. So and address address that if you would. [1:04:24 PM] >> Sure. Project connect is a little bit different because but it's different because it was a tax rate election. But it was for a specific project. And the dollars that were that the voters approved for project connect can only be used for those dollars. There's an agreement that the city wants. Those revenues are realized. It goes to atp to facilitate that program or that project. >> So so the the the TRE in that case said, if you vote for this, this is what you're going to get. And that's the money would go to project connect. >> Correct. And there was a contract with the voters to specifically say what we would use those dollars for. >> All right. Another question that I have is the idea of. And I don't know how to phrase this, but the way I've heard it is reopening the police contract or doing something of that nature. Mr. Benigno, I'd like you to address that situation. [1:05:27 PM] First of all, we have a contract, and there's a provision that some make reference to as though it is a blanket provision that allows for us to just reopen it if there's a failed TRE. But you have put out a memo on that, would you address address the issue of whether or not that money is available? >> Yes. Thank you mayor. And the language you're referring to is in the contract with the Austin police association. And one of the triggering factors is a voter approval tax rate election that fails. And so we obviously just had a voter approval tax rate election that failed. And then it lays out provisions for potentially reopening that contract. Should the cfo certify that a reduction is necessary. So, you know, in looking at that, I think it's the context matters. [1:06:28 PM] I think the facts and circumstances surrounding the TRE in question matter, and were part of the things I took into consideration in looking at that contract language. We just were talking about the tax rate election for project connect, for the Austin transit partnership, for a light rail system. So, you know, one of the things I thought about is in different circumstances with different contexts and different facts and circumstances, how would this language apply? I think clearly in a situation where we had a tax, were we to have another tax rate election for something like light rail and that light rail proposition were to fail? I think most people, perhaps not everybody, but most people would agree. Well, we don't need to open up the police contract and make reductions to the police contract because a light rail proposition failed. Alternatively, I thought about the tax rate election that the school district recently held, which was explicitly a tax rate election to fund raises for teachers. I could foresee a situation in the future, given [1:07:28 PM] our 3.5% revenue cap, just to meet just to provide employees with pay raises to to stay competitive in the market, we may need to go to the voters and do something similar. Tax rate election for employee wage increases. If we were to have something like that in the TRE, were to fail, I think I would certainly say, well, in that context, we should be making proportionate reductions to the police contract in line with reductions to other employee wages. And so looking at the circumstances and facts, the context around the TRE that we had, my determination was it was much more like the, the, the TRE related to project connect, where this was a TRE to fund some very important priorities, but it was to fund new initiatives, things primarily that we weren't currently doing, enhanced services for homelessness, additional funding for park maintenance crews, additional ems personnel, enhancing our reserves to get them in [1:08:28 PM] alignment with the city's financial policies. But it was funding new things over and above what might be considered a base budget. So for those reasons, in this circumstance, I, I felt like a reduction was not necessary in order for us to the budget was not necessary in order for us to fund the provisions of the of the police contract. >> Okay. Thank you. Mayor pro tem. >> Thank you. Colleagues, I have a number of questions, but I think first I'll just start with the presentation that we received earlier today. And just before I head into ems. Ems is a area that a majority of us on the dais have signaled as a priority for us to ensure that it is fully funded. So I'd like to have a more focused conversation on that. But first, just a few questions around some of the initiatives that you've laid out. First, let's start with on page nine where you lay out the financial [1:09:30 PM] breakdown on city departmental budgets for this year and for next year under fire. So on. For this proposed budget, you have 5.7 million to fund the fire tentative agreement. And next year, I don't see any allocation for the second year terms of that contract. Is that are those terms being included in as part of the financial forecast, or if you could speak to that amount. >> Let me get the amount pulled. But yes, we do have an assumption in the forecast that the fire tentative agreement will have funding for it, and the 5.7 is based on the the agreement that was put in place for this year. Give me one second. I'll get those dollars pulled up for fiscal year 27 okay. >> But to to the best of your ability, that assumption for year two is included in. >> It is included. >> It's at 12.7. >> Okay. On page 12. Moving on. [1:10:33 PM] This is to adjustments that were made in the base proposal proposal that we have from the manager. One of the questions I have and really just want to daylight that we have 540,000 provided through the housing trust fund for a tax and estate planning services pilot program. And while I certainly support this program and its efforts as a way to mitigate displacement, my question to my colleagues really first, or a comment to my colleagues and a question to you is, is this the time for us to be funding new pilot programs when we have several initiatives, including pilot programs that the city has funded for the last several years, one in particular, the family stabilization grant supported by the city the last three years that does not currently have any funding to continue it. And yet here we have a recommendation to start a new program at 540,000. So my question for staff is, can you walk us through the context as [1:11:33 PM] to why staff is recommending us provide funding for this new initiative? >> So this initiative was included in the proposed budget. And so the adjustment that you see is a reduction from that versus continuing it at the 700 that was originally proposed in the budget. So, so it's just taking away from what was originally included in the city manager's proposed Wright. >> But rather than because we know that there were other initiatives included in the adopted budget that are not here, I guess I need more context. Perhaps if there's the director of housing or if someone could speak to what information should we be aware of as to why this is being put forth as a recommendation to to cede at this time? Is there someone from housing that can speak to it, the importance of this program? >> Doesn't appear. >> Okay. We can get back to it [1:12:34 PM] tomorrow. That's fine. The next question I have is on page 15. This is around a one time allocation for 875,000. Excuse me, for the 898,000 to fund supports for the development of the city's next bond program. Can I have more detail as to what this amount will actually fund? >> This information? I mean, this 898 is a carryover from the funding that was put in place in fiscal year 25. I think it was about 1.2 million that was put in place to help with the planning for the for the bond program, including community engagement and the like, for as we go through and prepare for fiscal year 27. And so it was it was program dollars that was requested by the capital delivery services department to continue the work and preparation for that for that program. >> And so I guess thank you. [1:13:35 PM] That's helpful. I just, you know, we are at a time where we're trying to identify sources of revenue. And and certainly there are many priorities before us that we're trying to identify where we can pull from. So I'm asking questions not because I don't believe in the importance of community engagement around a potential bond package, but part of the questions I'm asking as a policymaker is to better understand what are the the absolute needs of these programs. And in other words, why is it so critical to fund this initiative at this particular level? It seems like maybe, perhaps someone can speak to the nearly 900,000 for community engagement on the bond initiative. >> If we're going to go back to the housing question real quick, do we have our director of housing? >> Oh, perfect. Thank you. Hello. >> Hello. What was the question? I'm sorry. >> This is around context, around creating a new initiative, a pilot program for [1:14:35 PM] the estate and planning program. Estate and probate. >> Sure. This program was identified by staff to really look at economic mobility and how best we can move the needle in that space. However, considering the budget constraints, we are willing and understand that we need to. There needs to be some cost savings somewhere, so we're not necessarily advocating for the support of this, maybe somewhere down the line. But we understand the importance of other issues that need to be supported. >> Thank you. I really appreciate your candor and your and your input here. And colleagues, I would just offer this as a potential area that we could perhaps fund another priority. I certainly recognize that we have a number of housing related needs, particularly when it comes to our permanent supportive housing units that are coming online. One of them is slated to open in just two months from now, and we're looking for funding for supportive, supportive services. I know [1:15:36 PM] enough to know that the housing trust fund probably has some parameters on how we fund things out of it, so I'll defer to staff if that might be a permissible use, or if there is perhaps another priority that we should reallocate those dollars. Of course, pending the consent of my colleagues here. The other question, sorry to jump around here. I'm going back to page eight. This is around citywide review of market or citywide market study. You know, part of this base budget proposal, city manager has highlighted that we will not have funds for a cost of living adjustment for city workers. And recognizing that that is one of the realities that we are contending with. I question the timing of us funding a citywide market review at 5 million at this time. Certainly, there's a lot of value in us doing market studies to ensure that our positions that the city offers are competitive and that we are [1:16:37 PM] recruiting top talent and that we are maintaining wages that are that positions the city to be able to attract top talent. However, if we're coming into a time where cost of living adjustments aren't guaranteed, I don't know if this is the right time for us to fund a 5 million citywide market study. Should we instead use those dollars to do a cost of living adjustment for city workers for next year? >> I would like to clarify. That's to implement the market study, not to complete it. And so that would be the implementation cost. >> Okay. And what what does that entail. So these would be wage adjustments for positions. >> Yes. And Rebecca Kennedy is coming up to give more detail. >> Rebecca Kennedy with the human resources department. Yes. That is the cost. That would be [1:17:38 PM] to implement a market study that we are currently starting to review over half of our citywide titles. And so this would impact our employees with wage adjustments based on the market. >> And is there a way I mean, I'm glad we're you're highlighting this for us now because I would want to know. I would want to better understand if there's a particular area in which there is a huge pay disparity of what the city offers currently for the position versus where the market is at, in other words, areas, and that we need to do the wage adjustment to be able to be at market level versus, you know, the other need that we're going to have to contend with for next year. And of course, this is a conversation more so for for next year. Right. Or actually no this year because you're implementing it throughout this fiscal year. >> It would be implemented in fy 27. So the next fiscal okay. But yes, that is what we look at. We look at positions that we haven't looked at over the last 3 to 4 years. And then we look at ones that are our consultant, tell when they get our information that they're [1:18:39 PM] looking to say this one appears to be out of market. We're going to guarantee that we get that information so we can make sure that our positions are where they need to be. >> Very good. Thank you. With that, colleagues, I'm happy to move on to ems. Unless, mayor, you want me to yield the floor. Okay. If so, the other question I have and part of the amendment that I, alongside my colleagues, council members Ellis Velasquez and Siegel have brought forward are to address the need for us to fund overtime within our ems department. We know that we've had brownouts in our city. In fact, we had brownouts just this past weekend. That's when we have an ambulance that is not able to go out because we don't have the staffing and resources necessary to have that response out in our community, and that is a significant issue. It's one that is top of mind for us, and it's part of why we're bringing forward an amendment that seeks to cut from some departments, from a list of prioritizations that departments have submitted [1:19:39 PM] as part of the budget process, on areas that they would be okay with cutting as well as pulling from our reserves. So with that, if I can invite the chief chief Luckritz to join us here at the dais to be able to speak to first, you know, let's start with the brownouts, why they're occurring, and how might funding for overtime be a strategy to help and ensuring that we have the necessary staff? >> Mayor pro tem, while ems is getting settled, would you like to hear from hcm Mike Rogers on the cds question? Yes. >> Yes okay. Yes. Thank you, mayor pro tem, for your question. I wanted to talk to you about the 898. That is more than just the community engagement piece. That is also for the programing and project development to develop this new bond program. So the scope, schedule, cost estimating. And so there's in-house as well as consultants that are helping [1:20:39 PM] with that whole development piece. >> So it's the consultant team that helps the advisory task force put together the recommendations. >> It's a combination of in-house and the consultant team that's doing project development, as well as the community engagement piece with the surveys as well as the the town halls. >> Okay. And that is a $900,000 expense. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Because they would be making their recommendation to us by may. Yes. Right. >> Yes. And one of the main things that we're doing differently here is we're trying to learn from past situations. And this is upfront making sure that we have those cost estimates as tight as possible. So there isn't any creep within within these projects as we move forward. So that's where really a lot of the funding is being spent, is making sure that those estimates are as tight as possible. So we don't have any surprises in the future about higher costs. [1:21:40 PM] >> Okay. So the funding will be used to give more accurate assessment on the project costs that the committee will recommend. >> Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of different things, not only community engagement, but it's also the project development. It's the cost estimating for the projects. It's getting the the proposals all ready to be able to present to city council and to the community. >> Okay. That's very important. I think I appreciate the context. Yeah. Thank you chief. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem and council members, to give you some background on the process and how we ended up in this position where there are days that we do not staff all of the the ambulances that we would otherwise staff, we really started that process back in 2022 and that at that time it was really based around staffing issues that we were having, the large number of vacancies that we had and staff fatigue and burnout, and we [1:22:41 PM] made a decision to reduce the amount of mandatory overtime that we were putting on to our providers, and that resulted in certain days where we had no one that was willing to work or that wanted to work. And so we began from time to time, and I should say, pretty regularly, reducing the total number of ambulances that were on the road as time progressed. Since 2022, we have had a very aggressive push towards recruiting and vacant and filling vacancies, as you're all aware, and we've brought our our vacancy rate down from in in the 20%, 20, 20 plus percent range down to around 15% today. And so as we came through into 2025, which is where we changed kind of our perspective on what those the staffing plan would be. There was a recognition that as we brought on those individuals over those few years, and we were bringing in over 100 new bodies in seats, those were not [1:23:42 PM] all fully productive individuals in their role because they have to come in. They have to go through the academy. They have to go through training, they have to go through credentialing and all of these different processes before they're truly, fully clear to be able to, to work in the field. And so we increased the number of personnel on the payroll that we we had and that we were paying for, but they were not still out there working. Now at the same time we did, as we started clearing these individuals, we had more folks that were willing to work that overtime, that were willing to volunteer to fill those shifts, which we had not had in the past. However, looking into 2025, those higher number of individuals that were nonproductive, that were still in training, combined with the number of individuals that were now willing to work those shifts, gave us less flexibility and less financial capacity to be able to continue to do that. And in order to meet our budget and really focus in on that recruiting and onboarding piece, we had to reduce the the the number of [1:24:42 PM] ambulances that we were staffing at any given moment. >> So, you know, part of what you have listed as part of the ems enhancements report. So the department's recommendation, if we had additional funding where we would put that funding, if you listed overtime funding as, as the number one. Yes. Can you just talk us through that? >> Sure. So what we did is we looked at all of the efforts that we were putting in early 2025, when we were at a point where we had enough volunteers to fill all those ambulances. Plus we had all of the other programs that the council has, has authorized to to put into place, plus all of the additional academies and folks that we had in training. And we looked at what we were spending at that time and marched out, what it would be for us to continue that process. And that was where we came up with the approximately $4.4 million for us to continue that process of of not only staffing the ambulances, but also hosting the academies, because we still do have an excess of 100 [1:25:43 PM] vacancies that haven't even started that extended process of onboarding. And so this is a multi-year process that's going to take for us to to get to that place. And I'll also say, recognizing that the. As the department grows, right, that's additional positions that we need to add and additional folks we are going to need to onboard. And as the department gets larger, even with our turnover rates staying the same, the number of people that are going to cycle through will continue to increase. And so we're going to have to have larger academies than we did pre 2022 in that covid era. >> Right. When you highlight. And so this is you have an ongoing need for the department to increase funding both to address the overtime needs for this fiscal year. But recognizing the over 100 vacancies that we have within the department and just how long the time necessary to us to fully staff the department, I mean that we're looking at, what, 4 to 5 years out at this point? >> Potentially, yes. >> And so what else? What else [1:26:45 PM] are you considering as a departmental chief of other strategies to that? We should be that the city should be doing to ensure that we don't have brownouts. >> There. So it's important for us really to monitor our performance as, as a department and understand what the implications are. And as part of our decision, even going back to 2022, we know we had to do some real time monitoring to look at what is the overall impact of these decisions that we make. As everyone here knows, the department has grown significantly and as best as I can say it, from a single tool to a multi tool device or Swiss army knife, and we have all of these different functions. The priority for us, as you know, is making sure that we have those ambulances available for those really sick, really high acuity individuals that have immediate life threats that need transportation to definitive care in the hospital. But that represents a very small portion of the calls that we go on. And in order to try [1:27:46 PM] to keep those ambulances available and address the fact that the majority of reasons that people call 911 for ems at this point in time is for lower acuity calls. We invested in these other services, like our collaborative care line and our community health paramedics. You know, we really had to look at the what is the, for lack of a better word, return on investment for something like the collaborative care line and how many calls can we then? Can they answer and not need an ambulance? Right. And then compare that to the staffing that I have for the collaborative care line versus the staffing it would take to add additional ambulances. And so from a managerial perspective, I'm looking at that piece of with the limited number of resources that I have, the number of personnel, the limited number of people, where are the best places to put them. That's going to have the biggest impact on the system. And that's why we made the decision to look at this as a combination. This past year, when we had these budget constraints to put continue to put those efforts in the collaborative care line and community health, but scale them back a little bit, and [1:28:48 PM] also recognizing that scaling back those frontline emergency operations a little bit while monitoring our response times and trying to ensure that since only about 54% of our patients that actually end up with transport to the hospital, that we're sending the right resource at the right to the right patient, and we're allowing those ambulances to focus on those higher acuity calls. >> Very good. And you said that's 54% of the cases that actually need an ambulance. >> They end up being transported to the hospital. Yes. >> They need the transport. Okay. >> I will verify that number. That might be a couple months old, but I certainly, at one point in the very recent future was 54%. >> And another question that's come up as part of our budget conversations is the implementation of a previously adopted item that council passed regarding. It was led by council member Alison alter, and it was on the call takers and the the mental health response effort. And, you know, was this very long, dedicated effort to increase our billing [1:29:49 PM] support so that we can improve, increase our revenues that we get from billing insurers for those transports that the city does, and that has led and resulted in an increase in revenue to the city. Part of the direction from, I believe there was two resolutions. One of them might have been a budget amendment, but part of the direction in that was to ensure that we were able to expand our call taker capacity, as well as a mental health component. Can you walk us through has that piece been fully implemented? Where are we at on on that resolution? >> So I am going to turn this over to the budget office to outline what I can say is, you know, we have seen some significant revenue. It's something we're very proud of in excess of $20 million from from when we started just a few years ago, focusing on it. But we've also seen exponential growth in the expenses of the department. And so I will turn it over to the budget office if they'd like to speak to exactly how they've allocated that. >> Okay. [1:30:50 PM] >> Thank you chief. >> So when we look at the ems budget as, as the chief has said, you know, they have recognized some additional revenue. But when we look overall at their budget as a whole, we see that the increase in the investments on the expenditure side have increased as well. >> Expenditures of 25.4 million. >> So when we look at their expenditures, they've gone up about $25.4 million. When we compare beginning at fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 25, and then their revenue has increased $6.7 million. So there have been significant investments in there in their programs and in expanding their services. And that is much lower, I mean, much higher than the revenue that they've collected year over year. Okay. >> Thank you. Thank you for that context, colleagues. I know this is an area that is [1:31:51 PM] top priority for many of us on the dais. So I will yield the conversation to another colleague. I just want to emphasize and draw attention that we have submitted an amendment for your consideration that seeks to ensure that we have the necessary funding for ems overtime. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem, councilmember Siegel, then councilmember Ellis, then councilmember Laine. >> Thank you, mayor, and thanks to the budget team for all your work, two budget cycles and 3 or 4 months. I hope your team is drinking water and getting some rest. But yeah, I really thank thankful for all the civil servants who are working with us in this process. I also want to thank the mayor and council members, alter Laine, qadri and vela for your post last night, including the suggestion that we rely a little more on our professional staff through the amendment process, and suggesting that we state our priorities and potential areas for cost savings. So I'm going to take that direction to heart here. So from a priority point of view, just want to add to what [1:32:51 PM] mayor pro tem shared. Definitely avoiding brownouts at ems for me is an absolute top priority. And you know, we have our proposed amendment that's posted on the message board. Another priority for ems, for me, that, you know, the sub quorum I was in previously focused on during the last budget cycle was, you know, these basic life support vehicles or so-called bls vehicles. And this is another one of these cost effective strategies to improve life saving 911 response. And so I just want to state that I would love to see at least one bls unit in the in the budget for next year. Another area that the other sub quorum posted about is the mcat. You know, cat deploys mental health expertise to complex and challenging psychiatric emergencies to increase the likelihood of efficient and positive outcomes for this type of specialized response. It's co-located with 911 and is a complementary tool to other public safety departments who do not have the same level of [1:33:52 PM] training and expertise when faced with mental health crises. So, with a $3 million gap in our cat funding, our 911 response programs are incomplete and those other departments will be impacted. And I would like to see this area funded. A third area for me is food. You know, our sub quorum, along with council members Velasquez Ellis and mayor pro tem Fuentes and myself, we're proposing an amendment to fund two types of food access programs in the community. And especially important given the recent, you know, federal shutdown with impacts on food access. So one aspect of this amendment would fund 30 food pantries at title one elementary schools that, through a partnership with the central Texas food bank, would provide fresh produce and frozen proteins to children and their families. And the other supported program would be basically delivered meals to older, older adults in our community to make sure they have nourishing meals as well. And so I would like to prioritize this need in terms of savings. I want to look at [1:34:53 PM] something that's been brought up by several of us, which is overtime and vacancies. And so I just want to state that, you know, for the d7 office, we agree with the mayor pro tem that we should also look at potential sworn vacancies as well as unsworn vacancies. And in particular, I'm looking at council budget. Question 168 submitted by council member duchen. During the summer process, which notes that the vast majority of vacancies that have been open for longer than two years are in the Austin police department. So my first question to staff is when you're looking at potential savings, could you also look not only at civilian positions but also sworn positions? >> Thank you councilmember. And of course we would be happy to look at that. I just I know there was a lot of discussion about vacancies during the public testimony. So I did pull up some numbers just because it's one of the budget tools we use every year is to look at [1:35:53 PM] what our vacancy trends and how many vacant positions do we have, and to adjust the budget accordingly. We call it vacancy savings. It's essentially a negative amount that we budget to offset some of the wages that we put into the budget for people. So if you have 100 people, but 10% of them tend to be vacant at any given time, will give you vacancy savings, will back out that vacancy savings amount. So for fiscal year 25, across all of our city enterprises, about 16,000 employees, we budgeted $145 million of vacancy savings that fiscal year just closed, and we came in at $148 million. So I just put that out there that as part of our budgeting plan, is to look at vacancy levels, anticipated vacancy levels, and to account for that in the budget that we bring forward so we can look at the vacant positions. I just don't think there's going to be a lot of additional savings to be brought forward. >> Councilmember, do you mind if I ask a follow up question to that? >> I have follow up questions. Go ahead, go ahead. [1:36:54 PM] >> Yeah. Would you describe that budget process? What you just said was what the outcomes of the budget process were, but describe the budget process when it comes to vacancies, because I think it's intuitive for most of us to say, oh, there's a vacancy. So there must be money there. But what you just described is a negative that you back out something. Would you walk through that so that we we all understand that. >> Yeah. And I'll just use easy round numbers because it makes the math easier. But if we had a department with 100 positions and they each got paid $100,000 a year inclusive of benefits, I think that would be about $10 million of a budget. And the departments, of course, would love to have that full $10 million. But these guys are tough on them, and they'll look at their their vacancy rates. And it varies by department. Some departments might be have higher turnover rates, so they have higher vacancy rate than other departments. So we're looking at it department by department. But in my hypothetical example, if a department was running on [1:37:56 PM] average about a 10% vacancy rate, in other words, only 90 of their hundred positions are filled. These guys would say, we don't need the 100. You don't need the $10 million. You only need $9 million, because at any given time you have about ten positions vacant. And so there's a bit of a negotiation on that. But I just put these numbers out there because they got it pretty darn close. Last fiscal year, 145 million of budgeted vacancy savings in anticipation of having a lot of positions, you know, about 9% vacancy rate is our current level. >> So if what you're saying is, if there were 100 employees, yeah, you assumed a 10% vacancy rate. You didn't budget for that 10%. Correct. So if today we said we would like that 10% to plug another budget hole, it's not there. >> You'd be using the money twice essentially. Yeah. >> And thank you. If I could get a little deeper into this, because one of the things I've become aware of and I'll ask [1:38:56 PM] you to educate me better, is that there's some sort of relationship between vacancies and overtime, especially as it concerns the Austin police department. And so going back to this council budget, question number 168, it lists that there's at least 106 long term sworn police department vacancies. By contrast, the next highest number from another department on the list was only 15. Right. Could you explain a little further how the so-called unfilled positions relates to the police department's ability to use overtime? >> Yep. So drilling down in the data more and the numbers I gave you was for our whole city. So if you wanted to look just at the public safety departments and they are a little bit different for all of our sworn positions across the city police, fire and ems, the sworn personnel, we budgeted $34.4 million of vacancy savings last fiscal year. Those departments collectively realized $45.7 million of vacancy savings. So they had [1:39:58 PM] more vacancies and they had more savings than what we had anticipated in the budget. In fact, they had about $11 million more vacancies and savings than we had anticipated in the budget. But their public safety departments, they have staffing requirements. And so typically when there's more vacancies, there's more of a need to use overtime to meet the mission. And so you'll see the police department and the fire department and ems running higher overtime when they have vacancies. So that is part of our consideration on the budget team when they say, okay, we got to manage these departments budgets, they're going to have some vacancies. We want to offset that. We want to realize that savings as part of our development plan. But we also want to recognize that when they're vacancies are high, they're going to be running higher overtime. So that's how that dynamic works for those departments specifically. >> And so then it becomes more of an operational question about whether the amount of overtime is justified, like how do we how do we understand [1:40:59 PM] whether, for example, it sounds like maybe $10 million in overtime was kept by APD from vacancy savings or some number around that ballpark? How do we understand whether that overtime is necessary versus optional? >> And that would we could have the chief come down and speak to that. But specific to the police department, they outpaced their vacancy, their budgeted savings target last year by 8.7 million. So that was funding that we had budgeted for wages that they didn't use for wages, but was there for them to run overtime shifts to meet different standards that they may have for shifts and officer safety. Okay. But there's not, you know, in some cases, like in the fire department, it's a mandated overtime model in the police department. Don't believe there's a mandated model, but there are no standards for deployment and keeping the community in our officers safe. >> Okay. Thank you. I'll hold some other questions for offline to better understand [1:42:00 PM] this. I guess the last point I want to make. And thank you, Mr. Benigno, in terms of overall spending, I mean, one of the metrics I've kind of adopted for my own analysis is the proportion of the budget that APD takes up compared to the rest of the general fund and compared to last year's adopted budget. The APD share of the general fund was about 34.8%. And in the latest proposed budget, it's up to 35.5%. So I'm concerned that the share of the budget is increasing pretty substantially right now. And in this context, we're acknowledging through our programs that a lot of 911 response needs to be executed by other departments and agencies. Right? So it's not just police to respond to every emergency. We need social workers. We need mental health providers, you know, ems, fire and so forth. And so I would like to see if there are ways we can fund the full panoply of [1:43:01 PM] emergency response programs and APD at the same proportion of the budget. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember, councilmember, councilmember Laine. Then, councilmember alder. >> Thank you. I wasn't going to start my remarks, but I saw that chief Davis had made her way in, and I didn't know if she wanted to add anything. Chief Davis, I just know there was some brief discussion around overtime. And so it might be helpful as we go through these conversations, if you have any input on, you know, how you make sure your your positions are staffed, how you make sure that those patrol shifts have the right personnel count in them. Did you want to expand on any sort of overtime issues? >> I was told that he did such a fabulous job of answering that question, so. >> Oh, great. >> No. I think anytime we're looking at overtime and the use of it, you have to be one very careful and you have to be very responsible with that. With that money. I think that I have I've developed strategies. We gave back a $9 million last year by putting people back on patrol, which they needed to be. [1:44:01 PM] And I certainly didn't go in with the vision of this affecting budget, but it did. And also recognizing the blue Santa and the warehouse that we were spending $500,000 a year renting. And so giving that back and moving us to a facility. So I feel like we have been good stewards as far as looking at ways that we can do that. But I can tell you this, I also feel that as the newest police chief here, that we are really making a turn, and I feel like the researchers and the people that we have brought in to to look at the police department to make serious changes, it's also important that we stay on track with that, and we don't lose focus on where we're going forward. >> Great. Thank you. I just wanted to daylight. I am also supportive of us finding more money for our ems medics. I know I'm in a sub quorum with mayor pro tem Fuentes and council members Siegel. And who? Who's our extra person? >> Velasquez V. >> V Jose Velazquez. [1:45:03 PM] >> What I would I would never forget Jose. >> It's been a it's been a long couple of weeks for us up here, but we're making our way through. And so I won't belabor the points that we had gone over for ems. But I do want to make sure, you know, that it's evident that council has a a commitment to not have blackout and brownout stations. You know, when I first came on the dais, we were pushing forward with building new fire stations and medic stations to make sure that we had quick response time. And so it's kind of sad to see a number of years later that we're in a position where some of those either may have shifts that that, you know, the truck just isn't staffed with personnel, and the call is going to be responded to by another station that's further away, or that there may not be trucks at all in these stations. And so that's a huge concern of mine. I want to make sure that we're properly supporting our our 911 system and making sure that people can show up when folks are at, at their neediest [1:46:04 PM] moment for help. I also wanted to daylight. I'm still curious about the feasibility studies. We had earmarked some money for the three libraries. There's the new one at colony park and expansions at Millwood and Hampton branch libraries. Are any of those included in the capital delivery services? That 900,000 we were just chatting about a little earlier that has some some staff time and some consultant time wrapped into it. >> Those are not included in the in the one time from the bsr for cds. Those are separate funding. >> Okay, okay. We will continue looking at that because I think that's really important. I'm worried we're going to miss the Marc if we end up with a November 26th bond and we don't have these feasibility studies done, I want to make sure that that input is actually turning into the new library and district one, and expansion of libraries in district eight and district seven, even though I know Millwood is very close to district six as well. And then I had another question about temporary employee benefits. We had had this conversation. It's [1:47:07 PM] actually been a couple of rounds at this point. I think it was back when councilmember Ann kitchen was on the dais, which must have been about 2022 or earlier, where we talked about the temporary benefits for temporary employees getting to participate in the benefits. And it seems like those temporary employees are no longer included. Can you tell me if that's accurate? >> So yes, there was $100,000 in the approved budget for temporary benefits that are not currently included in the amended proposal. >> Oh, sorry, I apologize. With the temporary benefits we are following the affordable care act, and if someone works that 30 hours a week and and over, we qualify them for benefits. We had a very small portion of employees that we reached out [1:48:08 PM] to to maintain their benefits and true up their hours of work. So so they would in fact qualify. So we were trying to work with the ACA and and follow that standard and also be able to assist the people that had had benefits in the past and make sure that they would be able to maintain them. >> Is it that part time temporary benefits are overburdensome? It seems like a relatively small amount of money to be able to cover these folks. And I know some of this is, you know, temporary employees and part time. Those are our lifeguards. Those are folks that aren't going to get medical and dental benefits otherwise. And it just seems like $100,000 shouldn't shouldn't be the make or break on whether we step up and provide this. >> Yeah, that definitely is the decision that that can be made. That was what we were recommending is to go ahead and follow that affordable care act standard and, and move forward [1:49:09 PM] with that uniform application of standard. >> Okay. But there's no rule that we have to follow that. Exactly. >> No, that was something that we were implementing in order to ensure that we had a just a uniform standard that applied to everyone. There wasn't any disparate impact. >> Okay. And what do we need to do to change that? Just find the money. Or do we need to change some sort of other directive? >> It would be monetary. It would be monetary. >> Okay, well, I'm going to do what I can to come up with 100 K between here and Thursday. Okay. I really hate hearing that our lifeguards can't go to the dentist like I just you can't do your job if you're a lifeguard and you have dental pain. It's just something I think we should step up into and and be able to take care of. >> Okay. >> But thank you. And then I just wanted to flag that the wildfire mitigation, I believe that's been taken out of this one as we had to lower the budget. >> Yeah. >> Eric Nelson, deputy director, [1:50:11 PM] budget and organizational excellence, is the additional million that was added at approved has been backed out in the proposed amended recommended recommendation over the 280,000 for wildfire shelters and equipment has been in there since the proposed budget and remains in there. >> Okay, I appreciate that. I'm going to keep digging and see if we can get that extra wildfire mitigation in there. So much of the city is in high wildfire risk. I just want to make sure we're appropriately supporting that, that division. So I'm going to keep searching for that and just wanted to flag that. I'm really curious about making sure that we maintain that. Okay. That's all I'm going to say for now. I've got a couple other thoughts, but I know that we have some time after folks have been able to ask their questions in daylight, their priorities, and a little more time tomorrow morning as well. So I'll keep thinking on it. Thanks. >> Thank you, councilmember, councilmember Laine and councilmember alter. >> Thank you. I share many of the concerns that we've heard [1:51:11 PM] around ems during our initial budget process. I was someone who stepped forward to try to ensure that there was budget for some of these programs. With ems. I'm going to have a few questions related to overall public safety. But rather than repeating what my colleagues have already said, I will say simply that I have concern when ems becomes less and less of the percentage of public safety spending out of our public safety budget. We have heard from our chief of ems that lower acuity calls are the lion's share of what they are working on, how to address. And we've also heard about ambulance brownouts, which absolutely impact the outlying parts of our city more than the central parts of our city. Because of the way the ambulances get drawn into the central parts of the city, if we don't ensure that we are maintaining sound, sound spending practices, not just [1:52:12 PM] the dollars amount dollar spent. Also, are we staying within the range of what our Texas peer cities are spending, or are we starting to get way outside of the range? Then lives will be lost if we don't make sure that all of our public safety spending doesn't go towards contracts. It also goes towards investments that improve how we're deploying our resources and how quickly and effectively we're responding to calls for assistance. It will cost us lives. And so, as you all have already said so eloquently, it is a high priority for me that we fully fund these ems initiatives as quickly as we can find the way to do it. I do have a couple of questions related to public safety. And actually, as I've already been a lot of examples that relate to ems, I will spend a little bit more time on the investments that can create improved response in our public safety department. And I know, miss Lang, that our director [1:53:12 PM] Lang that we had discussed this a little bit off offline. But while we are making investments as a city in our it and some of the other centralization and infrastructure type projects, I would like to understand how in our budget we are funding investments in the technology that would make, for example, our public safety response more effective than it currently is. And I know some people are satisfied with that, but some are not. And I'm thinking specifically of, I know we'll be getting a report in December about the joint emergency communications department proposal, but that may well have uncovered some need, and I would love to understand how those types of infrastructure investments are being made as it relates, budgeted for as it relates to public safety. >> So I think we're going to have to get some of the team to come back and have that conversation and I'll I'll see if we can have somebody [1:54:14 PM] prepared to talk about it tomorrow to to detail those investments. >> I appreciate that. That sounds good. And following on the heels of some of the questions that were raised around overtime, these are some pretty big numbers of vacancy that have been long standing. Across multiple public safety agencies. Me personally, I'm particularly concerned about the long standing APD vacancies because one, I personally don't find it credible that staffing up is going to occur to that level in any sort of a finite amount of time. And it's not just to do with Austin, and it's to do with national trends. It's also to do with state law that has mandated an officer on every single school campus in the state of Texas. It's challenging to staff up in these types of circumstances. So the next question that I have relates to when we have these large numbers for vacancies, and I heard a response that for APD, a lot of that is going to overtime. How [1:55:15 PM] are we as it relates to our sworn positions, making that plan for how we're going to respond to all of the needs, rather as opposed to just carrying vacancy forward and then being able to perpetually use it for overtime. I mean, I haven't heard that type of analysis of those management aspects of those agencies. I'm forgive me for my overly broad question, my financial services, friends. >> Well, and yeah, if you want to, you know, give us details. We're happy to get you some detailed answers back. But broadly, it has been a challenge to fill police officer positions, sworn police officer positions. There's a high number of vacancies currently I think report I'm looking at 278 vacancies currently in the police departments. Not that they're not critically needed, but they've been very difficult to fill. Similarly, in ems we've had a challenge filling positions. We've made some changes to contracts, increasing pay, increasing [1:56:17 PM] recruitment efforts, but we continue to struggle in those two areas in particular. But again, when we're looking at any department, including our public safety departments at a high, has a high number of vacancies, these guys are going to say, we are not going to give you all the money to fill all those positions. We know you're not going to be able to fill them all next year. We can look at the timing of your cadet classes and your graduation classes and project fairly reliably, how many positions you'll be able to fill, and so how much savings we should be able to take back, you know, anticipate in the budget development process and build those projected savings into the budget that we bring before council. Again, we're a little more cautious, or I should say more. There's an additional consideration in our public safety departments about the extent to which vacancies are going to drive the need for overtime expenses. And so that all goes into the calculations. When we bring the budget forward to council. All of that has been taken into account in the fiscal year 26 budget that [1:57:17 PM] you all adopted, built into that budget was anticipated vacancies and us budgeting accordingly. >> So picking up on the theme that the voters have asked us to do things differently than we have in the past. And I, I see so many commendable ways in which our city manager and staff have gotten to work on restructuring, where we need to doing things differently in various ways. I know that the and for good reason. There has been hesitance to discuss sworn positions to when we earlier just this morning talked about vacancies. It was only non-sworn. It wasn't sworn. And I think that for the number of years that we have had substantial vacancy rates, it allows us to continue managing in a way that isn't as effective as we could, because as long as we're holding those vacancies and those positions just vacant, there isn't a plan [1:58:19 PM] to actually meet those needs. And so from what I've heard so far. I'm wondering if you're going to enjoy this. Mayor, I think perhaps we should bring this over to public safety committee to discuss more fully. But whatever you can share with us that might be helpful to considering the impact of overtime and the long term caring of vacant, vacant positions, including sworn. I also fully support that because I think that we have to look at our entire city as we're making these painful decisions. So. That was that was stuff I'm going to do. I have time to ask about reserves and then, okay, this is related to pages 15 and 16. So we've got reserves projected to end at 15.7%, which is below our 70% 17% [1:59:20 PM] financial policy level. What does that forecast for reserves look like going out in the following years? Do we do we have reserves? >> Yeah. We would project that the ratio would fall slightly to 15.3% in fy 27, primarily because overall general fund spending will increase. Over the longer term. Our practice is to build in the transfers necessary to restore us to 17% by the end of the forecast period, and so we project that we would be be back at 17 in fy 30. >> Okay. So in fy 30 we would be back at 17%. So that's a quite a number of years of of carrying reserves below our financial policy. What is the impact. What impact does it have to carry for years lower than our policy. [2:00:20 PM] >> Yeah. And I would just add that that also contributes to the deficits we're showing in those years. As far as the practical impacts, I think maybe Ed could speak to it better than I can in terms of when we begin to cross the line into affecting our bond ratings from the from the budget side of the equation. In recent years, we've used the reserves to fund emergency expenditures. For instance, for storm response, and then we pursue reimbursement. But that can be a timely and uncertain process. Certainly during covid, we used the reserves to fund tens of millions of dollars worth of emergency spending. Again, that we pursued reimbursement for eventually. But we had that short term liquidity to respond immediately to those emergencies. >> So emergency use and liquidity for that. Is there no [2:01:20 PM] negative impact to running year after year below our financial policy or if our plan is I mean, if our plan is to do that for that many years, do we need to address that from a policy perspective? If there's no negative impact, then sure, we shouldn't take the time. But what is the impact? >> Well, that's going to depend. If you can tell me in the next 3 or 4 years, if we're going to have another pandemic that shuts down businesses and sales taxes drop to zero, if we're not going to have one of those, and I could, if you can guarantee me that, then I could say we don't need as much reserves as we have. You know, maybe 10% would be. But, you know, we can't guarantee that. So the answer to your question is nuanced in the sense that we can't predict the future. The government finance officers association recommendation for a reserve level is 17.7 or 17%, I think technically 16 six, 16.67%, but we just rounded it to 17%. But that's the standard set by the the gfoa. I would [2:02:21 PM] tell you that depending upon the circumstances of the city, that might be too low. I might be higher than you need. You know, if you're a city in Florida in hurricane alley, you might want to hold higher reserves than 17%. If you're a city that has very stable sources of revenues, you might not need seven, 17%. You know, 25% of our revenues are subject to sales taxes, and sales taxes fluctuate greatly. Back in the day when we were allowed to go to an 8% property tax, we didn't need to carry as many reserves because when the economy slipped and sales taxes fell, we had the ability to increase our tax levy to offset the loss of sales tax revenue and to continue to provide services. When we went to the 3.5% cap, different council, but I was down here advocating under a 3.5% revenue cap with 25% of our revenue, subject to the fluctuations of the economy. We should have higher reserves, and we thankfully increased our reserves right in advance of [2:03:21 PM] having a pandemic. That allowed us to be one of the few cities that got through the pandemic without having to rely on the on the federal money just to provide basic city services. We didn't have to supplement our base budget with those federal dollars. All of those federal dollars were pumped back to the community to fight the pandemic and to support our businesses and communities. So reserves are really important to have. What's the right level is not an absolute answer. I think the 17% policy that council's adopted is a prudent level for our circumstances. But, you know, right now we're below the policy level. It's a council. It's a policy the council adopted. Ideally, we'd be able to get back to that level, whether it takes, you know, one year, two year, three years, we should have a plan for getting back to the 17% level. I would agree with you. If there's not going to be any plan and no intent of getting back to the 17% level, we probably should just change our financial policy. That's not what I would recommend. You can see here. Eric mentioned we get back to [2:04:23 PM] the 17% level by fiscal year 30. That's all baked into these numbers here. But we also have a $37 million budget deficit by fiscal year 30 to to deal with. So, you know, between now and then we should your financial team should work to come up with a plan to get our budget back into balance and to maintain not just that policy, but all of the financial policies the council has adopted. Make sure we're in compliance with them. >> So part of what I'm getting at, and also including in the the longer version around public safety, is, yes, there was an emergency when the pandemic started. That was many, many years ago at this point. And so if we are still building out our finances as if we are in an emergency situation now, then what? And so we are depleting our reserves now. Then what happens if there is that other emergency? It goes even lower. I mean, it impacts our risk. I would think that it would. The plan that I just [2:05:24 PM] heard was by 2030, like that's our projection. By 2030, it will it will come back. Do you think that this is the type of thing that a rating agency does? Look at that. If we are consistently operating below our policy reserves, we are not in an emergency of the level of the pandemic, nor are we using the time, the four years that have already elapsed to replenish. Instead, we're taking five years to get back up there. I mean, that's what I would like to understand. >> Sure. And there is two aspects to our reserves. There's the emergency reserve that we've we've been talking about. Obviously it's for an emergency, but we also have a component to our reserves that we call the budget stabilization reserves. And that's something that the budget that we've proposed to council does tap into those stabilization reserves because sales taxes, which had been growing double digits post covid and with the federal stimulus dollars, really spiked sales taxes. But now we're you [2:06:26 PM] know, sales taxes are, for all intents and purposes, flat. They're zero. They're they haven't been growing for a while. And so in order to keep our budget in balance, we have needed to rely on on reserves at least this year. You know, in terms of the rating agencies, they they do look at your financial policies. They want to make sure that you have good financial, thorough financial policies, good best practice financial policies. And they also want they also want the elected officials and the city staff to adhere to those policies, to not just violate the policies whenever it's a matter of convenience. So that's what they're looking at coming below our reserves in a year of flattening out sales taxes was consistent with our, you know, using reserves in that circumstance was consistent with the policy that council has for the use of budget stabilization reserves. Our policy does require us to have a plan to get back into compliance and will have that plan. It doesn't specify [2:07:27 PM] whether it's three years or five years. I certainly would say it shorter would be better, but I certainly would say it shouldn't be more than five years for us to have a plan to get back in compliance with that policy. And with that story that we used our we used the reserves this year in compliance with the policy. That's what we have a stabilization reserve for, is to help us keep our budget stabilized when there's an economic slowdown, and that we have a plan to get back in compliance. That would be a satisfactory answer for our rating agencies. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember. Councilmember qadri. Councilmember duchen. >> Thank you very much. I wonder if I could get chief Luckritz back. I have a few questions to follow up. And while he's coming down, I just want to confirm with the budget office. So looking at ems's [2:08:30 PM] budget in fiscal year 25 compared to fiscal year 26 proposed here, fy 25 was a little over 143 million. Fy 26 is around 148 million. Is that 148.2? Is that correct? So for I'm looking at your chart on page six. So a four point almost 8% or $4.8 million increase. And of that can you just help. Is that primarily driven by salary increases? I don't know if that's. >> So there are a couple of changes that happened in the ems budget. One is attributed to salary changes. But the sobering center contract was budgeted in ems in fiscal year 25. And that moved over to municipal court or the community court in fiscal year 26. So that is the net change of their budget when you compare 25 to 26. But there are some nuance changes that happen [2:09:30 PM] in addition to the increased wages. >> Okay. And then what I wanted to better understand and we've just forgive me if I didn't get it all the first time you said some of this. So I might be asking you to say it again. When we think about the vacancies question versus the overtime and filling those vacancies, the way I'm understanding what you're saying is let's just say you have one vacant position. You can either you not try to fill that position and use the funding that we give for that position to pay for overtime, for someone to fill that out in the field. Or you can take the money and run somebody through the through our cadet class, but you still have that need out in the field. And so that's why there there's the additional overtime. Is that [2:10:30 PM] correct? >> Essentially that there's a I mean, it's nuanced and there's certainly a number of different components to it. But yes, that is one of the concerns is that, you know, as you bring someone on board, they're not productive. And you, you know, in order to staff the ambulances, you still need a second person then to staff the ambulance while that person is in training, that is a portion. >> And so to me that suggests like we're always chasing like we're we don't say, here's a new ambulance, let's staff ahead of time so that when the ambulance comes on board now we have the productive people. It's we have the ambulance, we don't have enough productive people. And we're chasing that ambulance. Is that. >> That that's accurate. And it comes into the timing of the implementation of different programs and processes. You know, as, as a for example, as a new station opens, there's an expectation that we will have an ambulance in there, but we have not gone through the process of really onboarding those staff. And so we're using existing staff on overtime to staff that. And then also going through that hiring process. And then that's compounded with the fact that we do have such a number of vacancies that even [2:11:31 PM] tying those positions to the direct programs becomes more challenging. >> Okay. And then thinking through. You know, typically when we think about overtime in various departments, it is an ongoing expense, right? Like the department had $5 million in overtime this year. They're probably going to have something like $5 million next year, you know, give or take. But given that part of your problem is that you just need to get new people through our cadet classes, at which point you won't essentially have to be double paying for them. Can you help us understand what of your overtime need is kind of more. It seems like that's more one time in nature to get them through, but that wouldn't be a reoccurring cost. >> Yeah. And there's there's a few nuances there as well. Unlike in the police department and the fire department, our our staff are subject to or not [2:12:31 PM] to subject to some of the exemptions in the flsa. And so therefore, based on their work week, we have overtime that essentially is part of their structured workweek because of the way their schedule is. And so even at our absolute base, if we were not staffing units with overtime in the sense that we were just describing, there would still be an overtime cost in the department associated with their base schedule because they are on that modified nontraditional work schedule. >> And that's very interesting. Looking at the proposed amendment put forward by the mayor pro tem, and their sub quorum, does that assume it's all one time? And so I'm trying to understand if that assumes that it would be used to kind of surge people through the classes, but then wouldn't be needed in the out years, or I heard you earlier mention that this is a multiyear process. So really, is it not one time in nature? >> Just to clarify, our [2:13:33 PM] amendment is a mix of ongoing and one time, because we propose a list of reductions within the departments to give us that ongoing funding. >> Okay. And that's that's helpful to understand as well. >> Yes, this would be an ongoing problem. This would not we will not be able to solve our vacancy issues in in this fiscal year. >> Okay. So then from your $4 million ask, given that you can't hire through your cadet classes in one year, do you still have a full $4 million need or do you have a lesser need to double up your people in the cadet classes? But that need just continues in years forward? If you understand what I'm asking. >> I'm not sure I fully understand, but I will try to see if I'm articulating this correctly. So the the the way that we came to this four, $4.4 million was on the the existing [2:14:35 PM] processes that we had going on in early 2025 of staffing all of the units and going through these academies. And so that was the actual spend. And so I think if you're asking me if I would spend less because I don't have that, that that would not be the case. In order to continue what we were doing in early 2025. >> Got it. And when in fiscal 2025, you and all the other departments were asked to save a percent and a half, and you reduced my understanding was your some of your overtime budget to help meet that 1.5%, did that become your new baseline for the fiscal year 26. So do you still have the same types of brownouts projected in the fiscal year 26 budget that you that we experienced for that last 6 or 7 months in fiscal year 25. >> The so in looking in what this year would look like if you're asking in the current in the base structure. And I think the most important thing for us [2:15:35 PM] is looking at what our overtime spend is, regardless of where it is coming from and and having some flexibility there to understand it. So if we were to do a larger cadet class, for example, which is something we desire to do to try to increase that throughput, then I would need to offset whatever that amount would be elsewhere in the department in order to, to to do that. So, you know, it becomes a fundamental question that we work through of, you know, there the timeline that we try to structure. For how long is it going to take us to fill these vacancies? You know, if we did classes of ten, that would be very, very long. And we'd need to look at what's the what's our you know, I call it the inverse out rate. Right. And so for every two people that come into the department right now, one departs. You know, if I'm only running ten per class, it it would not match just our, our departures. However, if we were to do 20 or 30 or 40 in a class, then we would make more inroads into that. But it would be more expensive. And so we'll need to make that that adjustment regardless of where our budget [2:16:36 PM] ends, to make sure that whatever expenditures we increase in one area, that we are accommodating them elsewhere in the department. >> Okay. And I just wonder if you could confirm for me, I looked on the budget open at, open budget at and it seems to me that the overtime budget from fiscal year 25 to 26 is almost exactly static. Is that correct? 13.8 last year, 13.4 this year. Is that accurate? >> So you must have been looking just in one object. I mean one unit, I believe. And you all correct me if I'm wrong. The 25 overtime budget for ems total was about 19 million okay. And it's going it's 20 million in fiscal year 26. >> Okay okay. That helps us. And then I wanted to also understand we had this discussion both during the regular budget process. [2:17:36 PM] Councilmember Siegel brought up, you know, these bls units or other types of. Programs that are really effective. But if we were to authorize those, do you have the people or do we you still have the same problem that we just talked about that we could give you the bls unit, but you don't have the person in either. You just have to run someone on overtime or catch up through the academy. >> Yeah. That's correct. So you know, as we would look at that, you know, trying to build out a plan particularly, you know, our bls units would be co-located. So it wouldn't be like in a vacant station, for example. And so a little bit of a different impact than, say, a medic unit. But and so we would look at the long term strategy of implementing that over time and trying to use some of those dollars if there was allocated towards training, education, onboarding and all of those, those pieces until which point we could we could bring that live. >> Okay. And can you talk to us a little bit, changing gears just ever so slightly on your [2:18:37 PM] communications personnel needs, you know, your your call takers. >> So, you know, we've seen we have seen growth in the department over the past few years. You know, we did submit enhancement around our communication staff and trying to address that, that growth in the increased call volume that we are seeing, you know, we are working through our own opportunities to to look at what options we would have within our current structure to reconfigure. And that was one piece that we had talked about was, was positions around specifically what we call controlling, which is kind of a dispatcher that that looks at things from a broader perspective to try to manage the fact that we want to make sure that ambulances are available for high acuities and that we're not in that old process of just sending the closest ambulance to every single call. But, you know, moving forward, you know, that that was an enhancement that we had asked for. But we we are [2:19:38 PM] already looking internally to see what other levers could we pull, recognizing that we believe that's an important part for us moving forward as a department. And so we're going to find we'll have to figure out ways to make that work. >> And if I can let me say it a different way, just to make sure I'm understanding you have a need for extra communications. People like right now, whether it's through vacancies or just the growth in the population, we need more call takers to meet the level of response that we would like to see. >> I think, yes, in order to address the growth that we are seeing over time, you know, we need to have optics on the communications center and make sure that, you know, over the next few years that it's a priority for us in growth. And and we need to balance that with the growth of the department. And I think that is one piece where I guess I could say is that we have done an excellent, excuse me, an excellent job over the past few years of growing the operational programs without corresponding growth in in our communications center. And I think that's probably a common theme of those support departments that might not be as publicly facing making sure [2:20:40 PM] that we grow accordingly. And I think that that as we look to the future for us, one of those pieces for us in our strategic, you know, strategic look forward is going to be back to foundations and making sure that all of those different areas that support the overall operation are properly invested. And then we will need to make adjustments as a department accordingly. >> Okay. Well, I as has been mentioned today, I to share my colleagues concerns and and prioritization of ems and not only having the personnel to run enough ambulances. I don't want those people also who are currently doing that job to be burned out. Or, you know, the fact that we have mandatory overtime built into their schedule, let alone the overtime need, that's a lot to ask of someone. And so I would like to see that we have enough people and the, the resources necessary to to do that. And, and the communications is an [2:21:41 PM] essential piece of that because, you know, if someone's on the phone for a minute, that's a minute that an ambulance is not on their way to treat what could be life or death situations. So I just want to to highlight that. I do have a couple other vacancy general questions, not for ems but for Ed. How how am I looking? >> You're about done. >> Okay, well, then I'll come back. >> Great. Council member zo qadri followed by council member duchen. >> Great. Thank you. Mayor, I have a question for chief baker. I know you're in a walking boot, chief, so I'd hate to have you. >> Just cry out. >> Yeah, you could, you could. >> Scream it out. Told him. Yeah. >> Give me a minute. >> Yeah. No worries. >> I'm not counting this against you. Council member [2:22:42 PM] qadri. This is all on him now. >> You're good. Thank you. Chief, just had one question, so I won't. I won't need all my time, but just want to know what are the funding needs for wildfire mitigation and how that pairs with what the county is doing? And I guess overall, my question is how do we optimize that, that relationship that that collaboration with the county as it comes to wildfire mitigation? >> Well, thank you, sir, for that question. Again. My name is Joel baker Austin. Fire the city and the county and our state agency. We work hand in hand to support wildfire mitigation. But as you may be aware, the city of Austin is classified as, I believe, as the fifth most hazardous city in the country for potential property loss. And although we put measures in place by adding [2:23:42 PM] a wildfire battalion, as well as making sure, I want to say close to 25%, if not 50% of our firefighters who are trained and advanced wildfire tech tactics and strategy and every firefighter have some type of basic wildfire mitigation purposes. But in order to stay ahead of when and not if the wildfire come to the city of Austin, the the risk continued to increase. The funding for wildfire mitigation is very important. I believe that's your question. >> Yes, sir. Sorry. Yeah. My, my the man, the manager picked this up. And then my other question, part of that question was just what are the funding needs. >> The funding, the funding needs right now we have the funding for the I think it's wildfire boots and intent, but [2:24:44 PM] we do need continued funding to support the wildfire effort. I believe we have subtracted $1 million, I think, from wildfire mitigation, preparation, preparedness. So the funding is definitely is that. >> Got it. Great. That helps. Well, that's it on my end. Thanks for thanks for coming on down. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember duchen followed by councilmember vela. >> Thank you mayor. Well, first, I, I really just want to thank staff for their help and support. You guys have been incredibly responsive, really made every effort to get us information on short notice. I'm really grateful for that and obviously grateful for and looking forward to getting things clarified over the next few days as we go through this process and your help with that, it's along that line that I want to try and figure out the best way to work with you all, [2:25:44 PM] or perhaps the mayor sub quorum and find out what are the best ways to relay our either things that we're looking at to opportunities for funding or or priorities so that you can take that and and incorporate that, knowing that I'm probably duplicating or a lot of the ideas that we might be investigating might have already been shared with you, if not today, over the next few days, or via prior communication from my colleagues. So what is the best, most efficient way to handle this process? >> I think the conversation today has been helpful for us to hear and understand. And so as you all are talking over today and tomorrow, I think that will be a helpful use. Again, if you have any specific amendments that you want to get in, getting those to staff by tomorrow morning would be helpful. And the way that you all have been using the message board has been very helpful as well. Just having those conversations so that we can [2:26:46 PM] see as staff and the community can see what your priorities are. And I love it when you all chime in and respond to each other so I can start counting on who's who's saying yes and no. Those are ways that we can that can help us as as we try to move forward in this process. >> Okay. That's what I'm trying to figure out, because I don't know if it's helpful for me to say, hey, well, I agree with the rest of the council on public safety priorities or hey, I agree with councilmember Ellis on wildfire mitigation and and also the work on making sure that our part time employees are supported. So. >> Yes. >> Any any clarity you guys can offer of the now or the next few days about what the best way to do that is. That's again, not eating up everybody's time here. But perhaps I know whether that's an email, whether that's a message board or a singing telegram. Whatever you guys think makes. >> I think this is meaningful. And you saying that you support the things that have already been said. We are me, Eric, staff upstairs were feverishly taking notes and putting names [2:27:47 PM] by them. So this is helpful. >> Okay, then I'll plan on continuing that process, and I'm assuming that everybody else will take note of that and do that as well. I have some questions for chief Davis. If she is still with us, is she not? Or somebody from APD? >> She stepped outside. There she is. >> Okay. Oh, there she goes. Thank you. Chief. One of the things that we've looked into this year that I'm has not really come up and I'm not even sure is an opportunity, but I want to get your thought on it is when we looked at the I believe it's the the audit report that deloitte helps put [2:28:48 PM] together, which is the operating, sorry, the annual comprehensive financial report that ended last year. One of the things that we took note of that I think I've shared with some of the folks up here on the dais, is that the amount of citations that APD has written over the last nine years has dropped from about 156,000 to about, I think, about 20,000 last year. And so I'm just wondering if that's if there's been any conversation around whether that's a potential source of revenue. And I realized in doing our research on that, some of those citations probably shouldn't have been written to people that are unhoused. And and there's obviously a big drop that happened between 2018, 2019 and 2020 when we got rid of certain specialized units, the motors unit, etc. So I'm just curious if that's been a conversation you all have had about whether citations in the time that we're in right now could be a one avenue for, for for additional revenue or resources. >> Well, I can tell you, I don't think of it in terms of revenue. I think of it in terms [2:29:50 PM] of public safety. And I can say this, the amount of proactive work that is happening in our department has increased. And so those tickets are coming just as a result of that. But also we are reinstituting our motors unit and are going to put back a group of officers that will address traffic, traffic safety here. And as a result of that, we will see an increase in the tickets written. >> Okay. But there's I guess the just to be pointed about that. There's no strategy that says, well, we're going to figure out beyond the motor unit opportunity you identified. And then I'm really encouraged to hear that we're looking at ways to either this or code enforcement or any of the other opportunities we have to sort of enforce the existing rules that we've got within the city. Acknowledging that, my understanding is some of that money goes to the state, right? We only keep a percentage of that that that would be, at this time, at least, merit a conversation around whether that's something we can look at [2:30:51 PM] from others or anything else that comes to mind for additional that could be useful for funding public safety, other priorities. >> I think it could be useful, that is for sure. But there's also when you look at giving warning citations, that's also useful as well when it comes to building community relationships. But when it comes to asset forfeiture and our partnerships with the Dea and partnerships with our federal partners, where we are getting that money, that is increasing as well. And so I am happy to say to report that. So that is something to absolutely look at, is that asset forfeiture and the work that we're doing there, the good work as well as the proactive%-pwork that's happening within the department. >> Okay. Thank you. I'll take that conversation offline. And to learn more about the office for asset forfeiture and the other opportunities that you you touched on. I think that's all I've got for now. Thank you, mayor. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember vela. >> Thank you. Chief. Actually, I got a before you run off, let me catch you there. I appreciated the the discussion last time about the it is a $9 million in overtime savings [2:31:52 PM] that the police were able to generate for this budget year. Yes. And I had looked at that with the brydan Wright is that that study or whatever. But I just wanted to break that down a little bit because, you know, my understanding of it is that you were essentially pulling a lot of patrol officer rank people who were not actively on patrol, kind of pulling them out of other portions of the police department and putting them into patrol. Again, recognizing that I'm sure what they were doing was important, but that the the need was, I guess, could you just kind of tell us a little bit about that so we know kind of and understand where that, that. Yeah. >> So for context, brydan recommends that the Austin police department, given the size of the city, that we have 1200 officers on patrol alone, we before I got here, we had about 460 officers on patrol for a city of a million. And so at this point, we're almost up to the goal is to be at about [2:32:54 PM] 615. And so every academy class that comes out will be going to patrol until we get those numbers up. Removing 72 people from other assignments and putting them back to patrol, that was the right thing to do. It was the right call. We are seeing our response times are lowering because of that backfill ended. And one of the biggest complaints I got from officers when I arrived here was the fact that they were doing backfill. >> Could you explain what backfill is for those of us that are not cops? >> So you imagine you're a detective in aggravated assault, and so you investigate the shootings. You investigate the more serious, you know, assault cases every, I believe, four days and 90. They had to go and work a shift. And so ten hours they were working that shift. And so that was everybody in those preferred assignments were doing the backfill. And that was given. And so what was happening is while they were gone, they were then coming back. We were having to pay that overtime for them to come back, get caught back up on their cases. They may have gotten a case assigned to them [2:33:55 PM] within that ten hours, and then they're catching back up and there's some overtime being spent there. And so that's been erased for for backfill. >> That was a backfill was a major source of overtime because I guess people, you know, again, if you're a detective and you get pulled back into patrol for a couple of days, you know, your work doesn't go away, right? You know, you you come back to it and or vice versa, right? You put in your 40 and I guess then you do your, your the backfill would have been overtime. >> That's right. And I think it's important to say too, in fiscal year 25 we reduced overtime by 18%. And we are on track to reduce it by 14% staying within budget. And so I think that's important to note as well, that we are being strategic about the way we're looking at the use of overtime. >> Yeah. And would then it would be would it be fair to characterize obviously the police budget is going up by, I believe, $11 million or something to that effect. >> For salaries. >> For salaries. But in other words, I guess to the extent that we can reduce needed overtime like that, that's, you know, that's the police budget not going up. Is that the kind of correct is my understanding [2:34:56 PM] on that? Oh. >> Well, I think it's important to to and maybe Carrie can speak to this, but we are, you know, the mandated return on vacancies that we give I think increased by $10 million this year. So we're giving back, I believe, $30 million a year in that mandated return. So when you're looking at overtime and being down over 300 officers, we have to use that overtime. And the, you know, every day that we're doing and believe me, every community that I go and talk to, it is not that we want to see less of APD. It is we want to see more officers out and we want better response times. >> Sure, sure. And any again, I appreciate your moves on the staff and and eliminating backfill and putting people back on to patrol. Any big what's next, I guess would be my kind of in terms of efficiency in terms of gains. What are you all looking at nowadays? >> So we're going to be having this is still being cleared with dcm fortune. But our next public safety committee, we're [2:35:56 PM] going to be talking about Barry Dunn and the recommendations and where we are with the recommendations there, as well as our use of force and our place network investigations and the way we're addressing violent crime reductions here in the in the city. >> Okay, chief, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Next questions I had were about the the housing trust fund. And. The housing trust fund has or let me actually let me just turn it to a question. What how does the housing trust fund get funded or how has the housing trust fund been funded in the past? >> So the housing trust fund receives a a transfer from the general fund. I think it is budgeted at $11 million. And in this fiscal year, and then it also gets downtown density bonus revenue. [2:36:57 PM] >> And about how much downtown density bonus revenue. And again, didn't have to I know because that's got to vary year by year, right, as buildings come open and whatnot. But how much revenue are we talking about over like, you know, let's say a handful of years just to get a sense of of what that can bring into the affordable housing, the housing trust fund. >> Let me get it pulled up. >> And then I also want to talk about what the housing trust fund has funded in the past to, to to get a sense of that. >> And if, when can they also talk about the formula for the housing trust fund? Because it's not a made up number. It's it's tied to something. Yeah. It's former city property that was off the tax roll I know I know someone knows this best of everybody that then is put on the tax roll. So these are taxes the city would have never seen. But we put it on the tax [2:37:57 PM] roll and then take those taxes and dedicate it to the housing trust fund. So it's it's not just a number we pull out to fund it. It's there's a dedicated idea behind the transfer. >> That's the way we created it back in like 98 or 99. >> Yeah. >> That's different than do you Luz. >> Yes. >> I didn't catch that actually. What was that? What was your question. >> Saying that was different than fee and Lou because Carrie mentioned there were two sources of revenue for the trust fund, the general fund transfer and the fee in lieu. And councilmember alter highlighted a third revenue source. >> And and I believe without jumping into that, some of the the kind of public private partnership developments that the city has engaged in. Right. >> But just also add another question I have on this topic is with the legislative change from the legislature on the fee in lieu portion, we should anticipate reductions in the fee in lieu collections for this fiscal year. Yes, am I [2:38:58 PM] right? >> Unless what we're attempting to do works real well with far. I mean, with the non-fa. Yeah. >> Unfortunately I don't see any cranes. I see very few cranes downtown right now. >> So the economy matters. >> Yeah. >> So apologize for the delay. >> We've been entertaining ourselves. >> I see, I see, so actually, my computer has gone dark on me a little bit. It's not pulling up the budget, but if you would give us a few minutes we would try to get that information pulled up. And, and we'll make sure we have the answer to over the last several years, what kind of programing? I do believe that the housing department's look, look at what the next year requirements are. So some of the programing changes year over year. And so let me just work on getting that detail. >> For you and no problem. And I'll yield my time after just a [2:39:58 PM] real short comment. I'm we're unlikely to be able to continue making a general fund transfer to the housing trust fund in the near term. And so my concern is about the programs that have been funded out of the housing trust fund. We're going to have to, unfortunately, I think, take a very hard look at those and decide which ones we want to really emphasize and which ones we're not going to be able to fund in the future. But that's the essentially the conversation. And then to that, assuming that we're not going to have a general fund transfer and assuming that, for example, the public private partnerships that we've signed and density bonus fee and low density bonuses are going to be going into the housing trust fund, I think that kind of keys up, that tees up that conversation about what can we do to generate funds into the affordable housing trust fund, because it has been, I think, a critical source of revenue for us in in various situations dealing with, with crises. I think about, for example, the, [2:40:59 PM] the, the tenant assistance, but specifically the tenant assistance that is combined with the legal assistance that Texas Rio grande legal aid provides, whereby, you know, they're defending people from evictions. But if you don't have any money, you know, there's not a lot you can do in terms of preventing an eviction. But what the city has been able to do is provide basically deal closing money to get people, get evictions canceled. And that's in particular would be my a major focus. And and then just a couple of comments on some of the other questions that have gone around here. I would agree with the mayor pro tem, the 540 for the pilot program. This is just not the year for pilots. I I'm looking at not just what we can and can't do this year, but what we can and can't sustain into 2627. I'm not a fan of just doing things for one year. You know, [2:41:59 PM] we need to have kind of a multiyear kind of horizon if we're going to fund something, if we're going to do it, we should sustain the operations for a number of years. And along with that, I know there's additional staffing that I saw for both planning and for aacme. Again, I just I don't know if if outside of I know parks and ems, but I just don't know if the aacme and planning the additional staff doesn't seem the right time to be adding staff when we're going to be under such, the general fund is going to be under such a pressure kind of coming down the road. So just a couple of comments to throw on to the the stack. >> Thank you councilmember. We'll now go back to previous speakers and we'll have the mayor pro tem, followed by councilmember alter. >> Thank you. Colleagues, I have three more areas I'd like to dig into. A top of mind for me is the social services funding. Our staff has now shared with us and thereby the public. That, and I just want to confirm this for the record, [2:43:00 PM] that if you are a nonprofit organization that currently has funding with the city through our social services, whether it's Austin public health, economic development or through homelessness strategy, those organizations can and should expect a 10% trim on their existing contract for this fiscal year with the city. >> Austin public health contracts, economic development and community court will see a 10% reduction homeless strategy or homeless contracts. So dac has our dac has a couple of those, but those will receive a 4% reduction or reallocation, and it's all to be reallocated to those services in the homeless strategy office. >> That's right. And so knowing that because that is significant news, that's, you know, we want to ensure that [2:44:00 PM] our community is well aware that they can expect a 10% reduction in their contracts so that they can also make plans for their own organizations budget, knowing that how many organizations do we or do we know will be impacted by this 10% trim in funding? >> Let me look. Let me get that information. I don't have the number of organizations in front of me. >> Building off of that. You know, the other thing that is alluded to with this two year outlook is anticipating that there's going to be further reductions for next year's social service contracts. And, you know, I had a great conversation with the manager yesterday about it. And really what this is teeing up a great conversation and understanding where this is coming from, I should say, is that this is teeing up a recalibration in how the city of Austin funds social services. Can you speak to how we're moving and what folks can expect in this very intentional shift? [2:45:01 PM] >> So I think the plan is to really look at, as you said, what we're funding and how we're funding those those areas and making sure that we are focusing on the high priority areas. We understand that as a city, we've invested in a number of areas, a number of organizations, and just taking a step back and and really evaluating our social service contracts. Understanding return we're getting from those investments and how those investments are moving the needle in the community, the way that we anticipate them moving. And so I believe over the next several months, there will be some initial conversations, some analysis as we begin to prepare for fiscal year 27, to identify what shifts we're going to take. We don't have that detail at this moment because we're starting that work. But in the coming months, we'll be able to speak specifically to these are the areas that we're looking at. This is the evaluation that we're doing and what to [2:46:02 PM] anticipate for 27. >> That's right. And colleagues, I do want to draw your attention to there was a question that councilmember duchin asked earlier this budget season. I forget what number it was, but it basically it asked for a list of all of the social service contracts and included in that backup it had. What metrics or outcomes associated with those contracts. And I was pretty dismayed that there was some pretty low numbers on a few of those contracts. And so certainly there's a lot there that we need to unpack as a city and shift our dollars in a way that we are moving to an outcomes based approach. And I know, manager, I don't know if you want to speak to any of this intentional recalibration. >> Sure. Thank you, councilwoman, and I appreciate our conversation yesterday. And Carrie talked through, I think, the initial side of what we're going to do, and you're focused in my conversation with you yesterday was really on next year in bigger outcomes. I will [2:47:03 PM] say this just as it relates to a finer point, even on this year's funding. While Carrie mentioned whether it was 10% or 5 or 4%, I just want to make sure that we're not walking away, particularly if there may not just be an across the board. That's where we're thinking now. But there could be other areas of points of emphasis where those cuts, depending on how many of those organizations exist, could be a little less and some could be more based. As I indicated to you earlier on, where our priorities are in the reshuffle as it relates to going forward. If you remember the initial budget and even the forecasted budget speaks to a much an additional 10%, potentially in reductions in overall social service spending, that gives us an opportunity over the next several months to have meetings with stakeholders, with our own staff and the council, to really prioritize those big efforts. As Carrie mentioned, that we want to focus our fiscal resources into [2:48:04 PM] come up with the metrics and the outcomes that we would expect, and really more focus on where the city wants to serve specific areas of our public, and not so much the mission of a specific organization and what they do to have a bigger impact on the broader community. And so that's the work we'll be doing the next several months. And, you know, I'll just give one example as well. Even with and not everything is in social service funding. We have direct contracts with organizations and las that we need to revisit as well. I know there's a clause in each one of those agreements that allow for us to come back and revisit those should financial issues arise. And I take, for example, councilwoman lane's comments earlier around what we're doing with children that are experiencing trauma and what we're not doing. And Williamson county, to her point, Williamson county, obviously, we've got city residents. And so maybe we need to step back and take a look at how we fund the entities that provide that service, that have a right to [2:49:04 PM] do it, and we work with them while we're doing Travis county now, we should be looking at our full footprint and maybe looking at a different formula for the existing resources that we push out for those needs and make sure that we're covering all of the residents in our city, regardless of the county. And so that may be something we look at as well in this iteration. So I just wanted to share that. But I think the go forward truly is to help council helicopter up, get your priorities, and we determine how much we want to spend on a specific effort. And then we ask people to find ways to provide your services as you're closer to the public. In some cases, in the doses that we want in the areas, and we can measure those things similar to the mayor, placing that item on the message board around metrics and outcomes. And so we're going to be focused more on outcomes, and I hope recommending that we don't just focus on the entities themselves and allow them to come forward based on the funding we have. Thank you for the opportunity to share that. >> Yes. >> Mayor pro tem, sure. I would like to clarify. We have about [2:50:07 PM] 80 unduplicated organizations, not including our zo contracts. Thank you. Okay. >> Can I follow up? How many of those contracts are reimbursement contracts? In other words, they need to they need to bring us receipts and show they've done the work as opposed to us giving them money on the front end. >> I believe all of them are reimbursement, but let me double check with the teams. >> Okay, great. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. I appreciate your comments. Manager. I just wanted to make sure we were daylighting this as a conversation for our community. Since there is a reduction to those 80 organizations that currently have contracts with the city. And then we're also signaling that there's going to be an intentional shift on social services for the city for next year. And so I just want to make sure that we're transparent in how we are deliberating and that that information is shared out. The next question I have is around the homelessness support funding. If we can have my questions are one I wanted to [2:51:08 PM] share for, for the record, that I also joined my colleagues who posted on the message board and wanting to identify funding for the supportive services for the permanent supportive housing units that are coming online, as well as there are a couple of other areas that were identified, non-congregate shelters being one. But I wanted to ask director gray for his feedback on just since he is our resident expert in chief on our homelessness response system. You know, what are the greatest needs that come to mind when it comes to supportive services and and homelessness in general? We were sent this letter from the Austin Travis county homeless service providers consortium, and they also highlighted a number of high priority needs within the response system. So would welcome your thoughts on this. >> Good afternoon. Mayor pro tem David gray, director of Austin homeless strategies and [2:52:08 PM] operations. I appreciate the question. Thank you so much. You know, our homeless response system has built so much capacity and positive momentum over the last couple of years. Our housing moving rates are down by 25%. We've seen a reduction in first time homelessness for the first time in five years. We've significantly expanded our shelter operations and brought a more dignified and successful shelter outcome for our community and our homeless. Response coordination across the entire system is so much further along in advance than you know where it had been. Unfortunately, the impacts of prop Q can disrupt and in some cases put the car in reverse and move us back into a place that I know many of us have worked so hard to come out of. And so when it comes to funding priorities, given the reality of no longer, uh, or having to make some budget adjustments because of prop q, uh, our guiding principle, first and foremost is to do no harm, uh, to sustain the momentum and the gangs that we've been able to develop as a city and in partnership with the community. what that would mean is, uh, ensuring adequate and sufficient funding for the shelter investments that we've developed with the city and with partners, uh, community shelters. uh, there are a number of permanent supportive housing developments that are slated to open in 2026 that still need supportive service dollars if we're not able to allocate supportive service dollars for those developments. and given the shift in federal funding for permanent supportive housing, uh, not only will we have units that are developed and sitting vacant, uh, but those properties are at risk of defaulting on their obligations to their investors, and more people will get evicted and return to the street. uh, so not having those investments in shelter and a permanent supportive housing would be detrimental, uh, to our system. uh, our kind of selfishly, our office also needs more contract ma management staff if we are gonna take on more contracts. uh, our staff is working as hard as they can, uh, to ensure that our vendors are complying with our policies and with the terms of their contracts. uh, but should we add more contracts to our department's oversight, uh, we just need some more staff to oversee those contracts. the last thing is council member, there's been a lot of discussions around public trust. it's always been a priorities of ours to build, uh, a dashboard, transparency dashboard that allows the public to take a good look at the performance of our vendors. you know, you had alluded to this today, in fact, about the outcomes of the organizations that we fund. that information is always available to the public, but the way we deliver it right now is very dense. uh, we'd love to be able to, to have the resources to create those dashboards so that people can see the success of our homeless response system and what we've been able to build together. thank you. very good. thank you. and, uh, manager, we've had, you know, dashboards [02:55:00] Have come up quite a bit lately. we have one on homelessness and a customer. ellis, you're calling for a dashboard on vacancies and, uh, around our budgeting process. so i'm curious how we're gonna approach the creation of all these dashboards. di guess we're gonna create more dashboards, . well, uh, fundamentally, uh, you know, as i've talked with staff, whether in it or budget or any department, uh, one of my philosophies is truly we need to tell our story more, be more transparent and find ways to make information more accessible to the public in some cases so that they do not have to go and do public information requests and take away from staff doing their job. so the more we can do that, uh, the more i encourage, uh, i, i think we are moving towards that, uh, in a lot of departments, uh, and particularly, uh, in a non-static form, uh, and getting away from pdfs. and so i think, uh, you will see more of that. and so, uh, again, uh, where council would like to see more of that, uh, just know we're already moving to that direction, but as we're doing with this budget process, if there are priority areas where you'd like to see that develop more quickly, uh, that would be something i'd make sure i want to hear from you. very good. thank you. thank you. director gray and colleagues. last area, i just want to highlight and surface as a priority of mine or an area i support us finding funding is for ott. and i don't know who is best to speak to the needs around ott or e ott, i'm not sure if is the proper way to pronounce it. um, but i do wanna highlight, you know, we reached out to integral care and they shared with us that, you know, they had two funding options scenarios. um, when we asked about the you anticipated cuts that we would have for interval care, um, one was at a 3.08 million, which would maintain the 24 7 mco coverage with essential staffing levels. and then the other option was to sustain the expanded hours, and that was at 1.7 million, which retains the 12 positions that have already been funded with integral care for those, um, with, for the expansion. and so i'm just curious if there's anyone with staff that could speak to m cot just to get a better sense of what are the essential needs, um, when it relates to that as an expanded crisis response. and if there's not, we can do that tomorrow morning as well. oh yeah. i think we got somebody either that or he is just volunteering for something he shouldn't, that's definitely not the case. yeah, go ahead. uh, robert kingham administrator for the austin community court, which is where, um, the em cot contract with integral care is housed. wonderful. um, so could you just provide some context as to when we look at identifying funding to continue the operations that we have with integral care on the em cot, how might we go about it? Or any just thoughts that you'd like to surface and recognition of what, what are the essential needs since we are gonna have to shift dollars to continue the spending? Sure. so i think a priority, you know, has been identified by the council during this previous budget, uh, cycle or current budget cycle. and, uh, previous years is to establish a 24 7 field response team for mental health, uh, crisis. um, integral care has been implementing that model and is currently at, at 24 7 capacity for, uh, field-based, uh, response from mental health crisis. and that need does exist. i, i mean, we, we could, um, uh, continue to work with integral care to maybe look at where the most mental health or when the most mental health, uh, crisis calls are coming in and aligning the schedule specifically for that. um, but it, it's, it's incredibly unpredictable. and so i think that's why one of the benefits for the 24 7 field-based re response is to have a qualified mental health professional available, uh, to respond for that situation, whether it be at two o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the afternoon. thank you. uh, so in which case then i support, um, any efforts in all efforts from the city in identifying that 3.7 million that's needed for us to continue to have a 24 7 mental health response. thank you. thank you, mayor tim. council member alter and council member. council member walter alter. great. uh, do a couple quick hits here just, and then i do have my vacancy questions. uh, just wanna second the ott i think i mentioned it before, but, um, huge priority and, and when we talk about trying to save money in the long run, right? If, if we don't have these clinicians doing it, it's most likely gonna be a pd officers and we need them doing other jobs. we, we don't have enough people and this is a, a force adder. so, uh, not only does it help get more people doing the [03:00:01] Job we need, but um, their outcomes are, are really quite staggering. so, uh, that as well as the homeless services that the ameripro tem mentioned. um, you know, i i think it's critical that we may not be able to move forward as much as we wanted to as it relates to homeless services, but we can't go backwards. and so having, uh, money for our shelters, uh, like out at to that are going to be, uh, operating, uh, we, we have to be able to fund those because we've already paid for them and invested in them. we, we need to operate them. uh, same story with the foundation communities, permanent supportive housing, um, as well as the permanent supportive housing that is coming online in january. these are projects we invested in. uh, i wanna say it's the, roz is the one that is, i know burleson studios is the one that, um, no, i had it right. the roz, um, we, we paid money to, to develop these. we can't have them either sit vacant or not serve the purpose. i, i've heard, uh, dr. Johnson talk about the dangers of having psh where you don't have the s uh, it, it's really not a good situation for the community. and so we need to see these through, i i consider these as basic as, as programs that are basically already in operation. we've made the investments up to this point, we need to see it through. um, i also want to just highlight or better understand as it relates to the social service contracts. if, if we're doing an across the board 10% cut or a, you know, this one might be cut by 20%, but this one might be cut at 2%. when is that decision being made? How is that being shared with the public? Because we've heard a lot of questions about, we don't know what our funding's going to be and we need to plan. so how, how will that decision be made and when will it be shared either for us to weigh in on, or, um, the organization's notified? So , i know you're, you're looking at who's gonna respond. um, so as we're working through these conversations, the, i think like the city manager said, we are starting with looking at it across the board reductions, and that's the first pass that we're gonna look at. there may be some deeper dives or some realization that some of these contracts can't, for whatever reason have that same 10% and that's where the review that staff is going to continue to work on will, will come into play. um, i think once we really understand what the realization or the finalization of this budget looks like, we'll continue to do that work and of course, try to inform those, um, organizations quickly after we get through the approved budget. um, and then work with them to see how we can get through or when those reductions will start coming into place. so hopefully they can plan through the rest of this fiscal year. um, we really wanna work with the organizations. we, we understand that this is a difficult time, but we are trying to do that work as quickly as possible to get them that information. and will we receive that through a memo or how will the council, 'cause i, the last thing we want is for 50 organizations to email or call us the week you're notifying them and we're caught flatfooted. we will make sure that you all are not caught flatfooted. okay. very good. and i would just as we go through this process, one, and i know you could tell a story about every single one of these contracts, it's how they exist to begin with. but one that i think is, um, i, i would like to mention are around our domestic violence, uh, contracts, the survivors of domestic violence, including, uh, the shelters. you know, we have had an issue with this as a city. there's been litigation about this. uh, i think it is incumbent upon us to continue the funding as best we can for, um, our domestic violence, uh, both shelters and services. uh, just so i just wanna put that out there. um, i also, but i mean, sorry, please, because that was part of why i think it's important that we're talking about now that the fact that it is a 10% across the board cut to organizations that have existing contracts for the city. um, but us if domestic violence, and i agree that's a key area for us. i think that this is the time when we'd wanna provide that direction to staff to either protect and not, or not make as deep of a cut to those specific services. right. couldn't agree more. um, then one other, the, the capital delivery services money. i know we are trying to do a lot of this planning on [03:05:01] The front end so we know the cost of projects so that when we do end up deciding to go forward with whatever, if, if we decide to go forward with a bond and if we do at what scale, uh, we have better planning for that. i, i do want us though, to think about the other side of the coin. that means that we are spending money on projects to develop them that are not going to end up on the bond. so we're gonna pay for engineering services and other design services for projects that aren't going to end up in all likelihood, making it to the finish line and how we might either scale this number down and provide some better instruction to our capital delivery services team earlier on. i know we're gonna have a conversation in january about kind of a proposed list. so hopefully we don't have, uh, as much work that goes unused, but in a time when there's not a lot of dollars to spare, uh, how we can better craft and, and maybe scale that number down so that we're not doing so much of that planning work on so many projects and, and be able to more refine on the front end, uh, i think is something that we should think about and consider. my last kind of area of questions, i wanted to go back to the vacancy discussion and understand just a couple things. so first and foremost, based on your responses before mr. Manino, am i understanding that essentially as it relates to our non-sworn personnel, we will give departments, they, they will carry a a, an authorized position, but we might not fund that position. we say that we think, you know, three of your employees are not gonna be filled and so you get to keep that fte on paper, but we don't fund it. is that right? That's essentially how it works out. i mean, again, going back to my a hundred positions, these guys will calculate the exact budget needs for all hundred positions, uh, benefits, retirement, health insurance, the whole 10 yards. they'll budget that, but then they'll, there'll be one line item called vacancy savings. it'll be a negative dollar amount that effectively backs out some of that funding in anticipation that not all the positions will be filled at any given time. but differently for our, our police fire and ear masks, our public safety entities, do we fund all of those vacancies? Uh, no same similar process that there's a vacancy savings number anticipated and budgeted. um, but there's typically a little bit of more of a gap typically when you, you know, the vacancy savings are on the wages and benefits part of it. so typically in the kind of the data that i have, like last fiscal year, those departments ended up, you know, with the high vacancy rates we're seeing in police and ems, they had vacancy savings over and above what, what was budgeted that predominantly then gets redirected to overtime needs because if they're running a high vacancy level, they need to run more overtime shifts for any number of factors just to meet, uh, uh, staffing level, you know, to maintain safe staffing levels for a shift. you know, if, if you think about, and, and the chief would know better than i, but a typical police beat, maybe there's 150 officers that are needed at that, you know, at that point in time patrolling the city. well if, if they have a 20% vacancy rate, which they currently do, or they, there's only 130 of those 150 slots that actually have bodies in them, she might still be able to provide safe coverage at 130. there might even be 10% out because they're sick or they're on vacation leave. and she might still be able to cover, you know, the, the, the, the patrol area in a safe manner. but, you know, if it gets to the point where, um, you know, maybe 15 or 20% are of folks are out for either training or sick leave or vacation leave or military leave, um, at some point in time, well i need to bring people in on a mandatory overtime shift 'cause there's just not enough boots on the ground to safely cover the beat on that time. so, you know, and when you have more vacancies, there's gonna be more of a need to, um, supplement staffing on an overtime basis. um, and you know, when there's big events like south by southwest, if you have a high number of vacancies, you're gonna have to rely more on overtime to cover big events like south by southwest or different marches that might be going on in the city. um, ms. L, can you tell me what the budget was for the police departments over time or you this year or actually let's look last year 'cause it's, those are real numbers. uh, and what i'm [03:10:00] Trying to understand is whenever, or, well, let's, let's start with the number. so to give some of that context, i think ed mentioned that, um, police had about $8 million over their vacancy savings. so they, they generated $8 million of additional savings. their sworn overtime budget was $25.2 million, but their sworn overtime actual costs were $39.1 million. and so it's the play between, you know, the vacancy savings, their overtime budget, and their personnel, their personnel budget. So all those items, all those variables are looked at as they're managing their overall personnel budget. and so we, we budgeted 25.2, they had, you said 8 million additional from vacancy savings that they were, they had an, an overage so that essentially they used that for overtime. and that gets you to 33.2, is that correct? It was 8.8 million. 8.8. okay. so 34. so then where does that extra $5.1 million come from? Is that from their budget and they have to not do something else or, yes. okay. it's all managed within their budget and so they, they work to look at, you know, what they have, what they can spend on, what they can save on over the course of the, that year to stay within their total appropriation. okay. and so when, when we've heard here and elsewhere, someone say, don't, you know, you should not fund, you know, these certain vacancies we're already and essentially not funding them, we're just taking the dollars and putting it automatically into overtime. well, no, not even, we're just not funding them. correct. okay. uh, that, but yeah, please on that, what is the amount proposed for budgeted vacancy savings, vacancy savings within the police department? If it was eight, it came in 8 million over last year, so i think we increased their vacancy saving risk vacancy savings requirement in fiscal year 26 to be, uh, 30 million for 26 it was 2030 0.3 million and 26 it was 20 million in 20.3 and 25, it was 20 million last year, 20.3 and 25. and then this year it's 30, 30, 30 0.3. so 10 million additional, additional in, in vacancy savings. so we take their full authorized strength, multiply it by the salaries, and then deduct 30.3 million from that. and that's what they get for personnel in additional overtime. and yes. yes. okay. that is the clearest that's ever been described to me in my few years here. um, two last things. one is on the auditor. early on the the, we're talking about these dashboards and, and any kind of potential audit or efficiency study i do, uh, just want us to consider, you know, we have the auditor's office and they do create some of these dashboards when they have ideas of, or when they come back to with us an audit and say, you need to do these seven things. um, that might be a tool we know we don't need to recreate the wheel. uh, where if we have these recommendations, whether it's by department or system-wide, you know, the auditor's office could play a role in saying, here is your progress on these recommendations. um, and we've had conversation with, um, jason on how we can partner and, and better show some of the, even looking at some of the assessments as well as what we can do to report out. so we'll continue to work closely with him and his team, um, as we are deciding and looking at what's the best way to develop some of these dashboards. and, and i just wanna leave us with a thought that has been really turning over and over my mind. that is, that is very, it is alarming. and that is, if you look at one of the questions, and i'll reference my council member to the left here. council member duch is one of his cb qs about looking at our departments year over year, what kind of percent change we've had. only two of them are less than 3.5%. you've got 11.6%, 8.7%, 9.5%, 11.7%. we are dramatically growing our departments at a rate that our revenue cannot sustain and we can't [03:15:00] Cut and replace. we just have to cut . and so when we're going through this exercise of how we, you know, address the priorities that have been shared today, an additional priority is we just have to get to balanced. and that is something that only gets harder every single year. we let it continue. and, um, i just, i want to raise that because we, i, you know, i, i think, and i'm gonna try to look for some various, you know, little things here and there that we can try to scrape together and, and boost our reserves up a little bit so that we have that tool available to us in the future. should, should we need it. um, but we, it, it can't just be cut, replace it. we need to find some areas where we just cut and let the balance finally come or let the budget finally come into balance. thank you council member. alright, counsel. um, let's, uh, council member vela, i just wanted to return to the housing trust fund question if y'all are ready for that. apologies. mayor, i don't know if you were about to move on or we're about to, we're about to. yeah, we were about done. i'm gonna, so i'm gonna make a request that we have this co housing trust fund conversation tomorrow. no problem. 'cause i think it's some nuance that i need to make sure i pull out accurately. okay, great. no problem. thank you. good. all right. so, um, let me remind everybody that we are, uh, the, the legal office has withdrawn item e one, which is the executive session item. uh, i want to say to our staff, and i'm, i'm speaking on behalf of the entire council and i know i won't get any objection how much we appreciate the, the, the work, the, the effort that's gone into getting us to this point. um, i think what you are hearing is the council as a group saying, a, here are our priorities and i'm gonna come back to that, but b we need you to help us find the, if there's going to be revenue to address those priorities. we, we we're asking you all to help and to make those recommendations. uh, you may get some suggestions, but it's not gonna be, uh, like you have seen in the past, which, which is an effort to say, i've got this as a priority and i think we ought to cut this. instead, we're relying upon y'all to come forward with those proposals. we, we think that'll be a more efficient, more controlled, more disciplined approach to this process. what i think you've heard, and i'm i'm not cutting off any individual member statement of priorities, but i think you've heard pretty clearly as a council, two predominant areas, uh, ems, and i think there's some variance there about what in ems, but wanting to do more in ems than, and than, than what the current proposal proposed amendment to the budget is. the other is, uh, hso, the homeless services and operations office. um, there's, and, and, and mr. Gray's comment about do no harm. we've made such progress, and that's a basic service of our government, uh, and one that's demanded that i think you, you see that now that's, i wanna be clear with the council members that the individual items that they have mentioned, they're still looking for, and we'll still talk about tomorrow and on wednesday. um, but we, we, we will, we'll be relying upon your professional help to tell us where there might be, uh, money for that. and i want, i wanna make sure that the public understands that while today has been a significant and good discussion by council members and all of us wanting to get to the bottom of how we do this and how much that might cost and how do we get some more money to do those kinds of things. um, there is no expectation, i don't believe by anybody on this dais that what you'll come back with is all the money. um, and we also get that if you come back with any money, that means it's shifting from someplace else in the proposed budget amendment. and so we're everybody's aware of that, but this is the first step. uh, maybe a second or third step, but it's a step in the process of actually trying to get to a final, uh, something we can vote on. and we know that the difficulty, uh, that we know the difficulty that's there and that all we're, uh, talking about just, just may not be achieved. and, and we're, but [03:20:01] We're yet, we're relying upon y'all to find what you can, but we're also relying upon y'all to credibly help us describe what it is we can't do, um, in, in, in these limited times. um, and we all start with the proposition that we can't do it all and we can't be all things to all people. and so i don't want anybody to misinterpret the very good questions you're getting from, uh, this council about what oughta what they would like to see and how we might approach it to be that. um, we don't get that. we've got serious budget constraints. um, we're, we're clear cleanly, clearly aware of our situation. so, um, members, indulge me just one more second so i can speak to the public about what we've got coming up tomorrow. we will have another work session meeting of the council that begins at 10 o'clock in the morning. and we will answer questions like, um, uh, the housing trust fund, things of that nature that, that, that we may still have questions about. and regardless of if that's five minutes long or if it's five hours long, um, we will also meet at three o'clock tomorrow in the same meeting. and that three o'clock is a time certain for a public hearing on the budget amendments and, and potential there. the online registration has closed. it closed at noon today. i announced it earlier this morning, but it closed at noon today in-person registration closes tomorrow at 9:15 am so i just wanna make sure that everybody hears me say that again and has the opportunity on thursday the 20th. so two days from now starting at 10:00 am we will have a, a regular scheduled council meeting. uh, that regular scheduled council meeting will take up a, a variety of items, but it will also take up and vote on, or potentially it will take up and vote on amending the budget and adopting the updated tax rate ordinance in response to proposition q not being approved. we will also be taking speakers on the 20th. um, but i will say to everybody, and i said it this morning, this looks like it's gonna be a long council meeting. there's a lot of items on that council meeting, so if you want to be heard, that's part of the reason i'm highlighting tomorrow's public hearing at three o'clock. that is a, a really good time to be heard. if you wanna be heard on the budget and you're interested in speaking on, on the budget amendments, i would, i would encourage you to do that on the 19th, tomorrow, wednesday, um, at the public hearing scheduled at three o'clock. i also want to explain again, what friday might look like. we have also posted a council meeting for friday, the 21st. we have posted a council meeting for monday the 24th, and we have posted a council meeting for tuesday the 25th. if tom, if on thursday, if on thursday we, after the, all we have to do with the council meeting and, and public comment and, and all of the other items. If we get to 10 o'clock at night and we have not voted, we will recess the council meeting. this council is pretty dedicated to not voting on big important things like this. late at night or in the middle of the night, we will, we will recess the council meeting, which will take us into the next day. the, the council meeting will be recessed until the next morning. it will be the same council meeting and therefore there will not be more public testimony. if, however, on thursday we're able to vote on the budget amendments, we have a vote, but we don't have enough votes to pass it on all three readings, we will have the friday posted council meeting to take up the budget. again, at that point in time, we will have public testimony if it's a separate meeting. the same would be true if we go into monday and tuesday. i know that is extraordinarily clear and i've laid it out almost beautifully . um, but i would just, that's why i'm saying it as many times as i can. Um, i, i don't want anybody to be disappointed if we recess at 10 o'clock, we come back the next day and we're not having public testimony. i want everybody to, to know that so they'll have the opportunity to, that's why i say, please come to, uh, tomorrow at three o'clock if you're going to, if you're going to testify, um, members remember that we're trying to have amendments in by 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. uh, we all know how difficult that is going to be, but everybody will [03:25:01] Take their best stab at it. and, and i know and yes, member, tim, there were a number of questions that we've submitted to staff that would, i think, inform any potential additional amendments. i'm curious, where are we at on those responses? So we've, um, submitted our first batch of responses, i think late yesterday. we are working on continuing to work on the others. let me check with staff on the status. i know we, we had several that were in review, which means we should be pretty close to getting them out. i don't know if we had, i think we had over about 50 questions. and so we're trying to get them, get them finalized as quickly as possible. we should get another batch out before the end of the day. very good. thank you. councilman al. is the plan tomorrow morning to discuss the amendments that have been submitted? I if we, if yes. whatever we have, that would be part of what the, what we'll do is we'll lay out the amendments and talk about 'em. we'll also, if there's something they wanna follow up with or if there's something that somebody's heard today and took notes and then go back and they, they talk about it and they think, oh, i don't want to ask another question about that. they'll have the opportunity to do that. i could see that tomorrow morning. uh, i could see where tomorrow morning is not a long work session because of today's work session, but we will be back at three o'clock and that will be for the public hearing. all right. um, you guys got anything you wanna say? How about you? All right. um, well, in that case, um, without objection, uh, this city council work session is adjourned at 3:26 pm thanks everybody. thank you.