City Council Work Session Transcript – 2/3/2026 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 2/3/2026 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 2/3/2026 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. [9:00:32 AM] Council members good morning, everybody, and welcome to the city council work session. I will call to order the Austin city council work session. It is 9:00 in the morning on February 3rd, 2026. We're meeting in the city council chambers, which are located in Austin city hall at 301 west second street in Austin. We have a quorum of the Austin city council president and two members of the council, mayor pro tem and councilmember Velazquez, are joining us virtually. We have speakers that have signed up to speak. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the city clerk and ask that the city clerk help us navigate that and do do as we do during our meetings on Thursdays and just go through and call based upon the order of the of the agenda. >> Thank you mayor. First, we have remote speakers. Aaron pierce. Aaron. Please unmute. [9:01:43 AM] We'll try to get her back. Next we have Austin Wright. >> Hi there everybody. My name is Austin Wright and I am speaking on I'm coming to you and speaking on behalf of hands off central Texas. To cut to the heart of the issue, the concerns over agenda item three I have here and apr is boiled down to two things. One is the right for taxpaying citizens to participate in public life without opting into a tool that could very well be used for mass surveillance. And what we mean by that is just the fact that, you know, you're going to hear a lot about this today if you go to a public park or a pool or anything like that, to participate in that, you will have to opt into this program effectively. The other side of this, and that's what I would like to speak more broadly on, is the concern over handing over data to a private company. And, and that being in, in their, in their hands, effectively, the concern that [9:02:45 AM] we have there is that it allows for the federal government and frankly, anybody else to go into this system and be able to use the data there with the warrant process to go around. A lot of the city oversight that we have and access data that could lead to unlawful arrests or just overall just broader unlawful prosecution of citizens. We've seen concerns with ice and how they operate nationally, and that's one of the major concerns that we have here, too, would be going after citizens, whether you are citizen or not, just going after you based on your race or your, you know, whatever your activities are and unlawfully prosecuting you there, the the solution that we'd like to hope to see is that the data get moved to the custody of the city of Austin in some kind of service that we can maintain, at least in that way we can have oversight as a citizenry. [9:03:47 AM] We have another broader concern, again, over the right to participate in this program or not as a taxpaying citizen. But if that is to exist, then the minimum that we would hope to get is at least some. >> Thank you very much. >> Also speaking on item a3, Haley Campbell. >> Hi all, thank you so much for taking public comment on this. I agree with everything the prior speaker said. My name is Haley Campbell. I live in Austin with my family and I'm the mom of a two year old little girl. And so when I heard that Austin parks and rec, the city of Austin is potentially going to enter into a contract with my taxpayer dollars to surveil pools where I might take my daughter in a bathing suit, and those images are going to be fed into an ai database from a company that I have no power to petition to remove those images from. I was extremely concerned. I don't [9:04:48 AM] know if you all have been following the news lately about what is going on with Elon Musk's grok ai chatbot, that people are creating extremely disturbing images of children using that technology. And I have no way of knowing or vetting the level of security that's going to be applied to images of my daughter. If I take her to a public pool or a public park, and this technology is put into place, I am extremely concerned about this. I am strongly opposed to the city spending money using ai enabled technologies to do this, and I'm opposed in large part because I work with ai tech as part of my job every single day. And I can tell you that the majority of these tools are untested, unreliable, and insecure in the ways that they're currently being implemented. Maybe in a decade or two, this will be an okay idea to consider. But right now, at the forefront of this technology, we don't want Austin children being Guinea pigs for the possible security risks of what could happen with sensitive images of little [9:05:49 AM] children. So I would strongly, strongly oppose the city of Austin implementing this technology anywhere, but especially in settings where high numbers of children and minors are going to be present. That's just deeply disturbing to me. Thank you so much. >> On item a3, Linda Bailey. >> Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem and council members. My name is Linda Bailey and I'm here in support of item a3 on mobile security cameras. This item is narrowly focused on temporary targeted cameras deployed where crime is occurring. It does not involve automated license plate readers or citywide surveillance. And I think that distinction matters. We've already seen this work in Austin when mobile cameras were set up in covert park and mount Bonnell, vehicle break ins dropped by 60%. When the cameras were removed, the crime returned. That's a clear local [9:06:50 AM] example of prevention working better and costing less than repeated response. In areas where I live. The pennybacker bridge overlook, which functions like a park. The increased visitor traffic has brought increased theft and vandalism. APD's online crime viewer map from past years noted that nearly 40 reported car burglaries in that area in one year, and other coverage describes at least a dozen vehicles broken into around the overlook in a single afternoon. These cameras give parks a flexibility, data driven tool to respond quickly within limits, oversight and short data retention. I urge you to support item a3 and keep our parks safe and accessible. Thank you. >> We will now switch to in-person speakers on item a3. Chris flores, Tom Smith, Leif [9:07:54 AM] brown, Hans maverick. You will have two minutes. Please state your name and begin speaking. >> Good morning. My name is Hans maverick. I'm a resident of council district ten. Thank you, mayor Watson, mayor pro tem vela and council members for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today. I'm here to ask you all not to move forward with item three on this week's council meeting agenda. Please don't deploy any rental surveillance cameras in Austin parks. Here's why I feel so strongly about this I first moved to Austin in 1989 at the encouragement of friends who lived here. They described Austin as a place that was vibrant, hip and diverse, where people did their own thing and minded their own business. And that was my experience of Austin back then. Over time, however, what used to be a city of free thinkers and independent entrepreneurs has [9:08:54 AM] increasingly become the playground of corporate tech bros. I want us to restore that old freedom in Austin. I want people to feel free to come and go as they please, associate with whom they wish and express their opinions, even controversial ones. I want my friends and neighbors to feel free to participate in the life of our city, including our neighbors who are unhoused or undocumented. Item three is yet another example of corporate managed for profit profit surveillance of ordinary people's lives. While you can make reasonable arguments about people's rights to privacy and public settings like parks, gathering all this data makes me worry about our rights. Under the first amendment. If a person decides to attend a political rally at a public park or go to a family reunion, or just hang out with friends, the government does not need to keep a record of that. The fourth amendment also comes to mind if a person has not been credibly accused of a crime, then the authorities have no right to keep a record of their [9:09:55 AM] comings and goings. We have already seen how ai cameras are racially biased and their data can be hacked and misused. Why should we expect this time to be any different? Surely there are other ways to reduce crime in parks that don't put our data in the hands of unaccountable tech companies? Thank you. >> Thank you. Please. >> Good morning, council members. My name is Chris flores. I'm a resident of district ten, commenting neutrally on agenda item a3. I'm hoping to persuade you today to delay mobile security cameras in our parks by redoing the bidding and the contract review process. There's no doubt Austin has a crime problem in our parks. There's no doubt the dismantling of the park police unit over ten years ago correlates to our crime statistics today. There is no doubt that cameras do not replace police. They do, however, offer a deterrent to about half of the would be perpetrators and most [9:10:55 AM] importantly, offer evidence to help police prosecute park crimes. The problem with this contract in the current state of affairs in our country in 2026 is of no fault of the parks department staff that put it together, they could not have foreseen that the federal government would be on a shopping spree of technology that surveils cities for target rich areas. Today, the targets are one group of people tomorrow who knows who will be targeted. We cannot, as a city, pay tax dollars into the technology cloud surveillance machine. That's a moral issue. We can, however, solicit bids from a closed circuit camera technology that saves the video on a self-hosted local storage system that only our trusted Austin police can access. That brings me to my closing point. The Austin police department should bid this park camera contract and manage its key performance assessments. Parks department staff have no [9:11:57 AM] expertise in this matter of public safety. As a daily swimmer with a pool assault police case myself, I can attest that parks department executives have told me personally and other park crime survivors that the parks department has no legal authority to ban people from parks and pools. Only the police can do this. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next, on item eight three, lily Ann Ortiz, Marissa liebscher, Eric Greenfield. Please state your name and begin speaking. >> Hi, my name is lily. Hello, members. Thank you so much for your attention and your time. I would like to please, please ask the council to not enter into a contract with liveview at this time. It is a dangerous time for us to add more surveillance to ourselves and to others. I understand that [9:12:58 AM] people deserve safe places to take their families to, to walk, to enjoy nature, the sun, and a place to rest. What those same people also need is the right to not be watched and monitored and surveilled at the park. Does the data really stand up to this immense need for cameras in our parks? We have many questions. Many of the places with high crime in the city are historically underfunded and are still being kept. So and adding surveillance cameras to an already underfunded overpoliced, which does not equate to a safer community. Overpolicing perpetuates cyclical poverty, and mental illness, is not going to make us safer in the long run. Mass surveillance does not equate friends to safety. What we can do is find a way to work within the constructs of what we have already built. We can encourage more community events. So the parks are being used by city and city communities, and we can provide subsidies to small [9:13:59 AM] businesses to use the parks as well. Please do not vote in favor of this contract. There are other ways we can make our parks safer. You want to know who spends a lot of time in parks? Immigrants in district four. Activists, protesters. Women with young children. Help us protect ourselves and help us protect you and help us protect each other. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yes, please. >> Good morning. Okay. >> Good morning. I'm Marissa, and I'm the president of the shepherd mountain neighborhood association. And I have a speech in front of me, but I'm changing it. I want to talk about how I've been hearing about how this might be. The cameras might be a waste of taxpayer money, and we don't see it that way. We actually see it the reverse, because we we don't see it, by the way, as mass surveillance. We see it as we can't stop what we can't see. [9:15:00 AM] And my neighborhood happens to be right next to a park, and we are seeing a trickle effect. We have what we are considering, sort of a punitive tax, which is our park. The park near our neighborhood is very popular. So there's been an increase in car break ins in our neighborhood. So we're having to pay for the to recoup expenses from that. But moreover, we pay taxes already. We pay taxes to support our public parks, and we don't feel safe going to these public parks because we know that if we go, chances are high that our vehicles will be broken into or even stolen. And it's another punitive tax, it's we will have to pay to repair our cars, maybe replace a car for the car damage. And what dollar amount is that? It's a disproportionate tax because we know that car repair companies don't charge to repair our cars [9:16:01 AM] based on our income. So it could be $600, it could be $1,000, it could be 1500. My 20 year old, 23 year old son is a UT student, and he took a friend of his from out of town to bull creek park to show her where he loves to hike and bike, and her car, which was locked, had nothing on the seats, had no target signs on it, was broken into. She spent $600 to fix it and she was a college student. So I'm out. >> Of time. >> Thank you very much for being here. >> Sure. >> Continuing on item a3, we have Tom Rogers, marina Roberts, Carlos pinion, Alyssa Matthews. Rich Harmon. Please state your name and begin speaking. >> My name is marina Roberts. I'm a resident of d4, testifying against the proposed liveview cameras on behalf of [9:17:02 AM] workers defense action funds. Membership of 6000 plus immigrant workers. Mass surveillance. The single most indicative distinguishing trait of tyrannical regimes has quietly exploded in our country, driven by ai innovation in a new frontier of domestic applications. Our data is harvested by everything from phones to doorbell cameras, and a dearth of regulations leave tech companies free to broker that data for profit, all without obtaining informed consent. The impacts of this surveillance are materializing in alarming ways, with grave implications for our immigrant neighbors and communities of color. An app called mobile fortify gives ice the power to identify people, using a combination of facial recognition tech and layered data sets sold by data brokers like floc and live. The app provides your name, the names of your family members, possible citizenship information, and more. Ice agents use mobile fortify to assess a person's legal status on the spot, essentially making a determinative assumption that if the app identifies you as undocumented, that you are [9:18:02 AM] they've arrested people convicted by the app. Even when they're able to produce a birth certificate. The arms of surveillance reach beyond immigrant communities. However, the New York Times reported a Minneapolis woman engaged in fully lawful ice watch activity was pulled over by the agents. She observed who's access to these tools allowed them to greet her by her first name to intimidate her. Three days later, she received an email from dhs saying her global entry and TSA travel privileges had been revoked with no explanation. When you approve a resolution like this liveview camera proposal, something the parks board voted against last night, you are opening up yet another tributary of data feeding into the ocean, powering these tools. As always, what targets immigrants can and will be broadened to target an ever expanding list of us. Do not erect this infrastructure, which is so essential to both mass deportations and the slow creep of authoritarianism. When a simple closed caption closed circuit camera will do. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next speakers for item a3 [9:19:05 AM] Nicole Majewski, Fran tattoo, Savannah Lee, Daniela silva, Peter Kim, Kevin Welch, Greg stoker please say your name and begin speaking. >> Good morning y'all. My name is Savannah Lee. I'm here with equity action registered against the item and I'm a resident of district one. I want to acknowledge what's driving this conversation. People want parks where they feel safe bringing their kids, using the pool and being in community. That's a reasonable expectation. And city council has an obligation to take those concerns seriously. But the question before you today isn't whether safety matters, it's whether this contract actually helps to deliver it today. While you're also considering a comprehensive efficiency assessment, the city is preparing to spend millions on a surveillance contract just months after voters made clear they're frustrated with wasteful spending. At the same time, we're facing $14 million in cuts to social service contracts, programs that are [9:20:06 AM] proven to prevent harm and harm and stabilize communities. Liveview doesn't fix the conditions that make parks unsafe. What it does is expand mass surveillance, primarily in communities of color. At a moment when federal agents are actively targeting immigrant families in Austin, we know from cities across the country that surveillance data is routinely repurposed for immigration enforcement, regardless of local intent. This particular contract is especially risky. Liveview disclaims responsibility for inaccuracies inaccuracies in its technology, meaning any harm caused by false matches or biased ai systems falls entirely on the city. And that's not hypothetical. Facial recognition tools have well documented higher error rates for people of color. There are better options park staffing, maintenance, lighting, and community based safety strategies all improve improved safety without turning public spaces into monitored Zones. Just last fall, council cut 5 million from the park budget. That was for these exact needs. So what are we doing here? Spending $2 million today, choosing this contract right now while cutting social services amid heightened federal enforcement sends the wrong message about what kind of safety the city prioritizes. [9:21:07 AM] Vote no. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good morning. My name is Daniela silva. I'm the Austin policy coordinator at workers defense action fund, and I'm here to speak against the proposed contract with liveview technologies to establish tools of mass surveillance that have the potential to cause great harm to our immigrant communities. We know that the trump administration is actively using data collected by mass surveillance technologies like live view cameras to facilitate mass deportations, to hunt abortion seekers, and to track political protesters. In many cases, police are sharing data with ice and other federal agencies. Regardless of the law or policy. Guardrails, with recent news stories illuminating an alarming amount of collaboration between APD and ice, we do not want to add to the data sets that create vulnerabilities for our immigrant neighbors and others who may be targeted under the interpretation of sb four, delineated in city legals recent memo. If ice requests data from the liveview technology cameras, APD would seem to be under legal obligation to turn the data over. The only safe data is [9:22:08 AM] data that is not collected. If the intention is deterring crime by the presence of cameras, why can't standard CCTV cameras, which are much less expensive, suffice? Or even funding park rangers to have a presence at the parks? Paying for such an expensive contract for technology with unnecessary ai capabilities during a budget crisis is both ethically and financially irresponsible. Signing this contract creates completely unnecessary risk for communities that are actively being targeted by the federal and state administrations. Our public parks are places of sight, rest, play and leisure. Third, spaces where families should be able to safely have a carne asada out of the back of their trucks without being worried about whether or not they're taking advantage of the spaces they paid for with their tax dollars will be used later to kidnap them and their children's. So many of our members at workers defense are already afraid to leave their houses to do basic things like pick up their kids from school or go grocery shopping. Parks are one of the places they still feel some sense of safety outside of the home. Please do not vote for this item and take [9:23:08 AM] it off the agenda for Thursday. Thank you. >> Hello, my name is Peter Kim. I'm a resident of district one, and I'm also here to ask the council to reject entering into this contract with liveview technologies for their ai, ai powered park surveillance cameras. And what really worries me here is that, you know, first of all, these cameras are part of a larger automated system. So what this means is that lvt is going to store a ton of this video data on their private servers that we have no really insight into, and then run their ai models over them to generate queryable annotations of that video data. This will then allow operators to essentially type into a search bar. Things like, you know, how many people were at the park at this time to this time, or did you see this person from this time to this time? And then you add to the fact that by state law, and as Danielle stated before me, that, you know, all municipal police departments here in in Texas are required to cooperate with ice, and APD will be able to [9:24:08 AM] access this data. So what is there really to prevent, you know, even a marginally creative ice agent from requisitioning this annotated video data from lvt just so he can make quota? And I don't think I'm being hyperbolic here because, you know, just yesterday there was a spate of kidnapings in the north loop neighborhood and someone shared a video with me of, you know, like 5 or 6 of these heavily armed thugs running up on this one guy, throwing him on the ground, slapping cuffs on him, and then tossing him into the back of a van and speeding away with him. You know, like he was just some road debris that they were, like, trying to clear out. This is actually happening right now. And so all this to say, like, you know, if we really care about public safety and I think I honestly do we have to acknowledge that increased surveillance, especially when turbocharged with ai and peddled by these private companies whose primary goal above all else is to make money, doesn't actually make us safer? I'm urging council to stop falling for these quick and easy solutions, and instead [9:25:09 AM] do the long and hard work of meaningfully investing in their communities, because that's the only way we're actually going to make us safe, especially now. >> Alyssa Matthew, item a3. >> Good morning. My name is Alyssa Matthews, and I'm here testifying in opposition of agenda item three. The other people who have testified before you today have done a great job of discussing the harms that this technology can be used to perpetrate against members of our community. But I'd like to instead look at the evidence that this council is basing their decision on. I reviewed the memorandum published to the public and relied on by this council to determine whether or not this technology would provide a benefit to the community at all. In that memorandum. The entire premise of it is based on this pilot program of this technology, and the assertion that the pilot program proved that this tech reduces crimes in our parks. If you look at [9:26:10 AM] the evidence cited within that memo, we actually cannot make that connection. All we have is at most correlation. We see that, yes, these parks had cameras, and yes, these parks experienced a reduction in crime. But if you look at the citywide crime stats for those same exact years, the entire city of Austin was experience a reduction in crime overall and for specifically theft regarding motorized vehicles, the crime that seemed to be at most concern within that memo, which means we don't have the evidence in front of us necessary to determine that these cameras are responsible for any reduction in crime, let alone enough of a reduction to warrant 400 plus thousand dollars of our taxpayer money, or the harm that can be done against our community members. With that technology, I strongly urge the council to vote no. Thank you. >> We will now move to remote speakers on item a-3. Monica Guzman. >> My name is Kevin Welch. [9:27:12 AM] >> Good morning, mayor and council. I'm Monica Guzman, policy director at Garza lugo Austin. Austin. We are opposed to item a-3 and stand with those who also spoke against it. As you've already heard many say, this is not good. It's a violation of privacy, especially where children are concerned. It's more of a danger to our community of color, especially those who are immigrants, families of mixed status. And a concern is also is how in what way will the police department use it? You know, besides what's briefly stated in the memo for this item, I know that the Austin police department, as has been spoken before regarding the automated license plates, when they shared data, they have said that they're not going to share it with ice with the federal government, but they do share in other circles that [9:28:14 AM] would go to Williamson county, hays county counties, and do share with the federal government. We we urge council to withdraw this item to do more research on it and hopefully just give it a thumbs down and don't let it go forward. That 400,000 plus can go towards better use. Thank you. >> Mr. Welch. If you don't mind, come forward. >> Thanks for calling, mayor. Hey, council, my name is Kevin Welch, current president of the board at F Austin. I'm here to urge all of you strongly to vote no on item three. While we appreciate the work on safeguards the council has made since the last time, this is considered fundamentally, this is a flawed idea, period, and cannot be reformed by safeguards. I should point out, literally, as I was driving here to you today, NPR was reporting on how, thanks to investigative journalism from Ben Jordan and 404 media, fox [9:29:15 AM] safety literally left dozens and dozens of apr servers exposed to the internet, accessible by anyone. So any assertions liveview technologies is making to you that they can somehow disable the risks of ai? Keep this data safe. I have to be blunt. They're in the business of selling surveillance to you. They can't guarantee this to you. I work as a software engineer. I see data abused and misused by well-intentioned people every day. The reality is, the only data that is safe is the data that is not collected. There is no bureaucratic means of reforming this, and there is no reason to trust a contract that has no enforcement mechanism. It doesn't say they owe us money if they lie to us, we are not allowed to audit their cameras. And you can't ignore the current political climate. The things this city does do not exist in isolation. We are seeing journalists arrested. We are seeing people shot and killed. You have a responsibility to protect your citizens, and you can't guarantee their safety by [9:30:15 AM] collecting this data. Parks are a vital space for protected first amendment activity, and I hate to see a world that's being normalized where unless you're rich and own a private house, you don't have a right to privacy. There was little to no crime in the soviet union. People did not lock their doors. I doubt any of you would want to live there. Do the right thing by your constituents. I fundamentally reject the idea that we can't solve crime in parks without these cameras. There are low crime parks in this city, so it's clearly about priorities, not about ability. Reject the false dichotomy that surveillance and fundamental violation of human rights is the only solution to this problem. Vote no. >> Thank you. >> Speaking remotely on item 83, Aaron pierce. >> Hello, this is Aaron pierce speaking against item three at a time where ai surveillance is being used to compile information about individuals exercising their first amendment rights only to be labeled by dhs as domestic terrorists. And with the recent passage of senate bill eight, [9:31:17 AM] requiring police departments to work with ice, any collection of data on Austin residents should be a cause for concern. Like others have said, the only safe data that can be collected is that which is never collected at all. The goal of these cameras is to reduce break ins and increase public safety. But taking into account what is going on in our country at a national level, the disproportionate risk of data misuse and how it could impact unhoused individuals and minorities in Austin is antithetical to that goal of public safety. I ask you to vote no. Thank you. >> That concludes all speakers for item a3. We will move to item a45. We have two speakers on that. That would be brydan Summers and Carol Guthrie. >> Good morning mayor and council. I'm Brian Summers, president of local 1624, the union for city of Austin and [9:32:17 AM] Travis county employees. We share a lot of the same values and what the intended outcomes are for this ordinance. We want to also ensure that we're providing effective service delivery, getting in a better financial situation for the city, and avoiding a charter amendment that's going to require audits. But for us, the details are really the lack of details are what is causing us some concerns, as I hope you know, we sent your offices a letter yesterday detailing some of those issues that we are some of those concerns that we're taking issue with. Now, this is just the second time that this is being discussed by council and and before it is scheduled for a vote on Thursday. I know that since I'm going first, maybe today you will be answering some of these questions, and I certainly hope so. But without greater clarity, we at this time cannot support this, and we think it either needs to be postponed or some changes made to the ordinance itself. A few of the issues that we're seeing is in terms of the process, why is this moving forward without consultation with the union and the community, what guarantees [9:33:18 AM] are there for the public to help shape the scope of the third party contract? If the ballot measure from save Austin now is not successful, is that a message that the residents do not want us to have a third party audit? Conversely, if the ballot measure is successful, then would we have two mandates to be going forward with third party efficiency studies? And what do we do in that situation in terms of costs? We heard very little information provided at the audit and finance committee. We know that these contracts are extremely expensive. The other ones throughout the city are extremely expensive. And so we'd like to know have a better idea of what that's going to look like. And then in terms of accountability, what's going to be available to the public and when what's going to be available to council? Will council be taking votes on any action plans or recommendations brought forward? So these are some of the questions that we'd like to have some answers to as you continue working through this process. Thank you. >> Thank you, miss Guthrie. >> Yes. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Carol Guthrie, business manager for afscme. I [9:34:20 AM] am here speaking in opposition of item 45. Not because we don't support efficient government. We do. And we know that the city of Austin has room to become more efficient. Our concern is the speed in which this is moving forward. We need to have guarantees that our workforce will not be contracted out, that there will not be layoffs, that, yes, city employees can help you and assist you in identifying waste. They know where it is, they see it every day, and we want them to be a part of this process. But this process is moving so quickly that we have concerns that we haven't built things in that do protect the workers and that we haven't defined what [9:35:21 AM] this assessment is actually going to do and where it goes and who authorizes it. There are just so many questions we're asking you to slow down. This will ordinance. It will be on the books, and we want it to we want to be sure that the employees are protected no matter which way you go. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor. That concludes our speakers. >> Thank you very much. Thanks for everybody that came and spoke to us members. What we'll do is we'll go through the agenda item, the agenda items in the order that they're listed on the agenda. So we'll first go to item a2 and that item. And by the way, all of these items were pulled including item number 44 I mean 45 which I had indicated we would pull no matter what. And so it's it's been pulled as well. Since they're all pulled items, what I think I'll do is [9:36:21 AM] start with the person that in the discussion that pulled the item and so on. Item two, I'll recognize council member harper-madison. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor, I appreciate that. So with item two, I pulled it because I wanted the general public and my colleagues to all get the opportunity to sort of hear the the latest on where we are with millennium youth entertainment complex, otherwise known as the Mike, now very newly under the stewardship of aacme. I almost said the newly formed aacme. But y'all ain't new no more. It's 26 and so I wanted to give them the opportunity to offer some clarity about this expenditure, what it does, what it doesn't do, where the money comes from, where it doesn't come from, and just open the floor to questions about the item. As you know, it's a super critical city of Austin asset and very much a gem in district one. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Director means. >> Good morning. My name is Angela means I'm the director [9:37:22 AM] for the Austin arts, culture, music and entertainment department, and it is a pleasure to be here. The item before you is a budget amendment for the revenue for the millennium. The first thing I want to say is this is not new revenue. The it takes $1.3 million to operate the millennium youth entertainment entertainment center, or complex that is consistent with what it has taken in the past that has come from $800,000, has been the city of Austin's contribution, with the additional 500,000 that's generated from revenue at the site. That includes bowling, skating, our special event rentals. All of that is what it takes to operate. So what you're what this item specifically is, is because the city of Austin, since November, is now managing and operating this facility, the revenue needs to be appropriated to the city of Austin versus the prior [9:38:26 AM] third party contract. So that's all this budget amendment is. >> That certainly satisfies my my curiosity. >> Thank you, council members. Any questions or comments? Thank you very much. Thank you. Director means appreciate you being here. That'll take us to item a-3. And I will recognize councilmember Siegel as the member that pulled item a-3. Thank you very much, mayor. >> I pulled this item for discussion at work session because since our discussion several months ago regarding automated license plate readers, I've been working with mayor pro tem vela on a policy that he has placed on the agenda for this Thursday to create a surveillance use policy for the city, and the need for the surveillance use policy was shown in the lpr context. When council adopted strong guidelines for lpr. But the contract with floc did not follow those guidelines guidelines and in this era of new technology, artificial [9:39:26 AM] intelligence, big data and widespread surveillance, we need to build strong internal systems, especially in the procurement process, to truly understand what we are buying as a city and how it impacts our constituents. Because buying cameras no longer means just cameras. And I'm not sure the procurement process for this item meets councils and community's expectations. I do want to start by acknowledging the absolute necessity and worthy goal of reducing crime in parks facilities. No one wants more break ins at parks. No one wants more vandalism or less safety. I very much enjoy hiking bull creek and climbing the steps at mount Bonnell, and I would never want to come back to my car to see broken glass and missing belongings. But we were discussing here today is how to best achieve the goal of deterring crime and protecting the welfare of our constituents without simultaneously causing harm. And in particular, how can we protect against a private company acquiring the data of our movements and [9:40:27 AM] activities, and either monetizing that data and selling it to others, or turning it over to outside agencies who may use it to violate the civil and human rights of our constituents. So I'm going to start with some questions of staff, and great to see you. All my questions are going to be focused on the q&a responses that were publicly posted last night. Early shared, as well as the memo of January 26th that was sent to mayor and council to. So to start, in the q&a published yesterday, it was written that quote the city of Austin's current current security requirements mandate that these ai features remain disabled by default. And so the first question is, what features in the liveview contract would violate our current security requirements? >> Thanks for the opportunity to speak here today. I'm Amanda Ross, I'm with the parks and recreation department. I'm division manager for natural [9:41:28 AM] resources. I'm joined here by our director as well as well as doctor Brian from information technology services as well as we have procurement staff too. So we'll we'll hopefully be able to answer your questions kind of as a group to understand that. So specifically, our understanding is that that is something that we've heard that is a concern for. And so there are things that this technology can do that we have asked in the contract required in the contract for it to be disabled. We are also able to hear from you guys today and make adjustments to that contract to make sure that we're able to do so. Did you want a specific example of something that the cameras are capable of that we would like to have disabled? >> Yes, please. >> So one thing that it can do that we first of all, I think we have concerns about just as a parks department is it can be let's say it can say it can go off and tell someone that it is after hours. And that is currently past park curfew. It [9:42:28 AM] could be 2 A.M. And someone's in the park and it could come on and say, the park is closed, please leave that kind of thing. We do have some concerns for that just because we do have. Obviously many of our parks are in neighborhoods and that's just, you know, volume, all those kinds of concerns as well. So that would be something that we would not use. We don't see it as the priority for this program. >> Are there other features that would violate our current security requirements? >> So the ability for some of the sorry, doctor Brian Gardner, I am the interim chief information security officer here. So some of the features that the software is has the ability to do won't be enabled as a part of our security controls and privacy assessment, are being able to correlate information within the system. The the the those features will not be enabled as a part of the controls and the configuration for the software. [9:43:29 AM] >> Are there any other features that would violate our current security requirements? >> Not not to my knowledge collection of the data and data retention. Those will be controls that are put in place and also followed up through the configuration and after assessment. Once the configuration for the software has been completed. >> And what security requirements of the city are you referring to when you identify these features of the device? >> So under current policy, ai has to go through a technology selection process like any other technology. And as a part of our technology selection process, ai has been elevated to a point where we want to make sure that the use of ai and that data, that is that ai is using is controlled and maintained within our control within the city. >> So is that the main policy you're talking about, the ai policy we have. >> Around the use of the video data itself? Yeah. Using ai to [9:44:30 AM] be able to correlate and use things like facial recognition, which has some a lot of concern. So those features won't be enabled. It will be purely bringing the data into the servers, encrypting the data. Those kind of security policies controlled access around the security, things like multi-factor single sign on that allow only the people that are allowed authorized into those systems to being able to access the video data. >> Doctor Gardner, was it? Yes, sir. Have you reviewed the proposed surveillance use policy that mayor pro tem vela has put forward? >> Yes, sir. I have. >> Has staff created an analysis of this vendor contract that would comply with that policy that we're looking to adopt. >> Yes, sir. So my staff does not only the security controls as we're talking about, but also the privacy controls, which entails a privacy impact [9:45:32 AM] analysis of what those how this could be or should not be used in that. And those recommendations are then provided to the department to making sure that those controls are in place from not just the security perspective, but also the privacy impact. >> Are you aware that mayor pro tem. Yeah. Mayor pro tem has proposed policy would require publication of that analysis two weeks prior to a council vote. >> Yes, sir. I am. >> And has that analysis that you've done on this item been provided to the public? >> Not as yet, sir. >> Okay. Thanks, sir. I have additional questions. This might be more for park staff. Did the city consider using, I guess, what we could call dumb cameras instead of ai assisted and very expensive systems? >> So ultimately where we're looking at placing some of these cameras kind of necessitates what the camera is. Right? So we're looking at putting these in locations that don't have power. They're they do not have they they going to have to go through some sort of [9:46:32 AM] cloud system to, to make sure that that data is saved as part of it as well. We did a request for proposal and kind of put out there what we needed. And this was a vendor that was selected that met those needs. >> But isn't it true that the rfp requested an ai system? >> It did include the idea that what some of the search ability within it. So being able to tell if it's a dog, being able to tell if it's a person, being able to tell if it's a bike, things like that which do help in aid. Kind of the review of the the system itself. >> But if a vendor had a non ai system, they wouldn't have been able to apply to this rfp because the rfp requested ai systems. Correct? >> I'd have to I'd have to look back at that more detail. I'm sorry, I don't have that specific. >> That's fine. >> I want to kind of move over to the January 26th memo from staff. In the memo, published on January 26th, it was asserted that, quote, under the proposed contract, the city maintains sole and exclusive ownership of all system data, [9:47:34 AM] while the technology provider lvt is contractually barred from accessing, sharing or utilizing the footage for any purpose, including ai training or third party distribution. But I my staff requested the proposed contract and there were no contractual provisions that would bar lvt from accessing the data and using it for whatever purposes it wished. I notified staff last week that these provisions were missing, and staff said they would work to alter the contract to include these provisions. Yesterday, my office was told that staff is still working on an addition to the contract and that as of last night, lvt lvt has not agreed to it or even seen it yet. Is that accurate? >> So we have an addendum to the contract that took the privacy and technology review and made recommendations for that contract as well. And so as part of any contract process, we're we're in negotiation with them. And we would hear not [9:48:36 AM] only from taking the information from our technology services team, but also from our privacy team, as well as council and anything that we are directed to do. Any city policy will make sure is in the contract. That's standard city procurement that we have to we have to make sure to follow all guidance that we're given, and that the guidance that we got from the technology services is what informed the information in that memo. And so it was always the intention for that to be as an addendum to moving forward with it, that it is a currently a draft with the idea that our goal is to hear back from, from, from council to make sure that we're meeting the needs appropriately. >> And to be clear, I'm not here today to criticize staff, but the memo says contractually barred. And we've got a lot of lawyers in the room here. But what you're telling me is lvt has not agreed to these provisions. Correct. >> And so my understanding is that we're working with lvt on that. And my understanding, [9:49:37 AM] well, I don't know how much I can speak to beyond that, but if they do not agree to it, then then the contract would not move forward. >> Yeah. My concern is more about process here that a public memo was distributed. That wasn't true when it was published. And to me, this goes to the point of why we need a surveillance use policy. We need a sunshine, a two week window, at least so the public can evaluate these contracts. And we need to maintain public trust. We've heard a lot of testimony about a lot of the concerns people are feeling right now in this moment of history. And when a memo is distributed that contains an assertion that's not actually backed up, that really gives me pause as a council member about my confidence in the procurement process. There's other provisions here and claims that seem to be similar in that they're aspirational, but we don't know if lvt will agree to these terms and conditions. And it's been presented to us as if they have [9:50:38 AM] already agreed. There's a provision that says the contract has no training clauses, which prevent the vendor from using city data to train their ai models. Is that in the contract that lvt has agreed to? >> So we have an addendum to the contract, and that is in the addendum to the contract. >> But the addendum has not been agreed to by lvt. >> My understanding is that what the council item is, is for negotiation and approval of the contract, and that that's where we are with that is and my understanding again, is we have to hear back from them, but that the city would not move forward unless that was agreed upon. >> I'm not going to belabor the point, but colleagues, my understanding is the law department has not even reviewed this so-called addendum. It looks like the ai search function will be turned on. Is that accurate? >> Can I understand which the ai search function. >> To search the liveview [9:51:39 AM] system using ai tools? Okay, the q&a says the system provides search and analytical capabilities to aid human operators in investigations. For example, authorized staff can filter footage for broad physical characteristics such as a specific vehicle color or behaviors like loitering to save time during post crime investigations. So, for example, my concern is how would the ai decide when someone is loitering? >> So it takes standard. So what it can do is it can say there's a person there, right? So it can tell us if there's a person we can kind of search in on whether there's a person, whether there's a dog, whether there's a bike you can do by color. And so that's what it helps with is helps with that kind of information. So it's kind of the basis of the search function itself. >> Can you see that this tool could be abused. For example, in other jurisdictions ai assisted searches of [9:52:40 AM] surveillance cameras have been used for stalking and other appropriate reasons. Will there be an audit of the reasons given for the searches of the system? >> So within the system, a lot of the recommendations around security controls that we have recommended and will follow up is being able to enforce audit control to access. So we will know who accessed the system and what they were actually pulled within the system. That's one of the recommended security control recommendations that we feel is very important to enforce. >> Thank you. Doctor. Doctor, are you aware that in the context that a review found that about 20% of the searches were non-compliant with the general orders and council policy? >> Sorry, I'm not aware of that, but thank you. >> Are you aware of any attempts to create an oversight structure that would avoid that outcome? >> No, I'm not aware of that. But when you set up auditing [9:53:43 AM] capabilities within a system, you create an immutable system or immutable audit so that data is no longer residing in that system, you're pulling that audit out. And so we won't it will not be able to be circumvented in as far as an audit capability. >> Okay. >> I'll, I'll conclude just by saying, you know, to me, there's been a lot of confusion about what these cameras do, what ai capabilities they have, what protections are in place and what might be prohibited in the contract. And as of last night, staff was still drafting contract language to include the protections outlined in the January 26th memo. The vendor hasn't seen these provisions as far as I know, and I'm not still I'm still not sure what we would be voting on Thursday. And if I'm confused, I'm sure the public is too. I don't think this is staff's fault. I believe council has a duty to create clear expectations about what kind of protections we want in these surveillance programs, and I know that staff has been working overtime to do the best they can in the circumstances we have, but we need clarity and transparency, [9:54:44 AM] and that's exactly why we need mayor pro tem Bella's trust act so that instead of figuring it out, what we're instead of figuring out what we're actually voting on during work sessions, staff presents all this information to council and the public, and it clearly outlined way two weeks before the council meeting via the surveillance use policy. Given that, colleagues, I don't think we're ready to vote on this item on Thursday. We need more time. The public needs more time. And it sounds like the vendor needs more time to review all this new contract language. So I want to propose that this contract be the first test case for the surveillance policy mayor pro tem vela is bringing, and that after we vote on that surveillance policy, staff comes back to us with a use policy for these park cameras that we can all see two weeks in advance of the vote. My understanding is the parks department doesn't need these cameras until the summer, and that this should be a sufficient amount of time. I understand that this has already been postponed before, and there were feelings of urgency, but we're in a new world now. We've all seen what's happening with ice, the way they're tapped into or tapping into private and public surveillance systems. And it's more important than ever that we carefully consider all the [9:55:45 AM] facts before voting on a contract with a private vendor for ai powered surveillance technology that could run the risk of violating our residents civil liberties. Thank you, mayor. >> Thank you, councilmember councilmember qadri, followed by councilmember Laine. Councilmember alder. >> Just a quick question. A few quick questions. What type of cameras are currently used at our park, at our parks, and on our trailheads? >> So there's a variety of cameras currently in use in the park system. We have cameras that are associated with some of our buildings, particularly our newer buildings. There's security cameras associated with those. They are CCTV cameras on our buildings as well. And then we have some at our trailheads and along the trails as well that are in that similar vein. >> Great. And then where is that data stored? >> My understanding is that data is stored locally with the facility itself. >> And then who has access to that? >> The staff at the facility. >> Okay. Can anyone else get access to that? [9:56:46 AM] >> I believe they they can if they're at the facility and have the ability to log into the system. >> Okay. And have these type of cameras have been considered instead of the ai camera that's being considered. >> So our concern is just the the what's great about this system is that it's mobile. We can move it from location to location. It's not just stationary at a location. There's a fair amount of investment in installing these in a more remote location, like someplace like the saint Ed's greenbelt area, where it's just we would have to get the infrastructure in the facility back support there as well. And so that's one of the reasons that we were looking at kind of this more mobile system that allowed us to not have a camera at all times, but really to focus on limited areas that had crime hotspots of concern. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember, councilmember, councilmember. Alter. >> Thank you for bringing this to work session so we can have a little bit of a more extended conversation about it and ask the questions we have. Thank [9:57:46 AM] you to councilmember vela for his leadership on bringing forward the surveillance ifc, that the trust act that is on the council meeting agenda. I want to say really clearly that I am a strong supporter of having policy guidelines that are approved by council and that we develop the habit because we need to because their policy of following. And I know the enormous amount of work that has gone into that policy, both on the council side and and on the staff side. And I say that as someone who is co- sponsoring that policy, I would like to look I also I would like to start by saying that I am also grateful for the data that has come out in the memo for the step forward that I think that that reflect that is for us in terms of being able to have this conversation now. And and with that, I would like to turn to a specific [9:58:47 AM] example that was in the memo that is part of this conversation and relates to a lot of comments that I've been hearing. And that example is saint Edward's greenbelt, or park on old spicewood springs road. It is one of two parks that were identified in that memo as having a significant reduction in vehicle breakdown. Break-ins. When the park's cameras were there, and then it immediately went back up when they went away. It is also a park that has limited infrastructure, so for example, there are no buildings on it right now. As we know, money's tight. It might be a while before there's a bond. This park has so far not risen to the priority list of capital investment. I have not heard any indication that we would soon have the type of infrastructure that would allow those types of cameras to be, to be put there. I have also heard that security concerns and the ability to protect any [9:59:48 AM] investment that the city would make at that park are prohibitive to making those improvements. And so very much at that park as I have dug into it prior to this memo, there's a big catch 22 situation going on in terms of anything that would be a step forward to address the concerns of the community. Also, I would posit that currently there is not a safe way to access and make use of that park, even those for those who live in the area. Maybe five years ago, I can attest there was not shattered glass glass littered all over the parking lot. There is now. The data came out in the memo that shows that there was a significant increase that hadn't previously been the case in break-ins, and it went down during cameras and it went back up now. So it tracks. And the moment that those cameras were [10:00:50 AM] removed from that park, my office received substantial incoming concern about how to use that park. There are not currently sidewalks or trails that connect any of the homes to that park, so that you can safely access it on foot. There is not money to create that type of large scale investment in safe connectivity on foot or on bike. There is not a parking sufficient to to really meet the demand. There is not. As I understand it, police staffing available to enforce or make be a consistent presence there. And so where that leads my understanding of the situation for that park, which is identified as a really high need park for these cameras, is there do not appear to be other [10:01:53 AM] alternatives to reach this park and use it. And people do not feel safe parking their cars there because of break ins. So my my first question is. What, if any, alternatives? Am I missing that? Aren't cameras these cameras that could make it possible for the community to reach this park and use it, even if you live within a quarter mile of it? >> Thanks for the opportunity to respond to that. You know, as a parks department, our goal is to serve the community members who want to visit the spaces and don't feel safe because of break ins. But also, we also have to be cognizant of the idea that if people aren't feeling comfortable in the space because of cameras. So there's a couple of things. When we originally started to see this problem, you know, 2018 to 2020 is when it really started and started to grow. We did some efforts specifically [10:02:53 AM] with our partners at the police department to try and get some additional patrols in the area. We brought additional park rangers out to the space as well, increased patrols from staff as well. Unfortunately, it's a crime of opportunity, right? So if someone's there then that's a deterrent. But placing someone there full time is difficult to do and cost prohibitive. We also worked at several locations to look to create, take lock, hide signs. Right, so that we were informing citizens that this is a space that you should be careful about leaving any items visible within your car. Some of the reports we heard from people was that they didn't leave anything in their car, and they were still getting broken into. We also, our park rangers created little little business cards that had information about take, lock, hide and what to do to be prepared following our leave no trace ethics as well to be prepared when you come to the space. There was additional social media that we did as well on it as well to just help inform and educate people. If [10:03:53 AM] this were occurring at night. There's things like Gates and things like that that we could that could be done. But ultimately really it's happening during the day with active park users. And so that limits kind of some of our options. And this seemed to be an effective option in response. >> Okay. So these things have been tried. And then what we saw was they they haven't worked. >> Yes. Correct. >> And and just to give an idea of perhaps staffing or, you know, you know, police enforcement that could be possible. I mean, there's been a motorcycle parked on the side of the road for like many, many months just sitting there. So it does have a little label on it saying that it shouldn't be there. And that's about as far as we've gotten over several months. I can tell you that in my district, we have a lot of concerns that are raised about when there's a property crime. They're not being police advising that there is not staffing to be able to [10:04:54 AM] investigate it, to be able to come even if you, you know, have called 911. So and I think that really as a council and as many of the people who commented here, I don't think our goal is to I am not saying that our goal is to boost police staffing, but I am saying that I want us to arrive at something that can be tried, that the cost benefits make sense. And I do believe that the process that we're in, the that's laid out in the ifc, is the best thing that we have so far come up with to address community concerns, thank safeguards, and then try that thing. I'm going to ask a couple of specific questions. As I said, I appreciate that the data that we have is available. I think that hearing the questions that are coming up still for me, I would want [10:05:54 AM] to understand how many trailers does this contract provide for the three year contract period. >> Right, so so these are rentals per month and we have a goal of somewhere between 6 and 10, kind of depending on need at different park parking lot park locations in particular. If the data shows that we're not having problems, then this would be a cost savings for us and we would not use it in a needed space. But 6 to 10 is what we were looking at our goals. It's not to go above ten per year, and we don't expect it to be out the entire year as well. We, you know, spring break through labor day is our busier seasons in the park. And when we see spikes as well. >> Okay. So we've and as we go into this we have a data. So where would the initial cameras be placed. And also you know, I think you alluded to some idea of timing for evaluating effectiveness and deciding whether to relocate them. What's our starting point on [10:06:54 AM] that? I didn't I didn't see that sort of thing in the info we've received. >> Sure. And so we would partner with our police department. We have the data. We've worked with our data analysts to understand the hotspots and continued locations. Many of these locations would be top priority for us, and then we would adjust based on the crime rate that they're seeing. They can send us reports and update us on that, as you know, as often as monthly, so that we can make those adjustments as well. But ultimately, the goal would be to have that data drive those decisions as to where that location is. If we're seeing a drop off and it's being effective, it potentially could be removed. There's certain locations where we might not want to do that, because the infrastructure in that facility or in those spaces make it really, really difficult. But we've seen improvements. Mayfield park is a really good example of having when we placed placed it, we saw long term impact when we removed it. So that might be a location where we would put it there, and then we would remove it because we were seeing positive [10:07:56 AM] impact. And then there's other locations that we, you know, mount Bonnell is obviously one that has been a consistent problem for us. And we would leave likely leave a camera there as a priority location, but we would make those decisions based on crime data. >> So I think in addition to council member Siegel's request that or that we consider having these cameras follow the new ifc policy and bring it forward that way, I would ask that if we have several years of pilot data already, and we've had the opportunity as staff to have these conversations, that it would be helpful to council in the public to to also have the recommendation for initial use for the initial period. And what I've heard so far here is that there's a, there's a a need for mobile cameras and some of the data capabilities. However, we've also identified some parks where it's actually just having cameras at all. And [10:08:57 AM] so I don't know what will happen at the end of this, but I would certainly appreciate if there were consideration for one, if this comes forward in this way, that we lay out what the plan is, when could they be changed? Understand if the public's going to be able to know that. But if we're not needing to move forward on mobile, mobile trailers, ai, all of these things, we have already identified a couple of parks that seem like they need permanently affixed cameras. Or at least that's what the data tells us now. And I, I want to find a way to move forward on those parks that isn't five, ten, 20 years out because we're already at a five year Marc on some of it. Let me just I'm going to wrap up. Let me just see if there is a final question that I want to put out there. I think in the event that actually I will just stop [10:09:58 AM] there and listen to my colleagues more. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember. Councilmember Fuentes, councilmember duchin. >> Thank you very much. I, I want to start off just acknowledging some really unfortunate realities of where we are today. And I, I think the two big ones are we have a federal government that is clearly unconcerned with trampling on civil liberties of the public, and that's something that we have to be conscious of. And I think that the item that councilmember Siegel and mayor pro tem vela are bringing help address some of that. As we think about the use of technology as a city. But another sad reality is that crime is occurring at an unacceptable rate in our parks. And I think no further back than a few months ago when in [10:11:00 AM] zilker park, we had an officer who was shot because of an individual who was violating the curfew of the park, and then escaped through the Barton creek greenbelt, ended up at Barton hills elementary school. Thank goodness didn't end up shooting anybody there, but created a situation where crime at the park didn't just stay at the park, it came into the neighborhood and and at potentially one of our, our schools where kids were just trying to to walk and bike to school. And so I think about these two realities in conflict and how we can try to thread the needle here. And it's not easy. And I don't envy the position you're in. But I don't want us to lose sight of the [10:12:02 AM] fact that, yes, someone should be able to freely go to a park and not worry about video or pictures of themselves, but someone should also be just as free to go to a park and not worry that their car is going to be broken into, or that they're going to be assaulted, or that they're going to find drug paraphernalia in the park. These are all things that are happening, and we have to find the right balance. And so I, I want to, in that vein, help you help help us understand the options. Some of our parks. Let's just take zilker park right. Has infrastructure. It's very well infrastructure. And we know that's one of the areas where we have an unfortunate amount of crime. Have you all looked at kind of bifurcating [10:13:05 AM] those parks with infrastructure and tools. You know, more permanent? As councilmember Laine was talking about options we have there where we know the need will sadly almost always exist versus some of these other parks with the the mobile options. >> Yeah, it's definitely something we've looked at especially zilker is a really good example on the azzi Morton side in particular. And there is infrastructure there. And that's something that can be done. And we could do that under a current contract. And there's other locations. Again I'm going to use Mayfield. There's a house there. There's infrastructure. And that could be a location where we could also install under our current contract. And and that could really work for those kind of regular and consistent spots. This contract allows us to also have a little flexibility. Right. So to address locations that have that are spikes that that are hotspot, that could be addressed for unique need as well as allows us the flexibility to move between those locations. Resources are, [10:14:07 AM] you know, our parks department, we're very excited to be a parks department, but resources are limited. So there are certain locations that obviously are going to rise to that. So if this is not the best option for them, then that's where capital improvement project and working to get some of those improvements through that process need to happen. And in addition to this, this contract would allow us to also address some of those that don't have the infrastructure readily available. That would be substantially more to get that infrastructure to those locations, as well as allow us to move locations based on what's occurring at that point in time or or to not use them and to not spend that out outlay of funding if, if there isn't a problem at those locations as well. >> Yeah. >> Well, I, I think what I hear from a few of my colleagues, you know, we might be spending a little more time on this item and have a little more time on this item. And so if you could help us understand, because I think intuitively people think and I'll put myself in that [10:15:08 AM] category, how much does it cost to just install a camera on the telephone pole that already has electricity? You know, that seems really cheap, right? But for whatever reason, things are always more expensive than what it intuitively seems. So could you maybe look at that list of where you think you would be using parks, and what have the infrastructure in place, what don't, and, and what the cost differential is there for us just to to think this through. Yeah. >> We could do that. >> And then I also want to better understand, I was at a neighborhood association meeting just this past week and they said we'll buy cameras for the trails behind our neighborhood. Like just tell us how much and how we can put them out there. You know, I think a little bit like the neighborhood partnering program where we we partner, but I don't know if that's even a viable option. You know, that you're more on the trail cam world, and that can be very difficult sometimes to actually go out and monitor. It's not that that closed captioning, [10:16:09 AM] but I do think there are a number of neighborhoods who have, whether it's a pocket park or a trail, who might be willing to invest in that area. And that's just something that I don't know how we would explore that, but food for thought. I also have a couple questions for APD who I see are here and I don't know, it's it's more APD presented to the climate water, environment, parks committee about security at our parks and use of cameras and other mechanisms. And one of the things we talked about was actually the use of signage or cameras, you know, says that this area is under video surveillance, but it's actually not. Right. But but that has an effect. And putting out a camera that may not be on. But people see a camera and they don't know, is this camera working? Is this camera not working? So I was curious if y'all have any data around the [10:17:13 AM] deployment of whether in operation or not. And and I don't want to give away all your secrets here, but do. >> You. >> Might have started. >> Well, they said it already publicly. So I'm, I'm only following their lead. But do we have any kind of data around, you know, whether we deploy a camera in use or not or a sign and it's telling the truth or not, the efficacy of that and being able to kind of spread out. The the use and the scope of this through, you know, some of them are on, some are not, and they move around. And so you never know, but you get more out of it. >> Well, good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem and council. I'm jj Schmidt, assistant chief with APD. To your question, I don't have that information readily available. I can tell you that sometimes what we've seen is there's an expectation, if you have signage that a [10:18:14 AM] camera is in use and there's not a camera in use, that kind of puts us into a bind at times, because there's an expectation that you're going to be able to retrieve that data or pull that for a later investigation. So I don't know that that's a model that we've stuck with. I think we do make visible, particularly like downtown with the halo cameras, you know, that's an area. And we try to make make that aware greatly so that people know the space that they're coming into. But I don't have that data for you, sir. >> Okay. Well, if you have any information, we can talk privately. I'd just be curious to know, you know, is a sign just as good as the camera itself, or just kind of what options we have to help. >> My initial thought on that, just based on what what this is going to help us with, is the obviously putting the cases together after the fact. So there is a deterrence upfront that a camera is in place. But what we've seen is based on the data, we can go back and pull that information and develop a case potentially on a retail theft ring or somebody that's committing these crimes targeting our parks. That's where we see the biggest impact, [10:19:15 AM] because we're able to stop the behavior and focus on that specific deterrence. So that's what I would kind of put forward to you in that aspect. >> Okay. And you mentioned the halo cameras. Who houses that information. >> That's housed at our office at the real time crime center at headquarters, worked with our staff there. >> And are those there is recording there, or is it just live there? >> They're recorded and live monitored both. >> So was that the halo technology, something that we considered here? Just piggybacking onto, you know, not involving a third party, but doing it like we do right now? >> I think the I'm sorry, go ahead for for the again going to the infrastructure. Those are all set up with a with a network of mesh that we can get those signals to headquarters. The lvt technology does have the ability to live monitor, but that's not something that we would do in in this instance. The way that I understand it, the the information would be [10:20:16 AM] provided to the police department. One of the folks at the real time crime center would then access that storage, pull that into our evidence management software so that we can maintain compliance cjis and everything else, and then provide that to the Travis county da or county attorney, as appropriate, and then stay within our retention schedules for the for the policies. >> Okay. >> Thank you very much. I appreciate it very much. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Fuentes. Councilmember duchen. Councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you. >> Colleagues. My what I'm I have more comments to say on on the issue overall rather than questions. But there are two things that are apparent from today's work session, both from the line of questioning coming from councilmember Siegel with discrepancies and need for more information on the process of this potential contract as well as the contract itself. And then I'm also hearing questions about what are the other forms of safety, what other tools do we have available for us to ensure the safety of our parks? Clearly, on both ends of this policy conversation, to me, I [10:21:17 AM] feel very uncomfortable moving forward with this contract on Thursday. We're not and I'm not at a place to support it as it stands today. And it really it for me, it's anchored in understanding the environment and context in which we are policy making in. And what is at the focus and forefront of me is knowing that with the trump administration and their proven and demonstrated track record of disregard for local laws and policies, and being able to access data and demand data and come in and and what have you, that gives me tremendous amount of concern about having this type of safety tool at this time. And, you know, we don't have to go very far for an example of when council considered the apr contract, council at the same time adopted a policy. We set up direction to the city manager on how we would like the alpr pilot program to go. We had an audit done in conjunction with that pilot program. Audit comes out. Findings say the contract was not in line with the policy [10:22:17 AM] that council directed. So given that history that we have, and knowing that what's before council in a few days is not at a place yet where it's even in alignment with the trust act, the other policy that we want to put forth when it comes to surveillance, I just this is too many loose threads here, too many unknowns and not a lot of assurances on it. So I just wanted to vocalize where I am on this item. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember duchen. Councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you, mayor. And I've got a couple of questions, and I'm really not sure entirely who to direct each one to. So I'm going to ask for your patience and maybe some volunteering up there to figure this out. One is I want to confirm that the cameras that we're talking about in this contract with this vendor are pretty much the identical cameras that we've been using for the last two years during the pilot. Is that correct, or is there a are there different terms that we're looking at as part of the contract or addendum that we should be [10:23:18 AM] thinking out? >> So to clarify, these cameras, similar to the previous ones, do not have license plate readers. They do not have facial facial recognition associated with them. And so there are certain things that are consistent with that. The technology is obviously evolving. I couldn't say if it's the exact the exact ones, but it's in line with what we were using previously. >> Okay. So it's very similar to what was deployed during the pilot between 23 and 25. >> Yes. >> So I'm curious what sort of issues were raised either internally or externally from park Goers, residents, other people during the window of the pilot that maybe we haven't talked about yet. What sort of issues correspondence did you all get from people about concerns around those cameras or incidents related to those cameras, setting aside what they might have been used for, strictly for addressing public safety issues? >> I don't believe I heard any [10:24:19 AM] concerns from the public with those when they were installed. >> Okay, so for the two year pilot, literally no feedback other than even though these were deployed at heavily trafficked parks. >> Yes. >> Okay. Is there a reason and you've kind of touched on this earlier, but is there a reason that even within this vendor, we would need to pursue cloud based storage, as opposed to a different kind of storage methodology? Is that purely for an operations perspective, that would be impossible to manually go retrieve data? Can you speak to that and then can you speak to I think in relation to that, any real or perceived and this may be a doctor gardener question, any real or perceived security challenges from having the cloud based storage. >> Not really any security challenges. The technology around encryption and making sure that the files are stored [10:25:19 AM] in a correct manner is matured to a point where that's almost a non-issue in whether it's file based or not. >> And then the first part of that question is there is there any reason that other than operation that you mentioned, that we would pursue cloud based technology over some other physical solution? >> Not that I'm aware of. It would have to we'd have to look at how the software is maintaining the storage and the database. But from my perspective, no, there shouldn't be any differential there, but it purely depends on how that software is written. >> I mean, maybe a better question for me to ask would be, is it more secure than based on your prior answer to have it stored in the cloud versus to stored locally on site, where I guess somebody unauthorized might be able to take that data from? >> From a security perspective, the more we can bring it back on site, obviously we have more controls around it physically. From a cloud storage perspective, most of the cloud vendors have implemented very [10:26:21 AM] secure controls meeting cjis compliance in this instance, which is what's called fedramp high or medium zoning. So those controls are very explicit and have to be met for these kind of vendors to work in that space. >> Okay. Then I'm going to ask the this is going to lead into can step me through what the chain of custody then looks like for the data? If it's housed, if partizan administrating with the vendor, what happens that this data eventually winds up with APD, presumably an axon in their system? And then how and then any security issues in the course of moving the data over. >> So I'm going to answer that from the park's perspective. And so to clarify, this is a system that will have limited park staff have access to. And anybody who has the ability to access it will have a login anytime that there's login or any sort of access to the [10:27:23 AM] system or any system that is logged by the system so that it can be audited and tracked as well, so that we know who's accessing it, how long they're accessing it, things like that as well. So we do have the expectation that within our park ranger, supervisor and above, staff would have access to it, but that would be limited within our parks department. And then we would work with the Austin police department, and they would have a single point of contact that would also have access as well, to be able to retrieve, to help with investigation purposes. >> And I would like to add on to as part of the security controls and the assessment, we went through, putting additional controls on top of that like multi-factor. So we know that that person that is accessing that is that person. There's multiple factors that that are being met. So it's not just a login or a password that's allowing it in. >> Thank you. Clarification. >> Chief Schmidt, anything you want to add to regarding the once it's transferred to the [10:28:23 AM] police, any security issues you could foresee for having that system, having either access to the system or the. Or unauthorized access to that system in the transfer to presumably axon or however you're managing that, that data. >> Sure. So as I mentioned, it would be the single sign on, just like we do with everything else. We would log into the cloud, capture that data, and immediately upload that into axon so that it follows all the protocols that we have in place now for all, all of our video evidence. >> Okay. And then similar to my prior question, any unauthorized access to the system over the last two years during the pilot or frankly, any authorized access from an entity that we wouldn't ordinarily share data with that we've turned it over to. >> Not that I'm aware of. >> I'm curious. My understanding is that the parks board last night, they talked about how some pumas are using [10:29:24 AM] are able to source physical security at their parks. Is that realistic for other parks to use that solution? >> Security has a place. And this this is one tool in a toolbox, right? We can talk about crime and parks. We've done a security audit across our park system. And this is one tool. As part of that there's there's many other that we need to invest in to make sure and to uphold the, you know, our stewardship role of making our community feel welcome and safe in parks. And then ultimately, a security guard is a tool. It is a fairly expensive tool and it is a very localized tool. So usually they're in one space. And there's only, you know, that's really helpful in a small space with a very limited entrance and egress and you know, where you can kind of track and follow that. Our park spaces. I'm going to think about the Barton creek greenbelt, for example, when you're parking along mopac. That's a very long parking area that would be very [10:30:24 AM] difficult for one person to to kind of walk and maintain, kind of maintain the sphere of control within that space as well. So there's certain spaces that might be effective, but in a lot of our spaces it's not effective. Just given the layout of the physical space itself. >> Well, I'm also trying to figure out thank you for that. And I'm also trying to figure out for a park like at mount Bonnell, where we have no Poma and no conservancy, how that would even work. >> It would be an expense. Back to the parks department. >> Yeah, okay. I'm also curious, how would if one of the concerns that we've got is some other government entity superseding our own and obtaining the data, requesting the data, first of all, are there any examples of that happening? Either? I'll just say in general, over the last two years regarding this data with that's already been collected, the pilot or just [10:31:25 AM] chief Schmidt in general with is this a is this a problem that you've seen occur periodically with data that's in axon? Anyway. >> This is not an issue that we've experienced with any of our video data. >> Okay. So any instances that the real question is if an if and how would this occur. >> There's not any that I'm aware of. >> Can you think of any scenarios where where you'd get that request? >> I really can't think of of a request from it's all going to be from the local level. If it's another case, the only thing I can think of is if we had a a crime ring again, that's creating a lot of burglary vehicles and maybe they get into to Westlake or another neighboring jurisdiction, they would ask to share some of that information on our suspects identities, vehicles and things of that nature that could potentially maybe be the body camera from a traffic stop or something. But I can't think of anything that would go outside of that. >> Okay, I appreciate that. Last question might be for commander Smith. My [10:32:25 AM] understanding is that he's used this kind of technology to help with the exact kind of crime rings that you've mentioned. I'm hoping that commander Smith can help me understand exactly how this technology, or the data was used to help find the evidence, make the arrests, whatever you did there. Can you walk me through how this was used? Yes, sir. >> I'm Craig Smith, commander for west Austin, which is baker sector. So we had a crime ring at mount Bonnell that was breaking in repeatedly to to vehicles. So we were able to use the park cameras and get a the suspects identified, the group identified. So once we were able to get them identified, we know we knew what vehicle they were they were using. And we would look out for for that vehicle. We'd put directed patrols out there. So with with that evidence, we were able to to gather what the suspects looked like and develop a case with our burglary and financial teams, and they were able to issue warrants on on several of the suspects out there. >> And what would have happened [10:33:26 AM] if we didn't have this tool deployed? Would you have been successful and what it has taken longer, how would that have played out? >> Yeah, we would have just had to wait for witnesses to come to to say, hey, we saw the suspects break into the vehicle. So that's just, you know, very rare for people to see because burglaries happen very, very quickly. So with the cameras, we're able to identify the suspects quickly and then able to look at the license plate and start the investigation right there with the camera system. >> So is it fair to say that without it, it would have been very hard to crack that ring and obtain the evidence and make the arrests? >> Yes. Burglaries are very hard to because they're so quick. They're they're crimes of opportunity. So without the cameras it would have been pretty difficult to to to solve those cases. >> Okay. Thanks for helping me understand that. Thank you all. >> Thank you, councilmember, councilmember Ellis. And then we'll have the mayor pro tem wrap up. >> Thank you. Mayor. I want to kind of recenter us on how we got here, why we're doing this. [10:34:27 AM] Our park spaces cannot be a free for all for crime. If someone commits a crime and they're on a roadway and they are witnessed doing something dangerous, they would they would have someone intervene, they would be apprehended. They would make sure that they are not able to continue unsafe behaviors. As someone who represents the bulk of zilker park, I want to read you a list. It's not a short list of incidents that have happened over the past four years, just within the footprint of zilker park. It's involved homicides, a hate crime involving felony assault, major vandalism to historic structures, and countless car break ins and thefts. And yes, while I would love to live in a world where cars don't get broken into, my first and foremost concern is the safety of individuals. People are dying. People are getting shot. It is not a safe place for kids to play. Depending on what is going on that day, whether people are there in early morning hours or late night hours. In August of [10:35:28 AM] 2022, a 27 year old man was shot and killed in the early morning hours while sitting in his car parked directly in front of the Barton springs bathhouse. The car was riddled with bullet casings. He was discovered later that morning by pool employees, and his body was found next to the fence not far from the pool entrance. February 2025 a 63 year old man was killed in the south parking lot following a daytime dispute with another park visitor he accused of stealing his phone. September 2025 during an effort by APD to recover a stolen car in the south parking lot. This is what council member alter had spoken to earlier. A 30 year old woman was shot and killed and an APD officer wounded by a male suspect who fled into the neighborhood and was later sighted near Barton hills elementary school and apprehended after breaking into a home where the homeowner shot the individual. July 2024. My office was contacted by a coalition of 15 nonprofit [10:36:29 AM] organizations concerned about a rash of crimes reported in the park, including an alarming increase in car burglaries. A man arrested for indecency with a child, and a Barton springs staff member assaulted while on the job. These reports included repeated incidents of troubling events at the historic zilker zilker girl scout cabin, including break ins, vandalism, drug paraphernalia and weapons, and a nighttime break-in happened while children and parents were present there. And there's other incidents that have happened at the girl scout clubhouse that I won't even say on this microphone. May 2025 I met with park staff to discuss reports I received from Barton springs lifeguards. Concerned about threats from pool patrons and unsafe conditions while walking to their cars at night. July 2025. In a designated hate crime, a transgender woman and her friends were harassed by two men who then violently attacked and seriously injured a good samaritan that was trying to intervene. October [10:37:32 AM] 2025 following a series of break ins and incidents of vandalism at the historic zilker clubhouse, my office was contacted by a neighbor reporting an illegal weekend party attended by a very large crowd. The structure suffered serious damage, including the loss of its historic windows and serious scars to the walls and floors. City owned truck and utility vehicles were stolen and crashed. There's drone video footage of these vehicles doing figure eights while people are scattering like ants. They were not being safe. They were not just having fun. People could have been seriously injured or killed by doing this. The clubhouse has been shuttered for months, after all the bookings had to be canceled. And bear in mind that this clubhouse was built almost 100 years ago as part of the new deal's civil works administration. So this is just a few incidents happening in one one park in my district. I have many other parks that have had other, other incidents, including circle C, where someone who had gone on a rampage from San Antonio to a [10:38:33 AM] school in north Austin to southeast Austin and ended up in circle C, shot a cyclist and murdered two people who ended up. They lived near where that park was and this individual ended up there. So I take it very seriously that we are trying to stop the crimes that are happening. I don't want to see anyone's information unfairly shared so that they can become targets. Ice is full of thugs that wouldn't make it in any other police department in this country. And I think there needs to be a difference here about how we're utilizing this information. But we cannot allow our parks to be a free for all. There's already some cameras in city buildings and trailheads. A statesman reporter that used to cover city hall used to go to mount Bonnell so often that he would find debit and credit cards on the ground and post them on Twitter so that people could find the information that has personally identifiable information in there and is affecting other people. So, like I said earlier, property crime is one thing, but seeing people get murdered in our public park spaces is something I take very seriously, and I'm open to options about how we [10:39:34 AM] can protect, protect the identities of folks who are not doing anything wrong, but simply existing in Austin, Texas, and also send a strong message that our parks are not a free for all for crime. We have to make sure that families can go and be in a safe, clean environment. And that is what I'm committed to doing. >> Thank you. Councilmember mayor pro tem vela. >> Thank you, mayor. I appreciate the conversation. And I just want to say that this is an excellent conversation and necessary one. It really does highlight the need for the trust act and making sure that we are thoughtful and deliberate about the surveillance technologies and that we're going to use, and making sure that significant protections are and safeguards are built into those surveillance technologies. So that's great. This whole kind of conversation has been one big advertisement for the trust act on Thursday, and really excited to to pass that. [10:40:37 AM] Questions. There's been some mentions of closed circuit cameras. What is a closed circuit camera? What's the difference between a closed circuit camera and either the cameras that we used in the pilot or the ones that are proposed under under this contract? >> Sure. Thank you for the question. I'm going to try to frame it as easy as I can. So a closed circuit TV camera or a camera, really the the data is maintained on site, usually on a, you know, DVR. And then that data has to if it's going to be offloaded, it has to be either logged into from into that site or there is there are some other softwares that allow it to be migrated into the cloud, but usually that is very localized data that is managed at the at the facility. >> So essentially closed circuit TV cameras save the [10:41:38 AM] data on a server that the city owns and maintains. >> Even more particular into the answer your question. Yes, but usually even more localized than that. It's to that location itself. >> Okay. And how widespread is our use of the closed circuit? You know, I mean, I know there's cameras in many city buildings, you know, city hall and libraries and city facilities are all over the place. Are those typically closed or closed circuit TV systems? >> I honestly don't have that information, but I can get that for you, sir. >> I would appreciate it. And then the you know, most recently there was the concerns. There were a bunch of drownings on Rainey in that park area right there off of Rainey street. And my understanding [10:42:38 AM] was that there, in addition to physical improvements to to make sure that people aren't wandering off the trail into the water, I do understand that we put up some cameras along that section of trail to to to keep an eye on things, and also so we could understand basically what was the problem and how were people actually accessing and getting into the water. What kind of camera system is that? >> I don't know that I can tell you the specifics. I might have to get back to you on it. It was installed at the trailhead, and so it was kind of in a physical structure right there at the trailhead at Rainey street. And I'd have to get back to you on the specific type that was used in that example. >> Got it. But I guess that's close enough to other facilities that it's it's a wired it's not a kind of solar powered cloud based system. I mean, would would is that correct or. >> I'm not sure. So let me make sure on that before I respond. >> Got it. And then along that [10:43:40 AM] line of questioning the and I believe council member duchen mentioned the halo camera system. Those are those also local storage systems that we keep the video and control the video. >> That is correct. They all come back to one one location at headquarters. So a little bit expanded. It's not per site, but it all comes back off that network to our to our structure there at headquarters. >> Got it. So that's not cloud based video storage. >> That's correct. >> Okay. Got it. And the the prior cameras that we used in the pilot were, were those also cloud based cameras? >> Yes, they were. >> Okay. And in terms of the, the the features, the the technology, those kinds of things, how different were those cameras from the ones that are being proposed right now? [10:44:40 AM] >> They were very similar. >> So these are very similar. Okay. It's just. >> A different company but yes very similar. >> So a different vendor but essentially the same kind of structure and technology and all that kind of stuff. >> Correct. >> Okay. Now the the focus seems to be the parking lots. I mean, again, if we deploy these cameras, they it seems to me and again, I would love clarification, but that they're going to be focused more on the the parking lots of the different parks and recreational areas than on the actual kind of parks themselves. Is that is that accurate? >> Yes. That's accurate. With the pilot, we tried a couple different things. We looked at if it could be effective for illegal dumping. We placed one. We have an illegal dumping problem at Colorado river wildlife sanctuary. So we [10:45:41 AM] placed one there. And we found that that wasn't as an effective tool for us. So those cameras didn't really necessarily provide us the information that would be effective in moving forward with information for illegal dumping that we could address, whether time of day it was difficult. With that, we also placed one. We had some copper wiring. Theft happened at montopolis, so we placed one there to hopefully with a deterrent and then hopefully with information. And that was also not as effective for us as well. And so what we found through the pilot is that the parking lots seem to be the most effective, effective use of addressing that concern that we had for burglary vehicles, which created kind of that unsafe feeling for individuals. And so our goal is to really focus these cameras in parking lots to help address those crimes. >> Great. Well, thank you very much. That's all my question. Thank you mayor. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem councilmember qadri, do you want to add something? >> Yeah, I was going to clarify something that mayor pro tem [10:46:42 AM] said, the unfortunate drownings that happened on Rainey street. Our office had brought forward an item about three years ago to address that. And, you know, we didn't we didn't use ai cameras. What we did was we had a camera there. We put in more lighting, fencing. And then I know something you mentioned that the ai cameras do that. You guys aren't going to be using that, but that if, you know, for example, if a trailhead or park was closing, it would it would it would, you know, say, hey, this park is closed. There's signage on the, on the trailhead that says what time the trailhead is, you know, is open and closed. And then we had a patrol for, for a bit. So did any use ai cameras. And you know, I think from talking to ems and other folks on the ground, you know, it's it's helped a lot in the horrific situation that was that was going down on the, on the trailhead. So, you know, I guess food for thought. You know, I think what we've heard from folks who have come and spoken today to the council and myself and, you know, some council members this that the, the, the ai technology gives a [10:47:42 AM] lot of folks pause. And it's not something that folks can, can support. >> Thank you, councilmember qadri. Good discussion. Thanks, everybody. We will now go to item a40 and I'll recognize councilmember alter. >> Thank you very much. This is an item related to some mitigation of parkland that's being alienated as it relates to the txdot project. One I just wanted to highlight one element of this or better understand, because these funds are ultimately going to be used for parkland acquisition in the area, correct? >> That's correct. >> And I was just hoping you could help us with the larger picture of what is our current parkland acquisition need, and how does this fit in to that need? >> Sure. Thank you. >> Parks and recreation. So councilmember, you're right. This particular so the item that we have before you on [10:48:43 AM] Thursday is to give us the authority to spend the money that we're getting from txdot as mitigation funding for the impacts that they're having as part of their their I-35 corridor project. So as they're impacting the parks, they're required to through various federal, you know, for up to six F to provide mitigation for that and that mitigation funding, we're we're required to spend it in and around the area that's being impacted. And particularly one aspect that comes through the federal land and water conservation fund that actually has to replace in-kind the space that was taken serving the same population, same value, etc. So we're limited in where we can we can use that money. >> And so sorry if you just said what is the what is our kind of citywide I know especially we're talking about the bond we're looking at. What is our parkland acquisition need. >> Sure. It's substantial. I mean, I think the way that we approach the need is we have a couple of metrics that we're trying to achieve. One is sort of the access so that every resident has access to a park [10:49:45 AM] within a ten minute walk or a five minute walk within the core, and also looking at a sort of a per capita measure of how much parkland we have. So as we do that and we have a long range plan, we sort of look at where where the gaps are, and we obviously target sort of our park poor areas overall, as we've been doing the analysis for the potential bond, you know, thinking about as we continue to to to both try to make progress on those metrics, but really look at providing services in the areas that we don't have as much. We've identified a need of about $120 million. That will just help us keep pace to where we need to be. >> Okay. And then these funds will help chip away a little bit. But that's right. Still leave us quite. And that's just trying to understand the the and the level of this versus the level of need. Just and my last question is, do we anticipate any additional alienation as relates to the txdot. >> There likely will be you know, there are instances, for example, where we have city [10:50:45 AM] infrastructure in the right of way that now txdot needs to take back. And so then we need to move the, the, the utility. So, you know, we work with txdot and try to sort of get ahead of those things, but there likely will be more cases that will bring before you there. >> Okay. Thank you very much. That's it. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Ellis. >> I do have a quick question. I think it's just timely that this item was coming to us when something else caught my attention earlier this week. Can you talk about if there's any impacts? According to this item for the festival beach food forest, I know that they it sounds like they were surprised by what will be a temporary wastewater line relocation. I know there's a lot of collaboration between city parks department, the robust volunteer network that they have, and txdot, but it seems like something may have gotten mixed up. Does this impact their work at all, or will it. >> This particular funding that we're we're asking for, appropriation isn't directly related to that. They're the property that the food forest is using, is being impacted by some of the work that is being [10:51:46 AM] impacted by txdot. So there is a wastewater line that will be installed on part of the property. And to your point, there has been just on our end some miscommunication. This was an item that was brought to our parks board way back in November. Chapter 26 item then was approved by council in January of last year. I think we just we as a department didn't do a good enough job coordinating with the food forest folks, and so we're trying to mitigate that and working with our partners at Austin water. I think the big challenge, in addition to to the the sort of the gaps in communication, you know, there's concern about some of the work that they've done that now is being impacted directly by the construction to to install this wastewater line. So we're working with them and with our, our partners at Austin water to try to mitigate that and certainly find ways to sort of make them whole and make sure that the investments that they make can come back to that park. >> Okay, I appreciate that. I've reached out to them just to further that conversation. And I know that because we also have a city council adopted food policy plan, I want to make sure that we're not losing sight of some of the [10:52:46 AM] intricacies that are happening. As txdot continues down its pathway of I-35. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. Thanks. >> Thank you, councilmember. Thank you, Mr. Geary. Members that will take us to item number 45. And as I indicated, when right at two months ago, when we first put this out, that we would have a discussion about this at this work session in anticipation of whether or not we were in a position to take a vote on this. And but we wanted to make sure that we had thorough discussion, and we assured the time for that. The only thing I'll say about time is that the goal of going ahead and setting this for the February 5th meeting was that if we were in a position to get some benefit of any audit that we were to do in this coming budget, and and as I laid out, I think in the very first, I think I did in the very first message board post back at the [10:53:47 AM] first part of December, that was one of the the thought processes. And but I want to also be clear that I've also said all along the way, we want to be very thoughtful about this, because one of the primary goals of having some sort of efficiency assessment that we establish as a citywide systemic efficiency assessment, one of the things about that is that we want to make sure that the public has confidence in the way we're going about our budgeting process, and this is one mechanism for adding to that confidence and that trust. Well, as I have said, for example, with the decision TRE and with other things, I think the process and how we approach these also plays a role in assuring confidence and trust in in what we're doing in that regard. That being said, I want to make sure that that the that as we come out of this work [10:54:48 AM] session, if we're going, I'm, I'm if we're going to want additional time, let's talk about that because then we may we may want to put things I'm a little off, as I say, a little to at least the next meeting, something of that nature, so that we try to reach a balance between moving with enough dispatch that we're able to maybe gain benefits even this year. But by the same token, make sure that we're doing it in a thoughtful, reasonable way. As I as you've heard me say in many instances, including this one, I don't want us to rush something. I want us to be more thoughtful than to to rush to something. So I want to say that out loud. And that's the reason we've had this. The other thing I'll say before I pass it to councilmember Fuentes is that there have been some comment on the message board about the proposed ordinance. There's also been a proposal that council member alter has put out. That is a [10:55:51 AM] motion sheet that I've seen this morning that has. Three different parts that all relate to employees being in a situation where they would have input. From my perspective, I look at that. I want everybody to please look at that. But from my perspective, when I look at that, I see nothing in there that shouldn't be added and would make assuming that the author of the amendment, the proposed amendment, would be okay with it. That would be the kind of thing that we would put as a another version, a version two, which of course, as we all know, is the way we try to operate when we can. And I'll just I'll just say that also out loud that I've looked at that and think that that ought to be incorporated into a version two, if that's okay with the, the author of the amendment. So with that, I'll turn it over to the person that pulled the item, in addition to the promise that it would be pulled. And that's councilmember Fuentes. >> Thank you, mayor, and I [10:56:53 AM] appreciate your opening comments, because that really helps frame where you're at on the item. Since you brought this forward for our full consideration. And, you know, we had a really robust conversation at the audit and finance committee meeting just a few weeks ago. Councilmember Laine, I believe you joined us for that conversation. And one thing I wanted to highlight for the full dais here on this item is just a series of questions that I have around four parts of adopting this comprehensive efficiency audit, audit by ordinance and as I go through it. But well, before I go through it, I do want to highlight that councilmember alter your amendment looks great. I really appreciate you speaking to our city workers and their involvement in this type of comprehensive efficiency audit, and I support it, and I think it would be great as a version two to the proposed ordinance. So the sections or the questions I want to ask about are cost and timeline, the scope of the contract as well as privatization efforts and how [10:57:53 AM] we're safeguarding against that, as well as worker input and colleagues. I am working on direction on the item, not an amendment to the proposed ordinance, but direction to help guide the rfp and contract process. So depending on today's conversation, I, of course would welcome and support postponement or delay to help us work through it. But if it seems everyone is good to go, then that's fine. I'm just flagging that I'll have direction on item. So the first question. So going back to our audit and finance committee meeting, you know, when we considered the proposal, one of the first questions I had or concerns I had is, you know, could this potentially be a blank check and really wanting to understand the financial implications of us undergoing a comprehensive efficiency audit, our city auditor laid out that this would be done over a number of years. And so I really want to dig deeply on the financial commitment that we were making forward by adopting this ordinance. And so we have here, auditor director [10:58:55 AM] hadavi, and I want to ask you if you could just walk us through anticipated costs to this ordinance and how you might structure this rfp for this work. And specifically, I want to get at, are you thinking one large consultant, several smaller consultants, what does that look like? And then also talk us through the procurement process, because I think that was also illuminating the timeline for the procurement process. >> Sure. >> Jason hadavi, city auditor council member so I would start with the financial implications. We we attempted to pull some market research that wasn't successful. We don't have any credible numbers because this is an unprecedented type of assessment. I don't have comparables to look through. So I know that's. Scary approach. But there are there are controls in place that I think will will alleviate some of that concern. So if if the ordinance were passed and we started procurement process, [10:59:55 AM] which I can give more details on in a minute, there's still a couple of opportunities. If the costs that that come out of that procurement process appear to be excessive or unpalatable to the council, there's the opportunity at our budget process where if you don't give us the funding, then I don't have the funding to to contract or if we're at the contract approval level where we've done a competitive procurement process, we've come back with multiple bids and none of them are in a price range that feels comfortable. Then mayor, mayor and council simply just has to not approve the contract. And we're not we're not out anything from a financial perspective other than the time committed to the procurement process. From a procurement process standpoint, my understanding is this is a multi-month process. It would I would want to do a competitive process to have multiple firms put together proposals with with cost estimates and compete [11:00:56 AM] against one another. I think that level of competition is good for government and it's good for us. That would take multiple 4 to 6 months and we would evaluate those like we do any other procurement process and assistance with with the purchasing office, and then come back to come back to council with who we think provided the best proposal that I would I would want to look at not strictly price. Price would certainly be a factor, but I would want to evaluate, given the scope of work that we put out, what what the different firms have put together as far as their approach to conducting this assessment, and if they have any innovative techniques or ideas about how to approach this, in addition to what kind of assessments they've done for other other government entities in the past. >> Okay, so we at least know, though, that the city of Houston, they under did their audit and that costs about 500,000 am I right? >> That's my understanding. I [11:01:56 AM] haven't seen documentation to that effect, but that that's my understanding. >> And that was over a ten week period. >> That is also my understanding. >> And what you're laying out for us in this proposal or this potential ordinance, should it be adopted, is that it would. We're looking at a 4 to 6 month rfp process, and then we would have council would then have the ability to vote up or down on the contract amount potentially six months from now. >> Correct. >> We just don't know the financial we can't we can't estimate the cost at this point. >> Correct. >> Okay. And so I do want to highlight colleagues that does come right in almost towards the next budget cycle. And I know, mayor, you mentioned wanting to get at least one of the assessments in in this budget cycle. So just wanted to flag that as, as part of the process here. The other question I had was around the scope, and can you walk us [11:02:57 AM] through how this audit. One thing that stuck out to me in conversations I was having with the manager as well, is, you know, this lays out a department by department assessment. But you when you and I met yesterday, you view this ordinance as it would assess function. So even if we're auditing hr it would go across services depending or across departments depending on the service. >> Sure, the current language requires that every department is is covered through the assessment. So we do have to touch every department. I don't think that it is restrictive in a way that we have to do one department at a time. And given the nature of some departments, particularly all of the internal service support services departments, hr, it, finance, purchasing, those are cross-cutting. Those touch all parts of the city. So we would we would look at those functions rather than just the department on their own versus, you know, if we're evaluating parks or libraries, that that [11:03:59 AM] gives us the ability to just look at those operations on their own. But when we when we touch hr, we know that that's going to hit every department. >> Very good. >> One thing, just to take it back on the consultant piece, you're envisioning this as one big consultant or. >> Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry I didn't address that before. Yes, my vision would be one one consultant to do the entire assessment. I would want some consistency from one part of the assessment process to the next, so that we're looking through the same lens, using the same techniques and the approaches and analyzing things in in the same way. >> Okay. >> And you know, the other area I wanted to dig into, and councilmember alter's amendment speaks to the workers, their input and process, and colleagues, I do want to highlight that afscme did send a letter to our offices highlighting their concerns with the item, and one area that they included on page three of their letter. And they state, many of our members are aware of systemic [11:05:00 AM] inefficiencies and are ready to provide innovative suggestions and constructive input on improvements that reduce costs and improve efficiency. And so I think this this matters and is important, especially when we have our workers union say they know and have ideas of where the city can be more efficient in their service delivery. And so I really think, you know, updating the potential ordinance to include workers input and process and giving them a role in this, especially because we have to be real about it. This is a very concerning time that we're in, and knowing that we will be undertaking a comprehensive audit across all of our city departments for the foreseeable future. Certainly, there's a lot of fear and anxiety of what that could mean to someone's job, to their role, to their place with the city and the impact that that could have. And so we know that the people closest to the processes are best positioned to provide us with ways we can improve. And so, auditor Darby, can you speak through, you know, how [11:06:01 AM] can we make sure and ensure that we're empowering workers as part of the efficiency audit assessment and not just subjecting them to these reviews and recommendations? >> Sure. So I'll say that, you know, we believe in strong workforce. I believe any organization is only as strong as the employees that that it holds. And so, you know, we we factor that into our audit process and the way that we, we conduct ourselves even outside of this assessment, you know, we run a fraud hotline that most of the complaints that we get will come from employees. Some of them are issues of perception, and some of them turn out to be actual issues that need to be addressed. We have a submit new audit ideas form on our website where employees can can ask to be audited. That doesn't happen a whole lot. Not not a lot of people I know are asking to be audited, but that is a vehicle for people to use. And then in [11:07:02 AM] the course of all of our audits, we we use surveys whenever appropriate. I've been accused of trying to over survey our our employees. We we always want to get get to the the feelings of what our employees are seeing when we're auditing any program or any specific department. So understanding what that looks like, we've we've done surveys when when we're talking about hr processes related to employee retention, succession planning. So I would envision the employees having a voice in a number of ways. When we do this assessment, I would I would definitely encourage any external consultant that's hired to do this, to incorporate the information that you can collect from our frontline workers who who see things firsthand and, and probably have really good ideas about ways we could be more efficient and more effective. >> And so that's great because I really I appreciate what you're saying here, because what you're laying out is that our workers will be incorporated in in the assessment by participating in [11:08:03 AM] the information gathering, providing their input. How will what does it look like once the this external consultant provides recommendations and they're saying, okay, we audited hr. Here's ten recommendations of how you can improve your services. Well, our employees have the ability to take a look at those recommendations and then say this makes sense. Or actually this is way off guard. And the reason why I asked this is because there's this underlying sentiment of when you hire third party external contractors, they may not be from Austin, they may not know the city of Austin work culture, they may not know how things are done and why they're done in a certain way, given the history of that particular department in the city. >> I would hope that the the consultant would factor that input in before developing findings and recommendations. I think that the findings and recommendations that come out of an assessment like this are going to cover a spectrum on one end there. There may be some operational decisions that that the manager can just make [11:09:04 AM] where we say, hey, we've identified the city is paying X dollars for widgets in this department, and if they followed a contract used by a peer city, we could save 10 or 15% on purchasing such widgets. That that's not something that I think needs to come up to a public discussion. And everyone look at it. I think it just offers a an efficiency improvement that management can undertake. I think at the other end of that spectrum, there could be some policy decisions that that get brought here that you have to consider. And public input, including employee input, could could weigh in on a way that we're we're approaching any one of our number of services. So I, I think there's going to be a broad spectrum of significance and how large some of these issues are, and some of them are going to be pretty straightforward that we can we can just change the way that we're handling something. >> Thank you. And my last question is on the efficiency [11:10:04 AM] efficiency dashboard. This was something that I believe councilman alter you brought forward. Do you have an update on where we're at on that? >> Yes, I'm hoping to have something up at the end of this month. So we're we're working on. We're working on utilizing a story within the open data portal to we're going to have an efficiency umbrella and the results of any assessment that come out of this would, would be able to be portrayed there and then side by side there would be the dashboard. And what we're envisioning is, is utilizing a form within within the city's network where departments can self-report efficiencies that they're making. We're going to make some of our own. And so this will be an opportunity to to put out there. These are all the actions that the city's already taking to be more efficient. As an example, this is not a huge dollar amount. I know this, but just as an example, we switched audit [11:11:05 AM] working paper systems and and the new system that we implemented was about $20,000 per year cheaper than the old one. And so if a department makes a decision where they lower the cost, or maybe there's no cost impact, but they're doing something more, more efficiently from a timeliness perspective. So they change the way they're approving a permit. And now things are happening in a matter of a couple of weeks instead of a couple of months, that this is a place where departments can report those, those efficiencies and will put them up on the dashboard for the public to see and maybe leave less things for an external consultant to find. >> I think that's great, because a huge part of this effort, and what we're hearing from the community is a need for transparency. So for us to be able to have a dashboard by the end of the month where we can already show the progress that the city is making and is demonstrating, I think that will go a long way. So I'm very pleased to hear the progress on it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Siegel. >> Thank you very much, mayor, [11:12:05 AM] and thank you to you and the sub quorum, and also city auditor for bringing this extremely important policy, which would analyze the efficiency of our programs and services and hopefully build trust that the city is spending our scarce resources wisely. I just have a few questions and we'll make a couple comments. Just want to start with a piece of the proposed code that relates to a supermajority requirement. And I didn't know if I should direct this question to you, mayor or, or to staff, but the proposed code says. >> It to him first. >> Please do. Yeah. So it says amendments to this section may only be adopted by the favorable vote of at least eight council members, and repeal of the section may only be adopted by the favorable vote of at least nine council members. And so I'm curious, first of all, like kind of the procedural aspect of this, to create a code amendment that requires a supermajority to be altered, do we need a supermajority of council to adopt it originally? >> No. And you want to take that? Jason? >> I'm no. >> Thank you. I'm teasing. Let [11:13:08 AM] me walk through all of that because there's there's several parts. In part you didn't ask, but I want everybody to be aware of all of it. Thank you. So the goal of that provision was to make it where the public has confidence that we really mean what we're saying, that we want to do this and create confidence and trust, and we're not going to do something that won't survive the next meeting, much less the next mayor and council. Right? To create a hurdle if you if you will. Not such a hurdle that you can't fix things as you go along. I mean, to the council member's point about some things that we might find as we go along, we might want to fix something. It allows the council then to fix those as opposed to, for example, having to go to a vote of the public in order to fix something because it's written into our constitution, into our charter. So it's an effort to [11:14:10 AM] hit a balance, if you will, that this is going to survive. We really mean it. The city really means it. But yet practically it can be fixed. Now it is just a hurdle. And let me explain what I mean by that. The requirement for nine. You still could change that with six. So to your to your specific question, it doesn't require a vote of nine to put it in at nine. It won't even require a vote of nine unless the public you you would have to override the public's desire and have a council that would go with six in order to change that. That's just the legal the legal requirement. But I wanted as I drafted, as I was working on the draft of this, I wanted to put a marker out there that [11:15:12 AM] this was serious and that we meant it. And so any this council or any future council would need to say, well, we know what the ordinance says, but we're going to change that ordinance with less than what the ordinance says. Now, the other thing I'll say about that is that the the, the draft that you're reading from, I wanted it to the reason it says eight to amend, nine to repeal was the original thinking on that was, well, if you want to amend it to fix something that may be a problem, then what you could do is make that a little bit easier than an absolute repeal. But as comment got made and I thought more about it, one of the concerns I have is that, well, then what you could do is just amend the fire out of the thing, amend it, amended, amend it, amend it, and you basically take all the the teeth out of [11:16:14 AM] it, if you will, and you have not repealed it with nine, but you've amended it to basically effectively repeal. So my thought was probably in version two was to just go to nine for across the board for amendment or repeal, so that you would be in a situation where, again, you're saying to the public, we could probably do this with six, but what we're going to say to you is. If this council or future councils would need to go over its very own ordinance in order to do that, and it could do it. But I hope that that was a yeah. >> No, thank you, mayor. And I, I kind of appreciate the sentiment almost to make it charter like like. >> That's that was the goal. >> As much as council can do without, you know, sending to the voters. >> That that is that that was the goal was to make it make this is an important thing that we're doing. And it is as the [11:17:17 AM] word was used by our auditor, it's unprecedented, but I want it to be unprecedented. I think the council wants it. To be honest. I hadn't heard anybody. I hadn't heard any discussion yet that that the council doesn't want to assure public confidence. The council doesn't want some mechanism for an efficiency assessment. And if we're going to do that, yes, it ought to be something that will survive right now. >> Thank you. Mayor. Well, along those lines, I have kind of two lines of questions that I'll ask. But I think what you shared, really to me brings home that we need to measure twice, cut once. Right. We need to get this right. And I did hear you say you might be open to giving a little more time. >> I've been saying that for two months. So I want to be clear. What I've said over and over again is I want us to have the thorough discussion because and we and we need to have that thorough discussion because [11:18:17 AM] this is this is something that I think we're going to be very proud we did, and we're going to want to be proud of it. And so let's let's get it right and let's be thoughtful. >> Thank you. Mayor and council member Fuentes brought up the letter we all received from aacme local 1624. And I think there were two points I wanted to kind of ask through questions. And one is they've asked for consultation before we adopt the policy. And the second, they really raised different concerns about costs and roi. And in terms of the consultation request, I really appreciated what the auditor shared about your commitment to consulting with employees in the course of an audit, which I think is really important, and I'm sure the the union would appreciate that. But I think what they're asking for is consultation on the policy itself before we adopt it as well. And I and I don't know if I should address this question to you, mayor or the auditor, but is that something you consider? You know, we just adopted this consultation policy, or at least a resolution that the manager is going to create a policy, but [11:19:19 AM] is there a way we could bring that process into this, maybe in an expedited way, to allow representatives of the city workers union, which represents thousands of employees, to sit down with leadership before this, this ordinance is finalized? >> Well, I don't I can't imagine why. First of all, I can't imagine why we wouldn't want all of that input. Right. And I think everybody up here has wants to and tries to be involved with our workers and supports our workers. And I don't think there's been a vote while we've been here that anybody could point to. That's not the case. That requires them to provide us input, though, and and requires them to provide us the input in a timely fashion. And so we're going to if we're going to do something like that, that would be my only request, is that it not be a mechanism to to just delay something. It's part of a [11:20:21 AM] thoughtful approach. >> Absolutely. And I agree, and I hear I see a nodding head from one of our representatives out there. Wonderful. Another thing that was new to me that was in the letter was reference to this Gartner report. I hadn't been familiar with that. I believe there was a vote in 2023 to adopt a $17 million contract with Gardner Gartner for it restructuring. Well, I don't think the initial contract said it restructuring, but the concern raised by afscme in the letter is that this Gartner contract is being used for the potential reorganization and consolidation of Austin technology services. And I wanted to ask if the manager or a representative could kind of respond to that question. Is that is that what's happening with the Gartner contract? And then if so, I have some questions about the roi. >> Yes. >> Gartner has been involved with the it reorganization work [11:21:21 AM] that's been going on. They're not the only consultant, but they are the consultant that did the benchmarking and the analysis and made recommendations. >> Thank you. And is there a report that's available that we could look at. >> Yes. >> Okay. Has that already been shared with council? >> I'm not sure if it's been shared with council but it is a public report. So I'll make sure that you have it okay. >> Thank you very much. And then Mr. Benigno, could you share a little bit of your kind of analysis of the roi of our investment in Gartner in terms of because obviously this is a very large sum of money. It represents a lot of jobs potentially. And so how would you characterize the return on investment we're going to get from this consulting contract. >> With this consulting contract with Gartner is not specific to this individual study. So Gartner is a large global it consulting firm. They provide research. They provide analyst consultations. They also have a consulting line of business. And so that contract that you're referencing from, I [11:22:23 AM] believe several years ago with Gartner was a multi-year contract. Gartner is used across the organization by city departments that have it presences. It's not just information security and ATS, but again, they provide kind of just day to day operational research and analysis to support departments in their it needs. But then they also have a consulting branch that would do a deep dive analysis, like what they did on the organizational structure. They're also working with ATS on a citywide strategic plan for technology. So they do a lot of things to support the city's technology presence. In regards to the return on investment for the research they're doing, specific to the organizational design, you know, that work was in the hundreds of thousands to get the to get to the result. And I think the potential savings from streamlining our applications [11:23:25 AM] just on the application side, you know, where in many instances I could point to where we have ten, if not 12 applications that ostensibly do the same thing. And is that the most, you know? Is that the most efficient and effective way to operate? The advice of the consultant was, no, it's not. And if you consolidated those applications into a single application or maybe 2 or 3 applications, depending upon the circumstances, not only would it be a lot more effective, but you'd also save a lot of money in doing so. And so that's a work that is currently going on. In addition to looking at the organizational structure, what's the best way for us to organize? Another piece of work that's going on is that whole application rationalization process, where we currently have thousands of applications in use across the organization, and are all those applications giving us the roi that we want and expect and that, you know, we need to ensure for our taxpayers that they're getting the best bang for the buck in [11:24:25 AM] that arena. So hopefully that answers your question. >> No, it is helpful. And I guess I'd like to turn to the city auditor. And I think you've addressed this some. But you know, how do we figure out whether it's worth it or not to engage in a particular, you know, consultant contract for these kinds of efficiency audits? You know, how do we protect, you know, basically create cost controls to make sure we're not spending millions and not getting good information back? >> That's tough. I would say it's really hard to do in advance with the type of assessment we're talking about here, because we're asking someone to come in and help us run more efficiently. So I would say that, you know, that's a big responsibility on me to make sure that I'm I'm managing that contract and working with that consultant in a way where they're producing something of value. If the if the efficiency dashboard and the, you know, department's voluntarily coming up with efficiencies is so effective and so profound that the consultant's not finding a lot [11:25:25 AM] of things, or they're only finding these major policy shifts that, you know, aren't easily implementable. I'll be the first one to come, come here and say, I don't know that we're getting an roi on this anymore, but, you know, we're talking about the the unknown and we're talking about an independent firm, an independent expert coming in and looking at things from a different perspective and hopefully identifying some ways that we can be a little bit more efficient. >> Can I interrupt just real quick to add to that, the ordinance specifically also provides that that we will receive reports, at least annual reports to the entire council twice a year at least, to audit and finance. And of course, we can always request them more frequently. And that puts the council ultimately in a position, in a governance position where questions, specific questions can be asked [11:26:27 AM] about roi, because it's in order to make this an ongoing improvement process, you're going to need to be able to have that sort of input. The council will even be helping us as things go along with setting the cadence. One of the reasons that the ordinance doesn't specifically get into the detail of what the cadence has to be is that the auditor will be able to make recommendations to the council, and then based upon what we're seeing in terms of potential roi as one example, value, I guess would be the other word I would throw in. We would be in a position to make recommendations or changes. >> Thank you mayor. And I guess one more question to the auditor. And it kind of relates to how do we incorporate our community values into the efficiency audit process. For example, I could imagine you hiring a firm and they say, well, it'd be a lot cheaper if we fire all the parks employees and hire an outside group to [11:27:28 AM] run after school programs, for example. And so is there a way to build into kind of the rfp process, or when you procure an outside agency to make sure that they're making representations that are kind of in line with our community values. >> And that's something that we can absolutely work into the scope of work. I would say that that that ties to why I want this to be a multi-year process, and why I don't think you can do an assessment like this in one year. If we wanted to go in and just find a way to cut, to cut some expenditures without any thought about operations or community value, then that would be a very quick assessment to do. But I think if we want to take into consideration the effectiveness of our operations, I think we're really well run city. I wouldn't want to sacrifice effectiveness to, to, to save a little bit of money. I want to make sure that we're still providing great service to our residents and our visitors. And so taking those things into consideration, in addition to our community values, strategic plans that we've put in place, some goals that we've set for ourselves. I think all of that [11:28:29 AM] is really important, and that's why this takes longer. So to me, it's baked into the process, but we can be explicit about it in the in the scope of work. >> Well thank you. I really appreciate your commitment to, you know, consulting employees, considering our community values, controlling costs. And I guess, mayor, I would just ask if you could fit in a brief consultation with ask me before we vote on the ordinance. That would be most appreciated. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember duchen, followed by councilmember alter. >> Thank you, mayor. And thank you, Mr. Hadavi and others for helping clarify some things, including some good questions already from my colleagues. I just had a couple of questions that I wanted to get to, and one point I wanted to build off of from councilmember alter. But let me start with a question on. There's a section under. 239 C. I'm just going to read it for the benefit of those here that. That the efficiency assessment is going [11:29:30 AM] to is going to have a determination of whether city contractors are meeting uniform standards for performance metrics, documentation of required deliverables and accounting of expenditures. My question is, is your sense that this is limited to just contractors, because the city already has the appropriate standards in place for our internal departments, or do we need to go about establishing that sort of standardization in a different way that goes that goes beyond what's written here in the current language? How are you interpreting that and what do you what would be your recommendation there? >> I think that that section is just is being specific about the contractor aspect, but I believe the I think that's two, three, nine. See the section above that addresses, you know, looking at peer cities and kpis and multiple other elements. Sorry, I don't have it right in front of me. I think that that that covers the the non [11:30:30 AM] contractor side of things so that it's going to look different from whatever part of the city we're looking at from one to the next, given, you know which enterprise fund we might be addressing. Not every city has an electric utility or an airport. State regulations are going to vary. So I think that the the room is built into the current language to allow us to use peer city comparisons and have those move based on which part of the city we're looking at. And then when we're looking at at contractor terms, there's a little bit more uniformity. If we're talking about engineers that we're hiring to design a bridge. And so there might there might be some industry best practices that that are built in there. >> Okay. It sounds like you've thought through both aspects then of the internal versus the contractor. >> Yes, it would. It would address both sides. >> And then just in relation to that, I'd like to understand your thought on that whole section C that you referred to. We it often refers to an [11:31:31 AM] analysis there, but my assumption has been that that analysis is ultimately going to involve recommendations that come from either you and or the vendor that you go through the procurement process for. Is that a correct assumption? >> Yeah. Envision the consultant coming back with some, some at least opportunities. I think that there's going to be some times where something, something that is more concrete, like the widget example that I gave where we're overpaying for this, we could be saving a lot of money by using a different, different supplier. And then I think there's going to be some other areas where there's going to be an opportunity for discussion. And, and a lot of decision makers and leaders in this room will have to discuss maybe a different approach to how we provide a certain service. So I think that the I would I would be hard pressed to ask a consultant to make a recommendation with something that that is that big and say, here's an opportunity. If you chose a different path, here's some alternate approaches to [11:32:32 AM] this. You could create some efficiencies, but here's what it would cost you in terms of, you know, operational effectiveness or other considerations based on, you know, any number of factors. >> Okay. I appreciate your clarification on that. The last thing I want to do is just, again, build on a point that councilmember altar raised about trying to address a need for community input in the process. And we conducted a couple of meetings over the last couple of days with different folks in the community, some constituents, some people in the business space trying to get a mix of opinions, people with some auditing background like yourself, and the consistent theme we heard throughout those meetings was the need for feeling like the public has more input and insight into this space in general. And so one of the conclusions that we've drawn is, and that led us to down a path of trying to [11:33:32 AM] figure out what are the appropriate places for the public to currently engage in this sort of auditing financial space. And my sense is from reviewing the board and commissions, from looking at intergovernmental groups that the city's got, that I'm not sure that we've got that place, but if we do, I'd love to know about it so I can direct people there. And if we don't, I'd love to have that conversation to figure out if there's an opportunity to if there's potentially an opportunity to invite that sort of feedback, maybe not necessarily in this process at this moment, although I could see some value in it, but maybe just going forward on budgetary and financial issues in general. So I just want to float that idea as something I'd like to visit with y'all about to see if that would address some of the concerns that I've heard from folks, that there isn't really the appropriate place to channel that degree of input, that we're sort of having to go conduct these meetings ourselves and solicit that feedback in place of, again, either a board of commissioners, [11:34:34 AM] governmental group or some other way to capture that, that feedback that might have been really valuable for the budget process last year. That's all I've got. >> Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember alter. >> Thank you very much. I wanted to better understand when we we talk about what is being reviewed and what the the product is. We're not going to hire somebody to go, let's just take ar-r, for example, to go look at our trash pickup service and say, you know what, if you got rid of the entire department and contracted with tds, it'd save you 5 million bucks, right? It's more on that. They're running three shifts over here and only, you know, picking up very little when it could be done in two or that, you know, this service is very disparate. Maybe you can consolidate it here. Right. That that is more of the question we're asking, right. Rather than like, how could you just do this? How could someone [11:35:34 AM] else do this for you? >> Yeah, I would be very disappointed if every assessment came back and was just privatize this, that I don't think that's the goal of what we're trying to achieve here. But I agree with your example. I think that the service model offering alternate approaches to to the service delivery in a way that is more efficient. I'll use an example. I'm not suggesting this. This is not a recommendation from the auditor. But years and years ago someone questioned, well, what if we had all the trash cans on one side of the street? Could they get through the streets quicker that way? I don't know, I haven't, I haven't studied that but but presenting alternative ways if and I would hope that they would come back and say, well, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, all stick their trash cans on one side of the street and then they get through it quicker. And here's here's how much time they save. And here's how they're able to save money on gas or whatever. So I think I think those are examples. I think I think looking at at peer city comparisons, how much we're [11:36:35 AM] investing in since we're in Irr, how much we're investing in the trash trucks or what, what it's costing us to maintain our trucks versus other cities. The the goals that we've set for ourselves. And so I think it would it would be a lot more encompassing than say, if you privatize, here's a cheaper way to do this. And then your problems are all. >> Done right. And I also, as I've been thinking about this and hearing what councilmember Siegel talked about, the discussions with the manager, the mayor, you know, I think one of the things that, like it or not, our system is set up with various lines, right? Your line is to tell us, or I should say, your side of the line is to tell us how we can operate more effectively. You give that to the manager and the manager with some of the language that we're adding here today tells us, you know what it says, that we should take these ten people and turn them into three. But [11:37:36 AM] let me tell you why that's not a good idea what that didn't capture, and then puts it in our lap to say, is this the right policy decision or not? And, and I want to make sure that we don't blur those lines too much and, and give you the, the room to make some recommendations that may be wildly unpopular. But then that's our job and the manager's job to say, here's why that's good or bad. And for us to then make the decision that we're publicly accountable to do. >> And with his phone number on it. >> Right, exactly. Exactly. Here. You know, comment cards can go here. So I just as we have, you know, any further refinements, I want to make sure that we don't accidentally blur and, and watered down because we're afraid of making a hard choice and having that [11:38:36 AM] come to light. And that's our job to to say yes or no. I also this the last thing I want to point out on the roi question. You know, you could have a an audit come back that says this department is running great. They have very little areas where they need improvement. And so we actually spent more money than we're getting out of it. But there's also value in being able to then go to the public and say, look, we've had someone else look at this. And they said, this is going great. And so you can have confidence that when you are spending your tax dollars, when you are making investments, we are being good stewards and we're using that. So there is a value there outside of just are you saving dollars more than the contract costs that? I also just think it's really important for us to remember in this conversation. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Thanks council, for the discussion. I'll sum up and [11:39:36 AM] then and. I want to start with, though, with what councilmember Ralston just said, that there's two I hear two parts of that. One is. We do. This city is very successful and it sometimes gets lost in the day to day politics. It's a very successful city. And as councilmember alter points out, some things that I bet we find is people will come back and say, well, you're the standard. I truly believe that to be the case in some instances. And that is an important thing, because remember how we started this discussion? Part of the reason to do this is to help better assure the public's confidence in their local government and their trust in how we go about budgeting. The second part I would say to that is that it's not all dollars and cents. When you do an efficiency assessment like we're talking about, because you're going to have qualitative recommendations that may not save a ton of [11:40:38 AM] money, but they will better assure quality in terms of the services that we provide. And so again there's another there's another value. That's and that's why when I was talking to with councilmember Siegel just a second ago, I don't believe I've heard anybody in any way or in any forum indicate that they're the strategic objective of having an efficiency assessment by way of ordinance, that I'm not hearing anybody that disagrees with, that we're still in the process of figuring out how to go about that in the best way. We all agree on that. I believe based upon these discussions, I think we all also agree that we want to create public confidence in our budgeting and operations, and we want to ask the the questions, are we acting as efficiently as we can? Are we being as effective as we should be? Are we wasting money in some way? And the efficiency assessment is the way we go [11:41:38 AM] about that. It's not inappropriate, by the way, even though there is a budget that we're at some point going to have to deal with identifying the policy and the framework first actually is part of good policy making, even though you may not have a budget because you don't want to limit where we're going to go with things, and that that would be part of it, frankly, what the discussion we had on the first item today was very apropos in a lot of ways, because before you go to a services contract, you might want a policy framework in place. And so we've actually experienced some of that just today in the way we go about it. I want to say a couple of other things. First of all, for those that I think it's important that we're having the discussion we're having about roi, and I'm glad we're doing that because we need to make sure that we understand the steps where the auditor creates a methodology, [11:42:39 AM] a work plan, procurement selection, public reporting, including recommendations. The manager provides data and access to the data, provides the cooperation plus formal management response and implementation. But the mayor and council review all of that and are looking at it and in terms of what needs to happen, and not just the cadence and not just where but but also are we how are we looking at the return on investment and assuring that our community's values are protected? And that's the role of this democratically elected body in in that. So I really appreciate the conversation. I want to meet with a couple of people that aren't on the council with regard to what next steps might be, but my recommendation is probably going to be that what we do is we not vote on this on [11:43:40 AM] Thursday, but instead with this kind of input, it's helpful as we as we guide this subject to the co- sponsors objecting in some way. But we put it at the Thursday, I think it's the 26th that we're scheduled to meet, that we we post it for that meeting and utilize that extra time, because I've said from the first message board post, I want to make sure that I want confidence in the process as well as confidence in the outcome, because that's the whole purpose here. So council, unless we have any thoughts, any additional thoughts? Okay. In that case, yes. Councilmember harper-madison. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the recognition and I'll keep it brief. I just wanted to let my colleagues know this afternoon, I'm going to post an item that my team and I have been working on. I didn't intend to say anything, I was just going to post it. But I want to preface it here. It's it's regarding an initiative that we're working on called. Well, the acronym is O C O L D. That's the office of council operations and [11:44:40 AM] leadership development. And I think it very much addresses some of the issues that we're discussing as it pertains to this particular audit item. And something else I've heard from the dais before. So just wanted to to flag that. I'm going to put that on the message board this afternoon for you guys to review and consider. >> Good deal. I want to say thank you to our auditor. Thank you, Mr. Benigno. And I want to say thank you to the auditor because of the level of detail that he has played in this process and very appreciative. Okay. With that, members, we don't have anything else on the agenda for this work session. So without objection, the Austin city council is this work session is adjourned at 11:45 A.M. Thanks, everybody.