Public Health Committee (PHC) Meeting Transcript – 2/4/2026 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 2/4/2026 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 2/4/2026 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. [10:03:17 AM] Good morning everyone. I call to order this meeting of the Austin city council public health committee. It is 10:03 A.M. On Wednesday, February 4th, 2026, and we are in city hall council chambers. Welcome, everyone, to our February public health committee meeting. And we are joined today with our vice chair, council member, duchen, as well as councilmember alter is joining us online and also joined by councilmember Krista Laine. Our other committee member, councilmember Velasquez is not feeling well, and we send him a swift recovery as he gets better. So thank you everyone for joining us. We have a packed agenda today. We'll start with first with our public communications. Then we'll move to considering the approval of meeting minutes from our December 3rd committee meeting. From there, the committee will hold an important discussion and possible action on the city manager's comprehensive review [10:04:18 AM] of the city's social services portfolio. Then will receive a briefing on our homeless Austin homeless strategies and operations offices strategic plan for fy 2526. And then we'll have a briefing on the 2025 austin-travis county community health assessment. Any questions on the agenda? Okay. Well, then we will now move on to public communications. We'll welcome speakers from the community. May the clerk's office please start us off with the first speaker. >> Yes. If I can have Dewey Smith. >> Yes. Good morning. I'm Dewey Smith. Thank you for having me. I'm an engaged Austin resident and a board member of the safe alliance. I'm here to comment on item two. I come as a steward of this organization and a constituent deeply invested in the future safety and health of Austin. To be very clear, the social services portfolio you are considering cutting is not supplemental to [10:05:20 AM] Austin safety. Safety infrastructure it is central. Safe operates at the intersection of public safety, public health and community stability. When the system works, it's difficult to tally what didn't happen. A family that stayed housed, a survivor of sexual assault or domestic violence who avoided emergency medical care. A child who never entered foster care. Those outcomes must be planned for. They are the direct result of sustained intentional investment. And right now, that investment feels as though it's at risk. From a governance standpoint, the greatest danger is the compounding impact of instability. Survivor safety systems cannot be paused and restarted when specialized staff leave, when clinical capacity shrinks, when survivors lose trust in where they can go safely for help. Those losses take years and significantly more funding to rebuild. Austin became a national leader because it invested early and consistently [10:06:22 AM] in survivor centered infrastructure that created resilience across our entire public safety ecosystem. Eroding it now will not create savings. It will simply shift those costs to hospitals, law enforcement, housing systems, and most importantly, to the families in crisis. Defunding survivor safety is not a neutral choice like water, electricity, emergency and emergency response. This is infrastructure that must work the moment it is needed. In closing, as you finalize the fiscal year 27 budget, I urge you to please treat safe and social services as core risk mitigation infrastructure for this city. Stable funding is not about growth. It is about preventing irreversible loss. Thank you in advance for your thoughtful deliberation and for joining us in taking the long view of Austin's safety and health. Thank you. >> Up next, I'll have doctor Pierre Bernstein. [10:07:30 AM] >> Chairwoman Fuentes, members of the committee. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is doctor Pierre, and I serve as the CEO of the safe alliance. We are the largest provider of services for survivors of domestic sexual violence, sex trafficking and child abuse in the south, and among the three largest in the United States. I want to begin by acknowledging that just last week, we heard and learned of the murder of Denise tejerina, killed by her boyfriend. We often say that one death is too many, but those words must be matched by the budget choices that we make. Budgets are moral documents. They show who we are willing to protect and whose suffering we are willing to endure and absorb later, at far greater cost. This year's $145,000 cut to safe translates to about $500,000 loss for us, and it means that 345 survivors of domestic and sexual violence and their children will go without support. Naming Denise here matters because it shows what happens when we defund [10:08:32 AM] early intervention. People do not disappear. They show up later in other systems when harm is greater and costs are higher. In fact, this year's cut to safe alone will shift an estimated 3.5 to $7 million in cost to other public systems. That is a negative return of $29 to $57 lost for every dollar that we've cut. That's not just a moral failure. It is a fiscal one. Saves work is an act of love. And it is also sound economic policy because it prevents avoidable crisis spending. Looking ahead, my concern is the stability of core infrastructure that Austin relies on. For example, we operate a city owned shelter serving about 550 people a year. The city contributes $2.1 million, but the true cost is closer to 3 million, which safe [10:09:32 AM] covers through philanthropic funding. Our results speak for themselves. Nearly 100 people in safe shelters transitioned to 100% of people in shelters transition to stable housing. By comparison, the city run marshaling yard is funded at over $8 million a year, and it has housing exits around 30%. Safe also conducts 85 to 95% of all sexual assault forensic exams in Travis county. We currently are carrying an $800,000 shortfall just to keep the program operating this year, with no funding secured beyond it. That leaves Austin's forensic backbone one budget cycle away from collapse. If it fails, exams revert to hospitals and law enforcement within 30 days. These are the conditions the city has spent years working to correct. Safe is not alone. As a member of one voice central Texas, I can tell you this strain is being felt by organizations serving elders, immigrants, people with disabilities, and families across the city. We are just a [10:10:34 AM] microcosm of a system under compression. Thank you for your time. >> Doctor. If you wouldn't mind, would you share that data that you've got, the numbers that you shared a moment ago with the public health committee? >> I'm sorry. Would you mind repeating the question? >> Sure. Would you mind? You just shared a bunch of numbers regarding and data that you put together regarding the impacts of the cuts and the work that you do. Can you share that information with the public health committee 100%? >> Absolutely. I would also invite you to read a five page letter that I sent to all of you further detailing these cuts. But absolutely, my office will send this to yours and to all of you. That'd be great time. >> Up next, we'll have doctor rosa-maria Murillo. >> Welcome. [10:11:36 AM] >> Good morning. I'm doctor Rosamaria Murillo, and today I'm here as a chair of one voice central Texas, a coalition of over 80 nonprofit health and human services organizations who together employ over 8000 central Texans and provide essential services across Austin. Our organizations help keep Austin healthy, house and working. Today, I am here because the city reduced social services contracts by 10%. About $5 million, retroactive to October 1st, 2025. This is forcing immediate service reductions, breaking trust midstream. We are requesting four things. First, no further cuts to social services contracts. Second, conduct an impact assessment of the current [10:12:38 AM] reductions. Third, facilitate a budget cycle work session on social services infrastructure and outcomes that includes providers at the table. Fourth, convene a cross-sector engagement that includes the city, the county, central health, philanthropy and community to develop stabilization. Innovative ways to achieve. Equity and stabilization in Austin. Let me just be clear that these cuts are not future. They're retroactive. It is not a situation where agencies can plan. Staff were already hired. Programs were already offered to the community, and residents were told help was available. [10:13:38 AM] Then funding was cut. Retroactive cuts trust. Retroactive cuts break trust and force immediate crisis. On top of that, the city reduced the I belong in Austin eviction prevention by $1 million. That is a 25% reduction and pause. The project connect community initiated solutions procurement, which delays community design pathways to stabilize and and decrease the displacement that is happening in our city. We understand fiscal constraints. Believe me, we live that every day, but we are alarmed that the impacts have not been fully assessed, especially as we hear [10:14:38 AM] that next year there will be a. >> Up next, we'll have doctor Aaron Alcorn, followed by Veronica veranda Durden and Sharon vigil. >> Your name has been called. Please feel free to come to the front. Grab a seat. >> Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is doctor Aaron Alarcon and I come to you as CEO of family elder care, a nonprofit organization serving asking for 44 years, vice chair of one voice, representing more than 80 health and human services nonprofit and most importantly, as a fierce advocate for Austin older adults, our parents, neighbors, veterans, and long term contributors who are too [10:15:41 AM] often overlooked in policy priorities. The data is clear across the nation and here in Texas, including Austin. Social services for older adults are under-resourced and failing to meet demand. At the federal level, about $39, about 2.37 billion nationally, which is about $39 per older adult per year, hardly enough to fund the nutrition, transportation, caregiving supports and in-home services so many rely on locally that poor funding translates into people waiting years for services that would allow them to age at home. Texas has one of the largest home and community based services waiting lists in the country. These waiting lists are not just names. They represent real lives at risk, older adults being denied the support needed to avoid nursing home placement or homelessness. What's more disturbing is that [10:16:43 AM] homelessness among older adults in central Texas increased by 70% in two years. Our family elder care, our financial advocacy program, provides tailored financial tools and case management that help older austinites age in place. Our data shows that 85% of our clients report that, if not for our services, they would not live independently. Yet this program faced a 10% cut this year and is threatened with deeper reductions next year. Social isolation and loneliness among older adults are widespread and under- addressed. Approximately 1 in 4 older adults over the age of 65 report feeling socially isolated or lonely. Isolation is linked to higher mortality, dementia, cardiovascular disease and frequent hospitalizations. Our in-home counseling program directly fights isolation. These two [10:17:44 AM] suffer a 10% cut and faced further funding risks. This committee has the power to change outcomes for Austin seniors. I urge three immediate actions no further cuts to social services contract funding, especially programs serving older adults. What we invest in now prevents far greater costs later. Engage the stakeholders to evaluate funding models that focus on return on investment programs like ours. Save taxpayer dollars. >> Good morning, council members. My name is Veronica Durden and I serve as CEO of any baby can. I'm here today on behalf of the ready families collaborative, a partnership of eight trusted community organizations, communities and [10:18:44 AM] schools. Austin pbs alliance, the Jeremiah program, the literacy coalition, safe alliance, the ymca, and any baby can. For more than 11 years, the ready families collaborative has delivered coordinated, evidence based services to families with children ages 0 to 5 who are living 250 cent below the federal poverty level through shared data aligned programing and intentional coordination, we have maximized public investment and achieved measurable outcomes. We are not simply a collection of nonprofits. We are a proven continuum of care that directly advances the city's strategic priorities. Early prevention works when families receive support. Support before challenges escalate, we prevent far more costly interventions, whether through that's emergency housing, child welfare involvement or [10:19:45 AM] emergency health care. The current and proposed budget cuts threaten to unravel this progress. At a time when families are already facing unprecedented economic pressure. Here's what these cuts mean in real terms. Any baby can will be forced to turn away families who are on the brink of homelessness. Our rate list already averaged 3 to 4 months, and these cuts will extend those waits disproportionately, impacting families who are already marginalized. Communities in schools anticipates losing more than 20,000 service hours each year, and potentially an early childhood classroom safe alliance in Austin and Austin. Pbs face staffing reductions that compromise the safety, stability and effectiveness of programs serving high need children and families. The Jeremiah program will have to reduce scholarships that enable single mothers to complete higher education and join Austin's workforce. Reducing prevention services does not [10:20:47 AM] reduce need. It pushes costs into the future, where they become significantly more expensive. Expensive cutting contracts today creates larger financial and social liabilities for the city tomorrow. Our work aligns with the community health assessment and the city's strategic plan. And while we support the development of a comprehensive funding rubric, that rubric must value evidence based prevention, including early childhood development and family stability. Let us not ask the families with the fewest resources to shoulder the greatest burden of a budget shortfall. If we invest in what works now, we protect families, strengthen outcomes and save the city far more in the long term. Thank you for your time and your committed commitment. >> Sharon. >> Thank you. >> Sharon vigil followed by Taylor, Ingrid and Christopher Hudson. [10:21:53 AM] >> Thanks for the opportunity to speak. I'm Ingrid Taylor. I'm privileged to serve as the CEO for United Way for greater Austin. In a city known for new and edgy investments in business and technology, united Way stands out. We're old. We've been around for 100 years. As an experienced, evidence based convener of now hundreds of organizations and partners eager to find collaborative solutions to systemic challenges. We're also a trusted source of data for our community, our social service and health sectors. We're unusual in that we give grants to partners in our community, and we also seek grant funding. So we have an unusual perspective in the social service fabric of Austin. We fund partners that serve families with young children because we know that those investments have an roi of about $9 for every dollar that is spent. If children don't do [10:22:56 AM] well in their early years, they arrive in kindergarten with low literacy rates, high school graduations plummet, and the quality of Austin's skilled workforce declines. We also fund partners that support families seeking to attain a family sustaining wage, and we're seeing that it's getting harder to reach that threshold in Austin. In Austin, it takes a salary of 102,000 for a family of four with two children in childcare to just survive. That means they're living paycheck to paycheck. It means that anything unexpected, even small, like a blown out tire or a new prescription is likely going to require them to seek support from outside. And it might be surprising to learn that over one third of households in Travis county are not earning a family sustaining wage. Unfortunately, those [10:23:58 AM] households are not meeting that threshold, typically have to go out and get some kind of regular or occasional assistance from the trusted partners in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit nonprofits are trusted bridge that families are increasingly having to depend on. The reality in front of us demands immediate collective action from elected officials, community members, philanthropy and business. When over a third of our households cannot meet the basic costs of survival, we're not talking about isolated hardships. We're talking about systemic conditions that touches every corner of Austin's future. The moment calls on us to create a shared vision for what Austin can be in its best version, and to prioritize investments that keep Austin families centered. We have an opportunity to build systems today together. Due to these budget concerns. [10:25:06 AM] >> Christopher Hudson, followed by Georgia Hernandez. >> Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this today. My name is George Hernandez and I am a district two native austinite and have the honor of serving as the director of development at el Buen samaritano. For years, el Buen has partnered with the city of Austin as a trusted social services vendor, a partnership intentionally built and invested in to meet essential needs. Over the last six years, we have served as an emergency response hub, partnering with the city during some of the most critical times of our lifetime. During this time, we have distributed food to over 30,000 individuals each year, facilitated over 110,000 [10:26:09 AM] vaccines, and provided access to education and health programs, while also distributing over $30 million in rental assistance. This work reflects what is possible when city partners with community based organizations to build the infrastructure for a thriving Austin, especially for families who are seeking belonging, equitable access to opportunity and more. This 10% reduction across city contracts, combined with the $1 million cut to I belong in Austin rental assistance directly impacts el burns ability to sustain services our community depends on. Right now, el Buen manages four city contracts that now face reduction and affect access to health resources, workforce opportunities, food and basic and essential needs supports. This reduction to ibere will also mean that we expect about 180 families at risk of eviction will not receive support needed to remain housed, [10:27:10 AM] while el Buen will work digitally to flex resources available. These otherwise flexible resources allow us to respond to urgent client situations. When a family comes to us with a need that goes beyond our traditional program parameters, this strains the very model that allows el Buen to provide coordinated, responsive, nimble and holistic care beyond the infrastructure. The timing of these reductions from already executed contracts presents an immediate challenge to programs that are already staffed, planned for and operationalized. These are not future adjustments that we can prepare for. They are present day disruptions affecting services most of our families depend on right now. Most importantly, the greatest impact will be felt by our neighbors. A decrease in service numbers should never be interpreted as a decrease in need. In reality, the need from our families is greater than ever and remaining diligent to serve Austin's most vulnerable [10:28:11 AM] families requires sustaining the infrastructure that makes this work possible. When this infrastructure is weakened, our families feel the impact. First, we respectfully urge the council to consider long term implications of these reductions to help us provide clarity on fiscal year 27 budgets and prevent any further reductions while engaging community and nonprofit leaders in these conversations before the decisions are final. Thank you for protecting the partnerships that create belonging, inclusion and stability for Austin families. >> Thank you. >> That's everyone. >> Hey, would you mind just repeating the names of those who were called but didn't? >> Yes, Sharon vigil and Christopher Hudson. >> Okay. Don't see them. All right. Thank you. And thank you to our community for joining us today. We really appreciate your testimony. Colleagues will now move to the next item that [10:29:12 AM] is consideration of our December meeting minutes. You have that in your meeting packet. So for item number one can I get a motion. Motion by vice chair and seconded by councilmember alter any objection to approving the meeting minutes. Seeing none those meeting minutes for item number 1st December third, 2025 are approved. Next we'll move on to item number two. Colleagues. As we know, last fall we went through two budget processes within months of each other. And budget 2.0 was part of during that time, a budget 2.0, our city manager announced a social service contract restructuring plan as part of a city wide efficiency and optimization process. The city's social service contract support are critical. City services and related to today's meeting, we'll be discussing more about our community's basic needs behavioral and primary health, child care, [10:30:13 AM] workforce development, homelessness services, and so many other supports that are vital to so many Austin families, public health, and our community's future. And so we know and as was mentioned in testimony today, that as part of budget 2.0, the city revised the budget that made a $5 million estimated cut to the city social service safety net. And, you know, that was heartbreaking for me personally to know that subsequent the failure of prop Q that we essentially balanced our budget on the backs of our social safety net. And so it was really important to me as we navigate moving forward, that we safeguard and keep as much of our social services intact to the greatest extent possible. And we'll talk more about that. But before we get to that, I do want to turn it over to our city staff here. They will be providing a presentation. And so we have Daniel Coletta and Carrie Lang from the office of budget and organizational [10:31:14 AM] excellence for presentation on the city manager's comprehensive review of the city's service, social service portfolio. >> Welcome. >> Thank you, chair Fuentes and members of the public health committee for having us here today. As the chair said, we're here to give an overview on our progress to date on the social services contracting framework. We'll be going through the the high points, as well as some of the areas we're looking at to help us through this exercise that you can see here. We'll go through each of those in turn. So in summary why we're here, the city is projected to face major budget shortfalls again in fy 27. And it's been announced that there will be a planned $16.8 million reductions across the social services contracting portfolio. What the city needs to do this, though, is a shared approach for assessing our organization wide strategy and performance, and social services and other third party contracts across [10:32:14 AM] our departments. What we hope will come out of this effort is an understanding of a full understanding of the content and function of our social services ecosystem across the metro area. Elimination of any duplication, duplicative or services, and make sure that we are doing our best with partnerships and owners ownership assignments. Creating a framework for aligning social services strategy and resources allocation with strategic priorities as best we can as best, especially when we have to make decisions like these. The cost reduction options for the fy 27 budget, and an evaluation framework that we can use going into the future to make sure that we are prioritizing and getting the most out of our social service investments. Our definitions are important here. When we talk about social services, we mean coordinated programs and supports that help individuals and families meet essential needs and navigate social and [10:33:16 AM] economic challenges. These can include services related to education, health care access, workforce development, housing assistance, and income supports, and these are intended to reduce disparities and promote stability and quality of life. Social services grant provides services to city residents or clients rather than services to the city organization itself. We further differentiate between contracts and grants. The important part here, this is something that we've been working on internally across a contract, is essentially something that we we have to do or we would have to do otherwise. As a city, as a city program, if we did not fund another organization to do it. And a grant is, you know, a value add, but not necessarily mandatory. And those just come with different types of agreement structures and requirements behind them. When we look at how we're assessing [10:34:18 AM] and optimizing social services, we're primarily looking at three levers as we're referring to them right now. One is a partnership reassessment that's making sure we're understanding across the ecosystem who does what with our other funding partners in the metro area, and making sure that that's aligned as best it can be potential for funding model adjustments. That's kind of how we fund and our timing of funding to reduce any vulnerabilities or fragility in our system. And then as well as the grant and contract evaluation, which a lot of us have been talking about, where we're making sure that our city funded what we do invest in, we're getting the highest performance and the highest strategic alignment out of those contracts. So when we look at partnership assessment, I have some benchmarking here. This we've all seen this, but this is the breakdown of the city's social services contracts portfolio as we have it in the fy 26 adopted budget with those different buckets [10:35:18 AM] lead departments and how much goes to each. Again, I think it's important to emphasize that these are contracts with third party providers. As we go more into these next slides of of our other funders in the region, there are other types of contracts or other types of agreements, such as capital investments, las and direct services. Those are all part of the of the services landscape. But what we're looking at here is our contracts, our social, you know, designated social services contracts. When we look at our area partners, we like to consider this as an ecosystem. So we have Travis county, central health and integral care. This is the county hospital district and mental health provider. And this is what we looked at across the other benchmark cities that we'll see here in a bit. Again, I want to note that there are a lot of other services within these [10:36:18 AM] ecosystems that each of these providers do bring to the community. Those are often structured in different types of agreements or formats. Like I said, ilas capital investments, direct services. What we're looking at here is contracts. And I will note that we're still mapping and aligning that ecosystem of contracts across across providers and still getting information there. But in general, we're trying to understand who does what and where we might best align. >> Okay. Ask a quick question on the area partners focus on funding for the Travis county central health integral care. Did we is this what they also have like have these partners affirmed that these are their focus areas? Are these coming based on city of Austin's internal assessment? >> Yeah, this is what we're pulling out primarily from their budget this budgets. At this point, we are in contact with all of these partners to further make sure we've got their ecosystems fully mapped beyond just their just what might be contracts that are relatively available, and make [10:37:19 AM] sure that we're mapping all those services. >> And if I can just jump in. Kerri Lang, director of budget organizational excellence, we are going to as we're working with them, we'll provide updates to the committee and the council to make sure there's a clear understanding of the full ecosystem of our partners and the amount that's funded by those partners as well. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So we did want to do some benchmarking to understand what other examples might be that we can compare against. We looked at Dallas, Houston and San Antonio in Texas, as well as some national comparisons Denver and Portland. These all had mature, mature social services ecosystems in portfolios. And we looked at their city, county, hospital, district and mental health authorities for each. And we reviewed the responsibility distribution across partners as well as their funding models and frequency. I will note that as we go into these benchmarks, it's not saying that one is [10:38:19 AM] right or wrong, better or worse, it's just for comparison's sake to understand what the kind of landscape of possibility looks like. So when you look across these partners again in Austin, we're mostly mainly concentrating on our general fund, third party contracts. We do know that, for instance, our county partners have some other services and some of these areas that are that are structured differently. So we want to add those to the ecosystem to understand what people do. I think the main point to take away from this slide is that many of our other benchmark cities distribute the responsibility for different types of services across different partners, such as hospital districts and counties. They also tend to align those services and more formal regional partnerships or or joint efforts. When there is a lot of overlap between services, rather than having parallel [10:39:20 AM] funding streams and contracting processes. So from that comparison slide, I know there's a lot of information. Oh sorry, I got one more here. The we'll get to some some general insights to pull out of that. But we did also want to say show this is the general fund spend from the city organizations, as well as how they are adding grants to their full social services spend compared to us. So we have a very high percentage of general fund spend as compared to the grants that we bring in. In comparison to someone like Houston who has a grants first strategy, they leverage all the grants that they can first and then go into general fund spend. Again, these are just different models that that exist that we might be able to learn from or compare against. So when we look at the partner distribution insights, we do [10:40:21 AM] have core municipal alignment. Again, that's what the city organization for areas like child and youth and violence prevention. And the county now has their dedicated tax, which is going to further bolster that ecosystem. We do have some structural misalignment with many of the other benchmark cities. Again, this is not saying it's better or worse, it's just that it we do maintain operational responsibility for funding third party services, where many of these others have that routed through counties and hospital districts. We have some different service categorization in some of these cases, for instance, health equity, mental health are defined as medical or county functions in some of these other areas, with hospital districts. In some places you have a governance versus funding distinction. So some of our benchmark cities like Portland and Dallas are often [10:41:21 AM] separate funding. So like the city funds things from the execution. So like a regional authority may manage that full portfolio of services. >> So you're saying that Austin retains so an outlier when it comes to how we fund our homelessness behavioral health and health equity. And that we we retain the city retains operational responsibility where peers distribute these duties to counties and hospital districts. Can you provide an example of that? >> Yeah. So in some cases, let me see. Let me pop that up. In just a moment. Sorry. I had a couple examples of these I wanted to pull out. Yeah. So in [10:42:26 AM] let me see where are we at. Now. That's not what I'm looking for. >> And more time is needed. We can come back. >> Yeah. If you give me just a moment. I do have some examples pulled of that and I'll pull them out. >> Very good. Thank you. >> I just want to make sure I get you those right. Those right distinctions. And then the final insight here, non-diversified funding that might be better stated as operational fragmentation, I would say. So in many cases we have funding areas or operations that run parallel to some of our other partners, like the county, like the hospital district, like we're funding similar services and we're all doing it, you know, in these parallel streams. And we see that there might be an opportunity to to align some of [10:43:27 AM] those processes to essentially deduplicate some of those efforts and get some more efficiency there. So and all we pay about $40 million more than some of our benchmark cities do for services that others distribute across those partners. So we also wanted to look at our funding model in Austin. We look at our social services portfolio along with our annual budget process, and adjust those amounts annually and many years past where we've had quite a lot of funding, we haven't made a lot of adjustments to those contracts. And I will note a distinction here, that many of these contracts that, for instance, departments hold are multi-year terms, but we determine the amount each year of that term based on the budget cycle that we adopt here at the city. So there there's not the [10:44:28 AM] predictability of every year, every year of a five year term, that funding each year may fluctuate depending on the city's budget. There are some other types of models that we see that run on longer cycles that have different types of renewals. For instance, San Antonio does performance based renewals in years two through four of their four year cycle. And there's also funding models that align closer with grant. Grant cycles, primarily on the federal level. So this is just to say that there may be some ways that we could adjust our timing of this funding or how we structure that, that could provide us some budgetary relief. That doesn't necessarily just focus on contract reductions. Our model does provide agility and responsiveness because we can look at amounts every year. We [10:45:30 AM] can make adjustments that that are needed depending on those external factors. We are a bit of a structural outlier in that way. And we do have some operational friction where if we're doing this every year, especially if our funding landscape is fluctuating, we start to get some administrative and performance drag compared to if we had a longer cycle for some of these, this funding, we do have some fragility in our system by reassessing or, you know, determining amounts every year, as we've seen here, when we have a year where we have less resources, the entire safety net can be affected. And then, as noted, there is some administrative duplication where we carry some parallel contracting systems with some of our partners. We did want to note that the that philanthropy is an important part of this ecosystem as well. This is just a note of some of the major funders. This isn't every [10:46:30 AM] single funder and every single city, but we are fairly in line with the other Texas cities as far as the amount of philanthropic funding the that flows through the metro area and our national peers have some additional funding just due to what's in their cities. So our third tier policy lever is looking at actual contracts themselves. We are proposing a three tier system to do that. The first is looking at those contracts that are mandatory or essentially non-discretionary. Non-discretionary. Those are things that we we have to do or our physical infrastructure that we have to maintain. And, you know, obviously those would not be available for cuts, [10:47:32 AM] filter two or tier two we're looking at is this efficiency and realignment by seeing where we can reduce overhead, any alignment where we might be able to reduce duplication, identify alternative partners, can we streamline it, can we consolidate it, etc. Without having a major impact on the amount of services that actually residents? And tier three is where we start looking at the performance of these individual contracts, roi and strategic alignment to make sure that we are getting the most out of each contract that we are investing in. Just a few details on these. Again, the mandatory structural filter I think is fairly self-explanatory. This is this is things that we have to do or things that we have a lot of, you know, high investment in momentum and needing to maintain. When we look into the efficiency and realignment, [10:48:34 AM] these are things like can it be simplified? Might we realign responsibility among some of our partners. And then we always want to have checks across all of these tiers. In this case the service vulnerability check to make sure that we're not going to make a reduction that might have a catastrophic or cascading effect across the system, essentially making sure we understand the interconnections between these services. And then we look at tier three, the performance industry strategic alignment. These go into some of these details like, you know, fiscal stewardship, strategic impact I think is something that we'll be continuing to have conversations with this committee and community partners with to understand how we might prioritize across some of our strategic areas when we have to make some of these decisions. The performance, integrity of contracts, [10:49:34 AM] structure and stability of the organizations that we're working with and the type of funding that is put forward to them, I.e. Is it one time funding, that's for instance, from arpa or something like that? Is it a pilot? And again, this equity check to make sure that we're not by widening equity gaps as much as we can avoid and avoiding any inadvertent impacts to service providers that may be specifically focused on communities, that that's the only provider. So again, how the framework is applied, we want to move through these tiers. And essentially what we're trying to do with this framework, as well as the other levers that we mentioned here, is trying to create the least amount of disruption in the service ecosystem that residents experience across the metro area that we can. So in [10:50:36 AM] timelines, it's important to note that, just like I said, that we're still mapping our partner ecosystems and services and getting a deep understanding there. We're also continuing to inventory across city departments to understand any contracts that may fall into the social services type category, but that weren't classified as social services specifically. Before and to date, we've found about 160 contracts equaling 207 million. And these are, again, things that we can assess to make sure that we have proper alignment, strategic alignment, etc. Across the whole portfolio of the city. We'll be generating the strategic priorities and decision criteria again with input from this committee and others. Start. And as well as let that inform the performance and evaluation framework. We'll look at this entire portfolio [10:51:37 AM] to understand how the performances on these individual contracts, as well as a group across our partners. Outreach engagement, of course, will continue throughout this process. We're at the very beginning now, but it's crucial, as we've heard from our partners, to continue to have these conversations as early and often as we can so that we can have as much as we can avoid any surprises or, or, you know, rapid developments that that kind of put people on the, on the back foot. And then, of course, the final outcome since this and fy 27 decision support here, when you look at the timeline, we've essentially done the kickoff in January. And now here presenting our first set of of findings from the framework to you in March and April, we'll continue this analysis and have recommendations and engagement. And then in may will be having having our full set of recommendations to this committee and the council. To [10:52:41 AM] give a bit further outlook to the budget again in in March, we'll be doing what we're calling alignment sprints internally. This is looking across the the ecosystem of contracts and services with our internal departments to understand where we might get the most efficiencies while still keeping up performance there. And may will be bringing those recommendations to you, as well as making sure that our partners have as much notice about any proposed changes that we can in June. And really, throughout this whole process, we want to make sure that we're providing all of the resources we can for capacity building, technical assistance and support for any organizations that may be impacted so that we can try and give the most help we can for any of those impacts from reductions that may be coming July. As we all know, [10:53:42 AM] proposed budget hearings, August adoption, and then October, any contract updates will go into effect. 11. Sorry, I'm going to go back to slide 11, which is the matrix quickly. >> So I want to just quickly respond to your question. Council member, when when we look at the the retains operational responsibility. It's going back to this. I know it's a very busy slide, but this is how we were analyzing what the city invest. And then when we look at our peers what those investments look like, as I mentioned, and as Daniel mentioned earlier, we're still digging into the ecosystem that is in the region and working with, you know, the county to better understand what their investments are, what central health investments are. But we were comparing the contracts that we're seeing in Austin to those same types of contracts, [10:54:42 AM] for example, in San Antonio, where they have some county general fund dollars, as well as the delegates across agencies. So when we say that we have the operational responsibility is compared to those peer cities that we're looking at and how they use different funding sources to to provide these services. >> Thank you. >> Director Lang. Anything else that you'd like to add on this? Because I just want to be very clear here because, you know, as part of adopting the updated budget, the manager was, I believe, very clear that he intends to further reduce social services by an additional 16 million. And so we should anticipate and expect that his budget proposal in eight months from now or seven months in July, will include a significant reduction. >> Yes. If you remember, in budget 1.0, the we always do a [10:55:45 AM] planned budget. We always look at the, you know, the budget that you're approving and planning the next fiscal year. And in order to balance fiscal year 27, there were a number of reductions that we made across several areas, one of those being social service contracts. If you remember, the housing trust fund transfer has been reduced or eliminated in 27, as well as the capital rehabilitation fund transfer from the general fund. So there are a number of areas that we looked at in order to balance fiscal year 27. Of course, as we move forward in forecast and in the budget process, we'll look at what revenue is coming in and how we can make adjustments to that. But those areas where the primary areas oh, there's one more area. It does include. The planned year did not include any wage increases for civilian employees. And that was those are the main levers that we use to balance fiscal year 27. There. There's as we look at [10:56:45 AM] revenue, we'll see what adjustments we'll be able to make, if any. But that's how we got to the fiscal year 27 planned budget. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Colleagues who would like to kick us off with any questions. >> Okay. >> Vice chair. >> Sure. >> First of all, thank you for all the research and the presentation and the insight that you've shared with us this morning. I'm going to start off by saying 1 or 2 things and then jump into a couple of questions that I've got from the research that you've shared. One is just to say very quickly, my first job here, at least political job here, was working for a lady named Kelly white, who was the former director of of. At that point, I think it was just safe or safe place. And her husband worked for at later family elder care as the development director. And so I [10:57:45 AM] got at that point, and this is 20 years ago, a window into the challenges that that those organizations have in terms of serving the community, raising money and being effective community partners. And so I very much wanted to say from the outset, empathize with the challenge that we're all facing, which is a time of constraint, a time of where sales taxes are down, where all of us are having to make really challenging decisions based on a very uncertain economic future that we face. And some of my questions that I have for director Lang and Mr. Cullotta are, are regarding some of that forecast. And so I'll start with how did we become the outlier. You pointed the slide 11, which described the funding sources for the partnership assessments. And I'm curious if you can give us any context for [10:58:47 AM] how we wound up in a place where in many of those categories, we've become accustomed to turning to the city for dollars. And I think there's a second question that I'd ask. Well, let me get that answer first, and I'm going to build on that. >> I don't have a lot of the historical context of how we've developed into this situation. That just made me me personally, I'm sure it's out there, but that's something that we can bring up in our next update to understand how we developed in this position. >> And to speak a little bit to that, I think we can we can probably provide a little bit more context, but as the I think it was a charge of past councils to really bolster our social service contract investments, and I believe it goes back to the mid to late 80s that we started working on that as a priority as a city. And then if you think about the financial spaces that the city was in, as far as the revenue [10:59:47 AM] that we had available and the ability to make those investments, that that was why, you know, we as a city decided to continue to invest in social service contracts. I think as you look at some of our peer cities, the other things that they've set up fundamentally and initially was working with their area partners. And although we've done that in some spaces, the other peer cities that you look at have, you know, formalized, structured agreements on who's going to do what, and that's just not something that we've developed in our community so far. >> Right. >> And we have acm. Stephanie hayden-howard. >> Good morning. Stephanie hayden-howard assistant city manager. Just want to maybe provide just a little bit more kind of background from kind of from my experience, the city started in this space probably in about 1987, when the elected [11:00:51 AM] officials had conversations with partners about how we can assist, and really just be in a space of just kind of being a financial partner. During those early conversations, the contracts with, at the time, integral care and aid and kind of started kind of funding in that way. Over the years. Council decided to make a a, a policy decision, because what we were seeing is, is that when we were doing the solicitations, there was such a great need. When folks put in their applications and, you know, the the pot was maybe $15 million. And the applications that came in doubled that [11:01:54 AM] amount. And so we, we we looked at the population and Austin, we looked at consumer price index. There was some benchmarking that was done in the past. And so based on all of those things, and then also looking at the need as a community and wanting to be able to prevent and work on more of the downstream issues, you know, if I could, you know, invest in early childhood programs and be able to provide that education. I do think that, you know, as we're taking a look at, at everything. I, I had a feeling that we did have because we have the fund, as the team has talked about, we have the social service fund. [11:02:54 AM] And so the the recommendation would be that the funds would reduce that fund itself. But they've done another survey, and that survey has shown that there are other contracts that the city has in other departments. And those contracts are within folks based budget. And so to the tune of I know you all have the number there, we we need to take a closer look at what we are funding and how we're funding, not just in the social service fund, but also in the department budgets. Okay. If if we have not been having the conversations that we need to have, there could be a chance of duplication. And we do need to be able to understand if [11:03:56 AM] there is some duplication and if there's things that we need to, you know, shift funding. It's in the general fund. And so if we, you know, reduce the the fund or the department's going to be able to continue that level of service. So we do need to be able to do as they're saying. This is our first blush. And so being able to look at it a little closer and understand and ensure that we don't have the duplication, do I? You know, as you all know, my background is in social work. And so, you know, I strongly believe that, you know, we always need to be able to look at ways to prevent things from happening, as well as looking at how do we, you know, balance what we're doing early on as a city, when we were doing [11:04:58 AM] contracts, we really tried to have agencies where we were not more than maybe 30 or 40% of their total budget, and we've kind of gotten away from that. The other thing that's happened over the years from a historical perspective, is that when other entities made their reductions and they changed their mission, typically the city folks would come to the city and ask us, you know, if we would be willing to provide an increase. And so I know we're just at a very challenging time as an organization, and I know these are going to be difficult decisions. But I do feel like that if we all come together, all of the community, all of one voice and all of the partners and we all work on this together, we can get to a [11:05:58 AM] very good place. So thank you, thank. >> You. >> Thank you for that acm hayden-howard I am I appreciate the context I got here in 96. So I clearly missed the first decade of of all these changes. All of this is probably ancient history to most of my colleagues. But but really helpful to understand sort of the genesis of how we arrived here. Because one question I've got is to the extent that this is sort of the first time we've done this level of peer benchmarking to understand if how other cities are approaching this kind of funding challenge. I mean, one of the key insights I took away from this was not just the funding makeup, but also the funding timelines and assessments that the process that they have that seems to be very different from how we approach ours and the pros and cons of that. So I'm curious if you can just speak to the degree that anybody there, you all are familiar with us having done this sort of investigative process before. [11:07:02 AM] >> I believe we we did. Public health led a review of our peers in 2012 or 2013 to understand better how they were funding their social service contracts. We could probably pull that information, but I think that was the first time we did it about 2012, 2013, and I believe that was when we were looking at changing how we were going to do our solicitations and things like that. So we can we can pull that information. >> I would be curious to compare that to what where we are now, but appreciate again that context. I wonder if you can just expand very briefly, acm hayden-howard. You mentioned that in the past, we sort of maybe had an internal rule or just a guideline or benchmark to say we weren't going to spend more than 30 or 40% internally on the contracts, and somehow we got away from that. Do you can you expand on [11:08:05 AM] when that might have happened, and if there was a particular catalyst or circumstance around that? >> I think there probably was several things that maybe has kind of happened, you know, over the years. You know, I think about with, with our homeless portfolio when we are doing, you know, housing and we're doing permanent supportive housing and we, you know, have the, the unit itself. And then we look to provide the supportive dollars. And so for those deals to really be strong deals and be made, you know, to the best of, you know, fidelity, we have typically been 100% of that funding that couples up with. Psh. So that's an example. There's been some some pilot programs that we've done over [11:09:05 AM] the years where, you know, we've done some research and work with the partners. And have you thought about pilots that we would do. And so in those instances, you know, we ended up being, you know, 100% there's times when we've had grants, we had the arpa funding, we had the cares funding knowing we needed to get those dollars out the door to meet the need. And sometimes we find ourselves doing 100%. So there's just been kind of different instances along the way where we we felt like this is a good decision to be 100% okay. >> Thanks for clarifying that. And I know others want to get to this, so I'm going to try and wrap up at least a first round here. Are any of y'all familiar with whether this, if not exact similar process is playing out at the commissioners court, at the state legislature, in terms of [11:10:05 AM] the same pinch or financial constraint and the same. Yeah. If a similar conversation is playing out there where you've got a lot of entities that, again, may not be in alignment with our peer cities for all we know. And they are perhaps overly reliant on one particular agent or government entity or another. And being similarly squeezed. >> I don't I don't know if we have that level of information as. Especially at the state level. I think we're having conversations with our partners to better understand where they are and what funding availability there is, but I don't know whether or not they are having the same challenges and looking at the same restraints that we are. But I think as we continue to have [11:11:05 AM] these conversations, we'll get we'll get a better understanding of what their challenges are, what they can do. And again, look at how we can look at this regionally and maybe provide a more in depth ecosystem in the funding realm so that we can better address these things across all of our partners. >> Okay. Thank you for that answer. And I think that's one thing that we can do also, is go check in with commissioners court and find out, to the extent that they're experiencing this or a similar challenge right now. I'm curious if you can go back. Well, actually, director Lang, if you can just comment very briefly. My understanding was part of what we balanced budget 2.0 on was taking out of reserves. And that part of what's happening here is that we don't want to do that again in the next fiscal year, and that's part of what's creating this, this necessity to go look for dollars elsewhere. Can you comment on that. >> Too? You are correct to balance the budget. We did do a [11:12:07 AM] transfer in from reserves and in the 2.0 version, that 5.2 million reduction to some of the contract providers was reallocated. So we didn't we didn't reduce social service contracts holistically. We reallocated those dollars to homelessness to support some of the areas that was determined was some of the priority in this fiscal year. >> And because I understood it, that we reallocated so homelessness services, the providers all received a 4% cut, not a 10%, but they received a 4% because we did the reallocation within homelessness and that the rest of social services received a 10% cut. >> Correct. So not all of the homelessness providers received a 4%. There was, for example, if rapid rehousing. I'll just use that as an example, because that was an area of investment. [11:13:08 AM] We didn't reduce those contracts. There were other social service contracts within the homelessness realm that was reduced 4% to reallocate. The rest of the providers received 10%. None. None. Homelessness. >> Okay. Very good. >> But just to because I want to make to your question, council member, vice chair duchen is, you know, with this new kind of two year outlook that we do with our budgeting, we did do a one time pull from our reserve fund of 14 million, with the intention that in the manager signaled that the for next fiscal year, that we would reduce social services by an additional 16 million because we wouldn't be making that transfer for next year. >> I know I've got some questions, because eventually I'll wait for you to introduce your recommendations, because I think I'd like to understand how we can potentially work with the framework that Daniel has presented. So I'll come back to that. I think the last [11:14:10 AM] thing I was just a clarification on slide 22, you talk you talk about strategic impact and then performance integrity. I just wondered if you could give me a couple of examples about specific places where those where you could sort of delineate between those two. >> For strategic impact. We just want to make sure that we're doing a thorough job mapping against things like the community health assessment, the citywide strategic plan, those things that we've determined are strategic priorities for the city, and making sure that all of our contracts have strong alignment to whatever, you know, mix or priorities that we've determined before. And performance leads more to what are the outcomes that we're getting from these services that we do invest in? How are the contracts performing? How has the engagement gone over [11:15:11 AM] the contracting period and making sure that we set those same types of metrics and assessments up for contracts going forward as well, so that we can continue? This isn't just a one time thing, but we're hopefully setting up a strategic and performance framework to that we can use going into to future years. >> Okay. So the performance integrity is more like outcomes and efficiency. And the strategic impact is more. Is it connected to a strategic vision. You have a bullet point there about where the where to the extent that we're leveraging other dollars or resources. So things that can be tied back to the strategic vision is that. >> Yeah. Yes. >> Okay. That's all I've got for now. Thank you. >> Chair colleagues. Councilmember Laine. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. I'll make a couple comments before I ask questions. And I first really just want to thank all of the partners who are out in the audience, some of whom we've spoken many times and others probably haven't heard any word [11:16:12 AM] out of my mouth until today, which is part of the reason that I'm starting with comments just to kind of introduce myself. But, I mean, I want to start by saying how much I truly value the work that each and of each and every one of you have put into our city, both paid and unpaid. I understand and appreciate the very important types of partnerships that allow nonprofits to work with the stability of city funding, and then also pull in private philanthropy dollars. I represent district six, which is the far northern and northwestern suburbs of Austin, 60% Williamson county, 95% Travis county five. Title one schools. And that's just a brief introduction. I also want to really thank acm hayden-howard both for the historical context and for her comments about how vitally important and effective it can be to work collaboratively, collaboratively, to come to a place that is the best we can get to and makes us stronger [11:17:14 AM] together. Through the through this process and at the end of it and the comments and questions that I have, I am making from it's it's hard when there's so much fear and so many different levels in our city, across our city right now, and scarcity of resources. But I am making these comments from the perspective of an abundance mindset, and I hope that they are felt in that way. At the conclusion of my questions, I also just I don't want to forget to say this, so I'm going to say it now. If I speak to. Areas that haven't reached district six, please know that my office is working very actively to increase the coordination and collaboration in district six, and there are funding partners there that aren't already tied into these cuts. And so if that's something that you're interested in exploring, keep us in mind. And with that I [11:18:15 AM] have a couple questions. Thank you. So one, so incredibly helpful. I'm so glad that I followed the mayor's request to attend this Austin public health meeting, and I expect to be back more often. I really appreciated the explanation of how these contracts have been mapped. The three, the three partnerships that you've evaluated as you're looking at contracts. And, you know, these were the similar contracts that we were looking at, cuts that happened, you know, more quickly than many of us had hoped during the budget cycle. So your three funding primary partners, the partners themselves don't reach 60% of my district, with the exception of integral care that has participation at pecan gardens. And I know has some other mental health work that happens in our area and is familiar [11:19:15 AM] with our Williamson county partner and works with them. But I am highlighting that the analysis itself doesn't consider the majority of my district and their needs. And it's a district in which, because of, in part because of the disconnection from services and transportation improvements and all of these things, a lot of displacement has occurred into my district of low income families, of the homeless population that has surged since the reinstatement of the camping ban. And so by analyzing the reach and needs within these filters on the foundation of a system that has grown and grown without reaching a lot of my district in particular, ones that have needs, I one just I want to elevate that. But I also want to ask I mean, it's I really appreciated the explanation about this having these partnerships, having started [11:20:16 AM] back in the 80s with aid and and animal services, aid, one elementary school in my district. It's not title one, I'll tell you that. So I think we've also grown in that way. And as painful as this reset is and is is coming in like a flood in a lot of ways that we can't control, it is a reset that that hasn't happened in far too long, I think not because I'm looking for cuts, but because I think it is very useful and valuable to take this big picture view of who are we reaching and how. And what I want to add on to that is, are we reaching our entire city? And so with with that in mind, I am wondering, as you're looking at what we're doing and how to adjust that, how can we how have you or how can we incorporate some type of gap [11:21:17 AM] analysis? I know acm hayden-howard and I have talked about, for example, with Austin public health zip codes as a way to see if we're actually reaching our entire city. I know that a lot of the data from personal experience, that a lot of the data that our various departments use to develop these plans, subscriptions don't cover Williamson county, which is where our title one residents, low income residents, are concentrated. I found this cropping up in lots of ways. So the fundamental question is how in this reset and this very careful and deliberate process of setting out filters and criteria, how are we incorporating a gap analysis and if not yet, can it be a yet. >> We have an item that. >> A policy item that we're about to discuss that I think we can integrate to make sure that's part of the direction moving forward. >> Okay. >> Councilmember alter, any [11:22:18 AM] questions. Oh, do you have a. >> Question? >> I so I'll just hold that till later. >> Yes. >> Yes okay. Okay. Yeah I'll hold. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. I have a number of questions and they are scattered around, but I, I want to start by just saying, at least from my position, I still am very concerned that. We have chosen our social service contracts to basically be. The lowest tier or the highest tier. However, when I think about the first thing to go right, I mean, we've zeroed out the housing trust fund. We've not proposed employee employee raises. But looking at [11:23:18 AM] the proposed budget, you know, department after department, either next year stays level, grows homeless strategy officer is projected to diminish severely, largely because of the funds that were funding that similar housing department diminish severely because no housing trust fund. But we are, in effect, balancing the budget on our social services. And I, I, I, I don't know that that's the right policy decision. So I just want to start with that. And I can see you have thoughts on this. >> So please. >> Yes, I think when we think about our budget process and the steps that we go through for fiscal year 26, and even at looking at fiscal year 27, we always start with digging into departments and looking at what areas we can reduce, find efficiencies, reallocate. And [11:24:19 AM] so that is part of our process that's going to continue being part of our process for fiscal year 27, there were reductions taken from departments in fiscal year 26 to balance our public safety departments, some in planning. So there was some reductions taken. It will continue. We're we did kick off two weeks ago with departments. And so we're working through those things, and we're looking at all levers that we can reduce. And that will be part of the conversation in our recommendation and our conversations. I think we did try to make sure that we looked across the general fund for options, and we recognize that the social service contracts, the housing trust funds, those are very important areas. But we have looked in other places and we'll continue to look in other places. >> And I know you will, and I know it's not you know, you from your position. You've got to figure out how to to balance [11:25:21 AM] the budget. And that's an unenviable task, especially right now with the constraints we're under. But I do think just looking you don't see other departments like if this was if social services was a department. Right. We're looking at a 20% cut. And unfortunately aside from homeless strategy officer now Austin homeless strategy operations, they're really the only other department looking at that kind of cut. And you could kind of think of them. I almost you know, the most of our social services are homeless strategy. You don't see a 20% cut from parks planning. Police run the gamut. And and I just think that's a a question we have to ask ourselves of the severity of the cuts to this one particular part of our budget. And, and I, I think it points a little bit to what the chair is, is bringing or hope to bring as an item here. But assessing cost [11:26:23 AM] savings within the budget is something that I think needs to be part of this conversation. Because you know, how many police calls, how many ems calls are to respond to homelessness. And I don't have the data on that, but I'm sure it's a very large number. And if we prevent those individuals from entering into homelessness or if we are able to serve them through a lower cost option. Should we be taking those dollars from the area where they're now? We're not having that burden, right? The return on investment and the avoided costs are something that I know are really difficult to quantify. And sometimes, you know, backwards looking. But I think that's one of the hard questions we have to ask ourselves right now is, you know, what does one position in this department equal in [11:27:26 AM] services to make that that person not have to go respond to the individual on the corner? So that's just one thing that I think is really important within what the chair is, is trying to bring forward. I also want to understand a little bit the tier one. And, you know, this is the must fund list. The things that, you know, we own and operate. How are we thinking about whether we should be operating it at all. So we, you know, we own whatever you pick your shelter, the marshaling yard. And as long as it's open, we have to pay the bill to operate it. But it seems like tier one is presuming that if we own it, we must operate it, and that not that necessarily. That's the best use of those dollars. And I'm just picking on shelter at the moment. But we this runs the gamut. So how are we thinking about that? [11:28:27 AM] >> At this point? We are looking at these as things that already have momentum. I think there is an opportunity to go back and have that even higher strategic conversation around those. When we're looking at existing contracts, this is how we're breaking it down. But again, I do think as this process progresses, obviously in the early stages, if it's if we desire to have those type of conversations, we should build that into to our framework. >> Sure. And I asked that question. You know, we're spending over $25,000 a bed at our various shelters. It's not unfortunately, it's fortunately not a 1 to 1 mapping. But, you know, I, I see sunrise in the house here, right? For $500 they can prevent someone from entering homelessness. So you're talking about a huge disparity of individuals that you could hopefully not even land in the shelter. Her bed. [11:29:29 AM] But I recognize that it's not you can't just you know, it doesn't happen immediately. Right? There's there's a time lag there. I'm also wondering how we look at, you know, Esperanza is looking to come online. They will offer additional shelter beds and bring other dollars to the table. Right. It's not just it wouldn't just be the city. How are we thinking about in in once again, the must fund the tier one? Are there ways to do this with a partner who bring other dollars to the table? >> I think those are all the levers that we'll look at. You know, as as we were creating and starting this work, we wanted to really understand the foundation of where we are. And then I think those are the conversations that would be really helpful for us to continue to have to say, how are we identifying this priority and figuring out the best way to fund it so that it can have the longevity that it [11:30:29 AM] needs and that all of the community is participating in a meaningful way. So I think those are some some of the conversations that we'll continue. >> Okay. Well, I just want to make sure that we're not saying if we own it, we must operate it because, you know, that's what we've been doing and that's what. >> And it's setting the foundation that we've owned it and we've been operating. And so I think going forward, deciding how we want to change that is definitely a conversation, a conversation. >> And my last question in the tier one, technically, for our permanent supportive housing projects, we own them. Someone else operates them. Are we considering those as tier one must fund? You know, they're social services so that they can continue to operate. >> Tier one right now is primarily the things that we the way we're thinking about is the things that we have to. A lot of it is like legal mandates, like things that we would have to do. I think it's probably a pretty small percentage of things that will [11:31:30 AM] actually fall into the this is an unassailable, you know, item that we cannot touch. And then I think there, you know, there will probably be some gray area of things that are, you know, extremely high priority or high momentum ownership, etc. That are going to be at the top of the list of that strategic alignment in the in the tier two that we've talked about. Okay. That's how we're currently thinking about it. >> Okay. That's very helpful. I think, you know, things change obviously, but not very many years ago we set out on expanding our housing, especially our permanent supportive housing. We did a really amazing job doing that. We have, you know, I want to say doubled the capacity there somewhere around there. But that was on the on the promise and on the understanding that we owned it. You operate it, but there are there are strings attached that, that we have to fulfill. And and I fear that if [11:32:32 AM] we don't do that, not only will we go backwards, some of these, you know, potentially clothes or just turn into general population, but who's going to trust us next time that we say, let's do this? And you know, that has to show up somewhere in this analysis as well. I just have two more questions. And that is. Somewhere in here. I can't exactly remember the slide, but there was a notion about basically, should we have a bunch of people doing a bunch of things or find, you know, a few providers who do various things really well and fund that provider to do that thing? Is that can you just expand upon that? You know, because I can think of certain providers in our community who do you know a certain thing really, really well? And should we focus resources on those providers? And of course, the opposite side of that coin is [11:33:33 AM] that's to the detriment of the smaller or newer providers. But how are we thinking about that? >> I think we'll look we will be looking at that across these different services and how the provider networks look. I don't think we're automatically deferring to finding the one provider that we would fund. I think there's, you know, different circumstances where a lot of these may serve different populations, provide, you know, different types of services where there's nuance between them. So I think that's where we're really going to dig into, you know, what is the what is the need in service ecosystem look like. How is it performance gone with these providers in the first place? So I'll say we don't have one, you know, one ideal, you know, format that we're trying to to go towards. It'll be based on the, the service and the current conditions across the city there. >> Okay. >> And last I think I'll tee up right where I believe the chair [11:34:33 AM] is going to talk about her item here, her shooting. Of course my computer locks. The minute that happens her recommendation. But I, I think really important in there is the recognition within this analysis of the criticality of the service. Right. Are we talking about providing life saving health food, shelter or are we talking about something else? And that's not to discount the something else. There are some really good something else is going on in the community, but we have to make sure people can live before the next stage. So just want to make sure that that. >> Yeah, it's extremely important. And that's the idea behind some of those checks. I think I put them at the bottom of those slides that we want to make sure that we're looking over, you know, as we go [11:35:35 AM] through this, this assessment for things like that, for things like, you know, cascading effects that we might cause, you know, by some of these potential decisions. So that's that's what those checks are intended for. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. >> Chair I mean, you bring up a great point, councilmember, in that, you know, not to single out a particular contract. But, you know, I also agree that we should be funding essential services. And, you know, one of the things that the city funds is a nonprofit to coordinate volunteer opportunities. So that to me is not like at the highest level of priority for us as we navigate the climate and the financial constraints that we're in. So we need a process that really shows, you know, where is that prioritization? What are the critical services that are essentially lifelines for many in our community, for the most vulnerable in our community? So with that, colleagues, I have a recommendation that I'd like to put forth for our committee to consider. This is really rooted [11:36:36 AM] in understanding that the manager has outlined a social service reset for the city, and we as policymakers, have an opportunity to guide, direct and help shape that process. And so what this recommendation does, and I want to thank councilmember alter, you and your team for helping us with this item, as well as with city staff. They have been we've been talking with them throughout this. You'll see a lot of alignment as to what they presented and what's laid out in the resolution. Because we've been in close conversation on how to outlay the process. This recommendation is a policy direction that does three major things. One, it directs the city manager to create a comprehensive rubric to prioritize the city's current social service contracts. Utilizing the austin-travis county community health assessment to inform and guide our investments. The Shea is a huge part, and while we were slated to have that presentation during today's committee meeting, know that we [11:37:37 AM] will take that up next month. But I just wanted to highlight that is an important community resource that convenes several different partners in Austin that inform that assessment, and that has some really good insights that we should use to guide our work moving forward. The second thing that the recommendation does, it directs the city to explore sustainable funding sources, partnerships, citywide cost savings and other opportunities to prioritize ongoing investments in social service contracts. And three, it directs the city manager to conduct regular feedback and community engagement sessions with community stakeholders to identify community priorities to finalize both the comprehensive plan as well as well to finalize the comprehensive and social service contract restructuring plan. And so really that third component is is rooted in the community. We've heard from several partners today about how their organizations have [11:38:37 AM] been impacted, not only from the cuts that they received from the city, but also the federal climate and funding cuts that they've received at the federal level as well. And ultimately, those dynamics are contexts that we should consider. And I want to make sure, as we go through the next six months here, that our community is involved. They are closest to the problems and will have important insights that we should be aware of. So with that, I will. If I can, I'll move for the committee to consider it. Is there a second? Seconded by our vice chair here. And now we're discussing the recommendation. Yes. >> I'll just I know we're pressed for time, so I'm not going to really say a lot other than what I said, but I think this is a really strong addition to, you know, our budget office is looking at things from a certain lens, and this can help do some of that filtering and really bring to the top those contracts that are very critical. And so I [11:39:38 AM] think this is a great addition. I appreciate you you bringing it forward. >> Vice chair. >> Thank you. Chair one appreciate the effort that you and councilmember alter and staff have put forth to developing this. The only question I've got, and maybe it's more of even a suggestion, I think there's a question I've got that's related to that I'll ask in a second, is to the extent that it sounds like Mr. Has worked on a framework already that's been in the presentation to help answer at least some of the get some clarity towards a decision making process for evaluating the contracts going forward. And so I'm wondering if there's a way to or the intent here is to synthesize what you've got. And there are probably or you and councilmember alter put together that you've got specific language in here about perhaps specific things that are not part of Mr. Framework that would be incorporated. Or maybe you can explain to me how this works in tandem, or what [11:40:39 AM] your vision is of working in tandem with the framework that he's laid out. >> Well, one, I think the framework that we're looking at is it goes in tandem with this methodology that he has just for the contracting piece, and that we will need more information. Right. So it sets the direction that we want this as a element to consider as part of the social the manager's social service reset. But to in that memo update that we're directing to receive from staff, we're we're saying we need more information because already in these different tier ones, I would love to know what staff has identified as those legal mandates versus what are the ones that they've identified as duplicative bucket areas for us to consider. Right. So it it's this is an outline to the framework. But what we are asking and would like to receive back is a memo update of the framework itself. >> Okay. That makes sense. And that yeah I mean I hear that [11:41:40 AM] there's sort of an opportunity to merge work that he's already started with some additional information requirements. And I think there are things in here that we're not touched on during his presentation that could be really valuable to better understand. >> So yes, and the other piece to that is the roi on the services. And I think one partner spoke to it, and that's an information I want to glean is if we if the city doesn't fund that service, where else might we be shifting the cost, right, either to our emergency services, to our legal system, to our jails, somehow, somewhere, our everyday taxpayer is going to absorb the costs? And so we have to have a way to capture that information as well. >> And I'll say there are things that I think would be helpful as part of this conversation to, again, if we can aggregate them. Right. I know in our q&a process for the budget, we asked a question about social services contract kpis. Right. And like bringing that information in here I [11:42:41 AM] think would be valuable. One question I've got for Mr. Culotta is just to understand sort of how granular you went in looking at the peer city comparison. When I say that, I'm just going to use an example, because councilmember alter has talked about it, which is our homeless system capacity. Right. The data that I've got is from 2024, and it shows maybe, what, 2100 shelter beds, maybe 3800 psa beds. Do we have any sort of comparison of how our system capacity is doing relative to these other? Since you were looking at not just city, but county and nonprofits base as well? >> Yeah. Initially we focused on peer cities, both within our area and ones that were often compared to nationally. We do want to start digging more into different measures or levels of of need. I guess you could say it. So within these different services, something like, you know, how many beds or you know how what is the level of need for shelter, for instance? I [11:43:42 AM] think there are measures like that for many of these different services. I don't want to say that I know that there's a comprehensive, you know, way to determine a single number for for need across the city. But we do want to start making sure that we bring that into the balance as well, to making sure that we're funding things at the level of need that they are, or at least understanding gaps where they are and understanding how that compares to others. >> I think that would be. >> Incredibly valuable. And I realize this is a journey and this is not the the end point today, but I mean, in terms of the findings that you shared, there were some real surprises there for me in terms of, you know, we've had conversations here about the philanthropic universe and relative to other peer cities and the sense that, for instance, Houston and Dallas have much larger philanthropic communities. There's also the sense and in relation to that, what is sort of the per capita value of some of these spaces? And if that's [11:44:42 AM] a if that's even relevant to this conversation, but noting that, you know, our philanthropic contribution in this space was comparable to cities that are in some cases twice our size. So there were just a lot of takeaways that I'd be curious to maybe visit more with you later about how to if there's a way to as we work through the requirements that are laid out in the recommendations, that we've got a really smart way to compare really what's going on here versus other spaces and the places that we can get the most value from working on. So with that said, very much appreciate the work that you all have done and and look forward to sort of synthesizing or aggregating the data together and helping us make smart decisions going forward. >> Yes. >> I'll also keep it brief, since I was lengthy at the beginning, and also councilmember alter covered many of the things that I would have otherwise comment on. So that's wonderful. Thank you for the willingness to incorporate the gap analysis into what may [11:45:43 AM] come to council. I want to clarify one additional thing or say explicitly one additional thing, which is that the the amazing work that this city has done in providing funding, funding for these types of services for in this way is is wonderful and it's painful to be faced with this now. But the capacity building that's occurred, the stability of funding, all of this is amazing. And I hope that as we look toward the gap analysis, we also look towards where, let's just say a nonprofit that's very skilled and experienced in a certain area. There's going to be whatever reduction is happening. So can we look at the opportunities for them to have a role in capacity building in areas that have been underserved and have need? And I think that can really help us all get to know each other better. Speaking to my district, which I know best, [11:46:44 AM] there is a widespread lack of knowledge of how to collaborate with the city and with the partners that are most active in the city, and I myself have been an example of that. But it also very much applies to our on the ground community members who care and have been trying to make a difference. So I just want to include that as part of what we're looking towards. >> Thank you, thank you, vice chair. >> There's one more thing I wanted to add to the conversation, and this is related to one of the items that you've laid out, which is helping us understand the recent state and federal cuts. I know in my conversations with our government relations director, I think one of the changes that they've made that I'm looking forward to learning more about is what seems to be a multiyear grant work plan that's intended to help identify not just state and federal funding opportunities, but but everything from earmarks and riders. That to the point that you identified [11:47:44 AM] in the report that is now a multi switching to a multiyear way of looking forward and identifying those, those different dollars as opposed to what we've been doing in the past. So I'm hoping that can all be incorporated into what our our product here. >> Yes. No thank you. And this is really it's putting it forth as a recommendation of this committee with the understanding that this is shaped by the input from our committee. Right. And we want to put that forth as the public health committee to the full city council for consideration. So, no, that, you know, with this vote, we will follow up. We will work with you all on doing a version two so that we capture the feedback that has been laid out today, but ultimately just want to appreciate y'all's feedback and input and, and know that we are a committee that works and that we we will put forth policy direction for full consideration. So with that, is there any objection to passing [11:48:45 AM] this item? Okay. Seeing no objection, that recommendation stands approved. All right. Colleagues, we have a little about a little over ten minutes left in our committee meeting. And there are two items that we had slated on our agenda today, including a presentation on the 2025 austin-travis county community health assessment. We've Laura Lafuente, the assistant director of public health, was going to give a presentation. We've let her know that we will take that up next month in March. And then the other update was a big update from our director of Austin homeless strategies and operations office on the strategic plan. And so, director gray, if you're okay with that, we will request that this item turns comes back to the full council as a work session briefing so that everyone can get that update. All right. So that is item two and three. And with the last item being any future items that we'd like to discuss colleagues, any topics for [11:49:45 AM] consideration. >> Full agenda. >> Yes. The March agenda is also packed. I think we also have the leadership from central health will be giving us an update. Thank you everyone for your participation and contribution to this very important conversation. If there's no further business, I will adjourn this meeting at 11:50 A.M. >> Thank you.