City Council Work Session Transcript – 3/24/2026 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 3/24/2026 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 3/24/2026 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. [9:01:20 AM] >> City council meeting to order. It's March 24th, 2026. We're meeting in city council chambers. We do have a quorum of the city council present, and we're meeting on three at 301 west second street in Austin, Texas. Let me see if we now have it. Sounds like we got everything working. Members. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to hear from our public comment speakers. And then we're going to go into an executive session. After the executive session, we will come back and take up the agenda items pretty much in order. Unless something happens between now and the end of the executive session. And then once we complete the work session, mayor pro tem vela will call to order. As chair of the Austin energy oversight committee, the Austin energy oversight committee, and we will have that meeting. So with that, I'm going to turn to the city clerk and ask that you call the speaker's. >> Mayor, we're going to start with remote speakers. Jen Robichaud for item a 31. [9:02:25 AM] >> Good morning council. I'm Jen Robichaud, longtime Austin resident. Last time I spoke on this issue, I pointed out that the homeless strategic plan completely omits the taxpayers perspective as a key stakeholder. Since then, I've spoken with many fellow taxpayers as well as director David gray. And while I see that state and federal rules create extensive barriers that we can't fix overnight, Austin has immediate control over safety, public spaces, cost, and accountability. And while our taxpayers are empathetic towards our unhoused neighbors, we believe that funding heavy that a funding heavy approach is driving up costs, eroding trust and harming our city's culture and environment. And so we need a plan that includes all stakeholders. And I see that the strategic plan still has various gaps. One is accountability. We need contractors to be tied to self-sufficiency, to be working people out of the system and not endless support. Second, we need better models looking towards our organizations that emphasize work and [9:03:26 AM] self-sufficiency without heavy city funding. And we should be building more services to train non-profits and business skills and sustainability. Third, we need to address encampments in our environment. We have unchecked camps in the greenbelt and trails that cause real environmental damage. Cleanup is costly, but the camps keep reforming, and our strategy lacks a solution for people who refuse shelter. Of course, we need more data transparency. The plan promises better data, but we don't have a public dashboard, and this is something that we need more information about things like point of origin, length of service usage, reasons for homelessness, drug uses, and the real cost of Brexit. And then in addition, taxpayers are looking to vet any outsiders because we believe that our services are attracting people from outside Austin and we lack data on where people are coming from and why they're here. This needs to be added into our strategic plan so that we can better address this problem. [9:04:26 AM] Sixth, we need to address public. >> Safety and public. >> Okay. >> Jen. >> Your time has expired. I also have you signed up for item a 40. >> Yes. Good morning, city council, this is Jen Robichaud speaking on item 40. So I am generally in favor of opening up pathways to make middle housing easier to build. I love the idea of cottage courts, duplexes, multiplexes and townhomes, which are far more neighborhood friendly than large apartment buildings and mixed use developments. I think encouraging one and two storey buildings that match the existing residential scales the best way to add density and achieve economies of scale without dramatically changing our neighborhoods. But while we're rewriting rules, I think it's important to keep important problems in mind, such as extra permitting steps and fees that drive up construction costs for builders. And this undermines affordability that we're looking for, especially for working families, and to [9:05:27 AM] address the issue before able bodied people who are exiting homelessness. We also need to be careful about relaxing loc coverage and setbacks, because this risk losing green space, which is a hallmark of Austin and also creates environmental problems, and it harms neighborhood livability. And then, despite the city's stated goals, Austin really isn't a safe walking or public transit city. Residents already struggle with parking, and so we need to make sure that there's adequate parking allowed for in these areas. And we don't cut back too much. And then also to address neighbors that oppose taller buildings next to their single family homes. This is something that we've seen come up a lot in planning conversations lately. And oftentimes deed restrictions prohibit them. When people buy a house, they buy it according to the deed restrictions. And so any rezoning we do needs to be honoring those contracts that people are signing. And so I think we need a clear, more effective way for neighbors to discuss and negotiate changes [9:06:28 AM] before they happen, especially when those sorts of deed restrictions are being violated. And as the city has a contract with other consulting groups, I think it would make a lot of sense for us to consult more closely with our neighbors. >> Thank you, miss Robichaud. >> We have two in-person speakers, Hans maverick for a 66. Christopher rouse B one. >> If you're here, please come forward. Mr. Maverick. Mr. Rouse Mr. Maverick Mr. Rouse okay. >> Mayor, we've called all the speakers. >> Great members. We will now go into members of the public. We're going to go into an executive session. My goal is to have us out of that executive session no later than, say, 945 to 950, because we have such a robust work session agenda. And then we have the Austin energy oversight committee meeting the scheduled [9:07:29 AM] as well. So we'll try to plan accordingly for that. So without objection, the city council will now go into a closed session to take up two items pursuant to section 55107, one of the Texas government code, the city council will discuss legal issues related to items e1 and e2. Item e1 is to discuss legal issues related to federal mandates. That is a private consultation, as I've indicated with our legal counsel and item e2 is to discuss legal issues related to the yogurt shop, criminal case cases. If there's. Is there any objection to going into the executive session on the items announced? Hearing none, the council will now go into executive session at 9:08 A.M. [10:08:35 AM] 8 A.M. On March 24th, 2026. We are out of a closed session. In closed session, we discussed legal issues related to items e1 and e2 members that will take us to the full agenda of the city council work session. And we're going to start with we're just going to go in the order of the agenda. Unless something happens that I'm not anticipating. So we will start with item a 31. And something may have already happened. I wasn't anticipating, as Mr. Gray here. Yeah, that's all right. We came out pretty quick. So let's just pause for a second. We'll we'll start. >> I can speak to the poll if you want to start. >> Yeah. Why don't you. Yes. I'll recognize councilmember. Well, actually he ought to be in the room when you speak to the pool. Right. >> He knows we've talked. >> But let's let's. >> Yeah. Fair enough. There he is. [10:09:39 AM] >> Sorry. We jumped out pretty quickly. Sorry about that. No, no, it's not your fault. We came out quick. Okay, I'll now recognize councilmember alter to speak about the. He is the person who pulled the item, so have him speak to why he pulled the item. >> Thank you so much. So we. I pulled it just. We were looking at a few potential amendments. Have had the chance to work with director gray and these are kind of trying to harmonize the need for more shelter, more rapid rehousing, more prevention or permanent supportive housing. And so we have worked together. There's going to be an amendment offered on Thursday. I'll post the message board. Hopefully today it it addresses the the targets we have right now around shelter capacity. Still having that expansion and adding some kpis around psh and rapid. And then looking forward, [10:10:39 AM] we talked about maybe bringing it back to the council or the public health committee, let's say after the budget, you know, the fall when we have more certainty around some of the outstanding questions, whether that's what we're funding, what the nofo looks like, things of that nature. So I just want to thank director gray for working with us on this. And like I said, we'll post something today to the message board. >> All right. You want to do you want to talk about what the potential amendments are while we're here quickly so that we at least know? Sure. And he can and we can ask him any questions if we have questions about it. >> Yes. So right now in the plan, given the uncertainty, as we talked about last time, the the the strategic plan has a specific numerical target around shelter capacity, but nothing else. And I was concerned that having there be this one area where we can measure success versus failure for it, when you, when taken as [10:11:40 AM] a whole, led the document to say, well, this is where we're really focused on success. The other areas we're going to try to do things but not have that more clear target. And so we are just striking the the specific numerical bed capacity, but still having the expansion of shelter and the measuring of our expansion within the kpis, because we do need to expand our shelter capacity. And then having a clarity around new kpis for psh, new kpis for rapid, just so that we're measuring that we can understand as a council where we are in those regards and clarification within the subpopulations that youth are one of the subpopulations we're looking at. So like I said, we've we've worked together. I really appreciate the collaboration here and, and think we've arrived at a good spot. >> Council. Any questions? Mr. Gray, would you like to address any of that? >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And [10:12:41 AM] thank you, councilmember Alyssa, for working with myself and my staff on those amendments. We're happy to to receive those, and we look forward to having the strategic plan approved by council on Thursday. Thank you sir. >> All right. Yes. Councilmember duchen. >> Thank you. I just have one quick follow up. Based on the prior discussion that we had, which was, from what I can tell you, included some language about behavioral health services under the strategic plan 2025 2027. Paige. Is that is that correct? Is that the one place you've made that change to? So it's not just in the appendix? >> I'm sorry, councilman, can you restate. >> We had talked previously about including language about behavioral health or mental health, because previously when we came back and looked at the plan, it was just sitting in the appendix. And you mentioned it was a priority. I want to confirm that it has been added back into that page called strategic plan 20 2527, and maybe other places I'm not aware of as well. >> Yes. Councilmember. So we do [10:13:41 AM] have language that speaks to the importance of behavioral health within the on page eight, within the strategic plan kind of introduction, we're continuing to work with integral care on prioritizing behavioral health and mental health services for our community. They are the mental health authority, obviously, for our area. And so while it is a priority for our office, we want to make sure that we're empowering our colleagues at integral care to continue to act in their role as the mental health authority and spearheading that work for our population, as well as other populations. >> Okay. Thank you. I just want to make sure that that change was what I understood it to be. >> Thank you sir. >> Thanks, councilmember. All right. Sounds like we're done with that. Thank you, Mr. Gray. >> Thank you all. >> That'll take us to item 840. This was mayor. Yes. >> I have a couple questions for David gray. >> Okay. Is there a way you can put yourself on the screen? >> Yes. [10:14:42 AM] >> Thank you. Good. You have the floor. >> Thank you so much. I want to start by just thanking you for all of the work that's gone into developing this strategic plan. There is so much in there that is very important and lays a strong foundation for what is to come. As we're thinking about implementation of the plan, I would like to better understand how this will function as a living document and how we as council will stay engaged as it evolves, as as it evolves. So my first question is, is the intent intent for the strategic planning report to be conducted on a regular cycle? If so, what will that cycle be? When will we see the next iteration of that plan? >> Thank you. Councilmember. It's good to see you. So internally, we have established working groups for each strategic plan goal element. And those internal working groups will be meeting quarterly to track our progress [10:15:43 AM] on the strategic plan. And then my leadership team and I will meet at least twice a year to again track our department's progress on the strategic plan. If it is council's desire, we're happy to provide regular updates as we as we go. But internally, we're going to be paying close attention to the plan and making sure that we're delivering on the goals that we've outlined in the document. >> Thank you. I can really see from the content of the strategic plan and also your answers to questions when we have been in dialog about it, that you have given very careful consideration to that and internal development of strategies and building on that foundation. I really appreciate that. I'm thinking about right now as I ask this question, how do we strike the balance between approving the strategic plan so that you can move forward with the next steps without any further delay? Because there certainly are many that you've told us that you would like to dig into. And [10:16:44 AM] thinking about our budgeting cycle. I mean, our fiscal year started before this calendar year started, and we are nearing the end of the timing that you had originally planned for already having developed some of those next steps. So I'm sensitive to the fact that continuing to discuss without an approval of something that you can move forward on is hindering you in ways that will only become more significant and probably are pretty significant already. So one question that I have, I think what I so and I understand how you have planned for the internal discussions around that, but I, and I appreciate your willingness to come to council as often as we request. However, I don't want you to have to. I want you to get enough of an approval that you can move forward, especially since we probably have, you know, less than half a year left before we start talking about what's happening next year and all that. So I really want you to be able to focus on that. But my question is, you know, this is a two. I mean, [10:17:44 AM] this is a follow up question. This is a two year strategic plan. I know that it's fairly recent that we have shifted to two year budgeting forecast. Forecast window. And so it makes a lot of sense to me to have a two year strategic plan. Would we as could we as a council, anticipate an update as early as next year of the strategic plan, which would then incorporate many of the things that you are working on between our approval of this plan and the next one, and it would still be a two year forward look. So, for example, could we expect to see a strategic plan early next year that is then 2020, whatever those two years are? Sorry. And if so, perhaps that would give greater comfort to council, to approving this, knowing the good work that's already gone on to it, and that we will see the product of your work in in six months. >> Yes, ma'am. So first, I want to I appreciate the [10:18:45 AM] acknowledgment of all the hard work that went into the plan. I want to give credit to all of my staff, some of whom are in the audience today behind me, because they really are the brain trust that drives our work forward. With respect to updates, a lot of the elements in the plan are up are items that we already update council on in terms of the specific projects, we're regularly providing updates to the public health committee, and we're happy to continue to do that for individual items or just an update on the plan as a whole. But like I said, we're also happy to to provide council with a one year update in the form of a memo or a presentation or however you see fit. We'd be more than happy to, to do that. So please allow me. Maybe I could meet with the assistant city manager, hayden-howard and a few others to think through what the delivery of that update looks like, but a one year update should be no problem. >> Okay, I appreciate that. And yes, please do take the time to [10:19:46 AM] think about you know, what makes sense and let us know. I also don't want to overly prescribe how you're going to update us, because it will of course depend on on your work. I was going to add something on, but I actually and what I will say is if, if, if we can count on some form of an update that incorporates this work early next year, that will allow me to skip a lot of my questions for you, whether I would continue them here or in a private briefing. In the interest of time, I have a lot more than is on my list, but I'm very comfortable giving approval for you to just move forward with what you've got, because that will also help me to refine some of that. I do have a couple of other items that. I think that what I'd like to suggest is that you reach out to our, our office after you've come up with what you think makes sense for the next update, if it will look like this annual update. And [10:20:46 AM] we'll also share these remaining questions with you there. So it can just be incorporated into the work that you're doing. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Thank you, I appreciate it. >> Thank you. Councilmember. All right, members, Mr. Gray, thank you. That'll take us to item a40. This was pulled by council members. Velasquez and duchen. I'll let you all decide who wants to give us an update. Councilmember duchen, why don't you tell us the basis of pulling this and we'll move forward with it? >> Thank you. Mayor. My hope to pull this was to ask some questions of staff regarding the briefing and memo about the missing middle guidelines, and then to understand if there's some other strategies we could employ to maybe create some geographical distinction between where we're deploying this and then invite councilmember Velasquez to jump in there and help us understand his rationale. >> All right. Go ahead. >> Yeah. Thank you. So one of [10:21:46 AM] the reasons that I pulled this item is that we you know, we heard from planning staff that we're nowhere near having enough affordable housing, starter homes to keep working families in Austin. And so I just had a few comments around that. So if council member duchen wants to go and ask us questions first, and I'll make my comments. >> Councilmember Deutsch, why don't you ask your questions? >> Thank you. Mayor, I think a central question that I've got is that we've made a lot of changing changes to our zoning regime in the last few years. And there's also been state level changes. And, you know, our previous reference point from orienting around zoning is goes back to the mid 1980s. So I'm trying to understand to what extent are we monitoring the effect of these changes that have already occurred. I'm thinking of home in two phases. I'm thinking of I'm thinking of last year we added coffee shops and residential areas. I'm thinking of site plan light phase one and phase two. So is [10:22:48 AM] that something you can help me better understand as to what extent we are kind of actively monitoring or measuring the outcomes of the prior things that we have done in the recent history. >> Hi council members, I'm Jordan Feldman with the planning department, and we do know that dst is tracking the uptake of home home one and home two, but we will have to get back to you about the uptake of the other amendments and how they're being tracked. We don't have that data at the moment. >> Okay. Well, my concern around this is, given the substantive changes that we've made over the last few years, that we're adding an additional round of changes to this. And I understand I think I understand the intent and logic behind it, but I'm concerned that we haven't adequately captured the full extent of what we've done, whether it's worked or not, whether it's created the outcomes we desire to or whether, you know, tinkering on our end is [10:23:51 AM] creating the outcomes we desire to impact the housing market beyond what the private market is currently doing, as well as other circumstances that oversee the private market. So that's where the sort of source of my concern is here that this would be this would be one additional change beyond that, or a series of additional changes beyond what we've currently done, without really understanding how far we've come or what the impact of those changes has been, who would I need to talk to within dsd to understand what they are measuring? And then beyond home, are we measuring anything else or is that something that we can I can have a conversation with somebody in planning or housing and better understand. >> Good morning. Andrea bates, assistant director for Austin planning. We'd be happy to follow up with your office [10:24:52 AM] after some internal coordination. That way we can make sure we get the right folks to the table and then follow up offline. >> Okay, then I'll plan on that. There are a couple just, I think in the backup and reports. There are a couple of other passages I just wanted to touch on and ask some questions around. I'll try and be brief here. One of those is regarding the appropriate. The area's appropriate for missing middle and mixed use development. And this I think I alluded to why we pulled it. There's a comment in here that says, before recommending specific properties where the new Zones could be applied as part of any future city initiated rezoning, staff would engage the community and conduct further analysis. So what I'm trying to understand here is as we engage the community and we find that there are concerns, perhaps even strong neighborhood opposition to a certain mixed use development. Is that going to impact recommendations? >> Yes, we would be working with the community to find the correct places for these Zones and through once they are [10:25:52 AM] adopted as tools through the rezoning process, it would be the same. We would be working with the community and engaging. >> Do you. Is there any particular details you can share about how that would work, what process we'd undertake? And I'm just like. I'm a little, you know, when when we've been doing the south mopac engagement the txdot has undertaken, like they're conducting virtual sessions that are just go watch a video and write in your questions. So I'm just trying to make sure we have a real process in place for this engagement. >> So since we're still kind of at the beginning of this process, we haven't fully developed an engagement plan. But that is something that we would plan on doing first when we create the new zoning tools as that kind of first step to just getting them on the books and into the zoning code as options for property owners to use in the future for the city to use in the future. We would [10:26:52 AM] envision that that would involve a fair amount of community engagement, and that could include things like virtual sessions, in-person in-person sessions, or open houses. Targeted engagement with neighborhood groups and other types of stakeholders, and detailed testing of the proposed regulations on actual sites so we can know whether the proposed regulations are actually generating the outcomes that we want to see. >> Thank you for that answer. I'm also trying to understand. And I guess I'll go back to my original comments when we're deploying this. Are we looking at deploying this across the entire city? Is that the intent behind it, or are we looking at prioritizing certain parts of the city, such as the tods or some other area? Can you speak a little bit more about your thinking about where this is most appropriately used? And if there are places that you that you already think may be [10:27:53 AM] inappropriate for this or less appropriate. >> For one, we're we're envisioning the mixed use Zones will be on transit corridors and within station areas. This is where we envision walkable, active places with pedestrian ground floor active uses. The missing middle would allow more housing within residential neighborhoods, but in a context sensitive way. >> Okay, well, one of the concerns I've got also is there's a comment in there on page 75, it says newbase Zones to enable missing middle and mixed use development could affect displacement pressure by increasing the market value of property or making property more likely to redevelop. So can you walk me through how increasing the property value is going to impact the displacement pressure in these circumstances? >> Those just a note of caution in this study that when you increase entitlements on a property that may then increase the property's attractiveness for a developer to want to [10:28:54 AM] redevelop that site, which may mean the owner of that property is more likely to to sell. And so that could contribute to a kind of direct displacement in that way. I do think it's important to note, though, that this doesn't directly impact assessed property values. The Travis central appraisal district has said that they don't take into account zoning changes when they assess properties, so that that comment in the report was specifically focused on the perceived attractiveness of a property for a developer. >> Okay. Thank you. When you when you're, as you mentioned a moment ago, as you're thinking through the corridors and where it's appropriate to best deploy this, when are we going to get more details about what that looks like? Can you explain to me the timeline or what we can expect in terms of more clarity going forward? [10:29:55 AM] >> Sure. So staff is proposing a kind of two step process with the first step that item 40 initiates is just creating the new tools. So just envisioning what mixed use Zones, what missing middle Zones could look like, and then working out those details with community members and getting the new regulations on the books after the regulations are on the books, there's kind of two paths that that could be taken to actually apply the Zones to properties. One is a property owner could request a rezoning of their property into one of these new zoning categories. Another is that the city council's discretion could initiate rezoning of properties. According to plans that the planning department is working on, such as station area plans or vision plans, or some other criteria that council direct staff to to implement. >> Okay, then I'll look for [10:30:56 AM] those updates and options as they become available to us. I wanted to also ask you about a recommendation that said staff would also evaluate the recommendation to create a transportation demand management standard to reduce car trips to and from neighborhood commercial uses. I'm curious to know where we are on the evaluation of that recommendation, and to create a standard to sort of mitigate the what I might call the, the, the effects or second order effects of this policy. >> Sure. Those actually are a recommendation from the zoning and planning commission and the codes and ordinances joint committee, basically saying if we were to allow more mixed use development in areas that have primarily residential uses, they thought it would be a good idea to look into transportation demand management as a way to have less car traffic going into neighborhoods, have people take alternative forms of transportation. The study mentioned that just kind of echoing that staff is [10:31:58 AM] supportive of exploring that. We haven't had detailed conversations yet about what that strategy could look like, but that's something that as this work really kicks off, we'll be having conversations with partner departments to see what that could look like for the missing middle or mixed use Zones. >> Okay, same thing. Then as we get more clarity on that, I'd like to understand how that's going to take shape, kind of related to that. Part of the part of where I'm approaching this is this is sort of at the sort of liminal space between where perhaps single family neighborhoods are and where we're now asking for, you know, a step up in density between that and larger density. There's a comment in here about how the missing middles promise is to provide more access to, to live in quiet neighborhoods and tension with mixed uses, zoning benefits of creating vibrant street life with more active hours that support local [10:32:58 AM] businesses. How are you all thinking about that kind of trade off that is happening in this kind of liminal area? Knowing that we've already got some challenges working through with parking and other things that are a byproduct of where we are now positioning businesses and restaurants and so on. Closer to, you know, regular neighborhoods. >> Well, again, we're envisioning the mixed use is going to be on transit corridors and within station areas. So those will not be integrated into existing single family. But the missing middle, while we're creating the new Zones, we would do it in a context sensitive way, so it would be able to be integrated into the neighborhood seamlessly. Is our vision. >> Okay, well, I appreciate your answer to this. There's more questions than I probably ought to just follow up independently with you all [10:33:58 AM] about those questions. I think the origin of my concern really is if there's some way to potentially work with the author here and figure out if there is a way to make sure that we've got an incredibly deliberate process, that we've got the public engagement necessary to make sure that people are being heard in this process, that we're deploying it in the circumstances that you're describing primarily on corridors and places that would be more attractive or open to having that kind of step up density and trying to protect people that have concerns about where this might be deployed, because I think it creates some value for certain people, but potentially takes away value from others under certain circumstances. And I want to try and avoid those circumstances when possible. So we'll be trying to potentially, again, work with the author and, and then reach out to you all to get additional questions answered to see if we can't. I think to me, the central tension is whether we build in those protections explicitly [10:35:00 AM] and what's what's been outlined or whether we count on you all to build those in as you're developing this proposal. All right. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Velasquez. >> I have about eight pages of notes that I'm going to go through right now, mayor. So y'all are gonna have to bear with me, colleagues, as we proceed on this item. >> Councilmember. >> As we proceed on this item, it's going to be vital that we make share very clear information about what missing middle is and missing middle and mixed use development is and how much it could benefit Austin. Last year, we brought a resolution about city communications and marketing programs. This is one of those times where I will be looking to our comms folks, particularly in housing and planning for excellence in messaging, marketing and outreach. This is a great opportunity to highlight how duplexes, quadruplexes, townhomes, and row homes all give people a more affordable, transit oriented part of Austin. [10:36:03 AM] Secondly, I want to recognize the fact that no single zoning change will solve Austin's housing and affordability issues. As we've said and has been said, and I have said several times on this dais, our goal is the city is adding more tools to the toolbox to create more housing options. This is another tool. And finally, I'm eager to to see some mapping of areas where the construction of missing middle housing could help with displacement, and where it could bring some diversity housing options to historically exclusive areas of town. I'm hoping planning staff can help with that as part of the scope of their work. Thank you. >> Thank you, councilmember Velasquez. Anything else? Yes. Councilmember Ellis. >> I just wanted to round us out since this is my item, I really appreciate staff being here. There is a really wonderful report that has been put together for us all to review, but there is one page in particular that really struck me and it is too many tabs open page number seven, [10:37:04 AM] and it's got this wonderful diagram about pre 1984 land development code, housing diversity and post 1984 ldc. And what you see is this stark shrinking of all of the types of housing in the middle that are duplexes, your 3 to 16 units, and then some of your 17 to 99 units. What we've seen since 1984 is now that 58% of the new housing stock that's coming in is very, very large apartments. I think there is a time and a place for these to be really great forms of housing. I happen to live in one, so I see that there is a use for them. But when you look at having missing middle pre 1984, and then it shrinks all the way down to 1% is duplexes, less than 1% is in that 3 to 16 unit category. I think it's really important that we look at how to better blend our neighborhoods back together. I think that being in a walkable neighborhood, being in a charming neighborhood is really important, not just for [10:38:05 AM] affordability, like first time home buyers or seniors that want to age in place, but also just for the happenstance community meeting where you bump into a friend you haven't seen in a while. And it doesn't take any planning. You just get to to see them and strike up a conversation and see how they're doing. So I'm very excited to be advancing this and moving this forward. I know there's a ton of folks that are really interested in this project, but I also want to make sure that we're focusing on what our what are the forms and the uses before we start thinking about where do these go if we don't know what they are, we don't know where the best place for them to look at is. And I definitely don't want to raise any concerns that things are happening to folks, property that they own without their knowledge. I think it's really important that we are transparent about this and open to the conversation. But I know that staff is is quite diligent and our stakeholders are ready and willing to come to the table to talk through this and make sure that what ultimately gets implemented is something that folks are aware of and have had a chance to have a good conversation about a lot of our most charming, walkable [10:39:05 AM] neighborhoods in Austin predate 1984. There's a lot of folks that have these 12 plexes, ten plexes right down the street from them, and they've forgotten that they exist because they are just seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the neighborhood. And so I'm trying to do what we can as a council to fix some of the overcorrection that happened in 1984, and now we are missing an entire generation of missing middle housing because no one's been able to build it. So I look forward to the conversation, and I appreciate everyone's review of the item, and definitely for staff for working so hard on getting creative with how to bring this, this stock back into the housing market. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Laine. >> Thank you. Apologize for coming behind you. Councilmember Alyssa didn't quite get my hand up visibly in time, and I want to start with both thanking you, councilmember Ellis, for your leadership on this and affirming all of the comments that you've made just now and between now and then. I also want to really thank Andrea bates and Jonathan Lee and the [10:40:05 AM] planning department for their work on this. I found the report that was produced to be extremely helpful. I would encourage anyone who is from the public who's actively engaged on this issue to take a look at the summary and at least flip through the pictures of some of what is contemplated by this report, because I think it really does help to illustrate what is being considered. And it is some of the types of housing that we see in our most desirable neighborhoods around Austin. I, I can't agree more with councilmember Ellis about what happened when zoning changed in 1984. And since that time. And I do speak to this again, my experience as a former commercial real estate appraiser who spent a decade analyzing the Austin housing market. What we have seen since then is two extremes and nothing in between. We have seen single family houses on lots with yards, and we have seen large scale corporate [10:41:07 AM] apartments being developed. Part of that is because of the zoning. Part of that is because of the challenges of completing any project in Austin and the need to hire consultants and have these professional class work through these projects. It's really important that we streamline things in ways that save money for the city and our stakeholders. And that includes everyone from the smallest property owner on up. And I think that because we have not seen any of the middle ground for so long. It is sometimes hard to imagine what that could look like. And so it's really important to have this deliberate and measured process where we start with the reports that give us a few images, we ask our staff to go back and work further on the concerns that we're hearing. Being in this sub quorum is part of my way of contributing to that process that is far from complete. One thing that I would like, I would also like to elevate council member [10:42:07 AM] duchen concerns around parking and traffic counts and put my own spin on it, which is I would just request that that staff I do hear and believe to be true and a very genuine concern from our neighborhoods in district six about concerns about increased traffic counts, increased parking on neighborhood streets. That's absolutely something that we've seen happen in more central areas of our city. And if we begin to bring those types of these types of development closer to the neighborhoods and our outlying areas, it it very well could repeat. I think this is a very legitimate concern. I also think that the city has already piloted numerous programs that help to address it, whether that is neighborhood resident parking stickers or the parking improvement districts where paid parking is required for people who don't have the neighborhood sticker. And then that income goes to further improve the infrastructure in [10:43:08 AM] this neighborhood. It also it also succeeds in limiting the amount of parking that's happening in neighborhoods. This would be a new approach for the city. I mean, currently we don't take it for parking in outlying areas either. We just put up signs and then hope for the best. And so my personal hope is that as staff continues to look at this, that we we do get out in front of concerns that are being raised around the way that we have historically looked at traffic increases and how to handle parking concerns, because the more explicit that we can be as we move through this, this, this concept, it will really help our neighborhoods and, and me, and I'm sure some of our other council members in responding to constituents about these types of concerns. Thank you so much again for your leadership on this, councilmember Ellis, for welcoming me in to the conversation and for our staff, Andrea bates and Jonathan Lee, for the the very helpful and [10:44:10 AM] informative report that's already been produced. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Anything else on this item? Okay. That will take us to item a. 66. Councilmember Siegel, you're recognized as having pulled item 66. Thank you. Mayor, I'd like to. >> Present two amendments to item 66 concerning digital wayfinding kiosks. If I had the only vote on this item, I'd vote no, just to put it out there. I'm glad that Austin blocked new billboards back in 83. I enjoy driving through our city without the visual clutter you see in many cities. I'm proud that Austin has prevented the further commodification of our vertical space. And I also really want to celebrate the law department, which for years has successfully defended the city's billboard restrictions, including all the way up to the United States supreme court. But getting off my soapbox, I'll also say I'm one of the newer members of the city council, and the prior council did vote unanimously, I believe, to launch a digital kiosk [10:45:11 AM] program. And there's also an economic benefit that comes from authorizing off premises digital signs, both an economic benefit to the city as well as to capmetro. So in the spirit of compromise, I'm offering two amendments that would limit the scope of this code change. Two of the biggest concerns I've heard about this item is the impact of digital signs on residential areas, and the possibility that we would suddenly have thousands of these signs all around the city. So my first amendment, which was distributed through email, would prevent digital signs in single family areas that are zoned sf one, sf two or sf3. And the second amendment would cap new signs at 200, which would allow the economic development agreement to move forward and would also allow capmetro the ability to start implementing signs at major bus stops and bikeshare locations. So with that mayor, I'll yield, [10:46:11 AM] but just wanted to share my amendments. >> Thank you for doing that. Yes, councilmember alter. >> I was just curious. I was trying to think about this practically, especially as it relates to some of the areas of district five, some of the areas I know in district nine that are, I think about a neighborhood where the. There's a fence line along a fairly traveled corridor where you have your capmetro routes and technically that that owner has ownership all the way to the street, but the right of way is where that bus stop is. That bus stop is on the other side of their fence. So it's, it's not really in any way impacting their enjoyment of their property. And I want to make sure that capmetro can continue, you know, being able to go to a capmetro stop and know that the bus is coming in three minutes [10:47:11 AM] is very valuable and I think will help boost ridership. So I just want to understand if, if you've kind of thought through that scenario of, of someone who, you know, we don't want this in someone's front yard, I get that that makes all the sense in the world. But for those thoroughfares, I'm thinking about Menchaca, Lamar, you know, some of these where it is residential, but it's behind the fence. It's not really in there. Their enjoyment of their property. So I don't I'm less familiar with district seven than I am obviously with district five, but has that kind of come through your thought process and in your amendment here? >> Well, first of all, I think even with these restrictions, there's a lot of opportunities for the signs to be placed, maybe not at every location, but in terms of those signs that indicate when the bus is coming, those are already out there. I mean, that's those are available without a code amendment. So we're talking about these big digital signs, [10:48:12 AM] not so much just the notification of when the bus is coming. >> Okay. All right. I think through it. >> But the good news is it's laid out on Tuesday before Thursday. So some questions can be asked and we can give staff on and including capital metro. Yes. Councilmember qadri. >> Yeah, I just have a question. Out of curiosity, the cap on your second amendment that caps it at 200 signs. How do we how did we end up at 200? Why not 150? Why not 250? Why 200? >> I'm open to lower numbers. My understanding is that the proposed contract with economic development is for up to 100 signs. And so this would give capmetro a similar opportunity. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Laine and the mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, mayor. I just wanted to highlight a couple of things, just so that my colleagues know where I'm coming from on this. I, I see clear benefit to these electronic signs to support [10:49:14 AM] wayfinding for parts of the city that are not as close in as district seven is. I think that when we think about the availability of having digital signs in the central areas, it is one of the ways that we make it easier for our residents to use multimodal transit and be comfortable doing that. They can get used to that setup and they can use it regularly. Also highlight that the electronic signs that you referenced that tell us when a bus is coming. I have not observed those in my district and we do only have one bus line. However, it it doesn't even always have benches. So people who sit on the ground, maybe coming sometime in the future. I don't really know. I haven't heard that they're on the way, but I would like to highlight that what you see as possible and available to the public in central parts of the city, frequently are not available in the outlying parts of the city. And so the the ability to [10:50:16 AM] extend access to those types of relatively small but important infrastructure improvements, it matters to me. And then revenue generation also matters to me. But I certainly understand for the city, I certainly understand the concern that it's not appropriate for the city to provide itself with revenue generating options that are not extended, at least in parallel to other stakeholders in the city. And so I am I appreciate the concerns that we have around the this issue, but I personally don't find that a numerical limit is the approach that I would take if I were considering how to. Approach the need for additional work on how this interacts with other sign restrictions in the city, for example, I think that it would be possible to consider the size of electronic advertisement, which I believe is relatively small on the proposed signs. I think that as [10:51:17 AM] far as I'm aware, the city has not done a serious look at how it may be possible to incorporate the ability to have electronic signage at a smaller scale that is appropriate to the needs of our city and doesn't distract. I mean, we do have a lot of factors going on that support the need for restrictions, not least of which is the proximity of residential houses to our highway corridors, which is not necessarily the case in a lot of cities. So I think there's plenty of ground to build a sound policy, but I don't support a numerical limit as the approach, and I. Am still considering the location limits aspect. And I believe that there are other possibilities that could also be effective. So I do want to highlight that. I do support finding a way to bring electronic wayfinding and bus route information signs to more of the city, including for [10:52:17 AM] this bus route information. I would love to see something like that in in my part of the district. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem and then council member Fuentes. >> Thank you mayor. I'm not sure I have some permitting and code questions around that. I don't I'm not sure if I see anybody from. Let me just express them then. And I, a I'd over the you know, last decade or so has put up digital signs at virtually all of its campuses. I know they're at all the elementary schools that, that I'm familiar with. And a lot of those elementary schools are adjacent. In fact, virtually all of the elementary schools are nestled in the middle of neighborhoods, and they have a digital sign in front of them. Is there any restriction on single family home placement of digital signs right now for for? >> Trish link with the law department, the restrictions [10:53:18 AM] that they have. So for aid for those signs that are digital, they are displaying information about the school. So they are on premise signs and they will follow whatever restriction applies to their sign district. So it just depends, for lack of a better way to say it, if they are, there's a hierarchy of sign districts in our code. And so we would have to look at each site to be able to tell you what the sign district is and what the requirements are, but that controls the height of the sign, the sign the size of the sign, and kind of how it operates. >> Does it control the digital aspect of the sign though? >> Digital meaning lighting or words? >> Digital meaning again, the ones that I'm thinking about are just, you know, three four feet tall, have a little digital display saying pta meeting on Thursday, no school on Monday. Just kind of, you know, again, basic information about what's going on at that campus. >> So they will have [10:54:20 AM] requirements about the I think there's a brightness requirement in there somewhere. And they have, depending on the size of the sign, the the text may be smaller or larger. It just depends. >> Okay. And what about because another on premise sign for just commercial properties, you know, again, fast food place or, you know, whatever kind of commercial property. Is there any restriction for a commercial establishment that is adjacent to a single family home to would that be allowed if you if you have, again, you want to put an on premise digital sign, you have a business, but you're next to or for that matter, across the street close by a single family home. Are there any restrictions as far as you're aware. >> The restrictions will again be based on whatever sign district it's in, but there's also times where businesses and neighbors have to work together to, you know, potentially reduce the hours that that sign is flashing or operating. I [10:55:21 AM] shouldn't say flashing operating and how bright maybe their display is. >> Thank you. And mayor, I know capital metro is here to answer some is available to answer some basic questions about it. Could we have them come in? >> She obviously was anxious. She was standing up, ready to go. >> We try to be on time. >> Yeah. >> Samantha. >> Good. That was good. We ought to adjourn on that, folks. That was a good one. >> Good afternoon. Samantha baez, evp of. >> Not yet quite yet. Afternoon. >> Our evp of experience and engagement for capmetro. And I'm happy to answer any questions or provide some helpful context. >> Thank you very much. And again, I know we've talked about digital signage and just the start as as council member Laine mentioned, this is a huge benefit for a writers. If you can walk up to a bus stop and [10:56:22 AM] know that the bus is nine minutes away, you know, again, maybe you can run into the store and grab a, you know, cold drink or a snack or whatever. It just, it helps you as a writer to manage your way through the system. And honestly, especially for kind of our less tech savvy writers, I know a lot of folks have the app and track everything, but but not everybody does. And even when you have the app, sometimes you're on the wrong line or sometimes, you know, you can make mistakes. Just having that there to the point right now, is there any existing displays right now in terms of, and I would also caveat that with working displays, in terms of the, you know, bus operations, when the next bus is coming, that kind of stuff like that. >> Yes, sir. So if you look at the metro rapid signs, we do have something. It's a product that we call e- paper, and it is a digital sign that whenever you look at it, there is little illumination. It has real time arrival information. We have it tied into our back end systems for the reasons that you [10:57:23 AM] mentioned, for our customers who arrive, and maybe they don't have information at their fingertips, they can see real time arrival information. They can plan their trips more fluidly. We do live in a time where people are looking for information at their fingertips every which way they can get it, and so we try to make that as accessible as possible. >> And I understand, and I remember talking to the CEO about this though, but that's been tricky as my understanding is that just the maintenance of the kind of the electronic paper has been tricky and the timing has been a little off at times. And it's been a complaint that I've heard from some writers. Can you shed any light on that? >> That is correct. So in order to feed the signs, there are many back end systems that push the data to the signs. And so we have had challenges with the data. And we do look for other times to display real time data. The transit app tends to provide sometimes a more reliable data set, but we are making progress with that data. But the actual infrastructure itself, the type of signage that we have right now, you can imagine on a humid day, if some humidity gets inside of the electronic control panels, [10:58:24 AM] those types of situations provide some challenges. >> Yeah, I've like I said, I've heard the, the operation staff, you know, their concerns about that. But in terms of possible locations and especially thinking about a 200 signed cap with potentially, I think 100 of those being taken up by the the city's right of way signs. What are the kind of spots that capital metro would be looking at putting this digital signage at? >> We would really be. So the process before capmetro would be first to go into an rfp process. But as part of that, what we'd be looking for is more of our high capacity corridors. So if you look at our metro rapid lines along those corridors alone, we have more than 200 stops. Or if you look at bike share, we have bike share stations that also have a sign. Those are part of this conversation. And there are 76 of those and growing. And so we would be looking at high capacity corridors where there is more traffic, more of a moving environment, thinking [10:59:28 AM] more like Lamar, Guadalupe lavaca probably out at Cameron road, possibly Riverside. So some areas where we really have high capacity transit. >> Yeah. And, and in terms of the, the, the metro rapids, those would be the, the 800 series rather the, the 800, the 801, the 837 and the 803. Are those correct? >> And the 800. >> But beyond that, for example, thinking about like the 300 and the ten, those are not considered rapids, right? >> Correct. We have four rapid lines, but then we have a whole host of what we would call our high frequency lines that also run on our major corridors within Austin, along pleasant valley, is one of our new rapid lines as well. >> And so again, thinking about the, the, the number of stops on the rapids that again, the number ten would not be in there. The 300, which are heavily, heavily ridden lines with lots of stops. That would be great candidates for digital signage. >> Absolutely. The rapid lines alone account for more than 200 stops. Bike share alone [11:00:28 AM] accounts for more than 70 to 80 stops. Throughout our entire system, we have 2500 stops. We would again, of course, prioritize high capacity roadways and transit network. >> Okay. And. So and this is again, talking about current, like we're not talking about the light rail. We're not talking about, you know, potential. Again, I know we're adding red line stations and, you know, potential green line stations and stuff. So I just my concern, I don't want to put a, a cap when especially an arbitrary number when there's clearly a need, again, without getting into the neighborhoods we're talking about, you know, well into the hundreds of locations that would be good candidates for this type of digital signage. And again, I just want to I my sense is that the capital metro contract would be structured very similar to the city's contract in the sense that the, the company, the contractor would [11:01:30 AM] come out and install the signs and then we. Capital metro would then be able to charge them for. Advertisement. That runs on the signs generating revenue for the agency. Any sense of what the level of, of, of revenue generation would be on, on, on a digital signage contract. And again, how is that related to the number of locations that that you could put digital signage at? >> Absolutely. So our preliminary numbers, so we've looked at this a couple times over the course of the past six years. We anticipate we would initially look at bringing in an additional 1 to $2 million to invest directly into transit, which is something that we we are very interested in doing to better serve our customers and community. This is also a program that we have experience doing. We have an advertising program right now. We work very closely with community partners, including the city of Austin, to provide space for. If there is a campaign from the Austin public health that we can [11:02:31 AM] provide space on our vehicles so that we can help share information that is important to our customers and community, we make sure to reserve some space to do that. Right now, we we look at in fiscal year 24, the total revenue, we generated almost 3 million for our current advertising program so that we could put it directly into transit. So we do have a vested interest in looking for ways to provide more transit, to provide improvements in our transit via this program. >> Well, thank you very much. And finally, on that on that single family home restriction, assuming it would be, I guess, adjacent to a single family home, any sense of how many stops that that captures? And again, I know y'all haven't kind of done the full analysis yet of where these would be, but any sense of how that would affect capital metro. >> You know, we have 2500 plus stops throughout the entire system. And we do intentionally put transit where people live, work and play. I think we need to do a more thorough assessment to be able to give a for Shaw number, though I am certain that there are stops [11:03:31 AM] that are adjacent to single family zoning. >> Thank you very much. And just to to close, I very much appreciate councilmember alter's comment about, for example, on Cameron road, there's a lot of backyards that face Cameron road and there's a lot of busy transit stops that are on the sidewalk at the backyard. And this would mean that none of those would be eligible, assuming that the amendment passes, that none of those would be eligible. And again, I mean, these are houses that back up to a very busy corridor, well lit corridor, lots of noise, lots of activity. I don't see what we gain by restricting relatively kind of small digital side, you know, and again, I'm 100% pro transit. It's just it's critical for our our affordability goals. It's critical for our environmental goals. I want to do everything and I want to enable capital metro to do everything it can to generate the revenue it needs to provide transportation services, transit services. And [11:04:32 AM] again, these are working class people that lean on the bus. The more revenue they can generate from this type of advertising, the better service they can provide. We're talking about stop amenities. We're talking about all those kinds of things like that. So I'm going to be opposed to the amendments. And I just want to give our transit agency all the tools that they can possibly have to generate the revenue and provide the quality service that that people in Austin demand. >> Thank you mayor. Thank you. And I called out councilmember Fuentes, but she indicated you covered what she she was interested in anything else on this item? Yes. Councilmember duchen. >> Thank you, mayor. First, I want to thank my colleagues for bringing up some points that I hadn't even thought of, and I want to thank councilmember Siegel in particular for pulling this and raising some concerns in some ways that I share. And I've got some questions I'd like to get. I think, legal and staff's perspective on. Because I've got I'm one, I have specific [11:05:33 AM] concerns around some things that we haven't talked about, though, this morning that I'd like to better understand what our risks are. You know, for councilmember Siegel's comments, I wonder if a smarter approach might be to have a much more. And I'd be certainly supportive of a much more limited rollout, one that lets us understand how well these signs perform, what sort of engagement they've created all downtown, where they could be assured pedestrian traffic as opposed to vehicular traffic, which I think run the risk of having some externalities that I'll touch on in a moment. I know that I've visited places in Houston where these are deployed, where they feel like they're clearly designed for vehicular traffic. And so I think it calls into question some of the public use cases that we're, that we're counting on, but may not materialize if they're not deployed in the right places under the right circumstances. And so whether that's narrowing the geographic area or being very thoughtful [11:06:33 AM] about it, whether that's limiting it to a way that we can review it in six or 10 or 12 months to make sure that it's delivering on the on the on the expectations that it's laid out. I think those would all be helpful or welcome approaches for us to consider, rather than what, what feels to me kind of a blanket approach here. One concern I've got is just that we're overall missing a conversation about what it means to monetize city resources. And maybe that's happened on prior councils before I showed up, but I don't really understand. And I'm really struggling with this idea of monetizing a civic resource and not having had that conversation, at least again, to my awareness. And so what does that mean for us? I don't know if that means we start entertaining other ways that we monetize city assets and city properties, because I don't know, some of us might decide we need revenue or [11:07:35 AM] additional funding opportunities. Some of us decide that, you know, there's some civic component to the advertising there that we can count on, like the supposed kiosks. But I worry that we're opening up a door. I think this is a concern that, frankly, planning commission raised when they entertain this item back in January. And so it worries me that we haven't had that conversation that but that we could wind up in a circumstance where, you know, there's a flashy billboard on top of city hall that I wander into council chambers with a jacket with a bunch of logos on it. I don't know where this ends, but I think it creates a I think it's potentially opening up a door that we can't close after we start doing this. And I think that's that, to me, alone is enough reason to pause this effort to understand what is our vision for monetizing the city resources that we own, because they are numerous, they're all over the city. And [11:08:37 AM] I don't know whether I don't know where the next step is. After we've done this. I also worry that we've seen evidence of other municipalities where the vendor in question has fallen significantly short of their revenue targets. We've been told different things at different times. We've been told one of every eight slides they offer on civic content, but we've also been told that advertising isn't sold means that upwards of, I don't know, somewhere around half of the slides might be civic content. So on the one hand, great, we've got more civic content. On the other hand, I don't have the revenue that was promised to us, and we were falling back on the minimum revenue projections from the vendor. One of the biggest concerns I have is just creating a double standard, where private operators have one approach to billboards, and our city sanctioned vendor and departments can use this technology in a different way. So this is a question I've got for legal to understand what [11:09:38 AM] this means. I'm going to ask this and maybe touch on it a couple different ways. One is under the proposed code, the third party advertising vendor with these kiosks would be allowed to display this off premise advertising using the digital screens. And so it seems like we are essentially granting a functional monopoly outside of our own departments, which colleagues have touched on to this vendor. While the existing operators here are, you know, would be threatened otherwise with fines or removal if they tried to leverage the same technology. So that's sort of one way to think about it. There's also the draft code that defines the non-conforming signs as one that was lawfully installed, but doesn't meet the current requirements. So it does seem like we're creating a code amendment that specifically grants new rights to [11:10:39 AM] >> Right of way signs to go digital while refusing to grant the same modernization efforts to the nonconforming private signs that might have been otherwise there for many years, maybe decades. And the last way I'll think about it is that I believe the working draft repeals the old section 2510 158, which used to forbid electronic images or lighting in the right of way, but removing the prohibition for the kiosk that we're considering while keeping it for the private owners. Aren't we sort of saying that the technology has some consequences, maybe even some dangers? But that we simply prefer, you know, sort of our own city speech over private speech. So can you help me navigate how to interpret what seems to be different standards? And maybe also just the legal exposure that you could see there? [11:11:39 AM] >> Again, Trish link with the law department. What I can speak to publicly is our code allows for digital signage today. Because if you go to the HEB, they have a digital sign. If you look at the aid site, they have a digital sign. So we allow is digital signage on for on premise advertising. And so if the so the provision that you referenced that's been going to be repealed if council approves. >> Can I interrupt can I interrupt. I'm going to turn to our city attorney because I'm worried that we're asking questions. That might be something you don't want to add. Maybe it is something you want to ask because you want to kill it. But but it might not be something you want to ask right now. >> Understood. And I visited with Trish yesterday about what was and was not appropriate. So I'm relying on her guidance or Deborah's guidance to make sure I'm within those boundaries. [11:12:40 AM] >> I can speak to what current code allows today and what the change will allow for in the future. That is as far as I could speak today in public. >> Okay. Fair enough. Go ahead. >> So the provision that would be repealed. So those are for our actually our easiest example is if you look downstairs, there's capmetro bike stand. That provision actually, I think if I remember correctly, was added or at least modified when the bike stations were actually the bike kiosks came to the city. For the predecessor to the capmetro version. So they did not allow for digital signs on those particular signs that signage on that installation. But that also was a smaller installation than what the code amendment today would be allowing for in [11:13:42 AM] terms of the size of the sign, which is actually why it's being repealed, because we we would have two potentially conflicting slash confusing provisions. So we'd be cleaning it up and having one standard applying to all of our essentially public infrastructure in the right of way related to transit, which again, is going to be our bus stops, our bicycles or the wayfinding kiosks that would that we've been discussing. So those would be allowed the. Digital piece of our of the changes will update that so that you can have digital signage, but we do allow digital signage throughout the city. Like I said, an example of the a, D or an HEB where they're advertising their products that are being sold at the HEB. >> Okay. Thank you. Trish, I worry that some of my questions here, per the mayor's comment, [11:14:42 AM] might be drifting into. More legal territory. What would you advise in terms of trying to get answers to those questions and. >> Meet with legal one on one? >> Okay, then I'll follow up with Trish, then miss link about the the additional legal questions I've got. I'll just say in summary, I've got those legal concerns. I worry about the kind of meta concern of not really understanding our direction here for monetizing city resources. And then. And then again, we'll just echo councilmember Siegel's comments about if there's a way to. Create a smaller scale approach that addresses some of that helps us understand in, you know, six, eight, ten months if these concerns are real or if they're, you know, if, if they [11:15:44 AM] if this is going to work out, hopefully better than I imagine it will be. So we'll try and see if there's not some other approach that we can take here. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember Laine, followed by councilmember qadri. >> Thank you so much for the robust discussion. Councilmember duchen, there are certainly areas in which we are thinking similarly, and I want to gently push back on a couple of things as well. First, I'd like to address the the possibility of needing an overall vision for monetizing city resources. Before proceeding with this decision. We actually already monetized city resources in a variety of ways. I'll give one example. The one rec center in my district has space available for lease by groups that need a community based space. There are other examples as well. What I would say that we don't have enough clarity on is how. [11:16:45 AM] So first of all, I would say that the the central organizing topic that needs to be considered is the use of signage and specifically ensuring that we have an adequate rule around electronic signage. We're already taking up multiple topics that are related, and this simply highlights that we do need to do this work. And I think it is particularly important for the concern that you raised relating to the ways in which public versus private stakeholders in Austin have access to a similar approach to things. But again, I really believe that location restrictions are not in total number of restrictions are not as a standalone around electronic signage is not the path to go by. We should be working on how we regulate signs in general, including electronic signs, and those restrictions should then apply as a general rule. So I'm elevating that. I don't [11:17:46 AM] personally see. I've heard a lot that is very beneficial about these signs. I see these wayfinding. I'm sorry I am sick and I am starting to fade here, but I see a lot that's very beneficial and it needs to be significantly weighed. And we do have some additional work to do, but it is not around whether or not or how we would monetize all city resources. I also understand certainly miss link, your your comments about having rules in place that allow electronic signage on premise. Yes. The area in which we need some policy work done is off premise electronic signage. And, you know, we have heard in the course of this discussion, lots of examples of electronic signage is already in play going to other cities besides Austin that are similar in size will show lots of other examples that are in play. It's important that we consider those. It's been a long time. [11:18:47 AM] Like I went to college in new York City in the early 90s, and there was electronic signage in New York City at that point. It's been a long time that cities have been working on this issue, and so I think it's appropriate for us to consider an off premises electronic signage rule that does apply to everyone, and we follow it for this as well. And I will again point out that the actual advertising on these bus stop signs is fairly small. And I think that size of the advertisement or the electronic display is a key consideration. And in fact, perhaps, maybe the consideration that it makes sense to restrict things based upon. Thank you for considering those points. As we move towards council meeting. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember qadri. >> Thank you, mayor, and I hope councilmember Laine feels better. I had a question based off of a comment that councilmember duchin made about revenue, about revenue [11:19:47 AM] expectations, reality, not not necessarily aligning. I guess there might have been an instance or so. Do we have anyone from Ike here that could answer that? >> Well, we got Mr. Waylon. Let's see if he can answer it. >> Yeah. So my, my question would just be on any instances where revenue expectations really didn't align, why that might have happened. Is there any, you know, is there any context that's important on why things didn't didn't happen as they should have? >> Yeah. Michael Whalen on behalf of Ike, in response to the in part of the rfp responses, we noted that each kiosk in Austin would generate approximately $130,679 in stabilized gross revenues by year. And for some context, in 2025, each kiosk installed in Arlington, Texas, generated an average of $177,687. Each kiosk [11:20:52 AM] installed in Miami beach, Florida, generated an average of $121,542 each. Kiosk installed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, obviously generated an average of $123,507, and each kiosk installed this is 2025. Each kiosk installed in Phoenix, Arizona, generated an average of $136,287. So that just to give some context, I'm not sure there was an article published several years ago. These are the most this is what's currently happening 2025 that answers the question. >> Can I respond to councilmember qadri? Sure. Well, what we found was an article written from October of last year that from a community where these had been deployed that said that the vendor had said they were going to generate more than $26,000 in revenue for the city, each of the kiosks, and they actually made less than 5000. And I'm happy to give that or share that article. >> Which out of curiosity, which city? >> That's from Berkeley. >> Berkeley. Okay. [11:21:53 AM] >> And I think we do have an ik representative, vice president on the line, Anna, that can answer that. We do also have a separate commitment of $20,000 minimum per kiosk, regardless of revenue. So I just wanted that to be clear as well. Could, could could we hear an answer? >> Representative. >> Sure, sure. >> I'm curious on on the on the answer, guys. >> I'm sure this is going to go very fast on Thursday, right. >> But Anna is available if you want to. >> Yeah. Go. Go ahead. No, the council member wants to hear from him, but I'm just we have an Austin energy oversight committee following this. >> This is my last question. >> I know everybody's going to stay for. Yeah. Councilmember qadri has a question. Yeah. Go ahead and get him on the line. >> She's on webex. I don't know if she's available. Anna. Yep. >> There we go. Sorry guys. I was I was muted and I wasn't able to unmute. Is everyone able to hear me now? >> We're able to hear you. Please identify yourself. [11:22:53 AM] >> Hi, my name is Anna Behrmann and I'm the vice president of Ike development. And to answer the question. So Michael did a really great job communicating our revenues from 2025 and several markets. I do just want to add to what he stated, which is that we, as part of our underwriting, have lots of conversations with prospective advertising buyers. And our understanding is that the demand for Ike and Austin is higher than in most cities of comparable size and profile. So he stated a bunch of cities that are comparable, many of which generated more in gross revenue per kiosk than what we anticipate in Austin, but that we think that Austin could even overperform the projections that we put in our pro Forma. And you will note, too, that the guaranteed revenue stream as part of this contract across the 100 kiosks is $2 million annually to the city. So in no event will the city receive [11:23:54 AM] less than that minimum annual guarantee. In terms of that article in Berkeley, that area of the country, as everyone knows, was significantly affected by covid 19. And so the timing of that article and when we deployed the kiosks, you know, that the advertising market was not extremely strong in the bay area. Since that article was written, our revenues have actually doubled. And so we've seen a slow recovery to to those to those revenue, the revenue performance. But the timing of that article was severely impacted by the covid 19 pandemic. >> Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. That answers my question. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Councilmember. Councilmember Velasquez. All right. Anybody got anything else on this item? Very good. All right. We'll go to the next item, which is a briefing on the Austin I-35 cap [11:24:55 AM] and stitch cap deck recommendations. >> All right. We're going to get started here with the presentation. Thank you, council members for having us today. My name is Brianna fry, program manager for the cap and stitch program and transportation public works. We are here today to do a couple of things. We're going to be providing a response to a resolution that council passed last may. Item 105 that asks [11:25:59 AM] staff to evaluate a couple different funding solutions for the cap and stitch program, and potentially identify a financing plan. But while we're here, we also want to bring you all up to speed on a couple upcoming milestones and ultimately provide you all our staff recommendation for for this upcoming milestone. So in order to really get you guys up to speed, we're going to first start with the roadway commitment that council did approve last year. We're then going to quickly get into the phase two capex component, which really highlights where we're at with the txdot milestones. And then we're going to really bring you all to where staff is recommending us moving into pursuing partners to seek additional funding for this program. I did. Thank you. So starting with what council approved last may, council approved $104 million for roadway elements, which is [11:27:00 AM] what we're calling phase one, just to reorient the council members to this concept. It's what you see here in the blue in this, you know, transect of a highway corridor. It's really the infrastructure that really strengthens the highway corridor to, in the future, uphold what you see in red, which is our capex. The 104 million would be entered into an advanced funding agreement with txdot. And council did approve five cap deck locations to invest in the roadway elements. So you can see them highlighted here. Three of them are full length cap decks and two of them are stitches. So speaking of those stitches, at that time, council last may asked staff to come back with a recommendation of where to invest in these stitches in the northern part of our corridor, which was between 41st street and airport boulevard. So last December, staff did provide council an update that we went [11:28:01 AM] to the community. We worked with our community partners, and we did find a solution and fully recommended to stitch locations. So one being straddling 41st street and the second being the south side of the metro red line crossing that you can see in this graphic on the screen. The good news that we're here today is to provide council an update that this option B, the red line stitch in 41st street comes in at $8.4 million at the time, and last may, we had been estimating a full cap deck in this location. We had to parse it down, make some estimates on what it would cost us to do two stitches here, just to future proof them. And at that time we had estimated 24 million. So really what that gives us in the 104 million that council did approve is a $18 million in reserves. This really does provide additional reserves to the city of Austin. As we look at this $104 million commitment, [11:29:03 AM] because now we have a total of $32 million as, as, as in when we look at the contingency of the program of what it could cost to construct these roadway elements, in addition to potential cost increases that we do expect as the engineering and construction progresses. So the bottom line here is that staff feel very confident in this 104 million commitment that council made last may. So what council made last may is the cap and stitches that could come at a later point. But this image here I just wanted to level set and and make sure that the council members and the mayor understand what these are. These are called enhanced bridge crossings. This is something that txdot has shown and their deliverables and their schematics and now their engineering drawings. That is something that they would provide external to the city of Austin's cap and stitch program. So the biggest takeaway for us here as we navigate forward, [11:30:03 AM] considering whether or not to invest further into the cap and stitch program, is that this is something that does not require city funding. So the enhanced bridge crossings here, you can see it showcases enhanced shared use path crossings where pedestrians and cyclists could cross safely across the I-35 corridor. It shows some landscaping, some artistic amenities, as well as some shade structures, so txdot would continue to design and evolve that. The city will have a chance to review and provide comment on these. But again, this is separate from the funding that we are talking about today. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to my partner in the financial services department. >> Good morning. Council. Kim lalvarez director of financial services. So as we continue to talk through the various components of the decisions that you all have made, as well as the resolution requirements, I wanted to do a quick reference to the schedule. So this is a very I know the schedule has been a. Because there's so many moving pieces [11:31:04 AM] and concurrent needs, I know it has been confusing for a lot of folks in the community to understand what decisions are being made, when and why. So we've distilled it down just to the portion that is very specifically relevant to city decisions. So I also, I want to note that there are a lot of concurrent and critical path items that are not being shown here relative to the overall project management of the I. 35 Kahn design and construction. So like Brianna noted, we all have made some prior decisions. Now we have moved into in this may council, there's a request that we make a commitment to two txdot on the cap deck locations. From there, there are a number of spots where there needs to be financial decisions. So we also want to stress that this is not a. You have to make a decision now, and there are no other [11:32:05 AM] opportunities ever in the future. So the first opportunity is in November of 2026, when we would have to commit to txdot with funding for all, any of our the cap and stitch decks that we would want to include them include in their construction leading bid package following that. So if council makes a decision to do that at that point, they. They can. But if you are want to just want to not make that commitment. There are opportunities for future councils to to have a kind of a bite at the apple. So in 2022 or 2030, 2032, that is when change orders could be requested, where we would be negotiating with the contractor on site to be able to do the design, construction of the capex at that point. And then there's a final another option following the completion of the I-35 corridor, there's after that ten year moratorium. Then [11:33:05 AM] there's another opportunity at that point for council to fund design and or construction of the caps. So it is not a one and done. There are other opportunities down the road. So now with that understanding, we want to jump into very specific about what our staff recommendations are going forward. So at this time, we recommend that we continue with those vertical roadway elements, which provides for future proofing and and do only that. And at that point, we would invite community leaders to come together, come to us to work with us on identifying partners that could lead that cap deck development, that design and construction, and not require any additional funding from the city. And the reasoning for that, we will now kind of go through all the details. So first, there's the uncertainty of the cap deck cost. At this point, we are at that 30 to 60% design phase of [11:34:07 AM] of the design that txdot is leading. So with the, with that stage, you don't have 100% construction drawings. So there are still opportunities or possibilities of, of cost, additional costs that you would have to be committing to. So at this point, we just can't recommend that, that we, that you move forward with such a decision because that does create such a significant risk. So with these 30% construction design roadway assumptions, there's, there are just, there are potential for additional cost. We also with these uncertainties, we're also needing to look at the structural conditions to allow for two story buildings. They. Right now, what we have asked txdot to do is to provide design capabilities to allow for two story building across the entire deck, as opposed to trying to identify key spots. The reason being we don't know [11:35:08 AM] what the cap deck construction or the amenities on top would be at this point. So we do don't want to cut ourselves, cut our nose off to spite our face, so to speak, of limiting ourselves to only having those kind of structures on certain points. If a partner comes in down the road later and says, well, if you put this, this the structural capability here, it actually would have been much better. So we don't want to try and guess as to what by what might be needed. We also do not have any utility infrastructure cost estimates because of the unknown of what would be on top of those caps and stitches. So there's just a lot of uncertainty and that could impact the overall cost dramatically. Also a reminder of the just the overall cost estimate. So like Brianna noted, there's the 104 million, but we're looking at having a really solid contingency reserve as part of that 104 to [11:36:09 AM] cover those vertical roadway elements. Because at this point we are looking at 86. But there have been some updated cost estimates. So for example, the 11th and 12th deck, 11th and 12th street cap deck has increased from 50 some million to 86 million in cost because of some other factors in design that that had to be added in later to be able to accommodate possible two story structures. So some of the previous designs didn't include what the degree of structural support we needed. And when we asked them to take a look at just updated cost estimates in general on this cap, it just we were able to find things that created much more additional cost. And that does create concern for us as there are again, so many unknowns as we move forward. So factors underpinning our recommendations. So there was a lot of direction in the resolution regarding things [11:37:10 AM] that we should be looking at. But there were also a number of things that we were looking at in general, just to see how we could make this feasible. So first, we did an analysis of the financials and potential roi on the capex. And at this point, it's the roi just isn't there. We also looked at benchmarking capital stacks across the country. I'll go into a little bit more detail on that in another slide just to see with where do we land in the amount of city funding that has been brought to the table already versus other sources relative to other caps across the country? We looked at potentials for tirz and public improvement districts around the capex. We also looked at our city bond capacity, debt metric analysis to understand how this could impact that. We also have engaged with partner possible partners outside to help them help us understand what might what level of funding interest might exist amongst possible partner agreements. And then we'll [11:38:11 AM] we'll go through this in a little bit as well. Analysis of all the various funding sources per the resolution direction. We also looked at the possibility of monetizing other city downtown properties, creating a package deal, so to speak, that would perhaps entice a developer to come to the table. If I can develop that, then yes, then the cap deck becomes feasible. The the analysis on that was was just also not creating a, a enough financial benefit. And finally, we looked at opportunity cost and competing needs across the city, across the organization. As we enter our particularly challenging budget times. So the local funding options. So there are quite a few items that were listed in the resolution for us to look at. I'm not going to go through every single one of these here. And but you can just see what we did is provided information on any limitations or challenges related to the [11:39:12 AM] funding sources or what action might need to be taken. So, for example, reallocating any funds from from other projects would take council action. What if we were to go to the voters, so on and so forth. So you can see there's through hot tax, through ace, which is our organization, our PFC that manages the hotel by the convention center, the state infrastructure bank loan, which we have taken advantage of and will be included as part of the 104. Also looking again, the pyd's, the tirz and the monetization. So and you can see to kind of go into a little bit more detail on the monetization, cbre, who is the city's real estate advisor, we engaged them to do a deep dive on multiple properties in the downtown area. And just the, again, the, the, the value wasn't there for us to be able to combine that with a possible debt cap deck structure. Also [11:40:13 AM] the federal legislative outlook. And if there are any questions on this one, we do have our government relations partners here to provide additional insights. But right now, federal funding can't should not be assumed as a financing source in the near term. I mean, we will continue to pursue such opportunities. But the the main source that we're looking at for Cesar Chavez to fourth street that was, as we all know, was was removed from the table. We also are trying to look at surface transportation law reauthorization right now. It's very uncertain when that might be reauthorized. And while we could go after highway grant funding in the next fiscal year, that's also very competitive and likely very limited. We have been in contact with our congressional delegation, and they have indicated that there's reduced support for large competitive grant programs, which is where we [11:41:14 AM] would generally be aiming our efforts to to to be able to secure funds for a project. So of course, if there are federal political shifts, those future opportunities could change. But at this point, the horizon is not in our favor. So but we will continue to to look for any opportunities we can. So just to close things out on the resolution front. So we were directed to do three things. First, prepare a proposed funding financing plan for the design and construction of the roadway elements and the caps. So we have the the plan for the roadway elements, those vertical elements that is, is set and good to go. But then we did make the recommendation of not pursuing city funding caps at that point. Also studying the feasibility and cost with additional bike and ped crossings. Tpx has been working diligently on that. Preliminary engineering reports are underway at this point. Each of those crossings seems feasible, but there again, there's a the [11:42:16 AM] issue of them being unfunded. So again, as we look at grant opportunities or other funding sources, we will continue to pursue those opportunities to to cover those project costs. And then working with representatives from local labor and workforce development organization, because of our recommendation to not move forward with the caps at that time, then the working with the representatives from the local labor force is, is, is is moot, unfortunately. That being said, I know there are extensive efforts going on for workforce development relative to the overall construction of I-35, the airport convention center, and the sort. So there's definitely efforts still ongoing. And so it. It's not being completely being ignored by any means. So at this point, we need to make a call for partners. And we recognize that we can't just say, hey, folks, let us know. And we need to have a process in place for, [11:43:18 AM] for, for folks to be able to work with us collaboratively on the possibility for these capex going forward. So first, I want to show you the comparison of other capex across the country and where we where we land in our funding levels relative to federal, state funding, philanthropic contributions, things like that. As you can see above, the amount of city or county funds, depending on the location, the local funds is actually much it's very much on the lower end of the scale across each of these capex. So we are actually above average when it comes to the funding that the city has already committed. If you look at the other caps, the degree of federal funding was very significant. Those caps were obviously built in a different time frame than we are dealing with now. But then there's also state funding. But there is that pink line is the philanthropic contributions. And those pink lines dominate [11:44:19 AM] across almost every single cap. So that is why we are really making that call for partners to come to the table, work with us on making these a reality. So there are also some pending factors that can impact on cap development. So we're continuing to have conversations and work closely with txdot on potential impact to structural loading capacity on each of the decks that that council has directed us to move forward with on the vertical roadway elements and future proofing. There's questions about vehicular accessibility. If you do not have the ability of emergency vehicles and services to easily and immediately access the caps, any development on those caps is a no go. So confirming that accessibility is still in process. Also, there's air rights agreements because these are txdot highways. We have to [11:45:19 AM] do agreements with them for leases. And the terminology varies from cap to cap. But basically air rights leases, multi-use agreements. So having clarity on the allowable uses, how they can be activated on regular basis. Revenue treatments, for example. Is there an expectation of revenue sharing with txdot on with whatever development occurs on those decks? And then also agreements, signatories? And then finally the ongoing maintenance and inspection requirements. Even if you put nothing on top of the the cap decks, there is an expectation for maintenance of those structural elements. So understanding the responsibility and the funding for those from the city versus txdot is another question that remains to be answered. So our process that we recommend for developing these capex. So council has already taken [11:46:19 AM] action that enables us to move forward with those roadway elements. That makes the capex those stitches possible at any time in the future. And then we would like to convene and support civic and business organizations to help lead outreach and attract funding and development partners, as opposed to the city going in alone. We also want to explore with those funding partners what tools are needed to ensure that the capex development can be successful from a financial perspective, but also from a public interest perspective, making sure that what the community wants to see on them and relative to what can make them financially feasible, making sure that they are compatible, and then also continuing to seek federal and state funding opportunities as they arise. So we will absolutely continue to have information available to the community, to those potential funding partners for them to understand what the locations, [11:47:20 AM] the the boundaries, the possibilities. But we, we just, we're, we're putting that call out to the community now, please, let's and we'll continue to engage with them going forward of help us understand who can help bring these to fruition. And at that point, we would also with with that funding partner, we would work with txdot on the air rights agreement and then also execute any of the required agreements, contracts for the design and construction of the capex. And then finally, if if the hopefully we get there that the funding partner is able to build on those caps and bring them to life. So next steps we have to inform txdot on our our location commitment for capex in their initial bid package. At this point, again, the staff recommendation is that we do not make any commitment to capex for that initial bid package. And as a result, council would not need to take any formal action. That being said, if there's any changes, [11:48:22 AM] then we then we just need to work through the steps of, of council direction telling us which if they were to want to proceed with any capex, we will begin or we will continue our negotiation and execute the advanced funding agreement with txdot for those roadway elements. That includes a payment schedule. That 104 million is a combination of the state infrastructure bank loan, as well as certificates of obligation. All of the the payment schedule and the associated debt service requirements for them have been and continue to be incorporated into our debt capacity analysis as we have other conversations, other conversations relative to bond programs and the sort. And then last but not least, continuing to seek those external partners to come to the table and work with us on on bringing those capex to life, utilizing one of those second or third points that I noted on the schedule, where we can add them in at a later date. Any [11:49:23 AM] questions? >> Councilmember Laine, followed by councilmember qadri. >> I want to start first by really thanking both the transportation and public works department and our finance department. The lift that has been required in order for council to fully consider the options available to. It has been quite significant and you have consistently. Throughout this entire process since I speak, from when I took office, of course, provided the information that we've asked to asked for and a very specific and helpful way. And it's just very appreciated. You can see the level of work there. With that, I would like to I have a few comments and then I have a question. When we as council committed $104 million to the I 35 roadway elements last year, I'll. I'll note that I, along with many of my colleagues, raised serious concerns about the projected cost projections. [11:50:24 AM] I'm sorry, the projected cost estimates. Also about the limited funding partners that we had at that time. And that certainly, I thought was realistic that we might secure by now. And in the near term and the medium term. So I really appreciate that you've come back to show us the changes there. And we can see, in fact, that some of these have come to pass. I also find it helpful in your presentation how you have illuminated that some of the cost increases in the 11th and 12th street segment are related to inflationary pressures, and some of them are related to redesign in order to accommodate two story buildings. The. We had a lot of conversations in the past about the value of the land that we are creating through caps, and I just. I must note that the value, the very high value of downtown area land is because of the ability to build high [11:51:25 AM] and put a lot on a small space. If we are. Seeing significant identical costs just to go to two stories, it really does call into question the, the very the value of spending this much money on what is effectively parkland. There are other benefits. And I, I certainly support many aspects of this program, but I want to say that out loud as an underpinning for what you also have drawn attention to in this presentation, which is what the return on the investment looks like, particularly given that so much of this investment disproportionately is already coming from city coffers versus similar projects, other places. These concerns continue to be very significant for me. And I will say once again, that we oftentimes, when cost projections are made, they are [11:52:25 AM] based on a stabilized rate projection rate that's smoothed out to take a long term account of the ups and downs that actually happen in real life. What we're trying to assess right now is a much shorter time frame. So for example, if we see a spike in materials costs because of tariffs and other factors, if we see a spike in labor costs because of the shortage of labor in our market and labor, the cost of labor and the availability of labor has always been a significant constraint in Austin. To begin with, we will experience the full risk of that in the shorter term, and the long term stabilized rate isn't as helpful to us in figuring out our risk there. And then you add on the ongoing current events. I mean, you certainly have shared with us over time the loss in funding that has occurred. We've heard about more funding that is potentially going to be lost just in this work session alone. And then we have factors that [11:53:25 AM] haven't been considered, like the significant increase in the cost of oil and gas, which is going to have significant inflationary impacts on our entire country and the cost of war. And how all of that plays out. There is a lot at play here that is not typical, and it is. We can already see how that's impacting cost projections. And there's more that we haven't even yet considered. And so I feel that I wouldn't be doing my job as a council member if I did not continue to bring focus to those considerations. I also want to draw attention to the fact that these figures, these cost figures are based on 90% design estimates in $2,025. That does not give us a realistic picture of our financial liability, as it fails to account for the compounding effects of construction inflation and the inevitable technical complexities that arise between a 90% design and actual groundbreaking. While I'm [11:54:26 AM] certainly hopeful that we will over time find additional funding funding partners from your presentations, it sounds like that is a medium term to long term goal, and we know that whatever we do now has to be finished in the two year window established by txdot. So the risks are real and the return on investment considerations are also quite, quite impactful. And as I close the comments and turn towards my question, I'm going to ask my colleagues, please, can we all of us recall the very painful cuts that we were forced to make during the last budget cycle, the challenges related to bringing a bond proposal forward that passes, and that doesn't completely max out the bonding capacity of the city. We as a council, we as a city, we are in a situation that is different from what we have previously experienced. We have to stop chasing speculative funding and start moving forward with a [11:55:27 AM] disciplined eye on our actual needs, both for our residents, our small business owners, our stakeholders today, and for the taxpayers of the future. I personally believe that it is incredibly important that we have enough money available in our budget to make investments that increase efficiency so that we can reinvest in our community. Everything that we put money into that is aspirational impacts us now, and we don't have the same flexibility that we once had under different conditions. So having said all that, and thank you for allowing me to make those comments upfront as context for my eventual question. I have a question, which is what? Previously, when we met, we gave staff direction to develop so much of the information that's included in these slides, but specifically at this number of structural elements. And of course, you brought forward the recommendation of no caps. Okay. So I'd like to understand the [11:56:28 AM] possibility for staff bringing forward an assessment of options to actually scale back the structural elements in order to be able to understand what the costs are, both in terms of sunk costs that we've already, you know, committed to based on prior decision making and also relationship costs with txdot and probably campo and the broader transportation landscape. I want to make sure that as I consider my vote, I really have strong information about that prospect as well. And I also am interested in hearing, of course, from my peers on the dais about whether they also would find that information helpful and whether perhaps there is appetite for for really giving serious consideration to the possibility of a scale back on the structural elements, I would welcome any kind of a feel that you would like to give me now, or a follow up by memo or by briefing, whatever we think could be helpful in [11:57:28 AM] that regard. As time is short before we'll be making the next decision by vote. Thank you. >> Councilmember. Thank you for that question. So it's a multi-part answer. So there's the txdot component where we would need for them to provide details of the impact. What what does that process look like for removing any components of those roadway elements, any contractual penalties and things like that. So I would have to defer to them on on answering that portion of it. There's from the internal city side of it, as you noted, the resolution that council passed directed us to move forward with those five locations, the three caps and the two locations. What we could do is provide council an overview and a refresher on the kind of the pros and cons and [11:58:30 AM] possibilities or challenges for each of those locations, so that that information is available to you all to make a decision on if you do want to, to trim back on the, the, any of the caps or stitches so that you have that full breadth of information. But then we would ask that you provide direction as a body as to what, what areas you want to focus on now instead of as opposed to the prior direction, so that we have complete clarity as we as we work through those factors with txdot. As for the relationship aspect of that, I'm actually defer to to others. I don't I'm not sure how much we could really comment on that. >> So yeah, I think it's a great question, council member. So I appreciate you asking it. And we can certainly provide more clarification about what there could be impacts to relationships for ongoing efforts with txdot outside of the cap and stitch program. [11:59:33 AM] >> Thank you. I appreciate that. Just in the interest of hopefully not needing to raise my hand again, but still letting you all know where I stand on things. I will go ahead and note that for myself personally, I am interested in understanding the impacts of scaling back the number of caps. I am not uninterested in touching the stitches. I do believe that the connectivity provided by. I can't remember the term you used. The enhanced bridge crossings and a combination of caps and stitches is very worthwhile and do want to plan for that. So. And I also fully recognize the. I don't fully recognize. I haven't been in the room while you all have been working, but I know how much work has already gone into this. And so to the extent that we can narrow what we're asking you to deliver now, I support that. And so it's in that vein in that. That is why that is why I am mentioning that I am more interested in information about the possibility of scaling back cap structural elements. Thank [12:00:34 PM] you very much, colleagues. I look forward to hearing your thoughts as well. >> Councilmember qadri, followed by councilmember Segal. Councilmember duchin. >> Great, thank you, mayor, and I appreciate the briefing. I just had a few quick questions. We saw on the the slide deck on how great of a job Seattle and Boston have done with the philanthropy component of getting the funding. Do you do you know why they've done how, why they've done such a good job? And do you have any thoughts on what would be helpful for us here in Austin to be engaging with the, you know, with partners, especially as we look forward or towards the first deadline of November so we can move we can move forward on a on a deck. >> Thank you. I'm going to pass this off to Marc. He's our consultant from Hyatt brown. >> Great, thanks. >> Council member. Not necessarily able to speak specifically about each ones, but what's this. What you're looking at is not necessarily numeric. It's percentage based. So what you see for Austin caps and stitches while looking [12:01:36 PM] maybe percentage wise, like less than the Seattle olympic park is numerically much, much more just because of the number of caps and stitches that city of Austin is considering. But in terms of in terms of the cap deck features, what we're talking about, the phase two that has been largely funded through federal funding across the caps. That is really where we are struggling at this at the city to to make up that what you see under private philanthropic contributions is almost entirely dedicated to what we're calling phases three, four, and five. Those are the amenities. What happens on top of the completed infrastructure? >> Got it. And then out of curiosity, what are staff's thoughts about a public facing website or dashboard that shows the cost and then almost challenges philanthropy to match the city? >> Yes. One of the steps that we've we do recommend is providing a public facing website that really opens the [12:02:37 PM] conversation so that partners can really evaluate not only the specific locations, but what that relationship would be with the city of Austin if they were to come forward and express interest. And yes, we definitely think this needs to be a bigger conversation so that our potential partners, philanthropy, private whatnot, understand where the pros and cons are with entering into an agreement like this and where the opportunities are for that, they can provide recommendations on the amenities and what resources are provided on the caps in terms of the amenity portfolio, as Marc indicated. But really, what we're seeing in this research, as well as engaging with helper and park, which used to be called southern gateways in Dallas, is it does require the partner to initiate the conversation with the city, take ownership and and be in alignment with the city's vision for the city to then have something to sell to our federal partners as why we should be capable and the [12:03:38 PM] readiness of the program to receive a federal grant. So in a way, we are now figuring out that there does need to be a relationship established first with the partner so that we can confidently pursue those federal grants. >> Great. Thank you. Yeah. And I want to once again thank staff and also acknowledge the comment that council member Laine said. And I think staff has said of just where we are financially, especially with a lot of things going on in the world, but I really do want to work with our community to advance a lot of these great ideas, and I look forward to many conversations ahead. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Segal, councilmember duchen. Councilmember alter. >> Thank you mayor. I guess I'll direct my comments to director Olivares. I feel free to, you know, phone a friend. I know it crosses a lot of departments here. And I think some of these questions you've answered, maybe in part, but just want to clarify. But to start, is it still possible for the city to reduce its $104 million commitment for the roadway elements? [12:04:40 PM] >> We we believe so, but we would we would need to have conversations with txdot about what that looks like in detail, because they have already begun design efforts across with the the prior direction. So there would be things like sunk costs and everything. And we need to understand what their contractual look like for if there's any penalties for ending certain components. So that is a discussion that we would need to have with our txdot partners. >> Thank you. And what is the deadline to execute the advanced funding agreement regarding the roadway elements? >> So the plan for that is to execute in June following because they have to finish some environmental impact work. And I believe that that's the the, the main item that needs to be completed on their end. And then we can do the, the a F a with them in June. >> Okay. Thank you. And in terms of the decks, when we last had a, you know, council vote on this item, I think [12:05:40 PM] there was some optimism that partners might come forward to fund them. But is it true that so far in the intervening, what, 8 or 10 months that no partners have come forward to fund either decks or the operating, operating and maintenance costs of having decks? >> We have not been contacted by anybody. We did have initial conversations with folks following council's previous action, but we have not received anything further. We've already arranged for continuing conversations to take place this coming month following this briefing, so that we can just talk about those next steps. So but again, if as we make this briefing today, if there are folks that are ready, we please contact us. >> Right now. There's no offers on the table. No. And I think this is a question for the manager, I guess, or for anyone you'd like to designate. But I guess I want to say, is it fair to say that the likelihood of of building out the caps as originally envisioned is less likely now than when we had [12:06:41 PM] this conversation last year due to cost escalations and also txdot policy changes. >> I will defer to Kim and or Mike Rogers, who had conversations with the private sector as well as our own assessment. I would say given cost escalation across the local government, anticipating no ready partners at this point and projecting that out into the future ultimately is only going to cost more. But I'll defer to Mike Rogers to to illuminate any specifics. >> Thank you for that question. Assistant city manager Mike Rogers. I think with the current conditions that are happening throughout the country and the world right now, it makes it extremely difficult for the private sector. The other aspect is if we are to have partners, I think there needs to be certainty, certainty as to what the numbers are, what are they [12:07:42 PM] going to invest in and that we don't have at this particular point? If I'm if I'm an investor, I need to know how much, how much and where and what. And those are the things that just don't have. So I think the uncertainty now is even higher than before because of obviously with the current situations and escalations of prices of everything right now. >> Thank you. Acm. And so basically less certainty. So therefore less likely they would get built. Is that fair to say? >> You know, I'm not running $1 million corporation or a foundation. You know, folks may look at this and may look at creative ways to. Have a tax haven or something of that nature. So, you know, not not being a cpa, there's, there's a lot of investment that's still happening here in this city. And with much of that investment that is happening, obviously, we're going to have those conversations with with [12:08:44 PM] many of those companies. And and as we have start to work through a lot of the details, I think then we'd have a better opportunity. But, you know, from a business standpoint, I think many companies could look at, you know, from tax, tax purposes, this is something that they could do in the future. However, I'm not running a one of those corporations. I don't have the funds to do that on my personal account right now. >> That's fair to say. Thank you. >> And so that's one down. >> We we will not be. >> That's what I was holding out hope for. >> Mike Rogers retirement account. I guess I can direct this one to you, director Olivares, our cfo, Mr. Van van eenoo, has previously said that if the decks are built, it is likely the city would need to hold a tax rate election to cover the operating and maintenance, you know, which could be 4050 million a year. Is that still true? [12:09:45 PM] >> If the the expectation is for the city to be funding and managing those capex, I, I would say yes, but that is our whole desire is to is to eliminate that need is to be able to invite partners to the table that they might be overseeing the the design, construction, the amenities, the management of that. So that financial burden is not on the city's books. It's it's handled externally. So kind of to, to go a little bit further with what hcm Rogers was noting, like we don't have insight into portfolios and the, the capabilities of various real estate investment firms and the sort across the country, around the world. So perhaps there is an opportunity where this kind of a deck, in combination with multiple other projects might make sense. But until we. Now we have made it abundantly [12:10:46 PM] clear to the community that we need those partners to come to the table. It's simply a TRE would be a kind of a requirement to be able to cover those kind of costs for certain. >> Because once the decks are built, the O and M is mandatory because you can't have people suffocating underneath the decks, right? >> Yeah. I mean, so there's an O and M from the deck, just the deck structure. There's an O and M for whatever might be on top. So there's just a lot of moving parts to it and costs that are that go along with it. >> And if I could just on the O and M piece, just based on other areas that I've been a part of, that O and M underneath the decks has traditionally been with the municipal governments have been responsible for that O and M generally as a part of these agreements that that the that are part of the deals, the O and M up top generally would be with one of the partners that are in that deck of funding. [12:11:49 PM] >> Thank you sir. Just a couple more questions. See page nine of the presentation. Looks like we have updated numbers for one of the decks, but I want to see if you all could provide an update for all of the, I guess, project cost estimates here. >> Yeah. So at this time, txdot followed through with request by staff to look at the cost increases for 11th to 12th specifically. And they really did go out of their way to provide those new cost estimates for us, because they are making sure that they stay on track and on budget for their larger project. So at this time, we do not have updated cost estimates for the phase two components, which are those cap deck crossings for the other cap locations. However, this comes with the biggest caveat of what staff have learned through this exercise is that we do not want to conflate the escalation seen here with 11th to 12th. As to something that would be seen across the board, we the increases here for 11th to 12th [12:12:50 PM] are very specifically seen because of this cap deck location in particular, whereas the other cap deck locations will not have the same impact. So for example, txdot did change some of their underpinning designs for their highway underneath 11th to 12th street. That did have ripple effects to this cap deck locations. We know that that's not happening in the other locations. In addition to the fact that what was highlighted through this exercise was the the structural loading capacity was not up to our request as city staff. So txdot accommodated that by providing us a series of options that we could choose from. So what you're seeing here is what staff have chosen to make sure that across the board, we are projecting two storey buildings as a maximum loading for these cap deck locations. So the biggest opportunity here, the storytelling that I can explain is that once we get our partners on deck in partnership with us and able to explain what they see in terms of the [12:13:51 PM] amenities on this cap, we could potentially lower these phase two cap deck costs in partnership with them. Once they're able to identify where they want to rearrange the loading for their cap deck and their amenity portfolio. In addition to we have in recent conversation with txdot, understood that there are minor increases that we could have that would have increases to the cap deck costs. But again, we wouldn't want to cross that conversation until our partner indicates where they would want to increase. And why. >> Do you think we'll have more accurate phase two estimates before this June deadline to sign the F a? >> Know that that's unfortunately something that isn't a worthwhile exercise because one, the costs are so uncertain, even with the models that txdot use to create this 11th to 12th street cap. And again, it's just it's just so uncertain on what we would like to see on terms of the loading, the structural loading. >> So to some extent, we're flying blind in terms of what the ultimate cost would be. >> For phase two. Yes. And [12:14:52 PM] honestly, phase three through five. Yes. Because these cost estimates through are just staff projections based off of precedent projects around the United States. >> Thank you. And then one last question about the cost. In December, the mobility committee was told the design costs have gone from 19 million to 25 million since may. Is that increase incorporated into $104 million plan? >> Oh, no. >> The 104 million is for construction of roadway elements. The $25 million design fee would be if the city of Austin wanted to commit to phase two capex. By this may, we would be able to negotiate a design fee contract with txdot designers. So that is not baked into the 104. >> Oh, perfect. Thank you for that clarification. And I guess my last question is just given all this uncertainty, increased cost, why does staff recommend that we authorize $104 million for roadway elements? >> So the direction from [12:15:55 PM] council was for us to pursue or continue forward with future proofing. So that council, at any point on those, like I noted on the schedule at any of those three decision points, has the ability to, to move forward with cap and stitch structures. If you if you don't do those roadway elements, there's not going to be a cap or a cap deck or a stitch at that location ever. So this is basically just giving the option to exist, period for the rest of time is, is really. So it seems like relative to the overall cost of the, the projected cost of, of the capex and the stitches, it seemed like that $104 million commitment was reasonable to be able to future proof things relative to the overall cost of committing to all the things at this point. So it seemed like a good medium of compromise that [12:16:56 PM] that could work for years to come. >> And I'll highlight that the roadway elements in blue here, there's not a lot of variability that could be impacted in the the cost estimates to date, especially since we do have this cushion room with the $32 million in reserve now accounted for. >> Okay. Thank you mayor. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember duchen, councilmember alter and then the mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, mayor, and thank you, team, for the presentation updates today and my colleagues for their comments. I've got what I hope will be a couple of quick questions, just to get clarification on a few things. And the first one is, can you help me understand what we've already spent currently on this design phase up until now? Of the 104 million where we currently at. >> In 2023, city council approved a design fee of $15.4 million for design of the roadway elements. We have transferred that funding to txdot. [12:17:58 PM] >> So we can think of this as we've got 90 million basically out of the 104 or that's on top of the 104, just to make sure I've got. >> It on top. >> On top. Okay, so we've actually got 104 for the actual construction. Plus we've already spent 15.4 on the design going back to 23. >> Correct. And we also Brianna noted because of the ultimate decision on the the two stitches on the northern end and the decisions that were made there, the cost estimate for construction is actually lower. So ideally it will be less than 104. But because there's a significant contingency built in that was initially there, plus that additional reserve created with that decision. >> Thank you for flagging that. Next question is what is the timeline specifically on phase two, the decks and tunnel elements? Because it's not clear to me, looking at the deck milestone, what we can expect there. So for instance, how long do we would we expect [12:18:59 PM] it to take to build the roadway elements? And at what point will we start to see decks and tunnel elements built and how long would that take? >> So you are correct. The milestones here is just city of Austin decision milestones. We did not portray any txdot milestones for their engineering construction. So what we are working with is right now txdot has assumed a construction timeline for their ultimate central package, which will include roadway elements and cap decks starting in 2027, 2028. And then it would it would take through what you can see here. We have 2033 identified as their identified goal for project completion of that ultimate phase. So roadway elements is something that a local community member wouldn't necessarily be able to call out once it's being constructed, constructed, except maybe for some, you know, mid highway [12:20:00 PM] barriers. But the cap decks, if we were to squeeze in a change order would be constructed at the tail end of this timeline. So around that 2032, 2033, the very end of their timeline. >> Okay. So if I make sure I got that, I assume we build a roadway elements and fund it. If we're going to also build the decks and tunnel elements, we would need to be able to resource that by 2033, 2034. >> That's correct. The payment plan we are working on with txdot right now, specifically for the roadway elements, would begin in 2026 and would be tapered upward through a multiple payment plan to the completion after 2033. So we would be looking at paying on the 104 roadway elements at a certain percentage over across those years. However, that would also be the same model we would be paying for a phase two [12:21:02 PM] cap debt payment plan in addition to other city betterments that we are looking at, such as the east avenue trail or any other enhanced enhancements the city is considering at this time. >> Okay, the main question I'm trying to get to, and you're helping me get there is understanding. My understanding is, and I think we were advised this decision to build phase. I guess it's three through five is a decade from now, basically. But it sounds what I'm hearing you also say is we need to start to figure out how in the next call it five, six, seven years. We also resource phase two now. Is that correct? >> If. So, with the current staff recommendation is to just proceed with the roadway vertical elements only if so, if that is how we proceed, then staff would be welcoming partners to table and be working with them over the next [12:22:02 PM] many years to to be able to ideally meet. Thank you. Be able to meet that change order timeline that 2030, 20, 32 time frame, time frame. So yeah, I mean, we're, we're only talking about four years between now and then. Now, if council has a desire to move forward with any particular cap deck in with the November time frame, then that's that's a whole different ball game. >> Okay, so again, just to clarify ten years, we need to be thinking about $600 million budget, which is the phase three through five. Sorry, I'm sorry. 258 million, which is phase three five. But in the next four plus years, we need to be thinking about $366 million on top of the 104. >> Yes. Over the next four years, we'd be needing to look at that 366 and then yes. And [12:23:04 PM] then that that longer time frame is when we. >> Okay. So a central question for council to consider is, do we think in the next four years it's realistic to. Between partnerships and other resources, including our own resources, come up with another $366 million. >> Yes. >> Okay. That's thank you. We've talked about the may 2226 deadlines that you've outlined, committing to certain cap locations. I want to know specifically what is the financial commitment include for the next three months there. >> So like cash out the door. So at this point, there's no over the next three months, there's no cash out the door, the for the roadway vertical elements, we would execute that a F a in June. And then the there's a based on the overall project schedule that txdot is managing for the larger project, [12:24:06 PM] there's a, there's timing that they built in for us to be, well be making seb loan drawdowns and payments and. And that also correlates to any the certificates of obligation. >> Okay. >> So that would be happening over a period of. >> Was it 2 or 3 years? >> Yeah. Three years. >> Three years. >> Okay. >> Got it. Thank you for clarifying that. Colleagues. My biggest concern, it feels like, is that there is a sort of worst outcome here where we invest $104 million into roadway elements. And then whether it's a decade from now or in the next four years, struggle to between partnerships and other opportunities, including our own resources, adequately fund the additional phases of this project. I want to get your confirmation that funding the roadway elements, not only just [12:25:07 PM] creates sort of no value in and of themselves, right? No sort of intrinsic public value. It requires a deck or amenity or future phases to, to realize that value, but it also has an o&m cost attached to it that we are going to be paying for going forward the moment we build them. It's not, I imagine, the full 9 million that's listed here. I imagine it's a piece of that. But can you speak to whether I'm on the right track here? >> We we don't believe that there is maintenance costs for the roadway element. Construction. >> Okay. So the O and M is specifically starting with phase two. >> That's correct. Got it. >> What about the first part of that question about. >> Public value. >> Yeah. The public value of the roadway elements. >> Don't do that. >> I don't know that it's appropriate for us to pass judgment on the intrinsic value of the roadway elements. I mean, that is that's a very subjective. >> Do they do. >> They serve a public utility beyond anything, beyond just [12:26:07 PM] being there for future support, for additional phases? >> Their main purpose is to support the the ability to do cap structures at some later date. >> Okay. >> That's what I'm looking for. And then finally, is there anything you can share with me about the status of any of the potential university of Texas caps that I think were being discussed and may of 2025? But. I'm not sure the status today. >> Yeah. >> The university of Texas wasn't able to respond to my questions that I asked recently just for an update because they're they're under the same time crunch as we are to evaluate these txdot milestones and opportunities to fund. However, I do the the latest and greatest is that they have approved roadway elements funding for their. A few of their cap deck opportunities, similar to what council did last may. So they did meet that timeline. And yeah, they're [12:27:09 PM] evaluating their partnership and building on their capex too, before they make a phase two cap debt commitment. But they would be under the same timeline request as the city of Austin is. >> Got it. So we may be looking at them and they may be looking at us as far as how to proceed. >> We and we. Yeah, we've been working in partnership with them very closely. >> Okay. >> I appreciate you answering all those questions. I just want to echo some of my colleagues already. You know, my sense is we continue to have significant financial hurdles that the city is going to clear, especially as we think about a potential 2026 or 28 point bond. We've got a lot of other capital project demands, including current projects, everything from our airport and convention center and the walnut creek wastewater plant that we discussed two weeks ago, and that expansion of that project and project connect. And it also is surprising to me, [12:28:09 PM] you know, there's a park amenity system being built in parallel to this cap and stitch area that's also trying to build out future phases. The Waterloo greenway project. So my concern is that given what you've shared a moment ago, that we're going to have to need to figure out fairly quickly. But certainly, while some of us are still up here on the dais, how to come up with the next $366 million, and whether that's realistic or not, I certainly support looking at a and asking staff to help us investigate what a reduction in the city's commitment to the roadway elements is. Ahead of the may 26th deadlines. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember, councilmember mayor pro tem and councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you very much. I'm going to shock everybody and provide a little different take on a lot of what we've heard today. And I think looking back, you know, this was a close one, right? This was a65 vote that [12:29:12 PM] had a lot of contention. And so. It is unsurprising that, you know, councilmember Laine asked for feedback on should we continue with all the roadway elements. That feedback was given last year, this council took a vote, and that was the commitment we made to txdot. So I think trying to revisit this vote through, how can we scale down what we've already approved? We've been there. Do we need we need to do all that again? What was the point in the whole debate we had last may? So I would say that's not a useful exercise of your time. Of our time. We spent months doing that already. There have been a number of things said that that I think are. Not quite accurate or a little [12:30:13 PM] misleading. You know, the budget challenges we face in this budget have nothing to do with cap and stitch. Whether we fund this or not, that is not going to impact our ability to fund our homeless shelters, our ability to fund our parks maintenance. We're talking about capital dollars. And so any insinuation otherwise continues to mddy the waters and not paint a clear picture for the public that these are talking about capital projects. To councilmember duchin's point, we do have a lot of capital needs as a city, but are also funding of caps and stitches has no impact on the convention center, which is funded by hotel occupancy tax, not property taxes. The airport, which is funded not by property taxes, waste walnut wastewater treatment plant, which is not funded by property taxes. These are different beasts and we cannot continue to conflate things that don't have an impact on each other to try to [12:31:13 PM] say, we're broke, so we can only do these that are funded in a different way. This is not about what happens in the next four years or ten years. This is about what happens in the next hundred years. That was the point of putting these in place is so that communities could be connected, communities that should have been connected 100 years ago. In the 1928 plan. We have the opportunity to do that over the next 100 years. It's not all going to happen at once. We never in a million years did I ever talk to anyone who said, yep, I think you're going to come up with all this money and we're going to do everything right now. No, this is about 2050, 2070 what our city is able to do and put in these spaces for the next generation, and the generation after that. So what were we don't have to come up with $366 million in [12:32:14 PM] four years. We have to come up with some money. If we want to do any of these caps. But this is about what I-35 looks like for the next hundred years. And that is such a bigger idea than what we have narrowed it down to today. And I don't want that to get lost in this conversation about the people and the communities. The conversation about whether or not we need a TRE to, to operate these. Walkes we have a budget that is going to be potentially cutting significant amount of money, more than $9 million, which has been brought forward today, no expectation that the city would come forward with that. That's going to be part of this financing plan. We're not going to do it unless we have a plan. But to say that a $9 million gap, [12:33:15 PM] potentially in about 8 to 10 years, that the city would be forced into a TRE, that's crazy. I mean, we've seen bigger cuts from the manager. No offense. Manager, you know, planning $16 million in cuts in social service contracts. I haven't heard someone say we have to have a TRE this year because we're cutting $16 million in social service contracts. That's a choice. We choose to fund things and we choose to not fund other things. So to say that if we do this, we have to have a TRE that is incredibly misleading. I won't belabor all the points here, but we keep talking about capital partners and making a call to the community. In the past year. I want to ask hcm Rogers, because I know you've been spearheading this. How many meetings have we had as a city with, you know, Dar and [12:34:17 PM] the capital community to fund these? >> We've had a couple of meetings. >> Okay. >> Well. I I've talked to two people who would be the likely suspects. They have told me about one and that we've scheduled another one, but so far we've had one. And it just feels like every time we have this conversation, we're expecting one of two things to happen either someone to drop off a $50 million check, which is never going to happen, or for the Dea to come to us and say, hey, we've put together all the downtown partners and here's your, you know, $200 million you're looking for. We have to have an aggressive capital campaign if this is going to be successful. And that requires someone to be in charge. And it doesn't feel like right now, when I talk to anybody in the downtown community, they know who's in charge. Is it D a a? Is it the city? Is it someone else? So who from your vision point, who [12:35:19 PM] is in charge? If we say we want by 2030 for you to come up with that money, who is it? >> I believe it's a, it's it's really an economic development play that we as a city take the lead on. And that's what we did in the meetings, as well as trying to take the lead in, in this and explain where we were and where we are at that particular point. Yeah. And I also don't expect anybody to come up with a check. I believe it's a situation where we're going to have to have continuous meetings, and as others are exploring, coming to Austin and making investments, using this as an economic development tool as well. So it's not going to happen right away. And I, you know, I never even had any expectation that anybody's going to step up right away either, because these things and the other plans that have happened throughout the throughout the [12:36:19 PM] country, they've taken numerous meetings, they've taken years at times to to get to that point. By the time somebody knocked on my door when I was in Dallas, you had funding stacks that had already been generated. And so we're talking years of conversations that have taken place. But they had the money before they came to the city, which is a little bit different than the situation. But yes, it does take years. It doesn't take one meeting that will never happen. One meeting. And then you have someone with a check in hand. >> And that's, you know, one of the great frustrations and this is not on you, you know, these conversations should have started years ago and they didn't. And we we can't change that. But we are where we are. And so I think we need to have a realistic ask of you and Ed of, hey, this is the, the area we want you to target. And so that to your point, people need [12:37:20 PM] to know what they're being asked to fund, right? We can't just say generally, well, depends on how much you bring to the table. You know, we'll see. You know, this is our vision, this is our goal. And, and go from there. But I mean, whether that's having a dedicated staff member to, to be banging on these doors, you know, it is going to take that time. You know, lastly, when we talk about this being public space, you know, when have you ever heard someone in ever visit a city and say, man, you know, this city really just has too much public space, too much parkland, too many plazas, too much area for people to, to congregate. That never happens. You go to cities that have those spaces because that's what makes them special. And I know, you know, clearly I'm a little frustrated today. I'm frustrated by the desire to go backwards when it felt like we are already at this point. And [12:38:21 PM] I appreciate that. The staff recommendation is to recognize we have made at least one decision as this body and to move forward from there, but I'm frustrated because I have I have been to some of these other places and spent time on, you know, these caps and Denver, San Francisco, Dallas with my family and seeing other families do the same. These are spaces that our community can use for decades if we are willing to stick it out. And this is the hard part, is sticking it out right now when there's nothing to see, right? This is all an idea, a vision. And if we are willing to commit to that vision, we can yield something that is really going to be impactful for our community. But hopefully we can give you clear direction on what that is. You know, if we get a new federal administration in 2028, that puts the 105 or plus back on the table, you only need to go [12:39:23 PM] find $30 million to get one of what I think is the best cap, you know, right there next to the convention center, Cesar Chavez to fourth street, continuous connectivity between east and west. That's doable. We can't forget that. While it's difficult with the current administration, those times will pass and there will be potential opportunities. So I appreciate the work y'all are doing on this. Hopefully we can look forward and not backwards, and I look forward to continuing conversation. >> Thank you. Councilmember mayor pro tem followed by councilmember. >> Thank you, mayor. And I think councilmember alter pretty much summed things up well. I just want to reiterate my support for the staff recommendation, and I would not be inclined to reconsider anything. The same council, same members. There's really no point in, I think, and putting staff through additional work when we we just really voted on [12:40:24 PM] this not that long ago. I would just end with this is a this is not about, you know, 20, 35. You know, again, this is about 20, 60, 20, 70 what Austin looks like in the future. And just and a widened and uncapped I- 35 running through the middle of Austin is a policy failure. It disappointed that we're not going to be able to add some very I think beneficial and valuable caps right now. But what we can do is we can plant the seed that a future city council in a different with a different presidential administration can can hopefully harvest. I don't want to take that possibility away from some future city council, from my children and my grandchildren to, to build a better city. So we'll we'll plant the seed and hopefully someone will will harvest that sometime in the future. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem councilmember Ellis. [12:41:25 PM] >> Well, I'm glad to see we're all in agreement here today. I really appreciate the staff recommendation. I'm landing somewhere in the middle of this. I know there was a lot of discussion that that took place last year necessarily. But, you know, we ended up with a split where five people wanted to spend 49 million on the retaining walls, and another five people wanted to spend 453 million on retaining walls. That's a fairly large gap for people to try to make a decision about where we're ultimately going to land. I am open to revisiting the conversation around the retaining walls because, as I said all the way back last may, I think we should figure out where we as a council can say absolutely yes, and I think we should leave some maybes out there for the future. But I don't see a scenario where all of a sudden we get down the road and there's hundreds of millions of dollars just, you know, raining down upon us. It is not the way that I make financial decisions for the city to look at impending doom, [12:42:26 PM] looking at tighter and tighter financial constraints, and to continue down a pathway that we don't know we can afford. I would love for that to be the case, but how I see my responsibility working with the city is to make sure that we're making sound financial decisions. And yes, there should be some opportunity for future investments, but I really think that it is on us right now to be able to make decisions about what we actually would do. I'd be open to saying, maybe we're not going to do all of the retaining wall strategy. Maybe we're going to pick one cap to do. Let's figure out what that looks like. But I am increasingly concerned about utilizing debt in a way that is not approved by our voters. It's not blessed by the people who are on the hook for paying the bill. And is is very unexpected. What's going to happen later? I think that people deserve to weigh in on the things they want to see in their community. I think we can get to a place where everybody gives a little bit, and we're [12:43:27 PM] able to come out with a really good project at the end, one that we can all be proud of. But looking at how much we are having to make tough financial decisions and hearing from our constituents day in, day out about their their fears financially is something that I take very seriously. So I'm willing to do some wiggling, apologize to staff ahead of time if we end up opening up the 104 million and looking at what we really need to do. But I'd rather see one really good thing and maybe a good future commitment down the road. Then continue on a pathway where we are syncing ourselves further and further into commitments that we're not sure that our voters necessarily want us to spend money on. I also do not want to see big, giant gaping hole of highway in downtown Austin. I was a part of the conversations that looked at how to stitch back together, what the current I-35 footprint has already done to rip our community. Apart from downtown to the east side. I think that we should get smart about this. I think we should really sharpen our scalpels and figure [12:44:28 PM] out a way to get something good out of this, but we are all going to have to give a little bit because I don't I don't know where this conversation is leading us leading up until may. If we can't start figuring out some some forms of agreement where people are happy and where where folks really aren't. So I will make my commitment to honing down what I think a good plan is, but I see that there is quite a bit of difference of opinion on where where we go from here, but certainly appreciate staff kind of leaning in and saying, this is what our financial forecast is and this is what our recommendation is. And I think we as as council members, need to make sure we're open to that and that we can continue to listen and revisit these financial conversations and make good, good, solid commitments moving forward. >> Councilmember qadri, thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember qadri. >> Yeah, I just want to go off of some comments and some of my colleagues have made I think it was my first year in office. I think it was myself, councilmember Ellis and councilmember Velasquez. We spoke at a stop I-35 expansion [12:45:31 PM] rally. I think it was in councilmember Velasquez's district. Many of us in the council have been very outspoken about not liking highway expansion. But unfortunately, as it does move forward, many of us also want to make sure that we future proof the future of not only. The current Austin that we live in today with with the current community, but the Austin that we'll have in 25, 50, 100 years. So I just, you know, personally, for me and as someone who worked on the cap and stitch item with, with, with some of my colleagues, I'd also like to move forward. I think our community in the present needs us to move forward. And I think the communities that come in the future, they deserve to have an Austin where they're not fighting or they're in disarray. And I think it's our responsibility to make sure that we future proof the future of Austin. So that's it. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Fuentes. >> Yes, just to add my my thoughts on it and similarly to [12:46:31 PM] councilmember Ellis, just want to share my appreciation to staff for putting together this presentation for my understanding, the question that is before us today, it and staff's recommendation is that we don't have funding or not to allocate any additional funding to any phase two elements of the caps. Is that correct? Okay. I stand in support of that. I think there's we the city has made our commitment. We have funded necessarily to get this program off the ground. And I personally can't support putting another dollar more towards the actual building of these deck plazas until we get more partners on board. So I support the recommendation to not allocate any additional funding for any of the actual buildings of the caps of the deck plazas. With that being said, with councilmember Ellis's point, if if we entertain a conversation of clawing back some of the roadway elements in the spirit of trying to deliver an actual deck, an actual cap at the end of this project, I would be [12:47:32 PM] interested in having that conversation, because I do think it is important for us to be realistic and pragmatic in what we can deliver for our city, and if we can do one of them and the reallocation of those funds, I'd be interested in having that conversation. But until then, I support staff's recommendation on no additional funding for the caps. >> Thank you. Councilmember. All right, members, it is 1248 almost. There's no other items on the agenda. There are no other items on the agenda for this work session. We do have an Austin energy oversight committee, that which is a committee of the whole, that needs to meet my recommendation, unless there's objection, is that we recess until 120, because the one thing we are in agreement on is everyone's hungry and a few of you are hungry, and I'm not looking at anybody in particular, but. And that being said, with there being no further business to [12:48:33 PM] come before the Austin city council at this work session, we are adjourned. Without objection, we are adjourned at 12:48 P.M. See everybody back at 120.