City Council Regular Meeting Transcript – 5/7/2026 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/7/2026 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 5/7/2026 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [10:00:07 AM] 26 at 10:00 in the morning, and I will call to order this regular meeting of the Austin city council for today. We have a quorum of the city council present. We are meeting in the council chambers located at city hall, which is at 301 west second street in Austin, Texas. The order of business that will go through today is we will first take up the consent agenda. We will take up speakers related to the consent agenda. After that, we will have a discussion and comments by the council and a vote on the consent agenda. Members, we have three items that have been pulled. Item number four has been pulled. Item number 26 has been pulled and item number 41 has been withdrawn. If you're here to speak on item number 41, or if you've signed up to speak on item number 41, that item has been withdrawn. And because it's not on the agenda any longer, we will not have speakers with regard to that item. But members item four and item 26 have been pulled from [10:01:08 AM] the consent agenda. We will have the Austin housing finance corporation board of directors meeting at some point. We might break at about 1030 and take that up quickly, but we'll just see when how we play that and I'll I'll play that by ear for the members of the public. The way we will do that is we will recess the Austin city council meeting, and I'll call to order the board of directors meeting of hfc. We will have that meeting. We will adjourn that meeting, and then we'll go back to the city council meeting. We will also take up non consent items. Those are items 27 and 28. Items 30 and 31 at noon or as close to noon as we can pull it off. We will have the time, certain public communications. We will also have music. We have a group of kids that will be here today for the music and it's a music video, so it will be a little bit shorter than what we typically do with music. So what I anticipate will happen is we will recess the Austin city council meeting at around 1230 for our live music with the kids who will also be [10:02:09 AM] here and come back at one is what I'm going to recommend. Just because we have so many things on the item and so many speakers. Again, we will also, of course have our time certain for zoning, although I anticipate that will be a little later than the scheduled time. Certain. Are there any questions or comments from any members of the council? In that case, members, we will. I will read now changes and corrections into the record. Item number 30. When public hearings are taken up and item number 30 is a non consent item. Public hearing. When public hearings are taken up, this item will be postponed to may 28th, 2026. Again, as I indicated earlier, item number 41 has been withdrawn. Item four and item 26 have been pulled from the consent agenda. There being no questions or discussion, I will now turn to the city clerk's office to begin the process of calling on speakers for the consent agenda. [10:03:11 AM] >> Thank you mayor. On item one, Scott Morledge. Speaking on item two, Mohammed sahib. >> If your name has been called, please come forward. Please just keep calling names. >> On item number seven. Bill bunch. >> Mr. Bunch. >> Morning, mayor. Council members, thank you for your [10:04:11 AM] service to the community. Bill bunch. I'm speaking on this item. As a taxpayer, resident and transparency advocate, this calls for $5 million to defease some poorly described bonds. It says there's no financial impact. If you read the backup, it talks about a deal with an unnamed developer on an unnamed development. As posted, this is in total violation of the public information act. It's completely opaque what this is even about, and I'd love to have even one of you tell us what it's about. Can you do that? You're about to vote on it. On consent. I'll let you take the rest of my two minutes [10:05:13 AM] to answer my question. Otherwise, I'm going to take my rest of my two minutes in silence. Is there any concern at all about just basic transparency? >> Mr. Bunch, if you would like, we can always provide you information and you can send us a request and we can give you the. >> Well, we're in a public meeting. >> Where. >> You're supposed to be deciding this. You aren't supposed to decide it in advance in a backroom by a consent agreement. >> And that hasn't happened. >> So please tell us what this is even about. >> Mr. Bunch. This is the public comment period, and we're going to hear public comment. And you know how this works. And you can do the challenges that you enjoy doing and get the attention that you get. >> I don't enjoy doing it. I hate doing it. Y'all need to obey the law consistently instead of hide the. >> Thank you, Mr. Bunch. It's been good to have you. [10:06:13 AM] >> Moving on to item nine. Remote speaking is going to be Monica Guzman. >> Good morning. I'm Monica Guzman, district four resident speaking in opposition to item nine. City staff have left major issues out of the draft ordinance, including ways that can help lower bills, full recovery, new customers of new customer connections to existing customers are not subsidizing new ones, and funding of a bi annual consultant review so that the company is properly managing capital expenditures and not building a bridge to nowhere, a city operated energy conservation program that saves energy cost effectively. One of the company's programs in 2024 had a payback of over 600 years and requiring $500,000 for a more effective energy bill payment program for low income tax, low income ratepayers. I [10:07:13 AM] agree with Paul Robbins comment and any recommendations he provides to council when he speaks. Thank you. >> Continuing on item nine with in-person speakers, Paul Robbins, is Bobby lavinsky here? Perfect. Mr. Robbins, you'll have four minutes. Also on item nine, Al Braden, Camille cook, Roy Whaley. >> If your name is called, please come forward. >> Mayor. Mr. Whaley has is in the process of donating time to me. So I'd have six minutes. >> Well, if he's we have a process for that, Mr. Robbins. And and he's there. Okay. So he you have four minutes? >> Well, no. With Mr. Lavinsky, wouldn't I? >> I'm sorry. You're right. Okay. Very good. >> Thank you. I timed it for five, if that's any consolation, I. I know you're busy. >> We'll see what you say. [10:08:13 AM] >> Council. The partnership between Austin ratepayers and Texas gas service has been a costly one. In 2025. Slide, please. In 2025, an extra $121 million in increased rates compared to 2019 was taken from Austin's economies. City gate. This is money that could have been used for food, housing, higher education and a better quality of life. Slide. Between 2019 and 2026, residential rates have increased by $365 per household. This is a 126% increase in just the last few years. In a city focused on affordability, fixated on affordability. This is not sustainable. There are two [10:09:17 AM] strategies. Slide. There are two strategies that you can use to lower bills that are not in, that are not in the insufficient draft agreement. The first is for Texas gas service to collect full capital recovery fees from developers. The way Austin energy and Austin water already do. When our utilities went to full collection rates in, both of them actually went down to show how poorly the gas company is doing in this direction. Figures from the 2024 rate case showed that the company collected only about 2% of its new infrastructure costs from hookup fees. Note that the company continues to dodge the collection of full amounts by waiving its hookup costs. If [10:10:18 AM] there's a ten year payback. City utilities have no such waiver slide. And so again, this is urging you to demand full capital recovery fees. And the collection should emulate what Austin water and Austin energy are doing, not what Texas gas service is doing. Slide. The other thing you can do is to conduct ongoing audits of the company's planned improvements and construction projects. The proactive action differs from current practice of waiting until the next rate case to deal with expenditures that were. Sometimes made years ago. As an example, in the 2024 rate case reflected from 2019 to 2023. Plant costs increased [10:11:23 AM] $342 million, a 63% increase in only a four year period, while the number of customers only increased by 5%. Next slide. Next slide. And so I've tried to abbreviate this council should require that all capital expenditures and expenditures for the entire company be reported annually, and to hire a consultant every two years to review it. Funding for this can either be provided with a bill rider or a slight increase in franchise fees. Though this is a new program, I do not expect this monthly bill, this to increase the monthly bill by more than a few pennies per month for the average ratepayer. Better to spend a few pennies up front than be hit with huge increases later. Slide. And there is also a problem. This [10:12:24 AM] is the last slide with inequitable collection of franchise fees from the fuel portion of the bill to under. To help you understand, large industrial customers buy on the open market and use the pipeline as a common carrier. So if they default to the estimate of the Houston ship channel index, they're avoiding storage costs and demand fees. Whereas residential customers have to pay them. So as you can see from this chart, the average in 2020 for the average residential customer would pay about double the franchise fee on fuel that a large industrial customers customer would pay. And to compensate, the franchise should require that if fuel cost is estimated by the Houston ship channel index, [10:13:26 AM] a multiplier of 2,025% would be added to industrial customers to come to something approximating their fair share of the franchise fee. In closing counsel, the resource management commission has focused on this franchise for over a year as a consumer, as consumer and environmental advocates, we find the current draft franchise to be lackluster and ask council to consider our advice. To make it more effective, we ask you to provide ratepayers with relief from relentless bill increases. We simply do not agree with staff that there are no options. >> Speaking remotely on item nine, Karen Rilling. >> Thank you. I'm here to weigh in about what's in the gas [10:14:28 AM] service franchise document and what is not. I'm a natural gas customer in oak hill who by preference has gas oven, water heater and heating system. Now I cringe when I note the steady increases in gas costs, but while I am able to pay the increased costs, I am concerned about low income customers. My ask is that you prioritize a highly efficient assessment of need and immediate service upon that verification of need. Second, I think it's a necessity to raise the price of new hookups in a time of rising costs for existing customers, it seems all the more unfair that existing customers are subsidizing the hookup costs for new customers. And third, I think it is prudent to verify [10:15:29 AM] that the organization follows best practices, the expertise of a well-chosen consultant can analyze and propose continuous improvements. Thank you for this opportunity to be heard. >> Continuing on item nine, Rafael Schwartz. >> There are slides. >> None were given to us that I know of. >> Okay. Morning. My name is Rafael Schwartz. I'm on resource management commission, rmc speaking about our commission recommendation. Oh, here they are. I'm going to transition from what commissioner Robbins was covering to talk about the areas of emergency bill assistance and conservation programs. These are a couple [10:16:31 AM] major areas where the city is getting a worse deal here than previously. Instead of the franchise being an opportunity to get a better deal for the community, things have gone backwards on these two issues, unfortunately. Next slide. Okay. Emergency bill assistance. So it's funding. This is funding for emergency bill payment to prevent gas shut off gas, shut off of low income customers. The proposed franchise agreement does not include anything on this. A little context. Austin energy dedicated roughly $20 million to low income programs last year, so this is a little cut off currently, Austin or Texas gas designates around $70,000 in Austin today. This is down from $120,000 in previous years. And there's no commitment in the franchise to continue this in the future. So our recommendation was to include this program funded at $500,000 in Texas gas service to fund 50, 50% of it. Next slide. So [10:17:32 AM] conservation programs, moving on now, Texas gas services run energy conservation programs. For the last 20 years. These were requirement in the last franchise agreement in 2006. Mok recommendation was to improve this program by having the city manage it. That way, Austin could direct the funds toward more effective energy savings. Instead, the proposed franchise agreement has completely eliminated this longstanding program, which is a step backwards for energy savings for the city. Next slide. I'm going to go to next slide. So the recommendation is that the franchise agreement needs a dedicated bill rider increased franchise fee. This will allow Austin to take over the conservation program. The city of Austin has managed this program in the past, and Austin energy appears to be well positioned to receive a new funding source for its energy efficiency programs. >> Speaking remotely on item 14, Janine Ramirez. >> Commissioner. >> Janine Ramirez. [10:18:38 AM] >> Jeannie Ramirez. >> Speaking in person on item 14. Bill bunch. >> Mister bunch is passing. >> Speaking in person on item 15. Bill bunch. >> He's passing on item 15 as well. >> Speaking on item 19, Jeffrey Bowen. Mckinney. Coke. >> You were called first. >> That's just trying to be. >> Thank you. Cordial here. Go ahead. >> Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mayor, council members Jeff Bowen, district eight. Well said. Thank you sir. I actually was looking at this [10:19:39 AM] earlier, and I'm not questioning the need for why we need to have, you know, our graffiti taken care of. But I do start questioning the cost on this. The original cost, at $75,000, came out to about $6,200 a month. But with just a six month extension on this, they're now wanting to go up to 100 to $282,000 for six months, which is $47,000 a month. Have we changed the scope of work? What? Why? The big difference? Eight times the amount for six months. I mean, what something else is going on here. And I think there needs to be some type of questions asked. Even if you were to go in and say, hey, can you guys extend the contract up to $10,000 versus the 6000 would have made a little bit more sense versus eight times that amount? So I question what's going on because we are in some type of a budgetary process. And I [10:20:41 AM] would think there would be some questions when we start looking at extending these contracts for this type of this amount of for this amount of time, for this amount of money. And thank you very much. >> Thank you. Yes. >> Hi. I'm Connie couch here. As a resident and a citizen. Welcome to Costco, I love you. I am here today because I saw that Austin is paying money to develop a time machine. I don't know if you have seen the movie idiocracy, but I heard that Costco has a time machine, and I bet you could get a good deal on it. As a citizen and resident, there is nothing more important to me than a beautiful and safe city. We have spent billions of dollars cleaning up parks, homeless camps, graffiti, and making the city look good right now in this economy, administration, and global crisis, we need to adjust our expectations. We need to focus our attention on what matters most to us. All of [10:21:42 AM] us, myself included, know that when money gets or sorry, most people with a heart like myself know that when money gets tight, it is not the time to focus on fashion. It is a time to focus on function. We focus on feeding and clothing and housing our families, not spending money on making things pretty. You can't Polish a turd. Well, you can, but it stinks. It is not a time for fancy upgrades or fancy dresses. It's about basic needs. We as a city should all lean in and look around if what we see is not pretty, is it functional? Are people safe, housed, employed at a living wage? Are we eating food? Do we have any to share? People who are safe and happy and well fed love to create beautiful things. They have time to volunteer, to clean up parks or paint murals. To keep Austin weird. We need to focus less on how things look and more on how things are under the Polish. Is your neighbor [10:22:43 AM] okay? It's a community effort and the community has built services like Eloise house for sexual assault exams that offer dignity to your daughters and your mothers. Moving back to exams and hospitals is like polishing a turd. Thank you. >> Appreciate you. >> Moving to item 21. Bill bunch, Jeffrey Bowen. >> Mister bunch is passing on item 21, Mr. Bowen. >> Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mayor, council members. Jeff Bowen, district eight. We're going to get that down right. Finally. >> So I trust you. >> Yeah. I was looking at this and honestly, I thought, well, at least we're making some steps forward when we start [10:23:43 AM] looking at how we're dealing with some of our bonds. And some of the past processes were not working. When we finally started getting the capital development people that were finally working on the bonds, it was I was I was looking at how this whole process worked. And after talking with different people, they were saying that there was so much conflict in the middle. So I'm hoping that this process will be clear and very transparent to us, the voters that voted for these bonds, in making sure what is being equated out there, because in the past, we've had issues on the bonds that we say, we're going to do this project, this project, and then whatever happened to those projects, we never get any information on this. So I'm hoping that this whole process will be very transparent, very at least telling us where the money is going. If there's changes, then there's some type of idea what's going on with this. So [10:24:45 AM] I'm hopeful. I'm very hopeful that this will be done and that we will actually have some type of management on this and know where are they meeting the expectations that they've put down and making sure that the dashboards are put, are, are put out there so that we can read and go. But I'm hopeful that this is a step in the right process. Now, whether or not it's going to fit for 2026 bond, I don't know. But I'm hopeful again, that we're at least trying to make some management decisions and being very transparent on this. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Moving to item 24, speaking remotely, Jeremy Hendrix. >> Hang on. There are a couple people on 21 that you didn't call. I see one of them. >> They there was two people on. 21 that signed up for the incorrect item. So we moved them to. 24. >> Fair enough. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning. My name is Jeremy [10:25:46 AM] Hendrix, the laborers union with the central Texas building trades. And I reside in district four. And I'm here in strong support of item 24 regarding economic development this morning. This resolution is an important step toward reestablishing, often as a proactive, strategic leader in shaping our economic future, it recognizes that a strong and resilient economy is the foundation for everything we care about as a city. Our ability to maintain staffing and services, fund housing affordability, infrastructure, parks, public health, climate investments, and the cultural assets that really define Austin all depends on a healthy, growing economy. This resolution gets it right by prioritizing workforce development, not treating it as an afterthought. Economic development cannot be measured only by the number of projects we attract. It must also be measured by the quality of the construction and long term jobs those projects create. Austin needs an economy built on good jobs, jobs with family supporting wages, strong benefits, and clear pathways into long term careers. These [10:26:47 AM] are the jobs that stabilize families, strengthen neighborhoods, reduce crime, address housing and food insecurity, and ensure working people can fully participate in Austin's prosperity. There is a real opportunity here to expand registered apprenticeship programs, strengthen the Austin infrastructure academy, and deepen partnerships with labor organizations that deliver high quality dol registered training and safety standards, and these investments prepare the workforce we need to build and maintain this amazing city, and they ensure that economic development efforts translate into real, lasting opportunity for our residents. There is also a real practical benefit to adopting a clear, consistent economic development policy. It makes it easier for city leadership, staff, workers and businesses to reach agreements that benefit the whole community. When expectations are transparent and our standards are well defined, employers know what it takes to partner with Austin. Workers know what opportunities are being created in the city can really negotiate. >> Hendricks, thank you very [10:27:47 AM] much. >> Speaking remotely on item 24, Mateo Ortega. >> Hi, Mateo Ortega, district four. I want to first recognize the shift of city council to revise the economic development resolution that officially removes ai data centers and fence technology from the list of target industries. That's a great first step I'm speaking in. First of all, in opposition to this item. And while this is a great change as a direct result of the collective power of the people who are opposed to these industries, it isn't the full thing. And I want to make sure that there are safeguards to prevent these industries from finding [10:28:49 AM] loopholes in this ordinance, and. I think that for Austin, these are not the kinds of industries that we want to see in our city. They don't make our city better. One, they also contribute to things like increased housing prices. The technology industry has led to more gentrification and. The city of Austin is not a place to promote war. And we already know that in Texas. We are struggling when it comes to our water resources. Cities like Corpus Christi are running out of water, and so things like ai data centers have no place here. When we're already struggling for these finite resources. So I implore the city to continue to put in safeguards to make sure that these industries don't come in and try to take advantage of our city. Thank [10:29:51 AM] you so much. >> Thank you. >> Speaking remotely on item 24, Bianca Guerrero. >> Hello, mayor and council. My name is Bianca Guerrero and I'm calling in for district three. I'll be honest, I'm currently sitting in a dentist's office with half numb face. It's not the ideal way to address you, but I felt it was absolutely vital to speak up today because item 24 is a far greater pain for our city than any root canal, urging you to vote no. And I don't have a lot of time to go into it because the dentist just walked in. But my my urge is for council to vote no on item 24. Thank you. >> Speaking on item 24, Abigail Lindsay. [10:30:55 AM] >> Good morning. My name is Abigail Lindsay. My property is in district four. I am against item 24, specifically the data centers. I think it's irresponsible for the city to incentivize data centers or make it easier for them. I had been fighting them personally for the last year and a half. Every presentation I've seen by people that are pro data centers has been filled with half truths and lies. And really, you don't have to look too far. If you just Google it, you will see all the articles that have come out in just the last year. Texas is in trouble and we don't have a lot of rules and regulations. It's unfortunate, but we don't need to make easier for them the water, the pollution, the sound, you name it, it's it's horrible. And like I said before, you don't have to be an expert in anything to just read an [10:31:55 AM] article. It's very bipartisan. And so Republicans and Democrats are coming together to fight this, which says a lot. Those two sides don't usually come together and agree on something. But, you know, it's bad when yeah, when people are joining together. When are we going to realize this, this same old pony and show thing about, hey, we're bringing money, we're bringing jobs, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, when, when has that worked out? I mean, Austin ISD is a shortfall of a huge budget. You know, I mean, y'all brought industry in and you still you're still chasing after that. It's just not going to work outside the box. And we don't need to sell yourself short. Please vote no on this. The consequences of it are just they're horrendous. Look at granbury. Look at El Paso. Look at Corpus Christi. I mean, it is egregious. It's horrible. And your community does not want this. People will come out [10:32:56 AM] in large numbers. >> Speaking on item 24 remotely Eli Cortez. >> Good morning, mayor and city council. My name is Eli Cortez. I live in district three, and I'm calling in opposition to item 24. It wasn't long ago that I'm an organizer with local Texas. It wasn't long ago that we stood in front of council in a coalition to fight automated license plate readers in this in this city, and made the message clear that ai and surveillance technologies are not welcome in our city to incentivize defense and ai industries, which are these huge, massive industries that are lucrative and have tons of funds, is is not an approach that our city needs to be. We don't have to be sending that message. If anything, we should be finding ways and finding strategies to, to tax and to help put some of the [10:33:58 AM] responsibility of these corporations that are in our in our city and make lucrative amounts of funds to help support the essential services and the, the things that our communities need, much like the, the need for storage and for shelters for our in house neighbors that are facing a proposed plan to increase encampment sweep that. I hope you all take action to pause that plan. Thank you so much for your time and the opportunity to speak. We are hoping to see some guardrails in this in this resolution that specifically prohibits and the incentivization of ai and defense industries in this proposal. Thank you. >> Speaking remotely on item 24, Valerie Mikulecky. >> Hi, my name is Valerie. I'm a constituent of district three. After more than two years of genocide cosigned by our local [10:34:59 AM] leaders, considering a resolution that could make Austin a hub for war tech and military profiteering is terrifying without any explicit guardrails, preventing valuable city incentives from going to companies that profit from war, surveillance, and occupation. This economic development resolution opens the door for industries like ai, aerospace, and defense contractors to develop unchecked. Right in our backyard. Austin is already becoming deeply tied to the military and defense pipeline just blocks from city hall. Capital factory is in bed with the department of war investors and startups tied to the military surveillance and genocide tech. They also work with war criminals from the Israeli occupation forces. These partnerships are not neutral. They're shaping the future of our city and defining Austin as a bloody city in favor of death and destruction. Often used to be known for creativity, arts, community, and innovation that improves people's lives. We are firmly against the development of violent technologies without [10:36:00 AM] clear and explicit protections in this resolution, we risk turning Austin into a center for militarization, surveillance, and war profiteering. We're the people that make the city run. We deserve a voice in deciding what values our city invests in. That means a transparent public process, community input, and clear language prohibiting companies tied to weapons manufacturing, military surveillance, policing, detention, and war profiteering from receiving city incentives. I urge the council to reject this resolution unless strong and enforceable guardrails are added. Austin's future belongs to its people, not to war profiteers. Free palestine. >> On item 24. Speaking remotely, Gabriel Timlin. >> Good morning and thank you. I urge you to vote against agenda item number 24 on April 1st, 2026, Austin's [10:37:02 AM] environmental commission voted to adopt recommended recommendation 20260401-004. Please prohibit tax breaks and financial incentives for data centers locating in Austin 24 puts tax rebates on the table. Please invoke a moratorium on data centers in the center. This turns on a fastplaine for permits immediately. We need the report on objective environmental impact and resource usage of local data centers over the next ten years. We do need to acquire tier two and higher data centers to generate at least 50% of their electricity on site for renewable from renewable sources. We do need data centers to use reclaimed water and direct investment in the city's purple pipe program via water mitigation fund. We do need operational curtailment during declared electric electrical emergencies to [10:38:04 AM] mandate council approval for large load extension requests to define data center in city code, and to require public notice to property owners within one mile of any data center. Construction site. Item 24 preclears land per job. The permanent on site workforce is usually smaller than the public expects, and can include under 150 permanent jobs per facility, so the safest way to interpret this claim? We need three separate numbers for that permanent on site data center jobs after stabilization. That's after year 1 to 2 operations, peak construction jobs and jobs that are supported. Data centers do represent health risks for their neighbors. They cause noise pollution, light pollution. They use a huge ton of water and a huge ton of electricity. >> I urge you. >> To vote against. >> On item 24 remotely Jamie Williams. Jamie Williams. [10:39:16 AM] >> Hello. >> Please begin. >> Sorry we lost your mayor. We'll get her back on. Continue on. Item 24. Speaking remotely, Forrest Aderholt. >> Forrest. Aderholt. >> On item 24. Jamie Williams. >> Hello, this is Jamie Williams. I am a I've been a a resident of the central Texas area for most of my life. And I am here to say no to any any mention of data centers. They are a threat to our water resources that are already scarce. And I'm here to say that you will not be able to stay any longer after this phone call, that you do not know that there are indigenous people in your area and under your care. With the water and our rights, there are so many [10:40:17 AM] laws that are meant to protect the ability to have access to clean water, and data centers are an extremely large threat to that. So if any of you are lawyers, you ought to know that these things are against the rights of indigenous people. And I will continue to fight these two tooth and nail, along with the rest of the public and the citizens of this town. So please do not go for anything that has data centers in the name. Thank you. >> Speaking on item 24 remotely, Austin Wright. >> Hi there. I'm from district five. My name is Austin Wright and I'm here today to speak against item 24. As of may 4th, we're now six months out from a very public and highly concerning bond election failure and in short, pursuing policy like what's laid out here in item 24 will only serve to damage the public's perception of our city's fiscal responsibility. Affirm the view that taxpayers are second class citizens and further guarantee the failure of future bond [10:41:19 AM] elections. When we look at the proposal on item 24, how should the public feel about the treatment here? Many folks already struggle to pay their property taxes, and others face endless hurdles with zoning changes and opening their own businesses. Meanwhile, the city is happily going to turn around and offer tax breaks, special regulatory treatment and the possibility of commercial use of public land to some of the largest and most capital secure companies on planet Earth. How should the public feel? Does this generate more trust, or do we think this would likely affirm the idea of disparate treatment? When we live in an area that historically struggles with drought, periodic rolling blackouts, and controlling for the pollution of our waterways from existing industry, the public will see that item 24 will only set a goal of minimizing the burden on public utilities, and makes no attempt to assuage fears of continued pollution like what we've seen in communities like bastrop. Austin land is already in high demand and premium real estate, so any use for things like data centers must come with a requirement, not goal, of self-sufficiency. Further, the city must must anticipate the pollutive tendencies of these industries and proactively work to create a better regulatory framework to safeguard our community's natural resources. I understand [10:42:19 AM] we believe that taking a radical step to attract things like data centers and heavy industry will pay off economically in the long term. The current proposal in item 24 will likely continue to drive public distrust and discontent with our city's fiscal responsibility. It will result in continued failed bond elections, intense public intense budget scrutiny, and increased rate of elected turnover all hurting our city and the people who live here. It is not a responsible policy proposal. Thank you for your time. >> Speaking on item 24, Monica Guzman. >> Good morning. Excuse me. I'm Monica Guzman, policy director at dawa. Austin Austin, speaking in opposition to item 24. First, congratulations to council member Fuentes on her baby. It's unfortunate she won't be on the dais when the dog's head development project currently in the pipeline, is put on council's may 21st agenda. You're proposing a comprehensive economic development policy package with flexible development regulation [10:43:21 AM] informed by developer complaints about required processes, thereby loosening processes for developers to attract business with zero zero community input, it is clear you are setting the stage for development near the airport and Tesla gigafactory in the area, located on the Colorado river and in a floodplain, making it easier for endeavor, which also owns land on both sides of the Colorado to develop a new domain. Thank you. >> Speaking on item 24 remotely, Brian Weldon. >> Good morning, mayor and council members. My name is Brian Weldon. I'm a resident of d3. First, I'd like to thank you all for removing the language in item 24 that specifically endorses data centers, militarization, defense contractors. But I [10:44:21 AM] would urge you all also to include such language to exclude these types of companies from the development plan and develop a strong process of community engagement to develop these. In the process of like figuring out this development plan, at the end of the day, you know, you all have a choice to make about what our city is going to be, what our identity is. And I don't think that we want the identity of the city of Austin to be one of defense contractors and just invite the worst people in the world to. To our city. Thank you. >> Speaking remotely on item 24, Forrest Aderholt. >> Hello. Good morning. Yeah. My name is Forrest Aderholt. I live in district eight. I was calling to voice my concerns on item 24. I recognize that ai [10:45:25 AM] and defense have been removed from the target sectors. But I think just to reiterate what's been said, I would like to urge you all to put in specific language that prohibits ai and surveillance and defense from benefiting from this proposal. I am very concerned about the environmental issues that these ai data centers bring. Just this year, the American lung association cited data centers as a leading cause of air pollution. They also gave the city of Austin an air quality rating. So I just don't think we can afford any more air pollution than we need. It's no secret that they use tons of water. While not, you know, a data center, we can look down the road at Tesla's gigafactory, which is the third largest [10:46:26 AM] water user annually at 556 million gallons, which is a big increase from 2023. Worries me that in the future, that water usage will continue to grow, and there's just no way to really separate ai from defensive teams. Even if the companies do, do not start out that way. So, and the city of Austin, we've rejected automated license plate readers and the defense contractors of south by southwest. That is just not the city we want to live in. So I'd like to see an economic proposal that puts local businesses above tax breaks, or especially. Thank you for your time. >> Speaking remotely on item 24, Becky Smith. >> Hi. Can you hear me? >> Yes we can. >> Okay, great. Thanks. Good [10:47:26 AM] morning, mayor and city council members. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. My name is Becky Smith. I'm our Texas director for clean water action. And so I'm representing our several thousand members and supporters in Austin. I registered to oppose item 24 for certain reasons. You've heard of here already, but specific to concerns about water resource use. For data centers. And at the end of the day, when we're giving away city tax dollars, other incentives and abatements, the jobs that are created, at the end of the day, when it all settles out, are often millions of dollars per job and avoided resources we could be using for city services. And as we know, the threats to our water resources as well as the energy generation and added pollution of our data centers, is not not the direction we need our city [10:48:28 AM] resources to go towards. And so I encourage you to slow and just use great caution on this piece, particularly of an economic development package. And again, appreciate the opportunity to to interact and hope that we'll have a really robust public engagement process around bringing new development and growing our development, especially in the data center department going forward. Thank you very much. >> Speaking remotely on item 24, Jay Popham. >> Hello, mayor and council. My name is Jay Popham, resident of district two and a member of the Austin democratic socialists of America. Speaking in my personal capacity and stepping away from work for a moment to speak on this important issue, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak on this, and congrats to council member Fuentes on her growing family. We were notified last month of the item before council today. We were immediately alarmed by the list of target sectors that included [10:49:29 AM] defense, tech, ai, data management and autonomous vehicles. We believe that these things are antithetical to the kind of peaceful, creative, caring human community that we want to build here in Austin, where public resources are being allocated. The public deserves oversight and input. And thankfully, through discussions with city council and staff, we were able to secure the removal of the list of target sectors. We consider this substantial progress, and we're grateful to council member qadri and city council staff for their willingness to listen and respond to community concerns. Ultimately, we're still here today because we want to show our continued support for keeping these targeted sectors out of Austin. We know that a strong economic development policy will be one driven by Austin's deepest values, and, we believe, a consultative, community driven stakeholder process is the best way to codify those values and establish the guardrails we need. We want Austin to be a city that respects human rights and international law as part of its equity considerations. We want Austin to be a city that does well without the war economy. We want Austin to be a [10:50:30 AM] city whose values are reflected in ethical contracting commitments. The proposal, as amended today, gets us halfway there. Work remains as the incentive plan is formalized over the next few months. You've seen the broad coalition activated by all the issues you've heard about. Today, we're ready to support council members who do the right thing throughout the process of developing the ordinance that will result in this resolution. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate your work. >> Speaking remotely on item 24, Leah Meltzer. >> Hi, good morning. My name is Leah Meltzer. I'm a resident of council district seven, and I'm also a member of Austin dsa. I wanted to, first of all, thank you all, especially council member zo qadri and council member Mike Siegel for listening to community feedback on this item and working to remove the language about certain industries like the ai, data centers and surveillance companies and defense contractors being removed from the list, and from forgetting incentives to come to Austin as part of this plan. As y'all [10:51:32 AM] have heard today, a lot of austinites are very concerned about these industries and them coming into Austin, as well as the environmental issues with the ai data centers and the excessive strain that they can place on local energy grids. So I really appreciate that list being removed from the original resolution. I also just wanted to say, I think a lot of austinites are paying really close attention to this, because we really do care a lot about this. We are going to continue to follow what the city does here very closely, because we don't want to see Austin create these incentives and these benefits for these industries. So I hope that y'all will continue to make sure that the decision making process around this is transparent and is an open conversation and seeking continual feedback from the public. Thank you so much. And I see the rest of my time. >> Thank you. We will now move to in-person speakers on item 24. Due to a large volume, I will be calling them in batches. So as soon as you hear your name, please step up and begin speaking. Carly Barnett, Melissa neslund, Al Braden, Marc Duvall. Please state your [10:52:35 AM] name and begin speaking. >> Please begin. Mr. Braden. >> Good morning. Getting used to the new procedures here. Good morning, mayor and council. I'm Al Braden from district seven. Looking at the glowing language of this economic plan. I wonder what kind of Austin we're trying to build as an el Paso one. It took me a minute to get here, but from 2004, the city of Austin has grown by 50%, the msa by over 200. In those 22 years of unprecedented development, the skyline is unrecognizable. The road maps flash bright red every morning and evening, and we are short on housing, water, electric power, parking and transit. We're short on resources for the people who live here. What is our societal benefit of aggressively bringing even more people to the area? Who benefits when you attract large corporations to crash land here and take up even more land while local families are gentrified out of town, who [10:53:36 AM] benefits as we build I-35? Mopac 183, 290 and 130. Monstrously large in every direction and then fill them with even more traffic. This is a hamster wheel of environmental destruction, of serious resource overreach. With the Colorado river as our only water supply, we live from flood to flood and the dice are rolling. Let us build programs to serve the people of Austin, not spending countless millions of our tax dollars on the wealthiest businesses on Earth, begging them to come here and outbid our residents home, drink our precious water, overload our highways and electric grid. We will still have growth. To be sure, Austin is just too cool. We can be friendly, improve our permit processes, and offer a great glass of local beer. But tone down this development. Push focus on sustainability over unlimited growth. Stop this plan that gives away the store and sells off the city's land. I'd put up a new sign at the edge of town. Welcome to Austin. [10:54:38 AM] Bring your guitar and your own water. Thank you. >> Please go ahead. >> Good morning, mayor Watson, mayor pro tem vela and council members. My name is Carl Barnett, and I am here speaking on behalf of the real estate council of Austin, representing nearly 2000 members of the commercial real estate industry. I'm here today to express our strong support for item 24, a comprehensive resolution to create a city of Austin economic development policy. Rica applauds the work being done by mayor Watson and council to put together a cohesive economic development policy for the city. This complements the excellent work being done by city staff, especially assistant city manager doctor Johnson and director Keith Mars, and places a renewed importance on economic development that will sustain Austin over the long term. This policy is essential for encouraging responsible growth that benefits all of. Austin rica specifically [10:55:38 AM] appreciates the recognition that speeding up the amount of time it takes to get a project on the ground will attract more businesses, big and small, to the city. This means the city will have the funds necessary to meet the needs of current and future residents, and ensures local austinites will have access to the jobs, housing and services required to stay and thrive in Austin. I encourage you all to support this resolution and truly submit that Austin is open for business. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Good morning. My name is Marc Duvall. I'm representing the greater Austin Asian chamber of commerce. To us, this is a this is a complicated but simple. Ultimately, we'll keep it short. We support item 24. This resolution enables the city of Austin to establish itself, reestablish itself as an effective economic leader for the city. The things we all value, the precious things we all value here in Austin can be funded by a thriving, growing, diversified economy. And we need a thoughtful, coordinated [10:56:40 AM] approach to help deliver that economy. This resolution provides a solid framework for setting the right priorities, establishing the right tools standards, engaging the right stakeholders, recruiting the right partners and delivering quality economic growth quality jobs well into the future. Ultimately, the framework will help grow and attract the right talent, the right capital, the right companies and the right jobs to Austin. So we fully support the vision, the resolution, and we stand prepared to work with the city and all the stakeholders in and around the city to realize the vision. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. >> Thank you. Yes, ma'am. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Melissa neslund, a district eight resident. And I'm here strongly supporting item 24 in the city's commitment to prioritizing economic development. I have a little script I wrote, but I'm going to go off of it for a second because I. I think it's important, at least for me, to note, I didn't read this resolution as a pro data center. [10:57:40 AM] Bring all the data centers to Austin. I also didn't read it as a. Regulations go out the door, no speeding up the process, being mindful, being intentional about the types of businesses, supporting small businesses, supporting entrepreneurs. This. This is a resolution and an opportunity to continue to work as a community, to put tools in place so the right businesses can come here. Let's also note that you all, as a council, have prioritized water reuse, very aggressive plans that that are going to help make our our city more resilient. So I just want to go on the record saying hearing some of these comments is I think it's a little off place in my opinion. So I'm going to go back on script. But our continued success depends on thoughtful, forward looking economic policies that strengthen our local economy while preserving the qualities that make our city innovative, vibrant and resilient. This agenda item represents an important opportunity to support sustainable growth, [10:58:41 AM] thoughtful growth, attract and retain high quality employers, encouraging entrepreneurship and creating pathways to good paying jobs for our residents. I would love my current Austin high student to be able to go to school and come back here and find a job and afford to live here, maybe in our district, probably not. But maybe economic development initiatives that invest in workforce development, infrastructure, small businesses, emerging industries help ensure Austin remains competitive while also expanding opportunity across our community. I appreciate the mayor and council's leadership in advancing policies that encourage collaboration. We're open. >> Thank you. >> Continuing on item 24, tam Hawkins. Todd hogan, David barber, zainab hadir, Mariana Krueger. Please state your name and begin speaking. [10:59:47 AM] >> Please. >> Hi, council. My name is Dana Taylor. We are grateful that our community advocacy was able to get this economic development resolution modified with the target sectors removed. The most problematic of these sectors was the defense industry listed as a growing industry cluster that we should be incentivizing as a city. We're also here against the original inclusion of ai, automated vehicles and data centers. If the resolution passes, I want to ensure that we do not sneak these back in at the ordinance level. We already saw your cards. We know when you say target industries and growing clusters, what you mean? The defense startup industry in Austin is locally making a lot of money from the war on Iran, while the rest of us suffer and worry for our families, they are making big money off the genocide that Israel inflicted on Palestinians. They're inventing surveillance tools here in Austin to track us for ice. They're creating drones powered by ai killing machines powered [11:00:47 AM] by ai, at least before war crimes resulted in guilt and PTSD for the killers. Now we can even outsource that. Austinites do not want our city to become a hub for war profiteering. We do not want an economy based on blood, and we will not allow our tax money to be used to invite more of these startups or Israeli defense companies into Austin. We also have questions on what was meant when the resolution called for working with international economies that specialize in these industry sectors. We know which countries specialize in defense, and we know which countries make an economy around genocide, war, and surveillance. We know where the cutting edge, battle tested technology is coming from Israel, and it is not welcome in Austin, we asked council to make the ordinance drafting process open and transparent, to involve all of our community stakeholders who care about these issues and put in strong guardrails to exclude the defense industry and ai from receiving any city incentives for defense ai automated vehicles. We need to support our artists, our [11:01:48 AM] creatives, our health care industry, education, and industries that make the world better. >> Thank you for being here. Please go ahead. >> Good morning, mayor, mayor Watson, mayor pro tem and council members. My name is Todd hogan, and I serve as the president and CEO of the Austin lgbt chamber of commerce. I'm also here today as a representative of the of the diversity ethnic chamber alliance, or dec, which brings together four chambers serving diverse businesses, communities across central Texas. I'm here in strong support of item 24, the mayor's resolution on economic development. This framework reflects an important shift, one that recognizes Austin must be intentional and proactive in shaping its economic future. Growth alone isn't the goal. Shared prosperity is, and that only happens when economic development is aligned with workforce opportunities, small business access, and measurable community impact. From our [11:02:49 AM] perspective, this resolution aligns closely with the work. Deca is advancing through phase two of the Reid plan, particularly around preparing small businesses for procurement opportunities, strengthening workforce pipelines, and ensuring that historically underrepresented businesses are positioned to compete and grow. We also see a critical role for chambers like ours as trusted connectors, helping the city engage directly with the small business community, especially as we navigate major infrastructure investments and rapid change across our region. Austin's competitive edge has always been its people, its culture, and its willingness to lead. This resolution builds on that foundation and provides a strong roadmap for inclusion and sustainable economic growth. We look forward to partnering with the city's leadership to help bring this vision to life, because when our small businesses succeed, Austin succeeds. This framework helps make that possible. Thank you for your time and your leadership. >> Thank you. >> Good morning, council staff [11:03:49 AM] members of the public. Davon barber, president and CEO of the downtown Austin alliance. I also am a national long standing development and community development practitioner. I am here to stand before you in firm support of this agenda item. I often say that downtown is not a gated community. It is a place for everyone to enjoy, including residents, visitors and workers. It is also a place that represents a cross-section of economic activity from the office and residential towers, small Austin businesses and the vibrant music scene on red river. Downtown Austin is an economic engine that powers the programs across the city. Downtown Austin is less than 1% of the city's land area, yet represents 11% of the city's taxable land value and 30% of taxable sales over the last decade. The city of Austin was the recipient of investment and development, which resulted in the downtown you see today. However, there is so much more to accomplish. The economic climate that we face today is far more different than a [11:04:50 AM] decade ago. We as a community cannot rest on our laurels. We must proactively nurture economic prosperity for our residents and businesses. I am excited to support this resolution outlining a strategy and subsequent policy goals that will allow Dar and our stakeholders to continue to attract and retain businesses, thereby reducing commercial vacancy and creating life sustaining jobs. It should also be noted that this resolution sets forth many goals identified through Dar's work with assistant city manager doctor Eric Johnson. To advance economic development, we must use every tool in our toolbox and have a unified goal of service, opening our doors and encouraging business development. Moreover, we can grow Austin's economy while simultaneously uplifting small businesses. As we have already been doing so, Dar will continue to stand alongside the city and strengthening the economy for all austinites. Thank you. >> Thank you. [11:05:51 AM] >> Continuing on item 24, max Hausman, Claire Mccaslin, Tina cannon, Chris flores. >> If your name has been called, please come forward and have a seat. Feel free to begin. Sure. >> Good morning, mayor and council and city staff. I'm Tina cannon with visit Austin and the executive director of the visit Austin foundation. I'm here today alongside an incredible group of partners from across Austin's hospitality and sports community. We are especially pleased to see sports infrastructure named as one of the pillars in this economic development initiative. We are united in our enthusiastic support for the direction the council is taking. We're here to say that we are ready to work. Tourism is a cornerstone of Austin's economy. According to Texas travel, the workforce commission and the U.S. Bureau of labor statistics, Austin [11:06:51 AM] welcomed over 30 million visitors last year alone, generating 11.1 billion in economic impact, supporting over 148,000 jobs in the hospitality industry right here in our community. Visitors generated 1.1 billion in local taxes, saving the average Austin household $1,500 and 36 $1,536 annually. And that's before you count what tourism does for our creative economy the musicians, the artists, the filmmakers and the makers whose livelihood depend on audiences and venues that thrive in this visitor economy. Sports infrastructure is an economic multiplier. Look no further than Cota. Formula one draws over 430,000 fans annually. Nearly 70% of those are from out of state, generating $1 billion in a single October weekend and over 10 billion across 13 years. But sports infrastructure isn't just about big marquee events. Investing in youth sports facilities creates sustained tournament weekends that fill hotels and restaurants, local bars, restaurants and venues. It [11:07:52 AM] opens workforce pathways for Austin's young people into coaching, hospitality, event management and sports business. Every field and court that we build is an economic development and community investment in one. In closing, the partners in this room the hoteliers, the restaurateurs, sports organizations, small businesses, and so many others that are impacted by the visitor economy are proof that Austin's hospitality economy is ready to grow with you. Visit Austin and visit Austin foundation are committed partners in this work. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Whoever wants to go next, please. >> My name is Claire Mccaslin. I've lived in Austin my whole life, and I've watched more and more of my community members require assistance to have their basic needs met. As the tech industry has moved into Austin, I want to speak out against my tax dollars going to support the industries mentioned and specifically wish legislation to prevent it going to ai and the defense industry. We've heard before that this [11:08:52 AM] type of development will boost the economy, but those of us here to experience it only continue to see our neighbors suffer more and more. I do not wish the dollars that I make as a caretaker to be used to harm people, jeopardizing our basic resources and funding the defense industry will do this. I don't want Austin to be open for business. >> Please go ahead. >> Good morning council. My name is Chris flores and I live in district ten. I'm testifying against number 24, agenda item as written. My ask is that you postpone voting on this item until it's been explained by staff through all the applicable commissions. I don't know what a proposed director for Austin economic development will actually do, and how we, the taxpayers, will hold that [11:09:53 AM] person to account. I fear without guardrails, the person in this new position could become billionaire Elon Musk's whisperer and arranged to take our scarce natural resources. I think this item needs to be studied. I admired the tourism woman who just spoke before me. I really question, as a longtime austinite, where we get these statistics from 30 million visitors, billions, 148,000 hospitality jobs, hospitality jobs don't pay enough for people to even live in Austin. So as as as we proceed in the future to grow our city and grow good jobs, we need to have some serious discussions between the public and city council. So I ask you to soberly ask this item to be moved forward for more discussion. Thank you. >> Thank you. [11:10:54 AM] >> On item 24, Stacy Schmidt, Monica Munoz, Andrea, Matthew Kennedy, Rachel Scott, please state your name and begin speaking. >> Good morning, mayor and council. I'm Stacy Schmidt and I'm here today speaking speaking for item 24. Over the last eight months, there's been a renewed sense of energy around economic development in this city. It's been noticeable, and we've appreciated working with the staff. Doctor Johnson, many of you on council on several projects that are important for Austin's future. It's also one of the many reasons why the economic development framework that you're bringing forward today is so important. Austin's continued growth and its ability to remain competitive depend on our capacity to build a skilled, reliable workforce [11:11:56 AM] that meets the demand of high growth industries. An economic development strategy strategy that is crafted with purpose and intent is the best way to create these jobs. I commend you, mayor, for your efforts and those of you who have supported this resolution for reestablishing the city as an active player in the process and building a vision for economic development that clearly states and supports Austin's values and needs, it creates a framework that allows strategic and intentional development for this city. As we know, the city faces a budget shortfall. The best way to address this shortfall is to bring an incremental revenue, bringing in incremental revenue by supporting both small and large companies as they want to relocate or expand here. Going through this process and having programs, whether that's tax incentives or development processes, will be beneficial to the city and bring in that [11:12:56 AM] incremental revenue. We all want to balance this commercial tax base so that we, the residents, will have some relief. We also want to have the things that we think are great in this city that we all love to, to enjoy. That is a great, safe, clean zilker park. Things to enjoy. But the city needs this incremental revenue. And how better to do this in economic development. >> Thank you. >> One is yes. Good morning. My name is Monica Munoz. Andrea and I serve as president and CEO of the greater Austin hispanic chamber of commerce. I'm here today in strong support of item 24, the establishment of a comprehensive economic development framework for the city of Austin. It positions the city not just to grow, but to grow intentionally with a clear strategy, defined priorities, and a commitment to shared prosperity. From the perspective of hispanic businesses, this framework is especially meaningful. There are over 700,000 Latino [11:13:57 AM] businesses in Texas, and we're one of the fastest growing segments of our economy. We're creating businesses, generating jobs, and contributing to the cultural and economic fabric of the state and the city. Many of these businesses still face barriers to accessing procurement opportunities, capital, and participating in high growth industries. That is why this resolution puts equity at the center, not at the sidelines, but as a core measure of success. We strongly support the focus of supplier diversity and procurement pathways because that's where scale happens. That's where small businesses become medium businesses and where wealth is created within communities. We also appreciate the emphasis on reducing administrative burdens. Too many small businesses are locked out of opportunity, not because of the lack of capacity, but because systems are sometimes too complex to navigate. If we want to include inclusive growth, we have to design systems that businesses can actually access. In [11:14:58 AM] addition, workforce development is another critical piece. The workforce. The hispanic workforce is a significant portion of Austin 30%. Investing in career pathways, apprenticeships and mobility is not just good policy, it's essential to our long term success. We're also encouraged by the city's focus on high growth sectors like clean energy and advanced manufacturing. But we must be intentional. Entrepreneurs cannot be an afterthought in these industries. We must be part of building them. >> Thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Okay. >> Good morning, mayor and and council members. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Rachel Scott. I'm a retired family practice doctor, former member of the environmental commission for Austin, longtime Austin resident in district two. And congratulations to Vanessa [11:15:59 AM] Fuentes, my council member on on the birth of her baby. Sorry she can't be here today, but I understand that it seems like item 24 is kind of a broad statement, and I and I would recommend that it be tabled for the moment, because I am strongly opposed to the a part of it that has to do with data centers. Basically, I don't see how you can build a data center. As I understand it, without creating a tremendous. Impact on the on the health of a city residents without creating a tremendous environmental impact. And, and I do think that one of the wonderful things that has made Austin. What it is, is the [11:17:00 AM] water that we have, particularly Barton springs, the Colorado river, without this water, really, where are we? We become a desert. And we know we've been struggling with drought for years now. We've we've been fortunate this spring. But the the long term trend with climate change does not seem to be in that direction. Unfortunately. Also, data centers do not provide long term employment at any appreciable amount. So it doesn't really bring that to our to our economy. Thank you very much. >> My name is Matthew Kennedy and is a union member with cwa and a resident of district nine. I am urging you to explicitly prohibit defense and artificial intelligence is. Target sectors [11:18:01 AM] for the city to incentivize with this economic development plan. While I welcome the removal of the defense sector from the revised revenue resolution, the people of Austin deserve. Stronger. Language will not be used as a breeding ground for the most destructive and disruptive industries of the global economy. Already, military tech firms and other war profiteers are taking over the city of Austin. Polluting ai data centers are threatening greater Austin and central Texas with their massive appetite for land, water, fossil energy and other resources. Residents have demonstrated time and time again that we don't want these unjust and unsustainable developments through our ongoing resistance to the proposed data centers, to the genocidal technologies incubating a capital factory into the instruments of mass surveillance, like automated license plate readers instead of fact tracking so-called high value economic development. No matter the ethical, social, or environmental costs, you should [11:19:01 AM] be prioritizing improving the quality of jobs, local and cooperative business development, renewable energy, arts and culture, and regenerative agriculture. These kinds of developments will bring the most tangible and lasting benefits to the people who live and work here, as well as our local environment and global climate. Do your part as our elected officials, to make the city more of an affordable, livable home for its people, not a home to corporations whose business model is war, surveillance and the rogue, unregulated proliferation of ai. Lastly, please don't incentivize autonomous vehicle research. We all resent the robot cars and want them off our streets. >> Wu. Speaking on item 24, Bobby Levinsky, Victoria kidder. Brianna Callery, Marianne Sanchez. >> If your name has been called, please come forward. >> Susana Almanza. [11:20:08 AM] >> I think I heard my name but wasn't sure you did. Bobby Levinsky, safer springs alliance I'm here to speak about item 24. I did read the revised resolution, and I do appreciate that you've removed the language that was calling data centers in the ai industry and explosive growth sector, which has influenced a bunch of. Venture capitalists to invest in that industry, and that it's a targeted industry that Austin should be seeking, actively seeking. That's in. It's completely contradictory to any national discussion on this issue, and I'm not sure who drafted that language, but I don't like the revised resolution because it doesn't make it clear that Austin does not want that policy. You have a unanimous recommendation from the environmental commission asking you to actually call upon a moratorium for data center development because of its externalities on our air [11:21:09 AM] quality, on our water quantity. And it's a it's a major issue that that I don't think you can open up a newspaper and ignore. You have Bernie Sanders, AOC calling on a national moratorium. You even have the Texas Republican party passing a resolution saying that it's a concern for our our water and our air. It is a moment that we need you to be part of, and we need you to follow up this action with a resolution that incorporates the environmental commission's recommendations, calling on a ban for data centers. Until we have our water planning in place to actually address what's coming to us. I know a lot of you care about air quality. We just passed a you just passed a resolution fighting a highway, and that's really great. I really appreciate that. But the Houston area resource center has described what's coming with data centers as increasing particulate matter beyond what even the text all of the Texas highways combined. That is what is what's headed in our direction. And it's because of [11:22:10 AM] their diesel generators that they use for backup and their power plants. Thank you. >> Please begin. >> Good morning, mayor Watson and esteemed Austin city council members. My name is Vicky kidder, and I serve as the government relations and outreach manager for the home builders association of greater Austin. I'm testifying today in favor of item 24, a resolution directing the establishment of an economic development framework and the creation of a comprehensive economic development policy for the city of Austin. Our city needs to think creatively to increase the revenue streams needed to support crucial city services, such as housing programs and workforce development initiatives. That is why the hba supports mayor Watson's proposal, which would provide Austin with a competitive advantage and attracting economic development opportunities and increasing city revenue without raising [11:23:11 AM] taxes, rates or fees. We strongly support the recommendations outlined in the proposal that would streamline the permitting and development process for prospective projects, including providing land use flexibility, including by Wright designations, density incentives and agreements, and maintaining an inventory of and using city owned land as a strategic economic development, asset. Economic development and housing go hand in hand. You cannot support one without supporting the other. As council considers this resolution, we urge you to continue to build on the tremendous work done by the development services department and assistant city manager Johnson that will support the city's economic growth. The hba stands ready to partner with the city as these efforts move forward, and we thank you for your leadership. >> Thank you, miss Almanza. >> Good afternoon, mayor, city council members and city [11:24:12 AM] manager Broadnax. I'm Suzanne Almanza with poder. This resolution and backwards. We all know that firms and corporations come to Austin because of the quality of labor as as stated in your resolution, Austin has parks, libraries, housing program, health care, climate investments, etc. We have universities UT htac, C and saint Edward's. These are the incentives. Austin doesn't need to give incentives to attract firms or corporations. We don't need to throw away thousands or millions of dollars of the city's revenues when the city is cost cutting social services programs. This resolution shouldn't be suggesting using public lands for firms and corporations. Public land should be used for building low to moderate income housing. You, your. Your explicit standards should be. Will this firm or corporation cause any harm to the environment and to the people? [11:25:13 AM] If so, it goes away. Let me remind you about sematech. In the early 1990s, with a national consortium of high tech facilities, they were all building the chips using millions of gallons of water a day and energy to build the smart chip, which I have to remind you, the smart bomb, which is caused devastation in our environment and to the people. So we have to make sure that we don't bring any data centers, any industry that's going to harm the environment and the people. Thank you. >> Continuing on item 24, Adrian Macias, Valerie Menard, Maddie Gutierrez. Sophia murdo. >> We can't hear you when you call names while people are clapping. >> No one's clapping right now. Call those names. >> Recall them, please. >> Adrian Macias, Valerie Menard, Maddie. Gutierrez. Sofia. Murdo. Daniela silva. [11:26:20 AM] Samia. Rizvi. >> Please begin. Thank you. >> Howdy, y'all. And congrats to mayor pro tem for the new baby. I'm here not just as a district six resident, but also as the president of hands off central Texas. We hope that the updated resolution language communicates an intention from council to see incentives go to small businesses who provide stronger local economies and more job security. For austinites, getting a large corporation to move in means the city gets to say it's bringing jobs, and then a few years later, layoffs from such a company will impact hundreds of austinites all at once. Small businesses prevent this problem while keeping the capital created by austinites in Austin. One piece of the update does seem to have weakened, describing community benefits categories as not all required makes this more like a menu rather than expectations. So we're asking for community benefits to be mandatory, measurable, and enforceable. I'll second the request that city commissions have a chance to weigh in on this before your [11:27:21 AM] vote. So we're asking you all not to vote on this today and to push it so we can have more conversations. We're concerned about the lack of directives for guardrails for our new economic incentives package, and we're asking for specific bans or at least very enforceable guardrails. The most toxic industries and companies like data centers, ai surveillance companies, autonomous vehicle companies, which the city is saying you can't regulate in the current political environment. Companies linked to defense tech, of course. And additionally, companies that have paid zero in federal income tax in the last 7 to 10 years, which indicates that such a company is sidestepping their responsibility and will not operate in good faith with the city. We're also looking for full disclosure of public subsidies and infrastructure commitments and council approval for major public support packages. Thank you. >> Please begin. Go ahead. Yes. >> Oh, okay. >> Good morning, mayor and council. My name is samiha Rizvi and I am here today representing the council on american-islamic relations. Texas, one of the largest Muslim civil rights organizations in the nation. I [11:28:22 AM] am testifying on item 24 regarding the economic development resolution. First, I want to welcome city council's removal of mass surveillance and militarized technologies from the target industries list. This aligns with your recent passage of the trust act, which sets surveillance limits. Whether you're a tech worker in north Austin or a tradesperson tradesperson in south Austin, none of us want our tax dollars used to subsidize invasive monitoring tools that can be turned against our own families and peaceful assemblies. The impact of such surveillance is clear. Care's 2026 civil rights report documented a record breaking 8683 civil rights complaints nationwide in 2025, the highest single year total since tracking began in 1996. This data highlights that government coordinated surveillance is used intentionally to chill constitutional rights, specifically affecting the safety and dignity of brown, black, and Muslim community members. As we enter this 90 day window before the ordinance is introduced and voted on, we must ensure this process is transparent. Economic development should mean investing in industries that [11:29:23 AM] create stable, dignified jobs for the working class, not handing out blank checks to corporations that profit from genocide and surveillance. We need explicit guardrails, for example, a no harm clause to ensure that city resources build up our local infrastructure and small businesses, rather than profiling our neighbors or monitoring our streets for no other reason than intimidating and threatening the civil liberties of austinites, every resident deserves to live with dignity, privacy, and safety. When we say people over profits, we aren't just using a slogan. We are calling for a fundamental shift in our legal standards. A people first economy means a system where our laws protect our families and our futures from exploitation. We are ready to do the work with you all to ensure these values are codified into law. Thank you. >> Thank you, miss silva. >> Good morning, mayor and council. My name is Daniela silva and I'm a resident of district three. I'd like to start by thanking you for removing ai infrastructure and defense companies as target sectors, and encourage you to go further by specifically prohibiting these industries. Item 24 is an opportunity to [11:30:24 AM] incentivize the world we want to see for ourselves and for future generations when using our city resources to boost and support economic development, we should be looking at more than just the jobs. But what kind of employer are they? Do they have a history of stealing wages? Is their product or service something that materially makes our lives better? Or do they make their money off of harming or exploiting people? Does the business work to protect or even reinvest in the environment, or are they actively destroying it? How strong are the worker protections, and have they ever been known to engage in union busting? Is the business a cooperative or B corp? Because we should definitely be incentivizing more of these. How much more does the CEO earn than the lowest paid employee, and are they contributing to the growing wealth disparities in our city? These are the types of questions I want our city leadership to be asking as part of these economic incentives. If we're doling out carrots, let them be given to the businesses that care about long term economic sustainability, environmental protections, and that workers are able to not only survive but thrive. On the contrary, this policy must avoid [11:31:25 AM] investing in corporations that are actively harming our communities, such as ai infrastructure, including data centers and businesses in the military, defense and weapons industry. If you're not going to stop companies that make their money off of surveilling our every move, poisoning our waterways and bombing children from finding a home in Austin, the least you can do is not cut them a check for it. So many smaller, incredibly innovative companies don't make it because the market is rigged against them and they get eaten up by these larger corporations. This is your chance to rig the market in the other direction, to give a little bit of help to those businesses that prioritize their people over their profit. Here's to fewer Teslas and Facebook's and more ace hardware's doctor, Bronner's and Wetzel's. Thank you. >> Continuing on item 24, Jonathan seibles, Taylor Smith, David Jabbour, Dominic Padilla, please state your name and [11:32:25 AM] begin speaking. >> Let's start here. >> Good morning everyone. My name is Tim Hawkins. I am the CEO of the greater Austin black chamber of commerce. I am here firmly in support of item number 24. The idea of a zero sum game versus small versus large is just not a feasible winning proposition for any city. This plan will help ensure that small businesses are vital and our economy is growing. This newly proposed economic plan represents an important investment in the future of our city. At its core, it recognizes something simple but powerful. Small businesses are the backbone of Austin's economy. They create jobs, bring character to our neighborhoods, and help keep our local economy strong and resilient. The Austin round [11:33:26 AM] Rock metro represents one of the fastest growing segments of black business. I stand here firmly in support of this plan as it will help assist those businesses. It gives them the tools they need to grow and succeed. From improved access to funding and workforce development programs, to support for innovation in neighborhood revitalization, by reducing barriers for small businesses and encouraging local investment, Austin can create a more opportunity for families across the city. Just as importantly, this plan prepares Austin for long term economic growth while preserving the creativity and community spirit that makes our city unique. When small businesses thrive, entire communities benefit, and this plan makes certain that all communities will benefit. Austin has always been a city built on innovation, determination, and local pride. This economic plan continues that tradition and helps ensure that opportunity remains within reach for everyone, and that's [11:34:27 AM] willing to work hard and contribute to our city's future. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yes, sir. >> Good morning. My name is Jon siebels. I'm an Austin resident, district ten. Today I'm here to urge you to vote no on item 24, and especially without explicit guardrails that prevent defense, ai data centers and surveillance from being included in any financial incentives or investments provided by the city. Today, I want to highlight the use of of dual use technology companies. These are companies who may provide multiple products or services. On one hand, this might seem benign or even Progressive, when in reality, there's another side of the business engaged in defense or surveillance, essentially hiding their true nature in the shadows. These companies are already being invested in by capital factory and Texas venture venture partners, which austinites are organizing against. We cannot be duped by these companies. I don't believe we need this resolution at all. I believe the money and effort should go into education and social programs, instead of funding massive corporations [11:35:28 AM] who exploit our city and redirect funds out of the city. But if a resolution is to pass, I believe it must explicitly state no companies involved in defense surveillance or ai in any way, shape or form should be eligible. >> Thank you, thank you. Yes, sir. Good. Good morning, mayor and council members. I'm David Jabbour, I'm president and owner of twin liquors and chair elect of the Austin chamber of commerce. Let's go back in time. My family made their way to Austin in the late 1800s. Population of Austin was 15,000 people. One five congress avenue wasn't even paved with concrete pavers. Yet what brought people to Austin, Texas, in the late 1800s? Opportunity. Business opportunity, opportunity put food on the table. It's no different today. [11:36:29 AM] What we are looking for is creating opportunities. I have stores in every member district. Our headquarters is in Austin, Texas. Our employees live in every member district. We create jobs in every member district in Austin, Texas. Austin is a magical place for us to enjoy all of the things that we're talking about this morning. We love our beautiful city. We care about our beautiful city. You can do that and be in business and contribute to the city. We feel strongly that we need to support this. We need to be open for business today. Just as we were open for business, over 125,125 years ago. Thank you. >> Thank you. No. >> Good morning. >> We're not going to do that. That is not the way we're going to proceed on this. There may [11:37:29 AM] be disagreement, there may be misunderstandings, but we're not going to call out. We're not going to ridicule. We're not going to debate that way. Please begin. >> Good morning, mayor and council. My name is Taylor Smith. I'm a resident of district two. I represent the Austin board of realtors. And on behalf of our more than 16,000 central Texas members, I ask you to support item 24, the economic development resolution. While economic development falls outside of our traditional scope of issues that Abbott advocates on, the importance of this item compels us to support the economic development resolution. Because a strong and diverse Austin economy is vital to the long term health of central Texas housing market. A healthy economy supports jobs and wages. It boosts household incomes and increases purchasing power, and helps generate the revenue needed to fund the city services Austin austinites rely on. At its core, this goal. The goal of this resolution is straightforward to create a more strategic and deliberate [11:38:30 AM] economic development framework that helps grow Austin economy base and generate the revenue necessary to fund core city services and programs like parks, libraries, cultural arts, public safety, and housing programs without placing additional pressures on taxpayers. Austin is facing real financial challenges, and as affordability continues to grow, we must be thoughtful on how we fund the services our community values, expanding the economic base and improving Austin's competitiveness and help can help address those financial realities without relying solely on bonds and increased property taxes that further burden homeowners and renters. I want to commend mayor Watson and the co-sponsors of this resolution for their leadership on this issue, and for being willing to restart what has historically been a difficult and contentious community conversation. These conversations are important. If Austin wants to be competitively, economically competitive and address our affordability challenges, we appreciate council's [11:39:30 AM] willingness to think proactively about Austin's long term financial and economic future, and we look forward to continuing to work with Austin city council. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Continuing on item 24, Lauren Wyatt, Joe Balash, bill Oliver, Christian. Civil. Carlos pinon. >> Please come down if your name has been called. >> Brie Ann Gates, please state your name and begin speaking. >> Why don't you begin? >> Hello, my name is Christian Salvador. I live in district one. I'm with the party of socialism and liberation. I was originally here to be against item 24 and still am. The language that has been removed regarding ai systems, defense technology and data centers, I think is a step in the right direction. However, I think we can do more and creating clear and specific language that will not allow these types of [11:40:31 AM] companies and predatory companies in Austin and definitely not incentivize them. There's a lot of information that a lot of people here have already said and probably will continue to say, but I want to talk about the voice of austinites and what we have already said. We have witnessed ice kidnap our neighbors, our friends, our loved ones. We have gone in voice our opposition to ISIS tyranny, including talk in talking to the police, chief, austinites shared their issues with the cooperation with ice. So why would we continue to invite companies that provide surveillance tech for ice that help kidnap our community members, such as. And we've also even fought against like flock cameras, for instance, as well. We see issues too, of palestine and the genocide that is currently going on and the war in Iran as not local issues. [11:41:33 AM] But if we can continue to invite warmongers to our city and benefit them, it definitely becomes a local issue, especially as we have capital factory, who continues to do that right now. So what I'm saying is we need specific language that does not allow these types of companies in Austin, because austinites do not want war mongers. They do not want surveillance, and they do not want continuous harm to our communities. Cancel cat factory and free palestine. >> Let's go ahead. >> Good morning, mayor council members. My name is Carlos pinion. I'm the resilience program coordinator at poder based in district three. It's heartening to see council remove ai data centers and defense technology from the list of target industries in this resolution. But like many others here today, I want to state we need to. We need explicit, ironclad language in the ordinance to ensure incentives are offered to any company profiting from war [11:42:33 AM] surveillance technologies, unethical investments, and a degradation of environment. You don't have to go very far to know that data centers have wreaked havoc on communities right outside of our city and worldwide, depleting and poisoning drinking water, exploding energy costs, offering false promises of jobs, and impacting human health. We're not at all in a position to welcome data centers. And, you know, well, if that if they were to come, the first place they'd look to for land and resources is the eastern crescent, where for decades our neighbors have fought to keep their homes, have fought to live in a cleaner and healthier environment. In 1991, poder participated in writing the principles of environmental justice, one of which is the opposition to military occupation and repression and exploitation of lands, people and cultures, and other life forms. This means we also don't want an ordinance paving the way for companies with blood on their hands to be prioritized and receive city benefits. We're not at all interested in our city contributing to wars abroad, and we're certainly not interested in our city contributing to the policing of our communities. Austinites have already rejected surveillance technologies like automated license plate readers, and they've. They've rejected war profiteers at south by southwest organizations working [11:43:35 AM] on the lines of multiple struggles labor, immigration, housing for the liberation of palestine, and all under siege by our government for environmental justice. Our plan to make clear that we want our money to go not towards data centers and warmongers, but for deeply affordable housing, for education, for social services that keep your constituents alive. It doesn't suffice to refer vaguely to community values in the plan without formalizing a channel in which the community can shape these policies. We want a transparent, two way process for creating the community values that guide these economic development policies, and we want language that reflects our interests, not those of companies who have no business in Austin. Thank you. >> Good morning, mister mayor. Members of council, thank you for the opportunity to speak on item 24 today. My name is Joe bullock and I'm the chairperson of the Austin hotel lodging association and also the general manager of the Hilton Austin 450 of 149,000 of [11:44:39 AM] hospitality workers here in Austin, work in my hotel and proudly reside in all of the council districts speaking in favor of of item 24 and specifically for its capacity to grow and develop the venues, opportunities and relationships in the sports market for tourism for this city, that market is underdeveloped for Austin and represents a tremendous opportunity for each and every one of our member hotels in and of the fact that it's a tremendous complement to everything else the city is doing now to develop tourism and to develop hospitality here in Austin. By that, I mean it absolutely pairs a with the peak periods that the corporate market travels, the sports market travels in its opposite. So in the summer months, in our distress periods is when we see the most traffic from our [11:45:41 AM] sports markets. And for our hotel, that specifically can mean a couple thousand room nights a year right now. But it's the difference in one of my team members being able to work a three day week or a full five day week. So finding the ability to develop that market through this partnership and this initiative is key to our growth and development and goes so well with the development of the convention center. Thank you so much. >> Continue on item 24. Justin Schwartz, Nathan Copp, rob Gillette, Sarah Foust. Please state your name and begin speaking. >> Thank you. Council. My name is Justin swoosh. I'm a lifelong Texan and an austinite. I'm here to speak on agenda item 24, specifically in regards to the removed [11:46:41 AM] incentives for ai companies, data centers, and war profiteers. I speak as a tech worker. We understand that navigating these emerging technologies is difficult and frustrating from a legislative perspective, but we want to reassure you that we will be here and to give you our feedback and input when these topics are on the agenda. But to go off script, what I want to emphasize is that we are not anti-small business. We are pro small business. But palantir is not a small business. Capital factory is not a small business. Google is not a small business. Open ai is not a small business. We want to support small business, not big business. There is a profound ethical concern regarding the ultimate goal of many of these ai companies, which is increasingly viewed as the automation of and replacement of large amounts of human labor, subsidizing a small number of jobs to facilitate the displacement of thousands more is seen by many, including myself, as completely unconscionable. The tangible [11:47:43 AM] impact on residents living in proximity to these facilities is a major point of contention. Go just up the road. Granbury, Texas the state offered huge tax incentives and other economic incentives to get a giant cryptocurrency farm built in their small town. It was seen as a windfall. It's now a nightmare. The health effects on this, on that community are absolutely unbelievable. The noise is ridiculous. Their homes are worthless, all as a result of the economic incentives we were originally going to offer these companies. And these initiatives for these huge companies are a boondoggle. Before you champion data centers all over Austin, I challenge you. Go to granbury, speak to the people who live there and see if you can withstand the noise for more than two hours before wanting to claw your eyes out. Thank you. >> If you'll pull that microphone over to you and please go ahead. >> Sarah Foust. >> Thank you. I think I have a [11:48:43 AM] time donation, yes. >> Is David Weinberg here? Perfect. You will have four minutes. >> Sarah baker, house, district five. My comments today are dedicated to bill Moriarty. Bill is an accomplished engineer that worked on critical water and wastewater issues in central Texas for for decades. He dedicated thousands of volunteer hours to the city of Austin, serving simultaneously on the water and wastewater commission and the water forward task force. I'm speaking in opposition to item 24 today because it does not promote water efficiency and does not protect our potable water supply. Our current water supply structure will not support the types of industries this resolution is seeking to attract to Austin. These are heavy water using industries. We're not positioned to provide fresh water to these high volume users at this time, without putting the burden of the high cost of investing in new water supply and conservation restrictions onto our current residential customers. As a council focused on affordability, please understand that developing the [11:49:45 AM] cost of developing new supply that will be needed under this proposal will fall to our existing ratepayers unless you change the status quo. As you know, for Austin's history, we enjoyed affordable, accessible, fresh water from the Colorado river. But that is not our future. Rising temperatures and lower rainfall are our future. Longer droughts and greater restrictions on using river water, more conservation, more recycled water use, and expensive new methods of treating and storing water are the future. Austin water is working hard to diversify our water sources, but it's expensive work that faces many challenges that are not in our control. Semiconductors are heavy water use industries. The new Samsung plant under construction in Taylor, is expected to use 15 million gallons of water a day. That's about 10% of what our whole city uses right now. So we need to look at taking this opportunity to become the most water efficient city in the country. We can use this tool to drive the tech sector to develop. Right here in Austin, [11:50:46 AM] the most advanced water purification methods, net zero water use in manufacturing, and being a model of economic development that does not quietly externalize the costs of natural resource depletion on our residents. The water forward task force, which I'm a member of, I'm speaking individually, but I'm a member, and we have a working group that will be bringing forward a recommendation in June on exactly these issues. So I hope you'll wait and consider that recommendation. I made a list off the top of my head of some specific changes that could be made to this resolution promoting our centralized reclaimed water system as part of Austin's competitive ecosystem, promoting our innovative requirements for on site reuse in the land and site analysis include proximity to the reclaimed water system. That's an important factor of the real estate inventory. Include Austin water in any recruitment conversations require use of recycled water, on site reuse or net zero water to demonstrate community benefit. Parallel efforts that need to be undertaken include [11:51:46 AM] reviewing the service extension request framework to allow council review of all large volume users. Expand our current requirements for using reclaimed water. Currently, you only have to be 250 or 500ft away to be required to hook up to that system. For large volume users, we need to expand our on site reuse requirements and repeal the fee in lieu provisions for using reclaimed and on site reuse. They're not effective if you don't plumb a building for reuse and using recycled water, you're never going to hook up. It doesn't make any sense to allow fee in lieu. We also need to expand our drought contingency plans, commercial restrictions. We need to strongly incentivize commercial users to invest in recycled or reclaimed water. Right now, the burden of drought restrictions falls on residents, residential and irrigation users, and that's not fair to the future of the city. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Please go ahead. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. >> City council leaders. Mr. [11:52:46 AM] City manager. My name is rob Gillette. >> I'm the general manager of the renaissance hotel in the arboretum district. I'm here to extend my strong support for mayor Watson's economic development initiative, particularly its focus on tourism and sports infrastructure as key economic multipliers. Now, my hotel is not located downtown, but we see firsthand how sports drive visitation across all areas of Austin. My hotel has been in Austin this September, for years, from circuit of the Americas events and UT athletics to youth and amateur sports tournaments. These activities generate meaningful demand for hotels, restaurants and local businesses citywide. In our area of north Austin, the Q2 stadium in Austin fc have been especially transformative for north Austin, and it really illustrates the broad economic impact of a quality sports venue. In 2025, [11:53:47 AM] Q2 stadium hosted 180 combined public and private events, with a total attendance of 870,000. What I'm here today to just ask for is it's time to highlight the need to support sports events and in particular, youth sports in our Austin community through the focus and investments for their playing fields, multi- use or multi-purpose venues. This is a highly competitive statewide segment. It fuels a lot of visitors to those cities and Austin. It's a great opportunity for us. And another element of this desire would be it continues to promote promote Austin as a family friendly destination. So we respectfully encourage your continued support of this initiative initiative and recognize that Austin sports ecosystem is a coordinated, cross-sector engine that strengthens our local economy well beyond individual events. >> Thank you sir, please. [11:54:49 AM] >> Mayor Watson, council members, thank you for your time today. My name is Nathan cop and I represent visit Austin and the Austin sports commission. I'm here to express support for the proposed economic development initiative focused on youth sports infrastructure. Sports tourism is no longer a niche segment. It is a major driver of economic activity nationwide. According to the sports events and tourism association, the industry generates 274 billion in annual economic impact, supports 1.6 million jobs and produces 20 billion in state and local tax revenues each year. Importantly, more of half of this impact comes from youth and amateur sports. 65% of the destinations reported that sports was their top room night generator in their destinations. This is where Austin has an opportunity. Youth sports tournaments are uniquely valuable because they generate consistent, repeatable demand. Unlike one time mega events, these tournaments bring families, teams and spectators who stay multiple nights, dine locally, shop at local establishments and explore the [11:55:49 AM] city. A single tournament can produce thousands of hotel room nights and meaningful spillover for local businesses, particularly in hospitality, retail and transportation. By investing in modern tournament ready facilities, Austin can become significantly more competitive and attracting regional and national events. This initiative is not just about building fields and courts, it's about creating a long term, sustainable economic engine that supports small businesses. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> On item 24, Hans maverick, Pedro Hernandez, junior rich Heyman, live. Welsh. Bill bunch, please state your name and begin speaking. >> If your name has been called, please come forward. Good morning, mayor Watson. Mayor pro. >> Tem vela council members, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is [11:56:50 AM] Hans maverick and I'm a resident of council district ten. I'm also a policy and research organizer for grassroots leadership here in Austin. I'd like to share my thoughts about item 24. As I was preparing to testify today, I noticed that the exhibit a that accompanies this resolution has undergone substantial revision. When I looked at the original version, I was deeply disturbed to see that artificial intelligence and data centers were listed among the sectors this resolution would prioritize. Now that all references to specific industries, including ai and data centers, have been struck. Thank you. Grassroots leadership has consistently spoken out against all forms of mass surveillance, and because data centers and ai help facilitate that, we are, to say the least, skeptical about any proposals to expand those. We base our skepticism on the fact that those systems disproportionately target communities of color, people with criminal legal system involvement, and unhoused people and undocumented people. [11:57:50 AM] Even though we are pleased to see the revised language of the exhibit, we will still pay close attention to how the city actually implements this resolution. We don't want economic development to be a backdoor way to promote mass surveillance. Those companies have shown us time again how oblivious they are to the concerns of our most marginalized residents. Those of us of a certain age remember the song every breath you take by the ironically named 80s punk band the police. Like the narrator in that song, the mass surveillance companies are watching every move we make. But while I'm at it, here's a pop culture reference for the millennials in the audience. We are watching them watch us. We would like to see data centers specifically excluded from this resolution. Please council members continue to stand up for the community against the tech companies that want to stalk us for profit by implementing economic development programs that take the community's concerned into account. >> Thank you, thank you. Please [11:58:51 AM] go ahead. >> Good morning, council members. My name is live Welsh. I'm the head of development of lone star soccer club, a local nonprofit organization, and the third largest youth soccer club in the nation. Born and raised right here in Austin, Texas. I'm here to show lone stars full support of mayor Watson's economic development initiative and a greater and more aggressive push for developing sports infrastructure as a core pillar of Austin's economic development strategy. Every year, lone star hosts two major state of play tournaments Austin labor day cup and the bat city cup. Together, they generate 8000 hotel nights. When we bring in about 1000 teams from Houston, Dallas and neighboring states like Oklahoma for three straight years, those tournaments have stagnated in growth, not because the demand isn't there, the demand is growing. We have stagnated in growth and are turning away teams because we don't have enough field space for those kids to play. We have reached Austin's capacity and that is money that the city is [11:59:52 AM] leaving on the table. Austin is best city in the world and it's our home, but the lack of infrastructure is forcing us to move further and further away of where we are right now in city hall, to find field space so that more kids can learn, grow and develop into the future leaders through the game of soccer matches, training sessions, and tournaments that should be happening here are moving outside city limits. Youth sports is a growing $40 billion industry. The council has an incredible opportunity to better position the city of Austin to capitalize on the economic activity of families who travel, stay and spend because they have a young athlete invest in the fields and facilities in Austin. Better captures more of those families economic impact and can be be the best city in the nation to be a kid. Don't. And those families are going to go elsewhere. Lone star soccer club is in full support of the mayor of mayor Watson's economic development initiative to invest more aggressively in sports infrastructure for [12:00:52 PM] Austin's youth sports community and organizations like us, and for the betterment of Austin's economic future. >> Thank you very much. >> Good morning. My name is rich Heyman. I'm a resident of district nine, and I'm here with a reality check. This plan doubles down on the economic development agenda that we've had for at least 25 years, which has not led to the prosperity of all austinites. Instead, it has led to increased inequality, a shrinking middle class and a growing percentage of low income jobs. Data from the U.S. Bureau of labor statistics shows that the economic development model we have been pursuing, and has contributed to the growing gap between the rich and poor. The continued shrinking of the middle class in Austin. This dynamic has been a major driver of housing affordability and homelessness crises in the cities. In this city, 37% of all new jobs created in the past generation and low income occupations such as food service, which is the second fastest growing occupation category in Austin, pays less than 60% of median [12:01:55 PM] income. We have had more than two decades of enormous growth in our tax base, but we are facing a budget crisis. This kind of economic development has come at the expense of middle and working classes. We have seen the effective tax base eroded by the expansion of services associated with development. Development has not paid for itself and said we have had to pay for it. Instead of supercharging the same failed economic development script, we need to adopt new economic development priorities that focus on improving historically low paying jobs, growing the middle class and creating economic foundation that is less dependent on the whims of Wall Street and the profit incentives of global capital. Rather than directing more resources to recruiting high value development, we should be investing heavily in growing local employee owned businesses and other enterprises that help keep money local, instead of sending profits back to investors on Wall Street or overseas. Otherwise, we're doomed to another generation of increased inequality, displacement and homelessness, leading to more budget crises and cuts to basic [12:02:56 PM] services. For 20 plus years, we've been building a city for the wealthy. It's time we prioritize the rest of us. >> Members and members of the public we're at. We're just a little bit past noon after Mr. Bunch speaks on this item, what we're going to do is then go to our 12:00 time certain. And that's the public comment. And then we will. I'll describe it more in a minute, but I just want everybody to know that that's the time frame we're on. Mr. Bunch, you have the floor. >> Thank you. Mayor. Council members bill bunch, district five, save our springs alliance, urging you to throw this in the trash can and start over with a policy that is focused on and limited to local and locally owned small businesses, so that whatever taxpayer and ratepayer dollars that are put into this [12:03:58 PM] from us, your voters, your constituents, your taxpayers, your ratepayers, we get back and they benefit those of us who actually live here. This is a policy of corporate welfare for billionaires, including the richest man on the planet. You don't put it in here, but this is for Elon Musk's terra fab. For the other mega corporations, the data centers, the cryptocurrency miners, the other businesses that are in business to eliminate jobs, not create them to export their profits to private equity, to nonymous institutional investors that don't give a about Austin, Texas. They're here only to maximize revenue, and you're about to put our [12:04:59 PM] money in their pockets in the name of benefiting us. This is a classic case of orwellian newspeak. You're number one proposed finding exhibit a economic development is an expression of Austin's values, not a compromise of them. This is an expression of your economic development values. And that is the same old. The rich get richer and everybody else suffers. >> Thank you, Mr. Bunch. >> And you're like. And you're lying about. >> It expired. >> You. You are lying about it. >> Your time has expired. >> Thank you. Some integrity and honesty. >> Speaking of integrity, your time has expired. >> And some transparency. [12:06:00 PM] >> We will now go to our time certain which is public communication. Members. What I would suggest we do. We're at 1206. If this goes as it typically goes, we'll be done about 1236, at which point we will have, as I indicated, the music, we will recess at that point in time, and we'll reconvene at 1:00 would be my recommendation. I think the music, because it's a recorded music, will be quicker this time than what we typically are used to. So with that, if you would go to our public communication. >> Yes. Thank you, mayor. First Blake flores, Jacob Atmos, Eva Menken. Luke hawk. Please state your name and begin speaking. You will have three minutes. >> Please begin and welcome all of you. >> Honorable mayor and city council members. My name is Blake flores and I am in [12:07:02 PM] seventh grade. Have you ever been stuck behind a large bus as a driver? After it stops to pick up its passengers? It's frustrating. I know many people in Austin feel the same way. That's exactly why I fully believe Austin city council should expand dedicated bus lanes across the city. One of the biggest problems in Austin is traffic. It affects our time, our stress levels, and even our economy. It impacts how we get to work, school and spend time with our friends. But here's something important. Austin has around 2500 miles of streets, yet only around 0.3% of them are dedicated bus lanes. That means the vast majority of busses are still sharing space, with regular traffic. Expanding dedicated bus lanes would solve this. When busses have their own lanes, they move faster and more reliably. This encourages people to take public transportation, especially for commuting to work. More people on busses means fewer cars on the road, and that equals less traffic for everyone. I also [12:08:02 PM] spoke with members of my community over the course of an hour. I collected 30 votes in 27 of them. Agreed that expanding dedicated bus lanes would be beneficial. This shows strong local support for this idea. This matters because Austin is growing rapidly, and if we don't improve our transportation system now, traffic will only get worse and continue to impact daily life. So I urge you today invest to expand dedicated bus lanes. It's a simple, effective step towards reducing traffic, improving efficiency, and making Austin a better place to live. Thank you. >> Please begin. Whoever was the next one to call. Name. Name was called Jacob. >> Honorable mayor and city council members. My name is Jacob and I am in sixth grade. Imagine being a lower income resident in Austin with the idea of owning a home slipping out of reach. This is becoming a reality for many people as housing prices in Austin have risen significantly over recent years, according to Austin [12:09:03 PM] board of realtors, housing prices in Austin are 40% more than the national average. Many families are being pushed further away from the city, leading to longer commutes and fewer opportunities. To address this affordability crisis, Austin city council should reduce minimum land plot sizes to make homes easier to build, and allow homeownership to be more accessible to more people. Currently, many areas require homes to be built on relatively large plots of land. This limits how many homes can be built even when there is available space. Lowering minimum land plot sizes will make homes easier to build, and would allow more homes to be built on the same amount of space, instead of requiring large, expensive lots, builders could create smaller, more affordable housing options. As the overall number of homes increases, supply increases as supply increases, prices drop, making homeownership more accessible. In addition, the city could generate more tax revenue not by taxing more per house, but by having more houses to tax overall. This shows that lowering minimum land plot sizes is a practical solution for the city and for [12:10:04 PM] the people. In the span of an hour, 16 out of 21 local residents agreed that housing prices in Austin needed to be lowered, showing that this is a concern shared across the community. Austin is continuing to grow and while we cannot stop that growth, we can manage it more effectively. So I ask Austin city council to reduce minimum land plot sizes to make homeownership more accessible. >> Thank you very much. Whoever's next. >> Honorable mayor and city council members. My name is ava Menken and I'm an eighth grader. Imagine walking a mile every day to the nearest bus stop, then waiting 30 more minutes for that bus to arrive. That's the reality in most Austin residents, Austin city council should expand bus routes to increase bus usage and decrease traffic congestion. Expanding bus routes will make public transportation a more realistic option for many residents. The more that people have access to convenient and reliable bus services, the more likely they are to choose them over driving. Expanding bus routes would also decrease the amount of cars on [12:11:05 PM] the road. Additionally, it would make a central locations such as schools, grocery stores, workplaces and hospitals more accessible, especially to those who do not own a car or cannot drive. Currently, many residents are unable to rely on public transportation because the nearest bus stop is either too far from their house or the service is too frequent to be usable. According to capmetro, about 50% of Austin residents are within walking distance of a bus stop, but only around 20% have access to convenient and reliable busses that arrive every 10 to 15 minutes. This means that while bus coverage technically exists, it is not usable for many citizens in their daily lives. Many lower income residents, students, and elderly people depend on public transportation. One bus services are limited and unreliable. These groups face challenges when accessing jobs, healthcare and education. As members of my community, what they thought about expanding bus routes and over 90% of them agreed with my stance. As one Austin community member said [12:12:05 PM] the nearest bus stop to my house is over a mile away, showing how real of an issue this is. Additionally, Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, and our public transportation must be able to keep up with demand. The recent capmetro expansion and addition of new bus routes has already made a big difference to many citizens, and it is an important step towards improving. If nothing changes, our city busses will continue to have low ridership and add to traffic congestion. For these reasons, I urge Austin city council to expand bus routes to increase bus usage and decrease traffic congestion. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yes, sir. Please begin. >> Dear honorable mayor and city council members. My name is Luke hawk and I'm in sixth grade. Whoa, wait. You can do. Oh, sorry. How much time do you waste sitting in traffic every week in Austin? Instead of letting this problem grow, the city must take action. Now. [12:13:07 PM] That's why I think that Austin city council should add more public transportation. According to the Texas A&M transportation institute, drivers lose dozens of hours each year sitting in traffic alone, and the EPA reports that transportation is a major source of pollution, adding more public transportation isn't just supported by research. It's clear in our own community as well. I asked 28 Austin community members over the course of an hour about my topic, and 27 of them agreed with it. Most of them said that sitting in traffic is one of the most frustrating parts about living in Austin, and if Austin does nothing to do, then Austin residents will continue to face worsening traffic, higher costs for residents, and increased pollution that will affect everyone's daily life. Austin is growing and our transportation system needs to grow with it. That's why I urge [12:14:07 PM] Austin city council to invest in better public transportation for our city's future. >> Thank you, thank you. Please call the next speaker. >> Next, we have Valentina Melendez. Gwendolyn. Meghan. Jesse. Valdemar. Noah. Cower. >> Please feel free to begin in the order your names were called. >> Honorable mayor and city council members. Currently one of our most popular trails is filled with litter instead of clean scenery. What do you think that says about Austin? In my opinion, it suggests that we're not taking proper care of one of our most valuable public spaces, and that neglect reflects poorly on our city. Please consider adding more trash cans on the ladybird hiking bike trail, because doing so would reduce litter, [12:15:08 PM] decrease contamination in the lady bird lake, and provide a cleaner habitat for wildlife. In addition, cleaner public spaces are more enjoyable, making Austin more attractive to both residents and tourists. The importance of this issue is already evident, according to the cooldown, when university of Texas student Daniel Zaleski collected a core sample from the floor of lady bird lake, it contains so many plastic fragments that researchers were unable to count them. This shows how little from surrounding areas, including the trail, is directly contributing to pollution in the lake. Over time, this pollution can build up and can cause long term damage to water quality. Public concern reflects this problem as well. After speaking with people downtown, I found that 31 out of 33 agreed that we should add more trash cans along the lady bird hike and bike trail. This shows that our community recognizes this problem and supports taking action to solve it. Addressing this problem is [12:16:09 PM] critical to protecting Austin's environment, wildlife, and reputation. Taking action now can prevent this issue from becoming worse in the future. In conclusion, because of the reasons I presented, please consider adding more trash cans along the lady bird hike and bike trail. >> Thank you. Please go ahead and begin. >> Dear honorable mayor and city council member. My name is Gwendolyn Meghan and I am an eighth grade. Imagine you lose a family member or friend to suicide. You are grieving, sad, missing them and mad at the world for letting this happen. You wonder why did this happen? Why didn't the resources they had help? Well, many people can't get the resources they need because of a lack of funding. That's why Austin city council should add more funding to suicide prevention programs and mental hospital resources. So what's the problem? The problem is that the problem is that mental hospitals don't have the resources they need to make people better. People also don't reach out to suicide prevention programs for lack of availability or fear of being hospitalized against their will, which would say something about [12:17:09 PM] the mental hospital resources. Now, why is this a problem that many people can't be facing mental conditions? Well, according to suicide and crisis center of north Texas, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people in Texas aged 10 to 24 years old. That's a huge issue, right? But there's more. According to every Texan, 12% of Texas students attempted suicide in 2022. That's about 600 000 students. That's like the entire population of Iceland attempting suicide one and a half times. And that's just in one year. The article says it. But who else in the community I've asked? I've gotten answers like how suicide can seriously affect families, friend groups, and people who acquaint each other. Losing someone you love to themselves and not knowing until it's too late would be awful. I've also gotten answers like how mental hospitals don't help. They lack resources and they often make the person feel worse. But hide it. And these people have spoken from experience. This is crucial to prevent suicide in teens, young adults, and anyone [12:18:10 PM] needing help in not talking about it. Adding funding can significantly add to the resources people can reach out to when they're going through something difficult or need support support. I please urge you to add more funding to suicide prevention programs and mental hospital resources. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Please go ahead and begin. >> Honorable. >> Honorable mayor and city council members. My name is Noah cower and I am 13 years old. Have you ever been walking down the street while eating food and noticed that there was no convenient trash can to put your trash in? Me? I am asking to add trash can and recycling bin every 25 to 30 steps. Multiple studies have shown that this. That increasing trash cans can reduce litter by up to 56% in cleaner areas and 35% in dirtier areas. Similarly, a Philadelphia behavioral [12:19:11 PM] experiment has shown that decreasing trash cans increase litter and thus staff cleanup time. I sat outside for an hour and asked 29 people about the availability of trash cans. In all, 29 of them thought that that there needed to be more trash cans available. One person said that they have been carrying trash for two blocks because there was no available trash can for them. This would also help Austin's tax revenue because. Because it would attract more visitors. If the streets aren't littered with trash. And it would also help families who walk downtown and spend time downtown because they don't want to constantly be dodging trash and other litter. I urge city council to add trash cans and recycling bins every 25 to 30 steps. >> Thank you. [12:20:17 PM] >> Good afternoon. My name is Jesse Valdez Lamar and I am from. I am a resident of district district six and a native Texan. I am also the president of la Frontera unida, an immigrant rights community organization. Today I am here to voice my disapproval against the recent actions taken by the city government. On April 24th, the city government gave in to the racist demands of governor Abbott and updated police orders such that officers should, when operationally feasible, contact ice over administrative warrants, replacing the prior may language, which allowed for discretion. They did this as the state of Texas was threatening to withdraw $2.5 million in grant money for noncompliance. I want this city government to help me understand, is the city government so strapped for cash to resort to in hindering the lives of hundreds of thousands of its of its own community members? If the city of Austin was so strapped for cash, why would it then call for item 24, which would funnel millions of dollars into in handouts to big [12:21:18 PM] business? If it was really a money issue, we should be talking about cutting back on the millions of dollars in handouts to big business at this city gives out on a regular basis, rather than risk sending any of our community members to their deaths in a concentration camp. I do not think this is a radical demand. Do our neighbors not matter? I find the actions of this city government to be very revealing. For the past few months, la Frontera unida has been canvasing the streets, gauging public opinion, and the people are not impressed by the actions of this city government. People have already been asking me about who they should vote for in the next election. It is becoming readily apparent to the lfu that we are not a minority in our views. The people demand the right to work, to live, to thrive in this city without anxiety. This means a life without ice terror. We are disappointed, in particular with mayor Kirk Watson. Council [12:22:19 PM] member Natasha harper-madison of district one. Mayor pro tem Jose chito vela of district four council member Ryan alter of district five council member Krista Lang of district six, council member Paige Ellis of district eight and council member Marc duchen of district ten. We strongly urge you all to join the rest of your colleagues, Jose Velasquez, zohaib qadri, Vanessa Fuentes and Michael Siegel and demanding that the city of Austin say no to Greg Abbott, say no to president trump and stop the collaboration between ice and APD now. I have 20 more seconds. Now that I'm done giving general comment, I would like to invite everyone here to join us outside in a rally demanding that the city government stop all collaboration between ice and APD. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Please call names. [12:23:20 PM] >> Imara maheshwaran, Cynthia Trevino. >> Please come forward. >> Honorable mayor and city council members. My name is Amara mahasthavir and I am in sixth grade. Imagine waking up one spring morning in Texas and the forests are silent. No songs, no bright flashes of yellow in the trees. This is the future we risk if we do not protect the golden cheeked warbler. I urge Austin city council to protect the ashe junipers to ensure the survival of the golden cheeked warbler. The golden cheeked warbler is a small, beautiful bird with a bright yellow face and black markings, but it only nests in central Texas, nowhere else on Earth, and it relies almost entirely on one type of TRE, the ashe juniper, to survive. The ashe juniper, often called cedar TRE, provides the exact bark the warbler needs to build its nests. Without this TRE, it [12:24:21 PM] can't reproduce. And here's the problem ashe junipers are being cut down at an alarming rate due to deforestation, land development, and even because they were considered an allergy causing weed or an invasive species. Because of this, the golden cheeked warbler is now listed as critically endangered and its population has been shrinking. Saving the ashe junipers means saving the golden cheeked warbler. The Texas parks and wildlife department proves that areas with healthy juniper oak woodlands have significantly higher warbler populations. In other words, saving the TRE means saving the species. Also, I have gone out into the public and asked 36 people what they think about my idea, and 36 people said yes, and no one objected. But this isn't just about one bird. It's about preserving biodiversity and helping preserve the ecosystem. So what can we do? We can support organizations helping this goal and try and choose environment, environmentally friendly options instead of the ones that are killing these trees and birds. The golden cheeked warbler doesn't get a second chance. Texas is its only chance, meaning that we are its only chance. Let's make [12:25:23 PM] sure its song doesn't disappear. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> That concludes our speakers. >> Thank you very much, members. As you just heard, that concludes all the speakers. I want to say, I think I speak on behalf of the entire council. I want to say thank you to the students that are here. This is the second time that a group from your school has been down here and provided us comments and commentary on what you see as the future of our city, and I will tell you that you do it well. You do it in where the advocacy is profound, and we're very appreciative of that. And I will also, I think, speak on behalf of the council when I say to the teacher that is organizing this. Thank you. We appreciate you as well. Members. With that, we will recess the meeting of the Austin city council until 1:00 pm. We will have our music that we have at this point in time. We will be back at 1:00 pm. Without [12:26:23 PM] objection, the Austin city council on may 7th, 2026 is in recess at 12:26 P.M. Until 1:00 pm. Thank you everybody. [1:00:05 PM] Everybody. It's still may 7th, 2026. It's 1:00 pm and I will call back to order the Austin city council meeting for this. Well, I guess I won't. Natasha. There you go. There we are. I thought, I thought I knew he was there. I'm calling back to order the Austin city council at 1:00 pm. We will go back to item number 24 and I will recognize the clerk's office. >> Thank you, mayor Caleb Aziz. On item 24, Cary king kaiba white. Camille cook, please state your name and begin speaking. >> Please go ahead and start. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council members. My name is Caleb Aziz from district five. Time and time again, large corporations have proven that their sole motive is to minimize costs and maximize profits. Austin has already proven to be a very tech friendly city in a state considered to be one of the [1:01:07 PM] most friendly to large corporations, incentivizing data centers in particular, will provide absolutely no benefit to the city and its constituents whatsoever. While it has been removed from the text, it is important to provide clear explanation as to what industries will be incentivized, whether ai data centers, defense contractors and surveillance technology will be excluded. They will prove a strain on our water and power, which Texas is famous for. In struggling with demand, they will provide no property tax to the city of Austin, employ very few full time permanent workers. There's absolutely no incentive for the city to allow these data centers to build within the city, let alone provide massive benefits to build within Austin. Council members, I implore you to vote no and listen to the voice of your constituents. Thank you. >> Thank you. Please. >> Hello, my name is Carrie king and I'm raising three children here in south Austin, district five. As caretakers of the future of our city, you bear the responsibility of guiding our community towards sustainability and cooperation, not sheer profit and domination. [1:02:07 PM] No more tax incentives and tax breaks for companies that seek to control and exploit our collective, natural and intellectual resources. Communities all across the nation have been fighting against the development of data processing centers in their neighborhoods. The industry uses too much water. It's just that simple. Less than 200 miles away, the whole city of Corpus Christi finds itself on the brink of dehydration, while to the west, the central Texas highland Lakes have been at drought levels for well over a decade. We have no business encouraging water hogging industries to come set up shop here in the Austin area, especially not now in this current climate of industry deregulation and political instability, we must not open doors to ai data collection and surveillance companies with one hand inviting potentially nefarious agents while using the other hand to close doors on, for instance, Austin public schools and humane solutions for our unhoused population. I [1:03:08 PM] understand the need to draw new industry to Austin, but growth and development should not favor industries notorious for harmful practices. Every city across the state, across the globe, for that matter, should be focusing on climate and energy solutions. Economic growth, yes, at the expense of Austin's moral fiber and ethical integrity? Heck no. And by the way, please get these wayward waymo's and robotaxis off our streets. I witnessed one cutting off my child's school bus just the other day. No thank you and no thank you to item 24, toss it out on its behind and focus on incentivizing industries that provide solutions, not more problems. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yes, sir. >> Hello, mayor. Council, my name is Camille cook. I work as a local clean energy advocate and organizer, and I'm on the resource management committee for district three. I'm here speaking against item 24. The city shouldn't be prioritizing investment in ai and data centers. The city should instead prioritize and invest [1:04:09 PM] in making the city livable through prioritizing social services and clean energy, greater investment in data centers and infrastructure for ai would not only further cement our city to big tech, but it would also mean greater demand for new gas plants and fossil fuel infrastructure. These would make it impossible for the city to meet its climate goals, and we already know that E wants to bring E being. Austin energy wants to bring in a new gas plant to the city, and we already know that there's a very good chance it'll be in east Austin, a part of town that has been attacked by malicious housing, energy and industrial policy, as well as economic policy. So I ask, who benefits from the current sectors you want to prioritize and who will pay the price for it? Over the last half a year, I've been supporting community groups across the state, fighting data centers and ai, and these fights have agitated and moved tens of thousands of regular Texans into their city councils, their county commissions, their local libraries just into the streets across Texas. There have been at least 15 city council and county commissioner resolutions calling for moratoriums or [1:05:10 PM] greater restrictions on data center development, reflecting the will of over 1.3 million Texans. I promise that same thing as y'all can see would happen here. People have never thought about local. I've seen people who have never thought about local politics hold down and host town halls with hundreds of people, all thinking about ways that they can stop data centers and the politicians who support them. I know that this item has been edited since it originally came out, but everyone here knows that if it was ever on the agenda, then it's being talked about and considered. We demand guardrails to guarantee that data centers and investment in ai are not prioritized by the city and that clean energy, social services and the sectors that make Austin livable for the regular person are prioritized. Thank you. >> On item 24, Jessie bangs, Jeffrey Bowen, Megan Fortson, Michelle Ramos. Ben sutterby, please state your name and begin speaking. >> Hi. Megan Fortson, the senior. >> Director for the Austin infrastructure academy with [1:06:11 PM] workforce solutions capital area. And today I'm here on behalf of the infrastructure academy, a local coalition of partners in business, education, government and the community, all working together to grow the workforce for transportation, construction and other skilled trades. Economic development creates the opportunity and workforce development connects austinites to. It has. Austin continues to grow with the $25 billion being invested in capital projects. We want to ensure that local austinites benefit from this opportunity and this investment. Since launching the academy just over a year ago, we're seeing strong momentum, and this reflects just a portion of the full ecosystem's impact. So we know that workforce solutions that we've engaged more than 1500 local job seekers in person learning about these opportunities. So raising awareness enrolled over 1000 austinites into the infrastructure academy, increasing access to these [1:07:12 PM] opportunities provided 160 plus training scholarships. So removing barriers and helped nearly 100 local job seekers improve or secure employment just so far, with more still in the training pipeline. So this shows what's possible. But it also shows the scale of need. You know, we need to invest in our local job seekers and remove these barriers. But also training alone isn't enough. These pathways must connect directly to jobs, and employer partnership is crucial in that. So we need employers sharing their workforce forecast, help shape training and commit to hiring locally. Their buy in is crucial to making this system and the infrastructure academy successful in helping people connect to real jobs after training, and we need the city's continued support to match the scale of opportunity and driving employer commitment to hiring local so that our own community can build this future. Thank you. >> Thank you. Please. [1:08:12 PM] >> Hello, I'm doctor Jessie bangs. I'm a psychiatrist and I'm a proud austinite. I'm here for my love of the people of Austin, as well as this beautiful city that I feel blessed to live in. And I want to talk about item 24 and how it threatens the well-being of austinites and this beautiful city. So, first of all, defense has been taken out by name as a target sector for this city to incentivize. But it hasn't been specifically prohibited. With Austin's history as a hub for defense companies, the current resolution is not strong enough. There should not be any loopholes. We believe that unless explicit language prohibits it, the defense industry will benefit enormously from city incentives. [1:09:13 PM] Under the new economic development policies also. Also, austinites don't want a resolution that paves the way for palantir and defense startups to get priority treatment in city benefits. Ai killer drones could end up receiving city of Austin taxpayer land or taxes. We don't want our city contributing to endless wars abroad. We don't want our city contributing to needless deaths. Austinites have already rejected surveillance technology like automated license plate readers. Ai data centers are also problematic environmentally, and as a physician, this is a public health issue that concerns me. Palestine will be free, inshallah. Thank you. [1:10:16 PM] >> Please state your name for the record. Yes, sir. >> Jeffrey Bowen for district eight. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mayor, council members, on this item, there was some things that as I went through even the revised version of it, and I just wanted to just point out a couple of items under the development process and permitting on page four, they talk about developing a permitting concierge service. Now, based upon my prior experience in dealing with permitting, I found that I did this with a project that I built on the east side of town, but I had to deal with Travis county and I got subjected to Tesla coming in and being put before a lot of other permits. Mine was so far was at the very end of that, so I missed that out. But I would like to make sure that we have something in here that says that this does not take away from other people's permitting processes in that if it's going to be a separate issue, that separate item, then that's fine, but we need to make sure that others are receiving the same benefits and go from there on the next [1:11:18 PM] item back. Under infrastructure and utilities, you say project projects with extraordinary infrastructure requirements must demonstrate proportional, higher community benefits and participation. Well, we all know we have an existing water leakage issue, and we have a usage issue on our strained supply. So I would really love to see more transparency and hoping that that's a very transparent process, because that's one thing that we need to make sure that that's, that is being taken care of under workforce and talent. On page five, the talent pipeline, there's a lot of the universities all put there, but I don't see anything about our public schools and being able to maybe start getting students indoctrinated, well, for lack of a better word, indoctrinated into the hvac world, the electrician side, the welding sides. That's where we start with this workforce training and getting students to understand there's a possible future in this and what the [1:12:18 PM] needs are. Not everybody is ready to go to college. >> Thank you, Mr. Bronin. You're sitting next to right next to somebody that could probably give you some more information about specifically about what you just talked about. Yes, I do, miss white. >> Thank you sir. >> Thank you. Kaiba white for public citizen's Texas office. Apologies that I couldn't get back in time. Public citizen is generally opposed to economic incentives for corporations. However, if businesses are going to receive some sort of public incentives, we believe that they should be checking the positive box in all categories. That's environmental, social and economic. It is not enough simply to create jobs. Businesses that are going to receive public support from our city should be improving our situation when it comes to energy, when it comes to air quality, when it comes to water availability and the cleanliness of our water, they should be creating good jobs [1:13:19 PM] that benefit people and benefit our city overall. And don't think that that can be said to be true for sure. Of data centers or of ai technology. And this is not, you know, just unique to the people of Austin that are showing up here today to speak out against data centers and ai. These are very unpopular technologies and industries. Recent polling has shown that in many categories, the public wants a lot more regulation on ai in particular, and good 72% of voters would prefer to have ai technologies slowed down significantly in order to put that regulation on. And the reality is, is that if you're supporting data centers, then you are supporting the buildout of ai and potentially also cryptocurrency, which is even more worthless and has even less public support. And the opposition to data centers is, you know, I think exploding, [1:14:20 PM] frankly, across our state and certainly across the country, as well as so many data centers, have attempted to move into Texas, and many have. And the communities that have unfortunately been forced to host these data centers are. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> On item 24, Elisa Hammond, Christopher Paige, Matt Oliver, rey Vasquez. Stacy. Rohan. >> If your name's been called, please come forward and have a seat. And why don't you begin. >> Good morning, mayor and councilmen, I. My name is Elisa Hammond. I'm in district nine and I'm here representing third act. Third act is a new nonprofit organization, over 100,000 strong across the country and now a thousand in Texas. We are elders, people 55 and over, organizing to protect climate and democracy [1:15:21 PM] nationally. Third act has a campaign to promote local and national moratoria on new hyperscale ai data centers. The rapid expansion of these data centers threatens our energy grid, our water resources, our climate goals, and they're hurting people's health with noise, air pollution, and the heat island effect that they are creating at each data center. Our our argument, our request is that we have strong guardrails in place, that data centers don't move ahead until we have those kind of environmental regulations and guardrails, like the Austin environmental commission has already proposed. My request is that we put this item 24 on pause until we can actually create the guardrails for any data centers going forward. This, I'm afraid, data centers at some point, because we have improvements, will be like dead [1:16:21 PM] shopping malls, that we have too many data centers that moved ahead and created permanent destruction of the land that they are built on, because we're moving too fast. I also want to point out that such an opportunity for all of you and the city of Austin to show leadership, the whole nation in every state is rising up with concerns how to push back on data centers. Since we've already made progress with our environmental commission, we could move forward and show how we adopt that here and then also celebrate. Here's finally a bipartisan issue. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rivas from district nine. Let me be clear out the gate. The kinds of companies you want to invite into our city will kill Austin. We are not interested in companies that will hurt our community. Companies like Oracle and Tesla that put money into moving to Austin, drained our limited [1:17:22 PM] resources, and then quickly abandoned us, choosing to move elsewhere. Companies like palantir say our job is on occasion to kill people. Chatgpt are in other big cities, asking for moratoriums on being prosecuted for killing over 100 people. And these are the companies we want in our town, whether broad or hyper specific or whatever language you choose, those parasitic companies read the first draft. They know you intend to cater to their whims. Do you want Austin electricity bills to skyrocket for all of your constituents? Data centers often shirk the cost of running those facilities to the communities and don't pay their dues. Do you want to ensure we have clean water? Many of these unregulated companies dump poison into our water sources, killing our ecosystems while not giving a about the places they ruin. They just up and leave. The reason why I'm in Austin currently is because my [1:18:24 PM] father worked for Bae systems, a defense contractor. They said you either move to Austin or get laid off. And what happened? He moved to Austin and he got laid off. These are not companies that view whether you are a target or their employees. They view both as expendable. We need to fully take this off the table. We need to start from scratch. And for all the people who are here in favor of this resolution, you will lose nothing right now by tabling the conversation, putting in these guardrails, and putting back forward for our economic gain. There is nothing that we lose from this. Let's actually think about the community. Let's roll it back and vote no on this. >> Thank you. >> I believe I had somebody donate some time. Can I just get a confirmation? >> One second. Is Julie Oliver here? >> Yes. >> Perfect. You will have four minutes. >> Thanks, members. Mayor, my name is Matt Oliver. I'm a full [1:19:24 PM] time working musician living in district nine, and I'm here to voice my opposition to item 24, a resolution sponsored by mayor Watson, mayor pro tem vela, council member alter and council member zo qadri that opens the door to taxpayer funded giveaways for ai and defense corporations and other big polluters with no guardrails. In a city whose schools are closing with $180 million budget shortfall, our ask up front members do not rubberstamp or advance mayor Watson's economic development initiative until it has been amended with enforceable language that explicitly prohibits chapter three agreements or city incentives for ai infrastructure, aerospace quote data management, defense contractors, job stealing, autonomous car companies, and any other industries with known records of job offshoring, pollution, toxic waste, war profiteering, and environmental harm. I've lived here in Austin since 1998, and like the other hundreds of people taking time off of work and out of their day to voice [1:20:25 PM] their opposition to resolution 24. I'm not here to be a whiner. I want to help be part of the solution to Austin's affordability crisis and build us a strong, sustainable local economy for the long term. I've got a kid in aisd public schools whose teachers and staff do heroic work every single day. I consider myself lucky to have enough work on the road right now to scrape by, but a lot of the working musicians I know who themselves create jobs in every member district, have had to leave the city limits or get second and third jobs just so they can afford groceries, while they provide the cultural services that generate billions of dollars in tourist revenue for Austin. I'm not a hotel owner. I'm not a paid lobbyist or real estate developer. I'm just a guitar player. But luckily, the solution here does not require a rocket scientist and mayor Watson's first term, the city gave Intel $15 million. Intel never finished that building. It was imploded in 2007. That money is gone. The city's chapter three agreement with [1:21:26 PM] Samsung 100% property tax abatement for ten years, 75% for the decade after, totaled over $62 million. And by 17, Austin was cutting Samsung a check for nearly 10 million bucks a year. Every year, this city council approved 725 foot towers on the statesman site, with no on site affordable housing requirement. Travis county judge ruled the city tax financing scheme violated state law. So that's public leverage for private gain with no accountability. It's now an empty parking lot. Ai companies and defense and aerospace contractors are serious water and energy consumers in a state already rationing both. So before this vote, two things on the record. Please amend item 24 to explicitly prohibit chapter three. 80 agreements with ai infrastructure, aerospace quote data management, defense contractors, and other industries with known records of pollution, toxic waste, war profiteering, job offshoring, and environmental harm. Put those exclusions in the text of [1:22:27 PM] the resolution and tell us publicly before the next budget cycle, with real, independently verified numbers, not vague corporate language or naive weasel words like targeted framework and proportionally higher community benefit. How you plan to support locally owned businesses and good local jobs that pay a thriving wage. Please do not include tax giveaways to corporations and real estate developers in your answer. These days, it seems like so many of the musicians who work in town have packed up and moved to Lockhart. I mean no disrespect to my fellow Austin musician Aaron Franklin, whose second job as a pitmaster overtook his duties as the drummer for those peabodys a great local band. But I will say that the barbecue at Smitty's is the best brisket in the world. I guess I can kind of understand, but I'm still here because I still believe we can make Austin a livable city for working people without selling out the creative class. Thank you. >> Mr. Why don't you go ahead? [1:23:32 PM] >> Chris Paige, district one. What I've been hearing today is that we don't trust you. And I think with good reason. We hear economic incentives. But what we know is that these are tax packages that businesses don't need. Some in some cases, trillion dollar businesses. We see them closing their office space in our city and trying to open up data centers that want more power than we could ever provide, and more water than the environment will ever provide. We know from very thorough national conversations, testimony in front of the us senate and congress by the people who have created these companies, that there is not enough power to do the things that they want to do. And they are coming here to Texas because we have cheap power and we are friendly to deregulation. [1:24:32 PM] If you want an economic package that protects Austin, it should have started a long time ago. And frankly, you should have been better stewards of our economy for a very long time. But as we see employees losing their jobs, people unable to pay this, you know, their ever escalating rent, the increasingly hostile economic pressure that is pushing people out of the city, often the most vulnerable. We know that you could have been better stewards through the policies that you create every single day. And if you want an economic package that supports our city, supports our creative class, the soul of Austin, and some some of you have described it, then you should stop what you're doing today and listen to the people that will be most affected. And until you do that, you will not have our trust. And you sure, you certainly should not have our votes when it comes to November, and I hope that our city sees better days through better leadership. [1:25:33 PM] Thank you. >> Lagrone. Please state your name for the record. >> Donated time. Stacy. Stacy, correct? Yes. >> Okay. Is hassan Lewis here? Yes. And a Darius Ross. Perfect. You have six minutes. >> Thank you. I don't intend to use it all, but I just wanted to have time to take my time to say what I needed to say. Thank you, council and mayor, for allowing me to speak today on behalf of item 24. I believe that we have to realize that we're at a very unique time for the city of Austin, and especially for Austin city council. 100 years ago, 1928 is when the Austin city council created the most intrusive and aggressive economic plan for the city of Austin, specifically for the minority [1:26:33 PM] and underserved communities that put a district east of east avenue. During that time, we've had landfills built in our communities. We've had highways going through our communities. And to bring context to this, I'm not just a lifelong austinite. I attended Austin independent school district schools from Harris elementary to lbj high school, all the way to graduating from the university of Texas. I'm an economist and an engineer. I live every day fighting for my community, not just the ones that look like me, but those who are underserved. And 100 years is taking us to get a council to consider an economic development plan, one that includes all of us, one that does not silo transportation. It doesn't silo water. It doesn't silo all the things [1:27:35 PM] that have allowed east Austin to be gentrified. And so today, I support this plan. Yes, I hear the concerns about data centers and ai and things like that. But guess what? We've been waiting for this plan for 100 years, 60 years. These things didn't exist then. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Consider the economic opportunities, the cultural opportunities, the commerce, the community that this new item will impact across Austin. Give those places like Houston. Tilson, I heard someone talk about earlier. Well, back in 1928, it was Houston on the west side and Tilson on the east side. The 1928 plan brought us all together on the east side. And so today I'm asking you to consider moving this forward. Of course, there should be guardrails. I'm sure that should be in place at any time. But the consideration of [1:28:35 PM] bringing workforce, entrepreneurship, small business opportunities, affordable housing, workforce housing allow social impact developers to develop the community. I think that that makes a difference to Austin dramatically. And the time that we took as committees, different committees, working on the issues that were outlined in this item, it didn't come haphazardly. It didn't come with billionaires in mind. It didn't come with department of defense or things like that. It came with all those attributes that make communities livable and makes them whole. It sees us to the future. It sees us into the next decade as we move forward and build our families. The greatest thing for me and my community is that for over 100 years, for our existence, we have tried to build economic empowerment and generational [1:29:37 PM] wealth, and we have not been able to do that. This city city council can change that in this community. It will allow us to come back to our communities. It will allow faith based institutions to develop their lands, to support businesses, to support child care centers, to support all those different things that make a community whole. Arts and entertainment. Hospitality. I heard someone speak earlier about, you know, hospitality jobs don't mean anything. They mean a lot because there are a lot of people employed in those jobs. Could they have better wages? Yes they could. Could restaurant owners have better opportunities in having access to clients? Yes, they could if their businesses were in a domain or they were in a downtown Austin. But guess what? Underserved businesses don't have those opportunities. So this item has a lot of things that are great, that are good, that could change this community. And if this pass, yes, I think we should have [1:30:37 PM] definitely guardrails in place. But I think this council could make history by changing the 1928 plan by 2028, making a difference in this community. And I'd appreciate seeing this moving forward. And by the way, I am not just a person who lives here and has lived here for four generations. I run a nonprofit, big Austin. We started in the city of Austin. Austin created it to help with economic opportunity and underserved communities. We've served over 64,000 individuals who are underserved in this community, and over the past two years, we have interviewed them. We have asked them what their needs are, and they have outlined and identified the specific things that you see in this item as things that could change their lives and their family's lives. So I hope that you would take this very seriously. Yes, I hear the concerns of others about, you know, billionaires and, and planeteer and all those other things that I have the same issues and concerns, but do not hold back this resolution [1:31:37 PM] because of that. Move those things out and move this forward. And this would be a great thing for the city council. Thank you. >> Thank you. Please go ahead and call other names. >> Jeremy martin, Zane Barnes. Focus. Durant. Please state your name and begin speaking. >> Go ahead please. >> Thank you. Mayor. Council, I'm bill Oliver, district three. Oh. Not allowed to play the guitar. That's new. Really. >> Go ahead and. >> Do it. That happen? >> I'm not sure Mr. Oliver knows how to make a presentation without it. And I've always enjoyed it. So go ahead and do it. >> Whoa. >> Go ahead and set his time [1:32:38 PM] again. >> Thank you mayor. Thank you. Mayor, I, I think you're right. I don't know of any other way to go. >> Fair enough. We got to go with our strengths. >> And this town has been very nice for that opportunity. Where did the other guitar player go? >> Go ahead. >> Well, there's not enough water. Digital centers, not enough water. No h2o, not enough water. Artificial incentives, fast track tax breaks, ai no a I I I, I know that's your sing along. Pardon? Not enough water lake Travis not enough water. Austin water supply, not enough water. Trinity water. Not enough water. Jacob's well goes dry. Not enough water. Golden cheeked warbler. Not enough water. [1:33:38 PM] Guadalupe bass state fish. Not enough water per denali salamander. Not enough water to go around. Not enough water. Climate keeps changing. Not enough water. Hurricanes and droughts. Not enough water. Population explosion. Not enough water fires won't go out. Not enough water to fill the rivers. Not enough water to go around. There's not enough water. The digital centers, not water. No h2o, not enough water. Artificial incentives, fast track tax breaks, a I know a iaiai no a [1:34:41 PM] iaia. I know 20 more times a iaai know. >> It was a two minute song. Please go ahead. Thank you. Mr. Oliver, good to see you again. Why don't you why don't you begin? >> Hi. Thank you for the song I. My name was checked off, but I did not get to speak, so I was told to just come up. My name is Brianna calleri. I'm an arts and culture editor and a resident of district five. I want to start by thanking the writers of the economic development plan for removing defense and artificial intelligence as target sectors, insisting on living wage with escalation, and upholding a focus on women and minority owned businesses. In addition to these changes, I ask you to delay a vote or vote no until a further amendment closes loopholes. By explicitly disqualifying that ai, defense, surveillance and autonomous vehicles be incentivized in future versions of the plan. If the economic development plan is simply a catalog of growing industries in the United States, then it correctly identifies that there is money to be made [1:35:43 PM] in ai and defense. If you sell austinites out, it is not this council's job to exacerbate the unchecked growth of these industries. The city's responsibility is to seek balance for all residents and as the document itself states, enhance economic diversity and long term community resilience. This means prioritizing middle and low income workers, small local business owners and businesses that aren't riddled. As other speakers have pointed out, with mass layoffs, ai is a very serious threat to the environment, to regular people's quality of living living given the noise, air pollution, resource strain and potential eminent domain and other real estate issues, and to the quality of intellectual, creative and educational output that Austin has previously been famous for. I'll also definitively say that the worst facet of my life as an austinite is watching my taxes fund war crimes on foreign peoples and incentivize foreign businesses, knowing that it could go to health care, child care, education, stable housing, public transportation, helping musicians live within city limits and other quality of [1:36:44 PM] life upgrades at home. Local policies are a chance to put our money where it really works for us and grow those opportunities. We need to take a proactive approach and not just delay a commitment to ai, defense and surveillance, but firmly Marc them as areas that do not warrant our community's investment. >> Please go ahead. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. My name is Jeremy martin. I serve as president of the Austin chamber of commerce, and I am a resident of district nine, and I am here to speak in favor of item 24 and join many community members representing our local businesses. Our core focus is helping Austin businesses succeed. By adopting this framework, you will communicate Austin values and prioritize how you choose to invest in our economy and strengthen our city budget. Successful implementation of this policy framework will help create jobs for austinites today and for future generations, and help those local Austin businesses. A stronger local economy grows. [1:37:44 PM] The tax revenue not only for the city of Austin budget, but our other local jurisdictions as well. And this will increase resources for education, transportation, child care, after school programs and health care. Thank you, mayor Watson. Thank you. Mayor pro tem vela. Thank you, council member alter. Thank you, council member qadri for sponsoring this item. Thank you to all the council members for your consideration today. We are committed to continuing our work with you and the city manager to make this policy a success. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon, mayor Watson. Mayor pro tem vela, members of the Austin city council, city officials and members of the public. My name is Zane Barnes, and I serve as the vice president of government affairs for capmetro. I'm here today on behalf of capmetro to speak in strong support of item 24, the resolution establishing a comprehensive economic development framework for our city, our capmetro. We share the mayor's vision that economic development is [1:38:44 PM] expression of our community's deepest values, not a compromise of them. We believe that a thriving, strategically diversified economy is the essential foundation for funding the infrastructure, housing, utilities and social safety nets that make Austin a world class city. Capmetro is far more than a transit provider. Our system is a powerful driver of economic mobility, connecting our workforce to jobs, education, healthcare, entertainment, and more. We are actively embracing transit adjacent policies in our strategic planning, recognizing that our role in the region must include being a proactive partner in economic development, resiliency, sustainability, and land use initiatives. We also appreciate the resolution's emphasis on regional coordination. As part of capmetro strategic plan 2030 efforts, we're focused on driving regionalism across central Texas, ensuring that our area grows, our transit solutions and economic strategies remain integrated and best in practice. We stand in line with capmetro member, non member and partner cities, as well as our regional partners including opportunity [1:39:45 PM] Austin, our chambers of commerce and other critical associations who recognize that a clear, proactive strategy for attracting investment is vital to maintaining our region's global competitive advantage. This framework is a welcome and essential step toward a more intentional economic future. Capmetro remains fully committed to our partnership with the city of Austin, and to the continued delivery of project connect as a catalyst for shared prosperity. Thank you for your leadership on this item and we we respectfully urge its approval. >> Thank you, Mr. Zohaib. >> Hello. My name is Ben suddaby, resident of district four. I initially registered against this item, but as this conversation has developed and there have been changes, improvements made, I'd like the clerk to Marc me down as. As for this, the change hinges on some of the inclusions that have been made to this. I'd like to particularly highlight the inclusion of language that encourages labor based, labor [1:40:45 PM] organization based apprenticeship programs. I know people whose lives have been materially improved by these types of things. That's the type of thing that our city should be encouraging. I also know that as this instruction to the city manager to develop this program happens, we're going to have more conversations about this. And we heard a lot from our community, both about the potential and also the risks. And like many things, the devil's in the details, right? There are some things that are great fits for Austin incentivizing, you know, our musicians, our artists, good jobs. There are also things that do not fit with the values of this community. We've heard from people both younger than me, who are aghast at our nation supporting foreign wars that are killing people all over. Also, from people older than me. I know you know, the old Austin hippies. They were antiwar anti-nuke, right? You run into them around town still. Sometimes they even come and give testimony. Those values. [1:41:49 PM] Exactly. Those. Exactly. They're still here. And those values are still part of our city. So I encourage you to include language in whatever is developed that empowers staff to dive deep on these things and weed out the ones that don't fit us and encourage the ones that do fit us. Encourage also robust community and comment on on these decisions before there inked that process would would fit with Austin. >> Thank you, Mr. Sappi. Thank you all. Please call the next group. Yeah. Why don't you move over here so we can see you? Has your name been called? Thank you. >> I was. >> Please begin. >> All right. My name is Michelle Ramos, district one resident. And I'm here in opposition for the economic [1:42:49 PM] framework. As you continue to work on this framework, we demand that these industries, including ai companies, data centers and military defense, are stricken out in the final ordinance. Thank you for removing the targeted industries from the framework, but we need to do more and call on a moratorium to oppose these companies trying to come to Austin. Our city is losing 9.3 billion gallons of water a year, and our ability to pay bills continues to increase due to companies that operate in these industries. In east Austin, our communities bore the brunt when it comes to our natural resources being depleted, allowing these companies to build and expand here won't just harm Austin, but they will be detrimental to the impacts on the environment, especially on the east side. Time after time, we've been told companies will come here and provide well-paying jobs, but those jobs don't often reach working families within the eastern crescent, and in turn, they continue to displace black and brown families. While said [1:43:51 PM] corporations reap the benefits provided by our city, only to lay off employees years later and sidestep regulations we put into place. Again, thank you for striking these industries down from the plan. Please continue to be vigilant so those industries causing harm aren't included in the final ordinance. We ask you prioritize our working families and individuals when thinking about who should benefit from this economic framework, we're asking that you put people in small businesses first when crafting this ordinance, so future deals can benefit the families and businesses that add to the cultural fabric and keep our city running, not companies that leech off our resources, feel genocide, class division, and harm our planet. Thank you. >> Continuing on item 24, Ahmed. Cameron. Dodd. Angelo. Angelo. Canard. Right off. >> Close enough. >> Matt. Patton. Xiang. Hao. [1:44:51 PM] Wang. J. Choi, please state your name and begin speaking. >> Please. Either one of you. >> Your name. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council members. Thank you all for all the hard work day in and day out that you guys do and your leadership. My name is Ahmed moledina, 38 year resident of Austin, currently in district six and an entrepreneur. I'm here today in strong support of this item. For Austin to truly thrive in the years ahead, we need a thoughtful, coordinated, and inclusive approach to economic development. Growth alone is not enough. The question is whether that growth creates long term opportunity for all parts of our city, including small businesses, working families, students, [1:45:51 PM] entrepreneurs, and historically underserved communities. Mayor Watson's resolution provides a strong framework for how Austin can approach that challenge. It creates a clearer path for setting priorities, establishing the right incentives, engaging stakeholders, and ensuring that growth is intentional rather than reactive. That kind of structure matters because economic development decisions made today will shape Austin's affordability, workforce, infrastructure and competitiveness for years to come. This framework also positions Austin to attract the right talent, capital and companies. Austin has already made incredible momentum, but maintaining that momentum requires clarity, collaboration and long term vision. Businesses and investors want stability and direction. Workers want opportunity and quality of life. Residents want growth that strengthens communities instead of [1:46:52 PM] displacing them. By taking a strategic and balanced approach, Austin can continue building an economy that is innovative, competitive, and inclusive, one that benefits not only large corporations but also local entrepreneurs, small businesses, and the next generation of austinites. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> Honorable mayor, honorable city council members. Good afternoon. My name is Angelos Angelou. I've been a long time player in the city's economic development that spans over 42 years. I am here to wholeheartedly support the mayor's resolution, which. Encompasses many things. And I want to explain a little bit of what it can do. First and foremost, it supports nearly 40,000 small businesses in Austin, which makes up about [1:47:56 PM] 97% of all businesses in our city. It's about investing in our social fabric and infrastructure and roads and housing and social services. It will recalibrate and rebalance our efforts to increase the tax base, which is critical, and the competitive environment has never been greater around us. So if we do nothing, the city's fiscal situation is going to be is going to becoming worse. Every single year. The resolution establishes the city as a leader in economic development and takes advantage of the fantastic brand that Austin enjoys, both nationally and internationally. I want to applaud the efforts of the assistant city manager, doctor Johnson, particularly for his efforts to rekindle the city's [1:48:56 PM] international economic development strategy. The resolution supports a purposely driven economic development with targeted industries. All of them are important. There are no winners and losers in economic development. And moreover, it takes advantage of the city's assets. Both soft and hard. >> I'm sorry, but your time is up, so thank you very much. >> The city's. >> Economic development. Thank. Thank you. I apologize for having to cut you off, but I have to do that. Thank you very much for being here and waiting. >> Continue on. Item 24. Julie Ann Nish arshia. Papa. Cary. Rohan. Gina fraza. Ali Hoffman, Stephanie Douglas, Andrew Travillion. Janina Cardenas. >> Your name's been called. Please come forward. >> Joshua de la Rosa, please [1:49:57 PM] state your name and begin speaking. >> Your name has been called. Please come forward. Please. Miss nitch. >> All right, listen, y'all. I think you can tell by who's speaking for and who's against that. Your constituency does not want this. And while I do appreciate the updated language. Zo, I forgot to text you back, but thank you for sending me that. There's still nothing in there that explicitly states that we will not have data centers, that we will not give this to tech bros. Moreover, it is not our job as public servants to invest in businesses. Businesses are there to profit off of people. They are not here to help our communities. And y'all know that. Even even the beloved H-E-B. If you were to tell me we're going to give them a tax break, I would say no. The butts family has enough money and they need to go ahead and build me an H-E-B in the eastern crescent, too, while we're at it. There is so much that we could do with the money that we have been giving to businesses. Y'all know the Dyess I sat on, and frankly, [1:50:58 PM] y'all have not come in good faith on child care. I have the labor force. I have the degrees for it. I need the child care centers built. Capmetro is here talking. Well, they're also partially privately owned. And how many times have they gone bankrupt? Seven. I think y'all spend more money busting down bus stops so poor people can't sit there. Then just building a transportation system that would work for them. Have you ridden a bus? It's like 2.5 hours to get anywhere. The only people that use our busses are people that use it out of desperation. That would create jobs, bus drivers. That's a good job. While we're at it, I also train drivers at our colleges. There are so many things that this city does not have. Eloise house just closed. Where do survivors go to get out? Where survivors going to go now they have to go to a hospital where there's no one there to help them when they're raped. We just closed Eloise house yesterday. Speaking of a pd, quit checking in on registered sex offenders. Did you know that? Because I've called several of you about it. There are places our money needs to go. One place our money never needs to go is to [1:52:00 PM] private businesses. So you have to change that language or you cannot vote on this. Thank you. >> Please go ahead and begin. Please. >> My name is Joshua Dela Rosa from project Phoenix, and I'm a consultant and a systems analyst, systems exorcist. And I'm going to be deploying some, some auditing tools for free. I just completed like one of the largest, most labor intensive acts, which is, I call it the great audit where we went, my guys went in as, as informants. We were the victims of like different felony and corrupt systems. So like a lot of stuff is going to be coming, coming y'all's way. Just be good. >> Thank you. Sir, please. >> Hi. Good afternoon, mayor Watson. And to the council. I'm [1:53:01 PM] a lifelong austinite seventh generation in this area, actually, and a student at the university of Texas college of education. Firstly, I just want to. >> Could you state your name? >> Oh. Ollie Hoffman. Sorry, sir. Secondly, firstly, I'd like to thank Mr. Oliver for his testimony earlier because my father's a working musician who was forced out of the city by the rising cost of living. Secondly, I'd like to directly respond to the owner of twin liquors. My family came here in 1830 on a Mexican land grant. So I beat you. You can call. What brought our people here? Opportunity. I call it a government selling resources that didn't belong to them for cheap. I digress. Item 24 presents a few great ideas for opportunities that could improve the lives of working people in the city, but it has some really glaring blind spots. Even after the edit, there's a lot of very Austin centric language and pontificating about quality of life. However, I've been in Austin my entire life and at this point promises that economic growth will actually benefit. Working people seem to be all hat and no cattle. We've been losing badly for longer than I've been [1:54:01 PM] alive, and it feels like it's just getting worse. Secondly, I don't only care about other austinites or Texans. I also care about the people who are being harmed by capital factory and other innovators of their ilk abroad. Later, in the language of this item, it stated that public incentives are public investments. I couldn't agree more, and I want to ensure that I don't have blood on my hands. Due to this investment on my behalf. I would like to request that there are more explicit guardrails put in place so that we can ensure that working people actually stand to benefit, and it doesn't cost people their lives. My grandma ran Burt pecan farm, the one with the big squirrel statue. If you're local, you know, and she saw firsthand the absolute horrors of allowing tech innovators like musk to rule the roost in bastrop. And we can't allow that to happen here. We need to protect and improve the lives of working people with strategies that don't come at the cost of our water and endless wars and genocide abroad. Lastly, I just like to say the city isn't a brand. It's my home and I hope it's my children's home as well. Thank you, thank you. [1:55:02 PM] >> Sir. Sir, before you testify, if we could get you to move over so that we can see you. >> Right here, sir. >> Yeah. Thank you. Just state your name for the record. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you so much. Good afternoon, mayor Watson and council members. My name is Ashley and I'm a candidate for Texas state representative here in central Austin house district 49, as well as the co- chair of the green party of the United States and a UT Austin student at our university. Up a few blocks away from here, Austin is being asked today to define what kind of city we intend to become, and, more importantly, what kind of city will still be livable 50 years from now. This impacts my generation and the future of Austin as a whole. Because beneath the language of innovation and growth is a harder reality. Unchecked corporate expansion is colliding directly with the ecological and social limits of central Texas and our home here [1:56:02 PM] in Austin, we are running out of water. As many have said before, large scale data centers consume millions of gallons of water annually for cooling, while placing enormous strain on our electric grid. At the same time, communities across Texas are already facing worsening drought conditions and water insecurity. These facilities also bring diesel pollution, particulate emissions and are linked to asthma and heart disease and noise levels, exceeding what health experts consider safe. So let us speak plainly Austin should not subsidize corporations that threaten the long term stability of this region for short term profit. The same applies to autonomous vehicle corporations like waymo. Austinites watched autonomous vehicles obstruct emergency response during the sixth street shooting a while back, we watched these corporations refuse meaningful public accountability while demanding access to our streets and public infrastructure. Why should taxpayers reward [1:57:03 PM] companies that treat this city as a testing ground while refusing democratic oversight? And absolutely no incentives should be going towards defense tech companies profiting from militarism and endless war abroad. The military industrial complex. >> Thank you. >> Sir, already receives trillions of dollars. >> I appreciate you being here. Thank you. >> Moving to item 25, Harriet kirsch pozen muneeb Aslam. Liz Schoenfeld, bill bunch. Please state your name and begin speaking. >> Hi, I'm Harriet kirsch, I live in district 910, district ten, and I serve on the human relations commission. Commissioner Aslam and I have co-sponsored this recommendation for foster youth. Every young person deserves a chance to be safe, supported, [1:58:04 PM] and the opportunity to build a meaningful future. I spent six years working with youth as a counselor with the youth advocacy program, which was located in montopolis, created by trabajadores de la Raza. I also spent six years as executive director of candlelight ranch, which serves children in need. I would like to put a face to the challenges placed on foster youth when they age out of the system and are suddenly left out on their own. Jerry's mother died when he was young, and his father worked mostly out of town. He was placed in foster care. When I met him, he had just come out of the juvenile justice system and was living here in Austin in a halfway house that helped him transition back into the community. At that point, he had support services, mentors, and people who cared about his future. That support helped him begin to build a life for [1:59:06 PM] himself. But when he aged out of foster care, he was provided with an apartment and then left on his own without continued support of services, he disappeared. I fear the trajectory of his life was not a good one. This was preventable. From my experience in working with youth, one of the key factors for success as youth transition into adulthood is cross-system coordination, which is part of this recommendation. Exactly what this recommendation includes, along with housing stability, all young people need a safe haven. >> Thank you very much. Please. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council members. My name is awesome and I am the district three human rights commissioner. I'm here testifying against something that is even scarier than data centers and ai, and that is the foster care to homelessness pipeline in the city of Austin. First, I want [2:00:07 PM] to thank council member Velasquez and his team for being the lead lead sponsor on this recommendation. And also and thank you to all of the co-sponsors who have also signed on. Just a quick story, like commissioner kirsch Posen. A couple years ago, I was volunteering at what was then the eight services of Austin. I got to I got to know a lot of people, including a teenager who was 18 or 19 at the time, who was kicked out of his house for being gay, and then jumped around different foster care homes until he ended up homeless on the streets of Austin. He didn't have a support system, and I saw how different our lives were, and we were only a couple years apart at that time. One day he just stopped coming. And ever since then, I've been wondering what happened to him. Did our systems fail him? Did he make it out safe? Is he still alive? And the heartbreaking story is that this reality is that his story is not unique. As our homeless strategy office shared, [2:01:09 PM] youth homelessness in Austin has quadrupled in the last couple of years, and half of these youth are have a history of being in the foster care system. So it is something that I am really excited to see that mayor Watson and mayor Watson has been working in collaboration with lifeworks and the county to identify the needs and to continue the conversation, and I believe that that is still just the first step. As city council enters budget deliberations, it is critical that the city invest in targeted support for youth homelessness and to provide life changing opportunities. I hope welcoming a city. We continue building a city that no young person is abandoned simply because they aged out of a system. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate you being here in your work. Yes, ma'am. >> Good afternoon mayor, council members. My name is Liz Schoenfeld. I serve as the CEO at lifeworks, and I am here in support of item 25. I want to start by thanking the members of the human rights commission for the recommendation, and [2:02:09 PM] then for the council members who put forth this resolution at lifeworks. Much of our work focuses on the intersection between foster care and homelessness. You mentioned a moment ago that about half of young people in our community who are experiencing homelessness have a history of foster care involvement. A recent analysis by echo last month shows that number actually gone up to 59%. At the same time, though, we know what works. Lifeworks holds the regional contract to provide life skills services for young people who are preparing to age out of foster care, and we provide case management services for young people who have already navigated that transition. We know that when young people have access to housing, consistent adult support and resources tailored to their needs, their trajectories change significantly. I also want to acknowledge the progress that our community has made in this space, in supporting this population and the city's commitment to this work. I had the privilege of co-chairing the task force with David gray, focused on dismantling the foster care to homelessness pipeline. And one of the central recommendations, which [2:03:09 PM] is the strategic use, the strategic use of foster youth to Independence vouchers, has now been elevated as an interim charge in advance of the upcoming legislative session, and that would not have happened without the sustained support and advocacy of the city of Austin. So thank you. This resolution also builds directly on mayor, your generation 80 initiative, which is really focused on ensuring that young people in Austin have a stable foundation as they enter adulthood. And ultimately, this is about whether young people leaving foster care step into crisis or into stability. And this resolution moves us in the right direction by strengthening coordination, prioritizing prevention, and centering young people at a critical moment in their lives. So thank you for your leadership and for shining a light on this important issue. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for your service. >> Thank you. >> That concludes our speakers for the consent agenda. >> Members, that concludes all the speakers on the consent agenda. What I'll do is I'll call for a motion and a second on the consent agenda. But let me point out a couple of things. [2:04:10 PM] First, I want to remind everybody that items four and 26 were pulled from the consent agenda, because there's an amendment to item number, a proposed amendment, as I understand it, to item number nine. I'm going to pull item number nine so that we can take that up separately. So now the items that have been pulled are four, nine, and 26. I'm also going to note for the record that item number seven, item number seven is being withdrawn and will come back at a later date. Bottom line to it is that after looking at item number seven, Mr. Bunch was right. And we're going to we're going to recognize that and make that make a reposting of that item. So the consent agenda will not include four, seven, nine, and 26. And remember that item number 41 is withdrawn. I also [2:05:10 PM] want to note for the record that as we begin taking votes, it's been it's been stated before stated, and I brought it up on Tuesday, but I want to say it again. Council member Fuentes had a baby this week, and so she is dealing with a baby. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And we're very happy for her. And in fact, we couldn't be happier. And it's a great time in life. But what that means is that she will be absent for the votes that we call. I will not try to call out every time we have a vote, but I want the record to reflect that she's absent for very happy, good reasons. And that's the kind of growth in Austin we really like. I also want to note for the record, that council member harper-madison is with us virtually. So with that, I will entertain a motion on the consent agenda as read. Is there a motion? Motion is made by the mayor pro tem. >> It is. >> Oh, I'm sorry, before I before I get a second on that [2:06:11 PM] motion, I meant to call up our legal staff on item number 38, item number 38 members is a item that involves a potential. Well, I'll let him explain it, but that's why we got legal counsel. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. Mayor. Mayor pro tem council members. My name is vasu bahara. I'm the litigation chief with the city attorney's office. I'm here today to request authorization to issue an offer of judgment in a federal civil rights lawsuit that appears on your agenda as item number 38. The request would also authorize payment of the judgment if the offer is accepted by plaintiffs under rule 68 of the federal rules of civil procedure, the city may serve a formal offer of judgment on the plaintiff at least 14 days before trial. An offer under this rule is not an admission of liability, and it's. If accepted, the offers are inadmissible at this instance, we recommend authorization of a $350,000 offer of judgment under rule 68, which allows the city to reduce risk, manage litigation costs [2:07:13 PM] proactively, and encourage settlement. I'm available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. >> Council members. You have any questions of legal counsel? All right. Thank you very much. The mayor pro tem moves approval of the consent agenda as read. It is seconded by council member Ellis. We'll have discussion on the items and without objection, I would like to begin. And I want to speak about item number 24 members. As I have posted in multiple places and have talked about publicly, Austin's success depends on more investment and more revenue to cover the services that our growing city needs and our residents want. Those funds end up being how we pay for all the things that makes life in Austin enjoyable and livable, while we need more funds and we. We also care about affordability. So we want to take great care about increasing our tax rates or taxes, our rates, our fees. And [2:08:14 PM] so growing our economy is the obvious, most equitable, sustainable and affordable way to generate needed funds. The things that we value in this community the social safety net, the parks, libraries, housing programs, health care, climate investments, workforce pipelines, arts and culture, and the public servants that we rely on to provide those services services, meaning those employees operate as stewards of Austin's public resources, its water, its energy, its land, and not simply operate as consumers of them. There's been a lot of talk about data centers today, although this resolution doesn't mention data centers and didn't, the words were not in any versions of the exhibit or the resolution. But if you're not in favor of data centers, you should be in favor of this resolution, because this resolution points out that we are going to require companies to be civic partners with us, not just employers. They will share the values that make Austin special in the first place. That standard is the policy. A company that meets it gets Austin's embrace, one that won't meet it isn't the right fit. Regardless of [2:10:30 PM] the size of the investment or the numbers on any jobs announcement. And I want to point out this resolution does not incentivize any companies. It's not a menu of incentives, incentives for the companies. What it does is establishes a framework or a process in Austin's economic development department to ensure that council and the public have all of the information they need to make the good decisions. This framework makes Austin's values binding visible and consistently applied, so that every economic decision reflects who we are. I want to say I appreciate the support of the community. I want to say that I appreciate the support of the council members that have signed on to this, and I look forward to us being the city of Austin, being an active participant in what the future looks like in being able to [2:11:31 PM] provide the revenue so that we can fund our values. Councilmember Velazquez, you are recognized. >> All right. Thank you. Mayor one I'd be like, I'd like to be added as a co-sponsor on that item. >> Thank you. Without objection, councilmember Velazquez will be shown as a co-sponsor of item number 24. >> Colleagues, I just wanted to touch on item number 25. I wanted to thank our commissioner, meb's Aslam, and our human rights commission for putting this recommendation in front of our office. 59% of youth who age out of foster care in Texas experience homelessness. By age 21, 70% of young men are arrested after leaving foster care in Texas, and youth who experience homelessness are far, far more likely to experience homelessness again. As adults, it is important that we as a city continue to advocate for youth transitioning out of foster care, because supporting youth transitioning out of foster care is a housing a public and a human rights concern, and we should all be focused on it. Thank you. To [2:12:32 PM] our to my to the district three policy advisors, Mo cooper and Elise de la Fuente, for all of their work on this item. And to our co-sponsors, councilman alter, Vanessa Fuentes, and Krista Laine. >> Thank you. Thank you, councilmember councilmember Laine, followed by councilmember alter and the mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, mayor. First, with respect to number 13, the flood forecast contract, I'm thrilled to see this item on today's consent agenda, a contract for flood forecasting that incorporates not only flood forecasting but also information on road closures 311 call data and first responder activity. This type of technology and coordination is how we efficiently and effectively work across departments and agencies, and share data to support and protect our communities, especially with something as significant as our response to floods. Thank you to our watershed protection staff for bringing this item forward, and I'm confident that this system will help both our staff and community during flood emergencies. Next, with respect to item 24, I want to thank mayor Watson and his co-sponsors for bringing this [2:13:32 PM] economic development framework forward and for incorporating changes that are responsive to community input. Our city has an extremely talented workforce. We have a large student community, and we're known for our creativity and innovative spirit. That's why so many companies choose to conduct business here. When it comes to finding a city with innovation and opportunity, all eyes are on Austin. This economic development policy framework will expand our horizon to new ideas and opportunities. While the policy work needed to ensure that future growth aligns with Austin's core values will never be complete. Passing a baseline economic development framework is an important step that needs to happen. New jobs and new property tax income are essential as our city adapts to abrupt, enormous and ongoing cuts in federal spending, combined with threatened state spending cuts to programs that we all value. Recognizing the importance of the changes incorporated in response to community input, I also would like to be added as a co-sponsor. >> Without objection, councilmember Laine will be shown as a co-sponsor of item number 24. [2:14:33 PM] >> And finally, in relation to item 25 relating to foster care youth support, I want to thank councilmember Velasquez for leading on this item. Our foster care partners do such important and excellent work for our city. I had the privilege of being at foster village when they celebrated the opening of their new resource center, where it was strongly acknowledged that the work doesn't stop there, and there is critical need for more comprehensive resources for our older foster youth as they prepare to age out of the system. I have great confidence in our government relations team, and that they will be successful in advocating and delivering on this critical need and bringing back resources for our city. Thank you. >> Thank you, councilmember, councilmember altar, mayor pro tem councilmember duchen. >> Thank you very much. Kind of picking up where councilmember Laine left off, you know, really want to thank councilmember Velasquez for bringing item 25 forward around helping our foster youth who are transitioning out of foster care, not land on the streets or in jail, because too often that is the story. And these [2:15:34 PM] young people are just trying to make it in the world, just trying to be successful. And the barriers that are often put in front of them are significant. And we need to do everything we can to help. Have their their dreams be open to them, and not just barriers placed in front of them, but how do we do that? It costs money. And that money is something that clearly we don't have a lot of going around. We were in the public health committee just this week looking at potential cuts to our social service programs, including homelessness programs, and clearly, you know, additional taxes aren't coming through the door. And so how do we get that additional revenue while we grow our tax base? We don't have to place that burden on existing residents. We can grow our city responsibly and [2:16:34 PM] intentionally. And so that's where then, of course, item 24 comes into play, where we can be smart and intentional and make sure that people who are coming here do meet. Our values are consistent, and we will open the door to those who are going to be a part of the Austin that we all want to see, and we will not open the door to those who don't. And so I really appreciate the work you've done on this. Obviously, it's been quite a lift, and so just want to thank you for helping open the door for us to be able to have the type of city that is growing and not dying, because that's what successful cities do, and that's how we afford the really important things that we're talking about here today. >> Thank you, councilmember mayor pro tem, followed by councilmember duchen. Councilmember qadri. >> Thank you mayor. I just want to look forward to seeing. I know item seven was drawn. Look forward to seeing it backed out. Related to the defacement of [2:17:34 PM] the bonds at the saint John project. I look forward to to seeing that return and seeing that project move forward with item 24. I just wanted to kind of bring that conversation back to reality. In my time on council. We have approved for if and please correct me if I'm wrong for economic development deals. One was with nxp chip maker that ended up not moving forward for reasons on the on the company side of things, a small deal for 3 billion us, which is a genomics company doing medical biomedical research. That's a Korean company. And this is their first North American location, and we're glad to see them. Southwest. We had a big deal with southwest, which brought will bring, I should say, because it's a multi-year process. But 2000 folks, flight attendants and pilots will be [2:18:34 PM] relocating to Austin. Good high wage union jobs again, fully supported that deal. And then we're in the in the process of another one, which would be the 1000 room hotel at the circuit of the Americas, which again has a strong labor element. Those will be union jobs, and those will be bringing above average wages for that industry. So I just want to mention that. And before that, it might have been a decade or so before we've we we had previously approved. So these are really rare that economic deals come to Austin. And one of the reasons is because we're so demanding about our standards, wage standards, employee safety standards, environmental standards. I see this item as continuing that tradition, but trying to, to create a more cohesive framework and process for when companies do come forward so that we're clear about what we expect and what [2:19:35 PM] we're demanding, and that they understand that up front. So I just wanted to again, I think this council in particular, will continue to be very demanding about the public benefit and wages and whatnot that that we see come forward. And I see this resolution as a way to to help us get there. So proud to be a co-sponsor. And again, want to thank the mayor for for bringing that item. And then finally, I would like to be added as a co-sponsor to item 25 by council member Jose Velasquez. I think that's a great item. And I just wanted to add one thing. We really need help from the state with foster youth. That's just been. I'm fully supportive of us using city resources to do what we can for foster youth, but ultimately, that's a statewide responsibility that. And we also see a lot of homelessness among folks that have. Serving long terms in prison and getting out and having nowhere to go. And again, that's another area where the state just can't be, you know, letting folks out of systems [2:20:36 PM] with nowhere to go and nowhere to, to turn. We, we really need support from the state in those two areas in particular. Thank you, mayor. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem. Without objection, the mayor pro tem will be shown as a co-sponsor of item number 25. Councilmember duchen. Councilmember qadri. Councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you mayor. Like my colleagues, I want to highlight item 25 and particularly thank the human rights commission, especially commissioner kirsch, for recommending this item. And for councilmember Velasquez for sponsoring it, as it was initially recommended because of budget implications. I had a hard time supporting it, but thanks to the work of councilmember Velasquez and his team, they found some alternate ways with the manager to explore other opportunities. And really, it's just a great example at this point of working together with outside partners towards a common goal. So I'd like to not only support it, but be added as a co-sponsor as well. [2:21:36 PM] >> And that objection, councilmember duchen, will be shown as a co-sponsor of item number 25. >> I'd also like to be listed as a co-sponsor for item 24 and appreciate the work the mayor and our economic development team has done here. From where I'm. My vantage point is that we face maybe unprecedented, tough budget choices, and we're going to need strategies to bring forward new opportunities, ones that make sense to the council for their support, to help pay for and maintain the services that people expect. Prior services, even new services like child care. So so I think it's a good item. I think it's a needed item. And I'd appreciate being listed as a co-sponsor. Thank you. >> Without objection, councilmember duchen will be shown as a co-sponsor of item number 24. Councilmember qadri, followed by councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you. Mayor. I just want to start off at first talking about item number 24. I want to thank the mayor, his [2:22:37 PM] team, city staff advocates who spoke today, as well as members of the community. I also want to thank liuna, you know, labor for for making sure that their voices were heard today. I think it's important that when we work towards economic mobility, when we talk, we have this discussion. Everyone's involved in this discussion. So I also look forward to the engagement from the city manager and his staff with the community as they begin drafting the drafting the ordinance that will return to council at a later time. And I want to be clear, I heard a lot of the concerns that were set today. I share them as well. I know we need to be mindful about the industries that we recruit for the city and ensure that those who go through our chapter three program align with our city values and goals. These values and goals are not limited to economic mobility, but also align with the culture and visions of our city, like moving toward cleaner manufacturing, being mindful of our city's resource capacity, and ensuring laborers in all industry sectors feel safe and supported. And to clarify this initiative, resolution does not [2:23:37 PM] allocate any dollar amount to any specific industry, and I look forward to in the city manager returns with his recommendation and the engagement that will be done at that point in this process. I appreciate everyone for coming out today, for expressing their concerns or perspectives or opinions, and I know many of you are here in your personal time during your work day to engage on this item. So thank you for taking out your time and being here and talking about a city that you love and a future that you deeply care about. >> Thank you, councilmember councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you. Mayor, I did want to speak briefly to item number 24, because I know that's one that most people are keeping their eyes on. I also look forward to seeing what the recommendations are from the manager. I think there's a lot of folks having conversations about what are the best industries that are a fit for Austin, Texas. And so I know that conversation will continue over the next couple of months. I would like to say, though, I know a lot of folks were talking about data centers, and I just I want folks to know that I think a lot of us up here are doing homework on, on [2:24:37 PM] what data centers are meaning for the region, what they mean for the state and across the country. I'm having some discussions with my team to figure out what we, as a council, can do to make sure that we don't get blindsided by an industry that does take a lot of resources. We have limited water resources. We have limited electric resources. There's other sorts of issues that have been brought up, like particulate matter and other environmental concerns. And so I just wanted to flag that I'm having those conversations. I welcome anyone else on the dais who's interested in opening that book to kind of figure out what does that look like? And is it a hard no? Is it a you have to pay for your own growth, or you need to offset all of the resources that you are draining from our community. I don't know what that looks like, I will admit, but I know there's a lot of other team members on the second floor that have been looking into this diligently, and I think that we, as a council, need to get ahead of it before something comes down the pipeline and we're unaware and we don't have the right zoning tools or assessments and [2:25:39 PM] guardrails and parameters to be able to, to get ahead of this. It's a huge conversation. I know there's some communities that are courting them. It doesn't sound like most people in Austin, Texas, have a fond opinion of them at this point in time. So I do think it's important for us to have that conversation at the appropriate time. And the other item I want to flag is number 15. This is about the zilker clubhouse. So we've had a lot of discussions lately about parks, security and parks. How do we prevent vandalism and damage to our community spaces? And so I'm excited to see that this is a long awaited improvement that will preserve the treasure that is the zilker clubhouse, and it's in the zilker nature preserve on on the other side of mopac that a lot of people forget is still within the city of Austin. This program is going to preserve the building's unique architectural features, including extensive wood and ironwork, and bring much needed Ada accessibility, a new roof, updated lighting, improved parking, and installation of an hvac system. For anyone who's been out at events at that location, you'll [2:26:40 PM] know that that is much desired. It will also repair damage from recent incidents of vandalism and will include security features such as six foot iron fence cameras and improved access Gates for that location. Lookout point, after suffering from years of abuse, will undergo an extensive masonry cleaning and rehabilitation. This is a very important moment not only for protecting the history of the zilker preserve and zilker clubhouse, but making. >> A. >> Safer and more accessible to all. We've had a lot of complaints over the years of folks going there after hours and breaking into vehicles that are owned by the city, and a couple other alarming situations that have happened out there. And so I thank the neighbors that live very close by for bringing all of this to our attention so that we can work diligently with our public safety officers and our parks department and other stakeholders in that area to help make sure that the zilker clubhouse continues to shine for decades to come. >> Thank you, councilmember. Councilmember zo qadri, do you want to speak? >> Yeah, sorry, I forgot to [2:27:40 PM] mention item 25. I want to thank councilmember Velasquez. I want to be added on as a co-sponsor. >> Without objection, councilmember qadri be shown as a co-sponsor. And without objection, councilmember Ellis will be shown as a co-sponsor of item 25. >> Thank you, mayor. >> Sounds like. And I'm I want to be shown as a co-sponsor as well. And I'll just mention that last week we met with the secretary of housing and urban development, and the specific conversation was about the foster the foster care pipeline, very much in tune with what what you're doing with this resolution. So thank you for your leadership on that. All right, members, the vote will be on the consent agenda as it was presented. Assuming there's nobody else wishing to speak. The the motion has been made and seconded. Is there anyone wishing to be shown abstaining from any item on the consent agenda as it was read? Anyone wishing to be shown recusing themselves from any item on the [2:28:41 PM] consent agenda. Anyone wishing to be shown voting no on any item on the consent agenda. Hearing none. Without objection, the consent agenda is adopted with. Again, I'll just be probably the last time I say this, but with councilmember Vanessa Fuentes absent for the birth of her child. All right. Thank you all and thanks for everybody that came here. Members. What I think I'm going to try to do is take care of a couple of other a couple of items. We'll go first item. Well, how about this. Let's go to Austin housing finance corporation and take care of that. Without objection, the Austin city council is recessed at 2:29 P.M. I will now call back to order at 2:32 P.M. The meeting of the Austin city council for its regular scheduled meeting. Members. What I'm going to do is go to item number for. That item was pulled by council member Ellis. So I'm going to recognize council member Ellis. >> Thank you. Mayor and I have circulated a motion sheet and there is a version two. It was emailed out this morning at 9:39 A.M. And subsequently posted to the message board. I moved to postpone item four to the July 23rd, 2026 council meeting with the following direction. The city manager is directed to issue an open invitation to current and potential organizers of large scale special events in public recreation areas to meet to discuss the proposed ordinance, answer questions and take feedback. Send direct invitations to all park partners and event organizers [2:33:45 PM] listed in the draft ordinance. Following these stakeholder meetings, provide a briefing to the council. Climate water environment parks committee at its July 15th, 2026 meeting, or whenever the committee's July meeting may be scheduled on the draft ordinance and stakeholder feedback. Return to full council at the July 23rd, 2026 meeting with a draft ordinance that reflects stakeholder and committee feedback as appropriate, and proceed with Austin parks and recreation issuing the request for applications for the existing unassigned auditorium shores dates immediately. >> Members. What I'm going to do. I'll recognize the motion in the second. In just a second, I want to make sure we have people that have signed up to speak on item number four. So I'm going to go to the clerk's office before I take the motion and call. And for those that are signed up to speak, you're welcome to speak. But the motion that I'm going to accept will be the motion that council member Ellis just laid out. So if you could speak to that motion and I'll look to the [2:34:46 PM] clerk. >> Thank you, mayor, on item four, David Weinberg, Chris flores and bill bunch. >> Are any of those three people here? I don't see anybody call their names one more time. >> David Weinberg, Chris flores and bill bunch. >> Okay. In that case, council member Ellis has moved that we postpone item number four, the way she read the motion into the record and that you have, as a version two of the motion, it is seconded by council member Velasquez. Is there discussion on the motion by by council member Ellis to postpone item number four as read here? Yes. Councilmember duchen. >> I just want to thank councilmember Ellis for doing this, because we heard from constituents, including the peace park conservancy, that they'd like opportunities. They don't want to be surprised by these things. So we want to make sure they have an opportunity to meet with acme, and your motion gives them time to do that. Thank you, councilmember. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. And I'll just flag, I think [2:35:47 PM] there tends to be a general sentiment that the process of moving it to a different section of code doesn't seem like there's any issues with that, but I know that events in public park spaces is a high priority topic for a lot of people in the city. And I wanted to make sure that all the stakeholders, you know, some of the conservancies and nonprofits, the folks who put on special events in our parks, and anyone with a parks operation and maintenance agreement had a chance to ask questions and understand how this might impact some of their programing, but it's not intended to make too many huge changes. Just wanted to make sure it was all buttoned up with all the stakeholders. >> Right. Thank you. With that close, without objection, item number four is postponed based upon the motion made by council member Ellis and seconded by council member Velasquez. Item four is postponed. That will take us to item number nine. Item number nine. I. I'm [2:36:49 PM] going to recognize council member alter as the person that pulled it, although I think I ended up actually technically pulling it, but I pulled it because I knew he wanted to offer an amendment. So what I want to do is I want to recognize council member alter to describe what's up, and then we will go to any speakers that we might have. >> That sounds great. Well, I guess so. Do you want the motion first or not? >> No. >> I just want you to describe. >> What's up and then we'll call up speaker. >> Sounds good. So this is the Texas gas franchise. We've had the opportunity at the climate, water, environment and parks committee to kind of get into the weeds a little bit of this one. But for anyone unfamiliar, we don't operate our gas utility or a gas utility like we do Austin energy or Austin water. We basically rent out our right of way to, in this case, Texas gas service for a franchise fee. I want to first thank Maria Norton, who has [2:37:49 PM] been one of our negotiators in this process, and also recognize Larry graham and Texas gas service, who I believe have come in good faith to negotiate an agreement that is more in line with Austin values. You know, we really came into this focused on two things, making sure that we could, to the greatest degree we could protect ratepayers and make sure they're not paying more than they really need to be, as well as conservation efforts. And so there's going to be a motion here to pass this on first reading. But ask the negotiating team to go back and look at just a couple of those areas to see if there's if we can move the needle just a little bit more and try to deliver ultimately, for customers in Austin. >> All right. I'm informed that we did go. We went ahead and heard the speakers because it [2:38:50 PM] was on the consent agenda before I pulled it off of there. So that's, that's we already heard from the speakers. So council member alter moves subject to pursuant to the yellow sheet that you have, which is a version two, as I understand it, version two also incorporates a proposal from council member duchen, but it fully incorporates that. So council member alter moves on item number nine. It's labeled motion one, version two, and that is to approve the item on first reading and direct city manager to continue negotiations with the franchisee to one lower cost for gas customers through shared participation in a low income assistance program and emergency bill assistance program, and two lower costs for gas customers through non socialized capital recovery and three reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per capita over the lifetime of the franchise. And council member. [2:39:50 PM] >> One other thing I want to note, as the team is talking about this, especially around item number three, which is that conservation piece. It's my understanding that part of what has held us back in terms of reducing leakage has been kind of the city being a barrier from a permitting perspective, making sure that if the gas utility does want to do greater replacement of their infrastructure, that is going to result in less leaking, that we're not the reason why that's not happening. So as those conversations are going forward, I would just ask staff to look at that barrier as well to make sure that we can have less methane leaking into the air, which is a very harmful greenhouse gas. And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Paul Robbins, who's here, who's dedicated who knows how many hours to this issue. So thank you very much for all the work you're doing. >> Motion has been made by [2:40:50 PM] council member alter, seconded by council member duchen. Is there discussion other than what is laying out the motion? Hearing none. Without objection, the motion by council member alter as read into the record, is adopted members for purposes of letting staff take care of some other things, I'm going to go to items 27 and 28 and I will first call on the city clerk to call up any speakers on item 27 and 28. >> We do not have any speakers on item 27 or 28. >> All right, members, there are no speakers on item 27 to 28 so with respect to those two items, both of them are nonconsent condemnation items. I call for a motion to the effect that the city council of Austin authorizes the use of the power of eminent domain to acquire the property set forth and described in the agenda for [2:41:51 PM] this current meeting, for the public uses that are described therein, is there a motion to that effect? Motion made by council member Siegel seconded by mayor pro tem. Is there discussion? Hearing none. Without objection, items 27 and 28 are adopted. That will take us to item number 30. Actually, hang on a second. On item number 30 when the. As I indicated when I read the changes and corrections in the record. When this item was taken up, it will be postponed to may 28th, 2026. This public hearing will be postponed until may 28th, 2026. That will take us to item number 31, which is a public hearing. Without objection, we will open the public hearing. The public hearing is now open, and I turn to the city clerk. >> There are no speakers on item 31. >> Members there being no speakers on item number 31. Without objection, we will close the public hearing on item number 31. The public [2:42:52 PM] hearing is now closed. Yes. Council member. >> Ellis, I thought I. >> Had 31 was withdrawn. >> Yeah. >> Well, yeah, that would explain why there are no speakers now, that's not that was not one of the changes of corrections that was read into the record. >> This item has been removed. I don't know what that means. >> I don't. >> From the draft agenda before it got finalized and we didn't want to renumber. I think that's okay. That's how that happens. >> Well. >> So is there an item. >> So there's not an item. Okay, well, that was a good exercise. I enjoyed that. All right. So we're not going to take up item number 31. All right. Well that will now take us back to item number 26. And item number 26 was pulled by council member duchen. We have a number of speakers that have signed up. I'm going to recognize council member duchen as the member of the council that pulled the item for brief comments. And then what we'll do is we'll go [2:43:53 PM] into the speakers. >> Thank you. Mayor. Yeah, I've got a presentation, but I feel like we ought to listen to the speakers first. >> Okay. >> Because I think they'll add to that conversation. And I pulled this item for a couple of concerns. One is to talk about some procedural stuff. One is to really highlight some of the affordability concerns that I've got around this item. And then one is to make some recommendations that we can consider going forward. I'm going to hand out a couple of motions as we hear the speakers. And and then when they're concluded, would like to take that opportunity to present. >> That's what we'll do. So with that, I'll turn to the city clerk. Thank you, councilmember duchen. >> Thank you, mayor. Item 26 speaking remotely. Tie. >> For district five. So I grew up in Austin. I do feel a sense of sadness seeing so many of my former classmates having to move out of the city or to move out to the suburbs, outlying [2:44:54 PM] suburbs like Round Rock, etc. Just to be able to afford owning their own home. I also want to point out, since item 24 was so relevant, such a big piece of discussion. If we pass item 24 and we have this economic blueprint, development plan, whatever, and we don't upzone or make it possible for denser multifamily housing to exist within our city limits, I believe that we would be repeating the same mistake that happened in previous decades, where we allowed so much economic development, so many new businesses and companies to come in here, which ultimately brought more jobs, but also more transplants. And without the necessary, like, accompanying rise in housing stock, the rent and the home prices ultimately rose super high. This is a piece of history that I would not like to repeat again in the next couple decades. Instead, I really am speaking in support of item 26 because I believe [2:45:54 PM] home one and two have been a success, but especially as we've seen the with the median sale for like one of the new units, it was like almost half the price of the median sale for like a newly built single family home. Right? So like this is great, but we have so much more room to go, making more of those types of housing available for families, either current or future incoming austinites will make it so that if the economic development plan passes, the people that can live within our city limits and own homes in the development, they won't just be like executives of those ai or tech companies or tech companies or whatever. I want an average austinite to be able to afford living and owning their own home, whether there's a duplex, a triplex, etc. Within the central. >> Speaking remotely on item 26, Monica Guzman. >> Good afternoon. I'm Monica [2:46:55 PM] Guzman, global policy director, speaking in opposition to item 26. Council approved home phase one on December 7th, 2023 and phase two on may 16th, 2024. Hundreds of Austin's unhoused renters, homeowners working for and low income residents mobilized and made clear their opposition to policies with no affordability. Now, two years later, council proposes to expand the initiative with vague language eased processes benefiting for developers. Still no affordability and a lack of robust multilingual community engagement, especially residents in displaced risk displacement risk areas. The 2024 home annual report is misleading, and the proposed policy is a pattern of continued misrepresentation about loss of affordable housing. The report shows. Home applications in displacement risk areas rose 58% free, home to 66% post home and phase one applications in displacement risk areas nearly doubled those in non-risk areas. We're losing affordable units due to [2:47:56 PM] continued deregulation of development policies lacking affordability, lack of preserving naturally occurring affordable housing, lack of 1 to 1, replacement of affordable units lost, and from 2018 to 2013, low private and public sectors. Production of units for people earning 30% below. Of the ten year 20,000 unit goal, only 426 units, 2% built. We know the city can't do it all. We also know you can build a better product and urge you to postpone the vote to allow time for a community informed policy, including directing the city manager to work with the Austin equity and inclusion equity division and utilize existing community input and expertise to launch a community engagement strategy, engage community organizations for the preservation of noaa housing and in neighborhoods experiencing chronic or active displacement. Establish anti-displacement measures, including equity overlay and affordable right to return housing options, community owned community land trust, and public nonprofit partnerships. Thank you. [2:48:57 PM] >> Speaking remotely, item 26, Stephanie Stanford. Stephanie Stanford. >> Good afternoon, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Stephanie Stanford. I reside in district nine, and I'm here to request that you vote no on item 26. Changes. >> Speaking remotely on item 26, Catherine tusk. >> Hello. >> I'm Catherine chichak from district one. I wear. City council has given up on respecting Austin residents by trying to pass resolutions with no warning, no discussion or no input from us. Even council member duchen couldn't get details. It shows a lack of leadership to vote on another partially designed half baked resolution. Please postpone. [2:49:57 PM] Who are you serving? Not Austin homeowners, and there's not enough data for it to be prospective home buyers. You have one study in medicine that's a too small of a sample size to even be clinically relevant. Don't declare it a brilliant program and double down before you know if you've even moved the meter toward success. Get more data. Find out what's working, what's not there, what changes will take place, who will be impacted, listen to each other. A council member unable to get details is telling. Talk to residents. Give us a chance to work on a plan. Not every suggestion is a roadblock, and some single family home dwellers are actually not a choke hold to reasonable growth. The dense six home development next to my church and the four home one across the street from me, fit in with out overwhelming the existing homes. They're not affordable though, but they're less than $1 million. But families under Austin's mfi and public service workers need entry level homes and not just dense, expensive homes to live or send kids to a dwindling [2:50:58 PM] aid. Investigate flooding, upgrading utilities, calculating what streets can manage more traffic. My new neighbors aren't writing capmetro. The pattern of blowing off resident concerns only to be stopped by lawsuits must end. Please do the slow work of involving stakeholders and showing respect to your constituents. We know best is a paternalistic. At least your elected officials who need to work with both sides of this, not just your own stance. And I urge you to say no to this resolution without some details, input, and actual meaningful data. Thank you for your time. >> Moving to in-person speakers on item 26. Parker Welch, Jeff Dickerson, Peter Brenton, David Weinberg, Chris flores. Peter Janet Keller. Taylor. Jackson, Brenda Wallace, Greg Anderson, [2:52:01 PM] please state your name and begin speaking. >> Good afternoon, mayor Watson, mayor pro tem vela, and city council members. My name is Peter Brennan and I am a resident of district eight. It's rare that I come to speak angry, but today I am. I am angry because many of the people who will be speaking here today in opposition are being lied to, and they're being riled up. They were told that there would be impacts to them, changes in their life that they weren't consulted on, and that they were left out of the process. This item actually starts a process of community engagement. It doesn't end it. The measures discussed in the item direct staff to fix technical problems that emerged during the implementation of home. And that's because we have an over 40 year old land development code, the conservative, obnoxious, obstructionist, kick the ladder down attitudes that led to a failed code rewrite continue to [2:53:01 PM] haunt us in discussions about land use. Despite the evidence that home is working, I would hope that our leaders, using an even handed approach, would address the fact that neighbors have to sue developers to get clarity on what's legal to build in their neighborhood, rather than being able to refer to a clear and consistent code. I would hope that a data informed approach would lead us to conclude that wasting neighbors precious time and money is a ridiculous choice. In contrast to fixing where the code conflicts with itself. It's not too late, though. Let's stop shortcutting the process by allowing ideologues to obstruct reasonably crafted solutions. Let's vote today to start engaging the community on how to best continue iterating on the success of home. Thank you. [2:54:03 PM] >> Okay, good afternoon, mayor and council members. I'm Taylor Jackson, I'm the CEO of the home builders association of greater Austin and a resident of district seven. I'm here in support of item 26, which are the improvements of the home initiative. The intention for home is to provide Austin with more missing middle housing. What home does and what will. What it will continue to do is that it will open doors to home ownership. It allows families to stay and live and work in Austin, and it allows gentle density. In fact, since home has been set in place, we've had we've seen over 430 housing units approved. Now, that's not built, but that's just approved. So we're on a right path. This resolution allows staff to [2:55:03 PM] research and analyze the barriers that that extend the the development process that would directly impact the cost of housing. Because honestly, every day and every dollar matters every time or every thousand dollars a home increases, it prices out a thousand families out of buying a home. So thank you for your consideration and support of item 26. >> Thank you. I just wanted to note I have time donations from my parents who are present here. >> Robert, caller and Carol journey. Perfect. You have six minutes. >> Thank you. I just want to start by clarifying this is not a technical cleanup of the code. And you can look at the language of itself to confirm it. The city manager is [2:56:04 PM] directed to conduct a comprehensive review of the land development code and propose amendments necessary to conform regulations consistent with home standardized zoning in all districts, and regulated plans with home. That is not a technical amendment. That is a code rewrite. Item 26 is asking council members to support sweeping zoning changes without sufficient evidence that home is delivering meaningful affordability challenges. And despite growing concerns around displacement, demolitions and public process failures, one official city report on home has been completed one, and it repeatedly emphasizes that evidence remains preliminary, inconclusive, and too limited to justify broad code changes, the report states. This report represents a single year of data, and while certain trends are emerging, it is too early to draw definitive conclusions. That is the report from the [2:57:05 PM] city staff 430 units. When we need 120,000 new units of housing, no. Despite this cautionary language, item 26 proposes sweeping changes when there isn't sufficient evidence to determine what home is actually doing. The justification on affordability that is being used to push this. Well, what is the city report actually say about homes? Impact on affordability mixed and inconclusive. Small lots and duplex housing have seen modest price declines across a few projects. However, a signature aspect of home triplexes, the new unit that's supposed to go out and make everything better. Median prices went from 750 K to 1.2 million. The most recent analysis we have from the unlock ems report shows that [2:58:08 PM] median home construction. Under this. The 400 units that have been looked at is 750 000 is the median price, which the report says is still out of the reach of most Austin households, noting that a household made up of ems workers or teachers could likely afford a home costing around 380 000, which means the other report published on home, is telling us that the housing it's created costs more than twice what the people who are supposed to get out of housing, housing, out of home can even afford. So the best available evidence shows no meaningful impact on affordability. But it does raise serious unresolved concerns regarding demolition, displacement and preservation of existing housing, the city report states. Home applications are concentrated and displacement risk areas and independent analysis confirms this and shows that after home passed, a greater percentage of infill projects involve [2:59:08 PM] demolitions and that many of these demolitions destroyed existing affordable housing. I'd also point out that item 26 is really a case in the failure of transparency, of policy making. The item itself calls out the middle missing resolution passed by this council, and that resolution requires robust stakeholder engagement. Instead, this item has been put forward with vague language shifting interpretations from staff and no meaningful opportunity for the affected residents to understand how it would be proposed. And indeed, how is meaningful engagement possible when the item that's being voted on by this council was posted less than 24 hours ago. Sponsors of the amendment have struggled to explain exactly what this is supposed to do. Is it a commitment? Is it a code rewrite? There are all these [3:00:09 PM] various opinions. Exhibit a, which finally came out yesterday, makes one thing clear ncd's are being specifically targeted for amendments to make them consistent with home. This is not consistent with how home was sold to the public, and it should concern everyone. Needs are among the most carefully developed zoning tools the city has ever created. They were built through years of neighborhood planning, negotiation, compromise, and public engagement between residents and the city. Now the city is proposing to subordinate them to home through a process that's had virtually no meaningful public engagement. And given the December 3rd deadline, cannot realistically provide the level of public process that was used to produce the documents that it's going to replace. My neighborhood, north university is a perfect example. It's one of the densest neighborhoods in Austin and contains exactly the kind of missing middle housing that the city says it wants to create. Duplexes triplexes single family with garage [3:01:10 PM] apartments, multifamily, all in an integrated, walkable community. These are housing types and overlays that should be studied for their successes. They're not failures of the city that need to be replaced. Austin deserve better than a major city wide zoning rewrite that's been rushed forward through vague language, limited evidence, and inadequate public engagement. We need a serious look at what housing affordability takes. That doesn't just look at zoning supply side issues, but the full toolbox. So I strongly encourage you to vote no on this issue. I thank you for your time. >> I mayor, mayor, pro tem council members. Good afternoon. My name is Greg Anderson, and I hope your colleague who's at home is doing well. I've been in the home building industry now for well over 20 years, and I want to share with you one of the most frustrating aspects of building housing in Austin, [3:02:11 PM] Texas. And it doesn't matter if we're talking as a nonprofit, building homes or as a for profit market rate developer, building homes, which is where the majority of our housing stock comes from. It's just the complexities of our land development code. It's it's very tricky to build the types of housing that we're trying to see on the ground today, and that's affordable to the majority of income earners. And so in 2018, we passed prop a, and in 2019, we responded to that by passing affordability unlocked, which made it a lot easier to build income restricted housing citywide. It was just a very good idea to make it easier for those folks to build the housing that you all were trying to see, and have those dollars spent as efficiently as possible. And then in 2020, we knew what was supposed to happen a new land development code helping on the market rate side. A lawsuit threw that out. So I'm sorry that you're inheriting a lot of issues, right? So you have that a terribly outdated land development code that's very complex, hard to use. Many years ago, there were racial deed restrictions and covering half the city's residential units roughly. And then when those were deemed illegal, they were replaced with large minimum lot sizes. We started to have really large minimum [3:03:11 PM] lot sizes to kind of have that same intent. And then 80 years later, when the vast majority of austinites could not afford homeownership, you all rolled up your sleeves and started to make it easier to build broader array of homeownership opportunities. So thank you for that. You're probably gonna have some amendments today that look to strengthen the idea of this resolution, which is a good resolution. Please support those. And you might have some amendments to water it down to make it harder to build more efficiently, more affordably and more areas. Please look to resist those for affordability and lock the way we looked at it city wide, which is what home was always is outside of flight paths and industrial areas. Let's legalize housing. Let's make it easier to build more types of housing for all the different income earners that are out there. So with that, good luck and have fun. And thank you for doing this. >> Brad Massingill. >> He's donated time to me. I'm Chris Paige. I have to pick up my child soon. Yeah. >> Is he here? >> He is. >> Yes. Okay. >> Four minutes. Thank you. I think we need to stop pretending that businesses are charities that are going to [3:04:11 PM] solve our public problems. We've seen pretty clearly that they don't. And in fact, they will exacerbate them so long as you create incentives to do so. A little anecdote about what home has achieved in my neighborhood in the last ten days, there was a house that was there for about 40 years, affordably rented to families. It was put on a truck bed and driven out of that, out of our neighborhood. And there's currently a filed site plan for three units with two pools, two parking spaces. And I guarantee those won't go to families. We've seen that pattern repeated consistently throughout our neighborhood and elsewhere in close proximity. I'd like to go into some of the. Misconstrued information that's often used to support policies like this. A recent April 2026 report on home. So it says that [3:05:11 PM] the average price for one of these is over $750,000. That's more than double the price that a public school teacher or an ems worker could afford. But you all were happy to use them as your mascots to pass this policy. There were 400 plus units approved, but there have been. Within 2025, only 57 were built of those. Like I said, they're more than double what the working class can afford. This is not trickle down housing. This is trickle out housing literally on the beds of trucks. We're seeing more supply at the higher end of the market, what they call affordable is anything less than $1.6 million. That's ridiculous. We know that's I mean, not even in the ballpark [3:06:11 PM] of what our working class can afford. But home proponents will say that anything less than $1.58 million is an affordability win, which is absolute nonsense. In terms of the actual home. The 57 units that were produced, there's between 0 and 3, most likely zero, that are affordable to our ems and teachers. That means there were only three that were sold at less than $500,000, and we don't know if it gets anywhere near that 380,000, you know, mortgaged house that those ems workers or teachers might be able to afford. You can look at the map and see where these things are happening. It's disproportionately in areas that are suffering from gentrification. And as we know from aba's own report, it is not solving the problem of affordability. We've talked [3:07:13 PM] about reducing minimum lot sizes. Well, apparently home units have been built on average on lots that are 6708ft S, >> Far in excess of what our previous minimum lot size was. But of course, we'll hear the, you know, the need for a cheaper division of lots so that we can liquidate whatever existing homes and long, you know, long time austinites have. We want to make it cheaper for industry to take a bite out of them. And the reason is to build more unaffordable housing, because you are scraping the bottom of the barrel for tax. This is the problem that was created by billionaires, by real estate industry, that wants to reduce the amount of time that a house is listed by 4%. Thank you. And to reduce the discount by. >> We're going to switch to [3:08:14 PM] remote speakers. First we have Stephanie Stanford on item 26. >> Good afternoon. Can you hear me? >> Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead. >> Good day, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Stephanie Stanford and I reside in district nine. I'm here to request that you vote no on item 26. Let's take this back to the drawing board and work on getting it right. There's far too many times in the city's history where we've let the greedy and unethical lead you down paths. That sounded great. Butts increased density to the 50 year floodplain instead of the 100. I know how much the city spent after shoal creek flooded. Killed a few people in building drainage [3:09:15 PM] controls. That developer was long gone. Their profits sunk into their grandchildren's college funds. This is important. This is important to get right because this is our city that we take pride in. We have a history of making great decisions. This is not one of them. We really need to revisit it, give us the opportunity. Look at neighborhoods the way they need to be lived in the communities that they build, and make sure we're protecting them and growing them responsibly. Earlier, it was mentioned that we need sustainable and responsible growth, putting high density into areas that have aging, utility infrastructure, aging, drainage infrastructure and not [3:10:15 PM] requiring that those be accounted for makes it more expensive to live in this city. The maintenance is going to become unfathomably expensive if we don't put it into the process like we do with larger developments. It's the same responsibility. So please consider that. >> Thank you very much. >> Next speaker on item 26. Speaking remotely, Janine Ramirez. >> I'm Jenny Ramirez. I am in district five and I'm saying no to this item. I, I mean, to hear from another speaker that y'all just put this up 24 hours ago. You know what? For years now I have been saying this. I can't wait to all of y'all are gone. I can't wait till you're voted out. I'm Latina. Graduated 1982 from Crockett high school. And it just seems [3:11:17 PM] to me this council with other Latinos don't care about the people. You don't have a people first attitude. What's happened to y'all? You know, I don't get it. It's safe. Where's the mayor at? I'm I'm I'm looking at the where's the mayor at? You know what you want to put. You want to open the houses to all the Zones. Well guess what? I'm a musician of 40 years. The name of my band is a vagabond jet setter. And I've been performing for 40 years, and we've had complaints at clubs. When, you know, they build condos, they build houses. You know what you're doing. You think because it's 3:00 in the afternoon, no one knows. God knows. People are watching you. You you guys have no no conscience. Things like trying to pass it. Shame on you. You this needs way more investigation on this. You think again. Keep it up. Keep [3:12:18 PM] it up. All you council members. Just like the 24 number I just waited on to speak. Excuse me. And and one of the councilwomen I she Burt over here to the right. You were saying me and my people are looking, you know, at what's going on with Johnson county, Manchester. Should have known a long time ago. I've known about this since when I saw documentary three years ago and I was horrified. Shame on you for not even know what data centers are and all the repercussions that have. Everyone should be required to watch the New York Times documentary. >> Thank you. Moving on to Michael curry, speaking on item 26. >> Thank you. I'm Michael curry. There's numerous problems with this resolution, but with my time, I hope to address two. First, this resolution elevates home to a status it has not earned. It's widely understood that home does not produce affordable housing or even [3:13:19 PM] market affordable housing, but rather expensive housing where market affordable housing in many cases once stood. The little chart in the backup purporting to compare home market values to traditional housing is not from any document that would qualify as a study, and is to be as charitable as possible. Wildly misleading in any event, and it's an inadequate basis for launching this process. The city admits home has implementation problems. Let's first fix those problems, evaluate those fxes, and then reevaluate the operation of home. In the meantime, we should focus on creating affordable housing. Secondly, much of the resolution is too ambiguous to be actionable. I find the red line language to be frankly unintelligible, but it seems that staff wants to provide the movement wants [3:14:22 PM] staff to provide some character of analysis based on vague parameters to force feed home standards in districts. Hayward for other uses. This is how the city wastes staff time and tax dollars, sending them on a wild goose chase to perform unfocused and unnecessary work through resolutions like this, when staff could be addressing real, everyday city problems like affordability, parks and traffic. Wasting city dollars in this invisible way is part of the budget problem. At some point, you have to stop. Please. >> Moving back to in-person speakers on item 26, Cody car, Sherrod Mahoney, Kristen Shope, Kelson, Trueheart, Mary Ann Sanchez, Susan. Almanza. Adrian. Macias, Valerie Menard. Please [3:15:27 PM] state your name and begin speaking. >> Good afternoon council. My name is Cody. Car. I'll speak quickly on this resolution, which I'm in support of item 26. I just want to say I've been building houses here for the last decade. I've spent the last three years building houses under the home act, and I can say from a firsthand boots on the ground perspective that it has resulted in a reduction in the cost of housing. It is absolutely true that if you only build one house on one lot, it's going to be more expensive than if you're able to build 2 or 3 houses on a lot. And home one did a great deal to reduce the cost of housing in that manner. In fact, in some cases, we found that we can build housing up to 50% cheaper when we build three units than if we built one on the lot. And we have experienced that firsthand. The reason that was possible is that there was a reduction in complexities, confusing regulations, and time associated with cleaning this up. And item 26 goes further, [3:16:28 PM] continues to expand on what home did that worked well and will continue to expand the opportunities to build smaller, more affordable housing. I look forward to seeing smaller, tiny homes on small lots like what was built in Hyde park. You know, historically, 25, 25 foot wide cottage homes and shotgun houses and really cool, different types of housing in the city. Again, I think we need to bring back those triplexes that are missing duplexes. And I think this is a step further. So thank you for your time and efforts. It's working and I appreciate it. >> Thank you sir. Go ahead. Next, speaker, and just please state your name for the record. Thank you. >> My name is Cheryl mudhole and I'm a home builder here in Austin. Good afternoon, council members. Several other people are talking to specifics about the motion, and I'd like to take this opportunity to draw attention to the broader picture here. Austin continues to grow, whether we like it or [3:17:30 PM] not. However, compared to the earlier in just this decade, growth has slowed down considerably. And the reason, based on the memorandum from the planning department director, is affordability, it goes to say, particularly affects families of color. Affordability continues to be our number one challenge, making it difficult for both city and private sector employees alike who work in Austin to live in Austin, forcing them to make long commutes, costing time, money and being away from their families while they're in their cars based on actual data compared to other Texas cities, Austin permitting costs and timelines at about 3 to $4000 in 30 to 60 days, or two X to four X anywhere else. But it's not all doom and gloom. We are making some important strides. The home act is a huge step in the right direction towards making Austin affordable again. You see what I did there, so [3:18:30 PM] kudos to council members and staff for making these gains. We need to continue this work by making home provisions apply to all the lots in Austin. If someone doesn't want to build more than one house on their property, they have every right to do so. Nobody is forcing them to build more. But by the same logic, if a property owner wants to build more units as allowed by the home act, they should have every right to do so. This will result in smaller houses. It will reduce the cost of the houses and the prices of the houses. Unlike many other people have said, and it reduces prices of the houses, reduces rents due to increased capacity and results in lower traffic and shorter commutes. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Miss Almanza. >> Good evening, council members. I'm Suzanne Almanza with poder, and we would like for council member Velasquez to remove his request for support [3:19:31 PM] for this resolution. This resolution is a gentrification resolution. This resolution is broadly written, vague in key areas, and rests on several faulty premises. But its intent is clear to expand the impact of the home ordinance into all zoning categories. Where single families zoning is allowed. The effect is to override focus local planning. This proposal does nothing to promote the affordability. Why the gentleman talked about it was cheaper to build the houses. It's more expensive for us to try and buy them. For instance, I live in montopolis with a 33% poverty rate. They are presently right now in porter on one single family lot. They're building five homes. All of them are selling way over half $1 million, 150 yards from me, a single family house was destroyed. He talked about demolitions. They're all over half $1 million. And I'm [3:20:32 PM] talking about 680,000 870,000. So I don't know where in the hell you're saying this is affordable when you build in half $1 million homes in a low income area, in a poverty area that has been studied, and you continue to build homes, they're unaffordable. This is gentrification really is colonization of montopolis. We are the last frontier to be dominated by the city council with its oppressive zoning. And we know that even though you say it's citywide, where does it really take place? In the eastern crescent. That is what this city council and the city council before has been doing to our community. I'm an indigenous person of this continent. We're still here. We're still present. And so I hope that you vote no on this particular item and that you don't move it forward. Thank you. >> Thank you, miss Almanza. >> Sir. [3:21:32 PM] >> Kelson Trueheart. Afternoon council members. I'm a native Texan, born 35 miles from here, and I've lived in the city of Austin and surrounding area my whole life. I'm also a structural engineer and co- founder of an engineering firm, my second in the past decade, and I've worked on projects in the city of Austin for the past 20 years. I'm here in support of this resolution. Austin has a housing problem. No surprise to anyone in this room. We've spent decades inside an entirely lacking growth infrastructure framework established to benefit those who voiced their opposition to density and growth. Councils have been variously aligned over the decades, but the results are clear growth in the city has been severely limited in certain areas due to a vocal, well funded and well established minority. As a professional in the building industry, I can tell you unequivocally this city is the most arduous to build in across the state. On the micro scale, a single permit can yield wildly different outcomes depending on which plan reviewer gets it. Code interpretations, inconsistent applications inconsistent. The same project submitted twice [3:22:33 PM] can get two different answers. That alone adds cost, time and uncertainty that smaller builders and individual owners cannot absorb, especially in this economic climate. All that before you get anywhere near the macro scale, the patchwork of far caps and ccd restrictions, compatibility overlays and neighborhood by neighborhood carve outs that have limited, that have limited density growth precisely in the corridors that need it most. These restrictions are sold as tools to preserve neighborhood character and promote compatible design. I want to be direct about what that means. In practice, they impose market density limitations. Dressed in design language, they apply an antiquated planning philosophy rooted in an era where single family exclusivity was the explicit goal. The loudest opposition to change consistently comes from people whose own neighborhoods and property values have been leveraged on the back of Austin's growth. As long as that growth has existed outside of their neighborhoods. This resolution works with something simple and long overdue, applying the same rules consistently across the entire city. Not one standard for those with the time and [3:23:33 PM] resources to fight against the greater good. >> Thanks. Thank you sir. >> Continue on. Item 26, Maddie Gutierrez, Benjamin Leslie. Kate. Just. Taylor Smith, Megan meisenbach, Erich Kleiber, Judah. Rice, Carlos. Pinon, Adam Greenfield, please state your name and begin speaking. >> Whoever wants to go first, go forth. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. My name is Taylor Smith. I'm a resident of district two, and I represent the Austin board of realtors. And on behalf of our more than 16000 central Texas members, I ask you to support item 26, the home improvements resolution. Unlike mls and Austin, board of realtors have long believed that better data leads to better policy. That's why we produced the home impact report, which analyzes the early [3:24:35 PM] results of the home initiative. The data shows that home is working. Home units are more attainable, smaller, built on smaller lots, family sized with a median of three bedrooms, and are creating new construction opportunities for buyers who were previously priced out of urban core neighborhoods. The data shows that in 2025, the median sales price of a home unit was 53% lower than that of a traditional single family home built and sold during the same time. We commend mayor Watson in this council for advancing policies like the home initiative that are moving Austin in the right direction. While we celebrate the early success of the home initiative, we. We know that $750,000 is still not attainable for most austinites. As our home report indicates, a typical household like two aid teachers or two ems workers can realistically afford a home price closer to 370,000 to 380,000. So while the home initiative initiative is moving us in the right direction, more work is needed to fully unlock its potential. That's why we encourage you to [3:25:35 PM] approve item 26, which is a resolution designed to address technical inconsistencies and regulatory bottlenecks that are moving us slower scale infill to come. We encourage you to approve this resolution as drafted, so that staff and the community can start the process to fully explore opportunities to improve the home initiative. Because ultimately, our shared goal is simple more homes at more attainable prices and all parts of Austin for all austinites, thank you all for your dedicated public service and your commitment to improving the lives of current and future people who call Austin home. >> Thank you. Next speaker. You'll go ahead. >> Okay. >> Afternoon, mayor pro tem and council Adam Greenfield here with Austin. Nice to be with you once again. Speaking in support of agenda item 26. Efficient land use is key to walkability. And when many of us go on vacation, we go on vacation to places that have [3:26:36 PM] that kind of granular urban fabric that the home initiative very much is making possible. And this clean up is just going to make it more effective. In particular, we wanted to single out our support for the further reduction of building setbacks. Every foot we can bring buildings closer to the street is a more shaded sidewalk, and more walkable neighborhoods. Setback reductions are a climate resiliency tool, and we look forward to working with council moving forward on revisiting setbacks in the future and seeing how we can make further adjustments there. Secondly, also speaking very strongly in support of the elimination of building coverage, which, as many of you know, is the amount of impervious cover you can put buildings on. When we had minimum parking requirements, this wasn't really much of an issue. But now that we don't have them, this is an essentially a, an incentive to build parking, where the council's intention a couple of years ago was very clear that there are no more parking requirements. So great to see [3:27:37 PM] that on the way out for duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes. And again, looking forward to working with council on reviewing building coverage in the other Zones too, because there's a lot of land that's being locked up there that could be housing and more walkable neighborhoods. So yeah, thank you very much for agenda item 26. Thank you very much to council member Laine for sponsoring it. And to the co- sponsors, appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much. The next speaker, whoever wants to. >> Yeah, I can go. My name is Carlos pinion, and I'm the resilience program coordinator at poder, based in district three. I'd like to echo Susana and ask council member Velasquez to remove himself as a co-sponsor from this. The language in this resolution does nothing to promote affordability, and what we need in district three is deeply affordable housing. The resolution essentially seeks to override all existing neighborhood plans without any engagement process, which I consider an affront to the longtime working class community members who, despite participating in the neighborhood planning process over two decades ago, remain [3:28:38 PM] here and are still fighting to keep their homes and preserve the communities they envisioned for themselves. And there are no restrictions on where projects can be situated. So we know that developers will go right to the eastern crescent, as they've done in the past, as they do now, as they will continue to do with full force if you implement more code changes to fit home. People on both ends of this have cited this immense gap between what people make and what the price of these homes are. Why would you approve something that will just build on top of that gap, you know, and widen? Why didn't the the equity, you know, in the city, please vote against this resolution and actually engage with your constituents, direct your energies back to to do more research on what home has failed to do for Austin's working class and to solutions that do not offer east Austin to developers as their playground that work toward deeply affordable housing, countering the displacement of our communities. Thank you. >> Thank you for your comments. And I guess, Mr. Next speaker, Mr. Judah rice. >> Hi. >> Good afternoon, mayor Watson, [3:29:40 PM] mayor pro tem and council. My name is Judah rice and I'm a resident of district three. I grew up in Travis heights in district nine. By the time I moved into my own place, I couldn't afford an apartment in seven, eight, 704, let alone a single family home. Looking at real estate listings today, which is the cheapest real estate market Austin has seen in years, though still not affordable, the cheapest single family home for sale in that neighborhood is listed for over $1 million, and that's not the Austin that I grew up in. I won't argue that a $750,000 house is an affordable house, but it's a major improvement from the 1 to 2 million single family teardowns that have been the core driver of displacement displacement across our city for decades. Unfortunately, it takes more than three years to undo decades of exclusionary housing policies, and I really encourage this council to speed up that process. The pre home rules are what got us into this mess in neighborhoods like that, many historic duplexes and triplexes that been illegal to build for decades got replaced by luxury single family homes, which led to a net decrease in housing units in many census [3:30:41 PM] tracts from 1984 to 2020. Item 26 is a great first stop at fixing those issues. I care strongly about preservation. I'd like to see an expansion of the preservation bonus to incentivize the preservation of historic duplexes with the addition of a third home unit, and not just a historic single family homes, which are what is protected under the current bonus. And just broadly, it's not lost on me that we're sitting here at 3 P.M. On a Tuesday talking about what the needs of working class austinites are. I work freelance, so I'm here. But as we sit here, our first responders, teachers and service workers commute for upwards of 50 miles to the only homes they can afford in the suburbs. When you drive out to those suburbs, you see the kind of small lot development that home provides for. It may be impossible to build in much of Austin, but it's legal in Taylor, which has home style zoning citywide. These are the affordable homes for working austinites, and they're not even being built here. Instead of allowing our neighborhoods to adapt to a growing city, we outsource the gains of our growth to the suburbs, losing out on tax revenue and funneling the gains to a lucky few homeowners who got here [3:31:41 PM] first. Item 26 is a great progress in that direction, in the direction of fixing that. Thank you, thank you. >> Okay, I'll go next. Good afternoon, council members. My name is Kate yushchenko. I'm a professor at UT at UT Austin, and I'm here to speak in favor of item 26. I'm the previous owner of the project, 205 east 34th street. The city approved building plans on the home initiative for a modest development consisting of three units with five bedrooms each. However. However, the permits got trapped in a board of adjustment appeals driven by private interpretations of northern universities. And I think this example should be very important to the council to consider, especially now that the city is being sued by a group of nimbys backed by safehouse prince attorneys, claiming that the density on the home initiative should be reduced to 40% instead of 65 as you intended. There is a striking difference in housing production in Austin neighborhoods. In the last 20 [3:32:42 PM] years, more than 2000 houses have been built and sold in skincare. In comparison, north university neighborhood only roughly ten houses have been built and sold new construction houses. And that striking difference is not accidental. The building process became so hostile, unpredictable, expensive and time consuming that many small investors as myself and property owners simply avoided these neighborhoods altogether. And seeds originally were ruled as a political event, which has nothing to do with conservation. The main point of ccd is were to spot change in multifamily to single family zoning. The rest of the ordinance was a copy paste of land development code. Why would you want to keep all the land development code to rule over the current one? This is just absurd. Austin cannot solve affordability housing crisis. If every attempt to add density becomes tied up to years of appeals and litigations, the rules adopted by council must be clear, predictable and [3:33:44 PM] applied consistently along all neighborhoods of Austin. Thank you so much for your time and please, please rip off this mandate of ccd. >> Thank you ma'am. >> My name is Ben Woosley and I'm a renter in district nine. I'm in favor of item 26. I can personally testify that my experience with home act is that it has materially contributed to affordability in two respects. First, I've been able to get rent concessions from my landlord in light of the fact that the rental market is now more competitive. Second, I've had to reduce the rents for the rooms that I rent out in this house because I have found that the competitive market has required that of me in order to bring in the housemates I prefer. The consequence is hundreds of dollars per month saved by my housemates, and thousands of dollars per year saved by me in rent costs. The detractors are mistaken to look at the newly built housing for the cost savings. The savings come everywhere else in the market, particularly in the older or more marginal real estate, which struggles to attract residents. My house is not a [3:34:46 PM] new house. The foundation is shot, for example, but we make do. Were I purely selfishly motivated, I might prefer fewer houses and a more competitive environment so that I could charge more, charge more for rent. I might prefer an unchanging Austin so that I never have to make accommodations for neighbors. But I care about the future of Austin. I look forward to in Austin that is more walkable, more dynamic, more welcoming, more neighborly. Thanks to the porch ordinances included in this package and more affordable for everyone. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Go ahead. >> Sir Eric hilberg from d7 speaking. >> To that microphone over in front of you. Perfect. >> Hi there. Okay. I'm Eric Heidelberg, resident of d7, speaking in support of this item. So I'm living in a relatively new townhome, you know, pre home, but you know, new and because of this availability, I was able to become a homeowner in my 30s barely. So, you know, there is a demand for small and midsize [3:35:47 PM] affordable market rate housing in this city if we allow it and don't just build more big houses like, you know, has been kind of the trend. This item, you know, seems pretty straightforward to me, does close a lot of gaps and loopholes. Echoing the building coverage makes a whole lot of sense. I don't really see why a driveway or a swimming pool gets extra exemptions that a bedroom or any other kind of living space has. That sounds to me like it's a carve out for luxury features over affordability and families. And I would just echo what Judith said is my hometown is temple. Temple has always made it much easier than Austin to build a small housing on small lots. And it's always been much more affordable than Austin. So I don't really see why we shouldn't be doing more of that here. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Continuing on item 26, schiera nallur Patty sprinkle, Barbara Macarthur, jordi Tello, [3:36:47 PM] Diego Schwab, Riley Patterson, Zachary Faddis. Pedro Hernandez Jr, please state your name and begin speaking. >> Yeah. Oh, sure. Hello, my name is jordi Tello and I'm a resident of district nine where I rent. I just wanted to speak in support of item 26. What's being discussed here today is not an ordinance, but instead the beginning of a process to make home work better. And I look forward to a denser city where more people can afford to live here, more families, first responders, teachers. And I know that these improvements to home will lead to that. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. If whoever's ready next wants to go ahead and go. >> Hi, my name is Riley Patterson. I'm a resident of district ten, and I'm here speaking in support of item 26. [3:37:49 PM] So I want to speak mostly to the demand for smaller, less expensive housing in central neighborhoods. From my own personal experience, my wife and I bought a small home on a 2600 square foot lot and a walkable, bikeable transit accessible area near DPD that basically was like half the price of similarly aged houses in the same neighborhood. I lived there with my wife and daughter, and we're very like, we wouldn't want to be on a larger lot, much less spend the price that it would cost to, to do so. So former neighbors in the same area on the split lot that's right next to us or in apartments nearby. Like I've had a few of them that have moved away when they decided to become homeowners because they couldn't find something like that in the neighborhood. And one particular case where they loved the bike ability, the like transit accessibility, and they ended up having to move to a neighborhood that didn't have those features. So I think that's one thing that we lose [3:38:51 PM] by not opening up more housing stock in these areas. So, and of course, we we have a decades long deficit of homes like this because we had 40 plus years where it was illegal to, to, to build them. And home has begun to address this. I think I've noticed some in my own neighborhood projects that got permitted, mostly not built yet, that that are putting three units were previously probably would have been a 3000 to 4000 square foot single unit. And, and I want to highlight that today is, you know, the stat $750,000 has been thrown around like today, $750,000 builds will be next generation's more affordable housing. In the same way that my house wouldn't have been the price it was if it was built yesterday. It was built many decades ago on a smaller lot when that was still possible. So that brings me to my support of item 26. Oh, all right. >> Thank you very much. You go. >> Howdy, council members and mayor, my name is Zach Faddis. I'm a resident of district nine [3:39:52 PM] and president of aura, an all grassroots volunteer organization focused on housing and transportation in Austin. I'm here today to support and to express my gratitude for item 26 home improvements, especially to sponsor Krista Laine and her hard working staff who have made such a thorough and thoughtful resolution. When we passed home, many of you made a public commitment that the ordinances would not be the end of the conversation around legalizing more affordable housing types throughout the city. You asked for periodic updates on progress from staff so that you could examine what's working, what's not, and what adjustments need to be made. So item 26 is a delivery on that promise. We've seen the results of home seen that it has resulted in the building of dramatically cheaper housing throughout the city. We've also started to see the major barriers to fulfilling homes promise. Today's resolution begins a public conversation about adjusting the rules, removing barriers and clarifying contradictions throughout our archaic code to ensure that the home reforms live up to their fullest potential. I'm grateful to have a council that is willing to [3:40:53 PM] take a critical look at its own work. Housing policy is complicated. No policy is going to be perfect the first time, nor the second. But by continual reexamination, we can enter away to a more abundant, prosperous and affordable city. On a personal note, since home has passed, three friends have purchased a house that they that would have been illegal to build before. Two are first time homeowners. Also, I moved from a two to a three bedroom apartment in the same complex, and my rent reduced by $100 a month, and I firmly believe that is due to the reforms made by this council. So thank you. >> Thank you very much. The floor is yours, ma'am. >> Hi. I live in district seven. My name is Barbara Macarthur. I found the resolution hard to understand, and it conflicted with a lot of the existing written ldc, but I'll go on from there quickly. I'll tell you my personal home story. My neighbor and friend was a montessori teacher. Her husband made pots. They couldn't afford the taxes they left. They had to sell to a developer. He [3:41:54 PM] subdivided their lot and he's put six home units on the lot. It's now being advertised for sale as an 18 unit hotel in a neighborhood. If you have 12 million, you can buy it. They've reduced the price. It's a fire sale and it's coming down rapidly. That's what I see in home, where I live in a which was always a lower income neighborhood. So rather than listen to our plea to diminish impervious cover limits, listen to a very esteemed expert who holds positions at UCLA in the London school of commerce. Blanket changes in zoning are unlikely to increase affordability for lower income households and prosperous regions. They would, however, increase gentrification within prosperous regions and would not appreciably decrease income inequality. Policies such as this blanket up zoning will unleash market forces that serve high income earners and [3:42:56 PM] are therefore likely to reinforce the effects of income inequality rather than tempering them. The idea that today's housing affordability crisis can be addressed by a simple swing of the pendulum clock back to a mythical free market of construction could well be another great planning disaster. Along the lines of other great historical mistakes in urban policy, which we have paid dearly afterwards. Please think about what you're doing, especially to the people who need affordable housing. >> Thank you for your comments, ma'am. >> Continue on. Item 26 ridge Harmon, key. Gray. Nico sacco, Rohan jabbar, David Whitworth, Susan Spataro, bill bunch, Jeffrey Bowen, Ben. Suddaby. >> Y'all come on down. >> Please state your name and begin speaking. [3:43:57 PM] >> Sir, if you want to kick us off, please feel free. >> Okay. >> Good afternoon council. My name is Rohan jabbar and I'm a resident of Austin, a local small business owner and someone who has built been building homes in Austin over the last several years. I'm speaking in support of item 26 because I firsthand know how reforms like home, the homeowner are directly increasing housing availability and improving affordability for Austin residents by allowing more homes on existing lots, we are creating opportunities for more families to live in central Austin at lower price points than would otherwise be possible. In my experience, the home ordinance is already having a real and measurable impact. More units are being built, land costs are being spread across multiple products, multiple homes on existing lots instead of just one, and that is helping to drive more attainable housing options throughout the city. At the same time, we still have policies like ncd's that often move in the opposite direction by restricting housing supply [3:44:58 PM] and limiting the ability to add additional homes in high opportunity areas. If Austin is serious about affordability, we have to recognize that limiting supply in central neighborhoods makes housing more expensive and less attainable for working families, young professionals, and future residents. Too often, projects in Austin become more expensive, slower, and less predictable than they need to be, and these costs ultimately get passed on to residents and homebuyers. This item helps create a clearer and more efficient path forward, while still maintaining appropriate standards and oversight. I appreciate staff's work on this item, and I encourage council to support this item. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you very much for your comments. Whoever wants to go next. Don't you go. >> Okay. Oh, yes. >> Leah Ziegler and Barbara silly. >> Barbara silly is here. Lee had to leave. >> So four minutes for Jeffrey Bowen. >> Okay, great. So Jeffrey [3:45:59 PM] Bowen, district eight. I'm also the president of a N C Austin neighborhoods council, and I'm currently the chair for the board of adjustments. And I'm speaking for myself. Home has been one of those issues that there's issues with the entire process. Being somebody that's been in the building business for 45 years and looking at this at all different stages. I just, I have my my major concerns. And when I looked at the message board, there was this that came across and it just says early results are promising. Home units are being delivered at a median price, more than 50% lower than newly constructed home families. If you'll pay attention to the board up there, that is the unit that miss Macarthur was talking about, that they've now jumped the price up on. That's 100% impervious cover. If half one of those units, which is there's two one unit with three or there's two big houses with three separate units in it. So [3:47:01 PM] now that because of the fire sale, but you still look at $5 million just for the entire process. Next slide please. If you okay, this one here is in north loop 1.7. Next one please. You got one more. There you go back there you go right there. Now these are also up there in the brentwood area. There you go. You see one at 1.7. Then the other one's just over $1 million each. And in regards to this, this doesn't even count for the that's just on the north end on the south side alone. And I just got this last night from a friend in Barton hills, which is in district five, one lot that was subdivided into .2896 acres, which means a big lot was now subdivided into three. The first house on here, three bedroom, three bath, 2500ft S, $2 million, just over 2 million. The number two facility on this [3:48:03 PM] one at 2591ft S, $2.1 million. And the third lot, or the third one on the same lot. Five bedrooms, four and a half baths, 3100ft S at 2.5 million. These were all built under the home initiative. Have we got problems? You bet we got problems. We're not building the smaller stuff that these people are all talking about that they want, but the builders are building what they're going to make money at and make profit at. There's another issue in this entire process which talks about which we just got the exhibit a, which I'm really glad we got this at the last minute, that talks about certain single families. So it lists out all of the sfs in there. Well, where are these certain sf areas at? There's no there's there's no identity. Where is this city wide? But you also go in here and list and going, there's potential zoning amendments that need to be done [3:49:03 PM] on numerous N, C, C, D S that's one of the problems is that Austin development services is now treating home as if it overrides ordinances that have been long empowered over 20 years, that neighborhoods and businesses all work together on, just in order to make sure that they can do some of these things under home, which does not apply to these ordinances, to these overlays. So if that's the problem, then change the ordinances versus trying to shove this down. This is not a working conversation. This is basically people and zealots in some cases that are going, you must do this so that you can make this more affordable. I'm looking at these right up there on the board. 1.7 I don't know who that's affordable to. It sure as hell ain't me. But we have this issue. If this is the issue that we're going to be these long standing ordinances. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> You've heard a lot of [3:50:05 PM] technical issues, and I'd really like to talk more about the impact of the people who live here in our community. And people have talked about our community all day long. To me, what this looks like is taking a bulldozer and getting rid of single family homes. And there's, there's a a downside to that, and that is that we are driving families out of Austin. And one, one of the reasons we know that is that the school district attendance in Austin ISD dropped this year by 3200 students. This isn't a place for families anymore. Now, what does that mean? First of all, if you've been reading what the school districts are doing, they're closing schools. They're closing neighborhood schools. We are eliminating and and downgrading the value of families and neighborhoods. We started with home one and the lot size of 5750. You could build three units on. I don't [3:51:06 PM] know if any of you actually went and looked at lots what size that that looks like. I didn't have much of a feel for it, but I did look at it. But I'm telling you, those are teeny little places. The next thing is you can go right almost to the yard line. And now we're moving out toward the street. But other important things, remember, you're not going to require parking anymore. So where are these people going to park? You eliminated the amount of people that can live there. And compatibility. This is not good for Austin. It doesn't have to happen. We can build neighborhoods with smaller houses, but I don't think that we should be going into current single family homes. Eliminating families in Austin, Texas. So I ask you to think about neighborhoods and families and children. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Whitworth. Do you want to go next? Yes. >> I believe I have four minutes for David Whitworth. >> Donated time. [3:52:06 PM] >> Yes. Is Matthew Atkins perfect? Four minutes. >> Hello council. My name is David Whitworth. I'm a district nine resident in Hyde park. I'm also a infill builder and I just wanted to speak to the nccd question. I emailed you all my presentation that missed the deadline. The people in the room won't see it, but you could follow along if you'd like to, but the particularly in the Hyde park nccd we have great examples of existing housing stock that would be allowed under home, but is prohibited by the nccda little history on an nccd. It's really a document that relies heavily on base code, except base code improves over time by the mechanism of the N, C, C, D. We essentially have our 2000 code locked in, such as 5750 square foot lot minimums, 7000 square [3:53:08 PM] foot minimums. For duplexes, detached secondaries have to be 850 square foot or less. There's still parking language in the N, C, C, D, S to freeze that in place really doesn't allow us to improve and grow and bring on the housing that we would like. More than that, to bring back the housing that we miss that isn't allowed anymore. And your presentation that you have, I took some pictures of 4311 avenue a in Hyde park. It's a small row home on a 3020 square foot lot built in 1925. At the time, the minimum square footage for a lot was 3000 to lock in 5750 forever in Hyde park. It does a disservice to the historic pattern of Austin's first suburb streetcar neighborhood, walkable environment. The owner [3:54:10 PM] of that home was a health worker that worked nearby on 39th street, so I really think that the nc seeds are being held up as something that they probably aren't really. And what happens is we need to dial in home. And thanks to council member lane's resolution, we might be able to do that. We might be able to do small lot homes with reduced side setbacks. The you know, the problem we have is that what is allowed, what you can get through. There was that contentious case in north university, also in nc, C D that is allowed. But what we're really trying to get to is still not is still prohibited. Probably even more important for you to know, in the Hyde park historic district, that is a separate overlay. The historic district home [3:55:12 PM] superseding the N C, C D will not remove historic protections for demolition, and anything new will have to meet the historic design guidelines. So imagine filling in Hyde park with something that adheres to the historic guidelines on the land pattern that it was designed for. How wonderful that might be. Personally, I. There was a property near my home, non-historic in Hyde park, and I really wanted to do two small lot homes and I called up the author of the nccd on a lark, wondering if she might support a variance, and I was told people will want and be happy with a $2 million house on that lot. So if you. You need to know some of the background of the the ideas behind the N, C, C, D and with that, I hope this comes back in December successfully. Thank you very much for your time. >> Thank you very much. Mr. Zohaib. All yours. [3:56:14 PM] >> Mayor pro tem council. My name is Ben Sturrup, resident of D. For a lot of times these land use discussions get really in the weeds really quick, and I want to take a step back and talk about some things that I know, just principles. I know that the working class needs housing. I know that we don't have enough housing in this city for the working class. I know that people who are in my family who have kids, they live in apartments, they rent duplexes. The the concerns that I heard about gentrification, I know that that happened under the old land use code. That's that's when that happened. I know that a house on a lot that's one big house is going to be more expensive than. If that lot is split up and you can have just a smaller part. We don't need to establish such high thresholds for people to be able to live in our city. So [3:57:14 PM] I also know that, you know, having such a complex code causes frustration for your constituents, people who are trying to build that needed housing, and for city staff who are trying to help move things along and navigate all this complexity. They do hard work, they do good work, and cleaning up some of these things that don't make sense is a good idea. Like why? Why should there be things that incentivize extra paving by, you know, having having rules that, that say, you know, the building coverage is lower than, than, you know, the amount for impervious cover like you want just paved land, you should be able to build housing on that. I urge you to pass this for those principles of building more housing for the working class. I will say that, you know, when I ride my bike to go get fresh tortillas, I pass some duplexes and row [3:58:16 PM] homes and it's good. >> Thank you very much. >> Continuing on item 26, Michelle Ramos, Shane Johnson, Chris Gannon, Roy Whaley, Glen Coleman, Pamela bell, Michael Rhodes. Pam bell, Katy Kim, emad Ahmed. >> Please come on up. If your name has been called and you still want to speak. >> Please state your name and begin speaking. >> Go ahead. Okay, okay. >> Welcome, welcome. Just state your name and for the record and go ahead. >> Hello, my name is Michael Rhodes. I am a resident of district four now. I came here to speak in favor of item 26, and I think a lot of people [3:59:16 PM] have already made plenty of good points, so I'm not sure I want to reiterate all of them. But, you know, I noticed some people were questioning, hey, will these reforms actually provide more affordable housing? And, you know, I think just and the simplest level, if you are requiring people to buy more land for a place to live, they're going to have to pay more money. And I don't think we need complicated or long studies to work that out. Just at the very simplest level of reasoning, letting people buy smaller places on less land is going to help people meet their needs the way they want. And, you know, just generally, I've been very encouraged to see the way council has kept working on these issues and continuing, you know, step by step, continuing to pass more reform. So I'm very appreciative of all the work that I've seen from [4:00:19 PM] council over the past few years, and I hope you will continue to work on these problems going forward. And, you know, keep on doing the work necessary to bring more people into neighborhoods where they can afford to live. So thank thank you to all of you who have kept going on this. And I hope to see more work going forward. So that's all. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. The next speaker whoever wants to. Mr. Coleman, you want to go ahead and launch. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem and council, before I speak on the behalf of the Austin Kimble coalition, my name is Glenn Coleman. I want to get personal with you. I was a wild kid. I was I did some things in my past that I'm not entirely proud of. I was the president of the Hyde park neighborhood association when the north end ccd was was adopted. And after [4:01:21 PM] 20 years of being around or in city hall, I've started to come to view that document very differently from I did when I was a kid, easily influenced and inflamed by ideologies. Yeah, it's been 20 years now, and I think we can all look back and see that these ncds do preserve some character, and they do have some merit, but this resolution is just really, as I read it saying, go forth for staff. Look at this very carefully and surface back to us are the community and the decision makers. Have we really preserved forever a document that says, my neighborhood is so elite, so perfect, that it can never be touched, that it does not have to bear the burden of absorbing new growth. It does not have to bear, like montopolis does, the burden of absorbing new neighbors. I think we can revisit that after 20 years. It made great sense to me at the time. I'm starting [4:02:21 PM] to view it in in a very different light. I read some heartfelt comments by council member duchen on the council message board, and I just want to assure the council member that no one knows more than we do the builders, that there are some problems with home. There's some bottlenecks in the code. There is no reason why whatsoever why a three units should somehow trigger commercial landscaping. What does that even mean? But it's still there. And what we're asking and what we as builders are asking with this resolution is please take a second look. Please take a second pass at the code. Iron out some of these items. >> And thank you. >> Very much in December. Thank you. >> Okay. Hello, I'm Katie cam, an experienced civil engineer and urban planner and resident of district nine. I live on a 1500 square foot lot in a townhome. I love living in a dense area. I can walk and bike to so many places. I also want to see affordable housing maintained and added. So why am [4:03:23 PM] I critical of this resolution? And speaking on this item, you've heard from speakers that home resulted in homes for their friends, but also stories of families being displaced and new homes affordable. We've seen our home has resulted in removal of existing affordable housing stock and construction of very expensive homes. Those concerns are legit and warrant a reconsideration of the policy to be more effective. An effort to align the code more with home deepens the integration of a flawed tool. Neighborhood conservation neighborhood planning combining districts followed from neighborhood planning efforts, which involved the selection of zoning tools to maintain and add housing tailored to the unique concerns and aspects of each neighborhood, such as context sensitive design, drainage, utility capacity, and TRE canopy. We should return to collaborative, thoughtful neighborhood planning guided by city housing goals and the issues unique to neighborhoods citywide. Across the board, zoning changes, homogenizes and alienates and amplifies flaws in policy. Collaboration will result in better outcomes. Let's see here. Home supporters [4:04:24 PM] assume that homeowners would could simply re re subdivide to add housing, but that ignores the reality of the significant financial and regulatory barriers to re subdivision that only those with deep pockets can overcome, and the results are not truly affordable units. For example, a homeowner subdivided their property from one single family lot into four lots. City fees alone were over $100,000 required. Utility installation and relocation cost over 160,000. Total $300,000. The homes were not built. The homeowner ran out of money. We need to return to neighbor planning and creation of a comprehensive set of tools, policies and programs packaged together that accomplish housing and affordability goals. Let's go that direction. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. >> Mr. Ramos. >> Hey. >> I'm going to. >> Keep it short and sweet. I want to speak on this agenda item. Folks are pretty concerned about what this amendment could do to the neighborhood conservation combining districts. In most cases, these seeds were [4:05:26 PM] developed by community members and in some instances, yes, these plans were used to cause division. But in east Austin, though, these plans were actually built to ensure neighborhoods could scale while protecting those in the community from displacement and gentrification. This is very important to consider, especially for those seeds on 11th and 12th street. Decades of input were put into these neighborhood plans. Currently, there have been hours of work engaging community members to help craft the expansion of the African American cultural district. It's understood this agenda item is a directive to explore what the compatibility can look like, but all communities with nc seeds on the compatibility list should be engaged and given a chance to voice their concerns. While the considerations are being crafted by staff. Thank you. >> Mayor pro. >> Tem, and I'm sorry, Mr. Ramos, could you just say your name for the record? >> Me sale Ramos. [4:06:27 PM] >> Thank you, sir. >> And district one candidate. >> Thank you very much. And I was about to mention that the mayor was off the dais because he was speaking at a university of Texas commencement ceremony, but I'll let him mention that he's back. >> You said it. Well. I'm back. >> That concludes all speakers on item 26. >> Okay, well, as you've heard, that concludes all the speakers on item number 26. So we will now go to item number 26. The way I would like to do this, if there's not objection is get a motion, a main motion on item number 26. There are proposed amendments and and give and take. And I think I've got that organized. But what I'll do is get a main motion and then I will recognize speakers. I'm going to recognize council member duchen because he is the one that pulled the item from the consent agenda as the first [4:07:27 PM] speaker. If there's others that want to speak, let me know. Is there a motion on item number 26? Councilmember Laine moves approval. It is seconded by the mayor pro tem. With that being said, before we go, we now have a motion before we go to any motions to amend, let me recognize councilmember duchen. >> Thank you, mayor. I'm going to ask staff for a bit of help to pull up the presentation and ask for their help to cycle through it with me. And while they're doing that, I want to acknowledge first, I know it's been a long day for all of us. I'm going to try and get through this as quickly as possible. I also want to be really clear out of the gate. I'm not here to relitigate a discussion or debate from two years ago. I'm here to just try and absorb the information that we currently have, what we're seeing in our neighborhoods, what we're seeing from other reports and data points, and trying to understand to the extent that based on information, whether what's working, what's not, and how to [4:08:29 PM] move forward. And I'm also just going to say really quickly, I want to thank the speakers from any viewpoint that came today, a lot of cases, I agree with the intent, the goal, and I'll and I'll start there with the goal in a moment. We do need a city that has a mixed, you know, a mix of housing types. We do need a city that's got that includes smaller and more efficient homes. I've lived in a sub 1000 square foot home for nearly a quarter of a century, and I'd love to see us trend in a direction that has homes like that for environmental and other reasons. But my sense right now, from the data that we've got, is that this is working to some degree at cross purposes. So I'm going to step through this and try and expand on that. So if you can, if you can go forward, I'm going to skip the agenda one more. So let's just talk about the goal really quickly. When this past two years ago we talked about lower case affordability, right? This isn't going to create [4:09:29 PM] actual affordable housing. But the idea is that in time, as some speakers have noted in a generation, some of these homes will be more affordable. They're not affordable to most people right now, but that they will be the idea that we'll create enough of these homes, enough scale that we're going to we're going to generate affordable housing. Next slide please. So let's talk about a use case that I, in the neighborhood that I think works. This is a use case where we're replacing basically a garage unit. This is in my district in 40th and Ramsey, they basically added a third rental unit. So they had one already and they were adding a third one. Next slide please. It's gentle density. And so the outcome is more affordable housing to the existing neighborhood. It's an opportunity for. And we've got lots of these corner lots and some lots across the entire city that we can leverage. And from my perspective, minimal negative impacts. Next slide please. But I want to introduce [4:10:31 PM] a couple of alternative use cases that we're also seeing in or near the district. And so again, part of this is just to sort of flag some of these issues and try and have a real, at the very least, awareness, if not discussion around what we're going to do about these, if anything. So this is a, another transformation. We see this was originally a $550,000, about 1000 square foot home, which by a lot of standard would be on the more affordable side for single family, certainly below the average, which we'll talk about when we look at some data. It's been replaced now scraped and replaced by three units that maximize the square footage, which works out to about 525 square foot. That's when you look at the abort chart that they shared. That's even beyond the single family square footage for that chart. These are minimum $900,000 units. And so conclusion sort of what is what was a modest market rate. Home has become three large [4:11:32 PM] luxury units. And so the question I pose is, is this is this the progress we want from this policy? Because we are essentially the net here is a net loss of one more affordable home and the creation of three far more expensive homes that were just sort of hoping that in 30 years will become more affordable over time. Next slide please. So does this meet the goal? Does this meet the goal? That slide that we looked at a moment ago for creating affordable housing? And my sense is that this may be part of the problem that we need to go figure out. This is and one thing I'll note that's on that slide is that there is a second challenge here that's worth noting, which is, you know, for developers, much easier to go find the, the buyer that can secure the financing for the $900,000 square foot home or $900,000 home versus the $300,000 more affordable home that in a different universe [4:12:33 PM] they might otherwise build. So here's another use case. We had a speaker speak to this. I don't want to get into the board of adjustment stuff. The bottom line with this one is you're replacing what used to be a couple of units of affordable housing. And next slide please. It again sent to landfill, replaced by what I think originally it was 22 bedrooms in three units that got rejected. So it became 15 bedrooms and 11.5 baths, stealth dorm. And so I have a question Marc here because I think you're, you know, you're going to see students that from a, from a floor plan perspective are living in rooms called pantry and study that are occupying these kind of stealth dorms. And, and my concern is really twofold. One, really never part of the conversation we had two years ago when this was passed. So it's not clear to me this was the intent. If this is the intent, great. Let's go talk about it as though it is the intent. But the second piece of it is. The second piece of it [4:13:34 PM] is what happens when you start scaleless in certain neighborhoods, right? This might be fine if there's 1 or 2 on a street, but with zero parking in this level of density, I don't know what the outcomes are. When half the street looks like a stealth dorm. Now that we've opened the door to that. So that's why there's a question Marc there. Next slide please. So here's the third use case and the one in some ways that troubles me the most. So this, you know the agreement with home. You offer entitlements for greater density. You're incentivizing floor area ratio and height and setbacks and other things in exchange for that. And, and what happens ultimately, and this is an example in rosedale from a is you're, you're winding up with developers that are using home that basically go way beyond the prior code of the mansion that we had. And they're, they're, so they're basically using the tools within home to build out single [4:14:34 PM] family that's as large as the footprint will possibly allow on those homes up to up to 0.5 5far. So in this case, you had neighboring units that were built fairly recently, I think one around 2007, 1 in 2019 at 0.28 and 0.3 9far. You'll see photos in a moment, but this got maxed out to 0.5, which is double the size, really double the size of the adjacent home. And that's about 1000ft S of what I might call fake density that is worth in the marketplace, about $800,000 that we've allowed as a result of this policy that, again, if it's a 1 to 1 replacement of a home, is no new housing for anybody, just a more expensive home. Next slide please. So here you can kind of get a visual sense of where it is, right? It's kind of dwarfing the neighboring homes again, most of which are pretty recently built. Next slide. And so the outcome here is because of what I believe to be our [4:15:35 PM] certain loopholes in home that allow this kind of development. We've the market is going to gravitate towards a sort of apex development, right, that maximizes every single possibility to squeeze out every home. That really just goes way beyond the prior code of the mcmansion ordinance. So my concern is that if our goal is to get affordable housing, you know, this this is entirely counter to the idea of incremental density, of creating affordable housing. And, you know, the idea, whether it's up or lowercase affordable housing, we're sort of obliterating that idea with this kind of luxury development. And there's a question here, which is how much is this happening? And I'll get to that more in a moment. But next slide please. So a couple of central questions here from looking at those examples. One question is what are our norms and what are our outliers. And we've heard different examples today. But what's not in our [4:16:37 PM] 2024 home report that was issued in November. The one report that we've got is a sense of what is actually being built before and after. So what's the net loss or gain of affordable housing based on home? Right now, we're not measuring what came before it. And goal is to work with, you know, director Mars and try and see if we can start including some of those things to measure, to get a better sense of and great look, if things are working fine. But if things as the examples that I've shared may not be working as we intended, then my hope is that we can take a really thorough effort and reexamine them. Next point is sorry, we can go back is again, understanding the affordability. And then finally it's. You know, it's really focusing on are we just there to produce units or are we just there? Or is it important that those units come in at a certain price point? Next slide please. Next slide. So just [4:17:38 PM] some data on home values. You all know home values peaked around 2022 post covid and have been stable to falling. Generally speaking very slight bump in one year. But generally speaking, that's been the trend. My sense is the market is correcting itself. Per the report, 430 odd units in phase one, 12 and 12 with home phase two. And so I think there is a question which is. And if you go to the next slide, I'll ask which is to the extent that, you know, we know now or in the future, we've got enough data to determine whether it's making a measurable impact in the marketplace or when that will happen. If you look at our 2026 numbers compared to last year, we built about 10,000 units or 10,000 permits. We're at about 1600 this year. And my sense is that a lot of that's the marketplace. And so again, another point is, you know, what's really driving it? Is it home or is it the marketplace? Do we we love to take credit for things when it's when it's our policy, but is it the [4:18:39 PM] market doing things? Is the market slowing down? If the market slows down, then then you know, how successful is home as part of that equation? And really just also keep in mind the scale of it, right? Is it too early to judge at this point based on a single report based on 430 permits? Next slide please. Here's the a board data. And I recognize and I appreciate the work on this, but I think it raises both a solution of problem. And the problem is when you're looking at single family, if you look at example three that I just shared, and you're looking at homes that are single family homes that are that are blowing past mcmansion and maxing out the square footage and taking advantage of all the home features. You're going to wind up with the second column, that home that was reporting on for single family homes. So, and as I pointed out earlier, some of the homes that are being built with home that are that are the subdivides or the, the actual home units, they're beyond the square footage of even the single family homes that report. So, you know, on the one hand, [4:19:40 PM] the left hand column, the new construction, great. It's great that those are cheaper potentially than the others, although we've seen many examples today already from from people submitting testimony and homes in their neighborhoods. And the ones that I've shown that that's not the case. And then the other piece is, is this is this data is the single family data already being warped by developers using home to build much larger luxury homes? Next slide please. This is just a displacement report from the home report. About two thirds of the units are being built in areas that have chronic displacement. We heard some testimony today. I leave that open to decide whether that's a good or bad thing. It probably depends on a council district and a lot of other factors. Next slide please. Next slide. So a couple so let's get into the details of where this is going to start impacting based on the language. So one of the new zoning categories is la. That's lake Austin zoning. I care about that. That's in my [4:20:40 PM] district. And the I think it's important to realize that lake Austin zoning has specific environmental features on it. I know because we've worked through zoning cases in the district with neighbors that have have dealt with those issues. And the current language tries to standardize this. And I'm not sure it's, it's it's contemplating the safety features that need to be on that property. Next slide please. It also includes restriction on placing dwellings along the lake shoreline, the la the current zoning and so conforming the setbacks that home had home may introduce could potentially allow a proliferation of dwelling units along the lakeshore that has its own environmental and flooding and safety things. And so, you know, maybe even a more compelling argument I'd I'd offer, is Lakes supposed to be a public good whose natural beauty can be enjoyed by austinites and visitors? So you're sort of extending private property [4:21:41 PM] owners rights to arguably degrade that good by throwing tons of ads up and down the lake. And given the extraordinarily high value of these properties, probably not doing anything to help with housing affordability. Next slide please. Rr is something that a lot of our districts have. Certainly, if you're not in central Austin and this regulates residential plots around the periphery of the city center, again, providing more intensive infrastructure to these areas is going to stretch strained resources and possibly lead to higher utility costs and community fees for everybody that lives in Austin. Next slide please. You can see here's a map of rr in Austin. It's impacting what, six plus council districts and is a fair amount of real estate. So I think there's a basic question that offer here, which is why I have an amendment, which is is this where we want to focus our energy for transit oriented, walkable density in Austin? Next slide please. So let's [4:22:42 PM] talk about the clarity, which I've raised online. We're using words like regulating plans and supplemental standards. And it's taken a week to try and make sense. And I've gotten different interpretations from staff about what that means. We finally got some clarity yesterday, but now there's an amendment that talks about supplemental standards that opens back the doors of revisiting some things that we thought were not part of this. So I would just offer that if we're going to make sweeping changes, we need to be really careful about having clear instruction to ensure that we can anticipate the consequences of those changes. As written. It's just been confusing for me, for others that have tried to make sense of this. And and so these two items I wish we could work on better clarifying so folks understood what was included. Next slide please. So, you know, we reached out to the author and city staff and different departments for what a regulating plan is. And [4:23:44 PM] despite the contradictory responses, we finally got the Q and a, which clarified things. But there's still some things that I'm not sure entirely make sense to me. For instance, neighborhood plans are not included under regulating plans. However, the section of the land development code, where neighborhood plans are codified, is included. So I'm not sure how we can say that neighborhood plans are not in the scope when the regulatory framework that makes the city obliged to uphold those plans will be standardized under the way that this is laid out. Next slide please, for for clarity, for regulating plans. I'm I'm fear that it was undermined by the concurrent amendments published. And now the amendment has the supplemental instructions for combining districts and overlays and supplemental standards. So I'm still not entirely sure. We're still not clear on who's going to be impacted when this is [4:24:45 PM] when the dust settles on this. And so it leaves me with, again, some questions about does overlay here mean conditional overlays? And is that including any of the 12 overlays listed in the not column from the Q and a? Does supplemental standard reintroduce mechanisms excluded under the exhibit a that was shared yesterday for the regulating plans. Is historic zoning going to be a supplemental standard? There's a lot of confusion. What I would hope and really the standard that I'd ask for is if we're going to make these kinds of significant changes that we all are in agreement about what is and is not impacted. And, and right now, I'm not sure we're there. Next slide please. On neighborhood plans. I think I touched on this, so I'll move on to the next item or the next one. So on conditional overlays, I think we've heard from folks, there are some folks that view them as burdensome. But for [4:25:46 PM] other testimony, we've heard that there's really a lot of hard work that's been invested in building out these overlays over years. And there's shared concerns that have been discussed about height and about impervious cover and building volume that were addressed or addressed over time, over years by these overlays that we still use this tool. We've got many of you have overlays in your districts. So these conditions are the result of a lot of work. And I think it's going to be unclear after the some of the terminology still with where this is heading. Next slide please. Same thing for historic zoning. Next slide. I find it odd that puds specific agreements with developers are exempted from this. So I'll just leave that open question out there. Next slide please. And so last I'll just end with a few recommendations. One is one thing that I touched on already was we used to have for mcmansion, for other rewrites, [4:26:46 PM] you'd have a healthy mix of industry people and non-industry people in a room to represent different viewpoints and hash things out. We've what community engagement has happened. I'm not clear on I does I have a sense that certain advocates have been hurt and certain advocates have not been heard in this process. And so I want to I'd like to see us, I think, and I think we're perfectly capable of having a balanced process that avoids unintended consequences, including some that I've laid out and some of those alternate cases earlier. Next slide please. Another one would be to have timely and clear language, which I do not feel happened for this. We scramble for a week to try and make sense. We're still trying to reconcile some of those things. And, and it's been just a frustrating process to answer to constituents that asked me is la, is rr what's happening with our homes and neighborhoods? And I don't have good answers up until the last moment, if I have them at all. Next slide [4:27:47 PM] please. This was just the example of one place where we got sideways. We asked them last week whether conditional overlays were included. I was told by staff it was, and then we were told it was not. And then the exhibits confirmed that. But now there's also an amendment that might bring those back depending on how we define overlays. Next slide. Another one would be to figure out a better way to break out different elements. There's a lot happening here, and I want to be clear that the couple pieces that I'm frustrated with are, are limited. And there are, you know, in many ways, I agree that there are improvements that we can add to home. And we've seen some things, and we've also seen some places where we don't have those improvements in place. So I think there's probably a way, and it might be useful going forward to figure out what specific problem are we trying to solve. Just saying the goal is affordable housing doesn't give us a clear roadmap to solving a problem. Next slide please. Let's clear up those loopholes that I mentioned, [4:28:48 PM] particularly in use case or alternate case number three, where we're seeing people blow past mcmansion and build out maximum single family units. Again, there's I don't have a clear understanding of how often that's happening, but I know it is. And here we're counter. We're expressly counter the purpose because we're replacing a more affordable unit with a far less affordable unit. Next slide please. And then finally, and there's an amendment that addressed this, which is to help acknowledge proceeding intent. You know, one of the directives that's in here is to acknowledge the intent of home. And so I want to be clear that just being guided solely by the intent of home, of missing middle and other kind of ideological accomplishments, that intent is not universally shared. And even this organization has grown sort of very sophisticated in moving forward in a very uncontested way. And so I'd like to see and [4:29:48 PM] I've got this is the second motion. Try and make sure that we got here for a reason. And that includes the existing intent behind whatever the existing category or zoning or policy was before we got to these changes. So while, you know, the council is free to instruct the manager to ignore those interests, I'd recommend that we at least acknowledge that the stated intent and purpose of what protections exist that we might be dismantling. And that's really it. I tried to blitz through that, but I'd hope that and I'll say this, you know, in well, I'll say 1 or 2 more things here real quick, which is, you know, we need housing, we need incremental density. But what we're seeing in cases is this expansion of luxury housing in the market. That is displacing low and middle income austinites. And I'm [4:30:52 PM] uncomfortable cloaking everything we do under the idea of lower case affordability when we're seeing whether they're edge cases or not, instances where that's clearly not happening or it's clearly being used for a different purpose. The other thing I'll I'll ask is, and this is alludes to the first motion is. It's the idea that we do, I think when we are involving people's chief assets, need to be cognizant of the impacts of what that means. And that means, in my mind, a more collaborative process. And I've laid that out in a recommendation. But just to emphasize, you know, when I believe when, you know, councilmember Laine or staff was asked about this, the idea was to get recommendations. It was to let the let the manager explore these things. But that's not how I'm reading the language of this item. And so that's the origin of the first [4:31:52 PM] motion, which I'd hope you all would consider, which asks us to, with what I believe is incomplete information, come back and at the very least, get staff recommendations on where they land on many of these different changes, whether they're ncds, la, rr, anything else that's been laid out as far as potential changes that are coming. And, and so I've offered I'd like to offer these two amendments to try and address some of these issues. >> All right. So the way I'm going to do this is members. Councilmember duchen has three proposed amendments. Amendment number one, he's labeled motion sheet one, and it says, I move to amend the resolution as follows. Line 52 change. Be standardized to be provide recommendations to standardize line 61. Change present options to present recommendations. But what I would suggest we do is get that out and then I'll [4:32:53 PM] recognize. Council member Laine, as I understand it, has a substitute motion. If councilmember duchin's motion to amend gets a second, then I'm going to recognize councilmember Laine to respond to the motion to amend and offer any substitute motion. >> I can certainly do that. I was thinking that I would have an opportunity to lay out well, >> If. Let's see how the motions go, because if if we don't need to get into if we can avoid a debate and then get into the motions and then have a debate on the motions, we might be able to kill two birds with one stone, is what I. I will certainly make sure you have plenty of time as part of your response to to because that was a. There was a lot there. So with that, I'm going to say the council member duchen moved to amend item number 26. It's duchen [4:33:53 PM] amendment number one that I just read. Is there a second to the motion to amend. Is there a second to the motion to amend? Is there a second duchen proposed motion to amend item number 26? Number one fails for lack of a second. Councilmember duchen, I'll recognize you on your second proposed motion to amend. >> Thank you. Mayor. This motion adds some language that tries to acknowledge the. The other context, the other intent that I talked about at the end of the presentation. And so it changes things in a couple of places to. To make sure that as staff and we are are contemplating those changes that we're aware of, whatever the original intent is and the context for those whatever they were conditional overlays, zoning districts, other supplemental standards that might be incredibly relevant [4:34:54 PM] for those conversations. >> Thank you. Members. Council member duchen has moved to amend item number 26 with a second motion to amend. It is on a sheet labeled motion sheet number two. I won't go through it in detail, but it says he moves to amend the resolution as follows. At line 64, there are two additions. Line 73 change feasible to reasonable and line 109 change conform to standardize. Is there a second to council member duchen motion to amend item number 26. Number two, is there a second? Is there a second? Councilmember duchen motion to amend item number 26 with proposed motion to amend. Number two fails for lack of a second. Councilmember duchen, I'll now recognize you for your proposed amendment number three. >> Thank you mayor. This is you saw the slides on this. This is L a and R zoning. And this [4:35:54 PM] exempts these two zoning categories from this item. >> Members, you have heard councilmember duchen, he has moved to amend item number 26 with duchen motion to amend number three. It is on a sheet of paper labeled motion sheet number three, he moves to amend the resolution at line 49 to a change changing allow to accepting L, a, and R based zoning districts comma allow and then line 52 changing all zoning districts to all based zoning districts. Comma accepting L, a, and R R. Is there a second to the motion to amend item number 26? Is there a second to council member duchen motion to amend item number 26 with duchen. Motion to amend three. Is there a second? Councilmember duchen motion proposed motion to amend item number 26 with motion number three fails for lack of a second. Members. That will [4:36:55 PM] take us back to the main motion. I don't know of any other proposed motions to amend, and I'll recognize. Council member Laine. >> Thank you. I'll ask that staff put up my slide. I don't I only have the one and I. >> 39 subparts. No, no, I'm not teasing. >> You know me too well. No. So I am proud to bring forward item 26. Today. I wanted to give you all a chance to digest these numbers a bit. They're pulled from the Austin board of realtors home impact report. But before I get to those, I also want I really want to acknowledge my colleagues on the dais who did the original work to make significant strides in affordability possible. That took courage and conviction. And the ifc we will vote on today builds on the foundation you laid. So just looking at these numbers, I want to acknowledge up front that being more affordable than if we would be if we hadn't taken these steps, is not equal to being affordable for all [4:37:57 PM] $750,000 is still very expensive for a home, but it is half the price of what would be delivered if we hadn't taken these steps. And I also want to call into question the assertion that these figures, this. These successes are, are, are purely the market at play. We can look we see that we are delivering for half the price. Homes that have three bedrooms that families can use and that are half the size. Those are that is not market forces independent of what we've passed. And so these are these are very meaningful changes that have already been taken. The I. Fc that I'm bringing forward right now is not a big new policy shift. Not at all. It is a move towards increased consistency, predictability of our land development code in relation to policies that have already been passed. So now I want to take a step back. We expanded housing options on residential lots because we believe that Austin should be a [4:38:58 PM] city where people can afford to live, where a family can add a unit for an aging parent, where a homeowner can build a small rental and stay in the neighborhood they've called home for decades. That was the intent. And the data is telling us that it's working. Home units are coming in at a median sales price, 53% lower than traditional new single family construction. But there is still more work to do. Austin remains unaffordable, and we've heard from both the community and staff that some of our rules even are getting in the way, not because anyone planned it that way, but because the size and complexity of Austin's land development code necessitates an iterative approach to change. While today's updates via this ifc will be technical, they will also have meaningful, real world impact saving time and money for anyone building a home and allowing Austin to unlock additional affordable housing options so that more of us, our children, and our grandchildren can remain in the communities that we already call home. Today, we open the [4:39:59 PM] door to clarify that a front porch, which connects the home to its street and its neighbors, can actually be built to ensuring that when someone has a beautiful old TRE in their yard that's protected by our regulations, they can still build a garage to ensuring that a lot that is only 46ft wide. The kind of lot that has existed in Austin neighborhoods for generations is not treated as too small to be a real home lot. And to clarifying garage regulations for duplexes and triplexes so that small housing projects don't get tripped up by math that was never defined. When it comes to overlays, this effort is about clarification, not initiating new policy change. The current lack of clarity has already led to litigation, underscoring the need for a code that is clear enough to be consistently and predictably interpreted. We're also making sure that three unit homes show up everywhere in our code, as they need to. This ifc is about cleaning up contradictions and ambiguities so that staff and residents get clear, consistent, and predictable answers when they [4:41:00 PM] contemplate building the smallest scale housing that is permissible in Austin. To be clear, nothing about the current ifc will challenge long standing environmental restrictions like impervious cover limits nor impact on zoning. Legal restrictions like deed restrictions or hoa rules. It's simply a step in the process of continuous improvement to reduce time and expense associated with building small housing, which will increase access to more varied and less costly housing so that fewer people need to leave the city we love in order to afford a home. In that spirit, I want to thank my colleagues, council members, alter and qadri for their friendly amendments and engagement in this process. Together, we can ensure that thousands of Austin lots are not inadvertently blocked from construction of the kind of modest, small scale housing that our city desperately needs to continue, adding, I also would like to make a comment about the rr zoning designation, which is intended as a [4:42:01 PM] temporary zoning designation that's applied at annexation. District six has a lot of round of rr rural residential zoning because we were a late annexed area when we saw the map that was presented in council member duchen presentation, we saw that at out in the outlying areas of of the city. Here's the thing as long as we sustain rural residential zoning, we are maintaining a system in which every individual parcel has to be individually rezoned just to get the level of zoning that is the smallest scale of housing that's permissible. We don't have time or money for that. Our staff doesn't have time and money for that. People who own housing lots, any of that, they don't have time and money for that. So in particular, as it relates to rr zoning, I am gratified that this amendment did not pass [4:43:03 PM] because this is this is a very easy way to make things more efficient for all of us. Thank you so much for allowing me my time. Appreciate you all. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember qadri. >> Oh, I just wanted to thank councilmember. Sorry. I just wanted to thank councilmember Laine and her team on this. I know it wasn't easy, but so appreciate you and also want to continue to give flowers to my neighbor in the Mueller neighborhood councilmember pool for for initially bringing this up a few years back. >> Thank you. Councilmember Velasquez. >> We make comments now. >> Yeah, we have we're on the main motion. So it's a discussion on the main motion. >> I just wait till we're open for comments. >> Well, that's that's what we're doing. Yeah. >> Sorry sorry. It's been a it's been a little bit of a day or an afternoon now. So colleagues, this ordinance removes barriers to our neighbors being able to use their entitlements under home. Our our office recently fought to convey two pieces of unused city land for housing. And [4:44:05 PM] because because of the changes we made under home, we're going to be be able to develop up to three affordable units on each. Whereas before we wouldn't have been able to develop any because of the lot size. I grew up in this city and for too long there have been neighborhoods that have been insulated from opportunity based on income, family structure, and background. And Austin cannot claim to value inclusion while protecting exclusivity. Exclusivity has consequences, and for decades it has helped push displacement and gentrification onto the eastern crescent. While parts of this city have remained closed, have remained closed off from growth, affordability and a shared responsibility. I fully support the work this dais has undertaken over the past several years to make this a more inclusive city. That means housing for all in all parts of Austin. I'm grateful [4:45:05 PM] to councilmember Laine and her policy advisor, Isabel Webb Cary, for their leadership on this issue. Thank y'all, thank you, thank you. >> Thank you, councilmember mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, mayor. Again, I also want to thank council member Laine. I think this is a great item and brings some very reasonable changes that will help facilitate a better home ordinance. I just want to briefly comment on some of the. N, C, C, D stuff and really working off of Mr. Whitworth's comments. The historic design guidelines will continue to apply to homes built in the areas that have N, C, C, D, S, but when the N, C, C, D S were created, we kind of migrated a bunch of current code requirements into the ncds like [4:46:08 PM] 5750 minimum square foot lot size, like the 700 zero square foot minimum size for duplexes that really don't belong there. You know, as he noted, the original lots in Hyde park were about 3000 square foot lot. So in many ways, by allowing home to apply in areas that historically were zoned and platted for small lots were were returning to kind of the original idea of the neighborhood as a, a small lot urban neighborhood that the kind of neighborhood in, in new Orleans, in Chicago that, that people love the kind of neighborhoods that, that are just beautiful are human facilitated, you know, small homes with sidewalks and walkable and all those kinds of things like that. So, you know, again, the 57, 50 square foot minimum lot size that has nothing to do with history, that that's modern change that we made. Let's go back to the [4:47:09 PM] original history of neighborhoods like, you know, Hyde park or Travis heights that that were built with the idea of a, of a back home or a garage apartment or those kinds of a duplex, those kinds of buildings. So again, I just appreciate council member Laine. I fully support this item and look forward to seeing what comes back from staff. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem members. Councilmember Laine, I'll recognize you to close. >> Thank you. I'll keep it brief. Clarity, consistency and affordability. That's what this item is about. Our code in Austin is an incredibly complex document that needs cleanup. We must make it quicker and less expensive to get housing at small scale built. We are not initiating policy expansion. We are asking for clarification and recommendations from our professional staff. Lawsuits have already been playing out, and board of adjustment cases have been going late into the night. If we do not act now, these conflicts will continue [4:48:09 PM] to cost significant time and money while blocking new housing development. And for what community benefit home is working, and we owe it to our city to enable it to do the most efficient and effective work possible to bring affordability and consistency in our policies to our entire city. I very much want to thank our professional staff for the work that they have also poured in. Navigating hard problems, often thanklessly, but that are deeply meaningful to our city. Thank you. >> Thank you, councilmember members. The motion has been made and seconded without objection, although I'm going to list councilmember duchen as a no vote. Without objection. Item number 26 is adopted on a vote of 9 to 1, with councilmember duchen voting no. And one absence. And that's councilmember Fuentes. All [4:49:12 PM] right, members, that will now take us to our. For 49 and 11 second time. Certain zoning matters. For 49, 21, 449, 22. We'll recognize miss harden. >> Thank you, mayor and council. I'm joy harden with Austin planning. Your zoning agenda begins with item 32 C one for 2025 0094. This item is offered as a neighborhood postponement to your. >> Hey folks, folks. Thank you. >> Thank you. So item 32. This item is offered as a neighborhood postponement to your may 21st council meeting. Item 33 is c14h19870016. This is a historic landmark rezoning, [4:50:12 PM] and this item is offered for consent on all three readings. Item 34c14h20250122. This is being offered for consent on all three readings. This two is a rezoning to historic landmark. Doctor and Mrs. Elliott were both civil rights trailblazers and pioneer educators. They dedicated their lives to teaching and uplifting Austin's students and families. So again, we are moving this item forward for consent on all three readings. Item 35 is C 14970141.04. This item is being offered for consent on all three readings. Item 36 is C one 420 260011. This item is being offered for consent on all three readings. This case does include a valid petition submitted by the neighbors. The neighbors and the applicant have reached an agreement. The neighbors have agreed to withdraw the petition. If the draft ordinance includes two [4:51:13 PM] conditions, which I will read into the record as a motion sheet. The applicant has agreed to those conditions in the neighborhood. The neighbors have provided written confirmation to the city that they will withdraw their petition upon the inclusion of the two conditions, and that letter is in your backup. If anything has changed, I trust that the neighbors or the applicant's representatives will make this known to council. When speakers are called, staff have reviewed the conditions and have no objections. So that motion reads. Amend part two of the draft ordinance as follows. Add outdoor entertainment to the list of prohibited uses in subsection a and add a new subsection B, which reads the maximum height of a building or structure on the property shall not exceed 35ft. And with that motion, this item is being offered again for consent at all three readings. And lastly, item 37ac81420080087 .02. This [4:52:16 PM] item is offered as a staff postponement to your may 28th council meeting. This concludes the reading of the zoning portion of your agenda. And as always, this is at your discretion. >> Thank you, thank you. Are there any questions of miss harden members before I call for a motion, is there anybody that would like to pull one of these items off the proposed consent agenda? All right. Then I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as read. And here's what I'll read it as. 32 postponement to may 21st 33, 34, 35, 36, 35. All three readings 36 is also on all three readings. However, miss harden has read into the record the terms of an agreement as part of the motion, and that includes two conditions that by utilizing those two conditions and making them part of the motion, it removes the valid petition. And then item number 37 is postponement to may 28th. Is there a motion on the consent agenda? Motion is made by [4:53:16 PM] councilmember Siegel, seconded by council member Ellis. Let me turn to the clerk and call on speakers. >> Thank you. Mayor. Speaking remotely to the merits of postponement on item 32, Brian cash. >> Yes, this is Brian. I live across from rosedale. I am not in support of this particular rezoning and am in support in the in the in the postponement, but I'm donating time to either Chris Allen or Darryl if it comes to that. >> I'm sorry, you can't do that. But we appreciate your comments. >> Moving to in person on item 32, parker Welch, Stephen Blandford, Liam. Duncan, Gary dhingra, Barbara Macarthur, Adam hutnik, Carl. Reynolds, John. Fretwell, Peter Brenton, [4:54:19 PM] Chris. Allen, Peter journey Keller, Greg. Anderson, Benjamin. Leslie, Christina. Singh, Darrell. Azar, Eric. Kilburg, Daniel. Rey. Srikar. Nalluri. Michael. Ali, Laura. Ali, Danielle. Miller, jordi. Tello, Elizabeth. Baird, Zachary. Faddis, David piper, rich Hayman, Cameron rey, Kendall Morledge, Jeffrey Bowen. Ben suddaby. >> Please come forward. >> Jeffrey Bowen, district a. I [4:55:23 PM] thought this was postponed. That's what it is. That's fine. Yeah it is. Yeah I know. Thank you. Council members. Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen that are still here. Honestly, I'm wanting to support rosedale in their in their actually in their lawsuit and the fact that the school district has really kind of violated it was still when you look at it, they never even changed the plat on this piece of property from way back from way back when. And the whole process is really has really been kind of convoluted. I suggested at one point in time that this would be a great piece of property to actually do home on. What a concept, right? To where you're actually building something that would fit within the neighborhood versus building some six story apartment complex that's going to stick out like a sore thumb that that the neighbors won't even care for. So what a concept that you could actually [4:56:23 PM] use a process to build on the lots that are still, that are still actually platted as single family lots, but there's going to be an up zoning on this. And I see no doubt that it will happen. For once again, nobody's wanting to listen to the neighborhoods like they did for blacklands like they did for montopolis until this body said no. We were going to listen and go through that process. I am in full support, and at this point in time, I know that a majority of Austin neighborhoods council is also supporting that this be not turned into an apartment complex, but actually be back to the single family. And with that, Jeffrey Bowen signing out. >> Are you for or against the postponement? >> Oh, I'm I am for the postponement. >> Because that's what we're talking about. >> Oh hell, I I'm so tired, sir. I'm. Yeah. >> All right. Just want to make sure we had you on the record [4:57:23 PM] about exactly what we're talking about. >> Yeah. Postponement. Yes. Thank you. >> All right. >> Mayor, that concludes all speakers on item 32. >> All right. Let's go on. >> On item 34 or Houston. >> Miss Houston. First of all, let's recognize that we have a former city council member from district one, and that's Mr. Houston here. >> Let's leave it on. >> There you go. That's the voice of experience, folks. You just heard the voice of experience. That's right. Yeah. Thank you ma'am. >> On item 36, Al brydan, Joseph Reynolds and bill bunch. >> Good afternoon, mayor Watson, council member Siegel and other [4:58:25 PM] council members. I'm Al brydan from district seven. I believe we have a good outcome in this zoning case for Hancock drive. The property is directly behind my front fence. It's been run down for years and needs a new owner and revitalization. It could offer shops and services in keeping with the scale of our neighborhood. We have a very enjoyable neighborhood with lots of people out walking, walking kids, dogs, young families, retired people, even dogs walking their owners. With this zoning change, when it was first proposed, the entire neighborhood banded together like never before to discuss all the options in the process. A lot of people stood up and worked for a good outcome. Tina Lawrence led the group in meeting in her yard. Christine Jacobsen started a good discussion with the developer, and Cynthia qadri from the zoning office really helped keep the communication going. We also got a lot of help from Mike Siegel's office. Kayla. Simone. Simon. Listen to our concerns. Talk to the developer, [4:59:26 PM] came back with us and kept us all in the loop and really, I think helped reach a good outcome here. My biggest fear was we'd have a five story apartment right behind my backyard. But with the agreement to remodel within the current footprint and keep the height to 35ft, along with the other agreed restrictions on noise, music, lighting, and so forth, I believe we have something that will help the neighborhood and also help redevelop the lantern center. So my thanks to all for working on this good solution. I support withdrawing our valid petition. If these agreements are properly codified, and I thank council member Siegel to really step in and help us out on this. So thank you very much. And for once, I won't use up all my time. Thank you mayor. >> You got nine seconds to spare, man. And you, you really gave up some time. Yeah. It's good to have you here. I appreciate you any way you can. Yes, sir. Okay. >> Mayor and council. >> I'm Joe Reynolds, I live on [5:00:27 PM] west 49th and in D seven, and I'm on the allendale zoning and land use committee. Allendale bylaws stipulate that I'm to support neighbors in their activity. The close neighbors in this case organized themselves and opposed the zoning at the zap hearing. After that hearing, they wanted more and I helped. When they decided to get the valid petition, they did all the work, collected signatures, ensured those were proper. Everything from experience I could advise when they worked jointly to satisfy the situation between them and the applicant, it was theirs. I had no direct involvement. Your approval of of this secures the withdrawal of the valid petition, but allendale has. Others call them distant neighbors, those living east and east of bull creek road, their downhill or downstream from the tract. And they have quite a number of kids who bike to highland park elementary. Lots of Scotty signs and yards. So during the site plan review, as the buildings are repaired and [5:01:29 PM] remodeled, I will be looking for new alerting notices at the curb cuts that the bike paths along Hancock are registered. Safe routes to school and to be aware of children on bikes. Also during site plan I will be looking at stormwater management changes as our distant neighbors have informal flooding with water and streets flowing downhill from the west. I've discussed these site plan issues with Mr. Clements, the agent from Armbrust and brown. Thank you for your attendance. >> Thank you. >> Moving to item 37, Malcolm Yates and bill bunch. >> I don't see either one of them here. >> That concludes all the speakers. >> Thank you very much, members. That concludes all the speakers on the consent agenda. I will ask if there's anyone I've got councilmember duchen abstaining on item number 36. Is there anyone else wishing to abstain from any item on the consent agenda? Anyone else wishing anyone wishing to be shown recusing themselves from a vote on the consent agenda? Anyone [5:02:31 PM] wishing to be shown voting no on any item on the consent agenda. Hearing none. Without objection, the consent agenda is adopted with item number 36 showing councilmember duchen voting no. While there is no longer a valid petition because the motion had the two conditions in it. Just for the record, I want to indicate that item 36 would still pass on a vote of nine to 1 to 1, with councilmember duchen voting no and one absence. I'm sorry, abstaining. Thank you for that correction. So but still a 99011, I guess. Thank you members. That concludes the agenda for the Austin city council at this regular meeting on may 7th, 2026. So unless there is a a raucous objection, we are adjourned at 5:03 P.M. Thanks, everybody. The council is adjourned.