City Council Work Session Transcript – 5/19/2026 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/19/2026 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 5/19/2026 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:00:04 AM] City council work session. It is may 19th, 2026. We are meeting in the city council chambers in city hall at 301 west second street in Austin, Texas, and we have a quorum of the city council present. The way we will proceed today is. I've just now, as you heard me, call to order the city council work session momentarily. I'm going to recess that work session and turn it over to the mayor pro tem. As the chair of the Austin energy utility oversight committee, and he will call to order the committee meeting, will conduct the committee meeting. For those that are here to speak on items. The way this will work is committees. We have five speakers at committee meetings. And what he will do, and I don't know if anybody has signed up on on the for the committee, they'll we'll hear from those five speakers. He will then conduct the entire Austin energy utility oversight [9:01:04 AM] committee meeting. We will have that meeting. We will have the briefings. We will have the discussion. And then when that's over, he. That will be adjourned, and I will call back to order the work session of the Austin city council. People have signed up to speak at the work session, and that is when we will hear the speakers on those agenda items. So now when we get to that, I also want to let people know that we will go in the order of the agenda. So a seven, a 23rd. Then we will go to the briefings b1, b2, and b3. I will also let everybody know, including members of the council, that there will not be, although it's posted, there will not be the executive session that is posted on the agenda. So unless there are questions or comments from council, I don't see any. So without objection, the Austin city council work session is recessed at 9:02 A.M. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and mayor pro tem, it is 1114, and I will call back to order the work session of the Austin city council. And as I indicated, what we would do and for people that are paying attention to this, we will just go straight through the agenda, which will take us immediately [11:14:33 AM] into what is listed as item a7, which is related to this. And again, I want to note that we will not be having the executive session. So what I what I will do is before we go into item a7 is I will turn to the city clerk's office and ask them to begin the process of calling on the speakers that have signed up for those that have signed up to speak and that are here, what we're going to do is we're going to hear from all of the speakers, unless there's some objection or comment from council. We'll hear from all the speakers on on more than just item a7, we have speakers that have also signed up for one of the briefings, which is item B two, and hear from everybody. And then we will come back to a7 unless there's some concern about that. All right. With that I'll turn to the city clerk. >> Okay. We're going to start with remote speakers for a7. We have one Tommy Joaquin Hancock. [11:15:39 AM] Tommy. >> Yes. I'm here. >> Please begin. >> Thank you. Council, I'd just like to send my appreciation to speakers and considering all sides of the topic discussed, transparency is essential to building trust with voters and purchasing and installing 400mw of gas speakers could cost up to $1 billion in just. The equipment will be several hundred million dollars and investment of that magnitude demands full, transparent vetting and the cost of contracts for everything from wind. To beg your pardon? >> Okay. In-person speakers for a seven. We have Al, Braden, Mary and Sanchez. If I've called your name, go ahead and [11:16:40 AM] come forward. Take a seat. State your name for the record. Bobby lavinsky. Larry gidseg. David Levesque, arnie Fierro. >> If your name has been called, please come forward and grab a seat. And, Mr. Braden, we'll start with you. If you'll state your name for the record. >> Good morning, mayor and council. I'm Al Braden, proudly from district seven and vice chair of the electric utility commission. This morning. I'm speaking for myself. As this is a work session, it's time to ask questions about this most secret billion dollar project I've ever seen in Austin. Don't let fomo, fear of missing out rush you into buying $1 billion white elephant. Austin energy is carefully choreographed to public relations process that checks the box of public engagement without actually producing public engagement. I intended two of the rapid response public meetings, and I doubt if there were 20 genuine [11:17:40 AM] community members at either meeting. The results were tabulated but not really heard. I asked during those meetings what ai's goals were. What was the generation target? What was the mix of batteries, solar peakers? Where would it go? What would be the community impacts? There were no answers to any of these questions. The uc was likewise kept in the dark until our Monday meeting. 400mw was finally mentioned, but none of the details were disclosed. Amount, cost. Location, timeline, justification, analysis of alternatives. A is hiding the ball. If you, as council are railroaded into executive session and signed $1 billion blank check, you will face the voters. You can count on that. Since this is a work session, ask these questions of your colleagues and yourself. Where is the analysis? Analysis showing there not other effective ways to bring power into town with transmission and batteries? What is the size and cost and rate impact? How does [11:18:40 AM] buying gas generator in 2030 square with our goals of eliminating carbon by 2035, what are the guardrails? Show the models. How is it possibly justified economically without running all the time? What will you tell your voters about this backroom deal? How will you vote? Thank you very much. >> Please, any one of you, just begin by stating your name for the record. You. Sir. >> My name is Larry Gillig. >> You might want to pull that microphone a little closer to your mouth if you want to be heard. >> My name is Larry Gillig. I live at 3900 avenue G in Austin and Hyde park. I've been a recipient of several boons from the city of Austin, a no interest loan in 1982 to weatherize my home. Rebates for rooftop solar rebates for a heat pump value of solar payment on my electrical bill every month. I have considered an asset to our community finding innovation, innovative solutions to technical issues and responding to disparate points of view. The a E [11:19:41 AM] generation and climate protection plan of 2030 addressed the problems of climate change with clear, unequivocal message no more fossil fuels for Austin. So, given the world we live in, I've been struggling to understand how we've gotten to the point of even considering purchase of a gas powered electric generator. The facts of our predicament are not in dispute. Planet Earth is heating up the fastest rate ever. The cause of heating is burning fossil fuels. Global emissions of greenhouse gases today are higher than when the Paris agreement was signed 15 years ago, ten years ago. Warming to date has already brought devastation to communities and ecosystems around the world. Not one of the 45 indicators assessed in the Paris agreement is on track today. Global temperature average temperature rise above 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end by the end of this decade, the latest generation and climate protection plan up to 2035 uses the fact that climate change is causing more extreme [11:20:41 AM] weather to argue that we need more of the single minded, circular logic that got us here by another gas powered generator that will continue to exacerbate the warming. Entrenched fossil fuel interests continue to exert powerful political influence. Stymieing climate action and and ambition. Many countries realize that ensuring climate progress will require transitioning entire economies around sustainable technologies. The economic transition is underway. It's interesting. I've heard more about load zone price separation in this meeting than atlantic meridional overturning circulation. >> Thank you sir. >> There is a conference. >> Thank you sir, your time has expired. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. >> My name is Danny ferro, speaking against item 87. I'm a resident of d7. For the seven years I've been living in Austin, I've been organizing for a just transition. And if you don't know what that means, it's fully transitioning energy sources to renewables. After hearing Austin energy this [11:21:41 AM] morning, I'm still not convinced there's enough data to support the speakers. Aside from the fact that I cannot in my right mind, support adding pollution to address a power outage caused by climate disasters. When our energy resources have been the primary driver of the climate crisis. Both Yuri and 110 degree weather summer days are both the result of climate change. Adding to that, adding to that, the day Austin energy has refused transparency with both the public and even elected officials. Also, Austin energy during what they call their community input sessions, which I attended, predominantly, had a small group of folks like myself who do this type of work and go out of the way to catch this kind of thing happening. As an organizer, let me tell you, that was not community input. We also have no guarantee that this will indeed have the peakers running instead of already existing, let's say, coal generation and other energy resources also have impact on the Earth and the land, which some of, like [11:22:41 AM] some of the power generated by Austin energy, might want to. Fayette have had bad results and hugely burdened financial burden on the. On the people living surrounding these energy plants. The city has also lost financial trust from their constituency, and I'm also not convinced how renewables are an economic burden. When. Just this month, there was a report from the international renewable energy agency that found that costs from from around the renewable energy from solar wind and paired with batteries fell from fell by 31% from 2020 to 2025. It is also projected to fall another 32% by 2030. The overall conclusion was that the firm renewables are competitive with fossil fuels. I'm also worried. Okay. Thank you. >> Mr. Levinsky. Why don't you begin? Next? Okay, whoever. Just. Somebody begin. >> Good morning, mayor and city council. I'm David Levesque. We've seen city council show strong leadership through the climate equity plan and the [11:23:42 AM] climate revolving fund, led by council members altar and Ellis. More gas plants would be a step back for human health and a big financial risk. Gas prices are volatile, while solar and battery prices are predictable and controllable. Los Angeles and London are proving that reliable grids don't have to lock in decades of fossil fuel debt and stranded liabilities. We have invested $100 million in 20 years of solar and battery incentives, which is amplified by customer and federal investments. What if we modeled the billion dollars to Austin residents, creating more local power and local wealth, compared to $1 billion over three years for gas that would only be paid for customers exporting our money to big national corporations for dirty air for us to breathe. It seems the requirements for bringing the gas plants to vote have not been met. Have you seen a current economic, health and environmental impact study? Also, best practices regarding software for improving grid utilization and solar permitting seem to be missing from Austin efforts. 100 hour batteries are commercially [11:24:43 AM] available in the United States today. Lastly, what is the plan to get to zero emissions by 2035? City council has committed to lean in to clean. Now it's time to pass on gas. >> Mr. Levinsky. >> Thank you. Council members Bobby Levinsky, silver springs alliance though I'm here largely in a supporting role. Speaking to largely echo what you've heard from public citizen and the advocates that have worked so hard to transform Austin's policies to reflect the urgency of climate policy years ago, when the carbon free by 2035 goal was set, I don't think anyone would have said that meeting. That goal would be easy. There's a lot of language in the plan that talks about the need for careful deliberation, particularly around these speakers and the need for community collaboration. I do think that this is one of those moments where there is a lot of questions around whether or not that goal is being achieved by the pursuit of these speakers, [11:25:44 AM] and that conversation needs to happen in the public as much as possible. I appreciate councilmember alter and councilmember Siegel for really pushing some of the dialog into the public just a few minutes ago, but I think that to the extent that you can force these conversations out of executive session and into the public would be really important. There's not a lot of industries that have the ability to go behind closed doors and talk about their procurement policies, and my understanding is that that is an option that the council could force those conversations into the public. There is some price sensitivity issues there, but that doesn't mean all those conversations need to happen behind closed doors. So please, you know, do what you can to push the conversation back into the public and really engage the community that's been working so hard alongside you to pursue climate responsible policies. I think that I'll just end it there and just, just really echo the, the conversation that councilmember alter was having about where speakers are located. [11:26:46 AM] Oftentimes it's an environmental justice communities, and that needs to be acknowledged here. And you can't be making a decision that affects these communities without engaging them. Thank you. >> Continuing with item a seven, when you hear your name, please come forward and take a seat. Elisa Hammond, Norma Cortez, Rafael Schwartz, Craig Nasr, Finn Macpherson. When you speak, please state your name for the record. >> Good morning, mayor and city council. My name is Elisa Hammond and I live in district district nine. I'm also a coordinator for third act, which is a local and national group working on climate. And I'm here to urge you to vote no in opposition to new Peaker plants. And I am also requesting that instead, we have a third party analysis of this plan that's been proposed that has more transparency, [11:27:48 AM] that a plan that looks at alternatives to fossil fuels, and a plan that really looks at both the fiscal responsibility and the moral responsibility we have with regard to people's health. I am really proud and grateful that Austin energy has been a leader for two decades on climate, made these commitments early on, signed the treaty, the fossil fuel nonproliferation act, and Austin has influenced other cities and states. This is the time when we really need in need to lean into that leadership. And each one of you. These are some great questions this morning. You have that leadership that we need local and nationally. We do not at this time of climate crisis. We don't need to lock ourselves in to buying more fossil fuels for decades and sending our money out to large fossil fuel corporations. Let's keep the [11:28:48 AM] money here. Let's have an analysis. How do we support our local economy and find these alternatives to Peaker plants? I really ask you for your imagination and creativity that Austin is known for, to help us find these alternatives that we are in the middle of a global transformation and energy revolution away from fossil fuels. And though we've had some barriers in our country, globally, the world is moving to run on the power of the sun. Thank you. >> Please. >> Good morning, city council, mayor and council. My name is Norma Cortez. I'm a resident in district two. First off, my main concern is the speakers, but I wanted to make you all aware that I was a participant in one of the Austin generation plan committees to help determine a plan forward. Many [11:29:48 AM] good discussions and solutions resulted from those committee meetings. Part of the conversation we discussed new peakers as an option. I opposed the new peakers then and I still oppose them now. Peakers are not cost effective as compared to clean energy alternatives. Peakers will only add to the local air pollution. Secondly, transparency is critical. In this process. We must have public disclosure of Austin energy's analysis and assumptions, so there is full transparency to the voters. That has not been so thus far. Trust with the voters is imperative, since we voters will ultimately bear the cost of the choices you make. We will have to pay for these massive purchases, such as these new peakers, and these choices can't be made, can't be [11:30:50 AM] done behind closed doors. They must be transparent to the voters. Thirdly, Austin city council must ensure full evaluation of solar and wind energy paired with battery storage. We know that these options can provide electricity more economically than gas generation. Gas speakers were included in the plan as an option if carbon free sources weren't available. They are available, but Austin energy has been slow to implement them. Thank you. Thank you for your time. >> Doctor Naser. Hello. >> Craig Naser, conservation. >> Chair, lone star chapter, Sierra club. And I think this is very interesting conversation. And first of all, I think Austin energy, given what they are looking at, has [11:31:50 AM] given us a good presentation. I would have to say I enjoyed it. The one thing they don't know is where demand is going to go. And so they're preparing for the biggest possible demand. And that makes this like a very small problem. To look at the demand, though, you have control over that. I mean, what we're just here at city council talking about using city land for more industry. I mean, that there is some control that the city council has over demand. We personally have control over demand, how we insulate our houses, whether we buy into the really good solar program, which I've done, you know, whether we drive an electric car or not, maybe I can't feel I can get across the country. I mean, the there are choices [11:32:51 AM] here that the city council needs to make that go beyond just what Austin energy is talking to you about. We haven't done enough about climate change. In fact, that is the biggest danger we face. I got a metal roof. Well, the extra heat in my roof has caused my rafters to crack, and I have to pay for that. Okay, we get there when when we get rain and drought and rain and drought, the soil gets flexible. That cracks people's foundations. It's expensive. Climate change itself is the problem. So I want to thank you very much for taking my comments. >> My name is Kevin Mcpherson. I live right across the street from decker creek power plant in district one. We've heard a lot about reliability, affordability and sustainability. I want to talk about the real costs of gas speakers, which has been vague about. But they are real and [11:33:52 AM] long term. $1 billion at current turbine pricing, 400mw of power units cost $1 billion just to build the units. That's not hyperbole. That's the going rate, 2.5 million per megawatt. And that doesn't even account for additional price hikes, supply chain delays, fuel and operational costs, which are astronomical and volatile due to increased exposure to global commodity markets. This financial risk is massive and uncertain, uncertain, and is borne entirely by Austin residents who will pay for this project. Whether the projects pencil or not, they can recover those costs, whatever they are, plus 10%. And we, the customers, assume the risk and pay the bills for decades to come. Site selection we still don't know where these sites will be, but we saw the short list and we know where they won't be. They're not going to be in neighborhoods on the west side of Austin. In all likelihood, because of existing gas and transmission infrastructure and the existing gas units. These will be sited at decker creek, where I live for sandhill. Both east Austin locations have borne the cost of noise and air [11:34:53 AM] pollution for decades, and this proposal will extend that decades into the future. This not only affects the health of local residents, but also the property value of homes and businesses in the area. This is a long term equity and health cost that is directly externalized to the community indefinitely. Austin energy wants approval for $1 billion gas Peaker project, hasn't shared the modeling assumptions and data with the public or said where they will build it. That's putting the cart before the horse, and it does not rise to the standard of responsible, affordable and sustainable energy development. So we're asking for transparency. Share the share the assumptions and results, not just a few bar charts that show reliability risk ours. If the argument is strong, there should be no reason not to share all the evidence that underpins it. At a minimum, approval for gas speakers should be delayed until this work has been completed. Thank you. >> Okay. Good morning. My name is Rafael Schwarz. I live in D two in south Austin. I've been following this as closely as I can for the last two years. Austin energy is asking council for a blank check to eventually [11:35:54 AM] spend up to $1 billion ordering 400mw of gas Peaker plants going down this road will also abandon the utility's commitment to carbon free generation by 2035. In any meaningful sense, this is is a serious ask, and one that deserves serious attention and scrutiny. In the 2 to 3 years since the modeling done for the 24 generation plan, ercot market has seen not one, but two generational trends play out. These are first, enormous explosion in utility battery storage across the state, and second, massive transmission superhighway build out. Ercot announced a year ago that we heard about earlier. This hasn't been just any two years. And taken together, these two events appear to potentially completely upend the modeling done in 2023 and 2024, which is still the core of Austin energy's decision making process on these speakers. For example, the explosion in battery storage across the state has already alleviated congestion pricing that the gas Peaker plants are designed to hedge by 70% in the last two years. That's 70% lower prices from ercot energy. Bringing us [11:36:55 AM] back to council's decision this week. Utility has not done third party or any serious, updated and transparent modeling of the current grid environment. The basis for this generation generational decision on breaking Austin's fossil free commitments should not be guesstimates about a data center growth and assumptions not at all shared with the community. We also have no idea how the economics of this looks under carbon emissions capacity guardrails the council discussed earlier. Austin energy should discuss its modeling, modeling assumptions, and the city council should require an independent third party in the loop in some fashion. This process does not seem to have met the spirit of the gen plan, which stated that the utility must do a real analysis or look at alternative options before investing in speakers. Thank you for your time. >> Now calling the last set of speakers for item a seven kaiba white. Eileen Mcguinness, Julie [11:37:56 AM] Oliver, Rebecca bernhardt, Mary Mcglynn. Please state your name for the record. >> Good morning. I'm kaiba white on behalf of public citizens Texas office. We are very concerned about the lack of transparency, financial impacts and public health and environmental consequences of the gas Peaker proposal. I've never seen a request to authorize a contract without revealing who the contract is with, or how much it will cost. The contract was developed outside the competitive purchasing process and didn't give equal opportunity to other technologies, including long duration storage. This should be a serious concern for those of you wishing to improve trust with voters. Austin energy is designating all useful information for modeling speakers versus batteries and other clean energy solutions as competitive information to keep it from the public. Given that Austin energy's conclusions about long duration batteries versus gas speakers don't align with other analyzes, we're asking you to require an independent analysis. Buying a lot of speakers when they're at [11:38:56 AM] their most expensive is risky for ratepayers. Natural gas price volatility is also a risk, and has resulted in huge cost overruns that customers will be paying for over many years at other utilities. The resource plan committed to only add gas speakers if there were no other options. Recent and upcoming contracts and changes to solar programs demonstrate that there are other options, but they need time to be implemented and more are needed. Austin energy is cherry picking information and hypotheticals to try to scare you into acting quickly, and give up on achieving carbon free generation before its first utility scale battery is even online. That's not a good faith effort. The truth is that these speakers won't keep the power on. In another Yuri situation, ercot would still require rolling outages. If you really want to help low income residents keep their food from spoiling during an outage, revive the solar for all program, which was supposed to put solar and batteries at low income homes. Why is are you [11:39:57 AM] willing to spend $1 billion on gas speakers, but not 32 million on solar for all? Thank you. >> Please. Go ahead. Oh. >> Oh. >> I'm Rebecca bernhardt, and I'm a member or a resident of district seven, mayor and council. First, I'd like to thank the mayor for your work addressing the need for a replacement plan for the forensic nursing care provided by Eloise house. >> Thank you. >> Very much. That was really important. I want to address some of the remarks of the deputy general manager of Austin energy, Austin energy story of being a clean, renewable energy leader is deeply inaccurate. Why didn't Austin receive local solar proposals to their latest rfp? Probably in part because Austin energy has been hostile to solar projects in the past. Why? Mayor Watson mentioned control. Austin energy has and may still see solar as a threat because of its capacity to be [11:40:58 AM] independent from the grid and therefore independent from their control. They don't want to lose commercial property customers who can control their own energy generation. We can't trust Austin energy on a secret billion dollar Peaker plant plan. It needs independent review. Now I want to briefly talk about climate change. There's something incredibly shortsighted about building new gas power plants to address climate change. It is burning natural gas that is accelerating global warming, because burning methane is 80 times more potent at warming the Earth than CO2. Peakers will not protect us from black swan events. They only protect us. The only thing that will protect us actually, is local solar generation or local generation, and microgrids and battery backup. The idea that we can have control over Peaker plant energy generation belies the fact that gas comes from elsewhere, and the gas powered plants stopped in hurricane [11:41:59 AM] Yuri because the gas lines froze. We are at the cusp of what scientists and climate activists have hoped we'd never reach 1.5°c warming. At some point, we need to say no to more fossil fuels. Thank you. >> Thank you, miss Oliver. >> I'm Julie Oliver, a resident of district nine, and I'm unequivocally, unequivocally opposed to the so- called investment in gas Peaker plants, a decision estimated to cost taxpayers $1 billion. Let me be clear. I shouldn't have to be here. You've pulled me away from volunteering, walking shelter dogs to come down here and say what should already be obvious. This council talks a lot about being Progressive, but your actions and your votes tell a very different story. And certainly tell us residents that you don't take climate change seriously. And frankly, the lack of ingenuity here is astounding. Austin energy's position and what seems to be the mayor's and council member Taylor's position that fossil fuels, regardless of whether they're imported or produced locally, are the only way to get us through an energy crisis is not just disappointing. It's [11:43:01 AM] ridiculous. This is a failure of imagination and leadership. There are cleaner, smarter and more forward thinking solutions available right now, including anaerobic bio waste to energy systems, distributed battery storage and demand side management strategies that reduce strain on the grid without poisoning our communities. Gas speakers are not a solution. They're a step backwards. Calling them more efficient is like saying today's cigarettes are healthier than the ones of yesteryear. It's a meaningless comparison that ignores the real harm. And let's stop pretending that these will only run occasionally in Austin. Summer is a constant energy emergency. These plants will run all day, every day when we need them the most, creating more pollution, more emissions, and more harm. And we all know where that harm will land. History makes clear these facilities will end up near low income communities and communities of color. The same communities that this city has already failed when it comes to environmental health. The same eastern crescent neighborhood whose health concerns you continue to sideline. You're not accounting for the public health costs. You're not [11:44:01 AM] accounting for the long term economic damage of the population made sicker by your decisions. And you're certainly not accounting for the erosion of public trust. So here are my asks one vote no. Two if you're prepared to spend $1 billion, then invest it in solutions that actually move us forward, like residential battery storage and distributed energy systems that allow residents to reduce demand during peak times. >> Thank you, miss Oliver. >> Hi, I'm Eileen Mcguinness, a resident of D nine and founder of the parents climate community. I'm here to ask city council not to commit to new gas speakers until Austin energy publicly discloses its modeling assumptions and allows for a serious discussion of clean energy alternatives. Right now, we're being swept up in the urgency of a seller's market for gas speakers. This runaway pricing and the lack of transparency required by sellers should not be the signal to join the feeding frenzy. Instead, it's a huge red flag that we need to slow down and consider the cost of new gas, both financial and ethical. But the false urgency of markets isn't what brings me here today. The urgency that [11:45:01 AM] moves me to be here is our obligation to protect Austin kids from harm. And we cannot protect our kids and communities with tools like oil and gas that harm them. So right now, these are the questions that feel deeply urgent to me as an Austin parent. How will these new gas speakers impact air quality and public health? How can investing hundreds of millions of dollars in new gas speakers that don't go online until 2030 enable Austin energy to fulfill its commitment to carbon free by 2035. And what is the generational legacy of these investments, the energy infrastructure and the climate future that our kids will inherit? Not in 5 or 10 years, but in 30. Y'all. The other night, my fifth grader said to me, mom, you're doing good stuff, but it probably won't make a difference. He's still in elementary school, and he's already questioning whether our leaders care about his climate future. He's not alone. Our failure to meet the moment with urgency is taking a serious toll on the next generation. So let's do better. Demand better of ourselves. Let's show Austin kids that their health and [11:46:02 AM] right to thrive are our greatest investment. Thank you. >> For item B one. We have Seth Johnson. And then we have two remote speakers for item B two. Jeremy Hendrix. >> Good morning, mayor and council members. This is Jeremy Hendrix, district four resident and former member of the bond election advisory task force. But today I'm here as president of the Windsor hills neighborhood association to strongly support fully funding the $30 million expansion for the Gus Garcia recreation center, a project that was left off staff recommendations for the upcoming bond. Throughout the process, one thing was unmistakable seniors and community members from Gus Garcia showed up again and again because they know how critical this center is. Meeting after meeting, they testified, shared their stories, [11:47:03 AM] and advocated for our community. For them, this facility is not just a building. It is truly a lifeline. Our neighborhoods rely heavily on Gus Garcia. Seniors depend on it for meals, exercise, social connection, cooling during dangerous heat, and access to essential programs. Families rely on it for youth programing in a safe place, and neighborhood groups like ours rely on it to keep our community connected. But this facility is bursting at the seams. Staff do an incredible job, but they simply do not have enough space to meet the needs of one of the fastest growing, highest need areas of Austin. And every summer we see the consequences. As youth programs expand, many seniors are displaced from the space they depend on daily. That often means seniors staying home alone during extreme heat, isolated without meals, without air conditioning, without exercise, and without human interaction. And we all know that northeast Austin has one of the highest concentrations of seniors in need. And for far too long, our area has been left behind. When it comes to public investments. I ask you, please, to stand up [11:48:04 AM] for the seniors who spent their lives building and supporting this city. They showed up for Austin for decades. Now it's time for Austin to show up for them. I urge you to fully fund the $30 million expansion for Gus Garcia in the upcoming bond proposal. And thank you for your time today and god bless. >> Seth. Go ahead. >> Thank you. I'm Seth Johnson, I'm a district nine resident, and I wanted to bring something to your attention regarding the bond package and help you frame your priorities for this upcoming bond. When you see a child skateboarding down the street, in this downtown, here, or in your districts, I want you to recognize a few things in that moment that's happening right there. That's a child that's poked their head out of the virtual warrant nexus created by Marc Zuckerberg to enslave our youth's eyeballs, to stare at screens all day. These. This child is practicing [11:49:07 AM] mobility and mobility option that is not a car. They're exercising. They're challenging themselves and achieving those those goals. And they may also not be. They may be skateboarding their. Because they may not be properly supported by the available skate facilities provided by the city of Austin. In the current inventory of skate parks in the city of Austin includes Mabel Davis in district three, which was built in 2005, opened in 2005, and then house park in. In Jose Velasquez's district. That I'm sorry. Mabel Davis and Jose Velasquez district house park is in zo qadri district, and that was funded in 2006. The great thing about these facilities that we've seen over the decades since is it's a one time implementation cost. The the benefits compound over the decades that have happened since, it's a negligible impact [11:50:09 AM] to city operating budget. There's no staffing and the user visit per day cost ratio beats anything else parks and recreation can offer. Skate park skate parks are used by more than just skateboarders. They're also supporting bicyclists. >> Roller skaters appreciate you being here. >> Back to the final remote speaker. For item B two, we have Katerina Harris. Good. >> Good morning, mayor. >> Council members and other attendees. My name is Katerina Harris and I live in district five in the garrison park neighborhood with my husband and two young children. My family and I regularly use garrison pool to swim and to attend swim lessons. This is one of the few accessible, affordable outdoor spaces where families in our area can gather, stay active and cool off during Austin's extreme Summers. I am speaking to you today to strongly advocate for funding the replacement of garrison [11:51:09 AM] pool in the 26th bond package. The city of Austin has already identified garrison pool as an end of life facility without reinvestment. This is not a theoretical issue. It means the pool will likely be forced to close in the coming years. Losing this pool will remove a critical piece of public infrastructure that supports health, safety and quality of life in our community. Garrison park pool is a cherished community resource to gather and connect one of five charging pools in the city of Austin along Barton springs and deep eddy. Charging at these pools helps the city offset costs and keep other pools free. It is one of 350 meter pools used for recreational and competitive programing, one of eight pools with a depth of depth required for lifeguard certification courses. A key source of teachable water, which is limited citywide. A facility that provides relief from long, hot Austin Summers, a low cost recreational resource including lap swimming, a location where some classes are offered to greater south Austin and is at the end of its [11:52:10 AM] useful life. Delaying reinvestment will increase costs and raise the likelihood of prolonged closures. Public pools are not just recreational, they are essential for heat relief, especially as our Summers become more extreme. For many residents, this is one of only the only free or low cost ways to stay safe during high temperatures. This is also a proactive investment. Replacing the pool now is the most cost effective, is more cost effective than waiting for failure and emergency closure, which would create greater disruption and higher long term costs. I respectfully ask that you prioritize funding for garrison pool. >> So thank you very much. >> Serving its community. >> Thank you very much. >> Moving to in-person speakers for item B two, Barbara Scott, are you present with time donated by Brian Dolezal. Are you present? >> Great. He is. >> That will be followed by Martha Langford, Armando delgado, Adam Greenfield, Alyssa vargas and Seth Johnson. [11:53:12 AM] >> If your name has been called, please go ahead and come forward. >> Barbara has four minutes. Please state your name for. >> The record. Go ahead and just state your name for the record. >> I am Barbara Scott. I am the representative of the colony park lakeside neighborhood association, and I'm here to speak in support of adding the colony park library slash Austin public health facility to any bond that Austin will have. This project is a rare opportunity to correct more than 50 years of unequal access to essential services and. Colony park and the eastern crescent. Since 1972, this community has lacked consistent access to educational programing, early childhood development services, licensed child care and nearby health care. There is no public health facility east of 183, south of 290 and north of the Colorado river to the bastrop county line. These are not new [11:54:15 AM] concerns. Austin public health identified this service gap as early as 2005, and community leaders have worked for decades with the Austin public library to include this area in long term planning efforts. The proposal is simple and practical create one shared multi-use public facility that includes a library, public health services, child care and early learning programs, and family support services like wick. Health care access is especially critical in this area. While central health has broken ground for a facility in the area, it primarily serves individuals at or below 200% of the federal poverty level and persons with acute illnesses. Austin public health serves all residents regardless of income and provides essential preventive care services such as immunizations, sti testing, [11:55:15 AM] and prenatal care. Creola. Co-locating. These services within one facility would reduce barriers to care and improve access for families and seniors. This project directly supports the city of Austin's commitment to equity, inclusion and the colony park sustainable communities plan. The need is urgent because this area continues to face major disparities. It is a food desert, a health care desert, an area with limited childcare and access, and community lacking early literacy and youth educational resources. Financially, this is a responsible approach. The city of Austin already owns the land. The property is already zoned for civic use. A combined facility would save at least $11 million compared to building separate facilities, and perhaps more if it is developed through a public private partnership. But the [11:56:16 AM] real value is not just cost savings, it means children. It means children entering school after are better prepared. Parents are having reliable child care, close to home, seniors and families gaining access to preventive health care, and residents would finally have services within their own community. A shared facility would become a true community anchor, supporting students, working families and seniors, and one trusted location. The question is no longer whether the services are needed. That answer has been clear for decades. The question is whether we are ready to act with urgency, efficiency and equity. This project is planned, aligned, cost effective and ready to move forward. Now is the time to honor the commitments made to this community and invest in a healthier, stronger future for the eastern crescent. It's also the time to honor the [11:57:18 AM] challenging and thoughtful decisions made by your appointed task force members. >> Thank you very much. Why don't we start down here? If you'll begin? Yeah. Why don't we start here and then we'll go down. >> He was next. >> But okay, I don't care. I'm just. I'm just getting. >> My name is Martha Langford and I'm a participant for a long time in the Gus Garcia Gus Garcia recreation center and park. And since Mr. Hendricks online stated what I basically was going to say very efficiently and more so than I can, I'm going to tell you a personal story. Maybe you won't be quite as bored. Anyway, 15 years ago, Gus Garcia and my husband, bill, were sitting on the first baseline of the longhorn baseball team playing, and Gus says to bill, why don't you come exercise with us at [11:58:18 AM] this new recreation center? And we did. Not very long after that, my husband had a heart attack, and after that he had severe osteoporosis. So we had to go to the center on a more regular basis. And you say, why are you telling me this story? Because every one of the people that come to Gus Garcia and there are hundreds and hundreds, if you go back 15 years and it's normally a hundred or more every day, and the senior program is only allowed from 930 in the morning until one in the afternoon, all those stories make up the needs that you guys need to have. We realize the situation that the city is in, and we're sorry, and we're very disappointed that we're not going to perhaps have a time in the very close [11:59:19 AM] for for bond issues. But don't forget us. We need you. Okay. >> Thank you. >> I got. >> 11 mayor pro tem mayor pro tem has a question. >> Thank you. Let me let me ask miss Martha Langford a question or two. >> Langford, mayor pro tem has a question for you. >> Okay. Right. Quick, what does could you tell us just a little bit about kind of the day to day there at the senior center, you know, when you get there because, you know, one of the concerns that that that we and it's a very serious concern is the operational kind of costs of whatever we're building, right? It's one thing to build, it's another thing to staff it and to operate it. And, you know, I've visited the senior center a number of times. Sure feels like it's very kind of senior led. Again, I know the staff does a great job providing that support, but what does that look like in terms of the interaction between the seniors and the staff and the programing and all that kind of stuff? >> Well, this gentleman's wife didn't come with us because she [12:00:19 PM] was the leader of the exercise this morning. And the the second person in line that leads exercise would be me. So we had to choose who came and said this. But three times a week we have senior size and that's led by volunteers. And that's can be as many as 60 people, because lately we have had an increase in population of seniors coming. And although we have people pass away on a regular basis, we have so many more people >> In the northeast area of Austin that are seniors and that are in the poor to moderate range. And so we they exercise, and we have at least 12 kinds of activities that take place in, in, in the center. People for different for different activities, which could be the garden or yoga or Tai chi or ping pong or [12:01:20 PM] book club arts or crafts or nutrition or cooking. And we serve a wide variety and diverse population. And if you can let me say that just for a second, I will tell you, because we also have meals on wheels that are served in a room once, there's only three rooms that are available to senior activities, plus the gym. And there are many instances when those rooms are not available because other things take up there, up, up the room time. We welcome everyone who comes in the front door. We are an eclectic bunch. We're diverse cultures, races, religions, ages, physical and mental abilities, and poor to moderate incomes. We and we participate in a wide variety of things. And basically, the lady that's leading the exercises is 87 and I'm 87. So [12:02:21 PM] here we are, a bunch of old people just trying to help each other out. >> Well, I appreciate it. And again, I just wanted to, to stress to, to council and staff. I mean, again, staff maintains the building and you know, they, they get equipment and the ping pong tables and the, you know, the garden was built and so on and so forth. But as far as I am aware, virtually everything that happens there is kind of senior led senior run, whether it's a ping pong. The only thing that I see a lot of staff involvement in would be the meals, like, you know, making sure that that the meals are distributed. You think that's about that's about right. >> You're spot on. You're spot on. >> All right. Well, thank you very much, miss Langford. I really appreciate you coming down and and testifying. >> To each one of you. >> Yeah. Thank you. Yes, sir. >> My name is blue delgado. I'm also a member of the horror associated with the Gus Garcia. My my question or my praise to you all is your leaders. You [12:03:23 PM] are very much in the light of our talks at home and our neighborhood. When you give an answer to anybody and everybody, every citizen deserves an answer. But when you give an answer, just be honest about it. That's all. It's just that simple. We work hard at Gus Garcia to give our seniors, to give the guy that comes in that lives out on the street a vision, something that they can look forward to. What would help us is just give us some type of tools that we can go out in the neighborhood. People will look at us, people that don't want to talk in front of you, all people that the the guy that's barely making it for [12:04:23 PM] his family help us. I got 40 minutes. 40s. I need to tell you this. Four weeks ago, a kid, they brought him in a victim of a dwi. He was left. What do you call them? Paraplegic or something? He called me and said blue. Come here, I can talk. I couldn't say nothing. I grabbed him, he grabbed my hand. He said, I can feel you. I can see you. I'm still here. Help us. That's all. Three rooms. A couple of rooms. >> Great to have you here. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. >> We won't get up. Yeah, yeah. >> I'll ask you to move. Yeah. Good. Thank you. [12:05:23 PM] >> Hello, I'm Seth Johnson. I'm here to speak about the Boehm district park project that's going to be included in the upcoming bond election, hopefully. I just wanted to point out that when the city surveyed residents on the east side about what they wanted to see for activities in that public park development, 66% of people surveyed said they wanted to see a skate or bike park. And this this usage doesn't this interest doesn't surprise me because of such a diverse user base, including roller skaters, rollerbladers, scooter riders, skateboarders, bmx and mountain bikers. This interest was higher than both soccer fields and playgrounds in the survey combined. The skate parks in. In such as the Boehm district park project, do not need to be. Huge, monolithic, intimidating facilities that are going to bring out the nimbys against [12:06:24 PM] the city. They don't. They're not. They don't have to be this huge Peaker plant that's going to generate controversy. They can be small skate spots. They can be pieces of art that are skateable that the art and public places. Component of the bond package in 2006 resulted in a sculpture called the iron wave that was recognized by the Americans for the arts public art year in review 2012. They said the piece provides a marriage of form and function and together greatly enhance the user experience of the park. Finally, I'd like you to consider that during covid and and after covid, the no comply skate shop has been able to raise money via raffles to the tune of $600,000 for the capital area food bank, and that has provided 2.4 million meals for Austin area residents. Thank you. [12:07:26 PM] >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council Adam Greenfield here with safe streets Austin, we're here today to ask you to maintain our active transportation and street safety programs at their current capacity. What these programs have done with previous bond funding is, is absolutely staggering. Here's just a few. 250 miles plus of sidewalks, 108 miles plus of bike lanes, 120 schools impacted through safe routes to school, an emerging citywide urban trails network just taking safe routes to school. So we, the taxpayer, have invested $47.5 million in safe routes to school through comprehensive crash cost savings. We save $47 million a year. So we've spent 47.5 in entirety, and we save 47 million a year. These are [12:08:27 PM] staggering numbers, and this is why these investments are so popular 2016, 2018 and 2020 bonds respectively received 59%, 81% and 67% public support. These were not just votes for these bond packages. These were referenda on how the public sees this infrastructure. People expect this infrastructure, and when they see it, they see the government working for them. It's good for building trust in the community. They've also spent these funds very efficiently and effectively. The sidewalks program is almost out of money. Safe routes to school is almost out. Bikeways, urban trails, vision zero, you name it. They have been good at spending the money. We should be funding them to keep going, including funding our high priority trails so that we can make sure [12:09:28 PM] we have the greatest connectivity impacts. Thank you very much. >> Good morning, mayor and city council members. My name is Alyssa vargas, and I am the advocacy manager for Austin parks foundation. I come before you today to strongly urge you to secure a 250 million bonds park package, in alignment with the recommendation put forth by Austin parks and recreation department and approved by the parks and recreation board. Austin has made a clear commitment to its residents to steward a park system that is equitable, safe, well maintained and accessible to every community. I ask that you honor that commitment through meaningful and sustained investment. The Austin parks and recreation department has fully allocated and spent all funding from the 2018 bond program operating under the expectation of a six year bond cycle. The 2018 bond investments produced over 140 tangible projects and results across the city, such as new pools, improved playgrounds and increased trail connectivity. And yet today, Austin faces [12:10:28 PM] more than 1.8 billion in identified park systems needs a number that continues to grow as projects are delayed and infrastructure ages. It has now been eight years, and there are no available funds left for Austin parks and recreation department. A robust parks bond is long overdue. Any proposed financial policy that imposes restrictions on bonds, such as the 90% bond expenditure cap, creates unnecessary barriers to critical investments. The proposed policy changes also disproportionately affect city departments that have allocated to future projects and reserved funds for rainy days. Delaying investment only compounds the parks needs for future generations. Every year. Deferred means higher construction costs, greater deterioration and fewer resources reaching the communities that need them the most. During the last eight years, our aquatic facilities have continued to age. Our trails and place Gates have deferred maintenance, and our recreation and senior centers have stretched limited resources to serve a growing population. Without meaningful [12:11:29 PM] investments, many of these investments will continue to deteriorate and even close our parks. >> Thank you, thank you. >> Calling our final speakers for item B three, Bobby Levinsky, Craig Nasr, Julie Oliver, you can come down and please state your name for the record. >> Bobby Levinsky, attorney with silver springs alliance, I assume B three is the dog's head. The dog's head development has undergone no public scrutiny and has not gone before. The planning commission, environmental commission or any relevant board or commission. I want to remind the council that the boards are there to help advise you, as well as serving as an opportunity to vet issues and get feedback before these issues reach the dais. When it is difficult for policies to be amended on the fly. The stretch of the Colorado river that is the subject of the dog's head. [12:12:30 PM] It. It flows around. It is arguably one of the most high water quality stretches of the. Of an urban river in the united States city. It is supported. It is supported by a high exceptional biodiversity. That's why I'm confused about how this agreement has virtually no environmental regulations. The agreement sets a maximum development entitlements 100% impervious cover, which equates to about 2400 acres of pavement. It has no height limit, no far limit. It modifies the critical water quality zone to only 200ft, and then it allows significant use of the critical water quality zone for roads, utilities and golf cart paths. It provides the director development services the ability to approve variances to any provision of the land development code. It allows nearly every zoning use given. Given the concerns around tech uses, we want to make sure that there is a call out for prohibition on data center chip manufacturing and similar high tech, high tech uses. And then on top of it, it's contingent upon the city giving the developer tax breaks on both property and sales [12:13:31 PM] taxes so that it can use money that would otherwise go to public safety libraries and social services for the developer's infrastructure. If this agreement passes on Thursday, it cannot be undone for 45 years. You will be alienating your legislative authority and the authority of all future councils for a half century, a few months of public scrutiny and the boards and commissions process seems prudent and wise. Thank you. >> Hello, Craig nazer, conservation chair of the local group of the Sierra club. This I just don't understand. You know, we talked about plants. And the problem is climate change. Climate change is going to cause larger floods down the Colorado river. I'm a lot larger. It's not it's not going to be a smooth line. We're going to come to tipping points and there's going to be things like winter storm uri and then right in the [12:14:33 PM] floodplain, you want to build this kind of dense development. Now let's say that flood comes. It's on an oxbow. Well, what do rivers want to do? If you know anything about river, they want to cut across the oxbow. That's they make oxbow and cut across them and oxbows and cut across them. So who's going to stop that? It's going to be the city. It's going to be the taxpayer. When that flood comes down here, the emergency services, all that and no venting. Just like Bobby lavinsky said, no commission, nothing, just less flush it through. How much energy is this thing going to use? How are the how are the water? How's the water quality and everything going to work? I just it, I don't know. And then you have one problem here and you want to solve it. And, and then you create like a huge number. Well, maybe this will go down to people in the future. You know, you won't have to [12:15:33 PM] solve it because you won't be on the city council anymore, whatever happens. But I've lived in Austin for 45 years and I've seen some good things happen, and I've seen some bad things happen and things are getting tougher and climate change is standing behind it. And this one, climate change really, I think, should let you think more about this. But anyway, thank you. >> Thank you mayor. >> All speakers have been called members. >> All speakers have been called. So what I would suggest we do is we take a recess, just a brief recess, and come back at 1245 and we'll go through the agenda. Those items at that point in time, what I'm going to suggest that we do on the first item, which is related to Austin energy, is will renew or begin the renewal of the conversation there. If members have questions or want to speak, [12:16:34 PM] let me know. And then what I'm going to suggest we do is we rotate. And hopefully, because of the conversation, we've already had this. Pretty much everybody had their opportunity. But what we will do is I'll recognize somebody will let let them speak for ten minutes, then we'll go to somebody new. And if somebody didn't finish in that ten minutes, I'll come back to them. But just so that you can organize your thoughts. So unless there's objection and I don't hear any, without objection, the Austin city council is in recess until 1245 and is 12:17 P.M. We're in recess. [12:48:07 PM] Call to order the work session. It is 12:48 P.M. And we have been in recess, but we are now back to order. The first item that we'll take up as part of this will be item a7. And as I've indicated, if you want to say something about a7 that you didn't get to say when we were in the Austin energy oversight committee meeting, I want to recognize you. And I'm assuming, councilmember, you're recognized. >> Here. >> I didn't even get the password right. All right. I guess I have a few more questions for our esteemed Austin energy. Okay. Just a couple questions related to the reliability conversation. And then I wanted to finish up with just kind of this concern about [12:49:10 PM] what we can and can't share publicly as part of this process. So, you know, councilmember Siegel talked a little bit about the reliability risk, our question, and where kind of the tipping point is, right. Are these two our events for our events, uri level events? And we've had some conversation for about this, but I was curious if you could help illuminate for the public. When we look at that chart, how I think the natural reaction, right? The morning ramp up or the, the, the solar, I forget what we the ramp down. Wow. Got it there. Can you just help put some context into those reliability risk hours? Are we talking about a few calamitous events, a bunch of little events? Just put put more context to those numbers if you could. >> Yeah. So the, the analysis that we did for, you know, [12:50:10 PM] these, this round of, of proposals, when we look at the number of reliability risk hours, we see them range anywhere from 1 to 10 hours. And we got some questions that had us look a little deeper at the numbers. And a significant portion of them were greater than five hours in length. So range between like five and eight. And but they go as long as ten hours at a time consecutively. And so that's what is behind a lot of the, you know, the, when you see the 575 or the 475 average hours at risk per year, it's it's a number of different instances, not just one big calamitous event. >> Okay. >> And I will just add that the, the, the modeling that's reflected in that chart of the reliability risk hours is needs to be looked at separately from the context of the slide about the financial risk, because the financial risk assumes a, you know, a winter storm, a calamitous event, the, the, the [12:51:12 PM] modeling for the reliability risk hours assumes none of that. It's just looking at normal conditions. So we know that reliability. That's the number of reliability risk hours. If you're assuming. No none of the extremes. >> And where do we draw the extreme line or in either officially or in your mind. Is it 12 hours, 24 hours, five days? Like what what is kind of that tipping point to being well outside of a normal stress on the the grid or on our local? >> Well, what we're seeing from that data is basically showing us that the normal stress on the grid is like the 8 to 10 hour type period. But we know that we've seen other events come along that are that are longer than that. And so if we were, you know, we would have to decide what level of event are you trying to solve for if you're trying to solve, and I hear this from a lot of utilities, even outside of Texas, they'll say, well, we know that you guys had winter storm uri, and that was over five days. And so that's what [12:52:13 PM] we're solving for too. And that's kind of, you know, nationwide. And so if you think if you take that same 127 hours that we had in winter storm uri, and you say, okay, well, we need 400mw of batteries for that 127 hours. We would need 50,000 megawatt hours of batteries installed. And it's just, it's just cost prohibitive. So we'd have to figure out how, how many batteries would we need for what we're solving for. Partly why we, the data show us that there's not a viable alternative to the speakers because we, our customers, expect us to be able to solve in extremes. >> What is the impact to reliability if someone does drop a large load right outside of our service territory? So very close, but not in the load zone. >> In in terms of reliability. [12:53:13 PM] It would still be a question of us being able to import power and there would be more congestion, and that power would be more expensive, but we would be able to to get power. It's just in terms of the pricing and the amount of congestion risk we'd be exposed to would be even higher. And so that's, you know, part of the value of local resources that we're already experiencing. It just becomes even more acute if you have a lot of large loads. What we're seeing is those large loads aren't coming to Austin. They're coming right outside of Austin, and that's on the import paths. So if then you have more of that, that that supply is meeting that demand right outside of your area, it makes it more expensive to try to get the supply through, you know, that area and into our load zone. >> Okay, that makes sense. And what is that? The ercot threshold of large load where they have to. >> 75mw is the ercot threshold. [12:54:14 PM] That would be still very, very large. So even things below 75 are quite large. And, you know, we're hearing from stories of, you know. You know, large loads that are as big as all of Austin, you know, that are coming and things like that. And from, from real developers who are doing those types of things and not in Austin. But so it is, it is a risk in terms of the supply and demand dynamics around ercot. You know, we've we have policies here in Austin that large loads that these any customer that comes in, they pay for themselves any infrastructure necessary to serve that customer, they're going to pay their own way. What we can't really account for is the supply and demand dynamics around ercot. And, and if there is a lot more demand than the prices everywhere will go up. And we just want to be able to protect our customers from that dynamic. >> Okay. Can you give us a little insight into the either research or outreach y'all have [12:55:15 PM] done into long duration batteries, you know, non lithium ion technologies where that where you see that technology currently and how once again, back to the reliability risk. Our question, you know, these longer duration events where those either currently are or you think they're going. >> Yeah, you know, it is important for when we talk about storage and people will talk about medium duration or long duration storage to talk about what what they're talking about, what technology they have in mind. Because a lot of the time people are just, you know, if you need ten hours, they're just putting in ten, one hour, you know, same technology that that's currently being deployed. But there are other technologies like iron air batteries that are that are 100 hour batteries, but they're really just not ready. They're, they're not able to compete in ercot and the costs and the efficiency is just not there. For example, an iron air battery, it, it, it [12:56:17 PM] rusts and unrests for just to simplify it. And it loses 50% of its energy in the form of heat. So from what you charge up, it's going to lose 50% of that. It also loses 1% of its charge every day. And it's unclear how many times you could even discharge it during the lifetime of that, of that technology. It's maybe around 30 times ever that you could deploy it. The other challenges come in that, you know, so it really would be, you know, something that you'd have to choose carefully when you could deploy it and there wouldn't, and you'd be constantly keeping it charged up in order to meet those few times, and it would degrade over time. So there's nothing that really meets the need yet in terms of that long duration storage. And we do have that in the resource plan in terms of making sure that we're doing the technology readiness assessments, the culture of innovation, we keep up on all those things and make sure that, you know, if some technology like that comes [12:57:18 PM] along, that we go through the phases of monitoring it, market testing it, piloting it, and then deploying it. And so that's kind of those phases are phased approach of getting something to where it can be fully deployed in the market. And for example, that's kind of how we got to where we are, where we're piloting geothermal in terms of monitoring that technology market, testing it, putting, you know, with, with market offers. And then now we're piloting it. And if it can scale up, it would be ready for full deployment. >> Okay. Just briefly, my last kind of I mentioned about transparency. I think that I haven't seen this, right. This is a unique situation where we are approving a very large contract, not in in the open. And I understand the competitive reasons why I'm not disputing that. I think right now, as it relates to the public's perception of that and understanding of what we're [12:58:18 PM] doing. You know, we saw in the gen plan, right, the ability to give a lot of modeling and estimates of what would happen from a liability risk perspective under various scenarios or an emissions perspective under various scenarios. And that's we don't have that here. And I think that is really making this very difficult for the public to internalize and accept. You know, it's without being able to see the proof, right? It's just, well, you know, we, we said it and, and hope you trust us. But, but, you know, that's all there is. And so I don't know if there are any ways to, to work with, you know, industry averages as it relates to speakers or just any kind of information that we can provide that is not specific to the acquisition that we're talking about, but that would help inform the public of what we are looking at. I just think it [12:59:19 PM] would go a long way. So I know we only have a couple days before Thursday, but that's just a concern I want to flag because I know it's been tough in talking to people about, you know, why this, why that? And you saw the you see, so I just want to flag that. >> Yeah. And it is tough because, you know, in the resource plan process, we realize that people we need. We were showing our work. People wanted us to show our work. And in order to have those conversations, we needed our work. The difference there was that we were we were modeling hypotheticals. We weren't modeling actual resources that we are seeking to contract and how those resources, how they would deploy in the ercot market. The amount of revenue that they would earn in the ercot market, all for a real for Austin's actual portfolio and the actual anticipated portfolio additions. And so doing kind of hypothetical scenarios that show the direction of, you know, whether we could retire all of our [1:00:20 PM] generation or whether we could do this or, you know, kind of showing these extremes is different than what we're doing here now, in addition to just the negotiating position that that, that we're in at this point and how, how challenging that is. But when we look at different portfolios, I do just want to say, when we show things to try to give, you know, to try to simplify. So instead of showing our work and showing all the numbers, we're trying to show the conclusions. And I think that that's challenging. But sometimes we do it in a way that suggests that we're we're competing, you know, speakers versus renewables or speakers versus batteries. And it gives it it may give the impression that we don't want to do it all. You know, that we would stop doing batteries if we did speakers. And that's not the case at all. It's not an either or kind of a situation. We know we're going to need it all. And like I said before up here, is that doing peakers can actually enable us to do more of the [1:01:21 PM] renewables. We will not stop and slow down if we can get more batteries done, if we can get the transmission import capacity done and all the renewables, we will continue executing on that. So I just want people to know that it it shows up on a slide like it's an either or, but we wouldn't be doing peakers instead of doing all of the things that, you know, are where our values are. >> Okay. Well, I appreciate it very much. And those are all the questions I have. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Siegel, mayor pro tem. >> Thank you, mayor, and thanks again. GM and deputy GM. You know, I pulled this for work session because I wanted this conversation to happen in public as much as possible. And you have both provided a lot of really important information. I'm going to ask you some questions that I think I've already asked you privately, but I really do want to hear your your public answers as much as you can. And so the first one is, I mean, we know we issued this all resources rfp. And my understanding is that any Peaker proposals that were submitted in response to that process were not deemed to be economical. And so why why [1:02:24 PM] is this process, you know, where we're going to go into exact session on Thursday and maybe approve an acquisition plan? Why is that process succeeding when the rfp failed? >> Yeah, great question, and thank you for asking that, because I could tell that that's a a layer of confusion to this that that needs to be clarified. So with all resource rfp, what we. And again, the intent behind that was to see if there was a carbon free alternative that could meet our risk and reliability needs. And in order to do that, so we issued the rfp. And rfp responses are for products that can bring a wind energy proposal or a solar energy proposal, a battery to council in open session. Because it's a whole project. It's not getting down to the specifics of that technology and the price of that technology and how it will perform in the market. And the terms of that are not are not known to the market. And even when it comes to council, all the terms of how that's going [1:03:25 PM] to work in the market aren't known. So we got the proposals for entire and the Peaker proposals that were part of the all rfp were not for Austin energy to own them. They were similar to the battery storage where we we, the developer, will own this and you will get the right to deploy it. And that provides a level of of revenue and benefit to that owner and that developer that wouldn't exist if we have direct ownership. Having direct ownership allows us to negotiate the best deal with all the major viable Peaker manufacturers. And we've approached all of them to get their current pricing. And we can negotiate the best deal that way. And what we've seen is that the pricing that we can get that way is better even than what we were able to get through through that process. So that's a lot to say. It's because of the model of of the all resource rfp proposals of that developer would own the [1:04:26 PM] asset, they would develop the whole thing. They would have the land, they would have do, do all of that, and we would just contract to be able to use that asset. That's what made it unattractive for us in terms of how it would deploy in the market. And we wouldn't ultimately have control over its future as well. So that's some of the difference. I hope that answered the question. >> Thank you. Yes. The next question is kind of building on what we talked about a little bit earlier about the guardrails. And there's emission standards that are in the gen plan. But then I think the gen plan says something like emissions guardrails for a particular project are developed at the time of project implementation or something along those lines. And I guess my question relates to the price that we're going to pay, because the price that we're paying and our ability to earn back that value over time is to some extent dependent on our utilization of the asset. Right. And so my question is, how do how do we know it's a good price when we don't know [1:05:26 PM] exactly what the guardrail policy is going to be? >> Yeah. So we do the best we can with the information we have at the time. And so we model what we anticipate the guardrails will be in the form of, you know, essentially run our limitations on kind of our all of our Peaker portfolio. And we do it in the order of operations that is stated in the plan, the cleanest units first and then the oldest, dirtiest units last. You know, when as we model this, they, they do show that these units are economic in the long run and that they essentially pay for themselves the revenues that they generate offset. If the future looks different than the modeling, which is a very real possibility, then you say, well, well, should I still do this? And the point that I go to is thinking about how, in addition to the normal conditions where they pay for [1:06:26 PM] themselves, these resources offset 50% of the financial exposure risk during an extreme event. So just one extreme event would cause them to essentially, you know, save everything around here. And so it's that essential insurance component that helps bolster the argument as a whole, knowing that models are, are an analysis, are helpful, but not always. They're never exactly right. But everything is pointing in the direction of this is the right move. >> And I'll just add one other thing is that even though our our modeling shows that they have a net benefit to customers, even assuming the high prices that we're seeing, if. But if we are in a situation where they aren't earning as much revenue in the market, that means that's because our load zone price isn't high anymore, because we're doing all the other things that we want to do, and that still saves customers money. So our future in terms of the net benefit to customers, [1:07:28 PM] because these units themselves, we don't need them to make money on their own. We need to save our customers money as a whole. And we do that as a portfolio. We do that through transmission investments. We do all kinds of things. And so even if that future unfolds where they're not needed, that will be a good thing. And it will be a good thing for customers as well. And it is a unique situation where normally we aren't in a position to look at critical infrastructure investments that are needed for the safety of our community. Normally we don't expect those to pencil out in a market. There's not a market for, you know, flood mitigation measures or or water plants or anything like that. In this case, we start, you know, start from the presumption that this is a necessary critical infrastructure investment. The bonus is that it will pencil out and be net benefit to the customers. But even if the market changes on us, our customers will still be better off because that means prices will be lower in our load zone. >> And as I think what martin was saying is that or deputy GM, is that the insurance aspect is [1:08:30 PM] a public good in and of itself. >> That's right, that's right. So yeah, one of those events and you know, the you know, half of the half of the investment is already instantly recouped. >> We have that peace of mind. And you talked about this a second ago, but if you could just answer the question, why do we approve speakers in secret? But wind and solar in public? >> Yeah, the negotiating environment is very different. When we put out an rfp for renewable resources, we're very much in the driver's seat. We're great off taker people look for partners like us to buy all of the energy output from that. They're limited people who can do that in ercot. Quite frankly, as a qualified scheduling entity, that can be the off taker. So we're very much in the driver's seat. The offers we get back in response to those rfps are fixed. We get the offer. We have many of the contract details already done by the time it comes to council. That offer is not moving. The challenge here is the [1:09:31 PM] competition for these major manufacturers of this equipment. They are not spending the time and resources to respond to rfps. They have utilities coming to them. They have other entities, you know, venture capital coming to them all the time. They don't need to respond to an rfp. That's why these major manufacturers did not respond to rfp. They they we need to go to the table, to them. And and many respects, whereas we're in the driver's seat for those renewable rfps, these Peaker manufacturers are in the driver's seat here. And so by making sure that we can get them to the table, they are not used to their prices being public and their prices are going up. If we want the best deal that we possibly can, if we're telling the world what their current pricing is at this current time, we are going to get their highest pricing because they're not going to want the rest of the market to know if we got a good deal. And so we need as many vendors at the table as we can possibly get to be able to negotiate the [1:10:35 PM] best price. And ultimately, that's going to save customers money. >> Last question is about siting. And I guess something that's been called the good neighbor policy. My understanding is that, as you shared earlier, placement for peakers will not come back to council unless there's a need to purchase land. And in the community meetings, I guess led by miss rife about speakers, there was discussion of good neighbor policies and agreements to mitigate the impacts of the speakers in the communities in which they would be located. So when would we learn more about these good neighbor policies and mitigation policies? Would that come back to council, or would that be carried out by Austin energy without further involvement? >> Yeah. The so this wasn't our entire community engagement process. You know, if if we're going to be in a in a neighborhood, in a, in a community, a part of town, that community engagement around that siting is, is, is going to ramp up. And we will have a lot more conversations of fleshing [1:11:36 PM] out what does, what are the needs of that community and what and getting even more into what does being a good neighbor look like? We can certainly provide more details to council as those conversations, you know, regular updates as those conversations occur in terms of whether it needs council approval or not, I don't I don't think it would be required, but we're happy to provide regular updates and then hear what council thinks. And if there are other things that we might be missing. Our intent now was to see if the community, as talking to the community about Peaker siting, was there anything we were missing or is there any definite things that you need to see? What what do we not know about this area? You know, any kind of shortcomings? Just obvious what what did Austin energy get wrong? And so we heard some of, you know, Linda gave a summary of what that feedback was, but that's certainly not all that there's going to be. We'll continue having that dialog and continuing to rightsize what any unique needs might be. Do you have anything? [1:12:36 PM] >> Yeah, if I could just add. So when we as we continue to hone in on our shortlist, we will go to the neighborhoods, right? We did now this time. And we reached out to the neighborhood associations. But in this case, we're not going to invite them to come to one of our meetings. We're going to say, when can we come to one of your meetings where you're already going to be so we can have a dialog, because we want to ask them what it looks like to be a good neighbor. We we don't want to assume that every part of Austin is going to feel the same way. Some people are going to want scholarships for for school children, and some people are going to want to make sure that a resource doesn't like like, I don't want to see the resource, make it make it disappear. And some people are going to say, I want to make sure that you've done a noise study or a glare study or whatever it is, a fire mitigation study. And so we don't want to presume that we know what's best for the community and what it looks like to be a good neighbor. So there's a lot more, as Stuart mentioned, a lot more dialog to be had with the direct [1:13:37 PM] surrounding areas, and we anticipate that will continue until we can find the right the right size solution. >> Thank you, vice mayor. >> Thank you, councilmember mayor pro tem. >> Thank you. Mayor, I really I think those were a good set of questions, and I really appreciate the framing around speakers as insurance. That is ultimately, I think what we're we're trying to do here is that we need to be prepared for that heat wave event, that winter storm event, and not just insurance to make sure that from a reliability purpose, but also so that we don't wind up, you know, $150 million in the hole after, you know, a very bad week. I just don't want to ignore the fact that the, the, the transfer, you know, the general revenue fund transfer from the utility, which is so critical to providing so many of the other services that that the city of Austin is involved in. And that is another just a really important kind of [1:14:38 PM] guiding element as we as we go through this debate with regard to the placement. And I'm going way out of my depth here, but I my assumption going into this discussion was, of course, we were going to put them where the other peakers were, because there's direct gas lines there and so on and so forth. But in the conversations that I've had with y'all, there's this the voltage idea and also that there's transmission kind of line capacity in that. In other words, that there is wisdom in kind of spreading the speakers around the entire service area as opposed to kind of all just sticking them in one location. Can you just talk a little bit about that? >> Yeah. You know, there are advantages from a system perspective, but I also just want to start with, let me just take a step back and say, the reason for us to look across our service territory is much of the reason behind that was [1:15:39 PM] some of the reasons we heard here today from some of the folks that spoke about communities that historically have been burdened with these types of resources. And so we we didn't want to assume that they needed to be in those communities. So we really felt a duty to look across the service territory. And we did that. And, and it does get more challenging from an infrastructure standpoint, but from a system perspective, there's an advantage to looking service territory, a service territory wide as well. Because from a voltage perspective, if you think about how all of our infrastructure was built to where and you saw it on one of the presentations earlier, much of the power imported into the Austin energy service territory is coming from the east. And if you think about voltage, kind of like water pressure, you got to push that all the way across. You got to have enough voltage support, enough kind of like water pressure to get it to everywhere where it needs to be. And so where we see that being a bigger challenge is kind of on the western side of the [1:16:39 PM] service territory, where there's more of a need for that voltage support to be able to, to move the power across the whole Austin energy service territory. So from that perspective, there is a benefit also to having resources on the western part of, of our of our load zone from a voltage support standpoint, a reliability standpoint, it can it can be a benefit that way as well. So that's why we've looked very hard at trying to find sites that could meet both the, you know, environmental and equity need as well as the system needs. And luckily in this case, the two are kind of going hand in hand. And we could, you know, locate a lot of this at decker. It was obviously built to there's 725mw of power that we shut down there. It was that ran a lot more, and it was a lot more inefficient. And it polluted a lot more. And that's now gone. And the infrastructure is there to be able to support that. But we don't want to just, you know, it's it's it's got the infrastructure, but we don't [1:17:40 PM] only want to look at those types of locations. We really need to look service area wide. >> Well, thank you. And again, appreciate that both from a environmental equity and from a just an operational point of view that that you kind of need the power to flow around and not just kind of have it all concentrated and going through again, beyond my kind of understanding, my, my law school degree did not prepare me for voltage discussions. But I'm glad. >> We've got Lisa right here. >> So we're good. Finally. In I hate to speak for the Dyess, but I think we all want to close fayette that that's been established goal. We were moving in that direction, but our partner has not so much wanted to close fayette. That said, fayette generates our portion of fayette. I believe it's, what, 600mw, you know, running at full steam. That's, in a way, our current insurance [1:18:42 PM] policy. I mean, is it fair to describe fayette as kind of our. You know, again, we don't want to run it. It pollutes a lot. We don't like it. But you know, that it ran during winter storm uri and it, you know, as y'all mentioned earlier. If we're going to close fayette, don't we need to add that dispatchable capacity so that we are ready to handle those kinds of events in the future? >> No, you're exactly right. It had been the way that the price ladder works on it right now. It really we try to use it as a as an insurance policy where it can, you know, save 90% of the cost for customers in those and 10% of the time and to have other resources to assume that that day will come when that resource is no longer in our portfolio. And we're, you know, we want to be ready for it because we don't want the risks to ever prevent us from, from [1:19:43 PM] being able to get out of that site. We, we're committed to getting out of that site. We've worked to do that or to get out of coal. And, and so you're exactly right that having this insurance policy of these speakers and this risk mitigation tool is a much better risk mitigation tool than that one. >> Well. >> And I very much hear that. We've got to make sure that, again, assuming that our partner eventually does make that decision to close fayette, and we've got to be in a position from our own generational capacity to close down that 600 megawatt facility and replace it with something else. And so I think that that the peakers will enable us to do that. So thank you all very much. >> You refer to it as full steam. When it's running full steam, it ain't steam. Thank you. Mayor pro tem council [1:20:44 PM] member duchen. >> Thank you, mayor, and thanks for all the information you've shared with us so far. Today. I had a couple of questions and a couple of comments. First, help me understand. I know we've covered this before, but help me understand kind of the lifetime investment in the Peaker. How long does a Peaker unit generally typically last given various maintenance or rehabilitations along its lifetime? >> Well, you know, we have if you look at what we have in our portfolio now in terms of, you know, a lot, a lot of grid scale, dispatchable generation resources, assume about a 30 to 40 year life. And, you know, I've talked to some folks around, around the industry and, you know, people who think a lot about the energy future, about, you know, well, is there ever going to be a time when we don't need something like that, that that can sit on the [1:21:44 PM] sidelines until that emergency comes when it's needed? And, and we don't see a time within that period where, where it won't at least be necessary as that kind of insurance tool. But, you know, the, the life of the asset and the, the borrowing, you know, the 30 year bonds kind of align. And, you know, this asset could probably even last longer than that 30 years and be in kind of the 40 year range. >> So, okay, so 30 to 40 years, probably 40 if we maintain it. Well, and. >> And the goal is to get it to where we need it less and less. And it still provides that backstop that you need. >> And that builds on some of the questions you've already answered. And, and my question directly I'm going to ask, which is and we've heard some questions earlier from speakers, to what extent does this potential acquisition mean that going forward, we've accelerated the retirement or decommission of the very oldest [1:22:44 PM] Peaker units that we've got? >> Yeah, I think that shows up in some of the emission, you know, the CO2 emissions data. I don't know if you want to take a stab at that or. >> Yeah, I mean, so the way I see it, we're operating at a deficit today. And so today we, we know that we need to add more with most of the time running the new units in place of the older units, but then having all the older units there as well for the tightest grid times. But as we continue to see how load growth occurs and how well we can continue to move forward on, on our, our local solar goals and how well the batteries that we are deploying are going to, you know, pencil out how they how they, how they work in the market, what else we can do in terms of demand response and energy efficiency, all of those things will help, you know, fill our energy needs collectively. And so I do see a [1:23:45 PM] day when we will be able to say that we can retire sunset, our oldest units. I just I can't say that today, but but this helps us get in that direction. >> But you could say it would accelerate that schedule. Yes. >> It does. It would help. It certainly helps displace those dirtier units until it can completely replace those dirtier units. And the way that that we're looking at it is not asking for the maximum that we, we might need in order to, on day one, be able to complete that, never need those dirtiest units. The reason for that is we will continue all of these other things that we've been talking about, the transmission upgrades, you know, the resource plan starts with customer energy solutions, doing all of the things that we can in terms of local solar. And so not, not seeking to do too much too soon, because we know we're going to keep [1:24:45 PM] executing on all the clean energy initiatives. >> Okay. That makes sense. Can you speak a little bit to be to me about assuming this goes forward and we move forward and the agreement does. And in three years, all the all the expectations are met. And we've got our Peaker units, but tomorrow, or rather, I should say Friday, assuming this again goes forward, what is the new strategy for local local, grid based dispatchable power? Do we are we still in the market for additional solutions? Does it satisfy solutions for a certain amount of time? A window of time, five years, ten years. Can you do you guys throw a party and go fishing? What does what happens on Friday? >> So the the work that we've done, Lisa's talked about how our, our work in the in the forecasting modeling is showing us that we need 4 to 500mw. And, [1:25:48 PM] and we, we know that we're going to execute on a lot of other stuff. So we know that 400 is what is what we're asking for that is looking at what our needs will be over a, you know, over a long horizon. It doesn't mean we'll come back for another 200mw of, of gas. Peakers this is this is the, what we can see in this forecast horizon as what our needs would be to, to have our needs met. It wouldn't be turning around and then working on the next thing to get more dispatchable generation. >> And if I could just add, our energy market office has a practice of running annual rfps, specifically renewable rfps, to see what's out there. And they've opened those to batteries as well. And so we will continue to test the market to see what other additional options are out there. Every year, we'll have new information about how the grid has grown, how everything has come to fruition, and we take that into consideration with the latest offers that are available to us, and we see if [1:26:49 PM] those offers are value adds to our customers portfolio or if they detract from it. And if they're value adds, then we'll bring them to you for for approval. So that work doesn't stop, but it's, it's, you know, the about 1000mw of utility scale resources that we've proposed to since the plan has been adopted should fill our needs for, for some period of time. And we'll just be back to seeing what is value add. >> The way I see it, if we can solve for the reliability equation, we get back to doing what we do best, and that's adding more clean energy resources. We've been such a leader at that. So I see it as a step forward on reliability. That then enables us to take several steps on sustainability as well. And so we'll continue to take those steps forward after we've solved for the reliability side of the of the equation. >> No, that makes sense. I am curious, what do you estimate that window to be right? This window you're talking about, where you think that while [1:27:50 PM] we'll continue to get the yearly proposals that may or may not make sense, depending on where the market is, this idea that we sort of satisfied this reliability piece for a decade for 2035. Can you give me a very rough estimate? >> Yeah, I mean, that the modeling period is a ten year period we modeled through 2035. Okay. >> Got it. So what we could expect, what I could expect is if market circumstances change, we might get additional proposals. They won't be they won't be speakers. They'll probably be solar or some other technology. But that this would probably sustain us at least for a decade for our. >> Local and other types of technologies that may come along in that time as well. That really, in the past, our plans merely relied on hopefully that that thing coming, that silver bullet coming to fruition. And we just need to plan for what if it [1:28:50 PM] doesn't, but be ready for when it does. And, and that that solution will come. And but the fact of the matter is, we're going to need all of it. >> Okay. Can one of the things that we've heard today is the idea that we may need more information. Can you run through very briefly? I know it was I think you touched on in the presentation, the the level of study that you've you've already expended on arriving at this conclusion. >> Yeah. So I'm just going to go back a few studies. So at the adoption of the last plan in, I believe it was March of 2020, there was a request to do a third party analysis to see if there was a transmission solution. So we hired a third party and they said, what if we could shut down all of our internal resources by 2030? Could you, you know, could could you have a reliable output? And the answer was, was no. And then as we moved into the adoption time period of the [1:29:51 PM] that led up to the adoption of the the plan that we have today, the 2035 plan, we not only used our own internal resources to do all of the market analysis, we looked at, I think it was about 20 different portfolios. And then there's different scenarios and sensitivities. So it ends up being hundreds of different runs. And we did that analysis alongside with a third party entity who was also doing analysis to using slightly different modeling techniques so that we could see, you know, one, does our work match their work in the same direction? And how do we help define what policy needed to go into the resource generation plan. So all of that work has been done. And so what has been done now is every time we get a new proposal or we look at a new suite of proposals, our energy market office team does full analysis with real time data and the real time updated ercot model, and the real time [1:30:53 PM] pricing and operating characteristics of those particular offers. And so that has been baked into all of the proposals that we brought you like the Jupiter battery last year, the the projects we brought you last month and then the all of them that we brought to you today. And, and so essentially, from my perspective, the analysis has been done. The third party analysis has been done. It's pointed the direction we need to go. And now we're telling you that our internal experts are recommending, you know, this, these final sets of real proposals based off of the, you know, in-depth market analysis that they do day in and day out. >> And I'm assuming most of that is proprietary for competitiveness and other reasons. It is. >> Got it. It is. Yes. >> And in the past, when we've hired people to do the modeling for the energy market operations side, they find that our team knows a lot and our team ends up having to kind of educate them on how to do this [1:31:54 PM] work within ercot. And it becomes very frustrating for our team because we end up training the, you know, kind of the consultant on, you know, that that we're paying for, but we're really the ones with the expert knowledge and, and, you know, kind of coming together to mutually understand how that work should be done. And then, and so we have the in-house expertise to do that. We've done a whole lot of analysis at the electric utility commission. There was a proposal to do more analysis and to do a third party analysis. And ultimately, we heard from a lot of the commissioners that they were very comfortable with all the analyzes that were done. There was kind of a conversation about not getting into analysis paralysis. Here we are, you know, a couple years after, you know, this whole process has started and the prices are very high. And I heard from speakers saying, well, well, now they're just trying to get in because the prices are going up. Well, we've been doing the studies for two years. Yes, the prices are going up. And the, you know, people have wanted us to slow down and here we are. And the [1:32:55 PM] prices have more than doubled on us during that period of time. And these units can still save our customers money. And that's that's where the analysis has been. That's where the analysis still is. But we keep refreshing it. >> Got it. Thank you. Last question I've got before a couple of comments is just about emissions. I know you shared a slide that showed kind of the relative a couple of things. You showed sort of the relative decline of emissions compared to the older peakers. Then you showed the percentage of the total emissions based on old and new peakers or old peakers plus new peakers. I'm just curious if you got anything you can share that helps us explain to constituents if these are deployed, what the actual, what the actual impacts, if they're in whatever, I don't know, half a mile or whatever the sensitivity area is that they can expect. Is there any, any information that you've got that shows not relative [1:33:56 PM] information, but sort of. Just information that's more understandable by the average person that might be concerned about being in the proximity of these facilities. >> We CN take that action item back to our environmental team and see what we can come up with. I don't think we have anything offhand to be able to do that, but I think that's a good idea, and we can work with the environmental group at Austin energy to understand that. >> Okay, I think that might be helpful also in terms of questions that I might get or we might get about what what residents can expect and how concerned they might want to be about potentially being in the proximity of one of the potential sites. So just a couple of quick comments. One is I kept hearing this morning, and I know we've talked to advocates and there's been this appetite for this third party analysis, but it really feels to me like that request sounds more I'm hearing it more as, do [1:34:58 PM] we trust Austin energy? Not do we need a third party analysis? In fact, I think we literally heard from a speaker this morning say we can't trust Austin energy. And so there's a sense that I have is we have this discussion up here that we ourselves are having to make this this decision about our own experience with Austin energy and our own level of trust. And, you know, it's a it's a $2 billion entity. And my sense is that there's a lot of sharp engineers and analysts that work there that you all have touched on some of the data this morning about blowing past the national average for renewable energy. My sense is it's a leader in the state and country for public utilities of its size. And we know this firsthand because we wound up trying to find and recruit the best candidates in the space to serve as the director recently. And it turned out, I think we already had that person. So I know that when we've asked [1:35:58 PM] advocates, is there anything that a third party analysis could produce that would be compelling to make them rethink this, make them rethink their their feelings about supporting speakers? And when I posed that question, they were candid with me and shared that, you know, based on the organizations that they represent or other circumstances that it would be, they'd have trouble supporting them regardless. So it does make me wonder, this idea of we had additional information even beyond this work session today or beyond information I just asked you for whether that's really going to move certain people in a different direction. And I have a sense that the reality is this is going to involve some gas and some emissions and, and your own multiple studies that you've been running for, it sounds like several years now have [1:36:59 PM] confirmed that it's still the most cost effective solution you could arrive at, especially regarding the other pillars that we haven't really spent a lot of time on today, which is the reliability and affordability pieces of it. And then if we don't have that local generation, sounds like we'll be importing more expensive and dirtier energy from the grid. So that doesn't seem like an appealing option from where I'm sitting either. So really, I can only speak to my experience with Austin energy and their responsiveness. And I know that when we had our microburst storm last year, you guys were on the scene pretty quickly and were pretty understanding and worked hard to restore power for people that were out without power for five days, which is definitely on my mind as I think about the reliability issues and the and the things that speakers can try and be our insurance policy for, for the three decades that I've lived in Austin, you know, it feels like you've consistently been compared well to other [1:38:00 PM] Texas private and public utilities. And, and so my sense is that even as we go through the Texas gas contract, that our desire is that we had a public gas utility and that we should be doing everything we can to be good stewards of the utility, the public utilities we've got. And the last thing we want is the, you know, the geniuses of the state to restrict our ability to run our own utilities. So. Yeah, so my sense this is, you know, a lot of this is just about a referendum on trust. And my hope is that from our conversations and the work that you all are doing in the community, that we can try and earn as much trust as we can with this going forward. And, and obviously, I think there's still some more questions to be answered, but I can't see that dramatically changing people's perceptions in the next two days about whether or not they trust the utility. So I think [1:39:01 PM] that's all the comments I've got for now. >> But thank you, council member. All right. Before we go to the next item, I want to follow up on a couple of things, and then we'll be we'll be done, and we'll go to the next item. And what I want to talk about a little bit is the the fact that that the public open meetings act and the competitive market exception allows for us to make decisions and the way we can make those decisions I want to talk about, because that's come up a couple of times more than a couple of times today. And I think we have to start with the idea and recognition that Austin is in a unique set of circumstances. The city is not every city owns an electric utility. Austin owns an electric utility, and it is a huge part of our budget, as has been pointed out, which impacts the citizens of this city. And it is a huge part of the day to day of those citizens. As has [1:40:02 PM] also been pointed out, and it also is important that we're it's we're not while we're an island, if you will, and unique in that we have our own electric utility. We are not able to operate that electric utility as an island. We are part of an overall process. And with ercot and that kind of thing. And in a competitive market, even though we have a monopoly, and just by way of those that want to know a little bit in 1999 is when the state of Texas changed and they called it deregulation of the market, but they created a competitive market. And in 1999, one of the things they said is that if you were a a municipally owned utility or a co-op, you could maintain that monopolistic situation if you wanted. It also said that the city could make a decision about whether or not it wanted to opt into competition. I [1:41:03 PM] remember where the mayor was standing when the mayor made the announcement that we are not opting into competition. I remember the mayor and and Austin chose to stay where we are in terms of that aspect of it. But with changes over time and with the role that ercot has played, we have to be responsive to that. We are in a highly competitive market and. The answer to the question very well, but it deserves a little bit of emphasis, and that is that we will not be able to get the best price if, in this set of circumstances, we don't act like an electric utility, we have to act like we are the board of directors of an electric utility. And that means we want to get the best price. A private entity isn't holding press conferences saying, here's what the prices are or here's what we're willing to pay. We want to play [1:42:05 PM] poker with you by showing you our cards. Private entities don't do that. And if we do that, then one of the things we will do is those people were trying to buy equipment from will say, well, we're not going to give you the price you want because then when we go negotiate with the next utility, they'll want that price. So unless you're going to keep it quiet, we're not going to give you the best price. We're only going to give you the worst price. And that's what happens to that, is that then goes to well, it costs it costs our constituents, it costs our ratepayers and has an impact on our customers. So that is why that in a nutshell, if we want to be a board that protects our ratepayers, there are some things that we're going to have to do that may not be consistent with the way we always do things in other decision making. For example, I'll say item seven, which is [1:43:07 PM] on our agenda. It was specifically put on the agenda to provide the council and the public with a vehicle to express their positions on natural gas. Peakers the folks were competing with on these prices, they're not doing that. We did that. But and that's great. By the way, I want you to know, I think that's great, but there are some things that still need to be protected in order to protect our customers. So we have to split the baby, if you will, on that. Let me just say also for the record, that section 551086 of the Texas government codes provide provides that the open meetings act does not require public power, public power utility governing body, which is us to conduct an open meeting to deliberate vote or take final action on competitive matters. And that's what we're talking about. Our competitive matters. I also remember, and by the way, [1:44:10 PM] that was put in in 1999, so that it would not disadvantage public power utilities. It was expressly put into the government code to allow for the protection of our our ratepayers. I also specifically remember in 2011. Have a very specific memory of it, because what happened in the in the legislature was they took out one of the barriers to doing that. And what the I say barrier you used to have to a public entity had to have a good faith finding. And that was taken out so that you didn't have to run through a separate deal. It just said, you will not be put at a competitive disadvantage. I don't think we ought to. When the state legislature has given us the ability to not put ourselves in a competitive disadvantage, should put ourselves in a competitive [1:45:10 PM] disadvantage. And I'll say that also in the context of we have all during the time I was in the Texas senate and others will remember this, we had to fight to not have damage done to Austin energy efforts to privatize Austin. Energy efforts to put us into competition, efforts to change the board of directors by legislation. And typically what was said is. The reason to do this is because they will make a political decision instead of making a decision on behalf of the ratepayers. We've been able to stop that over the years. We should we should recognize that we're given certain protections for our ratepayers, and we ought to act in that way as we go forward on this anyway. So I just wanted to lay that out as as part of this, because it's been it's a legitimate thing to be asked, but there is a good, [1:46:11 PM] good reason for us to be making certain decisions where we're not showing our hands. Yeah. Council member. >> I had a question for sure. So we will have the speakers come and speak, will then go to executive session to vote on the approval of the contracts for this acquisition. Will we then come back and vote either on item seven, either standalone or as part of the consent agenda? Or how does. The item seven? >> Yeah, really good question. The way I currently anticipate that that would be done would be that we would come in, we would call probably pull item number seven, just so that it doesn't get the speaker's go ahead and pass a consent agenda. We also have another item that because of notice requirements, I think it's item 12. Item number 12 has certain notice notification requirements and we need to pass it by noon. So [1:47:14 PM] it is it is highly likely that what we will do is I know you didn't ask about 12, but you can tell I prepare for these meetings. And what we will do is item number 12 is I'll probably call it up even before the consent agenda, just to make sure we don't drag things into noon. Right. So we'll take up item number 12 and then probably take up the consent agenda. And then probably item number seven so that we take the speakers specifically on that. Then we will go into the executive then either right at that time or shortly thereafter, we will go into an executive session. I don't anticipate there's a need for another vote that we would take a vote and we would be able to do it. We would come out and announce the outcome of that vote. >> So there will be no vote on item seven itself? >> No, because the vote is the vote that we are required to [1:48:14 PM] take is on item number seven. >> Okay. So then the reason I'm asking aside for kind of the public's just tiktok here is if there are like direction or amendments, just trying to understand if that's something that would be to item number seven that we would do out here, or if that would be done in executive session. >> It would be a it would be a direction that you'd be putting on the item we're voting on. So we might announce that there were. I would be willing. I hadn't thought that about that. So that's a good question. My thought would be that probably what we would do is do that, where we would come out and announce any change in any direction so that that that direction is made public. So long as we make the determination, it is not changing the competitive nature. Okay. >> Very good. >> Do you have any thing to add to that? Any heartburn with what I just said? [1:49:15 PM] >> No. That sounds. >> That sounds about you. Okay. You all right? Anybody else? All right. Good. Those are good questions. I'm glad you because I want I want to make sure we have the clarity. So that's the way I would outline what happens on Thursday. All right. This has been a good discussion. I'm glad we had this. So now we will go to item a 23. Mr. Riley, you're not moving near fast enough for somebody that's just been through what you've been through. >> I don't say 23. >> Council member alter you and councilmember Laine pulled this item. There were several of us that had questions and some just moved faster at pulling it. I'll recognize you and council member Laine if you want to say something quickly before we go to the item. >> Thank you very much. I just wanted to get further clarity [1:50:16 PM] on this item. This is contracts for acquiring av and television equipment and other information. I just want to better understand what exactly we are acquiring here. Are we doing what we're already doing today? Are we doing new things? Are we upgrading current? Current infrastructure in this? And then the funding source basically is this general fund that could be used for something else, or is this a certain certain funds that are dedicated to this purpose. So. >> All. >> Good afternoon mayor, city manager Broadnax council members. My name is James Scarborough. I'm with Austin financial services. I'm your chief procurement officer. Council member. Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your questions. The item that the Austin financial services is bringing before council this [1:51:16 PM] Thursday, item 23 is to authorize a set of contracts for audio, visual, television, broadcast services and related equipment. This is a continuation of a group of contracts the city currently has not not the same contracts, but a new set of contracts recently completed. Currently, the current set of contracts is seven contracts. The new set would be for six is currently used by roughly a dozen departments across the city, with a few that are substantial users of the contracts who are with us today that can discuss some of the projects that they're intending to use under the new contracts. The scope of the contracts are for primarily services associated with the design, supply and installation of, of, of television and broadcast equipment, including lighting and related services. This would include professional broadcast audio systems and install installed sound systems, [1:52:17 PM] as well as commercial audio visual systems, post-production services, digital storage, archiving and design provisioning, installation of engineering network systems. There would be an option to purchase a variety of equipment, including television, broadcast, distribution, engineering equipment, commercial, a V presentation systems, services related to equipment purchasing, including support, repair training, engineering, design and installation. So for the most part, these contracts would be used on an as needed basis. These are indefinite quantity contracts that are used by multiple departments, as I mentioned earlier, the the primary consumer under these contracts would be for communications and engagement. And I believe we have some of our colleagues here that can answer some questions on their intended uses. And other large users of the contracts would be Austin technical services, as well as Austin public library [1:53:19 PM] and Austin convention center, all of which are here, can talk about their intended use of the contracts. For the most part, the. The majority of the spend under these contracts are associated with the enterprise funds, with a smaller amount coming from general fund sources. Any specific questions you'd like to get into with regard to these contracts? >> Well, in the Q and a, there's a mention that the funding that will be used for these contracts will come from cable subscriber, cable, subscriber fee revenue, and that these funds can only be used for capital equipment purchases of video production equipment. So I'm trying to understand at the most extreme level, if we didn't approve any of these contracts, would there be a net benefit to the general fund, or is they are these funds that are earmarked only for this purpose? And so we wouldn't be freeing up dollars to do something else. >> Council member, thank you for the question. Jessica king, communications director so the [1:54:22 PM] funds that are applied for the atx Ann, which is what we use for broadcasting council meetings, commission meetings, that funding comes from peg funds, which is a specific source that you mentioned that a state law limited to that specific resource or need. So if we are. So we can't use it for any other person, it's capital equipment purchases that help us ensure that we can broadcast meetings. We won't be freeing up any funds because in order to, as I understand it, at least, in order for us to use those funds, we have to pull from peg funding that is already in our budget, that covers our budget, and that's the application for it. >> And there is that being supplemented by enterprise or general funds, or is that the exclusive source of funding here. >> For the atx N purposes? That's the exclusive source for for our broadcasting purposes? Yes. >> Does this contract go beyond atx N? >> Councilmember. Yes it does. >> Okay. So I guess at the bottom line, I'm I'm trying to understand is what the general [1:55:24 PM] fund attachment is to this item. And then within that, with some of the descriptions you mentioned, are we buying a new camera because the old camera broke or because the new camera is just better than the old camera, but the old camera would work for another five years or new lights because we're doing a new studio, but we have, you know, one that is really at the heart of what I'm trying to understand is what are we using general fund dollars for? And our ability to weigh that against the many priorities that are on the general funds. >> Understand, council member. That's going to vary from department to department, depending on their funding source. I would have to refer to my colleagues in the the largest using departments to kind of give you some examples of the types of projects that they were going to apply, the products and services under this department, under this set of contracts to to give you a some ideas of, of how they [1:56:29 PM] would, how they would. >> Sure. >> That's fine. >> If you don't mind, let me let me try. So, for example, we have the public safety facility that we are working towards the. The main, the main location for all three public safety departments. In order for that that facility to be operational, there are a couple of different elements. One, they need basic av use for for their conference rooms. So setting up their conference rooms for meetings, for tele tele televised meetings, as well as a press conference space. So for the atx, an element, what we are focusing on is providing accessibility so that we can broadcast live from a press conference, media briefing room there. That basically means that, for example, over the weekend when we had a press conference, because of the events over the weekend, we would be able to broadcast that live versus what police department has to do right now, which is use their cameras, their own cell phone cameras to broadcast and then place it [1:57:29 PM] later on a social media site or YouTube. So from the atx side, we would equip the public safety facility to do that. The av side, and I think that is normally led by a T S, and the director is here to discuss that if she needs to. But you have to have conference room space so that we can also host meetings, do teleconference >> Meetings. When we also look at the meetings for negotiations, where they're going to have to broadcast those meetings or have av equipment to broadcast any, I'm sorry, not broadcast, but put any type of av use in place, showing presentations, having those public meetings, then they will have that equipment. So when you're looking at the av use, my understanding is that for. That helps with city hall, that helps with any other facility, central library, all the different places that need av equipment. >> Okay, well, just ahead of Thursday, I would ask for just whatever is impacted by general fund. What is not the atx [1:58:31 PM] inside, not the enterprise side, but what are we spending general fund dollars on first and foremost? And secondly, is this a new thing or making an existing thing better? So that would be my request, and I appreciate y'all giving us some insights here. >> Sure. Thank you. Council member Laine, I apologize to you. I meant to call on you before we started asking questions, but I want to make sure. Is there anything you want to add or have questions? >> Thank you mayor. No worries. Councilmember alter did cover some of the ground that I had in mind, which is great, I appreciate that. I did, I am hoping that we could hear a little bit about how the vendors were selected, with an emphasis on the way in which the process may or may not have been designed to be competitive and lead to the best possible price pricing, as well as a vendor that will meet the needs. [1:59:33 PM] >> Good. Thank you. >> Councilmember. Yes. The current set of, of of recommended contracts were sourced in the manner that was used in the previous set of contracts because of the, the professional services nature, the engineering work and the design services that are intensely involved in the delivery of, of these services and products. The competitive method used was the request for qualifications. This was to determine the. The appropriate skill set, the appropriate level of training and credentialing necessary to design the av system so that they could be deployed in a way that would best meet the individual needs of the of the various projects and assignments where they would be deployed. So when we requested submissions from the market, we received a detailed description [2:00:34 PM] of the qualifications and and experience and key personnel from each of the offers and determine which ones were the most qualified, and then requested that they submit their pricing and, and for their services, as well as products that would be available in the market. And then we did the comparative analysis between what they submitted and what was available and other contracts, and determined the pricing was was fair and reasonable and comparable to what we would receive in the market. >> Thank you. Very helpful. I know we are a large city that leads in many areas, and we certainly value the types of engagement that were described. So it's important to establish a floor of companies that can actually meet our needs. So I really appreciate that. I have one additional question. Can you walk me through how this contract will help improve accessibility like captioning, language options, visual and sound clarity, or the extent to which it does help that. Thank you. >> So these this contract will [2:01:35 PM] help us upgrade a lot of the equipment. So from again, the at an aspect we utilize closed captioning. But in order for closed captioning to work, you actually have to hear things. Things have to work effectively. And so this contract will allow us to update and maintain the systems that we use to ensure that we can broadcast, live and capture all the meetings, community meetings, press conferences that we need to capture and broadcast to the community. >> Thank you. I appreciate those answers. And that's it for me, mayor, on this topic. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Anybody got anything else? Great. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Members, that will take us to item B one, which are council's priorities for the fiscal year 2026 2027. Budget development process. [2:02:52 PM] It's all yours. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council Cary Lang, director of budget and organizational excellence. We are here to talk through and have a conversation about council priorities as we move forward in the budget process for fiscal year 27. We're first going to talk through the engagement that has been done so far for this budget process. Talk through some of the survey results that we've received, do a forecast recap, and then talk about the exercise of prioritization tool that we will be distributing to council today. We always talk through the timeline. We are at may 19th where we're having this priority setting conversation. We will be presenting the fiscal year 27 proposed budget on July 16th, and then go through a number of community input sessions, council work sessions to get to August 12th through 14th for budget adoption. So when we think through our budget [2:03:53 PM] engagement so far, we began the budget engagement with request to boards and commissions to provide budget recommendations and asking for areas to consider for reduction from our boards and commissions. Those responses were received on March 31st and are currently being analyzed by the city manager. Also held for the second year, his community budget conversations. Over the six meetings, the manager heard from the community on various topics. He also conducted two feedback sessions from vendors who provide social service, social services on behalf of the city and has had the first of three employee budget conversations. The community survey. We received the community survey results, which were distributed to the council last week, and we will provide an overview later in this presentation. And each year we completed, we complete an online budget survey where we share the. And we will share the preliminary results here and have the full report available during the budget [2:04:53 PM] season. And then finally, there will be opportunities for community input, as I mentioned through through the budget work sessions and the council district town halls that usually occur over the July and August time frame. Looking at our community survey results, we received more than 2000 completed responses, with roughly 200 responses collected for each city council district. This balanced distribution gives us strong representation across the entire city and contributes to a statistically reliable margin of error of plus or -2.15%. At the 95% confidence level, participants evaluated 115 items spanning ten major service service categories. These categories cover everything from day to day city services, infrastructure, and public safety to broader perceptions about quality of life and the overall direction of Austin. Together, this gives us one of [2:05:54 PM] the most comprehensive and reliable snapshots of the community sentiments that we collect each year. This slide, although a little busy, provides a lot of information and lets us see who we heard from. Confirming diverse and district balanced participation across the city. Because this year's survey included a mail in option, it's important to keep in mind that mail surveys often produce slightly different respondent profiles in our data. These differences show up most clearly amongst older austinites, higher income households, and homeowners. These patterns do not affect the overall confidence interval, but they are useful context when interpreting results, especially when comparing demographic subgroups, are looking for differences in perception across the community. The survey includes two types of questions questions that ask austinites how satisfied they are with specific services, and [2:06:56 PM] questions that ask how. How much they agree with statements about perceptions of Austin for both types, etc. Combines the two top response levels. Very satisfied and satisfied are strongly agree and agree. They combined percentages become the score you'll see reported it also. It's also important to note that don't know responses are removed from the calculation. This keeps the results comparable across different service areas, especially ones people interact with more or less frequently. Overall, the city made significant strides 105 out of 115 items improved from the fiscal. From the 2023 survey, electric service reliability and overall quality of life saw the strongest gains. Public safety also showed encouraging movement. Both a pd emergency response, timeliness and community confidence increased by more than 13 points. The takeaway we're seeing broad we're seeing broad citywide [2:07:57 PM] improvements, especially in our essential services. This overall satisfaction slide highlights the Austin Austin's perception across two major areas overall quality of life and major city services. Across the board. We're strongly we're seeing strong trends upward and how austinites view the city as a place to live, work, raise children and feel welcome. The biggest gains are in overall quality of life, which increased by more than 14 points. You also notice the stars next to a few service items. These stars come from the important satisfaction analysis, which identifies areas that austinites consider highly important, but where satisfaction is comparatively lower. In this slide, traffic flow on major streets and the city's efforts to reduce homelessness rise to the top as key priorities based on community input. Looking at the [2:08:57 PM] overall perceptions, austinites report strong trust in fire and ems, and we are also seeing meaningful year over year gains in personal safety perceptions. More austinites now report feeling safe in their neighborhoods during the day, and there's a notable increase in feeling safe in their homes. At the same time, perception of the city's planning for growth and the availability of affordable housing remains lower than other measures. This slide here shows the we have against other Texas cities and the united States. The full report shows these benchmarks, in addition to benchmarks of our similar cities. It's important to note here that Austin is is benchmarked a little bit higher than both Texas cities and nationwide. And then this slide is just to kind of show the dashboard that is available to [2:09:57 PM] show year over year results. It allows you to look at demographics across several areas by district, as well as over the course of if you want to filter things in like age, race, ethnicity, you can do that through the dashboard, which is now live for the community and for you all to take a look at. Moving on to a quick overview of the budget survey. We provide an annual budget survey to get the priorities of the community. And this budget survey opened right after the financial forecast was presented. We had over 850 respondents as of may 15th, and we'll have the final report along with the proposed budget document in July. Wanted to just show some of the high. The. The highly important areas are are the areas where there was a number of support across this survey. Emergency preparedness, prevention and response, as well as housing [2:10:57 PM] and homelessness and transportation and critical infrastructure were the top three in the respondents for this particular question. And then we asked a question this year about social service funding to get the community's input on what they consider to be the top funding priority. And as you can see here, basic needs led the responses in top funding priorities for social services. Now, quickly going through a recap of the conversation we had during the forecast. As you all know, in April, we talked about the financial forecast, where we showed and we did a review of what our projected forecast looks like with a no new revenue, maintenance and operations rate, as well as the voter approval rate. This is just recapping that the and the initial review and deficits using baseline expenditures [2:11:58 PM] anticipates a $1.3 million deficit in we also had a conversation about what it would look like to add the items that were reduced or eliminated in the planned year that was created during the fiscal year 26 budget process. If we added those those items back into the budget for fiscal year 27, that would increase that deficit to 50.6 million. And this next slide just kind of walks through what that looks like with those added costs and to the base forecast for for the next five years. And then finally, we want to just talk a little bit about our sales tax update. We have received six payments through this fiscal year, and we are experiencing 7.3% growth in our sales tax revenue. The may payments current collections is 12.4% higher. But it should be noted when you look at this [2:12:59 PM] slide at the or this chart at the bottom, we had larger reductions or larger decrease in our sales tax. At the same time of last year. We anticipate sales tax revenue to exceed the original forecasted amount or the estimate. But we'll continue to look at that over the next coming months as we're preparing the proposed budget and make adjustments to not only our current year estimate, but also to the impacts that we anticipated having for fiscal year 27 and the years to follow. And then as we talk through city council's priorities and think through what we are going to do over the next couple of weeks, we do have an exercise that we're asking the council members to complete where it is a community. >> Feel better now that she's got something? I thought she was going to make us prioritize exercise. >> We can do that too. >> No, no, no, no, I feel a lot better now about where you're headed. >> We can get the seniors out [2:14:00 PM] here. That can lead us in a little Garza seniors. >> Let's do it. >> Let's do it. Senior size. >> Oh. With that, we will have a survey tool that we will be distributing to council today that will. We're asking you all to prioritize and work this tool that has three different areas. And over the next couple of slides, I'll walk through each area. The first being looking at our priorities related to our strategic plan and the service areas or the strategic priorities within the within the strategic plan. And so we're asking you to assign 100 points across the six strategic priority areas. And this is to help us understand your desire for investment or preservation of these general areas. Then we'll look a little bit more granular at the items that we discussed during [2:15:00 PM] forecast. And over the last several weeks, the items that were reduced in the fiscal year 26 plan year. We were asked that as you're looking through this tool, you'll tell us whether you want to maintain those reductions, restore them or partially restore them. There'll be an opportunity for you to provide input on if there are anything, if there's anything you want to offset those areas with, items you want us to consider for reduction in order to add to the other areas. And then we'll look a little bit more granular at the social service contracts, the focus areas of those contracts, and ask you to prioritize, prioritize those 15 areas, one being the most important down to or the ones you want to prioritize most. Number one, down to 15. And then finally, the tool will have an opportunity for open input. There's three questions that we have in that, that third section that allows you to give us additional items to consider, as well as any comments that you have for us, or if there's some particular service areas, programs, or [2:16:01 PM] initiative that isn't included in those first two areas that you want considered for inclusion in the proposed document. As I mentioned, we'll be distributing the survey today. And then once it's distributed, we're asking that you have it completed. And back to my team on by Thursday, may 28th. And we will provide an aggregated report of this along with the proposed budget. Once we have the final information from you all. Any questions? >> Thank you again. Anybody got anything that you want to councilmember alter. >> Just as it relates to part B, the priorities and where we might want to preserve. I just wanted to re-up the request for the social service contract list. We've not yet received that list and so can't tell you what we want to preserve. If we [2:17:02 PM] don't know. >> We you will have the memo this week. >> Okay. >> The list. >> I appreciate it. >> Anything else? Yes, councilmember Ellis. >> Thanks, mayor. I actually put my hand up this time, but I didn't know if we're using that system today. >> No, I just didn't look down. I didn't look down, so I apologize. >> You're all good. I wanted to ask a question about the budget priorities survey that's closing in mid June. When will we get those results. And can we have them broken out just by district so we can see what our constituents are saying as responses. >> So the the budget priority report will come out with the proposed budget. So we'll have that's one of the supplemental reports we add to or we distribute after we distribute the proposed budget. That along with, for example, boards and commissions recommendations. I will check with the team. I believe the online survey is not district specific. I believe it is across the city, but let me verify that and let you all know. >> Or if it has zip codes [2:18:03 PM] attached to any of them. I realize there's a good reason to have these maybe be more anonymous, depending on how folks want to answer the questions, but at least I know which zip codes I represent. And that could help us understand as the budget is being proposed, what our folks are saying. >> Yes, I'll check with the team to make sure to see if that's available. >> Okay, perfect. And then I had another question about when we get this exercise, which for the record, I'm happy to do any kind of exercise, whether that's mental gymnastics or physical activity. Will we get a breakdown of which departments are fitting within those six areas? Like I'm wondering where parks and recreation goes, is that with community health and sustainability? >> So I'm thinking through the service parts, I think we have a description of what is included in each one. Let me go back and make sure that is accurate. If and what I'll do as well is, is send you all the [2:19:04 PM] link to the strategic plan that kind of breaks down the different measures and goals that are related to each area. So you can kind of see what generally is included in in those areas. We don't say particularly with by the strategic plan that this is where part sits or Austin parks and recreation, for example. But by the goals and measures, you can tell what areas or what departments primarily lead those efforts. >> Okay, that would be helpful. And then what are the considerations around which of our priorities might be general fund dollars versus enterprise dollars, just so we can get a better balance of where we want to say our priorities lie. >> So most of the well, the first section is a mix of, of course, general fund and enterprise funds, but there is a section in that 100 points where you can have you can add your notes to say, I want this to focus on transportation. For [2:20:06 PM] example, in the section B, that is primarily all general fund focused. And then section C, you can identify any specific areas across any fund that you want to want us to focus on. >> Okay, perfect. Because I know also the critical infrastructure that could mean transportation, but that could also mean utility work or other things that fall outside of purview. >> Correct. And, and there's an opportunity to say specifically which, which part of critical infrastructure you want focused on. >> Okay, that's great. And then likewise with the high performing government section, just so we know exactly which initiatives are being referenced here, obviously, we want all of these categories to be high performing government, but just understanding specifically what would fall under that would help us do the do the program. >> That is primarily our support area. So if you're thinking finance, building service, facilities management, technology services, human resources, so it's mostly the internal functions. And there [2:21:07 PM] are measures that include things like our fiscal surety as a as a city. And so it's those kinds of functions that you'll be thinking about in high performing government. >> Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks, councilmember. Mayor pro tem. >> Just a quick question. The sales tax numbers are so unusual compared to what I'll just say what I was expecting what especially what we hear from kind of the macro environment out there. And I know y'all are on the budget side of things, not on the economist side of things, but any sense of what's driving those strong sales tax collections. >> Well, I'd say if you I think there's a lot of distortions in there. So if you compare it versus two years ago, we're only growing. For instance, the may payment is only as if you'd grown a little over 1% each year. It's just you had a big dip last year and then a large [2:22:07 PM] increase this year. So I think in addition to having uncertainty about the larger direction of the broader economic trend, on top of that, we have a lot of year to year and month to month noise, which doesn't make our forecasting job any easier. >> What's your name? >> Oh, Eric Nelson, deputy director Boe. >> Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. >> Thank you all very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. We'll now go to item b2, which is related to the 2026 bond program and election or recommendations regarding elements of that. >> Thank you. [2:23:10 PM] >> However you want to begin. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council members. Adriana Castaneda, director of capital delivery services. With me, I have Eric Bailey, deputy director, and Marcus hammer, assistant director. And I'm going to turn it over to Eric Bailey to start the 2026 bond staff recommendations. >> Pleasure to be here. Eric bailly, deputy director, capital delivery services. Good to see you all today. So first we're going to go through quickly some of the council resolutions that began the 26 bond development process. Talk about the development of the needs assessment and bond recommendations. Talking about the initial staff draft, the bond election advisory task force recommendations, updated staff analysis, as well as the funding, distribution and comparisons of the different recommendations. Following that discussion, we'll go over the council sub quorum request, the tiff alternate recommendation and the staff response to that alternative scenario and comparisons. And then finally, we'll discuss steps as we move forward through the process. So [2:24:10 PM] just as a refresher, in July of 2024, council passed a resolution directing the manager to bring a comprehensive bond package to city council no later than November 2026. In August of that year, August of 2024, council established the bond election advisory task force, and in September of 2025, council adopted a resolution directing the manager to develop an open process for receiving project suggestions from the public and expand priority areas for tiff evaluation. Departmental staff began by identifying and prioritizing nearly $3.9 billion in estimated needs throughout the different departments. These projects were weighted slightly towards community facilities and public safety, but pretty well split amongst public safety, transportation and parks as well. Our next step here was that staff took that initial needs assessment, along with public input received from the city hosted and bond election advisory task force hosted [2:25:11 PM] input sessions and created the initial staff recommendation shown here. Based on the initial total bond capacity of $700 million, these expenditures lean towards transportation, watershed and parks, with a goal of minimizing operational impacts to the city's budget. As we move through the process. In early 2026, financial services updated the city's capacity for 750 million. The bond task force, which has been meeting since October of 2024 and over the course of those 17 months, the final recommendation was for a total of $766 million. Important differences here between the task force recommendation and staff's recommendation is the $200 million for affordable housing and the funding of several new community facilities, which represent an increase from 131 million to 2 from 58 million. Those community facility investments recommended by the tiff do have significant impacts on the city's budget. [2:26:13 PM] And in addition, the tiff also decreased the funding for transportation from 251 million in the initial draft recommendation to 147 million later on in the presentation, there's a comprehensive slide showing the options and the differences in those recommendations. So the updates from the initial staff recommendation are shown here in light blue. These changes are based on input received from the public and task force to adapt that initial recommendation. Based on that feedback, you'll see the updated staff recommendation increase the total to 750 million based on the increase in capacity provided by financial services. The primary changes here are $28 million reduction in the watershed protection line item, $41 million increase to parks and a $37 million increase in community facilities. And again, these changes were made based on input from the tiff as well as the public response to the initial draft recommendation and community engagement efforts that are underway throughout the process. So one [2:27:14 PM] major discrepancy here between the updated staff analysis and the tiff recommendation would be the housing piece of that staff did not include additional dollars for housing in this recommendation, because of the $170 million balance, approximately that is remaining from the 2022 housing bond. This chart shows the proposed funding distribution for the updated staff recommendation by council district. The named projects are shown in the funding amounts and percentages, for a total of $324 million in named projects, and the remaining $426 million are in programmatic buckets that are implemented throughout the city. For districts that have lower percentage totals, the citywide buckets are able to make up some of that difference, and those citywide projects are implemented through various council approved plans from individual departments. So, for example, dpw has the Austin strategic mobility plan that guides its investment in transportation infrastructure. In addition, there are land acquisition items in the [2:28:15 PM] citywide buckets that, by their nature, are just not known at this time, as well as open space, parkland acquisition and the line item for the homeless resource center. So this slide provides sort of a single resource to refer to related to these three recommendations in the $750 million range. Again, as I mentioned, some of the main differences between the staff recommendation and tiff includes the prioritization of transportation infrastructure, particularly in light of the uncertainty surrounding the future of the transportation user fee, staff felt it critical to fund transportation infrastructure projects. There was large support from both the public and the tiff for community in the community facilities category, which was increased. However, it's important to note that any new facility or any alteration to an existing facility would have impacts on the city's operating budget, and the impact of those varies depending on the type of project. So and then, as I mentioned, the the final major [2:29:16 PM] difference is not including affordable housing in the final staff recommendation because of that funding that's remaining in the 2022 bond and the ability for the housing staff to adjust the spend in that category based on the funding that's available. So this graph shows a summary for the 16, 18 and 2020 bond programs that are non housing related. The red line shows expenses. Dark blue is obligation and the purple line is the spending plan. The royal blue line shows that 90% bond dollar value at 1.67 billion. Our programs tend to have a long tail on the end of them of the spending curve. As you can see here, this is mainly due to the size of some of the projects. We tend to reach 90% spent about three years before the bonds are fully expended. What happens is the larger construction contracts have longer contract durations, where the actual spending doesn't take place until after most of the other bond programs are completed. And this can lead to a case [2:30:17 PM] similar to what we're facing now, where some of the bond programs are complete, but the overall bond is not spent, and some of that debt has yet to be issued. As you look at the graph here, you can see that the overall the bond programs, when added together are expected, are projected to be at 90% spent in 2028. And one of the key results that I do want to emphasize here, and I've said before in previous presentations, is that since the creation of cds in 2023, projects spend more than doubled from 573 million to 1.3 billion. And the authorized. But unobligated balance has been more than cut in half, from 1.4 billion to 398 million. This means that projects are moving forward through the design phase and into construction, and rewarding those contracts and getting these projects delivered that were outlined in the past bond programs. So let's talk about existing bond spend. One of the things that council has recently adopted is the TRE, which is a [2:31:18 PM] disciplined, transparent tool that allows the council to evaluate bond necessity, prioritize projects, manage financial impacts while incorporating public input. It's designed to prevent past issues of frequent, poorly coordinated bond elections, ensure that voter approved projects are delivered efficiently and responsibly. That draft decision TRE was in January, and it's been through audit and finance review, and then council adopted that framework in February of 2026. Currently, there are four bond propositions from 2016 and 18 that are 90% spent or higher, including a fdms, the 2018 housing bond watershed and Austin public health. Then. Now there are subprograms within each proposition that have achieved a 90% spend. Those programs are sidewalks, safe routes to schools, streets and traffic signals and tpw, as well as aquatics infrastructure and land acquisition in parks. In the 2020 and 2022 bonds. [2:32:19 PM] There are no propositions or programs that are at 90% spent. However, the cumulative spend on all programs related to sidewalks, safe routes, streets and traffic signals in the transportation bonds are over 90%. So since mid April or in mid April, staff was meeting with individual council offices to discuss bond development process to date, as well as upcoming council actions related to calling for a bond election. At this point, a sub quorum of council posted on the council message board requesting staff and the tiff to develop an alternative scenario for parks funding at 250 to $260 million, community facilities at 50 to 60 million and active transportation at 75 to $80 million. The bond task force took the sub quorum instruction and approved the following transportation funding at 80 million parks and rec at 225, and community facilities at 131, for a total of $436 million. You can see here there's a mix of of named [2:33:19 PM] and programmatic projects that are included in the bond task force's $436 million recommendation. In addition, staff also prepared an alternative scenario based on the sub quorum request with transportation, 92 million parks and recreation at 250 community facilities at 58, for a total of 390. These projects also are a mix of named projects and buckets as well, and the sub quorum here really represents an increase to the parks funding from the $750 million bond at 181 million in the 750 scenario, versus 250 in the scenario. So this slide again is an overall scenario comparison of the sub quorum request provides a resource as you look across the board here, and you'll see that the tiff recommendation exceeded the funding recommendation for community facilities, but is a bit lower on the recommendation for parks from the city council request. So we put all of this information together based on the decision TRE and the city's [2:34:20 PM] financial policies and staff recommendation that the bond election be held in 2028, and that interim financing options be explored to address the funding gaps that exist within the bond programs that have reached 90% spent. And those include, as I mentioned before, the tpw sidewalk, safe route streets, traffic signals, watershed protection, parks for aquatics infrastructure and land acquisition. And I know that was fast and a lot of words, but at this point, I'll open it up for questions. >> Anybody have questions? If you do, let me know. Yes. Go ahead, councilmember Ellis. >> I know these gentlemen next to me were chatting, so I didn't know if they needed anything. No, I'm not distracted to make sure if y'all had something you needed to jump on that you had the opportunity to do that. I really appreciate the recommendation. I know we've been having a lot of discussions over the past few years about what level of funding or if a bond is appropriate for this year. I've had a lot of folks come to me and say that they really hope that we do a bond this year. I [2:35:21 PM] know that we've been watching our dollars, making sure that our budgets that we adopt can best fulfill all the service needs of the community. But at the same time, we know that these voter approved bond dollars are some of our best opportunities to deliver real, meaningful, tactile projects, hopefully across all districts. And so I need to go back and review the exact funding recommendations that the other sub quorum had put together. But I would say that I would like to do a bond. I may want to adjust some of the categories a little bit, and I know that over some of the iterations that the task force has come up with, sometimes the Hampton branch library expansion gets added back in and then gets taken back out. And so if I'm going to support a bond moving forward, I think we need to make sure that that expansion is there. It is the only city owned community meeting space in district eight that's not in zilker park or a fire or ems station. And so it's one that we use as our workhorse. It's next to dick Nichols park. And so a lot of families can ride their bike there. The kids love returning the books and picking out new [2:36:22 PM] ones. And we've hosted our community there for a number of years, and it is busting at the seams. If anybody was able to attend the community fair, you'll know what I mean. But particularly I would I would put my finger on wanting to make sure we're doing a lot for our parks and recreation department, including new land acquisition. I think that's one that I'm hearing most about is, you know, the increase in cost of land over the years is going to continue to burden the city. If we want to create our long range plan for the park system. And so I think it's important for us to be expeditious about that and keep that moving forward. And then I also want to give a plug to the active transportation projects. I know the 2020 mobility bond, the $460 million has really put Austin, Texas on a global map of safe bike ped infrastructure so that people can get out of their cars when they want to take a trip in a different fashion, which is part of our a smp goals. I know we just had a robust conversation about fighting climate change and making sure that we are [2:37:24 PM] responsible stewards of, of other sorts of infrastructure that the city council makes decisions on. And I think getting people out of their cars is going to do a lot to reduce our emissions and help with climate change and, and global warming on, on a very impactful scale. And so I know that our, our program with sidewalks, bikeways, shared use pathways, urban trails has been just churning and burning. They have been laying down miles and miles of safe and active transportation. And I really want to keep that energy going because I think if we put a pause on it, it's going to be very hard to get the machine going again. And so I think that's something that I'm really eager to look forward to. I haven't landed on an exact dollar amount necessarily, but I definitely want to open up what the other sub quorums looked at, because I think there's some really great proposals to be addressed here, and that's all I have. Thanks. >> Councilmember Siegel, I believe right and heads up, the mayor had to depart. I don't have the screen, so just raise [2:38:24 PM] your hands. I'll get you. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem, and thank you all for this presentation. I did want to take issue with the proposed funding distribution slide. I know we're not so much talking about the full $750 million proposal, but not only does it have district seven as the lowest percentage of of program recipients, it also lists William cannon bridge, which is decidedly not a district seven asset. So. So I don't know if that was just an error in the examples or if that was part I mean, I, I, I'm a part of the sub quorum that, you know, requested consideration of kind of a mid level bond package. And I just want to really emphasize that I think a parks investment would be really appropriate this November because the, you know, parks capital fees have been, you know, basically exhausted because of the way our city has grown and the outlying areas don't have the same park [2:39:25 PM] infrastructure because of some of the older facilities that need improvements, whether it's pools, park bathrooms and so forth. I guess I would really like to urge my colleagues to to consider at least a parks bond this November. Thank you. >> Councilmember. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem, I've got a couple of questions here. One is I saw that land acquisitions in two categories. It's in parks. It's also in what you're thinking for those different categories. >> Yeah. So the parks acquisition would be related to the development of parks. The watershed acquisition would be related to watershed protection, flood risk reduction, you know, that kind of thing. Water quality type of acquisitions. >> Is there is there any circumstance where there's dual usage or these totally segregated? >> Yeah. No, there there are opportunities for for dual uses for both of those. Obviously, the watershed protection land, you know, is generally used for, you know, recreational [2:40:26 PM] activities, trails and things like that, where a dedicated park land is what you think of as a traditional park with slides and playscapes. And, you know, that kind of equipment on it. >> Okay. I'm just trying to make sure I can understand and communicating to constituents. If we're thinking about total land acquisition in a particular bond, can I safely then include both of those categories in if both are both for different, different circumstances or different use cases can be appropriate for public use. Okay. I'm curious. I know in the past we've talked about a capital delivery service dashboard or better consolidating the information that's online. Any updates you can share with me about the status of that? >> Yeah, we're working on dashboards, talking about, you know, past bond spending. Our goal is by the end of the the fiscal year to have that up and running. We have in place right now that we're currently in the process of doing kind of our internal review, as well as accessibility reviews and making sure that it's user [2:41:26 PM] friendly and all those other kind of things. But we are able to pull the bulk of the data from our systems, which automates a lot of the issues. As you can imagine, you know, capital delivery services manages somewhere on the order of 400 individual cip projects. So that's a lot of data that's coming in. And you don't want that data entry to have to be really manual to update any kind of outward facing dashboard. So we've made those connections and we're in the process of refining the, the, I guess, beta version of the whole thing until we are able to test it further and roll it out with the goal of this year. >> Got it. Okay. Last question is, just as you're thinking about this discussion about 2026 and 2028, how much sort of peer analysis in Texas or outside of Texas have you all looked at in terms of who out there has has implemented bonds in a manner similar to Austin over the last 20 years, where [2:42:26 PM] it's sort of been per category or subject matter, sometimes successive bonds in successive every two years versus having a more rigid six, etc. Year cycle for a more omnibus bond. >> Yeah, I mean, we haven't done in-depth analysis in terms of that. I will say that Austin stands alone a little bit in terms of the frequency of the bonds that we've done in the past several years. I think one of the main things we looked at as a part of this particular exercise was really looking at the 2025 bond elections and which in a decidedly poor performing year for bond elections, what individual propositions were successful? We found that, you know, the infrastructure type of projects really tended to be more successful than facilities and things like that. So we can develop some more information related to peer cities. When it comes to, you know, how their bonds are spread out and how they're sequenced. But I will just tell you from, you know, [2:43:27 PM] anecdotal evidence that the city of Austin kind of stands alone in terms of the frequency we've done, especially in that 16, 18, 20, 22. You don't see a lot of cities that have done bond elections in that frequency, in the value that we have. >> Got it. Okay. Thank you. Last question is in your here in, I think, the recommendations you talk about interim funding. I'm curious, is there a any any very rough numbers in your minds right now about the scale of interim funding or CEOs or whatever instrument you guys would use to bridge us if if as an option for 2028? >> Yeah, there's several different options that are available in terms of the quantity of funding and the, the method of funding that's available as well. And it depends a lot on input from the council in terms of what that appetite is. You know, council member Ellis just mentioned [2:44:27 PM] talking about funding safe routes to schools and sidewalks and things like that. There's varying levels that you can do that based on, you know, input that we receive on this proposal or, you know, a future direction on how to go. >> There's no hard limits, though. I mean, 100 million, 200 million, 500 million, any of those numbers, if you were had council direction, all of them, all of those are plausible or realistic. >> I'm going to defer to Ed Benigno on that one in terms of plausible and realistic, I think there's what's financially plausible and what's politically feasible are two can be two different things. >> We've been working with chief financial officer. My team's been working with Eric and cds on, you know, where the gaps might exist between funding we currently have and what it would take to bridge the gap to a 2020 bond and making sure that the the use of non voter approved debt would be appropriate for those areas. And it and it would be. [2:45:29 PM] >> But to that question of is there are there any rough numbers you all are looking at or playing with that can give us any clues about what. What sort of proposals you might be putting together to present to us as options for how to bridge that gap? If, if we compare those to some of the 2026 options you all presented in this presentation? >> Yeah. And I think that, you know, Eric might have a little bit more on that, but, you know, the conversations that we've had, I, you know, I believe it's in the areas of like, you know, park maintenance trails, sidewalks, or some of the gaps. And somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 million, somewhere in that range would be the amount needed to keep those programs going until we had another comprehensive bond. And the other areas, like streets and bridges, currently have enough funding. Affordable housing currently have enough funding in previous bond programs to keep us going until 2028. And correct me if I got those numbers a little bit off, Eric. [2:46:30 PM] >> No, I think some of the information that we provide a council member is in terms of those areas that have actually reached the 90%, I think those are the areas that we were talking about in terms of potential future funding. >> Okay. I'd be curious if you have any if not now, going forward, if you can attach specific numbers or even a rough numbers to what those categories look like. So I or we can understand the scope of what you're thinking about for using co dollars to as a bridge option relative to the 2026 options that are shared in this presentation. Thank you. >> Councilmember alter. >> Thank you so much. I'm going to, I think, largely echo what councilmember Ellis mentioned before. You know, I do think an investment in our parks are desperately needed. You know, whether that is the garrison pool that I represent and that serves district three residents, district two residents. You [2:47:30 PM] know, we heard from somebody today about the value of that piece of infrastructure to south Austin and even the seniors we saw today from Gus Garcia. I think that that is an area where spaces that people can be indoors as well and have, you know, I think a common theme, whether it's the pool or the senior center, you know, spaces, when it's hot, someone can go and relax where they're, they're swimming or just enjoying the indoors. And these are really wonderful spaces for varying ages of the community, of course, also want to mention the land acquisition. You know, we find ourselves in the time of being able to have slightly down prices, which is not the norm here in Austin. And so I want to be able to be able to make sure we can take advantage of that. And then I do think it's really important that we deliver some of the parks infrastructure that the [2:48:31 PM] community has kind of been expecting and asking for. You know, we we do a good job of acquiring a parcel and making that parcel available, whether that's just kind of via trail or just, you know, be space that can be enjoyed in a community. But a lot of the neighborhoods want to know, when's that playscape coming? When are we going to be able to have, you know, some of the infrastructure that we have, you know, seen beautiful pictures of? And so I think that's something that we need to do more of as we're thinking about this bond planning process and recognizing, you know, once again, any spaces, I think the, the library that councilmember Ellis mentioned, you know, these are once again, spaces that allow for communities to come together and have that space out of the elements. So I do support looking in that realm. I also want to, just as we think about [2:49:35 PM] the conversation we had earlier today, you know, around our environmental impacts, I was really happy to see as part of the process that you all kind of scored the CO2 impact of these various categories. And sidewalks have a negative impact because they're getting people out of their cars. Vision zero a negative impact. I really think one thing we haven't talked about, the electric vehicle charging infrastructure, a huge impact for the cost. Six you know, you get a real bang for the buck there. Bikeways, trails, all of these things, lowering our CO2 as a emissions as a community because they're getting people out of cars and just into the the neighborhood. So I would certainly support those as well. You know, that those active transportation projects last. I just kind of want to highlight or foreshadow tomorrow in the [2:50:36 PM] audit finance committee, we are going to be having a discussion and ultimate vote on the policies, our financial policies. And I know you mentioned that the decision TRE, as it relates to the existing policies, might say we're not you know, we're not at that 90% spend yet, but we have a decision before us of whether we look all our bonds or proposition specific. And if we do move to a proposition specific regime, then, as I think you mentioned before, there would be some areas where we have already reached that point, or we would meet the threshold of that 90% if we're taking that more limited view. Is that correct? >> I'd say you'd have to look even deeper than that and look into the individual programs that are within a proposition. So a great example would be like the 2016 transportation mobility bond, right? That bond [2:51:37 PM] as a whole isn't at 90% right now, but there are some programs in there, sidewalks and vision zero and traffic signals and things like that that are at the at or exceed the 90% threshold. So you almost have to go a level below just the proposition level into the program level that's described within the propositions. >> Okay. And I don't have the big slide or the presentation in front of me, but I do remember when you came to audit finance, there were kind of two parks related ones. There's the facilities piece, and that one is kind of stuck because of the Dougherty arts center. Until we figure that one out, we'll never hit 90%. But for all intents and purposes, it is there with if you take that off the table and then the other parks one, we're getting pretty close. It's going to be right at the edge of 90. But but we're right there. And I think that's the as we talk about parks, obviously today seems to be a dominant theme. I think just the doughty arts center is really throwing off our math and. And that's. We just got to [2:52:39 PM] figure that out. That's going to be another conversation. Two last plugs. One thing that I don't think has been brought up enough in the conversation is related to cultural arts. And I think both from a community perspective, you know, the enrichment of cultural arts is, is very vital, whether that's the paramount mexic-arte, the Umlauf, which I am fortunate enough to represent. But in many of the instances, you know, you talked about some of the facilities that were recommended and the operating costs that come with those. A lot of these are partnerships. You know, I'll take the Umlauf, for example, which I would advocate for including they operate it. We we help with some of the capital funding, but it doesn't hit the city's operating expenditures. And so it's a way for us to leverage our dollars even further, and not just from an operating perspective, but, you know, they're offering more more than a 2 to 1 match in terms of we [2:53:40 PM] bring dollars to the table and they'll go raise outside money. Same with the paramount. And so I think being able to leverage those partnerships so that we're not completely on the hook, make our dollars go further, is something we should continue to analyze. The impact there. So I appreciate your work. I know it's been a long 17, 18 months. You as well. You. >> Marcus. >> Marcus has been you've had a child since we've started this. So you're clearly this is no small feat, but I hope we can get somewhere that really does meet the the need because like councilmember Ellis, I've heard from so many people, you know, their their investments that we need to make in, in the, in the community. And it's long since time. So thank you so much. >> A couple of quick comments. [2:54:41 PM] If there are no other council members, I just really more echo councilmember Ellison, councilmember altars comments, especially around the active transportation. And again, in, in light of the conversation that we just had around carbon emissions, local carbon emissions, and doing everything that we can to reduce local carbon emissions. We've been successful in our sidewalk buildout, in our bicycle urban trails build out, and those are so effective in reducing, you know, as we saw on the chart, transportation is a major source of carbon emissions. And I think that's where the kind of the the gains are to be had. And we have had success from the transportation public works and capital delivery services in executing some of the larger wishbone bridge, I think is a highlight of virtually everyone's year. It's just a gorgeous project, and I went out to visit it and just extremely well done. I think about the shoal creek, the [2:55:42 PM] underpass there where we're cutting under 2222 to connect the trail. The, you know, we've built out a lot of the the easy parts and we've got those kind of connections to, to make it a complete and thorough bicycle connection. Those are going to be trickier, though. Some of those kind of bypasses and some of those more difficult connections are going to cost money, but they really get people, I think, out of their cars and into active transportation, alternative forms of transportation. So I just wanted to echo the, the desire for those. And, and again, I was also part of the, the parks sub quorum that was posted on the, the message board, you know, parks are so central to the identity of Austin. They're so valued by people here almost, you know, uniquely among so many communities that that, that I know they're essentially out of capital funds. Parks is essentially out of capital funds. And I do feel an [2:56:44 PM] obligation to, to continue to kind of get them some capital dollars so they can continue to make investments. And it's a multi-generational, you know, kids are at parks, you know, the elderly are at parks. Like everybody loves parks. I know that in the past, we've had a lot of success. There's been very popular. The parks bonds tend to kind of do a little better than almost every other bond. And most of the bonds pass. But I just wanted to to echo those comments as well. >> Councilmember process question for I think >> For the the for the manager or for y'all? What what happens next between this conversation and ultimately ordering a bond election? I assume that would come in August. Just, I, we I have not done this before. I know some of my colleagues here have. But what happens now? >> Loaded, loaded. Pause there. What we would need to do is [2:57:45 PM] come up with whatever the final recommendation is, whether it's a parks only bond and that kind of thing, we would come forward with a request for council action. We would do a ordinance to that, which would basically outline the amounts in each bucket. If we do multiple buckets or just whatever it is, and then the election, the very last day to actually call the election, I believe, is August 17th, we'd want to make sure we get it on the council agenda in advance of that, in case there was anything that went sideways. But that's really the way that the process would work, would be council action related to what is going to go into the bond, and then a separate council action calling for the election with the upcoming break and things like that. We do have a placeholder that's on the may 28th agenda. That's a pretty full agenda, but that can also be moved, if necessary, until after the break. But then we're in budget season and things like that. So we'll work on that. And when we want to bring that forward in the details there. >> Well, as we're planning ahead, I would just it would be [2:58:45 PM] my request. I know councilmember Fuentes is on maternity leave, and I know councilmember harper- madison just I think, had surgery as well. So she's recovering. And, you know, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of investments directly into various council districts. I think it would be great if we could have this be a decision when they get back. So that would be July. And I know that kind of throws us into budget. And the other craziness that I'm sure that is not going to be a short agenda either. But I just think this is such a an impactful decision that I would hate for them to not have their constituents voices represented. >> Yeah. >> Manager. >> Thank you. I thank you, councilmember, and thank you, Eric. And team, I think I won't say we skipped a step, but but I think tomorrow's conversation, I think at the audit and finance committee on how we're looking through the lens of whether or not we actually have a bond program juxtaposed to [2:59:47 PM] the decision TRE. And any modifications to our financial policies, I think is a first step. And then some communication broadly from that committee. Should that be the case to the full council on making those changes? And then I think short of the prescriptive items around timing and ordinances and calling an election, I think some clear understanding on, you know, what type of bond program, whether it's scaled down or comprehensive or parks only, and then having the iterative conversations with individual council members in their respective teams to determine if, in fact, ultimately we've got the right types of projects within that that satisfy, I think, the community's needs and district concerns. And then ultimately, we'll work over the summer. Should we get a signal from council that that intention is to do a bond program, to have certain types of information available, to be able to have [3:00:48 PM] those decisions be able to be made within the time limits for you to call an election, should that be the case. And so, again, I think there's a lot of work we've got to do in between. And so tomorrow will be the starting point on whether or not we begin that work. But I think that will be critical. And as Eric said, there's placeholders on may 28th. And that could just be for the direction at that point of to go forth work with council members and community and btf whomever to really try to figure out what that package would look like to come back almost at the same time as the proposed budget, to have those conversations kind of separate. But in concert, particularly if there are any other alternative financing needed that would then be put into the budget in addition to actual bond election in November. So again, I think there's a lot more conversation, but tomorrow will be critical to determine which way we go. >> Right. Thank you manager. I guess it probably would be a good idea to set up an additional conversation on may 28th subsequent to the. But I [3:01:50 PM] my sense and again, I would, you know, look to my colleagues is that it's I would be very surprised if we were ready to call a bond election and, you know, do anything like that on the 28th, that July 23rd date seems again, well ahead of the August 17th kind of latest possible and gives everybody a, you know, pretty good runway to kind of figure out the size and scope and, and also, ultimately, this will go to the public for a vote. And we want to leave plenty of time for that. You know, have a deliberate, thoughtful process and not anything where we're scrambling at the end. So that July 23rd date does jump out at me as a as a seems like it works well for everybody. So well, if there are no other questions, then thank you very much for the presentation and look forward to continuing the discussion on on bonds. And we'll go ahead and move on to the next item. Thank you. >> Yep. [3:02:51 PM] >> Item B three the proposed development agreement and future annexation of a mixed use development of 2614 acres in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction, generally known as the dog's head, including the future creation of a tax increment reinvestment zone and local government corporation. Doctor Johnson, we'll turn it over to you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor pro tem and council doctor Johnson, assistant city manager. Trish link, legal here with us today. So I'm just going to jump right into the presentation. But first let me let me say this before I get started. Just give a little context for large American cities facing fiscal uncertainty, the opportunity to annex a massive single user, single owned track of land shouldn't just be viewed as a [3:03:52 PM] routine real estate transaction. It's a rare, and I use the word rare structural fiscal lifeline, and a strategic macroeconomic development tool. This is not something that shows up on the radar for American cities, and I just need to make that statement that it's a rare opportunity. But just to set up the slides, I'll just go through them and then we'll open up for questions. Just on the stage of economic development, we know we're playing catch up in Austin. We've been talking a lot about economic development, economic development strategies moving forward. When we talk about our efforts, we know we need to ramp those efforts up to level the playing field. Many would argue that we've been out of the game of economic development for a while, and it's time for us to get back in it. In particular, given our ability to grow the tax base. And one of those key elements in doing so is really having shovel ready sites to match the [3:04:53 PM] speed of opportunity, shovel ready sites to match the speed of opportunity. What does that actually look like? So in Austin, unfortunately, we do not have that tool available to us. And you see on the screen, and that's in part due to fractional. Fractional fractionalized ownership of land hold out risk, outdated infrastructure. That's really the context where we look at cities in particular large cities. It sets up an opportunity where we are at an economic disadvantage because we just don't have the size and scale of these types of sites available for us to grow our tax base. And I don't think it's a secret. We're in an interesting environment right now where we're at a fiscal crossroads with state mandated property cap caps limiting our ability to raise revenue, the exhaustion of federal relief funds. We're basically at a point where it's no longer a distant threat. It's an [3:05:54 PM] immediate reality. So it's imperative that we work to expand our tax base and establish a new revenue sources that can be equitably shared across the community to mitigate this disadvantage, strategically annexing large sites within the reach of the city's boundaries can serve as a competitive and I use the word competitive advantage in the world of economic development. It provides us, us being Austin, to be prepared when the opportunity arrives and we're not being reactive, we're being proactive. So when we think about this generational opportunity, dog's head is 2614 acres, which we call a mega site in the etj under one ownership. And it represents a generational economic opportunity bounded between the Colorado river, us 183 and state highway 130. The site sits within 15 minutes of downtown and 15 minutes, 15 minutes of downtown, ten minutes from the airport, which is virtually impossible to find [3:06:56 PM] in the msa, arguably making dog's head the premier location in entire msa. In particular, in the world of site selection criteria, this advantage makes the site a prime candidate for mass massive mixed use employment centers, secondary employment campuses, sports, entertainment, to name a few. We're not limited by a single use. It gives us the opportunity to provide a varying use of possibilities. So when we think about this generational opportunity, it's to me it's really simple. Securing a shovel ready future is basically what we call it. It gives us a speed which is now the ultimate currency in the world of economic development. Our ability to move. It also allows us to mitigate risk, which often becomes the default choice rather than secretary secondary option. When looking at locations for development and economic opportunities, a new revenue stream. It also works to provide us with a stable, long term funding source to [3:07:57 PM] help us mitigate and support long term city services. Core services. Just based on some preliminary numbers. I'm just going to tell you guys, council member Siegel, I think you asked me a month or so ago why I'm so optimistic. It's things like this that keeps me optimistic because when you when you look at just conservative potential in terms of revenue, we're looking at. Numbers in the range of 1.5 billion to 3.5 billion in new property taxes over 30 years. Again, we're looking at tax base protection and fiscal resilience. Again, having the site provides us an opportunity to deliver on economic growth, grow the tax base without placing a full cost burden on existing residents, because this would be new property tax generation. Next slide. Strategic impact. We're playing both offense and defense offense in the sense that, look, [3:08:58 PM] we're sending the message that Austin is not only open for business, we're going to go after and provide the resources needed to grow our tax base defense from a position in the region to basically say, hey, as a core city, we are in the game of economic development and we have arguably the best site in the region in the msa. So when we think about high stakes impacts, the dog's head, we're looking at deficit mitigation. We're looking at market advantage in the sense of reclaiming what we call stopping a 30 year loss and drain of tax resources to areas outside of Austin. Infrastructure, roi, direct growth into a concentrated, efficient district rather than costly, fragmented sprawl, generational stability ensures Austin remains economic heart of central Texas for the next 50 years, and it's not on the screen. But I would also add to [3:09:59 PM] this community benefits. It creates an extraordinary opportunity to work with a developer who we who we really view as a good partner to deliver community benefits in partnership without stopping growth and development. So the development agreement is a 45 year agreement between the city and the property owner. That applies to today's land development code, except where modified by the agreement includes commitments to establish a public accessible trails along the Colorado river. Open space throughout the property provide affordable housing within the development. Consents annexation. Contemplates adoption of regulation plan on the site. Creation of a tax increment zone. Tirz to assist with construction, constructing the infrastructure. Failure to adopt a regulating plan or create the tirz allows for the property owner to be annexed and released from the etj. So when we move to public finance, [3:11:01 PM] in particular the tirz, the tirz reinvestment zone required for this project, again, the market analysis estimated to be completed by the end of may early June, staff will provide detailed briefings to council in advance on in advance of July meeting consideration and published a preliminary project financing plan as soon as possible, but for met due to extensive infrastructure needs. If you've been out to the site, you can clearly see there's need for infrastructure, great infrastructure at the site, exploring potential partnership with Travis county. That conversation is underway as we speak. Developer will require to include affordable housing in compliance with the fiscal policy. What you see on the screen is initial property tax revenue estimates, projected estimates, one without potential tenant, two with a potential tenant potential tenant being identified as [3:12:01 PM] looking at a range of uses for the property. What we've been hearing, both in chatter, is that if Austin is ready, we believe there will be some opportunities that will emerge. We don't have clarity yet, but we do believe there will be some opportunities out there. Development agreement again coming to the council may 21st. Annexation. Annexation may 21st effective June 1st, tirz July 23rd. And that gives us time to work on this, on the tirz process and continuous Wright roadway annexation by July 23rd. Last slide. Before we get into questions, this is really about securing Austin's legacy. You know, sometimes things will fall into your lap. You're not expecting it. But when it does arrive, you appreciate the opportunity. So dog's head is really one of these opportunities that is actually falling in our laps at a perfect time. Annexing will [3:13:03 PM] enhance Austin's economic development, competitive advantage, create new revenue sources, and lock in a long term tax base position. Austin to attract major development employers. Strengthen Austin's regional economic leadership and deliver deliver shovel ready sites that will make a difference in site selection. And let me just say this again Austin is not short of talent. It's not short of capabilities. We are short of what we call shovel ready sites to be able to not only communicate and market to the outside world. We believe dog's head provides that opportunity. And lastly, provide an opportunity to collaborate and explore community benefits and amenities. Given the broader economic potential, the site will bring a site of this scale, and its potential will have tremendous opportunities for Austin. And before questions, I just want to say to the council that our team in particular, led by legal and all the [3:14:04 PM] various departments, have done a herculean job to get us to this point today. So I just wanted to say that our legal team has been outstanding in this process, and we have shown that collectively when we work together, we can move the needle. So with that, I will end and we will take questions. >> Council member Velasquez. >> Thank you. Thank you so much for this presentation in section 304. I wanted to see if we could speak to why we're including hunting. As a continued and allowed use in the property in when it's brought into the city of Austin. >> Trish. Link with the law department. Those are activities that are currently happening on the site. And so they are asking to continue those. >> Okay. Also in section six, I understand that we're looking at funding new infrastructure within a potential dog heads development with a tirz, but how do we intend to fund the necessary improvements or added [3:15:06 PM] capacity on existing roads heading into the site? >> As Kim Kim available. >> She's at a conference. Actually, no. >> She was calling you. >> She's on the line. >> She's she's on. >> The line. Moved over. >> There she is. >> Good afternoon, council members. So right now we are in the very early stages of doing all the analysis to move towards an eventual all the items that would come to council for creation of the tirz. When it comes to the roadway elements that exist right now, and this is something Trish can also speak to. There's already. There will be need to reconstruct those roads in general, but there's going to be significant infrastructure of horizontal. All the horizontal types of roadways, water, wastewater and so on and so forth. So we are [3:16:06 PM] working through all the various components that would be incorporated in that tirz to be able to understand what is actually truly necessary for the core infrastructure, for the city to be able to bring to the site versus extraneous infrastructure. So there's a lot of questions to be answered on that front, but nothing that's insurmountable based on what I've seen so far. I'm very, very pleased with what I'm seeing. And so we're just continuing our partnership with the developer to, to work through all those details and be able to provide that information to you in July. >> Thank you. In exhibit D, the conceptual major street circulation options as drawn would have significant impacts on the mochan trail. Baum park and John Trevino junior park. I see that we use the word conceptual here, but what assurances can we have within the development agreement that we are not bound by these maps, and that we'll have meaningful community engagement around ingress, egress and ingress routes that will take place before we have any decisions made on that. >> So the conceptual map is the [3:17:08 PM] kind of the idea going into the a, S and P in the annexation ordinance, you will be initiating an amendment to the a, smp for this area. And transportation is here. And they can speak a little bit more specifically about the roadways. >> Thank you, council member, assistant director, Austin transportation and public works department. The way the roadways are aligned or the alignments are provided in the area development agreement. It's conceptual in nature. And when we go into the smp amendment to incorporate these roads into the city, that is going to be an opportunity for our community to talk about some of the challenges. And again, these roads are conceptual in nature right now on paper, and there is always [3:18:08 PM] going to be opportunities for refinements, for all the details. And even smp is a vision plan. This is not an engineering document. And as we progress into the development of the roadway plans and engineering design, there is always that opportunity to look into all the constraints that we have and all the opportunities. >> Well thank you. And also in section 315, we have a 20% affordable housing commitment here, and that dog's head will be contributing 10% and the city will be contributing the other 10%. And this is part this is probably larger tirz discussion, but can you talk us through how we arrived at arrangement and what funding mechanism we'll use to fund the city's contribution to the affordable units? >> So as drafted council member, the first 10% will come from the developer, and then the second 10% will be a joint [3:19:08 PM] effort between the city and the developer. The tirz is not what would fund it, but it will be a component of the tirz plan in terms of that is how we would enforce the requirement to provide the affordable housing. >> And council member. Let me just add to that too. And we we we drafted a language that way because we wanted some creativity, because we really don't know. Traditionally, we may do a tax credit. You know, we said, okay, well, how about if we keep it open enough so we could look at partnerships through housing with director Dean and their team to see if we can deploy some different strategies. So that's why we kind of wanted to craft it more as a partnership between the city to make sure we can bring some creativity to it. >> Thank you. And thank you. >> Thank you, council member Siegel. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem and doctor Johnson. I'm always happy to hear that you're optimistic, warms my heart. And actually I share your optimism. This does seem like a great opportunity. I want to start [3:20:09 PM] with a question of miss link if that's okay. We heard a couple public commenters describe the development agreement as waiving all environmental protections, waiving all water quality protections. And I want to see if you could comment on that. >> So for the development agreement, we start from the premise that current code applies. And so that's our starting point. And then the agreement is modifying them. So there's still water quality requirements. There's still drainage. It's just modified within this agreement about how we're kind of making determinations about those things and also the ways that they will handle drainage and water quality. But I do have director morales here, and he can speak a little bit more specifically about that, if you'd like more. >> Yeah, that would be helpful. Just a kind of an overall analysis. Thank you. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. George morales, director for the watershed protection department. I think Trish already summarized it nicely, but we are starting with the base code as it stands today, [3:21:10 PM] right in article five does cover some of those exceptions. What that might look like. If you want to get more into specifics on what the agreement looks like, but the water quality drainage components would be that it would be regulated through FEMA regulations. >> And are you comfortable with the proposed development agreement? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thanks, director, I appreciate it. And then, doctor Johnson, I just want to kind of ask a little bit more. And if you could kind of share for the public how annexation is a bit of a collaborative process under under state law, because basically, you know, the, the property owner has the right to annex under state law with very little process. And so, I guess, can you kind of share a bit more about how your, your approaching this negotiation with the developer to make sure the city gets a good deal, but also making sure that, that they get what they need to stay in the city limits. Okay. >> Yeah, I'll actually answer that council member. So annexation today is essentially [3:22:11 PM] consent driven. If we don't have consent, we have essentially we're not able to annex. So in this instance, they've come willing to be annexed, but under certain conditions. So in terms of how we're negotiating, we're working with what they know they want to achieve. In a most general sense, I will say. To particularly to staff's credit, in terms of helping us navigate this agreement. It's very conceptual right now. And so they we have worked with them about what they think the plans for the development could be. And so if they if we if the council approves the development agreement, and if we annex that property, provided that the tirz and the regulating plan are consistent with the agreement, then they will stay in. If not, then they [3:23:12 PM] will have the ability to de annex. Today, getting dis annexed is. They've made it easier, a lot easier. And also this property, because it's in the etj getting released from the etj is very easy unless council has to take action. And this instance, council would likely have to take action to release them from the etj. We don't we don't know that they would be eligible under the state law. That basically makes it a ministerial function of the city. So that's how we've looked at it. >> Thank you. And then I guess my last question relates to the tirz. And my understanding is that this proposal for tax increment financing zone, that's really where the rubber is going to hit the road on, you know, how good of a deal the city's getting and the kind of the balance of helping the developer build enough infrastructure to make economic development possible, but making sure we're also protecting our general fund income from property tax revenue. And so I don't know if [3:24:14 PM] this would be more of a question for miss Olivares, but I guess if if you could provide any additional context for how the tirz works into what we're being asked to approve on Thursday and how the city is approaching those negotiations. Kim, I think they're looking to you. >> So I think this will be a question that both myself and and Trish would be responding to. So there's specifics in the development agreement about expectations around the tirz, but it doesn't set exact parameters around contribution rate or anything of that nature. So what we are the timing has been a little out of whack, but again, we can handle it. So over this, once we have the economic analysis report completed by our outside consultants, which is a key component of understanding, like the suitability of the the overtures overall, which but all, all arrows point to pardon me, all arrows point to it is [3:25:16 PM] absolutely suitable and makes sense from a market and economic feasibility perspective. We will be working closely with the developer on all the various components. Also working with the county on their potential participation in this. So there's a lot of moving parts right now. There's a lot of things that I have a, I know I definitely have a responsibility of keeping each of you informed fully throughout the process. So the really the next big step is once we get that market and economic feasibility analysis, that allows me the space to be able to start having much more meaningful conversations with each of you, as well as commissioners, court members. And in terms of how it works, specifically relative to the development agreement, I'm going to defer to to Trish, to speak to those. >> So the development agreement commits the city to considering a tirz. It doesn't obligate the council to approve a tirz, but it does obligate us to bring it to you. And then if that [3:26:16 PM] doesn't happen, then they will request a disintegration and release from the etj. >> Well, great. Well, thank you all for all of your work on this. I mean, my understanding of the tirz law is that we have to show that. But for the development, you know, certain benefits will not be available. Right. And I think that's this is a great example, right? If we don't annex, if we don't enter into a tirz, we don't have this massive economic development opportunity. So thank you, doctor Johnson and team for all your leadership on this. >> Thank you, council member Elaine, council member Laine. I see your hand up and you have the floor. >> Yes. Thank you. I first wanted to just thank staff for what thus far has been, in my view and my experience. You've been very thoughtful and deliberate in how you brought information to my office, answered my questions, and this discussion here, now in this work session is a part of that. And, you know, I definitely [3:27:19 PM] wouldn't want to even try to restate some of the points that doctor Johnson made about the uniqueness and timeliness of this opportunity. I also want to note that another aspect of this opportunity that is that is so timely is that this developer has a need for us as a city to be able to move through the process in a timely fashion. And we as a city, also have a need to get to the point that construction is complete and the positive impacts on our property tax revenue come as soon as possible. So that's another way that this is this is unique, is that our our interests are aligned. And I will say, having taken office at a point in time when the city had already been working diligently and with focus for for several years, if not much longer before that, but with a new level of focus in the last few years on improving the [3:28:22 PM] efficiency, predictability, and Rainey, and reducing the amount of time it takes to move through the development and construction process. And now we also have this moment where development has slowed. And so we really have the opportunity with such an important opportunity to put our efforts to the test and move through the process in an effective way that protects the interests of our community, but is also quicker than what we've done in the past. And, and it's important that we do that as a city, because in the end, that doesn't just positively impact this, this potential business and this potential development opportunity, it will save time and money for every everyone who wants to improve their property needs to rent property from the smallest to the largest. And so I just wanted to emphasize that this is something that is also in the interest of our city to move through this process fairly quickly. And I, I really value [3:29:23 PM] that, and I support both doctor Johnson and the city manager's overall efforts to advance economic development in our region. When I think about the kind of city that I want for the future, for my children, for my grandchildren, for our entire community, we've got to be able to generate both jobs and revenue to be able to fund essential services in this very challenging stretch of years that's coming up. And from everything that I have heard thus far, I support this project, the dog's head project. I appreciate the work that's gone into it so far, and you have actually answered my questions before we arrived. I value the additional questions that my my colleagues are bringing forward, but I also just want to signal my support thus far from what I've seen. So thank you so much for all of your work on this so far. >> Thank you. Council member Laine councilmember alter. >> Thank you very much. I just have a couple clarifying questions as it relates to the agreement. First, can you just set establish for us the open [3:30:25 PM] space amounts that are going to be provided through public access easement? >> Yes. Council members. So the first piece and we it's described as open space, but it's really the Colorado trail. So it's going to be connect coming around the river. That is the first part. And that will be what will happen. There's an initial timing. So an initial conveyance nature trail. And then it progresses from there. And then the next piece is going to be the actual open space that is going to be throughout the property. And it is. I knew this number, 282, 222 acres of the site, and it will have programing. It will, you know, be throughout. [3:31:27 PM] >> Very good. So just to clarify, and I think what you described that number plus the the trail or I guess this would be clarifying question on top of page 15 says the the amount of acreage of open space remains at least 266 acres. Is that. >> That's the correct number. >> Okay. And is that in addition to the trail or is the trail inclusive of that number. >> That is in addition to the trail? >> Okay. I see heads nodding back there. And the reason I asked that question is, you know, I look at the city's parkland requirements. If this were already in the city and and under state law, now, you know, a new development would be capped at requiring 10% dedication to the city. And so this is a 2600 acre site, 10% of that. So so we are getting in excess of 266 or in excess of 10% for public open space. Through this project. Correct? [3:32:28 PM] Correct. Math there. >> Yeah. >> I will trust doctor Johnson's math over my own. >> Yeah. >> Very good, very good. I do want to understand how the regulating plan interacts with this agreement. So I'll stop right there. >> Okay. So they don't have zoning. Now they are in our etj and we do not get to regulate any of their land uses. So the development agreement essentially establishes what their land uses will be. >> And sorry. >> That's okay. It's their it's their entitlements under the agreement. So what will happen is if council approves the development agreement, staff will begin working on the regulating plan, which will take all of the land development code provisions and the development agreement. And a couple other pieces that we've been discussing that can't be fleshed out right now, but they are referenced in the development agreement, and that will become essentially the mini code for the dog's head [3:33:30 PM] area. It needs to align with the development agreement. If it does not, the development agreement will control. >> So in the instance of, let's say at some point there's single family housing, we will not necessarily apply like S, F one, two, three, four, whatever. They will have their own special single family zoning that is consistent with the requirements of the mwcd. I assume, in this. >> Correct? Yes. >> Okay. I was just trying to understand, when we say the word zoning, we're not applying existing Zones that trump it's they're kind of established criteria that are the baseline, right? >> So the best way to think about the regulating plan is a mini code, because it will have all of their uses. It will have all of their land of other non 25, two requirements in there as well. And so it will become [3:34:30 PM] the mini code. And that's actually what will be the zoning at annexation. They will actually come in as interim rural residential which is consistent with the code. Right. And then we'll apply the regulating plan. >> Okay. As it relates to the affordable housing question that councilmember Velasquez asked you, you touched on the tirz language are tirz policy requires 20% affordable housing for the housing supported by the tirz, but not just if it is in a tirz boundary. So in this instance, is it going to be 20, you know, 10% provided by the developer and the next 10%, we're going to figure out that of all housing within this area, or is it going to be 20% of any housing that is supported by the tirz? >> So the language of the agreement says 10% of the first 2500 units residential units will be provided by the [3:35:30 PM] developer, and then a remaining 10% will be through the joint effort. It will be a component of the tirz from essentially a an enforcement perspective. So the parameters around the restrictions, quantities, incomes, all of those will be handled in the tirz. And that will be where we flesh out those specifics. And that will essentially be our enforcement tool. >> Okay. As we look at the tirz, and I know this is for Kim to work on with the the developers here, but I would like to the extent we can include both municipal facilities. So if we're building a fire station, you know, we had this conversation here about the bond. It seems like that would be an appropriate [3:36:33 PM] infrastructure use of those tourist dollars. If if we could do that and also how we're going to treat the supporting infrastructure into the tirz boundary. So for instance, like the bridge, the council member Velasquez mentioned, that will come into this area. You know, where does the tirz, the tirz requirement end and the city's requirements start? You know, figuring out what we're on the hook for outside of the tirz pot versus what infrastructure is being supported by the tirz. So just I know that's not a question. Just as you all are thinking about this, I think having that supporting infrastructure be included in the tirz plan would seem to be the fair, equitable thing. >> So just to clarify, for the development agreement, the language specifically says the financing mechanism for the [3:37:33 PM] construction of municipal facilities, which is our large umbrella as well as public infrastructure, needed to provide adequate service to the dog's head area. Okay. So I think to your question about fire stations, that would be a municipal facility. The landowner has also agreed to set aside an acre of the development so that we can hopefully put some municipal facilities on it. >> Okay? >> Okay. That answers my questions. So I, I guess I'm one final question, and this is for Kim. What happens if the county doesn't participate? >> I'd like to thank that and the positive thinker and that the county is going to be partnering this. But again, as we move through this process, we'll be working closely with the developer on all the infrastructure requirements and, and I my plan is to come up [3:38:36 PM] with a mix of scenarios to work through with my leadership and then with all of, you know, to kind of just demonstrate what, what possibilities there are and not just come in with a single option. >> Okay. Very good. Well, thank you very much. >> Councilmember duchin. >> Thank you. I've just got one question. Can you clarify that in this case, affordable units is a unit at 80% mfi, or is that going to be regulated by a different instrument? >> So we actually addressed that. We will be addressing that in the tirz documentation. >> In the tirz. Okay. So we'll see that this summer. Yes. Got it. Thank you. >> Any council member? Ellis? >> I've got one in particular and I had others, but they've been asked by some of my other colleagues. I had a question about the appeal of variances. So there's a section that talks about administrative variance through department director. [3:39:36 PM] And if there's any appeals, it would either go to the manager or the council. Can you talk me through what that process would look like? >> So the this would follow what our code already does. So instead of going to a land use commission for the variance, it could be handled administratively. And then whatever appeal process exists from that land use commission is what we would follow. >> Okay. And can you give me any high level examples? I know we typically see floodplain variances, but just given the nature of this land, it seems like that's probably something that's going to be, you know, developed very carefully since it is surrounded by water. >> So we do not have a I cannot give you a specific example. We haven't come across anything at the moment. >> Okay. Well, I guess I'll look forward to a little more information on that. Thanks. >> Well, I have a couple. >> Of questions, but first, I just wanted to thank council member alter for pointing out that the parkland dedication, that 10% that that's all we [3:40:39 PM] could get from anybody under state law. And the 10% in addition to the trail along the Colorado river. And my understanding, and if I remember correctly, that's a it's a 200 foot easement that will be granted to the city along the entire length of the of the riverfront. >> I'm sorry, could you repeat. >> Your question? Was it a 200 foot easement that would be granted to the city along the entire length of the river? >> It's a 20 foot. The width of the trail easement has to be 20ft, and it'll go around the development. The critical water quality zone is the 200ft. >> Okay. Got it. And the with regard to the taxation, the property tax revenues from the property, the annexation would. Let me rephrase that in the form of a question. Would we [3:41:39 PM] receive an initial tranche of property tax revenues from the initial annexation of the property as a baseline matter, and then the tirz would the the development, the increase after the annexation, then kind of again, we'll figure that out with the tirz. But in other words, are we getting an initial flow of property tax revenues from the property into city coffers, from annexation? >> So right now the property is all classified as ag and it's on the tax rolls. It's only worth about $17 million in total for all 2600 acres. So the intent is for us to create the tirz with y'all's y'all's consideration. It would be created this year. So by approving it in the 2026 tax year, it would be in effect for the fy 27 fiscal year, [3:42:41 PM] depending on what the contribution rate is in the end, which has not been determined. That would there would be a certain amount going into the general fund from for the fy 27 purposes. >> Okay. Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. And with regard to transit, I know we're working on project connect and an airport line extension, but that is going to run right in front of this property. And again, I know we're very early in these stages in these conversations, but what, what, what's going to happen there? Or, you know, my, my sense would be that we would like to see a very urban, dense development on this property that will need to be supported by, you know, preferably high quality transit. Do we know what's going to happen with that or what are we envisioning? There? [3:43:46 PM] >> Thank you, council member. Again from tip, we are still at the very early stage of the discussion and things that are going to evolve as we move forward. There are a lot of unknowns at this point from the land use side, what they're going to really develop out there. And as we go further into the discussion and as we know further details, then we're going to continue our discussion with capmetro on that front. So yeah, we have not really done a deep dive into all those detailed discussion yet. >> I appreciate that and completely understand, you know, one of the huge benefits of this deal, from my perspective would be we're essentially going to absorb a lot of the sprawl that would occur kind of toward the, you know, eastern Travis county into bastrop and Lockhart. I mean, this site could really get a lot of those kind of suburban style [3:44:47 PM] developments and pull them into the the city's orbit. That said, if we do do the airline extension and I and I hope we do, we could absolutely have a dog's head stop, you know, right there kind of not far from the airport. So I think that that dovetails into some of our broader kind of regional goals. And again, it's an exciting opportunity. And I have a question on the regional water detention element of the plan for director morales. Thank you. Director. I just when I think about regional water detention, the first place I think about is, is the Mueller property, because it's very close to my district. And we've walked all around the the kind of Lakes that they have there. Is that is it fair to compare it to that type of water detention? Is that what we're kind of conceptually thinking about on the dog side [3:45:47 PM] property? >> Thank you, mayor pro tem for that question. And Jorge morales with watershed protection. So in essence, you have a blank canvas here with what you saw, the image that doctor Johnson shared a while ago on the docket. It's been used for decades as mining operations. So there is a lot of mining pits out there that are full of water. And so there's going to be an interim phase where they use some of those locations for the drainage solutions. But the ultimate solution that they refer to, I believe, is a, a channel that would help divert some of the water out of there. And it basically is bounded by the Colorado river, as we discussed. And so there's an interim phase until it gets developed to a certain point. And that would be a full, full develop. So that is part of the intent here as well. >> Great. And and again, another example, when I think about regional water detention, especially for an area with high impervious cover, I think about walnut creek and the Waterloo greenway, which I think has been a tremendous. And you know, you have your your kind of bio filtration that occurs there. Again, just trying to think, you know, ahead. Is that what ideally we could expect from the type of [3:46:49 PM] water detention we would see on, on the site. >> Ideally, and it's too early. We don't have the details right now. It's all conceptual, as you said, but the intent is to be a collaborative partnership along the way. >> Excellent. Well, thank you very much. That was just the only question I had. The one other question I have would be for the, the, the developer and or the representative, mister subtle. And I know that that we do have that exhibit D, as council member Velasquez mentioned, about the kind of the conceptual nature of the of the kind of transportation and traffic flow on the property, how how set in stone is that? I know it says conceptual, but but what are we thinking about in terms of, of the traffic patterns and interactions with the rest of the road system? >> Mayor pro tem Richard subtle here on behalf of the developer and the owner, it is so conceptual that by Thursday you will probably have a new exhibit that doesn't show the [3:47:49 PM] Johnny Morris road connection and will have a sharpie line drawn to the edge of the John Trevino park. That was purely a conceptual. Literally sharpies on a on a map. And we should have looked at it a little closer. And we didn't. And we realized concerns were raised. The mayor raised them with me and said, you can't go through parks like cutting them in the middle and you can't take out the bikeway. And so you will have Thursday, you will have a new one, and it won't show those. Well, I appreciate that. >> Very much. And, and I know there's going to be a lot of conversations around that. And I just wanted to make sure that it was going to be a collaborative process so that we can, you know, properly kind of get that traffic to, to flow. With regard to the dog's head itself, I know there's a couple of, of roads on it at this point, but are we are gridding it out. Is that kind of where we are? Again, my sense is that the, the grid development pattern, just from what I do know about urban development, [3:48:51 PM] is, is the kind of the best, easiest way to lay out properties and makes it, you know, easy to get around. It's better to develop, you know, we want to get away from the cul de sac and kind of that, that type of development more. Is that what we're thinking about for the future of the of the development? >> You know, the dog's head is unique because it's a it's a blank slate. It is encircled by the river. And to grid it out, we've got to have connections from more than just 183. So the concept plan that you saw shows some bridges that are aspirational to get in there. But but the specific answer to your question is yes, the grid pattern, because we are we don't have to we're not constrained by other roadway systems yet except getting roads into the dog's head. We can grid this out. And we've been working with a noted land planner from out of state that has helped us get an idea. And of course, it has to be flexible because you have an opportunity to come along and you have to change it up a [3:49:52 PM] little bit. It doesn't change the concept. It just may change the actual grid pattern. >> Got it. Well, I just want to thank staff and the, the, I guess applicant was probably the wrong word. The, the, the part. >> That's a weird one. >> And I know this has moved very quickly, but it does seem to be well thought out. And again, just to echo some of my colleagues and doctor Johnson, this is a tremendous opportunity for the city. And I think it's a mutually beneficial opportunity for both the city and the landowner and the and the developer. And I'm excited to see this move forward. Councilmember Ellis. >> I have one last question. I'm not sure who this is for. So you can all you can all jump for it. You know, this is a new opportunity. I've never been able to be a part of anything that is like a new development agreement. I'm kind of always opening up an old development agreement, trying to figure out what's the difference between then and now. If we didn't do [3:50:54 PM] something like this with this opportunity, what would this tract of land eventually do? Right. It's old mining land needs a lot of remediation. Like in your experience as someone who has handled land use for a number of years, what would it develop? Tract by tract. You know, what, what would be the future of this land that needs remediation? Without a vision plan? >> I will leave the specifics up to Mr. Subtle, but for us, from a regulatory standpoint, without this, it would remain in our etj. >> It. >> Council member with one owner of 2600 acres in the. In the current configuration, it's in the etj today. Arguably it could get out of the etj. It actually has a financing district already created on it. It has a mud that has not been activated, but it is one method to finance the infrastructure. [3:51:54 PM] So if the city decides that they don't want to do the development agreement, or they don't want to do the, the all the components of it, probably what would happen is you would get a mud and a different project. It would look more like maybe what you've seen in the past along our fringes or in the suburbs. Because that's the way the that public finance would work. There wouldn't be any land use. There wouldn't be any. Most notably, there wouldn't be any property taxes coming to the city. So the reason this is before you, we've been working on it for seven years now. And it it needs to be in the city, both from a city standpoint and it and frankly, it's a better project for the developer if it's in the city. So it's a mutually beneficial deal. >> Thank you for that. And I appreciate the mayor pro tem comments as well, thinking [3:52:54 PM] about its proximity to the airport and how we can help make sure we have connected and walkable communities instead of, you know, the single drive alone sprawl that we're seeing in some of the different parts of town that that we're having right now. >> Council member Velasquez and then council member alter. >> Sorry. >> Yeah, I just wanted to make sure we get on record that that the whole project coming to district three. Right. That's what we settled on. >> That's actually my question. What how does it decided what. >> How to get in front. >> Of him, where it goes. >> We would actually probably need to have our demographer and some other folks join the conversation. So we haven't had that conversation yet. Ralls, I think. >> And there may be there may be two voters out there right now. >> Two voters short right now, man. And the city demographer is an old friend of mine. So y'all go ahead and let her know. >> About that. >> Thank y'all. Any further questions? Thank you all very [3:53:56 PM] much for the presentation. Thank you. And the answers. >> Yeah. >> And with that, we're not going to go into executive session. Then I believe we are ready to adjourn the work session after a mere, what, almost seven hours of work session. We'll go ahead and adjourn at 354. Thank you to everyone.