City Council Budget Meeting Transcript – 7/28/2026 Title: ATXN-1 Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 7/28/2026 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 7/28/2026 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. [9:59:07 AM] You're watching a meeting of the Austin City Council Council members [10:00:08 AM] live 28, 2026 and I will call to order the Austin city council for this meeting. We have two items on the agenda, and I'll talk more about that in just a second. But what I want to start off the day is on a happy note by welcoming back our colleague and good friend, council member Vanessa Fuentes. We are so glad that you are here. We welcome you back and are happy you're here. Let me quickly go through a couple of things. One is we have two items on the agenda today. One is a presentation and discussion of the city manager's fiscal year 2026 2027 proposed budget. And the second will be a public hearing on proposed charter amendments. The proposed charter amendments. You have a couple of things in there. One is you have those amendments, some of those amendments that were were recommended by the charter review commission and staff and did not go on the ballot a couple of years ago. So what we [10:01:10 AM] have decided to do is bring back some of those to have public comment on it, allow the council to make to have discussions about whether or not we want to put those on the agenda. And then there's one petition led amendment, proposed amendment that will will also be discussed. We'll have a public hearing on that, and we will vote on that at a at a later date. I also want to point out the schedule that we're following with regard to the budget. Of course, what we've talked about is that today we will have a discussion related to economic development and workforce development, mobility and critical infrastructure, and some discussions about high performing government. As I indicated, we will then have a public hearing on the proposed charter amendments and have a discussion only third, this Thursday at 10:00, we will start the meeting. It is a Thursday. We have a council meeting, and we will start the meeting at 10:00, and we will have discussion about that. We will also at that meeting vote [10:02:10 AM] with regard to the proposed charter amendments. By the way, the way we've also done this for folks is we've broken out each one so that people will be able to see each one of the proposals and be able to provide public input on each one, as they want to do that. On Thursday, we will also have, at 3:00 pm a public public hearing by state law, a required public hearing on the budget. That 3:00 is simply a time certain for the meeting that is on Thursday, July 30th. So you have to sign up for that public hearing the same way you would sign up for a regular meeting of the city council on July 30th. And if you go to the clerk's website, they have it all set out about when, when, when the envelope is for beginning to sign up and when it ends. I want to point out that on July 30th it is posted. The public hearing is posted as [10:03:10 AM] a public hearing and action. What we will do for the action is we were not. We will not vote on the budget on July 30th, but I don't want there to be any lack of clarity. What we will do is we will close the public hearing, and then we will vote on a motion to postpone the final vote until August 12th. That is just I don't want there to be any confusion. There's going to be an actual vote on the budget of this coming Thursday. Then on Thursday, August 4th, we we are likely to use that date, but is tentatively scheduled for a work session Thursday, August. In fact, August 4th. We will have a. Well, we'll worry about that at another point, but. But just everybody know we're probably going to have a meeting on that day, Thursday, August 6th. We'll have a budget work session again. We'll talk about it on that date. We will talk about council proposed amendments. And if we are asking for those proposed amendments in ifc's. To be in by close of business on August [10:04:11 AM] 4th, and we will have a. The votes with regard to ordering a general election in November, taking up everything from the charter election to. If there's a bond election, then on Wednesday, August 12th, Thursday, August 13th, and Friday, August 14th, we will have scheduled. We will be scheduled to take votes on the budget itself. So I think that's all the the cleanup that we need to do at this point. What we're going to do is we're going to take the speakers that have signed up to speak on items one and two. We will take them. We're going to take the speakers first, and then we will go to item number one for the presentation. With regard to the manager's proposed budget. So I'll turn to the city clerk and ask if you will please to begin calling speakers. >> Thank you mayor. Starting with item one, I have a couple remote speakers. Omit motwani. [10:05:15 AM] Are you there? Please unmute. Kanaka. >> Yes. I'm present. >> Please go ahead. >> Hello, my name is kanaka family elder care. Our mission is to help the most vulnerable in our society, older adults and adults with disabilities. To be self-sufficient as possible. We work to get older adults who are experiencing homelessness into stable housing, and then we work to keep them housed. We provide programs to help older adults pay bills on time, avoid eviction, and recognize scams. We also help enroll people in benefits that they have already earned, such as veterans benefits, disability benefits, medicaid, social security, all of which can be very confusing. [10:06:16 AM] This is essential income needed to stay housed, to eat, to see a doctor. The two. Often deadlines are missed or forms are filled out incorrectly and then the income is lost. We provide mental health counseling and programs that combat social isolation and keep older adults engaged and educated and connected to life saving resources. These are all common sense initiatives currently funded by the city and showing a great return on investment. These programs actually save the city money in the long run. They're designed to help our clients live independently and with dignity to help them help themselves. I'm here to respectfully ask that you vote to keep the funding for family elder care programs in the budget. Please continue to help protect the most defenseless and at many times, the most overlooked members in our community. It's not only the ethical thing to do, but it's also fiscally responsible thing to do. Thank you. >> Monica Guzman. [10:07:16 AM] >> Good morning, mayor and council. I'm Monica Guzman, policy director at Garza gio Austin Austin. I just want to reiterate everything I testified on last week on July the 23rd, to focus on the social service contract, the early childhood development and education family stabilization grant, the immigrant support for legal representation and mental health services, as well as the rest of the community investment budget coalition recommendations that were submitted. That is where the money needs to be focused. While it may sound cliche, it is. It is a documented. When you when you provide programs and services for the least of us, everyone benefit. And the first and best way to do that is to keep the Austin police budget flat. Do not settle them [10:08:16 AM] continuously with having to address issues that they are not trained for, and that they need to focus on what they are trained for. Put the funds where it matters with the people, the community. Thank you. >> That is all the remote speakers I have at this time. So let me switch to in-person. For item one. I have Tracy Cornelius, Michael Rios, Lisa Letourneau, Jeff Dickerson, and Nadia Barbo. If I've called your name, please come down to the front desk. And then just be sure to state your name into the record before beginning. >> Good morning. We don't please don't just stand. If you can grab a seat either at the dais, if you're going to be [10:09:17 AM] speaking. If you're not speaking, then just take a seat. Please begin. >> Good morning. I'm Tracy Cornelius, a leader with central Texas interfaith and member of all saints episcopal church, central Texas interfaith has member institutions in every district in Austin and has been organizing for over 40 years around issues that affect our families. Today, we are asking you to support level funding for capital idea. In 1998, central Texas interfaith organized faith and community institutions to create capital idea. Capital idea ends generational poverty by finding adults with low wage jobs and training them for in demand living wage careers in the Austin area. Assistance with tuition, books, fees and childcare, and career placement, [10:10:19 AM] and most importantly, capital idea assists in the fundamental belief in the importance of human development. In 2025, capital idea celebrated 176 graduates and 93% of them earning starting wages of $33 an hour. Capital idea grows the city's budget. Every dollar invested in capital idea returns $7 to our local economy. Capital ideas mission is a triple win for the community. It moves families into high earning careers, helps businesses find local talent, and delivers a strong return on investment for taxpayers. How can we say we're open for business if we don't invest in the human development of our neighbors, to have the jobs they need to survive and grow our economy? Central Texas interfaith is here today asking that funding for capital idea, a program that grows the city's tax base, be a priority in this [10:11:19 AM] year's budget. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yes, sir. >> Good morning, mayor Watson and council members. My name is Michael Ralls, and I am a proud Austin native and a graduate of del valle high school. I grew up in east Austin and the montopolis neighborhood, and I'm a 2017 capital idea alumnus. I grew up in del valle. I grew up in montopolis and graduated from del valle high school, and at the age of 21, I became the adoptive parent of my father, my sister's three children. Stepping into the role of dad was the most important decision of my life, but it also meant putting many of my own dreams on hold while I focused on providing for my family. One of those dreams was a career in technology. Through capital idea, I was able to return to school and complete my associate's degree in network administration at assisi capital. Idea provided tuition assistance, books, guidance, and access to opportunities that helped me succeed. More [10:12:20 AM] importantly, they helped me see a future that was bigger than my circumstances. Today, I have built a career in cyber technology, and sorry, cyber security and cloud technology. I was able to move from it support to identity access management, and now I'm a cloud security engineer. Since completing the programing the program, my earnings has increased by more than 350%, creating greater stability, security and opportunity for my family. I'm now the father of three adult children and the grandfather of three grandchildren. Capital idea didn't just change my career trajectory, it changed the trajectory of generations of my family. I stand before you today as proof that investing in workforce development and education transforms lives, strengthens families, and creates opportunities for people to give back to their community. Thank you for your continued support with programs like capital idea and for investing in Austin's future. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. I do believe. My [10:13:32 AM] name is Jeff Dickerson, district five. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Council members, since the end of the covid pandemic in 2023, Austin family has spent those years tightening their belts. It is time for city hall to do the same. The proposed budget grows to $6.63 million, $300 million of that will be funded by mostly tax collections. This is not where fiscal responsibility begins. Before asking taxpayers for another dollar, the city of Austin itself should tighten its belt, reduce the spending on outside consultants whose costs have increased dramatically, complete the efficiency audit and implemented recommendation recommendation before raising taxes again. Now is not the time to ask taxpayers to approve additional bond debt. [10:14:32 AM] Austin already has billions of dollars in capital projects underway. Deliver these projects on time and on budget, please, before asking taxpayers to finance the next round. Fiscal responsibility means living within your means. It means setting priorities. It means earning the public's trust before asking for higher taxes and more bond debt. Austin taxpayers have done their part. Now it's time for city hall to do their part. Thank you, thank you. >> Continue with item one. Scott cob, Emerich Moreno, Robert. Linder. Ryan. Papi. Linda. Thomas. Wade. [10:15:42 AM] >> Please begin, Mr. Cobb. Hello, my name is Scott Cobb, and I want to talk about something I've talked about before. But now that council member Fuentes is back, welcome back. You may have heard it online, but I'm going to talk about the living wage and why temporary employees are only getting a 10% raise, while regular employees are getting a 3% raise. Last year, we got a 1.94% raise. Temporary employees got either 4% or a flat rate that amounted to around 6%. So over the last two years, temporary employees. If you add the raise they got last year with the proposed $0.10, this year, $0.10 is a 0.0.4 5% raise. It comes to 2.39% over two years, whereas regular employees will get over those [10:16:42 AM] two years or 7% raise. I passed a gas station on the way here. It was $3.80 one year ago, it was around 260. That's about a 40% increase. If a lifeguard works 400 hours over the summer at a ten cent increase, they'll make $40, which will more, which will pay for one gallon, one tank of gas. If they get a $1 raise, which I hope they will, they will get $400, which would pay for their gas the entire summer. Gas isn't the only thing going up. It's the highest thing. The overall is 3.5 and it is only 3.5. Because last month we had a drop in oil prices because of the now failed cease fire, so it's probably going to go back up. It was 4.2 last month, 3.5 now. So please raise it more than [10:17:43 AM] $0.10. >> Thank you. Mr. Cobb. Why don't you begin? >> Hi. Good morning everybody. My name is Eric Moreno and I'm a student at the university of Texas at Austin. And I'm here to also talk about the financial strain as well that's happening to students. You know, you all have the opportunity to make people's lives better. A ten cent raise in my opinion. Yes. I would be grateful for a raise in general, but $0.10 is kind of like a slap, kind of like here, kind of take it. If you give these people a dollar raise, you know, let's say in a span of, let's say three months, they work 400 hours, these people make 400 bucks. 400 bucks is a lot of gas. For example, I drive a car that's 11 gallons of gas, and it costs right now about 38 bucks to fill it up. And depending on how the gas fluctuates, 40 bucks is barely a gallon versus $400. That could take you a couple months of gas as well. And I did the calculations as well. I spend $120 a month in gas, so $400 is more than [10:18:45 AM] enough to take care of several months of gas. Yeah. So if you give these folks or these temporary or these, these temporary employees, I guess is what we call it, $0.10. That's 40 bucks for 400 hours. And that's barely even hardly groceries, you know, so I, I just wanted to reiterate the financial strain that young people are also going through right now with the increased cost of gas, the increased cost of gasoline, the increased cost of groceries and rent. You know, it's it's egregious. So I urge all of you, since you have the opportunity to help people and to make lives better, where instead of focusing on the financial, physical strains that you have to go to, some folks who are working for the city of Austin are also doordash. So I just urge all of you to, to make a better decision than $0.10, at least a dollar, please. That makes a big, big difference. And thank you all. >> Thank you. Please just state [10:19:47 AM] your name for the record. Yes. >> Hi, I'm Linda Thomas wade, CEO and co-founder of the sickle cell association of Texas Marc Thomas foundation. We have received funding from the city for over 20 years. I would like to thank the city council for your continued support. With city funding, we have been able to leverage those dollars and have received funding from the state and federal governments. My late husband and founder, pastor Marc Thomas, lived with sickle cell disease. He was on oxygen 24 hours a day at the age of 25, and passed away at the age of 46 due to sickle cell complications. We have been serving families since 1997. Sickle cell is a life threatening hereditary blood disease that attacks the red blood cells, causing severe [10:20:48 AM] organ damage and excruciating pain. Known as pain crisis, sickle cell affects all races, primarily African Americans, hispanics, Asians, Italians and those of mediterranean descent and even caucasians, 1 in 12 blacks and 1 in 36 hispanics and austin-travis county carry the silent sickle cell trait. Our crucial services help to mitigate E.R. Visits, which assist in relieving the financial burden placed on the medical system. We provide education awareness, serve as liaisons between health care professionals and patients. We provide weekly support groups, respite care for families, youth, teens, and adult programing. We are the only organization meeting the needs of this underserved population, and there is no duplication of services. I would again like to [10:21:48 AM] thank the city council for years of support and ask that you continue to support and fund the sickle cell association of Texas Marc Thomas foundation. Thank you. >> Thank you for being here. >> I have another remote speaker for item one, Alexis Crawford. >> Hi. My name is Alexis Crawford. I I'm sorry, can you all hear me? >> Yes. >> Okay. Perfect. Thank you for your time and consideration. I am speaking on behalf of the Marc Thomas foundation. I am currently I have my phd in counselor education and supervision. I am also a licensed professional counselor and board approved supervisor in the state of Texas, and I wanted to discuss the continued support of the sickle cell, the sickle cell society of Texas Marc Thomas foundation. Imagine [10:22:50 AM] from your from the moment of your conception, you know that you will have a life full of pain. Immunocompromisation and the life expectancy anywhere around 42 to 46. This creates such a mental health strain that is devastating for most individuals. On top of all of the health. Issues that can occur with sickle cell. Right now, the sickle cell society of Texas Marc Thomas foundation is the only organization working with individuals with sickle cell in the state of Texas. I urge you to please consider the continued funding of this organization, not only for the support of the mental health of the patients, but also for all the other services that they provide. Thank you for your time and consideration. >> Thank you. [10:23:51 AM] >> Continuing with item one, Peter hunt, Solana pool, Aaron al-quran, Zenobia Joseph, Michael ward. Sunni. Sunni. Alan. Connor. >> Mr. Why don't you begin? >> Thank you. Good morning, mayor and council members. My name is Ryan poppy, and I'm representing the united workers of integral care. I'm here today on behalf of the dedicated behavioral health professionals who serve Austin residents every day. First, I want to thank the city auditor for conducting a thorough review of the nonprofit contract management. Transparency and accountability are essential to maintaining the public's trust, but it's equally important that we understand what the audit actually says and what it does not. The report identifies weaknesses in the city, contract management and oversight processes. It does not conclude that integral care is an underperforming [10:24:51 AM] contractor, nor does it recommend reducing funding for its services. As you deliberate this budget, I urge you not to confuse the opportunities to improve contract administration with the reasons to reduce services that thousands of austinites depend on every year. Behavioral health workers at integral care provide crisis management, mental health treatment, substance use services, support for the unhoused, and care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We help stabilize lives before before crisis becomes an emergency. When people receive help through integral care, they're less likely to end up in an emergency room, in jail, or cycling through repeatedly through a costly public system. That's good public policy and a smart investment of taxpayer dollars. City funding also allows integral care to leverage additional state and medicaid matching funds. Reducing the city's investment doesn't just cut local dollars. [10:25:52 AM] It also means leaving additional funding on the table. If the goal is about greater accountability and efficiency, then let's improve those systems. But if the result is cutting services because of an audit that never recommended those cuts, Austin's most vulnerable residents will bear the cost. >> Thank you, doctor Alarcon. >> Good morning. My name is doctor Aaron Alarcon. >> Microphone is off. >> Hello. >> There you go. >> Thank you. Good morning. My name is doctor Aaron Alarcon, CEO of family eldercare and vice chair of one voice, central Texas. Today's discussion focuses on economic and workforce development and mobility. That is exactly what many of Austin's social services providers work to advance every day. Family eldercare helps older adults and adults with disabilities become more independent, more self-sufficient, and more autonomous through employment services, housing stabilization, financial advocacy, and benefits enrollment. We help [10:26:53 AM] people move from crisis to stability and from dependance to greater Independence. That's why I am concerned by the calls. Nonprofit across Austin have been receiving over the past week. Organizations are being told that contracts will be reduced or eliminated, yet many have received no clear rationale for those decisions. At the same time, social services have been repeatedly been described as both a priority as and as a last resort for cuts by the majority of the members of this council. And the issue is not accountability. If there are serious performance problems, the city already has tools to address them. The issue is that providers are hearing from reductions that do not appear to be tied to performance, community needs or the direction this council has previously provided. These decisions matter because social services are not separate from economic mobility, they are often what makes economic [10:27:54 AM] mobility possible. Housing workforce development benefits, enrollment and homelessness prevention help people build stable lives and increase their participation in the economy. Please protect the programs you created to break cycles of crisis and create pathways to opportunities. Economic mobility is not achieved by cutting the ladder after people have started to climb it. Thank you. >> Please begin. Thank you. >> Can you hear me okay? Yes. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. And everyone. My name is Paul and I'm a proud benefactor of the services of the Marc Thomas foundation. It's an honor to be here to talk to you about an organization that's very near and dear to my heart, my family's heart, and many, many families in the community. When we first found out that my daughter had sickle cell, it was an emotional blow to the nervous system. We thought the worst immediately, and that was [10:28:56 AM] because of the limited knowledge we had about the disease. And our only thought was, will she make it through high school? We were shortly thereafter connected with the Marc Thomas foundation through her pediatrician, and it was a blessing in disguise. Through their resources, their love, their support, their education, we grew to understand the disease a lot more and knew that she would graduate high school, which she did early. She would go on to achieve great things in life and become an advocate for the foundation as well. The Marc Thomas foundation is is beyond words that I can explain. It's beyond a monetary value that goes in the budget. It helped our family immensely. Because of them, our daughter gained a sense of confidence, a sense of understanding, a sense of pride that allowed her to thrive every day with this disease. [10:29:57 AM] She's now a camp counselor at the summer camps that she started at the age of five. Their resources, their advocacy, their support is something that I urge you to consider continuing to, to fund for my family and for others in the future. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Good morning. >> My name is Robert Lindner. I'm an employment specialist with family elder care. I wanted to talk a minute about something that doesn't get addressed. How do we ensure that someone is housed, that they stay housed? We just finished the first seven months of the family care employment program, funded by the city. Every one of the 27 people in this program started out completely unhoused. We got them into stable housing first. Then we started the employment work, job readiness coaching and real support to help them find and keep work. Here's what we found out so far. Nine of [10:30:59 AM] those 27 people are now unemployed. That's a third of the group that face some of the highest barriers you can imagine. All nine live with a disability and they're earning real wages. The average starting pay is 1755 an hour, with some starting as high as 24. These aren't easy placements. These are neighbors who are homeless, have criminal records and live with disabilities. And with our help and the city's help, they're finding work that pays a living wage. I know the city is under real pressure right now. After prop Q failed, council had to cut nearly 95 million social services. Grants are on the table again, with millions more and proposed reductions this budget cycle. Nonprofits across Austin, including those doing workforce and homeless work, are bracing for cuts. That's exactly why this program matters so much. When resources are scarce, we have to protect what actually works. Housing stops the crisis, but [10:31:59 AM] employment breaks the cycle of homelessness and moves people towards real self- sufficiency. I respectfully ask the council not to cut family health care's employment program. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good morning, mayor council. My name is Peter hunt. I'm from district ten. I'm here first in support of the community investment budget, about which you have heard and will continue to hear more over the next couple of weeks. But I want to take the opportunity today to speak about the budget process more generally. And the short of it is that really this should be a three month process, not a one month process, as it's currently laid out. One month is really not a lot of time to inform community members, get them engaged and have their voices heard in a way that allows a substantive dialog about the budget itself. There's a lot of good effort by the city to reach out to people before the proposed budget is released. But in truth, for a [10:33:00 AM] lot of folks, especially those who don't have the opportunity or the free time to be as fully engaged as some of us, the budget process really starts when there's money on the Paige, when they see a proposed budget that gets released and they know what they're responding to and when they need to show up four weeks, five weeks, a month. It sounds like a lot on paper, but when you actually look at what it looks like for someone's schedule, it really does not afford a lot of time for people to directly engage with the budget process, to be heard, to provide feedback, and then to see that feedback get implemented and have something like a dialog with their council members. For that reason, I really think that it would make sense for the city next year. Looking at the budget process, to ask the city manager's office to provide a proposed budget one month to a month and a half in advance of when it was provided this year, and then take an extra half month on the back end of where it is accepted right now before they vote to approve that budget, per the city charter, the only requirement is that the city manager's office distribute a budget at least [10:34:00 AM] one month in advance of the start of the fiscal year. So approving that budget sometime in late August or early September is appropriate by the charter. And there's no requirements about when that proposed budget would be provided. So I really encourage you next year to consider that fully, and I'm happy to follow up by email or speak with any of your offices about that. Thank you. >> Thank you. Please begin. >> Good morning, mayor and council members. My name is sandy Connor, and I'm here today in support of the community investment budget. I'm currently the director of growth marketing and operations at universal tech movement. We connect the underrepresented to careers in tech. But I want to tell you why this works. This work matters to me. Before utm, I spent 13 years working to connect incarcerated women to their children through literature, and I watched so many of them come home ready to work, but unable to create an email account, complete an online application, or upload a resume because of the digital [10:35:00 AM] world had moved on without them. That's not a lack of ability, that's a lack of access. And that's exactly what universal tech movement provides. Last year, utm served 379 people. We placed 128 of them into jobs at a median wage of about $25 an hour. Our graduates have been hired by more than 250 employers, including apple, meta and city of Austin. None of this happens without the social service contracts in this budget that fund the workforce, the workforce training that turns access into a paycheck. So I'm asking council to protect social service contracts and fully fund workforce development. When someone makes when when someone moves into a stable career, they become a taxpayer who supports their family. That's a return on investment, not an expense. I'm asking you to invest in it. And thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Okay. Yes, sir. >> Yes. And I have a presentation. Perfect. There it is. So everybody, my name is [10:36:01 AM] Michael junior. I'm the president and CEO of universal tech movement, and we've been here in Austin for ten years. And today I wanted to go through our annual report that can. Oh. Next slide. There it goes. So first I want to say I've been here before many times. Y'all may have known us as Austin urban technology movement. We rebranded last year to universal tech movement, still doing the same work all around connecting our communities to the tech industry. And we do that through workforce readiness, innovation and economic advancement. There we go. So as sunyata mentioned last year alone, we've served 375 clients. That is in support of city of Austin, which has funded us since 2022. But also other organizations, other entities such as Travis county, Texas workforce commission, united Way goodwill, and also workforce solutions. But people come to us for three main different reasons one, digital equity. And we do that to make sure people have the support that they need just to get started with any type of workforce development or training program. That's devices, internet foundation, [10:37:03 AM] computer skills, digital literacy. Then we transition them to to training. And 130 people last year came to us saying, hey, I do not have the skills. Can you help me get there? And of course we can. And then we have 185 people that said, hey, you know what, I got this skills. I got the experience. I just need help getting a job. Can you help me do that? And of course we can. And we do that for entry level, mid-level and senior level jobs all across the tech space. So when we look across the board, yes, we serve 379 people. However, we received over 500 applications just last year. So there are some people that unfortunately, we can't just serve. So that's where we need funding from the city of Austin to continue doing that work so that we can actually serve every single Austin that comes through our doors. But looking at our demographics, 47% of our audience come to us as unemployed, 41% between the ages of 36 and 59. So we're working with families, working with adults. We're working with people who actually need their services the most. 25% of our audiences have bachelor's [10:38:04 AM] degrees, while 75% do not. 22% have high school diplomas, while the remaining do not. So the people that we're targeting are those that are most in need in order to get to the next step. So what I'd like to see is that 61% of our audience are making less than 30,000. So when we go through our work, we're seeing them increase their services, increase their wage by more than $30,000. And that leads them to companies like Amazon, apple, salesforce, Dell technologies, all with the support of city of Austin. So I urge you to support the community investment budget, support workforce development, and continue doing this work. >> Thank you, thank you, thank you. >> I called everyone for item one. Is there anyone else? >> Was your name called? >> Nadia? Yes, please go ahead. >> Please. If your name has been called on item number one, please come grab a microphone. >> My name is Nadia Barbo. I'm with moms demand action. I've [10:39:05 AM] been here for two other occasions in this budget cycle, so I appreciate the multiple opportunities for community members to speak. I'm here in support of protecting the community violence intervention, CVI investment that the city of Austin has been making for multiple years. And I just want to run through a few other a few points that we've covered already. And the broad coalition that supports this work has already mentioned CVI is a proven evidence based strategy and investment that cities all over the country use to pull down our country's high rates of gun violence. Gun violence does not have to impact each of us personally before we act to prevent it, we have this coalition of advocacy organizations here in Austin, along with moms demand action, who support this work. Continuing, we specifically support the community investment budget increase in CVI to approximately $4.3 [10:40:07 AM] million. One homicide can cost up to $2 million. So this investment is actually helping us to reduce the pressure on the rest of the general fund. And we know that this investment that we've been making for the last few years has been working homicides. We're at 90 in 2021 and dropped to 55 last year. In 2025. I mentioned before that I went down to Barton drive with a with one of the CVI partners at peace. And it was amazing work that we're doing as a city. It's really showing people who maybe are disproportionately exposed to violence that all of us care as a community, and all of us want the these individuals to feel supported. And it's surprising how little effort is needed to make them feel supported. >> Thank you. Thank you for being here. Yes, ma'am. [10:41:09 AM] >> Hello. >> Good morning, mayor and council members. My name is Lisa Letourneau, and I'm coming just as a concerned citizen. And I'm asking you not only to reject the proposed increase to the Austin police department's budget, but to reduce it and redirect those funds towards services that actually keep our community safe. This weekend, Austin police shot an unarmed 17 year old black teenager in a mental health crisis. He had a water bottle in his waistband, not a gun. And now a child is dead. If a department with more than half $1 billion in budget cannot respond to a teenager in crisis without ending his life, why should taxpayers be asked to give it even more money? Budgets are moral documents. They reflect our values, and every additional dollar we allocate to policing is a dollar that we choose not to [10:42:10 AM] invest in mental health care, youth services, housing, violence prevention and civilian crisis response services that can prevent tragedies before they happen. We cannot say that we value human life while continuing to reward systems that fail to protect it. So I urge you to reduce APD's funding and reinvest those funds into community resources that create real safety, real stability, and real accountability. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I'm going to move on to item two, starting. >> With, oh, sorry if I might interrupt you before we do that. Item number two is a public hearing. So without objection, we will open the public hearing on item number two. There being no objection that public hearing is now open on item number two. And again, I want before we call on people, I want to lay out what the schedule will be for this this important item. Today, we're only holding the public hearing. We're going to hear input on the proposed amendments, the [10:43:12 AM] petition amendment and any new amendments the public would like for us to consider. There will be no council action today on the charter amendments. We're looking we're only holding the public hearing, and we'll have discussion only by the council with regard to that. Speakers, as you have already seen or have been able to sign up on each proposed amendment in the backup, and they may offer suggestions on any amendments that they would like for us to consider putting on the ballot. And I appreciate the city clerk having made it possible for people to sign up to speak on each amendment that's in the back up on July 30th. On that, on Thursday, council is going to hear again from the public and then vote on the proposed amendments. Once again, speakers will be able to sign up to speak on each amendment that's in in the backup following the vote on Thursday, staff will then prepare an ordinance for the ballot that will be posted as [10:44:12 AM] backup for the following week, August 6th agenda on August 6th, council will vote on whether to order a special charter election for November. That will be the one item the backup for the August 6th agenda item on charter amendments will include a draft ordinance of all the proposed amendments, the petition amendment and any new amendments that council may approve this coming Thursday, July 30th. So I just want to make sure that we have clarity with regard to how we're proceeding on these proposals. With that being said, we've now opened the public hearing, and so I'll turn to the city clerk to call speakers for the public hearing. >> Starting with two a Luis Gonzalez, jack Crismon, Betsy Greenburg, and Zenobia Joseph. >> If your name has been called, please come forward and take a seat. And that way we'll know you're here and we'll be ready to hear from you. Mr. Gonzalez, if you'll begin. [10:45:14 AM] >> Of course. Good morning, mayor Watson. Good morning, city council members, council member Fuentes. It's heartwarming to see you doing well. My name is Luis Gonzalez. I'm a 17 year resident of the city of Austin, a resident of district ten, and the current chair of the independent citizens redistricting commission. I first spoke on this particular item back in August of 2024. Since 2021, it has been my utmost honor to serve on and help lead this extraordinary group of Austin residents and volunteers to highlight how independent, citizen led redistricting efforts are the antidote to gerrymandering practices we too often see play out across the country, where political districts are drawn for the purposes of reelection and political advantage, rather than to ensure fair representation and increased democratic participation, ensuring that voters have the best leaders to advocate for them. As established by the city charter, the icrc has the sole legal standing to create and adopt maps for our city council districts, while maintaining strict Independence from influence by city council. Our commission faced many [10:46:15 AM] challenges in 2021, an ongoing global pandemic, a historic and disastrous winter freeze and the trump administration negatively influencing and delaying the release of the census data from 2020 by four months. Nonetheless, after weeks of tough work and deliberation, the icrc voted unanimously to adopt the current map of council districts to be in place until 2032. The city council will now discuss proposed amendments to the city charter that would directly impact the work of the icrc will help the next group of commissioners in 2031 accomplish their goal of producing a new map that prioritizes equal representation, resident input, and takes into consideration the rapid growth and change our city has experienced since I came to Austin in 2009. The proposed new language will define independent as free from city council influence, though free to utilize necessary city resources such as meeting spaces and staff expertise. The language will specify an effective date for future maps in case of a special election. As we saw in January 2022, the new language will increase the number of qualified applicants eligible to serve on the commission and clarify the method and timing for filling [10:47:15 AM] vacancies on the icrc. >> Thank you. >> Sir, thank you. >> Appreciate. Appreciate your service. >> My name is Betsy Greenberg and I live in district nine. Last Thursday, I felt like it was a waste of time to try to talk to this council. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And yet I'm here again, this time to talk about charter amendments that you're proposing to bring to citizens for a vote. The November ballot will be very long. So without even looking at the content, I'm concerned about adding a dozen extra questions for uninformed voters to consider. Amendment one or a redefines what it's meant by independent for the redistricting commission. The revised language says independent means independent from the influence of city council and does not limit the commission receiving assistance as required from city staff. The city of Austin employs over 13,000 workers. I'm okay with [10:48:16 AM] the redistricting commission receiving assistance from the city demographer, but I'm not okay with the commission receiving assistance from all other city staff, including those that I often see in this room. And I'm certainly not okay with striking the prohibition in Kerri against communication outside of a public hearing, especially if that communication is with city staff. Please do not propose this amendment to the voters without at least clarifying which city staff can provide assistance and ensuring that such assistance is provided in a transparent manner. Thank you. >> For item two. C Betsy Greenberg, Zenobia Joseph. >> My name is still Betsy Greenberg, and I'm opposed to item two. C this amendment eliminates the requirement that [10:49:17 AM] council set its meeting rules by ordinance, thereby eliminating the necessity of public notice and input on the proposed meeting changes. I've seen the council severely limit speaking times, and I'm imagining that there are days when you'd like to do it again without ending up in court. If you're going to change meeting rules, the least you can do is inform the public and pretend to listen to the public's opinion about these changes. Please do not propose this item to the voters. Thank you. >> Monica Guzman. Monica, are you there? >> Good morning. I'm. Yes. Can you hear me now? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Monica Guzman, policy director at Garza. You must respect and protect the public process. Do what is right and needed. Ensure public [10:50:18 AM] process with a unanimous vote against the leading city charter language requiring the council to determine its rules and order of business by ordinance. Thank you. >> For two E Monica Guzman. >> No comment. >> Then also for two E, I have Betsy Greenberg and David Weinberg. >> Okay. My name is Betsy Greenberg, and I was a member of the 2024 charter commission, although I'm providing my own opinion. Of course, when the ordinance was passed creating this commission, it directed the commission to propose recommendations that limited citizen initiated changes to the city charter to November elections, with a preferred. Stated to holding elections on presidential election years [10:51:18 AM] only. This amendment limits elections for initiatives or charter changes that result from citizen petitions to the next November of an even year. In other words, the council only wants citizen initiated ballot questions considered at the elections with the highest turnout. Some would say this also means the elections with the highest turnout of uninformed voters. This amendment can result in a long wait for a vote after a petition is validated. Charter elections by state law can only be held at least two years after a charter change, as the general elections in November may be less than two years apart. For example, November 5th, 2030 is less than two years after November 7th, 2028. This would limit a charter change to nearly four years instead of two years. Similarly, the charter changes being considered today were intended for the November 2024 election [10:52:19 AM] after a judge stopped that election because of open meetings violation, the council waited until another high turnout election to put them on the ballot. Please vote no on amendment five or E votes on citizen initiated changes should be considered as soon as possible. Thank you. >> Good morning, mayor and council. My name is David Weinberg. I reside in council district five. Thank god for the elections clause in the United States constitution, which says that states determine the time, place and manner of our elections for senate and the house of representatives. If Donald if Donald Trump was in charge of that process, we would probably all be voting from 11 to 12:00 at night on paper ballots, using seven different forms of identification. And and maybe if you vote for James Talarico, your your vote doesn't count. This this proposed measure, it [10:53:21 AM] feels both unnecessary and overly prescriptive. The the Texas election code gives us uniform election dates for city elections, of which there are two per year. I do not see any reason why we need to be telling the citizens of the city. If you want to use this referendum process well, you can only have your election at a certain time. And as Betsy was sort of talking about making all of these elections happen in November of even numbered years, does a number of things, including making running those elections much more expensive because you're dealing with a much larger electorate. I think, you know, instead of boxing in the residents of the city on this process, if you if the goal here is really to move all of our city elections to November of even numbered years, we can we can all call Donna Howard, we can all call Sarah Eckhardt and say, hey, let's just let's just go to one election for the city every two years. So I think this is a this is, again, [10:54:23 AM] unnecessary, overly prescriptive, and I would urge you to reject it. Thank you. >> Item two F Jeff Dickerson, Betsy Greenberg, David Weinberg, excuse me. Scott Cobb. Mr. Cobb, are you here? He has time. Donated by Emmerich. Okay. And Zenobia. Joseph. >> Please begin. >> My name is Betsy Greenberg, and I'm opposed to amendment six or item F recall of a council member currently requires a petition of at least 10% of registered voters in the district, followed by a recall election. This amendment would change the threshold to 15%. The amendment came from the 2024 charter review commission, following direction in the council resolution to increase the percentage of voters needed [10:55:25 AM] for a recall election from 10% of registered voters in the district to 20% as council member. Ellis, one of the sponsors of the resolution, now probably knows even a 5% petition of district voters to override term limits is very difficult. Councilmember Ryan was also a sponsor of this resolution, and his appointee on the commission made it clear that this was an amendment desired by the person he frequently referred to as his appointer, according to the city's website, district five currently has 61,442 qualified voters, so a 15% recall petition for council member alter would require over 9000 signatures. This contrasts with the fewer than 8000 votes the councilmember received in both the general and the runoff elections. A 15% requirement for recall is clearly intended to protect council members jobs. [10:56:27 AM] Texas state law does not allow for recall of state officials. The voters don't necessarily understand the percentages. So to be more transparent about the intent of this amendment, I would suggest you simply propose a charter amendment to recall petitions and remove recall petitions and recall elections from the city charter. Then you can see how the voters feel about what you are proposing. Alternatively, you could vote no on this amendment. >> Mr. Weinberg. >> Good morning again. Council and mayor David Weinberg, Austin city council, district five. I can tell you what people in Austin really care about right now. They they care about affordability. They care about public schools. They care about public safety. No, no one's asking for this. There's there's no one out there who's concerned about making it harder to recall council members. There's something in politics which is very important. It's called optics. [10:57:29 AM] I, I think putting this on the ballot now, it you really couldn't find a worse time to do it. There >> I think. I think all of us, the people who are here today advocating on the budget, you know, in the wake of prop Q, I think we are all trying to rebuild trust with the public and assure people that we're spending money wisely. You know, we've got four of you who are up for reelection this year. We've got of you who are maybe asking folks to vote for a bond, others who may be asking folks to vote for or against an audit amendment right now to be putting forward to voters a ballot measure which looks, again, the word optics looks like an incumbent protection measure that nobody's asking for. That's a really bad look. So I'm going to give you all some free political advice on Thursday. Please get out the [10:58:30 AM] black sharpie and delete this one. Nobody's asking for it and we do not need it. Thank you. >> Please, sir. >> Jeff Dickerson, district five. I might remind those on the dais that the Austin taxpayers and families have tightened their belts, and the city hall should be doing the same thing. I strongly urge you to vote no and keep the 10% recall. Is this a proposal in search of a solution? Now, we're in the last 20 years, have there been documented instances of any serious recall petitions ordered by the city council? Today, Austin requires that signatures of 10% of the required voters before recall election. You're raising it to 15%, which is the 50% increase in the number of signatures required, not a minor adjustment. It is a major barrier that makes accountability harder before [10:59:31 AM] weakening one of public's most important checks on government, city and staff should demonstrate that demonstrate that the current system is broken. Where is the evidence of this abuse? Where is the evidence of frivolous recall election? Where is the documented problem that justifies making this government less accountable? There is none. Accountability is not an inconvenience to democracy. It is the foundation of democracy. Citizens should never have to overcome obstacles. If there is broad community support for recall, voters should be allowed to decide. Raising the threshold makes it harder for the public to make its voice heard. Democracy is strongest when government trusts its citizens, not when government raises barriers to citizen oversight. [11:00:31 AM] Think about this and say, no, thank you. >> Mr. Cobb. >> Hello. My name is Scott Cobb, and I cannot recall any time when a city council member has been recalled. I don't recall any time a city council member has. There's been a petition successfully submitted to recall. Someone could be wrong, but I know that we live in a time where the government, the state and the federal level are trying to limit participation in our democracy. They're trying to limit who can vote. The newspeak propaganda, titled save America act, wants to make it harder for people to express their opinions and our democracy. Martin Luther king in 1968 said that a riot is the language of the unheard. Use a similar analogy to say that a petition recall is a tool of the unheard. It is a tool used [11:01:34 AM] by people who feel their voices are not important, and that they cannot get their concerns addressed, whether that's the living wage, whether it's health care, whether it's security in our parks. They go to city council and they try to get their voices heard. They try to set up a meeting. They cannot get a meeting set up. They cannot meet with someone, their own elected representatives. That is when those unheard people turn to another method in between the elections. And that is a method that is given to the people. And in some districts, such as political units such as city council, city government, which is given to us to exercise that [11:02:34 AM] in between elections. And so I think it is unnecessary to raise the percentage those rich PACS who pay people to get these signatures will pay people. No matter how high you raise the percentage, it is the poor people. It is the unheard. Who will not be able to pay those people to collect those signatures. So please do not raise this. Allow this to remain where it is and allow the unheard to use it as a tool. When they feel that their voice is not being heard. Thank you very much. >> For item two G. I have Scott Cobb and is Emerick still here? Okay, Mr. Cobb, you have four more minutes. [11:03:34 AM] >> Cobb you have, you have. If you want to speak on item G. >> I support giving the city council the power to remove the city attorney. I also support city council giving the. Giving the power to remove any departmental head. Once again, the city council is the direct representative of the people. This form of government that we have, where an unelected city manager has more power to fire people than city council was created over 100 years ago in the 1920s. Today we live in a beautifully diverse community. I look up here, I see 100 years ago, maybe two of you would [11:04:35 AM] have been able to be eligible or qualified or able to get elected. These are the rules we have from 100 years ago. That we cannot currently fire certain people in, in our city government, like the city attorney or the parks and recreation director or the hr director. We have to rely on the unelected city manager to do that. So yeah, I think it's important to give the power to fire the city attorney. I was recently fired, and the city attorney, one of his lawyers, were on the zoom call with me and refused to accommodate me. Under the Americans with disabilities act. This is my hearing aid that I did not have at that meeting. I since have [11:05:35 AM] it, the city attorney needs to know the law, and if he doesn't follow the law, he needs to be fired. Other things that the city attorney should know about, or. Title seven of the 1964 civil rights act, which prevents retaliation for people against people who report government misbehavior. City attorney was on that meeting, not the city attorney himself, but one of his lawyers. They said they were there as an observer, yet they spoke and they participated. And when I asked for accommodations under the Ada, my legal right for an in-person meeting so that I could follow what was being said and understand it and look at the people and look at their lips, because I cannot do that [11:06:36 AM] when I it's difficult online on a video. If you have a hearing disability, which I was diagnosed in 2023 with. So yeah, there is misbehavior in the city council needs to have the authority to fire a city attorney who doesn't understand the constitutional right, legal rights that need to be enforced. And if they don't, they need to be fired by city council. So I encourage you to. Support this amendment to allow us to fire the city attorney. And then later on, you can also give yourselves the power. Ask the people for the power for you to [11:07:37 AM] fire other people who don't follow or enforce the law, like the parks director or the hr director. Thank you very much. >> Two I, Zenobia Joseph. Two L Jeff Dickerson, Betsy Greenburg, Zenobia Joseph. >> Please begin. >> My name is Betsy Greenberg, and I'm opposed to amendment 12. This amendment would allow city council members to fundraise to retire campaign debt while still in office. This was the only amendment proposed by the city council two years ago. Campaign finance regulations are about corruption or the appearance of corruption, which is why the charter prohibits [11:08:38 AM] current council members from fundraising to retire their campaign debt beginning in 1997, when 72% of the voters passed campaign finance limitations proposed by citizens for a little less corruption. Fundraising for the council and mayor was limited to six months prior to an election in response to a legal challenge by Republican don Zimmerman. The six month window was struck down in 2016 after the city responded by changing the fundraising period to one year before an election. Another Republican, Jennifer Virden, filed a lawsuit challenging the one year fundraising restriction. This was also ruled unconstitutional, and the city did not attempt to use a wider fundraising window. Now, council members start raising money immediately after being elected. Of course, there is a perception that money from developers and their attorneys a corrupting influence, for example, impacting your recent votes on the dog head development. I ask that you [11:09:39 AM] vote no on this amendment and wait for another Republican to file a lawsuit to remove this particular limitation on fundraising. Thank you. >> Please. >> Good morning, Jeff Dickerson, district five. I strongly ask you to vote no on this item. Removal of the waiting period. The current ordinance establishes clear ethical boundary. Election officials should not be soliciting campaign contributions to repay themselves or retire debt. This safeguard, just for a simple reason. Protect public trust. This item would weaken that protection, allowing officeholders to raise money while they're continuing to vote on zoning cases, contracts, appointments, budgets, policies that are directly affect contributors. Austin has earned the reputation for adopting ethics standards that exceed [11:10:40 AM] the minimum required by state law. We should strengthen those standards. We should not be lowering them. The rule is simple, easy, objective, easy to enforce. The proposal does not solve any problem. It only serves to create new ethical concerns and unnecessary conflict. This council is supposed to adhere to transparency, accountability with ethical standards. Now is not the time to go backward. I respectfully ask those on the dais preserve Austin's commitment to an ethical government and vote no on this proposal. Thank you. >> Two M Zenobia Joseph. Two N jack Chrisman, Betsy Greenburg, [11:11:42 AM] Scott Cobb, and Zenobia Joseph Emmerich. Are you still here? Yes, ma'am. Okay, Mr. Cobb will have four minutes. >> Please. Mr. Greenberg. >> My name is Betsy Greenberg, and I believe that a charter amendment is needed to create an independent ethics commission. The 2018 charter review commission proposed this amendment, but the council at that time didn't even consider it. Austin's ethics review commission is made up of political appointees that lack the Independence, expertise, authority or even the will to enforce rules about campaign finance, ethics, financial disclosure, conflicts of interest and lobbying. I would argue that the failure of proposition Q last year was not about affordability, but rather illustrated the voters lack of trust in the council. A recent substack article about the [11:12:43 AM] dog's head vote concluded that the biggest casualty was trust. Although the public allowing the public to vote on a charter amendment to create an independent ethics commission would be a step in the right direction to reestablish that trust. Show the public that you believe in good government and transparency. Please vote to add the item proposed by the 2018 ethics review commission to the November ballot. Council candidates routinely fail to file financial disclosures or even campaign finance reports. You cannot have good campaign finance or ethics compliance without the enforcement that would come from an independent ethics commission, one that is required by the city charter. Currently, the ethics review commission is appointed by you, even though many of the complaints it considers are against you, your employees and your appointees, the commission lacks investigative powers. Nothing is enforced unless a [11:13:43 AM] member of the public files a sworn complaint. The commission often barely has a quorum of six members to consider complaints, and these votes are required to do anything. Usually, result six votes are required, usually resulting in dismissals. Please allow the voters the opportunity to fix this broken system. >> Thank you, Mr. Greenberg. Yes, sir. >> Mayor and members of council. My name is jack Chrisman. I'm a district nine resident and a student at the university of Texas at Austin. I'm speaking today to ask you to correct an eligibility requirement in the independent citizens redistricting commission provisions of the city charter that is written categorically exclude traditional college age students from serving, despite there being an enshrined seat for college students. As it currently stands, no traditional undergraduate student would qualify to sit on the commission. The icrc has two general eligibility requirements for commission members a five years of continuous voter registration, and having voted in three of the last five city of Austin [11:14:43 AM] general elections, it appears that the drafters of this commission tried to ensure that college students could qualify by exempting them from the requirement to have voted in three of the last five elections. However, the five year registration requirement remains for college. The college student seat. If we do the math, that means that zero 18 to 22 year old college students in the city of Austin can qualify, even if they've lived in the city their entire lives and are invested members of the community. The effect is that more than 44,000 students at UT Austin, plus tens of thousands more at occ, saint Edward's, huston-tillotson and concordia, are shut out of a seat on a commission designated for them that determines who represents them. I urge you to change the time registered requirement, whether that means a floor of 0 or 1 year. It would ensure that college students are able to serve on the commission and in the seat that is designated for them. I thank you all for hearing me today. I'd welcome the chance to discuss this issue with you or your staff, and I'm glad to provide the exact charter citation. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Cobb. [11:15:44 AM] >> My name is Scott Cobb, and I would like to propose that you add an amendment that the voters vote on that would provide civil service protection to long term employees, currently classified as temporary. I think the cutoff should be if they've worked for the city for 12 months, then they should receive civil service protection. I do not mean the benefits should change. They can address that differently. I just mean they should be able to go to the civil service commission if they feel that they have been on lawfully discriminated against, unlawfully, terminated, unlawfully, not promoted, or any other disciplinary action. Currently, temporary employees can be fired at will. I've seen lifeguards fired on the same day. Just you're out of here. You're fired right now. There [11:16:45 AM] is no appeal for temporary employees. They may have worked for 15 years as a temporary employee, but they have no civil service protection. And the reason they have is there was a ballot language in 2012 that was not clear when people voted. The ballot language said, shall the city charter be amendment amended to provide a civil service system for most city employees who are not already covered by a state civil service statute? For most civil most city employees? It did not say for most of them, but not those lifeguards, not those temporary employees who've been working 15, ten, 15 years as a temporary employee. People would not have voted for it. It was clear to them that people would be excluded because of their classification as temporary, even though they're longtime temporaries. [11:17:46 AM] I'm not saying you should make an amendment to changes any benefits, make an amendment to give them the protection they deserve. And that they earned by years of service. As you know. People are currently discouraged from speaking to city council because they can be fired. 2019 there were three women who came up here and spoke lifeguards about raising the wage of Barton springs back to $1 more than it was when they changed it. It was now equal back then. They came up here and stood up here and talked, and they were fired within two years, under whatever pretext they were [11:18:46 AM] fired on. But they had no way to appeal that. They had no civil service protection. Those two women in December of 2024, who with me came up here and they spoke about discrimination. They spoke about harassment, they spoke about retaliation. One of them was fired the same day she reported her allegation of somebody having an inappropriate relationship with her daughter. She was fired, had no civil service protection. In my case, it is clear cut and I'm discussing it with the eeoc and a couple of weeks. But if I had been gone to the civil service, you would not currently be at risk of financial legal responsibility because it would have been solved at the civil service commission. It's clear cut evidence in my case, and I will win. But you should change the law. Thank you very much, mayor. [11:19:49 AM] >> All speakers have been called. >> Thank you very much, members. All of the speakers have been called for the public hearing on item number two. So without objection, we will close the public hearing on item number two. The public hearing is now closed. We are not posted for action on this item. As I've indicated, the action on this item will come on Thursday and on Thursday we will take up all these items. I'll the. Our budget presentation will go back to item number one. We'll go to item number one here in just a second, which will allow us to talk about the budget. But if anybody has anything they want. Yes. Councilmember Fuentes. Yes. >> The question I have is for these charter amendments. Will the consideration on the amendments be as a whole, as a package, or will we be voting one. >> By one? In fact, the reason we specifically will be voting one by one, and then what will happen is whatever gets voted out of that will become the staff will then draft an ordinance that describes that. And then on August 6th, we will vote on that ordinance to call [11:20:49 AM] an election. So just like what we're trying to do with the speakers, we're trying to separate those out. And of course, we all remember that we had a number of items that didn't make it to the ballot. And so what we're doing is having some of those items, those recommendations come back for our consideration. Again, people may have changed their minds. Things have changed. Whatever other discussion. Yes, councilmember alter. >> I just want to call attention. I passed out a motion that we will be looking to offer on Thursday. It addresses the issue that the student raised here today about student eligibility. I think it's an unintended drafting error really is. The intention was to allow students to be eligible, but because they had to have been registered in the city for five years, if you're, let's say, a 20 year old sophomore, you can't register [11:21:50 AM] to vote until you're 18 years old. And so this just cleans that up and addresses that issue so students can participate. >> Thank you, councilmember. Councilmember Siegel. >> Thank you mayor, I missed it. What you said. Are we having the discussion on the charter amendments now? >> We can. Yes. >> Okay. >> And we will also have it on Thursday before we vote on them. >> Okay, good. And as part of my my comments, I do have one question on finance, but they're up here. I guess I want to say about all this, I wasn't on council when y'all advanced these items, but I do know that the charter review commission put a lot of work into it. Actually, as a private citizen, I helped advise the group that was working on the ballot measure items. So I know a lot of work has gone into this, but I have a few concerns about putting these on the ballot this November. One concern is the cost, and I want to see if if our budget director might know the actual cost. My understanding is that it's minimum several hundred thousand dollars for the city to order an election of this of this type. Is that right, director? >> If I might, while there working to get get an answer on [11:22:50 AM] that, one of the considerations would be that there's already going to be an election in November. And so it wouldn't be the city by itself calling an election. The second is that we have a certified petition, and that certified petition would require us to call an election, regardless of what else we put on the ballot. So does so that would impact if you're going to have to have an election anyway. I'm not sure. Just having additional how much, just having additional items. >> The incremental cost of 12 more items or whatever. So, director, do you have the answer to that question? >> So we have a budget for $2 million for each fiscal year for elections, but it is dependent on what all is included in those elections and who all are participants. It can range anywhere from 400,000 to 1 million for one election, again, depending on who's all included. But it's not by specific item. >> Okay. But colleagues, my bigger concern is that [11:23:51 AM] extending the ballot in this very critical election could have an impact on how many people vote in Travis county. We know this is a very important statewide election. A lot of seats are up, including, you know, offices of governor and the United States senate. And most people are going to be coming out to vote for those offices. And then we have city and county elections as well. But if we add 12 more items to the ballot, this will increase the amount of time it will take for each person to vote, and that will increase wait times at polling places, especially on high turnout, early voting days and on election day. And there's extensive research that shows that increasing lines at polling places actually functions as voter suppression. Basically, every minute we add to the ballot will inevitably reduce the number of people who vote. And my concern is that I don't see any amendment here that is worth potentially discouraging folks from voting this November. Several of them sound good in the abstract and are good technical fixes, but to me at least, I don't see anything worth longer lines on [11:24:52 AM] election day. For example, if you imagine the UT campus or other high turnout locations. And so my ask would be that we not put these on the ballot or in the alternative. If if any of you are really focused on 1 or 2 of these items, that you bring those forward as priorities, because adding one or 2 or 3 items to the ballot would still be significantly better than adding 12. >> Thank you. Thank you. Council member. Any further discussion at this time on this item? Yes. Councilmember Fuentes yes. >> Councilmember Siegel, thank you for your comments. And certainly, if you have research to share with us, I'd welcome that to understand better the the correlation between voter suppression and the length of a ballot. The question I have is, do we have the option of being able to pick just 2 or 3 of the 11? I thought we had a time certain. And when we had to put them on the. For consideration. >> Well, if I understand your question, we can we can we can pick as many as we want, and we can even add to what's on this [11:25:53 AM] list and then call an election based upon those the way this is my interpretation of it. But if we have one item we're going to have, it looks like we have to have a charter election, right? Because we have a a certified petition that puts something on the ballot. We can add to that. We cannot add to it, but we're going to have to have an election that has at least one item on it. And once we do that, and I'll have to get clarity on. But once you have that, there then becomes a time limit on how, when, when is the next election that you can have. And I believe that's a two year if. But I'm not sure about the specifics of whether it requires a failure or not. And I don't want to give the legal advice on that. >> So any amendments we don't put forward, they would be considered at the earliest in 28. >> Well, I want to ask for legal to come up before I. [11:26:59 AM] >> Mayor and council member Neil Falgout, deputy. City attorney. So right now we have a petition initiated charter amendment which will need to go on the ballot in November. The reason we've brought forward the remaining charter amendments for your consideration is because of that two year blackout period. So if the petitioned charter amendment were to pass and effectively amend the charter, we would be blocked out for two years from being able to have another amendment to the charter. And so we've brought forward all of the ones from 2024 for you to consider. And you can. The way we've set it up is like a menu. You can pick and choose which ones you put on the ballot, keeping in mind that if something passes this November, then we have a blackout period of two years. >> Very good. >> Thank you. And and that would be a blackout period, not [11:28:00 AM] just for these, but for anything else that somebody might be considering as they want to put on. So mayor pro tem. >> To I believe it was miss Greenberg that made the point about the date that, you know, and again, I'm not completely certain on the exact dates of the 26 election and the 28 election. But she made a comment that and I believe I can't remember if it was her, that it's less than two years. You know, one would be like on the seventh, the other one would be on the fifth. So technically it would be like just shy of two years. Do we know what that means? >> So we could go back and figure out exactly what the dates are for you. It would be based on when the council verifies the actual election results, because that is when the amendment actually occurs. So you have the election on November the 1st, Tuesday in November. You don't actually certify the results until sometime after that. [11:29:00 AM] >> And the council has flexibility on the exact date that it would certify the results. >> Within some deadlines. >> There's some mandatory you have to do it by X date. But, you know, we could potentially structure that to make sure that there are two years so that to leave the possibility of a 28. >> Yeah. And it's 365 days times two. So I know a lot. There's oftentimes a discussion about two years. And what does two years mean? It's 365 days times two. >> All right. And two council members. Eagle's point, which I think is extremely valid and legitimate point. The 28 election would be even worse for, you know, I mean, all things considered, I would rather have it on a congressional a non-presidential year than a presidential year when we have the highest level of voter turnout and the longest line. So I would just throw that into the mix. But I completely I think that's a very valid concern. And it is already a [11:30:01 AM] long ballot, a ridiculously long ballot. And, you know, I would want to be careful about, you know, how much longer we make it. >> And just as a follow up, I'm informed that we're scheduled to canvass this November's election on November 17th. Okay. >> Thank you, councilmember Walter. >> Can you clarify, because you said something that I didn't I don't understand is the two year blackout. Only if it the amendment is successful, correct? >> Yes. So if the charter is amended. >> Okay, so there's only one thing on the ballot and it fails. We can do it any time. >> Correct? Yes. >> Okay. And and I think that's important because I do you know, one of these is about when we hold these elections and I, for one, believe the most people should participate in those elections and saying that some [11:31:03 AM] voters are not as worthy of other voters, voters because they're not as educated as other voters, I think is very denigrating to those voters and does not give credit to everyone who takes the time and shows up for an election. So I think it's really important for us to consider, just like we did for the mayoral election, moving things to when we're going to have the most people participating. Because democracy works best when most people participate. >> Thank you, councilmember. Councilmember Ellis. >> I agree with this conversation, and I know there's been at least one instance where we ended up with someone submitting petitions for elections and then having to put them on in may, when nothing else for the city has been on the ballot. And that does have low voter turnout. That does cost the city money that's not planned to be spent on those elections. And so I know that the the main concept here was to make sure that we did have high voter turnout for things that are very important for the city of Austin. It is unfortunate that the city [11:32:03 AM] things end up at the very bottom of the ballot, because then we have a lot of work to do to say, make sure you stay till the very end, because those are the folks that are going to have the biggest impact on your day to day life in, in your neighborhood. And so I want to make sure that we do have good turnout. But I also understand what councilmember Siegel is saying is that there's going to be a lot of people turning out this November, which is very exciting, but we also want to make sure that folks have a chance to be able to evaluate what's in front of them and make informed decisions as as they look at all of these different levels of government. >> Thank you. Further discussion on this item? Okay. Very good. Thank you. Thank you to the legal staff for clarifications. And now we'll turn back to item number one and recognize the director. Thank you. Unless you want to say something. >> Good morning. Good morning, mayor and council Kerri Lang, director of budget and organizational excellence. We will get started with the agenda for today on during our [11:33:05 AM] proposed budget presentation. Mayor, you asked a question on our 2% property tax scenario, what the revenue and expenditures would look like if, instead of raising the property tax revenue 3.5%, we raised it 2%. So we'll talk through those scenarios this morning before we go into the various strategic plan priority areas, which will include economic and workforce development, mobility and critical infrastructure, and beginning the conversation on high performing government and all the departments that work within those areas. Again, the timeline mayor talked through this timeline at the beginning of the meeting. We are here on the 28th. We have another work session this coming Thursday, including a public hearing that begins at 3 P.M. There's a scheduled work session for the fourth and the 6th of August, which is next week for readings, August 12th through 14th. [11:34:06 AM] >> Good morning, Eric Nelson, deputy director, budget and organizational excellence. The proposed budget is balanced at the projected voter approval rate, which is the rate that generates about 3.5% more property tax revenue than the prior year from property is taxed in both years. The mayor requested that we prepare a scenario in which we increase property taxes by only 2%. On the revenue side, this change would result in 10.7 million fewer dollars for the general fund. So in order to restore balance, we would have to reduce expenditures by the same amount. And that would require eliminating essentially all of the discretionary investments that were included in the proposed budget. More specifically, if faced with this revenue scenario, we would recommend eliminating planned staffing additions in animal services, forensic science, homeless strategies and operations, housing, parks and recreation planning, police, [11:35:07 AM] library, financial services and management services. We would also recommend eliminating $2 million in ongoing funding for permanent supportive housing services, equipment purchases and the fire department, a new software investment in public health, and one time funding for police recruiting initiative. Finally, we would recommend eliminating the general funds payment to development services, which is allowing dsd to limit increases in residential fees to a level below their cost of providing services. Just to remind everyone of our broader forecast as of the proposed budget, with a 3.5% increase and owing to projected savings from the one eights initiative, we expected to be balanced in fy 27 and fy 28 and have expanding surpluses in the subsequent out years. Were we to only do a 2% increase in fy [11:36:07 AM] 27, we would attain a balanced budget. With the reductions that I just went through, we'd be then looking at about $1 million deficit in fy 28 as we carry those reductions through, but feel the compounding effect of the revenue loss and our surpluses would be proportionally reduced as well in the out years. The more severe impact with not going to the full 3.5% comes when you have the compounding over several years. So this slide shows the effect. If we were to only go to a 2% effective increase in each year over the full forecast period, and that's about a $60 million swing in revenue by the time we get to fy 31. So we'd be looking at significant deficits. And this still includes projected savings from one Atmos. >> So with that, we'll move forward with our economic and workforce development conversation, beginning with [11:37:07 AM] our arts, culture, music and entertainment department. This $14.3 million budget for the department is about 20% higher than the current year. This is primarily the result of continued funding reallocation from parks and recreation and development services to finalize the adequate funding for the creation of acme, the general fund budget is 72%. Personnel with 73 full time equivalent positions. Our cultural education and historic preservation program includes funding for the city's museums and cultural arts facilities, as well as the heritage tourism programs. Cultural arts oversees the art in public places and cultural funding programs. This department is receiving two new positions in fiscal year 2027 supporting the Elizabeth nay, as well as the [11:38:07 AM] montopolis school. Looking at their performance highlights, acme does reach residents and visitors supporting youth through the summer programs and seniors. They're serving approximately 80 to 100 meals to seniors each day, Monday through Thursday at the Asian American resource center. They provide summer camps to nearly 500 youth at the Dougherty arts center. The George carver museum, their annual juneteenth month long celebration, saw nearly 400 visitors this year, and then they are anticipating over 300,000 visitors in our cultural facilities, including 28,000 visitors at the newly reopened Mexican American cultural center. The budget does have a decrease of about $1 million, and that is being transferred over to our facilities management department as that department supports the operations or the facilities that are acme [11:39:08 AM] facilities, such as the cultural centers and the museums. Acme is. Although it's a general fund department, it has several funding sources to support the work that it completes. This includes the economic development fund, historic preservation, live music and cultural arts funds. There is a decrease in the economic development fund of $500,000 that has been removed from the creative space assistance program. This results in $150,000 of savings for the general fund. Those two positions that I mentioned a few minutes ago, supporting the elisabet ney museum and the montopolis school are funded through the historic preservation fund. And then when you look at the other funds, those funds are used to provide grants to the cultural community, and it includes a record of 829 grants awarded, [11:40:11 AM] $28 million invested in fiscal year 26. Moving forward to Austin convention center. This. The convention center has about seven funds supporting the operations of the center, and it supports the convention center, polgar event center, and their operating garages. Their budget is $145.5 million. It includes the services that support the functions of those facilities. And then, as you can see, most of their revenue includes transfers in between those funds and also from the hotel occupancy tax. And then there are some charges for services for their revenue sources looking forward at some of their program highlights. They are increased revenue that they're recognizing at the palmer event center. That is [11:41:12 AM] due to introducing 13 brand new events at the center. The newer, larger expansion of the convention center is on track, and it is in budget at current time. And the new center will allow for additional square footage for events and services. And then the department is seeing an increase in their debt service payment based on that convention center expansion project. As an enterprise department, we show the five year forecast for the convention center. The first two years represents the closure of the center during the expansion and over the forecast period, the draw down of of funds balance as the project is completed and normal operations resume for Austin convention center. Austin development services. It includes funding through the development services and code funds. It supports both code compliance functions and [11:42:13 AM] development activities. The department's internal support services represents about 22 or 23% of the total operating budget for the department. It has 557 positions. A net change of 30 positions as about 22 positions are transferring to Austin technology services as part of the 1ats initiative. Looking at some of their program highlights, they are. Dsd does have an increase in funding for licensing of their updated permanent licensing and permitting software. The code fund has seven new positions to begin the graffiti abatement program. The department continues to work on efficiency efforts, including streamlining processes and procedures, and the department has assisted in the development of over 8000 single and multi-family units in the last year. Austin [11:43:15 AM] development services fund summaries this shows both the financial forecast for the code fund, as well as the development services fund. The fund shows increased expenditures as a. The. Excuse me. The department draws down on the ending balances over the forecast period and development. Continues to work on rightsizing their expenditure and revenue with efforts to recover the ending balance over the forecast period. In our economic development department, which is funded through the economic development fund, there's $22.3 million in that in that department budget for this fiscal year, for the proposed fiscal year is charged with growing. The department is charged with growing the city's tax base and leveraging partnerships for job creation and for the community. They do business training and education that remains a focal point of the services provided by the department. There are 162 [11:44:15 AM] training scholarships that have been provided as part of the infrastructure academy. The academy was launched in in fiscal year 25, I believe, and it is a partnership with several entities, including Austin community college and workforce solutions. The department has 61 positions to support the efforts of these programs, and in total in the economic development department, they are continuing the work for the infrastructure academy. As I just mentioned, they also have a number of key performance indicators that indicate the number of jobs that are creating more capacity and upward mobility, as well as the number of small businesses supported through their programing. This slide shows all of the funding sources that are managed are help support the work of the economic [11:45:16 AM] development department. It includes the economic incentives reserves fund, which provides funding for incentive grants and other economic incentive agreements. The loan program, the hud section 108, provides a small business owners with loans. And. Then there are the. The various historic preservation. As well as the improvement district funds that economic development development manages. Our small and minority business resources department is focused on encouraging participation of minority women and disadvantaged owned businesses in the city's contracting opportunities. Their staff costs represent 74% of the total budget for smb are. With the 35 positions. Their program services include certification, review and renewal and compliance, focusing on contract compliance. Reviewing over 4000 compliance documents [11:46:17 AM] annually. When we look at the performance for smb, we see that they continue to support firms being receiving their certification. 360 is the target for fiscal year 27. They are launching the the mentor protege program to expand technical assistance for small and minority businesses. And then they received funding to have ongoing support for their annual connections conference to provide opportunities for small and minority businesses. Moving forward to mobility and critical infrastructure, beginning with Austin energy, the city's municipally owned electric utility is the largest city department with $2.1 billion. Proposed budget is primarily funded through rates and fees. They're. The primary goal is to, of course, provide [11:47:18 AM] power supply and generation and ensuring the reliability of the city's electric system, transfers and other requirements that you see here is a 29.6%. It is represents pass through debt payments as well as pass through requirements and city wide allocations. The Austin energy department has 1963 positions. Looking at their their performance and their program highlights. Austin energy supports nearly 2.2 million customers assistant calls each year and have over 80,000 participants in the customer assistance program. There is additional funding for poll inspections for investments in the power supply and the. The solar rebate program, and the department is continuing to look at the carbon free generation as a percentage of [11:48:18 AM] their load. Over the financial forecast period. Austin energy anticipates minimal increases to the monthly bill pay bill for ratepayers, noting that many of some of these increases are inclusive of regulatory pass through rates that are required of the utility. Moving forward to Austin water. Austin water is the second utility that is owned and operated by the city. It has nearly a $900 million budget, 1482 positions. The department's expenditures include transfers to their capital improvement program to continue work on infrastructure improvements, and they continue to have their operational costs. You will see that is about 21% for operating the existing systems. Moving forward to [11:49:20 AM] their program. Highlights. Austin water will increase its positions in fiscal year 27 to support the growing operational needs. And then when you look at some of their performance indicators, they respond to priority one leaks within three hours 90% of the time, and continue to support emergency leak repairs for low income customers. Looking at the Austin water's five year financial forecast over this forecast period, water continues to balance expenditures and revenue with planned rate increases, primarily to support the continued capital investments needed to make sure our infrastructure remains available and resilient for the community. Moving forward to aviation. Aviation has a proposed budget of $5.7 million. Their primary revenue includes [11:50:21 AM] funding from airline rentals, concession contracts and charges for parks, parking and services. Expenditures include airport operations and development, and the transfers that you see here are primarily to support the expansion project that is ongoing at the airport. The 703 fte includes 25 new positions for expanded facility facilities. There is a net of seven positions that have been transferred to Austin technology services for the one ATS initiative, and three positions were eliminated based on being vacant for longer than two years. Key investments supporting the Austin expansion and development program include expanding passenger parking capacity with the opening of the yellow parking garage, completion of the midfield tactical taxiway to enable future terminal expansion, and [11:51:23 AM] then positions to support the operations of the yellow parking garage. They anticipate 22 million annual passengers and have completed three of their terminal expansion projects. Looking at their their financial forecast, you see that the revenue and expenditures are inclusive of their planned spending for the expansion project is representing the change in the lease agreement with the airlines, and the net transfers for capital needs shows the investments they are making on their expansion program. Austin facilities management. They provide comprehensive support for over 200 facilities, providing on site property management for 26 of those facilities. The department's budget is funded through the facilities management and support services funds. [11:52:23 AM] Primarily, there is a net increase of 27 new ftes in the facility facilities management fund, seven in the support services fund to support operations of those facilities and the support that they provide to other city departments. The $63.7 million budget supports those operations over 7,000,000 square foot maintained, square feet maintained, as well as 40 department supported through facilities management. Looking at their program highlights, 34 positions are included in the department to support the grove boulevard and university park facilities, as well as. One position is being transferred from our homeless strategy and operations office. As facilities began to support the city owned shelters and then they. They have a goal as a [11:53:24 AM] department to continue customer satisfaction with a planned or target of 98% satisfaction for next fiscal year. This slide walks through all of the funds that are that support the work of Austin facilities management and includes the public safety headquarters funds, which is a relatively new fund that was created, as with the purchase of the public safety headquarters, as well as the city hall fund, there are 21 positions being added to the public safety headquarters fund to support those operations, as we have more city departments beginning to move into that facility. Austin fleet mobility services it is our centralized fleet mobility services department that manages the full lifecycle of more than nearly 8000 vehicles and equipments, and it oversees the city's fuel and charging infrastructure. We have 385 [11:54:26 AM] electric vehicles, seven service centers, and this work is done with the 272.5 positions and the $86.5 million that is budgeted for fleet. Their program highlights includes the increase of ten technicians to support and align resources with the workload that they're seeing, as well as funding to address the inflationary contractual increases that they've seen over the last fiscal year and fiscal year 25, the department neared the goal of alternative hybrid or electric units, and they anticipate meeting that goal in fiscal year 27 of having 90% of of those units available. Moving forward to transportation and public works, $245.2 million operating budget for fiscal year 27, along with [11:55:29 AM] 872.75 fte. Their transportation operations. That is making sure we are have our mobility make and ensuring the street preventative maintenance is provided for the city. They are covered with charges for services as well as fines and fees, and they also have >> Licenses and permit inspection revenue. Ptp supports over 8000 land miles, 2900 sidewalks and works to ensure the inventory remains in good to excellent condition, as you can see by their kpis. And then they also have seen increased programmatic funding for three positions to expand the utility excavation repair program. This program is in partnership with Austin water, and Austin water actually reimburses the cost for the for these positions and for this work. Looking through to [11:56:30 AM] transportation and public works. Five year financial forecast. This really just shows the alignment and operational growth of the department, as well as how they are working to maintain their fund balance. The increased fund balance represents an increased transfer or reducing some of the transfer to cip. And so you'll see those changes year over year for transportation and public works. Our watershed protection department is charged with reducing the impact of floods, erosion and water pollution. This budget supports maintaining the stormwater conveyance system, enhancing the community's water quality for our Lakes, creeks, and aquifers, and and project delivery of the project. The capital projects that support those efforts. The $133.7 million includes 472.75 positions, and then they continue to have transfers to [11:57:31 AM] their capital to support some of these project management and work done on our on our Lakes, creeks and aquifers. Moving forward to their performance highlights for watershed protection, $1.3 million is budgeted to increase their personnel 15 positions to support operational maintenance needs and as well as three positions for educational and training. This increase is offset by reductions to creek and drainage channel maintenance contracts. The budget includes reducing tons of stormwater pollution and reducing flood risk to building properties and roadways. As you can see on their performance indicators. Austin water excuse me watershed protection is a five year forecast. Includes [11:58:31 AM] balanced operations through the forecast period. The operational changes are. Balance changes remain relatively stable as they continue to transfer dollars as available to their capital improvement. Finally, walking through our high performing government today, we will focus on Austin technology services, the city's I.T. Department. And which is funded primarily through the information technology fund, $151.3 million is the proposed budget for fiscal year 27. This 36% increase, as well as the increase in positions, results in the organization. Organizational change as the phase one of 1ats continues, and that results in 492 total positions and an increase of 233. The department is is supportive of over 19,000 [11:59:32 AM] computers, over 16,000 public safety radios, and is responsible for ensuring the critical infrastructure remains reliable for the organization. Looking at some of the highlights, as I mentioned, there are a number of positions being transferred into our it fund. $35 million. The increase of 191 total positions. And then we are seeing savings in it through the decommissioning of redundant applications, through the application rationalization process, which will result in approximately $5.8 million of savings. And then finally, looking at all funds that support our Austin technology services. In addition to the it fund, there is the wireless communication services fund, which supports the regional radio system as well as the combined [12:00:32 PM] transportation emergency and communication center, or ctec fund, which supports operations of shared emergency communications and transportation management for the region. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. And departmental staff is here as well. >> Thank you very much. Members, if you would like to be heard and want to have and have questions answered, let me know. And what I'll do is we'll go to what we've been doing, the practice we've been following, which is ten minutes, and then come back if you need more time. Council member duchen, followed by council member alter. Council member duchen. You have the floor. >> Thank you mayor, and thank you staff for the presentation. I have a couple of comments that I've got some questions about. Some of the items that are in the presentation and on the enhancement and prioritization lists. So to start with, I first want to thank you all for including the 2% proposal and projections in the presentation today. I think [12:01:33 PM] it's important that we understand what that looks like. And and for the council to consider and strategize if it's realistic to get to 2% or 2.5% budget, and what that could mean for the future budgets. And I want to reinforce what I said two weeks ago, which is that that 2% budget is still below core inflation, which is around 2.5%. And if the numbers in math remain consistent with how we're calculating these numbers, a 2.5% budget means we need to identify, rather than the $10 million plus in the current presentation, about $7 million compared to the manager's base budget or sorry, the manager's proposed budget. I don't think that's insurmountable. But what we're looking at in this particular 2% proposal, I don't think reflects my priorities. I suspect it doesn't reflect the council's priorities. When we're talking about things like park maintenance, homelessness, development services and fees and so on. So unfortunately, while I think this particular [12:02:35 PM] proposal may be a nonstarter. I don't want us to draw the wrong conclusion that this kind of work is impossible, or that it can't be achieved in a more palatable way. I also want to remind everybody that going back to 2008, aside from the last four years, we did 3.5% that prior councils, on average, increased the budget by almost twice that rate, closer to 7% a year. And some of that was needed to address growth, which was very rapid. But it also represents a very dramatic increase in the general fund and spending over a relatively short window of time. And now that we've got slower growth, now that we're dealing with declining property taxes, now that we've got volatile sales taxes, I think we're in a different space. So early next week, my plan is to still roll out an alternative budget that starts at around 2.5%. And I, my office, are doing what we said we do. We look at budget, prior budgets and spending to understand the baselines of [12:03:36 PM] spending over prior years, look at line item spending and programs, including enhancements and prioritizations. And we're connecting with directors and staff to understand what potential changes are going to mean for their work. We're looking at doing this equitably across all the departments, and I strongly believe there's a way to fund the things that the majority of council wants to fund with some shared sacrifice, but not deep cuts to treasured priorities and jeopardizing the council and staff's chief goals. So I hope you guys will join me in exploring that next week. The other thing I just want to touch on is this part of the presentation that we're calling high performance government. And and there's some language in the budget. It's about a page. It talks about these different categories. They match the language that's on the performance.austintexas.gov website that the managers put out. And I want to thank the presentation, thank the staff for the presentation and the updates on, on specifically ATS's efforts to optimize the it infrastructure and services. [12:04:37 PM] I appreciate clarity that we're getting on that department and the presentation of the kpis for for ATS and the list of goals. There should be priorities for it services, and I'm supportive of the work that's being done there. So I appreciate it. But I know there's always a. However, from me and and I've got to express some frustration that with the scope of the presentation, my understanding is that high performance governing, at least again, based on what we've talked about in the budget and what we've seen in the manager's website, is a strategic priority that guides many, many departments, key performance indicators. If you look on performance that austintexas.gov, there's literally dozens of kpis on there under that across many departments. And that priority is shared by law, by enterprise departments, by planning, by zo. Going forward, it would be really helpful. It would be fantastic to see how these other departments are working towards that shared priority in [12:05:38 PM] their different ways. I thought that that website would be a good place for me and my team to get in the same page as city management, and I personally referenced and shared that site up here in the Dyess a number of times at other public opportunities at district listening sessions. But to be blunt, that site needs more work, especially for using that site and the content there to create a shared understanding of what we're talking about when we talk about high performance government. I know that staff and senior management are moving quickly to meet expectations of the residents and the council, but we're going to need to get better, more accurate, more up to date information out to the public and to the council. I'm happy to visit afterwards for the things that we've seen on there that need attention and updates to connect that content with that presentation today. There is more to high performance government than our it consolidation, and we're working on better data collection for our contracts, better oversight of the consultants we hire, more [12:06:39 PM] consistent deployment for city staff and services across like dozens of departments. We've got over 10,000 city employees that put in work every day to make our city and neighbors lives better. But we need to tell that story, and we need to be able to look at what we're working on and what's not, and what's working and what's not. We need to be able to figure out how to quickly assess and reallocate resources to our highest priorities and best solutions. And I can't do that without accurate information. And I can't go back to my district and tell them that we're headed in the right direction when our reporting isn't designated the way that we need it to be. So with that, I've got. Got any time left? I've got a couple of questions about some enhancements that are that we covered today in the presentation. One is on facilities management. These are enhancements that are included in there. Already. So facility management one. I'm curious if we've got any information that y'all can share about the ongoing funding for the six support service [12:07:41 PM] positions to align administrative capacity with operational responsibilities. That's how it's described in the enhancement. So if you guys could please explain what operational issues would arise if funding some or all of those six support positions are not continued, and what facilities would be impacted by that. >> Before he starts? Councilmember, I want to assure you that we started with technology services today, but on Thursday, we will dig into the other departments that are included in high performing government. So you'll see some of that deep dive on Thursday. We want to balance it out. We were already at 50 slides with the departments we talked about today, but we'll give you the rest of it on Thursday. >> I appreciate that it's hard for us to know because we're getting the presentations in real time, 30 minutes before the the budget session. So I wish we had time to connect and help me understand what that timeline looks like. >> Yes, sir. [12:08:42 PM] >> Thank you for the question. Joe Alexander, director of Austin. Selena. >> You're going to really need to lean into that microphone or speak up. >> Jerrel director of management better. >> You're talking about the six critical support services that we'd ask for the accounting associate, contract management specialist, the human resource supervisor, advisor, senior, the business business consultant, and the public information specialist. When we have no public information specialist at this time, as we're taking over like acme and zo and some of the other things that you've heard in the news at this point, we thought it was a good idea to have that, and that really supports us there. As far as some of the accounting specialists and the contract specialists right now, we probably do more deals and contract processes. Probably the third largest, the third volume, as far as quantity goes, than any other department in [12:09:42 PM] the city. We've always been kind of understaffed, and that's just the growth that we've had with taking on some of these new new positions, new departments, human resources, those two positions and the business process and consulting. That's all part of that process, sir. Get more people. You have more concerns. You have more things going on. You've got to process people entering and in processing and so on and so forth. Right? So having more hr people to do that just makes it smoother. And it shows employees, you know, that there's some concerns and we, we're working for them basically. So that's kind of the justification and why we think those are very important positions going forward. >> Okay. I appreciate that answer. I think there's more clarity I'd like to get about the consequences of not having them. For instance, for like public information. If there's not a way to work with Pio to try and get your needs met without having that position or what that might look like, or if they charge back, like some departments do to your department for that support or help. So I'd like to follow up on that specifically to [12:10:43 PM] understand more about some of those implications. >> Yes, sir. >> The last question I've got looks like I'm running out of time. Here is. This is regarding a different enhancement item that you all have. This is the ongoing funding for an environmental scientist senior position that's going to do like water quality monitoring and implement the city's water management plan. I'm curious how many environmental scientists does facilities have on the payroll right now? >> There's 3 in 1 supervisor, and we do that for the entire city. Okay. There are hazardous environmental environmental technicians throughout the departments, but ours is the main one centralized. So they come through our our person first. And a lot of that reporting is through him. He kind of sets the governance. And with those four, with everything we have going on right now, they're overwhelmed. [12:11:43 PM] And so I think it's important to have another position now. It's just not water quality quality. It's air quality, water quality. But I think it's very important that we have this position to be more successful, even more successful. >> Okay, I know I'm out of time. I have a couple more follow up I'd like to understand, like the breakdown between I think that line item is $368,000, what the breakdown is between that position versus the actual water quality work that you guys are doing. But I'll follow up on that afterwards. Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you, councilmember. Councilmember alter, followed by councilmember Fuentes, then councilmember Velasquez. >> Thank you very much. Well, since you're up here, I do have one question for you that I'm trying to better understand, and that is the costs related to the public safety headquarters. If we are moving individuals from APD headquarters, which is one building as well as individuals from fire and ems, which is a separate building, if I'm correct, we're basically taking two very low quality, low [12:12:45 PM] condition buildings and moving them into a high quality space. Why? Why is it costing so much more if we're taking personnel from two buildings, ostensibly, and putting them into one? >> So we're still maintaining two buildings, even though we've moved, we've moved some people, we've got a if we empty those building out, taking the center APD headquarters, we still have to maintain those buildings until somebody makes a decision on what that's like, what that's going to be, we have to maintain them at this point, even though we've moved out people and we've moved them into the new headquarters, we still have people there. Okay, so we'll maintain those until they're all gone. And then what you'll see is we'll maintain them. We won't decommission them. You'll see some utilities, maybe some savings there. But that's probably the best for right now until we find a decision on those buildings. >> What is the planned date to get everybody out of the old buildings? [12:13:46 PM] >> Let's see. I think the, the, the the police headquarters is. August 2028. I'll have to research and look at it again. But I think it's the the, the end of fy 28 for, for the for the headquarters to be really set up and going. We are looking at a strategy where. Some of these spaces may be good enough for them to move in now, but we're still working on that process. We should have a better idea in the next month or so. >> Okay. >> Well, I'm sure like everything, it's more complex than it seems on its face. It does seem a little much that it's going to take us two years to move people out of a building and into a different building. Knowing the costs, especially with APD headquarters, that building is falling apart. I'm sure the maintenance requirements, as you mentioned, are high. And so if there is a way to accelerate [12:14:49 PM] getting those buildings to a point where we are barely just keeping them at their current not so hot condition, I think that would be. >> Yeah. Thank you. Council member. Ed Benigno chief financial officer and we can get back to you with more thorough information. But I did want to say that we do have people in those facilities already. We have been moving some functions of police into the new facility that we've acquired, as well as police and ems personnel, and we'll continue to look for opportunities to move folks over there. We still have a small handful of leases that we're working, and we're negotiating with the prior tenants to move them out of those leases early. And then there's also, you know, to, to meet the the new mission. And some floors are more move in ready than other floors, but some floors are have been developed as multiple businesses on a floor. And so we're going to have to do some work to renovate those facilities before they can [12:15:49 PM] really meet the mission of the new departments. The police headquarters in particular, is in very poor condition, and it's long overdue to have replaced that facility. And so we are working with the chief and staff at the police department to relocate those individuals to other existing city facilities as an interim step to getting them in the permanent facility, which is going to take a little more time. >> Okay. Next, I have a question or two for acme. Hello there. My first question is, as was mentioned or shown, you know, y'all have a lot of funding sources, and one of [12:16:52 PM] them, of course, is the general fund. Are there costs that are currently borne by the general fund that could otherwise come from, you know, be spent or be covered by one of those other funds? And then as a follow up, if so, what would be the programmatic impact then to the dollars from those funds? >> Absolutely. >> Good morning. My name is Angela means. I'm the director for arts, culture, music and entertainment. And thank you for that question. The majority of our funds are primarily from the hotel occupancy taxes. And so those costs are tied to tourism. And then we also have the general fund. We always look at our funds to see in our expenses to see if we can adjust every year. But at this time, we did not feel that there was more that could be moved over to other funding sources. One of the things that [12:17:54 PM] we're going to be focused on this next year is identifying additional resources for acme. It's part of our creative reset phase three that is, is has been one of our goals because we do want to expand beyond the general fund and hotel occupancy taxes. That will take a lot more time over this next year to explore that. If there were costs that could be moved over to the hotel, occupancy taxes, such as marketing for our teams, what that would mean the impact would be, is less funding for the grants that we provide to our creative community. >> Okay, okay. Separately, this is a very discrete issue, but the sound permit fees that are not going up year to year, but are still I, I've spoken with some residents, they're pretty high. Like it's pretty expensive for someone to go get a sound permit, even if they're [12:18:55 PM] having, let's say, a backyard concert or a small gathering. And, and I'm concerned that it's either a just going to lead people to not get the fee or the permit, which I'm sure happens more than we like, or B, it's kind of it's dollars out of the musician's pockets, right? Someone is looking at maybe I have $1,000 to spend on this party, $500 is going to this permit. And so I've got 500 left for the musician. And I know we always want to do what we can to help foster the arts and culture within your title. So I'd love to talk more. And we can get some information about how much revenue you do generate from that fee to see if we were to even provide some kind of reduction, what that the fiscal impact of that would be just so we can try to get those dollars into the pockets of the musicians themselves. >> Absolutely. >> Very good. I appreciate that very much. Director Lang. For [12:20:00 PM] the economic development fund, the sources there are. I'm sorry, I'm pulling it up here. You got your Austin energy transfer in general fund transfer in Austin water rr why? Why is the economic development fund funded by utilities? What's the what's the history on that? >> Great question. I believe historically the the thought was the work of the economic development department generates new customer bases for those enterprise departments. And so they transfer. They support that fund and that department based on that methodology. >> Is it just a certain percentage or how how is that amount set, let's say, for water versus energy. [12:21:01 PM] >> There is an allocation methodology that is used to generate the the different percentages that each department supports. Let me let me get that detail. I can get you that detail. >> And in your slides for Ed, there was part of the sources being general fund. It was. Oh, I've lost it here. Yeah. 2.9 million general fund. But then separately in the economic development fund itself, there's an almost $7 million general fund transfer. And so is really the Austin economic development being supported by what would be, I guess, 9.9 million or almost $10 million? >> The 2.9 million general fund are the social service grants for workforce development and child and youth that Ed administers. >> Got it, got it. Okay. [12:22:07 PM] >> Oh 13 seconds. All right. I'll pause there. Thank you. >> Councilmember councilmember Fuentes, followed by councilmember Velasquez and councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you. My first question is around the child care assistance reserve fund. There is staff available to speak to the newly created child care assistance reserve fund, and my next questions will be around consultant contract spending, just as a heads up. So, colleagues, we know we established the child care assistance fund earlier this year as a result of one of our incentives, incentives that we passed. And so I wanted staff to see if y'all could speak to just how these how these funds will be used and any guidelines that we have established with it. >> Thank you for the question. Councilmember Fuentes, mayor and council, good morning. My name is Mac Cummings. I'm the new economic development director. >> When did you start? >> I'm I'm on about our 28 today. >> Let's see how you answer this question. [12:23:08 PM] >> It's an honor and privilege to be here. I'm going to hand it off to Ann Eaton on our staff to answer some more of the specifics for some of these kinds of questions today. Thank you. >> He's already shown some good discretion, I think. >> Good morning, council, Annie and assistant director. To be fair, I've given him a lot in the last 24 hours, but this was one that we haven't gotten to yet. Councilman. Welcome back. Congratulations on your baby girl. It's nice to see you. Thank you. The child care assistance reserve fund. So this budget is actually going to formally create the fund. As of now, the only contribution through incentives is the southwest agreement. As you mentioned, we anticipate that deposit occurring in fy 28. What's coming in the horizon in the fall is developing draft guidelines and conducting community engagement, and leaning on our child care stakeholders to be able to formalize those. >> Okay. So for this budget cycle, there would be no general fund dollars within that fund. Correct. Okay. And [12:24:08 PM] then the other question I have is, and colleagues, you might remember that we also created separately the child care fee waiver program, which will go into effect later this fall. I believe. >> That's correct. In partnership with development services, we are planning to begin advertising in mid September, with a rollout on Monday, October 3rd to receive applications. And as a reminder, councilman and the council, we have been waiving the fire permit fees for high quality centers. This will now allow us to consider fee waivers for expansion of new centers and, of course, expansion of existing high quality centers. >> And the funds for this fee waiver program. Is it still the 250 000 that was back from 23? >> There's about 238,000 remaining that will roll over into fy 27. >> 238 okay. Thank you. Those are my questions for y'all colleagues. I wanted to now pivot and talk about consultant contract spending. I know that I assume that this may have [12:25:09 PM] come up during the social service work session. So apologies if I'm retreading a conversation that's already been had. But first, my question I want to start out with is if staff could tell us director Lang, on the amount of funds we have dedicated for consultant contracts in the proposed fiscal year budget. >> So we are. Staff is finalizing the analysis of our consulting contract spend and hope to get information to the council as a whole by tomorrow and talk through it on Thursday. And we started the evaluation looking at the information that was shared with the by the auditor and the report on may, and I believe their overall review indicated about $100 million of spend in fiscal year 25 on consulting contracts. And that's the universe. When they asked for our procurement team [12:26:10 PM] for information on consultant architectural contracts by commodity code, what we found is that when you go a little bit deeper in the into the world. So if that's the universe of what they started with, if you go into the general fund departments, for example, and look at the consulting spend there, they projected or they showed a $10.6 million spend in the general fund departments for fiscal year 25, the actual general fund spend of that is about 1.3 million. And that is once you take out all the funding sources that the general fund department support, for example, public health has spending that is related to grants, dollars, or arpa funding that was rolled up into that total amount that was shared. Again, we'll go into more detail into in our Thursday budget discussion, [12:27:11 PM] where we can show this information to you all holistically and hope to have a memo out tomorrow. But also, when we look at the overall consulting budget, what is what is listed as consulting other in the general fund as a whole is about 1.2 billion, $1.2 million. That's budgeted for consulting other. There are other services budgeted in the general fund, but they're very specific to temporary employees or. Very it services. So there are a number of, of, of service codes, but there are specific to a particular kind of service and not the general management consultant that has been the conversation. >> Okay. So just so I'm following under, according to the audit, there was over 100 million in consulting contract spend. You're essentially saying there's different categories of consultant services and there's only really 10 million. That was of general consulting related [12:28:12 PM] services. >> So 100 million total spend. And that included all departments in their analysis. It included 10 million that was included for the general fund. Okay. And looking for general fund departments. Let me be clear. That's for general fund departments. But general fund departments have multiple funding sources. They're primarily general fund, but they may have grant funding. We're still spending some of the arpa dollars. We have some special revenue funds. And so when you dig deeper into how those dollars are being spent, only $1.3 million was spent out of the actual general fund in fiscal year 25. >> Only 1.3 was spent. >> Out of the general fund. >> Okay. Okay. >> Thank you. And so we'll have more of a conversation on the. >> We are we are laying out the. [12:29:12 PM] So you all can see all the information, starting with the broader picture that the that the auditors provided. And then we'll dig into what we're seeing by each department as far as the fund is, and the type of consulting work that was provided with those funds. >> And also what revenue source, right. Because there's, there's one that I am curious if it's funded from general fund dollars or if it might be better suited for hotel tax dollars, but we can go over that. >> We'll we'll dig into that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And my next question is on the summer youth employment program. This program, I believe you all have shared that we'll be eliminating the city portion to the city county youth employment program. >> Yes. >> Colleagues, I do want to highlight that earlier this year, we adopted a resolution unanimously that asked for the city to strengthen our youth programs and specifically called out that particular [12:30:12 PM] program in partnership with the county. So I'm curious if staff can share more or provide context as to why we are eliminating the city participation in the youth program? >> Yes. And we do not have the public health department here today. They we can make sure that there is someone here on Thursday as well. We. And welcome back, council member. We'll make sure that you get the information and speaking to the public health department. And my understanding is that. This program. We've been in conversation with the county for the last several years about the. The way that this program has been implemented, the liability that has been placed on the city as the employee of record and have been working with them to to make some adjustments to the program. I also understand that the county is looking at a [12:31:12 PM] contracted service to to provide the administrative support that the city has historically done. And so even though there is a recommendation to eliminate this particular program, it is not removing any of the other city youth employment programs and initiatives that we have. So we still have several other programs across departments, I believe one in economic development. And so there are internships and things like that that we are recommending to be continued through the city's efforts. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I would just appreciate a conversation on that, and particularly understanding how many students have been served with the program. And if the city pulls out half a million, from what I saw, what is that like? How many students will be able to participate for next summer? Thank you. >> Thank you, thank you. Councilmember councilmember Velazquez, followed by councilmember Ellis and councilmember zo qadri. >> Thank you, mayor. Thank you [12:32:13 PM] very much for the presentation. What is the total amount of reductions to digital navigation and digital equity programs throughout the budget? >> I believe I'm going to have to get you that information. If you could hold off one second, I'll get that information. Digital equity. >> And the my next one is what is the total amount of reductions to programs that benefit our small and aspiring small business owners? >> And assistant director of economic development. Our 27 proposed budget does not include any reductions to service or programs for small business. Instead, we're leveraging that construction mitigation funds to fund our buydown program, which is we [12:33:15 PM] anticipate bringing to council September 10th for consideration for a contract. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Good afternoon, assistant director doctor Tamala Saldana with smbr. We do have a reduction for $150,000 to our supportive services for minority trade associations. However, we have hired some staff and are reallocating services to our staff to provide the support our certified firms. >> Thank you. I had one more question on, and this is for Austin energy. On page. Wait for you to get down here on [12:34:16 PM] page 118 of the budget under strategic initiatives, it says replace the 311 customer service request application and enhance service delivery. Then on page six of the service prioritization list, there is a approved reduction of 1.2 million for a pilot program that will inform a future funding recommendation. Could you share what the city's plans are for 311 how this will affect austinites who submit service requests, and how the results of these milestones and programs will be communicated to austinites and to council. >> Thank you and good afternoon. I'm Stewart Riley, Austin energy general manager. And thank you for the question. So first of all, on the 311 system, we are in the process of developing our requirements for what a new 311 customer relationship management system looks like. Currently the tool being used is over 25 years old. It has limited functionality. We would like, you know, we've we've run into challenges when we've sought to add [12:35:16 PM] multilingual services into the app or have the 311 system communicate better among different departments, service request systems. So there's just a lot of update and modernization that would be necessary for that tool to make it more up to date and meet the current standard of what we need that system to be doing. So that and does, does that answer your question on that? And then I can move on to the other. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. And so then on the service prioritization, so what we're looking at there in terms of a reduction to our our call center funding requirements is we will be doing a pilot to reduce the hours. So currently 311 operates 24 hours a day. That's not common among three on one systems nationwide. We get very few calls after 9 P.M. When we do get calls after 9 P.M. There for departments that are either closed, closed, or [12:36:16 PM] that call really is a 911 call and needs to get routed to 911. So by adjusting the hours from 24 hours a day to 7 A.M. To 9 P.M. We can still gather those service requests. We we will have a message to customers that they can submit, you know, through the app, they can call back. And so that's really a in terms of a service reduction, we don't see it as being a service reduction because we really don't get very many calls during that time. The, the majority really need are getting routed to APD. And that's causing a situation where then three, one, one charges are then getting allocated to APD, because there's that handoff in the time that's taking there, and it's causing increases on that side as well. >> Thank you. And the last part of it was how are we going? How are these milestones of these programs going to be communicated to austinites in council? >> Yes. And so this would start October 1st. And so we we will have a communications plan to [12:37:19 PM] get the word out, to let people know of what the changes are to the hours. And that has not yet started. We haven't, you know, gone through this budget process to know what council's will is in terms of this pilot project. I will also say that if we get to that point where that rollout, you know, this change isn't going well, we could we could pull back on it as well. So this is something that we're looking at to be able to be more efficient and kind of be more industry standard in terms of our operating hours. Thank you, thank you. >> Is he finished? Are you finished? >> Yeah, I was just waiting on one more answer. Okay. Back to it. >> Okay. >> No, we got we got time. >> Oh. >> So it's anticipated approximately $119,000 [12:38:19 PM] reduction, continued funding of about. Eight $800,000 is what is will be continued funding for digital equity. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, councilmember. Councilmember Ellis. Councilmember zo qadri. Councilmember Siegel. >> Thank you. Mayor. I have a couple of questions. I've got a few for Austin water and then a handful for tpw. And then I think one for watershed. Just so folks know where I'm heading, my first question for Austin water will be that there are 43 new full time employees budgeted for this year, and 36 more for next year. Can you give us a little more detail about that extra need for staffing, and what roles and responsibilities we're looking to enhance? >> Good afternoon, councilmember, city council Shea roalson, Austin water director. So Austin water goes through a robust staffing [12:39:21 PM] planning process where we bring forward the most critical needs within the utility and weigh them against each other. Before we present you with a with a proposal. So the this staffing that is proposed, pardon me as I work through my binder to get to the pages that will be most responsive, represent adding staff in a number of areas across Austin water. A large number of these positions are cost neutral because we are working to reduce overtime in our operations areas, and we're also working to reduce temporary and contracted staff. And then we have other positions that will support our. Electrician area, our [12:40:21 PM] environmental planning and development services area, where we're working with new development and our environmental programs, wildfire mitigation specialist and other key areas for advancing our go purple and reclaimed systems, as well as our aquifer storage and recovery program. >> Okay, so these sound like they're less adding technicians and more about expanding Austin water's space of environmental conservation and helping us work toward our climate goals. Is that accurate? >> It absolutely is supporting our work toward diversifying our water supply and meeting our environmental and climate goals, as well as supporting our ongoing operations in the field and reducing the stress on our employees of excessive overtime and and reliance on temporary and contract staff. >> Okay, well, that's really [12:41:22 PM] great to hear. And then did you say it was cost neutral? So that is not triggering any fee increases. I know there are some proposed, but it's not due to this additional staffing. >> Not entirely. A number of these positions are cost neutral. The ones that are reducing overtime and and reducing temporary staff. But there are I think we have an addition of about $5 million in our budget for for this additional staffing. >> Okay. And then of the proposed fee increases, what is the cost driver for those? Are those pass through charges or I know we do typical rate case reviews every five years or so. Can you talk to me about those fee increases that are proposed? >> The primary driver of our fee increases is our capital investment in our infrastructure. And so we have identified both renewing aging infrastructure, as well as preparing for the future to [12:42:22 PM] make sure that our systems are resilient and reliable and robust. And that's the the primary driver of our fee increases. And I'll I'll see if Joseph wants to add anything to that. >> Good afternoon. Joseph Gonzalez, deputy director of business services with Austin water. And, you know, Shea Wright, you know, the biggest part of our need for rate increases is related to our capital program, both in the form of, you know, debt service as we program in, you know, a growing capital plan as well as our investment in, in cash financing, which, you know, I like to equate to a down payment that would be made on, on either a car or home mortgage. So we, we have a financial policy that, that sets a level of about 35% cash financing, as well as we're [12:43:24 PM] proposing in the proposed budget, adding an additional layer of cash financing target for, for our largest projects. So, for example, our walnut creek wastewater treatment plant expansion, which is a $1.5 billion project. And, and so at a 35% cash financing level, that would require today's customers to pay for more than a third of that project, that's going to serve future customers for 50 plus years. And, and so as we went through our most recent cost of service study, we had a recommendation that was supported by the community to lower the cash financing target for large projects to, to 20%. And now that's still a big number on a $1.5 billion project. But it's allowing us to, you know, phase in our rate increases and, and reduce what would otherwise be required to, to maintain compliance with our [12:44:26 PM] financial policy. >> Okay. That's helpful. And then I've got a couple minutes left. I'll move over to transportation public works. Welcome. The first question I'll ask in the service prioritization list, there is a proposed budget cut for $400,000 for parking meter parts and maintenance. Can you talk to me about are we changing the way that we're maintaining our parking meters? Or are those dollars that weren't needed previously? So we're recommending to lower that line item. >> Thank you for your question. Councilmember Richard Mendoza, director for transportation, public works. I'm also joined by Anthony segura, assistant director, and Jim Dale, deputy director. Yes, the reduction in the parking meter maintenance [12:45:27 PM] reflects our transition from hard pay stations over to the pay app on the phone. And so we do maintain a meter shop. And over the last few years, we have been gradually transitioning and removing the number of hard meters, even the the centralized meters in lieu of the pay app. And so these savings reflect the reduced maintenance and repair costs for that hard infrastructure. But the levels of service for parking services is not affected. >> Okay, that was going to be my follow up question was, if we have meters that aren't working, are we damaging the income that goes into transportation's budget through those dollars? So they're still being collected? >> Yes, ma'am. That's correct. >> Okay. That is good to know. And then I wanted to talk about the sidewalk program, the proposed budget cuts sidewalk program by about 35%. How much of that will be cut from new construction versus rehab and [12:46:27 PM] maintenance? >> Okay, great. >> So in our current operating budget, we have sidewalk maintenance divided into two line items. Previously, we had all 8,000,008.5 million in the sidewalk program. And they would manage both the contractors that did sidewalk repairs, as well as issue task orders for in-house crews to do sidewalk repairs. We are transitioning more of that work to in-house crews to conduct sidewalk repairs in the interest of savings and efficiencies. And so those monies are there. They were just reallocated away from the sidewalk budget into the concrete and structures budget and street and bridge operations. Okay. So in actuality, the total amount we're investing in sidewalk repairs for fy 27, we're proposing a moderate increase of 200 000 overall to account [12:47:28 PM] for cost drivers. >> Okay, okay. Well, that's good to hear. There should not be impacts to our ability to maintain and repair sidewalks. And then it looks like the last question I'll have time for right now is the $10 million in costs that that council approved in last year's budget. How are we doing on that construction? And are there any dollars that are not encumbered yet? >> Yes, we are implementing and executing on those 10 million as part of the sidewalk infrastructure local mobility action plan. And if you look in the back pages in the capital budget, you'll see that we are on track on expanding that $10 million. >> Okay. >> That's great. I will leave it there for now, but I'll probably call you back up when they circle back to me. >> Thank you councilmember. >> Thanks, director. >> Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember qadri. Councilmember Siegel. Councilmember Lang. >> Thank you, mayor, and thank you all for another amazing presentation. My first question, I kind of want to go a little bit back in time. In 2023, I [12:48:30 PM] had brought forward an item around a drink spiked drink spiking test strip pilot program. It was for $100,000. It was a budget amendment, and it lasted for a little bit longer than just that year. Because my understanding is that the purchasing supplies that were bought in bulk, it reduced the cost and allowed it to go a little bit longer. We heard from APD that they believe that the pilot was an effective measure, a preventative measure, and that between 10 to 14% of reported sex crime cases have a connection to a bar or nightclub. We also saw in the city manager's city of Austin year in review in 2024. He highlighted the program and talked about how 70 plus bars had opted into the program and 5500 drinks, testing strips and other educational materials were handed out during this time. So my question for y'all is, if the city were to make this program permanent, what would the estimated annual cost [12:49:30 PM] be for the for the testing strips and any other supplies to to operate the program? >> I believe that that program was initially funded at the $100,000 in 2023 as as the pilot, let me get back with the departmental staff to verify the purchase and what that would look like to have make it an ongoing program. >> Okay, great. Thank you so much. And then my other question is that we know from community that the creative space assistant program is a highly valued when available as a resource, and we know it helped mitigate affordability issues amongst our creative community looking for affordable space to work. So my question on that is though the program is being cut the cycle, is there any intention to revive this program in the future? And then follow up to that would be what amount of investment would get this program up and running and adequately funded for community assistance? [12:50:34 PM] >> So I think we would we would definitely have to look at ongoing funding sources as, as I think I mentioned, that reduction was partially put in place to assist with the general fund balancing for fiscal year 27. I think there are varying levels that could be re-implemented to support this, this program, even if it's not at the full amount of 500 000. And we can continue to look for revenue sources of funding sources to help support that. >> Great. Thank you. And if I was able to, I would donate my time. >> No, no, no, we're not doing that. Not doing that. >> I think I've got 15 minutes here. >> Yeah that's right. Yeah. All right. Councilmember Siegel, councilmember Laine and the mayor pro tem. >> Thank you. Mayor. Director, I'd like to start with Austin technology services. The last time we received a presentation about cost savings from the one arts initiative, the exact [12:51:35 PM] sources of savings were still being vetted. Page 47 of the presentation today identifies a reduction of $5.8 million in funding for software and information technology support due to savings from the centralization and application rationalization efforts. Have the specific sources of these savings been identified, and how much of that is savings from redundant or ineffective software? >> Kiki chief information officer, Austin technology services. The application rationalization work has begun. We have approximately ten projects, ten initiatives in the queue that will address the $5.8 million in savings that you see in the budget this year. We know and understand that [12:52:35 PM] there are a wide variety of savings within the ten initiatives that we have identified. We have high level ideas of what we will save in each of those different initiatives, but we can't tie exact dollars to them at this point in time. The program manager is working through those initiatives, doing work with the different stakeholders around the city so that we can get very clear and crisp on the savings for each of those initiatives. >> Director, can you give us any like outlines of of the buckets of how do you count to 5.8 million? >> Yes. So in the work that we did with pass pass, they gave us ranges from the consolidation of the specific contracts and softwares that are tied to the initiative and the licensing costs for, for each of those. So as we go [12:53:36 PM] through each project, working with the different city stakeholders, we can identify if we have an initiative that has 12 applications within that initiative, we're going to get very crisp on if we're going to maintain one, two, three or however many out of that 12, and then we will look at and identify which of those applications are being retired and the timeline in which we can retire them. The overall. Range of savings is very large, but we wanted to be conservative on our ability to retire those within the fy 27 fiscal year. >> Outside of the categories of software licenses and applications, are there other categories that are contributing to the savings. >> For the 5.8 million? That those are the full savings. [12:54:36 PM] >> Okay. Thank you. So are there any savings from the information technology support category? >> Could you clarify meaning the support, the personnel support for those particular applications? >> Yes. >> Those have not been identified. No. >> Okay. Great. Thank you. I guess moving to the next question then, I guess previous briefings, I think the most recent memo suggested that one ets would impact 189 positions. The presentation today lists 191 positions. Can you explain what the two extra positions are from? >> So the the number is 191. There are 191 positions coming from other city departments within Austin technology services. We have three funds the larger technology fund, the wireless fund, and the C tech fund. Because of 1ats, there are personnel moving from two of those other funds into the [12:55:37 PM] broader technology fund. >> Okay, great. And have any executive positions been added to Austin technology services in the proposed budget? >> Those are in the existing budget for this fiscal year. There is an addition of two executive positions in Austin technology services. Currently there are. Pardon me, I'm counting in my head. There are currently three deputies, and we are adding two additional deputies this year and one next year. >> Okay. And those are basically across the city. Those are two new executive positions. Those aren't positions that were removed from another department and moved to this one. >> Those are. >> Correct, newly created. And do you know how much those two positions cost? >> I do not have that in front [12:56:37 PM] of me. Council member. >> Would you mind. >> Bringing that for. >> You to the next one, please? Yeah. Thank you. Let's see. Director have the, I guess, 189 191 employees who are affected by transfers. Have they received all the notifications, things of that nature? >> Yes. They are. All employees have received notification of their movement into Austin technology services and follow up communications on workshops that are available to them regarding change management workshops that are available to them on the over operate overall operations of Austin technology services. And those workshops have begun and will continue to run through August. >> Thank you. Would you be able to provide a memo that summarizes a list of any changes to job titles or classifications that have resulted from these transfers? >> We can provide a memo. >> Thank you ma'am. And last question. In the proposed [12:57:39 PM] budget for fiscal year 27, what does ATS have projected for change management and consultant costs related to one ATS? >> I don't know that number off the top of my head, but I will get back with you with that specific number. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And I guess with my remaining time, I would like to ask Austin energy a couple of questions. And GM, as you're sitting down, we've received questions about the estimated impact to our ratepayer bill on page 170 of volume one of the proposed budget, there's a line item noting an increase in base rate revenue due to a 5% base rate increase, as well as growth in customer accounts and usage. But today, on slide 27, we see less than a 5% estimated impact increase. Can you walk us [12:58:39 PM] through the other factors that go into determining the estimated impact to ratepayers, please? >> Yes. And again, Stewart Riley Austin energy general manager so the Austin energy bill is comprised of the base rates and pass through the base rates, make up the customer charge, and then the energy charges that customers see on their bill. The other half of the bill are pass through charges. The community benefit charge, which is the cap program, energy efficiency charge, service area lighting. And then we have the regulatory charge, which is ercot fees, ercot allocation for the statewide transmission grid. And then we also have the power supply adjustment, which is our largest pass through. So when we make a 5% base rate increase, it's about a 2.5% bill increase. And this particular budget for the customer impact, for the customer bill, the typical [12:59:40 PM] Austin energy customers bill is going up $3.68 and I'm sorry, $3.66. The largest increase we're seeing on this bill is the regulatory charge, which is going up by $3.96. So we're it not for our increased costs allocated to us from ercot wide transmission grid. We would have a second year in a row of the bill going down where we are right now, with the bill going up $3.66 for >> The typical customer. We're still below where we were and and budget time of fy 25. The current bill is about $121. We're at about $122 two years ago. And that budget process. So some costs go up, some costs go down. And that's kind of the net effect of. >> Thank you. And my last minute I'm going to ask a two part question. How does a's proposed base rate compare to base rates in comparable municipal energy providers. And [1:00:41 PM] then if you could also address the concern that increasing the base rate without raising rates on higher usage tiers, how that might disincentivize conservation. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> On on on part one. We're we're not alone. I mean, we're seeing rate increases everywhere. We're seeing them very rapidly in other places. There are utilities that have 6% per year for the next five years, but that's on their whole bill. So when we when we say 5%, you know, again, we're talking about half the bill for that. And so, you know, you know, news comes out on a pretty constant basis about other municipal utilities with very large rate increases. And that's just because of the inflation that we're seeing on everything that we buy, whether it's poles, wires, transformers, those costs are doubling or tripling over the past few years. So we're just trying to keep up with inflation on, on our costs. So in terms of our rate increases, they're actually smaller than what we're seeing elsewhere in the industry. And in part two of [1:01:42 PM] your question I'm sorry. >> Thanks, mayor. Just to clarify, basically, given that we're increasing the base rate, but we're not increasing the rates on higher usage tiers? >> Yes. >> Could that disincentivize conservation? >> So our proposal for the the 5% is to raise all of the tiers at 5% equally. We we did not do that last year. That rate increase was in tier one. And the reason that we had to structure it that way is when we when we need a certain amount of revenue in this. In that case, and in the case this year, when we need 5% more revenue, as our customers are getting more and more efficient, there is less and less consumption in those higher tiers, which is which is a good thing. But if we push the rate increases out into the into tier four, it's less likely to manifest that that that additional revenue is less likely to come to fruition. And it's a lot less predictable. [1:02:44 PM] It's more more relies on a very extreme weather year. And so looking at it, that's why we kind of had to do it the way we did last year. And now with tier one being less and not as far below cost, it's still below cost of service, but it was even farther below cost of service. So now we're able to just equally apply the 5% to all tiers this year. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, council member. Mayor, I do want to clarify and we'll get the details for you. Council member Siegel the new or the executive positions in a T S they were reclassifications they were not new positions. And so the department took existing positions and reclassified them to executive level. We're getting those details for you, though. I want to make that clarification. >> Thank you ma'am. >> Thanks. Council member Laine, followed by mayor pro tem. >> Thank you. My first question relates to economic development. We heard from some speakers today that were advocating for long term workforce development, [1:03:44 PM] with some availability of supportive services like child care. Rather than one and done short term support. And so I'm seeing around 6.6 million in the proposed budget, which is allocated to workforce development and child care services. I'm wondering if we can get a programmatic breakdown of what that includes, and also indication of whether those programs are all internal contracted out or a mix of the two. >> Andy assistant director of economic development, yes, council. We can certainly provide that follow up information. And for council's reference, that is the methodology that we've approached with the Austin infrastructure academy, ensuring that we have those wraparound supports and many of our providers do, but we'll certainly provide you a more detailed breakdown for council. >> Okay, great. >> Thank you. I have a question about support services. So [1:04:45 PM] maybe I should go to. Austin Ernie tbwi. >> Should break at some point. I mean, we all get up and take breaks from time to time, but we don't allow that for people questioning. So why don't we do this, if you don't mind and I'll I'll you you've got eight minutes, 35 seconds left. What I'll do is I'll start it at that. Why don't we take a ten minute recess. It's 105. And without objection, the Austin city council is in recess until 115. [1:15:39 PM] Well, I thought I had six. Well, they're they're six. I'm going to call the Austin city council back to order. And thanks for the brief recess, councilmember Laine, you have the floor. >> Oh. >> My next question relates to support services. The chief administrative officer activity budget nearly doubles from 4.7 million in fiscal year 26 to 8, and a half million in fiscal year 27, even as departmental support services services ftes fall from 62 to 51. Can you explain what's driving the near doubling of the chief administrative officer budget line item? Despite a net loss of 11 support services positions, partly from the 1ats transfer? I'm also wondering if any of this increase reflects overhead or indirect cost [1:16:40 PM] allocations, rather than direct departmental spending. >> Councilmember, can you clarify? I'm sorry I missed which department you were looking at. >> So it is. I was looking to see if I have a page number noted, page 411, and it relates to a tso. >> Volume two. >> I'm sorry, did you say 411? >> Okay. [1:18:02 PM] >> Give me one second. I'm sorry. I'm not seeing what you're looking at. >> Okay. Well, how about if I move on to other questions and I'll come back around? Okay? Okay. This one is for Austin water. So as I'm sure you can imagine, I'm excited to see that the northwest great hills lift station construction and improvements are part of our fiscal year 2027 objectives. I'm wondering if you can let me know what area that will impact, and what can customers in the area expect from those improvements? [1:19:04 PM] >> Good afternoon. Shea roalson, Austin water director, council member the question is about the benefits of the great hills lift station project, so that project will install a new natural gas generator and rehabilitate the existing lift station. And so once it's complete, it will provide more reliable and robust service to that part of our service area. As you know, your district is very hilly and requires a number of lift stations in order to move wastewater. So we're making a lot of investments into our lift stations in in your district. >> Yeah, I'm really happy to hear that, especially with the environmentally sensitive area. And I appreciate your bringing that to the fore in this cycle. This next question is for both Austin water and Austin energy. Last week, the topic of large users in act on demand for both energy and water came up, including their impact on our [1:20:04 PM] community's utility bills. I'm wondering, I want to give each of you the opportunity to describe what projects and investments in the upcoming budget will help us with our capacity and demand, especially as concerns and pressures increase from both large users and population growth. And how are we balancing meeting capacity needs with keeping utility bills relatively low? >> Thank you. Councilmember. I will answer for Austin water and then allow Stuart to answer for Austin energy. We we do a variety of planning as we look at the needs for the future. And that's very near term planning that we do with active development all the way up to our long range planning for both infrastructure in the next 20 to 30 years, and then water supply planning for the next 50 to 100 years. Importantly, when we our processes require new development to pay for the infrastructure required to serve their development. And that is true of of any new development. And so when we are [1:21:06 PM] looking at the capacity that we may build in our long term plans, that excess capacity gets built into our impact fees, that new development pays. So new development pays impact fees in order to buy into the available capacity in the existing system. And they pay for the infrastructure to to extend infrastructure to their new development. And so that is that's how we, our, our rates and all of our fees and charges are built on a cost of service model that allocates costs to the customer classes and the users of our system based on what it costs us to actually serve them. >> When there's infill development. How do you handle that? Because, you know, one of the issues is aging infrastructure. Aging infrastructure doesn't generate new fees. But I could see if there's a larger scale infill development, that question might arise. I'm also wondering if it varies depending on what part of the city you're in. >> So certainly if a if an [1:22:07 PM] infill development is moving into a part of our system that already has robust service, then they may be able to just hook up to our system and pay impact fees in order to redevelop that site. And if the we have a asset management based, risk based capital investments program, so that we are looking at the areas of our system that are aging or otherwise poor performing, that need to be need to be renewed. And we fund that renewal based using our rates from our whole customer base. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon. Stuart Riley Austin energy general manager so from the perspective of a large energy user moving into Austin, it's just like any other customer where they are going to pay 100% of the infrastructure costs needed to serve that customer. So that [1:23:09 PM] protects our existing customers from having to foot the bill for a new customer, a new customer coming along and creating bill impacts to anybody else. So we're protecting our customers from that by requiring them to pay for themselves, like Shea mentioned on the waterfront. In addition, similarly to Austin water, our team does annually a grid planning study. And then when we have other large users come along, somebody wants to interconnect to the system. We do additional capacity studies for any of those customers. And so the results of all of those studies go into the work that we're doing. For example, right now, we're doing a lot of projects to increase our transmission import capacity. So those projects are the result of our engineering teams doing those studies. That informs what goes into our capital improvement plan for our projects over the next five years. And I will say also, just as a vertically integrated [1:24:09 PM] utility in ercot, somewhat a utility that has generation, transmission distribution and serves retail customers, we're really uniquely situated to be able to solve for this, because part of this also means, you know, the customer energy programs that we have been doing for so many years with to reduce our customer demand and encourage conservation. And so that also helps us to be ready for any of those grid impacts as we continue to grow as a community. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. I guess I'm not going to get them all in during my first ten minutes. Mayor, sorry about that. Mayor. Mayor. >> I do have a response. I think council member, you're looking at page 414, which is the public health department. And I believe that that is due to a restructuring within the department. So that's not an increase necessarily in the overall budget. They just did a reorganization to move those dollars into that particular program. >> Okay. [1:25:09 PM] >> All right. Thank you. I'll stop there. >> Thank you. >> Very much. >> Thank you. Council member mayor pro tem. >> Thank you mayor. My question is for development services department questions. Good morning. Good afternoon. Excuse me. Director. As this was a theme of last year's budget where we're trying to hold development fees down on small projects, in particular small scale infill development, individual homeowners that are, you know, again, replacing windows or water heater, you know, doing whatever kind of work to the really trying to make an effort to reduce the [1:26:10 PM] impact on those small scale customers who are oftentimes the least able to bear those fees, the large developments, the fees are a much smaller percentage of the overall project. So they're much less sensitive to those fees. And in that discussion, we started talking about how Austin calculates impact fees with regard to the development services department. Could you talk about that a little bit? Do we how do we calculate our our fees when we're we're passing those along to our our citizens and customers. What. >> Reminder from Leslie. >> Charge a permit fee to turn that thing on. >> Hey. >> I'm we'll waive at this time. >> Creativity. >> Keith Morris, director, Austin. >> Development. Services. Afternoon. Mayor. Council members. So to the council [1:27:11 PM] members question. So how do we calculate fees. So the the the big picture is that we take the service. So that's the the reviewer reviewing the plans or the reviewers reviewing plans. It is they're fully burdened cost the hours associated with that. Then we also take support services and citywide overhead. That then becomes the fully burdened cost. The. The. One of the challenging components to this is then. That's essentially, for lack of better words, the numerator. The bottom line denominator is based on anticipated permit volume. And that's based on project. That's. Looking back, we used to do three years. We've tightened it up to, I believe 18 months because of the volatility of the market. The volume of permit applications is not a reflection of the past. It's a reflection of market conditions. So we're also have worked with an economist to better understand the forecasting. But that cost is spread out over [1:28:11 PM] that volume of applications. So when volumes go down, fees go up. When volume goes up, fees go down. That's inherent to how the the model works. >> And I appreciate that answer. And that's exactly what I wanted to know. The volatility is a concern. I mean, both from, I think for the department's planning purposes and from also, I think the customer, the permit payer, you know, you don't want to kind of be guessing how much it's going to be to do it this year as opposed to, to last year with regard to including the administrative costs as part of the overall calculation. And again, I know that is the way you're supposed to do it for an enterprise fund, but is that how other cities calculate their. Because my understanding, again, this is anecdotal, is that they do not include, for example, your payments to legal, the electricity costs for, you know, the support services. [1:29:12 PM] They just look at that reviewer their time and then use that as that kind of the upper limit basis for the, the, the fees that they charge. >> That's correct. Council member cities, there is no one way to do this. Many cities do this in different ways, even if they are cost of service. That may mean for that direct service, not for overhead. Many communities also have some semblance of a fee waiver program, which we do. That is also very not uncommon to adjust fees, even if they are cost of service to either waive fees outright or to reduce fees based on policy priorities. I will also say that our fees, and again, I can't speak to other municipalities, but it is it is indifferent to who is submitting an application. It can be a homeowner just doing an addition, or it can be a new, a new build. The the rate, the fees are charged the same unless council intervenes to to say otherwise. [1:30:13 PM] >> I appreciate that and and again, understandable. I do worry that there is an inherent. There will be. Maybe there has been since we've gone from the general fund model for development services to the enterprise fund model for development services. I think there's an inherent pressure that that creates on the permits, the fees that we charge for the various permits and services, and that that that concerns me especially, again, like I said, for the small projects. And then again, and just for the our own internal kind of planning purposes, you know, in 2022 and 2023, we weren't worried about, you know, the city budget as that peak has ebbed. We're in a, in a, you know, we're fine, but we, we have to think about it and we have to work through, I [1:31:14 PM] think, some of those budgetary challenges. Switching gears right quick, the demolition fund and a director, Martha, and you and I have had many discussions about demolition of properties. And just to give a little bit of background to this, there have been a handful of properties in district four that have largely abandoned properties that have become really public safety threats. One in particular that I'm thinking of, I think caught fire twice. There was a lot of criminal activity on there, and we needed to get that building, you know, torn down a number of other situations. And in our conversations with code enforcement, with dsd, we the budget that dsd had for demolitions, and this is when the city when an owner has completely abandoned any kind [1:32:15 PM] of responsibility. And we've got a very derelict building that is a threat to public health and safety, and we've got to go in there and tear it down. But, you know, in our conversations we had, I want to say 300,000, $400,000 budgeted. And just for one of the structures that we were looking at, I think it was potentially $1 million or more. I just I want to make sure that we're in a situation where the city, when faced with a public safety and health hazard like that, is able to move quickly and demolish a building that, again, by all folks, agree that it needs to be demolished. I just don't want to hesitate too much because of of the cost. What's the current budget? The proposed budget, I should say, for the demolition fund. And how do you how do you feel about that? Is that adequate given the kind of number of, of properties that that come up and you have to deal with. [1:33:16 PM] >> So in the upcoming budget, we're we're more than doubling that amount. The current budget for demolitions is 175,000. We're also doing a in this year's budget, proposing a $325,000 increase on top of that. So the net net with this is $500,000 to help and solve that problem. I'll also mention that this is also kind of taking a whole of government approach to this, because we also understand that these buildings are also concerns for public safety for for our colleagues and fire and the police department, etc. That are we're using and mobilizing those resources to investigate or to respond to buildings and perhaps on fire or whatever it may be, that if those buildings are are demolished and on the ground, that lessens that impact on city resources. Also on the administrative front, that you'll see something later this year to really expedite an emergency demolition process, as councilmember mentioned. >> Thank you. And one of the challenges, this is a minor challenge, but still one was [1:34:17 PM] that I think the council in the past has a five day waiting period. In other words, once the demolition order is issued for for prior council instituted a kind of a five day waiting period. And I know that was done to protect potentially historical structures, those kinds of things like that. And I completely understand that. And that's absolutely fine. That said, there is no waiver available when the structure clearly poses a threat to public health and safety. Where is that what you were alluding to there? Like, where are we on on making sure that when something needs to go down, that we have the money to take it down and that, you know, we can move extremely quickly? >> Yes, sir. So it will be in conjunction with the the city building official and the city fire marshal of looking at these incredibly hazardous buildings where there is either not a time to go through the building standards commission [1:35:17 PM] or that waiting period is going to be very important that the day that that that that building is vacated to be able to go in and demolish for many reasons, including safety reasons. >> Thank you very much, director. And I know I'm at my ten yield. >> Great. Thank thank you. Mayor pro tem councilmember duchen, councilmember alter, councilmember Ellis. >> Thank you mayor. If possible, I'd like to pick back up where I left off with facilities management if they're still available. So I just want to picking up where we were from that one item, which was about the environmental scientists. And you help me understand some more about that. I'm curious, how do they work with the city's water management plan [1:36:18 PM] and help me understand to the extent that we are utilizing staff and resources, or why watershed wouldn't be the appropriate place to, to do this kind of work. >> Good afternoon, councilman Donald Baldwin, assistant deputy director for facilities management. So basically anything from the meter into the building is us. Austin water takes care of the the water to the meter. And we have partnered with them on the water management plan to get their input and make sure we're taking care of that resource in conjunction with them. >> Got it. Okay. Thanks for helping me understand that. I'm going to ask for the help from fleet if they're here also. [1:37:21 PM] >> Jennifer walls. >> And the director of fleet mobility services. >> Thank you. So I'm curious, there's a couple of prioritizations that weren't included but have been shared with us. One is about reducing funding for vehicle equipment rentals from outside vendors, specifically for refuse trucks. I'm curious that if funding was reduced for vehicle and equipment rentals from outside vendors, what departments would largely be impacted by this and to what extent? >> So that contract that we had was with specifically for ar, and it was rental of vehicles for services that are outside their normal scope, scope of work. And so that's primarily what that was for, not in our budget, but maybe to put in their budget. >> Okay. All right. Thank you for explaining that. There's another item in there for reducing funding for repairs in the department. I think the [1:38:22 PM] entire city wide budget, I think the number was 25%, like the equivalent of 25% of city vehicles, excluding the public safety or sworn vehicles. So can you walk me through what that sort of reduction might mean for the all the rest of the vehicles that are not sworn, for instance, would reducing the budget mean that vehicles are get repaired more slowly, or maybe not at all? Does it mean like certain kinds of vehicles or damage are just go unrepaired or mothballed? Help me understand what that reduction would would imply. >> Okay, so we were at bare bones at this point offering up solutions. So what we find, and you may find this in your personal experience with accident repair vehicles, the vendor that we do not do in-house accident repair. So a lot of times toward the end of the year as a cost saving mechanism, we'll say, if a vehicle cannot be repaired [1:39:23 PM] within this budget cycle, we can delay it. And we just kind of pulled numbers from there about what we could save in that fiscal budget year. We don't have no we have no intention of not having that vehicle repair, but it may need to slip to the next year. A lot of times when working with vendors, you can call them and tell them, I want to bring these vehicles in. They'll tell you, hey, it's just going to sit here. We don't have the capacity to repair it. So like I said, that's kind of a timing issue. We were looking at trying to save some money at the end of the year. >> I guess maybe I need to follow up independently, but I'm like earlier with with facilities, what sort of the direct consequence of that? Maybe it's not 25%, maybe it's 10%, but what is the consequence of that? Does that mean departments aren't getting their vehicles back as quickly? Can you expand on that? >> They would get their vehicles back in the time they would have. Ordinarily, we're just talking about a line of funding more than how quickly the vehicle could be repaired. If I go to an accident vendor [1:40:25 PM] and say I have ten vehicles, I need repair, this is minor damage. This isn't major. And they tell me, well, I'm not going to get to those until November. What I spend that money or encumber that money in the existing budget, as opposed to waiting until funding is available in the next year. So the impact, like I said, it would be minor fender benders. We would, if we did it the other way, would place the vehicle at the vendor and possibly get a rental for the department while it's sitting in the lot of the accident repair facility. >> Okay. All right. Thank you for helping expand. That. Is small business or minority business resources. Still with us today? So this is a regarding a, I think an enhancement item that was included. This is about ongoing [1:41:25 PM] funding to support the annual connections conference held at the palmer event center. I'm curious if you guys can share. If not now, maybe this week, some data with us regarding kind of what this event is about, how many constituents does it really serve? Do you have anything like that you can share now or later this week? >> Sure. This is doctor Tamala Saldana. I serve as the assistant director for small minority business resources. The connections conference is a conference for small businesses. That smb are in partnership with economic development and a D put on on an annual basis. This coming year is our fourth year, and we average about 750 vendors. We bring in all of our procurement teams from the departments and our industry partners to include Travis county, a D lending [1:42:28 PM] institutions as well that provides supportive services beyond our reach. In one house as a one stop shop service. >> How long does this conference go on for a one day event? >> It is a one day event. >> Okay, well, I would say if we can connect with your team this afternoon or this week and get some additional details, that would be helpful on that. Sure. Thank you. Am I doing I got maybe one more department left. Is is acme still here? Director means I'm curious. There's a this is a enhancement that's been included in the budget. It's about ongoing funding for maintenance, repair of city owned public art that I [1:43:30 PM] think is funded initially through a ipp. And so that initially funds it, I think through essentially cip spending is my understanding. But what it looks like to me is that we're maintaining it through general fund dollars. And so my question is, can you help me figure out. If if there's a different way, perhaps to plan ahead as we're thinking about these projects so that we're using, we're maybe not having to use general fund dollars and maybe using cip dollars. When I think about what I would use for like a reserve account or debt spending, I would, I would include extending the life of an asset. So can you walk me through what our options are there going forward, or at least your thought process for this item and how it's being maintained? >> Absolutely. This is part of how we're going to begin to maintain our assets. We have around 400 ape in our [1:44:33 PM] collection, and this is just one of those components. So what you're seeing is a $90,000 general fund request. We are also working on the future of how we will maintain our precious inventory. And it does include other funding besides the general fund. And you'll hear that when we come forward with the a P P ordinance modification within the next couple of months. >> So getting back to my question, which is, is there what's the what is the specific thought process for using general fund dollars as opposed to budgeting it in as we purchase or as we think about future ape to incorporate it into that into cip dollars? >> Some of our cip has restrictions, and you cannot use those funds for maintenance. And so that's part of what we're looking at, just the eligibility of the funding when it comes to maintenance versus [1:45:34 PM] the creation of the inventory. And so, again, this is just one of the ways that we will create a bank of, of funding to maintain our collection. It will include general fund as well as capital funding. But there are some stipulations. For example, I think it's bond dollars that we cannot use for maintenance. >> Okay, I know I'm out of time, but I'll follow up on that item. I'm kind of curious also just about the scale of what we're spending on a given year on ape relative to the $90,000 item. So we'll follow up on that. Thank you. >> Council member. Can I clarify that those dollars are actually from the facilities management fund, not the general fund? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Councilmember alter, councilmember, councilmember Laine. >> Thank you very much. I'd like to start with Austin energy. And while you're headed [1:46:34 PM] down, I want to talk a little bit more about the 311 center. There is a reduction in the budget. Is that attributable to the service prioritization that this pilot program that you were talking to councilmember Velasquez about? >> Yes, it is. >> Okay. And and that is that we are going to be not taking calls between 9 P.M. And 7 A.M. Correct. In that prioritization, you had a an amount up to $7.6 million, but we're only doing 1.2. Are we piloting this just on some days of the week or what? What's the difference if between that 1.2 and the full seven? >> Thank you. I should clarify so that 1.2 is the is the total of about 600 000 in savings at 301 as a result of the new hours. And then also our utility contact center currently stays open until 9 P.M. And it will stay open until 7 P.M. We've benchmarked [1:47:36 PM] with other utilities and customers calling in to pay their bill up to 9 P.M. Wasn't at all common, so that would mean that that that the utility contact center would also be somewhat reducing its hours. So that's the sum of both of those. What the original prioritization amount was and what we were doing as we went through the exercise of finding budgetary prioritizations was we were looking to hit a target number, and we were looking for anything that we could find to propose that could achieve that level of budgetary reductions while keeping the lights on. And so by doing that, we were looking at we could reduce. In a in a more in a more drastic way, reduce the level of contract staffing that help support at peak times the utility contact center. That's what would achieve that level. [1:48:37 PM] Ultimately, we decided that that level of service reductions would just be too much and that this was really the right level of, of, of cuts to be able to make and still be able to provide an excellent level of service. >> So if you were to move all the way to the 7.6, would those additional cuts only be at the customer centers, or would there be additional cuts to 311. >> That would be for both for reducing the contractor spend by 50%. But what we found was the call wait times would would just increase dramatically. And just the, the level of service would be too greatly diminished. >> Do you know, or can you provide to us the volume that you get at the customer centers? Do you. >> We get and you brought this up at a work session the other day. So we looked into that and we get about 10,000 walk in customers to our customer service centers per month. And [1:49:42 PM] predominantly that's customers who pay in cash or pay by check and are looking for a way to, to pay without an additional fee, because they could do that at a, you know, at an HEB or some other locations, but there would be a fee associated with it through those payment processing providers. So by doing it at the Austin energy walk in center, they can do it without that additional fee. That represents about 88% of the transactions that take place at those walk in customer service centers. But those but there are customers that also come in for information or assistance related to the customer assistance program. We have events there related to energy efficiency rebates, and we provide information to customers like that as well. And it also is is an ongoing location for us to have events like we have customer preparedness pop ups and, and as a reminder, this is the city of Austin utilities customer center. It's not just the Austin energy, but we operate it on behalf of all of the, the city services that appear on [1:50:43 PM] the, on the bill. >> Have we ever done an analysis of the cost to operate the centers versus if we were to just cover that marginal fee, if they went to the HEB? So if, you know, HEB might charge them $2 to pay their bill, but we pay for that fee so that there's no cost to the customer, but we're no longer having to operate that entire customer center. Have we ever looked at what would be more efficient? >> I don't believe we have looked at that. The cumulative cost overall for all of our walk in customer centers is $1.6 million per year. And it's not just the act of making the payment. Some customers need to come in. There's a dispute between them and their landlord as to when their services started or when it should roll rolled over and they bring in their their lease agreement, and then they can work with somebody on our team to look at that lease agreement and make sure that they're billed appropriately, that their lease [1:51:44 PM] didn't start until X date and instead of another date. The other thing is that the, our, our walk in customer care centers have Spanish speaking people on staff as well, so they can get services in Spanish. And then we also have additional languages available should that arise. >> Okay. Can you changing gears a bit, there's a $19.4 million decrease in the cost to operate stp and fp. What can you just elaborate? >> Yeah, there there are certain years when at our jointly owned projects, there are more maintenance outages than other years. So for example, in the current year that we're in, there is a significant maintenance outage at php and two significant maintenance outages at stp. And next year there isn't one at php and there's only one at stp. So it's just cyclical. It just depends. And you know, whether it's nuclear refueling outages and things like that, just by [1:52:44 PM] nature, they happen at a different cadence than just every year. >> Okay. When thinking about your, the rate increase, the 5% on the, the rates themselves are, is that increase to is some of that increase going to reserves to increase cash on hand, or is that increase solely to cover additional operating costs? >> My recollection is that this year our our margin is only at about $2 million, so about 1%. So it's very, very fine margin in terms. So we're not yet able in this coming fiscal year to start rebuilding our reserves. As a reminder, this current year and last year we were operating at a deficit. So we've we've been living off our savings. Eventually we will have to replenish our savings to get back to where we'd like to be on days cash on hand. This coming year isn't going to get us there. It's really if we [1:53:46 PM] stay on the on the track that we're currently on in terms of recovering costs and being able to replenish those reserves. >> Okay. And my last question for you is there are some planned in your in the Paige about you. You have the on page 48, that breakdown of whether it's the customer charge or community benefit charge, there's a significant decrease in both energy efficiency services and the customer assistance program. Are those resulting in any programmatic decrease or diminishment or why are those going down so much? >> Yes, and thank you for this clarification. The opportunity to clarify. So from year to year, what we're doing is we're trying to set the pass through's at such a level where we get to zero balance, where there's not an over recovery or an under recovery. And so we continue to fine tune that as years come along. Some years you might have more billed [1:54:46 PM] revenue and then you create an over recovery and then you lower it the next year. So what's happening here is while these rates are going down, there is no service level decrease whatsoever. In fact, we have because of customer growth, we have more money coming into our energy efficiency services, even though there's a rate cut on that particular fee. We have more revenue for that and we have additional spend that's correlate that correlates to that. And so we're able to spend more on our customer energy programs this coming year, especially in the solar area, but also with demand response as well. >> Okay. >> Very good. I have one final question for director roalson. And while she comes down, I just have a comment related to tp. It is similar to the comment or the questions I had with for director means about the sound permits. There are the filming right of way fees have grown and I have a similar [1:55:46 PM] concern about. Once again, our creative community. You know, the film community is that potentially limiting our ability to have that sector contribute and grow. So just want to flag that for you. But director Olsen, my, my one question for you is you talked to councilmember Ellis about why the rates are going up, where they are and specifically around the wastewater charges to cover the wastewater treatment plant. Can you talk about on the water side, what are those rate increases attributable to? >> Certainly. Thank you, councilmember Shea roalson, Austin water. I'm going to talk about kind of three areas for water. One is a big portion of our of our operating costs for water treatment plants is our chemical costs. And those have gone up from $8 million a year in fiscal year 23 to 16.6 million in fiscal year 26. And that's just an indicator of the kinds of cost increases we're seeing on the water side. The [1:56:46 PM] second thing is we are making significant capital improvements in the water side, not not one big, large project like walnut creek wastewater plant, but many projects around our system to improve our resiliency. So our cip spend on the water side is up about 50% in the last two years. And then third, this by incrementally increasing our water we're able to get up to the level of rate support that we need to make the kinds of water supply, resiliency improvements and diversification of our water supply in order to support asr, brackish groundwater desalination. Some of the other water supply investments that we'll be making will be ready for that, without having to have the significant rate increases that we've had to have on the wastewater side, it'll be more incremental for our customers. >> Thank you very much. I'm done. >> Thank you, councilmember councilmember, followed by councilmember Lang. [1:57:49 PM] >> Does Mr. Riley need to get back on the microphone or. You seemed excited about something. >> Sorry. I apologize. My chief financial officer for Austin energy, Stephanie, just corrected me on something. We do indeed have $2 million in excess in our budget, but that is after $8 million in reserve transfers. So this budget does have $8 million going back into our reserves. Just wanted to correct that. Thank you. >> It's fun to see a man that happy when he's told he's wrong. >> Mayor, I need my time back. I'm just kidding. I'm going to have a couple more questions for transportation, public works. And then I've got one for watershed at the very end. I wanted to ask firstly about the vision zero program. So it looks like in this year's amended budget for the budget that we're currently operating under right now, the number had gone up from what we had [1:58:49 PM] approved in the fall to our ending number. According to one of the documents that I looked at. But either way, it's still proposed to stay at that that higher number. Can you talk to me about some of the enhanced programs vision is going through right now? >> Jim Dale. >> Deputy director for transportation and public works if you're talking about the increase in our budget for this upcoming year, those are just really being driven by cost drivers for us. So there's not additional if you vision zero projects going out on the street. >> I see it's that the individual materials are costing more money. >> Well, it's that it's just the the costs of running the city is part of that as well. And so it's going to be our cost drivers for our office space. There's going to be utilities and so forth that are [1:59:51 PM] adding to to our cost for the vision zero program, all of our programs. >> Okay. >> All right. Well, that's less exciting than I thought it was going. >> To be. >> Sorry about that. >> That's okay. It's not your fault. And then I wanted to ask about the metro bike program. I know we've been in conversations, and a number of us are on the board of capmetro as well about the e-bike battery fire that occurred. I know they just announced that they're going to be deploying some of that fleet back in the UT area in time for school to start. Can you talk to me a bit about the financial partnership for trying to get the rest of that fleet back into the docking stations? >> Certainly council members, yes. They did experience a catastrophic fire which impacted their barn where they recharge the units for the bike share. Just real quickly in review. About 2 or 3 years ago, the city did enter into an agreement for capmetro to be [2:00:51 PM] the operator of our city bike share program. And the reason for that is we wanted to create a seamless trip planning service for our community, meaning you could plan your trip with the bus pass and then move on to a bike share all in one easy application. Of about a year and a half ago, we were awarded a $15 million grant from txdot to expand and triple the number of bike share stations, as well as fully electrify our fleet. Prior to that, we were maybe 30% electrified. And so we've been executing on that agreement and progressing. It's, I believe, a 5 or 6 year implementation plan. And so we we are like midway through that expansion, when we did experience that catastrophic fire. Now they did capmetro did enlist the [2:01:53 PM] services of a third party investigator. And from what I understand, that investigative report is forthcoming. It's not been finalized. But in the interim, they have proposed and announce a staggered, like you said, revamping of the program to get the bike share online again in time for the UT semester, strategically picking those locations where they would have the highest ridership. But we do enjoy a good relationship with capmetro, providing that bike share service and look forward to that continued partnership. >> Okay. >> Thank you for that. And then I've got one more question about gis staffing. Does this proposed budget reflect any changes in transportation and public works data and map making staff from the department? I know we've been talking about consolidations for our it folks, right? Are [2:02:55 PM] they staying with dpw or are they moving or how how is the department working through that conversation currently? >> Yes, our department utilizes gis mapping in a number of different business areas as a as a very valuable tool to plan and manage our work. Right now, our department, transportation public works, is scheduled in phase two of the 1ats consolidation, if you will, which will begin in January of 27. But we are in conversations with a T S preparing for that in terms of our gis technicians for this budget, we have them remaining at current levels with the department. >> Okay. So they'll they'll stay in the department for this fiscal year. Is that accurate. >> At the beginning of fiscal year? And then we will be working with a T S on the phase two implementation of the one a, T S and then working closely with our staff, with our team members and a T S to make those [2:03:56 PM] business decisions where they're most appropriately centralized and where they still remain, should remain to provide the most, you know, business value for our department. Okay. Anthony segura, assistant director do you have anything to add? No. You're good. Okay. >> He's just behind you, nodding in agreement. We'll keep watching that. The the data sets that dpw has been procuring over a number of years are some of my favorite at the city, and I want to make sure that folks have access to, to the data and that it's seamless and people are able to get the attention that they need. I know there's one tool where people can ask for stop signs and stop lights, and check in to see how many of their neighbors have asked for that same, you know, infrastructure or if it's been evaluated. And that is some of the, the calls and emails that we get very frequently is, you know, why? Why is there not a stop sign here? Why is there not a stop light there? And so I think that's something that is really important that folks like to engage very closely with the city on and just want [2:04:57 PM] to make sure that all the tools that you have remain available and updated the way that they have been. >> Thank you, councilmember. >> Okay. Thank you. Now, if I've got a little more time, I will ask director morales to come up. Good to see you. I wanted to ask about the 1.3 million net increase for 18 positions in support of education and training activities to meet maintenance needs, partially offset by reductions to creek and drainage channel maintenance contracts. Can you talk to me a bit about what programmatic updates are happening and what we can see out of that increase? >> Yes. Great question, council member. My name is George morales, watershed protection director. And so in that particular case, we're adding more operation and maintenance crews to the green stormwater infrastructure. As we've evaluated efficiency of [2:05:58 PM] external contracts, we're seeing quite a bit of an escalation on contractor costs, and that's going to help save the city money by bringing some of this work internal. >> Okay. So it'll be fewer contracts and we're going to be doing that work in house. >> Yes. We'll be facing some contracts down on their scope of work and increasing our in-house crew capability. >> Okay, that sounds good. And then are there any updates to the clean creek crew work? I know that's you all have your drainage utility fee resource recovery handles the clean community fee, but there's some partnerships along the way. Can you tell me if all of those efforts are going to be maintained? >> Yes. And to get more specifics on that, I would turn it over to our partners at Austin resource recovery. As you know, it's funded through the clean community fee, but we do partner and identify locations together. But they run that program. >> Okay. >> That's all the questions I have. >> Thank you, thank you. >> Thank you, council member, council member Laine. >> Thank you. I have a follow up to actually, I think I'll start with a question for tp W. [2:07:00 PM] I noticed and appreciated where you mentioned the efforts to decrease reliance on contractual and consultant support and expand the use of in-house personnel. Of course, we've also discussed situations in which consulting can be quite helpful, but I'm really interested. I'm really glad to hear that you're focusing on that question. I'm wondering if you can quantify the number of consultant or contractor that will be placed with positions. Talk about the net cost impact. This universe of questions. >> Thank you for your question. Council member. Yeah, we are bringing in-house some of the capabilities around our professional services contracts. We are still retaining some professional service contracts, namely to support our traffic signal operations. And while I have the contract contract amounts, I don't have the specific number of personnel [2:08:01 PM] that would be dedicated to filling those gaps. But I can certainly follow up with you on that. >> Okay. That would that would be great and appreciate it. And, and I guess, you know, which areas that shift is being made in as well, right? Yep. Thank you. I'm also wondering if, and this isn't a question for tp, you just created the question for me. I'm wondering what other departments may have taken similar steps and very interested in understanding which departments are most heavily reliant on external consultant or contractor ftes. >> Okay, we'll we'll take a look at that and get you some response. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. And then I wanted to circle back to councilmember vela just left, but unfortunately, I'll have to talk to him separately. But I wanted to circle back to the questions that he was asking, development services about administrative burden and the handling of that. I know this conversation has come up a couple times during this past year. I'll say up front that I [2:09:03 PM] am perfectly comfortable with including administrative burden as part of the real cost of service. But I am wondering, and I know you said in your answer that every city is different, but I'm wondering if you've looked at comparables in terms of handling any specifics are available on that. >> Sure. >> Okay. >> Keith Mars, director, Austin development services we have looked at peer cities. Let me just give you a cost comparison for San Antonio and Dallas. Just take a single family home by way of example. So currently in this year, the the the fee for review and inspection, all things being equal, just your average single family home is about 23 to $2400 this next year. I'm sorry. Let me rephrase that. This year it is a 2855 in fy 27. The proposal [2:10:03 PM] is 2966. That is, with the proposed 10% cap. Anything over that cap is what the the stabilization, the residential stabilization fund will cover. Even with that, you look at our peer cities going back to 25. So it's a little bit of of not exact comparison, but it's just one year off for San Antonio. The comparable the same amount for the same product would be 1750 $1,750. Again that's compared to our 3000. Dallas is about 2100. That gives you a comparison for peer cities that when you look across the state of Texas, large medium cities, we are higher than every peer city. >> Okay. I appreciate that information very much. And as it relates to development services, but also more broadly as it relates to the city's shared services and how that is modeled as we move forward. I [2:11:07 PM] don't necessarily need this right now, but I am very interested in better understanding how our assessment of administrative burden and how much we're billing back to departments tracks with what other cities are doing, at least at the level of understanding what ratios people are applying. So I'm just flagging that. And that's the last question I have for you all. Now, I'd like to, with my last few minutes here, turn the tables and address the frequently asked question that I have heard as recently as this weekend during our district's budget town hall. But before I do that, I really want to thank all the departments who have come out today and sat in the hot seat with us, and also for the great handling of some very tough questions during our district six town hall this weekend by director Lang. So the question I want to briefly address is why is Austin's budget so big? Is it inflated? What is going on with this? So I bring up this question in part because the departments that we have [2:12:08 PM] engaged with today are a big part of the answer. We are unique in Austin. Maybe we might even say weird in that we own our own electric utility. This model ensures that every dollar stays in Austin, funding our infrastructure and services that our city relies on, and the programs that our community values, all while delivering electric bills that consistently rank among the lowest. In Texas, Austin energy is the eighth largest publicly owned electric utility in the country, and this model has made Austin a national leader while delivering some of the lowest electric bills in Texas. We also run our own airport and our water utility, and we get great benefit from having their sole purpose be fulfilling the needs of our community. But it does have an impact on how we look at budget. Austin's budget does end up big because not because we're spending more to deliver the same services, but because our city delivers more core services ourselves and brings to our residents and [2:13:08 PM] businesses all the benefits that come from ownership. But with ownership comes an obligation to ensure that our enterprise departments are run as efficiently as possible. So I know that my colleagues and I will continue to ask these tough questions about things like administrative burden and ratios and all of the other nitty gritty, and I absolutely want to express my appreciation for the careful work of our budget and department staff as we as we fulfill our own responsibilities here on the dais. Thank you. >> Thank you. Council member, council member duchen, did you want us to come back to you? >> Thank you. Mayor, I have one more question for Austin. >> Good afternoon. Stewart Riley Austin, energy general manager. >> I'm not sure you're on. >> I'll just get a little closer. My apologies. >> I thought maybe our power failed. >> Thank you, GM Riley. I know we were talking about the three on one operating hours you mentioned and handing off calls, [2:14:10 PM] 301 calls that may, I guess, impact other departments. Can you walk me through how the center that you run impacts the other departments as Austin energy? Craig gross revenue from this arrangement, from essentially addressing other department three one challenges or issues or concerns that people bring, but because you're administering your. Help me understand the financial relationship between how that works. If we want call center. >> Absolutely. It's not a revenue generator for us. What we do is we have the overall cost of running the 311 call center and other associated activities of 311. But if we handle a call, let's say it's a call that somebody is asking for information about, you know, picking up a dead animal or something. And then the time that it takes to handle that call would then get allocated [2:15:10 PM] to the appropriate department, who is then providing the service, carrying out the service request for that activity. So each call is tracked, the time it takes to, to handle that call, and is then allocated out to those departments. We get the department's estimate of what that allocation is going to, to look like in March, so that they can go into their budget year knowing what that's going to look like for them. But it's all based on actual time it takes to handle the calls and what departments issue is being resolved on that call or via service request. >> And then they are essentially reimbursed. It's like a reimbursement model. Then based on the amount of time that you all are spend per call per correct department, correct. And then that's all resolved. Or you, you're doing an analysis in March, and that's helping prep for the budget cycle for the following year for both you and the departments. >> Correct. >> Okay. I would be curious to just understand the if you if [2:16:10 PM] it's possible to get some data on that, what that looks like as you're as potentially call volume and other things are changing year to year. So I'd like to visit afterwards if possible and see if you can help collect some of that data for us. >> Absolutely. Okay. And the model is similar to the model that we use for, you know, we're the city of Austin utilities provider. And so their, their costs, you know, Austin water, you know, other utility departments covering their share of costs for the running of that operation as well. >> What about how does this relate to in any way? The three one app? Is that also administered by you all, or is that separately? And what sort of the flow that's happening between the app and the call center or vice versa, or not at all. >> That app is administered by us, but it would not it would not result in an allocation for that person's time being spent. If it was, you know, if it was [2:17:11 PM] another department's time or service request that was generated, obviously, it's a it's a, it's a cheaper way for us to handle those service requests and getting those into the >> You then than a person taking the call. >> Okay, so for the app, there's no sort of reimbursement model. You can sort of that's for the call center. >> I will, I will confirm how the costs for the, for the administration of the app work and get back to you at the same time. >> Okay. I'd appreciate that. I'll, we'll follow up and get some details, I appreciate it. Sounds good. Thank you. That's all I've got, mayor. >> Thank you. Members. I don't have anybody else that's indicating. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, it breaks my heart. Mayor pro tem followed by councilmember Siegel. >> Sorry, mayor. >> Just one more. Well, actually, a couple more questions for director Keith Morris. >> Councilmember duchen always says he has one more question and then take seven minutes on the five. He asked, but so be careful on that. Christa. [2:18:18 PM] >> Director Morris, thank you very much for the cross city comparison for the permitting fees regarding the construction of a new house. I think that's just extremely helpful. And again, we just want to be conscious of that as we move forward with especially, again, affordability. We're trying to, you know, do a lot of things. We really have to watch our permitting fees. I did want to ask, does that figure that you quoted, that 2800 ish, 2900 proposed amount? Does that include the transportation impact fee and or the parkland dedication fee? >> Keith Morris Austin development services no, sir, it does not. That's just for the permitting fees. >> Got it. So for someone that's again, let's say doing a new duplex that would be those would be additional. I will hold off on. I don't know if you know how many how much those are. But but I do know that the cost can be quite [2:19:19 PM] substantial. So I just want to again be conscious of that. And my sense would be that other cities we went through the parkland dedication kind of discussion years ago when the state changed and we had to adapt. And you know, Austin charges, you know, significantly significant park parkland dedication fees and transportation impact fees, which I completely understand. I completely support. Again, I just do think that we should be conscious of the overall impact of all these fees and how it affects affordability. Then to that point, I had an amendment last year on creating a a working group, and I just kind of wanted to and this is, I think, that illustration or that discussion right there where, you know, from again, from the department's perspective, you know, you're looking at your fees and what you charge from the homeowner or the builders perspective, perspective, they don't really care which department is charging the fees. They're just [2:20:19 PM] wondering, you know, how much is this going to cost? And to that, we asked for a stakeholder group to be put together. The again, discuss the considerations, the continued scaling of fees to the size and complexity of the project, development processes and fee schedules, and other Texas cities. And again, thank you so much for daylighting that information. You know, consolidation of review of reviews, staff capacity to make sure and process a number of other factors. And again, I know it's been a it's been a year and there's been a, a lot going on and on the table. We also asked for the, for example, that technical advisory review panel, which I think has been very helpful overall to, to weigh in. Where are we on that on that process? >> Keith Mars again? Yes, sir. I'm happy to say that you'll see a memo wrapping this up, but we took that from council to heart. And you've seen you're going to see action on every one of those. So let me start with just a couple of key ones that are germane to the budget. One is controlling cost. [2:21:21 PM] One of the things you're going to see or you will see in the development services budget is, is a flat budget, I think $7,000 total increase of a $70,000 or $70 million operation. So keeping that flat was really key to control the things that we can control. The direction was also to explore third party review and inspection contract, not to take away from core staffing, but to supplement staffing such that, again, going back to the volume, we do not control the permit volume that comes in. That's that's a function of the market local conditions, consumer price, you name. There's a lot of outside factors. But third party allows us to, to, to operate with a core function. And then when volume goes up, we're able to turn on that third party or we have a key vacancy. So that council just approved that contract in may. We're actually already putting it to use scaling fees. You're going to see that in this year's budget. We have infill plat. We have small project. One of the things that we're introducing I'm actually really excited about is more performance based approach to, to expenses. What [2:22:21 PM] I mean by that is we've introduced a concept of we're reducing some fees to cut down the number of cycles that a development takes so that they pay less fees. However, if you go over those cycles and it's of your fault, you're not responding to comments, you're not getting good quality plans submitted, you're paying update fees. So that that helps control costs where we where we can. We're also looking at how do we diversify the funding model? For all the reasons that this council has identified that we took to heart. And that's where you see fee waivers, where you see the stabilization, where you also see moving some of the functions of development services that are better housed at the city corporate function that can be that can be paid for elsewhere to really provide better city services, so that the core function of our department is to be the, the operating entity for, for permitting inspection and really do that and do that well. So all of those things that were in the memo we are working through, you see, you're going to see either have seen change [2:23:22 PM] or are seeing change in that. And we will wrap that up in a memo back to council shortly. >> Thank you very much, director. I very much appreciate all the efforts and looking forward to to seeing the memo. And again, from a big picture perspective, I just want to make sure that we're prepared for for the next cycle. I know that there's not a lot of building activity right now for multiple reasons, but I just want to make sure that when there is that, that we're not hindering, especially the small scale developments where people want to add an Adu or, you know, or doing a small scale project where, where the delays and, and costs can really be a major factor. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem council member Siegel. >> Thank you, mayor. Director Lang want to ask a little bit about graffiti abatement or. Director Mars. Thank you. Can you share a little bit about why we're adding $900,000 for graffiti abatement in the budget? >> I'm sorry councilmember, [2:24:23 PM] repeat that again in the 900. >> $900,000 for graffiti abatement. Could you explain what that's about? >> Yes, sir. So so graffiti abatement on this is on private property. So in the in the past, we did not have an active graffiti abatement program in the city on private property. It was a please go abate your your your graffiti this past year again, through council direction, we had a, a pilot program where we hire some temporary staff and we administer the contract. That program was, let's just say, highly successful to the point that we we'd already spent the money within maybe a quarter to half of the fiscal year. So based on the success of that, this is also similar aligned to the, the, the demolition work of taking that pilot program, making it full time. So you're going to see full time employees, you're going to see the, the, the commodities that they need, vehicles, radios, etcetera. That is. So the way that this operates, at least [2:25:24 PM] now is we when we receive a request for that private buildings graffiti, we will go out, notify the owner, give them an opportunity to to abate the the nuisance. If they don't respond, then we have the opportunity to go in and abate it ourselves and then place a lien on the property to try and recoup that cost. That is what that core, what the graffiti abatement team does do, and that's scaling this up to provide that as a core function of the department. >> Okay. So it's designed to be revenue neutral over time. >> Over time. Yes. For right now, it is being largely funded out of the reserve balance of the code fund. But it is also to recognize kind of the core function of the department. And then again, based on council direction of the importance of of graffiti and abating that. >> Okay. And so this wouldn't apply to abating graffiti on city property. >> On public property, correct? No, sir. We work with as one [2:26:26 PM] city to make sure that city properties are are maintained. We work and we do make sure that we work in conjunction with partner departments on that. >> Okay. Thank you. That's that's it for you, sir. And then director Lang, just want to ask a little bit about general professional consulting contracts. My colleague, councilman Fuentes kind of opened the conversation, and I guess I heard you talk about, you know, I guess under $2 million in contracts held or paid for specifically by general fund. Right. But I guess, could you share is there a thumbnail figure like that for general and professional consulting contracts held by internal services departments? >> Yes. And this is. So when we look at internal and support [2:27:27 PM] services departments, we are it's a number of departments that are included. So you think through building services or excuse me, facilities management, what was previously called capital contracting, capital delivery services, communications and public information arts, economic development, financial services, human resources, iso, law management services, office of the city auditor, small business resource and wireless communications and the some from the. Auditor was 53.8 million. The total support and internal services spend was about 14 million. With the big portion being in it services [2:28:28 PM] about seven. It looks like it's in it services and part of that includes some Ila costs. And so when in the universe that they looked at it included some of the interlocal agreement costs as well as consultant costs. And so that's some of the nuance that we're still digging into. >> And so when you bring this back to us with this report you've talked about, is it going to go within each office or department, and then is it going to go contract by contract? How much specificity are we going to get? >> I don't have contract by contract. Now. I think what. I don't have a contract by contract to give you by tomorrow. But I think that's more detail that we can dig into. And, and part of the challenge that we've seen is when we have city wide master agreements digging into it, because the department that led that agreement is the department of record. But the spend on that agreement is the [2:29:29 PM] department that actually did the Spann. And so separating those things out have been a bit of a challenge that we're trying to dig into more, more closely. >> Thank you. And just as you know, we have, I guess, a next Thursday deadline to prepare our budget amendments. And I. Efcc's is there a rule of thumb if we cut $1 from internal services, how much would come back to the general fund? >> It's about 50%. 50%. >> And how about for enterprise departments for if we cut a dollar of consulting contract for an enterprise department, how much would come back to the general fund? >> None. >> None. Okay. Because it would. All right. Okay. Fair enough. All right. Thanks very much, mayor. >> Thank you. Council member members. Anybody else got questions? All right. With that being said, I will say thank you to all the city staff on behalf of all of us. I think people have said that, but it bears repeating. We appreciate the the level of detail and the great work that you show up with and knowledge base. So thank you for doing that. You [2:30:29 PM] still got you got more. >> I just have one more thing I know you all are working on potential amendments. Please rely on my team and I, if you have questions about the amendments that you are considering, so we can make sure that we are coordinating and answering any questions about funding sources and impacts for those potential amendments. Thank you. >> Good. Thank you, members. And yes, mayor pro tem. >> I just wanted to say that it's a pleasure to have council member Vanessa Fuentes back on the dais. And just a hearty welcome back. >> Yep. Good, good, good. So as a reminder, Thursday will meet at beginning at 10:00. It will be a it'll be both a work session and a charter amendment vote. There is a 3:00 time certain for that meeting. So what will happen is if we're if we are done before 3:00, we [2:31:32 PM] will recess until 3:00, at which time we will have a budget public hearing. We will also at that public hearing, it'll be about the maximum tax rate and the public hearing on the budget. We will set a maximum tax rate at this meeting. You want to sign up at the public hearing at the three, it's a 3:00 time, certain for a meeting that will be called to order at 10:00. So it will be the same as we do at all of our meetings. In terms of you're needing to sign up in advance. And if you go to the clerk's website, it is the envelope for when you can begin signing up and when it's time to end signing up. It's written up there, members. Unless there's objection, there's no further business to come before the Austin city council at this meeting. So without objection, the Austin city council is adjourned on July 28th, 2026 at 2:32 P.M. Thanks, everybody. See you on Thursday.