City Council Work Session Transcript – 9/22/2026 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 9/22/2026 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 9/22/2026 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. [8:59:06 AM] Good morning everybody, it’s 9 o’clock in the morning on September 22nd, 2026, and I will call to order this work session of the Austin city council. We are meeting in the city council chambers located in city hall at 301 west second street in Austin, Texas, and we have a quorum of the city council present. The way we're going to operate today is I'm going to. As you can tell, I've just called a meeting to order. [9:00:26 AM] I want to say a couple things about that. And then we're going to recess the work session so that the mayor pro tem, who is the chair of the Austin energy utility oversight committee, can call that meeting to order and conduct that meeting. And then we'll come back to the Austin city council work session. All I want to say about the work session before we break is that items a 21 and a 31 were originally pulled by council member duchen. He has. Pulled his pulling. Is that the way to say that? Yeah, he's he's actually put them back on the agenda. And so we're not going to take those two up. We will just go straight to the briefings when we come back. With that being said, if there's not an objection, we will recess the Austin city council at 9:01 A.M. We will come back as soon as the Austin energy utility oversight committee meeting is conducted. And we recessed at 901, and I'll turn it over to the mayor pro tem. [9:47:28 AM] >> Thank you very much, mayor pro tem, I'll call back to order the work session of the Austin city council at 9:47 A.M. On September 22nd. Members. As I indicated, we have two items there, both briefings, but we also have a number of people that have signed up to speak primarily on the first item, which is item b1, but there are also a couple of people that signed up to speak on item b2. So without objection, what we'll do is we'll have the speaker speak first and then we'll have the briefings. If that if if that works. All right. That being said, I'll turn it over to the city clerk to call names when she calls names, as you're called, please come forward and have a seat. That way we know you're here, we know you want to speak, and we can move efficiently. For those who will follow you as speakers, they won't be held up. So if you please. [9:48:19 AM] >> I have a few remote speakers for b1. The first is Bridget Tobin. Bridget, are you there? Please unmute. Pam. Madhuri. [9:48:42 AM] >> Hi, my name is Pam Madeira. I'm a native austinite. I love the city. I appreciate this council for having this work session today. I am here to speak on the separation of the 311911 from the full public safety regime. I want to make sure that we as a community, do not confuse Independence with coordination. What I feel like our community really needs right now is one system where police, fire and ems have the same picture of an emergency, the same real time understanding of what is going on, and not another layer of bureaucracy between the person making the 911 call and the team that is attempting to respond to it. I think we're in a very sensitive time in the city of Austin right now, where the community is very concerned about fiscal responsibility, budgeting and the like. And I feel like by separating these two, we are moving from the community goal of, you know, financial efficiency, better use of taxpayer funds and greater integration into a structure that's creating more organizational separation, bureaucracy and cost. So I would respectfully request the council consider keeping 911 call with the overall public safety regime. So thank you for taking the time to look at this issue today. [9:50:24 AM] >> Lewis Granger. [9:50:30 AM] >> Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Council and Mr. City manager. My name is Lewis Granger. I as well, I'm a lifelong austinite currently residing in district nine. I'm speaking in opposition to the proposed creation of a standalone joint emergency communications department. The recent report from mission critical partners recommends enhancing the existing system already. Significant improvements with faster emergency response times in all ten districts. I believe most austinites that have a legitimate concern for 911 response times in this city were confused and frankly baffled by the city council vote in August, prior to receiving the results of the very report, it was requested that vote and the result was at best a hasty decision and at worst totally irresponsible. We have seen the results and continue to struggle with the previous mayor and council's anti first responder agenda, and how it has now inarguably can be viewed as misguided and damaging. Please don't make the same mistakes. Please reconsider. Thank you. [9:51:50 AM] >> Okay, I'm going to move to in person speakers for b1, Stacy Schmidt, Jennifer Stephens, Roger Borgelt, corby jastrow and grace enters. [9:52:07 AM] >> Mr. Schmidt. [9:52:08 AM] >> Good morning, mayor and council. Thank you. I'm Stacy Schmidt with opportunity. Austin. I'm here this morning to ask you all not to move forward with creating a standalone 911 department in August. Many of, or several of you voted to move forward on separating 911 call taking from the Austin police department. Despite the concerns that were brought forward from our emergency leaders and staff and the city manager. Now that the findings are in front of you and you have the report, I believe that support that report supports a different path. Here's what I understand to be true. Every council district is seeing faster 911 response times than in 2024. Across across both high priority and low priority calls. Also, Austin has already created a mental health line into 911, and since that was added, there has been 35,000 calls that have been directly routed to integral care. The city's consultants have recommended strengthening the current system and an estimated $1.7 million. Rather than standing up a new department, a 2.5 million. That itself would not improve response times. [9:53:21 AM] Austin has made real, measurable progress on 911 through steady investment and operational improvement. Many of those things you all were a part of making happen. I respectfully ask the council to reconsider the position that was taken in August, and direct the staff to move forward, under the recommendation of the consultant, to strengthen the system we already have in place with civilian leadership, quality assurance technology and continued training. That is the path that builds on the progress without cost disruption and uncertainty of creating a new department from scratch. Thank you. [9:54:00 AM] >> Thank you, Mr. Mcgill. [9:54:03 AM] >> Good morning, mayor and council. My name is Roger Borgelt. I'm a lifelong austinite and a resident of district ten with an office in district eight. I. I'm also here to ask the council to reconsider the decision that was taken in August regarding the 911 call center. I understand you're going to get a briefing in just a few minutes from mission critical partners that have now released their final report. Mission critical partners was tasked with reviewing the 911 operations, and their final recommendation is to retain civilian 911 call taking within APD while adding dedicated civilian emergency communications leadership, targeted technology and improvements, and a dedicated quality assurance team. This council allocated in August 1.4 million in the fy 2627 budget to create a standalone office of joint communications before receiving the final consultant report. Austin has spent the last several years rebuilding public safety capacity and restoring confidence for city services, undoing that momentum for an untested new department isn't the reform Austin needs. [9:55:16 AM] This enhancement approach is estimated at 1.7 million, while the standalone department approach is estimated at 2.5 million. This standalone approach would not would it would add new leadership and overhead without inherently improving response times or customer experience. And I think that's what you'll see your own consultants found the city has continued to navigate tough budgets over the last few years. We don't think it's the time to. I don't think it's time to stand up an entirely new department with its own ongoing leadership. So I'm asking the council to reconsider the August decision that was made before you had this report. And now that the report is out, the council should follow its own consultant's recommendations. [9:55:59 AM] >> Haam. [9:56:02 AM] >> Good morning, mayor, city council, I'm Jennifer Stevens. I am also here to ask for you to respectfully reconsider the decision made in August. I'm a mom and a small business owner in the community, and I'm also a volunteer serving as president of the board of the central Texas public safety commission. When someone calls 911, they are likely facing one of the worst moments of their lives maybe a heart attack, a fire, an assault, a choking baby. We should treat any change to the first point of emergency contact with extraordinary care. The shooting at Buford's really brought this home for me. Some of my employees were there. Some of my children's best friends were there. Police officers and medics reached the scene in one minute after the first 911 call. Absolutely extraordinary and no doubt saving so many lives in an emergency seconds matter. [9:57:01 AM] Austin is currently answering more than 97% of 911 calls within 15 seconds, exceeding the national benchmark. Our call takers have also worked with mental health clinicians since 2020 to connect appropriate callers with specialized care. The city commissioned an expert review, and I'm glad you did. Its recommendations are clear. Keep the 911 call center within a pdapd while improving the leadership technology, quality assurance and call processing. And those are improvements we should make. Moving the call, taking into a separate department, does not by itself make an emergency response faster. The experts would say that it does add cost complexity and transition risk when lives depend on fast, coordinated response, that risk is simply not worth taking. I urge you to act on the report's recommendations and those of the city manager, the deputy city manager for public safety and our chiefs. [9:58:05 AM] >> Thank you very much, Mr. Jastrow. [9:58:08 AM] >> Good morning. Excuse me. Good morning, mayor and council. My name is corby jastrow and I'm a resident of district ten. I'm here this morning to ask you to please keep Austin's 911 call center within the Austin police department. Every single council district. All ten of them are seeing faster. 911 emergency response times now than in 2024 across both high priority and low priority calls. Austin, as you heard this morning, Austin has already added a mental health line into 911. Since it was added, more than 35,000 calls have been routed directly to our mental health partner, integral care. Getting people in crisis the right kind of help without needing a new new department to do it. This progress happened through steady investments in our system we already have. Not by tearing down anything, tearing anything apart or starting over. That doesn't mean we stop there. We should keep asking what more can be done with our current structure, more capacity, more training, deeper partnership with integral care to make sure mental health calls are prioritized and routed well. [9:59:20 AM] Austin nine Austin's 911 system is a critical part of our public safety infrastructure. The men and women answering emergency calls are the first link to the chain of response, and their ability to quickly communicate with law enforcement. Fire and Travis county ems can directly affect outcomes in an emergency. Public safety professionals, including APD leadership, have raised serious concerns about removing 911 operations from APD. Their expertise and firsthand experience should carry significant weight in this decision. Before making such a consequential change, the city should fully consider the operational impacts and the recommendations of the professional responses for responding. When Austin residents need help most. Thank you. [10:00:05 AM] >> Thank you. Yes, ma'am. [10:00:07 AM] >> Thank you. My name is grace winters. I'm with the central Texas public safety commission. I'm here to encourage council to reconsider moving forward with the joint office of communication and keep the existing 911 system. We. Austin's 911 system is making progress. We have faster emergency response times this year than in the year previous across both high priority and low priority calls. We've also made meaningful strides in mental health response. Austin's integrated has already integrated a mental health line into 911, and since its implementation, more than 35,000 calls have been routed directly to integral care, connecting people in crisis with the help they need. That progress happened through investment and collaboration with our within our existing system, not by creating an entirely new department, we should continue looking for ways to strengthen the system, [10:01:08 AM] >> Build on what's working. Address what still needs improvement, and make investments in a system that is already delivering results. I encourage you to review the report by the consultant and reconsider your decision. Thank. [10:01:24 AM] >> Thank you. [10:01:25 AM] >> I think we have Bridget Tobin back on the line. Bridget, are you there? [10:01:31 AM] >> Hello? Yes, this is Bridget Tobin. I'm an Austin social worker. As many of you know, there were five overdoses at a bar downtown last week. Lives were saved with narcan, and it was distributed the next day by APD to businesses. The Austin police association told me in on their own post that it is not their responsibility to help prevent overdoses. They said you would have to talk to the district attorney about that, because we arrest for possession and controlled substances in the da does not prosecute them. I found this to be an extremely unprofessional way of answering my question, which was what is APD's plan to prevent these kinds of overdose events? They decided to blame the da's office, which is not only overly politicizing a really serious question, but it also indicates a culture of disrespect towards prevention work and towards the other agencies that APD works with, such as ems and social workers, people who collaborate with APD within 911. It speaks to a disconnect to what public safety goals are working towards across departments. [10:02:32 AM] What is the city's aligned goals? Policing is meant to be preventative arrests and prosecutions do not prevent overdoses, nor do they prevent crime. They are. Responses on 911 system also can be used as a last resort and as a first line of defense. We can prevent drug related crime and overdoses. We can prevent violent crime. We can also prevent tragic mental health episodes in our city. If a young person or anyone in crisis calls and is of the sound enough mind to call 911, they should be met on the other end of the line by someone who is ready to categorize their call to get them the help they need before police are needed for a much higher level crisis response. If we move 911, we can do this more effectively. Thank you very much. [10:03:24 AM] >> Moving back to in person, I have Jennifer Palermo. Jennifer, are you here? Yes. Is holly Sabiston here? Okay, then you'll have four minutes. Jen Margolis. Kathie. Mitchell. Miss Mitchell, are you here? And what about robin Schneider? Okay, then you also have four minutes. And Shelby Evans, please come on down. If I if. [10:03:44 AM] >> Your name is called, please come forward. Mr. Palermo, please. You have four minutes. [10:03:55 AM] >> All right. Good morning. My name is Jennifer Palermo. I'm from district nine. Hey, zo. And today I'm also speaking not only on my own behalf, but for Mary Elizabeth from ajc, who is too ill to be here. And also, someone literally said, you're so good. I'm going to donate time. So that person to look, I am very tired, I am very sick. I feel like someone hit me with a car, which is something I actually know what that feels like. But I still drag myself out here today because I just heard, I'm sorry. I'm trying not to be too offensive, but I just heard a bunch of ridiculousness coming out of people's mouths. Look, we all wanted to move the gc to be independent one conjoined call center, not because of response times. Let me be very clear. We all know you're fast. Oh my gosh, we've heard it so many times. You have quick response times in every district except for district lanes, apparently. [10:04:53 AM] So yes, we know that is not the point. That was not the question. The question that we asked as the public, as different groups. And to mission critical specifically is about the outcomes. How are calls being routed? Are they getting routed correctly? Are we sending police when they don't need to be there, when they might actually complicate the outcome? Are we not sending police in time? That is what we asked. And furthermore, the second half of that component is we asked about public perception of the outcomes and of Jackie, police, etc. In general, which is a question that they didn't even address. They didn't even talk to the public. I am at the point where I feel like we should ask for mission critical for like a refund. Basically, let's save some city money there because they didn't answer the question. Now, to be fair, that was a little too mean. I'm sorry. I'm tired. They didn't have the data, which honestly like we should be collecting that data. Why aren't we collecting that data? Why aren't we talking about it? We're not talking about response times people. We are talking about outcomes and public perception. We need that data doing the independent Jackie like we already planned. [10:06:01 AM] We already approved. Everybody up here is in agreement. Most of the public, except for a couple people today, are in agreement about it. That is a great way to get that data. Why don't we do that? Go ahead with the plan that we already have and other people are going to present to you research and data that you've already heard that already. Support how Jackie will improve the outcomes, which are the things that we keep talking about, and public perception of 911. But you know, that's the other half of it. You want to get data. We can get it from the jc that we already planned on. We don't need to keep it so that we can keep the response times we have. I'm sure we'll have the same response times at the new jc. Now let me get to the other half of it. I came here by bus today and on the way. I didn't see the whole encounter, but a man was literally crossing an intersection on one of those lime scooters or a bird scooter or something. He jumped off a, I assume a pd or an ice officer, I am not sure. Chased him down on a motorcycle, jumped off the motorcycle and jumped on him like a great panther. Okay, now I don't know the story. I don't want to judge too hard, but I literally stood up on the bus and prayed out loud and you know, forgive me. I am an atheist. I'm a secular buddhist. I don't believe in god, but I still said it out loud. Please don't shoot that man in the back. And you know, part of the reason why I said that, why that was my first response. I almost jumped off the bus because I got my stethoscope with me today, but ems was already there. I had to come talk to y'all. I'm like, all right, gunshots not fired. It's fine, I guess. But part of that response is because you knew you were going to hear his name. [10:07:39 AM] Wilbur Gaar Perez got shot in the back over the weekend, and that might not have happened if we had better outcomes. Two calls right now we have ice running loose. That was an APD, that was ice. And maybe if we had a joint response, something like this wouldn't happen. Thank you. [10:07:56 AM] >> Please, ma'am. [10:07:59 AM] >> Hello, council. My name is Shelby from hands off central Texas. Once again we are back demanding accountability from the city. During the budget hearings, the community was clear. Move 911 dispatch out of APD. Police are not an appropriate catch all for mental health, medical and economic emergencies. Using violence and the threat of violence as a response leads to outcomes like the loss of Anthony Williams, a needless death of a young man who had his whole life ahead of him. His whole life is gone. I feel like we, as a community and as community members, are trapped in a repetitive, nightmarish groundhog's day where over and over, APD demands resources for activities that detract from public safety, money for ai cameras that collect private data vulnerable to misuse and abuse, money for personnel who are continuously diverted to support ice kidnaping, abusing and shooting our neighbors. [10:09:00 AM] Money for pepper spray and gear used to beat back people using their first amendment right to decry the tyranny we are witnessing in our streets, like the attempted murder of Gilbert Rafael Garces Perez on Sunday, it seems to me that APD has plenty on their plate and has increasing strain on community trust. Why not alleviate the burden of routing public calls for service by following through on what we've asked for? An independent joint communications center that can ensure the right people show up to the scene without bias. For any specific agency, dispatching calls is the critical first step to addressing emergencies. Let's ensure it's done right by specialists who are accountable to that job alone. Thank you. [10:09:48 AM] >> Thank you, miss Mitchell. [10:09:53 AM] >> Hello, members. I am not going. Thank you to the previous testimony. [10:10:03 AM] >> To say your name for the record. [10:10:05 AM] >> Oh, my name is Kathie Mitchell and I am in D one. Please be careful with this report that you have in front of you. And I would just note its limited value. You already knew that the city manager does not want to do this. The city manager apparently hired an organization to do nothing more than interview the city manager and his leadership staff, and find out why they don't want to do this. That has nothing to do with what brought us to this place. So I wish to remind you, over the past ten years, and it's been about a decade, the community has brought to you a number of actual research based analysis that led us to this point. Among the first was the 911 call data analysis, which demonstrated that not only do police not arrest or find crime in most of the calls that they respond to, but that they appear to be basically the default response. And that limited effort had been put into figuring out whether there was a better response that we could be giving the public. The community also has provided you over the past decade, with what I would call a deep review of never events. This is a root cause analysis that is developed from the finer details of individual events where the outcomes were so terrible that we all agree that should never happen again. [10:11:48 AM] Among those never events were several incidents of people being shot to death during a mental illness, and I continuously remind you and ask that you return to the story of brick Monroe, because that story was critical to the conversation that brought us to the place where we finally at least asked people if a mental health response was the correct response, was what they really thought was needed when they called 911. And you have heard today many witnesses explaining that we have routed 35,000 calls to integral care. But how many people asked for mental health services? It is a far, far larger number. The implementation of mental health services has been the drag on improving outcomes from 911 calls, as requested by previous people. Yes, it is important to get there quickly. It's also important to provide the right service. Finally, what got us to this point was a detailed review of hundreds and hundreds of complaints filed by residents who were not happy with their 911 call outcome. [10:13:18 AM] These kind of studies were brought to you by this community, by the organizations who have testified in favor of this right now, because it took us ten years to get to this point. This isn't something that just came up. The fact that APD continues to resist the kind of systemic review of outcomes that we have demanded is why it needs to be moved somewhere else. If we are not able to achieve better outcomes than what are we doing? [10:13:58 AM] >> Thank you, miss Mitchell. [10:14:01 AM] >> Savannah Lee Rivas, Ben zohaib, Peter hunt, Ryan. Poppy. [10:14:21 AM] >> Good morning y'all. My name is Savannah Lee. I'm a resident of district one and I'm here with equity action. Last week I was excited to get my eyes on the report provided by mission critical. After nine months of waiting, I hope to see a deep focus not just on 911 response times, but on how an independent 911 could shape how accurately we respond to emergency calls in terms of who we send. I was disappointed to find that in the 100 page report that was discussed very little. Establishing a gc was never only about improving internal operations and response times, though that's piece a piece of the puzzle. It was about ensuring that when people call 911, they get the correct emergency responder. As mentioned moments ago by our new friends, the report underlines 35,000 calls routed to mental health. But here's what's missing how many calls were made from folks who wanted mental health care but were met with police instead? A fatality rate is high, as Austin has seen for mental health calls, is unacceptable, and it should be our complete focus that austinites don't just have faith that they'll be responded to in a timely manner, but that when help arrives, it's the right people at the door. I think this lack can partially be explained by what stakeholders were engaged in this process. As the report outlined, those engaged were communications personnel, operational managers, executive leadership, technology staff, public safety representatives, elected officials and regional partners. As a social worker, I can tell you that any clinical assistant professor I've ever had would balk at that list. [10:15:43 AM] Can you imagine a company doing a consumer satisfaction study and not talking to any consumers? Why did we not engage the people that use this service? The stakeholders that matter most right now are the immigrants who are scared to call 911. The folks in the city who need mental health support and are most medically vulnerable neighbors. Their stories and perspectives should be included. Anything less is detached from the purpose of the service. I was, however, heartened to see that the report underlines the need for civilian oversight. While I believe the one civilian employee is not enough, I'm glad we're discussing why it matters. Hundreds of community members this summer came because we know what an independent 911 will keep us safer. I hope, as we move forward that council council remembers their priorities. Thank you. [10:16:27 AM] >> Just real quick, can I change my position on this to neutral? I've asked. Thank you. Hi. Rivas, district nine council. I am tired of a city manager who is subverting the will of the public. I'm tired of it. We had council members on this dais here, notably council member Siegel and council member Fuentes, who were attacked by the Austin police association for their original vote. And these are the people that are supposed to be trusted to continue to hold 911 under their purview. I say this because when you look at what 911 services are, it's not just cops and it shouldn't be just cops. The cops are that they're getting less money because of our efforts as a community to stand up and say that this shouldn't happen. But what started this whole conversation? We have a budget issue here in Austin, and guess what happens with a budget issue? We need to cut the fat. And where did we see that fat social services, not the Austin police department, which balloons their budget every year and drains from our social services every time this discussion comes up. But no, we need to hire consultants to make this study that don't at all explore any of the actual things that are happening. I want to draw attention to to Wilbur Perez once again, because if we want to talk about communication, how we're supposed to trust the police department, our chief of police stood at a dais saying that she didn't know what was happening there. There were cops at present when they cut off Wilbur's shirt to show the bullet wound in the back of his neck. I want to thank you, mayor, for being there for Katy goldfinch to help get her information and in the doors. [10:18:43 AM] But who was stopping her from those doors? [10:18:46 AM] >> APD it's not. [10:18:47 AM] >> True and I don't at all have any qualms with the overall care that needs to come with this, because if APD isn't to be trusted, then we need to take that assessment and we need to make 911 independent. [10:19:10 AM] >> Mr. Probably before you begin, I want to be clear, it was not APD security. It was it was a different police department and it was not APD. So we need to be very careful. I know we're all angry. We all feel a lot of pain about what happened on Sunday. But one of the things that adds to the pain that adds to the fear and adds to the anger, is when things get spun up that aren't accurate. And I'm telling you, it was not APD. You can be angry with APD, you can not like APD. But actually what happened on that day was APD two on duty police officers and one off duty police officer saw something happening. They're the ones that responded and were the first responders and began providing the medical care that this person needed. [10:19:55 AM] >> So I appreciate your clarity on that. But also when we're talking about other things like Buford's and otherwise, we're. [10:20:00 AM] >> We're talking about how cops were there for the first second. [10:20:03 AM] >> I'm not going to argue with you. And that's one reason I don't engage is because I don't want to have these kind of debates, but I'm not. I understand. [10:20:09 AM] >> But right. [10:20:10 AM] >> Now. [10:20:10 AM] >> Yeah, I've clarified. So let me clarify. And now the clarification is done. APD is not who was telling them. And that's one of the reasons I went down there is because I was worried that was the accusation. [10:20:14 AM] >> And a lot of their operations that are causing. [10:20:15 AM] >> Thank you ma'am. [10:20:16 AM] >> Thank you. [10:20:16 AM] >> Good morning, mayor and council. My name is Ryan poppy, and I am here on behalf of cw, a local 6154, and the united workers of integral care. Our members are behavioral health professionals who work every day with people experiencing a mental health crisis. We supported council's decision to move towards an independent 911 communication system for a simple reason. The front door of Austin's emergency response system should be neutral today. 911 call taking exist within the Austin police department. Our concern is institutional bias. APD itself trains its personnel to recognize that implicit institutional and structural bias exist and can affect decision making. That line actually was taken verbatim from APD's own training manual. Decades of research show implicit bias exists in policing other institutions, including APD. Bias does not require bad intentions. It can influence how situations are perceived, interpreted and ultimately how institutions respond. That's particularly important during a behavioral health crisis. Someone who is suicidal, experiencing psychosis, or behaving erratically is experiencing an emergency, but not necessarily a law enforcement emergency. An independent 911 call center creates a neutral gateway, where the first question is, what does this person need? [10:21:32 AM] Sometimes that's police, sometimes that's fire or ems, and sometimes that's a behavioral health professional. We understand the feasibility assessment identifies operational challenges, but difficult is not the same as impossible. An operational efficiency is not the only measure of success. How quickly we answer the phone matters, but so does what happens next. Does the Wright responder arrive? Do we avoid an unnecessary arrest or hospitalization? [10:22:06 AM] >> Thank you, Mr. Zohaib. [10:22:13 AM] >> Loeb and sotheby's resident of district four. I just wanted to remind you how many people came to speak in favor of this when your original vote was taken. There were some people from special interest groups today who have come to tell you something different, but I can tell you from my personal experience in in my community that there's very low confidence when they call, if they call 911, that an appropriate response will show up. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people in English and Spanish say, don't call 911. No. No evidence. Mandan, la policia, don't call 911. They send police for medical emergencies, for things that don't need an armed response. I hear this in my community. This is a reality. But I also want to say that I appreciate that people have concerns about the amount of tasks tasked to APD. I think that moving this to an independent department would actually take something off their plate and let them institutionally focus on the more narrow roles that they've been assigned. This would also benefit the people who would work there. A standalone organization would provide meaningful professional development advantage by creating an opportunity for career progression that extends from entry level positions through the communication specific executive leadership. [10:23:54 AM] Right now, they are capped. Anyone thinking about starting a career at 911 currently recognizes they're capped because their leadership exists in a in a chain, in a ladder that is distinct from their own. I highly respect the work that is done there. When someone does call, they need to have fast response times. The emergency response times have improved, but they need to have the confidence that the right response will come. [10:24:17 AM] >> Thank you sir. [10:24:19 AM] >> The last few for B one Hans maverick, Rebecca weber, Luke Klein. [10:24:27 AM] >> I'll just get started. Hi, my name is Peter hunt, volunteer with Austin justice coalition. You've heard a lot of people emphasize that this matter of a joint communication joint emergency communications department is not just about response times, it's about ensuring that the right people are responding quickly. And I wanted to elaborate on that a little bit more and talk about how institutionally this change would be relevant to that. One thing that plenty of research on 911 administrative structures has established is that the place where call takers are situated matters. And I want to emphasize that when we talk about proper mental health response and proper people being sent out, that is not an admonishment of any of the call takers or anyone else in these departments. It's a matter of systemic and cultural environments that encourage certain defaults. One phrase that recurred frequently in the research that I was looking at is, when in doubt, send cops out. This is a mindset that pervades much more in 911 emergency response units that are situated within police departments as opposed to outside of them, whether that's in a fire department or independently, as we would have here. I also think it's important to highlight what mundane failures of appropriate mental health response look like. We know about the serious ones in which someone who needs mental health response gets police and the police shoot that person. We've seen it recently, but this happens in quieter ways that don't make the news as well. For example, I know about a case in which someone who was suicide risk called 911 and the only person who was dispatched there was a police officer. Now the police officer responded as well as you would hope a normal person in that situation would. They were considerate, they were careful with the individual. [10:26:10 AM] But the ultimate outcome of that interaction is that this person was put in the back of a police cruiser as the only mean means of transit available to them, and there was no mental health professional who arrived on the scene. This doesn't make the news, but it's exactly the kind of thing that needs to be systemically addressed and that a full, independent joint emergency communications department would contribute to doing. Thank you. [10:26:27 AM] >> Thank you, Mr. Hunt, please. [10:26:29 AM] >> Good morning. I'm Rebecca weber. I live and work in district nine. Thank you. Zo. I am a local civil rights attorney and I'm on the board of equity action. I'm here today wearing both my hats. I want to relay an anecdote, some anecdotal evidence from my civil rights work that supports equity action's position about the benefits of a 911 center that is not run by police. Lots of people have talked to you about how will be safer under this model. I agree with that. But today I want to suggest to you that support for the joint communications center is good. From a risk management and a liability perspective, I just want to be clear that I am a practicing attorney. I represent two high profile current plaintiffs against the city, miss Brenda Ramos, and former Austin police officer Samantha Liedtke, and her employment discrimination case. I just want to reiterate that because I had a weird interaction with one of our public safety reporters last week, she said that I could be interviewed only if I was an actual official attorney on a case that I had settled against the county for significant money and Ada claim against the jail. So I just want to be clear that I speak about things that I have learned directly representing people. All right. Here's my anecdote. Last summer, a concerned citizen called 911. [10:27:40 AM] On a Sunday morning around 9 A.M. He asked for an ambulance for a man asleep in his car in a driveway. Turns out the sleeping man was a deaf Uber driver who'd been ridesharing all night. He was exhausted, and he fell asleep in a driveway waiting for a customer. He was not in any way under the influence. He was tired and deaf. Let me cut to the chase. An ambulance was not dispatched, despite the concerned citizen asking for an ambulance. Instead. About 25 minutes later, after ems was requested, we have Austin police officer Luis Camacho arresting a deaf man for DUI without any asl interpretation. I would ask you to please remember this anecdote about what should have been a medical call that could have been resolved quickly, painlessly and cheaply for this city. When you are asked to review this man's civil rights claims, and that's coming before you very soon. [10:28:28 AM] >> Thank you. Yes, sir. [10:28:30 AM] >> Good morning. My name is. [10:28:31 AM] >> Hans maverick. I am a resident of district ten and a policy and research organizer with grassroots leadership. I'm here to ask the council to stay the course in developing a civilian office of joint emergency communication. The community is deeply concerned about several recent incidents at the intersection of Austin's 911 call center and police violence against marginalized communities. A few months ago, APD collaborated with ice in detaining a single mother and her five year old U.S. Citizen daughter, and more recently, they were involved in the shooting death of a and of an unarmed black teenager, which APD chief Lisa Davis unhelpfully labeled as suicide by police. These recent incidents only added to the community's justified mistrust and contempt of law enforcement's response to emergency calls, particularly those that involve either immigration status or mental health challenges. The office of joint emergency communication will help address the concerns that folks have raised about the handling of emergency situations involving either undocumented folks or folks, folks with mental health struggles. The issue is not just the speed of responses, but also the accuracy of the response and the safety of the whole community. The recent mission critical partners report did not address those concerns. I wonder how Anthony Williams family feels about the speed of APD's 911 response. [10:30:04 AM] What we want is a city that is responsive and to the full range of emergency situations that community members face. Not every situation calls for armed law enforcement response, and when law enforcement seeks to become a one stop shop, unfortunate incidents are bound to happen. This causes community members, particularly marginalized folks, to lose faith not only in law enforcement, but in government institutions as a whole. Instead, we want an emergency response system that is knowledgeable about and responds appropriately to every type of emergency situation. Please move forward with developing the office of joint. [10:30:42 AM] >> Thank you very much. [10:30:44 AM] >> Thank you. [10:30:46 AM] >> That was all speakers for B one so move to B two. Hannah, Daphne and Andrea able. [10:31:05 AM] >> Good morning. Good evening, council mayor. My name is Andrea able. I'm the executive director of farmshare Austin. I'm also a member of the Austin Travis county food policy board. Today I am wearing my farmshare Austin hat here. I just wanted to make three brief points on the social service contract briefing. The first is that I'm really heartened that there will be a new process for determining the social service contract, so thank you. Second is my hope that the process is as transparent as possible and includes meaningful input from the city's social service agencies and the I mean, the nonprofit and contract providers. I also ask that the council ensure that the process include other aff contracts that may not be defined as a social service contract, but serve that same purpose and perform the same functions. Thank you. [10:31:55 AM] >> Thank you. [10:31:56 AM] >> Mayor. All speakers have been called. [10:31:57 AM] >> Thank you very much. Members, we will now go to the briefing on item B one followed by item B two. Before we begin I want to recognize the city manager. [10:32:05 AM] >> Thank you mayor. And as the team is coming up today, you will hear a presentation on the joint emergency call center feasibility assessment for the city of Austin. Bonnie, vice president of emergency communications center operations, and David Jones, co-founder and senior vice president, strategic accounts with mission critical partners, will provide a high level overview of the results from the assessment mission critical partners, conducted as directed by resolution 20250813-018. Details of the results can be found in the joint emergency communications call center feasibility study, which the mayor and city council received a copy of last week. The report provides a detailed study on whether moving the civilians, the city's civilian 911 call taking out of Austin police would affect emergency communications and whether that change would actually improve outcomes. I will now turn it over to Bonnie with mission critical partners to begin the presentation. [10:33:10 AM] >> Thank you. I appreciate being here. Mayor, council and the guests as well. As I said, my name is Bonnie Maney. I am with mission critical partners. No. Is that better? [10:33:23 AM] >> I asked for that. I need to turn mine on. Would you? Yeah. Make sure the microphone is near your. [10:33:28 AM] >> Is that better? [10:33:29 AM] >> That's a lot better. Thank you very much. [10:33:30 AM] >> Okay. Wonderful. [10:33:32 AM] >> The mayor pro tem is getting old and he can't hear us. [10:33:37 AM] >> All right, so just really quick an agenda. We just want to do some really quick introductions. Project overview, discuss the drivers, the evaluation and the alternatives. That got us to our point. We want to then dive into the next the feasibility of actually establishing a joint emergency communication center, what some of those definitions are, and then going into a comparative evaluation again. Then our recommendations talk briefly about a strategic roadmap, and then happily, we'll take any questions that you may have. Go back. So quick introduction. Who is mission critical partners? We are a nationwide public safety and public sector consulting firm. We were formed in 2009, were comprised of about 225 subject matter experts on our consulting division side, about two thirds of us have either practitioner experience, whether that's in the sappi or the 911 center in the field as roles, as elected officials. And of course, very importantly, as community members and active members of our communities that both receive and, you know, have to request emergency services from time to time, unfortunately. So as far as really quick project overview, we do have a very successful framework when we address complex issues such as this. There are a lot of points of data gathering, who we're talking to, the methods that we use. But it is basically a four, you know, phased approach, ultimately culminating in a, you know, a final study of of some form in this case, the feasibility of a joint emergency communications center and then a strategic roadmap of what that could look like based on our recommendation. I would mention that the team that actually is working on this report, I would say collectively has about 150 years of practical public safety experience. So just a quick, really brief, you know, to get to the kind of summarize for everybody right off the bat. [10:36:00 AM] Well, at the end of the day, we did look at three options we have since that initial briefing, tweaked some of these options a little bit. Option a being maintained, the current organizational placement with the targeted modernization efforts. Option B looking at maintaining the organizational structure with no change. And then option C, you'll notice here it says establish a standalone P sappi or independent department. It does not use the word joint emergency communication center. So we find that, you know, the current placement does have this stability. It is a low risk, but it doesn't fully address identified gaps. And there are gaps. There are gaps as well, not just in, you know, police, fire, ems response, but there are gaps in what we hear today here is about mental health services, behavioral health. We refer that to alternate response. We actually broaden that term. It's not just about behavioral and mental health. What other options are there across the entire continuum of your constituents and austinites? [10:37:10 AM] Needs can be served in a way that is not a traditional police, fire or ems response. And there are a lot of varieties of that. We find that a standalone app does carry the highest cost risk, with limited operational benefit in its current discipline specific configuration. The greatest opportunities, and we've heard this several times already today come from governance, quality assurance, analytics, technology, and, and so on, and really don't require organizational separation. The targeted improvements under a P D oversight do provide strongest path to measurable system wide outcomes. Again, those improvements, those enhancements, though, being led by a civilian leadership that would report directly to the chief of police. And then at the same time, we are talking about modernizing the system, especially in the world of mental and behavioral health. [10:38:13 AM] Alternative response. This is, you know, a newer, still novice. Fourth arm of public safety, if you will, and it has a long way to go. And there are a lot of opportunities to increase those calls that are going to some sort of alternative. But that does not require a structural change or repositioning of who and, you know, answers 911 calls. So drivers for change. When we talk about the drivers for change. Yes, we interviewed many of you on on the dais had opportunities to talk with all of you. We talked to chiefs of staff. We talked to your policy advisors. We talked to some of you directly as the representatives of your constituents to find out what the drivers are behind this. We also did, yes, elected leadership. We talked to operational staff, and we also then sat on the operations floor in C tech in your current 911 center or your current ps app. And we found there's about seven categories that were driving this. And so your response times and service outcomes, clearly one of them primarily about how long it takes. We heard several anecdotal examples. We heard several, you know, real situations, customer experience and access. Absolutely. Services perceptions. It is traditionally thought if it's you're calling 911, you're calling the police. We can tell you there were over 5911 centers in the country. And we have found that they can be managed by fire, by ems, by emergency management. Some of the whole centers are independent and some of them are still, you know, under law enforcement. A lot of that, again, though, is it's just a long standing, you know, perception. I can tell you from being under the headset for 20 years myself, I wish I would have had other types of resources to send at the time. [10:40:16 AM] And that I know today, having worked with cities like city of Columbus, Ohio, city of Portland, Oregon, having rode along with the behavioral health folks in Albuquerque and in Columbus and these other places, that there is that perception, and it is a perception that needs to change. But those folks under the headset, they are really trying to do the best that they can with the with the resources that they have. And the city has a lot of resources. And that brings us to the evolving response models. City of Austin does not get the credit that it deserves when it comes to what they're already doing for mental health, you have a call center within your app. Very few places are doing that. City of Columbus has one. Durham, North Carolina has one, but you all are not. You are not referred to like when you hear about Albuquerque and Phoenix and and, and Durham, north Carolina. And that's unfortunate because you're actually even including the references in your 911 call grito. Now we talk about maybe modifying that greeting in the order of it, but you're asking straight up police, fire, ems, or mental health services, that opportunity exists there immediately. And the city of Columbus, they don't offer that in their greeting, but they offer it on their ten digit line. If you press option two, you can talk to their what they call it, the right response unit. So you're doing so many really good things, but does that mean you can do more? [10:41:51 AM] Absolutely. We need to get more calls over there. But again, our charge and our ask was should we have an independent 911 center? That's what we were asked about. We can have a whole other conversation about, you know, how do we improve alternative response in the city of Austin? And we would really welcome to do that. But those evolving response models there, you guys are doing so much more than you're getting credit for. And I mean that nationally materialistic, significant organizational results you guys have mentioned about how we have. Since 2000. You're the staffing was terrible. The the call answer times were really poor and those have improved. And so we really and again, nationally, you're doing so much better. When we told the chief of police that you're within the top 5% in the country, we mean that especially on staffing, on training, on retention, 50% training completion rates around the country are the norm. [10:42:54 AM] Staffing 60% maybe of their staffing levels. And not only are they understaffed, but they're short staffed. These are things that you need to build on, and you need to do whatever you can to maintain them while you're improving in these other areas. Governance and accountability. Everybody wants more transparency, more accountability, without a doubt being aligned on all of that technology, data and performance visibility. There are so many things happening right now in the world of public safety communications. With the advent of ai. Translation transcription services that are able to listen for key words to help better route calls. And you have that ability and the interest with your with your technology here, that you can do some really great things. And we'll talk a little bit about some of the constraints on that. But that was another area. And 100% we need to look at this performance visibility and be able to get the actual timeline on an actual life cycle, or the life of a call from beginning to end. So there's some challenges there. [10:44:03 AM] And then the organizational perception and political context, absolutely sensitive areas. There's a lot of areas that can be improved on that will really bring about some really good reform in, you know, the whole entire life cycle of calls and how they're handled. But moving the 911 into an independent doesn't necessarily doesn't have to do that to make those things happen. And so the organizational perception and political context was another driver. And that was kind of across everything. Now, did everybody agree? Absolutely not. Not everybody agreed. So then we were looking at where did the operational stakeholders align? The policy stakeholders, the community workforce considerations? Because, you know, we we hear all of the the, you know, all of the concerns and then where did they align? Where did they diverge? And then the emerging strategic themes. And I know I don't want to take a lot of time because I know you guys are going to have a lot of questions. If you look up in the top right, we did put the section numbers in here so that people can follow along with the report, operational stakeholder alignment really was around making sure preserving what is going right right now while making improvements. Polly Lee stakeholder alignment really primarily resolved revolved around the transparency and the governance and the accountability, community and workforce considerations. You already heard me talk about the great strides that the that has been made in staffing, retention, training, and where these aligned though, we're really in a way, not, not, not fixing or not not breaking anything more, you know, and, and really being able to move in an area, you know, collectively to, to make things better. Everybody has the best of intentions. Right? And then where they diverge though was about really about how to get there. And that is about whether we have an independent, you know, 911 center or, you know, do we continue down the path and, and work with, with what we have? And then really the emerging strategic theme at the end of the day was, how do we move forward improving emergency outcomes, you know, for the constituents, for austinites collectively. And it seems like such a simple thing, [10:47:03 AM] but between the drivers, between then the, you know, the, the alignment and the strategic themes. We looked at this from a perspective of. 12 evaluation based criterias based on standards, best practices, our collective industry experience. And when we talk about response times, when we talk about places that we can actually make some improvements, there are seven data points that actually can be improved upon within the city, and making sure that we can get the data at these points so that we can look at the whole life cycle of a call for service, and then really hone in, really hone in on where in the system, whether it be fire, ems, mental health services, telephone reporting, online reporting, what actually can impact each of these areas. And these, again, are based on national standards and best practices. And this at the end helped us come up with a decision evidence matrix. And actually what I want to point out is this top piece here, because this is a micro look at what the emergency communications ecosystem looks like. Now. It's very linear. The left, you have the community, you know, calling in emergencies. However they do that these days, you can text, you can call, you know, your smart devices, we'll call for you. So that's on the left. And then you have your, you know, your nine one center. I envisioned this as C tech, the state public safety answering point off to the right. Then you have the caring hands, which is your alternative response, your mental health, all of that police, fire, ems and how those calls get routed to there. And then then you have all the other organizations and entities, emergency management, utilities, all of those that have to be coordinated on any type of event and the importance of situational awareness across this life cycle. But it's not as simple here because the way that you have this discipline specific set up in your SAP, in that public safety answering point. Improves situational awareness, but it also does cause some challenges. Oh, there we go. All right. So with that, that's kind of how we got there. Everything we looked at. But the primary question we were asked was, is it feasible to establish a jack and how could we go about that? And that's based on the resolution language, a unified joint emergency emergency communications center. It's a mouthful envisioned by the resolution actually cannot be implemented under current legislative and contractual conditions. And people may go, oh, what? That doesn't, you know, why? Why can't we do that? Well, these constraints. [10:49:37 AM] Prevent the transfer of emergency communications functions as they were contemplated into a single department. And that's what a jack is. When we talk about a joint emergency communications center within the definitions of of our profession, it means that you have everybody under one roof, under one organizational structure, handling all the calls for service. Now, there's some key terms that are in the resolution that have probably it sounds like they've created some confusion and they're been open to interpretation, and we've heard them quite a few times. But moving only the civilian 911 call takers from a pd would create a reorganization, but not a unified jack in the resolution mentions north Texas ic or what we call ntec, who actually just last week celebrated their 10th anniversary as a as an emergency communications center. [10:50:45 AM] So why can't the city of Austin be like ntec? Well, ntec is actually what we refer to as a consolidation. Also, as a jack, they are under one organizational structure. They are civilian end to end, meaning that the 911 call comes in. They handle all the the questioning and protocols for police, fire and ems. I don't believe that they do mental health. And then they put those call takers, put that call into the computer, aided dispatch, and it goes to a set of civilian dispatchers that are going to dispatch those resources. That is not what you have here. You have the 911 call coming in to a civilian call taker who, by the way, they actually only handle 911 calls. You all have moved out your ten digit calls, your administrative lines that would typically come in to police, fire, ems. You have moved them out to 311, which allows those 911 call takers to focus strictly on the emergencies at hand that come in. We don't see that very often. We'll either see they're still taking their ten digit calls and the 911 calls, or they're taking all of that and 311. So that is a great thing. Again, I don't think that it's maybe realized how much you guys are already diversifying and allowing 911 to focus on 911. So that call comes in. They question, they try to get police, fire, ems or mental health location verification. And then as soon as they say, well, I need fire, they they transfer to fire or ems. Then on that end, specifically for fire and ems, they have sworn uniformed call takers, then questioning, taking in all of those appropriate questions, and then they send it to their dispatchers and they dispatch the only time that the 911 call taker continues to question is if it is. They say that they need law enforcement, and then they finish that call and they send it in the computer aided dispatch system to police. So what you have here is a very effective actually, which which we look at and we go like for us to recommend not kind of pulling it though, to have it all out as an independent civilian. That's a lot of times what our recommendations are because we see the value in civilianization we do, and specialization of people that are focused on nine one, one on public safety communications, on the whole ecosystem of it. [10:53:25 AM] When it works together here, you happen to have a very effective mesh network that works. And so to be you, it would take a lot for you to be an Ed tech. There would be stuff at the state level, the governor's office with your district, all different kinds of things to be able to contracts, you know, agreements with the county and the city. Could you get there? Possibly, but it would probably be ten years or so. So the Ed tech reference, albeit I understand where where you want to go with that. In your current environment, you have a co-location, not a true jack. So if you. That's why we keep, we keep referring to it as a 911 center. So the available model with the call taking, separating police call taking, disrupting the cities, you know, this integrated mesh network and adding that coordination complexity. We don't take that lightly in making that that recommendation, but essentially because fire and ems have their own call takers and dispatchers, by separating 911 from that, then you really, you are also then disconnecting police officers from that same, you know, call taker, dispatcher relationship. So that that is a challenge there. So as we say in this last bullet here, really by, by removing the 911 call takers from APD, it's not going to create an end tech style model. We didn't find any measurably improved operations that from doing just that, you know, you saw we did all the other recommendations. So it would be more kind of sim repositioning rather than substantive reform, which I think in hearing today, especially to what is really [10:56:26 AM] being asked for, which is more around better alternative response. Oops. Rohan. All right, so quick costs. I know Ed is here to talk about anything, you know, answer any questions ultimately about the cost. There's been a lot of discussion, you know, with the council meeting and the budget meeting previously here. This is about the option. See the standalone piece app in that 11.8 to $12.2 million range. Set up costs, ongoing costs. The other is the targeted systemization or system modernization costs. Heard it mentioned about, you know, this professional civilian emergency communications leadership. We could see here as well to have another, you know, another level of leadership in, in there as well. And, and not it wasn't in the purview of the study to include pulling a pd dispatch under that leadership. But, you know, to have that whole structure, call taking and dispatching under, you know, civilian leadership is a possibility to be considered as well. But yes, are there, you know, a pretty good delta in the cost? Yes, there are. But again, at the end of the day, we are looking at outcomes. [10:57:29 AM] These are sprinkled throughout the report. But in section 5.2 these are all the governance operational technology modernization recommendations. Those that are in italics. Those are ones that are do have a cost to them. Others are primarily can be done with under the existing administration and organization. I'll be happy to answer any of you know, any more details about any of these. Some of these also are within direct purview of of the organization today. Others would require discussions with what they call cap cog, which actually owns the 911 system and call handling equipment and stuff like that opportunity there to open up those discussions. And then this brought us to our comparative evaluation scale. These are the same five bullets, just kind of bringing them back around to kind of bookend here. But we looked at an evaluation scale for each of the three options from strong advantage down through disadvantage. And where that led us was to this table. I apologize if it's an eye chart, but if you look at the report itself, it does provide some context and narrative in each of these boxes. These are also not in the same order as in the report as far as your evaluation criteria, but option a, which is maintaining again the current organizational placement with targeted modernization efforts. You can see of the 12 that six of them I'm counting now. Yeah, six of them are strong advantage. [10:58:31 AM] Three of them are advantageous. And then a couple of mixed. And then as you move over to the right, we're just not finding that the strong or advantage is there with actually some disadvantage and mixed in there as well. And then just the last, I believe, two slides here, the strategic roadmap you will see in the report that we are looking for the modernization efforts. We could see, you know, significant change within 12 to 18 months. Option B is current. Again, you know, we're not really recommending you stay status quo. Option C could take 3 to 4 years. And if you really moved tried to move toward a true joint emergency communication center. Significant hurdles. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it would take significant work. And you're looking probably 8 to 10 years across the whole strategic roadmap. You know, you need whichever option that you choose to move forward with. [10:59:35 AM] And mcp will be by your side to help you move forward with whatever option you choose. Because we want to see that you are successful. You know, just standard project management, risk management, change management is going to be a huge piece of that. Of course, engaging all stakeholders and performance monitoring. We want to make sure that the objectives and the goals that you have set in place are actually what will be being achieved. And so basically, final summary, you know, the message is still the same that if, you know, just by moving, the call takers won't create a Jackie as envisioned, although it is, you know, a respectable, you know, desire to have a jack. And we've seen them be successful around the country as well. But you have a very strong, effective co-location model right now with discipline, specialization, and then basically highlighting that that is, you know, how we see you strengthening in it through the recommended modernization options. With that, I will stop and entertain any questions that you may have. [11:00:52 AM] >> Thank you, councilmember Laine. [11:00:57 AM] >> Thank you, mayor. I'm going to start with a few opening comments and then move on to questions. I want to start today by thanking everyone who contributed to this report. I'm grateful to be able to read it. And thank you to mission critical partners for being here to present the findings to us and to the public. I found a lot in this report that was extremely useful to be able to read through, and I appreciate your presentation as well. And I want to acknowledge the significant improvements as well that have happened in emergency response in the city of Austin prior to the arrival of this consultant and this work that we are considering today, whether that is the improvements that led to faster call answering or the cat integration that's current and ongoing. These are notable, important, and absolutely should not be risked as we move forward. I would also state that simply getting to the point of answering the call quickly does not get us all the way to dispatch, much less all the way to arrival on scene. [11:02:04 AM] And there is another link in that chain, which is call taking. And I appreciate your recommendation, as I understand it, to move call taking under civilian leadership to make some quite notable and significant improvements, including hiring of an executive leader, that civilian leader, and then also standing up of a quality assurance unit consisting of four ftes, a manager and three people working for that, as I've seen it. And I would appreciate I'll give this opening and then anything that needs to be tweaked, please feel free. The the establishment of a quality assurance unit with four ftes that is focused specifically on this link of the chain, the call taking. In reading your report, I also note that the 0 to 6 month time frame is where you envision that we would be, to the point of having that executive leader, those first five ftes, the executive leader and the quality assurance unit on board, and having established baseline measures for how we are going to evaluate call taking performance. And just to be clear, we don't currently have this capacity now to evaluate on a robust way that leads towards a data driven goal setting around call taking. Is that correct? [11:03:29 AM] >> There are definitely data points that are missing that should be focused on how do we collect those data points and start tracking them so that we're moving the entire organization and that call taking place in a in a proper direction, which already has started, but there are still places that that can be improved on. [11:03:53 AM] >> Sure. Because I mean, adding five ftes, four of which are dedicated to quality assurance, suggests that it's not a small or an insignificant amount of missing data points. Is that true? I mean, this looks like a significant addition to me and I welcome it. I am very pleased to see this recommendation. I will let you all draw your own conclusion about whether that is a significant change, but I certainly found in your report a number of very meaningful changes that, you know, let me ask you another question. So in reading the report, I really appreciated the detailed phasing that we saw. And so I'll ask you the 0 to 6 months. [11:05:23 AM] That's the accurate time frame for getting to the point of the quality assurance unit and the baseline data in our key measures. [11:05:27 AM] >> Yeah. I think in our experience that is inaccurate. If you know that we put it in the report. Yes. [11:05:32 AM] >> I just want to verify understanding, you know, and so in that 6 to 12 months, we look at this step of then moving the 911 call takers into the civilian leadership's reporting line. And that reporting line, as you recommend, reports to chief Davis, our Austin police chief. [11:05:47 AM] >> Correct. [11:05:47 AM] >> Okay. And I really appreciate being able to read your reasoning on all of that. I want to take a moment to just level set based on our previous discussion. I'll speak [11:05:58 AM] >> For myself. I want my colleagues to speak for themselves. Of course, I want to say that I support police dispatch remaining in Austin public police department. I did during budget as well. We have been discussing where 911 call takers specifically would reside. I support that, and your report certainly gives more reason to see it, because this brings us to an organization organizational structure in which all three public safety agencies have their domain specific dispatch. But we have begun a restructuring of how the 911 call taking apparatus exists and how quality assurance is maintained. So I just want to make sure that it's clear, because I did. I know and I in fact, I'm going to have a question for Austin fire and Austin ems if they're in the room. You know, in our prior discussion of this, you know, we had some questions about support versus lack of support for some of the recommended changes from our chiefs. And I had the privilege of having some meetings since then with Austin fire and Austin ems. Thank you for that time. So first, I'll go to chief Luckritz. Do you have concern? Do you support not support? Like, just please describe your take on the impact to your own agency of moving 911 call takers under the acm for public safety versus retaining under APD. [11:07:06 AM] >> In the the current or I should say in the in the proposal, both from mission critical partners as well as what you're discussing. You know, ultimately the ems operation would not be impacted by by either of those proposals. [11:07:22 AM] >> Okay. So no, no additional administrative burden. And no cause for concern there. And, and I love the same question answered by fire. [11:07:33 AM] >> No, absolutely. And I think that the, the qa and qc review that we're talking about here with the change in leadership, provides a guidance based on real outcomes and some objectivity and some follow through that, you know, now will be required. [11:07:48 AM] >> Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. And I did also have a meeting scheduled with chief Davis to discuss. And unfortunately, as we all know, there have been some significant considerations that needed to take precedence. And I, I, I welcome the opportunity to discuss that in the future. I'll reiterate that one of my concerns and why I brought this forward is because I, I do believe that we would benefit from civilian non-sworn leadership, as you have recommended, just specifically because there is so much urgent matters on, you know, that are the responsibility of APD and they cannot catch it all, as we see, especially at the at the staffing levels relative to what we're asking of them. So I wanted to level set there and then. Okay, so next question that I have for mission critical partners. This appears to me like you've given us a quite detailed 12 month action plan that gets us to the step of, like I said, restructuring 911 call takers. And they report to chief Davis. And you gave us great, solid reasons why that should be a step up. [11:08:57 AM] Is it was it within your scope to look beyond 12 months? I mean, because I saw many places in the report where, you know, suggested that we we take these steps, we begin to use that data to monitor progress and consider, for example, in the future whether we would move police dispatch or not. Would you say that you had a 12 month horizon for your scope? [11:09:18 AM] >> I don't think we were limited on the horizon. We based it on what we thought was our our best recommendation and laid that strategy forward. There are also comments in there in the report that don't limit this from being an additional discussion later on, right. In addition to the a pd dispatch portion. So really looking beyond is, you know, really up to you where you want to take it, especially around the, the conversation of alternative response. [11:09:53 AM] >> And that's an excellent point. It's not so much tied to the number of months as to the Gates of readiness, the readiness Gates. [11:09:59 AM] >> Exactly. [11:10:00 AM] >> So we need to move through these readiness Gates right in in the order that you've laid out and where those readiness stops in this report is at the point when 911 call takers have gone under civilian leadership and are reporting to chief Davis. [11:10:16 AM] >> And have the quality assurance and additional tools and modernization of the technology and all of those things that they're going to be able to need. They're going to need to be able to do what we've laid out. [11:10:28 AM] >> Okay. And then you also said during your presentation that the city of Austin has done some important and valuable work in terms of setting intention towards alternative response, diversification and response, specialization of response, and the most effective ways to implement that and route the calls and make that workflow work is a valuable conversation to have, but not the subject of our conversation today. It would require additional, more robust development. Correct perspective. Okay. And so thank you very much. And so what I will say, colleagues, from my perspective is that in bringing this, you know, I've also seen the work that has preceded me on alternative response. And I know we all value it, particularly considering the staffing levels that APD is currently at relative to what they to what they recommend to us. And so I believe that the moment at which to determine whether it makes sense to have call takers, civilian call takers, be perpetually under APD versus going through an intermediate step and then moving that report line to our acm for public safety is not within the scope of what you have developed for us today, and it is a significant concern for my colleagues and I. And I will say that even from the discussions and while I didn't have the opportunity to meet with chief Davis in the lead up to this specific meeting, I post this receiving this report. [11:11:57 AM] We have met many times before as well with the acms for public safety and, and I've done ride alongs and, you know, talked with frontline people to the greatest extent that I can. And I do hear that at the point that dispatch, you know, puts the call out there for the officers. They've got their list of calls and the officers, they are still receiving calls in that in that list that are things like someone has a wallet that needs to be turned in. And so, and that the noise of all of these calls, when they don't have the staffing levels to address every single priority level, all the way down to zero or X or not zero X or, or information is important to how we receive our data and also how things get handled. And so my perspective, my takeaway, so level set on APD dispatch remaining where it is. But I also believe that we would be, from what I've seen so far, and I do have a number of questions to add on to this, but I'm laying this out because of the nature of the conversations we had before, is that our most effective plan would be to move through these steps in, in the order laid out for us, with the specificity laid out, that the public safety committee receives quarterly reports on the progress through these steps based on date, not based on hitting a readiness date, but where are we as of the date and then? Once we have baseline data and we have a quality assurance unit, and so we have the capacity to actually track more effectively than we have before, that would be a more appropriate moment at which to consider whether that reporting line ultimately should stay with chief Davis or should go to acm Batista. And what I do see a great value in it, residing with chief Davis for a period of time. But as we have heard a number of times, that no one wants a foregone conclusion, we're not really using the taxpayers funds effectively nor effectively problem solving. By having a foregone conclusion. It is not a foregone conclusion to me at this point that I would not ultimately want that move to be the next step. And so I put that out there, and I, I have a number of questions that are directly related to the presentation, but I want to stop there because I know that I've already taken a fair amount of time, and I want to hear from my colleagues, and then I would hope to be called called on again for detailed questions. [11:14:26 AM] >> As usual, we will do that. Council member Siegel. [11:14:32 AM] >> Thank you, mayor, and thanks to all so much for this report, for your work on it, and for the thorough and thoughtful presentation. It was interesting for me to hear that an independent civilian department is something you would often recommend, but that there are very specialized considerations here in Austin, Texas, that make it more complicated than other jurisdictions. You know, one of the central conclusions of this report is that we need to introduce professional civilian leadership in order to correct identified gaps in our 911 system. Is that right? [11:15:06 AM] >> I wouldn't say that it's the only way you can identify those gaps. Your current leadership has made great gains in the last couple of years, but our experience nationally is that when you can have staff that who's whose careers are dedicated to public safety communications and know the technology and the operations. It generally does serve the profession better. With that said, there's no guarantee to say you can't ensure something or guarantee. That's when, with councilwoman lane's comments about the decision gate setting up arbitrary dates. That's right. Right. [11:15:52 AM] >> So could you just maybe share why it's a best practice to have civilian leadership over. [11:15:57 AM] >> 911 well, in in public safety communications in general. So please don't take that to mean civilianization of just 911. Sure. Okay. Again, throughout the country, there's over 5000 piece aps. Great majority of them are civilian from end to end. Again, the way that it is run here with the specialized discipline, having specialized call takers for fire, specialized call takers for ems, that is popular but not necessarily the norm. And so that does add the complexity. So when we say civilian leadership, take that as the public safety communications profession. And again, it's because it's career law enforcement, police are trained to, you know, in in law, in legal, in criminal activity, fire, you know, the adage of, you know, put the wet stuff on the red stuff and such. [11:16:59 AM] >> So just interrupt briefly because the mayor only likes it for us to talk at ten minutes at a time. Sorry. I just want to ask if. [11:17:04 AM] >> I'll be. [11:17:04 AM] >> More concise. You're putting it on the mayor, but everybody, everybody, everybody kind of likes to get to talk. And if 1 or 2 just do all the. [11:17:11 AM] >> Talking, I just I do. Have several questions. If you could just try to just give us the top line answer. You don't. You've already given us a ton of context. We've got your detailed report here. We got your beautiful presentation. But anyway, so I was just trying to start with kind of a high level one there, but let's get into mental health. You know, I was one of the co-sponsors of the 2025 resolution. I sponsored this budget amendment to fund civilian leadership of 911 a couple months ago and to speak for my office. And also a lot of the advocates we work with the top priority for establishing civilian leadership 911 is, and to explore an independent department is emergency response for mental health crises, because we acknowledge all of these wonderful improvements that have been made across the public safety response in recent years. And so we recently had a report done by city experts and additional consultants, a human rights impact review report, and the first key risk they identified for all of public safety in Austin is our mental health response. And the report says mental health calls to Austin 911 increased 269% over ten years between 2014 and 2024, and the average response time rose 180% to over 53 minutes. [11:18:25 AM] And your report says mental health, alternative response and community based services were recurring topics in your stakeholder engagement. And so I wanted to ask, have you analyzed the reasons for the mental health response times in Austin increasing so much over the last decade? [11:18:44 AM] >> When. Okay, to clarify, when you say mental health response times, you're talking about from the point of call entry to having a mobile crisis response or some sort of mental health responder. [11:18:55 AM] >> I mean, I'm not sure if you've read the human rights report, but this is the assertion that mental health calls increased 269% and average response times rose 180% to over 53 minutes. And so I'm asking if you've analyzed the reasons why those times have increased. [11:19:13 AM] >> No, we did not analyze those reasons. Experience and other cities that we've worked with, specifically with mental health. And the increase in call volume is typically because more people are aware of it, and cities are providing more opportunities to have that connection. Like you ask it right in your number one call greeting. [11:19:32 AM] >> But we can stop there because I just want to focus on because you haven't analyzed it yet for Austin. Correct. So and my understanding is, you know, APD responds to tens of thousands of mental health calls every year, which don't result in charges and many say should be eligible for diversion. But diversion occurs relatively infrequently. And so I guess in line with the prior question, so so far, mission critical has not analyzed the percentage of eligible mental health calls that were diverted to alternative response and the reasons why those calls are not diverted. You have not done that. Analysis is that. [11:20:07 AM] >> We have not done that analysis. We have talked to your your program staff at integral care, and they agree that they are not getting the calls that they feel that they should. There is a check box on the 911, you know, call take screen to indicate a possible mental health situation. But our understanding is they're not getting as many calls directly over to integral care. [11:20:29 AM] >> But that's like a, an area of study that we need to get into. [11:20:33 AM] >> Correct. That's more anecdotal at this point. [11:20:35 AM] >> Okay. And then there's a kind of a question in the report, I think, page 37 about call classification accuracy. And I think councilmember Laine got to this, that we're kind of missing data. And is it fair to say that data is not available because we don't have a quality assurance team right now? [11:20:51 AM] >> Correct. [11:20:52 AM] >> Okay. And then another issue, I think, page 36. You looked at time to transfer and we learned that and some of my office's meetings with 911 staff, including fire and ems, they don't have access to information about when a call was placed. And so they can only measure response times from when they received the call to when they arrive on scene. So those times are excellent, but they can't measure from when a call is received. And then on page 36 of your report, it states we should be aiming to have 90% of calls processed and transferred within 30s. Do you know the percentage of calls that meet that benchmark? [11:21:31 AM] >> I'd have to look back at the report. [11:21:33 AM] >> That's fair. I don't think it's in the report. There's also a statement. Mission critical partners estimates a range of 41 seconds to 86 seconds per call. That results in an additional call processing time due to workflows involving transfers. This site's to a publication called prehospital emergency care. You can get to that back to us later, but we would love to have the data information behind this calculation. We, like the report, doesn't have the citation to the specific article, it's just to a periodical in general. And there's not really a sense of, yeah, the details behind that assertion in the report. So if you wouldn't mind getting that back to us later. Sure. I'm going to kind of wrap up my questions now and just share with my colleagues that I think as a body, we should celebrate this report and the presentation. This is not something the city would have received, but for council intervention in the 2025 budget cycle. And council member lane's leadership on that resolution. So there's a lot of enhancements that are recommended quality control units, technological modernization, reducing unnecessary transfers and duplicate questioning. And these enhancements that you've identified should save lives. [11:22:44 AM] And so I think this is a sign of success that we've got this report and we've got this work to do ahead of us. The improvements to 901 identified by this report are because council didn't just trust that the current structure would yield improvements. We we intervened. Right. And I think the call for a true civilian leader of 901 is something that all of us seem to agree on. And with the main question being where that person should live in an organizational chart. And so given our agreement on so many key points, I think we have a great basis to move forward, to hire a civilian leader and to empower that individual to hire support staff so we can get to work on these recommendations. And some things weren't explored, right. We don't have all of this analysis of mental health and diversion. We don't have the customer service data, the survey analysis. We don't have classification accuracy or protocols, which is very important to explore. Mental health response. We don't there's also issues of career path and professional development for 911 call takers. [11:23:47 AM] So and I'll just say, as my colleagues have heard me say on other topics, I don't necessarily think the answer is to hire more consultants. I think we should stick with this recommendation of hiring a true civilian professional leader. Someone who is an expert at 911 best practices, has a vision for how to make our 911 the best it can be, given the context we're in. And, you know, in particular, we want to continue for my office. And I think this is for all of us here. We want to improve my own response. And so we've established this little office. We've allocated dollars to it. I think we should proceed with that direction. That doesn't mean we establish an independent department. It doesn't mean we move anyone out of a pd, but we should use the dollars to hire budgeted staff and keep exploring these questions, because our goal ultimately, is to save lives and dispatch resources more quickly and dispatch the appropriate resource for each emergency, and by providing all of the professional support and resources our our call takers need. And I hope we all agree in that direction. Thank you mayor. [11:24:47 AM] >> Thank you, councilmember mayor pro tem. [11:24:51 AM] >> Thank you, mayor. I appreciate the comments and and I want to start off, we have come a long way in our mental health response, and I'm going to read a few quotes from a report that I had a mental health resolution back in 2025. The report was published on may 1st, 2026. And I think it is. It speaks to a lot of the issues that council member Siegel was just talking about. It focused on our mental health response. But I just wanted to say that in 2018, 2019, we had meadows mental health policy institute report that really kind of started this entire we did not have a mental health response system ten years ago, not a formal one. And there were a bunch of recommendations in that document. And when you look at that, you know, eight year old document and you look at where we are today, it's really a tremendous success story of standing up an entire mental health response system in a relatively short amount of time and becoming, I think, a national leader in terms of the diversion away from police toward mental health. It's it's been just a huge success story. [11:26:08 AM] And again, we can always get better. And I completely agree that we've got to continue to strive to get better. But I've got to pause and acknowledge that we're doing a pretty good job on our mental health response caseload. And I'm just going to read a handful of these. And again, this is a memo may 1st, 2026, entitled staff response to resolution the number regarding mental health response. And there are key findings. And this is another one. I'm not sure about the numbers in that report. But again, between 2022 and 2024, approximately 11% of all 911 calls were initially identified as involving a mental health component. Fewer than 1% of calls not initially classified this way were later determined to have a behavioral health element. Again, I think that says we're doing a pretty good job on the front end of identifying and saying, this is a mental health call and getting it to the appropriate place. Are we perfect? No, we're missing some. But the vast majority, 90% or so of the calls that we're receiving, over 90% are being routed appropriately. Again, a key finding of the calls identified as mental health related and referred to see three are the the crisis call center, the mental health response. 86% were resolved without requiring law enforcement involvement. [11:27:39 AM] Again, just a tremendous success on the on our current system of making sure that the response that we're giving is appropriate and not involving law enforcement when we don't have to involve law enforcement. Another key finding in cases where mko responded either alone or with ems, over 85% did not result in arrest or transport to an emergency room. We're diverting people away from an emergency room, which is another, I think, very, very important public goal. And then finally, the c3 was eligible but unavailable to respond to just over 1% of mental health related incidents due to staffing limitations. This percentage has declined annually, indicating improved clinician availability. So again, we are responding to virtually every call that is routed toward. We're catching the vast majority of calls that are mental health calls. We are dispatching the appropriate response to the vast majority of calls that are mental health calls, and the cat and integral care. The personnel were not available only in 1%. [11:28:49 AM] When, where, when we identified as a mental health call and we dispatch it over to see three, 1% of the time they're not available. And I would also note that this report was done before we went to 24 over seven on our cat response. So very likely our responses have gotten better. So I just wanted to lay that out because, and again, I really appreciate the discussion. I think there are improvements. I think that I really appreciate the report. I think there are a lot of improvements to make, but we are we have a very successful mental health diversion program right now in the 911 call center. And I, I want to improve on that, but I just want to be very cautious and careful that we're not losing or we're not putting at risk any of the substantial gains that we have made here in the last decade or so. So I just wanted to put that out there. I really and I'll post it to the message board later, just with a link to the to the report. I think it's a really good report. [11:29:53 AM] I think it goes to the heart of some of the questions that are kind of beyond the scope of your specific report, but that that council member Siegel discussed, what are we doing? How are we doing on mental health response? That was a big question of mine. We asked for the report. We got it back. And in largely, I'd say we're doing a pretty good job. I just wanted to put that out there because, you know, if, you know, we don't pat ourselves on the back, no one else is going to pat on the back. And, and again, it's a big victory for the city of Austin. It's a big victory for the people of Austin. And we're getting better outcomes because we're recognizing and sending appropriate mental health responders to those calls. One question sworn dispatch versus civilian dispatch. I know here we have, you know, our dispatch and please correct me if I'm wrong. They are firefighters. They are medics. They are a pd. In other words, a pd is talking to a pd in the field. You know, ems is talking to ems in the field. [11:30:53 AM] That's how we have structured our emergency response team. Intuitively. I don't really have a problem with that. Pros and cons versus a sworn dispatch model versus a civilian dispatch model. What do you think? [11:31:13 AM] >> At the end of the day, it is all about training, experience, efficiencies and outcomes. And we've seen it be successful in in both environments, cost per call, generally more expensive. If you're using uniformed personnel, there is also without speak for fire and ems. But I think a level of comfort when they feel like they're talking to their own and a level of experience, seeing things go poorly in both, right? Nothing's guaranteed. Everybody goes in with good intentions. So if you're looking at costs, if you're looking at. Operational efficiencies, if you're looking at just, you know, comfort of communications, the important thing is what are the outcomes? [11:32:13 AM] >> I appreciate that. And, and one of the my last question toward that, and I'll ask this, I don't know if we'll have an answer immediately, but for example, on some of the inspection duties, and I'm thinking about the fire department in particular, there there by state law, basically kind of given authority over a very kind of specific. And we would have to through collective bargaining, essentially, they would have to agree to say, okay, we can let civilians do that. Is that the context that we're looking at? Again, I know that that that may be beyond the scope of this discussion, but in other words, would would this have to be something that was a bargain for with our public safety agencies and or changed at the state legislature in terms of, again, if we did want to go to a full civilian model. [11:33:06 AM] >> That is our understanding. [11:33:09 AM] >> Thank you very much, mayor. [11:33:10 AM] >> Thank you. Mayor pro tem councilmember alter. [11:33:16 AM] >> Thank you. Pick up on that thread to to understand. I know right now the contract has the requirement of sworn dispatch, but as you talked about other communities in the state of Texas do use civilian dispatch. So it would be that we need to we'd have to move away from our current contract environment. It's not that state law prevents a civilian from, let's say, dispatching a firefighter. [11:33:45 AM] >> Correct. [11:33:45 AM] >> Okay. And I'm curious, you've done this work not just in the state of Texas, but across the country. To what degree would just in your kind of professional judgment, when you have that type of segregation where a call might, you know, caller might say, this is a police call. And so it goes to someone who is very much for us in that realm of policing. How much do you think we get into kind of the the hammer and nail situation, right? When when you're a hammer, all you see your nails and so do we. Is there any concern that someone who is, is kind of more isolated in their response framework that they are not going to say, well, no, this is actually a mental health call or this is actually an ems call because, you know, they're in kind of their Laine. [11:34:58 AM] >> I'll speak from personal experience of having been in that seat. You want to get the right resource to the right location as quickly as possible. And as I think I stated earlier, you know, back in the day, I wish I would have had the resources and the tools that are available now to make those decisions, to call triage better and to have those better outcomes. And you here in Austin have a lot of those things in place. I'm very confident that the 911 call takers that are sitting in there, that actually can focus simply on 911 every call. Are doing the best that they can with the tools that they have, and would love to have more tools to triage those calls. Better to get away from traditional response as much as possible, to serve the caller in the best way. [11:35:51 AM] >> Okay, I have a couple specific questions from your presentation on the cost comparison slides. Those are slides nine and ten. The option C, which is the the standalone option. There are two lines, one for personnel wages, one for benefits. Does that include the personnel of the call takers themselves. So as if the call takers were moved from a pd to this standalone, that looks like about $11.2 million worth of wages and benefits, would that be the call takers plus any of these new hires for quality assurance or leadership? [11:36:47 AM] >> Yes it does. [11:36:48 AM] >> Okay. And I just want to make sure we had an apples to apples comparison, because then in option a, it talks about the cost for hiring these new individuals like the new civilian person, but it doesn't lump in the cost of the 911 call takers. That option C does lump in. So when we're comparing saying that it's $12 million versus less than $100,000, it just doesn't seem like a fair comparison because in one, you're counting the call takers and in one you're not. [11:37:16 AM] >> Yeah. Understood. [11:37:18 AM] >> Okay. I just want to make sure I'm not reading that incorrectly. When we talk about the civilian leader, let's just say through option a, that your recommendation is for that individual to report to chief Davis. Is that correct? [11:37:33 AM] >> That is correct. [11:37:35 AM] >> Is that standard practice when you have seen this in other communities? I know in some you that individual reports outside of a pd or their police department to city management. Can you talk about why you recommended this reporting structure? [11:37:55 AM] >> Given the constraints, given a lot of times political will and and to be able to move the needle in a positive direction without disrupting all of the good things that are going on here, we felt that this was the most direct way to affect the changes. And when we do look at sworn and civilian leadership and those hierarchies, the closer we can get to the to the chief, to when. So the report talks about neutrality. We don't talk about neutrality from a bias perspective. We're talking about neutrality being equal to other command level, you know, roles. So getting that to, you know, as close to the chief as possible. [11:38:42 AM] >> Okay, I'm trying to distill down in my mind, if we have this existing structure right now that that reports to the chief. And there are things that you think could be going better. And, and that's not isolated to APD, right? Every department can do something better. But in this particular instance, there are things that you think could be improved upon with this individual. I'm, I don't know, I feel like I'm missing something in how that individual is going to be empowered to make the change. If that current structure is not achieving those outcomes. [11:39:35 AM] >> So I'll try and be concise. Wrote one of the challenges that we have in the profession when it's under a uniformed services is rotational leadership. A lot of times commanders, lieutenants, they through policy, they need to rotate or they rotate through. And one of the places they rotate through routinely is communications. When you're trying to plan a strategic path for communications, having that rotational leadership and that direction is very lacking. The direction is very difficult. It's not to say that there hasn't been very good leadership here. Again, we know over the last couple of years it's really been rotating or advancing. The current command just got rotated out. Right. And so you lose educational and knowledge in that they're constantly retraining the next person to get that expertise. And so that, again, one of the reasons looking at the civilian leadership, that person then becomes very articulate in understanding their needs, how to articulate the specific needs of public safety communications. And then can doesn't have to go through layers to make their case for their budgets, for their needs. [11:40:44 AM] And in doing so, you're, you're reducing the layers of bureaucracy. You're also reducing the layers of, if you will say, competition with finite resources. [11:40:55 AM] >> Yeah. [11:40:56 AM] >> Okay. Did you do any of the work on the Cincinnati change out of a pd? Are you did you personally do any of that work or. [11:41:08 AM] >> City of Cincinnati? No, we. Mcp has worked with the city of Cincinnati specifically on operational assessment. Back in an after action report on the Kyle plush. Unfortunate incident. [11:41:20 AM] >> Yeah. [11:41:21 AM] >> I was just curious if you're familiar with I'm curious if there are pluses and minuses kind of experientially, what went well out of that transition? What went poorly out of that transition? As we are analyzing how we want to structure this, whether it's within a pd or not, if there are things, lessons learned from that experience that we should, you know, look out for. Yeah. [11:41:45 AM] >> We have contacted city of Cincinnati. We routinely work with Hamilton county, Ohio as well. Have for will definitely don't have a problem reaching out. [11:41:54 AM] >> Okay, okay. [11:41:56 AM] >> Well, appreciate the conversation. And you know, I think councilmember Laine, her suggestion of kind of through the public safety committee, getting certain reports at various times just to understand how this is going so we can make an educated and informed decision about this structure, I think makes a lot of sense. So appreciate that suggestion. And I'm finished. [11:42:24 AM] >> Thank you. [11:42:24 AM] >> Mayor. Mayor, I'm sorry. May I offer a point of clarification to a question that came up earlier? It is true that we do have some requirements in our meet and confer and collective bargaining agreements related to civilian versus sworn in certain functions. But as it relates to state law, it is it is required that fire personnel be sworn personnel. Currently in our call center, the 911 operators for police are civilian in addition to the call takers. So I just wanted to offer that clarification for the council. [11:42:57 AM] >> Good. Thank you, councilmember duchen. [11:43:01 AM] >> Thank you, mayor. It's strange because everything I feel like I've heard this morning seems to be hinging on the mcp recommendation, specifically around the professional civilian emergency communications leadership position, which is identified like from what I've read and identify position that reports to the chief, at least in your implementation of it and helps with strategy and training and quality assurance and technology and probably a bunch of stuff I'm not even thinking of right now. And so I guess now there's just a difference of opinion about what that position means or how to implement it, and who that person should be reporting to and what the timeline of that implementation should be. I mean, that's kind of the conversation I'm, I think I'm hearing this morning. And so my first question is actually for either the manager or for John fortune, if he's still here, because I'm confused. I want to understand, based on the current council direction, what is the plan for implementing this position? As we currently understand it? [11:44:15 AM] >> So thank you, council member for the question. John fortune, deputy city manager we obviously have put things on hold until we got to this point today. And so, quite frankly, the conversation that we're having with the city council, the fact that we wanted to provide the consultants an opportunity to finish the report and present it was all information that we hope, you know, beyond today would inform us on our next steps. So, quite frankly, we we're taking the steps necessary, anticipating the moving toward a civilian leadership and all the other components to that, with the hope that after today, we would have the clarity that we would need to move forward. [11:44:59 AM] >> So I guess my next question is, when are we going to get the clarity on how to move forward there? What does that look like? [11:45:06 AM] >> Well, I think this conversation that we're having with the council right now is, is, is very helpful in terms of understanding expectations. What so far, you know, and I know not all the council members have spoken is that there's still a desire for some civilian components to the structure, but keep the structure where it is. And then we come back and we report. I think that is what I'm hearing from at least the speakers that have spoken so far. [11:45:33 AM] >> Okay. Thank you. It sounds like there may be more to come than in this conversation, even today, about the direction you all are, are being given about how to implement this particular role, since it sounds like the vast majority of our conversation is about how does this happen? Setting aside all the other recommendations, the other 100 pages of of what you put together. And by the way, thank you for that report. I know we've heard from and I appreciate in particular, mayor pro tem vela comments on that. I think he kind of defines how I'm seeing this also, which is we've we've heard we observed this sort of tension between two groups of advocates, both at times, I think, wanting to represent the community in different ways, which is one, how to make progress on the alternative response that you all talked about earlier, but also, how do we not sacrifice progress that we've already made over the last 4 or 5 years, which I think has been fairly substantial. And so a big challenge I'm running into is understanding where the data is on that alternative response direction. And I appreciate advocates sending me data on approaches that are being implemented in some other cities, but I don't I have yet to see any kind of really rigorous analysis on the outcomes or even equal comparison of these approaches. [11:47:01 AM] And most of what I've been sent is a couple of years old and doesn't really have the outcome level data that I'd feel comfortable with, making a substantial change in how we're approaching this issue. And that includes from looking at the university of Chicago, transformed, number one, the Stanford center for racial justice and Oakland and San Francisco, stuff from Berkeley and Berkeley. I'm also not seeing that information, the mcp report either. So like, given this tension and given this concern about jeopardizing progress versus how do we make progress in this space? What can we expect? Or do you have some thoughts you can share with us on how we can make a more informed decision about how to improve alternative response? What sort of data do we need to be collecting? Is this what the civilian position is intended to impart to, or help me walk through how we can be back here, potentially in a matter of weeks or months, or however long, to make a more informed decision about the right direction for alternative response. [11:48:09 AM] >> So as I mentioned, when we look at alternative response, it is beyond the mental health component. It is any alternative that is available in the city to be able to better serve an individuals need. So again, telephone reporting, which we do highlight, there's some challenges with the reporting workflow between 911 and 311 and technology that can make that better. But your question of how do we make more, you know, where do we get that data from? What should we be collecting? And how do you make more informed decisions? It really is. Our charge here was really not looking at alternative response. [11:48:50 AM] >> I realized. [11:48:50 AM] >> That yeah. Right. So if you really want to dive into that, then it is looking at what are you doing today across your ecosystem? Again, looking at all the alternatives you have, what's currently in their portfolio, what else could they be taking on their portfolio that perhaps police, fire or ems? And both of those are included in that as well, that they could be doing that others could be doing that don't really need to fall to those traditional entities. And so broadening the, the purview of what alternative response means, finding who's handling that today. And if there's no nobody alternative besides police, fire, ems, determine what that alternative could look like, whether that's another a city run unit or a public private partnership, whatever that that could look like. And then you just you maintain a commitment to continual improvement. Now, the question of is this something that a civilian nine one, one leader would, you know, would be part of their responsibilities? I think it's part of everybody's responsibility. You know, every response organization, all of you as representatives in the communities themselves to help determine what other alternatives are out there and, and do better. [11:50:19 AM] >> I mean, if I can jump in, it sounds what I'm or paraphrase, perhaps what I'm hearing you say is we would need to issue specific directive to go do an in-depth dive into specifically alternative response to either the management or in combination to mcp so that we can get that kind of either that or work with staff to make sure we're collecting better data to inform an analysis that you all could later. [11:50:44 AM] >> Councilmember, if I could interject, the council has already given us that direction. We understand very, very well that the directive from this council is to look for alternative ways in which we can respond to calls, whether that's through an online call system, whether it's through mobile crisis paramedics, whether it's through our cop program, no wrong door, all the programs that we're doing, we understand the council's direction. Whereas in fact, there's been previous action by this council directing those type of alternative for staff to evaluate those alternatives. So I would be cautious as a manager to put that burden on one civilian person in a call center. I think that that that that is an ecosystem of response. It's much broader than an individual within a call center to be able to be responsible for the magnitude of that. And so when we're talking about data and we're talking about success, I think it's a it's the challenge quite often is we have so many programs in the city of Austin that's focused on those types of activities, is bringing all that data together in a digestible way in which we can actually demonstrate the types of success we're seeing. And we recognize that that is something that we will continually be striving to do. [11:52:00 AM] So I just wanted to add that context. I believe that, you know, certainly civilian leadership will provide some consistency as, as as the consultants have said, I've also experienced that in former cities where that civilian component does provide a level of consistency in terms of just operations and management of the personnel within the in the in the operations. But beyond that, I think it's a scope too big to put on one person to be responsible for all the alternative response. [11:52:30 AM] >> All right. Thank you for clarifying that. And I would just then want to follow up and find out kind of what the timeline then is for how you all how staff is thinking about how to make sure that we're pulling that data together or how we're going to organize, getting that response. I think just broadly, I'm going to say like, I support the mcp recommendations. I want to be able to send them to residents. There are some places where, and I think you already identified where either because of the report scope, we may not I may not have the information I might need to be able to defend or respond in a way that I'd like to. I don't know if today is exactly the right time to get that, but I would love to follow up with you independently and see if we can help me get some of that clarity. I think you've heard some things from my colleagues about cost of certain things. I've got some questions about peer cities that you looked at. So if that's the best way to approach this, okay, then I'm happy to do that instead of ask them on the dais. Thank you. [11:53:30 AM] >> Thank you, councilmember. Councilmember Ellis. [11:53:34 AM] >> Thank you mayor. I've appreciated all the questions and comments as we work through this. It is quite a a beefy report to kind of get through and to be able to triage what exactly it is that is a decision ahead of us. It seems like there's two conversations happening in real time, and one is about how do we assign dispatch calls to which entity, what's the reporting structure for whoever is leading the 911 call taking center? And another seems very, very much tied to the actual technology. I know that council member Laine, during the budgetary process, had brought up the issue of, you know, if we have Austin residents that are in Williamson county or in my case, hays county, and they're calling 911, they might be getting sent to the wrong center. So I wanted to start with that conversation and what your report might tell us about those technologies. I know that it mentions there's some technology improvements or, you know, better software or different ways of collecting data that could help with these issues. But can you tell me a little bit about what you learned through your conversations about some improvements we can make there? [11:54:41 AM] >> Certainly. Thank you for that question. I think the question regarding what has been being done for helping, you know, route calls, you know, with councilwoman lanes, you know, is, you know, challenge that she's having up there. I think that question I would probably give to doctor stoner so that, you know, he can real time tell you what, you know, what has been done and where that is headed, which I understand is, is it heading in a positive direction? Other technologies. So there even with the quality assurance unit, there are ai supported quality assurance technologies that can assist in, I mean, being able to cue a, you know, 90% of your calls rather than the manual, you know, system that they're pretty much is today in most places. So technology can help there. There's a secondary benefit to that because those systems also then help with detecting possible mental health of the call takers themselves. How many critical calls have they taken? They can flag calls, they can give them feedback, and I won't say real time, but within an hour or two of how they've been doing, where their deficiencies lie, other technologies to be supporting call, triage. These are technologies that aren't necessarily, you know, under the control of the city of Austin. They're part of capcoa, which is the folks that own the 911 call handling equipment. [11:56:15 AM] There are ai supported technologies that can help pick out those key words that can help them better route those calls. That's a conversation for them to be able to turn on that function and what those costs could be, you know, to the city. Another piece of technology right now, there is not the ability to transfer a 911 call 2311. Right. You call your bike's been stolen a week ago. It could be through the telephone reporting unit. And but you're told to hang up and call 311 again. That piece to do that is actually through capcoa. And then in reverse, if somebody calls 311 because of their handling the ten digit lines and they do have an emergency, there's no way to transfer that call into a dedicated line in the 911 center. So those types of things in and of itself can can help with those efficiencies. [11:57:13 AM] >> Thank you for that explanation. And I'm also curious about any sort of software updates and whether it matters who's operating it. Are there any circumstances under which they would say this needs to be a police officer that handles this type of information, or a sworn personnel as opposed to civilian, as far as handling sensitive data and making sure that that information is not available to the general public. [11:57:39 AM] >> Yes, that would be what we call see just criminal justice information, system information, criminal histories, even running of your, you know, even tags and, you know, license plates, those type of things. And so there is a relationship with that, those call takers, right? Because they're entering that information, they can have, they do have to have access to that information to then be able to inform, you know, the, the police dispatchers as well. And there are some licensure requirements at the state level, especially, you know, with regards to that. So you would have to maintain, you know, hiring criteria, those types of things so that they can maintain access. [11:58:20 AM] >> Okay. That's helpful because I'm trying to think through, you know, whether we end up with a civilian individual that is managing the call center, would they have to go through other extensive training, or would this be someone that we say we have to hire someone with a specific, like tcole certification, for instance, to make sure that they know the information that needs to be triaged? [11:58:41 AM] >> Yeah, you would definitely want to make sure that everything aligned with, with people, you actually are very fortunate here because you have some very experienced, you know, leadership already within the within ctec within 911 that could step up into these leadership roles. I think between the top three that you have right now or, you know, 30 years, you know, combined to be able to do that similar to fire and ems, they kind of have a, a built in resource pool of applicants, if you will, because they bring people in from the field to serve in those call taker and dispatcher roles. You do have a, a career pipeline like that available to you as well. [11:59:25 AM] >> So theoretically, even as civilian, you know, leadership, whether they're in the assistant city manager's purview or with APD, could end up being someone who's dispatchers be able to do that work. And it's just who they report to that would ultimately be the, the deciding factor. [11:59:44 AM] >> Correct. [11:59:45 AM] >> Okay. Interesting. I, I will just conclude by saying, I really, really appreciate the report and all of the information in it. There's, there's a lot to digest. It does seem to me like it leans toward. There are operational improvements that can be made that trying to reset and restart a whole new program may not, in and of itself solve the issues that are ahead of us to solve. And so that's where I'm worried that there is risk in having a setback. If we're trying to completely restructure a department that is generally already functioning well, even if there's absolutely improvements on, you know, who is showing up to the calls and how fast can we get mental health care professionals into those situations? I definitely see some room for improvement to make sure those are being handled appropriately. I'm just worried that we may end up inadvertently setting ourselves back, and having some of those calls take even longer to respond to. If we're trying to reinvent the wheel within a program that generally does function well. And it seems like a lot of the stats that my colleagues have, have dug up are pointing to, you know, a fairly successful program with with some tweaks that do need to be made. So thank you. You're welcome. [12:00:57 PM] >> Thank you. Thank you, councilmember Ellis. I'm gonna go back to councilmember Laine. [12:01:05 PM] >> I'm sorry, did you say you're returning to me? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. I'm going to jump around a little bit because so much ground has been covered of my remaining questions, and I really appreciate that. And I feel like this has been a really productive discussion in terms of bringing clarity to some of the confusion that I think, unfortunately, has prevailed before now. And I certainly recognize the role of our consultants and and our leadership team and bringing that clarity. So I wanted to start with just kind of picking up where we left off. I appreciate it very much. Your acknowledgment of the steps that Austin has taken towards diversification of response, and I would be remiss if I didn't also touch on your description of a primary benefit of a standalone joint joint emergency communications department being symbolic repositioning. And, you know, we've heard, I think a lot about this at this point. And so I'm going to skip some of my questions and comments and simply say that I am not looking for some symbolism alone. I am what I am looking for is moving from initial steps, good intentions to mature implementation and mature implementation for us as a city has always included. And I will say, speaking for myself, but many of my colleagues, most all has included mature implementation of our internal response alternative response initiatives. And so, so I just, I take issue with the, the consideration, I mean, the description of it as being purely symbolic, although certainly now that we have uncovered that our consultants scope differed from, you know, was shorter than the scope that was laid out in the ifc, which did include consideration of how alternative response lays out. I can see how you may have initially said something like that, but and just for my own information, for our information, when you were preparing this report, to what extent did you speak with 311 leadership? [12:03:16 PM] >> Would help with that? I'm I'm going to have to say I'm. I personally did not. So I would have to look back at our notes and see who who on our team spoke with them. [12:03:28 PM] >> Okay. So to at least we could say not significantly enough that it bubbled up to the level that you made use of those interactions. In your preparation for our briefing today. [12:03:41 PM] >> We use the information in the report, which is how we found about the inefficiencies and the routing and that. But again, that was actually pulled back the taking a deep dive of the 311911 combination from our scope. [12:03:56 PM] >> Okay. But actually in the report, it says frequently that there is the capacity to transfer between 311 and 911, which is part of what made me transfer. [12:04:07 PM] >> Now, what is in like the same way that calls are transferred to fire and ems, they are told to hang up and call 311. [12:04:16 PM] >> Yes, absolutely. That is our experience and source of frustration. I agree. Okay. And then when you were looking at the call center, which already does ask about mental health response, and you were evaluating so that the report could be written, to what extent did you speak with integral care about their perspectives on effectiveness? [12:04:37 PM] >> Yeah, we, we sat and we talked with integral care program manager there. Okay. She visited us over at ktec, showed us the, the area. And, you know, we talked about that we actually had the opportunity to talk with her more extensively, actually at a conference that we were at prior to meeting here. So we've had additional conversation. [12:05:01 PM] >> And I know you noted in the report that it is the the way in which wilco or, or hays county and hays county wasn't mentioned in this, but the way in which wilco would be integrated into Austin. 911 ecosystem. And also I got the impression getting a more robust look at the data as it relates to the experience of Williamson county. Stakeholders should be considered separately from the aspects that are the focus of this report here. Did I understand that correctly? [12:05:32 PM] >> I think the concern with routing of calls and the technology that can be implemented to assist with that address, that part of it as far as challenges with response times and call receipt, when as you experienced yourself, you called 911, you got transferred and then was like, well, if you would have called 911, but you did. And so I think the steps that are being taken and we had those discussions, how are those addressed? [12:06:02 PM] >> Okay. So then. To what extent? I mean, there was a lot of discussion in the report about not having an end to end. Look at what happens with a call. Yeah. And I understood that to mean we have the information when it hits, for example, fire dispatch. And then we can add our call takers [12:06:27 PM] >> Amount of time to transfer. Do you actually have a similar amount of data on the amount of time that it takes to get from Williamson county's call takers to. Okay, so we don't have that complete chain and that complete response time. No. And that that would. And and therefore that would be addressed in the future. [12:06:48 PM] >> That that would not be addressed in the future. [12:06:50 PM] >> That would be addressed in the future as opposed to having a clear look at the data. Currently. [12:06:57 PM] >> You have to make sure that you, you, you specifically that that data existed. [12:07:04 PM] >> Okay. [12:07:04 PM] >> And so it could be available. [12:07:06 PM] >> Okay. So I asked that question because more than 60% of my district experiences that situation. And so for us, it's, it's not a hypothetical. And it is also not something that we don't want additional delay on addressing. 25 years ago, when we were annexed, many parts of my district were annexed. The calls were going to the right. They were going Williamson county. And 25 years later, they still are. And we still don't even know how long that is impacting before our firefighters show up to a fire that's grown significantly. And so I know the challenges, and I think that my colleagues will be very happy to hear that. I, I very much appreciate seeing the sequence of steps that you've laid out and see the importance of going in that order. And I also recognize and you tell me if this fits, that this sequence was laid out so that we could begin to take steps immediately that will be felt on the ground everywhere without undoing our progress. [12:08:42 PM] And then we'll add on, we'll get to the point that we have data asap on the experience, the call response time that's being experienced by the caller. So I just, I am very glad to have have a robust set of steps. And so I really want to acknowledge that. And I'm sorry that that acknowledgment was longer than you all probably want, but it is very important. Okay, so I have a question for, I guess, John fortune or I don't know who, but for city staff, one of the first steps that's laid out is appointing an interim lead. Who will the interim lead be for this first phase? 0 to 3 months? Because I know I've talked to a lot of different like there's chief Davis who's over right now. There's you, there's acm Batista, there's some interaction with him and a lot of different. [12:09:42 PM] >> When you when you were. And I may be missing something in the detail when you say an interim lead, can you help me understand that interim civilian lead? Because it has leadership right now. We have we have we. [12:09:52 PM] >> Have allow our consultant to describe what they mean by that, because I pulled it from the report. [12:09:58 PM] >> So this is actually designating an interim implementation lead. So somebody to assist with the responsibility of putting the whole kind of project together. How are we going to move forward? And then working on defining that professional. [12:10:08 PM] >> That that will be acm Batista, who will be handling the overall steps as we move forward with the implementation, recognizing that the day to day leadership has not changed until we get to those next steps. [12:10:15 PM] >> Okay. [12:10:15 PM] >> Many will be glad to hear that I won't be having as many meetings. I'll go straight to you soon, Batista, as the implementation lead with the more detailed questions, so I appreciate that direction. And I also am wondering, you know, councilmember duchen and I believe others may have also been asking questions along this line. What do you view as the. And I'm not sure if this is for the consultant or or for anyone else, but what do you view as the step that needs to be taken to begin that scope of work? Looking at alternative response options and how that. What implications that has for the organization of our 911 call center? Would that be a a second consultant report? And we bring in these experts, or would that be we've now hired an expert in a quality assurance team, and we are relying on this individual independent capacity. [12:10:45 PM] >> So what I what I would add, what I would the way I would answer that question is this. We have an amazing, talented leadership in our police, fire and ems departments, and they speak and are recognized nationally on the stage as leaders. Being in one of the top cities in the country. And they have wonderful ideas and we will continue to rely on them for their leadership and guidance on how we can provide different types of response to calls. Again, as I was referring to my response to councilmember duchen earlier, I don't believe it's incumbent upon one individual within the call center to to necessarily determine the alternative response models for our public safety agencies. And so I think there's a level of coordination that has to occur. I think there's a level of, of implementation that can be strengthened by that, but it's not incumbent upon one person to direct all the public safety agencies on how they can provide those alternative response. [12:11:44 PM] >> That's not really what I'm asking, though. Well. [12:11:47 PM] >> Maybe then I misunderstood your question. [12:11:49 PM] >> Okay, so if we look at our mental health response that is independent of our public safety agencies, we have a way that we handle it. Right now. If we look at 311 that's independent of our public safety agency, we don't have an internal leadership position that addresses the types of issues that our consultant has brought to the fore. And so if we are if we don't now and we aren't going to soon, it makes it feels like perhaps another consultant report on that topic. [12:12:26 PM] >> I think what I would recommend, councilmember, is that we get the civilian leadership in place, and then we do the assessment that's been discussed and contemplated here. Before we take the next step of saying we need another consultant, I would lean on the level of coordination and collaboration between the public safety units and teams and the leadership there to work with somebody independently or not to develop those types of strategies. And I will say, just recognizing where we are in the city of Austin, we're quite frankly, leaders across the country and the types of alternative responses that we have. People are looking here all the time and coming here and talking to us. And so I think what I would like to see is a synergy from that and continuing building upon that to get even better. [12:13:12 PM] >> Okay. So and I thank you. And I, I support that approach and I can wrap up my questioning right there. So it sounds like we want to move forward with the actions laid out. And approximately the first 0 to 9 months, paying attention to these readiness Gates, getting quarterly reports on progress based on months time, not readiness Gates to public safety committee. And when we have moved through the steps that are laid out in this report, we use what we have learned in order to determine whether that is additional shift in the reporting line. And so if that is in fact the course that is taken, I also want to just express my gratitude to my colleagues for taking that risk during budget to approve the allocation of resources necessary to take either path. [12:14:31 PM] I would personally hope that we would continue to explore feasibility, knowing that that decision has not yet been made, and that we have already cleared the hurdle laid out in the report of funding, and that funding is available. When we get to the point of that decision, then the determination can be made of how it's allocated. So thank you very much. [12:15:08 PM] >> Members. Those are all the people that have indicated they want to speak on this item. So what my recommendation would be is unless there's an objection, we take a recess until 1245 and then come back at 1245 and take up item b2. All right. Without objection, the city council of Austin, Texas, is in recess until 1245. It is 1214. [12:45:04 PM] Good afternoon everybody. It's 1245 and I will call back to order the Austin city council for this work session. Members, hang on one second before I do that. The manager wanted to say something. So hang on one second. There he is. We're back in order and and we're going to take up item b2. And I want to recognize the manager. Apologize, I got started. [12:45:36 PM] >> That's okay. Mayor. Thank you. Today's staff's presentation on the social services social services strategy update. You will receive that from Daniel Kalata, the assistant director of budget and organizational excellence, and Cary Laine, director of the budget and organization organizational excellence department. They'll provide you a brief update on the social services strategy and portfolio planning for fiscal year 2028. I'll turn it over to Daniel. [12:46:08 PM] >> Thank you, mister manager. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Daniel Kalata, assistant director, Austin, budget and organizational excellence. We're here today to give you an update on the social services reset a quick agenda. We'll go through some background information. We'll go through two sections of main content on agreement evaluations and the other on the broader strategic reset, and then go over timeline and next steps, social services background of how we got here today. Entering the fy 27 budget process, we were facing a budget shortfall. And initially the budget plan, which was announced in 2025, anticipated a $16.8 million reduction in social services contracts. In February 2026, we presented a proposed evaluation approach to the public health committee. There was also a city council resolution adopted that month, calling for a rubric to guide the funding decisions. March through July, we had several engagements with vendors, community members, staff and council around social services contracts and the the topic of the reductions. In may 2026, we updated the public health committee with the rubric and framework of how we were evaluating those funding decisions for the fy 27 budget in July. The fy 27 budget. The proposed budget included an $8 million reduction in ongoing funding, as well as a planned 8.8 million reduction for fy 28 and in August 2026, and the adopted budget for fy 27, council restored 4.7 million, which, along with some other budget adjustments, maintained social services funding at current levels. That's where we are today. There's also been three resolutions that have been shaping, guiding, guiding this work. The first I mentioned before, called for a rubric to evaluate the social services funding decisions. The second called for, which was passed in August, called for an evaluation, a deeper evaluation of the social services agreements that are going into fy 27 to assess the need for changes in reductions, and another passed in August, called for a broader evaluation and reset of the social services ecosystem, or at large. [12:48:30 PM] As a reminder, this is the rubric that we use in continuing to base our work off of of how we assess both individual social services contracts as well as the the focus areas. It's based on community need, the need trajectory, the city's role, the efficiency of the of the contracts and investments, as well as council and community direction. And again, that is that helps us to, to shape our priorities when it comes to the focus areas. What you see here is a current breakdown of the funding. So this is with the adopted budget for social services. We've organized it by department since that's how the budget is broken down and have the issue areas that those departments have contracts and programs in on the right, the the funding columns in the middle, the city grants that you see. That's the that's the main agreements that we've been talking about. And the evaluation operations are some of those things like shelter operations and other other operations that aren't as discretionary, let's say, as the the grants and contracts. [12:49:49 PM] There were a number of items moved into one time funding in the fy 27 budget. And then you see the totals there, which is a total of all three of those columns. Excuse me. Now I'm going to move to. So that was all background information. Now we're going to move to the agreement evaluations. This was these are tied to that second resolution that I mentioned. That resolution called for an evaluation of all social services agreements that could potentially be affected by reductions in fy 27. Staff from eight departments reviewed 133 agreements that were across the social services portfolio and assessed their funding level, contract structure, performance and compliance, level of need and impacts, as well as partnerships, and they staff made a recommendation of whether those agreements should be maintained, modified or reduced going into and through fy 27. As a result of that evaluation, there were 106 maintain recommendations, 27 modify recommendations, and in this case, modify means recommending changing the structure of the agreement over the next 12 months, going through fy 27 and no calls for reductions in the agreements. [12:51:16 PM] And that was a total of about 48.1 or $48.2 million assessed. There were 26 agreements in that evaluation. So it's about 20% of them that had compliance considerations or concerns called out in the evaluation forms. I will note that y'all will be seeing the evaluation forms in a in a memo that should be out later this week or next, but those compliance issues, I want to note weren't just related to performance metrics. There's, there's a range of things that could have led to that type of flag, such as invoicing for unallowable items, later incomplete deliverables, and in some cases, meeting those contractual metrics and in individual or sorry information on the individual issues in those agreements can be provided. [12:52:15 PM] Here's a breakdown of those compliance issues across departments from the current agreements that were evaluated. We did want to go a bit more into the current compliance processes. Each department that has social services, grants or contracts has a compliance and performance process in place to address challenges from compliance that do arise. Those are those processes, while differing slightly between each department, are broken out into three main steps. One is ongoing monitoring that's reporting fiscal oversight and coordination between city staff and the vendor. Some examples are, you know, meetings between staff and providers as far as contracts compliance unit that runs annual monitoring. So has quarterly monitoring processes, basically to, to keep tabs on what's happening with these agreements before payment of an invoice, invoices are verified. [12:53:25 PM] It confirms that the costs were allowable and the services were delivered. When a compliance issue is identified, as is in the case with those ones that we saw flagged in the previous slide, the department follows a corrective action process that includes clear expectations for rectifying the the compliance challenge, measurable improvement targets, and defined timelines. Typically, they have 30 to 90 days to rectify the issue, and remedies, if those issues are not addressed, can include sort payment notices or stop payment status, official cure notices, and terminating the contract. [12:54:24 PM] And those those are always ongoing processes the departments hold. Now, moving to the broader strategic reset, the. The other resolution from August called for a social services strategic evaluation that included need assessment, collaboration, city role evaluation, consideration of different funding models and policy options, performance reporting and accountability, improvement across the social services ecosystem. We're addressing that with a working group that's led by the city manager's office and includes all departments with social services funding. We have focused efforts and working groups on the issue area definition, including the level of need, the gaps in the city role, the intervention strategy and service portfolios that would inform that strategy based on national best practices, best practices from evidence and research, stakeholder and partner engagement, the contracting grant structures, performance measures, and reporting that we'll use in the individual agreements that are under those portfolios, as well as governance and collaboration both within and across organizations in the region. [12:55:46 PM] The evaluation that I just went over of the individual agreements, as well as the strategy determinations, will all be completed. Target date December 2026. So by the end of this calendar year and all of that information will be used to inform any agreement, modifications or solicitations that we plan to do to take effect in fy 28. So when we think of the policy considerations that come with this overall reset, we've got three main areas that we'll be looking for guidance on, as well as discussion with you all on. The first is issue area prioritization. That's as we define the level of of need, even the definitions of the issues, areas and services portfolios. We want to make sure that we're prioritizing with council and community input, of course the accountability framework. So that essentially means what it looks like from a performance standpoint. When we solicit a resolution or modify most or all of the agreements across the issue areas, as well as the individual agreements themselves, that will, of course, be presenting to you through the council processes that will aim to take effect some in fy 27 mossad starting in fy 28. From timeline and next steps, the timeline. We're. We're here in September completing the agreement evaluation and vendors have all been notified. And we're proceeding with that work again issue area definition, the services and partnership strategy, the structures and funding level determinations and options, as well as continuing and establishing engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders and partners. [12:57:23 PM] As we enter the new calendar year in 2027, we'll move into the process of soliciting new contracts and grants, or modifying any existing agreements based on the results of the evaluation and strategy work that we do over the next few months. The budget engagement process, of course, will be taking place during that time as well, all leading up to a reset. A new set of social services portfolio and agreements coming online starting October 2027. Special note here on engagement and partnerships. These are going to be crucial as we want to make sure we're looking at social services as an ecosystem, both within the city but across our community and partners. Resolution 81214 calls for engagement with several committees, including public health, public safety, economic opportunity and housing committees to review specific issue areas. And we are scheduling times with those committees now to do that through the end of the year, we will be collaborating, as we did over the past year with vendors, on options for contract structure and performance frameworks to make sure that that that works for our vendor communities as well as us. We will have community engagement with residents and affected individuals that rely on these services the most, as well as city leadership and staff collaborating with our counterparts from regional government partners to define roles and focus areas across the system. So we're making sure that the system functions as a whole and serves individuals across the region. [12:59:09 PM] A review of the next steps. Right now, we're working to complete the issue area definition, which includes gaps and services analysis, work on partnerships, funding potentials and agreements, structure determinations that will all bring us into the end of the calendar year. We're going to determine and confirm the accountability and governance changes for the portfolio and agreements within our own organization to make sure we're managing these agreements and the operations as best we can within our own organization. We'll continue engagement with vendors, staff, community and leadership, and this is all in preparation for those procurement processes and any agreement modifications that will start in early 2027 to begin and go into effect at the beginning of fiscal year 28, which is October 1st, 2027. So with that, I appreciate the time and happy to to take any questions and discussion. [1:00:08 PM] >> Great. Thank you for the presentation. Councilmember Fuentes. [1:00:12 PM] >> Thank you for this information. It is incredibly helpful. I just have a few technical questions, and then I'll end with a few overall questions. The 133 agreements that you have here for social services. And one thing that struck out to me as part of the budget process, there were a few contracts that were outside of social services, but still within the realm of the definition. For example, the farmshare contract, which was housed under a phs Austin public health's community healthy food convenience store retail initiative, does that how do we account for those other contracts? [1:00:48 PM] >> The evaluation of the 133 were on the agreements that were part of the fy 27 budget process. So I believe, if I can remember correctly, farmshare had one that was in that process and one that was also outside. So the one that was in was evaluated. The one that was outside was not as part of that specific evaluation. However, as we go through this more broader strategic reset process, we'll be looking at all of those issue areas, I would say as a whole. And we'll capture any and all agreements that are existing and determine the need for, again, the existing and any new agreements to make sure that we're fulfilling those services as the level of need and community needs. [1:01:31 PM] >> And if I could clarify a little bit in regards to the, I think it was the farmshare, the convenience store healthy food initiative, it began as an operating contract. So it was not initially, the program was not initially a social services program, how it was developed. And that's why that that particular contract was evaluated separately from the social services contracts. That contract was looked at along with the other operating functions of Austin public health. As we looked at the 5% reprioritisation process that we go through in the budget every year. And that is that that is the reduction that resulted from the 5% look across all general fund departments. [1:02:13 PM] >> Gotcha. Okay. And certainly, I appreciate that it was still because as a service, you know, that they're providing healthy, fresh food to people who are on snap and in disadvantaged areas of our city. So I would want to maintain funding that type of service when we do the reallocations between the categories. And so I just hope that we capture those contracts that were cut as part of the departmental cuts. And I did ask for one voice coalition to send me a list of the providers who have who have been cut in the fy 27. We'll be sure to forward that along. The other question I have is with the 133 agreements as part of the social service reset, will all of them be re solicited or just the ones that have been identified as modified? [1:03:02 PM] >> We're anticipating that most agreements will be solicited to begin in fy 28. And I say most because there may be some that receive modifications. There may be some that that are more operational in nature, that that may not be part of that. But we do anticipate that the majority of the agreements as part of this general reset, will be part of a solicitation process. [1:03:33 PM] >> Okay. That makes sense. On the policy considerations slide. You know, you lay out the the need for us to have further conversations on defining the priority issues, you know, and those are the colleagues. Those are the categories that we've discussed. You know, what amount should we be funding on basic needs versus homelessness versus mental health, behavioral health. And you know, for me, it's always has been to maintain our current funding level as it relates to social services overall. But to re categorize or, or fund differently the levels based on the information that staff gathers. Because now we know, for example, you know, central health has made a very significant increased investment in mental health, and we appreciate that. But what does that look like for our city and where we fund when it comes to social services? How does that process play out in the coming months? You know, you mentioned coming to the committees, but would you prefer that the committees issue recommendations on those category spending levels or defining the issue area? What does that look like? [1:04:47 PM] >> Our plan is to bring that information. So essentially, I think of it as, you know, this package of information across for each issue area. So, you know, level of need, what the partners are doing, current funding, you know, what an ideal services portfolio would be, as well as some recommendations both to the committees. And potentially we're still working out if we need to speak across the committees to the entire council. So we make sure we get that coverage across the focus areas. We can do that. But the point being is, yes, bringing that information to a subset or all of the council in those different cases and making sure that we have all that information across the whole issue area so that you all can make those recommendations and decisions. [1:05:34 PM] >> Okay. So we should expect at least a baseline recommendation in our committees for us to have. Yes, our policy discussion. Okay. Very good. [1:05:45 PM] >> Thank you. And council member, I do want to add, when we bring those areas to each of the committees, we will still be discussing the framework holistically so that even though the committees are focused potentially on public health, they'll see some of the results for workforce development. And so we want to make sure it's a holistic conversation, even as we go to each committee. And then probably we will come back to the full council in early 2027, probably January, to have a overall conversation with the entire council. [1:06:19 PM] >> Very good. And one last question. We should anticipate a memo that will explain further the 27 agreements that have been designated as modified. [1:06:31 PM] >> Yes, will be. We'll have a memo with more details as well as the evaluation forms. [1:06:37 PM] >> Okay. Thank you. [1:06:39 PM] >> Thanks. Excuse me. Thank you, councilmember councilmember Laine, followed by councilmember alter. [1:06:45 PM] >> Thank you. On the accountability framework. As staff developed the pay for performance measures, excuse me. [1:06:52 PM] >> As well. [1:06:54 PM] >> How will they be designed to make sure providers are still incentivized to serve our most vulnerable and hardest to help clients? [1:07:03 PM] >> We have a working group that's coming together now that's going to look across different potential agreement structures. I say agreements because some will be contracts, some will be grants. So lumping those together, agreement structures to make sure or to, to, to present options for and make sure that we're choosing a type of agreement structure that does exactly what you say. There will likely be some, some different types of agreements depending on the outcomes we seek, but we do want to make sure that performance is tied to outcomes. So that obviously goes beyond just the words written down in agreement and making sure we have the monitoring and reporting structures and even making sure that we are describing the services in a way that makes sure that it's driving towards the outcomes we see. So to answer your question, that's exactly the, the, the charge that that working group has been given that we want to make sure and see as a pretty foundational part of this reset is, is how we structure those agreements and how they function after they're signed. [1:08:14 PM] >> Okay. Thank you. [1:08:16 PM] >> Thank you, councilmember alter. [1:08:21 PM] >> I wanted to better understand your slide about which contracts were maintaining, which were modifying and reducing. The fact that we're not reducing any. I fully believe in these services. I have, you know, sat up here time and time again and said that they are critical part of what a city does. My concern is we've had an audit report that sampled a number of these contracts. We've had your office give us a lengthy memo talking about these contracts. You've even identified in this presentation some contracts that have some kind of flag, whether that's a performance flag or otherwise. And we're not reducing or eliminating any of these contracts. I think it hurts the credibility of the city. It hurts the credibility of some of these organizations, because everyone's going to assume nothing's changed. And so there's this landscape that all these nonprofits are somehow not performing, and we haven't sifted out who the high performers are, or even just the adequate performers are and who is not meeting the Marc. [1:09:51 PM] And so I'm, I'm just really concerned coming into our meeting on Thursday that we have 20 plus contracts, and I have no clue which of these contracts have met all their performance metrics haven't. And and, you know. I the, the mayor's resolution on this, the idea was to figure out who's performing and who's not. And we have some data in some places saying there are people not performing, but yet our funding hasn't changed to the vendors. I mean, we've done some modifications here, but the in your notes, the modifications aren't necessarily all tied to funding. It could be modifying some of the criteria within the contract. So can you just help me work through that? Because I want us to be delivering the outcomes. I want us to be spending the dollars so that we're getting the result, not just spending the dollars. [1:10:56 PM] >> Yes. And those are completely valid concerns, councilmember, as we're moving into this full reset in fy 27, essentially what we did with that evaluation was identify the agreements, again that need to be modified. Some of those are, you know, saying that they need to be modified because performance levels aren't being met or a level of need changed or something like that. A lot of the agreements that you'll see on Thursday are coming up for extension, because we want to make sure there is continuity of services through this fiscal year as we go through this broader reset. So we have a good idea of the ones that are experiencing compliance or performance issues. We want to make sure that we have that entire funding level intact for the portfolio, social services portfolio as a whole. As we do this evaluation to understand what level of investment, where and the issue areas, we can then make those agreement modifications. Re solicit for new vendors where appropriate, kind of with with our full capacity and potential intact as we go into fy 28. So it's essentially saying we're not making any changes at this moment, but all of those any, any agreement with a compliance flag that we noted is currently in the, the performance improvement process for the department, whichever department it lies in, any adjustments that need to be made as a result of that will still be made, and that also then allows us again to go through with this broader strategic reset, with that full funding capacity intact. And I think you will see some changes on that level as we go into fy 28. [1:13:12 PM] >> I can understand that, but it feels like y'all took the mayor's resolution, reviewed everything, and said, basically, we don't have the time or we don't want to have a service interruption. And so even if we have some concern, we're going to fund it anyways and then fix it in fy 28. And I just, I'm, I'm talking to people every day who are rightfully concerned about the dollars we're spending. And I don't what is my answer to them when I say when they say, how do you know these contracts are delivering? You know, what, what has changed in the information you've learned? And the answer is, well, we're funding everything just like we were. I, I understand the justification and I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to to call you out here. I'm just I'm really. It gives me a lot of pause that I don't I don't know that. I mean, based on your answer, there might be contracts on Thursday that we have concerns about, but we're funding because we don't want to interrupt the service, but we may not be getting the outcomes that we want. [1:14:27 PM] >> Councilmember, if I can kind of speak to that, I believe when we started this process months ago, there were several contract areas of service areas that were supposed to start their solicitation. And we we halted that back in the fall or in the spring in order to complete this first phase. And so one of the main concerns is if we don't move forward with these contracts, then there will be a a definite gap in the services provided. When we provide you with the memo that shows all of the the reviews and assessments, it will give you the details of the contract, the assessment and and why the staff recommended the way that they recommend it in regards to the contracts that's coming forward, I think it's important to note, or even the contracts that are being monitored are in a improvement process. As those contracts go through that improvement process, there will be modifications made, and I think that staff in the time frame that we had, we were trying to be diligent in our review and also be responsive to the request of the resolution. It's been a little bit over a month. So we we are moving fast and we are still trying to make sure the services are available. So that's that's the challenge that we're having. But we are want to assure you that as we move forward, if any of these contracts that are in the improvement process do not meet the requirements, then they will be modified, they will be adjusted, and those dollars will be shifted to other agencies that can provide the services that we're intended. [1:16:18 PM] >> Okay. Well, my request ahead of Thursday is if there are any, those contracts on our agenda that y'all have flagged for performance reasons, and it may not be just within this analysis, but that we have concerns about previous performance. I would like to know that ahead of Thursday. Thank you. [1:16:39 PM] >> Yes, sir. [1:16:42 PM] >> Councilmember duchen. [1:16:44 PM] >> Thank you, mayor, I really just want to pick up, I think, where councilmember alter left off, because I have some confusion around what's been done and what's going to be different going forward with this current evaluation. When I look back at the work that you all share with us in February of this year, which was, I thought, fairly comprehensive, a whole peer analysis about where we land relative to the cities. And what I kind of thought was the starting point of a conversation around how are these contracts performing? And then I look at the memo you all sent out at the end of July, which had a detailed list of contracts followed by, you know, different levels of different levels of performance and how many unduplicated clients were served and so on. That was helping you make some informed decisions about what to recommend to council, how is what we're going to expect different than what has been done? And I'm sorry if I'm asking a similar question, councilmember alter, but I'm not sure I, I fully understood the response, but if it is similar to what he just asked. [1:17:53 PM] >> I think the main difference of what we're moving into now is we are not necessarily starting with an assessment of. And I will qualify this by saying in the work that we're about to do through the end of this calendar year, into the solicitations to take place to start in fy 28, we're not starting with the agreements we have and saying, what should we, you know, change with those? We are starting from a more, I would say, holistic and strategic standpoint to say, you know, what service, what is the level of need in the community for these different types of services? How are these issues defined? How can the city best meet those needs, along with our partners and other services? And then saying, how can we fund to get there? A lot of that may be things that we already fund. There may be some things that we don't. [1:18:58 PM] There may be some things that we should stop or reduce. So it's, it's less of a looking at what we have now and how can we come down from that or adjust and more, what does the landscape look like? How can we best address that? And then how can we use the resources we have to get there? So I think it's I think it's coming at the question from a different approach. And I think while we may not. Land on a totally different answer that's just unrecognizable from what we do now, I do think it will be different and a bit more strategically informed going into fy 28. [1:19:41 PM] >> So if I trying to understand that, I'm hearing you say it's going to be more strategic, it's going to be looking to figure out how do we solve the problem, but maybe in a different way than we are currently now, or based on the current contractual arrangements. So it's not going to be diving into individual contracts in a way that the prior analyzes from earlier this year did. It's going to be looking at we're trying to solve a a food access problem, or we're trying to solve whatever other problems that social services problems. And are these contracts getting us there, or do we need to reallocate some funding within this contract space to get to the result that we want to strategically is that. [1:20:24 PM] >> That's that's a good characterization. Okay. [1:20:28 PM] >> So then based on that, like what additional information could we expect that we haven't gotten already about how the contracts performing other than the context of how they fit into the larger picture outside of that one information, are we getting that would be new. [1:20:48 PM] >> If I'm understanding your question about the existing contracts, I think. We you may receive some additional information about performance, especially on those that have compliance flags. I think. Another another element of what you said, how they fit into that. The broader, you know, challenge space or service portfolio that we're recommending to suggest those focus areas will be the, the primary new information or additional information that you'll see. And I think we'll be able to compare how they fit, how they're performing, you know, to what level we're funding these, these types of services compared to the level of need compared to the, the city's role and just be able to have a lot kind of richer and fuller conversation around that whole space. [1:21:47 PM] >> I mean, the one thing that definitely seems clear and based on prior questions and based on even how the July 30th memo is characterized and the agreement evaluation results that you've shared in this update is all of what we're going to be primarily doing is reallocating as opposed to any other changes. Is that correct? Or rather, if there are changes to be made, they will be of the reallocation variety. [1:22:18 PM] >> I'll say we're starting with the baseline of total funding that was set in fy 27 as our as our baseline resource. And and yes, I would say if there are changes, you could consider it a reallocation of that entire funding package. If that answers your question. [1:22:39 PM] >> It does the the performance flags, are they from the prior research or investigation from this year? Is that where those. The origin of those performance labs is from? [1:22:49 PM] >> We asked for those specifically in this most recent evaluation that was done over the last three weeks. So while they were very likely, you know, informed in some cases by what happened in the past, I would say the most up to date information and potentially could have been updated since the summer when we asked some of these questions last. [1:23:14 PM] >> Okay. And last question is in terms of updating council, I know you've got a timeline. Here is the intent to provide quarterly updates on the progress of this. Is this the intent to provide a large update ahead of the budget process? Is the intent to come before the public health committee? How do you see the best way to keep us apprized of your progress on this? [1:23:36 PM] >> It will be all of the above, so we'll be at many of those different committees talking about specific focus areas or issue areas in addition to the to the overall, I believe we'll be giving quarterly updates. I'm not sure if that'll just be to audit and finance or the entire council. And then I think there will be a lot of engagement, both in January, as director Lang mentioned, as well as coming up and through the budget process. [1:24:05 PM] >> Okay. Thank you. [1:24:07 PM] >> Thanks, councilmember. I want to based upon this discussion, what I understand is happening here. I want to make a couple of comments and thought processes to follow up. First of all, the as I understand the goal here, and I think I do understand the goal because I played a role in helping to try to establish. The goal is that we're going to look for the right. We're going to look for the right amount of investment. And we're going to try to determine what needs to be invested. And if you recall, at the end of the budget process, one of the things that I put out there was the concept that for right now, let's protect the investment as best we can without necessarily being in the game, if you will, the business, if you will, of trying to protect the individual contracts, because we had not yet as a as a group made decisions about how much we wanted to invest in certain things. And so the I want us to be very clear that what the resolution did and what it asked to have happened is an evaluation of the investments. [1:25:23 PM] What we need in terms of different. What we need in terms of different services, as opposed to just we have contracts and we want to continue to perpetuate those contracts. Because time may have moved on in some way. There may be a difference in in what that investment. So so what is the right investment is the key question. Evaluating need evaluating things like best practices, evaluating things like are there other sources of funding that now have filled in a gap that we were filling? I say by we the city of Austin was filling, and now some other entity is filling up in a way that gets us there. And of course, performance becomes a key factor because if we're spending a dollar that is getting $0.50 or some other amount, some lesser amount of value, is there a is there something else that we ought to be doing? And what. One of the things that I. And I think that's what we're all saying here. I think we're all have have some clarity about that. I think we also all get the time gun that you're under. And I think everybody has a lot of confidence in your ability to try to manage the time gun, but also the real goal of what this exercise is. So I we hear you, or at least I, I think I hear you and I think everybody else based on the comments I'm getting, but please hear us. [1:26:56 PM] And one of the things that concerns me, part of the reason I'm bringing that up is the idea that you indicated that the baseline is how much we're already spending. That gets right to, I think, what councilmember alter was bringing up. The resolution even expressly states that that may be a. The amount we're spending may be a factor to consider in what we're going to do, but we can't let the tail wag the dog if we're spending money, if we're spending $100 on something that we don't need to be spending that $100 for whatever reason, then that's $100 that can go to something else or a save the taxpayer dollars, work on the affordability that we don't want to be in a situation where we're spending money in such a way on things that we're actually making a greater need for those kinds of services because we're we're creating a problem with affordability. So while that may be a factor, let's not let it wag the dog. [1:28:05 PM] The other part about that is, and I know the council joins me in this concern, and that is this also is not a practice in who is the best at lobbying the council. We have a whole lot of contracts with a whole lot of providers and a whole lot of people pushing those contracts, and we love them all. But the truth is that we ought to be making our decisions based upon what the investment needs to be, and not simply who's done the best job of getting of lobbying us. And I don't say that in a disparaging way. I say that we need to have protections that make sure we're getting to make those decisions in a calculated, thoughtful way based upon what is the appropriate investment by the city. So that's just my $0.02. To kind of clarify. We do get the gun you're under, and we're even as it causes some instinctive reaction on my part and obviously others, I'm taking that seriously. But by the same token, we have to get to the the real baseline, which is what is our need. [1:29:11 PM] >> Councilmember, we're both eager to say something. I will say we we fully hear you and the full council mayor, on the charge that we have. I think, anecdotally, we all know that the need will exceed the resources. We see that across the city and across our budget, but we will continue to work with not just looking at what we're doing as a city, but we are tying ourselves to our partners to see what funding that they are able to bring forth to help with some of this conversation, and trying to make sure that we are being collaborative in that regard. So if there is a partner who is focused on mental health, then what is the city's response to and how can we be parallel to them but not duplicate the efforts that they're doing? And so that is some of the work that we're going to be doing in the next several months. It is a tight timeline, but we are we are. That's one of the reasons why we are trying to keep the baseline based on the level of funding we have for fiscal year 27, as we're trying to make sure this full reset happens in fiscal year 28. [1:30:18 PM] >> Yeah. And all I'll say about that is the baseline isn't the determinant. Yes, sir. [1:30:25 PM] >> Yeah. I was just going to echo what director Lang said in that we are assuming the baseline as a starting point. But as the resolution said, if there is any shift from that baseline, especially if it goes below, that will be an overall policy decision of the council. So we will be bring any recommendations forward that talk about, you know, recommended investment levels for the different issue areas, as well as the the overall portfolio as a whole. And if that is different than that baseline that we're starting with, then that'll be a policy decision of the council. [1:31:02 PM] >> And I think I understand everything you just said, but let me say something in response, or at least a corollary to that, to make sure that that I am and that is we're relying on you all, in addition to tell us if I get we have a baseline of X number of dollars currently being spent on the broad category of social services. But if there's not the need to spend that money on some aspect of that, that is not just to say, okay, well, now we can have what we replenish that baseline. There. The credibility that councilmember alter's talking about, I think, is that the public has to assume that we're not ever just going to take the position that there's there's no better way of doing something, or there's no cheaper way of doing something or there's no. Savings that we might find. I don't think that's so. So we keep using the word baseline as though it is the tail wagging the dog. And I don't want I want us to avoid that. Thank you. Mayor. Yes, manager. [1:32:15 PM] >> So thank you. And I'm I'm trying to better understand, as I think the conversation between using the word baseline, at least from at least my very short memory of the budget process, I think staff is using that number to establish, for example, as we started the presentation, what our initial recommendations and thoughts were on the necessary reductions in the level of social service funding altogether. I think at least the way we walked away from the budget adoption process, and at least whether it was ifc or just the comments, were that there was a desire for council to what was approved as it relates to the total amount of social service funding to have that funding be at that level. The determining factors going into next year is. What I thought I heard was whether that number was $50 million. [1:33:17 PM] And that's what we stabilize that. The direction I thought I heard was there was a council desire to not have that dollar amount for the investments in social services reduced. Now that didn't speak to the areas of social service, which I thought this reset was ultimately going to have a role in helping define what those buckets were, so that there may be 20 million this year going into behavioral health. Well, next year that may be 25. And then this other area around youth or families in some other basic needs might be $5 million less or whatever the number is. I think that is where at least we began our thinking on. We don't need to settle that today. That will be settled over the meetings and discussions with the council and the committees. But to the point, so that at least from a baseline perspective, I think that's why we keep using that word. Not that it won't go up and down. In fact, if council wants to reduce it, that is totally fine with us. It frees it up. The only other concern or question I have, and I want to make sure we're getting clear guidance on, is, you know, when it comes to what we're you're going to see over the next several weeks, I think back to the tight timeline. I think, you know, and I've pressed on the team to councilmember alter and your point around performance and expectations and people's credibility is one, how do we avoid gaps in service, which I think would become an issue. [1:34:47 PM] And you begin to hear that as a council. But to for those particular contracts who may not be meeting the expectations, some of that could just be based on they can't determine and or they can't. I guess in some cases, they can't predict what the needs are out there specifically. So there may be less things that they can do for people with our resources. I think when you see the words modifying our contract, keeping it in its current state, I think we are looking at performance and I don't like to call it double secret probation, but there are a lot of, of, of performance challenges and opportunities to make sure people can cure their deficiencies that I think we do on a normal basis. And I think that is part of what Daniel said as it relates to as we move into a reset with the current contracts, that we may modify those individuals who are basically need to improve their performance, we're going to be monitoring that, and that will be reflected in any future contracts that they could receive or how competitive they are in this reset, but I just wanted to at least clarify to make sure I didn't hear it wrong. The baseline issue is that number. We're going to make a staff recommendation, whether it's on the buckets and the funding areas based on the desired outcomes we hear from council. But it is not my impression. I'm going to begin the year saying to you, unless there are different things that I have to consider that we're going to be reducing or recommending reducing social services contracts this year to balance the budget, I think I heard loud and clear performance is an issue, but we do need to continue to invest, and we don't want to do it off the backs of the social service providers. And I thought, again, if there was one thing that came out of the process, it was that was clear to at least us. [1:36:33 PM] And so we're starting from the premise of to take your words in some cases, to do no harm and to figure out how we can make sure we get the best outcomes, making sure that people are providing the services that we expect them to provide, and that we hold them accountable as well as ourselves in some cases for how we review and do that. And so again, we're going to have a lot of conversation with council, but I just want to make sure at least I was clear baseline to us was really, hey, if we're spending 50 million a day, let's assume we're going to have 50 million next year. And we'll begin the discussion there. And if council wants to adjust that number, then based on rubrics and all of our discussion, then we'll move from there. But at least I want to at least say that because I think my staff was trying to say that and maybe I said it wrong or use too many words, but. [1:37:18 PM] >> Well, you ate up all my time. [1:37:19 PM] >> I'm sorry. Councilmember Siegel wanted me to do that because. [1:37:23 PM] >> That's right. Yeah. You and councilmember Siegel are in cahoots on that. So but here's what I will say in. While I disagree with very little of what you just said, one of my memories of the ultimate resolution that got passed is that it was amended so that there could be a needs assessment and we would have a needs assessment, but we wouldn't determine that. All of our needs are defined by how much we're currently spending. We may end up spending that we may end up spending more. But in part of the way we talk to the public about how we fund certain services is we want to do an analysis of our needs and the, the if if we say, well, our needs are defined right now by how much we spend, then I worry you don't get a complete assessment of what your needs are. I'm not adverse to that being what we end up spending. I'm just saying I think the appropriate analysis of needs doesn't end with. Here's how much we're already spending this, so we must need all of that. That also gets into your good point, that you might have $1 million being spent on X, but now we've determined you only need to have a half a million. That half a million could go to something we have need for. So you end up spending a million. It's just that I don't want us, and I, we worked to not do this. I think to not say needs are defined by how ever much you're spending right now. Today, councilmember Fuentes. [1:39:00 PM] >> Yeah, and manager, I really appreciate your comments because that is how I took our budget conversation, very aligned to what you laid out. And I think for me, it comes from the understanding the needs of my community in southeast Austin and how great they are across those categories. So I certainly looking at our city, I know that the needs that we have for Austin overall will far out, will far exceed exceed our amount that we have available to invest. And so that's my, the lens that in which I approach this conversation is knowing that the investment level that we have as a city will not come close to matching the needs that we have across all of those different categories. And so as we consider how we move forward, given our tight budget dynamics, I do see the funding level as a baseline for our conversation because I don't want us to reduce our spending without understanding, to the mayor's point, the needs overall as it relates to defining the categories of how we invest, because that is where I do believe we'll have shifts in how we do our social service spending. But for me, it is important that we continue to have a baseline amount for our city moving forward. [1:40:10 PM] >> Thank you. Members. I think that concludes unless you guys got something else you want to say. Manager. All right. [1:40:18 PM] >> Use all. [1:40:19 PM] >> My words. Okay. Oh, you used them up today. All right. Well, then that concludes all the business to come before the Austin city council at this work session of the Austin city council. So without objection, the city council is adjourned at 1:40 P.M. Thanks, everybody.