Closed Caption Log, Council Meeting, 07/24/08

Note: Since these log files are derived from the Closed Captions created during the Channel 6 live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. These Closed Caption logs are not official records of Council Meetings and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records or transcripts, please contact the City Clerk at 974-2210.

Mayor Wynn: Good morning, I'm austin mayor will wynn. It's my privilege to welcome the george holcombe, asbury united methodist church. Who will lead us in our invocation, please rise.

May I say just a word of thanks to this the city council, you are a plus to the city of austin. Some cities I can't say that about. In the word of kermit the frog, it ain't easy being green. [Laughter]

and you are setting a standard for other cities of this nation that will be remembered in decades to come. Let us pray. Oh, lord, who has created universes beyond what we know, and planted courage and wisdom in all of our hearts. Beyond our expectations. Thus the mayor, this council and this meeting, may we use that wisdom and courage that you have granted to us to protect the powerless, the poor, and this earth that we depend upon for our existence. Allow us your grace to create the city of austin as the new austin. In every addition that we make, through showing respect for every person, religion, race and culture, and seeking peace through justice. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you reverend holcombe. There being a quorum present I will call to order this meeting of the austin city council, thursday july 24th, 2008, APPROXIMATELY we are in the council chambers here in the city hall building, 301 west second street. Before we start all of the business, we of course want to welcome new councilmembers, randi shade and laura morrison, graduating mayor pro tem brewster mccracken. Before I actually get into the agenda and do the changes and corrections, we have a number of -- we have a number of items to handle today this being our first city council meeting in about a month. I will ask city manager marc ott to expand a little bit on this if he needs to. With the hurricane south of us, probably two days -- two full days ago now, we sent several dozen of our firefighters and paramedics down stationed north of the presumed location of the hurricane kingsville. As part of the texas task force 1 preparation. So now -- now that the storm has come ashore, there is significant flooding, i think most people recognize that -- that the damage wasn't as bad as it could have been, but we have lots of men and women in the field right now going through pretty massive flood waters to try to help folks down in the rio grande valley in sowks. Austin manager I'm told -- down in south texas. Austin energy is involved and prepared to follow in a second wave should there need to be additional work done restoring power to folks in south texas. Lastly, similar to our exercise with hurricane rita, not crete, but rita back in 2005, austin is part of the evacuation and shelter hub plan whereby likely we will be a second tier city. San antonio the primary city this year. But working with working -- working with school districts, the governor's office, there's a rolling series of shelters being set up mostly in school gymnasiums, which was the exercise went through with hurricane rita. We do know lots of men and women of our city workforce are already in the field or prepared to be in the field should the need arise austin likely for, you know, very temporary nature might be housing some folks in shelters mostly in our school gymnasiums. Sheriff or marc if you want to expand on that?

That is a pretty good summary. I did ask our assistant city manager bert to gather up additional information if any is available at this point, bert.

Thank you, mr. ott. Mayor, thank you for the opportunity to share this. Certainly our office of emergency management will -- first of all, our office of emergency management has been in constant communication with the state monitoring the situation very carefully, not only for our community but also in terms of resources that are needed. I can tell you as you mentioned mayor, austin energy does have about 20 personnel, primarily linemen on stand by and ready to go at -- pretty much at an instant. We don't have a formal request yet. We do have about 20 firefighters deployed already through the state. Primarily focussing on teams of -- for urban search and rescue and helicopter. Rescue crews. As well as about 12 paramedics also deployed for both teams, search and rescue as well. It's my understanding talking to staff that we seem to have a -- not seem to have, but we actually have a -- one of the premier expertise in these areas in the state, the state really heavily relies on us in terms of these resources. Again 20 firefighters, 12 paramedics. No other requests in terms of health and human services , but I think that we have got a number of personnel certainly trying to help out as much as we can. So --

thank you, bert. Council and folks, a number of changes and directions, if you will bear with me, i will read through all of those for the record. Let's see we will be noting 1 has been reviewed by our electric utility commission. By the way, we normally -- 1 normally is the approval of our minutes from the prior meeting. We misposted that, but it will be part of the addendum. Part of the consent agenda in a few moments i anticipate. Items 4, 5, 10, withdrawn. 28 has been postponed or as part of a consent agenda it would be POSTPONED TO AUGUST 7th, 2008. On item 29, it should read: this contract will be awarded in compliance with chapter 2-9 a of the city code, which is our minority owned and women owned business enterprise procurement program. Meeting the goals of 7% m.b.e. and 2.4% w.b.e. We should note that items 53 and 54 have been withdrawn. We will note that item 88, mayor pro tem mccracken has been added as an additional co-sponsor. 87 has been withdrawn by councilmember cole. Item 103 we should note that the correct ordinance number is 2002-1107-z-11. And that this is the east mlk combined neighborhood plan. 104 we should note on first reading approved NOVEMBER 8th, 2007. On item 114, we should note that the -- that the planning commission will -- will review this case on AUGUST 12th, 2008. So there's no -- there's no planning commission recommendation yet on this thing. On item -- that's item 114. On item 128, the planning commission took no action, it was pulled from their agenda. 139, the planning commission recommendation was to grant mixed use and multi-family use. On item 140, the planning commission recommendation is to grant general office vertical mixed use conditional overlay or go-co-co combining district zoning. On item 114 the planning commission recommendation again was no action as it was pulled from their agenda re-- renotification issues. On 142 the planning commission recommendation is to grant family resident historic landmark neighborhood conservation combining district zoning -- neighborhood plan or sf 3 hnccd-np combined district zoning. 143, it should read to grant single family resident standard lot historic landmark neighborhood plan or sf 2 hnp combining district zoning. 144 it should read that the planning commission's recommendation again they took no action as it was pulled from their agenda for renotification purposes. On item 145, we should note that the planning commission recommendation is to grant family resident historic landmark, sf 3 h, combining district zoning, item no. 146 Also pulled from the planning commission agenda for renoifbs. No action by them. -- renotification by them. 148 we should note it comes not recommended by the planning commission. 150, and 151, time certain public hearings, note that the staff will be requesting a postponement of these two public hearings to THURSDAY, APRIL 21st, 2008, Technically we can't take that vote to even postpone them until after 6:00 p.m. this evening. But do note that's the staff request and it's highly likely to be -- to be acted upon by the council. I believe that's all of our changes and corrections to this week's posted agenda ms. gentry. Our schedule today ted if we can do -- if we can do our best to keep through it. This morning after the consent agenda and perhaps a couple of discussion items, we will have our morning briefing which is a presentation of the downtown austin rail plan analysis. If you remember several months ago as part of the downtown plan we had our consultants mostly roma expand that scope of service, looking specifically to downtown rail circulator system, we will have that presentation here later this morning. And -- and -- and for our -- for our lunch break, we likely will also go into closed session to take up a modest executive session agenda. 00 We break for general citizens communication. In the afternoon, sometimes we will have potential bond sales as well as an afternoon briefing, this will be austin energy's future energy resources and co 2 or carbon dioxide cap and reduction planning. A really important, you know, initial briefing of what will be austin energy's plan to move forward this year on planning essentially the future of the generation of our utility. 00 we will have our austin housing finance corporation board of directors meeting, ahfc. , thereafter, we take up all of our zoning matters. 30 as usual, we break for live music and proclamations, ruby jane our musician. we will conduct our public hearings and also likely take up those two postponement requests by staff. Council, so far we have a handful of items pulled off the consent agenda for further discussion. 19 has been pulled by councilmember cole. Item 40 pulled by councilmember shade. Item 42 pulled by councilmember martinez. And item 78 and 82 pulled by councilmember morrison. Council, any additional items to be pulled off the consent agenda or added back before I read a proposed consent agenda. Councilmember morrison?

I believe my request was to pull 79. Not -- did you say 78?

I said 78. But is the request 79.

Yeah.

Mayor Wynn: gentry, 79 will be pulled by councilmember morrison, not 78. Good. bailey might confirm that. Again, any additional items to be pulled off the consent agenda, councilmembers? Hearing none, I will read a proposed consent agenda numerically if you will bear with me. Our proposed consent agenda this morning will be to approve from austin energy, item 1 per changes and correction, also items 2 and 3. We will note that items 4 and 5 have been withdrawn per changes and correction. For austin water utility we will be approving items 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. We will be with -- will be withdrawn per changes and correction. Again approving items 6 through 9, withdrawing item 10. From our aviation department, we will be approving item 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. From our budget office we will be approving item 17. Which are our proposed dates and times for the public presentation and hearings for -- for our proposed budget for '08-'09, those will start two weeks from today. Contract and land management department we will be approving item 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, [01:34:03] postponing item 28 to august 7th, 2008, OUR NEXT Meeting. We will be approving items 29, per changes and correction. From our economic growth and redevelopment services department we will be approving item 30. From our emergency medical services department, approving item 31. From our health and human services department, approving items 32, 33, and 34. From our law department, we will be approving items 35, 36, 37, and 38. From our library department, approving item 39. From our neighborhood housing and community development department approving items 41 and 43. From our neighborhood planning and zoning department, will be approving item 44 and postponing item 45 to august 21st, 2008. From our police department approving items 46, 47, and 48. From our public works department, approving items 49, 50, 51, and 52. We will be noting that items 53 and 54 withdrawn per changes and correction. From our purchasing office we will be approving items [01:36:02] 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 and 76. From the solid waste services department, we will be approving item 77. From our telecommunications and regulatory affairs department we will be approving item 78. From the treasury office approving item 80. From our watershed protection and development review department, approving items 81, and 83. Items from council, we need to approve item 84 to our -- which are appointments to our boards and commissions. Which I need into the record. And if you will bear with me, we have a lot of appointees as council terms have changed. And so we are trying to align our boards and commissions with our terms and so this is going to be probably far and away the largest group of boards and commissions appointments. smith is okay with me not reading the nominating -- the name of the nominating councilmember and in fact just reading the [01:38:00] nominee to the different boards and commissions for the record and then we will conclude this as part of our consent agenda. So bear with me. To the african-american resource advisory committee, aqkasi evans, nelson linder, mary palmer all nominated. To our animal advisory commission, baseball bet ellis babette ellis. Arts commission, breath barnes, [indiscernible], bruce walisnik. Asian american resource center advisory board, a shhh aan [indiscernible] our nominee. To the austin airport advisory commission, richard has thefield, scott madoe, dale murphy. For the austin community technology and telecommunications commission, randy kolb, chip rosenthal are nominated. To the austin mayor's committee for people with disabilities, norman kieke is our nominee. To the austin music commission, paul avasi is nominated. To our board of adjustments, frank fuente subcommittee, leann hilldenfields, bryan king, greg smith, michael van ohlen. Building and fire code board of appeals, michael kinati, steven king are nominees. For building and standards commission, tim hill, howard lynnette and susan morrison are nominated. To the child care council, albert black and jill McCRAY ARE NOMINEES. Commission for women, amy everhart and angela howard are nominated. To our commission on immigrant affairs, thomas esperaaz junior, solomon [01:40:03] casa, rainy coe and linda fawn are nominated. To the community development commission, michael kellerman, john lemon and ruby rosa are nominated. To our construction advisory committee, ira crawford is the nominee. To our construction advisory commission martin piiscent. Design commission james shia and bart wartley. Downtown austin community court advisory commitment dennis farquay. Downtown commission, stan hass, richard hall pin, chris shorery. Electric board, david adam son, meeting bee simpson, randy walden are nominated. To the electric utility commission shude fath is nominated for about the 30th term perhaps. 33 Years. Shudde was one of the original members of that commission. Thank you, shude. To our environmental board, john beal, mary gay maxwell and maryanne neeley. Ethics review commission, jody hughes is nominated. To our federally qualified health center board, david campos and alfredia miller are nominated. To the historic landmark commission, daniel leary and terry myers. To the human rights commission, judy cortez and sandra serna nominees. To our impact fee advisory board, lisa harris, chin li. Library commission, wendy price todd. and [01:42:01] small business enterprise procurement program advisory committee, barbara vota, adrienne neeley and roell zambrano are nominated. To the mechanical plumbing and solar board, john gress michael nail are nominated. To men american, raul garciaza, lopez are nominated. Parks board, danette sheacial jane rivera are nominated. [Indiscernible]

to the planning commission, tracy atkins, mandy beally, sandra kirk, clint small are nominated. Renaissance market commission, delia navilla, nominate. To the residential design, [indiscernible] gable, chick mains, gene stevens. Resource management commission, christine herbert and grace shea, sorry if I'm mispronouncing that grace are nominated. To the robert mueller municipal airport plan implementation advisory commission, corky hill yard and why I am walker. Sign review board, frank few .. Bryan king, greg smith and michael von ohlen. To our solid waste advisory commission, rick cover, madell sneacial, j.d. Porter. Urban forestry board, keith [indiscernible] donally, shannon haley, eddie heath are nominated. To the urban renewal agency, sharon baxter is the [01:44:02] nominee. Urban transportation commission allan demling richard mckinnon. Water and wastewater sarah baker, maria espinosa, mike warner, glen webb. Melissa hawthorne. Mine feel to our zoning and platting commission, betty baker, clark hammond and donna tymon are our nominees. Those are lengthy list of nominees for our boards and commissions appointments 84 on our consent agenda. Continuing on. Mr. smith?

[Indiscernible]

I would also point out on item 84 of the consent motion would include a written resolution that was provided to council as late backup of -- appointing various councilmembers to -- to committees, subcommittees and -- and certain roles on other governmental entities.

Thank you for reminding us of that. Agreed. So councilmembers if you remember to look -- we have an additional resolution, 84, I do need to read this into the record, I apologize, these are the council members committee and subcommittee assignments. They are audit and finance committee will be mayor pro tem mccracken, councilmembers cole, leffingwell, martinez. Our committee for emerging technology and telecommunications, mayor pro tem mccracken, councilmembers morrison and shade. The judicial committee, initially be myself and councilmember martinez. Land use and transportation committee, be mayor pro tem mccracken, councilmembers cole and morrison. To our minority owned and women owned business [01:46:00] enterprise small business council subcommittee, councilmembers cole, martinez and shade are nominated. To the public health and human services, councilmembers leffingwell, martinez and shade. To note that -- in our board of directors slots the austin bergstrom international airport development corporation i will serve as president, vice-president will be mayor pro tem mccracken, board members will include office board members cole, leffingwell, martinez, morrison and shoot. Similarly the mueller local government corporation, i will serve as president, vice-president mccracken and board members cole, leffingwell, martinez, morrison and shade. To our tax increment financing reinvestment zone number 15, and 16, and 17, i will serve as president, vice-president mccracken and board members cole, leffingwell, martinez, morrison and shade. Another -- other entities i will continue to serve on the austin firefighters relief and retirement fund, councilmember cole on the austin san antonio intermunicipal computer rail district, councilmember leffingwell will now replace me and serve on the balcones canyonlands conservation planning organization or bccp coordinating committee. To our capital area council of governments clean air coalition, I will continue to -- to serve in that role. To our capcog or capital area council of governments general assembly, councilmember morrison will serve in that spot. I will continue to serve on the capital area metropolitan organization or campo executive committee. The other members of campo including myself will be mayor pro tem mccracken, councilmembers leffingwell [01:48:00] and cole. To the capital metro transit authority or capital metro, our two spots will be mayor pro tem mccracken and councilmember martinez. [Indiscernible] will be myself, mayor pro tem, councilmembers cole, leffingwell and martinez, to the city of austin aisd board of trustees joint committee it will be myself, councilmembers cole and marches son. City joint committee will be councilmembers leffingwell and morrison. I will continue to serve on the clean air force of central texas. The community action network resource council or c.a.n. Councilmembers morrison and shade. I will continue to serve on envision central texas. Our police retirement board spot will be taken by councilmember martinez. And the regional planning committee for the barton springs segment of the edward's aquifer will be councilmember leffingwell. To the texas colorado river floodplain coalition it will be councilmember leffingwell and as an alternative mayor pro tem mccracken. Those are our council committees and subcommittee nominations. Thank you, mr. smith. 84 on the consent agenda. We also will be approving item 85, 86, noting that item 87 withdrawn for changes and correction, we will approve items 88 for changes and correction and approve item 89. We will be setting the public hearing by approving item 90, 91, 92, and 93. Then also --

mayor.

On 85, I think we need to [01:50:01] read into the record additional appointee to the street closure task force.

Yes, thank you. Councilmember leffingwell who was a sponsor for our street closure task force, we are appointing an additional person, tomas pantine to serve on that, thank you. Also council will be approving item or addendum item I think posted as number 153, which are the minutes of our previous meeting, that being june 18th. So I will entertain a motion on that proposed consent agenda. Motion made by councilmember leffingwell. Seconded by councilmember martinez to approve the consent agenda as read. We do have a handful of citizens who would like to give us some feedback on our consent agenda, but first further comments from council. Councilmember morrison?

I would like to first of all note for the record that -- that the design commission nominee bart wheatly is misspelled in what you have provided. So remove the r from his last name, please.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you.

I would also like to offer item 82, for consent. Which is the life teenager issue but with a -- life tower issue. To amend the ordinance that has been prepared with something that's been agreed to by all parties. It's posted, let's see, to read it -- to add a finding that public performing arts theaters are a significant benefit to the community. To clarify that the height exemption provided under this ordinance is subject to compatibility standards and I have provided the legal department and the city clerk with the language to [01:52:01] that regard.

So councilmembers leffingwell, martinez, do you consider that a friendly amendment to -- to add to the consent agenda an amended item no. 82?

[Indiscernible]

accepted, thank you. Further council comments on the proposed consent agenda? Handful of citizens who would like to give us feedback. Let's see, our first citizen signed up is gus pena. Welcome mr. pena. I think you signed up wishing to give us I think affirmative testimony for both items 32 and 34. Guess pena. Gus pena. Also 86, a couple of folks wanting to give us testimony. A number of folks signed up on items that have been pulled off the consent agenda. So of course we will take that citizen testimony when we take up the discussion of those items. 86 related to -- to the proposed lease with mobile loaves and fishes, a couple of folks wishing to give us testimony. Angela scoss here, welcome, you are welcome to come give us some testimony to be followed by tim shorts. This podium will be fine. Welcome, you will have three minutes.

Hem although, my name is angela scloss, I'm here representing the [indiscernible] gardens neighborhood association. Janet blake couldn't be here today and other members of our neighborhood as well. This letter was prepared by the members of the lincoln gardens neighborhood association in support of the city council member mike martinez's publicly announced intention to table the mobile loaves and park [01:54:00] issue for one year. Members of the lincoln gardens neighborhood association would like to remind the couple of the neighborhood association's unanimous vote against the development and implication of the harold court homeless part and our intentions to oppose and prevent the city from issuing this lease and approving the project at the harold court location in the future. The members of the lincoln gardens neighborhood association do support the spirit and overall intentions of the -- mobile loaves and fishes and city to provide care and support for the area's homeless population and for -- providing a long-term solution to the problem of chronic homelessness here in austin. Our opposition to the harold court project is not motivated solely by the not in my back yard mentality. Members of our association carefully studied the mobile loaves and fish proposal and engaged in several discussions with their staff. We oppose the project based on its failure to address critical short falls in the care and treatment of the homeless population and the concerns of the neighborhood. The idea of moving a population of homeless individuals into a length per colony sign camp in the single family neighborhood at the edge of the city is a fundamentally flawed idea with the potential of serious harm to the camp's homeless population and the neighborhood in which it is placed. Even if the event that the transportation, the lack of necessary on site health and social services and the resident selection and screening process were to be adequately addressed the city would still be faced with a historic public perception problem that exports its problems to the east side while catering to the downtown development interests. Until this and other issues serious issues are addressed, we cannot in good conscious support this project in any region of the city, in particularly in a single family residential neighborhood. Like lincoln gardens. We strongly feel that anyone in the chronically homeless population of austin with [01:56:00] the potential to maintain a stable home situation must be integrated into an existing healthy community with access to health care, food and employment. We greatly appreciate city council martinez's recepness to the association's concern and look forward to continuing positive dialogue in regards to the needs of our neighborhood and the city can be addressed. We strongly urge that council not only to table the current mobile loaves and fishes and city excuse me mobile loaves and fishes proposal for harold court but to permanently remove harold court location as well as any single family residential neighborhood for consideration in this or any similar project. [Buzzer sounding]

the members of the lincoln gardens association remain committed to preventing this project and will pursue any recourse available, including legal action. We wish the city and mobile loaves and fishes the best in their efforts to help the homeless population in austin. Thank you, respectfully.

Thank you, angela, next speaker is tim shorts. Tim shorts signed up. Okay. shorts, we will show your support for the postponement as for the record. Thank you. 1, paul robbins wished to be heard. Welcome, three minutes. Mayor, council, citizens of austin. I'm paul robbins. An environmental activist istconsumer advocate. [01:58:00] I'm here to talk about a lease for building space. This lease item amounts to about -- about about $10,000 in addition to 5 million that -- that the city currently pays a year for office space near downtown austin. Now, to the two councilmembers that recently arrived, I spoke at the very last meeting of the last council in mid june, against the land sale of green water treatment plant to a private developer, one of my main reasons for opposing this land was the city's need for more office space downtown. Here we are six weeks later for the city having more need for office space in the downtown area. Before this lease we are now considering, the city already leased 50,000 square feet of office space in the central city. Roughly equivalent to the amount of office space in this city hall building. This 50,000 square feet cost taxpayers about 1.5 million. Again the lease that you are approving today adds an additional $10,000. I have made the point in the last meeting that the city needs to do an office needs assessment of future office needs before it sells the land at green not to do so would be fiscally irresponsible. Let's look at what we have now. Central city leases cost 1.5 million. If there was a 20% savings from the city owned buildings, -- is my testimony really that insignificant? If there was a 20% savings from city-owned buildings, that would amount to a cumulative savings of $9 million over a 30 year period without adjusting for inflation or seemingly skyrocketing rates for buildings located near downtown. This also does not include future savings for more lease space. [Buzzer sounding] council, you are charged with being stewards of the public's money. If you can save taxpayers $9 million, why aren't you investigating it? And I urge you again in the strongest terms to undertake an office needs assessment before you sell the green water treatment plant. Councilmember leffingwell, i did not mean to be overbearing, it's just that -- that the -- that the other councilmember has a habit of -- of ignoring contributions that I make. Thank you.

Thank you, mr. robbins.

Thank you.

Mayor Wynn: We do take your comments quite seriously. Do note that the next six weeks we are going to be doing virtually nothing else but analyzing next year's budget, all of that plays into -- all of that is supported by a series of analyses by city staff when it comes to everything about -- about our needs assessment, which includes real estate in a dramatic way. So thank you, mr. robbins. I believe that's all of the folks signed up wishing to speak on the consent agenda. The other items have been pulled off the consent agenda, again we have a motion and a second on the table approving the consent agenda as read. Further comments? Councilmember martinez?

On the moabls loaves and fishes project, obviously we are taking a different direction in terms of locating this project on the harold court site. But the resolution also does speak to -- to asking the city manager to continue to work with mobile loaves and fishes to try to find -- try to identify a suitable property that meets the criteria that doesn't impact neighbors and -- and I just wanted to publicly state that I'm still absolutely committed to this project. I think that it's something that's needed in our community. These are folks that -- that -- you know, just -- just can't help themselves if we don't try to help them. I do hope we can find -- so this project can come to fruition and be successful.

I understand. Thank you, further comments on the consent agenda? Councilmembers cole and then morrison.

I would just like to reiterate sentiment when we first had this issue come before council? There was a considerable amount of discussion about the need for aferz, not just for -- for affordable housing, not just for the people 80% of median income and above, even though we have made a firm commitment to do that as a council and we substantially support that, we also have to think of people that -- that do not have that level of income and maybe be at only 10% of median income. So I am also hopeful that we can have a location for mobile loaves and fishes that meets with our overall affordable housing goals and still fit within the city of austin.

Councilmember morrison?

Just the connecticut quality and the vote that -- technicality and the vote, i would like to be shown as abstaining on 153, the vote on the minutes from last time.

Mayor Wynn: Fair gentry note that for the record. Thank you. Again a motion and a second on the table approving the amended consent agenda as proposed. Further comments? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Wynn: Opposed? Motion passes on a vote of 7-0. Thank you all very much.

A couple of house keeping items here. I know a handful of folks are here to give us testimony on item 42 which relates among other things to our h.u.d. action plan. Staff is requesting, I agree from a flow standpoint, that we will take up that item 42 00 staff presentation of our austin housing financing corporation item and plan. So know that we will do our best to take up our ahfc 00 in order for us then to take up 42, there's about 45 minutes worth of public testimony that will then 00 zoning. 00, we will do both our austin housing finance corporation meeting and take up item no. 42, On our city council agenda, which relates to the h.u.d. action plan.

Mayor?

Councilmember martinez?

Martinez: On item no. 42 I know there's a lot of folks signed up to speak and may not be able to stay until 3:00 today. I want you to know what the intentions are of postponing this, I think there's where much of the testimony is going to come from. The issue of of the housing trust fund and the million dollar commitment from the general fund. So my intention was to make a motion this afternoon to restore the entire million dollars and allow council to go through the budget cycle and make a final decision in the budget. But staff is going to recommend complete restoration of that, they have identified some funding. So we are going to have a presentation this afternoon, have a couple of questions, but it's my understanding that staff will -- will recommend that we restore the funding and maintain the one million dollar commitment to the housing trust fund and in order to thank staff, margaret shaw [indiscernible] for the work that they did over the last couple of days, meeting council, listening to our concerns, this is just in my opinion not a time to be cutting affordable housing dollars. It's a one million commitment that we make. I want those of you who are going to testify to know that. You may not be able to stay and you may want to testify that we restore it, but that's what's going to happen this afternoon.

Thank you, councilmember. Further -- again, we will take up item 42 along with our ahfc meeting. Very much related. I think folks will like some of the suggestions and recommendations by staff of -- regarding that. So --

mayor, I had a comment?

Councilmember cole?

Yes, I just wanted to also speak to the affordable housing trust fund and our efforts to restore the million dollars that we have worked hard with staff to try to do that. And also to honor our commitments that we have made to many of the properties that we have recently sold in terms of the increments being dedicated to the housing trust fund that -- that i hope to be bringing forward shortly. And I had planned to second that motion by councilmember martinez.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you, councilmember. Council, I think just based on the -- some of our presentations, my instinct 19, pulled by councilmember martinez that relates to our lime creek quarry, my instinct is there won't be a lengthy discussion about that item. Without objection, councilmember cole I'm sorry, councilmember cole our lime creek --

Cole: Yes, I would like to ask assistant city manager rudy garza to come forward and ask him a few questions about the lime quarry, item no. 19. Could you first explain why we are terminating that lease.

Last summer when we went through the process of working with the [indiscernible] for the actually the last several years. It became very clear that we are not going to be able to use that site for its intended purpose, which was for the disposal of the lime residual from treatment plant 4. In fact there's also legislation that will prohibit us from using it for the intended purpose without the consent of cedar park and cedar park has been very clear that's not going to happen. We now as you know we went through the process, of securing and acquiring a -- an alternative site for treatment plant 4. We are now at the point where this site is no longer an asset that the city or the utility should or needs to maintain. Terminating the lease as is included in the lease agreement calls for a nine month period for vacation, we are now in the process of -- of doing the land planning for highest and best use and an appraisal and we are intending to come back to council for the next several months to put the property up for sale.

What impact would an attachment to the current termination making the short term lease of nine months to [indiscernible]

councilmember, I believe that we can work with that. In fact the item before you was for the nine month window and also a month to month agreement. Until we completed the sale. The most important point was as we went forward to ensure that all of the potential buyers understood that there were no encumbrances on that land. If they wanted to begin immediately with site development they could do that. Again the item before you does allow month to month extension.

Is there a representative from ranger here? I basically would like for you to explain to my colleagues the impacts that this amendment would have on the negotiating process and your intentions with the property.

For the record, mayor, council, I'm dowe gullett, we represent the ruby, the wholly owned subsidiary of ranger excavating, welcome councilmember morrison and councilmember shade. And mayor pro tem. I think mark mckenzie the president of ranger is here, I would like for him to answer your question directsly.

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to speak. We have enjoyed the relationship there at the quarry. With the city and the -- and the -- the ongoing operation and the lease that we have. We understand that the city's end use has changed. We certainly don't want to handcuff or stand in the way of the city of austin's utilization of the property. What we would ask and i think that it's already been discussed is to get some six month extensions after the sale, which I don't think would impede the sale in any way and would allow us to make at least somewhat long term commitments. The nature of our business is we provide crushed limestone for roads and developments and many of these projects are lengthy. Some of them lasting years. So it's important for us to be able to make long term commitments for certain projects and for the equipment that we have for the operation and for the personnel, it's the nature of the business is such that -- that the longer we can see, the more efficiently we are able to run. At a -- at extra will quarry -- central quarry, which is a benefit for everyone.

Okay. So you have been in discussions with staff, i know staff from my office with assistant city manager rudy garza, are you comfortable with the proposal being put forward?

With the six months after the sale, I would feel like that's adequate. After the lease is terminated? After the -- after the nine months that the lease is terminated.

Councilmember, if I'm -- if I may respond, if i understand the proposal was for a -- for a go ahead and do the termination today, have the authorization for termination and then that after termination that -- that council would have a -- would have a direct staff to into into a -- rather than a month to month, what I call a rolling six month lease that the lease would stay in effect until the property is sold or otherwise conveyed by the city. In other words it keeps -- it keeps my client in operation on that site until -- until you -- the city has a deal or a proposal to convey it to a third party. -- That will allow my client to provide a valuable service to the economy. Also provides some revenue to the city. We're paying, not much, but $15,000 a month, approximately, in royalties and that -- that is an escalating royalty that goes up over the time period. Other than a month to month proposal, what I call a rolling six month lease that allows them to stay in the site until -- until mr. Garza is able to find an appropriate arrangement for the city to -- to sell or otherwise convey the property to a third party and that's what we understood your proposal was and we're -- we can live with that.

Well, I just want to make sure that you understand -- if we get a buyer, give notice to you of termination for the six month lease that you fully comply with that.

Certainly, we understand that.

Okay.

I would like to make a motion or I would like to instruct staff to -- to -- to -- to go ahead and do the nine month lease termination. And add a renewable six month lease until we have a buyer with the intent that the nine month period be renewed until the property is sold. Are you clear on that, rudy?

I believe that's clear, councilmember. I -- let me just confirmment once we have the property under contract, the nine months comes and -- the lease is over, that would vacation -- they would vacate the property. Obviously it's clear once that contract is sold we certainly won't have any jurisdiction or authority to force the lease on anybody. I have communicated this to ranger that we will work closely with the new buyers, the potential buyers if in fact they want to continue the lease. We would be glad to have that conversation with them. But -- but obviously we won't have any authority and I don't want to have any encumbrances again to the potential buyers that they have to keep the fleece place.

Exactly.

-- The lease in place.

Exactly.

We understand that.

My intention with the motion is to either have the property sold or leased or enough notice to the existing leasee that we are about to sell the property and they need to vacate the premises.

Mayor Wynn: If i I can, how long will be that notice process? What if we put the property on the market next month, we get a 30 day offer with a 30 day close. I keep hearing six months being batted around. What if we need to sell the property in 75 days, are we letting ranger hold us --

the existing lease that we have calls for a nine month termination clause. We intend to put the property on the market and make that very clear to any potential bidders that we have a lease in place but that it has been terminated and the termination date i believe is march 24th of -- I believe that's the nine months. That will be clear to potential bidders that the lease will be expiring at that point. However, if by then we are not able to get the property under contract, then this item would allow for a six month extension to that.

I think the intent was to give us a safety net if there's not a buyer. If a buyer is to come along in the next three months, if no buyer comes along, gives us a six month window to always look ahead in light of termination.

So if the city finds a buyer the first month of a six month extension, we can't sell it for five months?

You couldn't finalize the transaction. We would stay there. You could have the transaction occur subject to our -- to our five months to -- to -- to essentially finish the time of that lease. -- Which is fairly standard in many transactions, if i understand correctly, what garza is trying to do is to get to the step of -- of taking care of the nine month notice of termination. That's -- that was the issue brought before you today -- to start that process going. Councilmember cole's motion is to trigger that, start that termination. That termination from -- the nine month, I think the time frame mr. garza just said. Sometime in march. Our lease would run at the very least to march. If I understand correctly, garza and the real estate people are looking for a potential buyer and looking to find one. They are going to be bid process, you have to go out to a bid process or have other relationships transpiring enter dr that time frame -- during that time frame. The buyer out there would know that it's subject to this existing nine months. What councilmember cole at my request basically was what happens if nothing happens during that time frame? And you are left with the situation without a third party buyer or without a conveyance to some other party because of the long-terminators of our business -- long term nature of our business, he wanted a safety net. So he proposed a six month lease and the nature of it being a rolling lease if you ton have -- if you are not closed the transaction, it will continue to roll for that six month time period. If a buyer occurs obviously that trigger would occur. There will not be a renewal if that makes sense. [One moment please for change in captioners]

my sense is that we could work with the potential buyer if they understood that at the worst case scenario they would have to wait the six months. We expect to put this on the market in november and have bids open somewhere around january. It's very likely that before march 24s we'll have this under contract, but without getting any feedback from potential buyers on they can't wait six months, it's really ditch for me to pinpoint that -- it's really difficult for me to pinpoint that. But my sense is even if we did sell, it's unlikely that somebody would be ready to begin any kind of development over the next three to four, maybe in six months to go through the site development process and get their financing in order. We expect this will end up being a high end development, so that will take some time. Our expectation was keeping it to the one month was preferable, but we can certainly manage within the six-month window.

There's not the risk of the encumbrance -- you're not worried about that?

We're not overly concerned about it. We will get feedback from potential buyers if we start hearing that's a concern to them, then we may have to come back to council to request reconsideration. Until we start getting feedback once we have it on the market that that's a problem, then it's going to be difficult to pinpoint that.

That's interesting. So what are the implications. You're saying if you get feedback, the additional encumbrance is going to create a problem you will come back to council. So what security -- how does that solve your problem, i guess would be -- marilyn moritz mr. smith?

I just want to remind council that since we're in negotiations over the lease of real property with a third party and I'll rely on garza's feelings on this, it would be appropriate to go into closed session around 072 of the government code to have a lengthy and rho bust discussion than has occurred so far.

Mayor Wynn: I am prepared to accept that advice, council. If there's the will. And I don't doubt that i could get very comfortable with with this, but I like the idea of making sure our -- so without objection, then we will table item 19 and likely take it up my instinct is early to mid afternoon. Appreciate the time, gentlemen. So we will add that to our closed session agenda to take up just after likely our citizen communication. So thank you all. Council, just to sort of make time work for as many different people as possible, I know different folks are waiting for different potential discussions. We do have a posted morning presentation, item number 94 is the presentation of the downtown austin rail plan analysis. I know that our team and our consultant team is here and they've prepared I'm told a 20 to 25 minute presentation. I think it's important stuff. So I'd like to call up this item now, number 94. As a brief introduction, specifically this newest analysis was begun several months ago by the previous council and I appreciate that support, at a time when the campo subcommittee or transit working group has geared up and now helping us out as a regional community to analyze potential passenger rail products. We had what I think was a very successful phase one of a downtown plan analysis done by roma. My perception is very well received in the different stake holding communities when it comes to the importance and the future of our downtown. The previous council asked for an extension, an expansion of the scope of services to specially look at how rail relates to a future plan downtown. And just as importantly to build upon work that capital metro and a number of stakeholders had accomplished back in i believe '05 and '06 whereby capital metro went throng what is generally referred to as a locally preferred alternative analysis. I remember attending a community forum in the convention center on a saturday morning with several hundred people in the room to work on what might be a next phase for capital metro. So it just seemed to us at the time we had that body of work existing, we had just completed a very successful phase 1 of a downtown master plan, and so why not have the expertise of this team that was put in place to know analyze that potential downtown rail program with additional potential extensions. And obviously we noted opportunity opportunity to try to get passenger rail out to our airport. So my -- another perception I had is that frankly this analysis and this presentation could have been done about a month ago, but of course we have new councilmembers coming on, and I just thought it was appropriate to actually hold off on this presentation until we got our new council in place because if there is a decision to be made over the next year or so, which i hope there would be in some form or fashion, this will be be the council that will make that decision. So with that I would like to jim robertson of city staff to walk us through your presentation. Welcome, jim.

Thank you very much, mr. mayor, councilmembers. Jim robertson with neighborhood planning and zoning. I'm joined this morning by some key members of our downtown plan consultant team. Jim adams and janna mccann of roma design group and dan. I'll make a few introductory remarks and they'll cover the meat of the topic. The mayor has already given you a little bit of background relating to how this ties back into phase 1 of the project. It was february 28th when the council directed us to move forward on this extension and expansion of the downtown plan. The direction from council requested that we look at connecting downtown, and of course downtown to us within our planning area means -- includes the central business district, the capitol complex and the university of texas, with some key other central city locations such as the miller airport development that is well underway now, zilker park and that area as well as abia airport. I would like to note that that scope of work also included some non-rail planning. It includes a number of other transportation issues as they relate to our downtown. We've been directing a lot of our effort in these last few months to rail, but we would like to come back to you in the coming months and give you a briefing as to what our recommendations are with some other issues, downtown transportation issues such as the role of pedestrian and bicycle mobility, perhaps classifying streets or prioritizing streets for different modes of transportation and so forth. The team that -- the team that we have together is a robust and diverse team. It includes architects, landscape architects, urban designers, civil engineers, and in particular we have ltk engineers on board. Ltk is a tim, one of the oldest, and probably I think most respected rail planning firms in america. They have been involved in the design or planning for rail systems in portland, los angeles, new york, seattle, and so forth. So we're lucky to have them on board and tom madoff is here and I'm sure if questions come up about operating methodologies, he's the person we'll turn to to help you answer those -- to help answer those questions. I should point out also that we've worked closely during these last few months with capital metro. As the mayor mentioned, some of our work ties directly back into the future connection study and work that capital metro did a few years ago. And capital metro has been great in terms of working with us. Right after we were charged with this scope of work in early march, we had a two-day technical workshop that includes not only city staff, but representatives from capital metro as well as some other public agencies as well. Back in late april we had a public workshop where we had I believe 75 to 100 or more people at that workshop to sort of give a snapshot of where we were at that point and get feedback. And then we had another technical workshop more recent than that to come back be and loop back with that same group and get feedback on where the planning process was at that point. In a moment I'm going to turn it over to our consultant team, but I did want to lay out for you before that what we see as potential next steps so what you can have that in mind as you hear this presentation. What you will hear today represents the culmination of roma's -- this team's work with respect to rail planning. And I think it puts us in a very good position to take what would be the next steps in achieving the addition of an urban rail system in our community if that's the community's wealth. We do believe there are particular issues on which additional stakeholder input might be valuable. How an alignment might -- specific alignments, what roadway should they be on. How do you insert rail into a particular right-of-way. There's different options you'll hear about that for. Perhaps some input from communities and stakeholders along these corridors that we'll be discussing. So that's one future step that we would ask for your authorization to proceed with. The second would be, and this goes back to the mayor's opening comment, back when we began this project, the transit working group had been set up in early may. They culminated at least that phase of their work in the creation of the decision tree. And a potential next step for us would be if you authorized us to move forward and put together a product that could be submitted for the deliberations of the transit working group via that decision tree. One element of the decision tree or a few elements deal with how you will fund and finance the system. That particular financing piece goes beyond the scope of work that we've been working under. So if we were to move in the direction of preparing a submittal, we would need authorization to move forward on the presentation of a financing plan. Our proposal then is that we would come back to you with a draft submittal and give you the opportunity to proceed feedback to us and direct us as to whether that proposal is ready for submittal or needs tweaking and so forth with the idea of being ultimately that we would have a product that we could be submitted for the deliberations using the transit working group decision tree. With that I'd like to turn it over to our consultant team to walk you through this. And of course we'll continue to be available for questions throughout.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you. Welcome mr. adams.

We're very please, sirred today to be here to present our findings on the downtown urban rail connections. The presentation that we're going to give is going to cover the five points. We're going to summarize what we learned from our phase 1 downtown plan report. We're going to talk about rail and how we think it can work here in austin. Where it should go, how it should get there, how much it's going to cost, our early projections of capital costs as well as operating costs. And how the project might be able to be phased. You'll remember that when we presented the downtown plan findings, we concluded that of all of the many challenges facing downtown austin, mobility was the principal one. Over the last 15 years we've constructed a significant amount of freeway toll roads, but we with have less than five percent of our transportation spending has been dedicated to transit. When we look at the relatively low ridership figures for transit, 79% of downtown employees driving 6 percent of residents using transit, especially nowadays with gas prices where they are, we believe that looking at transit and rail transit in particular is a very timely. The campo 2030 plan has addressed this issue they propose a significant increase in transit investment to about 30% of the overall transportation budget. These diagrams show what would happen on our roadway system if those projects were not pursued. Simply we do not have any more right-of-way to increase our roadway capacity, so transit is the key action that we can take to improve mobility in the downtown. What is at stake? I think number one is realizing this community's very aggressive goals for environmental sustainable. There was recently a study that showed that austin in spite of it's very progressive land use policies, environmental policies, is still ranked giveth out of hundred in terms of carbon emission. A butt amount of that is to do with -- a big amount of that is to do with transportation. We really believe that addressing the especially transit will improve our environmental record and our environmental targets. Lack of mobility is also affecting our goal of making the downtown the principal cultural center of the region. It is promoting outward expansion and sprawl. We believe that is an important aspect of the rail transit program. Affordability is a key goal that has been expressed throughout the downtown plan effort. When you consider that 17%, at least 17% of a household budget is dedicated to transportation and the need for two cars and for most households, transit has a real goal of reducing the household costs, especially in an environment where gas now is approaching five dollars a gallon, and that it is at a record high since it's been measured from 1918. Other thing at stake is really to create the kind of downtown that has been envisioned for many years, the kind of pedestrian mixed use.

Vibrant downtown. And if you look at downtown austin, and I think we showed these slides a few months ago, it is very much an auto oriented place. We believe that the introduction of transit can create the kind of downtown that you see in cities like portland, a city that has a very similar population to austin, but has a much more robust transit system with ridership that is almost three times what it is here. And their carbon footprint considerably less than ours. Portland is again -- they have a robust transit system that includes a significant bus system, but also light rail as well as a street car system that circulates throughout the downtown. All three systems working seamlessly sewing to provide that service. Most recently they were the firscity I the country to introduce a modern street car system. Just some facts on this slide about that system, altogether it's a six to seven mile loop. Total cost of the initial phases about $88 million, roughly $25 million a mile. And the funding source, as you can see, from that system here, the tax increment financing 22%, street car improvement district assessment on the adjacent properties, 16%. 30% From npo funds and 32% from tphaoeurpbgtds. In portland the street car has -- the studies that have been done show that there's been a significant increase in development investment within the immediate proximity of that street car within the three-block area, 2-point # $8 billion invested within that area, and the chart here showing just the relative increase in investment as you get closer to the street car lines. So we believe as we'll show in this presentation that there is significant opportunity in austin for that type of investment. Why rail and how can it work in austin? One of the things, studies have been done that show that passengers prefer rail to bus. It's greater capacity, greater comfort. Rail has been proven to increase ridership over buses. So cities that have bus only operations versus cities that have a mix of bus and rail, the ones that have introduced rail have an increase in ridership. Also it has been shown to reduce operating costs per passenger. It clearly is a more sustainable system. Fixed routes as I said with the portland example, have been shown to influence land use patterns and to promote investment and density. But dearly rail is suited to where it's the most density and the most destination. Rail can extend the bus system and compliment the bus system that you have already established here. Capital metro has a very robust bus system with 130,000 riders per day. The idea of the rail system would be to extend that bus system and to complement it. And certainly it can extend the reach of the planned regional metro rail system, the commuter rail system that is planned within the central city. The red line that will be completed later this year as well as the other potential lines, the elgin manor line, the austin san antonio line, this diagram on the right showing radiuses of one, three, five miles, and the you fact is that once these commuters lines do serve downtown, we do need the ability to distribute those passengers to destinations throughout the central city. These terms are thrown around a lot. This slide briefly explains light rail. It typically operates on exclusive track ways. It's not sharing a lane with cars. It operates larger areas out of the city 15 to 20 miles and can operate in one to three car trains of 450 passengers in a three-car assembly. Costs could range anywhere from 30 to 50 million per mile. Street cars, more recent development in the modern street car, this picture on the bottom is from portland again. Street car often shares traffic lanes with automobiles. They don't have to. They will have to operate in their own dedicated right-of-way. They typically operate more as a circulator system within five to 10 miles of the city centered and a one car train would carry about 120 passengers. They've been shown to be less expensive per mile, particularly if they are sharing the vehicular lane. It's a little more expensive if you're having to widen lanes. In this diagram here, the typical dedicated or exclusive lane condition on the top showing a transit median dedicated to rail. This is a side system where the street car shares the lanes with the cars and the passengers board from the sidewalk. And just some examples around the country of different systems, light rail. Portland as I mentioned earlier has light rail and street car. This is the light rail system passing through the downtown. This is light rail in san jose passing through downtown. And the examples that your goals for great streets and landscaping are certainly not precluded with rail. A median running system of light rail in san jose, this is a dedicated travel lane with a center platform here at the same system, passengers coming to the center of the street to board the vehicle. They tend to run in more pedestrian intensive environments. And in more intimate urban environments, as you can see here in the german examples. The more modern application of this in portland, running on the street. The platform on the sidewalk as you see in this lower picture here, which is just a bulb out into the parking zone. And also running through the university -- state university through a plaza, pedestrian plaza area. So where should rail go and how should it get there? You all directed us to have the downtown connected with three possible destinations. Mueller, which at its buildout will have 10,000 residents and 10,000 employees. Austin-bergstrom international airport, which currently has eight million passengers a year, nonstop service to 51 cities. Sand zilker park, which hosts the austin city limits festival and has the long center, which hosts at least 200 event per year. This is -- the four criteria that we use to evaluate our options, we wanted to ensure that any alignment was going to connect the major destinations of downtown linking jobs with the housing. That we serve transit dependent populations and the densest parts of the city. That we promote transit area development. In addition to serving existing population areas that, we put transit in areas that would influence land use patterns and promote density. And that we achieve alignments that are cost effective, where we aren't having to acquire additional land and where there is sufficient vehicular capacity where we could accommodate rail. The recommended rail project that -- this is what we have concluded from this study is 3-mile street car system that would run in a combination of dedicated and shared lanes, which I will explain in a moment. And in addition to the 3-mile street car system, a 700-foot extension of the red line commuter rail. I don't know if this works, but from brush square to brazos street where it would interface at congress avenue with the street car system. 3-mile system we're proposing two overlapping routes. One which would connect seaholm to mueller along congress avenue, elegibility elegibility -- san jacinto through the university. And a second lap that would overlap through that route from the university of texas down congress avenue past the capital, down congress avenue, across the congress avenue bridge and along riverside drive to terminate at the airport. In addition a spur that would offer evening and weekend service between the downtown and the long center. That's a .3-mile spur. All together 15.3 miles. I'll walk through each of those routes with you. The seaholm to mueller route 7 miles, would operate in about 30 minutes from end to end. Would connect significant center city downtown destinations. You can see here the list of those from seaholm. The most intensive development that's occurring along the waterfront between seaholm and the downtown. The terminus of the red line, especially if it is terminated at brazos street, which would be within a one block walk of congress avenue. The central business district, the capital, brackenridge hospital, the university of texas, the restaurant row along manor road, and the mueller town center and children's hospital. We looked at the development potential along these corridors and within a 1500-foot walk of that alignment, we feel that there's about 2 75 acres -- 275 acres of potential development, land that is ready to redevelop. So a significant amount of development opportunity along that corridor. There are various alignments that we've studied, alternative alignments. We look at manor road versus mlk and concluded that the manor road alignment is preferable to the mlk boulevard alignment. Most importantly, it would go through, serve the university most directly. It would -- has more potential to provide a site for a future maintenance facility, which we will require. There's more land opportunity along manor for that. There's greater development potential along the manor line. And also importantly, manor -- mlk is an important vehicular east-west vehicular route connecting sh 130 with i-35 and putting the transit on manor would have less of an impact on the vehicular capacity. The one advantage of mlk over manor is that the station -- we would require an additional red line station at manor road, a walk-on station to where the two services would overlap or intersect. We also looked at various options for running the street car through downtown, congress avenue versus san jacinto and brazos. We believe again as the future connection study confirmed in 2006 that there are distinct advantages to congress avenue. It is the historic alignment of the street car as the postcard is showing. It provides more equitable coverage to the eastern and western portions of the downtown. It offers us the opportunity to remove buss from congress avenue, at which we're looking at along the lavaca-guadalupe corridor as per cap metro's bus planning. And it provides the most suitable rail corridor relative to grades. It's less steep, less curb cuts facing on to congress avenue, less con flick. There are some concerns that people have expressed about congress avenue, concerns about views along the capital and the potential of wires, of blocking those views, conflict with parades and the fact that we would still have a one-block walk to the red line if it terminated at brazos street. There are other alignment variations that we believe could be studied in more depth in the next phases of work. Speedway through university of texas versus san jacinto, it has been pointed out that san jacinto is a rather eccentric location relative to the concentration of folks on the campus. The university supports the san jacinto alignment, but others have pointed out that if we're really trying to serve the greatest population that speedway certainly is worth consideration. Brazos and san jacinto still remain as options to congress avenue. And then there are ninth and 10th streets as a way of getting from congress avenue to san jacinto versus 11sth street. Any of those three streets would work. 11Th street provides the most direct access to the capitol, 90'ster secretary in the core of the downtown, the red line terminating at the brazos station. The orange, dashed line being the street car that would traverse third and fourth streets. And the connection to the rail along the fourth street between brazos and congress avenue. And the bus corridor, the transfer between street car and bus along guadalupe and lavaca and the transfers to the dillo system in the aqua color. So a significant amount of transit overlap and interchange occurring at the very core of the downtown. We will be coming back to you in a few months with our recommendations for the entire downtown circulation system and how that works. Just a few slides on how we actually operate the rail within the streets. There are at least three options for how congress avenue could accommodate rail. This diagram is showing a shared median running system where the light rail -- this pointer -- the light rail is sharing a vehicular lane in the median. With the cars. There's a center platform. This option allows us to keep diagonal parking on congress avenue, and would probably have the least impact on the existing street. This option is showing a side running, shared alignment in portland. This is -- passengers would board the street car from the sidewalk. This also would mitigate the issue of views because the catnary wires could be don't the side of the street. But again the vehicle would be sharing the lane with cars. This is a solution for a dedicated system. It would -- as the previous alternative, if I didn't mention, would require removal -- replacement of the diagonal parking with parallel parking. This also would require us to change the diagonal park to go parallel parking, but the street car would have its own dedicated lane in the center of the street. We would maintain two lanes of traffic on either side. I should point out that even with -- we've done a study of the impact of the diagonal parking replacement with parallel parking, and we've concluded that you really would not lose any number of parking spaces. In fact, you might even gain some parking spaces in doing that conversion, just because of the way that the current diagonal parking is laid out. This is just an image of a dedicated center running system in melbourne, australia on a street that has a similar scale to congress avenue, slightly narrower and what that might look like. On other streets. Downtown, again we have an option of doing a side running, shared system. This picture on the top is a picture of san jacinto street during rush hour, so you can see that there is significant capacity on these streets to provide for rail in a dedicated or a shared system. This is a dedicated transit street car way, image of a similar street in minneapolis, but offering one lane of vehicular travel on either side and a dedicated rail line in the center. So the downtown streets with your 80-foot rights of waco really accommodate both shared or dedicated arrangement. The right-of-way on manor road is 60 feet. And looking at that right-of-way we believe that the best way of accommodating the rail without having to acquire additional right-of-way, which would be very difficult along that corridor with all of the existing businesses, would be to do a shared running system, maintain the bike lanes on the bush curb side of the street and have -- on the curb side of the street and have a shared running system with the transit stations at certain intervals on a median platform, which this diagram on the lower right is showing. So that was the seaholm to mueller line. The second line is that we studied or the options we studied were how do we get from the downtown to the airport. 3-mile riverside drive route that would take you across the congress avenue bridge to riverside drive and then through and around to the airport. The total length of that trip, depending on the number of stops, would be about 25 to 30 minutes. The other option that we studied for the airport run was an extension of the metro rail system, so using some of the existing rail lines that already exist between downtown and east austin and extending those rails across the colorado 7-mile of new rail directly to the airport. This would run at about 20 to 25 minutes and service -- but what we've concluded is we really would recommend the riverside drive option in looking at the analysis relative to the criteria that I described earlier. It connects more destinations, current destinations. It would have a significantly higher rider ship. It's serving existing neighborhoods in populations. It would not require any land acquisition and we're leveraging existing infrastructure to promote new development. The servant amount of redevelopment potential along the riverside drive line, we believe over a thousand acres of redevelopment potential and the longer term with over 500 acres that would be ready to develop, we believe, in the next five years. So a significant amount of development potential. The rights of way along all of riverside drive are sufficient for a dedicated median running system. West of i-35 it's tighter, but we would -- we believe you can accomplish that and still maintain the existing vehicular capacity of two lanes in each direction by some street widening. East of i-35 you have a wider right-of-way. You can maintain the existing vehicular capacity of three lanes in each direction and run a dedicated transit way in the center of the street, and even provide opportunities for beautification of that very wide roadway as you can see in this image in san jose. The third destination that you asked us to look at was zilker park. We studied two options, one that terminated just east of barton creek that follows riverside drive and toomey road and serving these destinations. And we looked at another option that went further, about a two-mile line that follows barton springs road to stratford lane, ending at loop 1 and going right through zilker park. Our conclusion was that the ridership, the development potential was really not significant enough to warrant the extension all the way to zilker park, and our recommendation, as i mentioned earlier, is to construct a spur line that would follow barton springs road and riverside drive in a shared travel configuration because there isn't sufficient roadway width to accommodate it in a dedicated lane, but that could provide evening and weekend service to the long center. So just in summarizing, the 3-mile recommended system relative to our evaluation criteria, this system would connect all the principal destinations of the downtown. 65,0 Within the downtown core, 13,000 in the capital complex. 67,000. There is no other downtown that I know of that has that concentration of residents and employees so closely linked. The second criteria is that the system is serving certainly the densest portions of the downtown, but also the neighborhoods that have the highest concentration of low income families. The purple area on this map showing areas of the community that have more than 50% of folks living at 50% mfi or less. So you can see with the black lines here we are serving those neighborhoods very well. We have done some preliminary ridership projection. These need to be expanded further, but we estimate in a very conservative fashion, assuming no land use changes and current conditions, 32,000 riders average weekday trip. 19,000 On the airport line to downtown and 13,000 on the seaholm to mueller line. Again, a significant amount of redevelopment potential, about 2800 acres altogether of land that has long-term redevelopment potential. And it's areas within the desired development zone on the east side of town. We think there's significant potential to capture the increased value of this land and to help with financing to help offset the cost of transit as we showed you in the portland example. In terms of cost effectiveness, the alignment is completely located within public rights of way, so there is no need for land acquisition. And there is no significant reduction in vehicular capacity. We've chosen corridors that have either sufficient capacity already or sufficient right-of-way where we can widen that roadway and maintain the capacity. How much will the system cost? We've done preliminary cost estimations, capital costs. We estimate the cost of the 15-mile system at about 550 to $614 million. The variance represents the shared versus dedicated trackway, the dedicated trackway being the more expensive cost because of the need to widen streets and do street scape improvements. The estimated annual operating and maintenance cost -- again, this is a very preliminary number. It does not include fare revenues or offsets from cost savings that would occur from reduction of bus operations, but we estimate that at about 21 to $23 million per year. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] would be the extension of the line to pleasant valley, these increments could occur in various orders, but we believe from the ridership standpoint that extending to pleasant valley would make sense with a concentration of high density residential in that area. That would cost an additional $133 to $147 million, but would connect the university with the riverside housing and with the auditorium shores, the long center would be built at that same increment. Third increment would be to connect mueller, another two mile extension from the red line station at a cost of about 68 to $78 million. You will notice that in each of these increments the cost goes down because the -- the in this case the roadways at mueller have already been planned for rail and are waiting for it. Fewer vehicles at each stage that would be required. The final phase connecting pleasant valley to the airport at a cost of about $157 million. That would include six additional rail vehicles, altogether 20 minute rail vehicles to operate at a 10 minute head way. I think it's also important to point out that this system could provide the backbone for future extensions that would connect to north-south-east austin to zilker park. It could provide the spine for a much morrow bust system. Not unlike your historic street car system that existed here up until the 1940's which raid indicated out from the downtown radiated out from the downtown, an opportunity to rebuild that system in a modern form. Just in conclusion, we believe this urban rail proposal would help to add the down plan by the stakeholder. The ability to create a downtown in a city that is vibrant, pedestrian oriented, more sustainable, more economically viable and providing more diversity and affordability. This slide here, just to accentuate where this is in the process, a typical rail projec phases, we are at a very beginning point in this analysis, the community would have to go through a much more rigorous process. We are really at the systems planning level, which if you look at it probably 2% of the entire project, the next steps corridor planning, preliminary engineering and final engineering. We ar the first steps but very exciting and important step that you all are taking today. With that I will open it up to any questions or comments.

Thank you, mr. adams. Council, I hate doing this, as excited as I am, some of us are about what we just seen, this has taken us right to the noon citizens communication. We set up our citizens communication right at noon so folks can take time off in lunch hour, give us testimony. I hate doing this, I'm excited about what we have just seen. Really impressed with it, i would like to now go ahead and go to citizens communication while those folks are here, get that 30 minutes worth of testimony, thereabouts, to the extent we want to continue this dialogue we certainly can do that before or after the lunch break. Thank you all very much, mr. Adams, very impressive, we will get right back to this. Council that does take us to the noon general citizens communication. We have a full slate of 10 speakers. First folks who have signed up would be ma ccel, elizondo, to be followed by grand jury regard kinney. Followed by gus pena.

Thank you, mayor. I believe she was going to pass out some materials so i hope that you have that. Members of council, as most of you I'm a native austinite, have an east austin business, I live in east austin, I'm an architect. I love the city I believe with inspired leadership austin could become the most liveable city in the world. But it is with a heavy heart that I come to you before you today to explain why i have withdrawn from my involvement in current city council sponsored initiatives with which i would have been involved and some which I have been involved for many, many years, including the design commission and the other current roles. My dedication to the work of the various boards and commissions, committees, task forces, can which i have been involved has taken a great deal of my time, tens of thousands of hours over the last 15 years or so. But I have believed that the future of the quality of life in this community was worth the sacrifice. I must say, however, that my family and staff are thrilled that I may actually be able to make payroll and bring home my share of the family income. I will continue to work with the private sector and with aia, through my business and through austin area regional transit, art, of which I'm a vice-president of that non-profit organization. In whatever way I can to make austin -- have austin achieve its test sustain as a -- test taken as -- destiny as a sustainable, affordable, walkable city. As many of you know in a parallel effort I have been involved, founded scenic austin in 1991, I have been involved continually in the efforts to eliminate outdoor advertising in the region. And billboards specifically. Including billboards specifically. The city council was very forthright in the 1980s when it eliminated the option of building new billboards in austin and announced the goal of eventually eliminating billboards. However, the -- the outdoor industry has been relentless and successful in its lobbying efforts and -- and in -- in several places along the way, most significantly in 2005 were successful in convincing the council that -- that it was a good idea to relocate billboards which was not a good idea. Because it eliminated an effective way of getting billboards, which is through attrition, getting rid of billboards, through attrition as land use changed. Recently two major impediments to the signage industry's goal of moving billboards from non--- [buzzer sounding] performing areas to gateways happened and it is because of that action by city council that I have made my decision to withdraw. I realize that my time is up, let me quickly conclude. I believe that the action that the council took will basically mean that our grandchildren's grandchildren will be dealing with billboards on our gateways basically forever. I don't see a way of -- around it. It will be an awfully long time. I do urge you to reconsider both the planning commission's unanimous recommendation to you about -- about how to deal equitably with this issue and to consider the design commission's recommendations relative to signage and [indiscernible], thank you.

Thank you, mr. kinney. And for your years and years of dedicated support to -- to the boards and commissions and the task force process within the city. But of course your long standing life long commitment to the community as a whole. Did marcel elizondo arrive. He was going to talk about mileage reimbursement. We will go to gus pena. Welcome. Gus will be followed ed by molly greaves.

Good afternoon, mayor, mr. city manager, gus pena. Welcome laura, welcome randi. Please remember the poor,s the need do, have-notes, people left out of the loop. Please include them in the situation and meetings. They are a very important cog of the community, also. I'm a native austinite, 2723 east fifth street. We know that we are going to have to tighten the belt of the budget. I told you all last year we were headed to recession. Admit, it's going to be worse next year. city manager, I ask you, I know the mayor and city council members already had presentations yesterday with regard to the budget. It hurts but we have to bear the burden, we have to bear the thrust of the budget and its implications thereof. But don't let it occur. Social service funding, article came out in the paper about how the city is going to allocate funding for social services. Be cognizant and aware of the fact that there's some agencies that are working, functioning well, some of them are not. Have a grading mechanism for that. Help those that are. Council the -- counsel the other ones to come to grade. Budget library hours. Councilmember martinez I am with you, also. That bears a negative implication on our youth cutting hours. I can understand because of the budget, but come on, we can do something better, instead of cutting the library hours. It hurts the seniors and the kids and the youth. Housing. I have been telling you about homeless issues. Mayor, councilmembers, you know, a lot of homeless families, I understand item -- let me put my glasses on. .. caritas of austin. Has to go further than that. A lot of people are homeless families, taxpayers, too, for many years here in austin. Bore the burden of also bad economies in the past. A lot of issues to be resolved by homeless families out there. I know that people don't like to hear about it. You have got to listen to me because it hurts the heart. Veterans, veterans need help, job training, health care. A lot of us are being denied services to clinics, even in waco, even in temple. I have spoken again yesterday actually to senator jim webb who served in the marine corps in vietnam, I'm a fellow marine, also, not former, not ex- we are marines still. We want to see changes regarding hoping the -- helping the homeless, veterans and their families. Not just single family. Last item, pio office. You have a good interim pio here in david. I respect this man. I've him for many years, you don't need to spend money on search committees out in the community. Appoint him permanent. He didn't ask me to say this but anyway he's a good guy, at point him. Don't spend the money on needless searches. He's doing the job, hard work, experience, god bless y'all, continue the march.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you, mr. pena. Molly greaves, welcome, three minutes to be followed by jennifer estherline.

How are you? Thanks for your time. I received my leadership management degree from a university in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, you may know it as the steel city, I know it as a city of bridges. All of the pittsburgh bridges are unique. I enjoy looking at the details. I wish that I could do the same in austin. Beautiful landscape, beautiful architecture, things continue to get nicer as the construction continues except our bridges. I would like to propose the idea of doing something about that. Or at least doing something about the bridge that you see as you are travelling down south lamar on your left, looks like an old abandoned railroad bridge and it's filled with graffiti. I think that it's an eyesore and inconsistent with austin. We are way too creative for that. I propose corporate sponsorship and having a city-wide art competition for artists to showcase their attempts in competing with an art theme mural contest. It could work well with the art in public places initiative that the city already has in place. I know and you know that we all love murals here in austin. Just thinking about the hi how are you frog makes me smile. I don't know about you. Another thing that I wanted to talk about was deposit legislation. I know as I travel around i talk to a lot of people that learn that I'm from texas here and everybody knows that don't mess with texas slogan. I know that we also have the 0 waste initiative going on in this city. In an effort to piggyback on that, I would really like to propose the idea of deposit legislation. This is where the city or the state of texas would impose a five or 10-cent deposit on returnable bottles and cans. Consumers would give their deposit back when they return their containers to the store for recycling. This are several seats in the game who -- sorry. There are several states in the game who started this to combat their litter problems, including vermont, hawaii and connecticut and a whole bunch of others. I also helped hawaii launch their initiative when I was living there a few years ago. To create jobs and help the economy with solid waste, i know that recycling can be expensive and it uses energy and is often hard to find someone to buy the recyclables. That's what's great about bottles. Companies like coke and pepsi pay the stores to buy back their bottles. Basically the consumer takes their bottle into the redemption store, five cents and then pepsi comes back at the end of the month, whenever they do their pickups, in return they give the store owners nine cents or 10 cents or whatever the current rate is. So anyway it creates jobs, cleans the earth and I think it's consistent with our don't mess with texas phrase. I also know that people take initiative when money is involved. So I think it would be a great way to help clean up the earth. If I have a little bit more time one other thing that i wanted to mention which is our credit reports. It's no doubt that most people even in central texas are feeling the effects of our current economy [buzzer sounding] okay. Bernake, bush, everybody has someone to blame but themselves, i see this as a huge problem. I think that austin can help solve it. Solving at the root cause making sure residents are prepared and educated about their credit scores as they are for hurricanes and fire evacuations. 7 I have a little more if you are interested for later. But -- thanks. So anyway I would like to see the city take some sort of initiative to help, you know, make sure everybody is aware of their score and maybe run like a know your score campaign. I think it's the single most imperative advice that anybody can have. Every decision that you make for the rest of your life is, you know, linked to your score. I think it could really help our economy around here if people knew their current score and how to go about improving it. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next speaker is jennifer esterline, you, too, will have three minutes.

I have a talk that follows her. May I come after her.

You may mr. halpin. Hi, I represent the katy kay harman foundation, founded by janet harman three and a half years ago. Based right here in austin with a 30 million-dollar endowment, a one million dollar annual budget for our grant making. Our mission is to break the cycle of poverty through education while promoting a culture of giving excellence. We support non-profit programs with academically rigorous programs here in the central texas region, which includes travis county. We support such programs as american youth works and the free mind project of the [indiscernible] institute both of which you will hear from later today. I want to share with you a staing statistic that few central texas realize. The high cost of high school dropouts. First before I show you that statistic, this information is from the texas education agency, which illustrates clearly the high school dropout crisis that our state is experiencing today. Please note the significant drop from ninth grade to 12th grade. A high school dropout crisis in texas is very real and very serious. So what is the cost of a single class year of dropouts in central texas? Not even the entire state. By the way, these slides are from e 3 alliance. Also one of our grantee partners. So what is the conservative estimate of the cost to the central texas economy for a single class year of dropouts? Is it a fully loaded mercedes benz, the annual athletic department, the cost to build the long center or the total gross proceeds from dion's ticket sales for an entire year. A conservative estimate of the cost to the central texas economy of a single class year of dropouts is ... $425 million. Answer is d, celine dio ns ticket sales. You could build five long centers every year with that kind of money. Nationally for every 100 ninth graders, only 68 will actually graduate. 38 Will enter college by the age of 19, only 18 will either earn an associate's degree within three years or a bachelor's degree within six. Those in texas those statistics are far worse. The foundation is investing in turning around the lives of our communities' croout. We are looked for the continued investment of partners such as the city of austin. As you can see, the return on investment is obvious. A $250,000 investment in american youth works, also one of our grantee partners, yields a $42 million return on investment to travis county. That's a whopping 638% return on investment. When the private and public sectors work together, you can show your taxpayers a significant return on their taxpayer dollars. [Buzzer sounding] please support american youth works, thank you.

Thank you, molly. Welcome, mr. halpin.

Hello, mayor, city council members, city manager, city attorney, hello austinites. My name is richard halpin, i am the founder of american youth works. I have recently received the social entrepreneur of the year award. As I reflected on this award, I have remembered what it takes to achieve something like this. It is not a me dynamic. You take the m in me, turn it upside-down, you get the w in we. Together we make a difference saving the lives of endangered dropout young adults. You are asked to make men investment decisions. Our taxpayers deserve your smart choices and investment in our endangered but most promising young adults. They provide a yiewj return. You have that with this national award winning program. Huge. We are bringing people from all over the country and even internationally, mayor, to study this remarkable work. Now we are even sending experts in green building and endangered youth out to teach others all across the country. To help these extraordinary young men and women become the great contributing members of our community, city council member shade that you know so much about. We all need them to be what they want to be councilmember shade, councilmember martinez. You know it's a big win-win for all councilmember leffingwell. I'm trying to not to leave anybody out. Councilmember morrison and the new mayor pro tem. And councilmember cole. [Laughter] we build award winning affordable five star homes. You know that. Trails, parks, green ways. We can salvage foreclosed homes and energy retrofit homes all across our city. Putting hundreds of endangered at promise young adults to work. We build the workforce versus the jail force. Hour passion, common sense and uncommon success is an unbeatable transformative life saving taxpayer saving workforce readiness and economic development solution that you all are already partners in. Isn't it time to take winning solutions to a new level. We have awards for you. These awards are customized for each one of you, I will read the mayor's now and then with your permission these extraordinary young men and women here will bring forward and present, these champion I don't knows of your investment, will present each of you this beautiful award. Champions. Is that okay if they come forward and do that?

Mayor Wynn: 40 Second. You bet.

Civic investor of the year, awarded to mayor will wynn. City of austin mayor will wynn is awarded this acknowledgment of taxpayer investment excellence through social entrepreneurship. He has invested the taxpayers' funds in a positive, innovative and lawful manner, produced a return on investment of extraordinary proportions. This awardee helped to reduce the cost of school dropouts by 95% from 420,000 each to $21,000 each and criminal justice costs dropped by 99% from two million city manager to $26,000 each. Thousands of young adults in austin have had a chance to earn a pathway out of poverty and a vicious generatial criminal behavior cycle. Congratulations to mayor will wynn for being a champion, successful steward of the taxpayers' funds and guardians of our young people's lives. If you will bring these forward and hand these out.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you, mr. halpin. Thank youment. [ Applause ]

thank you all very much. Especially to the young men and women. Next speaker is pat valls-trelles. I thought I saw pat earlier. Welcome, followed by carolannrose kennedy.

Mayor, mayor pro tem, councilmembers and city manager, thank you for the opportunity to speak here, thank you for the -- your willingness to be a public servant. I also w to voice my support for the excellent dropout work that american youth works is doing. Add that as a first grade teacher, I think fully funding pre-k would do a lot to help that situation as well. I am here to speak to animal issues as they relate to the budget that you are about to approve. The shelter that you are about to begin building and the appointments to the animal advisory commission that you are about to make. As far as the shelter, i would like to talk about your plans to build one single shelter that will serve the entire county. And how that's not such a good idea right now with the cost of gas being what it is, with our problems with global warming and climate change. And that I think our city would be much better served if we had four shelters, one on the west side where it already is, one on the east side where you plan to build one, one far north and one far south. I think over the course -- councilmember mccracken, you and I have talked about that. Over the next 50 years, it makes no sense to have animal control trucks all leaving from one location, driving all over the county to pick up animals and bringing them all the way back. The gas expenditures on that, the cost to our environment and the fact that, you know, it will do nothing to build neighborhood participation in the no-kill effort. I inch you to consider -- i urge you consider building only a smaller shelter. Partner with some non-profit organizations to build shelters up north and down south over the years to serve our community. I would also like you to look at the performance measures in the budget for the next three years and try to set an 85% save rate for animals leaving the shelter within three years. I would like you to start by setting the save rate at 65% for the budget year that you are going to be approving now. If you set it at 65%, 75% year, the 85 percent the next after that, within three years we will meet the goals that I think most communities in this country are trying to make, which is to save 85% of the animals that leave the shelter. I think it's doable, a great time to set that as a goal because you have a community that's very aware, very willing to support and help with this effort. As you consider your appointees to the animal advisory commission, please ask them if they would be willing to commit to an 85% save rate and I would just like to add one more thing, that whenever you look at saving animals, please also be concerned about animal cruelty. We don't want animals leaving the shelter alive only to go live in a situation that's a fate worse than death. Thank you for time and welcome to city council.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you, pat. Next speaker is carolannrose kennedy I saw earlier. Welcome, you will have three minutes to be followed by rachel hullly:

Thank you all for having me. I'm going to postpone speaking on violence on the homefront. And instead welcome all of the new members. And tell y'all again what a fine job you're doing, everybody thank you for serving, thanks.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you, ms. kennedy. To be followed by rachel hulley. Welcome, rachel. Three minutes to be followed by paul robbins.

Hello, everyone, welcome, I'm rachel huley, here with roadway productions, here to talk about austin bat fest coming up august 30th and 31st on the congress avenue bridge. Everyone knows that the bats are one of our own most wonderful resources and attractions and the festival that we have bat fest is just one of roadways shining stars. It's what we love to do and the tourism and the positive aspects of this event are immense. Brings in millions of dollars, the hotels are booked, restaurants are full. We also provide a place for 150 local vendors. They sell their wares in the middle of this festival. Positive, win-win situation for everyone, it's a family event, affordable, $5 gets you in all day, you can bring your whole family out for less than $20. Can't even go to the movies for that. Reason I'm here I'm asking for council approval for a fee based event on a closed street. I've been with roadway 20 years, doing street closures and events festivals things like that for 20 years, i know how things are changing, I'm here to ask for that consideration for the bat fest. The one scheduled this year is our fourth annual. Okay. I'm also asking if possible for a waiver for the street closure sign-off requirements for this year's bath fest. As a bone -- bat fest, as a bonus to everyone, I have really cool plastic little bat rings that we give out to all of the kids who come in, if you like I have bat rings for the council and everybody in the audience. You know, there's 5 million mexican freetail bats that would really appreciate your support of this event. Thank you very much for your time.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you, ms. hulley. Let's see, paul robbins to speak again. Welcome back, mr. robbins. Mayor and council, citizens of austin, I am paul robbins, I'm the environmental activist and consumer advocate. Here to ask you to place an item on the charter amendment ballot this november concerning voter approval of debt incurred by ratepayers on city of austin utilities. Article 7, section 11 of our city charter states "our revenue bonds issued by the city shall first be authorized by a majority of qualified voters voting in an election held for this purpose. The right to vote is a fundamental part of our system of government and the fact that austin takes this further by having citizens vote on debt is all the better. This right was reaffirmed and reasserted by the citizens in january of 1985. When a huge overwhelming majority reaffirmed their right to vote in a charter election. Now, there were -- the -- the custom was continued until 1998. And at that point there were no -- there were no further elections on debt and this happened for several reasons. First, there was a recession and debt was not in great demand for a few years. Second, the council began exempting projects from debt and these exemptions grew as the years went on. Third, you had a city manager who did not enjoy voter input. And in fairness to her, it was not just about her. City staff has always chaffed having to account to voters in [indiscernible] elections at least since I've been involved in the 1970s. Another reason is that many new people in austin don't know that they have this right to economic self determination. Personally, I'm quite concerned about big ticket items like water treatment plant 4 and has large new power plant that might be funded without voter approval of the electorate. The economic and environmental considerations of these two items water treatment plant or power plant are just too big knot to defer to voters on these matters. Some believe the city charter provision mandating voter approval has outlived its usefulness. Whether you agree with it or not, what you have here is a hanging problem. You have a charter proper six that is routinely being ignored but the public might want it to be implemented. So why not let the voters have a say and decide whether they want to [buzzer sounding] continue to vote on these or not in the upcoming charter election in november. Thank you. We will talk soon.

Mayor Wynn: Thank you robbins, council, i believe that concludes our citizens communication unless -- has marcel elozondo arrived. If not that concludes our speaker signup for our general citizen communication. Takes us back to again i apologize, but thought it would be the appropriate thing to do for our citizens, takes us back to our presentation regarding the -- regarding the downtown rail analysis. adams ended with his final slide, recommendations of next steps. If we can pull that slide back up again. I know that we have executive session and lunch waiting for us, but i thought this would be a -- would be an appropriate time for us while it's still somewhat fresh in our mind to continue this conversation. mayor, you have put me between councilmembers and their lunch.

We really just want to wrap up to reiterate the next steps. We are prepared to come back to council as soon as august 7th. Of course this morning was a briefing. So in order to actually move us forward with next steps i think that you would need to be posted for action to do so. We are prepared to come back to you as soon as august 7th to do that. The three next steps are one authorize us to move forward to get some targeted stakeholder and public input on some key issues. Two, to continue working with our staff, our consultants and this will probably be in a joint effort with capital metro as well. To prepare a submittal to go to the transit working group for deliberations via the decision tree. Once again I reiterate that we would come back to you. We proposed that we would come back to you prior to that submittal to get your final input and authorization to do so. Finally to the extent that you wish to issue us a guidance on the timing and schedule of those efforts, that would certainly be helpful. Of course the -- the -- you know the -- the lurking in the closet is what we all know is that the likelihood of the necessity of a voter referendum in order to actually authorize a rail project to move forward and dates -- different dates talked about, may of '09, november of 2009 certainly in terms of working towards next steps to the extent that you want to guide us in terms of your wishes on -- on directing towards those or other dates that would be helpful as well. With that, we would welcome any questions that you may have or any occasional we can give you.

Thank you, we do appreciate the fact that you all can come back as soon as our next meeting in two weeks if there's going to be specific direction by staff. I will say as a quick little point of information, so the transit campo's transit working group, which sort of concluded its first phase of work six or eight weeks or so ago, the culmination of the decision tree, the process by which we as a working -- transit working group can help analyze it in as objective of a way as possible, potential or additional passenger rail projects here in the central texas region, it's my belief here sooner rather than later, probably in the next matter of weeks, that the potential analyses of extending the red line out towards elgin might be brought before the transit working group. That is folks both with the city of elgin and others along that route and capital metro have put together, i have seen a draft submittal, potential submittal to the transit working group for that potential project. Sort of an obvious project that may be in our future. I think that's been the potential working group here in a matter of weeks. My belief is our potential, any potential submittal that involves the city of austin, a downtown circulator, any phased extensions to mueller and/or bergstrom is -- is frankly just more complicated. That is the elgin line, you know the rail exists, the right-of-way is there, it is what it is. Ours I think we are doing the appropriate work here with jim and roma and our consultants to realize it's -- it's far more complicated, at the same time I think that it's far more opportunityistic looking at those numbers as to the employment and housing and visitor base in our urban core, I think it behooves us to really to continue to work hard as trying to figure out what might be the next set of products when it comes to urban passenger rail. I do have the -- the licks sherri occasionally of -- luxury occasionally of visiting with colleagues across the country, occasionally visiting their cities. I promise you that -- that our peer cities and cities that want to be our peer are moving forward with urban passenger rail projects as fast as they humanly can, possibly can. Miami, charlotte suburban , boston, houston, paul and albuquerque and denver and seattle and san jose and santa ana california and san diego, again city that's we consider to be peers i believe, many of those cities want to be our peers. They want to emulate us in many, many ways are moving forward with significant passenger urban rail products, I think it behooves us to do haul that we can but in a very objective, very yuschenko shows way to -- judicious way to figure out what those projects might be. I really applaud this presentation. Frankly it's more detail than I anticipated it being, which I appreciate. I think between our internal discussions and working with stakeholders the next few weeks, we could have staff back in front of us with a potential posting item that ultimately allows us as a council to I think in some form or fashion direct and/or bless any potential submittal, still likely a little ways away. I think the elgin proposal will come to the transit working group in advance of anything from us. But that I would hope that we won't be that far behind them when it comes to -- you know, to allowing a significant project like this to go through an analysis to figure out if it's the right product and if it is how do we pay for it and how -- who precisely is we. That is who might be partners when it comes to financing and ultimately building and operating what I think will be a very important future project and product for this city and region. Further comments or thoughts about this. We are not posted for action. Staff is prepared to come back to you whenever we believe we are ready. Councilmember leffingwell?

Mayor?

Leffingwell: I basically agree with what you said. There are problems that haven't begun to be addressed, financing, who is going to operate the line, how they are going to operate it. The solution to the labor questions that exist at capital metro. But I think that we ought to go ahead with the -- with this recommendation, all them of -- three of them, based on a time table. If we can solve these other problems, this time table ought to be based, predicated on a may '09 election, that would be my recommendation and thought.

Perhaps a simple question for mr. smith. I don't necessarily see this as action. I think we can -- you know, based on what I see as the recommended next steps by our team, I don't know that we as a council need to take action one way or the other. But that this is -- this could be happening, we won't be violating any posting language or anything like that, correct.

That's correct, mayor. The subject matter is posted properly. And council can -- can discuss that subject matter and express various opinions. This agenda does not post council for action, so council is not taking any kind of formal action. But I think my observation hearing from the presenters of the information is that -- that I would be surprised if you didn't see an item on your next agenda setting up action on next steps much.

Mayor, if I could -- next steps were really intended by us to give council an indication of what our intentions were. You know? And hearing no objections from the council, this is again what we would -- [indiscernible] further comments, thoughts? Councilmember morrison and then cole.

I'm sure everybody is going to have special concerns and interest within those three steps. What would be the -- this is a question, what would be the process then for council to provide that input as they -- between now and then or -- perhaps once the formal action is taken, that's just my question how we would express that.

Mayor Wy STAFF Can continue to brief our offices, I would be interested to get more detail for instance as you say seek further public input. But maybe a schematic as to what that looks like, you know, who we approach, how often that is happening, what forums and formats that occurs. I would be curious to see that, my instinct is our colleagues would be as well. So I would hope that in advance of staff posting an item in the next meeting or two, in advance of that, each council office and the mayor's office would be briefed to here's the schematic format, we could have a that public debate at the council as to the makeup of the public input, timing of the capital metro work to help with the submittal, those sorts of things. So well in advance of even a preliminary agenda if staff could make sure that council offices are briefed as to what might be the parameters within a potential action item to have input in advance and then have the ability to have the appropriate public debate.

That would be our intention.

Councilmember cole?

Cole: Yes, I was really focussed on the financing scheme. I think this is going to be a primary issue not only in terms of this council for the potential commitment that we make, also for the public. I don't think that -- that that potential or range of commitments or evaluations that we make should necessarily go to to capital metro or campo unless we have fully voted those. So I would like -- vetted those so I would like to instruct the cullants or city staff -- consultants or city staff to bring that to the audit committee, which is a four present subcommittee, we try to vet that out and make a presentation to council, in potential vetting, i would like to look at peer cities, potentially dallas or houston because they have the same taxing structure that we have. I also understand that dallas is engage understand some efforts to try to -- engaged in some effort to try to increase their sales tax revenue this time around. We need to talk about those types of things. We have talked about other peer cities like portland, seattle, those types of things, the -- I think the committee would be interested in seeing what they did, but we also have to keep in mind that they have a totally different taxing structure and I also think that the committee needs to look at the potential federal funding sources that may be available to -- to fund not only the inner city connection, but the whole zone as it relates to also the commuter rail line and also the austin san antonio line, so that we are not looking at it in just a vacuum, but we are looking at a comprehensive plan that we could potentially take to the voters that say over a period of time we are anticipating making within the next five years, that we really are looking at it from a potential of biting off small chunks that we could potentially finance as opposed to doing the detailed analysis of -- of a disney world that -- that is really just not into a play that we get into everybody's mind and then come back with one ride and they are saying well what happened to a disney world? So we need to look at it in a total comprehensive manner and let me ask you a question because I didn't get clear on this yesterday. Because I really think that we should look at it in phases. If we looked at it in phases like considering -- I guess I'm asking what that would look like, funding from downtown to the airport, versus funding just from the , has there been any thought to fayed implementation of the proposal? Is that yes.

We presented some slides that showed potential increments that could occur, certainly there would need to be an initial increment that provides the key transit connections between the downtown and the -- and the two points on the red line. After that point you could take any number of -- you could go to the mueller, to the airport.

That you would term like the downtown circular area as your recommendation for phase 1?

Well, yes. We believe that the most effective first phase would be to connect the downtown and seaholm up congress avenue. To the state. To the university. And then across manor to the red line station at manor road. So you would actually be connecting two red line stations with the university, with the capitol and with the downtown corridor. That we believe would be the most effective first phase of the project.

Cole: When you say effective, is that based on ridership, capital costs, o around m, what? O and m.

Basically all of those things, ridership very important because you would be connecting all of the principal destinations of the downtown, connecting those with the regional transportation -- transit rail system that you are about to -- to open in the fall.

Okay. I guess the only thing that I would add to that, that i don't remember seeing much discussion of, is that -- is that the potential involving the georgetown san antonio line, in particular, I saw that on the map, in particular the piece that goes through austin that would connect to seaholm.

We have been totally focussed on the -- on the urban street car. The -- the seaholm line, the connection I should have mentioned, the seaholm to -- to line through cdb to the red line would also serve the austin san antonio line, would also connect to that station.

Okay.

Mayor Wynn: If I can, councilmember, I appreciate and agree with, I think the audit and finance committee is a great venue for -- for us ultimately as a city to look at the financing. I would request that staff comes and brings our offices, if they were to grade essentially both the decision tree and then how you all have proposed to help us work towards a submittal on the decision tree, you will see that financing as important as it is, it's a late step. It's a late box in that decision tree that first and foremost you have to think about routes, you have to think about product, you have to think about cost benefits, you have to think about, you know, the environmental benefits, the -- the transit dependent population benefits and then you will get to -- to a price and then figure out how to finance it. I can see very much all of us being intimately involved in -- in all of those steps up to and threw financing, audit finance can take a closer look at how other peer cities in texas, financing products, I think then that could come back at the same time we might be submitting. I will say lastly it may very well be that the transit working group will be receiving submittals and going through analyses with everything up to how would one pay for it. That is a big part of the decision tree matrix is helping us objectively measure things like the environmental benefits, the housing benefits, those type of things. Not knowing what the price is. Then if there's an agreement that wow we would like to accomplish all of those things or, you know, these -- this nine figure price, then the big decision is how would one, you know, pay that price. So I can see, wouldn't surprise me if the transit working group isn't prepared to accept proposals or submittals, has everything answered including the cost, but everything short of how do we pay for it. For instance in the [indiscernible] for whatever reason thinks that's not the appropriate product route, timing, phasing, why would you bother to have the very lengthy complicated likely multi-jurisdictional discussion about how we pay for it? So I really think we ought owe oat audit finance is the appropriate, you know, subcommittee of us to really look at how would we pay for it if there's this council agreement that it is the right route and it is the right product, it is the right timing, those type of things. So I just ask as staff briefs us individually here over the next two weeks, they do it in -- in light of what likely would be the decision tree format of the submittal.

[Indiscernible]

councilmember mccracken or mayor pro tem?

Jan and jenna, our entire team of roma, traffic engineering team, if we could real briefly provide us from the professional engineering viewpoint about how much confidence that you have in the numbers and in your viewpoint is -- as a professional transportation engineer of this proposal today.

I would be happy to. My name is tom [indiscernible], the director of planning for ltk engineering services, we are mostly engineers but I'm a planner. I think that you have, i think that you can have a lot of confidence, that was your question in these numbers, very conservative. The capital costs for construction includes a -- a -- a 30% construction contingency, that's reflected in the totals, given that no real engineering of this concept has been done. Hopefully as we proceed through the steps to preliminary engineering, you get a better handle on what some of the costs really are. We can refine those numbers, give you perhaps lower ones, the way the dollar is going it's very difficult to say that that would in fact happen. But in terms of the construction costs, the cost of the vehicles, so on, i think that you are on very good footing. With regards to the operating costs, I'm the one who is responsible to those. They are based on a string of assumptions, I think conservative ones about the speed of the system, the number of cars required to operate it at -- at 10 minute head way, very good level of service. The assumptions are such that the 10 minute services 00 in the 00 or 12:00 at night. That in fact isn't what would happen in reality. You would start with longer head ways in the morning, build up as required. So in a refined analysis of operations and maintenance costs, I think that we can -- we can hope to bring those down a little bit. We also use unit cost based on -- on experience in houston. Which -- which is the nearest similar system to you. Which has comparable bus operations costs to capital metro. But in a refined estimate i think that we actually go into the real nuts and bolts of what it would take, hopefully reduce those.

McCracken: Jumped out at me, I don't know from y'all or roma. It's this. The light rail or street car recall shows [indiscernible] trips per day. By way of comparison the capital metro commuter rail line is anticipating 2,000 trips a day. I believe these are spectacular numbers and show the incredible transportation system benefits of an urban light rail system that serves our most densely populated areas. Can you all tell us where you got those numbers from? Also the confidence that you have in ridership numbers that are 10 times higher than the computer rail line.

The ridership numbers were developed by parkers [indiscernible] as part of a study two years for most recently for the riverside line. Again, we believe these numbers are conservative. Riverside is only projecting ridership between airport and downtown, not between , which we believe would give us another jump. They are also not including any land use changes yet. In other words intensification along riverside corridor which we believe has incredible potential. We believe -- very comfortable with the ridership numbers as being conservative we think as we get into more detail we will be able to refine those numbers as well upward. I think relative to other systems around the cup, which tom could speak -- around the country which tom could speak to.

Portland has a mature system now, responsible for opening the system in 1985, but that is now carrying 100,000 passengers a day. Cal garry in can day -- calgary in canada, a city of half a million, 200,000 in the additional urban area has a light rail system carrying well over 100,000 passengers a day. Sacremento, another similar city with about 60,000 jobs downtown, government offices, state capitol, about 60,000 a day. Projecting a two line or really a three line starter system here. Connecting mueller, airport, west side, providi