>>Mayor Watson: we're going to start off our proclamationings section by doing something that is -- it's a real honor to get the opportunity to do it. One of the things that happens in Austin is we got a lot of folks that care deeply about our City, and so they give a great deal of volunteer time and energy to events and to causes and to work that we need to have done in this City. And through not just in things that you might normally think of, but in boards and commissions and other aspects of the City. And james christianson has given a lot of time to Austin, Texas over the years and so today -- but he is -- he is leaving the historic landmark commission and after quite some time and so today we get the proud opportunity to honor him, to thank him and to provide him with a distinguished service award. And it reads in acknowledgement and appreciation for his untiring efforts and unselfish service to our community during his more than 20 years tenure as a member of the his tore being landmark commission james christianson is deserving of public acclaim and it's signed by me, Kirk Watson, may of the City Council of Austin, Texas and we want you to know how much you have meant to our City. Thank you very much. [Applause]. Would you like to say something?
>> Thank you, Mayor and Council for the opportunity to serve for I guess 22 years. I was a member of the historic landmark commission. I think I got appointed when jimmy carter was president at the beginning of his term and have been able to faithfully serve. I wanted to thank all my fellow commissioners, a couple of them are here today. I thank our staff person, barbara stockland. We have a strong preservation system and that's a work of a lot of people, a lot of commissioners who have donated a lot of time. I would also like to thank Ms.. Betty Baker who probably was Ms.. Historic in Austin. I've long since given up arresting historic issues with Ms. Baker.
>>Mayor Watson: most of us have given up arguing with her.
>> Mayor, I thank thank you very much for this award and I appreciate the opportunity to serve the City for these number of years and it has been a pleasure from my standpoint, Austin is my hometown, I grew up here, my grandparents came here in 1870 and I got involved simply because I saw a lot of our old buildings getting destroyed, and I didn't want my hometown destroyed and I think that we have made some progress and we have one of the strongest preservation organizations in the United States. Thank you very much, sir.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. [Applause].
>>Mayor Watson: if he had just made it 23 years we were going to declare him an historic landmark. [Laughter]. Is dag bogue here? come up. Know all men by these presents that I Kirk Watson, Mayor of the City of Austin do hereby proclaim august 13th, 1998 as KLBJ Instant Austinite David bogue day and call on all citizens to join me in congratulating him as a winner of the 1998 instant Austinite contest and recognizing KLBJ as a sponsor and it's signed by me, Kirk Watson, Mayor of the City of Austin. Congratulations. Why don't you tell us a little about the contest.
>> Well, what the contest wassenich song of the day and got a few prizes for being an instant Austinite and just kinds of introducing to you the City and what we have here in the City and I just wanted to say this is a great City and I think KLBJ is a good radio station and I'm proud to be an instant Austinite.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. [Applause]. Ms. Salazar? please come up.
>> Can I bring my children with me?
>>Mayor Watson: please do. When I was talking a minute ago about people that give to our City and are important to our City, the folks that work at the City as employees of Austin are also very important to us and they give a great deal. We have a remarkable professional City staff here in Austin and one that we're all proud of, and we have the opportunity today to provide a distinguished service award to Alice salazar for her long tenure and untiring efforts here and so let me read that. In acknowledgement and appreciation for her untiring efforts and unselfish service to our community during her tenure as a dedicated employee of the City of Austin and it's signed by me and I will tell thaw the Mayor pro tem was going to be here to present this to you today, he is not right here now because of some personal reasons, but he wanted me to also give his congratulations and he was sorry he wasn't here. But we really appreciate all you've meant to our City and thank you for your long service.
>> Thank you so. [Applause].
>>Mayor Watson: do you want me to hold her?
>> thank you very much, Mayor Kirk Watson. On behalf of the child safety program, I accept this award, but however I would like to say that no matter how hard the work, if you really enjoy it and are committed to it it seems to make the day go by shorter. No man is an island. I have had many awards throughout my tenure with the City. I'm recognized a lot because I'm the one at the helm. However, we have built the no. 1 Program within the state of Texas and I certainly didn't do it alone. Some of my -- I want to say my staff, my former staff are with me now and I would like them to come forward with me to see this award with me, please. Linda, chris. Fill list? 4 dave, you come up too. Dave and peter rieck. A program deserves support from your department. We're part of the transportation engineering division. We're the ones that do the school zones, the sidewalks, crosswalks, school signs. People always ask what are you going to do, you know, how long is it going to take before you get something done, how many -- you know, when is something going to get done. Are you going to wait until somebody gets killed? and I haven't quite yet figured all the amount of hours that go into a day by just the staff within the Public Works and transportation department and all the other City employees and trying to keep this City safe. In fact our Mayor last year pulled duty as aing guard the first day of school and in a tofrt remind motorists -- do you remember that?
>>Mayor Watson: oh, yeah how could I forget it?
>> in an effort to remind motorists to slow down in school zones. One of the biggest problems right now in the City for the crossing guards, no. 1, We can't recruit them enough, but two is the lack of responsibility on the motorists' part when driving through a school zone and almost hitting crossing guards and children on a daily basis. If we were to get the crossing guards here today you would probably hear lots of war stories and unfortunately they are all true. So on behalf of the -- you know, the children of Austin and the crossing guards, please drive safely. First I would like to introduce my staff. Chris moore who is acting child safety program manager, linda Mayor, who has been with me for several years. And a special friend, this is -- we're speaking of dedicated City employees. This is trellis rolands, she has been with the City 26 years as a quote unquote temporary part time employee. [Laughter]. Dave gerard. Our traffic engineering manager and of course peter rieck the director of transportation and engineering. Hello, how are you? so thank you very much.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. [Applause]. Going bye-bye.
>>Mayor Watson: now for an opportunity to have some music our music proclamation today is for the naacp Austin afro academic cultural, technological and scientific olympic days also referred to as act so. The naacp program seeks to raise the standard oFAAemic and artistic excellence among today's youth while providing them with positive role models and images to say cyst in their personal growth and development providing workshops, seminars, mentoring and field trips, the program impacts more than 5,000 students nationally. The organization also provides scholarships to students to compete in the national competition in 21 academic areas. Including science, technology, the humanities and fine arts. At this year's 20th annual competition in atlanta, georgia we had receive inAustin students participate and they -- seven Austin students participate and they brought home a national medal in classical piano so we're very proud to have these students representing the City of Austin and we're very proud to have representation here today to be part of our music. And with that what I will do is ask parise robinson to introduce our singer. We're proclaiming today as naacp Austin, afro academic cultural, technological and scientific olympic day in Austin and call on all citizens to join me in recognizing the many outstanding contributions toward the development of Austin's social, economic and cultural diversity and recognizing the dedicated efforts of artists which further Austin's status as the live music capital of the world and I want to thank you all for what you do when you represent the City of Austin and it's signed by me, Kirk Watson, Mayor of the City of Austin and let me introduce the president of the local chapter of the naacp to introduce our singer.
>> Thank you, Mayor. We appreciate being here and I want to just add to your remarks that it's fitting that seven area high school students won the naacp Austin afro academic cultural technological and scientific olympics competition here in Austin. This entitled them to participate in the highly competitive and grueling four-day 20th annual 1998 national act so competition in at lan take. With the combined support of our community and dell computer participants were provided mentoring and scholarships to compete in the national competition. The local winners were housed with hundreds of other local winners at olympic village and competed at the world Congress center. And I would like to introduce the person that worked tirelessly to help bring about this competition in Austin and to carry it on to atlanta, our tireless worker and youth visor polly street. [Applause].
>> Thank you. I would like to tell you those students that represented Austin at the national competition, they were sha nechlt. L hall in the area of dra mat ix of crockett high school. Renice heard, category of original essay, graduate of reagan high school. Charles maderas, category contrary instrumental music of lbj high school. Valanesia talbot, grout of bowie and is attending southwest Texas state university. Dartinia harris, contemporary vocal graduate of pflugerville high attending university of Texas. Ebony walker category biology attending bowie high school, and tenison washington whose area was classical instrumental music. He was our silver medal winner this year in that category and last year he was our gold medal winner at the national convention. [Applause].
>> Thank you polly and before I introduce dartina harris who was also featured as part of the national program that will air sometime in the coming weeks here in the Austin market, and so we'll certainly be looking forward to hearing from her, but I want to also acknowledge the help that we received in putting this together in terms of helping us to facilitate this Councilmember Lewis. Thank you very much for your support. Dartina harris is our featured singer as she was also on the national act dlsz so program. [Applause].
>> Good afternoon. The song I'm going to sing today is entitled what about the children. It's bio lan today adams and this is a song that I competed on in atlanta and it's a thought provoking song to get people to focus on helping children and trying to better their lives to make the future better. So it's called what about the children.
(Music)
(Music)
tears streaming down
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
her heart is broken
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
because her life is hurting so am I
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
he wears a frown
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
his dreams are choking
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
and because he stands alone, his dreams will die
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
so humbly I come to you and say
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
as I sound allowed the warfare of today
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
hear me, I pray, what about the children
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
to ignore is so easy
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
so many innocent children
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
will choose the wrong way
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
what about the children, remember when we were children and if not for those who loved us and who cared enough to show us, where would we be today
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
sir, where is your son
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
where lies his refuge
(Music)
(Music)
and if he can't come to you, then where can he run
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
such a foolish girl, yet still she is your daughter
(Music)
(Music)
(Music)
and if you will just reminisce, your days of young
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
you see it's not where you've been, oh, or what you've done
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
because I know a friend who specializes in great outcomes, his love overcomes and what about the children
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
to ignore is so easy, so many innocent children will choose a wrong way
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
yes, what about the children
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
remember when we were children
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
and if not for those who loved us and who cared enough to show us where would we be today
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
what about the children, don't just turn and walk away
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
what about the children, they need our love and our help today
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
what about the children, remember when we were children
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
and if not for those who loved us and who cared enough to show us where would we be today
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
where would we be today
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
oh, where would we be today
(Music)
(Music)
.
(Music)
what about the children
(Music)
(Music)
. [Applause].
>>Mayor Watson: you represented us well. Thank you very much. Thank you for representing us and thanks for being here today.
>>Mayor Watson: I'll call to order the Austin City Council for a regular meeting, it is thursday, october 13th, 1998. We are meeting at the City Council chambers located at 307 west second street. Changes and corrections to the agenda, item no. 12, Approval contracts for landfill services should read waste management of Texas, inc., estimated annual cost of $1,63,775. Texas disposal systems landfill, inc., estimated annual cost of $274,113. Item 15 should read set a public hearing on the town lake comprehensive plan round table advisory group's guiding principles of the development and management and management of park land at auditorium shores including palmer auditorium and the City coliseum, suggested dates and times wednesday, august 19th, 1998 at 5:00 p.m. And september 3, 1998 at 7:30 p.m. Item no. 28, Approve a contract with anchor fence is postponed to august 27th, 1998. Item 41, approval an agreement with the music management company is postponed to august 20th, 1998. Item no. 62 Should read approve a reimbursement, the word reimbursement is added, approve a reimbursement -- and go on through the rest of the item. 64, Approve a resolution to providing funding for american institute for learning is pulled from the agenda. Item no. 88 Should read approve a resolution authorizing fee simple acquisition of lot 1 lbdement subdivision known as the block stock clinic located at 4614 north I-35, Austin, Texas, from ctmf, inc., for relocation of the David powell clinic and then the addition is and authorize ctmf, inc., to lease back from the City of Austin the blackstock clinic for an interim period at a rate between $7 to $11.50 per squire foot with ctmf paying all expenses. Item no. 58 Is postponed until august 20th. Items set for a time certain, at 3:00 items 13 and 14, approve a contract with clark and clark and approve a contract with black and veatch. At 3:30, the meeting of the board of the Austin housing finance corporation, items 61 and 62. At 4:30, the zoning items, items 66 through 77. At 5:30, approval of contracts with waste management and Texas disposal. Item 12. At 6:00, a public hearing on the proposed 1998-99 budget involving transportation and infrastructure, item no. 78. And at 6 clone 30 a public hearing on a variance -- by parks and recreation to construct a parking lot on red bud isle, item no. 79. The addendum, items no. 91, City Manager report on the City county health and human services department issues and item no. 92, Approving an ordinance authorizing amendments to the City's financial policies, no fiscal impact and recommended by audit and finance committee.
>>Goodman: Mayor, on the time certain could you add in that there will be a report at 2:30 from the child care Council? I know we have no action that goes with that.
>>Mayor Watson: sure. Let me do that. 2:30, Report from the child care Council. First item on our agenda is the approval of the minutes of the City Council for the special called meeting of august 4th, 1998 and the regular meetings of august 5th and 6th, 19198. I'll entertain a motion. Motion made to approve by Councilmember Spelman. There a -- is there a second? seconded by Councilmember Goodman. Any discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed motion carries. Next item is citizen communications, greg ericson followed by stace alfstad and Gus pena. Greg ericson. Mr. Irk son. Stace alfstad. Welcome, Mr. Alfstad. You will be followed by Gus pena and michael sander.
>> Thank you, sir. How are you all doing?
>>Mayor Watson: doing well, thank you.
>> I'm the regional executive director for gang, it stands for giving adolescents new goals incorporated. We serve juvenile delinquents and less privileged youth in East Austin. About six months ago I tried to get a speed hump placed at the location of our youth group tutoring program. Which is at 200 brushy street in East Austin. This stretch is a one way minor street approximately 50 to 75 yards long. Even during rush hour it is not heavily utilized. We have been in this area for seven years and as long as I've been there no emergency vehicle has ever used this section to respond to a call. During the course of my research, I learned that there are some people in northwest Austin who have speed humps but they don't want them. We need one, just one. Because 40 to 50 children and youth from the neighborhood participate in our program and they utilize the basketball court and the volleyball court which is located in the church parking lot across brushy street. Many times the balls roll into the street, many kids have to cross that street to get from the court and to the church, and sometimes cars drive too fast and they drive the wrong way. A definite recipe for disaster while dealing with the safety and traffic departments, one person got condescending with me. When I presented my case to you all about two or three months ago, nothing happened. Apparently you blew us off. And when I say us, I mean the 40 to 50 children and youth and myself. I now see that it's time to change my tactics. After compiling all the information, doing all the research, I boiled everything down into one simple yes or no question. And as head of this Council, I'll address it to you, Mr. Mayor. Will you make a commitment right now and see to it that a speed hump is placed at 200 brushy street?
>>Mayor Watson: there is a procedure followed for placement of speed humps and it also has to be budgeted items so there's not much way that any of us could make a commitment at an immediate point in time to be able to do that. If all the procedures are followed in accordance with our rules and regulations and if there are budgeted items that allow for that, then I would anticipate that the process would be followed and the speed humps would be placed.
>> Okay, well, sir that's not good enough. [Buzzer sounds]. As long as loud as I can I will tell the City, this City that the local government has turned its back on 40 to 50 children and youth in east Austin.
>> Peter rieck, the director of pickup works and transportation, I would ask you to sit down and visit with him. It is not just a request that you make. We have to have sign-off from property owners. We have a process that needs to be followed and there's a lengthy list. We have a list of people waiting to get their humps in since the program began. And it's a first come first serve, assessment by the transportation folks. If someone was rude to you, I an aapologize to that. If you will talk to peter, peter can walk you through the process and make sure in the pipeline.
>> What is his name?
>> peter rieck.
>>Mayor Watson: it's this gentleman right here. And I know you will understand speed humps, it's been an interesting thing, I found speed humps is one of the areas that everybody seems to have an opinion on. And it's one of those opinions where it's -- and it's not -- I mean there's no gray area. And what you find is when speed humps go into neighborhoods, and part of the reason we have the process where you have to have a certain number of property owners that would be involved affirmatively taking action to say they want these is because what that means is those who chose not to take the affirmative action really don't want them. And when they get them, there is dispute. So that's why we have a process. But if you will visit with Mr. Rieck, I'm sure he will at least attempt to help provide you some satisfaction.
>> Thank you, sir, and we desperately want and need just one.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: Gus pena followed by michael sander and leonard lyons.
>> Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, City Council members, Gus pena president of East Austin concerned hispanics. As of october -- august 31st, the neighborhood center concept will no longer exist and officers will be reassigned some to patrol and so to other promise, the dr program, the district representative program. We in the community hope that adequate support and funding will be appropriated to this program from the City Council so that the dr program will be effective and positive for the community. We do appreciate Chief Knee's leadership and innovating changes for the betterment of the community. It's for example, like having a park and not funding enough funding for maintenance. Be rest assured the community is concerned that sufficient logistical support is need to do ern sure its success out there. East Austin concerned hispanics would prefer a bond election be set in november. That will give us time to skroot nias the bond's committee's proposal and also the context of the bond election. We also would like to send our appreciation to Mr. Gary valdez, the chamber president. He has invited the community to sit down and dialogue with the issues and we appreciate it because there are groups out there that are not inclusive of the community. So again, Mr. Valdez, we send you a note of appreciation as regards to this issue. We also feel that setting the election in november will save the taxpayers money. We all want to save taxpayers money. I don't want to spend excess money on anything such as $1.3 million to the consultant fee for the clinics. We feel this was not an adequate and appropriate expenditure but it was pass but we will be scrutinizing goggio consultants. We also hope the City of Austin will decide next year to keep the swimming pools until at least the last week of august. We have a lake travis of kids that went into school the 12th of august and the kids don't have anything to do afterwards except go to the recreation center, which is fine, but if anybody knows swimming is health full and a lot of exercise and we would hope the kids, you would have the kids' best interest at heart. Keep them open until at least labor day or the last week of august next year. On tug, august 18th, the county will vote on the seton proposal at commissioners court and this will have a direct exact on the county residents who utilize the county clinics and will affect City employees who are paid out of the county coffers. It is very important to know that any kind of process that affects the clients will have an adverse impact on the community. I think you all need to start communicating with them. I have more effective communication with them and also the county with you all because the communication line has been severed somewhere down the line. Aattended the commissioners court meeting -- let me wrap it up and I hope you all will act appropriately on this issue.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. Mike al sappedder. Mr. Alexander. Loan erd lyons, welcome, Mr. Lyons.
>> When I spoke [inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: doesn't like like it is. Could you please make sure Mr. Lyons microphone is on?
>> I didn't do that intentionally. [Laughter]. Now it's booming. When I spoke to you yesterday, I had some things to say, I was trying to say them moderately and softly, but I'm really anxious about it and that's the rfp process. Something has to change. It is a bad process. It's costing us tremendous amounts of time and millions of dollars. The problem is the people that have to solve it are so damn busy that they seem like they never can get to it. The director of finance and director of purchasing or the purchasing officer have to be -- have to be vitally involved in it. The City attorney has to be invitely involved along with the City Manager. It can't happen by accident and it's got to be looked at seriously. But unless you four guys or have consultants representing you, I mean really consultants that know what they are talking about, it's not going to happen and it has to has been. Your wagon has wheels that are broke and it's costing us time and money. And we can afford neither. Coincidentally with this I attended a meeting of the minority oversight, and I don't have the title, I left it over there on the table, the -- this was this week. Unso list it by me, speakers were there to pront a response to a request. The request was please tell us what is wrong with the process. Please tell us what is good about the process. What suggestions do you have to make. One small company whose name I have seen here many times, reputable company, doing regular business, primarily business on demand but with many departments, I was only able to get one of the packages because there was two speakers. I have three pages of comments direct comments about what is wrong. I didn't get the other three pages, but this is available. They are crying out there and unfortunately not to be im polite, but the people listening really chuckled when these things came ouchlt and they said we're sorry, we've been talking about this for years this. Is not news. And just because it's not news doesn't mean it isn't right. They are losing thousands of dollars worth of money in collections or with bad bids that they have to write off because of improper paperwork, they say in the City. Now, I'm smart enough to know having run a computer that most of the problems I had on the computer were operator problems, not windows problems. Not all, but a good bit of them. I say there's probably operator problems here too. But it has to be cleaned up and someone has to do it. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, Mr. Lyons. These are all the people signed up to speak in general citizens communication. The next item will be passage of the consent agenda. The way I will approach this is to first read the items that I believe have been pulled for discussion and then I will come back and read the consent agenda. Item -- these are the items that have been pulled for discussion. Item no. 11, Item no. 12 Which is set for a time certain of 5:30. Items 13 and 14 set for a time certain of 3:00. Item no. 15 Can go back on consent with a comment prior to the vote. Item no. 17 And 18 will be on the consent agenda for postponement of one week. 17 And 18. Item 28 is pulled and set for august 27th. Item no. 31 Is pulled. Items 35 and 36 which had been previously pulled are back on consent. Item 41 has been pulled and postponed. Item 55 has been pulled for discussion. Item 57 has been pulled for discussion. Item 58 has been pulled and postponed until august 20th. Item 59 has been pulled. Item 64 has been pulled. So now let me read the consent agenda. The consent agenda will be 15, 16, 17, and 18 with a postponement of one week. 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53 54, 56, 60, 63, 65, 88,, And the motion will be to approve a resolution authorizing fee simple acquisition of lot one lgdement locally known as the black stock clinic at 4614 north interstate 35, Austin, Texas from ctmf, inc., for the relocation of the David powell clinic in the amount of $800,000. It also will authorize ctmf, inc., to lease back from the City of Austin the blackstock clinic for a int rhyme period at a rate of $7 to $11.50 with ctmf paying all expenses. Item no. 89, The motion on consent would be to adopt the agenda item no. 89 On all three readings and on emergency passage. Emergency passage being required so that the parties to the litigation may take the necessary action to have the court enter appropriate orders permitting the agreement to take effect, and I'll note for the public and the Council that motion would need to pass by a vote of six votes because it is a site specific to the area covered by sos which is also known as the save our springs initiative ordinance. Item no. 90, Board and commission appointments, the following appointments would be made. Airport advisory board, William Bill Martin by Councilmember Goodman. The federally qualified health center board, howl cats an attorney represented by consensus. The mbewbe advisory committee, velva price a reappointment. She is a professional organization representative by consensus. The urban forestry board, scott Johnson by consensus. The water and waste water commission, Robert hinojosa, a reappointment by Mayor pro tem and chin lee by Councilmember Goodman. That is the consent agenda. I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as read.
>>Spelman: I would like to pull item 92 for discussion also. That's on the addendum.
>>Mayor Watson: okay.
>>Griffith: Mayor, on 15rx did we change the dates on those, on that.
>>Mayor Watson: the dates were the ones set out in the memorandum from the Mayor pro tem, Councilmember Goodman and me. That's a good question so I'll make sure that the suggested changes that I read into the record didn't change those s the dates are wednesday, august 19th -- the dates -- let me just -- let's cover that real quick because what the dates would be is that on wednesday, august 19th, representatives of the town lake advisory group of the co-chairs would provide a 15 minute briefing to Council on the Town Lake advisory group's guiding principles. On wednesday, august 26th, there would be the first public hearing, and that would be conducted at 5:30 p.m. On thursday, september 3rd there would be a second public hearing conducted at 7:30 p.m. And since you brought this up let me go ahead and make some of the comments. For those who are here and listening to this, this Council appointed an entity we call the Town Lake advisory group to provide us help and guidance and provide some guiding principles regarding the development and management of the palmer auditorium, City coliseum and surrounding site park land. The resolution creating the group at the time called for us to hold a public hearing within 30 days of being presented with that document. The proposal is on the consent agenda today to have two public hearings and a 15-minute briefing at the work session from the co-chairs of the tlag to kick things off. And the dates that I have just read on the dates that would be the suggested dates for the purposes of the briefing and the two public hearings. Okay. The consent agenda -- Councilmember Lewis?
>>Lewis: will you put 65 back on?
>>Mayor Watson: sure. All right. Any other items that can go back on the consent agenda? all right. The motion to approve the consent agenda will be as I read it with the addition of item no. 55 And with pulling item no. 92. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? motion mad by Councilmember Spelman. Is there a second? seconded by Councilmember Goodman. Any discussion? let me call on those who have signed up to speak. Leonard lyons.
>> I pass.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, Mr. Lyons. Kirk becker who will speak on items 16 and 63. Welcome, Mr. Becker.
>> 16, Trying to develop a cash incentive for City employees with regard to improvement suggestions the program would probably work better if you commit to no cash savings, instead dedicate the savings to improving services. Employees are declined to take the initiative and have the faith for improving departments. Inclined to do good jobs. Such employees are much more enthusiastic, likely to submit suggestions. If suggestions and the benefits are used to improve the department services rather than reduce department budgets 63 you said -- use of the drainage fee from properties owned by churches to help support the homeless, right now they are going to capital area home alliance which is running what I call hobosa arch. They've got some people in there that are actually doing a lot of work. They are starting to collaborate with other agencies. If you drive past it there is a new mural out there. It's much more positive place that needs -- it's much less depressed. As far as homeless in general go, I think about the resources the City has. We've got lots of jobs, we don't have a lot of houses. I think the focus needs to be on getting people work and letting them save money rather than trying to have them js find a place -- just have them find a place to live. When we talk about the needs of the homeless, we are real short on places for them to live. Even if they get jobs and all that, you know, it's hard for them to find a place to live. They are better off saving money. There is no place for people to park cars, park and leave them until they get them fixed. The homeless tax force talked about a continuum and meeting all the needs of a homeless person and that's bound to be the most effective approach and we're still missing a lot of gaps on that and I guess you can see what I mean on that and I'll let you go for now. 36, Libraries computer contract, leonard lyons made some comments t library's computer contract was a low bid and any time we want an up grade it's a contract that. That doesn't work real well for the City. There is nothing the library is not doing anything that they weren't doing last year. Why does the contract need to be upgraded? probably because it didn't work in the plirs place. In general, computers if you wait until after the mess is resolved you will probably get a better deal on computer best of my knowledge et and so I encourage you to put off as much computer work as possible and that one you could probably put off for a while. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. James almond. Mr. Almond will be speaking on items 47 and 49.
>> Good afternoon, Council. My name is james allman, I'm here today just as an individual, a private citizen. I wanted to say a couple words about item 47. This is the interlocal agreement for riley elementary school. I would like to thank anne dinkler and Councilmember Goodman for this item. This was initiated in about 1994. According to kirt shaw of aisd this is the only aisd school that is currently located in the middle of the 1 hundred year flood plain. This detention facility will be both athletic use and it will provide mitigation of the flood and pull it away from the building. Of course if we get the millenium, that's a different event or the 5 hundred year. Congressman doggett, he and I had a chance to meet and we will be working on a project for the long haul at the huntsman site to look at the possibility of removing a toxic lands fill and providing additional flood protection that. Is just in its initial stages. On june 22 the aisd board pass thd issue and in the first week of august the environmental board did as well and I congratulate you for this item on your agenda. The second item that I wanted to discuss is item 49 which is a contract on shyed park and I have a newspaper article to pass out from 1988. Sometimes people think hyde park gets everything it wants, but I can tell you this is no overnight sensation. This was the initial project that I brought to the City so those who are advocating a project I would say take a photograph of yourself and learn persistence. The trick is to get it into the system. Once you get it into the system when it really gets in there, you can't stop it, if it's a good idea, and this is, and I thank you for this consent item today. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. Those are all the people signed up to speak on consent. The motion has been made and seconded. Any security discussion on can consent agenda as read adding item 55 and deleting item 92?
>>Goodman: I need to ask a procedural question. There is an item that it's not yet time for, a zoning item that the Mayor pro tem had wanted to be here for, and so out of a courtesy I was going to ask if we could postpone that as item no. 67, Is it appropriate now or do we need to --.
>>Mayor Watson: what we'll do, since you called it to our attention is we'll make sure that somebody looks into whether or not there is any difficulty in pulling that with clearly the request we go ahead and pull that and when we get to the 4:30 time certain I'll pull that back up if you will remind me. Thank you. Any additional discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries on the consent agenda and it is adopted. That will take us to our 2:30 time certain and I'll call for a report from the child care Council. For those that are interested in specific agenda items let me tell you how we will proceed. We will have the 2:30 report from the child care Council, then I will ask for a brief report from the electric utility commission, and then the resource management commission and we will get a brief monthly Austin energy management report and then we will go to item no. 11. Welcome.
>> Good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor Watson, Mayor pro tem Gus Garcia, Councilmembers, thank you so very much for inviting me here today. My name is rhonda paver and I'm the chair of the Austin child care Council. This is a stellar day for the issue of child care in Austin. I'mm honored to speak with you, the Mayor and the Council of our great City, who in addition to recognizing the importance of child care are seeking ways of improving this essential community resource. The problem is and the problem that we're looking at and discussing here today is that Austin's quality of child care is bad and that families can't afford it and there is not enough of it. In February, you asked the Austin child care Council to return in 120 days with recommendations for how the City could improve the afford ability and accessibility of quality child care. The City acting as a strategic partner, employer and developer of public policy. The documents that you have before you detail these recommendations and the findings which support them. During the next few moments I will highlight information from the report about the reality of child care in Austin, the benefits of quality child care for our community as an investment, and recommendations to improve this system of early care and education. These recommendations were developed after several months of intense work. The child care Council created a task force comprised of many members, parents and providers. And to guide us in examining those issues we conducted surveys of parents, child care teachers and directors throughout our community. The survey responses uniformly pointed in several consistent directions. In general, they spoke to concerns about inabilities of parents to afford the cost of good child care, inability of teachers to live on an average wage of $6.44 an hour, and to remain and stay in the field, and the ability of child care directors in our community to find work and workers to work in the profession. Very interestingly I've heard a heard a rumor a nou children's song, parents can't afford to pay, teachers can't afford to stay, there has to be a better way. Maybe that's just a bad rap song. There are many elements combined to frame this dilemma. Staff turnover in the child care programs in our community is approximately 35%. Compared to a 6.7% turnover rate which is among our public school teachers. Over the past year we know of at least 15 child care centers which have closed citing lack of applicants for teaching positions as primary reasons for their closing. The cost of child care, another important trend, places an enormous burden on our families. Parents in our community may pay as much as 30% and upwards of their income for child care tuition. Yet this income barely covers the cost and expenses associated with operating a child care center. There is also in addition to that effect the sandwich effect of those individuals who do not qualify for subsidized care butted at the same time cannot afford quality child care. We call that sort of a sandwich phenomenon, the group in the middle, and there's a large percentage of individuals in our community who are experiencing that fa no, ma'am in a as well.
>> The waiting list for subsidized care contains as many children as are currently being served. In the Austin area there are 2300 children being served by the child care management system and approximately that number on the waiting list. In addition there are approximately a thousand children on the head start waiting list. These children who are not in care may be in substandardized unregulated child care segtsz. Lack of child care, third trend, is a major barrier to employment for low wage workers. Unveil blt of affordable child care drives wage earn ous of the of the market. This is a workforce issue. This action aser bates the need for those workers in particular in service industries in our community. As we know and I would refer you to a graph on page 10, there is a inverse relationship wean the phenomena of brain growth and development and the amount of funds invested in the early ages. It's obvious that the outcomes of those kinds of lack of investments will have serious consequences to the future of the community. The community action network, and we agree, has a very laud I believe vision for Austin which is to be a community where all children and families have ak sos to high quality education child care and family support in order to assure that all children have opportunities for successful and productive lives. There is a lot of work to be done before that vision becomes reality. There are several classic studies referred to in our report. Those classic studies will give indication as to data as the net effects of iesting in early care and education. Let me name just a few of those. There would be a reduction in the need for special education fewer arrests and reduced cost to the justice system. A reduction in welfare costs. And our community would enjoy the benefit of more stable families, a better educated and more productive workforce. In addition to the fact that we would be recognized as a community that is investing in its future and our current infrastructure. Another segment of your report details community throughout the kun trip and other kinds of unprecedented commitments that have been taken to ensure quality and afford yabltd of child care. This clearly would be an effective investment in the future quality of our life. The recommendations are detailed for you on pages roman numerals one and two. Partner in a collaborative community effort and address the role of the City as policy maker and employer. Those were the three major areas of the resolution that was issued to the child care Council. The child care Council recommends that the City of Austin created a unique community initiative in which the City is a leading partner to improve the afford ability and availability of quality child care in our community. Very specifically, the City would establish and provide a substantial funding for an Austin community child care fund. The Mayor and the City Council might establish a blue ribbon committee of community leaders who would then be vocal and effective advocates for investment in a vision of affordable and accessible quality care for all of our children. We are already all aware that many of those leaders currently exist and we have seen evidence of such. Next, as employer, the City would implement a range of policies and strategies to improve employees' ability to parent their children. Again I'm referring to you pages roman numeral two and three in the first document. Lastly, as policy maker, the City would examine options and establish mechanisms to reduce cost to parents and child care providers. We recognize the good will of the Austin City Council in asking for this report. Speaking on behalf of the entire child care Council and the many citizens who contributed to this report, I would like to thank you again for the opportunity to present this document. We look forward to providing further support to you in implementing this initiative. I have a couple of other members who would like to offer a few comments. But I would ask for questions at this point.
>>Mayor Watson: let me first of all thank you and the members of the Council that's done the work and after we ask you to do this, we really appreciate your time, energy and the emotion that goes into it. Thank you very much for your dedication. Council, do you have any questions of ms. Paver at this time?
>>Spelman: real quick one. Ms. Paver, you've come up with a real comprehensive list of things that the City could do to act as a model employer. Have you been able to get an estimate for hoch that -- how much that would cost the City?
>> in terms of the employer index? our estimates primarily were in the area of the recommendations as the partner which was the establishment of the child care fund. I think that -- I don't have -- I don't have a set figure for that amount and I think that the Council would be able to pick and choose and possibly prioritize some of those things. And that would probably require some further research shell l..
>>Spelman: of these a through g, which ones would your committee think is the most important?
>> a through g on item no. 2? As the model employer? which did we think are the most important in terms of priority?
>>Spelman: yeah. If that's not easy for you --
>> that's probably not an easy question to answer. They are not in descending order, they would all be of importance to us. I would say that some of the direct benefit issues are important, some of the educational issues are important, and the economic impact issues are clearly important to the future, especially workforce related issues. Sll l..
>>Spelman: thanks.
>> Thank you.
>>Slusher: I really think I agree with everything you said as far as the importance of child care and all the statistics and everything. If the City were to put a million and then the idea is to seek that -- the corporate sector funds also.
>> Correct. That is correct.
>>Slusher: okay. Because we -- in some other areas we haven't had that much luck with that, like job training is one where I keep pushing for -- I would say more corporate investment, but that would -- I don't know if that would be accurate.
>> I do think it is a unique example of collaboration that we need to -- that would need to occur. There are examples of other occurrences and we have some indications from some of those areas of our community that there has been some interest in doing that.
>>Slusher: and then you would envision it working as the subsidizing families directly paying to the child -- the day care centers?
>> one of the first issues would be the length of the waiting list of children who aren't able to access the currently subsidized program, those 2300 children who are somewhere else in care or are not able to access that. That would be one of the high priorities. We would call that direct services. And then another component of that -- the direct services would be a majority of those moneys. And then another component of that would be quality enhancement issues.
>>Slusher: okay. And would that get at the folks or to the folks that are in the what you described as the sandwich effect?
>> that would get to some part of that population, yes.
>>Slusher: okay, because we would need a considerable amount of investment beyond the City to really make -- I mean I calculated it what I pay for day care myself, although I don't think I have the latest increase in there, but it's about $18 -- 185 kids for a year for the million.
>> The one million, yes. We would be looking at larger sums to completely eradicate that problem.
>>Slusher: okay. And I'll have to look at this list of how the City could become a model center too. I think that's a good idea for the City to lead by example as well. So thank you.
>> Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you.
>> May I introduce leonard signs, please, and learn erd represents the assistant director district attorney's office and also Mr. Ralph collar is here from the hogg foundation. Thank you all very much for your support. I appreciate it.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. Mr. Signs, welcome.
>> Good afternoon, I just have three areas I wanted to highlight. I was -- I first want to say that the Council and all these flowers, I hope that's a positive thing, very spring-like and nice. Second I want to say that I am a member of that sandwich group towards the end of it, but I'm in there, and I'm a new parent and kids don't come with books and I'm learning a lot of things and I'm reading a lot of things and one of the things I found in looking for child care is we started late and my wife is three months pregnant and we were ready -- we were already hundreds down the list. We went to several day cares, interviewed probably 20 places got on wait lists, some we had to pay fees, some we didn't. Finally when my child was about four months old we got a spot in october and you would be seeing rudy here today but luckily some people cancelled and he got in in august. So you don't get to see rudy, which is -- you know, he's a great kid and a lot of fun, but the main thing is the cost of rudy's education and development is between now and just beginning of the year has gone up $25. Our fees. So before he even walked in the door paid an extra $25. And I was fortunate enough in terms of where I work, I work for the district attorney's office. I'm a juvenile prosecutors, and I was allowed to have some flex time so what that means is I didn't have enough vacation and sick time built up and the office allowed me to work 20 hours from the house so that I could spend two months with my son and fortunately like I said the spot opened up. Otherwise it would have been a longer duration until oblgt. In terms of that aspect of it as a prosecutor, every day I see the effects of what happens if we don't spend this early money and a lot of the more serious offenders you look at their psychologicals and it all goes back to early development. And if we don't spend the money now, we're averaging now at the leadership academy about $30,000 for student, we're averaging in the thousands, the county passing bonds in order to increase the july shall level detention centers and so the cost is only going up and so I'm asking for a million dollars, this is really a minor investment in terms of we're going to be getting more bang for the buck. And I think those are really the three areas, I just want to end with this is a great opportunity, it's a great challenge to this Council to make Austin a model City. In order to do that we need to make this investment, we need to do it now. We need to take the courage to maybe -- I know this is going the sound unpolitically correct, but they are spend ago lot of money on parks, a roads, we are spending a lot of money on all these things we need. If we don't spend money on our kids we're not going to have the folks who can build those roads, who can make those computers who can do these things. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you.
>> My name is ralph collar and I'm the associate drerkter to the hogg foundation for medical health n the fall of 1994, we joined a group of houston foundations and major service providers to plan a collaborative project for very young children and learning to work together and developing a plan, producing a rfp and securing major funding took several years but today there is two new programs in place to help houston's children. This was our first involvement in a truly collaborative enterprise and one that turned out to be very successful and I might add part of the reason for that success is that one organization came forward at the outset and put a million dollars on the table and that million over a period of years turned into five million to support the new programs. Having that experience I was very please to do learn of and become involved with a local effort by foundations and others interested in the issues of child care and early childhood education. And I'm honored to read a statement signed by representatives from five area foundations which have been working on this issue. We the undersigned foundation representatives strongly support investment in early childhood education and care. It is vital that a broad based community wide initiative be launch to do provide the resources that are needed. As a group, we have begun to discuss the issue of how we can collaborate to improve early childhood development in Austin. We are pleased to support the recommendation of the Austin child care Council that the Austin City Council as a partner make an investment in the development of a community child care fund. We look forward to the opportunity to work together with the City of Austin, the business sector as well as private donors as with our colleagues in public and private foundation to establish the community child care fund which will improve the lives of children in Austin and which will enable their parents to be effective parents and productive employees. And it's signed by patricia airs president of the shield airs foundation, craig kozmetzky, gretchen laura shortle, president of expanding horizons, ralph collar, associate director of the hogg foundation for medical health, judge will flowers and rose lancaster for the troll foundation. Thank you very much.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, sir. We appreciate all the work the child care Council has done and we look forward to spending some more time with you with the report. Next item is a report from the electric utility commission. Theresa reel.
>> Mayor, before we do theresa let me say some of the recommendations from the Council have to do with almost immediate budget decisions. Some of them are policy and some can be done immediately. I think if there is the commitment, some maybe take a little longer to development an all-round goal to get to, but our office is working on the immediate ones for budgeted deliberations including the seed money and we'll have something to show you all by next week. If not, anything put on the agenda, at least something to work for in the budget.
>>Mayor Watson: great. Thank you. I take it that you are going to fill in for ms. Reel?
>> that's correct.
>>Mayor Watson: Mr. Lee, thank you for being here. Can you do both the electric utility report and the energy management reported at the same time?
>> yes, sir, I'll do that. Theresa reel couldn't be here and their report was going to be this, that at their august 3 meet the electric utility commission recommended that the City Council approve items 7 17 flu 25 and 39 on today's agenda would be the report for the uec. As far as the monthly management report goes, there is a couple of items I would like to highlight. One is our system operations of the electric system itself. In 1997, we hit a system peak of 1870 mega watts. We've hit seven new peaks since that time frame with the extreme weather this career. They culminated july 17th2070 mega watts. This was forecasted peak from our base forecast that we are anticipating hitting 2062 mega watts by the year 2000. We're roughly two years ahead with the continued growth we experience on our system. I would also like to state to the Mayor and Council that our employees within Austin energy are the ones to be congratulated on a great job they are doing in doing everything they can to have our system hold together. It is still performing well. We are experiencing some forced outages on our distribution system relative to the high temperatures and also to the stress on the system. Over all, I think our system is performing very well and our employees are to be congratulated in doing a great job. Also I would like to mention a couple of other things, the stress on the system is also pushing our generation capacity. If you recall we recommended and Council approved last year a purchase power contract for 50 mega watts for 1999, next summer and also 50 megawatts for the year 2000 with an additional 50 in 2001 and 2001. As you know, we anticipate closing holly one and two. I anticipate bringing back to Council sometime this spring recommendations on two items, one being we're going to issue a rfp here very shortly on renewable energy, up to 100 mega warts and depending on the sponz we get back we will be bringing back recommendations for that rfp. We also will be bringing back most likely some other recommendations relative to pour chis power similar to what we did last spring. That way we can keep our system reliable and we're still trying to maintain a 15% generation reserve. The two other items I will mention, one is the reengineering and reprocessing effort within Austin energy is continuing. We anticipate to complete the entire utility by october 1st. It's been a long journey for us. I anticipate everything getting wrapped up by that time which I think would really be a great thing for all of our management and employees to get that done. However, we're putting everything down in pencil. As you know, we are marketed driven and we're customer driven and we're going to continue to revise and adjust our organization as the market and the customer requirements dictate that we do that. With that I would like to have steve bartlett our vp of finance come up and give you a brief report on the financial status of Austin energy. As you recall back in may time frame we were behind and I think we maybe have some good news to report relative to our revenues. It's one thing to Bill it, it's going to be more difficult to collect it. We've had a practice in for the past month of not cutting off any customers. We will -- we were still sending out past due ngts sz but we were not cutting anyone off and we're not going to do that. The puc followed our lead, I believe, yesterday or two days ago in making a mandatory requirement throughout the state for all of the utilities they regulate and we're going to continue to work with our customers and ratepayers to ensure we can do everything we can to set up payment plans so we can collect the revenues that's due the utility. With that I'll ask steve to come up and give a brief report on our financial status.
>> Good afternoon. We are presenting the june financial statements this month to the City Council. He mentioned the stress the system and the heat we incurred during the month of june. We do have good news to report. Our revenues our operating revenues for june are significantly above last year. We reported 71 million dollars of operating revenue in june of '798 compared to 63 million for june of -- 98. Our net income june of this year is $22 million which is twice what it was last year for the same period. Our year to date net income is right at $80 million. Our target for the year is $137 million, but with the level that we're experiencing in june and we expect to receive for the rest of the year, july, august and september, we will meet that target. Looking at our actual to budget results for the month and for the year, on our service area base revenues which are the revenues we get from our native customers for the month of june we exceeded our budgeted by $7 million. Every month prior to this month we've either been behind or as was the case in may we broken. This is the first month we've turned everything around so that's good news for june. For the year to date, however, we are still $5 million behind on our service area base revenues. We are a little bit ahead on our off system sales, which is is sales we make to other utilities, and we are slightly behind on our operating expenses, so the bottom line year to date we are still $2 million behind where we need to be as far as our requirements, but we have preliminary reports already for july and I think I'll be back next month to report that we will exceed budgeted revenues next month even more than we did in june. We're looking at approximately $10 million above budget for july. But those numbers are not firm yet, but they are going in the right direction. Finally, as far as how we're doing with our City Council resolution targets, we are meeting or beating all of our City Council resolution targets to this point. Just to give you a couple of those ratios data percentage of capital our target for the year is 73%, we're at 72.5% today. Our general fund transfer is slightly below where it is targeted to be this year and our nonfuel l and m on a per kilowatt basis is slightly above our target but a lot of our kilowatt hour sales are going to come through in the summer and reduce that factor down so we're confident we're going to meet or beat all of the Council resolution targets for the year. [One moment please]. Particularly on our joint projects, stp significant below budget, fayette power project is below budget, we are slightly above our budget but we are reporting encumbrances that should reverse, our departmental budget should come in under by the end of the year.
>>Spelman: and the expenses we are getting out of the coal plant, gas plants that are under the expected numbers, that's -- that's not driven by whether the number of kilowatt hours -- by the number of kilowatt hours we are putting out, is it?
>> yes, that's close to being correct. What we are really looking at it with extreme weather, really what we are experiencing is this: our employees are doing the kind of things to meet or beat the Council resolution, come up with creative and innovative ideas how to meet or beat those targets. For instance down at fayette we have done a good job in turn around on rail contract, also the non-fuel reasoned portion of the putting increased down there. Incentives with lcra being the operator of the plant. Here we are trying to improve heat rate, for instance, how many btu's do we burn, it has improved drastically over the last six to nine months, we are doing things even with the heat related things on our system, I think, that are really, really driving down our costs while the revenues are up. So the combo or the net of that means we are having a good year.
>>Spelman: that means we can take some credit of for some of that difference then.
>> That's correct.
>> Good, thanks.
>> What do you project the net income will be at the end of the year?
>> our target for the -- target for the year is $137 million. My guess is we will exceed that by the stretch target, approximately 5 million above.
>>Mayor Watson: anything else?
>>Slusher: Mr. Lee, I noticed that numbers 19 through 25, they are all -- there are no m.b.e. W.b.e. Subcontracting identified.
>> Yes. I am just concerned in the -- if the move towards competition is causing us to not pay as much attention to that because the department in years past had a really -- probably the past m.b.e. W.b.e. Program in the City.
>> Yeah. I think what you are seeing here for the items that you mentioned is this: that those items are really very specific electric utility system type of items. Things that have in the past and really we anticipate in the future do not lend themselves necessarily to m.b.e./w.b.e. Participation levels. If you take that out for the moment and put in I think what you are referring to is items where there are m.b.e./w.b.e. Opportunities, where we have them, they are on record with the City, you will see that our numbers are still relatively high when we do have the opportunities. What we are trying to do is on the equipment related items, all of the ones that you see 19 through 25, I believe you stated is this, is that we are trying to make those available to everyone that we can so that we can achieve competition. The majority of the mwbe community in Austin has chosen to not become actively involved in those, but rather than on the ones relative to more of the civil work, more of the building areas that we have, I think that the smbr office, Austin energy office is doing everything we can to make those more readily available to the m.b.e. W.b.e. Community.
>>Slusher: we talked about that back at the very first, when the [inaudible] came in.
>> Yes, sir, I think once you take automatic those opportunities that we do have for m.b.e. W.b.e.'s here in Austin, I think you will see our numbers continue to be high.
>>Mayor Watson: anything else? thank you all. Resource management commission report by peter pfeiffer, chair of the commission.
>> Greetings, Council and Mayor. The resource management commission doesn't necessarily have a lot to report other than the fact that we are reviewing presently the findings of the energy development commission and will be probably reporting to you next month about that vis-a-vis the renewable energy production initiatives that were just spoken about. We did not recommend the interlocal agreement. Not -- on another subject, we did not recommend the interlocal agreement with the cities of rollingwood and west lake hills, not because we didn't think it's a good idea, but because we were perturbed to see the amount of conservation, water conservation issues that have been stripped from that agreement, water reuse. Are there any questions that you have?
>>Mayor Watson: Council any questions of Mr. Pfeiffer?
>> thanks.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, sir. That will take us to item no. 11.
>> If I could ask chuck Griffith to make a brief presentation on item no. 11. This is the concession contract for Austin-Bergstrom international airport which is scheduled to open next year. If you will give us a very brief presentation, back ground information for the Council deliberation.
>> Yes. This is the second time this rifp has been out. This time -- rfp has been out. This time it was bid allowing each of the bidders to bid on two of the four locations, but in any combination, the result of that was there were six possible combinations and then the best proposal out of those six then was the recommended choice of the staff. Let me just adhere first that these are all nationally recognized companies, they are all companies that the airport would certainly be satisfied with doing business with. And that the -- the evaluation was very close on some of those. The evaluation group selected paradies to operate one news and books and one sperbt store. And ca 1 was recommended, these are both joint ventures, ca one was recommended to operator the -- operate the other news and specialty store. If you have any questions, we would certainly be -- scott -- scott is here and he was, frederick scott was involved in the process and involved in the rfp. If you have any questions that you would like to ask him about the process, he can certainly answer those.
>>Mayor Watson: at this time let me see if Council has any questions of staff regarding these items and then my recommendation, which I will kind of make up as I go along here. We have 12 people that have signed up to speak. And I know that there is some dispute and people on two sides of the things. What I might do is run through those and see if anyone is on a side, if you will, or is here just as background or to provide information, because I know we have some people from our airport advisory board that are here. Let those who are representing just themselves or to provide background information speak first and then ask those who have signed up on one side or another to -- to let us go then in an organized fashion so that we don't get it all disjointed is what I am trying to avoid, although I am stating it in a disjointsed fashion. First of all, does anybody have any questions of staff? okay. What we will do is try to run through that. So what I will ask you to do is if you are just trying background, tell me and I will put you in a different stack, we will start there. Then if you hear your name called and you are representing an entity or a side in this, why don't you all figure out how you want to organize that, I am happy to let you decide that among your speakers. Bill solomon, are you background or -- you are with somebody. Ed windler, roselynn olifant. Gotcha. Jeff sailor. Okay. Sophia Martinez. Olga pena, leonard lyons. Are you representing somebody or are you just here to give us good information? hopeful. Okay. John trevino. Background or --
>>.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Okay. Dow gullatt. I'm sorry? okay. William graham. Dick dixon. Francis corneo? carol addnot. [Inaudible] castenada. Pam rittering. Okay. Charles morin and mary beth rodgers, okay. Here's what I am going to do. I am going to -- I hope that I have blocked these in a way that makes sense to you all, so I am willing to take advice on this. What I am going to do first is I am going to hear from leonard lyons, castenada and then hannah rittering. I am going to go to the people who signed up first. That's how I am picking who gets to go first. The order I will call is Bill solomon, ed windle, rose lynn, sophia Martinez, olga pena. Then I will go to John trevino and dow gullatt. Then William graham, dick dixon, frances corneo and carol hadnot. Then Charles morin and mary beth rodgers, is there anybody that can't live with that? all right. Thank you all and so let me call on Mr. Leonard lyons. What I would ask also that we do is we do this -- I will call out at least two names at a time, I will ask if you are on deck, you go to the microphone that's not being utilized so it will allow for just a little bit more efficiency. So ms. Castenada, if you would come to the other microphone. Ms. Rittering you are going to be on deck.
>> The last time I talked I screwed up with the name and I was chastised for it. M.b.e. W.b.e. Advisory committee was where I was, that was where I talked about that purchasing. I want to start and close with one comment. Whatever it is you do, don't rebid it. Finish it today. If you have to put it off, I wouldn't like it, but don't rebid it. I am afraid it will reduce everyone. The group and -- well, staff first and the group as a result of it was charged with the responsibility of getting great diversity and local participation. For the most part we did it. We did it with ca one in that they licensed a lot of good people. And I want to tell you, if I were voting and I wasn't a voting member, I would have voted for it, I supported them. They are number one in food. In this instance, if I were voting, I would have voted for paradies, they are best in gifts, all kind oFAAds. As far as the others, they are all good companies, we are not going to go wrong, we are not going to go wrong. Do I have a preference? I think I do, but it's really immaterial, they are good, you let them sell whatever it is that you like. But I really don't feel as though we need a second golf course store, I really don't believe we need to have one company having more than 40, 50% of the airport because that was a decision that was made early on. That would -- that it be spread out and we not have a master contract. I believe that was the City manager's recommendation. It came from on high. The -- I want to commend the staff and the committee, the staff before the committee and with the committee. We put in many, many hours on this. I think the lasting around was over two days, I think it was something like 10, 12 hours. A lot of work was put into it. And there wasn't clear cut answers. But everyone participated and participated strong. Where there was confusion, staff led the way. And there was confusion. But staff took us through it and we finished. Do I agree with everyone? no, but neither do most people agree with the guy next to them, but there was consensus that we did a good and fair and honest job. Other than those comments, I would suggest to you that you got good people here and, no, I don't know anything about the newark, new jersey, I don't know anything about that. But we have put a lot of good work in here and just asked the right -- just ask the right question, make up your mind, I think you can get through it fast, thank you.
>> Councilmembers, I am deanna, member of the airport advisory committee, I am representing myself. I would like to ask the Council to remember their directions to staff in terms of how they wanted the development of the concessions to evolve and that was to have as much diversity as possible. In establishing ca one as a recommended party for news and gifts, along with the fact that they already have a major portion of the food concessions, that's set up a master vendor situation, I am real concerned about that, that's not where we wanted to go. Dobb's house, all of those other ones think about it. I want you to seriously consider we cannot move in that direction because we don't have the kind of quality and service that represents the local business and local communities in our airport and I think that's what your directions were. Paradies' specialty is gifts. Hudson is books and news as is news gifts international. They have all kind of location, the specialty being books with hudson is 120 stores across the nation. That would indicate to me that they would receive a significantly higher number of points on the matrix for having experience. As opposed to one of the other groups, or several of the other groups, I think it's important to look at that. Continue to look the at matrix and see the example of the interviews and how the numbers should be the same. For example, on the interviews, for all of the different combinations that they bid and they are not. They vary up to 10 points. You also have a letter, Mayor Watson, that I am sure the rest of you have from the Texas monthly that indicates to this person, as well as to myself and some of us that are here today, that it appears that staff has manipulated the numbers to make it look the way they want it to look and choose who they want to choose. That's unfortunate because that's implied in the way the matrix comes out. I would like to offer you some options. I gave them to bill.
>>Spelman: man who is -- to bill Spelman who is my Councilmember. They may not be the best, but something to consider. They may not make all of the groups happy. We have got to prove to these people because some of them have problems in different locations, maybe they need to prove themselves here. Maybe we need to give them one concession. It may not be economically feasible for them because of management issues, I understand that, but if they really want to do a good job for us, we need to utilize a process that will allow a lot of diversity from our business people. Bill has those. The one option is to have the four majors being paradies, river cities, ca one to have one concession, I haven't talked to them and seen how that will benefit or hurt their situation. The other option is to give both gifts to paradies to suds son one book and news -- to news gifts international one book, the other option is sort of a reverse of that. I really hope that you will take these things into consideration. Thanks for the appointment and the headaches.
>>Mayor Watson: yes, sir. Hannah rittering, followed by bill solomon and then ed winder.
>> Good afternoon, my name is hannah rittering, I am a member of the airport advisory board. I like the other two abstained from the vote on this issue. Mine maybe comes from a slightly different perspective. First of all I have never agreed with or really understood why staff insisted that this always be in combinations of two stores. I felt that this could possibly leave out smaller companies who might want to participate without having to be in partnership with some huge national korpgs from outside of Austin. Corporation. The other part of it for me is that all of these huge corporations who have formed these joint ventures have done all of them a wonderful job of putting together a diverse group of people. All of these companies, if you take them altogether, really do represent the community of Austin. And I cannot imagine how you could slice a portion of any of them out. I want to see all of their stuff at the airport. For the first time there would actually be an airport shop where I could go shopping, that's kind of my perspective on it. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you ms. Rittering. Bill solomon followed by wed windler followed by olifant.
>> I yield to ed.
>> You will have up to six minutes if you wish to use it.
>> Mayor, members of Council, people here from ca one, people from paradies, it's been a long time since I've stood here. First of all, all of the times that I have appeared before the boards and agencies and this City Council over the years, it's been a long time now, the process that I witnessed during the preparation of this recommendation was as bad as I have ever seen. And I have grave concerns about the way it worked and I think it worked to the disadvantage of my client. I have preserved that objection legally in the necessary ways and what I do with that I don't know. But I could talk about why that rfp and the process was bad. But we won the first time. Nobody ever complained about our victory. Other things happened to other companies and the bid got thrown out. Nothing that we did. Now we bid again. We are the only alternative chosen and that wasn't mentioned by the staff, our company is the alternative to both of these other companies. Rather than complain about the process because ca one can manage these, paradies can manage these, we can manage these, it's a subjective judgment on your part. And if you want to consider the questions of including more competition, that's a subjective decision you could make. You could make a subjective decision about the ethical standards of a company. But I want you to -- I want to urge you to make a judgment about this. I was in houston recently campaigning for -- against a proposition down there that would eliminate affirmative action. What I heard all through -- we won, and it's still there. But we are going to lose it across this nation. We are going to lose it here. And we are going to lose it because Council and state governments and county commissioners continue to use the affirmative action program to select people who are politically powerful, or people who have all kind of other qualifications except for the project in mind. The two we have are not bogus, they are not consultants, they are not lawyers, they are not architects, they are not builders, they are not printers. Both of them and they are both going to speak to you in just a minute have small businesses, they both own the entirety of that business, they are struggling to make it in this community. It's a related business, it's a retail. And both of them are going to work in it, one particularly, and the survival of their business could largely depend on that affirmative action program. That's what it's for. That's what it was for! so I urge you not just because k it's y client, I don't do this much anymore. But you are going to kill affirmative action in america unless we stand up and say we are going to use this for real minority subcontractors trying to advance their business! and that's what you should do today. And my company qualifies and the subjective judgment you can make is that this company, the one I represent, international news and gifts/Austin, is the only company that really tried to do that. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: Mr. Windler, thank you. Roselynn olifant followed by jeff sailor.
>> In the tradition of fred lick douglas, I stand before you as an advocate for what is right and what is just. I am an african american book seller. I own a book store here in town, folk tales book store. We are entering our 8th year in business and we have been nationally recognized for our children and youth programs as well as our adult book clubs. I was excited and I still am very excited about the opportunity to be a joint venture partner with news and gift shops international-Austin. I said I was excited because I did not realize that the fight would be this challenging over what I think is right. As ed windler said, we won the first time and we were disqualified by no fault of our own. I do urge you on the Council to take a long, hard look and make a decision for what is right. I am an african american business woman here in town. My business is challenged. We are going up against the chains every day, but we have been able to survive and we are doing a good job. We have a lot of clients and we do a lot of community service. And we are not olga pena and myself are not just dbe's on paper. We will have an active role in the airport operation and we are probably two of the most be theable dbe's in the process because we have retail outlets and our customers are going to make us accountable when they go into those airport shops and they are looking for local products. They know how to find us, they know how to come to our shops, my shop at 1806 nueces and say, listen, I was in the airport shop and I did not see anything. So we have to be accountable to the airport and making sure that it's local and making sure that it's diverse. Speaking of diversity, as an african american woman being left out so many times, and I have strong appreciation for diversity, not just for african american products, but for all products, for all people, for different cultures, for men and for women. I do urge you to make the decision on what is right. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, ms. Olifant.
>> Jeff sailor.
>> I yield to olga.
>> Okay. Ms. Pena you will have -- if you don't mind, sophia Martinez here.
>> I am here.
>> Okay. Ms. Pena you will have up to nine minutes if you wish to take it.
>> Thank you. I used to be a classroom teacher, that may not be challenging at all. I taught for 19 years before I came to Austin in 1986 and worked for armado pena as a gallery director at el taller gallery. At age 50 I decided to buy the gallery. I prayed about it, the good lord said go for it, so I did. It's been a wonderful business, a great representative of what Austin is all about. It's vibrant. The art work is great. I can bring to Austin anything and any kind of art work that you will ever want to see from anywhere in the world. And as well renowned as the gallery is, I always have patrons coming in and they will also like, ms. Olifant's business look for me and find me. I am also a minority woman. I own all, 100% of my business. I front this business for no one. I am very proud of it. I am also a woman, hispanic, over 50, single, and I have achieved what I have achieved proudly without having to go through this and say do this because of that. This has never been one of the issues that have stopped me from doing anything that I would like to do. I would like for you to vote Texas because Texas -- Texass know what Texas is all about. I would like for you to consider Austin and Austinites because Austin -- Austinites know what Austin is all about. My gallery has promoted armado pena, Daryl howard, Daryl willisson and the artists that are very, very well known, michael atkinson in the fiesta of Austin. And last year we also had a very young vibrant 34 years old Daryl willisson being the fiesta artist of the year. So in the year 2000 I will be 20 years in operation. And I am very, very proud to be associated with news and gifts international. They seem to be from Texas, they know Texas, they love Austin, they know Austin. And I say to you give back to the people in Austin the vote that they honored you with in your position. Vote Austin, vote Texas and vote with confidence because we are very proud of who we are. And what we have to offer. The world. Thank you.
>> Thank you, mess pena. Mayor pro tem trevino followed by dowe gullatt. I'm sorry, is it dowe? what did I say?
>> yes, Mayor. Mayor, I am dowe gull lat.
>> I know.
>> You are with --
>> I'm an attorney representing river City. I am -- you will be happy to know give most of my time to Mr. Trevino. What I would like to say --.
>>Mayor Watson: doesn't that disqualify you as a member of the bar? [laughter].
>> I think so. We bid only on the books and news locations. That's the only combination that our clients bid on. What we ask you to do is look very closely at the financials of all of the proposallers, compare them side by side if you can. We ask you also to look very closely at the expense, the relevant experience of each of the proposers on the items of which they are proposing for. We want, we would ask you to award these contracts to the best qualified people and the people that have the best for the City, the numbers, the financial numbers. And we submit that the best process is to award books and news to one proposer, that being our client river City news, with that I am going to turn over to Mr. Trevino to address some of the specifics.
>>Mayor Watson: will you please set the clock for five minutes. He's donatesing two minutes of his time to Mr. Trevino.
>> Thank you, Mayor. Ladies and gentlemen of the Council, my name is John trevino. Local, native Austinite. In the first round of this rfp, river City news was actually designated as probably the highest score, but was disqualified at that time because staff was informed that no one should be given two concessions of the same kind. In other words we were not -- we were disqualified even though we ranked highest in points, because we were going only after the books and news. We have felt that that is our specialty. Hudson books news is one of the largest ones in the country, we have established the standards throughout the airports in this nation. As it's been pointed out, they have, I think the handout we indicate that they have 104 locations and 11 different airports, but in reality I think that number has expanded to about 120 some odd, close to 130. So we felt that it would be probably in the best interests for the City that we could offer our specialty and that is in books and news, that's why we decided in the second round that we didn't want to get into the combination because it doesn't make sense for us to get into an area we don't specialize. The thing that the Council needs to keep upper most in its mind, I am sure it is, is that you need to find out what's going to be the best return for the City and its citizens, who is going to provide the best experience to operate those concessions, and, three, who is going to provide the wider diversity of reading material to the traveling public. And I think if you can take a look at that, looking at the experience being held by all of the competitors, taking a look at the different sites they operate in the different airports should give you an indication about their experience. But apparently staff came up with something a little different. That's what makes -- what brings me and us to the podium. We cannot understand using the matrix, for example, in location nine and 10, which is the book stores, how we can come up with fewer, fewer, less points if we operate at least 104 locations in 11 airports, we can come up with fewer points than a competitor who only has five locations in two airports. That doesn't make sense. But yet that's the way we were ranked. We talked about financial support, financial contribution, return to the city, and we take a look at the matrix put out by the City, and it says that the -- the four proposed -- the fourth proposals that are being accepted is only going to give you -- let's see, for example, over a five year period, projected five year rental revenue, projected five year rental revenue, it's going to give you 4.03 while we, who only operated two locations, easy those are the smarter ones, minds you, will give you 2.35, which is over 50%. 58%. That doesn't make sense, either in terms of financial or contribution back to the city. And the five year gross sales, the four sites that are being proposalled right now is returning back to you is -- the projected five year gross sales is 29.42 million. We on the two smaller locations propose 16.57 million, which again is over 15 --50%, which is 56%. Folks, it seems to me that you may be leaving some money on the table. Remember what I said your first responsibility is to make sure that you bring in more money. I mean, my understanding when we sat on the Council was we need to find out who gives the city the best deal. And in this particular case with the two small locations, I think our -- our proposal is superior. The other thing, too, is that the rfp indicated that 40% --40% of the points -- I think that I will read it here. The evaluation will be based on 40% will be for financial consideration, 40% for business structure, and 20% to interviews. (Buzzer sounding) in reality what has happened you have given 20% to financial consideration. You did not follow your own standards, that is what concerns us ladies and gentlemen.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you Mayor pro tem.
>> Just 15 seconds. If you take a look at this carefully, read the matrix and your standards and if you still come back w with this recommendation, then we will support you. But until you do, we would suggest that take a good look at it.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. William graham. And dick dixon an then frances corneo. If you all will start coming -- are you donating time.
>> I donated my time to Mr. Graham.
>> You are Mr. Dixon.
>> [Inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: let me ask about carol hadnot. Are you speaking?
>> I will yield, too.
>>Mayor Watson: okay.
>>Mayor Watson: Mr. Graham you will have up to 12 minutes if you need it.
>> Mayor, I hope I won't need that much time. I would like to say good afternoon to you, City Manager, and Councilmembers. I am a minority partner with paradies-Austin joint venture, my partners being frances caneo, jp printing, it's local, been in Austin for several years. Carol had dolls in the with business resource consultants, also one of our partners. We each make up 12% of our teams. Paradies, out of atlanta, georgia, will be 64% of our partnership. I am happy to be here to tell you that this has been a new process for me. It has been an exciting challenging and rewarding process. I commend the advisory board members, the City staffers, because we went through the process not once but twice. Each time we were scored highest amongst the other bidders. I would like to be able to sit here and tell you or stand here and tell you that your staffers and your advisory committee did their home work and they picked a company that had a lot of diversity and by their peers, Mayor and Councilmembers, by their peers in the airport industry, paradies has been rated number one in the industry for the past three years running. They bring service to their clients, they work very hard in making sure that there's diversity throughout the organization, they look for upward mobility for all of the participants within the organization. They have people that have worked as clerks that are now owners and partners within their organization. I would like to just be able to tell you that we look forward to being able to serve the traveling public that will travel through the City of Austin, we would like to try to be able to raise the standard of service that they become used to when they come through the City of Austin. I know I have 12 minutes, 10 minutes remaining, but the process has just been exciting for me and my partners and I just wanted to come up and convey that to you. I know that it's a big deal. It's a lot riding on it. But you can rest assured that we would try to deliver to you the service that you expect from parady-Austin joint venture.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you, sir. Charles morin, followed by mary beth rodgers chuck more ran, president of ca one services, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity this afternoon. I would first like to commend the staff and advisory board for the process because we think the process has been fair and the evaluations have been excellent. Not just because we won because they covered all of the criteria necessary. We at ca one a number of years ago put out what we call the gateway concept in the airport environment. This is where we involve local participants in the airport market. We were actually the leaders in this regard going back starting about five or six years ago. We are really proud of the process. What we have put together here for the City of Austin, for this retail package, is a team that consists of business oriented minority partners who have tremendous background in business and operating and will be very active in this with licensing agreements with some of the greatest Austin concepts that you can imagine. Travel fest, Austin City limits, book people, sop we have really combined the national expertise of ca one, which operates in excess of 14 airports, operates the news and gift side in over 14 airports, over 56 shops with the local expertise of the 'em that we have here. The gary hoovers, juan portillos, rabina jackson, it goes on and on, Austin City limits, you will hear from mary beth in a second. We think what we have put together for you is the best of all world. We are really proud of this team. We did not sign up our dbe partners to speak, but they certainly are here if you have any questions. I thank you for giving me the opportunity.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, sir. Mary beth rodgers.
>> She had to leave Mayor, she just signed up for.
>> All right.
>>Mayor Watson: all right she's representing klrutv. Those are all of the neal have signed up to speak Council. The way I would suggest we proceed is with a why don't we have some initial discussion and allow for any questions the Council might have of staff and then after a brief period of discussion, then I will call for a motion. Does anybody have any discussion or questions at this point? Councilmember Lewis?
>>Lewis: thank you, Mayor, and I have question for staff. It was my understanding when this item was fulled from the agenda before that the difference between time and -- it was between billout and opening day was approximately three weeks to a month. Is that true or -- well, let me ask you this: what effect is the delay in this rebidding going to have on opening day as far as buildout goes?
>> I think any time as we get into these last few months, any time we delay selecting a contractor and dlfr delay that party getting their contractor to do the finish out, it creates a problem. But I certainly am not sure to say if the Council wanted to move this one week that that would cause the airport --.
>>Lewis: I meant from the time it was pulled previously. I'm not talking about a delay in today's.
>>Mayor Watson: has the second bidding process made any difference?
>> no.
>>Lewis: in other words they had more time for buildout from the original contract -- it had the -- the originatenal date went forth.
>> We still feel it's sufficient time for any of these contractors.
>>Lewis: the other question I have is why a combination of two stores? and the second part of that question is why a set time as far as contract time goes.
>> On the first question, why the two stores, the first time it was bid, there were requests for bids for individual stores and we got no bids at all on one of the locations. The staff then -- in consultation with their consultant, decided that the rereason one of the locations didn't get any bids is that you need really two stores to have a sufficient mass to really be able to make it. So that was why the consultant recommended to us that we bid in combinations of two.
>> I'm frederick scott. I would like to add on the first attempt we did afford proposers the opportunity to pursue single locations, again that was done largely to afford small, local firms an opportunity to pursue it. But again as chuck indicated none pursued on it the first solicitation. So on the second time around we decided that we would just drop that option and go with the combination of stores because, again, it just appeared that it would be cost prohibit active for a single operator to reprevail in the new airport.
>>Lewis: our original intent was to spread the as great of a number of participants in the airport as possible. My information is that I guess ca one has a number of food concessions already.
>> That's correct.
>> How is that participation in other airports? do they have both the combination, do you know?
>> ca one is a national player, they have representation in airports in both the news and gift as well as the food and beverage arenas, I don't know the mix. I think they have a slightly larger presence, however, in the food and beverage arena than in the retail area. But they do have a presence in a number of airports.
>> Okay. That's all of the questions that I have. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: Councilmember Lewis?
>>Spelman: what other concessions have we already granted?
>> the concessions grants sod far, food and beverage, rental cars, and parking lot. Those are the only major concessions awarded so far.
>> I might add in the food and beverage there are a number of different providers there.
>> Well, in the food and beverage arena we have awarded contracts to ca one. On the other side we have direct contracts with a series of primarily minority local entities. They will operate in the new airport as primes.
>>Spelman: they are primes, not acting as subcontractors.
>> Four such operators that will operate at primes in the airport.
>> Barbecue joint.
>> Barbecue, mexican food restaurant, there is a chinese food restaurant.
>>Spelman: okay. Of the --
>> and then there's auntie annies, I believe they offer the pretzel.
>>Spelman: got to try that. Of the square footage, I'm not sure the best way to measure this, of the food and beverage stuff we already allocated, approximately what percentage of that is ca one right now?
>> I don't know exactly the percentage in terms of square footage, but in terms of the number of venues awarded, they have seven screen yews awarded, six of which will involve -- five will involve food and beverage, one will operate as a bar and another will operate as a newsstand that was awarded with the food and beverage solicitation.
>>Spelman: a bar, news stand, a bunch of food con tegss?
>> that's correct, four food operations, stand alone food locations as well as a major restaurant and bar. The large restaurant and bar in the central concourse.
>>Spelman: the one right in the center.
>> That's right. If we awarded them half of the current concession that's before us today, approximately what percentage of the revenues would ca one be picking up, do you figure?
>> the total revenues.
>>.
>>Spelman: total revenues, the stuff on the terminal floor. Not parking rental cars, that's a whole different story.
>> I would say probably in the range of 30 to 40% of the total or more. I can get that number for knew a few second. I don't have that calculated.
>>Spelman: if you can calculate it, I would like to hear it. I was working out the square footage, it turns out that ca one, if we went with the staff recommendation here, would be getting 42 and small change percentage of the square feet on the terminal floor.
>> That's possible.
>>.
>>Spelman: that seemed -- well, 42%, if we went with another provider with a concession before us here, it would be 26 or 27 percent, which is still a large percentage but not the kind of dominant position as 42%. I'm not sure if this is a direction you got from the previous Council or from this and I forgot bit, but whether you agree with this in the first place yourself. Didn't we agree at one point -- we agreed not to have a master contractor. And we agreed to split up the work in such a way that there would be several different contractors. Is that correct?
>> the objective of the concession program was to spread the opportunities around and to get away from the master concession as we have at the current airport.
>>Spelman: why is that? why did we do that?
>> we felt by getting away from the master concessionaire, we would bring forth variety, it would fuel quality, that would affect our sales, that was the rational for using that approach.
>>Spelman: competition sounds to me like a really good idea. Given that, however, what would the justification be for that combination one and two on the concession before us today. If we granted combination one and two, then that would mean that all of the book stores would be one concession and specialty gifts would be a separate concession, it doesn't look like there would be much competition going on there.
>> That's -- those combinations do involve assigning both book stores to one entity, both specialty stores to a second entity. Again, all six proposallers are qualified firms, they have presence in airports around the system. We feel very strongly that any of them can meet the objectives of our program.
>>Spelman: I wonder, notify concern about the qualifications of any of these vendors, they all look like they have done a very good job in other airports elsewhere. My xern is actually about the competition issue. If we have only one vendor no matter how well qualified who has a lock on all of the book stores, then well, what would happen if we did that? is competition really a concern here?
>> I think in looking at the numbers, I think our projected revenues would drop off slightly with certain combinations versus those that have been recommended. But I feel personally that competition is good for all.
>>Spelman: competition is good for our revenues, you are thinking, because they would be trying to draw more people into the stores.
>> What we have proposed, what staff has recommended two firms having a mix of book stores and newsstands and the revenues in that combination are projected to be slightly higher. But again that's not an indictment of anybody that proposed on the two book stores solely versus the two specialty shops solely. Again, we feel that any of the firms can people and meet our standards.
>>Spelman: last question. Mayor pro tem trevino suggested that when the respect was originally issued that the rfp mentioned that 40% of the evaluation criteria would be financial projections and when it was eventually reviewed it was only 20% on the return, can you address that?
>> first before I do that, let me say that most of the objections that have been raised here this evening were also raised during a protest hearing a couple of weeks ago, that was brought by one of the proposers. That hearing was heard by an independent outside attorney. And her findings indicated that there were no suggestions of impropriety and that the process --
>> I am not suggesting that at all, I realize we always have the authority to make decisions about those percentages.
>> Let me add something here. He's perfectly correct the evaluation that was originally done overlooked at percentages, so staff went back and applied the correct percentages and it didn't change the standing.
>>Spelman: so even if we did 40, 40, 20 instead of 20, 60, 20, it would have the same effect.
>> The rank order remains the sale, we have done that, I'm sorry.
>>Spelman: thank you.
>>Lewis: I have one other question. I guess I need to direct it to the people -- as far as the employment of personnel once they open, that's one of my concerns, I realize that the airports is going to be open a number of hours a day or 24 hours, how are you going to staff it and would -- would -- are you going to uses a demographic as far as hiring or are you going to bring people in or what is your projection? I would like to hear from some of the -- some of the --
>> this -- the issue of personnel or staffing was raised with each of the proposers during the interview. And basically all have made commitments to use local resources to staff their respective operations. And the hours of operation of the airport are pretty much set by the director and currently, I think that the new airport we will require that all of the venues be open a half hour prior to the first flight in the daily and a half hour after the last flight daily. Those would be our standard hours of operation.
>>Lewis: hum. Half an hour after the last flight.
>> Yeah. Yes. Keep in mind that there are times when we have americans and they will have to remain open regardless of the hours, as long as we have inbound flights those facilities will be open.
>>Lewis: well, you know, because my concern is that, you know, we get contractors or from different areas, a lot of times they bring in the staff, it's nothing -- I don't have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with the glass ceiling as far as local people go, as far as hiring them. And, you know, you -- they wind up with a large number of employees but they are always at the bottom of the pay scale. That's the reason that I am asking the questions. Because looking at the amount of revenue, you know, I would like to be able to say that, you know, someone here in Austin, other than the owners is going to be able to get a job making a liveable wage.
>> Well, again, one of the things that we are asking each of the proposers or the successful proposers to do and that toys look at the incumbent staffs. We are not mandating they take the incumbent staff, however we are asking that they give those folks first consideration in their hiring. All have committed to doing that if they are successful here this evening.
>>Lewis: all right. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: any other questions of staff at this time? what I will do is I will ask that we -- Councilmember do you have any questions? okay. I recognize Councilmember Slusher.
>>Slusher: thank you, Mayor. Mr. Scott, I was concerned about the points that ms. Oli olifant and Mr. Windler brought up as to --
>> which points.
>> About some of the subcontractors, who was directly in the business already to provide these services we are providing at the airport. And I realize it's very sensitive topic. But tell me the kind of scrutiny, if any, that was done on that front.
>> The dbe partners in particular were certified by the small minority business resource center. The partners as I recall with ca one were jmp enterprises operated or owned by a local hispanic male. The other partner that that entity is the robina jackson agency, which is owned by a local black female. I think together they have I believe 35%.
>>Slusher: I think what their point, ms. Olifant's point was, was that they were the only ones, the only subcontract towers that were actually in the business of providing books. Is that accurate? is that accurate portrayal of your point? okay. That accurate? that a true point?
>> from my recollection ms. Olifant is the only one pursuing this that is currently operating in the book sales business.
>>Slusher: okay.
>> To my knowledge.
>>Slusher: okay, thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: any additional --.
>>Slusher: what about the other side of it? specialty gift shops?
>> I am not aware of any of the subs being currently involved in that arena, I guess, unless there's one lady who has an -- an art gallery, certainly that's retail. But beyond that, I don't know of any of the subs who are directly involved in retail sales. I may be incorrect on that.
>>Mayor Watson: you wouldn't consider travel r travel fest and blue bonnet gifts and collectibles to be retail?
>> I'm sorry, sir, I need a copy. Ca one, they were not partners, as I understand. That's going to be a licensing agreement. I'm sorry they arere in direct sales, travel fest is certainly in the retail business, no question.
>>Mayor Watson: I got you, I'm sorry.
>> As I understand that's proposed as a licensing agreement. I thought you asked specifically about the subcontracting.
>>Slusher: you did answer my question. I appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Warren are you wanting to tag in, too?
>> I wanted to mention that everyone is certified and they are certified in the areas that they are going to participate. Everyone is a joint venture partner, a joint venture owner in each one of these ventures and they also will be contributing capital contributions commensurate to their ownership intrgs.
>>Slusher: thank you.
>> Let me make one correction, I do believe that there is another party in one of the -- hudson news, I believe Mr. Vaughanner indicated that he was in the retail business. A concession retail business. I don't know specific daily what -- specifically what he sells or market, but that was in the documentation as well.
>>Slusher: okay, I appreciate that.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, if there are no further questions, at this time or discussion with staff, I will ask that there be a motion placed on the table for discussion. There is a motion? -- there is a motion?
>>Slusher: Mayor, I would move that we award it to ca one and news and gifts and that we ask the staff to work out between them who will do which sites. Would that work, Mr. Griffith?
>>Mayor Watson: hank on one second Councilmember Lewis. Mr. Griffith?
>> yes, it's certainly within your discretion, it might be useful if you advise us as to whether you would rather each one have one specialty and one book or whether you want one of them to have both books and both specialties.
>>Mayor Watson: honk on Councilmember. Do you want to give any direction on that.
>>Slusher: let me hold off on that until after the discussion. Councilmember Lewis I am going to aoption number two is what the Councilmember's motion is.
>>Mayor Watson: no, because option number two indicates paradies and news and gifts. He's saying ca one and news gift shops nu ional. There is a second to Councilmember Slusher's motion ?
>>Griffith: I will second it.
>>Mayor Watson: discussion?
>>Spelman: may I offer a friendly amendment to the motion. As a starting point for that discussion, if we could consider offering accommodation number 3 to news and gifts international and accommodation number 4 to ca one. That would be splitting the news and books in the specialty among the two of them, so each of them would get one of those two concessions. I'm sorry would get one of each, thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: Councilmember Slusher? dlrn I would accept that.
>>Mayor Watson: Councilmember Griffith?
>>Griffith: yes.
>>Mayor Watson: the motion to be discussed is that -- that Council would adopt the awarding of the contracts to ca one and news and gifts -- gift shop international jv and it would be done in a way to operate -- each would operate one news stand, book store and one specialty retail store. Is that right? Councilmember Lewis?
>>Lewis: now, my only question is then that gives staff the option as to picking which side they is on, I think when the bidding was done, the companies had the option of deciding which one they wanted. Whether it was nine and 10 or nine and 12. I think this is -- am I correct?
>> well, I think the motion was just made, they would have to both be on each side because you are going to have a gift on one and a gift on the other and they are on opposite sides.
>>Lewis: it still depicts which one you want, whether you want nine or nine and 11 or you want 10 and 12, right?
>> that's correct. The motion --.
>>Lewis: the -- in the beginning it was picked so that the people decided which one they did it on, right?
>> that's right.
>>Lewis: what you are saying now you are going to allow staff to dictate as to which one who gets?
>> I would like to say that the staff would get with the two parties and work out an am meanable solution.
>>Lewis: I am saying it hasn't been decided among the people. I for one can't, you know, I mean, we had the bid originally with parady news and gift, then with paradies ca one with news and gifts as an option. And now the -- the motion is to throw out all of the options and go with the different option. I don't understand how we are going to do away with both bid processes and like Mr. Windler said, the process is what we was working on. The other one, news and gifts, or ca one, didn't come in number one in any one -- in either one of the times that the -- that the bids was open. Or the evaluation was done. So, you know, I -- I don't understand what you are -- I need an explanation of why getting rid of paradies is something that --.
>>Slusher: I'm not sure that I agree with it amounts to throwing out the whole process. The way I think these two work is you have the only m.b.e. Sub contractors that are already in the retail business of providing the services that are going to be done at the airport and as ms. Olifant detailed and on the other end you have expensive local participation, which is -- extensive local participation, which I think both those things are in line with the nature and character of Austin that has been one of the leading goals in putting together the airport.
>>Lewis: well, I still haven't heard anybody tell me what business that the people in ca one, the joint ventures are in. I don't understand what travel concession has got to do with doing news and gifts.
>>Slusher: no, I am making that point about the news and gifts and the ca one is more -- you have -- you have book people, you have travel fest would -- at least relate to travel, I don't know if there will be doing that at the airport frankly or not. But book people is certainly a local company.
>>Lewis: well, you know, my only thing in this is to -- to look at the process that the airport advisory board went through to he felt -- the evaluation team went through. If we can't accept one of those, then we should have did the evaluation ourselves. I mean, we sit here within an hour, within a week, we go through and make a change to -- and as far as I'm concerned, giving staff the opportunity to select which side and which option they are going to give -- it will be staff's decision, if we go to that as to which venue each one gets I think is a little ridiculous on our part. I would say rebid it. If you are not going to go with the process, there's no need of having the process. That would be -- that would be my suggestion if we don't like this process, let's do like the City Manager did with the last one, let's put it out and go rebid it again. I mean, because, to -- to take someone take came in number one, both times, and get rid of them is I -- I think is saying a little much. And I'm not -- I talked to the Mayor pro tem in concern with it. His concern was of going with gift international was that the number of very much yews that ca one had in the airport already. The number of venues. If we go with them we are going to wind up with another major supplier, another major concessionaire in the airport. I would yield.
>>Mayor Watson: additional discussion? I would ask for staff to get -- if they could do a calculation for us. Based upon the motion, I don't know how long that will take.
>> He's working on it now. He went back to look at the -- drawback the numbers, do the calculation, it will be a few minutes.
>>Lewis: while we -- I would like to offer a substitute motion.
>>Mayor Watson: okay.
>>Lewis: I would like to offer a substitute motion that we go with option number 2.
>>Mayor Watson: number two being paired adies and news gift shops international with combinations three and four, one book store and news stand and one special retail store each. Is there a second to that substitute motion? is there a second?
>>Spelman: Mayor I'm not sure I understand. I think Councilmember Lewis and what you said are saying something different.
>>Mayor Watson: he said option number 2. Paradies --.
>>Spelman: I'm sorry. I have the wrong piece of paper.
>>Mayor Watson: combinations three and four, one book store, news stand, one special retail store each.
>>Spelman: I will second that, Mayor.
>>Mayor Watson: okay. There is a substitute motion on the floor. Discussion on the substitute motion?
>>Lewis: the reason that I am making this is that the news and gifts came in as -- in the first evaluation as number two. Paradies came in as number one as I understand it from the advisory board. Being on the advisory board myself, I know how much time these people put in evaluating these different proposals. And to have sat through this proposals like Mr. Lions said, even though he wasn't a voting member. They do scrutinize these a little more than we do sitting here on the dias, that's my reason for hagy that motion.
>>Spelman: Mayor the reason I seconded the motion is not out of any concern with the ability of ca one people or their subcontractors to do a fine job. Only with my concern that not one contractor not have a dominant position in the airport, dominant position on the floor. Were we to award this in part to ca one, that would give them over 40% of all of the square footage on the floor and I am concerned about that.
>>Mayor Watson: additional discussion? Councilmember Goodman?
>>Goodman: I just want us to remember, but for those who watch channel six, if there are any, that we can bunch everybody up around a name that is not a local name, but people should understand that under that umbrella each of these is a combination of local folks. And local retail talent and so on. So I don't want anybody to have the wrong impression that because we say ca one or paradies or what have you that there's nobody from Austin under that umbrella.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, any further discussion? I would like to get this before I --. All right. Bear with us. What I will do is -- do we have somebody here on item -- well, we have people signed up to speak. I was going to try to take care of items 61 and 62. Mr. Becker do you really need to speak?
>> yes.
>>Mayor Watson: all right, we will skip it, we will come back to it, we will just wait.
>>Lewis: Mayor maybe we can go to item no. 57.
>>Mayor Watson: let's go to number 57. I will recognize Councilmember Lewis.
>>Lewis: on item no. -- I put 55 back on. Let's see. That's the item concerning the demolition of the famous quick key picky, I move approval.
>> The motion has been made to approve item no. 57, There is a second? seconded by Councilmember Spelman. Any discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye., opposed say no. Motion carries on item no. 57. Mayor pro tem absent. I'm sorry, with a did you say Councilmember Lewis?
>>Lewis: I had something from wastewater.
>>Mayor Watson: yes, sir you had item no. 31.
>>Lewis: do you have anyone signed up for that item? no, sir.
>>
>>Lewis: I would like to go ahead and take that item, also. After speaking with Mr. Rhodes, even though I feel that the longhorn -- that longhorn is either giving us a super good deal or they are getting the majority of our business, but I move approval.
>>Mayor Watson: item no. -- Councilmember Lewis moves approval on item no. 31, There is a second? seconded by Councilmember Spelman. Is there a discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye., opposed say no. Motion carries with Mayor pro tem absent. Do we want to take up item no. 92, Councilmember Spelman?
>>Spelman: help me with this. What I would like to do is reconsidering a motion that we made last week. This appears to be a posting for the same resolution we made last week. Would it be appropriate to take this up or to reconsider the previous motion?
>>Mayor Watson: what you can do under the -- what you can do with this posting is you can move to amend the City's financial policies to back to the financial policy that existed prior to the passage of the ordinance which is commonly referred to as option 2. Also has another common referral we will stay with that.
>>Spelman: let's not use that one, thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: option two that we passed last week. That would be your motion, if you want to reconsider the financial policy. What we might say as part of that, you may be getting ready to say that, I apologize if you were, that the City has been considering a change in the financial policy with regard to water, wastewater and revenue bonds. This has been through the audit and finance committee where there was a recommendation made concerning that change of financial policy. That change was approved on a vote of four to zero by the audit and finance committee and recommended to the entire Council. Last week it was brought up by the -- at the Council meeting, we voted to change the financial policy. It became obvious that we probably could do more in terms of letting people know and understand what the goals are with regard to that financial policy before we make a change of that -- of that nature. And so there's been some discussion about recalling that, looking at it again. And so that's why it was -- that's why we posted it. We posted it as part of the addendum so that we would have this opportunity.
>>Spelman: the primary difference between the three options that we considered last week was that options one, the staff option, option two, which was referred to not entirely accurately as Councilmember Spelman's proposal and option number 3 is one and two on the one hand would permit without a vote of the public the water and wastewater utility to use commercial paper to get loans for purchasing capital improvement projects in excess of $5 million. Option number 3 is largely very close to the status quo, it does authorize waste waste to issue commercial paper, but only for capital improvements of less than $5 million. That's a technical change, I think it's perfectly appropriate. Therefore, Mayor, I would offer that we adopt option 3. That would be a change from our previous action, which was action 2.
>>Mayor Watson: hang on one second before I recognize the motion. Just -- before I recognize the motion, Mr. Brothers.
>> Thank you, Mayor.
>>Mayor Watson: I want to make sure that we have complete communication about what Councilmember Spelman's goal is so we pass the appropriate motion to deal with an ordinance that we have already passed.
>> Thank you. Charles brothers, law department. I waited to listen to be sure I heard what you said. If you recall, at the meeting last thursday, there were a number of separate provisions in that financial policy and if I understood correctly you want to delete two of those changes that you made. Concerning --.
>>Spelman: that's a way to think about it. Sure.
>> Under those circumstances, sir, since that was a previous meeting you cannot reconsider at another meeting parliamentary wise. You have two ways that you can do it. You could repeal the action of last week and adopt it again with just the pieces that you want or another simple way to do it would be just to repeal those two sections that you don't want from the previous meeting. If I read those correctly, sir, that would have been in part 3, 7 -- subparagraph 7, the additions capital improvement projects are located in desired development zone and the related planning expansions as well as for, delete that out. And in paragraph 8, that last sentence of the first paragraph, those projects located in the desired development zone within the full and limited purpose areas of the City and plan improvement and rehabilitations do not require voter approved revenue bonds.
>>Spelman: that fits my intention.
>>Mayor Watson: I will recognize that as your motion, is there a second.
>>Slusher: second, with a clarification. This means that all of the revenue bonds go on the ballot?
>> it means those provisions of the financial policy that you passed last week, which would have eliminated certain -- that policy is revoked.
>>Mayor Watson: yesterday at the Council -- at the special called Council meeting, the Council voted to -- if you will recall, voted to put on the ballot refuse new bonds that would have not normally been on the ballot if we had followed the policy that was passed last week. So even though we had that policy in place, we went ahead and said we are going t put those on the ballot. So the action -- if we vote affirmatively on the motion that Councilmember Spelman has made and that you are seconding, then what we did yesterday is consistent with that vote today. We are back together.
>>Slusher: okay. I would second. Ms. Dunkerly?
>>Mayor Watson: you didn't need permission to talk to him.
>> Okay. I want to make sure that you understood about the voter approved bonds. This action will put you back where you were before I brought that policy to the audit and finance committee.
>>Mayor Watson: yes, ma'am.
>>Slusher: thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: let me say by way of discussion, there's a motion and second on that, by way the discussion, this policy that has been discussed and is now being discussed more, we ought to create a process where it has some additional discussion for the idea of perhaps reviewing it at a later point. But we need to get it out and there's more we can do in that regard.
>>Spelman: in deference to the audit and finance committee, I think that there are arguments in favor of this. They may very well want to take those arguments to the public. Although this does not legally require a change in the City charter, I think it would be prudent for us to ask the public for that change in the city charter so that City charter is -- would then be consistent with state law and more importantly so that what we do is consistent with the public's wishes.
>>Mayor Watson: any further discussion?
>>Lewis: and I have question. I would like to know what the action that we are taking now, what change will it have on the bottom line?
>>Mayor Watson: it puts us back to where we were wednesday of last week.
>> It takes us back to the policies that were in place before and that -- yesterday's action that you took is consistent with that policy that you are about to enact.
>>Mayor Watson: bottom line -- bottom line what happened is wednesday -- thursday of last week the Council made a change in its financial policy with regard to voter approval on certain water and wastewater revenue bonds. Subsequent to that, a determination was made that there is more we can do to have that discussion in the public before we make that policy change if we make that policy change. Yesterday the Council voted to have a ballot that included items on it that we didn't have to include if we were going to follow the financial policy we passed last thursday. But in anticipation that we might want to change -- we might want to review that policy today, we went ahead and put that on the ballot. So this vote today does two things: one is it put us back to where we were last wednesday or last thursday before we voted on it. And it makes it our -- our ballot that we established yesterday consistent with our financial policies.
>>Lewis: so what you are saying is these numbers at the bottom of option two and three, it's insignificant.
>>Slusher: may I take that one?
>>Mayor Watson: sure you can.
>>Slusher: had you say the bottom line, I think the bottom line is the same for the amount of water and wastewater expenses. But now the ballot, the amount on the item will be more because under the action approved by the majority last week would have meant that some of those bonds wouldn't go to the voters. The ones in the desired development zone. And if this passes, then they would all have to go to the voters.
>>Mayor Watson: yesterday we -- we put them all on the ballot.
>>Slusher: right.
>>Mayor Watson: all right the motion has been made and seconded. Councilmember Goodman?
>>Goodman: one more question or one more proposal, I guess. When this particular financial policy proposal goes through public review, I think relative to charter revision we had better send back the already passed financial policy on electric utility items. Which I am assume you think was going to be a part of a large number actually of charter revision issues that we were going to bring up for electric utility and weren't able to because we are co-opted on that.
>>Mayor Watson: any further discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries on item no. 92. Let's go back to item no. 11. I appreciate everybody's patience. The question I had, Council, is if you will note on the memo from Mr. Griffith in your backup that has down at the bottom of the page it provides a summary, it says in summary the following combination of store types will generate revenues to the City as listed. And then it lists one, two and three. It lists the combinations, and then it lists in millions of dollars the revenues generated for the City. What I ask is if you go to the original motion by Councilmember Slusher, seconded by Councilmember Griffith, of ca one and news and gift shops international jv in combinations three and four, what would be the revenue generated to the City? and the number that they have come up with is $4.15 million.
>>Slusher: so it's more than any of the others?
>>Mayor Watson: yes. That combination of entities in the combination of each receiving one book store news stand and one specialty retail store each would give $4.15 million in revenue. That was what the delay was. I was asking for that -- is that correct?
>> that's correct. What I did was I took the total projected revenues using what we called concept number one, that would be assigning each of them one book store and one specialty store. The projections I used was -- involved ca one taking venues no. 9 And 11 and news and gift stores taking 10 and 12. Projected revenues would be $4.15 million.
>> Those are estimates and those are estimates on what they think the refuse nice would be, but it's being applied uniformly.
>> 4.15 Million over the five year period.
>>Lewis: may I ask a question.
>>Mayor Watson: yes, Councilmember Lewis.
>>Lewis: during the evaluation, was this calculated at all?
>> yes.
>>Lewis: combinations.
>> We did calculate the projected revenues for each venue, they were calculated.
>>Lewis: why wasn't -- if it was -- what I am trying to get at is what the difference and why wasn't it -- that one of the options?
>> why wasn't?
>>Lewis: why wasn't this paradies -- I mean ca one and gifts and news, why wasn't that one of the options that -- of one -- one, two and three? if the revenue was greater?
>> again, revenue was but one criteria ron on the matrix. The matrix involved a series of criteria. The financial projection, whicich involves the numbers that I just gave you was one one criterion on the matrix. They received a set amount of points for that, but there were other criteria considered on the matrix.
>>Lewis: oh, okay. What I get from that is that -- how -- how is ca one projection on -- in this scenario compared to the others, the other three, the other two, the other one?
>> I think they projected slightly different revenues per location. I can give you that. Did you say ca one?
>>Lewis: yeah.
>> For instance, on ca one, what they projected on let's say no. 9, They projected revenues in the first year, I am giving you first year revenues, that's what I have have here, $158,000 on venue no. 9 For the first year.
>>Lewis: okay. Scenario -- and item no. 1, Which venues do they have?
>> in item no. 1?
>> Yeah, paradies and ca one.
>> Paradies and ca one in number one, they have nine and 10. News and gifts has nine and 10, are you looking at the same document?
>>Lewis: I don't know. The combinations, I don't have that, I do t have that. [One moment please] [one moment please]
>>Lewis: okay. So what is -- on the one where they have no. 10, What I'm trying to do is get a comparison of how they bid it on the same item as far as revenue. It was 158 --.
>> Again, what I'm giving you, their first year projection on no. 10 Was 158,000 675. That was their projected revenue payment to the City. 158,000. The same as they had proposed for venue no. 9.
>>Lewis: and the other option it was the same thing?
>> for ca one, yes.
>>Lewis: so how did you come up with more if the numbers are the same? where is the increase? from 4.034 to 4015?
>> what I did, the last number I gave you, the number involved two different venues. We were assuming that when you said you wanted to go with ca one and news and gifts, I used concept no. 3, Which was on the matrix. It was the third highest scoring combination on the matrix. And that involved venues no. 911 For ca one and venues 10 and 12 for news and gifts.
>>Lewis: what I'm looking at is if ca one bid it at a higher revenue return on either one then you're saying than they did on the one with the no. 3, Option 3, of course, did they bid constantly across the board on each venue or did they --.
>> For the locations, I believe they're numbers were for each location. I don't believe they changed the numbers from one side to the other. I don't have the proposal in front of me.
>>Lewis: is someone here from ca one that can answer that? would you go to the microphone, please?
>>Mayor Watson: and Councilmember, the reason I asked, I had no idea what the numbers were going to be, I just wanted to make sure it was a comparable number to the various things that are here. And it wasn't something way low or something like that.
>> If I could follow up on that statement.
>>Lewis: et let me get his answer.
>> In answer to your question, Councilman, the six combinations were all bid a little differently, but basically when it came to the size of one and one, a combination one specialty area with one bookstore and the way the traffic was diverted, we saw them both as pretty much the same, whether it be east or west. So in that combination, one bookstore and one specialty, we rated them pretty much the same. When you cross over and do just book stores or just specialty, it's different. But as they are related together, yes, they're pretty close based on what we saw as the traffic patterns.
>>Lewis: my question is did you submit a proposal for both, one for book stores and one for a combination?
>> yes, we submitted a proposal to accommodate all the alternatives that were in the rfp as stated.
>>Lewis: okay. Go ahead and ask your question.
>> These financial projections are not -- well, they are return inston stone?
>> they're best guess is based on the information in hand.
>>Spelman: how much of a fudge factor do we put around those, 10%, 20%.
>> I'd say anywhere from five to 10 percent, but the revenues are driven largely by the en plainments. That's the basis for revenue projections for retail.
>>Spelman: if we put five% around these, we're talking $200,000. 3.9 Million, that's option 2, had million is option one. If the ca one option is option four, that's 4.1. We're talking about a three-way tie here.
>> Pretty much. I think you drop off about $600,000 when you go from combination one to combination -- no, I'm sorry, you're right, you're correct.
>>Spelman: combination three is different. That's probably a real difference. Both books in one and both specialty shops in another. But so long as we're crossing back and forth and one each to each of the two --.
>> I think the margin of difference is not much. But there is about a 600,000 dollar drop going from one to three.
>>Spelman: got you. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: all right. The motion that we'll vote on is the -- I want to make sure I have everybody here. Is there any further discussion? the substitute motion is on the -- what I'm referring to as the memo, which is the august 11th, 1998 memo from Griffith to Mayor pro tem Garcia and the City Manager. Down at the bottom where they give the summary of numbers. Councilmember Lewis's substitute motion is item 2 there, paradies and news gifts shops international jv in combinations three and four, meaning one bookstore or newsstand and one specialty retail store each. That is the substitute motion. And I'll ask for a vote on the substitute motion unless there's further discussion. Hearing none, can you call the roll? a vote yes is a vote for the substitute motion. A vote no is against. And remember, the main motion is ca one and news gift shops international jv in combination three and four, one bookstore or newsstand and one specialty retail store each. We're on the substitute motion.
>> Councilmember Lewis?
>>Lewis: yes.
>>Slusher: no.
>>Spelman: yes.
>>Mayor Watson: no.
>>Goodman: no.
>>Griffith: no.
>>Mayor Watson: the motion fails on a vote of two yeses and four no's with the Mayor pro tem absent. That takes us back to the main motion. Is there any discussion on the main motion or the original motion?
>>Lewis: yes, I have a question. What happened -- let me ask the City Manager. What happened if the two companies and the staff can't agree on locations?
>> well, I don't think that that will be the case.
>>Lewis: I didn't ask you if you thought. I asked what happened.
>> I think this we can't agree we'd have to come back to the Council and say we're at a deadlock and we need to go to another alternative. But my sense is the way they propose, the way they have those proposals and the combinations that they have come forward with, we ought not to have any problem at all in terms of what this Council -- with the motion you have on the table, any problem at all in securing a contract that we can execute.
>>Lewis: I'm saying if you can't secure it, would it be required to be rebid or would you make a decision?
>> let me correct this a little bit. The motion as it exists now is concept 3 and you did name nine and 10 and 10 and 12. So if this motion passed, nine and 10 would go to ca one, 10 and 12 would go to news and gifts.
>>Lewis: that's which item?
>> concept 3.
>>Lewis: those were proposed already?
>> that's correct. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I understood the motion was.
>>Lewis: is that what your motion was, Councilmember Slusher?
>>Mayor Watson: I want to ask for clarification for that because I'm not sure it got into location, if it did, it did. I want to make sure.
>>Slusher: Mr. -- Councilmember Spelman was the one o said I'd like it to be combinations three and four, four going to --.
>>Slusher: is that equivalent to what you just said, Mr. Griffith.
>> Yes. All I was saying is we use it as a starting point for discussion, not necessarily as where we end up. If they prefer to flip-flop them, that wouldey want both book stores versus a split, if they can't decide on whether they want nine and 11, nine or 11, then what happens?
>> my amendment addressed that as well and that would not be allowed.
>>Slusher: it would not be to where they would be in combination.
>>Spelman: no firm could get both specialties. Slush and that's the way they were bid. Lewis so you have one for nine and one for 11 and that's on opposite sides. I don't know which one is which. But if one company decides they want -- both companies decide they want nine, what happens?
>>Slusher: that would be up to the staff to work it out.
>> We'll work with them. I think they'll work with us. I've seen a nodding of heads that they'll work with us. We're going to be the 800 pound gorilla. They'll do what they want.
>>Slusher: would it make sense that ask if either one of the bidders or proposers have -- think that they would not be able to work that out?
>> in your owe valuation process, we graded each of our proposals on each of the combinations so we have scores for each proposal per combination, per location and we would recommend that we just award based on the high score. For instance, if you choose to go with what you're proposing, ca one has in that combination, has scored to get locations nine and 11. They had the highest score for those two locations.
>>Slusher: and is that consistent with what you're trying to do, Councilmember Spelman?
>>Spelman: yes.
>>Slusher: so that's the motion.
>> And in that combination, news and gifts scored highest and they should be awarded 10 and 11 if you go pursuant to the motion that's on the table.
>>Slusher: okay.
>>Mayor Watson: 10 andy 12. >>Slusher: is that clear, Mayor?
>>Mayor Watson: oh, yeah.
>>Slusher: I knew you could figure it out.
>>Mayor Watson: as I understand the motion, it would be to award to ca one and news and gifts shops international jv in combinations three and four, meaning one bookstore or newsstand and one specialty retail store each, that ca one based upon the scoring and the matrix that was previously done, would be at locations nine and 11 and news and gifts based upon the scoring that was previously done in the matrix would be at sites 10 and 12 and the direction would be to staff to go forward and negotiate those agreements.
>>Slusher: that's it.
>>Mayor Watson: that's what I thought. And that was seconded by --.
>>Slusher: I knew you had it.
>>Mayor Watson: Councilmember Griffith, is that what you seconded?
>>Griffith: absolutely.
>>Mayor Watson: is there any further discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. -- Hearing none, call the roll, please.
>>Goodman: yes.
>>Griffith: yes.
>>Lewis: no.
>>Slusher: yes.
>>Spelman: aye.
>>Mayor Watson: yes. There being five yeses, one no and the Mayor pro tem absent, that motion passes. That concludes item no. 11. At this time I would entertain a motion to recess the City Council of Austin Texas. Thank y'all for being here. And if you could, folks, if I could get your attention real quick, we have quite a bit of business and if you could wait to hold your conversations outside and please leave as quietly as you can, but thank you all very much for being here and making your presentations. I will entertain a motion to recess the City Council meeting in order to call to order the board of directors' meeting of the Austin housing finance corporation. Motion is made by Councilmember Griffith, seconded by Councilmember Goodman. Is there any discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries, we are recessed. At this time I will call to order the board of directors of the Austin housing finance corporation and we will take up items nos. 61 And 62. Welcome, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. The first item of business will be to conduct the public hearing to receive input on the issues of 15 million dollars of bonds to assist the nonprofit in purchasing the rutland apartments.
>>Mayor Watson: I will call the public hearing as item no. 61. We have one person that has signed up to speak and that is Mr. Kirk becker. Mr. Becker, if you would please come forward.
>> Okay. You're going to spend 15 million dollars to purchase and renovate for the nonprofit organization, purchase and renovate the units. The projected rents on these are going to be 411 dollars a month to 651 dollars a month at the high end, probably for three bedroom, these are called reasonably priced housing these days. The problem in Austin is there's a surge of housing supply related to the demand. In this action here, buying existing housing doesn't reduce demand, it doesn't increase the supply, it spends 15 million dollars without doing any good. However prudently this purchase, these expenditures are wholly unproductive. They don't increase the housing in Austin. I ask you to expand the supply and increase the amount of reasonably priced housing in the private secretary areaer as well. I think back to last year's election day. The dewey beats true man article and reduction in the housing prices and cost. It didn't happen. Why not? all the statesman did was report readily available to everybody in real estate development. Investors pulled back on the financing and the projected increase in the housing supply were restrained. Real estate developers and the investors who finance them are making good money in real estate. They're happy with things as they are. They're making money and they don't want to change the supply demand equation. In order to change the definition of reasonably priced housing, we're going to have to change the supply demand equation. If the public sector builds housing, we could anticipate the private sector to reduce the amount of housing it would build so as to maintain the current supply demand equation. Taipt, everybody knows that there's good money to be made in housing construction. They're making enough money to be content. The public sector needs to start making some of that money. It needs to build enough housing to begin pushing some of the private interests out of this most profitable real estate market. Private entities aren't going to like that. They won't let themselves be pushed out of the real estate market. They will begin to purchase at a lower profit margin. Land and development costs will begin to go down, the definition of reasonably priced housing will also go down. I think back to another statesman article about a year ago that compared a white student living in a nice 700 dollar a month apartment and a working class hispanic family living in a dump that was the best they could afford. $700 A month for the nice one. But if you're living in a dump, it shouldn't cost more than $200. If you're paying $400 a month, they should fix the dump up so it's a nice place to live and maybe there's some compromise of $300 a month for a place that's reasonably maintained. And I think that's why we need to change the supply demand equation. That's why we need to increase the supply. [Buzzer].
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, Mr. Becker. We appreciate you being here. Those are all the people that have signed up to speak on item no. 61. I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing. Motion is made by classify. Seconded by Councilmember Lewis. Is there any discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. The motion carries with the vice-president absent and board members Slusher and Spelman off the dias. It takes us to item no. 62.
>> Thank you, Mr. President. The next item is to consider reimbursement resolution for the issuance of the same 15 million dollar bonds.
>>Mayor Watson: I'll entertain a motion to the substance of item no. 62. Motion is to approve by board member Griffith. Is there a second? seconded by board member Goodman. Is there any discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no.
>>Lewis: no.
>>Mayor Watson: all right. The motion carries on a vote of three -- no, the motion did not carry. I will entertain entertain a motion to recess -- no, I've got someone else. In order for us to be able to take action, I'll entertain another motion with regard to item no. 62.
>> I move approval. Mayor the motion is made by grf. Is there a second? seconded by board member Goodman. Is there any discussion?
>>Goodman: Mayor, could I ask Councilmember Lewis, why he was in opposition?
>>Lewis: one of the reasons is the number of units and the percentage of median family income is clear because here they're saying that 20% of the families -- 20% of the units will be reserved for families making 50% of median income and the rest of the units will serve families with incomes of below 80%. And to me reserve is not saying that they will be occupied by people in that category. It just means that until the -- if you don't have the number of people making applications, then you are -- they're open to lease the apartments to people at a higher rate.
>>Mayor Watson: do you want to address that?
>> if I may clarify that, law that governs the issuance of public bonds requires that at least 20% of the units be rented to families with incomes --.
>>Lewis: that's not what it says. It says to be reserved.
>> I apologize if we didn't give you the exact picture, but it will be rented to families with incomes below 80 percent of the median and affordable rents, which would mean that they would not spent over 30% of their gross monthly for housing.
>>Lewis: I'm just going by what it said because the difference between reserve will be leased to people is two different -- it means two different things.
>> Again, I apologize.
>>Mayor Watson: but I want to be sure we're clear. In this case reserved is defined as meaning --.
>> Available and will be rented.
>>Mayor Watson: it is set aside to be rented by people in that income bracket.
>> Correct.
>>Lewis: but my thing is, my reasoning is that if they set aside 20% of the units and they're not going to keep them available forever for people to come to make applications --.
>> They have to keep them available. I'm sorry, they do have to keep them available or vacant until they rent them to families that make less than 50% of median. That is the law. Otherwise the bonds become taxable.
>>Lewis: according to her its guidelines you have to make them available. If no one applies for them, making application for them, then in a reasonable period of time, and they state reasonable as the same time period that you would rent 80% or below 80% or above 80% in that same time factor is being vacant, a reasonable amount of time that you would have that people in the below 50% median income would have to make application.
>>Mayor Watson: let me ask a question.
>> If I may respond to that.
>>Mayor Watson: before you do that, let me ask a question. Would there be any difficulty in the housing finance corporation's work being carried out if as part of this motion to approve this resolution we added to the resolution that the term reserve means that it must be rented to someone in that income bracket and in the case of a vacancy, it cannot be rented to someone else, it must be held vacant until a person that qualifies in that income bracket can be there?
>> Mr. President, I have with me a man with our bond Council and he can address the legal issues with that.
>>Mayor Watson: I'm afraid of anyone carrying a book that has that title on it. [Laughter]. All right. You're now able to address the board.
>> Good afternoon. I'm an attorney who is Council for the Austin housing finance corporation. When these multi-family housing bonds are issued, the borrower enters into a restrictive covenant, in which case a covenant that according to the rent restrictions that it will be reserved for those parties, people with income limits within 20 and 80 percent range. Now, I'm not the tax lawyer at my firm, but if that is not the case, I will come back to the Council and tell them that that is not the case. That's my understanding, not being the tax attorney.
>>Mayor Watson: I understand, but my question is still the same. And that is if this board wants to take the position that that's being represented as being consistent with what the staff is saying, that the word reserved means it's set aside for people of a certain median family income such that if for some reason -- not for some reason. If it becomes vacant it will not be rented to anyone outside of that income and must remain vacant until a person who qualifies by virtue of being in that income bracket comes up?
>> nothing prevents you from doing that. That's the answer to that question.
>>Mayor Watson: I'm going to ask grf if Councilmember Griffith if she would consider that to be a friendly amendment.
>>Griffith: highly friendly.
>>Mayor Watson: so now the motion would be to approve item no. 62, But with the specific and expressed clarification regarding reservation and who it can be rented to. Councilmember Lewis, does that help you with that?
>>Lewis: yes.
>>Mayor Watson: okay. Is there any further discussion in hearing none, all those in favor say aye.. Opposed say no. Motion carries with the vice-president absent. There being no further business to come before of the board of directors of the Austin housing finance corporation, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion is made by Councilmember Slusher, is there a second? seconded by board member Griffith. Is there any discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries. We are adjourned. I'll call back to order the Austin City Council and we will go to items 66 through 77, which are zoning hearings and approval of ordinances. Who do I recognize? I recognize ms. Glasgow.
>> Good afternoon Mayor and Councilmembers. Zoning cases are as follows. We do have a lot of postponement items, so in case you weren't aware of that, I'm warning you before we proceed. Item 6, case no. C 14 knife 314 and c 14853212. We received a request from the agent to postpone the case to august the 20th. The applicant is out of town today. Item no. 67 Is a request to postpone the item to august the 20th also in order to. Because it's a valid petition, there would be an interest that we have a full Council on that date. On item no. 68, Case c 14-98-28, there is a request to postpone the case to august the 20th and again this case has a valid petition. The applicant has asked that the case be postponed so that he can have the benefit of a full Council. Item 69 will be a discussion item. 70 Is a consent item, case c 14 --.
>>Mayor Watson: hang on one second. Oh, I'm sorry.
>> Are you okay?
>>Mayor Watson: I'm okay. I see what I just did. I apologize.
>> Would you like me to run through or proceed?
>>Mayor Watson: you're doing what what you need to be doing.
>> Okay. Item 70, case c 14-98-46, the current zoning is development reserve, the applicant is seeking community commercial zoning. The Planning Commission granted that zoning request with conditions. This case is ready for first reading. Item no. 71, Case c 14, 9869 located at 1315 to 1429 east wells branch parkway. The property is currently zoned interim rural residence and the applicant is seeking general commercial services zoning and the planning commission recommended gr, which stands for community commercial zoning district with conditions, and this case is ready for first reading only. Item no. 72, Case no. C 14-98-71, located at 4525 south IH-35 service road. The property is currently zoned single family three and the applicant is requesting a change to community commercial zoning. The Planning Commission recommended that request with conditions. This case is ready for first reading. Item no. 73 Is case c 14-98-72, located at 6301 us highway 290 east. The applicant is requesting a postponement to september 10th in order to continue dialoguing with the neighborhood to hopefully come up with a resolution. This is the applicant's first request.
>>Lewis: may I ask a question?
>>Mayor Watson:: sure.
>>Lewis: will this go back to the Planning Commission?
>> it's been to the planning commission. It has been to the planning commission.
>>Lewis: will it go back to the Planning Commission?
>> for?
>>Lewis: you said they requested postponement.
>> In order to meet with the neighborhood association before they come to meet with the City Council. I don't think there's an intent to go back to the Planning Commission. They're hoping that they will be able to resolve the differences or concerns of the neighborhood before they come make their indication case before the City Council. Does that answer your question? you may be thinking of a conditional overlay.
>>Lewis: no, I'm looking here, recommendation is to deny it so that's the reason I was asking.
>> Okay. Item no. 70, Case c 14-98-75, locatesed at 2108 balm road. The poem they have requested a postponement to september 3rd and that date was recommended or suggested because we have a companion sight plan that Council had referred back to planting commission that needs to be heard at the same time. So both the applicant and the neighborhood agreed to the september 3rd post positive poniment for item no. 74. Item no. 75 Is also a request to postpone this case to september the 3rd. And this is a request that was received today. The applicant has decided that he needs to hire an agent to represent him and this will give him enough time to familiarize themselves with the case. Item 76, case c 14-98-77, located 11617 research boulevard. The body is zoned community commercial with conditions. It would like to keep it in the same district a a minor deletion of a previous condition to allow for a use that was not allowed and that case is recommended to you by the Planning Commission with that adjustment and it's ready for all three readings. Item no. 77 Is case c 14-98-90 located at 12151 hunters chase drive. The property is zoned interim rural residence. The applicant is seeking a zoning change to community commercial and the planning commission recommended that request and it's ready for all three readings. That concludes all the consent items and postponements.
>>Mayor Watson: please let me run through those quickly. Item no. 66 Would be on consent to be postponed. 67 Postponed until august 20th. 68 Postponed august 20th. 70 Consent on first reading only. 72, Consent first reading. 73, Post pointment to september 10th. 74, Postponed to september 3rd. 75, Postponed to september 3rd. 76, Consent on all three readings, 77, consent on all three readings. Mar.
>> Mayor, that was perfect. One amendment.
>>Mayor Watson: listen to you. [Laughter].
>> It's not your fault. I've just been informed by the applicant, item 71 -- Mayor we know it's not your fault. [Laughter].
>> It's not your fault. The applicant would like to discuss item 71, so that takes it off the consent agenda.
>> The applicant is getting ready to get something passed on first reading, but wants to talk.
>> Wants to talk about it.
>>Mayor Watson: well, I've seen stranger things. We can always vote it down tonight. [Laughter]. It's a joke. That's a joke. Okay. So consent agenda will be 66 postponed for august 20th, 67, postponed to 20th. 68 Postponed to the 20th. 70 Consent on percent first reading. 73 Postponed to september 10th. 74 To the third. 75 To the third, 76 on all three readings and 77 on all three readings. Let me quickly run through on item no. 67, We have some people that are here signed up to speak. Mr. Seals, Mr. Levrik, Mr. Patrick and ms. Dunn. Do any of you feel the need to speak because of the postponement as a result of the valid petition and the need to have a full Council? okay. On item -- and ms. Seals, I'm sorry. On item no. 68 We have mattson, sagleman, mac he will nationally, alman, hoffman, Martin, howton, wright and casey. Does anyone feel the need to speak because of the status of this matter? 69, we're going to discuss.
>>Lewis: let me ask a question. They want 67 and 68 postponed for a full Council to the 20th. What happens on the 20th if we don't have a full Council?
>>Mayor Watson: well, we will have to deal with it then?
>>Lewis: how many postponements? --.
>>Mayor Watson: we ought to take one shot for sure because there's a valid petition and in order to give anybody the ability to overrule that as you know, have you to have a certain number of votes of the Council.
>>Lewis: I realize that, but I'm saying how many extensions will we give them until we get a full Council or will we just -- or is it a policy not to vote on a valid petition unless you have a full Council?
>>Mayor Watson: we don't have a set policy of that but it seems kind of fair that you do it at least once.
>>Lewis: all right.
>>Mayor Watson: and also out of deference I think ta to the Councilmember who is not here. Item no. 74 -- Is David wise here? do you feel a need to speak? 75, terri mitchell? 76 is on consent and bobby henley, you don't feel the need to talk in favor now, do you? [audio problems, please stand by].
>> I need to make a brief statement.
>>Mayor Watson: we'll pull it off the consent agenda. You are in favor of it.
>> I am in favor of it.
>>Mayor Watson: all right. The consent agenda will not include item no. 76. 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75 And 77. I'll entertain a motion. Councilmember Spelman. Is there a second? Councilmember Goodman. Is there any discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries with the Mayor pro tem absent. Yes, ma'am?
>> ms. Henley said to put it back on consent.
>>Mayor Watson: it's too late. We just voted on the consent agenda, but we'll pass it in just a second unless she wants to talk. Does she need to talk? I'll call up item 76?
>> no. I don't need to speak.
>>Mayor Watson: you're welcome to. We've pulled it off consent agenda. Okay. I'll call item no. 76. Is there a motion. The motion has been made to approve it on all three readings. Is there a second. Seconded by Councilmember Goodman. Is there any discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries with the Mayor pro tem absent. It passes on all three readings. That will take us to item no. 71. I'm going toing to 71 because I understand we only have one person to talk. Is the applicant wanting to talk about item no. 71?
>> Mr. Reed?
>>Mayor Watson: Mr. Reed, welcome.
>> Mayor and Councilmembers, I am jim bennett, I am here today on behalf of Mr. Reed, who is in the audience. Our request for a zoning change was to cs zoning. The Planning Commission recommended a gr zoning and we would like to go with staff's recommendation for cs rather than the gr as proposed by -- recommended by the planning commission. We need the cs zoning because we are proposing to build a service center that will serve the high-tech community both for the dell campuses and other uses. The property adjacent to us is developed. It was outside the City and was developed with an sterm nating company and a trucking company. The property to the west of us is developed and it has been in the City quite some time and it's developed with a pawn shop and a retail use. Wells branch parkway is 120 foot right-of-way, divided median, which you can see from your back up material, there are no residential units within approximately 1,000 feet of us. The south side of our property is bounded by a cemetery. To the north side of the street is a large retail center that buffers our site in addition to the wells banch parkway away from the residential users. There is physically no way for any of our traffic to interfere with the residential uses on the other side of the strip center, north of the strip center. We feel like the cs zoning is appropriate. We've had no objections to the requested zoning change and we would like to stay with the staff recommendation. I'll be available if you have any questions.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, sir. I'll entertain a motion -- I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing on item no. 71. Motion is made by Councilmember Goodman, seconded by Councilmember Spelman to close the public hearing. Is there any discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries with the Mayor pro tem absent. Councilmember Slusher and Councilmember Lewis off the dias. I'll entertain a motion with regard to Councilmember Spelman?
>>Spelman: I move to adopt the staff recommendation.
>>Mayor Watson: motion has been made, seconded by Councilmember Griffith, is there any discussion? do you have discussion?
>>Griffith: I need to think about this for a minute.
>>Mayor Watson: okay.
>>Griffith: or I could ask the staff a question. Alice, can you tell me why the commission disagreed with staff recommendation?
>> the Planning Commission felt like this should be a transitioning in zoning as you get away from the highway and they felt like this case should be at least be considered for community commercial zoning and not the commercial services simply because of what is adjoining and surrounding the property at this time. And they felt like we should start transitioning to lower zoning districts including possibly office warehouse as we get away from the major intersection. Those are the main reasons and the minutes summarize some of those concerns.
>>Griffith: but there was neighborhood opposition to go -- owe.
>>Goodman: but there was neighborhood to go with a cs.
>> I'm not aware of neighborhood opposition that was present at the planning commission. The discussion was among commission members and the applicant.
>>Goodman: thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: are there any further questions or discussions?
>>Goodman: I just want to mention that the abutment of the interim rr may have been what caused there to be some difficulty. For me it's not necessarily viewing from the street that I see referred in here, but the irr.
>> And there is an area that we just annexed last year. That's why you see the interim zoning.
>>Goodman: but it's rural residential. So does Councilmember Spelman have any insight on why you think that would be okay if it was developed rr?
>>Spelman: my conclusion was that the particular use for which the applicant would like to develop the site fits under cs, but does not fit under gr and that that would be a site which would not be too unreasonable in the surrounding neighborhood, given the surrounding neighborhood is about a quarter mile away. I don't think it's inappropriate for the section of wells branch parkway either. It's very close to the highway and I think it's an appropriate use close to the highway.
>>Goodman: Alice, is this one of those places where you could do cs, but under a gr building standards? is there a difference?
>> I think it's mostly the uses. When you get into the distinction between the cs, the commercial sftss zoning, it has to do with the types of tools that are used, so you get into custom manufacturing that may be a distinction there that does provide more plex ability. -- Flexibility. Councilmember Goodman, if this helps at all. This will be on for first reading only and if we can provide additional information to Council before second and third readings, that might help you.
>>Goodman: okay. Maybe there's a possibility that the owner would think about some kind of buffer from the eastern rr.
>> The adjoining tract which shows there is a use there in warehouse distribution?
>>Goodman: well, I was thinking that was more north than I was thinking, but yeah, around there.
>> We can explore that and also consult with you before we come back for second and third to find out some of the things you would like to see.
>>Goodman: okay. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: any further discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries on a vote of -- I'm assuming you -- how did you vote? did you vote aye. I didn't hear it. With Councilmember Slusher off the dias and the Mayor pro tem absent and the others voting yes. That takes us to item no. 69.
>> Item no. 69 Mayor and Councilmembers, is case c 14-98-41 located at 900 willow street and the request is from single family 3 to lo, which stands for limited office. The staff recommendation differs from that of the Planning Commission. Staff recommendation is that of neighborhood office. And I will explain the differences. The staff recommendation looked at the fact of this property is within the willow national register district, which means that the property has been recognized as a national registered district because it has structures which are considered historically disbanted, however, the key point to consider here is that the property does not have historic zoning, so that is a key distinction to consider. The Planning Commission wremd denial of a zoning change for this property, so what you have in front of you is a Planning Commission recommendation to deny any zoning change at this point, while that of staff is not to grant the applicant's request, but instead offer a down grade in zoning to neighborhood? which we feel is somewhat compatible with the adjoining neighborhood and also that would be in keeping with the character of those structures that have contributed to the designation of the national register designation for historical places. I will pause there and respond to questions after you hear from the applicant and the neighborhood.
>> What do we need to do? okay. Is the applicant present?
>> it appears that the applicant is not present. We may consider skipping the -- if you don't mind, we can move on to the citizens' presentation.
>>Goodman: well, is the applicant aware that we're going to do this and maybe is just out of the room temporarily?
>> I have not seen them.
>> It was at the applicant's request that we post point the case from a previous hearing to today to accommodate his travel plans.
>>Goodman: okay. Well, okay. Let's go ahead with the neighborhood side and then when the applicant comes in, if he does, can we keep an eye out for him and then we can retro.
>> We'll attempt to tract his office.
>>Goodman: okay. The first speaker -- well, do you all have an order that you prefer or do you just want me to go. I have a lori renteria first. So if that's okay.
>> Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is lori and I am an affordable housing nut, have been for a long time. I am chair of the east cesar sha ves neighborhood planning subcommittee and I also serve on the community action network affordable housing working group. Although my comments today I'll be representing my neighborhood group, the united East Austin coalition because the east Cesar Chavez planning team has taken a position that as a planning team we will not take a position to endorse any project or another until we complete our plan and have a permanent governing structure in place with policies and guidelines to make endorsements so that the comments that I have regarding 900 willow are those of united East Austin coalition which has a very long history in supporting anything that will improve the quality of life for residents in East Austin. In fact, our organization in 1988 chaired the first attempt to create an affordable housing trust fund called the home bond campaign to pass 22 million dollars in general obligation bonds. United East Austin coalition stands in support with the willow street neighborhood association in asking you to deny the zoning request for 900 will low. If you deny, you give our neighborhood planning team an opportunity to make some smart growth recommendations that should be before you in september. And finally, in my last minute, I was prepared to come here with those Written comments you have regarding the guadalupe neighborhood developments, new construction of affordable housing on claire month and east forth street which are also within our planning area boundaries. And I'm sharing those with you today because I think many of the points I'm making apply also to 900 willow. And if we could get your vote to deny, we would be able to do the same thing that we're asking you when claire mont and east month come before you. I guess they were pulled. They were up for today, but not pulled. So please read those comments and also consider the same reasons for a denial for 900 willow today. Thank you.
>>Goodman: okay. Lori, could I ask you before you -- there you go.
>> Yes, ma'am?
>>Goodman: when you come back with your neighborhood plan, do you think you will have specific zoning remss, especially for transitional or potentially transitional ones like this?
>> well, about half of our planning team attended the public hearing at connelly grair row about the smart growth and we got so excited about the 10 new zoning categories which I've atached behind there. The problem we see is our neighborhood plan is going to come before you before the smart growth recommendations, those 10, are adopted. So our zoning and land use committee are thinking outside the box and we're going to start plarning using the new smart growth so when you see our neighborhood plan, you will see recommendations for the new smart growth initiatives and our plan will definitely involve, you know, zoning and land use recommendations throughout the neighborhood, throughout the entire planning area.
>>Goodman: well, the reason I ask is because if we went for something like an indefinite post pointment, if you had an -- if there was going to be a zoning category other than what exists, then the applicant -- we could tie the plikted's return to after the neighborhood plan had come forth, but then they would have to pay a new fee to go through the zoning again.
>> Right. The problem is we're in a real catch 22. I mean, we want to come to you in september, but we don't want to use old categories that the Council could be adopting as early as october or november. So we're going to be recommending using the new tnd guidelines. Tnd is the greatest thing. Councilmember Lewis is the one that first got me interested in looking at the document and the potential. And in talking to tracy Watson, I asked him, tracy, in the tnd manual, there are a thousand and one items that could be on this list of 10 how come you only have 10 on here? and he said because we didn't have a good enough neighborhood representation and input and these are the only 10 that our little focus group could really come to consensus on to get a roll on. The other problem we had, we want to apply these 10 items to existing structures in the neighborhood and what is being proposed by the smart growth task force is only new construction within the ddz. So when we come with our plan, we hope you will think outside the box as we will.
>>Goodman: okay. Thank you. Liz gold?
>> good evening. My name is liz gold, I'm here to represent the willow neighborhood association. I am also on the east cesar chavez neighborhood pilot plan, whatever we're calling ourselves, the leadership team. As you may know from your materials, our neighborhood group originally tried very hard to work with the applicant. We thought it might be able to resolve some of the issues that came up through no zoning and a restrictive covenant, however we didn't entirely resolve some of the issues of scale that we felt this particular proposal was out of scale with the rest of the neighborhood. At the Planning Commission, we were essentially persuaded that without -- because the corner lot is already zoned cs, zoning this second lot to no would mean that we would essentially have a no, ma'am know effect down the block. Domino effect down the block.
>> There was originally a house on here, there was a historic house that was listed on the application for the historic register listing and it was the applicant who tore it down a couple of years ago. So we're not very happy about that. And we're looking for other ways to get protection for our area, both because of the historic nature and also because as you know, east Austin desperately needs more houses for our families. I have to say that there are a couple of people in the neighborhood who would prefer to see any building there, even this one, because right now we have 78 grants deaf indicating in both blocks, however, we are very concerned about the president dent that would be set if this were changed to no for the entire East Austin neighborhood, the whole Cesar Chavez neighborhood and the whole East Austin. We don't think it's a very good idea for that. Let's see. I guess that's pretty much it, but I hope that you would not vote for this in the absence of Councilmember Garcia. I'm sure you will reconsider. And I do want to emphasize that we tried to work with the applicant and particularly with the architect; however, I personally have been persuaded by the Planning Commissioners that it would be a very bad idea to start moving into the neighborhood in this way, that we would be losing a available historic area and family housing. Thanks.
>>Lewis: excuse me. I'd like to ask a question, please. What neighborhood organization did you say you're from?
>> the willow neighborhood association. We take -- we cover the willow expense district and a couple more blocks just -- and surrounding it.
>>Lewis: okay. Thank you.
>>Goodman: and could I ask you one more question before you go? were you saying that you didn't want Council to take any action at all tonight because the Mayor pro tem is not with us?
>> I would prefer to see the Council vote this down at this time. It may be another project from the same applicant would be possible, however, they are sticking with the original application for the lo, not even the no, so I think that the application for lo zoning really is inappropriate.
>>Goodman: so what you're asking is that we not approve a zoning change tonight without the Mayor pro tem being a part of that discussion?
>> correct.
>>Goodman: okay. Thank you. And soos an almanson is our last speaker or at least the last card I have.
>> Good evening. I think this may be the first or maybe the second opportunity I've had to thank you all for appointing me to planting commission. I really appreciate it. So I do want to thank you all. I'm here to talk about the willow street. It's so important. You all who have driven down to Cesar Chavez or holly street, east seventh street, have seen the deterioration of our community and how we are losing our housing stock. And willow is a very, very key area because Cesar Chavez is practically gone to commercial, car sales galore and pawn shops. So with those lots possibly going to no, it would be just a matter of time I think before we see the neighborhood stock begin to dpleet. And so I ask that you either postpone this indeftly until we have a chance to look at the neighborhood plan because we have always taken the stand of protecting the residential area in East Austin and we feel that if these particular lots go to neighborhood office and not be single family, we're going to see the domino effect there in the area. These are two very key areas. I'm very sad to hear that he would rather have anything there because of what's happening hand that just tells me that the applicant himself can fence in that area and do something on his own for that particular lot so that these things -- the neighborhood doesn't have to be seeing this or the rest of the community. So to me that also shows the irrelevant responsibility on behalf of the applicant also. So I ask that you just either postpone this indefinitely until the neighborhood plan comes forward and addresses this issue. Thank you.
>>Goodman: thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: those are all the people that have signed up to speak. I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing. Motion is made by Councilmember Goodman, seconded by Councilmember Slusher to close the public hearing. Discuss discuss? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries. I'll entertain a motion with regard to the substance of item no. 69.
>>Goodman: could I ask a question of ms. Glasgow first.
>>Mayor Watson: sure. Ms. Glasgow.
>>Goodman: the indefinite postponement gives us a maximum six-month time frame which would seem adequate to have the neighborhood plan come in and some amendments perhaps get through the process and of course that she's on the planning commission now I know they would keep an eye on on it. Is there a mechanism by which a Council action to postpone indefinitely -- is there a mix nism that we can put the time frame and -- mechanism that we can put the time frame and say that we're not going to hear this until such and such happens within the six-month time frame, like the plan has gone through the review process, the neighborhood plan or a proposed rezoning from the neighborhood side is coming through the process? not necessarily this one.
>> Certainly. That makes sense because you don't know precisely when that process is going to be concluded and an indefinite postponement basically gives you the time to bring it back at a point when all parties are ready. So the goal here is not to set a date so that it gives you that flexibility until such a time that there's comfort among all interested paerlts and we can bring it forth or we might decide that the case needs to be withdrawn because the neighborhood plan could basically take care of the zoning change issue.
>>Goodman: right. So if we just had language that said an indefinite postponement until after the Planning Commission and Council have been able to review, the completed neighborhood plan, would that work?
>> that would work. That would be perfect.
>>Goodman: then that would be my motion, Mayor.
>>Mayor Watson: motion has been made by Councilmember Goodman. Is there a second?
>>Lewis: what's the motion?
>>Goodman: that we move an indefinite postponement, which is a six-month time frame. Normally the applicant could come back any time within that six months, but the addendum to that would be that we are not not going to hear that case within six months until after the neighborhood plan has been reviewed, the complete neighborhood plan has been reviewed by the planning commission and Council.
>>Lewis: all right.
>>Mayor Watson: motion has been made. Is there a second?
>>Lewis: second.
>>Mayor Watson: seconded by Councilmember Lewis. Is there any discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries with the Mayor pro tem absent and Councilmember Griffith off the dias on item no. 69. Those are all the zoning hearing items.
>> That concludes the zoning items. Thank you, Council.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, ms. Glasgow. That will take us back to items no. 13 And 14. Actually, what that will do is Council, I will entertain a motion to recess until 6:05. Motion has been made by Councilmember Slusher. Is there a second? seconded by Councilmember Lewis, is there any discussion? the only discussion is -- no discussion. All those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries. We're in recess until aa e h 8 @d t4 the way we are going to proceed is we are going to first take up items 13 and 14, then we will come back to item no. 12 And then we will move to item no. 78, And then probably 79. So first items 13 and 14, I have one, two, three -- four. All right I recognize Councilmember Spelman.
>>Spelman: we are running a little late, so let me move very quickly through this if I could. Item 13 is a -- approve negotiation and execution of a contract with a firm to serve as a consumer advocate for the water and wastewater department, water and wastewater is going to be developing a cost of service study, setting up a rate structure, a change in the rate structure for 1999. It takes about 12 months to do it. We would be hiring a firm for doing a cost of service study. Item 13 would be to hire a firm to be the consumer advocate, argue in favor as parts of that on behalf of residential and small business customers. On item 14, I move to negotiation an execution with black & veatch, that's the staff recommendation. On item 13s the rfp was generally set up for a general consumer adequate for all classes of consumers. I believe it was the Council's intent to execute a contract with a firm with expertise in residential and small business consumers. The -- of the four responding firms, the only one that has considerable experience working with residential and small business consumers is bernie birnbaum, I would move that we execute a contract with birnbaum.
>> The motion on item no. 13, Negotiate a contract, and execute a contract with bernie birnbaum, on item no. 14, Negotiate a contract with black & veatch. Seconded by Councilmember Slusher. Any discussion?
>>Lewis: Mayor, we are going to have them do a cost study, what method are we -- are we going to leave out any methods or -- what methods are they going to use to do the cost study?
>> Councilmember Spelman, they are going to -- Councilmember Lewis, they are going to look at the standard methods as well as alternative methods. This was required in the rfp and presents some options that we might want to look at there. I can't tell you exactly what those alternative methods are. We had the representatives here you would like to ask them some particular questions.
>>Lewis: I would like to ask them if they can -- you know, because it's a number of methods that you can use to determine the cost of service. If they are going to be out looking at something -- when was the last cost of service done if.
>> The last cost of service study was the '92, '93 time frame and we implemented in '94.
>>Lewis: okay. Do we feel that it's changed that much? the cost of service?
>> well, we've been using this, I think, last year it was we talked about this, somewhere in the range of 8 to 10 years, you probably want to relook at it again, that was Council's recommendation at the last budget last september when we got the budget approved. Is to go ahead and relook at it and try to have it completed, the construction work c completed by september of '99.
>>Lewis: that would be five years we would use -- and if we didn't put it -- it would be six years before we put it into effect, is that what you are saying?
>> no, actually the last study was done ins> '92-'93. This one would be done in '97. The implementation would be -- I mean '99, so the implementation would be 2000 or thereabouts, so we are running -- implementation would be about six or seven years.
>>Lewis: the reason that I asked the question is you know, when you do a cost of service, if you -- you know, we know what we have done to change the service, so, I mean, is that what we are going to look at, that difference? we have updated some plants, we have did a number of things between the time we had to -- the last cost of service study.
>> Now, each year we have been -- basically what this does is looks at the methodology. Each year we have been updating the cost figures. But the methodology of how we allocate those costs and who -- which customer classes are allocated certain costs, that's been the same for this time period.
>>Lewis: well, it just -- I don't know. I've had a problem with the next door thing, you know. You say a unit one is in x class and unit b next door is in b class, and the cost of service is different to get to each one of them. And that gives me a problem. It really does. Because you know, it doesn't take -- then class -- then unit c is the same as unit a and -- and the cost of services is the same for those, but in the middle you have a cost of service that's different. And that's what gives me a problem, that's the reason I wanted to find out what method they was going to use to determine the class -- the cost of service.
>> Well, certainly, I mean that's part of the study is to look at the different methods and whether or not we have the data and the ability to implement some different methods. Yes, we went from one class of customer prior to 1992 to 8 classes of customers. That was based on a great amount of monitoring of the different customer classes and it's basically how they use our system, how they peak off of our system and how much they use or how much strength of the wastewater they put into our system or how much volume that we treat. So those are kind of the -- the factors that costs are allocated by.
>> Will they be using -- looking at the time -- time charge for your monitor of of a period of the day, a new system where you know how much water is used in any one hour or any two hour span where you would -- if whatever you set it for?
>> well, that is an option, currently the technology to do that on the water industry is not where it needs to be. We did some pilot tests here in the last couple of years, are still working with that. It's -- that would be a goal eventually. I am not sure we can do that in the time frame of next year. But over the next few years, that has been a goal, to -- if people want to use their water in a separate time, therefore have a different rate, I think that's a good place to go. But the technology and expense to install that in every meter, to be able to monitor that is not there now. I think it will be in a few years, though.
>>Lewis: all right. Thank you.
>> Okay.
>>Mayor Watson: motion has been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries with the Mayor pro tem an september and Councilmember Goodman off the dias. Absent. I will go to item no. 12 And recognize the City Manager.
>> Mayor, members of Council, you had -- this is an item that's been on the agenda at least one other time and we met with the solid waste advisory committee on wednesday. And I wanted to report to you what they had asked or what their recommendation is. They have asked us to hire an engineering company or an environmental company that can assess and evaluate the waste management site prior to us entering into any kind of contract for them to accept our waste. It is going to take us at least a week or two to develop a scope of services so that we can go hire a professional company that does this kind of thing. We would like to take that scope of services back to the solid waste advisory committee so they are able to see the kind of things that we would be looking for in a company. And I would I would like to have that two week period to be able to do that. There's always been some issues raised about our watershed protection department either being involved or only being minimally involved. Certainly we don't have any problem at all with solid waste services and the engineers within that department working with the watershed protection engineers in watershed management. So they can have a hand in evaluating the proposal, evaluating the scope of services and then as we go out to hire the best company to come and do that work for us. With the Council's permission I would like to have that two week period to do that. If we need longer I will report to the Council that I need a longer period of time to work this issue out. So we would like to people this item down with that brief explanation.
>>Mayor Watson: what I would ask that we do is make that a -- if the Council -- if it's the desire of the Council, the member of the Council make a motion to follow the recommendation of the City manager to get a true environmental assessment and then get a scope of service out on the street, if that's the will of Council we will approach this.
>>Griffith: so move.
>>Mayor Watson: motion made by Councilmember Griffith, seconded by Councilmember Spelman.
>>Slusher: I just want to ask the manager are you totally confident that by not awarding the contract this evening that that doesn't interfere with the opening of our airport or the hauling of our waste where we can no longer take it to the current City landfill, that there will be continuity.
>> Currently you have a contract with bfi and they will extend obviously on a month-to-month basis to continue to accept our waste. Our landfill needs to begin to phase down toward the end of this year, beginning of next year. We are on a short course with that. But it's a matter of simply finding someone to take waste and entering into a short term contract that we will need to do if we are not able to satisfy all of the questions an all of the issues. What I would hope would happen is once we have done the scope of services, once we have done the evaluation, we can move expeditiously in either executing this contract or if it turns out we can't do this contract because of information that we find, we could put out an rfp expeditiously to have a long-term contract. There's also been issues about the queer or term. Typically in this business when you are do -- the year or the term. Typically you do it on a long-term basis. You don't do a solid waste service contract on a 10 year basis. 10 Years comes on you too quickly. You have to have a ready place to take the waste that you are collecting and so that -- that is something that we can evaluate and work with the committee to determine what might be better than a 30 year, if in fact 30 year gives folks some issue. That's an issue that we have to work through.
>>Slusher: while we were on that subject, Mr. Rhodes we were discussing this, saying even with the 30 years, the price at 30 years, locks in the price, but it doesn't require that we carry a single sack of garbage to any particular place; is that correct?
>> that's correct.
>>Slusher: wait a minute. The City Manager answered my questions. That's fine. Thank you, Mr. Rhodes.
>>Mayor Watson: ms. Conner, did you have something to add? you just held up your hand for -- [laughter]. Marsha moves and bettie seconds. [Laughter].
>>Mayor Watson: her hand just kind of goes up. If you have any other twitches just go right ahead. [Laughter]. Okay. With that, what I would suggest we have a number of people that have signed up to speak. And what I would suggested -- based upon the discussion that I am hearing here, I don't anticipate -- I anticipate that this is a motion that the Council is favorably disposed to because it would get some additional information so the solid waste advisory committee has recommended. And would allow for some answers to a number of questions that have been asked, including by a number of of the people that signed up to speak. I am not going to say that we are not going to have speakers because of the way that motion is. Instead I am going to plead with you. No. What I am going to do is I am going to request that unless you just feel like there's no reason to go home before 7:00 tonight, you feel the need to speak, go ahead and speak and we will call out the names and ask people to speak. But if you don't feel like you need to, based upon what that motion is as opposed to the fact that oFAAding a contract, because there's not going to be a contract awarded tonight, please use your discretion there.
>> [Inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: sure.
>> There will be another public hearing?
>>Mayor Watson: oh, yeah, yeah. Before there's an awarding of a contract we will do that. What this is tonight, based upon the City Manager's recommendation, following up on the recommendation of swac, let's attempt to do that right in terms of getting an environmental engineering firm in. Did you have something, ma'am?
>> [inaudible].
>>> This is a scope of services and it's to work with the swac in development of that scope of services and you obviously are going to need to get out on the street then to hire somebody much then depending on that scope you have to determine the time frame in which that study can be done to get adequate kind of information that you need to have property evaluated.
>> Mr. City Manager? could you comments now a little bit on a what that scope of services is likely to include?
>> I think several things. You will need, this is somewhat -- I haven't done this in a while. You have certain regulatory requirement, that's where you would start. Go out and determine if there is any migration from the site, excess methane being generated from the site. You would try to make some assessment of subtitle d regulations to ensure that there's some basic compliance or basic environmentally safe landfill. And there may be some other things that we need to look for soil balance to other things that are important from the state regulatory standpoint.
>>Mayor Watson: if I might interrupt, things like if you have certain types of waste that in the past has been put in certain cells of the landfill, if that is causing the leech to qualify as hazardous material, as a result of whatever may have been put there, it needs to be very detailed, things of that nature. Councilmember Griffith?
>>Griffith: from the discussions that I have been in on, there seems to not be a question about whether the tnrcc requirements are being complied with or not, but whether or not those are adequate. Will that be -- will that be addressed in the scope of work, also?
>> I don't know that we are going to grade the state's paper. The state of Texas does that regulatory piece. But I think what we will do is evaluate whether there are things that would cause us concern about using this as a solid waste facility. And I think that's what we are going to spend the next two weeks to see what kind of indicators and what kind of information need to be asked of, what kinds of questions need to be asked so when we go in and do the evaluation that we test for those kind of things that would cause us some concerns, things that the Mayor talked about, some other issues.
>>Griffith: so then those things could be put into the contract so that if we had some standards that we wanted beyond the tnrcc standards, those could go in the contract?
>> well, if in fact we determine that there needs to be stricter standards for the reasons that we identify from a -- then obviously that is something that we could request. The permit holder has a choice to say we are not going to do that. And in which case then we can from a policy standpoint say in absence of meeting these requirements, we can't do business with you. But that's without knowing what those kind of issues would be, that's the basis of this study and the information that you would be getting.
>>Griffith: thank you.
>> [Inaudible].
>> This is somebody that we hire outside of the organization who comes in and gives us advice.
>> [Inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: no, no, no, trust me, you don't have a single vote up here for that to happen because we are seeking this information so that we can make an independent determination. Councilmember Griffith?
>>Griffith: did I understand you to say that watershed protection as well as solid waste services will be involved in determining what's in that scope of work?
>> that's right. Let me just clarify on that because I think that there's been some confusion. I've had a chance, someone has visited and it's been related to me, he's indicated that he doesn't have a lot of staff that have that expertise. But he's willing to assist in this process to make this a better product. Obviously as an organization we are willing to work as team members to try to achieve an objective, a policy objective. But they per se do not have the expertise about landfill regulations and subtitle d, but they are going to participate from a water head protection standpoint.
>>Mayor Watson: let me start calling out names. Again, if you wish to speak, fine, but based upon what you hear is probably going to happen here tonight, I would encourage you not to if you just don't need to. There will be another hearing at a later date with regard to the awarding of the contract. And at that hearing, of course, we will all have certain information we don't have tonight because of -- of this environmental study. Jim walker. Jim walker. Bill bunch. Bill bunch. Ron davis. Ron davis. Sparkey anderson. Welcome, Mr. Anderson.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have got to say something.
>> Sparkey, you never disappoint me.
>> I am sparkey anderson, the state program director with clean water action, here speaking on behalf of our members. I have some additional recommendations that I think ought to be in the scoping of a review of this sight. First of all, I would like to go ahead and state to the Council, there is enough evidence at tnrcc right now to give most of us a good idea and a good answer as to the condition of that site at waste management. And I think it would really be easy if you were to be able to look at that state information, it would not only tell you that there are currently problems, but there will be continue -- continue to be trends of problems as you need to understand how a landfill works. These things don't go away, they are not usually one time occurrences, whether it's methane gas or if it's a liquid contaminant that is leaving the site through contaminant sources like leech chai. Nonetheless, if Council decides to hold on on whether or not to go ahead and give the full proposal to a better site, then I would recommend that you look at some other issues. You need to look into the legal issue, again, our organization is not -- has not been convinced that the City would not be liable if that site is declared a super fund site. As you all know, my organization along with others has filed with the epa in a petition to have that site declared a super fund site. There's been talk about writing an indem indication clause. You certainly could do that. Indemnificatioion clause. I don't think the City staff has done an adequate or legal job. I think you need to look at legal advice. I think you also need to look at the accounting issue here. Staff has also done, I think, a horrible job of giving you the kind of information that you need to make a determination, whether or not goods to go to be rate increases, rate savings or no change in costs. They are not giving swac, which my organization depends on receiving this information, giving swac the right kind of information to make the determination in we are comparing apples to apples. Instead I think staff has been comparing apples to passion fruit. They have some passion for this landfill that is very clearly has problems. I think there's one last thing that you all need to do again, the staff's determination on this rfp, I think there's again been serious problems with the way the staff has addressed this issue and that ought to be reviewed in your process. If I can just put this real simply, we basically have a choice of looking at the purchase of the landfill. It's going to be like buying a used car. That's really what we have got to deal with here because we are going to be buying a car with real serious problems if we go with waste management.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, rick green. [Applause] rick green. Trek english.
>> [Inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: ardis mishkey. Chuck croft. Sure you can.
>> I am with the neighborhood association, I guess that you have seen me before. And you are probably going to see me again. I would just like to say that we concur with what was just said, plus a little bit. We would like for -- for you to check into the possibility of maybe doing a traffic study, also, along with some of the other things because traffic is in the area at 290 and giles road is pretty tough right now. We suspect it will even get tougher under the new contract, whichever -- if it goes to this particular place. I have copies for each of the Council people, the City attorney and the City Manager of the petition that was mentioned that has been filed to epa concerning this site that I would like to pass out. If that would be acceptable to you.
>>Mayor Watson: sure.
>> Thank you, that's all that I have to say.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you very much. John hutchinson.
>> I give my time to earnest.
>>Mayor Watson: christina kubek.
>> Pass.
>>Mayor Watson: alex porter.
>> [Inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: I tell you what I will do is christina kubek, signed up against. Alex porter, signed up against, earnest carter signed up against. Dpu wish to speak?
>> yes, sir.
>>Mayor Watson: please come forward.
>> Normally I wouldn't given the circumstances, but I am going to be on the road and I would like to get my comments in. I am earnest carter, I am here tonight to speak to the City Council about the City's proposed solid waste disposal contract. I am concerned about this disposal contract because I live in the harris branch subdivision and I believe there are some serious problems that need to be addressed at the wmi facility. I feel that I am qualified because of my background in toxic materials and hazardous waste disposal that I acquired while serving with the military. From 1998 to '93 I was a hazardous waste control officer, I was fully train understand identifying, handling, transporting and disposing of toxic and hazardous waste products that were produced in an industrial and aircraft maintenance environment. I have a fact sheet that is a listing of most of the chemicals that were buried in Austin community landfill in 55 gallon drums in the early 1970's. As you will see, some of the chemicals are not allowed by the epa to be present in the ground or the ground water in any quantities whatsoever. This is because they have been proven to cause genetic newation, which is an error in the dna replication series in the smallest amounts that we can currently measure. Some of these chemicals that are buried at the acl site release cyanide gas when they break down. I made remind you cyanide gas is used in death chamber for only the most hardened of chemicals, it's use here in Texas was prescribed and we went from that to the lethal injection. Would any of you continue to smoke cigarettes if you knew that your children would get sick and die before their life passed because of your smoking cigarettes? that's what we have here. We have used and then dissupposed of these chemicals in the ground. At the time we didn't take any precautions that it wouldn't seep into the ground or ground water. We just buried them in containers that we knew would rust through in 10 to 15 years, now our children are about to pay the price for that. Our children and our children's children for 8 generations. We smoked the cigarettes, but they are the ones that are going to get cancer and die from it. In documents held by tnrcc, the monitoring wells installed at the wmi site show steady but increasing contamination of ground water. This migration is apparently occurring through the layer of what's called weathered clay which is referred to as a liner. In which the chemicals were stored. This weathered claire consists of taylor clay, which is a top of soil -- a type of soil which was allowed to dry out and become weathered like the paint on an old house, just like the paint that has cracks, fractures, channels and missing chunks, so does this weathered clay. The cracks and fractures, et cetera, allow water to seep through the liner so that it is no longer watertight.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you very much for being here and your comments.
>> I do have a couple of people that have volunteered to give me time.
>>Mayor Watson: if they are here.
>> I did. You are Mr. Hutchinson, right. You have an additional 3 minutes, what's your name?
>> [inaudible].
>> You have up to six more minutes.
>> Hopefully I will not need the entire six minutes, sir.
>>Mayor Watson: what's your name?
>> I'm christina kubek.
>>Mayor Watson: we are already up to the full amount of time he's allowed to give. The concept was not give it all to one guy, really -- [laughter]. Say your name again, mary?
>> [inaudible].
>> 6305 -- Okay. And you are Mr. Gordon?
>> gorman. You will have up to nine additional minutes.
>> I shouldn't need that much Mr. Mayor. We were talking about how the weathered clay cracks just like the paint on an old house. Now they allow the ground water to seep through that liner, so that it is no longer watertight. Just like the paint on an old house that allows the wood underneath it to become soaked from the rain, so does the weathered clay liner allow ground and rain water to migrate through the stored chemicals, there by becoming contaminated itself. This ground water then follows the natural con tours of the land and runs downhill. Unfortunately, downhill is partially toward the applied materials site and therefore toward the harris branch subdivision and partially towards the water head area for walnut creek which eventually dumps into the Colorado river. I would like to give you the results of just one monitoring well identified as monitoring well number 2 a. This well is located on the southeast side of the wmi facility, adjacent to giles road. It shows a history of he will straighted sal lynn tee and chlorinated hydro carbons, what does that all that mean. Salinity that been three or four times that of the other wells. The monitoring wells operated by applied materials also shows elevated materials of chlorinated hydrocarbons indicating that it has migrated off of the wmi's property. It is reasonable to assume that it has reached highway 290 east and is moving towards decker lake or lake walter e long. At the recent solid waste advisory committee, City staff indicated that the difference in price between continuing to use the wmi facility and moving operations to the tds facility would be approximately 800,000 per year. This breaks down to approximately 50 cent per household per month or 6 dollars per household per year. The cost of continuing to use the wmi facility could be a lot higher than that. I have been informed by the regional office in dallas that they are looking at the possibility of placing the acl site on the comprehensive environmental responsibility compensation and liability act. Most people just call it super fund. When I ask about legal liability, they stated that the e.p.a. Usually apportions the cleanup Bill for the uses of the site based upon volume. Not upon content that was inserted in there. This would make the City of Austin potentially liable for at least some of the costs involved in a cleanup if one is required. A member of the e.p.a. Stated, you can assign authority, but not responsibility. He also stated that companies can go bankrupt. But cities are not aloud to based upon e.p.a. Super fund payment requirements. Something we found out earlier on today that was brought to my attention worries me quite a bit. In 1994, 1995, tnrcc requested a check for thalium, it's a heavy metals. There was no reason for them to -- that we could find for them to want to check for thalium except for one thing, and that is the fact that thalium is a carrier for radioactive nuketides. There was a firm here in Austin called Texas nuclear ink up by the old glascon boat factory, 183 and burnet road. Back when that was way out north of town, I know because my family bought a house way out there when there was nothing behind us but scrub. We were a little bit north of what was then called research road. Well, they are finding out now that that firm did a lot of defense contract work for what the military refers to as special packages. Everybody else calls them nuclear weaponry. Most people were not aware that the jj pickle site was built before it was called the jj pickle research facility was build with dollars given straight from the department of defense. For research in nuclear weapons capabilities. It was contracted to u.t. Austin. Ladies and gentlemen, if this was defense related research into music clear weapons, there will not be a paper trail. 20 Years in the military can tell you that they don't even admit at any location that they have nuclear weapons of any type. We are not going to find a paper trail if there's anything in there. And the fact that tnrcc requested a test for
thalium tells me they don't know if there's any radioactive waste in that site or not. In conclusion, I would like to say that I am not in favor of either one of the companies being awarded the contract. I do not, however, feel that the solid waste disposal sites are equal. The site operated by wmi has a history of problems and if they put the Texas 130 in at the preferred location, then the Austin landfill will be seen by anybody driving down the new highway. If the City Council awards the contract to wmi, then we just may be closing our eyes to a very real problem, a problem that our children and grandchildren will have to pay for. I believe that the City Council should, as you have already announced tonight, hire an independent firm to evaluate the risk of continuing to use the wmi facility and again as you have decided to do wait until a report by an independent firm has been made public before awarding any part of the contract to wmi. In the meantime, the City lawyers can research the super fund rules about liability. If we continue to act on the basis of coast alone, cost alone, the quality of life in Austin will give the phrasing south an entirely new and unwanted meaning. And our grandchildren won't see anything funny at all about somebody asking them for a cigarette. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you very much for being here, we appreciate your comments. [Applause] karen gladwin. She signed up against, lauren ross.
>> Good okay, Mayor, Councilmembers, my name is lauren ross, a registered professional engineer. From 1983 until 1991 I worked almost exclusively in the area of solid waste management. I have professional experience at 40 solid waste management facilities, I'm also a principal officer of the City of Austin's closed land study in Travis County. As part of that work we researched the industrial landfill contained within the waste management landfill. I think you should know that waste management has a history of environmental violations at their Travis County landfill. Those violations include the presence of organic chemicals in their ground water, methane in their methane detection systems and enforcement action by tnrcc for failure to maintain their landfill cap. I also have very serious concerns about waste management's proposal to remediate the closed industrial landfill. That landfill was operatesed without a permit. There are no complete or accurate records of the chemicals contained therein. The information that is available indicates that the chemicals included or organic solvents that are both volatile and carcinogenic as well as reactive chemicals. The procedures proposed by waste management for the close shirt of the landfill are not appropriate for hazardous materials. Tnrcc is regulating that waste as a solid waste closure because of the date of placement. They are not regulating with the hire standards of a hazardous facility because the material was in place in 1976 when the federal law was passed. Mr. Bob gregory asked me to investigate the relative environmental protections of compliance at the two landfills. I told him that I would not look at any material prepared by him or his consultants. Instead what I did was I went to tnrcc to review their official records and particularly what I looked at was the compliance history. I think that you should know, since you are probably not going to rifle through tnrcc records, that the Texas disposal system records for environmental compliance is the best that I have ever seen by a lot. It is a significantly careful, exempt player environmental record. Exemplary environmental record. The City of Austin has an opportunity with this contract to affect the level of environmental integrity and compliance associated with waste disposal in our community and I suggest that you support the landfill with the highest environmental compliance record. I think that the small difference in the cost per ton is a wise investment for a neighborhoods and community. Thanks.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. [Applause] jane falkenberg. She signed up against, ms. Klotz. Okay. Doc perryman.
>> [Inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: he's already spoken. Do you need to say anything more? I am asking him if he wants to. [Laughter]. This man wants to force you to talk some more and I am trying to protect you from that. [Laughter].
>> I yield.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. Melanie reese is not speaking, but signed up against. Kelly worser is speaking, but signed up against, michelle maupin is not speaking but signed up against. Renee koserek not speaking, against, richard keefer against. Andrew slagel against, joey broussard? against. Jeffrey Johnson, do not wish to speak, but against City contract with wmi, gale vitori. Welcome, thank you for coming tonight
>> I really don't have significant comments tonight. But I would want to say that as representative swac, if any Councilmember, City Manager has questions on our deliberations and meetings on this topic, I am happy to respond as is jd porter our chairperson who is also in the audience. But to emphasize croft mentioned the importance of traffic, that was part of our motion last night to -- in addition to requesting the technical review of the environmental issues that have been -- issues of concern, that we also engage staff to the extent that City staff is able to provide for us a very thorough analysis of what the traffic impact are. We haven't really received what we would consider to be an adequate response on the traffic issue. I'm sorry? [inaudible].
>> Both sites would be fine.
>>Mayor Watson: one thing I might mention as an aside, but yesterday the Council passed a ballot for the upcoming bond election and it also passed a resolution related to a certain expenditure of cash for capital items over the next six years. Onone of those items was to spend cash, didn't go on the bond, we are ready to move in that direction, for improvements to giles road. This has been something that's been a long time coming and people have seen a need to do. And so it passed yesterday on a vote of 6 to 0 with the Mayor pro tem absent was to go forward. I know a lot of you live out in that area, that is something that is of importance to you.
>>Mayor Watson: ann pikea. Thank you,sy. Gordon Robertson. Signed up against, David sideman.
>> [Inaudible].
>>Mayor Watson: I'm sorry.
>> I will bite my tongue.
>>Mayor Watson: don't do it too hard. Ricky, bird.
>> Pass, Mr. Mayor.
>> Thank you, sir.
>> Ann bennett.
>> I would like to speak.
>>Mayor Watson: please come forward, Mr. Bird against.
>> I know you need to go home to your families, also, but I have a three-year-old, I don't know what we can all make it here together and he would be quiet.
>> I am not a fancy speaker, I don't know pie charts or diagrams, however I am a mother and I vote. Our family chose harris branch to build our house so we could enjoy the big City of Austin without being in the big City. When we built this house, the dump was getting smaller, it was going to be closed down. Taking the City's trash will really affect the quality of life for my children, my child and our other children in our neighborhood. Please do not vote for this trash dump. I ask you to put yourselves in our shoes, would you vote to put a trash dump in your neighborhood in your children? there is another alternative that is not -- does not involve neighborhoods. Neighborhoods filled with blacks, hispanics, working people, retired people, but mostly importantly a whole school full of elementary school children who will some day be voters, thank you for your time.
>> Thank you. Brent bennett. Looks like you got the duty there. So Mr. Bennett signed up against. Charles caseen.
>> This is the first time I've been up here. I believe we need a glass recycling plant to cut down on the amount of trash that we throw away in the first place. That is what I am looking forward to. I hope we get it sometime this year.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. Those are all of the people that have signed up to speak. I appreciate the way you have expressed your views here tonight and I know the whole Council does. And we appreciate the situations that you are in and when this comes back up, after the report is done and made public, then there will be another opportunity for public input. So thank you all --
>> [inaudible] notice on the hearings, we have not been getting -- timely notice on some of these other hearings. [Inaudible] it would certainly help us to keep up with the situation.
>>Mayor Watson: what I will do sir is tomorrow I will get with some folks on staff and the City Manager I know will do that, too, we will try to figure out a way to make sure that you get appropriate notice, because you do need to have that. The motion is on -- Councilmember Lewis? loose loses Mayor, before we vote on the motion, I would like to say that I have talked to staff a good number of times about the contract, myself, I -- I don't have a problem with anyone bidding. What I do have a problem with is putting 30 years of garbage inside of the City. If we can keep from it. I realize that if we rebid this contract, it -- that wmi along with bfi has the opportunity to rebid. But I would think that more of the people that was in the decision making positions lived in that area it would be less enthusiasm to move that -- to move -- with the contract in that leaks in that location. It's another indication from the perception that everybody bad goes to East Austin and for some reason even though it's a little north of where I live, not far, just about two miles, you know, I don't -- we don't mind having a mountain and we are not trying to match the hill country out north of the lake by having a hill of garbage, but it -- you know, you can still see from it a mile or so away if you -- and -- but my thing that I have spoken with the City manager we realize that they will have the opportunity to bid. But I think that even if we was allowed to dump it over there free, the people that's in that area would say, no, I would rather pay to have it put someplace else. And with that, I think that we need to take a real close look at at it, not just from monetary value, but what it's doing to the sit distance of Austin. I realize that harris branch is not in the City, but you may be pretty soon. [Laughter]. I will say like Mr. Slusher said about another area. [Laughter]. But you know I think that maybe we need to take a serious look at where we -- what we are doing and why we are doing it and like I said, if -- I know that some people that -- that it don't affect their quality of life would say that I would rather do it in a place that is cheaper. But if you live there, then you would -- I don't think that you would agree to that. So ... With that I will close to say that, you know, beware of what you get, what you ask for, it may be something that you don't want.
>>Mayor Watson: motion has been made and seconded. Any further discussion? hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries with Mayor pro tem absent. Thank you all very much for being with us tonight. Council, we have about the same number of people that have signed up on items 59 and 78, since we have -- on -- item 78 was set for a time certain, I am going to go to item no. 78 First unless I hear some dissent. Item no. 78 Is a public hearing on the proposed 1998-'99 budget relating to the items of transportation and infrastructure. I will call that hearing to order. We have -- do we have a presentation from staff? we have a number of people that have signed up to speak. What I will do is I will ask you, I will call out three names at a time. I will ask you to come to the microphone and if you are the person that's following, please go to the empty microphone so we can move in a more efficient manner. Kirk becker, followed by jimmy castro, and then William pointer.
>> I am looking over there thinking of godzilla, anyway --.
>>Mayor Watson: it will make for good tv, but I ask you not to do it.
>> Okay. 78 Transportation issues, this is a tough one for me. I will wait. Ask you start it over?
>> sure.
>> I mean -- okay. Thanks. This is a tough one, I seem to be going against everybody on this asking for more changes in implementation usage than policy, which is especially difficult. It's easy to ask, just difficult to achieve concurrence. We keep talking about mass transit as something that everybody else is going to use. It isn't going to work that way. Especially in the downtown area. Where residents are a three minute car ride, a 15 minute bus ride from the bright lights of the City. Suburban nights further out are a 40 minute bus ride from downtown, also a 40 minute car ride is still 40 minutes on the bus plus however long you have to wait for the buses, closer to downtown there's a bus every 15 minutes for the 15 minutes ride. There are three library ies within walking distance from the central library, they are all in bus routes. I recognize the value of branch libraries and stabilizing neighborhoods. They are not sufficient by themselves, with additional development and violateization they may not be necessary in some cases. Vitallization. Some of the complaints of traffic parking overflow from auditorium shores probably residents from the neighbors taking up some of the parking spaces, the best way to relieve traffic and parking problems is for the inner City residents to ride the buses, bicycles or walk, which opens the streets for suburb banites traveling differences, I know it's horribly unselfish, but one most lick likely to work. Similar also from each employment centers just as it has for u.t. But the shorter trips are most likely to increase first. Thank you.
>> Mr. Castro, followed by William pointer.
>> Good evening, I am here to speak on my own behalf, I also serve as a member of the urban transportation commission in which I serve as chairman of the capital improvement projects subcommittee. I am here to speak in favor of the City of Austin public works and transportation department's recommendation, the urban transportation commission did vote unanimously to support the cip recommendation, your attention will be needed to consider all budget requests from the entire Austin community. Transportation is nearly as important as education in determining economic growth. The transportation fee is designed to fund, preventive maintenance on 10% of our street network. I would like to speak in support of the 3% increase in the transportation fee for the fiscal year '98-'99 to keep up with inflation and seen sure that we meet all of our annual goal for preventive maintenance on the 408 lane miles, 70 lane miles of overlay and 338 lane miles of seal coat. I would also like to speak in support of the following budget items: first, capital budget funding for one million dollars to remove architectural barriers for city buildings. Second, an addition of $1 million in capital budget for the a.d.a. Curb ramps and sidewalks. Third, repair construction of sidewalks in the vicinities of schools, 100 -- $175,000. Fourth, completion of the third and final year of the park and meter modernization. $273,000. Fifth, technology has become an important tool in the day to day operations especially in the funding critical technology needs. Including the year 2000, 3.5 million is recommended in departmental operating budgets to replace specific software and hardware in departments. And additional $3.5 million is proposed in general government capital budget. Finally, one of government's most important roles is to provide a solid infrastructure that supports our economy and society. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you Mr. Castro. William pointer. Followed by duncan is not speaking but is for the residential parking permit program. And her organization is oak park homeowners. Carol young. Carol young. Okay. Signed up for residential parking permits. From the oak park neighborhood association, thank you very much. Lucy buck will follow William pointer.
>> Mayor Watson, City Council members, I am William pointer. I am with the oak park open owners association. Several of us are here this evening to urge you to approve the transportation division's funding request for City-wide implementation of the residential permit parking program. We understand that the funding for the were the shall permit parking program is included in the proposed budget as an enhancement under the neighborhood traffic calming program. Oak park is located in southwest Austin and borders bowie high school. Unfortunately there's a severe shortage of parking spots in the bowie lot. Our community is plagued by bowie high school student overflow parking on several of our street. This parking creates all sorts of problems, specifically these problems are, number one, heavily congested streets with more than 100 student vehicles parked the last two weeks of school in may. This heavy congestion presents a real safety concern for several reasons. First of all, emergency vehicles would have considerable difficulty negotiating these streets and intersections responding to calls in the neighborhood. This congestion negatively impact travel flow and presents an unsafe situation. Many of the students parked on our streets speed and drive recklessly in the morning racing to class and in the afternoon heading home. Another problem presented by this overflow parking in oak park is the loitering by large numbers of students, littering of our streets and yards and burglarizing of student vehicles by other students. Fights broke out this past spring among students parked in our neighborhood. Additionally, from 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through friday, homeowners experienced partially blocked driveways, reduced access for trash pickup, recycling delivery, not to mansion the lack of parking for visitors in front of their own homes. Another problem is the fact that the overflow parking problem is negatively impacting marketability of homes. Ultimately all homeowners in oak park could be affected by these declines. Oak park has signed up with the transportation division to implement selectively the residential permit parking program once it is funded and expanded City-wide. The rppp would be effective in oak park in helping to relieve a major irritant and safety concern that is only getting worse. Please approve this funding request and give other residents in Austin like oak park the opportunity to safely and freely use their streets, thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, sir.
>>Goodman: could I add when this stays in our mind when we get to budget, oak park is a neighborhood that's been trying really hard to come to resolution on its robs for many years now. We have been able to help with some, but I think that this particular pilot program we started out with north university neighborhood is probably ideal for oak park and so I definitely will be pushing that item to stay in the budget and I am hoping after -- after they are speaking today that we will remember them for one of the first implementations.
>>Mayor Watson: I want to echo that. I think we have a number of neighborhoods that as we deal with smart growth and density issues and we have certain types of facilities that go near neighborhoods, that frankly we know will attract people and maybe want to attract people, to those areas, one of the ways that you can deal with that is programs like this residential parking permit program. I agree with Councilmember Goodman, I think everybody does, really, and I think we ought to utilize that sort of program in other neighborhoods in addition. I think it's worked out to be a good pilot and will help us with our smart growth initiatives as we address attracting people into certain areas. So -- thank you for being here tonight. Lucy buck. Loses see buck. She signed up for grade streets, alley repairs and downtown greenery maintenance. Excuse me. Charlie sullivan. Charlie sullivan, roger baker, Jr. Roger baker, Jr. Gus pena.
>>Pena: good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Councilmembers again, Gus pena, president of East Austin concerned hispanics, we talk about streets needing to be repaired, we talk about streets that never were repaired, we talk about streets that need vast amounts of money spent on repairing in East Austin. We talk about convict hill that needs to be repaired, William cannon and brodie needs to be repaired, downtown one block just east of City hall needs to be repaired. And what I said last week that my car can no longer be aligned properly, the steering is totally out of whack I wasn't kidding. I am one but hundreds of thousands of residents here in Austin. I will cut this short because I am going to sound redone dan. The bottom line is pump the money into street repairs. I always advocated to public safety, child care, housing, been there, done that, but again it's like the hold adage, pay now or pay later we are paying for it right now. Mayor I know you all will do the right thing, I echo about downtown and again also in the neighborhood areas, thanks you all very much.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, those are all of the people that signed up to speak at the public hearing, item no. 78, I will entertain a motion to close the public hearings, motion made by Councilmember Griffith, seconded by Councilmember Griffith, any skugts? hearing none hearing none, all those in favor say aye., motion carries.ud isle in the 25 year floodplain, there are no people that have signed up to speak on this item. So I would ask for a short presentation from staff, the look you just gave me, is there no way it can be short.
>> Yes, sir, very short.
>> The look I got I was worried you thought there was no way that can occur.
>> Okay. I'm jay elley, the project manager for the over transmission main for the water and wastewater utility. We put in a transmission main from the green water plant across red bud isle, we have park use agreements before this board, everything was approved. Part of the condition was that we would improve red bud isle. Currently there's a non- -- a non-controlled access vehicular route all away around the perimeter of the isle. The proposal was to construct a parking lot for 23 parking spaces and to convert the vehicular walkway into a pedestrian walkway around the island. And we are here because we are constructing a parking lot within the 25 year floodplain.
>>Mayor Watson: any questions? Councilmember Griffith?
>>Griffith: probably an obvious one, are there any drainage issues that needed to be addressed and if so has that happened?
>> no, ma'am, there had been for no drainage issues impact at all, this does not affect the 100 year floodplain.
>>Mayor Watson: any additional questions? Councilmember Slusher?
>>Slusher: I don't understand if it in the floodplain how there can't be any daij issues. Drainage issues.
>> Hike will address that. Mike will address that.
>> The structure itself being a parking lot, does not displace any water on the flood side of it. As far as the -- as currently the way it has, it has a road that goes around the island and people park anywhere along in the area. As a result of that, we've had problems with trash, we've had problems with the way people are parking. This gives a little bit more order to that and so the -- the amount of the space that's currently used for parking, the amount of space being added here, would offset each other.
>>Slusher: how many spaces are we talking about?
>> 23.
>>Slusher: that covers approximately how much space, what portion of an acre?
>> right offhand I'm not sure.
>> In relationship to the island, this is the area you are talking about.
>>Slusher: the circular thing.
>> Yes.
>>Slusher: are we taking out any trees?
>> no, sir.
>>.
>>Slusher: okay, it is going to be a paved lot?
>> yes, sir.
>>Slusher: did you all look into -- does the floodplain keep it from being non-impervious, there's some part like we talked about a parking lot at fiesta gardens where we are doing, I can't remember the term for it. Grass cerete, would that be possible here?
>> we didn't look into that. The parks department requested us to make it a parking lot. Of this magnitude and order. That's what we looked at.
>>Slusher: well, if we could do it without paving part of red bud isle maybe we need to, but I would have like to have had the expert advice on that before moving forward.
>> The aifmt that we are putting in is a concrete base and concrete so that if in the event that the water does come up, it doesn't wash out, also, so you don't have to come back in and replace it.
>>Slusher: I am sure that's wise. What about -- what would be the arguments against the grass secret having that there? can anybody discuss that with me? grass crete?
>> I'm ann young. I'm the landscape architect who was working on this project. One of the things that impacted the decision on the materials has to do with the fact that we do have a floodplain issue. One of the things that is different about this versus your site excuse me. In this case we have a lot of public access. The smooth walking surface was an extreme concern for them. In addition we have people carrying kayaks and that kind of thing. So the concrete was important to the parks department. In addition one of the things that we were concerned about was the quality of the water runoff. So something like an asphalt or something on that order was not of interest to us. This is a particular concrete system that should be your highest and best use, if you are going to work with impervious cover on the island. Does that answer your question?
>>Slusher: yeah, pretty much. So it's going to be your highest and best use as related to clean runoff or less dirty runoff?
>> it's clean runoff and also easy and convenient and safe public access. One thing that I will mention to you, the walking trail that goes around in the emergency vehicle access are both considered basically pervious. One is a granite path, a typical granite path that the parks system uses, the other is a terecel system that's completely pervious.
>> Is that where people will be carrying the -- the canoes and kayaks? because -- at the -- at -- like the 360 access, that's -- that's an impervious parking lot there, people carry canoes and kayaks down the trail without much problem.
>> Uh-huh. This section that I am talking about this is this section right in through here. It's a little bit more environmentally sensitive in an area that needs it. The area that the parking lot is proposed for is currently a very impacted area already. There are a lot of cars that are utilizing that area as it is. It's basically a cleared area. During the construction of the pipeline that is the area where the drill shaft will be located. So as far as impact is concerned, it's not as though they are going into the pristine area and the need for something like a grass crete is important. In this case the concrete is a better solution, a more stable solution.
>>Slusher: you did explore -- so you are telling me that you did explore non-impervious cover approaches.
>> That's correct.
>>Slusher: this is what your professional determination is is the best way to go on a number of fronts.
>> That's correct.
>>Slusher: okay. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: any other discussion or questions? I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing on item 79.
>>Griffith: so move.
>>Mayor Watson: motion made by Councilmember Griffith. Is there a second.
>>Lewis: second.
>>Mayor Watson: seconded by councicilmember Lewis. Any discussion hearing none, all those in favor say aye., motion carries, that takes us to item no. 80. I will entertain a motion with regard to item no. 80. Item 8 0 is the substitute motion whether or not to approve a variance request by the parks and recreation department to construct a parking lot for red bud isle to the 25 year blood plain. Motion made by Councilmember Lewis to approve. There is a second. I will second the motion. Is there any discussion? all those in favor say aye, opposed say no. Motion carries with Councilmember Spelman, Councilmember Spelman,.
>>Mayor Watson: -- I guess it wouldn't carry. Somebody has got to vote. Who -- anybody voting no?
>>Goodman: silence is deemed consent, I believe.
>>Mayor Watson: well, all right. [Laughter]. That's a anonymous vote. And he and he union unanimous vote. -- It's a unanymous vote.
>>Griffith: I am going to abstain.
>>Mayor Watson: by voice and silence the motion passes.
>>Slusher: I was voting yes because Councilmember Griffith's long expertise with the parks board. So I have a problem with that.
>>Mayor Watson: call the role.
>> Mayor Watson?
>> yes.
>> Councilmember Goodman?
>> yes.
>> Councilmember Griffith?
>>Griffith: abstain.
>> Councilmember Lewis.
>>.
>>Lewis: yes.
>> Councilmember Slusher?
>>Slusher: I will vote yes. [Laughter].
>> Councilmember Spelman?
>>Spelman: gosh, I could have abstain, but I will vote yes.
>>Mayor Watson: on a vote of five yeses, no nos, one abstention, the Mayor pro tem absent, the motion to approve the variance is granted. [One moment please]
>> there are a number of reasons that we are working through all the different smart growth inititives. One of those is the need to achieve quality in-fill in the urban core. Sprawl is an issue not just happening to Austin but happening all across the nation. Since 1950 density has decreased by 50% in america's largest cities. Austin is not unique. It's following the exact same national patterns. In 1960, 65% of the region's population lived in Austin. By 1990, that fell to 55%. And it's anticipated to continue dropping to less than 46% by 2020. New single family homes are being constructed outside the City of Austin at a rate twice that within the City limits. In 1950, 90% of the new single family housing starts were within the City limits. By 1996, we were getting 30% of the new single family housing starts. Transportation trends, further exacerbate the adverse impact of sprawl. In 1950, our region's average vehicle occupancy rate was a little under two person per car. By 1990, it was 1.1, by the year 2000 it's expected to be one. So what are we trying to accomplish? we have a loss of population. We have a need to find a way to attract quality in-fill and we have a loss of tax base that's occurring. There are a wide range of inititives as part of your smart growth initiative that are trying to combat this, trying to combat suburban sprawl, a diminished urban core, loss of tax base, fiscal challenges for inr City school district and urban design challenges. How are we going to address the lack of a loss of character for our City? so what are the goals and objectives? there are three goals of smart growth. You've heard it many, many times. The first is to manage how and where we grow. The second is to protect our quality of life. And the third is to enhance our tax base. The smart growth initiative, this matrix and this process particularly, are designed to help achif the following objectives. Redirecting growth from our most environmentally sensitive areas, creating a strong economic base in our urban core, protecting the economic health of our innercity school district, enhancing participation from and the vitality of our innercity neighborhoods, protecting the character of our City and its buildings, creating a vibrant downtown, including residential and supportive mixed use and finally to develop a viable transportation system through transit oriented design for all modes of trance it including pedestrian and bicycle. So how does the smart growth matrix, the business case analysis and the propose he had inisn't I have package work? the process is designed to recognize development in our urban core that advances your goals and your policy direction. Things like creating downtown residential development or promoting pedestrian and bicycle modes of transit as well as the creating of opportunities for quality urban in-fill. There are a number of reasons why quality in-fill doesn't occur. One of those has to do with risk and the other has to do with cost. We are hoping that by providing incentive packages we can off set some of those negative components. Land costs per buildable square foot are substantially more in the urban core than for suburban development. A fairly conservative way of looking at that is some $32 per square foot versus $21 per square foot in suburban development areas. When you add the cost of having to build up versus out, when you add the cost of the -- the cost of the shell or the skin of buildings, then that cost disparity increases dramatically. The first question when you are looking at ranking a project is is it quality in-fill and that's what the matrix that's in your backup is designed to help you determine. It's a tool to provide a score or ranking for the equal at a time I have
components of a development. After the score, if the score is sufficient to recommend an incentive package, then we go to a business case analysis. That business case analysis is a quantitative tool to determine what is the cap, what is the not to exceed amount you want for a infrastructure packet. For these purposes we've chops even a very conserve -- chosen a very conservative model and that's going to incremental property tax increase. There are lots of other spin off benefits. Captured sales tax, new jobs, a variety of different benefits that we aren't capturing in this analysis. So it's a very conservative but very solid way to approach the business case. So now you've done two things. You've used the matrix to determine the qualitative score, you've used the business analysis to determine the qualitative analysis, so how do you structure an incentive package? we propose three funding sources. The funding sources are fee waivers, they attorney general dan morales and enterprise sources, a utility investment with a not to exceed amount equal to a ten year cash break even analysis. And accelerate infrastructure as an investment. The sources of funds for the infrastructure packet have been very carefully selected. They've been selected in a way to minimize the impact on the general fund, to allow you to use this tool repeatedly with -- as you choose to rank and to score projects coming through. I would like to stress that the matrix should be considered a living document. We recommend that every six months we come back and report to you on what you've achieved by using the matrix, what are the type of developments projects that have gone through this matrix, have you achifd some additional downtown residential, have you arrived the form of development you are looking for and so each six months we come back to you with outcome measures. That gives you a chance to look at the matrix and calibrate it. Are you waiting for the right things? if you are -- if you are not having much get through, not much is happening in the urban core, you may want to race the incentive package. If you are looking at what is coming through and we have a floud of projects coming through, things look like they are beginning to develop on their own, you may want to lower the incentive package. You are getting a lot of mixed use but not a lot of residential, you may want to wait the residential -- weigh the residential differently. So we're talking about coming to you should you choose to accept this tool as a way to make some of these decisions and take the risk of giving incentive packages to see if you can create not just where development goes but the form of development. That we come back every six months with a report on outcome. There should be a point in time after you've seeded and changed the momentum of the development that you may want to reduce or even eliminate giving incentives to development. The specific recommendation on the Austin marketplace, the Austin marketplace, think of fifth and sixth street near lamar. It's a mixed use 5 10,000 squire foot of retail commercial. It has an 8 0,000 square foot class a office component that will start shortly after phase one. The original request of the Council is $7.3 million of which $4.5 million was an addition to structured parking. The qualitative analysis or the matrix score for the Austin marketplace was 370 out of a possible 600 points. That total far exceeds the threshhold we established in order to recommend an incentive infrastructure packet for this development. The business case analysis, and this depends on what discount rate is used in the present value calculation, and I know Councilmember Spelman has some questions about that and betty is going to run you through active of different
scenarios, but using different rates from five and a half percent which is what we originally used all the way up to eight and a half percent, you get a range for a not to exceed amount of $2,156,989 to $2,482,495. Using five and a half percent, which was the original cap we used, we would have said that this project should not have an incentive package to exceed 2,482,495. The actual recommendation when you look through the three funding sources or ways to put the package together is 2,182,266 dollars. That includes a utility investment for both reimbursing of some lines as well as accelerate infrastructure on a 30 inch main, it also assumes some accelerated infrastructure on swaution and ramps and it is 100% fee waiver as well as a license agreement for some right of way and airspace issues involving this development. Probable the last thing I would like to say is that any agreement, this or others that we recommend to you, would be contingent on approved interim financing and that once a development is scored, should any of the design features that we use to score the projects change, that would also be a reason to revisit the infrastructure or incentive package. With that I think I will just step back and any specific questions on the matrix, Austin is here to answer. Any questions on the business case analysis betty is here to help walk you through.
>>Mayor Watson: Council, before we go into discussion, I might say one thing about this which is that I think that based on some of the kaktsz I've had from other parts of the country, we've got a situation here where we're doing something that really is probably on the cutting edge of smart growth in terms of attempting to do things in a way that make sense, and people are interested in, fascinated by and want to see if they can replicate. I think because it is kind of the first, that we recognize that we're doing something that we're not going to have all the answers to right now. Much of it is a great experiment that ought to be very beneficial to the citizens of Austin, particularly when we're working to capture a greater percentage of the sales tax base in the region at a time when we are actually losing sales tax base on a relative basis. Our sales taxes are going up, but on a relative basis as compared to surrounding areas we see that going down. Part of what smart growth is is trying to figure out ways to do that in your urban core where you can increase sales tax. But because we are feeling our way through this and there will be times when we don't have all of the answers, I think it's important that we set up a process where once we start using this matrix, we probably revisit it in six months and step back and look at it again, do an analysis of what is come in, what have we looked at, how do we want to approach it, do it again three months later and again in another three months so we have data we can analyze on a six, nine and 12 month basis. It may be, and since we're doing this new, I'm making this up as I talk, it may be what we want to do is at the end of six months, if it is successful -- let me back up. Historically a lot of things haven't been happening downtown. A place where we say we want this kind of growth. You know, we can ask a lot of questions about why that is true. Part of the reason we know is we make it pretty expensive to work downtown. If what happens is this works, a sign that it is working is we're going to have people ask to do this. That is not a negative thing. If we get some or a lot of people that say can we utilize this and they want to be run through the matrix and we're able to energize and encourage development downtown that is correct is a sign that what we're doing is working. But we ought to analysis that data to make sure we're doing it in a smart way and at the end of six, nine months, a year we analyze that data and find maybe there's too many waivers that would be occurring, we might want to fix it or calibrate it or redesign it in some way and that's one of the good things about doing something where you are pioneering it, and that is that you have the opportunity to make adjustments in it. So I would recommend that be part of whatever we do also is that we evaluate it on an ongoing basis and make it a dynamic kind of project.
>> The other thing I forgot to mention just in case you missed it, we have a three dimensional model right in front of us that when the Austin marketplace takes their five minutes to explain to you they wanted to you visually see the project.
>>Mayor Watson: and I think there was too much noise going on as we were ending the one public hearing been Mr. Becker came up to speak and paused and made some comment about godzilla. [Laughter]. I even occurred him while that would make good tv he probably need to do stay away. Are there any questions of staff or any other comments right now? all right. I'll entertain a motion with regard to item no. 59. Is silence consent here too? I'm sorry? there's a resolution.
>>Goodman: I would move approval of the resolution before us.
>>Mayor Watson: the motion made by Councilmember Goodman to approve the resolution is in your backup regarding item no. 59. Is there a second? I will seconon the motion. Before we go to discussion of the Council, what I would ask is that we go to the speakers, and ms. Futrell has said on more than one occasion you all wanted to make a five minute presentation but you brought about 40 minutes worth of presentation. You are welcome to come forward and make your presentation. And Mr. Slosser, would you please tell me how you wish to proceed on this?
>> many of the speakers have given the first two speakers the time so --.
>>Mayor Watson: you and Mr. Moreno are the speakers?
>> yes.
>>Mayor Watson: according to our rules, you have been given more time than the rules allow but you have up to 15 minutes.
>> I'll take less time.
>>Mayor Watson: then Mr. Moreno will have up to six minutes.
>> That's fair.
>>Mayor Watson: welcome, sir.
>> Thank you. Mayor Watson, fellow City Council members, I'm brad slosser and I'm a partner at the Austin marketplace at sixth and lamar development. I am proud to have made Austin my home for 20 years, including my tenure in college and graduate school at the university of Texas. I wish to thank you all for all of your time and energy considering our proposal. We also extend our appreciation to the City manager and assistant City managers. The numerous department heads, staff members and professionals that we have had the pleasure to work with over the past many months. And more intensely over the past several weeks. Members of the Council, today you will act specifically on the request by marketplace for direct City incentives. Additionally, you will -- your action will establish benchmarks on a spectrum of related issues. Austin's economic stability and growth, our community's quality of life, the redevelopment of downtown according to smart growth principles, and the appropriate level of public funding. Detering as toby said, urban sprawl, paired with recapturing the urban car. The kind of message Austin sends to national and local companies that are considering investment in our City. And finally, the means by which we prove that Austin is indeed an emerging vision anterior multi cultural progressive world class City. We urge you to consider the following relevant points. As you measure the unprecedented opportunity that marketplace offers to the City marketplace is great business for Austin. Allow me to review the revenues marketplace is generating for the local economy. $70 Million in property construction labor and materials and soft costs will be pumped directly into our local economy. More than $1 million in planning and design costs have already been expended to 13 different local architectural and engineering firms. Major narl and local businesses, some new and some familiar have pre leased space and will contribute additional investment dollars into our economy. Conservative to moderate financial projections indicate at the present value, over a ten year period, will include the following. $2.5 Million of incremental property taxes. $1 And five million 600,000 of incremental utility revenues delivered directly to the City's general fund with an additional $1,250,000 of incremental sales tax to capital metro. In sum, marketplace will generate more than $10 million of additional City revenues. These are substantial revenues to the City of Austin. Especially when contrasted with the City's net potential investment in the marketplace. Not including potential fee waivers, our revised proposal contemplates approximately $1,100,000 and $1 million of new infrastructure by the City both of which total not more than about 20% of a total revenues provided by marketplace to the City. Bottom line windfall for the City of Austin, net of our proposed City investment or even the staff's recommendation is between $8 million and $10 million depending on the size of the City's contribution. Marketplace will be a downtown Austin landmark. The american trend is suburban and the suburban retail mall has a backwarder ro of quote unquote sameness, thus diminishing the character aesthetic diversity and civic identity of our structures. By and large our places of work, residence and leisure are increasingly becoming who moj niced. At its very essence marketplace up holds the notion of place making. Bringing to Austin and to downtown a prot toe typical town square. Overflowing with authenticity, artistic uniqueness and high standard design style. To become an Austin landmark, marketplace promises to deliver to our citizenry design elements that go beyond the typical attraction of retail, entertainment, dining and shopping by establishing
people space that is ak sen you the eight by courtyard, by fountains. Marketplace will have pedestrian streets that connect to existing sidewalks. Arrest advertise particularly crafted benches and tables, street side shops and cafes, multi access and connect toift a cleaned up Shoal creek greenway, all energized from the marketplace heart, its courtyard plaza where people can connect as families, as friends, as neighbors, co-workers, civic groups, consumers, tourists and visitors. Marketplace has a crate cal mass of neighborhood support -- critical mass of neighborhood support. We are very proud our pro-active efforts have received the support of the respective surrounding neighborhood stakeholders. In doing so we have embraced the concerns and ideas of those organizations who endorse this project. Including the old west Austin neighborhood association, the trust for public land, the Austin metropolitan trails Council, the downtown Austin alliance, the downtown development advisory Council, the parks foundation, the City staff, the urban transportation committee, the Planning Commission, the recently formed west end district alliance, as well as many other stake holding restalers and agencies. Successful down towns do not just happen. They happen when the municipal leadership commits itself to public-private partnerships. The cure ordinance, the regional urban downtown advisory team process, the daa and now smart growth are all examples of Austin's growing commitment to raise the quality of life and reap the benefits of a strengthened tax base. How many major entertainment and mixed use projects rm built in Austin, Texas downtown before cure and smart growth? none that I'm aware of. Now with development interests more focused on downtown, your challenge is to define the reasonable range of the City's support tore the projects that prove their value on the smart growth matrix. Marketplace has completed its matrix evaluation and has emerged with its top category score. We take great pride in knowing that the Austin marketplace has been the first test case for this process and we believe that the collective knowledge generated will benefit Austin, its downtown and City process as additional new and exciting redevelopment projects step forward. We hope that we have set a high standard for projects that will be evaluated by the smart growth matrix and that your consideration for partnership will strongly take that into account. Please remember that when you consider the funding support package for marketplace, please factor in the construction cost differences between downtown and the suburbs. The conservative financial fact is that marketplace costs $26 million more to build in downtown Austin than in the sub burst. $26 Million additional dollars for us as a private develop tor embrace downtown redevelopment. That reason and that amount more than any other is why smart growth and the financial incentives are needed. Smart growth and your partnership with marketplace will help us to level the playing field for construction cost differences between downtown and the suburbs. Additional copies of our study analyzing this are available to you after I finish speaking. This is but one of many tolls that the public and private sector must address in stopping debilitating urban sprawl. Our shared investment is worth it because the future cost savings are potentially enormous. For example, new soldiers any 1992 passed a statewide plan to contain sprawl and direct new investment near traditional urban centers based on a study completed by rutgers university. They calculated that the state could save $1.3 billion in capital costs alone for roads, sewers, utilities and schools, and $400 million in operating costs. Members of the City Council,
the choice is clear, the timing is perfect, revitalizing and redeveloping Austin's downtown is here and now. Never before has there been such a consensus by City leadership to pioneer the partnership needed to lift up downtown Austin. It all starts with our project the marketplace. The City of Austin and lamar sixth Austin limited have the opportunity to be partners for a vision anterior project that at the end of the day represents great business, creates an Austin landmark, raises the civic quality of life, brings high standard downtown redevelopment, satisfies the neighborhoods, gets smart growth done right, gives urban sprawl a run for its money, and signals national private invest tortion that Austin is truly ready. Within weeks we will break ground onn Austin marketplace and then a little more than 15 months later around the beginning of the new millenium the doors of the marketplace will open to the citizens of Austin. At that time it would be our pleasure and joy for our partner, the City of Austin, to join us for a movie or a stroll to Shoal creek and a friendly conversation in the courtyard. Thank you very much for your time. I would like to introduce Mr. David moreno, a design architect for a short presentation on the design of marketplace and how it reflects particular components of the matrix.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. Welcome. Mr. Moreno.
>> Thank you, Mayor, City Council, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you tonight. The partnership has been working on this kind of mixed use projects for 20 years. For many of those years it was overseas. After the american recession we see a much stronger interest in doing this kind of projects in down towns. We're currently working on projects similar to this in phoenix, arizona, salt lake City, kansas City, heart forward, connecticut and niagara falls, new york. I thought the best way to go through the project would be by explaining the project and other projects in context of four very strong urban planning goals. And they also happen to be the same goals that I see in the matrix, which I was here last week to have a presentation. First one is location and critical mass. And do you have enough program to create a destination. Because a destination and the right location will stimulate redevelopment and in-fill. This is a project we opened recently in japan and it's about two million square feet on eight and a half acres of land. For the first two years 16.4 million people have shown up. It was in a poor area of the City, the growth had been moving in a different direction, and this project totally revitalized the City. Where now you see new projects beginning to come in all around it. In fact it was the japanese version of news week, they voted on the ten best asian cities, and this City was no. 1 And they just happened to use our project on the cover so I really think that's truly creating a destination. This is City walk in los angeles. We also did this. It's brought the tourists which we knew that it would, but it's also brought the local population. Los angeles, as like many other cities, has very few destinationings where you can find true mixed use. Ublg drive your car, park, go to dinner, movie, have a cocktail, go dancing, do shopping, all without moving your car six times. The place making quality, that's what our business card said, doesn't say planning r planners or architects, it says place makers. The only thing that matters to us is how many people show up. You can see in our -- these projects, it's many, many people. This is downtown san diego, horton plaza, which was a horrible downtown 15 years ago. The project came in with I believe it was $7 million of public funding to do the parking, for the same reason as this project needs incentives, no developer could handle the net. It's become not only a very famous shopping center but a tourist attraction. It's also stimulated $5 billion in growth in the surrounding blocks around it. Now we're at the marketplace site. We're looking along sixth street here, fifth here, downtown here and the marketplace site here. If you look at the map, you can see that at guadalupe pretty much the urban context of the City ends and it ends rather abruptly. We believe that a project like this of over 500,000 square feet will create a destination that destination will then cause people to start moving from downtown to this site in a pedestrian way which will then stimulate redevelopment in the four blocks in between. The second item I would like to talk about is compatible neighborhood planning, integration of the project in the surrounding neighborhoods in terms of scale, material, style. This is a project in dell March, which is a three story retail project, broken down to be compatible with the scale of the neighborhood. It very natural, outdoor. The clue is from european hill towns where you can see the builds aren't really important it's the overall organization that makes the space special and it's the place inside between the buildings where it's life is. We've tried to orchestrate this project into a village scale. Instead of making one big shopping center it's a
collection of little buildings. And public spaces in between. For instance, here's a fountain court in a project of ours, the same size we're talking about this this project. It's about a 6,000 square foot space. You can see it there in the middle of the rendering. Another view of it. We believe this will become a very important public space in the City, a place for people to go, not just to a movie, to shop, but just to go to hang out. Project in australia we did which was a three story shopping mall that we broke down, trnd into a village gave it more of a town center life rather than a shopping center. The next issue is create an active pedestrian network. We have connections from the creek, the City sidewalk flows right into the project, right into the courtyard. It's accessible to store fronts at the street level on all sides. This in fact is a view from sixth and lamar from the corner with the shopping street curving into the project.
>>Mayor Watson: Mr. Moreno, Mr. Slosse are had four minutes left so I'm going to ask you they give thaw four minutes.
>> I only need about two and a half.
>>Mayor Watson: okay.
>> The alternative is hopefully what we are not going to see any more in this country, the suburban shopping mall where it has no context. Its only context is it sits in a sea of parking and it's 500, 600 feet from any neighboring use. The fourth item is creating a public amenity and usable open place. That can be done successfully in many, many ways. Fountains, grand plazas, parks this is a fountain in horton plaza which was a gesture to the public. This is a courtyard the same size as the courtyard we've designed. I show these because they show the space better than any rendering we could do, these are actually existing spaces. Public amenities, fountains, landscape and color. Color we think is also very important element where we haven't designed use buildings to be gray or beige or white but rather very colorful buildings. And we used the color to break down the scale of the walls to accentuate and break it down to a pedestrian scale and accentuate different forms and surfaces as different buildings components. One of these is outside the project, one of them is an interior elevation so the same color flows into -- throughout. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>>Goodman: if we turn the lights back on, I have a --.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. The next speaker is terry sheehan. I can't hear you. [Inaudible] okay. Signed up for. Curt becker. Uh-oh, here comes god zil I can't! [laughter].
>> I was talking to the county commissioners earlier this week, they've got a real bad problem, they've got a budget deficit in time of a boominging economy and I thought now what's going on there and I thought back to jim bob moffett's threats to bankrupt the City with lawsuits and looks like I bankrupted the county can infrastructure costs. [Laughter]. And I fear that we're going to have some of the same problems here with downtown development. Think back to the '8 0s. There was an expression if you owe a million dollars do the bank then the bank owns you, it can tell you what to do, control projects. But if you owe the bank $50 million you own the bank because they can't afford to let you go bankrupt. I think as we put more and more eggs in the downtown basket we come farther and farther being in that predicament. To hear the developers talk sounds like they are going to put in a downtown target where they grow money on trees and give it to the City. It's a retail development, it comes from us. It's our money and there is no reason it should be given tax abatements. The worst expression I hear is that the property is too valuable to develop without City subsidies. It just -- you are doing so much to promote downtown development, camping ordinance all that, I mean if you had a homeless facility and let the homeless run it at a co-op the property wouldn't be too valuable to develop. And I feel that we're not having a good balance here between downtown development and the needs of the City and the people who live here. They've mentioned before the need -- the thing that attracts them is the high number of consumers, high traffic patterns. And we get that through improving the bus system and things like downtown housing. As far as downtown housing goes, when it real expensive to live here, they mentioned aisd, aisd is in a predicament where they are going to have to give some tax dollars away to other cities, other cities within the state, they are going to have to revenue share because property values per student are so high in Austin. When they talk about running out of money to do things. You have the same problem with individual consumers. The more they spend on granite the less they can spend on this retail. And it's a lot more fun to spend money on retail than it is to spend it on rent. Finally, you should -- usually consumers have a stake in like if I go buy something and want a sales tax break, I could talk them into reducing the cost of goods otherwise I don't get the breek my sales tax. And any retail business, depends on the consumers, it depends on the employees. They are the ones who do the work. And usually when you give a tax abatement it should be a qid pro quo. The employees ought to get a raise, but this one goz straight to the property owner. [Buzzer sounds].
>>Mayor Watson: thank you.
>> I don't think you need to.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, Mr. Becker. Bill bunch. Bill bunch signed up representing himself only and he says he opposes if the development includes a chain bookstore that competes with book people. Charles betts. Charles betts. Representinging the downtown Austin april lines wrote daa has endorsed. Mark fer rar reof the old west Austin neighborhood association.
>> Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm the chairman of the old west Austin neighborhood association. I'm here officially to say that I want to -- we still strongly support the Austin marketplace development. I think we support it strongly because we've been involved, our members in the past wrx the uli's action new urban ifk conferences, u.t.'s projects, other charettes the City has and we will be participating in the conference on smart growth later this year so we're educated on new urbanism downtown revitalization and because of where we are located we live it every day. The marketplace is designed as a true urban public place that has a fair amount of public space in it as well. Space where weem will want to be even if they don't want to patronize the theaters and stores at that moment. A few weeks ago juan cotera gave a briefing as which he defined downtown as from barton springs to I-35 plus the neighborhoods next to those boundaries which includes old west Austin. Downtown revitalization is important and must go done as well as possible especially here in the beginning. Unfortunately downtown and near downtown already have the architectural nightmares of the downtown post office and the hye h. High rise public storage box and will likely get the suburban sprawl extended stay america hotel across from the post office. So we already have kind of a bad trend starting for downtown. To give an example of where this project is really following through on these principles, they are going to great expense to have underground truck docks. This will keep the surface area and above attractive looking from all sides and dense. We understand density, we're one of the most dense neighborhoods in the City. As an example of the other site, whole foods market across the street has surface truck docks and that -- they have views of a wall on henderson and then an unattractive work space on sixth street. A little while ago Councilmember Lewis mentioned during the landfill item that was earlier that the City should look into more than the dollars but also what it will do for the City. And iwana agrees with that, we support these incentives, we probably even would be -- or I would be interested in seeing more incentives offered to this developer. Additionally, something that's being put on hold is the idea of the parking garage. We're supportive of parking. There is already a need for parking in the area. We've got a lot of spillover parking coming into the neighborhood. I think this would be something especially as we get into light rail when that happens that this will be an excellent location. And as was mentioned a little while on another item earlier, when the City goes to the residential parking, we'll be will and parking will be even more dear in this area. Thank you.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you. Jim thompson.
>> I yield some of my time.
>>Mayor Watson: say that again.
>> I yield some of my time back to brad.
>> This is the last card so if you want to take any time, you would have this. Okay. Thank you. And Mr. Thompson signed up in favor. Those are all the people signed up to speak on item 59. Let me just say a couple things real quick based on some of the things so there is no misunderstandings. First of all this does not involve tax abatements. The smart growth matrix and the potential for mechanisms to encourage smart growth and encourage quality development downtown, you will get some development downtown, the question is whether or not you are going to get quality development down down unless you do certain things from the smart growth perspective. And the ability to have from a business perspective good business where you make money for your citizens, and it's interesting to hear one of the comments made -- all right. To hear some of the discussion about the county. You know, when you bring good development that pays property taxes and you allow for that quality development that increases the property taxes that are collected then by the county, and it also helps our school district, our school district has a goal of changing its current tax base to where it is less predominant residential and more predominant commercial, because they consider that to be a more stable tax base. Being able to encourage this kind of good development also helps our school district. But that's not done with tax abatements. This package that we've been working on as part of this pioneering of smart growth involves fee waivers, it involves utility construction costs and it involves creating accelerated infrastructure. What that means is that the City would be able to move forward with certain projects that it would move forward with certain projects, the impacts this particular development in a quicker time frame. I just say that by way of clarification based on some of the things we heard from the speakers. According on you are rules a person can signed up and speak so long as they sign up before the last speaker has finished, and in that case karen akins made it just barely.
>> Thanks.
>>Mayor Watson: sure.
>> I just wanted to take the opportunity to come here tonight to dispel the myth I'm just a big complainer. [Laughter]. I have been at this podium many times on zoning cases at City Council meetings opposing really bad development proposed in our neighborhood and a lot of times the neighborhood has had their way and we've won, sometimes we don't win, like the public storage buildings that is on fifth and sixth street. And the reason we -- I've always tried to stop bad document is to allow good development to come in and I think this is a prime example of the kind of development that is compatible with our neighborhood in every way and as far -- furthers our goal. It's the gand daddy of all in-fill projects. I just wanted to say this is an example of what can happen when the developers and the neighborhoods work together. Keep up good communications throughout the process. And you don't really hear much about the project and the relationship between the two because we talk to each other every week, every month, they've been really good about floating ideas to us and anyway, these good experiences never make the news so I just wanted to be here and say this is a real positive experience for everybody and hope you guys can support this. Thanks.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you.
>>Slusher: Mayor? let me ask Mr. Slosser a few questions. You mentioned you've got some folks pre leased and I think you provided those documents to the City. Could you tell us who you have pre leased?
>> yeah, we have given a list to the City in the list of tenants I just wrote down through target stores, theaters, office max, in responses to Mr. Bunch's concerns, not only is book people not in competition with a national bookstore but they are one of our tenants. They are relocating into our shopping center. There's a fitness center, a music store, furniture store, starbucks is on two sides of the project. A cafe, cafe, a lounge, Johnny rockets just to name a few. The total project size in phase one is 4 20,000 square feet and about 84% of it is pre leased.
>> Could you elaborate -- I'll wait until he gets through talking to you. Could you elaborate a little bit on what you said about the cost of building downtown versus building in the suburbs.
>> What we did was we broke the cost of construction up into three particular categories, and the categories were essentially land cost, which is clearly more expensive in downtown Austin than in suburban Austin. Structured parking versus surface parking, and the third category was basically just the shell building costs associated with building in a downtown location. Its vertical nature and there are many components that go into a shell building. The land cost difference was based on an average accuse in the suburbs of about six to seven dollars per square foot versus the actual cost in the marketplace which was significantly higher than that. The structured parking garage system costs on average approximately $6,500 per space and a parking garage system versus just the cost of grading and paving in the suburbs. Just basically a parking lot. The disparity in cost for the structured system in the case of the marketplace was about a $6 million difference of cost. The disparity of cost for the land component was about four and a half milliononon there was about a $16 million component cost and that was made up of about seven or eight different items including things like underground truck docks, add-on structure to build up as opposed to out, the skin premium of building around the entire building as opposed to just versus a facade like you have in the sub burns for these quote unquote power centers. Fire rating, the structures, the pedestrian areas, a central plant as opposed to rooftop systems, flood way and drainage way areas and the right of way improvements. Those made up a total of over $16 million in disparity.
>>Slusher: thank you.
>> Sure.
>>Mayor Watson: any other discussion?
>>Spelman: just a followup to Councilmember Slusher's question a moment ago. I wouldn't ask you to give away trade secrets but is there a way you could item ice that so I could have a look for future reference?
>> sure. We have a complete backup data on this so we can give you the items that have been given actually to the City Manager's office with regard to the disparity cost break down.
>>Lewis: I have a question. Where did you make comparison of land?
>> we used a general cost of land in the suburbs of around six to seven dollars per foot and that's arguably about the average cost, could be more, could be less. The cost in downtown Austin unfortunately we have set a new high for purchasing land in downtown Austin. We're not proud of that but we had some very proud owners. [Laughter].
>>Lewis: what -- let me ask you one other question then, and I know it's going to be asked numerous times, what is it that makes you think that -- or what is it that makes the project more advantageous to the owners by being in Austin versus being in the suburbs?
>> I'll try to answer that and I'll certainly ask the architects to join in any time. I think the primary reason why this type of project adds to the flavor that the entire City of Austin appreciates is because it is in fact in the downtown core and it brings back to the City what much has happened as toby discussed in her discussion which is the flight to the suburbs. And the sprawl that's going on around the country and Austin is no different, is the problem child of cities. Not just because of taxes but because I think what happens is you lose your identity in cities -- I don't want to mention necessarily places that are more honogenous in nature, but not differentiated because they all look the same. You can walk into any mall around this country and but for if you knew what City you were in you would have no idea which City you were in because they all look alike. The same is true in some respects with regard to residential neighborhoods and suburban strip centers. So what we've tried to do, which is is what David's firm is recognized nationally for is we have tried to identify not just a great location, but also we have tried to enhance it and embellish it with a certain design criteria, a standard that in many cases we've tried not to discount but for the cost differences we have worked very, very hard at value engineering that to make this the place that we're talking about. I kind of want to turn it over to David to answer that question any more thoroughly.
>> Thanks, brad. There is definite national trend. People -- you know, during the 60's and 70's everybody moved to the serb bushes and that's what everybody wanted, speptd space, peace and quiet. Now human beings are different. They are all want to go come back downtown. You have a position of picking the jewels that are out there and locating them along your main corridor. If there is a market for a project that makes sense for a develop tor build, it will get built somewhere. So rather than have these built scattered all throughout the suburbs it's better to bring them together into the town down. Then you begin to have a benefit of the parking, shared parking, getting people that can work and go out in their leisure time in generally the same area, not have to drive back and forth. Don't make the mistake like languages made because that's where I'm from and everything is all built out now and there's no continuity between anything and the buildings are so big that you can't demolish them. This City, you have the opportunity to create a real downtown core on fifth and sixth street that -- that can be as lon as you want it to be six, eight, ten blocks by making sure that everything that happens along it is a real vool and you are -- jewel and you are left with a string of pearls for a downtown and that's a great position to be in. Because things in between this project and your downtown, you know, are not immovable things. It is fairly underutilized land.
>>Mayor Watson: any additional discussion?
>>Spelman: Mayor, I thought I heard Councilmember Lewis ask you a different question so let me see if I can ask it differently. If you are spending $26 million nor to build it downtown presumably you are going to be able to get a much bigger return on your investment here than you would be getting in the suburbs. More even return on square footage than in the suburbs. What's the basis for that? why do you think you can make more money here than in the serb bushes.
>> I want to respond because that's kinds of my area but just to make it very clear, fortunately or unfortunately from the standpoint of us as the private owner of this project, Councilmember Lewis and Councilmember Spelman, the disparity in costs have been so expensive that the return on this project, and we have confirmed that with ms. Dunkerly, is actually respectively lower than the suburbs and that's because the costs are different. So and the fact of the matter is that we are also trying to create or justify that this is in fact a separate market unto itself. So as this becomes and confirms itself as a separate market and the return will ultimately maybe bear out, but for now the return from the standpoint of just comparatively speaking is not -- not what it is generally compared to the suburbs.
>>Spelman: what is the bank loaning you the money think about this?
>> one of the bankers is in the audience tonight. I think the bank is very conscious of that. We happen to have a lot of equity in this project. Not necessarily because we want to but because that's the fact of the matter. And so what we have done is we have clearly tried to maximize rents, but it's difficult to maximize rents in a market that is still unproven. And perfect example is situations like book people and local retailers who we want to bring back the local flavor, but we have to prove to them that this is a real market. And so we're kind of betting, if you will, that the market is here, and I think that whole foods has helped us justify that with their location across the street and there is also a small shopping center catty corn of corner to our project, but I think this will help confirm and justify that the market really exists and I think that we have added certain layers of insurance to our bank, chase bank, for this accommodation by bringing upon people who were professionals in their respective fields like David's firm who knows about the pedestrian experience and that insurance policy on top of the fact that we have hired what we consider the best group of professionals will help alay the concerns of a lower return
>>Spelman: thanks.
>>Slusher: Mayor, I have some questions of ms. Futrell. [One moment please].
>> That's the definition of one of the three categories of sources of fund, which is accelerated infrastructure. That we move up or accelerate because it benefits the particular development under evaluation.
>> And we're putting in water, wastewater lines at 225,200.
>> The 10 year cash break even analysis of the water wastewater utilities would allow an investment of a little over, a little under, a little over $300,000. This is a new customer, incremental cost analysis and so one of the things that we'll do as part of this is we'll assist in reimbursing some of the cost of the water wastewater lines. That adds up to 225,$200.
>> And then we're replacing the bowie street line at a cost of 230,dollars.
>> This is already on the maintenance schedule, but it will be moved forward to 1999.
>> There is a major main, 30 inch main somewhere between three and seven years we would have rehabbed this line. This line happens to run right in front of the major entrance of this project, so there are a couple of things. Clearly the development has a strong interest in making sure that there isn't a problem down the road which would shut down the whole front of one side of their project. On the other hand, for us it's a cost benefit. The sidewalk work, the road work that's already occurring makes it easier for us to do the rehab now, so we're moving it up in our cip plan for water wastewater. Surb slush so this is 10 r. 104,000 And at least two-thirds of that is what the city would put out anyway: the other third would be considered an investment in getting this customer who will be a profitable customer on the system.
>> Yes.
>>Slusher: and that's all the cash or the funds that the city is putting out. And then we're proposing some fee waivers, which would be $9,000 in review fees, 55,000 in lieu of the water quality pond, construction inspection fees of 53 hundred, plan review fees, 28,000, shell permit, 301. What's that ti permit?
>> it has to do with tenant improvements. It's when the tenants make some of their move in improvements, their inspection fees, permit fees.
>>Slusher: and we're waiving the temporary use of the right-of-way, about 552 and the air rights on the bowie right-of-way.
>> The bowie right-of-way and air rights for a variety of reasons, it's not a fee waiver, but we're putting it in this category. We're basically doing a license agreement.
>>Slusher: and the waiving the capital recovery fee, so basically we have about 1.5 million in fees that won't be collected as an incentive to help these folks build downtown.
>> That's exactly right and that's sort of the opportunity costs but one way to make sure you're not having to pull from funded general fund expenditures to find some cash, some pot of cash. So fee waivers is a major way we are proposing to handle the incentive packages.
>>Slusher: okay. That's all my questions. Mayor, I might want to make some comments after the motion on the table.
>>Mayor Watson: there's a motion on the table.
>>Slusher: maybe I better jump in there.
>>Mayor Watson: why don't you talk.
>>Slusher: I think it's good to say that -- I was a little behind. That this is early to leave it open, that this doesn't set a precedent, we're going to readjust this matrix. I think the staff did a good job on the matrix, not just to provide incentives, but for judging the type of development we'll get downtown in the central City, period. And my knee jerks a little about any subsidy to development and we've been trying a long time to get retail back downtown and we really haven't done it. But when I -- let's say a couple of years ago before I was on the Council, that the one was the City invest $60,000 into getting a mall downtown. We just heard the City is putting in $600,000 in cash to this is the proposal. And a million and a half in fee waivers as opposed to 60 million dollars we were supposed to put in to a private development. I always thought that was absurd and I still do. I think that's a good illustration of how far we've come. And I'm glad that we've hung tough on not putting up that 60 million. And like I said, I don't like -- private subsidy is something I usually get real excited about or public subsidy to private development, but I can see looking at this as more of a partnership since we haven't gotten very much retail in the downtown, certainly nothing on this scale and we can see from the list, the list of the tenants that are preleased, that it's going to be a significant development, things like folks living in the central City for many years have had to drive to the out skirts to ben white or 183 to go to target or anything like that. I think that's very exciting that that's going to be at sixth and lamar along with all the other businesses here. So a lot of these things we always heard about the reason why we should put 60 million dollars into a downtown mall or why we should give tax abatements which we're not giving on this project, a lot of those things are true for this project, but we're not having to put up the -- anywhere near the level of public subsidy that has been asked in the past. So I'm glad we hung tough on that. I think this is a prudent move for the City to take. I would say we're going to have to work on the transportation because I think you are going to get a lot of folks down there and we're going to have to get more buses in there a and I know Councilmember Lewis down there is going to say that's my responsibility as a capital metro board member, so we'll work on that. And maybe ee ven wally eventually train when we get things worked out there at metro. But I think we're going to have to work on the transportation. It's going to bring a lot more cars downtown. I think that will cause more problems if we don't do something about mass transit in the area.
>>Mayor Watson: thank you, I'll say something real quick, and that is to he can co-the work that staff has done to help create the tools that this Council has indicated it wants to see in terms of trying to carry out its vision has been exemplary and so we ought to -- regardless of how this vote comes out, the amount of work and amount of imagination and thought trying to correspond with seven people's vision of what they want to see done with smart growth has been great and I want to thank you for that on behalf of the Council also. Councilmember Spelman?
>> if I can take a moment to plug that, you have to thank your new assistant director of planning and environmental conservation services and his staff, and this is an example with the City manage's recommendation to expand the planning section of that department, the kind of product I hope we're going to be able to bring you out of that unit.
>>Mayor Watson: that's an important point. The day we announced stand you out there on the east side of the town where the cameras could see what downtown looks like from the desired development zone as opposed to from the drinking water protection zone, one of the things the City Manager did that day was part of our announcement of smart growth was he announced the hiring of Austin la brock to help with the planning. I think that was a smart move and if you look at the proposed budget that he has now laid out as part of the policy budget -- I just realized what I said. It took me a minute. I'll catch up. But's talking about putting additional money into planning. And if you're going to talk about having smart growth, you ought to plan for it and so I certainly appreciate that. Councilmember Spelman?
>>Spelman: I want to second what the Mayor said about the wonderful work or staff has done to put this all together and let me offer a friendly amendment that incorporates some of the work the staff has done in the last couple of days. I don't want to explain where this number came from. Let me offer the number. If anybody wants an explanation, I think I will refer them on. I will be teaching public financial management for the first time this semester. I'm going to have to explain this discount rate stuff and I haven't figured out the right way to do it yet. I may ask betty to do that. Maybe that's the easiest thing for us to do.
>>Mayor Watson: why don't you do that.
>>Spelman: I'll take notes on your explanation, betty and I'll use it in class.
>> You would give me all the hard questions. I'm glad I don't take your class. That's all I can say. There is one number I'd like to show you that I changed on this analysis if you have that new analysis before you. It's the second number on that list where it says -- where I've subtracted the present assessed value. The first time we did that, that number was 17 million. Since that time the owners had appealed that to the appraisal district and I contacted art corey at the appraisal district yesterday and he faxed over their values after their appeals and that's where the 12.99 came from. So that number gave us a different bottom line to work with and that -- when I started applying the various discount rates as we call them in order to get the present value, I began used -- started with the 5.5%, which is what I used internally in the City when I'm doing a cost benefit analysis on a make or buy decision or whatever I'm doing and want a present value of the string of revenues. That's the costs -- that's the amount of interest rate that I make on money that I'm investing on average. It's a little bit higher than what I can borrow from a general fund projects, but it a pretty good number. The state and many of the federal agencies use a similar number on their internal projects because that's also close to the federal funds rate. However, there are any number of rates that you can use and the ones you select really depend on the type of project that you're trying to analyze. This particular project since we're dealing with the private sector, we could look at any number. And so I put -- went from five and a half percent. I also figured seven percent, seven and a half, eight percent and 8.5%. And you can see the various net present values there. As toby pointed out, go from about 2.5 million to about 2.2 million. Interestingly enough, the 8.5 number there is the prime rate right now, so what I've done is gone from my rate to the prime rate and really any number within that range I think could be used, but it might be more appropriate in some of these to use a higher number than what I used on my 5.5, since that's my incertainly number. I do want to reiterate this is not a -- this is not an analysis of the total benefits that this project brings. I think you will see on the analysis that the folks did at the Austin marketplace that that total benefit is going to be a little bigger for us as a city and as a community; however, we had recommended to Council that we use property tax as the key in trying to decide what the cap would be on our investments in these projects because we have to do it not one time, but hopefully many times in the next few months as we get very much desired development of the right type in downtown Austin. So that's the range. So I think if you want to give us some direction today, we'd be happy to take it. And whatever we do, I think we need to be consistent in all of the projects we analyze. And so rather than giving me a specific percentage, if you can give me something that I can check everyday in the paper, whether it's the fed funds rate or the prime rate, which is -- which might be nice, I think generally there is a banker here. I don't know what you're loaning right now. What is it, prime plus something? we don't want to go that high. But I think that any of those numbers would be okay.
>> After we discuss this a little bit and I understand your argted about the make or buy decision on internal projects. I think using our own cost and borrowing money if we're talking about internal stuff makes good sense. 5.5 Percent sounds like the right number. Since we're acting here on behalf of the public, using the public's cost of borrowing money I think makes good sense to a project of this kind and if prime is eight and a half you can check easily in the newspaper every morning. I think eight and a half is the right number to be using here.
>> We've done that on this number and when we apply that that would cap our investment or our subsidy to 2,156,9d 89. And if you look on the incentives that we were proposing to give, what we would suggest you do, that's a difference of only 25,277 from what we originally proposed. And I would recommend that you simply take that off of the fee waivers. And so that our total package then would be 2,156,989.
>>Spelman: with that background I would offer the friendly amendment that instead of 2.2 million as being the maximum that we set the maximum for this project at 2,156,989. And it may not be appropriate for us to make a policy decision, but I would -- if we went along with that, I think what would be inherent in that decision would be that we use the prime rate for discounting in the future.
>>Griffith: second.
>>Mayor Watson: he's offering a friendly amendment. Councilmember Goodman, do you consider that a friendly amendment. Ga good 2,156,989 dollars.
>>Spelman: yes.
>>Mayor Watson: that was the maker of the second and I'll consider it friendly. Now, if you look at the resolution behind, it would read that the City Manager is directed to negotiate and execute an agreement with lamar sixth Austin inc. For the purpose of providing development fee waivers and infrastructure participation with the smart growth matrix, project score and business case analysis in an amount not to exceed 2,156,989 dollars for the incentive package and fee waivers.
>>Slusher: Mayor, she was coming up anyway I think to say something. No. Would you state for the record the estimated tax gain to the city from this project, the property tax?
>> oh, the -- over 10 years with a net present value is that 2 million 156. Then the total vl to the City, including on -- vl ta the City, including some estimated sales tax they've done and electric revenue is over 10 million dollars. You will also have property tax accruing to Travis County, aisd, Austin community college and certainly capital metro and the state of Texas on any sales tax improvement. But this subsidy is 10 years and then after that all of the property tax will continue to accrue to Austin.
>>Slusher: but it will all accrue to us right now.
>> It will, yes. There is no -- there is no subsidy. I'm just saying the value of the incentives, the non-tax incentives and then non-cash incentives and the small cash incentive equals that amount, but the property tax will be rolling in every year, no abatements. I would like to say, though, that this is all contingent to the permanent -- interim funding that they're going to get if from their banker and in the next six months we're hoping that's all wrapped up so we can get started.
>>Mayor Watson: after all the attention you're getting, aren't you glad you came. There is channel six. You can watch this on tv. Councilmember Lewis?
>>Lewis: I have a question. With all of the numbers that you gave us, what is our time limit for break even?
>> what is our what?
>>Lewis: our break even time. How long will it take us to do a break even?
>> incentives minus the returns, plus the returns, whatever.
>> If we get the -- even the modest sales tax that they've estimated here, which is only 10% incremental amount over what we're getting now, what we're doing is offering them incentives that it's about 20% of what we'll get over the next 10 years. So it's -- and probably a year after the investment is completed we'll have that paid back, two years after.
>>Lewis: so are we saying two-year time span for break even?
>> let's see. 10, Two -- probably about --.
>>Lewis: keeping everything constant.
>>Mayor Watson: keep in mind a couple of things. One is I think you're including in the break even number there the fact that we're not going to collect fees. In terms of breaking even on money out of our pocket, you do that the first year. If you throw everything else in, it will be two years.
>>Lewis: that's what I'm saying. If we collected the fees, if we didn't give the incentives.
>> You're talking about the total value of the incentives?
>>Lewis: right.
>> If we're going to get 10 million back in 10 years, that will be a million a year. So it would be two years.
>>Lewis: that's the point I wanted to find.
>>Mayor Watson: motion has been made and seconded with the amendment that was a friendly amendment. Is there any further discussion? Councilmember Lewis?
>>Goodman: good I should have said this earlier, I'll sorry. I wanted to thank this Council no matter how the vote goes and the staff and actually the feeling of movement and commitment throughout the City, especially in the neighborhoods. It's a time for a change that works for all of us. In this particular action, although it may sound like a grand gift from some, we're just doing for a change what we need to do in town ahead of time, and we don't usually do that. So I guess that is a gift in that we're actually planning ahead and doing what we need to do for our own infrastructure so it's not quite the gift it may seem since we really need to do it. And as I say, for a change, keep the inner City up to snuff on infrastructure. But since we're doing the timing issue and that is a gift that we get paid back for very quickly and I think that that will help will the continuing motivation and the impetus that's already been started. So that's definitely a function of this particular Council. I haven't seen another work toward this kind of goal so quickly and with this staff and with the folks out there in the private interests that have steppedded forward and the neighborhoods who have stepped forward to make something positive happen too.
>>Mayor Watson: there being no further discussion, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries on a vote of six to zero with the Mayor pro tem absent. Thank y'all for your hard work on this also.
>> Mayor, we have one final item, and Mr. Lurry is going to present the report to the Council.
>>Mayor Watson: item no. 91, Council.
>> Marcia, are you starting?
>> yes, Mayor and Council, what we would like to do today is provide you a briefing on some actions and discussions that have been occurring on the last couple of months regarding the health and human services department. First of all, I just wanted to give you a little bit of history. In 1985 the City and the county entered into a inner local agreement to provide --.
>>Mayor Watson: hang on a second, marcia. Hey, folks, we're trying to -- let us finish our stuff. [Inaudible]. Sure, if you can do it quietly. Mr. Becker, can you help him? [laughter].
>> Mayor and Council, I'll start over. What we'd like to do today is just provide you an update and a briefing. I understand that tomorrow the joint committee of health and human services with both the city and county are going to meet and have some discussions about the -- some of the issues that the county is actually looking into regarding the health and human services department. In 1985 the county and the city entered into a inner local where the City, the county contracted with the city to provide health services. In 1995 we had a further integration of both the county and the City health and human services department into what we call an integrated department in 1995 and it began the first phase of that integration. With the hiring of the new director in 1997, we actually started to implement the second phase of the integration. A couple of months ago, the county actually began some discussions in terms of looking at the organization, its effectiveness, whether or not integration was working and from their per spekt active the whole issue of their ability to have accountability for the issues related to the county and their concerns in termds of the department itself. As a result of that, there have been a number of requests to look at the organization and a couple of proposals have moved forward. David lurry as our director of health and human services is going to talk about the proposal for the City as well as what is being looked at by the county and then I'll come back and talk to you about the staff per sperkt active in terms of some of the policy concerns we have.
>> Thank you, marcia. Evening Mayor, Councilmembers. You should also have in your backup materials some materials related to this, including some organizational charts that reflect the work that we've been doing within the department looking at reorganization possibilities and also at least one model related to what Travis County is discussing. First of all, I'd like to emphasize our approach to this. We have been looking at this as an integrated health and human resources organization and this does include a wide range of health, environmental, public health and social service related kinds of needs and issues in the community. And I would really very much like to acknowledge the fact that within our department a lot of very good progress has been made in terms of bringing these various services and programs together. If you look at ur medical assistance program, for example, it's an integrated single system. Our clinic system is a single system. We've done a lot of work with the community network planning and processes and that's been done jointly with the City and the county and a number of our public health, environmental health programs serve the whole region. And these things I think from the perspective of the community are seamless. I think people recognize it as a single agency and a single delivery system. That's not to say we don't have the problems and chal lengs and we're attempting to address those and all the of the work that we were doing through this phase 2 affordability planning was to take the organization as we viewed it to sort of the next level and help us take it further to what we view as the porblg of this organization. -- Potential of this organization. Some of the factors associated with the process that we've been going through within the department and it's been an inclusive process, engaging a number of employees, have included looking to flatten the organization. We're proposing reducing a level of management within our structure. And also combining some like or similar functions within the department. I think doing a much better job to emphasize our public health, health promotion activities, bringing our neighborhood and community services together and combining ailgt of our managed services and purchased services, really building upon the very effective model we developed within our medical assistance program. As marcia has indicated, Travis County has expressed an interest in revisiting the county direct and county funded parts of the system in an interest in considering the development of a -- of another sort of organizational unted that would have a more direct reporting relationship and accountability to the commissioner's court. In recognition of that interest, we have in effect put on hold our organizational changes within the department and I guess one thing that I would really like to encourage through the work with the joint committee and both the commissioner's court and the city Council is I think a very critical need for some commissions to be made relatively soon for the direction to be clarified because we have some critical issues within our organization, some key leadership positions that need to be filled and we really need to get on with I think some important issues and challenges for us within our department. As marcia indicated, this is on the agenda for the joint committee tomorrow and the commissioner's court has also expressed an interest in discussing this at their voting session next tuesday. Basically the proposal relative to the county's consideration is still being developed, but in effect I think what will be presented is a structure that would use some of the county direct and county reimbursed resources primarily in the area of human services to form an organization that would as I said earlier would have a direct reporting relationship to the commissioner's court and would allow for the continuation of some of the county reimbursed positions within the City of Austin and Travis County health -- particularly the health component to remain in place
pending some discussion and decisions about what the long-term intent might be related to the health and public health services in particular. And marcia I believe is going to comment and we've outlined also in your backup what we think are some of the key issues that would probably be before you in considering, you know, some of these potential changes. Marcia?
>> I think if you were to look at the two organizational charts, some of this information is probably just sort of jump out at you in terms of looking at the organizational charts. Some of them aren't as obvious. Some of the things that we really need to consider as we look at this reorganization are the proposed working relationships. Clearly the department director, the health authority, not only from a reporting perspective, but also a financing perspective, who's going to actually fund that position. On the executive manager, the supervision of both City and county employees, because we'll we're looking at county reimburse, we will still have some employees that are actually going to be on the city side. There's also the issue of tax equity. When you begin to look at dual programs and paralegal systems at both the City and county, I think it raises the issue of tax equity. At this time we're not sure what I am pact that these changes on the county reimbursed punishedding is going to have on the City. If we make a decision to continue to provide those functions where in fact they were being provided by county reimbursed positions, the City will have to make a decision as to whether or not you would want to fund that service or continue that service. One of the things I think we will probably be impacted greatly on is the potential loss of service linkages between the health and human services area. And I think we've made some big strides in terms of trying to do some wrap arnds in both of health services as well as the human services. In the area of the community action network, which is jointly funded by both the city and the county, some of the issues that are being raised there is who would actually have county oversight, would it be on the county or the City side and who in fact would have responsibility for community assessment and planning. As it relates to map, we are -- there's a potential to look at the separation of eligibility and the administrative functions, what would be the impact on both the City and county if that occurs. One of the other issues that is also being discussed, and I understand that the commissioner's court on tuesday requested a transition plan, was to look at the transfer of private sewage to a county only responsibility. And then the other issue that would have to look at it the termination of the appropriate level of administrative report. When you begin to pull human services out of the department, there are some joint funded positions and you have some administrative impact in terms of either a loss or where we may in fact consider replacement or in some areas elimination. All of this also we need to have some type oFAAysis in terms of fiscal impact on both the City and county side. In some areas it will require an increase in funding on the county side and in some areas a a decrease in funding on the city side and in some an increase on the City side. So we need to look at those. I think all this, however, is predicated I guess on at least since I've been here, the long-term issue in terms of how we actually are going to fund health and human services and organizationally what should the organization look like and what is the direction we would like to see it going in terms of the future, the responsibilities of both the county and the City and what is the best organization or structure to make that happen. While I think the most important piece of providing quality services and serving the citizens of Travis County.
>>Goodman: since the Mayor is not here, I'm just going to say, marcia, can I ask you a question?
>> yes.
>>Goodman: for a long, long time, there has been a desire on the part of some people to move toward a metropolitan government where possible. And knowing that even when there is duplication, even when there is desire by, say, two governmental entities to work together and to come up with some new way to meet the needs that they're all trying to serve -- in here we're saying the City, county -- why are we moving backwards or why does it feel like we're moving backwards hire? why are we still coming up with the same old words, City, county and all the turf battles continue, all the tear tore al impairtives get in the way of using tax effectively. And although I understand tax equity very well, I think somewhere in there the bigger question has to be tax effective. And it doesn't seem to me like we ever really get caught up in that argument, we always get caught up in should steven spend four hours over at the commissioner's court, should you, or can steven make a decision and then what is your role if he makes that decision, what is David's role, what is anybody's role, who is accountable for what? why don't we find something new out of the box.
>> Actually, I think it's an issue. I think what's probably missing here is we probably need -- I would recommend that both the City and the commissioner's court, I think what's missing there is the long-term view of what we really want. I think we started on integration, but there are some real barriers to making integration work. We still have dual personnel systems and we have dual retirement systems, we have some legal issues that -- some legal barriers that we have to get through in terms of making it a truly integrated system. And I think just inherent in that is we still have two organizations that have policy oversights and I think that actually in some sense creates sort of that tension that's there in terms of if the county gives direction on what they perceive as county direct employees and county issues and then the City provides the same -- a different type of direction in terms of direction to City employees. And I think if we have some agreement in terms of what that long-term goal is and where everyone wants to go, I think at that point we probably could truly look at an integrated system and try to work out the issues in terms of financing and who reports to who and what programs we should be offering.
>>Goodman: does that sound like anything that you've heard that anyone would like to try to do at this point?
>> actually, I think that's one of the reasons why it's being recommended that it go to the joint City-county committee to begin to have some discussion. One of the things I just want to make clear, I guess I'm not clear to sort of report on what I believe the county is doing. I think there have been a number of discussions about, you know, what should this look like. I think their issues are issues of accountability and I think maybe there's a different way of being ability to address the accountability, even looking at different structures.
>> Because there have been several issues that happened here recent lismt one is that we recently had the concerns about the relate clinics and the county pursued its own process to determine whether in fact the City operating those clinics on behalf of the county to the inner local was in fact the best way to provide health care to county residents. And they're ee ral situating that now and in that evaluation they're considering another provider coming in and running those clinics. With respect to the human service side, way back when we started this, it used to be just the City of Austin, Travis County health department. And around the mid '80's, late '80's, it became Austin travis county health and human services department. But what we understand the proposal that's being considered is actually a realignment of some of the county positions to set up the potential, though I don't know whether that's in fact what is intended, but it allows for the potential to create its own health and human -- its own human service department directly reporting to the county. So the integration has been worked on would cease and you would go back to saying we're going to try to continue with the dual system. And I think the purpose for this report was so that tomorrow when you have that discussion with the other two county representatives, it is for us to try to ascertain really what marcia has talked about. What is our ultimate goal, what do we want this to look like? and then once we've decided what that goal is, what are the best structures that we can put in place to effect that goal. And I think that's the kind of discussion we're hoping happens tomorrow.
>>Goodman: well, I guess we'll see.
>>Lewis: you say tomorrow --.
>> It's at 10:00 o'clock, I believe.
>> I think it's 10:30.
>>Lewis: is the two commissioners that's going to be leaving or the two that's going to be staying?
>>Mayor Watson: they're all up.
>>Lewis: that's what I'm saying. If we're going to talk to two that we know is leaving, Robert moore and karen sonleitner. Us.
>>Lewis: why talk to someone we know won't be there in december. Their decisions won't carry any weight anyway. I'm like Jackie, I've been hearing for 20 years and it ends up being a turf war as to who's going to have what. And my thing is that if the county wants to do health and human services, then why not just let the county do it? I mean, I don't understand what the big problem is. Everybody is talking about the transferring the employees and some employees have to be with the City, some with the county. We layoff employees all the time, both the county and the city. So -- and I'm not saying lay them off, but there comes a time that you have to make a decision. We can transfer the money to the county or have the county transfer the money to the city's retirement and wind up with the same effect. But I don't know if it's a turf war between the City management or the City Council and the commissioner's court, but, you know, I for one can't see -- understand why we can't do some of the things that we -- everybody is talking about that's so easy to do. I mean, I was talking to some of the commissioners about the parks. They come up with the idea that, well, the City parks are operated different than the county parks. They're all parks, you know, you have employees. I don't understand what the big deal is. You know, it's the same with the police. You know, everybody has the jurisdiction, but I can't get a county sheriff to come over to my house, even though I pay county taxes. You know, I don't like that. I really don't. You know, the people in the county don't pay City taxes, so then they don't need the city police to come to their house. So there is -- and it seems like it's a constant turf war as to who's going to furnish who what service. And I was talking to the sheriff and I said why can't I call the sheriff's department since I pay county taxes? and that's how the sheriff's department is funded. So I would strongly recommend that the City Manager get with whoever is -- he need to to come up with a plan to combine as many of the functions as we can because, you know, when we're paying taxes and -- to both the county and the City and only getting the City services, I think we -- we're coming up on the shortened of the stick. So that's my spiel for tonight.
>>Mayor Watson: any further comments? all right. There being no further -- thank y'all very much for the report and briefing.
>> If there being no further business to come before the Council, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion made by Councilmember Lewis, smekded by Councilmember Griffith. Any further discussion? there being none, all those in favor say aye, opposed say no. Motion carries, we are adjourned. Thank y'all very much.
End of Council Session Closed Caption Log