Travis County Commissioners Court
April 20, 2010,
Item 13
>> item number 13 is to receive update from city of austin on city of austin comprehensive plan. Is there a spokesperson?
>> good morning. I guess i will be that spokesperson this morning. First of all, thank you for inviting us to come before the commissioners court. It's always a pleasure to do that. And today is really exciting because we get to talk about the comprehensive plan and where we are in that plan. You all had asked for review and on you are presentation shouldn't take very long. And we will be open for questions. First of all, i'd like to start down on my left. Matthew, if you would start introducing yourself and tell the court who you do, please.
>> matthew hagen, planning and review department. I'm staff liaison for the citizens advisory task force.
>> i'm greg gurnsey, director of planning development department.
>> i'm garner soul, assistant director of planning and department department.
>> sue edwards, assistant city manager, city of austin.
>> mark lee, etj task force.
>> jeff goal horn, commissioner davis and the commission's appointy, one of them, to the city of austin task force and a member of the very powerful greg neighborhood association in northeast travis county.
>> welcome to all of you. Are we supposed to have some backup of some sort?
>> we have information for you. We also have a powerpoint presentation.
>> while that is being packed up i read with interest the draft vision statement. Really powerful stuff, really good stuff. And saw also with interest that there is the second phase of public hearings is coming up. I was hoping perhaps in discussion about the hopes for the second phase of public hearings that we could as a commissioners court support y'all in that effort in either our attendance or encouraging attendance for constituents interested in the processwe would love to have you do that and we invite you to do that. Please feel free. You don't need an invitation. Any time you would like to participate, we would be really pleased to have you do to. I think what you have before you is a copy of the presentation. You also have a copy of the vision statement and some media information that we have talking about phase two of the comprehensive plan would you like for us to start?
>> please.
>> judge biscoe, members of the commission, again, i'm garner sole. We have a brief presentation that is designed to give you an overview of the process, an update on some of the activities of the task force. Tell you a little bit about the public participation and some of the summary items that we have terms of direction. Then finally what commissioner eckhardt mentioned, we want to tell you about what is coming next week and the following week in terms of additional opportunities for the public to provide direction for the plan. If you go to the next slide. Similar to the process that i think you are using austin spent quite a bit of time better part of two years, talking about the project, what has been done in the past in terms of comprehensive pladge. It's been a while since austin has undertaken a comprehensive plan. How we should approach a comprehensive plan. That doing a budget, a scope of services, a citizen participation plan. All that culminated in the kick-off of the project on october 12 of 2009. Since that time which is phase 2, or which we call vision and plan framework, since that time we have been trying to entertain the question where are we going. And we have been trying to involve as many people as possible in answering that question. The next and last phase, and the question of where are we going, the vision and plan framework, will we think take the rest of this year 2010. In 2007, we anticipate the final phase, which is to answer the question, how are we going to get there. And that very much solves looking at more detailed plans, strategies, and detail to address the ten elements of the charter. The charter is very specific in terms of the subject matter of the comprehensive plan. I told you i would give you an update of some of the task force's activities. The task force, as you know, include five members that were recommended by you and appointed by the city council and jack and mark are here today. It also includes ari yates, carol torgel son and bill hill ger ger. The task force is created for , 37 members, a large group, and they have created four committees, three that have some of your appoint ees as representatives. The task force also has recently asked us some yesquestions about public input from the city of austin and the etj. The public input whose ear question included asking what the code number was, and we can roughly translate into into city limits and the extra territorial jurisdiction but not precisely. One of the task force members suggested for round two, we plan to simply ask the question to you live in the city limits or not, which we think will give a little more precision with regards to that question. The task force role has been to help with outreach. They have been instrumental in getting additional participation which i'm going to talk about next. The county appoint ees, i think your intent was they would coordinate our effort with your planning effort. Next slide. The public participation to date the three questions that were asked of the citizens have been consistent since october 12. And they were what are austin's strengths, or what do you love about austin. What are austin's weaknesses or challenges, and your vision for the future. 5730 people answer those questions. They break down into 500 that came to our meetings. Over 4,000 that filled out the survey. Then austin used a new process called meetings in a box where we really allow citizens to host their own meetings. 162 boxes actually, meetings were held by citizens also answering those three questions. Representing over 900 participants. Looking ahead, next week starting actually this week, starting tomorrow, we are once again trying to reach out. There is a process called speak week where citizen volunteers and staff people will be in the community where people already meet. Whether these are shopping malls farmers markets, obviously in the spring along town lake where people congregate. Simply with the booths and brochures and hopefully attracting additional people that normally don't come to meet little--meetings, to come to the following week community forum series number two meetings. So that kicks off wednesday. Your handout gives you the details about the second series of meetings. And i won't belabor those. We also entend, following those meetings, to once again give the citizens opportunities to fill out surveys, to give us feedback on the draft compolents of a vision, which is still being worked on by the task force. As well as another meeting, meeting in the box. Which would replicate in abbreviated form the activities of the community forum number two meetings.. .
>> citizens, some like to come to city sponsored meetings and others would prefer going elsewhere. So we are trying to provide as many opportunities as possible. I think that is basically our presentation i would look to my right and left to see if anybody wants to add something to that. Or we are all here to answer your questions. We're hoping this will be a discussion.
>> i have a couple them. I guess this should be directed to the city of austin. Again, thank you all, city of austin and all of you participants here. Really appreciate it. What you are doing. This is something that i think years from today we can say that this is helpful that we pup into planning situation where by this county and city could maybe come together and do some things as far as future planning. Not all the county but within the city boundaries of city of austin. My question though is that the survey that you have received responses from the community, for an example, we wanted to make sure, we meaning my office and the retch --representatives that we appointed, jack gillihan and others, we wanted to be sure the survey, we wanted to piggy back on the survey and have the persons not living in the boundaries of the city of austin have an opportunity to participate in the survey. So what my office did was to send out at least 100 e-mail situations where by the persons that would respond to the survey had an opportunity to do that in the counties, in the unincorporated areas of the county. And my concern is when citizens in the unincorporated area, residents of unincorporated area have a chance to participate in the survey that we have on the table, how do you determine as far as collection of data, where that persons have responded, i have no idea, city of austin, of the person that we asked to participate in the survey, what were their responses and how are they depicted in the outcome of the survey. And because we definitely would like to make sure that whatever we end up doing survey-wise, we want to make sure that the representation of the residents in the unincorporated area is a part of the process. The city of austin, i guess i need to find out how will you let me know orlet jack, who is my appoint ee, thank you jack for being a part of this, how will you let us know where and who is responding whan are they responding to and what are the comments. This is, not only this survey but any future survey, we want to be sure we have an opportunity to plug into that survey that is being placed before us. So can you answer that question somebody? I'd really like to know what the answer is for those responses.
>> let me try and others may want to add. Commissioner davis, thank you again for your support of the play and your appointments.
>> thank you.
>> we view stakeholders broadly. Though where people live is interesting to us. The stakeholders is anybody who works in city of austin. They may live in round rock, they are a stakeholderment we welcome input from everybody. The task force and others are interested, however, in tracking whether there is a divergence between input from the unincorporated area and the city limits. We have a rough way of doing that right now. In fact, staff is working on that. Which is we did collect information by zipcode. We asked the respondents to give us their zipcode. Zipcodes straddle city limits.
>> right. You're right. Unincorporated are straddled. Just like school district.
>> you are absolutely correct. I talked to ryan robertson this morning and we can produce information that will roughly play to unincorporated responses. You can simply look at zipcodes that straddle. If the majority of residents are in city limits, you call it city limits. If the majority are outside you call it outside city limits and we can produce a report that way that we think roughly will give you the difference between the etj and city. Now going forward, we plan to ask an additional question that will help us be more precise, and that is we plan to ask them, do you live in the city limits or not.
>> if you have what now?
>> what was that question you were going to ask?
>> do you live in the city limits or not.
>> a h. Okey doke.
>> we entertain the idea of asking whether they lived in the extra territorial jurisdiction, but our experience has been through the statistically valid survey, which is a completely different process, that most of the extra territorial jurisdiction residents really don't know the answer to that question. So we think a better question is do you live in the city limits or not. We are open to any other suggestions.
>> that is good. Because we will be able to, good tracking. So this will come out in the next report.
>> yes.
>> the next survey.
>> yes.
>> okay, good.
>> yes.
>> commissioner eckhardt.
>> looking at the, looking into the methodology of the scientific survey as opposed to the qualitative surveying that was done, it's great that y'all are pursuing both lines in a parallel fashion because that is maximally informative. Just looking at the second phase i'm looking for opportunities for us to build on and enrich the city of austin's efforts through our efforts and figuring out how we can be helpful in that regard. So in the second phase, i was looking through the materials. I do have a calendar of, i guess it's speak week opportunities. Andwondering if we could get a list of all the speak week opportunities, perhaps we could sends out blast e-mails and try and drive participation in that way. If that is helpful to y'all.
>> absolutely.
>> that would be very helpful.
>> i'm guessing, and correct me if i'm wrong, i was wondering about what demographics are you seeing difficulty in reaching? Because as i was looking at the scientific survey, it struck me that the demographics, at least with regard to the average, we may not be reaching certain pockets. So who could we be, you know, what demographics should we be trying to be helpful on driving to participation?
>> low income, lower educational attainment, noninner city residents. Those were all underrepresented. Now, there have been a lot of efforts to try to get representation in addition to this statistically valid version which does have represent tigs--representation. We were able to use large employers who have representation in the various income groups as well as they tend to live in outlying areas. So our numbers improved that wa.
>> that is interesting. Because that i wouldn't have thought about, contacting employers and asking them to get their employees to participate.
>> they were very helpful and a big part of our 4,000 responses to the survey.
>> that is really interesting. Are there other methodologies that y'all have found? That i would not have guessed. Seems obviously once you say it, but actually, i wouldn't have guessed to go asking for participation from employers. Are there other methodologies that y'all have found in getting responses that we might be helpful on in.
>> task force members were helpful in terms of knowing constituent groups and they helped with e-mail blasts as well as personal contact. They increased the response rate i think, in the meetings in the box significantly as well as the survey. And it certainly brought more balance into those results. With regard to your question about speak week, we have identified presently 30 locations that are all on line if you want to go to imagine austin dot net. We are physically adding to those.
>> just to add, in your packet is who is participating. A great tool to see who is coming out and participating, just an important as who is not participating. One of the tools we have used that has been very helpful is the meeting in a box. That allowed us to really target different groups that are not as we will represented within the city's overall demographics.
>> that is what led me to ask where y'all felt we could try and ferret out additional participation. Looking at that against the indicators project data, it seemed we are getting a demographic that is of a higher median income and higher educational level than what is, than the norm.
>> very true.
>> which is not, that is not surprising. But it is something we need to work on.
>> yes.
>> that is great. Well, i will commit to finding out what that schedule is for speak week and trying to shepherd folks that direction.
>> the goal is to have a final plan by december 2011?
>> we hope the have a draft plan. We think the adoption probably will go into 2012.
>> okay. Any other questions or comments? Commissioner huber.
>> i have two. I don't want it to sound like i can't let the etj thing go, but we deal with etj issues all the time. Your comment was right on if you live in the city or not because people don't really know if they live in the etj or not. However, that is our area of highest growth and biggest challenges as we grow. And one of the things that i am mindful of with my almost half of the county in my precinct and much of that in the etj or unincorporated areas, is that i find that we have, the further out you go from the core of the city, the less wear --awareness and i don't know if it's interest, but sense of need to be involved in a process like this. I applaud the efforts you are planning to try to reach out further. But one of the questions i have related to that is do you have in the mind a methodology for having a representative spalling in those etj and outer core areas such that you really get a good feel, get the right kinds of responses as you push out there to get that? Because i think it's a challeng.
>> commissioner huber, they were part of the statistically valid survey, but representative. They were not representative spalling of sampling of etj residents alone. That could be done or perhaps we could work with your process to do that. I was earlier alluding to the fact we are trying do the best job we can to take the information that we have about the respondants and approximate the different response from the etj and city. We think we can get it close.
>> any way we can help, i can help, be happy to do so. The other question, do you envision in some part in this process a direct collaboration with the county, particularly on areas like the etj.
>> absolutely. Somebody told me last week, somebody very knowledgeable in the city planning, big city plan development, that they thought the fact that the county was entertaining to do a comprehensive plan for travis county and that we were doing comprehensive plan at the same time is unique to texas. It's never been done in tex.
>> another first.
>> i think it's unique to the nation in terms of a city that anticipates as much growth in a county that anticipates as much growth as city of austin and travis county. So i think i would go beyond texas.
>> right. And i would also add to that. We think it's important as we started out tacking about this whole planning process that it is the community. It is not the city. It is more than the city. It is all of the surrounding areas. Because it's as all of you know, everything impacts everything else. What we are looking for is that collaborative effort. As much as we can collaborate and as much opportunity as y'all feel that we can participate and help in your process, we are welcome do that because i think together, it just makes a whole lot more sense that, because there's no really line between the county and the city. We're all the same in terms of what we are trying to accomplish and trying to do. So any suggestions that you might have about how we can help participate with you too, we appreciate that.
>> i think, sorry, commissioner?
>> go ahead.
>> commissioner gomez. I'll wait until you finish, margaret. I just had one more follow-up question.
>> i'm fine.
>> okay. Sue, i appreciate, again, what we are doing here. And thank goodness we needed to get an update on where we are going and where we are headed. Hopefully we can be in the same boxcar as we move forward. I just want to make sure that whenever, when is the next survey supposed to get started?
>> the survey will start right after the community forum series ends, which is may 1.
>> may 1. Okay. I just want to make sure these concerns that we have mentioned here today, especially the concern that commissioner eckhardt and also commissioner huber had brought up as far as etj and of course the methodology approach in future endeavors in this, get adhered to. Not only that. I want to make sure that the average in the etj, that is a sure deal between county and city.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]atdt15128544495
>> i want to make sure that outreach in the etj and also in the unincorporated area is substantial. You know, substantial to the fact that we can come back with some responses as we move forward in this particular planning effort by the county and also the city. So those are the last comments. I just want to let you know that portion of it.
>> commissioner huebner, but finish?
>> i have one more question. Actually, i have one more question that came to me from a constituent. And the question was basically, as i understand it, there was a path laid out previously by the consultant for going through this process at the city. And the question was will the second phase build on the public input process and does that in any way change your second phase process?
>> well, we certainly have learned a lot about the first phase public input, and yes, the second phase, the speak week was invented after what we learned in the first phase. We're trying to learn as much as we can as we go along and the process is flexible in terms of adjusting. The taskforce has certainly encouraged us to do that too.
>> commissioner eckhardt?
>> this appears to be a relay race, and i just wanted to throw that image out there, that y'all have the baton now and you're running full steam ahead down the track. And then in many regards y'all will be passing the baton to us on our comprehensive plan and we'll be passing it back to y'all. I look forward to that statistically valid survey being one leg in a race that then we can pick up and build and enrich that data with information that may -- that may have less relevance to you, but is extremely relevant to us. For instance, the unincorporated that's not in the etj, of course, is of high import to us. But i wouldn't expect you all to survey that, but i oops wanted to hear from -- but i also wanted to hear from mr. Lynn and perhaps mr. Vellehan too.
>> thank you for the opportunity to address this in front of you. I would like to make a comment that follows up on something commissioner huber just said about how the growth in the etj, basically the growth around the perimeter of the city is really the most explosive area. That has concerned me greatly for some time. I grew up in what used to be a suburb of austin, which is now pretty much central austin. And i've also lived and owned property in very close to the cbd around the university. Now i live out in the perimeter of town, so i feel like i've been everywhere. And i'm concerned that in a way austin is growing to such an extent that we almost have two cities. We have a suburban area with very different live style, totally dependent upon automobile transportation, strip malls, driving everywhere, and ironically traffic is far worse on the perimeter of the town than it is in the inner city, where it's bad enough, as we all know. So i'm concerned that in a way there may not be one solution to austin community college planning as a whole -- to austin planning as a whole. And it may be that this tailors into some of your concerns that the etj perhaps needs to be broken out and studied separately or at least see the results and be able to look at them independently. And i want to suggest that even the very maps that the city are using may be leading to a complication of the situation in that the maps that constituent showed us at our last meeting to break out different zones that we're looking at, and i don't remember all their names, but they were based upon the watersheds if i'm not mistaken. Most of those -- i think with one exception -- all radiate to the center of the city -- to the river. Therefore you're not getting independent sections around the perimeter of town that sort of stand alone that you could assess the data from those areas independently. In a way the data from the perimeter seems to be kind of all mushed in with everything else in each watershed. But i know you've got to pick a map and we've got to start somewhere, but at our last meeting people sort of, if you will, criticized some of the names of these districts. In a way i'm wondering if even the districts themselves couldn't be lending or contributing to this problem of seeing everyone in this pie-shaped slice of the city as all having the same issues. I've felt for a long time that the way the city does zoning -- if you take sf-3, single-family zoning, it's the same all over the city regardless of your proximity to the inner city. I think that is in a way devoid of reality. It's silly that you have the same impervious cover, density and height restrictions say four blocks from the university of texas in an sf-3 zoned piece of property as you do way out in balcones woods. And i don't know what the answer is. I'm hoping to be part of the dialogue, but i'm very skeptical that there's sort of a one size fits all solution to everyone in the city of austin. And i'm hoping that the comprehensive plan can sort of accept that there are different lifestyles. We're not going to change people entirely. People live out in the suburbs because there are things out there that they find preferential to living in the inner city. As i say i've lived in all these areas and i have my own proclivities or my own biases, but i'm not sure a solution that fits willshire woods can be imposed on wells branch, for instance. Perhaps it can. And i'm just looking forward to that, but that is a growing concern to me that if you look at even the election results, they're heavily skewed one party in one area and another party in another area, and i think that is somewhat of an indication that the city is in a way growing to be increasingly polarized. Hopefully the comprehensive plan can be a place to bring people back together, reintegrate the city, but i think that's something that i don't see a process for discussion currently in the schedule that at least i've seen, trying to understand the whole two-year process. But i think that bears at least some discussion.
>> any comments?
>> yes, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to hopefully serve the county as moving forward on the county's efforts. I had a couple of things that i thought i would point out that at least i see as questions that you as the county may want to address and we can work on in conjunction with the city. Part of that comes from commissioner eckhardt's comments a moment ago that we might be able to leverage off of some of the work that has been done statistically by the city, for example, in the statistically valid survey that was done. There would be elements of that, for example, that i think would be important to us, but that the county's perspective will need to go further. The application is, of course, that the city has a planning process that incorporates the etj. The county has a planning process that incorporates the etj, but incorporates those areas outside the etj. The question that i think that we have to deal with with the county's process as well as with the city's process is we're going to have to take a look at all those planning needs that we see that are out there and determine if there are fundamental differences for those people that are etj and beyond from those people that are inner city out to the etj. And if so, how do we coordinate? That's one of the big concerns i have in being with commissioner davis and talking with county folks, one of the big concerns i have is how do we -- we being the county in this instance on on collaborate to the highest extent possible. I know that the city is now looking at collaboration as one of the fundamental bedrocks as we move forward with more comment, but i think one of the concerns that i have is how do we best figure out how to answer the questions on what can we be doing in a vision for the future so that these units of government can effectively work together to make it as easy as possible for the citizens to deal with government, whether it's city government, county government or the governments of other municipalities that may have an etj that the county would also be involved in. So eng there's a few things, for example, that we need to do from the county's perspective that might be helpful to the city. We i think may have a better idea of where there are concentrations of people in the city's etj that. -- where they live. Commissioner huber, you were talking about the vast area that you have. Data that i've seen, and i'm sure it exists somewhere, but the data i've seen doesn't spell out where the highest concentrations are of population within etj. I have been provided with that where we may want to focus our opportunities to go out and solicit input, just knowing where the high concentrations are will be of benefit to us as we move forward. Again, i think it's going to be critical in everybody's planning process that we figure out not only how to collaborate on the planning process, but to set up something for the future in a vision so that the bureaucracy and the red tape becomes less complicated in the future as we grow and have more of these kind of problems.
>> mr. Reeferseed, any brief comments?
>> yes.
>> i will need you on a microphone.
>> thank you. I want to express my agreement with the young man there talking about needing more study on etj. I would also include the unincorporated areas, kind of in agreement with both of y'all. And so the suggestion of increasing full participation is in relation to this community input survey is the way you have it structured now, phase one by zip code, that's all of us across the county, including the city's people. And phase two, only city folks. So my question is travis county residents can only speak at phase 1, but austin city residents can speak at both phases 1 and 2. That's unfair. And so at least less input from us in the unincorporated areas. And are city of austin residents more important here? Commissioner davis spoke to this non-input from travis county residents. He started out with this definition of stakeholder. That's limited supposedly to those only who work in austin. And that's faulty. You have to throw that out. It's the residents of the whole county. I mean, non-citizens -- austin city residents, we matter. And i just hope that we can learn to throw away this -- like one of your people were saying, the city limits is not the issue. If you live on one side of that city boundary or the other side, we're still people and we all need help to use the resources that we have efficiently. So i'm just urging you to not ignore those -- i agree, i appreciate y'all's sticking up for it and i think just in the structure of your phases one for the all of us and you came up with phase two with only city folks which excludes us.
>> anything else?
>> the process is open to all participants. There are absolutely no restrictions in terms of participating. City residents, extra territorial jurisdiction residents, round rock residents, it's -- it's open to everybody. How we were talking about is how we track that participation.
>> i thank you very much for talking with us today. We look forward to another opportunity to discuss this with you.
>> judge, at this point, very briefly, our charter actually requires in our comprehensive plan to take in our etj, which takes in williamson, travis and hays county as well as the city of austin. And as part of this process and based on what jack was actually speaking to, i'm hoping for, as a comprehensive plan actually moves forward, that the city of austin and because of title 30 working with the county, we'll revise our codes to be much simpler so there's less bureaucracy both within the city and our etj as we move forward on planning projects, whether they're capital projects that the city and county may also share, and as far as development is concerned both in the city and our etj.
>> thank you very much. We look forward to visiting with y'all again.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 1:53 PM
