AUSTIN (KXAN) — Beginning at 4:00 p.m. City Council will hear public testimony ahead of making a highly anticipated decision – whether to adopt Ridesharing Works for Austin’s citizen-initiated ordinance, or put the ordinance up for a public vote.
TNC (Transportation Networking Company) Ordinance
Last week, the city clerk confirmed Ridesharing Works for Austin’s petition for a transportation network company (TNC) ordinance was sufficient, with more than 25,000 signatures submitted. The ordinance does not include a fingerprint background check, the sticking point TNC companies Uber and Lyft have threatened to leave Austin over.
The Council now has two options. Either accept the ordinance language as is, or call a May election and let voters decide.
Mayor Steve Adler has told KXAN he wants to make sure the thousands who signed the petition for a rideshare ordinance and the rest of Austin voters understand what they would be voting for if the decision does come down to a public vote. He said this is not going to be a vote for or against mandatory fingerprint background checks, because he wants to make perfectly clear that the city will not make it mandatory.
Adler posted a new ordinance, dubbed the “Innovation Ordinance” Sunday night to the Council Message Board. The ordinance prohibits mandatory fingerprinting and allows for incentive programs, such as the proposed Thumb’s Up! program. This is a separate ordinance from the one Council passed in December, which gave TNCs like Uber and Lyft until February 2017 to get the majority of their drivers fingerprint background checked. While that ordinance set benchmarks to get drivers in compliance with a goal to have a majority of TNC drivers fingerprinted, the mayor admits the ordinance is vague, and doesn’t specify what will happen to drivers who fail to meet those benchmarks.
Hence, Adler’s new “Innovation Ordinance” scraps any mandatory fingerprint background checks all together. Adler says the new ordinance would not take anything away from Uber and Lyft drivers who choose not to participate in the Thumb’s Up program, but would still allow the city to reward rideshare drivers who choose to participate in fingerprinting.
But now, there is yet another option the mayor has brought to the table, in an effort find middle ground in a battle over mandatory fingerprint background checks that’s dominated city council meetings for months. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). On the Council Message Board, the mayor writes, “The Council could seek to achieve fingerprinted TNC drivers at scale without an election in May if it were possible to enter into an enforceable contract with Uber and Lyft that would go along and beside the adoption of the Initiative Ordinance,” referring to Ridesharing Works for Austin’s ordinance.
In response to the posted MOU, Council Member Don Zimmerman wrote, “Mr. Mayor, I truly admire your tenacity on the matter and the goal of reaching consensus, but at this point the constituents deserve an election.”
Wednesday afternoon, Uber sent an email to KXAN saying it met with Mayor Adler that day and offered to submit its own MOU for discussion, “since we were not at the table for the other MOU draft.” Uber’s MOU strikes the mayor’s Thumbs Up program.
Uber Communications’ Debbee Hancock said, “APD does not need to spend additional resources and manpower monitoring which vehicles can go where and when.” Hancock is referring to the Thumbs Up incentive idea that would allow fingerprinted drivers closer access to areas like 6th street, and big events such as SXSW, Austin City Limits Music Festival, and Trail of Lights.
Keep in mind, if you spoke at last week’s meeting during the public comment period on this issue, you may not speak again this week.
The Council will also look at ways to alleviate some costs for AISD.
The resolution directs the City Manager to consider the City assuming departments, activities, or functions provided by independent school districts located in the City of Austin if those departments, activities, or functions have a municipal purpose. This resolution sets in motion a plan for the City Manager to look at Austin Independent School District costs the City could cover.
Mayor Steve Adler’s Communications Director, Jason Sanford, tells KXAN there are departments, activities, and/or functions the city could fund more cheaply than the school system. This resolution directs the City Manager to explore those avenues more deliberately, and come back with some options. The motivation behind the resolution is to keep more local property tax revenue within the city. Texas’s public education system relies heavily on local property taxes and a “Robin Hood” system or “recapture,” where school districts in wealthier parts of the state, like Austin, share funding with poorer school districts.
The resolution states, “AISD is the single largest payer of recapture in the state and recapture resulted in a loss of $181 million in tax revenue for AISD in 2015, representing nearly 25-percent of AISD’s total Maintenance and Operations tax collections.”
The resolution explains that AISD is subject to recapture as a property-rich district, despite the fact that nearly 60-percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. It goes on to say, “In the next years ahead, AISD will experience steep increases in the required recapture payments and anticipates sending nearly a half billion dollars to the State under recapture laws by FY2019.”
Keeping more tax revenue within city limits, Sanford said, could result in a tax cut or increased services.
Approve a resolution directing the City Manager to initiate a public involvement process regarding potential transportation projects and funding options.
On February 3rd, the Mobility Committee received a briefing discussing public process options for prioritizing and funding transportation projects. This resolution directs the City Manager to start that public conversation by gathering input from the Planning Commission, Urban Transportation Commission, Bond Oversight Commission, Public Safety Commission, Commission on Seniors, Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee, and Vision Zero Task Force, along with utilizing the City’s Conversation Corps and collaborating with Council Members. The plan is to put together a list of transportation projects and funding options for review and a public hearing at the Mobility Committee’s June 8th meeting. There’s a question of what projects could potentially be put to a bond election.
Approve a resolution stating the council’s desired purposes for the council committee system.
This resolution creates new protocol for Council committees to make City government more efficient. The goal is to reduce time and workload burdens for City staff in carrying out and facilitating the committee process, and improve accessibility and transparency for the public. The resolution states Council committees “may take public comment early in the policy-making process if the committee finds early public input is helpful” and the purpose of the committee should be to proactively craft policy on major city-wide issues. Mayor Adler has said he would like to make Council work sessions longer to better prepare, and make full Council meetings more deliberative. The hope is to improve the efficiency of committee meetings, and ultimately full council meetings, known to run late into the night and early morning hours.
Approve an ordinance amending the Fiscal Year 2015-2016 Budget Stabilization Reserve Fund Operating Budget (Ordinance No. 20150908-001) to transfer out $1,100,000 to the General Fund; amending the Fiscal Year 2015-2016 General Fund Operating Budget (Ordinance No. 20150908-001) transferring in $1,100,000 from the Budget Stabilization Reserve Fund; and appropriating $1,500,000, which includes $400,000 in estimated fees, to increase expenditures in the Fiscal Year 2015-2016 Austin Police Department Operating Budget (Ordinance No. 20150908-001) for public safety support for the Spring Festival Season.
In years past, the Austin Police Department had to pull officers, detectives, etc. from their regular assignments to properly staff South by Southwest (SXSW) and lessen the cost of overtime. While the move increased festival safety, it created safety concerns during that week for the rest of the city. This year, an ordinance is calling for $1.5 million to cover all APD overtime assignments so no one has to be pulled from their typical shift.
Approve a resolution directing the City Manager to identify funding for childcare and supportive services for the Passages Program. (Notes: SPONSOR: Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo CO 1: Council Member Leslie Pool CO 2: Council Member Sabino “Pio” Renteria CO 3: Council Member Delia Garza)
The resolution outlines how a growing number of homeless individuals in Austin are single women or women with children. A lack of emergency shelter resources is contributing to the problem. The Salvation Army currently shelters both women and children at the Downtown Social Service Center and the Austin Shelter for Women and Children. The resolution says there are more than 300 women and children on a waiting list, in need of shelter. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds “Passages,” a 6-agency collaboration that provides full-time case management to help families find housing, employment, education, childcare, job training, counseling, legal issues, and more. The problem is, beginning July 1st, new federal guidelines will eliminate HUD funding for Passages’ support services, including childcare and housing assistance. The City Manager is directed to identify $160,000 in ongoing funding for Passages.
Approve a resolution supporting the nomination and inclusion of the Lions Municipal Golf Course in the National Register of Historic Places.