Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call the meeting to order at 700 p.m. Uh we have uh Commissioner Crane uh absent this evening and Commissioner Magen as well. Uh first off, uh citizen communication. The Planning and Zoning Commission welcomes comment on items relevant to the Planning and Zoning Commission not already scheduled on tonight's agenda. In accordance with the Texas Attorney General's opinion, any public comment that is made on an item that's not on the published agenda will only be heard by the commission. Each person uh no formal action, discussion, deliberation, or comment will be made by the commission. Each person providing public comment will be limited to three minutes and we asked to state his or her name for uh the public record. Is there anyone present wishing to address the commission? Seeing none, we'll move on. And uh we're actually going to flip the agenda just a little bit and cover the consent agenda item four. Uh first, uh all matters listed under the consent agenda or considered routine by the commission will be enacted by one motion. These items include preliminary and final plats where staff is found compliance with all minimum subdivision regulations. All items approved by consent are approved with any and all staff recommendations. There will be no separate discussion of these items. If any commissioner desires to discuss an item on the consent agenda, we'll move it to the regular agenda. Uh is there any items that uh any commissioner wishes to remove from consent? All right. I will uh entertain a motion.

Uh I'll move to approve the consent agenda as read. Seconded. I I You voted at the same time. All right. Let's do it for real now. All right. All in favor? I I I any opposed hearing? None. The motion passes. Thank you. So eager. Yeah. All right. Next up, uh we're going to go back to item 3A on the uh agenda, uh which is a discussion regarding um the youth advisory council. Welcome.

Hi, good evening everybody. Um thanks. Uh you may have seen me last year too for this. This is our youth advisory council. They are high school juniors and seniors who are learning about local government. So last week they got to meet with Emily and Britney hear all about planning development services. So tonight they are here to speak to you to hear about this side of the planning fund. Um this is you know open conversation for you guys to share what you do um and for them to ask you any questions that they might have.

Awesome. Well first of all um thank you all so much for showing up. I know I saw a few of you at the last city council meeting as well, which was fantastic. Um, really appreciate you all stepping up and and being engaged uh here in our fabulous uh city of Flugerville. Uh, it it's always, I think, pretty motivating to see folks of of all types and ages um come and engage with the city. It's something that we desperately need more of. And so, um, love that you all signed up and to do this and I hope every session you all have is, uh, is really exciting, uh, and you learned something great. Uh, we've got a great commission here and, uh, I'm sure we will have some questions for you all, and I'm sure you all have some stuff for us. Thank you. Mhm.

Anyone want to go? No. Okay. What other questions? Uh, I'll um I can ask one to start us off here. So being the uh on the youth advisory council, what would you um most like to get out of your experience?

Um I think for me personally, I would say just very firsthand experience with local government and know the intricacies of how it works even the different departments, how they interact with each other. I know I'm very interested in learning also about you know um the attorney and justice as well which I think we're going to learn about later on but yeah just getting firsthand experience with government and government you know councils like you guys is what I really want from this experience. Awesome. Anyone else want to answer as well? Just going to say I to that one.

All right. Um, I'll ask another one. This is, um, something, so I do a little bit of volunteering at the high schools to do um, like voter registration. And, uh, one of the things I always like to ask them is what do you think we could improve in Flugerville? What do you all think that we're either not doing enough of or something that we're not paying attention to that we should be? Would love to hear your all's thoughts on that. In terms of planning and zoning or just in general, it can be in general.

Yeah. So then the planning and zoning commission covers all of the new developments of course um repurposing and updating existing businesses come through here pretty often. Um we get previews of a lot of what's coming to town. Um and so certainly anything in that but it's it's an open question. I know one thing that I also brought up during our meeting, I think last Monday as well, was the fact that um I really noticed that our city isn't very walkable to that great of an extent and that's just Yeah.

Yeah. I know a lot of people like to ride bikes and stuff and I and maybe not all places is the best to do that cuz I know that I used to live in Blackhawk but walking from Blackhawk to a school like Mkas or Kelly Lane was really hard because coming out of like that stop weird stop sign through like I think it's like Kelly Lane or whatever I that was really hard so I would just my mom would just drive us But I live closer which is more walkable. But definitely a lot of our students come from those areas that it's harder to get to school without relying on some sort of car or other sort of public transportation. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's a great point and I think it's something that all of us have have agreed on and and pushed for um as we've been up here. I think it's uh it definitely is treacherous sometimes. Um and uh one of the things that we um do pay pretty close attention to when there's new um development plans coming through is making sure that they are you know taking full advantage of um of space so that we can have good sidewalks and and um crossings uh as well as car um uh you know making sure that everything is connected so that you don't have neighborhoods sort of cut off from other neighborhoods nearby etc which also opens things up I think for pedestrians and bikes. Yeah. And I know um we last meeting we were talking to Emily about the downtown Flugerville area. And that was also a concern that a lot of us brought up about making sure that that part is also walkable and easy to get through the different shops and the new recreation center that's going to be built. So just making sure that all of that is easy to bike through, walk, scooter, you know, just accessible all around.

Yeah. I think uh I mean our city like a lot of cities in Texas in the United States is very carentric of course

but I think I've seen the staff um working very hard to try and make sure that the new developments are not always just fully about cars like working on the parking regulations to try to get that a little bit a little bit better so it's not just cars everywhere but making it more accessible to bikes and pedestrians and and the thing that I've seen that that I like is that you kind of have to think about it from a different direction of not just do the people just go where the cars go, but maybe there's places where you could put a pedestrian connection or a bike path that that doesn't really make sense for a car to go there. You don't have space, but a connection through there, like you're talking about going to school or going to a shopping center is really useful. So, um I've seen a couple instances where we've we've made specific requirements for that or we've rejected things because they didn't have that or they were trying to um trying to put a development through that didn't have the right accessibility. So, that's something that that I've seen us doing a good job of. Yeah.

Well, and something else for walkability that I think will be really cool because you're going to be looking at all the different departments is, you know, we can approve or recommend approval or denial of um development separately. We're not the parks commission, but the parks commission is all these trails. And at the higher levels of government at council and the manager's office, they are looking at those things alto together. And so while some street like to your point, some streets may not be walkable, but there's an alternative way to get there on foot via a trail. And it's actually um in the Flugerville Aspire 2040 plan and in the parks master plan, there's a lot of uh long range thought about um using the trails not only as recreation, but also as transportation. And so um I do think that this city has really excellent leadership for that and it's definitely something there are a lot of things like I think transportation is one of the best examples where you have different departments of government that are responsible for things that affect each other and um not so much inflville. I think Flugerville does a good job of breaking silos, but I've definitely seen it in other cities, especially major cities where uh historically throughout the 90s and the early 2000s, we saw that lower income communities were grossly underserved by buses. And a lot of that was because the bus routes were planned by the transportation department with an emphasis on traffic abatement, not thinking about lower income people needing buses to get around. And so that's an example of like silos in government un inadvertently causing problems. I think that's one that's being addressed now, but keep your eyes open for other examples like that and point them out to us.

Yeah, definitely. I think it's actually one of the neat things about serving on um planning and zoning over the last few years, too, is that we we get to work with the parks commission fairly often, whether it's on the trails, the future park plans and locations. Um we PCDC. Yeah. And we team up on the public art program as well. So some of those projects come through uh planning and zoning, which is always kind of fun uh to see how where those are going and what they're going to look like and provide some feedback on it. But to your point, so even at the advisory level, um we try anyway uh to work with the others that are that are relevant. Do

you have any questions for us? Do you do a lot of mock voting in high school? Mock voting? Yeah. Like um what you would vote for if you could vote? Do you do things like that? Um I think they used to do it back in my day. I don't remember your day. They do it a lot. I remember I think I did it one year in elementary school, but not not in Texas. Oh, not in Texas. Yeah. No, I I did it cuz I'm from Puerto Rico, so I know we did it there, but when I moved here, we didn't really do that. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Are you you're not doing it even in your advisory what you're doing here like mock?

No, I don't think so. That's interesting. I know at my old high school, or not old high school because I never went there, but back in New York, um they had something, the district was called like Shannenda Hoa, and they had this like Shen like Senate thing and they had something similar to that, I think. I don't know the details, but Okay. Yeah. So, I'm from New York. We did it there. Yeah. We did a lot of like even like from elementary to all the way to high school to learn about government. Yeah. and not like sit in class and like learn about history, which is amazing. You should learn about history, but it's not as boring as learning about history. History is awesome. I'm so sorry that you had a terrible history teacher.

I enjoyed mock voting and history and all of that, but some kids don't. And it makes it more exciting if there's a vote, like fake voting. Yeah. And it kind of gets you away from what your parents would vote for versus like what you want to vote for because it just gets you ready. So, I just wondering what they did here. In sixth grade for me in Texas, we did it, but that was a very long time ago. Again, I said in my day, I don't know. Yeah, we did mock voting as well. And And then you had to like walk through why you were voting a certain way. So, you had to like verbalize why you were voting a certain way. And girl state and boy state. What What year do they do that? Junior year of high school. Oh,

did any of you do Girl state or boy state? No. either. It's like mock UN, but it's not mock Texas legislature. Yeah, I've I've definitely heard of it. And I think I don't know what grade it is, but it's definitely high school level. I feel like it's the summer after your junior year. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I think so. Okay. So, I don't know. I'm sorry I was late. If you if any of you are not yet, if any of you are juniors or younger, highly recommend looking into that. Other questions for us? Yeah. Oh, sorry.

And I I don't know if this would be interesting to y'all to hear some of our like backgrounds of what we do and kind of why we're we decided to be on a commission or anything like that. So, I figured that could be interesting because we all I think we all have very different backgrounds and different reasons for being on these commissions. I think that could be interesting for y'all if you're interested in hearing that. And then maybe y'all might have specific questions for people based off of what they do in their job or what they learn or what they've, you know, studied or anything. Yeah, that's great. Should we start at that end of the diet? Yeah, let's do it. Sure.

So, I'm Teresa. Uh, my background is in something called industrial organizational psychology. So, it's the study of the workplace. Um, at my job, I do change management. So I help teams get their products uh which are for specifically data and analytics related adopted and used by the rest of the company. So I joined the commission um because I wanted to find a way to give back um and it's a good really good learning experience for me because I haven't done something like this before.

So um yeah, I guess that's it. Uh any questions feel free to to ask now or or later. happy to answer. What sort of products do you help market or so the group I support are um the data scientist and data engineers mainly of the company. So they develop um data and analytic product. So I pro I can't go into too much detail but they develop these insights and tools for other areas of the company to utilize that are related to data and analytics. What did you study?

I know. Yeah. Organizational psychology. Oh okay. Oh what? Yeah. So scientific study the workplace. So if you're interested in psychology you don't have to just go into clinical psych. There are a lot of different areas. Um, for me like there's no counseling training uh or anything. So I don't have uh clinical or c counseling background. So and change management is hard. So it's awesome that you're doing that. Very tiring. So like you know you guys know how like there's all these different softwares that your parents are supposed to use to to check your grades online and they change periodically and nobody knows how to use them. That's because they don't have That's because a change manager could help them with that. It's

Am I getting it right? Yeah. It's trying to move people through the process of change because change is can be a very emotional uh experience for most people, which that's completely normal. Um, so it's trying to move people successfully from a current state of working or being to the desired future state of, you know, wanting them to exhibit specific behaviors or mindsets or uh, you know, engage with different ways uh, within the company. You're here. Yes. Good job. Yes. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Chelsea. I think you can actually see it right in front of me. Um I studied civil engineering at UT. So I was doing um some roadway and flip plane management, flip plane maps, things like that for a few years. And the past nine years have been working with Austin Independent School District on their bond program. So bonds are what go to voters um to vote on and it can be really large bond packages. is the two that I've worked on is a U billion dollar bond program that was passed in 2017 in Austin and then in 2022 there was a $2.4 billion bond program and my team manages the design where basically represent the district in managing the architect during design and the general contractor during construction. So, I've been doing that for about 10 years now and was previously on the parks and w commission uh just because I really love green spaces and um I don't know, it just felt like a nice way to get into local government um in spaces that I like to use a lot like trails and and parks and everything. And then um we started a parks foundation, a nonprofit from that as a subcommittee. So, I'm a board member on that parks foundation and this is my first year on the planning and zoning commission. Um, and I really like it. It's a lot more on the engineering side of things, planning. Um, but I still get my park fun stuff with the parks foundation. So, I'm I'm happy to still be connected there. Do you have any questions for for me?

I'm Sally. I am a commercial broker. So I work with developers to build from dirt up buildings. I work mostly in gas stations um and retail centers. So um I have dealt a lot with planning and zoning with my clients and other not just Flugerville but like Cedar Park, Austin um to figure out where best suited these properties would work if it works for my clients and it works for the city of I mean city of Flugerville, the city of Boston. Um what else? I am my own broker and my degree is in marketing and psychology. Before I go, questions. We have questions for the New Yorker. Yeah, for the

Y'all are very quiet. We are. Uh, my name is Amanda Majun. I am I don't have a short way to say my job, but uh so my bachelor's degree is in history because history is awesome and not boring at all. A lot of kids don't like it.

Um but my ma my masters is in public policy and so which is a similar degree to the uh local government uh a lot of the roles here, but it's a it's another one of those uh degrees you can do a lot of different things with. Um, so I actually the industry I work in is public health. Bless you. I work in public health. I was I was with the state for a while and then I've been with nonprofits for the past decade. Um, and I'm I've been a project manager and a grants director. And right now I work at a member organization. So we help nonprofit health clinics throughout the state. Um, and my role is to help them with financial sustainability, which is a challenge when you have to pay doctors to serve patients who can't pay them. Um, and uh, yeah, I highly recommend exploring all the different public policy, public affairs options, um, because you guys are clearly already interested in this kind of thing. Um, but just there are so many different career paths you can go down with with that kind of degree. I cannot overstate how it's really My son says I'm very boring, but I think it's really fun. So, he

Do you guys have any questions? What different nonprofits have you worked with?

Um, I've worked with Well, I don't want to So, I I need to keep a really a good wall between my job and my volunteer work. Um but in Austin I've worked at So I've only ever worked for government or nonprofit. Um yeah even well except for like waiting tables in college. Um I've worked for health clinics uh where I managed the grants for them and so I worked with all and it was really fun because grants touch everything. So I got to work with all of the different departments in the health clinic even though I'm not clinical. So, I would, you know, get with them the clinical teams and be like, "What do you guys need that you can't, you know, afford?" And I would advise them like, "You don't want to use them. You don't want to use grant dollars on this, but you could use it on this instead." And D, and I worked with the finance department really closely, and I worked with the operations department really closely, and I worked with the CEO really closely. Uh but then now I met a nonprofit member association and member associations are another one where policy is handy because they do they also do like public interest lobbying. I'm not a I'm not a lobbyist. I did that as a volunteer in '05 with the ACLU. Highly recommend that for experience, but that is also how I learned it's not what I want to do.

I have a nonprofit. You have a nonprofit? Okay. Well, we help, but we Well, our group is hopefully helping those that don't get served, even the smallest smallest of groups. So, like, do you have a nonprofit question? Because you also have a nonprofit. Yeah, you founded a foundation. Yeah. Yeah. So, do you have a nonprofit question? How do you fund a nonprofit? So, it depends. It varies a lot. So the grant program is great, but some of the grants don't let you make more money than the grant. So you're stuck in your sty. We accidentally got

accidentally got a grant. Um we got a grant. Yay. Um but we got a grant and we were stymied on what we could do and how we can do it. Um the other way to do it is to raise funds through like donations, you know, Target um small companies. um your friends, your family. Um like we're having this an event in October and we've gotten 25K in donations, so we're able to have this event. But like

Yeah. And every nonprofit is different and every and grants are different and development is different. And that's why you go to grad school, honestly, cuz like most of my graduate work was on nonprofit management. So like if you have two years, I could explain it. Yeah. But basically, so there's government grants and they're very like data driven. They're like we we have an outcome in mind and we are willing to reimburse you for costs blah and you have to give a lot of data and it's not and then foundations are like we want to feel good and we want a story

and so the it's a little bit easier to spend the money but you have to it's totally different mindset when you're dealing with those two different funders and that's grants and then development is donors from individuals donors from corporations and then certain types of foundations are more like a donor than a than a grant maker. And my best friend from undergrad, so we've been friends for like 25 years, she does development and I did grants and we would never do each other's jobs. No. And uh and then yeah, some nonprofits can make a profit. They just have to put it back into the mission, not give it to shareholders. But then depending on your funer, some funders

Yeah, we do a zero net. So at the end of the year we're zero and we start January 1st getting more money. Yeah. Yeah. Every year it's zero. It Yeah. So it's a challenge. Small nonprofit I'm guessing. Very small. Yeah. Less than $100 million operating budget. Yeah. So that's the other thing. I've worked at nonprofits. It's very exciting to be small and not be governed. Yeah. So that's why it was great to have the grant but also not great to have the grant. And I've worked at nonprofits that were around a million dollar operating budget. And then I've worked at nonprofits that were $200 million. I have to quit my job cuz it's going to be too See that? See, and like that's the thing too is when you like a money that would be a lot of money to an individual isn't a lot of money to get things done for a bunch of people.

But you have to work a lot to if you're at that level. Well, yeah. Again, I was at large nonprofits that were $200 million operating budget. So, it was more like a corporation. The Flugerville Parks Foundation does not have that large budget. Otherwise, you'd be able to walk to school and or like there would just be a scooter taking you to school, right? But yeah, no, you have a train and have a train. He's not here with a metro. That would be awesome.

So, yeah. Also, frankly, an MBA is another good degree for nonprofit management. Um, but you're more likely to get a scholarship for a m an MPA or an MPP. If you're good enough to get in, you're good enough to get funded with a policy degree. the masters in business, they expect you to make your money back. But but yeah, lots of finance, lots of But there's a bunch of charities here in Flugerville that if you wanted to like join a charity just to see what it's like, there's so many like um Circle of Hope has a lot of teenage volunteers. Yeah. Um and I can't think of others and I I Women of Flugerville. Yeah, the women of Flugerville. Uh like uh Backpack Friends is one that's pretty well known. Flugerville Education Foundation.

Mhm. The Parks Foundation also has volunteer every month and we love having high school students. We had a lot of high school students at our last event. The She's probably going to give you a shovel and have you dig Yeah. dig. It's not glamorous work. It's usually picking up trash or planting trees, but it's a lot of fun. We have a We have a We have a Facebook. I don't know if you guys have Facebook. I They probably don't cuz they're so Yeah. Tik Tok. No, we have Instagram. Can you cross? Can you cross? Don't say the

I have an Instagram, but we're we're we're trying. It's gonna look like it's pretty bare. We'll have a better Instagram in about a month. So, feel free to follow us and get your parents to follow on Facebook and then they can tell you when the event is any. Oh, sorry. We got to go. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So, I'm Nick Hudson. Uh I'm a structural engineer. uh although I work in solar energy now for the last 10 years or so which doesn't really have a lot of structural engineering so kind of more like a project manager and development manager but um the way that I got involved in P&Z is that I would be an engineer or a development manager on some of these projects that would go in front of this type of council somewhere else. Um, and it was interesting to kind of be on that side of the of the podium, trying to make a presentation, trying to get in the minds of the people over here and understand what they're looking for and what they what they want to see um for a new project. And, you know, 10 years ago in the solar industry, there was a lot of doubt, especially the kind of places where you would build solar is usually out in the middle of nowhere where there's yeah, just a lot of hesitancy towards that kind of thing. So, um, that was always part of the challenge at that point. And so when I was doing things like that, I was kind of, well, I wonder what what Flute Real does for that kind of thing. And um and yeah, I found that it was it was pretty accessible to just kind of come to these meetings and eventually ask to be on the commission. And um I've been doing this for almost 6 years now. And it's been really interesting been able to see this side of it, you know, kind of why you might say no to some things that that seem like a good idea. Um and yeah, it's been it's been really interesting. You reminded me of something. Can I say something?

Of course. Nick, thank Nick Nick reminded me. Um, so when I went to grad school, I went uh in Baltimore. So I'm I'm from Texas. I'm seventh generation Texan. Grew up out in the middle of nowhere. And um I'm really glad I studied policy in another state because there are a lot of things about Texas that I didn't appreciate until I was somewhere not here that that doesn't have open record laws like we do. So they don't have open meetings and they don't have open records and so the planning and zoning is behind closed doors

and the public doesn't have access to it like we do here and they aren't able to to to give comment. they aren't even able to like see the minutes and and and you can like and I went to grad school specifically in Baltimore and when I was there I was there from 07 2007 to 2009 and uh the majority of the buildings in Baltimore the majority were abandoned and in 2000 7 years before I got there 80% 80% of their properties were abandoned and nobody because their planning and zoning was so opaque, developers couldn't get in to redevelop those properties. So, they were just sitting there and like it was it was it was such a mess. And so, I didn't really appreciate how amazing it is that we have this openness in Texas until I was somewhere that didn't have it.

And then beyond that, I think this partic this city staff does a really good job with the agendas and the reports online. like they're the the reports are so well done and they they tie it back to the Aspire 2040 plan which had so much public input. Um the staff here in in Flugerville do a very good job of getting more than the minimum of public input. So just wanted to thank you for talking about how how it was easy. That reminded me. Yeah, you're here. And do you all have questions for Nick? Um I think just regarding solar. Yeah. Um because my grandfather lives like out in the middle of nowhere, East Texas, piny woods. Um and there's a lot of solar development.

Yeah. Um especially in places where they cut down the trees. I was going to say drill for oil and then they just have a blank plot of land. Yeah. So, I was wondering how could we combat um without destroying like the woods um like maybe moving solar into urban areas on top of industrial buildings. Mhm. Um or like residential areas. That'd be brilliant.

Um like maybe paying the homeowner or the person that owns the business rather than spending a bunch of money buying land. Yeah, there's um so in the solar industry there's a lot of different kind of financing models. Um a lot of the smaller systems uh rely on a lot of subsidies and and financing that comes from either local government or the federal government. Um, some of those subsidies were recently kind of curtailed or they will be soon, which is unfortunate. But, um, solar energy in general has gotten to the point where it's cheap enough that you can usually put it up somewhere, even as simple as your house, and it will pay itself back just in the offset of your utility bills within about 10 years, maybe less sometimes.

So, we're kind of getting to that break even point where you don't need as many of those financing schemes to make it work. Um but at the same time that also kind of just leaves it in the open market where you can kind of build it almost anywhere that it makes sense. Um so yeah the kind of places that are going to get the most development in solar the places that are paying a lot of money for energy right now. Um, and I think one of the one of the biggest things that's happening in the energy market as a whole is has to do with AI and the rise of the amount of power and the amount of data centers that you need to actually run all these AI um systems that we have. It's it's like an exponential curve that's going up and up. So, um I personally being in the solar industry think solar is a great solution to that because you don't have to necessarily build a new um you know fossil fuel plant. You don't have to build coal plants, god forbid, um or nuclear or anything like that. You can you can kind of solar is very modular. Um I mean they're called solar modules and they're as small as you know a sheet of plywood basically but you can have a system that is one of those or you I've I've designed systems that have more than a million of those. So um it is very flexible. You could put it yeah on the top of warehouses. Um, I'm working on a project right now that's an open pit mine that's saying, "Hey, we're kind of getting a bad rap because we're an open pit mine. Uh, what can we do to offset some of our costs and also kind of put it out front a little bit to say, "Hey, we're doing solar as well." And so that's that's a great fit because it's it looks like it's going to be economically beneficial for them. They get to pay smaller amount of money for the energy. The energy is right there. It's reliable. They know where it is. You can put a battery on it so you can have it during the day and the night. So, I'm I'm excited to see kind of as the technology is advancing, as the energy prices are going to keep going up because of the data center demands, um I think we're going to see a lot more solar and energy storage in in a lot of other places. Not just cut down a bunch of trees, like you say, and and do it

there, but in a lot more, um intentional ways and and utility scale ways. Do you think that's like a legislation thing that we have to do like make it more that they build solar on warehouses and buildings if they come up for stat centers? Is that more in line of what you're thinking? You have legislation, but like here we would start it here and then it would Yes. Yes, it's the kind of thing that I mean pretty much any any government can offer subsidies or can uh a lot of places in California I think as a state are requiring some solar and some energy storage on all new developments. Um and so that's something that can be done at at the state level to kind of jumpst start it a little bit, right?

But at the end of the day, if if it's not a good economic proposition, it's, you know, it's not going to be a winning proposition long term. So, but I I think we're kind of at a at a tipping point where it's it would almost be economically stupid not if you need more energy to not try and get it from a renewable source rather than fossil fuels.

And to expand, I don't really know the financing side of it, but um I was googling what IEC stands for. I have no idea what it was. The International Energy Conservation Code. So certain entities can adopt certain code expectations that really require to get a permit in that city to meet certain expectations within those codes. So for example, Austin is adopting the 2024 IEC code which actually requires solar panel um to be a part of of developments for buildings of a certain size. So a large urban area is requiring within their permitting and their code process certain solar expectations. So, you know, advocacy on, you know, a government level can lead to cities adopting certain code expectations. Um, for example, AISD, Austin school district for any of their new construction, they require at least Austin Energy GE building um three star or lead silver certification. So, that entity that that district says if we're doing a new construction, we are going to do it to the sustainability standards. So even having entities um through wanting to be sustainable through advocacy of the people expecting them to be sustainable, community members expect for AISD to be sustainable. So then they make these commitments to meet certain sustainability goals within their buildings and then that creates a more sustainable society. Um, so that's a way that folks like on a ground level can advocate for things by asking questions like, "Okay, I hear we're doing X, like what what are we doing that's sustainable with the way that we're doing this?" Um, and that's a lot of questions that we ask here for longevity. Um, are, you know, what are we doing to make sure that what we're putting in is is sustainable and is considering those types of expectations. And shout out to the nonprofits because IEC lead

um like those are also industry nonprofits that um set these standards because it's all well and good for advocacy to say we want it to be better in X way but these these nonprofits that are usually national will actually set the standard so that there's a unified guideline like a so that you know it actually is sustainable and you're not requiring you know city staff to have even more expertise and and then B so that it's consistent so developers can have there we know that our development meets these certifications and no matter where we go we can say and so again nonprofit management and also I mean also voting because if you don't advocate and you don't vote for what you want then you're not going to get it

so like if there's like I know they're taking away solar subsidies right but if you go to your government your local government go well we'd like to keep it how do we get this on the nonprofit would be your backup and you can get the word out and you be an advocate for it and then vote for it.

An interesting thing happened with the kind of big beautiful bill this year is that it uh it started off looking quite bad for solar energy and renewables. Um but what happened in between is that the the original bill included these big statements that basically said all this is going to end by this date and you have to stop doing it by this date. But what they didn't really say was okay what are the terms of that? what what you know, how does that actually work? And in the last few months, what's happened is that there have been a lot of back channel communications between a lot of legislators from both sides, thankfully, who are hearing from their constituents and hearing from their local governments that are saying, "Well, we actually need these subsidies. We need this to do what we want to do because it helps us with costs and energy conservation, everything else, all the other goals we want to do." Um, in a lot of these, you know, quote unquote red states. So that led to a lot of the actual regulations that came out of it and the actual instructions that came out of it for the industry were a lot softer than they could have been

and that happened because there was a lot of feedback because there was a lot of blowback if you will even for the for the big policy decisions. So, I think that's an important takeaway for me was that, you know, you can have the bluster and whatever of the front line and saying, "Okay, I'm virtue signaling and I'm doing this because that's what I said I would do." But then what actually matters and what actually happens in the industry sometimes can be determined by a lot smaller things. So, it's it's important to look at the details. Yeah,

I'll go uh my uh my journey here is uh quite the winding road. I originally and and I might be the only one now I realize that does work that's not related at all to my original college degree. Um I uh I mean I did major in Russian history. So that's very niche but uh so I originally studied journalism uh and my first couple of jobs out of school were in Washington DC working for PBS and NPR. So I um

yeah it was an amazing experience being out there. I worked mostly on news programs and so I was um did very little reporting but I did a lot of writing and producing for television news mostly. Um and then I sort of figured out that I wasn't effect being effective at telling the same stories that we were doing for TV and radio on the internet at the time. And so that's kind of how I then transitioned into um like digital and websites and um and tech things was because I needed to figure out how to build new tools so that we could tell better stories online. Uh and so one of my projects back then was uh we sort of built the first um sort of Hulu for PBS, the video streaming portal. Um so I was able to work on that and and figured a bunch of those things out. Uh and so then I sort of transitioned fully into uh technology. Um, and then for the last 10 or 15 years, somewhere around there, um, I've been, uh, basically in product management, which nobody knows what that means for the most part, but, um, uh, essentially I, um, work on strategy, business planning, some project planning for software. And so, um, some of my most recent projects are the ones giving him grief. I work on, um, AI. Uh we built we're building software tools to help uh businesses be more efficient by automating the workflows um uh through AI and uh and helping companies with change management um on how to set policies for employees and how to help folks integrate that into their everyday work. Um and then I ended up on planning and zoning sort of similar hopefully to what you all are doing. I uh originally took Flugerville 101 which is a course um every year um where similar to what you all are doing you go and talk to each of the different departments um and learn about them. Uh I also did the citizens police academy which was really

fun. So that was like I think it's a six six weeks maybe somewhere around there. um speaking with different uh departments within uh police. Uh and then I've been involved in a bunch of other like several of uh the folks on here have been in different strategic plans and um visioning for different projects and those types of things which uh was really fun. Um I'd realized that uh I had a lot of ideas and opinions and so um sort of jumped in from from there and I've been on and now you're running. Yes. is good trying to be hopefully our next council member. Also true.

So if you see Jonathan Kaufman sign himself. Um I have a question. Sure. So I this this is about something that you had said earlier about how you were involved with a lot of voter registration stuff and I know that a lot of people here in Yak like me and um one of our other members Natalie who isn't here today um was interested in kind of learning more about that. So do you think that's something that we could get involved in as well?

Yeah, absolutely. Um there's basically it's pretty easy to learn and jump into. Um you actually literally can watch a YouTube video that takes like 30 or 40 minutes. Um and then fill out an application and get certified to help people register to vote. Uh and then there's several organizations in central Texas that help to coordinate where people can go to help folks get registered. Um the League of Women Voters is one that does a ton of that. Um, and that's actually the program that I um did the high school work um with. Uh, it's nonpartisan. It's just their goal is to get people to register to vote. And so, uh, but there's several other types of organizations that also do a lot of that. But even just as an individual, you know, you can get uh get certified and uh essentially wherever you can find somebody that isn't registered or if they've moved and need to update their registration, you're able to do that. What was the organization again?

Uh the League of Women Voters. I think it's called the Texas League of Women Voters, isn't it? It would be our our local version of it. Just Google League of Women Voters. It'll pull up the ones near you. And yeah, be sure you pull up the Texas or Travis County, but I mean, they've been around since the women got the vote in 1920. That's how they started was to get women registered in 1920. It wasn't that long ago. um women's suffrage, but yeah, it's really Googleable. Yeah. And they're a really great organization and especially they've maintained their nonpartisanship this whole time.

And they also have some really really awesome resources um for people wanting to understand what's on the ballot, what type of things um to be voted on. It's not really like recommendation based because it's to their point nonpart partisan, but um

it is a good guide too. So, I feel like one thing that I struggled with whenever I was younger and and wanting to vote was was really understanding what am I even voting for. Um, it's so challenging, especially in local elections, to find any information sometimes on what's on the ballot. Um, so finding resources like that I think kind of helps, you know, makes it a little bit more um what is it like achievable? not achievable, but like more attainable attainable to to know what you're you're voting for because it is sometimes hard and then if you read the language on the ballot, it's so confusing if there's propositions.

Yeah, they kind of give you a summary at the end like explain the ballot, explain what's on the ballot, show you what's on the ballot, excuse me, and then gives you the reasons for a yes, no vote so that you can make up and it's like four sentences. So, it kind of gives you like a real quick blur of how and what that means because yeah, when I was 18 and started to vote, I was like, I don't know how to vote. I'm just going to vote local, you know, national national and then I started voting locally. Yeah. I never voted locally. Voting locally is actually the better way to go. I know. So, if you can't, you don't want to vote, please vote. But if you don't want to vote nationally, vote locally because that's makes the biggest impact. Period. It was like your grandfather wouldn't have had that piney woods

issue if there was more voting going on and more acknowledgement to what was it what was happening. And also something super important to know that I did not learned for a very long time. I'm so ashamed to say but it's not just November. There are elections all the time. There are May elections. So, you know, to to really like engage in local politics, which obviously yall are interested in cuz you're you're here.

Um, it is kind of keeping up with all the different elections. There could be runoffs like in in a local election, if someone doesn't get 50% or more of the vote. Like right now for mayor, there's four people running. So, if none of those candidates get 50%, then they will have a runoff election. So, that'll be another time to vote after November. And if you're not following that, you would never be aware that there's another election after the November election. It's crazy. Yeah, there was there was one this past May for the school board election, which I was a student clerk at the polls for that one. So, that was an interesting experience also learning about Yeah.

you know, the different types of elections that are not just the president, vice president, all that, right? Yeah. people just go out mainly for those, but really if you go locally, you're gonna really get a bang for your buck on that one. Yeah, those are really And it's, um, I think I I always encourage high school students to do it as well because you get excused absences, um, to do it. Uh, and you get paid. And so, um, it's it's a pretty good deal if you're willing to, you know. Um, yeah. My my parents didn't even know there was an election until I told them, "Oh, I want to work as a student clerk in this one." They were like, "There's an election?" Mhm. Yeah. you know. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of folks that try to advocate for everything being in November, but

that's it's a hard battle. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just had one quick question for you guys as a commission because you all very clearly come from very different backgrounds and there's seven of you and Commissioner Crane is here. So, what happens when you all disagree on something that comes before you? Oh, I think we just talk about it. Yeah. Explain. We actually had a disagreement last se not in September, in August. We actually had a disagreement in August. I'm actually trying to work in all of the old old lady you old lady phrases whenever we disagree that I can like um don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. Oh my god, who says that?

Who? See, you're from New York. You're not from the south. Don't say words like that. That's gross. See, another disagreement works on that side of the dice. I've never heard that before. Really? No. What is that? It's an old It's a very old common southern phrase. It's not They don't usually say P. Yeah. Yeah. It's usually a worse word. Southern humor and um allegory and no, we discuss it. Um we don't stick really strictly to Robert's rules, but we do have Robert's rules when it comes to actually making the decision. And when we're in disagreement, that's when the motion and amendment to the motion process becomes the most important and Jonathan keeps us in line. Yeah, that's and this was a disagreement.

Yes, we're very upset. So, yeah, it's not like adversarial. It's that's one of my favorite things about being an adult is like, oh, I can disagree with you about something and still be your friend like a real adult or like at work, you know, like at work, my favorite workplace was one where we had comfortable conflict. Like we were, we all know we are all here because we care about Flugerville. We're all really smart people, highly educated, dedicated. We're doing this for free. So if we disagree, it's about the work and the vision for the future. And it's not personal. And it's not it's personal because it's personal to Flugerville. It's personal to our peoples that are here. But it's not like not us. It's not personal to us.

Yeah. And ultimately, we're trying to do what's best for all of the citizens, right? or in the end it becomes your what we do up here becomes literally your issue. So yeah, like Jonathan still likes me. We disagreed on the last thing. Exactly. Yeah. I think um you know there's there's a lot of it takes a lot of mutual respect I think in those types of situations which we certainly have um as a commission here.

Um and like you said, I think we generally talk it out and um try to deal in facts uh wherever we can and um Yeah. Right. Um I think when it gets difficult for all of us, I think is when there's very um passionate members of the public speaking for or against something um that may not may or may not be reflective of what the overall community might like or want. Um and so those are always difficult because we also want to be mindful and empathetic to the folks that are taking their time to come up and speak to us about something that they feel really strongly about. And so we try to try to handle that um very respectfully and with empathy uh from where they're coming. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think um when there's disagreement um one thing that I really appreciate about a lot of the folks in this commission is I think we all are are pretty great at acknowledging the other person's perspective as well saying you know while I think that is a really good point this is you know my perspective on that and I I I think the the way in which you can kind of tee up your own thoughts um makes it nonadversarial you know by by stating out loud someone else's perspective. by giving everyone the space to talk and feel comfortable in talking. Um, one thing that I appreciate about the way Jonathan and others lead this, um, but it's always making sure everyone has a chance to speak. You know, we're obviously very talkative folks as you can tell up here. So um you know I think giving everyone the space to have the chance to talk um also just leads to that mutual respect and then when the that mutual respect is tested

by disagreement it it kind of holds true in the in the way that we might disagree. So, I I really appreciated that last meeting cuz we were we were very split. Um, in the way that we voted and it was the conversation was very interesting and even the people I disagree with, I thought they made really awesome points. Um, so I think acknowledging that and being open to hear that is what makes it honestly a growth experience and yeah, kind of fun. I think I almost I almost wish that we would vote things down more often that we would that we would have like a motion that somebody would say, "Oh, I want to do this or I want to add an amendment or something and then we say, "No, we don't want that." And then we'd have to figure out how to compromise. And

I feel like by the time we vote, we're always usually on the same page or we just know how we're going to vote and okay, it's going to be a majority anyways. I kind of wish every once in a while that, you know, we just try to be a little more creative and then be like, "No, we're not going to do that. Okay, let's try to do something else. I want to add an amendment and name it Fred kind of thing." Yeah. But no, it's it's good. I mean, I there's good things about that, too, that that we have the discussion first and then by the time we get to the vote, there really aren't any mysteries, right? Um but but yeah, I think at the same time, there's there's a healthy level of um compromise and and and other things that you can do with voting as well. Yeah. Oh, and you can go back to that meeting and hear what we're talking about.

So, like it's always recorded. It's always ready for you guys to listen to it again online. So yeah, but you do have a question. Um, so back to what you said earlier about AI. Um, I was wondering if you could elaborate more on like how you use it on your current projects.

Sure. Yeah. So, um, funny enough, I use AI to help build AI, other AI. Um, and so, uh, I will use AI to, uh, speed up analysis. So, I do a lot of deal with a lot of data and, um, have to find sort of trends and patterns in it. and AI is really good at that type of work. Um, so that's one for sure. Um, occasionally use it for uh for writing if I have a bunch of thoughts and I can just, you know, speak into my phone and have AI organize it for me. Um, that's super helpful. Um, and then beyond that, um, one of the more fun applications that I do is, um, using AI to sort of mock up, um, what a new screen or a design for something might look like, um, as a way to better or more effectively communicate with my peers. I'm not a designer, but if I can do something that's, you know, better than a Sharpie on a napkin, which I used to do, um, then, you know, AI can be generally be pretty useful for that. So, a ton of stuff. And I'm always learning new tricks and and ways to use it, honestly.

Yeah. Yeah. I used uh recently AI to help me build a restaurant space using ADA compliant hallways. Oh, nice. Um like a new kind of robotic kitchen. Um which I think you guys are going to hear about soon from somebody else, but uh not not today, but um just kind of trying to decide how it would work in a space. So I used that and then it worked out pretty well. And then I went to another program where they do the pretty and then sent it back to me, you know, and then I was able to use it as illustrations for one of my job sites. That's awesome.

I think one other thing specific to uh the commission here that I think we've um done really well at um with the help of staff too is with that public engagement. So you mentioned a lot of the planning and um staff goes out and talks to and surveys as many people as they can. Similarly um one of the things I've certain I've tried to do as chair is also be flexible with the rules when it when there's someone who is here and engaged and when we have disagreements sometimes you know not being afraid to pull somebody up. let's talk to the developer or the land owner or the business owner and um and get those clarifying questions and things like that. Um and again giving everyone the opportunity to to do that whenever possible just to make sure we're getting as much input um as we can.

Cool. All good. All right. Well then uh that was the only thing on uh on the agenda tonight. So we are adjourned at 7:57. Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Thank you for being here.