Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 9:30 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee
The Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee, chaired by Ryan Alter, met April 1 and approved minutes from its previous meeting unanimously. Austin Water Director Shay Rolson and staff presented on recruitment, retention, and training, reporting a vacancy rate reduced over 40% since 2023 and a new workforce development program. The Office of Climate Action and Resilience presented the Comprehensive Climate Implementation Program, a follow-up to a July 2024 council direction, listing 46 prioritized climate actions with cost and greenhouse gas analyses. Parks and Recreation and Austin Police Department staff briefed the committee on park security, focusing on park rangers, vehicle burglaries, and cameras. The committee also heard quick summaries of memos on the Austin-Travis County food plan and the status of federal grants, and adjourned after discussing future topics.
0:00 Ready to go.
0:06 A txn. Good to go, y'all good?
0:10 Alright, well, good morning.
0:12 Um, I am Ryan Alter chair of the climate water environment and parks committee here on April the
0:21 first at nine 30 at 3 0 1 west second street City Hall.
0:27 We are in the boards and commissions room.
0:29 Uh, a quorum is present and so we will kick off the meeting.
0:35 Uh, our first item of the day is approval of the minutes from our previous meeting chair.
0:42 There's one speaker for public communication.
0:44 Okay. I didn't know if we were gonna do that now or with the item, so.
0:47 All right. We'll do our public speaker now before we get to the items.
0:50 Great. Thank you. We have, uh, scott johnson.
0:53 You have three minutes?
1:15 Yes. Good morning council members.
1:18 Welcome to the new council members that I haven't met in person yet, although I met you at
1:22 one of the events.
1:24 Uh, my name is scott johnson.
1:25 I'm a long time advocate on air quality and climate, and this is a presentation I gave to
1:30 the joint sustainability committee back in 2023.
1:34 And you can read that.
1:36 I'll paraphrase. Uh, with the framework that we have now, the air quality program and the air quality
1:45 plan really is the gateway to climate because there's many substantial and tangible things that, that has.
1:51 This is a regional plan with cap cog being the, the lead rather than the city of Austin.
1:57 The city of Austin is a participant.
2:00 Next slide, please. I started my advocacy in the early to mid nineties, and I was involved with
2:06 the city's first air quality plan, which was launched in 1995.
2:10 Three of my recommendations made it into the plan.
2:13 There were 10 recommendations.
2:16 So, next slide please.
2:19 Regarding the climate equity plan, I've had contact and now regular contact with that to me, there, there
2:25 are some gaps in it.
2:27 Uh, greenhouse gas emission reductions are not included for, for the following.
2:32 Aries diesel construction equipment, uh, landscaping equipment.
2:36 Now we're doing something related to it, but the initial program for landscaping equipment was one where Austin
2:42 energy was simply giving a rebate at the point of sale.
2:46 When someone bought the equipment, then they would leave the store and to their surprise, sometimes they would
2:51 get a $30 rebate or discount off of an electric model and a $15 rebate off of a
2:57 handheld model, which could be a line trim or, or leaf blower.
3:00 Can you scroll down a little bit on that same page?
3:04 If not, that's fine.
3:10 Next slide please. So, next slide please.
3:17 That's it. So I just wanted to share that there's a lot of value in asking questions when
3:23 you're a new Council Member or an existing Council Member.
3:26 Some of us, uh, offer up to be resources that can work when I, it's sincere offer when,
3:33 when someone's been been engaged for a while.
3:36 I'm happy to meet with those that I haven't met with already.
3:39 I'm in contact with Council Member Ryan Alter staff on a regular basis to try to offer ideas
3:45 and suggestions to move the climate equity plan forward, and also to make sure that they're connecting with
3:50 the regional air quality plan that is up for renewable in the next couple of years.
3:56 The current one was extended by two years, and this plan is one that unfortunately has been a
4:02 bit static. When you look at the state mandated measures, those ones there have have not changed.
4:09 They need to stay in place, but we need to review it in a more systematic way as
4:15 there's some emission reduction opportunities that haven't been realized.
4:19 Thank you very much.
4:21 Quite loud. Thank you very much mr. Johnson, for being here.
4:26 Um, alright. Now we can move to item one, which is approval of the minutes.
4:33 Can I get a motion moved by Council Member Duchen?
4:36 Seconded by Council Member Siegel, any objection or abstention?
4:41 Nope. Seeing none. Alright.
4:43 Um, the minutes are approved unanimously.
4:47 Next we will move to item number two.
4:52 Um, and actually, yeah, let's move to item number two.
4:55 Uh, I know councilor Ellis is about to be here and would like to be here for this
4:59 item. Um, given that, actually I'm gonna, if you'll indulge me crowd here, I would like to skip
5:07 to item number four, the, uh, recruitment, retention and training of Austin water staff.
5:19 Sorry to go out of order on y'all.
5:34 All right. Good morning.
5:35 Good morning council members.
5:37 My name is shay rolls rolson and I'm the director of Austin water.
5:42 Uh, I became director in January of 2023 at the same, uh, time when the office of the
5:48 city auditor published an external review of Austin water conducted by ut's center for water in the environment.
5:57 Um, that external review had a number of recommendations that we have since implemented, and many of them
6:03 were around, uh, the topic we're gonna talk to you about today, recruitment, retention, and training.
6:09 Um, and so, uh, we have worked diligently to, um, to make these improvements, which not only make
6:18 Austin, uh, water a better place to work, um, but have the added benefit of, uh, really setting
6:25 the standard for, um, these, uh, this type of work and our ability to, uh, create an environment
6:32 for our employees where they can, um, meet their professional goals as while they serve the city of
6:39 Austin. Uh, so I'm gonna turn it over to our acting assistant director of employee and leadership development
6:45 israel custodial. Good morning counsel.
6:47 Oh, you need to turn that over.
6:49 Good morning counsel. How are y'all today?
6:50 Great, how are you?
6:52 All right, so next slide please.
6:53 Let's get into it.
6:55 So this is just our org chart.
6:56 It's just kind of what we use to illustrate that.
6:58 We're a pretty complex organization.
6:59 We have, you know, water quality scientists, uh, operations and maintenance personnel, uh, conservation specialist, you name it.
7:07 We probably have it working over at Austin water.
7:10 Uh, we're an organization of 1400 plus, and we're looking to fill about 118 more positions this year.
7:17 Next slide please. Next slide, please.
7:21 So when we talk about how we're doing, kind of like the standard kpi the city uses is
7:25 your vacancy rate, and you can see here our vacancy rate by fiscal year.
7:31 Uh, a couple of things of note here.
7:32 You can kind of see what, uh, what you hear about or what you have heard about as
7:37 the great resignation you can see there.
7:39 Uh, in, uh, 2022, uh, you saw that our vacancy rate kind of started to climb, uh, that
7:46 coincides with the great resignation post covid.
7:49 People started to kind of, uh, leave their jobs look for different opportunities and certainly we that we're
7:55 not unique in having experienced this.
7:57 Um, but the, the big story here, or the big good big happy story is that we're now
8:02 to 8.3, uh, seven vacancy rate, which means that from 2023, we've actually reduced our vacancy rate by
8:10 over 40%. Next slide please.
8:14 So, part of managing your vacancies really is making sure that you are timely posting your jobs and
8:19 you're hiring folks. And so, uh, what this chart kind of illustrates is that we've, we've, we've done
8:24 that, right? So, um, 40% of our, uh, jobs are hired within the first three months, and then
8:31 the second, um, three to six months we hired the other half.
8:36 We do have like one job there that is older than two years.
8:40 But actually we have a offer in place for that job.
8:42 We do have some challenges with some of our elec industrial electrician jobs and inc jobs.
8:46 It's really hard to get, um, that's not unique to this utility, but we have an offer in
8:52 place for that one.
8:53 And we, we feel like it'll be filled by the end of the month this month.
8:57 So, uh, next slide please.
8:58 Can I ask you real quick, were y'all impacted or covered in the last budgets kind of sweep
9:06 of any position two years old?
9:08 Or is that enterprise funds as well?
9:09 It, it does cover all departments, including Austin water.
9:12 We have never lost a position due to it being over two years because we really focus on
9:17 getting those filled. As israel mentioned, the electricians and instrumentation and control technicians are our hardest to fill
9:23 positions. Um, but we are very focused on getting those older vacancies filled.
9:28 Yeah. And would you say those are hardest to fill because of the salary competitiveness or for some
9:33 other reason? Uh, I, I think that, uh, salary and competitiveness with industry is part of it.
9:39 I also think that it's a pretty unique skillset.
9:43 Um, you can't really go from being an electrician, uh, building, um, high rises in Austin to working
9:50 on, uh, lift stations and treatment plants at Austin water.
9:53 And so there's a real training need there as well.
9:56 And that's where we're really focused is how do we provide that training so that, uh, so that
10:02 someone can actually be competitive for those positions.
10:05 Yeah. Thanks. Sorry I interrupted.
10:07 No, no worries. Um, we, our average data fill is about 150, which is good.
10:12 So let's take a look at positions filled versus separations.
10:15 This is a really good one.
10:17 Um, what this kind of shows is that we've done a pretty robust job year after year of
10:22 filling our vacancies. Uh, but it's a little, it's a little bit trickier than that really, when you
10:26 look at the math, you know, you would probably ask, well, if you are hiring, uh, more than
10:31 you're losing, why are you, why are you not at zero vacancies?
10:35 And the answer to that is because a, a third of the positions that we fill are actually
10:40 internal promotions, which is fantastic for retention, it's good for the organization, is good for the employee.
10:46 However, it doesn't help our vacancy rate because it just moves it from the position that we fill
10:50 to the position that filled it, right?
10:52 So that's kind of the explains that.
10:54 And it also illustrates that you really can't hire yourself out of a vacancy issue.
10:59 You have to also have, uh, a holistic approach to retention in order to be able to reduce
11:04 your vacancy rates overall.
11:06 And we're gonna examine that a little bit in the next slide.
11:11 Uh, so the next slide is separations by source.
11:14 Couple of key notes here.
11:15 You can see that back in 2020, that was the last year that the major reason for separation
11:22 was retirement. Again, that kind of coincides with that great resignation that we talked about on the first
11:27 slide. Uh, and then you see that after that the voluntary resignation starts to really creep up and
11:33 it really hammered us in 2022 and 2023.
11:37 Um, but this is also a good new slide because when you see 2024, you see that we
11:42 have been able to reduce, um, our voluntary resignations by 22%.
11:47 And we've also actually reduced the transfer to other city departments by 36%.
11:52 And we're pretty much on track this fy as well.
11:55 We had to close out the data for the slides at the end of February, but we're, we're
12:00 pretty much on track.
12:01 And so that was a very significant kind of strategy that we used to, uh, kind of reduce
12:06 our vacancy rate overall.
12:07 And we'll talk a little bit more about like the holistic approach to retention as we go forward.
12:11 This is fiscal year, right?
12:13 Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Fiscal year data.
12:14 So just to point out that this is fiscal year data, so October to September.
12:17 Yeah. Alright, so next slide.
12:21 Next slide. So training's a really, really important part of a holistic, uh, retention strategy.
12:29 Uh, we have built out an operational training division that we stood up this year.
12:35 Uh, and that operational training division is going to be comprised of onboarding training, uh, technical job skills
12:41 training and licensure training.
12:43 These are training programs that existed in the utility, but they were kind of located in different parts
12:47 of the utility. So we're kind of bringing them together to be able to have kind of more
12:52 depth and to be able to kind of share in the skills.
12:54 And these are actually pictures of our, our trainers in action.
12:58 I wanna talk really quick about the onboarding training, 'cause it's kind of the newer thing that we,
13:02 we have, this is a direct result of the after action report that we had.
13:07 And what our onboard training trainers do is they have work with our km kts, which is a
13:13 knowledge management, knowledge transfer modules.
13:15 Basically, they're just the best practices and they're the skills that our operators need at the water treatment
13:20 plants, the hands-on skills, uh, that they need in order to be successful.
13:25 So we've taken those modules, turned them into, uh, training modules and have used that to establish, uh,
13:31 an onboarding training program.
13:33 And we're about two years into this now.