 Welcome everyone to the LBJ Library and to our continuing program year. We're really, really excited to have you guys here this evening for what's going to be a really great presentation. For those of you who haven't seen Ryan before, his presentations are always great. And having our mirror with us is always an honor and a treat. Before we get rolling, I want to go over some upcoming events that the Future Forum is hosting, both here at the library, but then also out in the city, out in the community. On marker calendars on October 22nd, we'll be having a Future Forum members happy hour at the Rattle Inn. We've been doing these member happy hours every other month under the leadership of Carson Mitzler, who's our social chair slash membership chair. And they've been a great opportunity for members to get together and kind of discuss what happens to be going on around the city, around the nation in a kind of more relaxed environment, let our hair down a little bit. So that's on October 22nd on October 28th. I am very, very pleased to announce that our public policy cluster will be getting together at a location to be announced. And having a great public policy discussion, I think really tearing off of what's been going on here the last year with the Celebration of Civil Rights Act, we're going to be talking about race and ethnicity in the U.S. and how it affects the way we view the world, our nation, our community. It should be very, very, very entertaining. And then in mid-November, I'm excited to announce that we're going to have a conversation and a celebration of sorts of the Voting Rights Act. And that's going to be sometime in mid-November, details to come. You can find out more about all the programming at the Future Forum website that is linked to the library's website. As I mentioned, as you can see, we're discussing what is the first of what we hope will be a series that we're hoping to kick off this year and continue in future years regarding the state of the city. Tonight we're going to focus on the 10-1 plan and also the changing demographics of the city that we live in, work in and play in. This, and I would contend that I think the changing demographics of this city really played a large role in what is going to be a monumental historical change in the way that our city leaders are elected. This will be the first time ever in Austin that our city leaders are going to be elected by geographical representation, by districts, and is going to really, I think, change potentially. And I'm going to be really interested to hear what our special guests have to say about the way Austin votes, but also about the way that the Council's run and government works here in Austin. So we've asked Mayor Lee Levingwell and city demographer Ryan Robinson to share details on the changing face of Austin, because it is changing and changing rapidly, as well as the new city structure. As I mentioned before, Ryan's presentation about the change face of Austin is fascinating, and I always, every time I've seen it, it doesn't get old. Ryan's going to be up first. He has a terrific PowerPoint presentation. He's going to run us through, share some data with us. And then Mayor Lee Levingwell is going to join Mark Updgrove, our very distinguished leader here at the LBJ Library up on stage for a conversation, really looking at the 10-1 plan, looking at the changing demographics. And we're going to ask Mayor Levingwell to look into his crystal ball a little bit and tell us what he thinks is to come for us here in the city. And at the end, hold on to your questions, because we're going to have both of these gentlemen available to answer your question. And I know I have a few. With that, I'm going to go ahead and kick things off by introducing Ryan. Ryan started working for the city of Austin as demographer in 1990, which was the year that I moved back to Austin. He has directed their demographics program since 1995. He's a native Austinite, which is a rare and rare breed these days, it seems. He graduated from Austin High and UT. His current professional interests include data mapping and interpretation, population change, and the rise and fall of American cities. So with that, Ryan, come on up. I look forward to this very much. Thank you very much. David sort of stole a little bit of my thunder. I mean, the connection I want to make tonight is Austin's amazing demographic story and where we find ourselves at this truly historic point in our history as we return to electing councils by district. We have been at large since 1954. A couple of things I want to say, I'm very honored to be here. I did not know the president, but I was blessed to get a chance to become very familiar with Lady Bird. And of course, as many of you know, she was a delightful, very intelligent, really fun person to hang out with. I'm also pleased to be here because of the connection I have with Sarah McCracken, wife of Brewster McCracken, one of the really the greatest council members to ever work with. He had this intense interest in planning and enormous amount of energy, and we miss getting to hang out and do city planning with Brewster. And then thirdly, I'm very honored to be on a double bill with Lee Leffingwell of the six mayors I've served under. He's the only other native Austinite. And so as you'll learn for native Austinites, it's really important that we sort of see ourselves. But with that, I do want to jump into data and I think the slides will sort of tell the story. So the easy part is talking about Austin's demographic story and then my challenge is to try and make that bridge because I think I agree with David. At some point, we had simply gotten too big. We had gotten too diverse. We had gotten too geographically disparate to continue under an at large system. So point number one is the one that's in our face every day. Austin has been at or near the top of the list of fastest growing large cities in the country for three decades running. You know, we hear every year a new piece of information that comes out and verifies this. And so one way to show that is to do it in bar grab fashion. The city has doubled its population roughly every 25 years since its founding. You really see how that population growth takes off after World War Two. And it's that exponential bend in our growth trajectory that sets us apart from Dallas or Houston or San Antonio. I've taken the liberty to advance this to 2015. We're right now at about 86870. So we could actually be above that 900,000 mark by the time 2015 rolls around. That's a map of our city. The point is that we now have jurisdiction in the county lines are shown in purple there. So a large amount of jurisdiction in Williamson County almost 45,000 Austinites with a whole lot more to come as Robinson Ranch. Unfortunately, no, no relation as it develops. My father was very explicit. He would tell us as children, those are the rich Robinson's. And so I, you know, wasn't scarred for life. But my point is that is that we could someday be the second largest city in Williamson County behind Round Rock. We also have jurisdiction in Hayes County now and that's finally beginning to develop. 320 square miles, it's a big, big city. The latest data from the Census Bureau confirms this. We continue to be the fastest growing large city in the country and not just by a little bit, right? I mean, this is way off the front as they used to say. I mean, you know, we're growing at three or four percentage points faster over that period of time than the second and third place city. And that's a simple map to take a look at that. Dallas is in 12th position and so is not too far behind that and Houston is in about 13th position. What I think is amazing is that aside from percentage gain, when you look at total gain, right? Because that's really what puts pressure on infrastructure. The city of Austin ranks third in those three years. I mean, so we've added a city of Round Rock in that three year period, almost as much absolute growth as the city of Houston. And that's the kind of, you know, those are the kind of pressures that the mayor has been very, very keen to address in his transportation initiatives. All right, we have grown and I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but of course the mayor and I are keenly aware of this. We are now the 11th largest city in the country, not the 11th largest urbanized area. We're about 35th, 34th in terms of the metropolitan area. But in terms of the municipal jurisdiction, which is what matters in terms of city council and taxation, we've become the 11th. But when I came back to Austin in 1990, we were 27th. By 2000, we climbed to 16th. By 2010, we were 14th. And then in 2013, we made it to 11th. When this happened, Mayor Leffingwell wrote me an email and he said, just out of curiosity, when will we break the top 10? So I said, well, I'm going to grow the city of Austin at its current rate and I'm going to grow San Jose at its current rate. And we catch them in about 2025. Not that it's a race, but I think that Austin's becoming one of the top 10 largest cities in the country is, I would say it's inevitable. And I find that fascinating. So in sort of my quest to try and understand why is it that we continue to grow and will we continue to grow? I would offer up this piece of data, educational attainment of adults in the country. And the economist Richard Florida, who wrote the book Rise of the Creative Class, he says this top 10 has been decades in the making, right? It didn't come together overnight and it won't fall apart overnight. And in terms of the new economy and what's driving the new economy, that's all about knowledge based industries. And so people can live anywhere they want to live. And that dramatically changes the growth agenda for cities. All of a sudden it becomes about quality of life. And in an example to try and get at how we wound or end up going to 10-1, I want to follow this slide with a map of educational attainment, which to me drives home the intense amount of spatial variation we have in this city, right? We have some neighborhoods where not even 5% of the adult population has a bachelor's degree. Other neighborhoods where, you know, insufferably the 90 to 95% of the adult population has got a bachelor's degree. And this geographic variation, I would argue, is underneath, I think, one of the important reasons why we're leaving at large and going to districts. Because when you have a city with this much spatial variation, I would argue that in order to govern it at its best possible level, you need to go to geographic districts. All right, point number two, Austin has experienced profound diversification over the past several years. Now, as a demographer, when I talk about diversification, I'm talking primarily about racial and ethnic diversification, but it goes way beyond that. And for those of you in the room who have been here a long time, I think you'll agree we're a far more heterogeneous community today than we were 30, 40 years ago. And I would argue that that's a huge positive. It certainly is from an economic development standpoint that cities out across the country that are becoming more homogeneous, well, they're not growing. Cities that are diversifying, they're thriving, they're vibrant. Cities today need that diversification, they need that growth aging. So in a simple way to show this, back in 1990, and I'm at the city level, the non-Hispanic Anglo-share of total was approaching 60%, Hispanic share of total about 21, 22%, African-American share of total about 11%, and a very small Asian share of total about 2% or 3%. And so you can see what happens over the sweep of time. By the time we got census 2010 data, we realized we had joined every other large North American city in becoming a majority minority community. And as I do a mechanical projection forward, you can see that a couple of things happen, the non-Hispanic Anglo-share of total begins to really get very similar to the Hispanic share of total. And significantly, the Asian share of total, I believe, will surpass the African-American share of total. That could wind up changing, but the current forces at work really suggest that that's what we're going to see. And then my own estimates of the current racial and ethnic mix of Austin, Hispanic is at 36.5 and climbing, non-Hispanic white is at 47.1 and dropping. And you can see the very similar size shares coming from African-Americans and Asians. But let's peel back a layer of the onion and look at just children. And that Hispanic share soars to 52%. So that says a couple of things. It says about the youthful nature of our Hispanic population. And it also gives us a good measure of the kinds of issues we're going to be dealing with from a public policy standpoint going forward. All right, the gentleman's agreement. This is something that we have to talk about, right? I had the chance to go to Washington, D.C. in early 1998 with Mayor Kirk Watson and Jesus Garza and Toby Futrell. And we were there defending a huge annexation that we had done in late 97 where we annexed almost 35,000 people. So in our pre-meeting as we're getting ready to go in and talk to the DOJ lawyers, Mayor Watson looks at us and he says, if anyone says the term gentleman's agreement, you're fired. And so I'm like, well, Mayor, can we say that? And he goes, because it will sound like a bunch of paternalistic rednecks. So to other ears, right, I mean, we become accustomed to that term. So what is the gentleman's agreement? In simple terms, it was forged during the 70s. And it was a technique, a method, an agreement to keep us from going to districts. And it was a way for the chamber boys, as it were, to keep the elections at large and to keep the power the way they wanted it. So on the one hand, it really kind of amazingly over the years produced lots and lots of very, very fine African-American council men and women. It also produced lots of very, very fine Latino and Latino, well, Latino council members. So the difference is that those people were increasingly being chosen by really just white West Austin. So it's a fascinating thing. It wasn't ever written down, but it was followed. It was challenged over time. And with the passage of 10-1, you finally had the dismantling of the gentleman's agreement. Oh, excuse me. As Austin has grown and evolved, socioeconomic differences between neighborhoods have increased. And the Western suburbs have become increasingly antagonistic to city-wide initiatives. So I want to take you through a couple of sequences to simply drive home the point of how much bigger our city is spatially. So I'm going to start in 1990 when the city was 225 square miles. We had a massive annexation program during the 90s. That's when we brought in Circle C, Davenport, Canyon Creek, Spicewood. Those of us used to lovingly refer to that as Toby Ganastan. You know, thank you for that. I coined that, but I didn't get to go very far with it. And I never was able to say it in front of her. And then from 2010 we kept annexing. We've done it even further. My point is that we're a very different city physically, spatially than we were when the gentleman's agreement was forged and over the past 20 or 30 years. Now, this is a map from our failed 2012 housing bond election. All the other bonds passed, but this map I think is striking. And I think it sort of backs up my notion that our Western suburbs are more politically conservative than they've ever been. They're more affluent than they've ever been. And I think they're more antagonistic to citywide issues than they've ever been. And this is certainly a case in point where only three precincts, West of Mopac, voted in even a shallow way for these bond issues. The editor at The Chronicle called this a snapshot from the future, which sort of made my head big because who wouldn't want to deliver a snapshot from the future? But my point is that this is one of the reasons, one of the concurrent forces at work that led us to 10-1. This is a summary map, and you can see the precincts in blue, they voted for every single last bond. The precincts in red, and I'll call them out, Onion Creek to the southeast, Circle C, Davenport, the park, Anderson Mill and Avery Ranch, and Spicewood voted against every last bond issue. The map of who elects Austin City Council has grown increasingly lopsided to use a technical term. I'll show this map from the last time our mayor was elected. A couple of things to point out. Turnout was, that's not a typo, is it 10.6%? Now, this is going to be the tough part, but here goes. More people voted for Roy Butler in 1972 than voted for Lee Leffenwell in 2012. I mean, more people total votes. Turnout in 1972 was 45%. The city's population was 290,000. When Captain Leffenwell was elected as mayor, the city's population had grown to 825,000, and turnout had dwindled to 10%. So some things at work there, right? Because in 2008, Travis County turned out for the presidential election at 67%. In 2012, that turnout was 63%. Some neighborhoods in Austin either stopped or never started voting for city elections to begin with. And so, the couple of things from this map. Yes, the turnout is low, but maybe even more significant is the geography of that turnout. So this is percent turnout. What gets you to the dais is total votes, and you can see how those maps are a little bit different. Here comes Circle C. Here comes Spicewood. They may not turn out at the rate that Territown turns out, but they're big boxes, and there are lots of votes cast. So if you live in a purple or red polygon, you live in the part of the city that represents where roughly 35% of the population lives, but you've been casting fully 70% of the vote. So that's kind of what was broken with the Germans agreement. Yes, you could guarantee a seat for a Latino, and you could guarantee a seat for an African-American, but who was really sending those folks to the dais? Probably the most famous example is councilmember Eric Mitchell, who had the support of this Western Crescent during his first term, got up on the dais, became intimate with East Austin issues, he became a true candidate of East Austin, and he was sent packing for his reelection. All right, the vote to go to single-member districts. There's a lot of drumroll and I've given this some lead-up. That's the map, and keep in mind this is the seventh time we had given the voters a chance to go from at-large to districts. And it's the first time, obviously, that it was successful, but of the hundreds of maps I've made in my career, this is one of my personal favorites, because it says something so interesting, right? Or maybe not so interesting, maybe the blinding flash, the obvious. The neighborhoods colored red and orange, right? They were the only neighborhoods to vote to keep the status quo, to reject 10-1. That should be no surprise, right? Because those are the neighborhoods that have been enjoying the hegemony of what it means to be at large. So there's that, but look at the agreement in this very, very disparate collection of neighborhoods. The University of Texas said, yes, we want geographic representation. There's blues and dark blues. East Riverside, Montopolis, Onion Creek, Circle C, Village of Western Oaks, River Place, Canyon Creek, Anderson Mill, Avery Ranch, Gracie Woods, they all said we want something different, and that difference is geographic representation. That's a map from the competing proposition, Proposition 4. TJ and I were talking about this, and right, they're very different looking maps. I mean, I stared at them a lot this afternoon, and there's not a whole lot of correspondence. Of course, they both won, but 10-1 garnered more votes, and so it's the one that we went with. There was certainly, I think, a lot of very sound political theory as to why a hybrid might be a better way to go, but we're going to find out, right? Now, interestingly enough, this is a map from the last time we gave citizens a chance to go to single-member districts, and look how Circle C joins Territown and Northwest Hills and saying, I don't want any part of this, right? I mean, that's a very, very different map from when Circle C is almost driving the full bus saying we do indeed want geographic representation. So something happened in that 12-year period, and that's the result. This is total votes for Prop 3, and you can see that Southwest Austin really did lead that charge. And this is a placeholder for me to mention that not only are we going to districts, but very importantly, we're moving city elections from May to November, and you'll see some big differences in the electorate, right? The electorate in November will be much larger, it'll be more diverse, and it'll be significantly younger than the May electorates that we've been using to elector council. You'll see that one little funny precinct that votes almost against the way anyone else in the city votes. It's a tiny precinct in northeast downtown. It includes the governor's mansion and a few other registered voters, maybe 17 registered voters. That's not a dig to our governor, it's just kind of stating the fact. New coalitions will emerge. And so this is the map, and we actually have an ICRC member in the audience. ICRC is an acronym that stands for Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, and it truly was independent. It was a model lifted from the California state legislative elections, and I think that this may be the only large city in the country that has a council map created by a group that's not associated with the current council. They're not staff. I mean, they really were out on their own, and I think they came up with a really, really great map. What's interesting now to watch people begin to identify these districts and really embrace them, I'm quick to tell them that don't get too fond of them because they will look very, very different when census 2020 data come rolling in in the spring of 2021. And those districts will be redrawn and they'll look very different than they do today because the city's growing in a differential way across the city. So if I just had a couple of slides to show you to talk about 10-1, it would be the next couple of slides. Each district was created to be almost exactly equal to each other in terms of total population, but that's really where the equality ends. For example, registered voters by council district, look at that variation. So that, again, begins to show you one of my points early on when I started is that this city has an enormous amount of spatial variation, and this is one way that you see it manifest. Candidates running for each district, which is just kind of amazes me. There are 78 people running for council. So if one of our reasons for going to districts was to engender interest, like the two sides of the equation, engender interest and create the possibility of a totally new kind of council member, because all of a sudden you don't have to scare up $300,000 to run for council. You can do a shoe leather campaign. You have a much more direct connection between you and your voters. So the one side of the equation that certainly is working, and that's candidate interest, I so hope that it is balanced by the other side of the equation with an intensified turnout, especially from places like Southeast Austin that really just would have dropped off the map, you know, or Northeast Austin, right? They're going to have a candidate they can connect with for the first time in decades. And what the data say is when you look around the country at jurisdictions that go from at large to a single district, that you do get a bounce and turnout. The challenge is to sustain it. Median family income by district, you can see variation there. That should be no surprise. And then when I talk about new coalitions, because I couldn't help myself. I took presidential election results from 2012 and put them on top of the districts. And that's the resultant map where you have two sort of swing districts, 8 and 10. And then one district that's not just heavily Republican, but it's, you know, the needles pointing toward the Republican. And what's so amazing is that you're seeing a very healthy mix of candidates in these districts. So maybe that's one coalition that you immediately have, you know, first round out of the bag. You know, I don't know, but I think that that will be part of the challenge. And I'm confident this is something that Mayor Leffingwell is going to cover, right? That going to districts is going to increase representation, but the challenge will be for those new councilmen and women to balance the interest of their district, right? The people that sent them there and still maintain what I think has really been an admirable level of sort of citywide ethos. And let's do things for the greater city. We have to, and so that's going to be a hard balancing act. And I'll let those guys cover it. That may be all I have, and I can, yeah. And so we'll do a little, we're going to bring the mayor up. I'm going to sit down and we're going to keep rolling. Thanks, sir. Ryan, that was terrific. Thank you very much. That was very informative and helped set the stage for our next speaker. Mayor Leffingwell. Lee Leffingwell is also a native Austinite, graduated from UT with a degree in mechanical engineering. Then he went to go serve his country, becoming an officer and pilot in the Navy and served in the Vietnam War. He was a pilot with Delta Airlines for more than 31 years, coming in his career as an international B767 and MD-11 captain. After retiring from Delta, he volunteered on a number of environmental issues, got involved in city governance, was appointed to the Environmental Board by the Austin City Council in 1999, and was subsequently elected chair by his colleagues. In 2005, Mayor Leffingwell ran four-and-one seat on the Austin City Council, was re-elected in 2008 with 68% of the vote. In 2009, he ran successfully and was elected Mayor of Austin and was re-elected in a very healthy manner. In 2012, I'd like to invite Mayor Leffingwell and our own Mark up to the stage, and I really look forward to your conversation. Thank you. Ryan, thank you for your presentation and there's a lot of food for thought in there. Mr. Mayor, before we talk about some of the implications of the new structure of our municipal government, let me just ask you, what impelled you to get into politics? I'm pleading temporary insanity. Fair enough. No, I retired from Delta Airlines or was about to retire when I was appointed to the Environmental Board and I thought that would just be a good way to serve my community and not have a full-time job and then 2005 rolled around and there was an open seat and I was asked to make a try for it and I agreed to do that so that kind of led us to where we are today. Well, as Ryan mentioned, our municipal government's about to change with 10-1. What would you tell those who voted against Proposition 3? Well, you know, I was one of the earliest supporters of some kind of district representation. I was not a 10-1 supporter, I was a supporter of the hybrid version because we all know a lot of people were opposed to Proposition 3. Proposition 3 is the 10-1, correct, because they were afraid of going back to award system, going back to a system where you had all the council members who were focused on their districts and did not necessarily take the interests of the general community to heart when making decisions. And a lot of the things that have to do with successfully running a city, building a city, especially one that's going like ours is, is to make these long-term decisions that relate to infrastructure, transportation, water, electricity, and so forth. The basic things that a city does are really citywide issues. In fact, now I would even argue that they're more regional issues, but at least they're citywide issues. And a lot of people were afraid that we would lose that focus. So we'd create award system where an individual council member would sort of be like little squire over his district and control anything that might happen in his district without regard for how it affected the rest of the city. So the award system wasn't still as big unknown. We're going to have to see how that turns out. I supported the Proposition 2, which also passed, as Ryan mentioned, the smaller number, which would, as I tend to do, sometimes try to hedge my bet. Going into something new, the hybrid system was not invented here in Austin. They haven't in Houston. They haven't in other cities across the country. And the idea is that you have some council members who are elected at large, and then you have some are elected from individual districts. That way you preserve a nucleus of people who are focused on and responsible to in the entire city. But at the same time, it does provide and ensure that you have representation from all parts of the city. That's the district system. So a way to get into that and basically see how it worked out was to go with the hybrid system, but the voters were convinced to approve by a larger margin the 10-1 system. So let me go back to something that Ryan alluded to. The challenge seems to be with district representation is balancing the needs between the voters of your district with the city at large. How do you do that? As mayor, how do you compel those on the council to think about the city at large? Well, see, that's where another factor comes into play. And that is the fact that we still have a council manager form of government. So the mayor does not have any special authority over the other council members. When you go to a vote, his vote counts the same. His or her vote, I should say counts the same as any other district members vote. It falls back on the mayor then to exert leadership basically from one of the better terms, the bully pulpit, to lead in a way that convinces people that the district representatives that they need to take the city's interest at heart. Because he really has very little of any leverage over individual council members. And a lot of cities, older cities mostly where you have a number of district representatives. Some cities, I think Indianapolis has 26 or 27 districts, for example, but they also have a strong mayor. The mayor, in fact, in many instances is really not part of the council. They elected a council president, but the mayor has the authority similar to what we see at the federal level. The executive branch versus the complimentary to the legislative branch. American veto budget proposals has authority over various different kinds of authority, appointing members of committees, delegating authority to individual council members. And so it sounds like I'm advocating for a power play for the mayor, but I really believe it's going to be necessary as we go forward here to preserve good government is to give the mayor more authority, more responsibility. We got plenty of responsibilities, just the authority that we're looking for in the future. And that will make our form of government function better, I think. And how does that authority come, Mr. Mayor? Well, you don't necessarily have to go to a pure so-called strong mayor, and I'm not talking about physical strong. A strong mayor system is where a mayor is elected and he is the chief executive officer of the city. In our council manager form of government, we are the legislative body, the mayor is the head of the chair of the legislative body, but we appoint a city manager who is the chief executive officer. So in cities like New York and Chicago and many other mainly large eastern cities, the elected mayor is the CEO and he makes the decision. So he's the guy that says go out and fix that pothole, or Mrs. Jones didn't get her trash picked up this morning, get out there and do that. That is the function in our form of government that the city manager performs. So there's a middle ground. And in other cities, Dallas, Texas has I think essentially the same system that we do, a 10-1 system with the council manager form of government, but the mayor there has the authority and I'm going on, I'm hoping I'm right about this, I think I'm essentially right to appoint chairs of council committees and to appoint members, council members to those committees. And that gives, in addition to that, the mayor in Dallas has a lot of more control over the agenda, what goes on the agenda. With those two things in place, I think it will do a lot to achieve, excuse me, good government and make the wheels of city government turn a little better. We've, Ryan, enumerated the demographic changes in the past years. What is the biggest cultural change that you've seen in Austin since you've been mayor? Well, Austin has changed a lot, you know. I tell people all the time, when I was a kid here, we were a city of less than 100,000 people in a very much a different city, dominated by the University of Texas and state government. The wealthy guys were the ones who owned the car dealerships. And we were, it was a very pleasant place to live. But we changed so much over the years with the advent of sort of the economic revolution that we went through and the demographic revolution. Instead of having, this is kind of sensitive ground, I know, but you know, back in the 20s, the city council, the city government of Austin actually sanctioned segregation. Basically, they said, if you're an African-American person and you want to go to a public swimming pool or go to a public school, you have to live east of, at that time, it was called East Avenue. It wasn't I-35, but it was in the same place. So they basically forced geographic segregation, and that's beginning to kind of fall apart right now of its own weight. Ryan mentioned that the African-American population is declining, and I think that's mainly because of dispersion outside of the city limits. Up in people who are on the rise in the African-American community and want the things that people want as they enter the middle class, you know, the four-bedroom, two-bed, two-bath house, the place they can get that is Flugerville but not in Austin. So that's why our population of African-Americans is declining, not only in percentage terms but actually in raw numbers as well. So that's changing. We've seen, as Ryan pointed out, the rise of the Asian population in Austin. When I was a kid, they weren't even on the map, but one thing I've said about the experience of running for public office, there are a lot of things I've found out about the city of Austin. Since the first time I ran in subsequent times, you meet people from all walks of life that you never would have otherwise met. What is your greatest pride as mayor? Well, of course, I'm really proud of our city and the way it's maintained its character, its small-town charm, and all those things, but I have to say, I came into office in 2009, basically the heart of the recession, worldwide recession, and our great challenge was to keep our economy going. And to me, that means creating jobs. And so we cruised through that recession like it was hardly there in the city of Austin. We outperformed every other city in the country by one measure after another, and we have emerged now as one of the leading cities in the country, an international city, one that's known and respected not only around the country, but around the world. I'd have to say, at the highest level, that's what I'm most proud of, that I was a part of that. What is the biggest missed opportunity? Well, I would say that if we have a deficiency that is critical in the city of Austin, it is in our transportation infrastructure. And I think we've missed several opportunities along the way, not just in the last few years, but going back over decades. Time and time again, we took the easy way out. We took our head in the sands. We took the provincial view, not looking at the interests of the community at large, and we ignored, we did not build the transportation infrastructure that we need, and now we find ourselves as the fourth most congested city in the country. Not a place, not one of those high rankings we like to have. We are slightly better off, believe it or not, than New York City, and we're slightly worse than San Francisco. That's the company that we're keeping. And so it's been my focus for the last two years to try to work our way out of this. I've been very careful not to promise that I've got a solution that's going to rid us of congestion, but what I can promise is that we can make a start, and we'll have that opportunity this November to vote on the first phase of a regional mass transit system that will get us going in that direction, and it'll take generations to fix it. But right away, I think we can make some differences that people will know, can feel, and at least they'll have an alternative to, in 2040, the forecast now is that commute from Round Rock to Central Austin is going to take two and a half hours. Hopefully you'll have an alternative to that. What has stood in the way of reform there? Provinciality, but what is it the root of that? Well, there are a lot of factors. Ryan talked a lot about where the people are who actually elect mayors and city council members, but I'm going to go even a little bit further than that, and I will say that right now on the council that I sit on, there are no council members at all south of the river, none. I live farther north and further west than any other council member, and I live in the 4,500 block of Balconies just west of Camp Maybury. So there's this whole, you know, there's another 20 miles you go before north, before you get out of the city, and there is no representation from there, and there's no representation from the south either. So all the council members are clustered right in the center of our city, which is a great place to be. I like it. But you're not focused on the entire part of the city. It's almost like we have a seven member council, including the mayor, that's elected from one district in the middle of the city. You can look at it that way. So I think kind of going back to where we were before, maybe some of these people from districts will force us to address traffic congestion issues, say in southwest Austin, where we've been particularly lacking, and maybe it'll work out that way. It's a big unknown, and we're just going to have to wait and see. I got to tell one funny story about the difference between the hybrid system and the Pure 10-1. I was talking to a former mayor. I'm not going to mention his name, but he's gone on to bigger, better things now. And he was saying, well, why don't you just don't mess with it? He said, just go straight to 10-1. He says, if you have that hybrid system, you're going to have, with two members elected at large, you're going to have two people who think they're the mayor. And I said, well, I've got six now. What is the biggest challenge for Austin in the next 10 years? Well, I definitely think the biggest challenge is transportation. We have gotten ourselves the combination of our growth pattern, our growth rate, and our lack of attention paid to that over the last decades has gotten us into crisis mode and trying to solve our transportation problems. We've got plans on the table, but right now it's in the hands of the voters to determine if we can go ahead with it or not. You, in your state-of-the-city address earlier this year, you said this was the greatest time in Austin's history. What do you think is our greatest opportunity going forward? Yeah, I said the state of our city has never been better than it is today. And I honestly believe that because I think that we have... One of the objectives going back a few years before my time, this started before my time, was realizing that we had to have a diverse economy, that we couldn't be just a chip fabricating economy. We were going to be tech, we knew that. So we had to diversify our technology so that if one sector began to lag, it wouldn't have such a profound effect as it did back in the days when we lost 30,000 jobs in a couple of years. So we... I think that success in being able to be the biggest job creating machine in the entire country, having a lower unemployment rate than virtually any other large metropolitan area, being the fastest growing region, the Austin MSA, the fastest growing region in the country. Those things have catapulted us to the top, and we've gained an international reputation. We have... I mentioned technology. Another thing we're becoming very dominant is in the tourism business. We've had South by Southwest grow from a music festival back in the 80s to not only music, but also film and interactive media. An event that last year contributed over $300 million to our economy in terms of economic impact. In 2012, the circuit of the Americas was finished. We brought in Formula One, and we... That's another event that has an almost $300 million a year economic impact, and we have ACL. And all of these events together bring in people from all across the country and all across the world. And to help facilitate that, by the way, on March 3rd of this year, the city of Austin got its first transatlantic nonstop flight from our airport here at Austin-Bergstrom to Heathrow in London. That was a major event for us, and we're not going to stop there. We're going to continue to be more and more of a city with international connections and international affiliations. I want to give you all a chance to ask your questions of the mayor, but before I relinquish my seat to Ryan, so you can question both of them, I want to thank you, Mr. Mayor, for your service to this city. And thank you for being here tonight. Thanks so much. Thank you. Ryan, I'd ask you to come up and sit with the mayor, and then is Sarah here? About how much time do we have for questions? Perfect. That's great. For those of you who might be otherwise tempted to sneak out early in a fine, future-form tradition, we will be having a reception starting in about 10, 15 minutes. We'd be honored to have both of you gentlemen as our special guests for as long as you can stay. But now we have a little bit of time for some questions. Since I have the microphone, I'm going to go ahead and take the liberty of going first. And I kind of wanted to ask you, Mayor Lovingwell, you mentioned transportation. I think transportation is a topic that I think has been on people's radars for a while and continues to be on people's radars. And there's been all these different plans over the different years, but it seems like we've got ourselves into a situation where we have kind of two prongs of the transportation puzzle that needs solving. One is roadway infrastructure. The other, obviously, is an emphasis on public transit. What other cities are we looking at other cities for solutions? And one that comes to mind is Dallas, which is where my parents live. And I remember when they built the dark system, everyone said, that is the craziest thing we've ever heard of because it's Dallas. People live all over the place in suburbs and everything else. No one's going to use this. This is ridiculous. And every time I go back to visit, I can get downtown and get to the zoo and get to the cotton bowl and get other places. And I'm pretty amazed by it. But I'm wondering kind of if we're looking at anyone else for examples of solutions or we're kind of forging the head on our own. Yeah, actually, as I said, we've been working on this for two years. About two years ago, we formed a transit working group, which is a committee actually of Campo. And this group is diverse group of stakeholders that we've been working together to devise a regional system, which is really the way we need to look at it. And we've done that. But what we have to realize is that we can't do it all at once. We have a plan for a regional system. And the big challenge for us is people look at a first phase, which is what we're talking about in the November election, and they tend to isolate that and say, I don't see how that's going to help me. You have to look beyond that and look at the entire system and realize that it's going to grow into a system that will help you no matter where you live in the entire region. Another important part, a point that I want to bring up is that the mass transit regional system that we have in place right now is not all real. It has a very large bus component, bus rapid transit. Last March, we got a $38 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration to enable these fancy buses, you know, the ones that have the flexible part in the middle that operate through downtown that's part of our system. The managed lanes on MOPAC, that's part of our transit system because those are going to enable express buses that bring commuters in from Cedar Park and Round Rock and other places to actually be expressed. They'll be able to maintain a speed of 50 miles an hour in that lane. Believe it or not, that's a plan no matter what time of day it is. So all these things coming together to work as an integrated system eventually down the road will provide a benefit for everyone at once but it's not going to provide a benefit for everyone immediately. That's the thing we have to get past. Thank you. And I would also add that even though what we have worked on is a transit system, we've always kept in the back of our head that we need roads too. And we have been guided by where these big new road improvements going to be made. That's influenced roots of our planned transit system. So what we have before the voters in November is a plan that has money for roads and for rail. $600 million for first phase of a rail system and about $400 million worth of road projects. Another very important point that I want to stress is that the $600 million for the rail system is contingent on actually allocating that money for road improvements and it also is contingent on getting a matching grant from the FDA. So the way to look at it I think is you're getting over a billion dollar project at half price. And believe me, if we don't compete for those federal matching funds, somebody else will get it. There's a limited amount of money that the FDA has to distribute and there's 30 or 40 cities that are going to be asking for it. We want to be the one, we think if the voters approve it, we think we'll get it. But if we don't, somebody else will. Thank you very much. Rico. Yes, I thank you again, Mr. Mayor for your service to the city, for your service to this country and I'm especially grateful that I very much hope that we reach out to you. One of the things that those maps brought out in stark contrast is the way that race and socioeconomic stats permeate so many of the decisions that are going to be made in Austin. Which schools you shut down? How do you distribute money? Where do you start transportation? All of this type of thing. Another pilot friend of mine once told me your position on any one particular issue depends on where you sit. Where you stand depends on where you sit. If you're the pilot of a plane, you don't take the word you want to do. Which is a lot nipper when you're sitting on a plane, but what is going on? I imagine you have experience in threading the needle on this dealt issue. Because I heard sort of your description of why you weren't in favor of 10-1, I thought oh man, I start off in East Austin having an autopilot. And one who is not familiar with the good track record might easily conclude here we go again. Austin is afraid of giving the vote to minorities and people on the east side because we're going to get in there and look the place. And it seems like it's a really tough thing to have one hand badly advocate for the good of the city while acknowledging these very real concerns that people have been out of power for so long have. And I wonder if you might give your thoughts on that. Well, yeah. I appreciate the point you're making. The groups of people that you're talking about have been underserved and underrepresented for a number of years. And this is a way to give them a voice. And that's why, as I said when I first got up here, I have been for single-member district representation from the get-go for exactly the reasons you just talked about. We want everyone to have a voice at the city. No one has total control but everybody has a voice in city government. So I do think that that is something that the district-based system will accomplish. I think you'll see a big change in that in the next few years. We just want to make sure that the people who represent their district well and ably we assume that we will be the same way. Yes, ma'am. Second row. Yes. I'm sort of toyed with that. I don't tell anybody, but I stay up late at night and I go through the different scenarios. Like one scenario, we could have eight council women. One thing I think is so exciting is that even though there are four opportunity districts, you're seeing viable candidates of color in several different districts. And so maybe we'll sort of break on through to that next phase where yes, we have these opportunity districts, but if you're a viable candidate it doesn't matter what your race or ethnicity is. And so I've actually been really tickled to see the diversity that I shared that last map of here to swing districts in a Republican district. So we're going to have an increase in political diversity. I think we are actually going to have an increase in political diversity. I've heard those arguments that we could wind up with an all-white council. I don't buy them. I think that we're going to be pleased with what we get. I certainly hope we are because back to my original point, we're seeing viable candidates that aren't following the conventional wisdom of, oh, you know, you're just going to get African-American candidates from one and Latino candidates from two, three, and four. Yeah, and if I could add to that, if you remember from the maps that Ryan just showed, the districts six, ten, and eight going from north to south are the most conservative, most affluent districts in the city, and there right now there's an African-American candidate in each one of those districts that could potentially win. It was very difficult I understand there's a representative from the commission here who knows how difficult it was. One of the objectives under direction from the Department of Justice actually is to try to create those opportunity districts for all the different ethnic groups. Trying to create one for the African-American population was very difficult. I think the best they did was about 29%. District one is about 29% African-American. That's the most they could do. In the back, yes sir. I just wanted to ask you it seems from the data that you've shown in the program you just said that neither of you would probably be surprised if you ended up with a city council that had not just one, but maybe two or three people that even have identified in the Republican path. I would not be surprised at all. There is only one Republican district and that is District 8 Southwest Austin but there are two swing districts as Ryan pointed out 10 and 6. I think you will see well here I am going out on them I think it's very possible that you will see a Republican representative from 8 and possibly 6. If I can jump in the big difference is that all of a sudden it's not a fatal flaw to be a Republican and run for city council. We could come up with lots of examples in the past if there was even a whisper of a rumor that you had voted in a Republican primary you were toast. And so whether or not and how it manifests itself just the fact that you have this many different candidates who are saying yeah I'm a Republican but does that really matter in terms of these city issues and so I think it's a rough I hope I'm not being polly-annish but it's a refreshing sort of embracing of both Republicans and Democrats so I would not be surprised to see a couple of Republicans up on that dies. I'm hoping Ryan will back me up on this but first of all I believe the city of Austin is going to grow whether or not we have jobs. I believe the jobs follow the population growth not the other way around. The city is going to grow. The question is are the people here going to have good jobs? That is that issue but with regard to your specific question did you take all that into account what's going to be the increase in policing and fire protection congestion on our roads impact on our schools and account into account I'll go to the depth of my technical knowledge about but it's done by a computer program called WebLOCAC that does all of that analysis and comes out with a spreadsheet here's what it costs us and here's the benefits that we give get from offering this particular incentive package and if that number isn't positive for the taxpayers we don't do it. So it's okay. No need to apologize. It is taken into account and believe it or not people work hard every day to try to balance those exact things there have been a lot of changes made in response to impacts on various neighborhoods Barton Hills neighborhood and Zooker neighborhood are particularly impacted by ACL for example so we go to a lot of pains to make sure there are alternate traffic routes make sure there's not a lot of people parking in their neighborhoods and that kind of thing but you can't do it without any impact it's going to be an inconvenience to somebody so you balance the needs of the entire city and most of the people in the city and against hopefully what would be minor inconveniences to people in certain locations but certainly there are always going to be people who don't want the event at all I realize that and that's just kind of something you have to accept after you've gone through that balancing process We have time for one more question and in recognition of all the hard work she does for us and as I put this together Sara you had your hand up a lot earlier I was going to add but you have the final question The airport is in a district I believe it's in district 2 Yes sir, 3 2 but it is very definitely owned and operated by the entire city of Austin it's an asset that benefits the entire city and furthermore a lot of things that have to do with we own and operate the airport but the FAA tells us how to own and operate it so there are a lot of federal restrictions that are attached to that ownership of the airport so I'm really not concerned about one council member controlling the airport that is not going to happen as far as Austin energy is concerned they may have their offices but they've got assets spread over the entire city that's another story by the way I'm very concerned about our electric utility we may be in crisis mode as the next legislative session comes into place because we're not viewed to be a very stable and responsive to consumer wishes utility by a lot of people in the legislature we're just going to have to see how that plays out for those of you who don't know the city owns the utility and we are a monopoly we are exempted from competition by state law and so that is a land that you have to be very careful even though you're a monopoly you have to act like you're in competition all the time because you've got we have supervision from the state level to make sure that we do Mayor Leftinwell Ryan thank you so much for your time and being here we hope you'll be able to stay