Additional Back Up On this Week's Council Agenda

[Michael McGill]

This could probably serve as standing topic. For this post, I just wanted to post a short paper I read I about one of the resolutions passed this week regarding Civic Crowdfunding. A lot of the motivation was to address issues of equity, tap into larger communities of interest and other break down barriers to engaging in the Neighborhood Partnering Program, so I found the information here on that issue very interesting. In the end, the paper notes that it's too early to have any conclusions on the platforms currently operating, but I thought it still raised thoughtful questions to be aware of when designing any program for Austin.

Civic Crowdfunding: Participatory Communities, Entrepreneurs and the Political Economy of Place by Rodrigo Davies
http://www.academia.edu/7216104/Civic_C ... y_of_Place

[Michael McGill]

I'm just posting some additional info out here about another item we recently passed regarding social impact financing or 'pay for success' financing. There's a fair number of white papers on it that can be found with a simple google search, but I wanted to just put one or two out there if folks wanted to read up on it some more.

The first is this report prepared by McKinsey on the structure generally and its financial feasibility. I found it to be one of the better such papers, but it is from 2012 and some numbers may be a little dated now:
http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/ ... Report.pdf

The next is a more locally focused report prepared by the Re-entry roundtable:
http://www.reentryroundtable.net/wp-con ... -Final.pdf

Introducing a pilot and a potential program will likely take time, so I just wanted to put these out there for the staff's benefit as well as future council members and the general public.

[Michael McGill]

I wanted to post a little bit of additional information on the resolution regarding Autonomous Vehicles. Below is a link to a good overview in the form of a February 2014 report from the Texas Transportation Institute titled "Revolutionizing Our Roadways - The Challenges and Benefits of Making Automated Vehicles a Reality":
http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/sw ... 0029-2.pdf