award and it's the Excellence award it's a prestigious Accolade presented to honor individuals within city or county government who have demonstrated exceptional dedication Innovation and leadership in fostering Urban and Regional development this award specifically celebrates those on the front line who go beyond their regular responsibilities to profoundly impact our community's growth and prosperity so this year's award winner uh they've said was an incredibly knowledgeable individual and he was never too busy for the citizens in Fort Worth he always returns calls or emails he's never afraid to say no professionally of course and we'll work with you to try to get to a yes if at all possible and when conflicts between departments happen he picks up the phone and even gets in the truck and doesn't rest until it's resolved and a better safer solution is found he's an amazing partner to the Fort Worth commercial real estate industry and a true asset to the city as a whole and so it was the real estate council's honor to award their first Excellence award to senior fire protection engineer Bob Morgan of the for Worth fire department so bring bob up and the team see if uh Chief Harrison or others would like to say a few words y thank you thank you very much Mr BD um first I'm a little bit nervous normally when I'm talking about Bob it's behind his back so um I I we're so proud that he got this award and he's so deserving I don't think there's a way that I could really emphasize to you all to the city just how important and how good Bob is at what he does um you can imagine all the challenges that go into development and trying to get everything to meet up with the with the code and the different needs and demands of everybody involved and Bob finds a way to get us all there and and he does it in timely manner um you if you call him he's going to pick up the phone and we're sitting around scrambling trying to figure out Solutions and he'll walk into the room and say anybody think of this and of course we haven't but because he is the expert in the room and we're just really proud that he got the award and and glad that you're taking time to recognize him so thank you very much they said I wasn't going to have to talk um thank you it was great to get that kind of recognition you kind of strive for that 30 years of doing this uh you know in the fire protection industry so it was an honor to serve the citizens of Fort Worth and the City of Fort Worth so thank you very much I appreciate [Applause] it thank you great job Bob next we have a number of informal reports so the first one is on federal Housing Programs update and Sharon Berkeley from neighborhood services available if you have any questions Sharon come on forward looks like a question good afternoon yes uh I just I had a couple of questions as I went through this IR there's a pretty significant cut to the C uh cdbg grants um that's redundant but the cdbg program yes um and then uh some other significant funding sources and so um I just I'm curious as to how practically speaking as that you know trickles down um what are the anticipated impacts on the city of Fort Worth and and what programs could potentially um we be looking at um less than previous year's funding okay for the upcoming um Year we're anticipating at least level funding possibly not an increase so right now I don't think there's an anticipation of any reduction in any programs or Services you said this year are you anticipating it to funnel down next year that we would see no it's been further consistent over the last four or five years at that 12 to 13 million allocation when I was looking at it the last increase or larger amount was in 2020 and before that in 2010 but it's been right at 12 or 13 million dollars over the last few years and so even with that significant cut we don't think it'll impact us no you talking about the C cut at the federal level yes okay no we're not anticipating that because there has been Cuts but primarily it's been um and this is from reports from the national Community Development Association that we're anticipating at least level funding is what we're requesting without possibly not much increase okay thank you you're welcome yeah okay our next informal report is on General obligation bonds for a aable housing and Christian Simmons and Chad Laro are available if there are any questions yeah thank you David I do have some questions but I want to kind of get a overview of what we have presented before us to do the overview from the hi CH Rogue Neighborhood Services uh this informal report uh went over um uh obligation of housing bonds for cities um in Texas uh for wor the really the largest city in Texas has not had a a general obligation bond election for housing uh and so in the study it included Houston Austin San Antonio um Dallas and also Denton was included and we also um had just went out and looked at some peer cities of out of state and that included Charlotte uh Raleigh um Albuquerque and Kansas City I believe um so when I'm looking at the report um one of the questions is that um we don't even have a category that considers housing as a bond option when we talk about our bonds yeah we have not included uh housing in the bonds in the past right the for the 2026 Bond we don't have our draft categories just yet so it's certainly still on the table and we do have um a project in hand from neighborhood services that would consider adding affordable housing to the 2026 bond in what neighborhood services are on a separate Bond I mean on a separate category um it would probably be a separate category that was just housing but those aren't quite drafted yet so we have to sort of compile other projects that we that we received in the lab and create draft categories based on like how they group together but I'm assuming it would probably be separate okay is Victor Turner here no I think he has some stand-ins today like Chad and and Shon mhm okay how would it look if it's in the uh neighborhood services oh so I know that Amy Turner and Victor had submitted a bond proposal and it would be for $100 million and that would be Capital funds uh for housing for single family for sale housing and I believe also some maybe uh for uh homelessness and for the Community Land Trust I was just going to add so from a legal perspective when we do bonds there's a requirement that you have one proposition per topic so we would have a specific Bond proposition for housing as far as how the funds are used as you'll see in the IR lots of cities do lots of different things some do supportive infrastructure some do uh housing for homeless so the the the programming the bonds could be different but it would not necessarily get rolled up into a larger proposition that's just because it's state law requires one topic so that the voters can decide on each subject matter right and in the past we have not ever considered housing as been as one of those one categories at top and I think that's what I want to bring to the city of forward how do we get there to make that a category to let the people I believe you'd asked Mr cook to add it to the list she's overing right there so what I say we're we're at that part of the process where we're beginning the discussion on the bonds for 2026 there is a limited amount of bond capacity right and so whatever we spend in one area is dollars that aren't available in another area so we will be bringing a total package to the city council at some point in time that talks about Parks and Recreation it talks about police and fire facilities talks about Transportation projects and if we want to consider affordable housing is part of that it simply competes for the same dollar with all the other Capital infrastructure that the city has to implement so but we're at that point in the process that could be part of it sure I like that and may Pro Tim I I know this is not a it's or not a presentation maybe we'll get one down the road quickly but we have some representatives from the Homeless Coalition here housing channel is it okay if they can have a word or two of what this would look like if we're able to put something in our bond I have no issue City attorney it's on topic okay do you want you like to come up and uh have a conversation thank you and then also let us know who else we have in the room I mean that's a nice dress I guess you didn't think it was coming online today did you got be ready for councel uh okay hello everyone Lauren King executive director for Taran County Homeless Coalition um so think we've looked at a um a number of different ways that this Bond could be used and honestly are using the affordable housing strategic plan as the guide for that um as that recommendation and so and I mentioned too when you all had your workshop on February 13th I don't know how we are as a community going to raise the capital if we don't do some kind of bond perhaps there is another tool but I don't know how to raise the capital otherwise homelessness it could look a lot of different ways um most cities I will say use it for psh Capital um so that is a way to fund the psh that's needed there um but could do a lot of different things I know that um we have come together as a group um from affordable housing developers everyone from psh to home ownership and so um there's lots of ideas there as well making sure that homelessness is included multifam is included and then also home ownership is included as well so really trying to get that real gamut of affordable housing represented there Donna hi Donovan as pres housing Channel I just have a couple of things to add including in the IR you can kind of see that uh for every dollar of go of bonds you have anywhere from $6 to9 in private money that helps augment and you basically support what the city's putting in and I think all of that uh information that you've received in the IR shows that you know with that commitment from the city there's private dollars that are added to really make a robust program and everybody's talking about it in all the cities all across the ca uh Nation about affordable housing crisis and this our city for orone a fabulous job of creating uh you know Economic Development opportunities jobs we really need to support that Workforce with affordable hous thank you thank you so much Lauren thank you Donna and I I'll just say my two cents and let it pass I think make may have something I think we done a good job as we in our bun packages as it relates to police fire as it relates to to um parks and wrecks and I think this is just another tool we need do as it relates to housing if we're the 13 largest city and we like to say the fastest growing city then we got to make sure we take care of our housing and our residents and make sure that it is Affordable for those that need it so those my two sents I hope that we can really eagerly look into adding that as a topic and a category for our next 26 Bond I'll be gone I just want to Echo Council moneto sentiments um we talked a lot about this on the nqrc and I just want to say as we prepare prepare for the bond I would like to see an option available of uh including a housing proposition um I know sometimes we um get things spoonfed to us and it's no knock to anyone but and this is not one of those instances where we have something baked I think it's important that as a council we have a discussion about what does it look like and give it a fair shot to do that um I also think especially on the home ownership side this creates a catalyst to create generational opportunities for um Assets in a period when people are asset limited we've heard a lot about Alice and this is an important investment in the residence of for wor and so I see a lot of um upside potential to us um considering this proposition so um um I fully support what council manett is saying I would love to have that discussion and maybe presentation in the future David all right you're doing next inal report moving on next informal report is on the priority repair program and Sharon Berkeley is available if there any questions I want to hear a lot about that Sharon once again and Sharon when you're when you're giving an overview please give some examples that people can really relate to to understand what it takes to be El ible okay afternoon again our priority repair program um under Neighborhood Services um administers home repairs low income to lowi income uh single family homeowners our typical um applicant is an elderly uh individual that has lived in their home for multiple years that may have not been able to maintain the upkeep Um this can include um um flooring um uh plumbing needs um Roofing windows that need repaired Etc um the program is administered um with our community development block grant and recently has added general fund to that um funding source over the last two or three years we've had um increases in both the uh Grant funds as well as the uh general fund uh we recently about 8 to 10 years allocated about a million dollars each year of Grant funds uh in the last couple of years we've increased that to nearly three million of our grant funds um previously uh we did not have General funds and in this last budget uh we were approved for uh $2 million to add to that so that's nearly doubled what we have been uh allocating for our priority repair program um we also increased the um maximum amount of eligibility for the program from $55,000 annually to uh a maximum of 25,000 over a 2-year period um and this has helped us to be able to uh more comprehensively serve the homes versus kind of doing a patchwork or a peace meal uh repair so instead of if there is a repair that's needed on a roof instead of just being able to replace exactly where um the damage is for the half a portion of a roof we're able to replace a full roof we're able to do Roofing HVAC and flooring uh to increase um the um assistance they were able to provide to the homeowners um we have um uh what the IR is addressing is our update and so we've encountered a few challenges along the way while we have been able to add money been able to um serve more individuals to do more comprehensive work it has kind of slowed down our time U that has increased our weight list um it has um um caused a minor challenge between different trades having to coordinate Services because we don't want um or would prefer not to have several contractors going multiple times to a homeowner so they need to coordinate that to be able to provide all of those services at once um some of the adjustments and recommendations we are proposing to address our challenges is to um increase the number of inspectors uh we did not have a staff increase because all of the funds went to the actual program so we're looking now to increase two rehab techs to help with managing the additional work that's needed and then we're also issuing a um RFP or an I think it's called an ITB invitation to bid to uh attract attract additional contractors to assist with the program we currently have four that are working the program we haven't increased contractors even though we've increased the um amount and the number of persons that are requesting Services um and then we've also um established our prioritization uh rubric that highlights persons particularly the elderly particularly those that are disabled to a higher priority level to be able to start be uh assisted more quickly so we only have four contractors at this time but we're um working on issuing an ITB to get additional contractors yes ma'am that that's all I'm not running this forth this is David so I get a chance to talk like you all but what I what I will tell you is the priority repair program is key to helping elderly people stay in their homes and every District in the city has people who have used this program and so just know that it's it's very important so David I turn it back over to you oh Char so one thank you for that information um just to make sure we we we stretching those dollars out to make them go a lot further are those rehab techs are they working with um insurance companies as well for example the roofs to say hey there's a storm in the last few years it could actually be covered under insurance and then helping that family out because obviously we know a lot of insurance adjusters out there may not want to let that claim and especially if it's an elderly couple who you know they're like okay I take your take your word for it are they working with those insurance companies to say yes that's a part of it part of the process and then um in the application process too are they um identifying whether or not they're a veteran as well because then that way we could stretch those dollars by sending them over to Ford homes and then using that grant money from Texas veterans commission rather than using this pot of money is that happening too they are and we also have a veterans assistance uh funding within our department and so we refer it over to our own program okay awesome thank you so much I I have a question uh we have four contractors is that is that our limit or is that just who has applied to be contractors um as far as I understand that's just been traditionally um the contractors that we've used working with the city and working within the confines of government regulations and contracts kind of limit sometimes uh the availability of contractor but that's not there's not a limit to it it's just what we're able to manage okay and so we talk about and these probably normally small contractor firms or uh agencies uh yes I believe so and I know sometimes uh smaller firms are neglected or hesitant to come and do these type of contracts because the payment or being paid a reimburse for the work that they're doing or the turnaround are we seeing those problems in this in this category um I honestly don't think so I think it's just the additional work cuz these are longtime contractors that have a long-standing relationship with us and usually um what I've seen is larger contractors generally prefer not to work with us because of the time delays and the restrictions with our federal regulations and so these are um like I said long-term contractors and so it had been an issue it's just that we haven't increased the contractors since we made all the changes to the program but we're looking to do that yes yes we're we're working with uh purchasing right now okay and I guess whenever we get ready to open that up and send that out if you could I mean send it to my office for sure maybe May protim so that we can also send that information out to let people know that they can Rel to our department our division uh contractors for the city forward that department thank you so much certainly Janette then Jared how long are projects taking like let's say for example roof placement from start to finish how long what's the average time there um I have to defer to our managers I know right now uh we have a weit list um and so I wouldn't want to guess because I really don't know okay I was just curious because I've seen a roof being replaced in a day and so I don't know if it's you know the inspections and then you have to get the contractors out for the roof replacement and then just how many folks um are waiting on Services you know we could get those rolling out pretty quickly I guess if we get have new um contractors that sign up so we'll do our best to help share that out to these small businesses thank I will say our biggest challenge is the Federal Regulations because we have an inspection we have environmental review process and other things that we have to go through before we can actually issue a a notice of proceed Jared thank you mayor Pro Tim um thank you'all for the work that y'all do in this program it's really are you in your microphone I am let me can hear me now it's so hard to let me just move this is that better mayor Pro yeah love you dear um um this program is really important and um I've been wrapping my head around this for quite some time of how do we help with the weight times knowing that the longer sum repairs um are deferred the worse the situation gets um on that need and so is there anything that we can do um as a council to help um streamline some of the process or to help give youall more resources to then reduce the weight times and um serve those who are waiting on the wait list and if you if you want to get back with the team we can come back but that's something I've been thinking a lot about so wanted to put on the record here for y'all okay one one of the things that we did um um suggest that's a recommendation that we I forgot to mention is uh we're uh considering creating an emergency repair definition that will kind of separate um persons with more critical needs um particularly it's identified HVAC repairs uh leading up to cold weather and emergencies uh in particular like water sewer leaks things like that so that's one of the ways um other than that just kind of what we've identified we're increasing our staff contractors technology uh we're working internally to try to work on better streamlining the processes we have to work through I like the thought of a um emergency prioritization um totally support that would that take Council action or is that something y'all can do administratively it would be an internal yes just be a difference in the program design okay great thank you thank you Sharon thank you David all right our next informal report is on programs and policies to reduce evictions and Tera Perez is available if there any questions the next one is an update on family homelessness and Tera pre is available if there any questions on that as well Tera myy good afternoon Lady T good to see you good afternoon hi Tara how are you fine thank you um I just have a couple questions um the on the allocation of emergency housing vouchers how long these families in emergency housing on average I can I can tell you a little bit about the voucher my understanding is that the emergency housing vouchers these are generally seven-year vouchers one thing that's different about these is they're um so they're different than the housing toys vouchers that come through the housing authorities so these went through our Continuum of Care and so Taran County homeless called Coalition is the one that made the referrals for the vouchers and um one part of the program that's different is they're not refillable um and so as people leave the program someone else is not able to come in um so they gradually decline over time okay so we're with this we start with a set amount and those are good for seven years per family or is it seven years from the time that we have the vouchers seven years per household um I can find find out the if the clock starts ticking when they get the voucher I don't think it does I think that there's a hard 2030 deadline but I can confirm that with you that'd be helpful thank you and then um let's see for the emergency shelter in Fort Worth so I know Salvation Army is closed how many individuals can Broadway Baptist hold versus what Salvation Army can hold for emergency shelter okay uh Salvation Army has 60 beds so this is not 60 households this is 6 beds um Broadway can do 80 beds and they usually run about 40 um 40 people per night at Broadway is what it's been averaging okay are't they willing to do that this summer as no so um Salvation Army is planning on reopening hopefully at the end of April beginning of May okay and so we are working with Salvation Army and Broadway to have a smooth transition so when Salvation Army Family Shelter opens the families at Broadway bapt will transition directly there okay and what about for overflow this summer is there a plan for that in case we do have an extremely hot summer yes there is a we handle families a little bit different than our individuals but yes there's an overflow plan for families okay can you share that or you want to get back to us on that I'll I'll get back to you on that okay thank you yeah I'm in particular worried about families simmer um and then overall prevention and addressing poverty with these families is there any kind of emergency case management done when they receive a housing voucher for emergency services or put in emergency shelter try to figure out why they're homeless and where they came from and what we can do to help them so one of the things the city did is when we had the family Spike originally we had been discussing as a community using these emergency housing vouchers for the chronically homeless however like as a system we were responsive and we pivoted and it's basically taking the same pie and carving it differently and so a large um amount went to families and so the city was providing some funding for permanent Supportive Housing to match these vouchers and so we opened up the city funding to help these disabled families and so there is City supported case management for the families on the emergency housing vouchers that want case management okay do we have enough case managers for that yes what's do you know what the ratio is between families and case management um our typical ratio is about 1 to 24 um with families we try to get that a little bit lower um there's not been a huge um uptake for families a lot of families prefer just the voucher okay without the case management but for some of those families we have been able to provide that because they requested it okay thank you you're welcome Elizabeth I just want to thank you and uh Lauren King who I see is in the audience um you know when we got that um when y'all alerted us to the spike in family homelessness um I it was alarming to all of us here on Council um and we asked y'all to do something and you did it and so um well done thank you thank you Tara let's see next we're moving to Municipal Court it's uh I on the Fort Worth Municipal Court judicial reappointment and chief judge recommendation and there's groups going to give you an update on this thanks David mayor and Council there so I'll just kick us off we have an IR just providing an update on the judicial process and the chief judge hiring process um back in November of 2023 mayor and Council um granted permission to former Chief judge Danny Rogers who retired at the end of last year to come back and help with that hiring process so as my partner in crime here is here to provide that update yes good afternoon mayor protim and councel thank you for the opportunity to speak speak with you the information contained in the IR is correct except for the timeline of presenting a recommendation of the legislative affairs committee which is supposed to be next week and then an MC two weeks following that we simply have more work that we need to do before we're able to make the best recommendation which we want to make uh to them and then on to you so just wanted to clarify that for you we're working we're working well and we will get back to you as soon as it's possible same song yeah same song 23rd verse but let me say also thank you for retirement it is an awesome thing and I appreciate I I appreciate all the time that I had with you and I'm thoroughly enjoying the opportunities that I have now so welcome back thank you we'll be back again I promise thank you all very much thank you all righty next informal report is an update on meeting confer negotiations and William Johnson is available if there are any questions any questions i' I'd like to see if the new father is alert enough to make a an update I heard he planned on not doing anything when the newborn came but now he's he just moves rather slowly yeah congratulations new dad thank you um on meeting confirm uh we've met we started meeting last year in November with uh the Police Officers Association uh exchanging information and since the beginning of the year of this year uh we've had three meetings our next meeting I believe is going to be on the 25th of this month um and we're just exchanging documents and working with legal to to work on a lot of the language uh our goal is to have uh or to be ready to bring something forward to talk to council about uh before the end of of this fiscal year um the current agreement will expire on September 30th and then we will go into an evergreen period which we want to avoid because that would not allow us to be able to provide salary adjustments and other things to our employees who work as as part of the police department for a full year so we'd like to if we can at a at if at all possible get something done uh before the end of this fiscal year I'm sorry I'm laughing because you're just so much slow in your delivery are you getting any sleep at all with the newborn very little very little but uh she's full of energy especially at night uh and mom and baby are doing just fine well congratul ulations I'm sending a picture of you to your bride right now all right thank you thank you all right the next informal report is on ordinances and practices related to the planting of native trees and Native landscaping and Leandra Leandra string fellow is available if there any questions I don't have any questions but just a report please Leandra good afternoon mayor and Council city manager um so we provided this IR for you in response to um Native landscaping and we included trees as well because they're two different aspects and so what we have lined out for you are we do have requirements more specifically for the planting of native trees but for um actual Landscaping it's an actual option so you can do um land landcaping or you can do what we consider native shrubs in or grasses if you're going to be planting any native shrubs and grasses then there is a little bit different requirement than if you're doing other types of landscaping also there is a different requirement I should also point out um if you're also going to be planning in the RightWay that's actually dealt by our parking Recreation Department however development services will be looking at any planning of Trees and Landscaping on private property I do yes thisor I do have a question for you and this is very specific um and I'm wondering if the plan articulates this okay I know that the city doesn't have well does have some uh conservation districts I don't know by how many maybe you can count them on one hand but thinking about conservation districts that are Parkland all right uh for example Circle Park Boulevard okay that was originally conceived to be large boulevards or oversized medians right that uh Define you know that particular neighborhood Corridor and the original intent was that uh oak trees were planted exclusively on each of those large medians over time uh parks and Forestry have begun to plant other trees there to a limited um uh number just because of availability but again it was intense originally as a Conservation District to to have you know oat trees now I I get it to you want you know biodiversity uh you also want maybe some resistance of species to Oak Wilt something like that right I get all that but there are species of oak trees that can resist it so does the plan articulate that particular item so in our that would actually be part of our rideway landscaping and that is solely going to be determined by our city Forester so um I'm not sure maybe someone from Park and wreck could address that Mr zabala Circle Park Richards ofala Park and Recreation Department Circle Park is part of the keser plan and it anchors to the courthouse so you well know that area yes we as we go in and replant Landscapes we're looking f for diversity so we don't want in run into one type of species then you have an O wel decline or something like that so it's a newer standard but definitely I can share that with the city Forest I guess my request would be if staff could look at it and keep it say within oak trees because I think it defeats the purpose of the original creators that they wanted to you know have oak trees exclusive there to that area just a thought we can talk about it later on online thank you thanks Allan thank you mayor protm Leandra so we've had some discussion related to to trees as part of the urban Forest master plan and I want to thank you for those conversations but one of the things we talked about was a street tree program which you mentioned and uh the the question I posed then to you I'll pose here now and it's uh we have these trees that are provided as part of the street tree program but there are significant constraints because they're in right of way uh where many residents maybe not be able to take advantage and and so the question I asked then and the thing I would like us to look at in terms of meeting our future Urban Forest master plan goal is those trees being available for planting inside the yard or or a little bit further out of the right away and is that something that we can do definitely so one of the we actually do have um a requirement um now that was added um later on for plantings on um single family lots um but we realize that there's some you know existing neighborhoods and so we do have um programs where we encourage um Property Owners to be able to plant trees you know they can get trees for free to plant in their yard um but one of the things that we're looking at and actually it's one of the proposed recommendations in our Urban Forest master plan is to find ways to expand you know on that program and part of that too is just educate education um letting people know it's it's even um an option so um also second to that another recommendation is looking at how we can encourage um more planning more conservation areas and some of these newer single family neighborhoods as well thank you don't go far Alandra the next informal report is on the proposed Panther Island form base code text Amendment for North Main subdistrict yes member FL first alandre if you can give us an overview of that then I have a question most definitely so what you were um what we're at presenting to you today is um actually you'll be seeing a resolution on the next Council agenda we're looking at two phases um really of this particular code Amendment this first phase um is kind of a way for us to be able to move forward um some interest in development on Panther Island and so one of it's relating to height as well as floor plates so and it's only in one of those subd districts so we're going to be bringing that forward to the zoning commission as well as you asking for you to approve this first code Amendment now we have a larger um group of Co a larger group of code regulations that we'd also like to amend um if the first one goes forward and we get approval from you we'd also be moving forward with that second fade of phase of code amendments as well um we want to put that or of Q out probably sometime um this month or either in May thank you LeAndre uh you know first you read this through you know support it uh you know I understand the idea of going through subd districts and all that because uh there areas of uh you know Panther Island that can be developed differently and still attain you know the required density that we want to achieve uh so if you look at the inscribed map you know it's clear that that highlighted Corridor is what you know is being intended here you know by this uh you know proposed text Amendment and to create I guess a corridor that leads into downtown and is complimentary to what exists in downtown so all that makes sense to me I've heard a couple concerns uh you know along the way uh you know from some of these workshops and also individually from uh uh residents so that we can kind of address this concern here for those that are tuning in concerns about increased you know height and I think it's necessary uh to achieve if I understand this correctly a necessary amount of density there so that you can keep the cost of living to a certain level right so it doesn't rise too precipitously uh so maybe if you can just comment how how much does do do height you know limitations come into play when you're thinking about um you know achieving that level of you know density that you want and need on the island see Dana coming forward with a lifeline and then we'll have questions from Council Members Hill then Beck after carinal finishes yeah if I may since I've um got to work on this with the panther Island steering committee I just Leander knows what she's talking about I just want to give a little bit of color to some of the conversations she might not have been been part of but um so we envision as part of the the panther Island uh strategic Vision update that you all heard in early March we we envision there being a a future Transit Corridor connecting downtown and the Stockyards and perhaps even down to the South to the near south side and Beyond um and we also um currently have three Tower zones that are allowed by zoning on the periphery of Panther Island the two islands really and um one of the ideas was that North Main is such an important Corridor it's a designated State Highway it's a very important north south connector um that the height limitations today are are pretty restrictive in in an interesting way there's a minimum height of five stories and a maximum height of eight stories and so it's a very narrow envelope um that construction can occur and it generally leads to stick Built construction between that five to eight stories we'd like to see high quality development we'd also like to um allow for affordable housing um as we do have a downtown goal for affordable housing we envision a similar goal um on Panther Island and in order to get the greater height and or also in order to deal with some impact fees uh for infrastructure that we have on Panther Island that we don't have in downtown and other parts of the Central City uh greater height will both get us potentially steel construction get us the greater density to support Transit and we can also consider and we do the broader form-based code update that that um shandre mentioned we can also consider offering greater height um as an in incentive for for an affordable housing or mixed income housing prod you know development so those are conversations we still need to have um but we thought in the interim uh with the with the update of the Strategic Vision knowing how important North Main Corridor is and knowing that we've you know heard concerns about the the constraining height limits that we have today we wanted to go ahead and get this interim zoning text Amendment moving forward while we have the longer conversation about the broader geographic area okay thank you Dana questions council member Hill then council member Beck hi Dana I think this is for you um can you give me just an an overview of how the hrna report and the steering committee influenced the recommendation y are making and I know this is a step then we have a longer conversation ahead of us but how did these all work together and what the outcome is going to what you anticipate the outcome to be so I think um there's a there's a couple of things one is the you know they they recognize that the that the zoning should be more flexible and that was both with regard to minimum Heights maximum Heights and then also land use so much of Panther Island uh is designated with neighborhood zones N1 and two and three uh and that requires that the development be at least 2third residential and so we'll be revisiting that uh component about the land use restrictions as well as the the height restrictions and then there just also some changes um there was some very large blocks that were laid out in the original form based code particularly on the periphery of the existing block pattern that really were much larger than than what we have on Panther Island today and so that's one of the recommendations is that we create a little bit smaller block pattern and allow some more pedestrian connectivity um which is a better you know just Urban Development form um and so that that'll affect both our subdivision ordinance and our zoning ordinance that's what a form based code does it sort of addresses both at the same time and just quick followup question is that from hrna or is that from the pantherland steering committee so that's from hrna so in Lake flato their subc consultant was Lake flato were the Urban Design experts that um that spent a lot of time looking at Urban Development patterns um around the US okay perfect thank you yeah great thank you um so you mentioned potential future changes um that would be triggered by this change to the code um can you give us just broadly speaking what we're what we're looking at those changes would be and how that how this change and those subsequent changes generally speaking impact the overall development of Panther Island sure I'll I'll jump in if that's all right just because I've got a little bit of the history on it so staff starting back in I want to say 2016 2017 was looking at wanting to update the the panther Island form based code it was established in 2006 has had some minor updates since then but there really hasn't been a major update to the code since 2006 and so um the idea is that we would have the Strategic Vision um that we would be able to use that as a guide uh for updating the form based code and so it's everything so it's not just the two islands there's some areas off of the islands even going up to Samuels Avenue and up jaboro Highway Henderson that have the pi Panther Island zoning and so it would be a full review of that existing uh zoning District so again to council member Hill's question it would be addressing the minimum and maximum Heights it would be looking at those land use restrictions and then it would be looking at the the block patterns and in some cases even the the street design or Street widths uh that are called for there yeah okay all right thank you all right thank you Switching gears next informal report is the status of the Americans with Disabilities Act compliance plan and Christina Brooks is available if there are any questions all right next informal report is an updated Market Place availability analysis for business Equity veteran service disabled veteran owned firms Christina Brooks is again available if there are any questions Char Christina Christine how are you doing good how are you well a lot better now that I saw this this is super exciting so again thank you for all the work that's gone into this um as with anything that I ever uh asked for request just breaking it down Barney style for for me to understand um so is this saying that in order to do this disparity study for VBS um and sdvosbs um it would take 6 months or 12 months or are saying these are the different options or can you break it down for me yeah so in the IR we break down the different ways that we can analyze data around um the availability of of firms in the marketplace so we're looking at two specific groups business Equity firms and then veterans and service disabled veterans and what our recommendation is is to do an availability analysis for veterans and service disabled veterans which is probably the quickest analysis that we can do just to understand how many are in the marketplace that do the work that the city usually contracts for so that we could set goals um if that's something that the the council would like to move forward on um so that's probably the easiest way to go about this the other uh portion that's covered in this IR is looking at um updating uh the data analysis around business Equity firms and what's look what the marketplace currently looks like um when we concluded uh the 2020 disparity study for um business Equity firms that data set that we used to conduct that analysis went from 2013 to 2018 um so this would be a look at 2019 to present um understanding what the what the state of play in our Marketplace is now and uh it would not replace the the goals that were established in the disparity study but those numbers could help um uh inform us as to any emerging Trends in our Marketplace as as the community continues to grow when we attract new businesses here what that looks like gotcha okay so in that case what what should we be getting out to our small business owners that are in you know in Fort Worth who are or who would qualify as better known small businesses who maybe they're not registered as such because there's no benefit to it so I got over at the chamber right now forward chamber that's one of the things we're working on is polling just the chamber members on where they're at and then helping them with those certifications through the SBA so they can be identified so is I guess whenever this kicks off what should we be going out to our business owner saying hey make sure you're identified registered with the city okay make sure you're registered with the city so we're working with our purchasing department we have the new bonfire system and so we want to make this as userfriendly as possible uh so that when uh contractors vendor register with the city it's a one-time uh uh process where they would identify um what types of certifications they have um and Veterans and service disabled veterans uh certifications would be added to that um so they would just need to register as a vendor with the city make sure that they're checking all the applicable certifications and then we will be uh using those list uh to reach out and make sure that all of our um small business business business equity and Veterans um are made aware of all of the Contracting and vending opportunities uh that the city procures okay awesome and then the unbundling contracts can you explain that just really quickly sure um so unbundling is really just looking at uh sometimes we have large contracts that uh can be broken down by the specific work that's included in a contract um and sometimes that makes it easier to identify vendors and contractors that can do those smaller portions of a large contract and so to the greatest extent possible within State uh uh Texas statutes and regulations we try to make sure that those opportunities are available so what we do in our department is uh we work with um sit down proactively with some of our project managers and identify uh the scope of work for some of the projects before uh the bid is advertised uh so that we can see um potentially some opportunities for unbundling and and uh targeting some uh uh activities within a project that could go to a a smaller firm um and then make sure that we're once the bid is advertised that we're reaching out to those uh businesses within our Marketplace that could serve uh in that capacity and invite them to um to bid on a project awesome well and that'll certainly help those contractors who you know have those Bond requirements and can't exactly get those huge bonds so um all great information um I think this would lend very well especially uh to the priority home repair program where the vendors needed there it's like a win-win for for everyone involved so thank you very much for the for the update I appreciate it thank you thank you Christina and then the final informal report is on upper leau flood mitigation flood infrastructure financial assistance application Jennifer we have somebody with their hand raised already council member Flores thank you mayor BR to hi Jennifer hello good I know uh you know we had spoken before you know about this and I appreciate your staff Seer to getting you know this needed uh funding right you know for you know projects like this because it is a as our you know City continues to develop this is going to be more omnipresent so in the past you know your team has provided the council with a timeline for flood mitigation projects uh based on what current then current available funding had right so if this project is selected you know if we get grants loans combination thereof uh awarded what is the project timeline for Libo specifically would would you estimate I know it's it's a phase thing I'm just wondering how that changed the original timeline because we were looking what like past 20 20 2035 somewhere around there memory service I can't remember so yeah so with the with the fee increase that was approved in the fiscal year uh 24 budget um part of that was to help with the next phase so not the full and complete project but the next phase of Lio um as well as two other large uh scale flood mitigation Improvement so if we got this grant funding uh for Libo it would accelerate that delivery but I can't tell you by how much because we don't really know how much we're going to get um so so we're going to apply for as much as we feasibly could could spend um and can afford within our current policies and with the other um commitments that we've made uh to moving forward but because we don't know how much they're going to give us we don't really know how quick we could do that next phase or how big that next phase could be okay so once we find out that information like how much we could actually get then we can figure out okay this is how much that next portion can be and give you an updated timeline sure that makes sense and since I'd like to you know remain optimistic if we were to get all we wanted conservatively you know how much could we accelerate you think um I would have to go back to our team and like really look and see um but yeah if the star cars were aligned and we got um this this funding as well as the FEMA grants the very cool part is that the FEMA grants have a local uh requirement and if we actually got this flood infrastructure funding that could be used to help contribute to the the local requirements so that would be awesome if we can get both we just don't really know um but of course we're trying to get as much as possible because then that gives us more money to put towards our other commitments so got it okay okay thank you if you can give back to me yeah when you kind of run you know hypothetical okay sounds good sounds good thank you thank you mayor protm that concludes my report thank you very much David any questions regarding changes in membership on boards and commissions for the April 9th meeting hearing none uh any questions regarding significant zoning cases for the April 9th meeting moving right along uh questions regarding city council MNC log for April 9th any issues there council member Nettles I do have one and I think it was a number 13 we had a conversation about it earlier and I think the approval amount was up to 2 million but the the 13 ex says 1.1 it's going to be so that's the additional so Council has approved already I think up to 995,000 so that's just the additional any others and with that we have an update on the noise ordinance from Chief Aldridge and Deputy City attorney Melinda Ramos as well thank you for going to the right stand because you have good lighting there that's what I need so I want to make sure I'm in the right spot U melen Ros city attorney's office and um as the mayor protm already said we're here to give you an update on the noise ordinance um kind of the overview of what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about sources of noise the regulatory Authority the standards of measurement and lastly enforcement and just kind of as a preface before we begin um you know all noises are sounds but not all sounds or noise and really what that is right wow wow this this is what you all pay me for so you know I got to make it work right um so you know sounds are what are heard by our ears and noises are what we perceive to be unwarranted or unpleasant sounds so people perceive those noises and sounds differently and how it affects them is also different can be different uh from person to person so as you can imagine noise complaints come in from a wide variety of sources and for a wide variety of reasons from loud music Animals barking dogs automobiles construction sites uh mufflers um near residential areas most of the complaints that police receive are for loud music um these are noises that um disturb the Tranquility or quality of life of residents and those can manifest themselves either in a physical way or in uh affect the the mentality of the person um most of the complaints are received through the NPO uh through their Communications division um from council members um alternatively where you have animals involved typically those complaints related to chickens barking dogs Code Compliance will'll often receive those in addition to the police department as well so kind of the laws that are applicable to um noise are both at the state level and at our local level here at the state level those are handled through the penal code through the disorderly conduct and when it's declared a public nuisance in order to be declared a public nuisance for noise and disorderly conduct a person has to commit an offense knowingly uh where they make an unreasonable noise in a public place or alternatively uh in or near a private residence that they have no right to occupy they have to be given Warning by a peace officer that that noise is unreasonable and a public nuisance and then it has to hit 85 DB which can be very loud um what doesn't qualify as you'll see here is any uh noise that comes from a shooting range because those are handled through another Statute in state law now kind of more locally our noise ordinance in chapter 23 um was updated in 2012 to add decel levels prior to that it didn't have any uh but it is designed to regulate Noise by various alternative means in order to allow the police and when necessary Code Compliance to enfor Force these regulations at times when either um there's not a sound meter available or when they have a person that is wanting to make a personal complaint um these noises can be in violation because it's um disturbing to a person of uh reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities or because it exceeds a certain decibel level restrictions that we have in our ordinance um any noise that is in excess of the maximum deciel level that we have in our ordinance um is during State time so we have Day times and night times by which we have maximum levels um and the noise that is it's measured um for duration of 30 seconds from the property line of the person that's making the complaint um where we have a yes ma'am so how far from the property line do you measure measure the decibels so I'll have to defer to Aldridge but typically what the officer would do is he would stand at the property let's say it was a resident home complaining about a business um that officer would go to the resident take their complaint go stand at the probably the edge of their property maybe the edge of their driveway right is where typically you would imagine the property line to be and then take the decel lever the sound meter reading and see what the decibel level was okay so there's not like a 300 feet or a 50 feet roll around the property line okay thank you um when there is uh not a deciel level or the sound meters won't capture the decibel level um the officer would still have the discretion to write a citation for noise if they have a person who as I stated before um it disturbs them in their a reasonable person of ordinance sens ordinary sensibilities that would make cause or suffer allow an unreasonable noise at such Manner and such volume that it disturbs that person um it can vary uh what bothers one person may not bother another person so the officer is really using their discretion at that point in time to make that determination but for this particular violation he does need a witness so the person that's the complainant would need to be the W witness for the citation council member block so I have a question that may be a little obtuse but district 10 were're blessed with lots of little pockets of etj and so what happens if we have a noise complaint from a city of Fort Worth residents about a noise or a firework that's coming from a street away in the etj so right it it would be in the county we don't enforce our ordinances in the county and I will just offer that um counties right now don't have the authority to enact any kind of noise ordinances themselves there have been a couple of bills that have been tried in the past but they've not gained traction for them next um Melinda I don't know if you're getting to this if you are you know I can you know wait until you reach that slide but I wanted to ask you a little bit about entertainment districts so we're get we're getting there you getting there I'll wait there okay council member back okay so we do have a number of exemptions right now built into our noise ordinance um and they are generally related to our entertainment type of uh facilities that we have here in the city ranging from Texas Motor Speedway um public or private school properties where it's permitted by the owner so the biggest example of that would be um TCU in their Stadium an outdoor event that's permitted by the city um Panther Island at their um event venue that where it seats a th uh persons you could have amplifiers that would be exempt from our noise ordinance anytime any of the governmental bodies are doing work in the streets those are exempt from the government from the noise ordinance um vehicular traffic Railway and airport traffic is exempt um and our Drilling and production is exempt but they are exempt because they have their own noise requirements that that uh The Operators are required to meet both the gas Wells and the compressor stations that they're required to meet they have to submit a noise management plan where they have to account for what the ambient is in the area I believe they have to do a 72-hour study put that in and then once they either drill refract or uh have a compressor station it can't operate during the daytime any more than what five uh DB above the ambient and at night three DB of the ambient so they're covered under a completely different noise kind of uh requirements so they're not in this particular um ordinance council member Hill I have a Tenon of questions but I want to make sure I'm this is applicable do fireworks are they considered under the noise ordinance or they have a separate ordinance so fireworks can be considered under this noise ordinance um but the exemption if they had a permit like Colonial or t um TCU shooting up fireworks they have to pull a permit for that and so they would be exempt right so TCU they pull a fireworks permit um all of these I don't think they have to pull a they wouldn't specifically be exempt under this because they don't get a separate a special events permit or outdoor events permit okay um but they have been considered to be exempt um with their fireworks um it it doesn't mean that somebody couldn't still want to make a complaint about fireworks noise it's um just been um my experience that um typically it's one person complaining all for it for a particular area or it the complaints may stem because of the time by which the fireworks uh go off I know that there was a case last year with an event on Panther Island where the fireworks didn't go off until after midnight um and so of course that creates a noise disturbance that I know we got complaints about um that is being addressed through a separate uh Amendment to the fire code that will be coming forward to the council at at some time at one of your April meetings okay and it will address kind of noise um also okay then I'll hold the rest of my questions to the end thank you and then lastly um normal building conditioning and ventilation and property maintenance is exempt um that's not to say that if you don't if you um or a resident experiences their neighbors's air conditioner uh making a high Screech or a high whine that they can't call development services and they'll have an inspector go out and ensure that that air conditioner or whatever the uh particular Machinery may be is operating the way it's supposed suppos to be so this is just a did you have a question CR no I'm sorry this is just a visual depiction of the range of noise and the decel levels that they are um all the way from um 30 decel levels where it's wrestling leaves all the way up to 140 where it's a gunshot fireworks can range uh depending on um the degree uh they can be all the way up to 140 as well uh sounds are harmful to the ear to the person in your hearing once it reaches 85 D levels um how these oops sorry preview how these noises are perceived may depend on um you know if it's seasonal the prevailing winds the weather uh whether or not there's any kind of vegetative cover and the topography so these are on average but on any given day that may not be the decel level that sound meters may catch them on it may be louder it may be softer So within our noise ordinance um we do have maximum decibel levels uh in there they are set roughly by zoning districts residential non-residential mixed use um downtown Panther Island West 7th and then other zoning districts which do include uh the form based codes including the other entertainment districts of the Stockyards and of um near Southside generally for the res residential districts daytime for all of these with the exception of what you'll see for West 7th downtown in Panther island is 7: to 10: p.m. and then 7 uh 10: p.m. to 7:00 a.m. so in residential areas the during the day the max you can have is 70 uh the nighttime it's 60 uh for commercial areas commercial it is 80 DBA and nighttime at 70 for the uh downtown Panther Island and West 7th areas from Sunday through Thursday during the daytime hours it's at 80 DBA and at night from uh 7 10 to 7: it's 70 DBA but on the weekend from Friday to Saturday it's uh from 7 to 2: am it's 80 and then from 2 am to 7: it's 70 um as I said before for all our other zoning districts that aren't covered in the three categories above um during the daytime it's whatever the existing ambient is plus 3 DBA and then at night time whatever the existing ambient is for the area so we do include buffer yards not in the zoning ordinance and really those are designed to screen or block uh Vision or noise pollutants along the entire length of the boundary between one and two family residential districts and the adjacent non-residential districts which can be either our commercial districts or industrial it consists of open space of grass other Landscaping a masonry wall or wood fence either alone or in combination and here's how these are set out and specifically with regards to our non-residential districts so both the commercial and the industrial as you can see it really relates to where the building is set back and then where um the buffer yard is and that is that 5 foot generally 5ot of area where it has to be um that uh Landscaping as stated above for the industrial districts there is a bit more the building is set back at 50 and when it's adjacent to residential then the the buffer yard is set to 20 where that grass and vegetation has to occur for those IND dustrial districts um the zoning ordinance requires a minimum uh planting of trees a minimum of two half 2 and 1 half in calipers and shrubs for a vegetated screen if you're planting Med trees they have to be planted every 15 ft on Center if you're planting large trees every 30 ft on Center and the shrubs are meant to grow between 8 feet tall and be planted in between the trees I I will add just as a caveat is that for from all of the buffer yards you are allowed to park in that buffer yard so that can mitigate the effect of having that set back and if its intent is really to provide any kind of noise mitigation so I'll turn it over to Aldridge to handle the enforcement um Melinda before you do that before the chief gets underway I just wanted sorry Chief wanted to ask you uh maybe how legal looks at this I mean in the definitions I forget which slide you presented when you talk about uh a normal person being bothered by an unreasonable level of noise sound whatever you want to call it right okay well how does the law look at say someone with a disability that's not readily apparent but loud sounds could you know create a problem like an autistic person in terms of whether or not a citation will be written well how's how's that apply so I think I think the law would generally look at and what it what a judge is going to generally look at or the court is going to generally look at is how it affects the a reasonable person so it's an average person standard right so I think the the court would assume that it's not a person with extra sensitivity to noise however however the case may be I think in I'll age myself here when I was doing research on this I was reading that people who are prone to be bothered by lowf frequency noise it can really manifest itself uh through being nauseous through through being physically sick and that typically happens to people when they're 50 to 59 and I won't say where I am in that range but uh but it typically happens to that so I mean noise um there are special um perhaps um medical conditions that can create noise sensitivity but sometimes just with age uh there can create you can have noise sensitivity as well but a court would look at what what is an average reasonable person they would look at kind of what is the the nature and the extent of the inter erence how long it lasts how long it reoccurs and how much it interferes with daily life is what really Court's going to look at when you're going to prosecute a case based on a noise citation okay and you mentioned noise management plans right as they apply to compressors like natural gas compressors right uh does this apply to uh open air concerts so we don't have in our ordinance right now our no our regular noise ordinance we don't have a similar requirement uh for noise management plans like the gaswell ordinance does so the gaswell ordinance was written um more robustly to address the particular noise issues that were coming up during the height of the Gast drilling phase and so there's a specific plan for that that requires certain the operator to take into certain things related to kind of what the noise impacts are from what they're making with their Machinery to EST Lish as I said before the ambient for the area um and how much they're they're either drilling or the compressor is going to impact that and then to also provide other mitigations whether it was enclosing the compressor station or putting up sound walls it it's kind of its own little separate set category within the gaswell ordinance that is not part currently of any we don't require any kind of noise mitigation plans or anything related to that okay any permitting in our current noise ordinance and what I'm trying to do is segue into a specific area like Panther Island right uh as an example The ubby Doobie concert right okay uh the outdoor events ordinance you know by the city uh well you know it administers and and enforces over city-owned property but it does not say for example have any U purview over trwd owned property right like you would find over in Panther Island so they're not required to do that as it stands because we don't have you know a a plan to well right now right now they are carved out they are Exempted from our noise ordinance specifically their entertainment venue that seats a thousand persons um it would be a decision of the council if you wanted to continue to exempt them from the noise ordinance or if you wanted to amend the ordinance to remove that exemption and make them subject to our maximum decibel levels you could at that point the council could either consider adding them to the maximum decibel levels that are included for um the downtown Panther well that area where the maximum is 70 um it would it would at that point be your choice but right now we don't have any um requirements for that venue because it's exempt ordance I'd like to keep that option open you know for further discussion um but just in the interest of getting through the couple of other questions that I have I think I covered most of it uh okay last one for entertainment districts okay and I'm thinking of the stockyards in particular all right very popular place but what we see is that uh during especially during certain times of the day of the evening you get uh not just you know showy cars but loud cars or trucks going in there whether it be by music or by virtue of their exhausts right their exhaust systems are just loud especially when they R engines that's including motor cycles as well so it's an Entertainment District right there's a lot of you know outdoor activities going on they're folks on the PA I get it sometimes there are people you know playing music at the corners fine how how would we possibly adjust you know our noise ordinance to uh maybe be a little more specific for example police and you know Chief Aldridge I'd love to hear what you have to say on this maybe they're put upon a bit to try to make a judgment call for instance when you have all this other you ambient noise going on and then you have a point source noise that is of particular disturbance level right because I've gotten complaints before by retailers that have their in good weather their shop doors open right uh you have outdoor diners and they're like you know what this would better but not for that guy over there you know loud on his you know megaphone you know saying something right expounding his first amendment rights or whatever it is that kind of thing because then it starts affecting business the conduct of business so maybe I don't know if you're prepared to answer that but again like the uh the exemption for Panther Island I would like to look at that further maybe how we can better refine it so for entertainment districts um I know um the chief will get into other cities that they looked at in terms of enforcement and how they're enforcing when I looked at those cities and what their noise ordinance ordinances required um many of them had um permits that they required for certain types of entertainment venues for their noise um and they put limits on those within those permits related to that and if they went beyond that then they would revoke their permits related to that I think um I'll defer to the the chief for how to address vehicles I think it would be difficult um for a um police officer um when it's the muffler or anything like that to be able to use a sound meter to to try to measure that because our ordinance right now requires a 30 minute not a 30 minute a 30 second uh measurement so I'm not I I'll you know they have more experience in terms of related to that I think we have to be very careful with with um First Amendment and um folks that want to be on the um sidewalk and um be able to have their say exactly there's certain kind of case law that's related to amplification um that we can look at what's in there now but I don't I don't know how much we could really successfully regulate that and and not infringe on somebody's First Amendment right and a lot of it has to do with location right that's correct because some people will say sure they can say whatever they want but I have my family here you know there's Long Way to the restaurant the only available seating is outdoor and I have to put up with that anyways certainly our Department's always willing and um ready to work with the police department when issues like that related to come up to to find a solution that we're respecting First Amendment rights but also respecting the folks that go down there to enjoy the the Stockyards or any entertainment center and sometimes s first amendment uh you know rhetoric can be a little volatile especially to Young young years but anyways that that's all my questions thank you thank you council member Chief good afternoon mayor pemp council members it's good to be in front of you today um so I know this is one issue that is uh frustrating to a lot of the constituents that you guys represent um I get a lot of phone calls not only from you guys I get emails uh text messages I I get a lot of things from you guys about just noise so whenever we talk about the penal code uh peace officers enforce the penal code that's the chapter that Melinda talked about a little bit earlier but the you know the co the code can be enforced by either Code Compliance or us but the reality is is that really whenever you're talking about noise ordinances it's us I mean 99.9% of the time it's US unless you're talking about a barking dog or something like that so you know usually we try and get verbal warnings and uh you know we can issue citations if we need to our whole goal is to gain compliance we want people to live in harmony in their community without disrupting everybody around them so I mean if we went around and wrote citations for people at birthday parties kenas you name it um you know we don't want that hard feelings between the community that's just trying to celebrate a very happy event um and maybe not aware of what the noise ordinances are so uh according to the city ordinance the Fine's not more than $500 so uh the next two slides I couldn't fit it all on one slide it's very busy reading if you look at it but I looked at the calls from 22 and 2023 for loud music and parties those are same category if it's a loud music or party you can see we had about a 99.2% increase from 2022 to 2023 during that two-year period we got about 177,000 calls so um out of the 177,000 calls we pretty much you know took some sort of enforcement action 117 times either citation or if a report was written a citation was issued after the fact the next slide is going to look fairly similar except for more call um just with 2023 data um and you can see you know I I broke it out if um the the disposition that was set on the call whether they were gone on arrival there was no action taken the call was cancelled officers were unable to locate or if a report or citation was issued um and so I really kind of want to talk about a little bit of the challenges for law enforcement one is uh loud music calls are for the most part are low priority calls so they kind of get put down on the list a little bit and we answer the higher priority calls unless there's you know um somebody's life that's in danger and by the time we get to it usually the noise has probably been turned down or the party has ceased altogether maybe the noise doesn't rise to the de decibel limits um as frustrating as it may be to them living in the house uh every division has decel meters and we can test the decel levels at the property line to determine if they meet that that uh limit um a lot of the times complaintants just want to be anonymous and so if if we don't meet the decimal limit but yet it's still inconvenient to them we need a witness for the citation so we need somebody to say yes I'm more than willing to go to court to say it Disturbed me to the point I called the police to have a citation issued um but a lot of the calls that we really get they are either anonimous or concerned citizens so um and there are times whenever we go to a loud music call that people don't answer the door yeah go figure that they don't want to talk to the police uh the only remedy we have with that is that we can write a report issue a citation later um but it doesn't solve the problem for the night so that's that's a very big challenge for us whenever that does occur because guess what it's going to continue to disturb people throughout the night and we're going to continue to get calls so whenever I was looking at this I was able to you know send out a feeler to a lot of different agencies we got 12 replies from across the country uh and actually into Canada uh the reality is is that most of the agencies do exactly what we do um they try and gain compliance through you know operation um to get the music turned down um there was one that had a licensing committee that could revoke permits um for businesses um and there were a couple of agencies that allowed uh again to revoke the establishments permit um there was one Department that had a positive interaction program that kind of met with the community whenever they have problems but as you know we have npos that have meetings with community members all the time and so if there's a problem location no matter what side of town if it's a loud music uh we sit down and we talk to the community members we try and get the business owners you know to sit down with us and come up with a solution uh this is a very convoluted Pro problem as you guys can imagine uh and really uh the officers sometimes are put in a no win situation that you know the citizens want the music turned down but yet it doesn't rise to that level so um you know we're always open to suggestions and uh potential Solutions um but the reality is is that um unfortunately you guys are probably going to continue to get a lot of music complaints and we're still going to try and address them the best way we can so I'm sure everybody has a lot of questions council member Beck all right I'm up I hope yall are comfortable up there so I think my first one actually is for my first round of questions are for Melinda um hopefully it's not too much noise it's just sound U my first question is when when you talk about that distinction um sound is energy and it creates vibration and we can feel that um so how or do we can we distinguish noise that maybe does not reach the decibel level that is can the loudness right because deal level is really how loud it is um what about that like a low level that would create a vibration that there would be a physical impact on a a person or property right you're you're right right now the way our maximum decibel levels are written um people who are bothered by low frequency sounds it's not going they they generally only hit like 40 decel levels 50 deel levels so that's well below what we have in our residential areas and that um we can look at um what best practices are for other cities with regards to how to best measure and um capture what low-l sounds are what low low frequency sounds are and and how to best um be able to include them in an ordinance where we can the police or depending on where the source of the noise is maybe code would be able to site and have that person who is the originator be able to if it's Machinery fix it there's a certain level where um typically that was the complaint during the years where gas drilling was going on it was the low hum that you would hear from compressors is there's ways to build sound walls or other things to mitigate either through requiring um soundproofing for buildings or other measures that we can look at that wouldn't solely be included in a noise ordinance but perhaps touch on some of our other ordinances as well um that that we could look at okay thank you and I'm I'm thinking about um I I'm a loud music person in my car so that doesn't bother me but you know there are times that you feel people's um music it's painful um but we also deal with that with residents that you know in their homes if they're adjacent to um you know a a bar or the right and so they feel that and that's to me feels more disruptive than just loud right when I'm physically feeling it so if we could yeah we can certainly look into that yes all right great so first question down all right next one is um it it's pres so just to be clear presumed unreasonable if it exceeds 85 so for disorderly conduct under the penal code okay and um Chief do you know if we um issue any citations for disorderly conduct as it relates to this as it relates to noise I'd have to go look up the reports again okay thank you um I didn't ask that earlier so okay next so I'm a little frustrated actually to to learn to today that we have this um alternative means in our code for issuing citations because I know we've talked about uh noise several times at Council and noise readers and all that to really help us understand how to best serve our constituents um and often what we hear is well I don't have a you know not everybody has a a meter which we understand um but how one how often do we issue a citation under this uh particular code so again I would have to go back and look at the reports and back in 2021 we did an audit of all the decibel meters in every Division and we learned that there was some deficiencies in each one of the divisions and so we bought new decibel meters for each division yeah you'd given us an IR on that yeah I I remember that um okay great and so um I asked about okay so my next question is um how often or ever do we train um officers on what that sound in practicality feels like or so that they can be better armed with going to a noise call and understanding where that is and I know we have the chart and I appreciate that chart um but standing in a room and feeling in hearing 85 DB right is probably a little bit let you have a better understanding so the majority of the officers uh whenever they're in field training of course they take a variety of calls do I put them in a room and play 85 decb for them no okay um but the like can I sure if I wanted to go deaf um but the likelihood of them encountering a loud music call is quite likely I mean it's one of the highest things that one of the most frequent calls that we get so um in their training of course they have field training officers that deal with this all the time and you guys know as well as anybody you guys have frequent flyers in your divisions people that violate this ordinance time and time and time again well the officers are just as familiar with them and so anybody that's in training I guarantee you they're getting exposed to that type of call on multiple occasions okay um Melinda uh so you said when Macy asked a question earlier about um different places that are permitted um for firework shows and we have them all over the city um but they're not exempt from our noise ordinance and so I'm really kind of confused because it feels like we're setting them up for failure fireworks are loud by nature and so um how can we permit them for a firework display but then say but you're not exempt from a noise complaint so a lot of that is really for um through officer discretion um kind of if you have one person complaining about a fireworks display and nobody else in the area is complaining about the fireworks display that that is going to play into whether an officer decides to write the operator of the the fireworks or let's say um who's hosting the fireworks a a citation or not what what I will offer is um the fire department is coming forward with some amendments to their fireworks display section where they do address fireworks displays and whether the sound coming from the fireworks display if it's above ambient uh or that it has to meet ambient for that area so they are trying to address the issue that you are raising related to um permitting a fireworks display because they're they're the department that permits these fireworks displays and then kind of the the level of of um the fireworks fireworks by their nature are going to be loud a lot of what you hear does depend on what I mentioned before it it depends on what the atmosphere is for that day whether um you know those the time of day that it's occurring whether there's any wind um you know just depends on how that sound carries on um either dampening the sound of the fireworks or if it's a perfectly clear night and there's nothing it's still that fireworks may sound louder than it normally does it it it really is dependent upon the atmospheric conditions on that night that that those fireworks are occurring but they do have language in their proposed proposed ordinance that would address um your question okay um all right thank you and then um Melinda this is it's just a statement really when I look at the different the SL slide eight that has the different um deal levels Day and Night by Zone uh mixed use is often residential and downtown uh future Panther Island and west are also residential areas and so I I get for ease we've done we've done it by code right by Zone but mixed juice has residential in it and so I'm a little concerned about that distinction in there because practically speaking on the ground when someone does mixed juice it has a residential um component to it and so I think um we're not doing right by those residents by allowing that higher level and I think that's probably why the majority of the complaints that I get come from some of those those areas and then my next question is we talked about buffering um and so just to play on that and let me back up and say the reason why I asked for the buffer and all of that is because I have some areas where I get regular complaints from homeowners that live in a a single family neighborhood that have um businesses adjacent to them and those businesses play loud music and so my question is is it so if we say it's 70 DB and so that's 70 DB in the residential area so if I'm standing in my driveway right and we take that reader um and it's 70 DB where I am it's okay but we're allowing 80 DB in the zone just a adjacent to that property and so are they in violation if say if it's 74 in the residential do does it make sense what I'm trying to ask because you've got two separate requirements right next to each other right so what what the officer would do is they would take that measurement from the complainant's property and base it on what that deciel level should be for that complainant's property so for that person that lives in the residential district that's adjacent they would be set at let's say it's 11 o'clock at night so they would be set at 60 dbas so they would stand on their property line and they would take their sound meter out and they would measure it and if it's above 60 they would be able to write a citation based on that to to where they believe the originator of the noises for the let's say the the person who lives in that mixed use area if they're the person making the complaint and um more specifically let's say they're in Panther uh the West 7th Village but they're in they're in the apartments that live there and they're the person making the complaint the officer would be using what that maximum DBA is for that District which you know at that time would let's say it's on the weekend would be 70 DBA right but so one one way perhaps to look at resolving that is to instead of measuring from the complainant's property line is to measure from the property line of the the um where the complaint is originating from so to go to the business and measure from their property line for the noise that's coming from their property line is it exceeding either that maximum that maximum decibel level and whether what we have currently in our ordinance should still be our current maximum decibel levels I think is something that that can be looked at these were set based on a uh noise a Citywide noise study that was done around 2006 so it's been some time since that's happened but certainly we can go back as staff and re-evaluate whether our maximum decel levels for all of our districts are where they should be and more specifically for some of these entertainment areas whether we need different regulations for the businesses that operate or within those districts yeah the the conundrum I think we fall into is if I'm a a resident and um and it's over 70 DB where I'm standing I want you to is issue a citation for the person who's making that that noise if I'm the business right and you're standing at my property line and it's 80 and I'm saying well I'm complying with um with city code and why am I getting a citation for compliance and that's where those setbacks come in and the buffers and we don't always I don't know that those are always effective at creating that downgrade in decb and so I think it can potentially raise issues so I don't know how we fix that but um you're pretty pretty smart cookie so if we could maybe um come up with some ways to to better address that um okay and then um Chief do we have um oh sorry Melinda one more question for you on setbacks sorry um if um with the setback so setbacks and buffer yards are the buffer yards within that setback so you have a 20 foot uh setback and then is that 5 foot buffer within that 20 foot setback or is an addition to no it's my understanding that it's within and it's specifically that's the area that is has the landscaping or the Shrubbery okay okay thank you okay chief um so I see here that says it not it's punishable by a fine not to exceed $500 um do we have any mechanisms for habitual offenders no okay um can we look at um changing that ordinance for those habitual offenders because $500 right if they're continued do one do we have habitual offenders yeah we can look at that okay um thank you and then I think I only have a couple more okay um you said that some calls require a witness yes what type of calls would require with so if it doesn't meet the decel limit so if it doesn't meet the 60 or 70 uh deciel minute uh level um for us to write a ticket I mean the person's actually in compliance but yet the person that is complaining still may may feel like it's unreasonable okay so in those circumstances we you know we'd like to have witnesses uh because if not you just have an officer going to court with the you know the complainant or the person that got the citation going proved that it was unreasonable so um you know usually the person that really wants the citation issued they do a really good job sometimes they record the noise uh they have other uh neighbors that will show up to court um it's it's just easier to prosecute okay and then um I appreciate the research that you did can you tell me um a little bit more about this positive interaction program and so um the department that did it all they did was they created a a group of people that goes out into the community let's say it's a bar that's next to a residential area and they have a conversation and they try and develop solutions that where everybody can live you know together without having issues it is absolutely no different than what we do with our mpos so whenever we have the neighborhood association meetings we invite you know either businesses that may have issues or maybe the citizens have concerns with and sit down and come up with a solution okay and then um last actually it's my last question so when you were looking at um the cities that revoke permits did they give you an idea for like what type of situation would require that allow that it multiple offenses okay so it wasn't just the first time they violated their ordinance and you know their permits were interwoven uh with you know applying for the city so right now we stand independent I mean you don't you don't have what ifs you know if you do this your permit's going to be revoked it's you get a permit or you don't okay um Melinda what would that look like revoking permits for habitual I'd like us to look at evaluating what like a habitual offender um program would look like as we or what potential parts of our ordinances what ordinances and what parts of them we would change to um maybe deter some of our worst actors so we if we amended our noise ordinance where we created a a program where certain types of um businesses needed to get a permit related to noise and as the chief said if they violated that permit after we'd have to pick however many violations we would prior to revoking the permit we'd have to of course give everybody their due process so we would likely have an appeal process by which they would they could appeal and then kind of make their case for the appeal and then if they weren't successful then we would revoke the permit um some cities revoke it for a year uh some cities revoke it for less time but there's always a time period by which that permits revoked for a certain amount of time yeah okay or until a plan is they create a plan to come into compliance and they adhere to it perfect um and then I just want to uh reiterate something that um or my support for something that uh councilman Flor has brought up and that's um looking into noise management plans for large scale outdoor activities um I think that would help help us manage our constituents um when we have those onetime events that maybe um create create more noise than usual sir thank you I have a couple of comments to add uh council member Beck I've never thought about the idea of mixed use and Commercial and how that could be unfair and so I'm glad you brought that up and when you when you think back to 2006 none of us were here then certainly it's time for a scrubbing and I can assure you that there are people in residential areas who will really support taking on habitual offenders I've got a whole bunch of little old ladies who just live in Terror you know when it comes to holidays and so you know i' I'd like to see us take this on to be updated and the idea that you know we we could put in some safeguards where maybe we had zoning and didn't have development at the time but now it's there and it's creating chaos and so you know hats off to all of you who waited on this conversation but I think we're due for an update that's all and now I was looking at David it's on me we're going to hear from assistant city manager Dana berdoff giving us a update on development streamlining thank you Melinda and chief our forgot to say thank you thank you mayor proem and members of the city council I appreciate the opportunity to provide this update to you uh the last time we provided a briefing on development streamlining was last June of uh 2023 and we thought it would be a good opportunity to run through uh some of the accomplishments that both development services and other coordinating departments have made uh over the the past year and what I'm going to do is go through several slides and then I'll turn it over to DJ harell the real expert to walk through uh a number of the slides after that so we um one of the things that I think you all know is that we've been working on development process streamlining uh for as long as I think I've worked for the the city of Fort Worth right it's a it's an ongoing task there's ongoing challenges we're in the fastest growing large city in the country so there's a lot of Demands um but there's also been a need for a lot of improvements and so we recognize that um what what we what prompted some of our more regular conversations is uh the Real Estate Council has been a partner with us in surveying development customers um to hear from them what are some of the issues and concerns that they're hearing as well as the Chamber of Commerce and as well as our own development advisory committee and so um The Real Estate Council provided a list of uh 10 recommendations last January of 2023 to Mayor and Council and we've been working through a number of those as well as recommendations that we've received from The Institute for justice related to small businesses and business Equity um and again our monthly meetings with our development advisory um committee so um what I'd like to touch on is um the the Real Estate Council uh and the forums uh that we've held and I want to thank David and the city management team because it's not just you know development services it's a lot of different departments that are involved in helping to achieve the the ex excellent customer experience that we want to have um as well as making sure that the improvements that we've made in in one Department are reflected in in in other departments as well and so I want to thank the directors of those other departments because they've been very willing to jump on board and be part of training and and be part of these improvements so um just a quick review we've got the updated list of the city council's strategic priorities and in and in looking at this list we think development really touches on all of these elements Economic Development Community safety infrastructure responsible growth and so on uh as well as being something that the the sooner that we can help a a developer or property owner achieve their goals the sooner we're able to get um property that may be underdeveloped or undeveloped on the tax rols and be productive uh for Fort Worth and so that is part of our financial responsibility as well as making sure that we're using our staff resources um and other resources efficiently uh the city manager's work plan uh so for a few years the uh goals have been related to improving customer service efficiency and transparency and then improving the planning and development review process so This falls in line with that and then lastly we wanted to touch on the city uh employee values and so of course um again we want to be sure that we're treating our customers uh with with all of these values um and then again to touch on EX exceptional customer experience and continuous Improvement is two that are really highlighted for us as we as we bring this to you so one of the things that our the team has done is worked on a development 101 training uh that was very has been very successful and I I stole this slide uh from that presentation and the Real Estate Council has thought that it's been pretty important because it helps illustrate the complexity of development that there's Land Development there's infrastructure development and then there's Building Development and there's been a lot of improvements over the years related to Building Development uh related to getting your certificate of occupancy to getting a building permit in timely generally where folks have been getting caught up is when they maybe don't have the entitlements they need to Plat or replat the property and there's infrastructure involved so that could be a green field project where they need to extend infrastructure or that could be a Redevelopment where when they come in they realize they have to upgrade the infrastructure and so uh we had circled last June that infrastructure um uh square if you will to highlight that as an issue or an area of concern uh that we were needing to focus on we have we have we still have some staffing challenges in terms of hiring Engineers uh to help us with infrastructure plan review um but there's been a lot of great work to um streamline those those infrastructure processes so one of the 10 recommendations was that the the city manager hold a biannual twice a year Forum with develop the development community so we've we've done that we held our first one last July and as you can imagine we focused on infrastructure uh so we had a good conversation about our infrastructure studies water sewer storm water traffic uh infrastructure plan review center our agreements for Community facility agreements encroachment agreements uh storm water maintenance agreements and so on and then uh permits and then just this last uh February just a couple of months ago um they asked that we focus on these three recommendations employee retention strategies uh expanding the positive trajectory uh uh that development has made to other development related departments and resolving internal process conflicts so that customers aren't doing that themselves and so again had a great discussion um and a lot of great support from uh from the city departments involved so first thing I want to mention is um uh di gordano with HR department um she she and our city management team uh agreed that the customer experience the customer service training that responsibility for dealing with customer problems when they come in the door um that that's something that applies really Citywide and so HR took on that role of of putting together an really outstanding customer service training program uh to make sure that we're talking through not just a one-hour training um but what they put together just switch to this next slide is a 4-week program uh 28 hours of Blended learning both instructor-led self-paced uh as well as some peer-to-peer sessions and you'll see on the right all of the different departments uh that went through that training and so again I want to thank all the Departments that agreed to send reps to that training over 300 um 324 employees that were trained this last this last summer and fall and in fact HR has now Incorporated that training into their curriculum for all all uh city employees so we're very very excited to see that um and just coming back again here you know we want to have that focus on owning problems uh being problem solvers going above and beyond having that sense of urgency you got to talk fast like I do um I'm teasing adhering to deadlines um giving customers options and then and trying to have some consistency in in every interaction we you know we of course want customers to say wow so um uh at this point I think I I turn it over to DJ to take on these next slides but I did just also want to recognize he's not here but council member Michael crane um has been heavily involved in Small Business Development and uh working with us and with uh both development services Economic Development our Communications and public engagement um and I know I'm missing some other folks to help develop a lot of different resources and so I'll turn it over to DJ to describe those thank you get out that thank you Dana good afternoon mro Tim councel city manager cook as you know and as Dana Hint it uh development is quite complicated um and uh our department as well as our partner departments we spend a lot of time brainstorming how we can better facilitate development in the city of Fort Worth um and uh you know meet people halfway on the development uh path uh some of the things that we've done for uh new business uh new small small business initiatives where uh We've designated people in both Economic Development Department as well as development services department to help facilitate new small businesses through the process as they uh develop in the city of Fort Worth we've also as Dana said continued the development 10one trainings um we've developed several guides commercial development guides related to you know restaurants and other commercial uses in the city of Fort Worth to promate those on our website we've also um um you know redid redid our website to create other um links and tools available for uh firsttime developers as as well as um other developers uh We've created uh in informational videos and other tools that we've also shared as well um brief update on our uh volume uh of this past uh year calendar year 2023 uh we had almost 16,000 total permits issued uh and if you guys want to compare year-over-year uh that's right above 2019 but right below 2020 uh in in U in volume um commercial permits a little over 2,000 and about 1,600 for new construction which exceeds the 2020 numbers um 20 222 commercial lights platted and 51 uh commercial I'm sorry Community facilities agreements executed we've also made some strides in our uh you know software areas uh We've uh engaged with a company called philoso that connects a lot of our um our tools our uh technological tools and help them work together to seamlessly offer uh the the best customer experience um permit assist that's the uh software that someone can go on to our website and pretty much get their due diligence done in a matter of Moments by just typing in what they'd like to do and where the property is located so that's now connected with our permit which I think counil ask for it's connected with our permit software so they don't have to log off to that account and then log into a totally new system just to get through the process uh We've also made strides in areas where uh to to help with uh the consultant engineering um uh Community to provide comments to uh their plan sets as they go along so blue beam e-builder um uh for contracts we've implemented more Tools in Adobe sign docy sign uh e notaries uh we're also um um transferring a lot of stuff from Las laser fish to our website to be able to provide for uh folks to get their certificate of occupancies and other uh documents online at their fingertips also we've rolled in new payment portals for both the water department as well as development services department and uh We've also launched a new plan uh deficiency report so when someone turns into an application to the city of Fort Worth and it's deficient we wanted to make sure that we standardize our comments uh to those customers so that you know water department doesn't have one structure of comments the fire department has another structure of comments in the development services and so on and so on so we've standardized the way we communicate with customers to make it easier for them to understand what you know what plans are defishing also um you we've up updated aella I I think we talked to you guys in March of last year about going into the cloud so we went into the cloud March of last year and um that's going uh well it's also afforded us the ability to be able to quickly put more tools into a seller uh for instance we've added a lot of uh you know new stuff for the fire department the water department and uh even Co Code Department um we've also streamlined the process for uh you know new plat addresses assignments uh uh platting studies and uh building permits uh again you know we updated our you know with additional water permit types in the cell and then we also focused on our 24-hour review uh time so basically uh projects under 6,000 square feet should be able to walk into City Hall and leave with a permit right but we wanted to try to mimic that process online so maybe they don't need to come all the way down the city of City Hall maybe we can do that same thing from the comfort of their living room uh and so we've we've we've been able to accomplish that it's it's not as quick as the walk in where you walk in and in hour you leave but within 24 hours those permits should be issued as well uh let's talk about the water department so the water department has made huge strides u in uh their uh water application session section uh they've been uh able to do a couple bpis on contract meters where they've streamlined the time for receiving meters I'm sorry oh business process improvements yes ma'am um so so basically basically they wanted to ensure that they were able to to issue meters in a timely fashion I think the the metric is three days for commercial and seven days for residential so they've made huge strides um you know since last year working on that they've enhanced their plan review uh comments and notes you know as I spoke spoke on earlier uh they've had uh initiatives related to uh employee retention as well as enhanced training uh efforts and they've created dashboards to make sure that they're meeting all their kpis as they're going along uh also um our city manager uh one of his core values that you know Dana put on the screen earlier is continuous Improvement uh in in development services what we've done is created a program by which our employees can receive a uh green belt in lean6 Sigma and as a as a in during that process they have to complete a project that either saves time or money for the city of Fort Worth and our citizens and residents and uh part of that uh with that project they've created uh 12 or more projects including standardizing customer reg uh contractor registration um the contract process uh development advisory committee informational reports TI uh thirdparty reviews encroachment agreement process timing and pre-development conferences and reduction of call call center inbound calls another um another great U stride that they've made is they created a system by which uh we talked about people being able to apply for permits from the comfort of their home they can also now get per um consultations from the comfort of their home so we have a system called cus where they can log in set a time um and and meet with a any City person um from the comfort of their home on a WebEx meeting um during that same process as if they were a Walkin so if they wanted to apply and they just needed some help they had some questions on how to uh facilitate that we would have a customer service rep or even an engineer pop on in order to help facilitate that application process other things that we're doing we're working with uh you know Carlo Capia and Kevin Gunn in Our IT department to uh to uh utilize uh AI for intake um so we're working with you TCU we're also looking at a couple other um Consultants to see how we can proceed with that as well other improvements that we've made um you know we we're constantly trying to keep our ear to the re you know you know uh so we're uh We've rolled out some new surveys related to our customer service in the call center um we're also um undertaking a um we're on the tail end of a um structure and efficiency study that is being conducted by Barry Dunn it should be completed next month it'll let us know a couple of things one if everybody in our organization is classified appropriately but also how efficient are we set up as a department uh in our hierarchy also we've been um um you know laser focus on our efforts to hire those hardto fill positions those Engineers those planners those inspectors um so we've been uh you know putting a lot of efforts into going to job fairs uh and going to conferences in order to recruit those individuals and with a high vacancy rate or high turnover rate another thing that's really important is training so we've been focusing a lot on onboarding manuals uh you know rolling out 30 60 90day plans for new employees and trying to keep and some of that institutional knowledge so that we can share with folks as they come into the door some really good news is um um a lot of you remember 2019 um the the state legislator decided that our engineering plans should go to the City Planning Commission for review um what that did was that slowed down our entire development process back in 2017 we had conducted a lean6 sigma um where we reduced the time for infrastruct developer Le infrastructure delivery from 252 days to 105 days well the very next year the legislature added a shot clock bill which was uh um intended to speed up development it essentially had the effect of slowing it down because now development had to wait to go to a city plan commission once or twice a month um so now uh in the last legislative session uh Bill 26 3699 um took those plans out of the shot clock Bill and now we're allowed to go back to our Legacy process which started actually today where now we're able to accept engineering plans every week rather than once a month and so that's going to speed up uh those engineering plans um um as well and we also uh made a couple other changes where we no longer require all studies to be completed before you can enter into that process uh other efforts uh to uh reduce time and streamline development were related to ordinance changes um we looked at our encroachment ordinance and some of our zoning ordinance to try to come up with some of those normal conflicts that take up a whole lot of time on the development side that we think uh can be done in an administrative Manner and so we made some some text amendments there another program that we're starting today as a matter of fact uh is our sit program it's called the sitp program it stands for a small scale infrastructure program it's designed to deliver that same infrastructure by by City means for example if we have a small business um in the near southide that wants to open and we tell them that they have to to build two street lights and three pedestrian scale lights well you know it's much more difficult for deals Donuts to go and do that than it is for the city of Fort Worth to to cause that construction to happen so we we we've just started uh this U this process today it rolled out today but it's it's meant to be a turnkey solution to help those developments move forward without having to go through the CFA process um the here's the phasing of it so we're at Phase zero today right where we're just starting out um we're we're going to start light so we're starting with you know you know pavement we're starting with The Pedestrian scale lighting and the street lights and then we're going to see how it goes to October and in October we're uh looking to roll out our software the software we're looking to use is e-builder it's a software that our transportation public works department uses and they're currently doing some work for for them through it um and so the next phase will be scaling all infrastructure categories so in the water department we have uh uh something similar which is called the in in-house design so we're looking the phase the developer portion of that in-house design back to development services department and so with that we'll also be doing storm water we'll be doing water sewer we'll be doing uh street light sidewalks and flat work so we'll be able to to do any um a smaller projects projects that are smaller in nature but we'll be able to do any uh con um infrastructure category and then and then lastly our our last goal in 2026 we want to roll out to in-house design uh the program is designed today to to utilize third-party engineering Consultants to help us design these this infrastructure and we'll pass that cost along to the to the applicant but eventually what we want to do is do all that inhouse because we know it'll be faster we won't have to do a whole lot of qaqc to make sure that the plans get out in a timely fashion so next steps uh we're going to continue to work on Integrations with aella work on our Tech technological improvements we're also um you know keeping our ears to the rail with the Real Estate Council with our Dak our small business partners to ensure that we you we're reacting to to their concerns as they may come up and then we also looking to uh continue to upgrade our qist we know we're going to be moving into a new building we want to make sure everything is effortless and it it works better than it does today that is the end of the presentation um here for any questions DJ I am convinced everybody does work for DJ yeah I'm I'm just it's really impressive to see how we're able to do cross training and not move every one funded you I didn't think that that could happen and so David my hat goes off to you you with with that I do have my peers who have their hands up I saw council member Hill first then Charlie then then Carlos nobody on this side so far thank you for the update DJ um a quick question on the new program what what size companies would qualify for the small scale or how would you define that so it's it's it's not by the size of company but it's about the size of project so so uh it's you know about 800 linear foot of water sewer lines right 800 linear foot of you know um storm lines um and then there's five maximum street lights eight maximum pedestrian scale lights but I can also share that information as well we just rolled it out on our website so what I can do is I can you know share a link to all of it council member Flo is oh was Charlie Charlie thank you um so amazing update um really looking forward to hearing from some of the developers too who are going to be benefiting from some of these changes um when I just are want to make sure we're continuing to empower our employees uh at every level to make those common sense I guess decisions recently I talked to a new business owner District 4 who opened up his third Nothing But Cakes um and unfortunately during the process it was kind of a unique situation and development services wasn't sure what how to categorize where he was so they just made it fast food drive-thru even though it was neither of which and so he tried arguing but there was it ended up costing him like 40 Grand and he knew that that' get refunded once it was determined he wasn't fast food drive-thru but he paid it because he was up against deadlines he did get that refund so I'm I'm glad development services was able to work for him but I think had that employee at that lower level had that empowerment say no this I know what the book says but that's not what this is It's a bakery here's what we're going to categorize it I think that would have streamlined and saved a lot of time and money so I just want to make sure we're empowering employees at all levels um and the two I really like the small scale um program but um are you also looking at Large Scale um improvements like like for example the X team I think it's great for those who can afford it but going beyond that for the large scale projects for vetted proven uh developers who they're they live in Fort Worth they work in Fort Worth they do large scale projects that if it's delayed by 3 months it's costing the city of Fort Worth and tax revenue potentially millions of dollars which then could go to fund some of these other programs um have y'all looked at or considered any programs for those large developments like like almost like a red carpet and like helping them not cutting corners but pushing them through faster so that way they can hit the ground running and start generating that Revenue have you all looked at that at all yes sir absolutely so so you know pretty much all of our Focus traditionally has been on those large scale know projects right um probably in the last two years there's been a shift to kind of help facilitate small business as well but um for instance the the slide that I I'll go back to you um this process uh infrastructure plan review process we have what's called an Express CFA and it's basically intended to help those large projects you know you know go through the system a bunch quicker also the the lean Six Sigma project that I that I mentioned that we work with Dak and Real Estate Council on was basically geared to those larger projects and we didn't give a lot of thought to small businesses and so when you see some of that newer stuff talking about small businesses it's basically to try to catch them up because we know that they're also the economic engine of our our community but also the last thing is we also have a program called project facilitation where these facilitators are assigned to these projects as they come into the city traditionally again they've been uh traditionally assigned to those larger projects of of higher econ iic value uh now we're starting to uh you know you know look at that program and increase it to small business also increase it to you know affordable housing and things like that so we're looking across the Gambit now of this conci a service if you will to hard to to help you know bring development into the city of for yes sir DJ thanks for uh looking into process improvements by investing in our people I think it's great that you're uh giving them the opportunity to um get training and certification through lean Sigma you know training um my question is how do I get in on that yeah yeah we'll get you signed up I'm ready show me some black belts and then I'll be real impressed any other questions comments jar just one quick one I'm in preparation for the budget season um is there anything you would like us to know um that would help improve what you're doing well I I think U you know now is the time that we're starting to kind of look at our strategic plan and you know develop our business plan and kind of roll out what those needs are U we're looking at volumes right obviously we're looking at also you know what what the council priorities are what the David uh Cook's uh work plan is as well to try to see how we can accomplish it so I I expect in the coming month or so we'll have a better uh view on what you know what we would need to be able to accomplish that yes sir this real diplomatic response I have yet to hear a department head say I need X number of dollars thank you DG have yet to hear that uh any other questions comments okay thank thank you sir uh next to last presentation deals with congregate living and we'll hear from Leandra string fellow Melinda Ramos again and chief Aldridge again congregate living okay gotcha sounds like hippies to me I can't wait they say all right good afternoon again so um I'm going to get this presentation started and then um Melinda and chief Aldridge will be taking over from me so I'm going to be talking about the zoning portion of it and um how we classify by some of these um different congregate living categories so we're going to talk about the different types of congregate living the applicable laws um how we're classifying those in our zoning and Melinda is going to talk more about reasonable accommodation because really that's the wild card that's the exception to um everything that I'm going to be telling you and then Chief Aldridge is going to talk about the boarding home ordinance and enforcement so what what is it that we um mean by congregate living so we're talking about types of housings in which individuals or family has a private bedroom or living quarters but they're shared with other residents um with a common dining room recreational room or other facilities so there are two categories that we're looking at here so the first category are for elderly and persons with disabilities and now this can also include we're going to get into some nuances here this can include folks who need supervision versus those who do not then we have the unrelated persons um and those are your lodging houses um religious institutions with monasteries and coments and then of course um student housing so there are three different laws that um we have to think about here obviously the city is going to be enforcing our zoning ordinance and reasonable accommodation however um as a city we also have to be cognizant of the state laws um and then federal laws that also govern housing um which also impact um reasonable accommodation that Melinda is going to be talking about so first of all let's talk about what's allowed in single family districts so obviously a family that that's the easy one but when we say a family you know we're not just talking about those who are related our ordinance has a specific definition where it talks about a single housekeeping unit for five unrelated individuals now you may remember you also passed an ordinance um that we refer to as the TCU overlay where it's actually restricted to three unrelated individuals and one of the things that we look at when we talk about a single housekeeping unit we're look we're not looking at individual leases um whenever we get a complaint we will actually look for a lease and on that lease we're looking for um all those individuals being listed on one lease and them basically living um as a as a one common family um I guess maybe communal um type living and then the next group that is allowed but it's going to be limited to six occupants and that's a boarding home facility um now boarding home facility is different from a group home that we're going to look at next and that with a boarding home facility this is these um individuals may have some disabilities however they do not um require supervision so that is an important Nuance but again it's limited to six unless um they have a reasonable accommodation and then next is what we call a community home these are actually a little bit easier for us in zoning to spot reason being is because they are actually required to have a license by the state so that's an easy one if you got a license by the state um you have no more than six plus two supervisors living there um you can be considered a community home now these are the different types of congregate living institutions that are not permitted in single family districts but again there is always that Nuance of reasonable accommodation so um the easy one are fraternity as sorority houses now group homes group home one um this is going to be a maximum of 15 residents those are not going to be allowed in single family however you have those instances where and we kind of look up to nine persons for reasonable accommodations because maybe there is a good reason to allow one in a single family home however we want to make sure that it does not rise to the level of now being a facility right because the whole point is that um it can fit into a single family District setting halfway houses not permitted in any circumstance um as well as shelters so there's some other notable residential uses that I would like to point out here as well before um Melinda gets up to talk a little bit more about reasonable accommodation um accessory dwelling units those are allowed but however there is a Nuance here as well they cannot be rented so it has to be for example a mother-in-law quarters but if it's rented are used as a separate resident then it's not allowed in a single family district and then these other items um again prohibited just told you about adus that are rented bding breakfast homes and ends those are also prohib prohibited as well as short-term home rentals here now we're going to talk about reasonable accommodations and the reasonable accommodation ordinance was adopted in um March of 2016 and it was part of a settlement agreement that we entered into with the United States the Department of Justice for fair housing that complaint that we received uh related to a sober house so or sober home and if you're not familiar with those that term refers to folks that are either have alcohol or drug addictions in that are in recovery and they've been at a place to receive treatment and this is where they're going to be reintroduced um to a community setting and to be reintegrated into their communities um I'm not sure any of the council how many of the council was actually on the council at the time that we were going through it perhaps just the mayor proem and Carlos um yeah so you may have been on the zoning commission perhaps so but just to go into that lawsuit a little bit more the the city was under um as part of our settlement agreement um those departments that dealt with development the development services department the Cod compliance Department some aspects of the police department all had to go through reasonable accommodation training um that both on our ordinance that Dana and I gave and both that we had a consultant come in and give related to the um Fair Housing Act in Americans with Disabilities Act but what the ordinance does that we adopted and um just as a caveat our ordinance also had to be blessed by the doj so this is the one ordinance that we definitely know is constitutional um but um what the ordinance does it provides regulations and procedures to comply with the FHA and the Ada it sets out an administrative process to consider request for accommodations to land use to building regulations and to other practices and policies or procedures of our city code of our or how the city functions um it's an administrative process so public hearings are not part of that process neighbor notification is not part of that process it establishes the criteria that is used to consider um when we consider these requests to the benefit of the persons with disabilities those criteria are kind of written in in the form of questions so whether or not the housing will be used by a person with disabilities that's protected under the federal laws whether the reasonable accommodation is necessary to make that dwelling avail ailable to a person with disabilities whether the accommodation would pose an undue Financial administrative burden on the city and that's determined by a case-by case basis and then lastly whether the reasonable accommodation would require a fundamental alteration in the nature of the city's program or law it also provides um criteria for by which the city has to make decisions the city can either Grant an accommodation or it can modify the accommodation in certain aspects um it also provides an appeal process if the city does deny an accommodation or if we Grant an accommodation that the uh person seeking the reasonable accommodation doesn't agree with so kind of what does that reasonable accommodation do so it may allow like what we got sued for it may allow a sober home or a group home with more than five persons to operate as a single family in a residential uh Zone uh it could wave a minimum yard requirement it could allow the construction of a pool in a required um side yard or rear setback it could allow a front yard carport without going to the board of adjustments for for a special exception um as a modification to a building it could allow the construction of a ramp or mostly these affect land use so zoning type related but it can include other policies so it could allow for a service animal where they may already have uh the maximum number of dogs that are are code allows so it can it can have that effect as well so I'll just talk briefly about the boarding home facility ordinance and I'll turn it over to the the chief to talk about the enforcement so the city adopted the boarding home facility ordinance um on January 10th of 2023 and it was effective on April 15th of 2023 it regul Ates facilities that provide lodging to three or more elderly or disabled persons who are unrelated by blood or marriage um and it provides care services including meals Transportation laundry and medication uh and the health and safety code once you adopt this ordinance it allows these particular facilities to be in all residential districts um these are facilities that are not licensed by the state and so uh a law was passed in 2013 by the state legislature that or 2011 that allowed cities to adopt this type of ordinances a lot of our um cities um Houston San Antonio Austin Dallas have these type of ordinances and we finally looked at adopting and did adopt this in 2023 so I'll turn it over to the chief now talk about enforcement mayor protim councel good to be back with you so uh um whenever we started this about a year ago we didn't know what we didn't know so there were a lot of things that logistically that were gaps that we kind of had to fill in and so we're probably not as far as we want to be but we're definitely moving in the right direction so we have an officer uh that's assigned with our crisis intervention team along with a code compliance specialist that are basically connected at the hip um whenever they deal with a boarding home a lot right now a lot of it is uh complaint-based um because if you remember remember from the previous presentation you know last year most of these houses look like a regular home you don't know um that they're a boarding home unless uh you see uh people coming in and out more so than what you normally have so you know they do a lot of Outreach and education some compliance assistants uh they do inspections uh they can issue citations and you know compliance and safe housing are their ultimate goals um so just to show what they have done they visited over 400 50 addresses they've closed 270 suspected um boarding homes they've identified 74 Bonafide boarding homes 12 of the 74 in various stages of Permitting 25 of the homes have shut down or moved to another city uh no one has been displaced because of this uh we've been able to find other accommodations for people for those homes that have been closed just of a side notes uh We've assisted the Attorney General in Four Medicaid fraud cases um food stamp violations we worked with Taran County MHMR and JPS for placement um the officer still are providing food for some of these locations where the refrigerators and cabinets are locked and these individuals don't have access to Foods uh and they've worked with some of the utility companies to get the gas and electricities turned back on on some of the houses that were not so um these officers are working really really hard um trying to make sure that this population uh is not lacking for either food or just the basic necessities to survive so with that um I wanted to show you these are the first three individuals that have been permitted and are actually officially uh considered boarding homes by our ordinance so uh that's a win you know we're moving in the right direction so with that we will take questions I don't have any questions for you Chief but I do want to say um when it comes to picking the right person for the job I really applaud PD um putting officer King in that position because um he definitely seems to have a passion for it absolutely he likes to share some of those wins and I think that list really shows um why we needed this ordinance and so I truly do appreciate all the work that um both him and code have put into making sure that we're getting some enforcement I know it was Rocky and it was a little rocky start at the beginning but um I think our residents of Fort Worth are greatly benefiting from that abut thank you okay so a lot of my I think most of my questions are development Melinda um related if you could go back to um slide number four and so um it would have been helpful U if we had had this but what I'm interested in is as we go through these different types right like Assisted Living Center um the city the city or State regulates that so if we could just go down the list and you could let us know who s who gets to choose the where they go and uh who regulates them so that when we get phone calls from our constituents or just to better um educate our constituents so like assisted living is that us or the state so that's the state okay boarding homes are us so that's us community homes that is the state okay but uh there's a state statute that says that they are allowed in residential districts okay so we can't control if they go into a single family that's correct and then before we get to or let's just go down the rest of list group homes so those are um most of group homes have to get registered with the state um through zoning we don't allow group homes in um one and two family I believe they're only allowed in multif family and above and is there any restriction on the proximity of any of these to each other so that we don't overol proliferate no for for group homes there is not for Community homes in the statute and in our well I'm I'm sorry let me let me step back for Community homes in the statute and in our ordinance is 500 foot um from each other yes okay for group homes I believe the same is to be true um and in the boarding home facility we have a development standard for them to be 500 feet from each other okay and then nursing homes is n nursing homes Residential Care Homes and state supported living centers are all regulated by the state okay and then all the unrelated folks that's all us correct that's correct okay can you um explain to me the difference between a community home and a group home because when I read the definitions they sound similar so I don't understand the distinction so they are very similar um the the best distinction that I can tell you is there are two different state agencies that regulate them okay and um that's kind of that's kind of really all I have for you there I'm sorry no that's fine so um so if I get a phone call or if someone's concerned um one I guess how would we ascertain if it's a group home or a community home that's so there are um databases that I know our Code Compliance Department searches and development services and will search to to look to see if um these usually they're businesses that run these that if if registered with the state is where we'll go to look for them we can provide those those to you all if if you want to have those what those links are where we go to look I think that would be helpful um and then so you said it's just a different so if they have a complaint with one of those the best place to go would be that agency that is yeah it's typically typically it's the I'm going to get their name wrong it's the uh Texas aing Agency on Aging yes yeah a yeah yes okay um okay thank you for that and then you answered that question for the TCU overlay um we know how the boarding home facility is enforced and that's a little different PD can go in there um because of the way that we did that ordinance um but how do we enforce these five unrelated or the TC TCU overlay so for the TCU overlay of course it's the one mile surrounding the campus and So within that overlay for single family districts unrelated persons are limited to three persons so when we adopted that ordinance at the end of 204 beginning 2015 um folks who were operating at five unrelated persons had an opportunity to register and go on a list and um so long as they maintain on that list then when code gets a complaint code does their investigation um they go out to the property they'll try to speak to the to the residents so contact the property owner and make it try to determine are there three persons living there are there four or five persons are they part of this list that we required people to come register on if they're not then they kind of proceed with their investigation I'm not sure if um Shannon is here and wants to address how they go about investigating when we get complaints of unrelated persons just generally and specifically within the overlay okay and I don't want to speak for my colleagues but I know when we get calls to District 9 um there's often a lot of frustration because and it really seems to be in the investigatory process about you know whether or not those people are living there whether or not they're registered um and so can you walk us through that so we have a better idea yes so it's very similar to what we're doing for boarding homes where we have one officer that's specifically doing boarding homes on everything else um the whether it's a family five unrelated or whether it's uh TCU overlay and determining that there's only three unrelated it is just our uh Neighborhood code officer that goes out there to determine that and so they're knocking on doors or contacting the owner they're talking to neighbors um we have the same difficulties that if people don't open the doors um so it all comes down to doing the research and get and now at least on the TCU overlay uh the ordinance does allow us to request a lease from the owner to determine how many people are there so that's a little bit easier and but it's up to them to provide us with all the lease documentation right but if they don't we do have an option to issue a citation based on that okay um and then what happens if you issue a site like continually issue a citation is is there anything again for those habitual offenders or so we haven't had to yet but we could go to District Court okay all right I think um I think those are all of my questions thank you any others moving right along the final presentation will come to us from Reginal Zeno and he will give us a 2024 debt financing plan presentation he'll be joined by John Samford Mr Zeno good afternoon um yes I'm not Mr Zeno maybe I'll I looked up but I was surprised all right and I appreciate that y'all left the most exciting topic for last I appreciate all right again my name is John Sanford I'm the city's Treasurer here today to present to you the 2024 debt financing plan uh I'll try to keep it as brief as possible but make it as informative as you need and we'll open up questions at the end so here's a quick summary of the 2024 financing plan um you can see we're planning to issue about 178 million in general obligation debt this includes 161 million which is the second series of the 2022 Bond authorization so as youall know we issue the 560 million over a series of years as the money is needed so this is the next series in that uh 17 million in tax notes these are short-term 7-year notes we use these for fire apparatus Replacements about 13.3 million and then that leaves just under 4 million about 3.7 for other needs which will be um figured out working with Administration and forward lab on the Water and Sewer we have about 244 million that includes 185 million in water and sewer revenue bonds and then about 60 million roughly in a Texas water development board subsidized loan for infrastructure and then lastly 18.5 million these are special assessment revenue bonds for the Walsh Ranch PID these are paid from special assess where issuing these on behalf of the pit and the debt is paid for through the assessments on the properties within that Walsh Ranch pit so any questions before I move on okay um here's just another look at the 2022 Bond authorization previously we've issued about 86 million so this is the 161 I just mentioned uh keep in mind we made adjust those we show none for open space money has been spent out of the program for open space we we may toggle these a little bit but the amount would not exceed 161 million okay a defeasance or early retirement update here um you may recall at the last council meeting you approved a agenda item to early retire series of the 2012 Co and 2013 general obligation bonds um to achieve about 340,000 in net Pres and value savings that takes into consideration time value of money um and other costs to execute this transaction so it's a it's a positive saving so we uh support moving forward with this transaction a little bit about our debt capacity on the general obligation side here so this is all based on a Model that we which takes into consideration a number of variables you can see our assumptions that we use in the model um for example the tax rate we're assuming it's going to be kept flat at 1475 4% growth on the property tax revenue side the value which is consistent with how F forth lab um models future forecasts a little bit for delinquent penalties and interest and then assumes the self-supporting debt for example ccpd related debt culture and tourism Solid Waste Etc that those Reven will be available to pay those debts and all of that basically boils down to about 1.6 billion roughly in bonding capacity through 2030 that's broken down as follows 474 million that's the remaining 2022 Bond authorization of which we're issuing 161 122 million for the tax note program through this period of time 120 million for Reserve capacity now we recommend keeping reserve for emergencies you know there's a grant that needs matching funds things like that so um it's a good idea to keep some in reserve and then all that equals out to roughly 800 million that would be available for a 2026 Bond authorization that's 43% increase over 2022 so quite a increase which with all the infrastructure needs that's good thing there's just a graphical view of what we just talked about you can see we maximized this uh issuance plan in the 2331 you can see we get close to our Revenue line up there but we keep everything in check so that um we maintain a good Financial uh management of debt for a quick market update there is the municipal Bond rates and the treasury bond uh yield rates you can see that since we last presented our debt plan last year rates peaked in October they've since come back down we're basically in the ballpark of last year so that's that's a good thing and I'm sure as everybody's heard the FED is exercising patients um inflation still running a little bit higher than their 2% Target so um that's kind of where we're at right now just a kind of a quick look at Future uh debt activities here there are a number of big projects coming down the line such as Mary's Creek Water Treatment Plant and normal Water and Sewer infrastructure improvements got an exciting Convention Center expansion in the works and then the A&M Campus expansion there so those are some major items coming down the line just a little bit about the city's credit rating um as you're aware we maintain ratings from all the major credit rating agencies and they all basically even though they use different methodologies and how they look at our credit they all basically Place Us in high investment grade um and that's primarily because of the strong economic strong economy economic growth here outstanding financial performance strong and increasing reserves and strong management practices a little bit of a challenge on The Leverage side with fixed cost and leverage primarily due to the unfunded pension liability this is a quantitative view from moody this is their scorecard so basically we run our numbers through the scorecard to give us a feel for where we think we're going to rate out the scorecard comes out to a A3 that's basically where we're at currently Keeps Us in the high investment grade category again you can see for the most part we we score pretty well um in the categories of economy financial performance and institutional framework and then again a little bit of a challenge there in the leverage category to close out uh just wanted to summarize the next steps here to execute the debt financing plan will be coming forward with the bond author authorization ordinances on April 23rd the cash uh defeasance transaction we discussed will will close out on April 2 2 4th we'll be meeting with credit ring agencies on April 29th uh with Bond sales scheduled to happen May 21st with delivery funds about a month later and then I need to point out a typo here the Walsh Ranch bonds would not be going to Council on the 17th because that's a Friday it'd be May 21st okay so everybody still awake any questions any questions I guess you were just that good thank you future future agenda items from Council Members I'll start with council member at the end I am I'm just just did Janette any future agenda items Allan Chris we'll come back to you Elizabeth Carlos it's we already said it request that staff look into requiring a noise mitigate management plan for any outdoor event of a certain size including C Chris yep uh just want to I know we talked about it in the uh Homeless Coalition uh meeting and today but I want to get a full report on uh the bond for the affordable housing also um when I was looking into the uh race and culture task force recommendation um I want to actually have a report on that recommendation but I want to focus on all the other items I know last time we focused on just the uh criminal talking about the oversight monitor office but we talked about affordable housing we talked about um equity and quality I actually want that full report to come back to us as a recommendation because I think that might also encourage us when it comes to the affordability so I want to bring that report back um I did talk to um one of the co-chairs offline and and mention it already I love hearing about zoning and Equity Charlie yeah just one um from legal and code either an update or report on um vacant businesses in uh potential leans for not sing within compliance for legal dumping and taking care of it in a timely fashion can you elaborate yeah so we have quite a few vacant businesses that are constant uh nuisance issues with with not taking care of illegal dumping um and there it's reported time and time and time again um and then it takes forever to clean up and I understand it's a gift of service if the city goes out there and cleans it up but these are large businesses and somebody has some pockets and if we're going to go after our residential um folks to stay in compliance then I want to make sure these large business owners here probably out of the state they out of sight out of mind um whether or not we can legally uh put a lean on their business to not allow a certificate of occupancy to be is passed on until any fines or anything else is taken care of that way it keeps them on top of it so thank you sir Jared thank you mayor protim um i' like to request an informal report on the crime-free multihousing uh program with NPD I heard a lot of uh good um reports about it and just would like to get more information on the program Mery we've already had an exact session do you want another one okay with that we are adjourned you are free to roam about the country until 6 o'clock for