Good morning. We're going to get started this morning with an invocation led by uh Dr. Kelly Booker, pastor at New Union Baptist Church, and that will be followed by the pledge of allegiance led by Abby Stewart of Girl Scout Troop 2313. Please stand as you are able. Here the lesson of Ecclesiastes 6. Everything has been decided. It was known long ago what each person would be. So there are no use of arguing with God about your destiny. Father in heaven, how we thank you for this day. We pray for our leaders, Lord, as they go about the business of serving humanity, this city. Bless our mayor. Bless each representative, Lord. We ask that you would keep us in the hollows of thy hand. Guide them in every decision, knowing that one day we must give an account to you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Pastor Booker, and thank you, Abby. Okay, I call this meeting of the city council to order. Uh today, of course, are just uh budget presentations. There are no votes today. Uh we're at item three, presentations and discussion of the fiscal year 26 proposed budget. Today, we'll have presentations from public works, utilities, and fire. And uh from here, I think I'll kind of let the city manager uh serve as master of ceremonies. Thank you, mayor. Uh first up, we're going to have public works, and I'll let Debbie come up and get set for her presentation. Yes, sorry about that. Um I'll have Debbie come up. She'll get started with her presentation. We do have um another budget hearing that's scheduled for the 27th where we'll hear from planning, airports, and police. And our scheduled adoption right now is for June the 3rd. And so Debbie uh Debbie um we'll start we'll start our presentations this morning and then we'll go forward and have the uh utilities and fire as well. So Debbie Miller will we'll present the presentation now. Good morning, Mayor and Council. Debbie Miller, public works director. I'm here to present the budget for next year for public works. Um I want to say thank you to my staff who's helped develop the budget. Shannon Cox, um Brandon Bundy, Barry Lodge, Billy Little, and Mike Miller. Couldn't do it without them. Um the uh public works portion of the budget begins on the budget book, page C57. Our core mission is to pro to provide infrastructure construction and maintenance, private construction review and inspection, emergency response services, um to provide and live, work and play in a safe and supportive community. Here is our organization line of business. We have seven divisions, administration, traffic services, engineering, storm water, streets and drainage, field services, and project management. And I'll go into more detail in the presentation. Uh here shows the number of positions per division. As you can see, our streets department is our largest division at 167. And this shows public works at a glance. Um we have over 98,000 street signs that we maintain. We have 8,951 street uh lane miles that we maintain. uh 1,800 snow routes that we take care of and we have 804 signalized intersections. So this slide here shows the comparison of the fiscal year 25 to our new budget for 26. Um we are about the same on the operating uh we do have some total non-operating cap in capital that has decreased due to the better streets safer cities coming to a completion. Um, our major, excuse me, our major budget changes are personnel and materials. So, this shows a summary of u what we are changing in our budget. Um, we are reducing some of the asphalt materials in our budget. We're also implementing a crack seal program. Uh, in personnel, we added an assistant city engineer and we um deleted two vacant positions. So, this is our uh funding by budget source. So, we have a $221 million budget. As you can see, we have street impact fees at 25%. And I'll just give you a little update on that. It shows 55 million. We have um nine projects in construction and 36 in design. So, of that 55 million, we have 44 million 55 million. We have 44 million that's been allocated towards all those projects. Uh we do have 45 future projects identified and we have completed 24. Our second largest um funding source is better street safer cities. We are working on streetscapes getting those completed. Those are the most difficult projects to complete because we work hand inand with the stakeholders to meet what they need. So our operating budget is 60 million with as you can see storm water or is our smallest division at 4.3 million and street and drainage is our largest at 30.4 is 43%. So our first division we'll talk about is administration. Um this division has our communications team, our PIO, has our finance, our IT support, our human resources and business intelligence. Uh the budget is 12.6 million and we have 32 positions. Our next division is engineering. Uh the engineering division provides the engineering services for public works along with all other city departments. Uh we oversee bridge, drainage, paving and infrastructure. Uh we also have tech review that is a part of the engineering division. Uh they will review all of the private development plans that are submitted. Uh these are plans for streets and drainage that will be turned over to the city for maintenance. So one thing I'm really excited about that we are getting started on is our pavement management system. We are very close to going out for an RFP. We expect to do that this summer. Um we'll get data collection and management, condition assessment, uh performance modeling to predict how the pavement conditions will change over time. Um it will help us with maintenance and rehabilit rehabilitation planning. Um the results we expect to get from this are improved PCI, reduce costs by making more informed decisions, and to optimize our resources. So I was I'm going to highlight the technical review section. Um here you can see a review. We do reviews digitally. Uh our goal, our LFR measure is to review plans and return them within four weeks. Um as of this year in April, we're at three and a half weeks. So we're really excited about that. Um I have a very innovative team down in tech review. They a couple of years put out a survey to the developers and to the consultants to kind of see what we could do better, what they liked, what they didn't like, and what they felt we needed to do. And communication was a big a big thing that came out of that survey. So, we regularly meet with the developers and the consultants. We have a workshop with the contractors yearly. We bring the contractors in and we provide um all of the information on permitting and what each division of public works does and what they need to do when they want to do business with the city. We also hold an engineering talent hall every year to kind of touch base with the engineers and see what's working for them, what we need to do to help them and we have a quarterly newsletter that we send out. So project management is our next division. Uh there are four sections in this division and we have uh for project delivery for our bond and better streets and grants and other public infrastructure. So we have design and construction services. We have citywide traffic improvements uh bond sales tax and G grant programs. So we oversee all of that in the project management. So here, this slide shows um the purple is the better street safer city sales tax and the blue is the bond to show how from 2019 on how we've been able to put more money out onto the streets and to improve our streets. We are winding down on both the sales tax and the bond. So you can see how we're starting to come down on the end. will probably be a little lower this this year for 26, but hopefully with the vote in 2025 wand, we'll be able to start start increasing our production there. So, this shows the miles resurfaced, which kind of reflects what the previous slide showed. We strive to do a 100 miles every year. We are running out of money so we're not able to actually get to that, but that is our goal moving forward. So, the condition of city streets, um, you can see since 17 that we've made a significant impact in the streets with both the bond and the sales tax. Um, our goal is 70. We're there. We'd actually like to get a little bit higher. So, that's what we're going to to strive for. Um, the national average for streets is 37%. So, next division is field services. Um they provide inspection for work in the ride ofway. Uh they do public and private development reviews. They also provide utility locates for our traffic signals uh for the infrastructure and that's required through OKI 811. Here you can see they're out um inspecting some forms. Looks like they're getting ready to uh pour some concrete. Um, in 25 we estimate that they have completed 8 8,700 rightway inspections and over 26,000 construction inspections. The value of work inspected is about $481 million a year. So, this shows the inspection work orders on the private development side. Um we estimate that there'll be about 520 projects that they'll oversee and con inspect. Storm water quality is our next division. They handle our uh watershed characterization and testing, pollution investigations, our household hazardous waste and construction site inspections. So this shows um at a glance what storm water does. We have a yearly report that we submit to DEEQ about our program and this is where this slide is from. It shows what they accomplished in 2024. Um they did over 800 industrial audits. They did 14,000 construction inspections and they removed 2.6 million pounds of floatable debris from all of our waterways. So this is our household hazardous waste collection center. We're very proud of this. It's it's a great it's it's a great asset. It's located at 1621 South Portland Avenue and the times that it's open are Tuesday through Friday 9:30 to 6 and Saturday 8:30 to 11:30. Um we also have MLUS with the surrounding nine cities. So their residents can also use the household house waste facility. So every year in the spring we have a special collections event. We held this out at the fairgrounds and this shows the results from this year from April the 12th. Uh we collected um what we do is we can't collect these items at the facility. So we have the special collections which ammunition, tires, computers and prescriptions. So this year we collected 221,000 pounds and we have 537 residents come through. So our next division we'll talk about is streets and drainage. We have um two sections, streets and then drainage as it says. Um the streets section, they handle all the pothole patching, our railroad maintenance and chip seal and crack seal and asphalt. The drainage section handles our rule road drainage um inlet cleaning and concrete structure repairs. So this next is a it's a video showing it's kind of a speed up thing. What we did is we wanted to kind of get our story out there. So, we started making these videos about did you know and you can see the the longer version out on YouTube. So, we were getting complaints about blocking the lanes too long. So, we wanted to show the residents, hey, this is how we do a pothole. This is how we repair it. And we think this will kind of help with residents realizing how we do our work. So, here's a picture um doing some base stabilization out in the rural road. Uh, this is could be used for I'm not sure if they're going to do a chip seal or if they're going to do some asphalt overlay, but we do have the ability to do both out in our street maintenance division. Um, hole repairs. We um we have an annual target of 60 million uh 60,000 60 million 60,000 to be repaired. Um as you can see since um 1617 we've kind of gone up and down but we think that the red reduction from 15 at 85,000 is due to the work that we've done with better streets and safer cities. So um the drainage side of our uh street maintenance they maintain 108 miles of our channels. Uh some of them are natural and they mow and some of them are concrete where they have to be cleaned or be repaired. Um they also do concrete repairs on the drainage infrastructure. They do some small storm sewer replacement. Uh they also have a camera where they'll go out and video storm sewer systems that we are having some issues with and help us identify those problems. So this bar chart shows um drainage repairs that are completed by city staff. Um, we have an average about 2100 repairs annually and those are the storm sewers and inlets, head walls, small stuff like that. Okay. Our last division we'll talk about is traffic services. Uh, this division handles our traffic engineering, our traffic commission, and traffic operations. So, I'm really, really proud of the crews. They got the the striping machine running and they've been out practicing and we received a lot of complaints about class that the stripes had all worn off and if you ever drive class south of 23rd Street, you know, if you don't have stripes, you don't know where to go. So, they have actually restriped that for us and it's it's a great advantage to have that and not have to hire a contractor to do it. So, the crews were great in getting that up and running and and getting it going. Um, one of our programs I wanted to highlight in the traffic services is our alternative speed abatement program. Um, this is a program that is a 50/50 program that the residents will come and they will make application and provide all the documents needed. Then once they're approved, we uh they pay 50% and we'll go out and pay the remaining amount and do the installation. There are four different types of traffic calming that we look at. We have the street alert where you can see up here in the left top corner the stop ahead. Over in the right corner is a driver feedback sign to kind of give the drivers information that hey you're going too fast, you need to slow down. Um speed cushions which are very popular which are over in the bottom left. And then the mini roundabouts which we have a couple of those that we are working on. Um, since the program's inception, um, installations have included 36 speed cushions, four driver feedback signs, and six stop alerts. We have 29 different locations that we've installed in infrastructure. Um, this picture shows crews out actually installing a speed cushion. What's interesting about the speed cushion is you see the spaces in between. That is for the emergency vehicles to be able to just keep driving and not have to slow down and go over the homes. So, um, we do this in house and we have a great crew that does it. So, this is public works at a glance. This is what we try to achieve every year. Um, 100 miles of street improvements, 21 impact fee projects, uh, 60,000 pothole repairs, 700 pound 700,000 pounds of HHW collected, and 600 rain barrels distributed. So, I will be glad to answer any questions. Thanks, Debbie. Are there any questions? Yeah, thank you for that um presentation. Um I'm curious to hear I curious if you all could provide a more detailed report on the ASAP program to us if like maybe a little map of like where all those locations are, which which item got um uh installed. Um and then if there are any maybe like in progress um projects just to sort of be able to see a a survey of where they've where they've been. Um can you remind folk just maybe for public that's watching as well as I cannot remember off the top of my head how much for the 5050 matching program how much um should neighborhoods be expecting to um need to provide for each of those types of infrastructure? I believe um it's maybe $5,000. We really try to make it as economical as possible so that they can participate. Okay. So that's that's for every single one or is it that's the mini roundabout and then it gets cheaper from there or more expensive? A mini roundabout might be a little bit more expensive. Okay. It's a little more intensive. Okay. But for the the $5,000 would be specifically for which uh I would say the speed humps, but I will be glad to get you all that information to you. That'd be helpful just because I think if we could help provide people an expectation of what they might need to be raising before they get to the point of applying that way they can or even like researching that way they can kind of have all that information up front. I think that'd be really helpful. And then you might be expecting this question. I'm curious to hear um it's really great to see all of the types of waste that the hazardous um waste facility can collect. But I'm curious to hear if there's any more like progress or conversation about also having even if it's just maybe during that special collections event being able to uh receive sharps because that's still a conversation that I hear from many constituents that you know they point to Midwest City and Still Water and Norman and they all receive sharps. So just kind of curious to hear if that's something that we can keep pursuing what the process for that would look like. We continue to look into that option. uh we've got several different options that we may be able to do. We haven't determined which would be better and then we also need to determine the funding source. So, but it is something that is on our radar. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, next up is our utilities department and uh Vanessa Aguilar, business manager in the utilities department is going to present the budget. Chris Browning, Josh Morgan, others from utilities are here. um appreciate their work and um Vanessa will present the utilities budget for this year. And this one is one and I think we see this with with um airports and with Katpa that will include the trust budget as well as the c the uh general fund or the city side budget. Good morning, mayor and council members. Vanessa Aguilar here to present the fiscal year 26 utilities department budget. As uh city manager Freeman mentioned, if you want to follow along in the budget book, our city portion of the budget can be found on page C169. And we'll start off with the reference to our mission statement, which is our commitment to providing water, wastewater, and trash collection services throughout central Oklahoma to safeguard public health and the environment, support public safety, and enable economic prosperity. Several years ago, the department established core business initiatives which guide our strategic business planning process as well as our annual budget planning process in which any of our budget initiatives align to one or more of these core business initiatives. These include safety, which is our commitment to providing a safe work environment for our employees as well as the public. Customer service, providing quality customer service and meeting expectations for effective service delivery. Water supply. We continue to pursue additional water supplies for the Oklahoma City region as well as reliably transporting delivering that water to central Oklahoma. System resiliency and system reliability. We continue our efforts to maintain and upgrade our systems to enhance the reliability and resiliency to minimize the likelihood of a service disruption. Financial management. We follow strong financial management principles that have enabled us to obtain and maintain the highest credit ratings available by standard and pores and Moody's which allow us to issue debt at the lowest borrowing cost possible. Regulatory compliance. We are committed to full compliance with regulations and directive of all regulatory agencies federal, state, and local level. We'll start off with a snapshot of our Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust budget for the coming fiscal year, which is proposed at $1.3 billion. The largest portion of the source of funds includes debt construction fund proceeds or debt financing. This is going to fund 732 million is proposed to fund water projects of about 576 million and wastewater projects of about 156 million. From there, our next largest source of funds is our service charges. About 517 million come from service charges received from customers for each of the three utilities, water, wastewater, and solid waste management. We also have withdrawals from cash reserves about $22 million. This includes uh set aside of cash for projects that were initially scheduled to be awarded in FY25. And due to deferral and scheduling conflicts, these projects are scheduled to be awarded in FY26. So the cash set aside is being withdrawn for the award of those projects. This is primarily for water projects and a solid waste project as well. Other sources for Aquit include $8 million. This is primarily our billing services fee chargeback revenue that we get. Aquit owns its own billing system that it provides uh billing services to its customers and we also provide billing services on behalf of other entities of the city and payment collection services. Other sources also include interest on our operating accounts as well as miscellaneous revenue such as surplus and damage proceeds. system development charges of about $6 million. This includes a forecasted uh revenue $5 million for water system development charges and about $1 million for wastewater system development charges. And those are the revenues that we collect um when there's a new build, a connection to either the water system or wastewater system. Flow fees generate about $2 million. Flow fees are fees that are assessed to commercial haulers that dispose of waste at the landfills within the city limits. Those fees are remitted back to our solid waste management utility to fund and manage our environmental cleanup program throughout the city along the rideways. Non- rateayer activities. We have expected revenues about $1 million. These non- rateayer activities are recreational or nonoperating sources. These include boat permits, boat stall, lease revenues, etc. Now, as we go to show you our planned execution of our budget, you see the largest component at approximately 70% is for capital improvements. That's about $897 million. Of that 678 million is for water projects of which the second Atooka pipeline project is our largest program. We also have wastewater projects planned for this coming year of about $21 million and solid waste management projects of about $9 million. This number represents our incumbrances or project awards not necessarily the cash spendown. Typically the cash spendown or spendown of these projects occur on average over a two to threeyear period based on the construction cycle of these assets. Um we continue to meet our financial plan and all of our debt service metrics as we have shown our financial our intended funding uses of our capital program and operating and maintenance expenses as well of this capital improvement number. This also includes about $257 million of projects that were initially scheduled in fiscal year 25. They're being rescheduled to fiscal year 26 primarily due to financing capacity limitations. We have secured additional some additional financing capacity at this time and so we anticipate that that amount of projects will be awarded within the first six months of fiscal year 26. The next portion of our budget is the city utilities operation. We have planned approximately $112 million of planned transfers from the Aquit trust to fund our city utilities operations, which is primarily funding salaries, benefits, and day-to-day divisional expenses related to our employees and managing the divisions. This represents approximately 94% of our proposed FY26 utilities budget. And the budget book, you can see that it's proposed at 119 million. The delta between those two numbers that you see is going to be primarily for budget authority that we have for reserves such as operating reserves and salary reserves. Our trust operations proposed budget is approximately $110 million. This includes primarily many of our contracts that are funded through the trust, multi-year contracts and professional services such as financial advisor, trust engineer. We have bond counsel, outside legal counsel. We also have payments to the city franchise lease payments. We have payments for our billing system. And we also have outsource contracts such as landscape restoration, mowing, fleet services, our chemicals, electricity, and inventory items. Our debt service for this coming year is projected to be about $81 million. This represents the annual principal and interest payment on the debt finance portion of our capital project. This also includes temporary interest on projects that we have in currently in construction and are drawing down as they are actively in construction. Solid waste management service contracts about $52 million. Approximately 60% of our service area for solid waste management, it's outsourced to where res residential trash collection, recycling, and bulky collection is serviced and supported by a contract operator. We also have other service contracts for solid waste management that this includes four landfills that we contract with that are privately owned throughout the city for disposal of the waste. We also have a fleet maintenance contract that helps maintain and repair our fleet for solid waste management as well as a street sweeping contract under that line item. We also have outsourced our operations and maintenance of our four wastewater treatment plant facilities for this upcoming year. That's projected to be about $26 million. Included in that forecast also includes other ancillary expenses for the operations and maintenance of our wastewater facilities such as the electricity. Aqua has an agreement of support with the McGee Creek Authority to fund its operations, maintenance, and improvements in every fiscal year. For this upcoming fiscal year, McGee Creek Authority's proposed budget is approximately $9 million. We have $9 million of forecasted transfers for McGee Creek operations. Non-rightpayer activities. These are the expenses aligned to our recreational activities and our nonoperating expenses and are also projected at approximately $1 million. Now, we'll go into a little bit more detail into our city utilities department operations budget summary. As you can see here, we're looking at an overall 6.6% adjustment over compared to our fisc year 25 original adopted budget for the utilities department or approximately a $6.6 million adjustment. The tables showcase the summary and of the increases and decreases. The first one being those annual salary and benefit adjustments. So, merit adjustments, changes to insurance, uh, pension contributions, and other elements that relate to our existing 826 employees. We have a reduction of salary reserves of about $1.2 million. This is to true up based on forecasted cost of living adjustments for this coming year. The department has position improvements proposed of about $231,000. This number includes a proposal for two facility and plant mechanic two twos as well as position enhancements within the department. We also have adjustments to our services and supplies budget of about $3.6 million. We'll go into a little bit more detail on the next subsequent slides on the on the details, but this is to adjust services and supplies within our divisions. We have a slight reduction in city chargebacks. The city provides services to the trust such as administrative, IT, risk, and property, and we're seeing a slight reduction of about $184,000. Even though Aqua is not sales taxf funded, we have mirrored the city's initiative to have a conservative budget by only adding two positions for an overall 828 position count proposed for fiscal year 26. As we take a look at our water treatment facilities and associated initiatives in relation to this, the department recently completed an in-house evaluation of all of our assets at our water facilities. And specifically at our Hefner water treatment plant, we currently have approximately 4,000 assets which require about 1,200 preventative maintenance work orders, whether the frequency is monthly, quarterly, or annually. In addition, we have projects that are currently in construction, construction in progress, which will create an additional 2,000 assets at Hefner Water Treatment Plant. As we looked at the resources available to maintain proactively maintain and have an proactive asset management program, we evaluated the resources needed and identified that two additional facility and plant mechanic twos were needed to help keep up with the preventative maintenance work orders. In addition for our water quality division, we're adjusting our overtime budget funding to ensure that we have adequate funding for the inherent overtime in our our division. This is primarily due to the nature of the shifts in which we have a 247 operation with four shifts. We have 48hour work weeks which inherently identifies overtime in any given week. In addition, time for corrective maintenance work orders, emergency repairs, and other special projects. We're adjusting funding to assure ensure we have sufficient budget authority. Lastly, we have improvements to our pumping pumping stations maintenance program. We have throughout the city of 620 square miles. We manage within this division two pump stations along the second the first pipeline. We manage 15 booster stations and nine water storage tanks. In order to make sure that we're efficiently managing and scheduling our resources both with employees and equipment, we're doing a position enhancement to add a PLA planner scheduler will which will help us enhance our maintenance operations by efficiently scheduling the work minimizing the travel time and based on workforce availability in any given day. On this next slide here, we show you a little bit more detail into our corrective and preventative maintenance for our Hefner water treatment plant. This shows a 5-year historical of preventative to corrective maintenance ratio. Our target is to have an 80% preventative to 20% corrective. As you can see over the fiscal years, we've seen a slight decline with the blue bar part of the bar chart showing you preventative. This is primarily identified to a couple of things. As I mentioned on the previous slide, as we continue to add assets to the system, we're seeing those additional preventative work orders increase. And in addition, due to staffing vacancies, we've also seen a slight decline. adjustments to services and supplies. As I mentioned, we also have adjustments to address continued inflationary cost increases to both parts, supplies, and services within the utilities department. These adjustments are funded for our water quality, wastewater quality division, line maintenance, and minor adjustments to our engineering division as well. these. We ha also have funding adjustments to help support funding for our proactive preventative maintenance program. Several years ago, the department implemented a pilot program for supporting translation services in our utilities customer call center. At the time, we forecasted approximately 150 calls per month. Since then, and most currently in this fiscal year, we've seen that demand for the service rise to about 560 calls per month. And so, we're providing adequate funding to ensure we're meeting service expectations. Within the last year, within the last couple of years, the utilities department has updated its policies and procedures in regards to safety footwear and PPE and uniforms in which it now also covers probationary employees to ensure that they have the adequate safety footwear, PPE, and identified uniforms. We're also adjusting our funding to make sure that it meets those needs. Here we have one of our leading for results or LFR measure as it attributes to our utilities customer service division which is percentage of customer calls answered within 30 seconds of first drain. You can see our target in the solid green line at 85%. The orange line represents our actual performance from FY25 through F from FY21 through FY25. The blue bar chart represents the number of calls that were actually indeed answered within the 30 seconds. You can see in this earlier years we had a couple of challenges. One of those included COVID related challenges, staffing challenges and additional increase calls during a portal implementation. But since then, we've been able to address some of our staffing challenges. And also here more recently with a billing system implementation, we've been able to address and have more self-service options for our customers as well. In our proposed budget for 26, we also have the reorganization of the department by creating a new division. We have the financial services division which is composed of over 30 employees which is responsible for managing our short-term and long-term financial planning, managing our budget process, monthly appropriations, purchasing payables, contracts management, property and land management for the trust as well as financial management for our Tinker Air Force base contract. In line maintenance, we have a couple of initiatives as well for this upcoming year which include some position enhancement and reallocations of services. First, we're looking at centralizing new service meter inspections from the utilities customer service division and moving them to the line maintenance division. Line maintenance currently has a section called meter maintenance. They are responsible for troubleshooting, repairing meters, and also the replacement of meter. We're now centralizing the inspection of new meters within the meter maintenance program. So they are now o have oversight and management of the entire life cycle of a meter from installation to replacement. We're also doing a position enhancement for project management within our line maintenance division. This position will help us manage those outsourced contracts that I mentioned such as landscape restoration, paving, and other outsourced items for line maintenance. This position will also help support our meter replacement program, our lead service line identification, and coordinate with engineering on capital improvement projects as it relates to the distribution and collection system throughout the city. some additional LFR measures as it relates to some of our other services we provide. Percentage of wastewater overflow or backup calls responded to within one hour. Our target is 95%. You can see in the orange orange solid line our actual performance from FY2 21 to FY25. The blue bar chart at the bottom shows you the number of calls that we responded to within one hour. Similarly, as I mentioned on the customer service LFR measure in the earlier years, we saw some impact due to staffing challenges and COVID. We also have an LFR metric for our solid waste management utility which is percentage of scheduled solid waste routes collected by 5:00 p.m. Our targets 95% and you can see our actual performance within the orange solid line and the number of routes collected by 5:00 p.m. The count is shown in the blue bar chart. The city of Oklahoma City conducts an annual residential survey. In that survey, there are several elements that relate to the utility services, which includes solid waste such as trash collection or recycling, wastewater service, water service, and customer service. In all of these areas, as we compare to large communities across the nation or the national average, the utilities department continues to set the benchmark with a differential of about 33% compared to large communities and a differential of about 28% compared to the national average. Now, we'll take a look at our FY26 capital improvement program to give you highlights of some of the projects that we have planned for this upcoming year. This includes awarding the final two pipeline segments of our second ATO pipeline project as well as the award of the third pump station for this program. We also have programmed the construction award of the overhulser dam structural stability improvement project. We have final segment awards of the Hefner Draper system interconnect project which is the interconnection of the two service areas throughout the city. We have improvements at Deer Creek wastewater treatment plant improvements including the engineering design of an expansion of Deer Creek. We also have several improvements at Draper Water Treatment Plant that are planned, lift station replacement program, and we have our neighborhood line replacement program as well, which we are doubling starting with the next year going forward. And so with that, we're happy to answer any questions that you might have. Could you put up the the national average slide again? Yes, sir. Please. You know, I I think people don't realize how good a job we're doing, but when you look at those national averages, we just blow them away. And so, uh, I'm really impressed with this slide. I would like to see it go out in our utility bills two or three times a year so people can know the great job we're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Vanessa, thank you so much. Oh, I do. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thanks for your presentation. Um I s would you go back to the customer service line? Uh I'm sorry the um where Councilman Stone Cyper just took us the resident survey. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Um recycling uh how are we doing right now with I see how what the results are here, but how are we doing right now with recycling? I know that there were concerns in the last 5 years that I've been here that, you know, often people will put plastic bags, these sorts of things into the, you know, into the recycling. It gums up the works. How are we doing on that? Just how are we doing with recycling generally? I guess why I ask is because I've had residents reach out to me uh concerned that there's like rumors floating around that like we put stuff in recycling but either because of these technical errors or what have you that the recycling itself isn't actually something that is occurring. And so I just thought I would ask a little bit about this. It sounds like it looks just from the nod on your head I feel nodding your head I feel like you've heard versions of this. Absolutely. And so um we within our recycling program, we are seeing customers participate in the program. What we're working on right now actively is education and outreach on recycling of what is appropriate to recycle um how to dispose of those recycling materials to avoid contamination. Right now, that's what we're seeing with our recycling program is we're seeing a bit higher contamination level than what we would like. And so, we are actively working with our public information group within the department to work on messaging for our customers on how to recycle, right? One of the biggest problems we run into is people will put their recycling in a bag. Yes. And then put it in the recycling bin. the bag itself becomes a part of the problem with with the recycling stream. How much is that contamination hurting our efforts? I guess is also a question that I have like what how much are we because again the the concern I am hearing I mean I literally just had someone reach out to me about this last week is that we are uh there there people are worried that even uh to try to recycle that their efforts are just you know we're not we're not able to recycle the way that we that the residents hope that we are and I'm worried alongside them about the contamination as well. Hello. Good morning, Councilman. Chris Browning, utilities director. So, we we have a really high participation rate. We're over 90% participation and right now our contamination is running about 30% and we'd like to get it below 20. Below 20 is a really solid national average and that's what our target is. Um, we'd really like to get it lower than that, but 20% is is a is a the the top performer average throughout the nation, but we're going to continue to work on that to help people understand what they should recycle and what they shouldn't recycle. But what Craig said is spot on. People have a tendency, you know, they'll they'll put in a can for their recycle materials and have a plastic bag in the can. Well, they just take the whole thing out and that's jams up the uh recycle center. So, that causes contamination. So, it's not that everybody's doing the wrong thing or a lot of the wrong thing. It's just we need to help them understand how the operation works so that they can participate a little bit better. Thanks. And then so after a successful run through like we got the materials in there, we are recycling. What does the city of OKC do next with the materials? Where does it go? So we we don't collect any of the recycled waste management does that and it's part of our contract that they own the recycled material. So they process that recycled material. They separate it at the facility down off of of Reno and then they distribute it to their buyers accordingly. I think that needs to be part of the story that we're telling people about like what happens next. I'm I'm telling I've had multiple word two people reach out to me just worried that you know basically I mean I'll be honest they they like well just going right back into the landfill like that is what I hear and I think we've just got to tell a story. This is especially concerning to a lot of our young people I can tell you. Um they have a particular heart for this but I I've heard it from across the board. So, I think being able to tell the story of where things go next, what recycling actually looks like as opposed to just some feel-good thing that people do. I think that would be a would be useful. I'd actually like to go to the facilities myself and see. I didn't get a chance to do that during orientation. So I I would say too like recycling is a challenged market and it's a really expensive service for us of like where they're finding places to place that but it's definitely something that I think is happening nationally that I mean really worldwide but nationally is a real challenge and I appreciate Waste Management our partners in this but we can certainly accommodate getting you know the the work on getting a tour and getting something set up for you. Yeah. And then again, I I this this this story of explaining the process. I know on I want to say it's on the city of OKC's Instagram, there was some there's some video of of our work like of the machine, right? And I I was so I found it so compelling because I didn't understand that process. And I think being able to show show people where things go um and how they're contributing to that recycling process, I think in you know demonstrating the efforts and work you all are putting. I think it would go a really long way. So yes, sir. We we've contracted with a marketing firm to help us with that messaging. Oh, that's great. And so yeah, I'm ready to go out there and help contribute to it. So thanks y'all and thanks for the work you do. Yeah. I just wanted to mention too, I really appreciate the presentation that you know with utilities utilities I think I mentioned be before I said she'd be pres uh Vanessa would present the trust and I said general fund it's actually the city side of it but it's not in the general fund. So the utility stands alone as an operation and the funding comes from the trust goes to their it's a cash fund basically but it's a separate city fund and and really it's the point of rateayer revenue pays for the services that are provided in utilities. It doesn't come from sales tax. So, it's something where it's a standalone operation. They've done a great job with setting the rates before us to be able to keep those in line with what the costs are and particularly with some of the capital improvements that we've had to invest in the pipeline. So, really appreciate the work of the team and all that they're doing to lead in this. Great. If you don't mind, I'd like to say a couple of words. First of all, I'd like to thank our team. Our our financial services division starts the process in October. We have a very large, very, very complex budget and it's a program-based budget. So, every year we take a look at each program in each division to see, okay, how much does it cost to run this program? And and we're very mindful of rates. Every four to five years, we do a a rate analysis to make sure that we're charging each customer class exactly what it cost us to provide that level of service. And so, we're very mindful of that. So Vanessa and her entire team uh work very very hard. About the time the budget's impro approved by you all and and is is put in place, we start the process over again for the next year. So I want to thank them for all the hard work that they do each year to make sure that that we're mindful of of the the dollars that we're spending and the dollars that we're charging for these services that we deliver. Thank you. Thank you all. Okay. Thank you. So, next up we have the fire department. Chief Kelly will present the fire department budget and I know he's got part of his team here as well. And I think something I appreciate is the teams that come with the directors and the those that are presenting the budgets that it really does reflect not just those that are in the room, but how many people are engaged and involved in this that we want those that are involved in providing the services deeply engaged in in presenting the budgets and and developing the budgets. So, Chief, I'll turn it over to you and let you present. Yes, sir. Uh good morning, mayor, council, Mr. City Manager. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I'm Richard Kelly, the fire chief. Um really when what we see today is a final product of a total team effort, and I really appreciate our team, the office of management and budget, specifically Tiara Taylor does an outstanding job working with us. Alina Croy who's in fire who put this presentation together, and Clint Regier who's here, our business manager. It really takes team effort and I do appreciate and acknowledge them for the work that they do. We start off real quick. We'll just jump into our mission statement. When you look at it, you know, the goal of the fire department is to ensure the city council priority of safe, secure, and thriving neighborhoods is accomplished. And we believe this year we'll see the focus in our budget allocation additional requests for services does follow that mission and what we're trying to accomplish. If you look at that, to provide emergency response, fire prevention, public education to the city of Oklahoma City. And we follow that specifically. That's our mission statement there at the bottom. Respond quickly, safely, courteously, meet the need. And I'm very proud that our organization does that to a high level. And they all understand the importance of our mission. When you look at the next slide is our organizational chart. It's pretty busy here. A lot happening on the chart, but there are four major divisions that we have within that. the operational services that we have falls under Deputy Chief Shane Smiley and you can see the fire suppression operations. I'm really going to get more in detail on each uh division a little bit later. Then we have our medical uh emergency medical services portion of that and then our emergency transport program that we have and our mobile integrated health uh care services. So you can see a very robust and large division within our organization. And then we have the support services under Deputy Chief Derek Ke. our fire dispatch facilities, HR, and our logistics and maintenance. So, they're really the support side of that that keeps everything running every day to help save lives. And then our fire prevention services to try to be the proactive side of that as our deputy chief of uh Dominic Brown of our fire investigations, code compliance, and community risk reduction section there. And you can see administrative services, our executive leadership, public relations, and marketing to make sure we're telling our message every day. And if you look at that, that shows you right there our FY26 proposed numbers. And we'll get into that more of 1,0 uniform, 113 civilian professional staff for 1,20 1,123. And just beside that, I wanted to put that note so you could see where we're working from. Our last year FYI 25 budget, you can see the reduction of 10 positions. And I'll present that today and explain those reduction in businesses. Just a quick overview of all our fire stations located throughout the city uh that we have and our apparatus that we have at these fire stations. The red are fire stations throughout the city to provide great coverage within our city. And if you'll see some of those are blue, those are fire station, but that's actually where we have our emergency medical transport services within that fire station. And that's going very well. I appreciate the support in that area. We actually put our fourth unit up um this month. So, we're really excited to see that come to full fruition in that. Um, and if you look at that throughout our fire stations, we had 39 engines, and I'm going to propose the reduction of one of those today. So, it'll be 38 engines, 13 ladders, 17 uh brush pumpers, six battalion chiefs, six tankers, four light rescues, a hazmat, heavy rescue, and a water rescue unit. So, this here is going to get into our major budget changes that we have this year. Um, you know, when we look at this, the goal that we're trying to do is prioritize protection to our residents to make sure we provide the least amount of impact when we're going through a challenging time. And I believe what we're proposing here today will show you that that's what we're we're uh proposing. Um, Engine 51 is located at fire station one. So, it's actually a station that we have two engines at that firehouse. So, in this we're going to reduce um the staffing on engine 51. We're going to make a cut in that of 15 positions. And we'll get more into that in the next slide and talk about that more in detail, but that's $2.2 million. And then we have all of course our rollups that we have and and changes in personnel related costs, salaries merit retirement health insurance, other benefits that were afforded by working for a great city. that cost roll up is 7.7 million. And then we have some fire sales tax increases that we're proposing this year to really make some uh changes and really continue to improve and build the robust infrastructure we have within our organization leading into that 1.7 increase in our fire sales tax that we're looking at. It's for fire IT and fire station construction and remodel. Again, as we look at our our uh 42 facilities we have throughout the fire department, our goal is to stay innovative to make sure we have the latest and greatest infrastructure to provide safety and protection for our firefighters as they live there for 24 hours. And then obviously we see the changes in the IT world, the technology increases in those areas that we want to make sure that we're staying ahead of that. And if you'll notice there, it says fire station construction and remodel. Sometimes when we uh on geo bonds, if we're a little bit short or we want to do some air additional stuff in that area, we may use some fire sales tax to put that money in there. So that's why it says fire station construction and remodels. So we'll also be doing remodels throughout our fire stations. That's the main focus of that increase in that budget. And then as I talked about earlier, our our major budget changes that we have are deletion of 15 personnel from engine 51. Uh that's a double-housed engine as I said earlier at station one. Uh in that uh there will be no firefighters that are losing their jobs. There's not any in that. So we'll be able to absorb that within the organization. Uh and and our goal in this too is also to look to bring that engine back. We're building a new fire station at 15300 uh North Rockwell and the goal in the future is to move that engine company to that firehouse to be able to staff that. So we're looking at options of there safer grants. It's federal grant funding out there that's available that we might be able to uh seek that we are going to seek and see if we can get that that would bring those positions back and that pays a proportionate salary of those firefighters for up to three years. So we're going to make sure that we leverage that and look at every way we can to bring that back. So also in that we are adding one human resource partner and that would be someone in our HR and we have our own internal fire HR section and with the changes we have in our in our work u and our personnel you know adding MIH adding MS transport we need we feel we need to move into that more robust u professional civilian staff that has experiences in HR world so we're going to move the major in that position over to our EMS area and we're going to create a position there for a professional HR staff within our fire HR in that you also see an addition of four personnel. So what this was last year mid year in FY25 we added four positions to our mobile integrated health that was for our alternative response program. And so this just codifies that into our budget this year of adding those four positions. So in that you'll see that we're adding two peer recovery support specialists and two health responders. and we've already hired those positions and they're working for our alternative response program currently. So you can see that's where it comes up with the negative 10 personnel. If you look at our expenditures, you can see this year in our budget, we see an increase uh from FY25 to FY26 uh of approximately 1.8% and that is because the rollups and the things that I talked about earlier. But getting into each line of business that we have there, our general fund is at 135 million and that supports 853 positions. And then we have a better streets and safer city use tax. And that actually we have allocated for uh one of our storage facilities that's currently under construction. So we'll probably see that go away this year. Uh it was rolled over actually from last year because we're still continuing that project. And then our uh CIP that you have right there at 1.7 1.3 of that is actually for individual sleeping quarters and within remodels within our fire stations. And we'll hope continue to work in that area. And and what we're trying to do there, many of our fire stations have one single sleeping area and when they have two companies in that it's very challenging when they get up at night, you wake everyone up. And really when we look at sleep deprivation and the challenges we have there, we want to separate those two bedroom and make them into two bedrooms. So when one apparatus goes out, the other one is not woken up at night. And that's very important for the safety of our firefighters. So we're going to continue in that area. And then you look at our medical services fund. That's for our EMS transport. We have the 40 positions. Uh we are bringing revenue in that area. So we're really excited to continue that program. And then we have our special uh purpose fund we have there for the six positions and those are for our CRT CCD teams. It was funded from the opioid funds uh opioid settlement funds. So really important in that area. And then you'll see our maps for use tax. That's what we use to purchase our apparatus. And you can see it's very significant in there. 38.2 million. But just to let you know in that almost 27 26.9 million of that has been encumbered for apparatus that we're waiting to arrive. And you know we've seen long delay times and a lot of challenges in that area. And some pretty significant list of apparatus that we have. Some of those um we actually got three of our ladders in just recently. We're working to get those in service. We have about 16 engines coming in, several brush pumpers, um uh a lot of uh uh command vehicle, some other things that'll be coming in. So, it's a pretty substantial list and that's why it's so large this year and that maps for use tax fund. Our next picture here is our lines of business and you can see our administration. Um and then our operations, I'd introduce our our deputy chief sport services I'm sorry, operations, Shane Smiley. our deputy uh chief of sport services, Derek Keel, is here. And then our deputy chief fire prevention and that's probably for many of y'all most important. He's our fire marshal right here, Dominic Brown. That's usually the ones that you might be dealing with in that. But also brought a lot of my staff and it takes a full team if you ever worked around me. Takes a lot to take care of me and I appreciate what they do every day. but also have battalion chief of health and safety Lamont Smith, battalion chief of administration, Donnie Bennett, and then we have Lori Brown Loftess who you all know very well is our mobile integrated health program manager. And then we have Chararma Ramier, who is our business intelligence specialist. So, we have a a great team here today and they really are able to do a lot of great work for the fire department and for our residents most importantly. Uh getting into our lines of business administration, you'll see that there. It's at 21.1 million at 40 employees in that. The executive leadership has 37 of those employees at 20.7 million. And then our public relation marketing uh team has three employees who do fantastic work. If you're in on any social media platforms out there, you're going to see the work that they're doing. And all they're really doing is just showing the great efforts that our firefighters do every day. and really the support that we have from each and every one of you on our residents because really it's a team effort takes a village and we really want to show that and I'm really proud of what they do and show every day within that we're going to show you a few admin highlights and and really we're going to get into some data points in that. These are really our LFR measures and I'm just going to show you some of the important data things that what we're the work of our firefighters and what we're doing to protect our residents every day. This right here has a lot in this, but this is the most important thing. Look at that top line all the way across. And if you look at that, that is the smoke alarm installs that we provide free every day to our residents within our city when they own their property, they own their home. And it's really important that we get this out there because smoke alarms save lives. So, we focus on that. It's really big for our firefighters. We provide that. We buy it with uh city funds to be able to put those out there to make sure that we're saving our residents. You can see since conception of this program and what we have within our app that we have that we built, we've uh installed 5,78 total. If you look to the right there, you can see at the top is 3,473 year to date. And what we do is we come out and we put them in the homes to code. And if they call 316 beep, we'll come out put that. Our goal was within 24 hours to install a smoke alarm. So important to save lives and that's how we make sure that we make sure our community is safe. This next one right here is really our rig response data points. A lot in that. I'm going to pull out a few areas. You can see we've had a uh 1300 1,00 I'm sorryund 13,000 incidents this year. Uh and you look at that those are unique. That means different apparatus and and so in that our focus is to get out of the fire station quick and we want to get out of the fire station quick. So we track this data point and our goal is 60 seconds or less 90% of the time and you can see we're right at 87%. Our firefighters see this every day. Our chiefs are able to see this. This is a dashboard they have available to them and we believe through our compliance is the easiest way for them to see what they're doing and they want to achieve that goal. But that's important to know. We do everything we can from our dispatch time to getting out of the fire station to our travel time and making sure our citizens get adequate quick response. And that's part of our mission when we talk from the first part. Respond quickly, safely, courteously, meet the need. The other data points here, this is real big. When we talk about travel time, we talk about fire station locations throughout the city where we have our fire station. We look at travel time because that's the easiest way to say from point A to point B. So when they leave the fire station, arrive at your scene, we have two data points that we look at there. Our structure fires, we want to be there six minutes travel time or less 90% of the time. And you see for structure fires, we're about 89%. All other incidents were about 76. And our goal is 90% in that. And and you look at that and go, why is structure fire so much higher than all incidents? really the core of our fires that we see are more in the core part of the city, the older parts of neighborhoods and that and and we have a quicker response time in that area, closer fire stations. So, you can see that when you look at the totality of that of every type of incident we respond to, it's about 77%. And you can see that here. This is a lot. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that, but this reflects that if you look the core of that is where our major incidents are are located. And you can see that is is where we're able to get there faster on our structure fires. I just wanted to point this out this to let you know that we track all our data points of every type of incident we respond to. We can drill down in that area so we can look at that from a community risk reduction aspect and and make sure what we're looking at. So there's a lot of information there, but that's just something we utilize to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our community. Now we get into our operations line of business. As I said earlier, the largest uh division within our organization had 996 employees, 153.5 million in our mobile integrated healthcare. Super excited. I presented that here last year. I have a a few point points on that, but uh we have 24 employees at 1.8 million. Our emergency medical services and that's our firefighters. And we look at that ratio proportionate to our response. about 70% of our incidents are EMS and you can see about seven 70% of our budget in that area is allocated to emergency medical service because that's what they do that majority of the time at 644 employees for 102 million and then our medical transport that's our EMS transport program we have at 4.4 4 million and 40 employees. And then our fire suppression is 45 million with 288 employees. And our operational highlight, this shows our mobile integrated healthcare that you all have been very supportive of. Lori Brown Loftus who's here has been very active in really growing the outreach and what we're doing here. Partnership with uh this wouldn't happen without the partnership of law enforcement. Uh and also the support of our assistant city manager, Jason Fairbrush. This is a team effort, but we had uh 1324 responses. That was that day point in time. I'm sure she could tell you now it's more than that. But what I'm really proud of is that 16 minutes average response time. That's throughout the entire city. So they're they're responding from downtown. They're very active out in the community and that again goes from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. at night. So we're continuing that uh program and really excited for the efforts that they're doing. our support services. This is the logistics portion of our organization that supports everything that we do. So, we have a logistics and facilities maintenance at uh 24 employees at 17.3 million. And then our fire dispatch who does an outstanding job. We're really starting to do more in our fire dispatch uh work section with our DFR program Jonas first responder program with our good SAM apps. The capability we have to see live footage of what's going on our incidents of really active and engaging in those areas. And I'm super proud to have they taken ownership of these programs and really working hard to improve that. We have 19 employees at 2.8 million. So you can see our support services a small group that do a lot of work. These are the ants of our organization. They're the heavy lifters. Uh 43 employees at 20.1 million. And and this right here is exciting. We got a fire station 31. It's one of our larger projects we've had in in many years. This is about 800 North Rockwell. It's about 15,000 square ft. five operational base for apparatus and it will house there's a fire station right there next to it that will house our chief from that station our engine our ladder and we're going to move a heavy rescue trailer over there so hopefully we'll see that come online uh late summer early fall um we know how timelines can change a little bit construction but we've been very pleased with everything so far and then we have our fire prevention staff these are the ones that really are proactively trying to resolve things and emergencies within our city before they happen. And they work very hard in that area. We have 44 employees in that uh division. 7.6 million is the budget allocation in that area. Fire investigations. These are our firefighters that go out there. They are commissioned law enforcement officers, but they're firefighters. 14 employees, 2.7 that go out and investigate every fire that we have um within the city. And then we have our community risk reduction work section that are the proactive side to try to eliminate risk. uh 10 employees at 1.7 million. And then our code compliance personnel that are out there inspecting, checking our facilities, new facilities, old facilities to make sure that it's safe for us to occupy and work and live and and enjoy comforts within those areas. 20 employees at 3.2 million. And our highlight that we have this year, um couple things. We'll work on our wildland inter uh wildland urban interface, uh what we call a firewise community. So we really collective effort in that our emergency management liaison fire prevention working with communities to try to establish a firewise community that's where we could establish certain locations within our city that they're actually proactively trying to reduce the risk to wild and urban interface making sure the fuels are reduced everything that we're managing in that area. And then the other one is our smoke alarm canvases. We actually had three large smoke alarm canvases this year. There were 752 homes in those areas. We were able to enter 142 of them and we installed 401 smoke alarms. It's always a challenge. You know, when someone knocks on your door, the last thing you want to do is let them in your house even though they're a firefighter. So, we're really was excited that we're able to get that many out there. And that that's our focus to reduce the risk. And then I'm going to talk about a few strategic results that we're working on our LFR measures. The first one here is annually the residents of Oklahoma City um anticipating growth in outline areas will receive emergency responses within 7 minutes or less 70% of the time. And that's a total I know I've gave you a lot of response time numbers. That's a total time from 91 pickup till we arrive on scene. And that's a measure that we look at and our goal in that is again we said 70% of the time that we're looking in that area. So this in the upper left hand this is our total response data. You can see 87 uh,000 incidents dispatched. And if you look in the upper left in that, you'll see that is our seven men or less target. We're right at 70%. We really want to continue that and grow. And we look at everything technology wise. We focus on number one, when we get a 911 call, we dispatch it 66 seconds or less. 90% of the time. You all seen the turnout time. We get out of the fire station 60 seconds or less. 9% of the time the goal the other is travel time. So in that you can't tell an apparatas to drive faster to do anything other than drive. So we're looking at technology pieces down the road for traffic management systems. There's things available out there will make it safer for firefighters, police officers, emergency medical services responding where lights transition as you're going in that area. And that's something that we look at. We're looking at everything we can do to reduce this number. So those are things that we continue to look at and we'll challenge ourselves in the future. This right here is so important for us because the support of the council, city leadership, we have full ALS implementation all our fire stations. So our goal in that is that upper right hand corner you'll see these are 57,000 incidents. Remember I said earlier about 70% of our calls are EMS emergency medical services. And our goal in that is when we do that over 95% of the time we want to respond with an ALS unit because that means when we arrive on scene you're going to get the same level of care you would in an ambulance. We have all the cardiac monitors, drugs, medications in that area to uh to deal with the challenges that we see in the field. So we really are excited that we keep that high level of 95%. I would love to be a 100, you know. So that's things that we'll shoot for in the future. You always want to have those lofty goals and targets that we try to achieve. This is a lot of uh information here, a lot of goals, but just to paraphrase that, three goals we're looking at this year is to advance the health and safety of our firefighters. And we've got many things that we're going to be looking at in that area is to maintain the momentum in our facility upgrades and improvements. And you see that with additional funding we put in our budget in that area. And then we're going to leverage data. That's why we put a lot of data up here and we talked about it. We want to le leverage our data to make informed decisions while improving work outcomes and anticipating future needs of our community. So, it's so important for us to drive those those data points home and utilize that to help us make informed decisions. So, with that, thank you again so much for your continued support of public safety. I do have a quick video if you don't mind. I'm going to show you real quick and then after the video, I'll uh entertain any questions. Healthcare is housed under the Oklahoma City Fire Department and was created to expand how we serve our community. NIH provides alternatives to traditional emergency resources by making sure that when individuals are calling 911, they are able to get the absolute best and correct response. It's critical for Oklahoma City to have an alternative response team. We know that when people in mental health distress get connected to care, our communities are able to function more fluidly. Our mobile integrated healthcare team has four units. We have crisis call diversion. That team is housed within the 911 comm center. And so we are able to get those calls from the 911 call takers as they're coming in. We're able to sit and talk with a person and really listen and get them connected to resources in the community. Our crisis call diversion team can dispatch out one of our mobile teams to go out and actually meet the resident where they're at. So our second team is crisis response team that also is known as CRT. Our crisis response team is comprised of a paramedic and a mental health professional. So when someone calls into 911 and they're saying, "I'm struggling with thoughts of suicide or my loved one has been struggling," those teams are able to go out and serve where there may be a threat towards their safety or someone else's safety. Mobile integrated healthcare crisis response teams, lessen the workload for police officers. This takes calls for service off the board, allowing officers to focus on calls that are criminal in nature and not mental health. One of our other teams is called the alternative response team or also known as ART. They go on the lower priority mental health calls where individuals are calling in and really just needing some support in the community. The alternative response team, that team serves also as our overdose response team. Since we have a paramedic, we're able to start some treatment right in the field, eliminating a lot of barriers that people may experience in starting substance use treatment. We have the benefit of having some peer support members on our team that are really able to really be relatable to that person and offer hope and guidance in that recovery process. We also do follow-ups with the people that we interact with trying to close the loop on those resources that we give them. Our other team is called our CAP team or our community advocacy program. Our CAP program really focuses on individuals and creating capacity for those individuals to get their needs met on their own. Now when they come across a similar problem, they now have the capability to think and problem solve for themselves and say, "Okay, where can we go from here?" Oh, I remember Cat told me about this resource. And so then they're not needing to rely so heavily on 911 emergency services. Everyone can be impacted by mental health or a substance use issue, whether it's themselves that are struggling or they have a family member or loved one. We're able to really help individuals who are experiencing mental health symptoms get that specialized care that they absolutely need in order to make sure that police can maintain doing the important police work that the city relies on them. Fire can continue to do their work and IMSA as well. Having NIH come on scene really helps round out the services that are available to the residents of Oklahoma City. [Music] Thank you again for your support of public safety and I'm here to answer any questions you might have. That was great. How do you uh convey that information we just saw on social media? What are your s sources? So, we have put it out, you know, in our as I spoke earlier a little bit about our public relations and marketing. We've been pushing that out through the platforms that they have. I I believe the city's probably on their side, PIM have been doing that. We continually we had a press conference the other day to do a full release on it. So, we're continuing every day to make sure that we're pushing that out and making sure that those are also known and available to our residents. Great job. Thank you. Thank you, sir. provided such a great example of how um we can kind of deploy the right people um that are you know trusted community members you know we're in the fire fire you know uh polo or whatever um and um and even though maybe not everyone wants to you know let you in the house that day um that it's it's a touch point that maybe you know they call a little bit later and say oh actually you know what I do want someone to come install that fire alarm um so or smoke detector. I'm probably annoying some people with my incorrect uh language, imprecise language, but um but yeah, I just I wanted to lift that piece up in particular because we've been having some conversations on the horseshoe about what it might look like to address safety across some other areas. And um and as usual, you all are like, hey, we've been doing that in our particular area of expertise. is um you know I I think the same thing um about you all sort of tackling opioid response and and doing that. So I just really appreciate you all always being sort of forward thinking and thinking about both that how do we provide that preventative piece and sort of meet the need um that we're seeing show up um but then of course always in that emergency situation um being able to show up and keep people safe. So really appreciate all the work you all do and um just thank you so much for kind of being willing to take on a lot of new um difficult very complex projects um through the the mental health integration. So thank you. I appreciate that. I would like to say I think Lori's working on some projects. I know she went to Tulsa and looked at a popup event they had and we're looking at some things in the future that should be rolling out. We had discussions yesterday a staff meeting about, you know, looking at a more proactive approach on smoke alarms. And and one thing I'll also say, we've always when we make emergency medical calls, um if it's not a crisis or what I mean by that, it's a critical event, we always ask our firefighters because they broken the threshold to check a smoke alarm while they're in the house. So we have a lot of our firefighters are very proactive in that way because that is the difficulty sometimes is knocking and getting access. Sometimes when we're already in there and it's not critical, we're not worried about the patient that time. We can ask to check their smoke alarm. So, we really try to take it and it's not me, it's our staff and I do appreciate the kind words because they work hard every day to accomplish the needs of our community. So, thank you, Chief. I appreciate too the um just the work that you all have done in bringing this budget forward. And I know it's always hard when we're going through tough budgets that we have, reductions that we have to make. Cutting 15 firefighter positions is never our choice. We're really in a place where we need to be adding with the growth we've had in the community. and chief uh chief even talked about the addition of a fire station. You know, as we're adding fire stations, we've got to get that staffing back. So, we're going to look at ways that we can try to address that, but right now it's a decision that we have to make. But I also want to add that what we're doing with mobile integrated health. I appreciate Lor's leadership in this and what she's doing with the team. It's, you know, we're coming along in this part of this is recommendations that came out of the uh law enforcement policy task force and um that you know, the work that was done in that in that time came out of it as recommendations. Police and fire have been working together identifying and seeing these issues and trying to train their staff to deal with different issues, but again not having trained professionals that specifically are called to do this work. And so I think it's really us catching up with the direction police and fire have been trying to move together. And um we did have resources that we had set aside before. I think he talked about some of these positions that we weren't waiting on the budget. We needed to move forward. We did have funds set aside to take care of this so that we could incorporate those into this year's budget. Um that was already there and available that offset some of the cuts that they're making. But it's still we have uniform positions that we're going to have to work on getting restored whether it's through grant funding or other means in time. But I just appreciate so much the leadership in this. And then I think what this represents for our community and it really is a team effort of looking at public safety differently of how we serve all of our communities. So I really appreciate the leadership. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again. Sorry. I I just want to also add uh first I am thanks for your presentation sir. I'm forever grateful for the work you and your team and Lori what you all are up to right now implementing um this new service. I posted about it um on Instagram following you all's lead and I have to tell you it's a top five post I've ever done in terms of the response. People are sharing it. It's had thousands of views. This is a moment I would encourage for the city of OKC. I was happy to attend the press conference. I'm always happy to be at a fire station of course with you all. But as I reflected upon it, I think something that we really need to think about and I think what was missing at that event was a lot more community outside of the folk who were there. I think there needs to be a broad awareness and I do appreciate what I think city of OKC I think fire um you know councilwoman Hammond's posted I know I've posted but we have now just introduced a historic new service I mean I can't tell you I I was talking to my therapist about it on Friday I can barely process what you all have done you took the community policing resolution and its recommendation and the working group's recommendation And you all have gone even above and beyond that. Like that's how I is so impressive. My brain can't handle it. I I'm serious. You've stretched city government to to do something that quite frankly it was resistant to years ago. It was actually actively resistant to it. Um and that's even if it was on its radar. So, first I want to also thank the council members who were here back in 2020 who voted for the community policing resolution to set this in motion. But I think we really need to think about um introduce reintroducing 911 to our residents so that they know that this service exists. In the other video that you all have, which is just as good. I just can't sing you all's praises enough. But in the other video, it notes that one in four Oklahomaans uh have some sort of mental health condition. So that means there's a lot of people in need of this service out there who I'd love to believe they're following my Instagram account, but I don't think they all are. Right. And same with the city of OKC and the fire department. So I I would wonder about paid advertisements on social media. Um I would wonder about a bit more of a media blitz for the local news channels. Um, I just think that this is such now I think this service is life- saving and you know that and I it it needs um more water, excuse me, which I believe you all are really good at, excel at the water, but I think there needs to be more water um on this garden. Uh people need to there's there's got to be there's got to be a much much more compelling saturation of this news this good news this really good news. Thank you. I I would like to state in that um with the law enforcement dispatchers our CCD really a proactive approach internally. they're able to really identify those that, you know, they may not crawl in and say, "Hey, I'm having a crisis, but they're really good at learning from that, listening to them, and recognizing and getting them to the services." So, although people may not be fully aware, we have great trained staff, and we're learning every day. I mean, it's new, but they're really understand so they can move those individuals to the right care. So, even though it may, and I appreciate what you're saying, Councilman, even though it may not be that we're telling everyone and everyone has a message, if they pick up the phone and call 911, we have trained people that understand that can get them to the right services. So, I do appreciate what you're saying, but I want you to know they're really good at doing that and they're figuring it out. We're learning. It's new, but I think it's really going to see some great things out of it. I think so, too. And let me also just add, you mentioned national um numbers earlier when it comes to recycling. You know, unfortunately, we have data that shows that if you have a mental health condition, you are 16 times more likely to die in encounter with law enforcement. Um a third to a half of the deaths um come from people with disabilities. Those aren't my numbers, those are the numbers. And so that's why I cannot sing the praises enough of what you all are doing and whatever we can be doing to get this out to more of our people. I think that 911 dispatch training that you all have done is just inspirational quite frankly. I think people will learn from us. But thank you. Lots more to do. Thanks Chief. Appreciate it. Thanks for your leadership. That is all that we have uh for today. We do have another um I know we've got residents that have signed up to be heard on this. We do have another budget hearing on the 27th uh where we'll have planning, airports, and the police department. That's all that I have. Thank you. Well, that concludes then item three. We're now at item four, citizens to be heard. And uh for all people who have signed up, I will uh ask you to state your name and address and keep your remarks to three minutes or less. And the city clerk will give you a verbal um warning when you have 30 seconds left. All right. First up is Grace Carter. Good morning. Uh my name is Grace Carter and I'm a homeschool student and representative of the students at Northwest Optimus Performing Arts Center. Um I'm here to talk to you today about our concerns for what is most certainly my favorite place like in the world. Um in 2023 I enrolled in Optimus uh theater program on Thursdays. uh a program where homeschoolers like myself got together and participated in classes like art, dance, PE, and theater. Uh imagine me, an anxious, awkward, and introverted 13-year-old, 12-year-old, uh who stood outside the door with my head held high and my heart guarded. Um I begged my mom to walk me in because I was scared of being disliked or shunned. Um it didn't take long for me to discover that this was just not the case. Um, I walked into the building was immediately welcomed by uh many people and staff who had taken the time to learn my name from the sign up form before I had a chance to introduce myself. This is the kind of community that is fostered at Optimist. Uh, I'm nearly 16 and I'm far more extroverted and confident. Um, I gained some of my closest friends, many of whom are behind me today. Um, and from all of them, you could hear stories similar to mine. Different ways we fell in love with this community. Some of them, like myself, have been here for just a few years, and some of them have been here for over a decade. This this is just an example of how many of us there are at Optimus. There are 45 kids that participate in the Thursday homechool class, uh, which is the maximum amount of slots that we have. Um, and there are three classes that homeschool classes that last all day. So, there are 150 kids that are in the our building each week from homechool classes alone. Um, we could not do this without our staff, our crazy our crazy, incredible and amazing staff who work with kids from six, ages 6 to 17 all day, every day. Um, due to a wave of budget cuts, our staff's all salary and hours have been slashed drastically. Um, and we just don't have enough funding to go around. Um, we have one full-time employee at Optimist and the rest of the work is done by employees and volunteers. And we're one of the lucky ones. There are many other uh parks and recreation centers that have had their budget slashed far more than ours. Um we have this we're lucky to have the support of parents and the backstage players 501c uh but their support can only reach so far and cannot assist in facility care and our staff's wages. Um we adore our staff and this program would not be the same without them. So uh I'm asking you today for an extension on the parks and recreation budget. Uh because in supporting us at Optimist uh you are supporting a diverse community that is access accessible and accepting. A community that is allowing myself and so many others to grow into strong, confident and well spoken people by allowing us to perform. 30 seconds remaining. Thank you. by allowing us to perform and encouraging us to present our beliefs. We cannot lose our staff. We cannot endure another round of budget cuts. These actions would damage the program and in turn damage our childhoods. So please invest in the future of the arts in the city and invest in us. Uh if you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us or talk to me after. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jennifer Mike. [Applause] Good morning. Uh my name is Jen Knight. I live at 11216 Bluff Creek Drive. Um I just wanted to kind of follow up on what Grace had mentioned today. you you've heard from a student now and the annual budget presentations that are happening over the course of um several meetings. We understand parks was last the last meeting, but um we're hearing all of this wonderful information about these essential services. I mean, obviously fire is essential. Um but we just wanted to highlight how essential parks and recreation is for many families in our community. Um let's bring lights up here, guys. Um, as a parent, I can just I can tell you that the parks and recck services provided at Optimus and some of the other centers that occur that are in the city, um, they they really are an important um, place for families to come and find community and find support. Um, it really does a a great job of helping create um, strong and confident young people who grow up to be strong and confident um, you know, citizens in our city. And so we wanted to just take some time today. Um we do have a parent organization similar to uh like a PTO that you would have um for public schools that operates with the theater group. And we are always happy to show up with cupcakes and bring extra construction paper and that kind of thing. But when it comes to major budget decisions, you know, we can't do anything about um you know, payroll, that kind of thing. So, we just we wanted to highlight how important the people are um to the culture and the services that are offered at our parks and recreation um department, all of the different facilities, especially Northwest Optimist, where we feel belonging. Um but those those people and the care that they put into the time that they're there and investing in the kids that are coming in those families, um it is just it's unparalleled. I I would have a hard time finding a parallel some some other situation. If um if we weren't able to bring our kids to optimist, I don't know where we could find the same level of love and care and development and enrichment for their education and their social development. So, we just wanted to speak to um these programs, how important they are, how essential they are to our families and um and the care that they provide for our staff. Thank you. I'm sorry. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. What's going on? So, Melinda, you want to help me with this? So, this is not something that was cut in the budget. Okay. Yeah, this is not something that was cut on the budget. During the year, uh, the parks department, and Melinda will speak to this more eloquently and know more detail, but during the year, they realized that their part-time budget was well above was progressing well above the or the part-time expenditures were progressing well above the budget that they had available and realized they needed to rightsize some of the programs. It affected a lot of programs across the community. We had sent a message out that we were making some adjustments on part-time. It affected some part-time employees, did that midyear, made some adjustments. It's having some effect now. It's not specific. I mean, obviously, it's a budgetary impact, but it's not specific to budget cuts that they proposed. It was adjustments that were made in the year to try to address budget issues. And Melinda, I'll let you speak more to that. Yeah, thank you, Melinda McMillan Miller, parks and recreation director. Thank you for allowing me to present to you today. the uh just like city manager Freeman had stated, a lot of this is kind of like a um long-term effect. So, as our budgets have contracted year over year over year, we lose some of our ability to absorb overruns, budget cost overruns. And so, in the past, we've had a little bit of room in our budget to absorb the extra amount of time it needed for part-time wages and um salaries. that budget, as you guys know, our budgets have continued to kind of contract. And so, as that fluff, as we like to call it, has also been removed from that budget. So, in order to keep ourselves in budget, um, we have had to retract back the number of hours that our part-time employees are allowed to work. So if an employee in the past was working up to 28 hours a week, that employee now may be reduced down to 5 hours, 10, 15, 20 hours depending on what task they're working or if they're a camp or whatever have you. So it's not that the classes have been cut, it's the number of people who have the number of hour capacity in the budget to work. Does any of that make sense? But does that affect the ability to staff these centers fully? It does. So the staff that we have today, so we don't have as many part-time employees anymore. We've had to let some go. Um we've reduced the number of hours that some of those ex the ex the remaining part-time employees are able to work. So, some of those classes, if we've had to say instead of offering um a hypothetical example, if we were offering six classes on something, we're now maybe only able to offer four of those classes instead of the six. Um if we were doing um a class at one facility, we may have had to move it to another facility where the staffing has capacity to to host that program. So, we've had to make adjustments and have had to reduce some classes and some programs, the number of programs and also ensure that we have the appropriate number of staff available to safely um supervise and monitor and teach the um children who are in those classes. Standards are about 25 children per adult or for two adults. Um we were not doing that. We're right sizing that to make sure we're in compliance and to make sure that we're also safely uh supervising children at the same time. So, all of these things, we've been working on this process for about nine months now. Um, trying to get us right sized and back into compliance, back into the budget. It's incredibly difficult. Like you said, we have the most amazing staff at Northwest Optimus Performing Arts Center. Um, if you've ever had the chance to go to one of their performances, those children are immensely talented. It's just wonderful and heartwarming to see them really come into their own and participate in those classes. Um, but we also my job I cannot go over our budget. So that would get me into trouble with Mr. Freeman. So um, we want to make sure that we're being as good of stewards as we possibly can with the resources that we do have. Thanks. You're welcome. Well, and I think I'll just add, you know, you said the word fluff and I understand what you mean, but I also would not characterize any of the services that Parks and Wreck offers as fluff. Oh, no. No. Everything's essential. Everything's absolutely and and I think that again falls back to us that you you say the resources that you've been given that we I think as a council as need to like have a strategy to actually not just like sort of like maintain parks and park service but actually increase and expand it because as we've heard it is essential to young people's development. It is essential to community connections for folks who are older. Um, I personally have benefited from parks and wreck programs, but many of them are inaccessible to me because of the pl they are so scattered across the city and so difficult to access if you do not own a car. um that I'm not I'm not able to re like I every quarter probably I go online and I look like what program could I potentially participate in and the ones that I've been able to do in the past have dried up and um and again I know we had this conversation last year with Menace Lake View and McKenley Park that we do not have we just have not and it feels and I don't know maybe there is a strategic plan that you all have that's been unfortunately put on a shelf somewhere but like I feel like we need a strategic like path laid out for us of how we not just like sort of hold hold the line but actually increase and improve access. Um and and it feels like yeah every year we're sort of presented with like oh we got to shave here and shave there but you know again like an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure and that's for mental and physical health. It's for safety and well-being like it's just across the board. And so I guess this is just me taking the platform I have to say like we need to get you more resources because it is very frustrating to to hear these stories on a regular basis and recognize that also that's people that we're losing from the city infrastructure um that are providing really vital services and support to people um across the city. Um, so thank you for filling us in, but also um, you know, I I guess that's a charge city manager like h like to think about how we can actually like strategically, you know, whatever the goals are that we're trying to meet. Um, you know, think about how we like make these services more robust and not just sort of like try to stem the tide of of cuts. So, no, I appreciate that. And I think that strategically planning, I mean, that's a it's a whole citywide, you know, um, challenge that we all have from police and fire to public works to public parks. I mean, it's it's all of us were in this really difficult position. So, um, we are absolutely wanting to work as much as we can with our city management group and team to help create those plans for better long-term um, durability. Questions? Okay. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. I thought I'm Thank you and for your explanation. My understanding too is that there are some improvements we're proposing in the 2025 bond for Northwest Optimus. Would you speak on the good news before I go into my concerns? But please, for now, let's talk about what's coming to Northwest Optimus please. Yes. I'm very excited. Um, can I talk about the bond yet? I mean, my boss, it's still in the planning phases, so not everything is is definitely if it's not appropriate, it's not appropriate. I'll just go straight to what I want to say. She could talk about what they would like to do there and I think it's what we planned and I what I would expect that we would have there, but yeah, we're still in the planning phases. Okay. Thank you. Just wanted to make sure. Um, yes. So, in in Melinda's wonderful um world of perfect parks and recreation, um I would love to see at Northwest Optimist um the expansion and creation of an actual theater on the facility itself. So, the current building is a very tiny little building um and it is packed with more love and costumes. Well, costumes have gotten um put to the prop shop, but it's packed with programs and love and activities as you could possibly cram into one small little footprint of a building. But that building, the that community, those kids, the staff, they need an actual true theater on that facility. And so within Melinda's long-term wish list, I have um the desire to build a theater onto as an addition onto that facility that has the full kitten kaboodleoodle of, you know, lights and stage and actual seating for parents to come in and actually be comfortable seating. Um and uh that way the kids also as they are learning everything about stage production u and really a STEM program from engineering of lighting and sound uh video videography that they learn while they're putting on the stage productions as well as acting, singing and all sorts of um performing arts. I think it'd be cool, but we'll see. Um thanks for that. Yeah. Uh, Grace, thank you for speaking. As we just heard, the lights are bright, so I'm guessing that was um not maybe the most fun, but u you definitely shown your extrovert skills. um city manager first. It's dis it's disheartening to learn about this cut as a midyear cut that I do not remember as a council person ever learning about. I know that things happened in budgets throughout a year, you know, I across all the different departments. I do understand that. Um, I would implore us at the level of leadership, you know, when it's something like youth centers, um our children, that is, as you know, a priority for a council member like me. I'd love to be brought into those conversations as they're happening so that we can try and talk through them. And then the other thing I want to say um and I guess there are more residents to sign up to speak. I but I just the other thing I just keep hammering home up here as a former middle school teacher and as a college professor and as someone who watched the news with everyone last week with Midtown when Councilwoman Hammond says that an ounce of prevention goes so far much further. um the outcome of what we saw at the collective where someone got in a fight and shot someone that is someone not learning conflict resolution. And as I've mentioned up here at this horseshoe before, nowhere really in any K through2 school are there classes these days on conflict resolution. Kids, did y'all take one? Did you take a class where they taught you how not to fight? didn't think so and I'm so sorry about that. So, what we heard Grace describe when you get to act, dance, when you get to learn lighting, when you get to learn how to build sets, sew bead costumes, perform, that is a version of conflict resolution. You are taking all that negative energy that exists and you are rechaning it into Iago into a fellow into Lilo and Stitch. That's what's happening. And that's what happens when we invest upfront in our children where they have a place to go after school on the weekends during the summer breaks. And when I saw the news this weekend about the violence in Midtown, I also heard about the violence in Tulsa and the police officers expressed concern that as we head into the summer months, more crime will come to downtown Tulsa. That's because they don't have places for our youth to go. It is not and I this is not this is and I want to please hear me before I make this next sentence. is literally not a critique of you. But going back to that word fluff, it can't be fluff. It must be a priority that we are investing in the staff at Northwest Optimus in these upcoming youth centers that maps for rule build. It must be a priority that they have the caring adults there who can guide them into these different professions so they're not out there in dim streets. What can we do to help them? I I just don't know. I appreciate the my applause. I This is just This will go on. I saw someone wearing a Boys in the Hood shirt a couple weekends ago. That is 1992. Academy Award nominated film. Youngest director ever nominated. That film ends after all of its violence with the rapper Ice Cube in the movie saying, "Either they don't know or they don't show what's going on out there in the hood." 1992 I was 10 years old. This has been going on for at least that long of us not investing in these sorts of programs and the collective is the result of it and that's just one example. So what can we be doing to get these kids the staff that they need? Yeah, at this point it's not just parks, it's every single department. We've got less sales tax revenue. It's a reality that we're dealing with. It's trying to manage within the resources that we have to ensure that we're providing services. I think some of them even mentioned that we use volunteer programs. We bring others in the example of the youth centers working with Boys and Girls Club where they're actually a partner agency with us. It's trying to manage these resources and keep services still there. It's just reduced services in some areas. We're still providing services, a significant number of services. I don't recall the numbers from the presentation that that uh Melinda provided last at the last budget hearing of how many young people how many people are actually served through our park. So it is not eliminating the services altogether. It's just trying to balance with the resources that we have. So definitely we want to do this. I I want to have the strategic plans. I want to work forward. Staff works on this all the time. We have to make adjustments. In this case, it's actually making adjustments where services had expanded beyond the budget and trying to reel it back within what resources we have. Okay. One day, I hope I really hope that I hear what you're saying, but I hope one day you all understand up here that I I hear about the other budget cuts across the rest of the departments. I hope one day we understand that when we invest in our young people, they are more stable adults and they contribute to the sales tax and the use tax and that contributes to a more stable budget. I hope one day that message makes its way through. I just want you all to know I I I hear you. Thank you, Councilman Cooper. I think we all feel that way. Where would you take the money from? It's a great question, mayor. I think that what would be I really I I because I think it's a little offensive when you say like when you portray it as if all of us as you're the only one who believes in investing in our children. We all believe in investing in our children, but obviously we have to work within budget parameters. So, you know, make a proposal, tell where you would you move the money from. I would love I'm glad you mentioned that. I've mentioned before, mayor, and I'm sorry you took offense at it. Well, I am. I mean, I know I know that's not what I'm trying to do here. What I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to get us just as we stretch with the mental health alternative. I'm asking us to stretch and think a little bit differently about our approach to public safety. I would love and I don't know if I may I thought I've articulated this before, but forgive me if I haven't. Something I would absolutely love us to do is when it comes time to, you know, every February we have a budget workshop. Mostly what happens at those budget workshops is we as council receive information from the various departments. There's not like a workshopping where we all get to dig down into the budget. I'm not talking about budgets for our respective ws or anything like that. I'm talking about like a moment seriously where we would sit down and have like a participatory budget type conversation, you know, I I would I would happily take an afternoon of my time or a morning of my time where we actually get to sit down and dig down deep together in this to have community input uh at that earlier phase too. No, I I'm not being flippant. I'm I'm trying to be constructive. I would love to when I first heard that word workshop mayor I thought that's what was going to happen that we were going to sit down and we was going to be like a working type all right let's look at all this and dig down and learn a bit more about how each of these departments what their needs are I I would absolutely sign up from that I don't know that answer mayor because I've not had the parameters yet to to work with you all in that regard okay but I mean I think that uh I think it's very important for everybody and understand this budget is the city manager's proposal. This council has every right to amend that budget and we have until mid June as it is currently scheduled to do that. And so any member of this council can put in that time. They don't need the other seven or eight of us sitting there to do it. They can put in that time, come forward with an amendment and say, I propose to move this money from X, cancel this current service, and move it over here to Y. And you know, that's always available to you. And I just I I I think we all feel just as strongly as you do about these programs, but we only have the money that we have. And so, as the city manager said, we try to balance it as best we can. But also, he works for us and if we want to point him in a different direction, he'll gladly take that direction. But, but generally, you know, most of our budget is taken up by personnel. So, it tends to kind of just be what we did last year with some modifications, you know, because obviously it's not usually his intent or does he doesn't feel empowered to like start laying people off and move that money to somewhere else. So, but he can do whatever we tell him to do. So, I would encourage you if you feel strongly about this, but again, money doesn't grow on trees. So, you got to say where are you going to take it from if you're going to move it into a worthy endeavor like this? I would Well, I appreciate that laying out of a process. I think the cake is so baked by this point that there is no way any of these folk are going to move. That's why I'm suggesting mayor that what the pro part of the process you're describing. I'd love to see that happen back in February like dur like heading into that budget workshop. I would love for us to to start having much more hands-on conversations in those sorts of ways because I'm not I don't come from finance. I don't come from these backgrounds. And so I think actually taking time to teach us and help us all understand how all this works would be much it'd be very beneficial. And yes, but I'm saying a version of what you're suggesting, mayor, but earlier, but like heading into to February. Um, I know what's possible. I just don't have exactly the answers to do it and I know what the solutions are because they're literally staring us in the face out there. And I'm not trying to be rude. I'm really not. I'm just saying that when you say that um we all care in these ways. I know I I do. What I am saying is that 5 years ago before the mental health alternative became the reality is today that it is today. There were people who right here who could not wrap their heads around what the community was asking for, what I was asking for, and what that resolution was asking for. Thank God the council who was here at the time said, "But we're going to take a chance and we're going to figure it out." Um, so but you see what I mean? Like there there wasn't that we we we weren't there yet. And I think that might be where we are now when it comes to some of the services we could be providing our youth is that I think there needs to be a little bit more of a stretch of an imagination here. Okay. All right. Good discussion. We do still have some folks signed up to speak. Are we ready for that? Uh Wyatt Stark. Hi. So, city council people. Uh, [Music] I I lived up growing up through Northwest Optimus my entire life and I think it's the greatest uh place on earth. Um, and I think uh it's great people and a lot of great staff and it's the greatest thing on earth. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yes. Okay. Thanks. [Applause] Thank Craig Stark. Good morning, Mr. Mayor and Council. Uh, I am a parent of a student who just spoke. Um, my son Wyatt has been involved in the Optimus Club theater program for 12 years and obviously he's passionate about it as so many children are and I think in line with what council member Cooper has just uh talked about and I know all of you feel the same. We all care so much about our children in a digital age where we find our kids so distracted and disjointed from each other and possibly ourselves. um in a time when the development of empathy and care for others is so um desperately needed as others have talked about prior to my stepping up here. A program like what's offered in the theater and other classes at a uh parks and wreck facility like Northwest Optimus is essential. Obviously, you all know that any way in the world that there can be more funding to a program and programs like that, I think is the root of solving so many problems that we all care so much about and worry about. Um, as we watch the news, we wonder what is the solution? And I think the root of those that solution lies in things like this this program and others that the city supports and offers. Um, when I go into that theater, I feel like I've been transported um, probably to the 1970s where I grew up because kids are free to be themselves while being so well instructed in so many things that have been uh, talked about. Um, it's a pretty amazing thing. And when you walk in there as a parent or a child, you're immediately struck by how different the atmosphere is in that place. And I'm sure there are others like it as well in the city, but the director Toby Tobin and the wonderful staff that staff that facility and the volunteers like my son who now volunteers there after having spent 12 years participating. Um it's it's inspiring and at a time when many of us probably are looking something for something hopeful, it's it. So thank you very much. Thank you Don Williams. Don Williams. Hello. I am Dawn and these are my daughters that are coming up behind me. This is Elena and Nia. We've participated in the programs at Northwest Optimist since 2021. And I think you you really expressed the sentiment, Mr. Cooper with what you said. Um, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And as I sat and listened to the fire department in their presentation speaking on mental health services, this is what the arts helps to combat. It is a preventative measure and that our kids have access to creative outlets, to leadership, to um being involved in their community. It provides them the opportunity to do that. Um, I've seen so much growth and development in my girls and the time that they've spent there and from performance after performance. The things that they learn, the community that they build, um, and what they create there, they really cannot do. Northwest Optimus is just a special place in what they provide the opportunity for the children to do. If they have something unique skill, ability, or talent, they want to highlight it. They want to bring that out in them. And because they've been fortunate enough to have consistent staffing at the facility, the staff knows, they know me, they know my children. It's a personal relationship. There's not a turnover year after year. And so we really appreciate that about the place. And I would even say we started in 2021 and when we started there was Tuesday homeschool class. There are three homeschool programs now, each of them with about 45 children in them in addition to all of the the dance and music and acting programs that they've added over the years. So, the facility has seen tremendous growth in community use, but it has not been supported in the way that it needs to. So, these most recent budget cuts have been detrimental. Um, seeing their their favorite staff members, the ones who gave them outdoor instruction are not available when they need them. the ones who they turn to when they needed support. They're just not there when they need them anymore. And listening to my children say how they provide they they help them be themselves. They see so many different personalities reflected in the staff there. They feel free to be who they are. I would really encourage all to consider emergency funding. We're going into summer programs. More children are coming in to access the facility. We're coming up on our fall programs. The number of people coming into the facility is again going to increase. These cuts in our staff have lasting impacts and we have 30 seconds remaining major use coming up at our facility. We would really need those staff members back not only for safety. This facility is connected to a public park and a public tennis facility out back when our children are there. if the number of adults supervising these children has decreased then the security of their the facility has decreased as well. So if you would consider emergency funding for those positions and programs there for this summer and the fall that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Effinger. Yes. Good morning, council. My name is Sherman Effinger. My address is 2600 North Chartell Avenue. Uh, yes, I'm from Oklahoma City. Uh and anyway, I'm coming today to urge you to please review uh the well I understand the cuts are happening and that's a reality. So four four and a half% are happening as a cut to the embark uh and trans uh transportation and one and a half to uh was it like police funding or whatever. So anyway, later I'll save my proposals for later. But anyway, at this time I don't think I have to ask for too much in terms of modification from that. But with within the parameters of those uh proposed budget cuts, uh there was a posted uh route change for 24, which doesn't have as bad of uh a future as the 19 which is proposed to be axed altogether. There's a gut gutting happening uh to the 24 as you may already be well aware of uh or not. And so they are saying that 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. will be unaffected and the same with the rush hour of 4 to 7. And so these look good on paper, but I think they're a bit out of touch with uh the reality of working hours. uh especially when you look at the route which services the Oklahoma uh university health sciences center and it's already leaving Oklahoma first or Oklahoma City first and going to Norman to pick up students uh primarily international students who don't have access to cars uh you know so we have uh students will be at a loss workers will be also at a loss with their career opportunities to be able to uh you know flex uh their abilities to use the entire metro. Uh so anyway, I'm I'm currently using and relying on the 5:50 a.m. which is already outside of the proposed uh target rush hours. Uh and what I see is, you know, ample time to get there as we're leaving pretty early. If you slate it back farther, you're going to run into more uh logistical errors with uh traffic and people missing their timelines. So, you're doing a disservice by gutting it. Um, also I wanted to mention early to bed, early to rise helps make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. Also, uh, early bird catches the worm. So, these are truisms I feel like are important and core to, uh, what makes Oklahomaans great, uh, and certainly something I've tried to live by and I feel like with these proposed cuts, uh, and I see I have 30 seconds left. I'll try to make this brief. Um, you see what's happening with the downtown convention center. They had proposed that they were going to cut lights today and stop the street car and that's been postponed. I'm asking for a provision or postponing of the said uh you know um cuts that'll go into effect by July 11th or by by July 1st. Um, I think that there's still time to look into getting money and uh cutting other budget or other routes that are over served, namely the route 10 and route 18 that have two physical buses. Uh, thank you. Those are my proposals for how money could be resourced. Thank you. All right, that concludes citizens who signed to speak, which brings us to item five, adjournment, and we are adjourned.