Right. That's Microphone check. One, two. Microphone check. One, two, three, four. Microphone check. One, two. Which one's the TV's off? Or 85. That one says 908. Yeah, that one say it's Monday, I guess. What's up, Josh? Can I come up there and ask you a question? We Good morning. Hi that it was a stop and shop. They they did it in the northeast. The other thing I'm good you can control the slides here or or the arrow down or hopefully this is working but if not but yeah if you send it to me I'll I'll send it to it. I think selling liquor liquor on the sale is just bad news. Okay. It's just something I just present. What is the prime again? I don't I don't understand. No. Prime P R I N E. This is what you did. Okay. Let me go somewhere else. Thank you, Russian. Sam put membership on you at least that much. You said it was item one. Okay. Yes. That's great. Whatever they want. Hi, how are you? Are you sure? Were you able to set it? Okay. Yes. Hey [Music] Wait, Miss Brian, are you ready? Okay. All right. I don't USB. Okay, got it. You got it. Thank you. I just got it. Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay, Miss Bryan, are we ready? Yes, mayor. Okay. Well, good morning everyone. We're going to call our work session to order. Miss Prime. Yes, sir. Good morning. This is a work session of the El Paso City Council for Monday, June 23rd, 2025. It is 9:06 a.m. Mayor Johnson is present and presiding in council chambers along with Mayor Prom Chavez, Representative Asdo, Representative Alonado Rocha, Representative Orico, alternate mayor promo, representative Canales, Representative Nino is running a few minutes late today and representative Lemon will be joining virtually. Okay. Well, good morning everyone and welcome and uh glad to have everyone here. Hopefully everyone had a really good weekend and we're getting ready for the rain that's going to be coming which is going to be a nice treat for for El Paso. Representative Canales, would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance please? 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. Okay, Miss Bryan. Agenda item number one. Yes, sir. Item number one is presentation, discussion, and action by Weaver and Tid LLP on City of El Paso's internal audit current state maturity and needs assessment. Okay. Good morning. Good morning. Sorry, we're just working on one technical item and then we will get with you real quick. No worries. NIT is working on bringing that presentation up. We apologize for the delay. There were some updates made from the FOAC meeting based on some additional feedback that was obtained last week and so been working diligently to make those updates and want to make sure that they get uh put on here so we can go over those with y'all. So I apologize for that. Uh, no worries. And once that gets up, we will begin. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Prime, Representative Lemon is on Zoom. She is she is in team, sir, but I don't see her on camera. Okay. And she needs to be visible to be able to be counted for the meeting. Okay. So, I think she's working on on turning on the camera. Okay. Do we know how much longer this is going to be? Maybe go to item number two if this is going to take it said they're working on it, sir. It's just a large file, so it took a it's taking a minute to come through. Okay. Are you guys okay on time? Yes, sir. If we moved you to the next agenda item, we can do that. Okay. Thank you. You want to do that? Yeah. Let's take item number two. Okay. Apologize for the No worries. We'll get it loaded up for you. Item number two is a presentation and update on behalf of the humanitarian engagement action response team. Good morning. Good morning. How are you guys? Good. Just going to wait for it to bring up our presentation. So, thank you for uh letting us present to you today. This is definitely like a passion project for the leadership behind me. Um with us, you'll see you'll hear a little bit of the voices of the leads and the anchors of this cross functional team. This hasn't been easy, but it's surely a beginning to what's to come forth. So um you'll hear a little bit about um what we've been doing, the progress, and then a call to action of what we want to see next. So first off, we're going to kick it off with Commander Lopez, followed by Lieutenant Milner, and then we'll also hear from um Officer Machoto as well. Mayor Council, good morning. Good morning, commander. And thank you. Very excited about this process that we've been working on. Initially, we started looking at criminal trespass about two years ago. And it has evolved into the heart crossf functional team project that we've been working on to address unsheltered and unhoused individuals in El Paso. Sometimes the forgotten demographic. What we have done is we've gone from police enforcement only to providing services and resources at the front end before the police department is called in to assist with enforcement efforts. uh initially I'd say in November of last year when we started asking stakeholders and the cross functional team to start meeting we maybe had two or three representatives from outside entities or agencies join us that has evolved and as we go through the uh PowerPoint here I will explain the long hours the research the surveys our trip to Phoenix Arizona to see best practices on how they're doing their uh CARES project so ultimately what this came down to is I started reviewing data and I looked at the number of hours an officer or officers would take to deal with a criminal trespass whether at a Walmart, an encampment or illegal camping. And officers were spending close to eight hours dealing with this one individual or group of individuals. So, that's a lot of hours, uh, transportation, booking, booking costs. And, and what caught my attention immediately is these same individuals that were being booked into the county jail were being released almost immediately because it is a class C misdemeanor for criminal trespass. So, the officers or a second group of officers would get dispatched the following day to handle the same exact situation with these individuals. Now with the services that we have on the front end and with the support of the cross functional team and all the stakeholders, it it's phenomenal where we've come in the last six to seven months and with the support of our city leadership team and uh the executive and the chief of police uh and uh especi El Paso helps who have been phenomenal. This is our presentation. Next slide please. that. Okay. Agencies United. This is where we are as of today with city departments and outside health and social services and nonprofits which are a big player in this process. Initially, like I mentioned, we had two or three people showing up to our meetings. Now, we have a total of between 20 and 30 agencies and entities attending our bi-weekly or monthly meetings to address this unsheltered unhomeless uh situation that we have here in El Paso. And it really kicked off during the migrant surge from a couple years ago. All these entities come together. Uh we have tabletops, we have discussions, we have forums, we have feedback, and we we're trying to produce best practices. Initially, we took the lead as the El Paso Police Department because it was our initiative. But we passed that baton on to El Paso Helps. We realized immediately that we should be at the back end of this process when enforcement is absolutely necessary. At the front end should be the social services, the the resources that these folks may need. We we remain cognizant of the fact that a lot of these people will not be receptive to these services that are being provided. So we keep hitting them with these services whether it's housing, mental health, food, shelter, whatever the case may be. And we have identified this demographic is unsheltered, unhoused, veterans and people with disabilities. So, we incorporated that balloon of that demographic to provide these services that we're talking about. How we got here? Again, looking at what the police department was spending with resources and this cycle of continued calls for service for criminal trespass, we came up with our hearts program. It's we did notice citywide a rise in encampments, illegal encampments on private property. So by having our support system go out on the front end and meeting and dealing with this individual or individuals and providing them with the resources and the services they may be requiring. We have a multi- agency collaboration. Fire department has been huge with this. the nonprofits, El Paso helps has taken the lead. Again, as I mentioned, uh we were able to send a core group from the cross functional team to Phoenix, Arizona to see their CARES model to look at best practices and we brought those ideas back here to El Paso. The big thing here, and we'll go into the numbers in a little bit, is the city support for a 247 response, coordination, resource matching, and intake challenges. Quick story. We had a veteran in a wheelchair on the west side who was requesting assistance. After making multiple phone calls to different agencies, this veteran was finally provided services 18 hours later. We have reduced the contact time to 20 minutes. If an officer is dispatched to a person who is seeking services or resources, El Paso helps and that whole system that we have in place will have someone boots on the ground talking to this individual or individuals within 20 minutes. I think that's phenomenal what we've done cross agency coordination. Uh like Chief OIA says, we were hurting cats and it was very difficult at first, but we were able to corral everyone so that we could come up with the plan to address this demographic. The humanitarian CTF, a cross functional team, launched in November, actually launched in November of 2024. We have a pilot program on the west side that has been very successful. And what we want to do is implement this process citywide, departmentwide, and we look in the future to possibly incorporating this process with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office so that we can address county issues. Uh we activated El Paso Helps as a 247 response team outreach, which has been very positive. El Paso Helps responds within 20 minutes now instead of the 14, 16, or 18 hours that I mentioned earlier. a streamline outreach with one call intake model versus multiple phone calls to multiple agencies. Now, an officer gets to the scene, he's got one number, he reaches out, that phone is answered, and services or boots on the ground within 20 minutes. Early wins or quick wins, housing outcomes steadily increased. 40 were placed in April and May meetings. We activated a welcome center in the central area of uh the city and that's for intake and stabilization and it's identified as our 247 drop off location for our officers. The opport the opportunity center has been huge in our efforts with this initiative. They are in the process of adding 125 beds. They're expanding medical access through fire mobile integrated health. Again, the fire department has been phenomenal with this progress process. And the fire department MIH team is stationed for medical triage at this drop off center. And then I'll pass this on. No, it's fine. All right. So, like U Commander was saying, we've launched the welcome center as our stabilization site, right? This means that if an officer is on duty, for example, at 2:30 a.m., the welcome center is going to be Introduce yourself. Oh, sorry about that. Of excuse me, Denise Pulva with the communitydriven innovation office. So, um, coming back to the welcome center being our number one support, right? So, if an officer is out at 2:30 in the morning, a call is made to an individual that needs assistance, we automatically call El Paso helps through the pipeline. They're able to show up there within 20 minutes and be able to provide resources for this individual. And then what that helps us do is that that puts our officer back in. Excuse me. If you're in teams, please make sure your microphones are muted. Thank you. So, um, this helps an officer go back into duty, right? And then the the individuals provided services and they can go back to the welcome center to provide housing at that time. What this helps us do is that the welcome center now has three days to be able to place this individual, right? working with the nonprofits, what they do is like make sure that they get um you know put into a situation where they go to the women's shelter, they get provided housing, they get the documentation that they need, but this is our 247 drop off center, right? There is a banned list on many shelters. And so the welcome center will still take people that are banned, but they within they have 24 hours to place those other individuals with someone that can take them in. So that's the best part. And like they said, um like commander said, you know, they're uh expanding to 125 beds. that's going to allow us that medical triage capacity, but being able to have the MIH team on site. So, just to put it into perspective, the OC has about 90 calls monthly just to the opportunity center. That's a lot of like on-site support that they need. So, having them triaged there um is going to help with these costs as well. Something that we just recently launched is on May 13th we launched um on 311 app we have now an encampment resource button right that officers can use as constituents as well that helps us collect on-site data for the city that we didn't have before. So nonprofits do have their HMIS system but we don't always have access to it. This will help us identify heat maps where resources are needed and then how we can all support right and then now what we've asked is that they'll collect the details there and have them available for pictures right and any reports that's there but what it is working on and hopefully launching in the next month is that we ask for a second caveat that's going to ask for a mandatory question that's going to say is there an individual needing assistance such as food shelter medical support or veteran resources and if it's if they say yes then it automatically routes to the Apostle Helps medical team, right? And then they are able to provide that that quick service with their outreach services within 30 minutes. So, we want to see what that looks like as far as like launching a 311, but that's going to help us collectively know where we need to focus our efforts and what that looks like. Um, part of that too that launched last week is that we now have a script. So, not only do we have it online, but we also have it if you call 311 services, they're going to ask you, you know, the individual needing care, but if they do run this question there, this is already live. Well, it'll automatically route to El Paso Help's team. So that's awesome there. And then so what why does this help us right? Um I'll give an example of one of the officers recently. So coming to these meetings that um commander was talking about um it's like a full service case management system that we have. We're able to track the full life cycle of this individual who they are where they are what services are provided to them. So that's very important. But for us as a capacity of a city that helps us, for example, an officer had a situation where an individual was trespassed from Walmart, right? He had to he had to move him to a different site. They moved him across the street to be able to provide services. He called El Paso Helps. They were able to show up. But when we came to these meetings, the officer was like, "Where is this individual? I still want to find out what happened to him." So, he gave his name at the at the meetings that we had together, and they were able to say, "He got services here, here, and here." because everybody was able to tell them exactly what services he went through and where he was at now. So that was very important for us as having us case management. If we route this using El Paso helps, we'll be able to have that in uh information for us available directly where public safety can use it as well. So the whole data coordination is very important, right? Coming to these meetings with the nonprofits um is like I said that full life cycle case management we have. So we have real life tracking as far as like who these individuals are, who we need to put on the list, who we're identifying. Um PD and fire come to let us know these individuals need assistance. We identify what encampments we have found and we're able to give the locations, the types of individuals that are there. And this is where the outreach teams come out perfectly because they come together and say, I'll go in the morning, I'll go in the afternoon, I'll go on a Wednesday, I'll go on a Monday. So it's that fullline coordination that we have live when we're there. So again, monitoring their outcomes. what are they what services are they getting used? Um what where are they at housing wise? What assistance do they need? Now we're going to have the 311 app that's going to help us have that live data internally. And then again we launched it with the westside command center and we just got permission from the commanders uh and the chiefs uh two weeks ago to be able to launch it to another um regional command center. We're looking at either northeast or central depending on the capacity to be able to make sure that we extend the pilot there and see what that looks like. And the team is also exploring a GIS and SharePoint tool that will help PD be able to identify some of these centers um to be able to use that information for our nonprofits and be able to coordinate as well. As far as the pilot itself and the community impact that we've had since the pilot started there, the Westside Regional Commands uh community center community services department is a mighty team of four, right? So you'll see that we've had about 30 plus cases and this is data through May. I think last week we identified another 12 individuals. So it's definitely growing. But through May, we had 30 plus cases where an officer was on site and actually initiated a call to El Paso helps. From that we estimate about 64 60 individuals that have been housed, right, and placed into a service. And then having that rapid response prior to the pilot, it was over 18 hours to get response time or assistance for an individual. And this is where coming to these meetings, we understood that the nonprofits have to say, "We know you can't do it all. How do we say tag you're it and we can go ahead and you know pass the baton to somebody else. So using this umbrella of El Paso helps now helps us do that reduction of cost um of downtime for the outreach time. So they respond within 20 minutes improving that officer wait time and they can go back to service but then having a centralized system for the city of El Paso that we didn't have before. And then a little bit of cost avoadance for you. Um, so last year alone, the opportunity center had over 600 medical calls made, right? Out of those 600 calls, 250 of them went to UMC. So now, awesome. UMC came to the table and we asked UMC, how much does a regular visit, ER visit cost? And they said $5,000. Right? We asked the team, how much is a transportation route to get them to know, you know, an ER transportation? They said 2,000. So that's an average cost of $7,000 per person times the 250 cost 250 calls that went to UMC. That's $1.7 million of costs that we can definitely help avoid by having this medical triage of the MIH team there. So the MIH team has been fantastic to be there on site for medical triage providing the oncare support. If we're able to launch them there on site they're going to help us with wound care as well and then have the capacity to reduce these calls for those folks that are repeatedly doing that. But they're also helping with outreach um and drug prevention and overdose um overdosing uh education as well and providing Narcan. All of yours. Excuse me. There's a live mic again. Please make sure you're muted if you're in teams to reduce any um disturbance. So a little bit of the impact in the outreach, right? A little bit before and after so you can kind of have a visual. So before we started meeting with these individuals with these um nonprofits you could see the pilot they would h were housing about one to four individuals. That's only because the the partners are working siloed. They weren't talking to each other. So coming to these meetings led by these nonprofits really helped anchor like coming together having that full capacity of case management. Now after the pilot since we launched it you're seeing about 7 to 20 individuals being housed or placed or getting services every single meeting. That's bi-weekly. So 7 to 20 bi-weekly. That's awesome. And then, you know, before I was routed to multiple multiple agencies. So, I can tell you that when we did a lot of the outreach, we had to go beat and talking to these folks and individuals. Some of them said had a little paper that had like 12 to 14 numbers, very small print. Some of those numbers were outdated. And some of them were, I don't even know what to read, right? They couldn't even read the the contact on there. So through the El Paso helps coordination, we are able to launch one single card that has one QR code, one phone number, and then we'll give you a little bit of an example of these backpacks that we're also launching with them. So now they can have this backpack. They have one number to call directly. They don't have to worry about anything else. So it's streamlined through El Paso helps. And then prior to that, we had delayed handoffs right from officer to agency to figuring out where this individual was going to go. Now the response team is able to be showing up and then they're able to provide response uh resources depending on where the individual what type of help this individual needs and then the agency coordination again everybody working in silos right we weren't talking to each other and now everybody comes to these meetings and it's important to have the one shared mission and the all all the same goals so that's the conversation that's been happening bi-weekly at these meetings the medical intervention again going back into frequent ER trips for these individuals with the mah team now they're working on hospital coordinated discharge plan. So UMC has come to the table. We also have adult protective services come to the table as well. So that'll help us with these individuals for example that can't provide self-care, have to take medication or like they say, can they get up from the floor and up and they don't have that capacity. So adult protective services can help out as well. And so they're working on that plan. And then being able to have that real time shared data log. So using 311 consistently and then these meetings that we're having to have that case by case um management as far as that. Um this is a a quote that Mr. John Martin back here said at one of the meetings and it was you know just competitively you know what makes you the expert and he stood up and he said not one of us is an expert but collectively we're all experts. So, you've heard of it takes a village. This time, it takes a city. It takes all of us coming together, right? Putting our egos down and making sure that we provide and lead our resources first. And then I'll take I'll turn it over to Lieutenant and she'll ask she'll ask you a little something of what we have coming up next. Good morning. Good morning, Lieutenant Milner. I am the supervisor over the community services. I am so excited because what's next? as you can see everything that the team has done the history and so where we are today uh what's next what's next is our VA event and this is going to be a citywide event that is going to take place 3 days July 29th through the 31st and of course like Denise said this is a one team model uh during that event the veterans are reaching out to unhoused individuals um that are veterans however we said okay you know what let's partner with them. So, the nonprofits that they told you about and the various city agencies that have been working together, we will be going out with our VA partners and this will be for the three days. We'll be having two shifts per day and we're also looking to get volunteers and that website is open so that people can volunteer. Um volunteer training will be the week of July 23rd. that will be spearheaded by our VA partners just to ensure that each of us is on the same our goals align. We know the mission and also police and fire as well. We will assist with the training as far as a public safety aspect to it. So, so um those individuals that are not veterans, this is what is going to be part of the activation plan on-site support from UMC Alivani and Project Amastad Mobile Units. If they do accept resources, then we can transport them to the welcome center that Denise uh told you about. So, what's near and dear to my heart is those demographics that are that are especially hard to house is individuals with pets, individuals with companions, pet companions, so to speak. Well, we are partnering also with animal control with our animal uh control partners, and they're providing, as you can see, on-site pet accommodations, crates, food, vaccinations. Usually that's a deal breakaker for individuals who have animals. So that right there, you know, it's definitely something that is going to help us to reach out to them. Okay. Now, we do know that not everyone is going to be ready to accept um resources or anything long-term, but we don't want to forget about them. So, through our pilot program with the Westside Regional Command, Amastad through a grant has provided us these care packages. And the care package it is um it contains various food items, various personal hygiene items and most of all most of all what's important is Amastad has provided this um covered it's a it's a covered envelope and inside is a updated directory of any number that they can potentially need from mental health all the way to housing or anything like that. So, we're really excited about this and this provide. So, once the officers, first responders actually go onto the street and they see an individual who's in need, not willing to be transported. Then we collect basic information. What is your name? And then we write down the location where we found you. That way, we know the area that you frequent and we can follow up with you. So, we're really excited. This project is gaining momentum. It is going to be a 3-day citywide event. It's going to be a lot of work, but it is so worth it. And so, I'll bring in my partner, Officer Macho. He'll tell you a little bit about the logistics of the 3-day event and what that looks like. City Council, Mayor, Officer Murro, out of the Westside Regional Command, Community Services. So, how can we help with this initiative? How can we come together as a city and help? So, the VA reached out to the police department and asked if they could use the regional commands as their staging points for the 3-day event. So, on the first day, they will be using they'll be going to the areas of the Westside Regional Command and the Northeast, and they're going to use those regional command boundaries as the areas that they're going to go reach out and give the services. And on that day, they're going to use the west side and the northeast as staging areas. On the second day, it's going to be Pebble Hills and the Upper East. And Pebble Hills would be the staging area. And on the third day will be Mission Valley and Central Regional Command. Mission Valley being as the staging area. So, when I'm saying staging area, that's where they're going to use the community rooms as an area to go and meet with all the volunteers, all the teams, get a game plan, get some briefing on some safety before they set everyone out. After the event, they're going to come meet together at the regional commands, and then they're going to have a debrief. Each regional command is going to provide their PAR officers or their community service officers to provide safety and security during the event and go out and give information as to because they're the subject matter experts in their areas. They're going to tell them where they know of any areas where they're going to have encampments or people that need services. But the PAR officers will not be enforcing. They're there to provide safety and security for all the members and teams involved. Animal services will be on site to provide food or vaccinations for anybody that has pets and then they'll give the optional uh to spay and neuter the animals if need be. Fire department will be on scene, their MIH team to provide any medical services to anybody out on the field and we want to thank you for your time and and we'll answer any questions that you may have at this time. Wow. Incredible. Incredible. We have a few uh comments. Represent Trey Hall. And just to let you know, we do have all the anchors from our city departments here with us as well as nonprofits to answer any questions that you may have. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. This is really amazing work that you all are doing. Thank you so much for coming together to take care of our community. I do have some questions. Uh the El Paso help. So I see that it was launched in January of 2025. Yes. The that was the pilot. Yes, ma'am. The pilot. Okay. The and and it's in partnership with United Way. Yeah. Under the umbrella. So there u El Paso helps is funded through community development our department here. And so um United Way is part of the umbrella that works with them as well as EHN and we have some other and opportunity center, the welcome center. We have some other partners there as well. Okay. H how is this being funded? Um it's through it's through a grant to community development. I will see if there Oh, she there she is. Good morning everyone. Nicole Rodriguez with community human development. El Paso helps is funded through ARPA. Through ARPA and then there was a an extension of three-year services under home ARP. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Is there is there training involved for the employees on how to work with the unhoused? Is there any training that's provided for them? So, right now the nonprofits are leading that, right? They have their own outreach teams that they support and they train. Um, for this event particularly, the VA is going to help us anchor that training as well as the United Way. So, we just launched the portal this morning. It's going to be through volunteer El Paso. So, you you're going to see that event and all the details as far as what's to come and what they look forward to as far as like what's expected on the day of. So, for this training itself, they will lead that the week of July uh July 23rd. Okay. And that includes training for the volunteers as well. Yes, ma'am. It'll be training just for volunteers pretty much. Okay. What does that consist of? Uh, so right now it's going to be how they're going to collect data, what they should look forward, like what they should look for, um, precautions, and that's why PD and, uh, fire will be there as well to help. Um, but pretty much it's like how to approach an individual and, um, I'll make sure to provide the logistics of the regional commands, the United Way, uh, website for you guys, and then all the details, uh, to you as soon as we have them. Okay, let's see. Uh, and you said there's four employees in in the in the program for the Westside Regional Command. Yeah, they're right here. There's four mighty teams over there. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you all. But just imagine if we launched this region like citywide to all the regional commands, right? That's like a tiny little amount of number and it was a smaller pilot. So, we know that the Northeast and Central are big and so if we multiply those numbers, it's going to be huge across the city. Knowing that not everybody will accept the help, but knowing also that the outreach teams are committed to going back, right? So, they might accept help today, but they'll accept help in a month from now. So, that's the mission, right? Making sure that everybody gets assistance. Very good. Thank you. Thank you all again for all that you're doing. And Rep. Representative Leone, I see you on the uh teams and I will definitely call you. Okay. Uh, Representative Chavez, thank you, Mayor. Well, I think this is outstanding. I congratulate you for your efforts. Um, I have encountered several circumstances where my constituents have reached out to me specifically for district 1 in terms of, you know, dealing with with people that have been unhoused. Maybe they've they've set up some encampments in and around um district 1. And so I know that this is something that many people are concerned about not only for uh the safety of the people that are unhoused, you know, many times they do need specific help like like you mentioned uh medical needs, mental health needs, you know, all of that. Um, I've also seen, you know, and I and I mentioned it to briefly to Representative Canales over the weekend, um, many people that are walking around with shopping carts and several dogs in those shopping carts and of course we we thank them for for keeping those pets close to them um because there is a need in our community for, you know, for adoption and fostering, but you know, how can we help them care for those pets adequately, I think, is also something that is a concern of mine. So, I'm glad that you brought that up and that there is going to be something that's going to be proactively done so that we can support them better. How many volunteers are you looking for for that July 23rd date or July 29th? Sorry. Let's see. I'm going to bring John up, right? And we have I don't know if Kristen's here from the AVA as well, but we'll get him up here. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. My name is John Martin. I'm with the opportunity center for the homeless and the direct answer to your question is going to rely a lot on the heat maps that we are putting together which is in conjunction with the different regional commands in the police department. Right now we're anticipating that we will probably need 5 to 10 teams per day and so if you do the math that's between 20 and 40 volunteers per day per shift as we work through that. I don't know if you need me to expand on that question. Will 20 to 40 is it going to be um for specific areas of the city or citywide? Again, as it was mentioned previously, we are going to do this over a 3-day period and we're doing two of the geographic areas that are defined by the regional commands per day. Okay. Okay. And so it was done somewhat intentionally because we know areas such as the northeast which do have a heavier uh concentration of individuals such as the central regional command whereas when we look at those in the far east side we don't anticipate seeing those numbers but we want to be prepared for it either way. Okay. I mean I have someone specifically in mind already that could maybe spearhead that. and uh we met along with representative as so she's a constituent of district 1, has a business in district 2 and so that's why we we both met with her and that this is something that she wanted to to do. She wanted to form a task force in the community to spearhead this. So now I think if she um you know is introduced to you then this would be the perfect fit. be more than happy to have a conversation with her. And uh unless there's any other questions, I would like to encourage each of you to join us on one of those days, the 29th, the 30th, and the 31st as a volunteer so that you can get to know the constituents within your areas as well. Any further questions for me? Not at this time. I just want to um make sure that I vocalize my support and I will be there and I will uh contact you to see how else I can be of assistance that day. That' be fun. I do want to mention something uh real quickly. I was looking at some data just before I came into the meeting so I could update you at this point. Um as was mentioned previously, we're seeing a larger number of encampments throughout the city of El Paso at this point. This actually caught me by surprise. For example, the last six years have not been normal. If you look at COVID followed by the migrant influx, if you compare our numbers today just with the opportunity center for the homeless. Okay. So, I'm excluding the other partners at this point. 2019, we served 1,499 individuals. 2024, that number is over 300% higher. We are now at 5,094 unique individuals, and we're on track to be able to meet that same goal, unfortunately, for 2025. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that for those of us who have maybe traveled and seen, you know, the same concern in other cities, we definitely want to make sure that we stay at the front of this. Um, and I think this task force is doing just that. And so that's why I think it's so important that we support it. Thank you. I appreciate your efforts. Thank you. We're gonna go to Representative Canales and then represent Lemon. Thank you, Mayor. Um, John, cuz you were just up, I'll just start with you quickly. And no, you it's not a question for you to answer. I just I don't have many opportunities to thank you publicly. So, thank you for all the work you've been putting in uh not just on this. This is an incredible effort and and you know, I'll have other things to say about it as well, but just in District 8 generally and and the service for the entire city. I think uh you know you are the the first option for a lot of people and the only option for a lot of people and so it it makes a big difference what the opportunity center provides to to our community and uh I know you're always at the forefront of that. So thanks for that work and and then thank you to the rest of the team as well. I know this has been a huge undertaking. Um, I was in some of the early meetings that I think ended up kind of coalesing into this. Uh, and to be honest, it's it's grown uh bigger and better than I imagined it would. And so, uh, it's it's so good to see all of the different partners who again over the years like I've worked with separately on these issues all now pulling in the same direction uh to to provide these services together. it makes way more sense. You can contact somebody and have all of the information of everybody that they need all at the same time. Um the uh I I guess my my biggest concern here is how quickly can we scale this up citywide. Um I know you talked about potential expansion of the pilot to one additional command center. Yeah. And I'll let I want to I'll let the commander come in, but we did present barely uh two weeks ago to the commanders and the chiefs. We wanted to make sure that they were on point with this and they had any concerns and so they did address some things that we have to include into the pilot which we're already doing that now and just getting the approval to launch it with central or northeast is is within the next month so that we can get that going and again it's it's a whole different cycle of training right not leading with enforcement but leading with resources I know central is a big concern for a lot of the neighborhoods there but being able to provide resources right away and you know shifting that that approach with the teams that are out there as well as all the nonprofits to shift some of their efforts. We can get that done within the next month hopefully. Excellent. Yeah, I think it's been a complete success so far uh or as near as nearly complete as it could be and so I I'd be happy to see that roll out to the other command centers. Again, I understand it takes time and and uh additional training and everything, but uh I think that the faster we can do that, the better because uh like Representative Chavez said, uh the more we can be out ahead of this and be proactive, which I think is the whole goal of this program, I think the better outcomes we'll we'll continue to see for people. Um I wanted to give a special shout out as well to the uh MIH team at at the fire department. Oh yeah, they're they're back there, too. I didn't see them hiding. Uh, but I had a conversation with Chief Killings the other day about MIH and I know like they're it it's it's been transformative for uh what happens at the opportunity center and and elsewhere as well. I mean, they're doing an immense amount of work to really have that community health focus. So, they're preventing calls from happening as opposed to having to respond to to so many uh calls for service. Yes. And I think it'll make a difference for everybody else who needs ambulance service or medical service from the fire department. You know, this this is a way to reduce response times across the board, not just in this area. So, exponentially. Thank you to all of you. Uh I'm available to help with whatever you need. I'll definitely be attending. Uh and I don't know if we need to sign up for the volunteer training. We'll we'll get with you on that, but I'll send you the whatever whatever you need from me. I'm happy to be there because I think this is a really important effort. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Yep. Representative Lemon. Good morning, Mayor. I'm hoping you can hear me. Yes, we can hear you. Thank you, sir. This is certainly a new adventure for me um participating in the me meeting virtually but I did want to comment on and congratulate congratulate every single person that is on this team. Very early on Miguel Guerrero in our office was able to find out that there was no category for illegal encampments on the 311 app. This was shortly after we started using it and after meeting with Ivan Greece this was added to that particular window and so the illegal encampments came up to be part of the entire process. I am just incredibly amazed by how much work has been done by every single member of this team. And I can tell you to the leadership of the team and to every person that works that on July 31st, all three of us in my office will be volunteering and will be part of this volunteer training that will be taking place. Thank you very much and I really appreciate all the work that you have done. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Lemon. Representative Asavo. Thank you, Mayor. I We've had long conversations and I've been really annoying with you and um I appreciate all of this um packaged into this really nice presentation. This is really really important work. I'm really thankful for it. I have a few questions and and one of the things that I kind of wanted to dive into is you said that you've housed a few people. I think like 50 people if I remember correctly and so I I think at the root of this one of the major things that I see as this being an issue it's it's a housing problem, right? And so I think this is something we need to really focus in on. So what does housing look like under what you've been doing so far? Yeah. So I'll give you I'll let one of the team members uh chime in in a little bit. But for the pilot itself, we've housed about 60 individuals. That's just with the pilot um for the west side, right? That doesn't include all the efforts that the the nonprofits have done. That's exponentially. We're in the hundreds as far as that. Um but as far as housing, um I'll let John and Kristen chime in so that they can get that for you. Hi there. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Kristen Mitchell. So, I'm the acting manager for the homeless programs for the VA here in El Paso. So, you had a question about the housing. Yeah. What does housing look like? And in the presentation, it says that there were quite a few 60 individuals were housed. So, what does that look like? So, that would not be uh so that with the pilot program so on the west side. So, I'm with the VA, so I can speak to the VA and how we do the housing. Um, and I can tell you right now that we have about 370 active vouchers with veterans that have been placed into permanent housing. We have, I think, 12 to 14 more vouchers that we're going to be working on here in the next couple of weeks. So, hopefully we will have those filled shortly. And maybe we'll be going back to ask for more vouchers. But, it can be difficult here in El Paso. I won't lie. Um, there are some veterans that we work with that can be very difficult um, behavior- wise or substance abuse, things like that that make it challenging trying to get them into permanent housing and to get them more stable. So, I think that our veteran population is just kind of representative of the population at large. So, I think that that those continue to be issues that we we struggle with and that our landlords would struggle with. Okay. And I'm assuming the rest is opportunity center housing. Okay. Again, John Martin with the opportunity center. And again, when you talk about housing, um, I thank you for bringing that comment up. That is something that we as a community need to focus on going forward. And it's also one of the central tenants of the El Paso Helps initiative, which by the way was created back in August of 2022. And then we came into the pilot project that was indicated by Denise. But we have three funded partners which include ourselves and of course we provide the shelter component along with some housing. United Way of El Paso County was questioned earlier and you need to recognize the value of the work that they're doing because they're doing homeless prevention and in anticipation of the question just so you know to date they have housed 354 individuals which equates to 136 households. So that's an average family of about three as you sort of work with that. Amistad has provided access to shelter for 255 households and they've also provided housing for 223 households. Now it was mentioned in the presentation and I don't mean to correct Anise the 125 beds that we're adding the number is actually 165. But more importantly of those 165 beds 64 are permanent beds. So, we need to continue to look at that housing stock. It needs to be affordable because we're working with individuals that are aging and they have a very limited income. I don't know if you have any further questions. I think that explains it nicely. Thank you so much. Um I I guess Denise, I have more. But in terms of kind of working, I know the continuum of care is kind of in a rebuild phase at this point and you're working with nonprofits are their efforts to reduce any duplication of efforts that others are doing and then at the same time you're collecting data and you have heat maps. Yeah. And so how are you sharing that data to make your decisions? So we we work to the they are also part of they have a seat at the meetings that we have bi-weekly. So they they do come to those meetings and we do share um again information as far as we have an by name basis list that we kind of all go through every single meeting. So that's important to know. Um we work together with our crime analyst u Dr. Milo back here. He helps provide some of those heat maps as far as like what PD has and then the outreach teams we kind of over overlap those maps together as far as what they um you know encounter as well. The important part of these meetings it's like you know officer Machoto comes and he's like hey I have this past meeting we had about 10 individuals that we were able to identify that they needed assistance and it's just sharing the locations sharing their you know a little bit of their story from the officers and what they've found out and giving that to the nonprofit so that they can like tag your it and then they provide assistance to them and then we put them on our list and we're able to track them every two weeks when we meet. So, I mean, it's been growing a a small list that we had. Now, it's a couple pages, right? And so, these meetings start at 8 a.m. Before it was just like a 1-hour meeting. Now, we have three different types of meetings. We have an outreach meeting, we have a medical meeting, and then the local team itself as far as with community development as far as what the next steps are for funding. So, and now it's divided into three. So, we're definitely working quickly to leverage different u avenues for that. And and what role is the county doing right now? because I I see the $1.7 million at UMC and if there were efforts to mitigate that Yeah. with more I I think that's something we could really capture. Yeah. So, we just uh had part of their just uh justice division come to these meetings as well and then UMC just came forth within the last two meetings. So, that's where they're working really closely with the MIH team on working on a a hospital dis uh discharge plan and what that looks like. And then uh Captain Aranda has arranged a meeting. So, we'll meet with the rest of the hospitals on July 3rd and hopefully we can get them on the on the meetings as well so that we can start working on something total citywide. And and with the discharge portion that you're just talking about, how are we having that court-ordered ability access to medication for people that are unhoused with mental health needs? I'll let Captain Arand come back uh so you can talk about that as far as the that that portion. Good morning. Want to get that on the like the overse program for the pass fire department. I'm sorry. Can you repeat? Can you repeat the question with um we we were talking about the hospital discharge and I kind of wanted to further that um if there's court order c court ordered ability slash access to medication for people that are unhoused and have mental health needs. How are we addressing that? Correct. So we're working with the hospitals currently to create some sort of algorithm right uh to make sure that uh these individuals are getting the right care at the right place. So whether it be uh mental health issues uh housing, food um the issues that we were having is that um kind of like hospitals um a lot of these uh facilities can't take every person that's unhouse for different reasons um and it comes down to capabilities correct um some facilities may offer mental health some facilities may not offer uh accom accommodations for u individuals with pets. So um I guess it just depends on on the the individual themselves once they get discharged and where they fall into in the parameters. So is there something more with EHN that we could really uh we would uh we would uh send those uh individuals over to our our partners with EHN. Okay. The last thing I had, and thank you so much, is um when we're thinking about this, are we thinking about more permanent physical locations that that can help with this? Cuz I I feel like that might be more of a long-term goal, right? And you're doing a lot in the short term. So, what does that look like? And then the second part to that is, can you please come to the Northeast? Cuz I I think we're already doing some some work there with our big crossunctional team that we're doing. So this could integrate nicely and obviously I think this needs to go citywide but th this is where our constituents in district 2 are really um calling in and trying to find solutions for that. So that's why also saying that as far as long-term housing I think that' be a good question for Mr. for Mr. Martin and uh the AI team has been doing amazing work citywide. Um just at the opportunity center themselves we've been able to house individuals or place them in long-term uh rehab uh facilities. Uh we currently have three individuals completing a 90-day rehab uh program. Uh we've been able to house uh approximately uh 35 individuals. Um and these these are the high utilizer groups within the opportunity center. So uh whether it's rehab centers, long-term drug rehab centers, or actual housing, we've we've been uh able to uh accomplish that as well. Okay. Yeah. Denise, did you I I felt like No, I think your your county question uh John can answer that. Okay. Sorry, I thought I was finished, but this that specifically acknowledge the work that the county of El Paso is doing. As you know, they tend to focus on those individuals that are justice involved. And as a direct result, the county has recently made an investment of approximately 4 to 4.5 million. I don't recall uh the exact amount to basically create the infrastructure that's needed. Those that received the funds include the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, which is what's helping us to build the additional beds as we work through that. El Paso Alliance, also known as Recovery Alliance and the Rescue Mission of Al Paso. Uh the Rescue Mission of El Paso, to give you an example, is purchasing the lot across Lee from them and I believe they've already acquired it so that they too can have additional capacity. So you're seeing quite a bit of effort coming in from both the municipal as well as the county side of the fence. Okay, that sounds great. Thank you so much, Represent. Thank you, mayor. I appreciate it. And first congratulations. What a herculean uh effort this really is for all of you that are involved. And so I thank you so much for for just really being um so thoughtful in your approach. That was one of the first things that actually Rep. Canalis and I when we first met spoke about was the the homeless population or the unhoused population and how there needs to be some type of um outreach to help them from the city side. So, thank you all so much for your efforts. I just have a few questions, so bear with me. Are there any additional resources, policy changes, or any additional city support that would enhance these efforts that you all need? Let me refer to the community development team. Sure. Hello. Uh Nicole Rodriguez with community human development. I think when we talk about the supportive services that are around, we get our annual entitlement and we utilize those dollars. This particularly ESG funds for homelessness specifically. Um ARPA utilizing the ARPA dollars was our way of getting creative with our our limited funding sources to provide GAP services. These were all everything that you hear today were gaps in the system that we're filling. And so while we don't have bricks and mortar locations, we have a dream and we have uh we have the foundation to start working and then the partners that are willing to come to the table. Thank you so much, Nicole. And and so I know that uh Rep. Acadeo asked a question regarding the county piece and I know you're bringing in the El Paso Sheriff's Department as well. is is the justice of the peace. Are they involved at all? The JPS, do you all know? And and I only say this from this perspective. I had a situation where there was an encampment on a private property and um unfortunately the unhouse that were living there became um difficult for the tenants that were living in the surrounding I guess they were budding into that property. the JP helped to create that writ um kind of make sure that that we can get those like EPD would be able to go out and enforce the RIT at that point if if that's my understanding. So is there any um I guess assistance that the JP or even the drug court is there any collaboration with them at all? I know the JP has come to the meetings and so we identify some of those individuals that are there as far as getting assistance. Good. Um but that's as far as the conversations like all that case management that we have there. Okay. Thank you very much for that. And then the the other thing um let's see there's just a couple more questions. So overall it looks like you all had 42% if I and I did that based on the 600 right. You had 250 that went to UMC out of 600. I know it's over. So it's a minimum of the 42%. Are any of those repeat patients? Yes, ma'am. There are Do you have a a a number as to what those 250 are? Um, I'll ask Captain Aranda, but they the MI team is really proactive as far as like identifying those frequent callers, what they need assistance with, what type of services that they need, and really zoning in on how to help them there at the opportunity center or even like where they're at. So, the great part of the MIH team is that they go meet them where they're at. They go door to door to do the Narcan education as far as and they go meet with overdose overdose patients as well. So, um I don't know if you have an additional question for that. I just wanted to know basically, you know, out of the the 350 or the 250 that are getting helped, how many of those are repeat, right? Because that that that changes the number slightly even though it's, you know, it's the same person that's calling several times. And so, I'm concerned about those additional minimum 350 that are not getting the the the not necessarily the assistance. I know there's over 600, but I'm I'm more concerned about how you're closing the gap on that or is there a plan to close the gap on that? There is. And so I'll let Captain Ed on that talk to that one, but we have identified those folks. Thank you, Denise. I appreciate it. Captain Pasar Mih. So to answer your question, ma'am, we've uh here today we've uh identified 35 um high high uh 35 individuals that meet the high utilizer group criteria. So, these are individuals that have called 911 more than four times in a one-year period. Correct. Got it. Um, and u, a lot of these individuals are uh, not terminally ill or um, uh, they need obviously need medical services. Um, so out of those 35 individuals, we've been able to house um, a total of eight. Um, as I mentioned earlier, two of them two of them are in a 90-day rehab program and 19 of them have been are considered graduate. So that term graduate means that they they're no longer calling uh, 911 services. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you so much, sir. And then, um, is there follow-up to determine success long term? So, you know, you have some followup. You have you have this great program. It sounds like it's all in the short term piece of it, and you have some some that are housed permanently now, but is there is there something that's built in to to to measure that long-term success? I'll let John and the team chime in on that one. But I will say I will say these meetings are very important as far as like we're tracking that full case management, right? So even those individuals that have maybe even relapsed, right, because they go back into to drug use or something, all of that is being tracked during our list, right? We have that binding basis where they at, you know, they got released from housing, they're back on the street. So having putting them back on the list so we keep monitoring them is consistent during our meetings. So I think that's really important for the project. Thank you, Denise. I appreciate it. John Martin one more time with the opportunity center. You have an excellent question. Thank you, sir. In all honesty, when you look at the shared goals of the different partners that are involved, and the list is actually quite extensive, one housing. Yeah. And that is something that we do measure. Two, access to services. Okay. And three, increased income. Thank you. Now, increased income can be earned income through employment or it could be benefits uh that they deserve and need to be registered through. But I would like to remind everybody that this initiative, the El Paso helps initiative prior to the launch was launched out of CO. Um there were a few of us that stepped up because the social distancing requirement at that time cut our shelter capacity as a community in half, right? We created the Delta Welcome Center. Thus the welcome center. We just dropped the word Delta as we worked through that. And essentially what we created as a community was one front door to services. Whereas prior to that it was no wrong door. And there were several advantages to that. One, we had engagement upon arrival, which is what we do today. Two, we can enhance and exp and expedite engagement with our community providers. And three, we take a collaborative approach. We've gone through a very rough five to six years as a community, but the one blessing that I have seen that has come out of that past five to six years is the value of collaboration. Absolutely. And it is the one thing that I want to see move forward because as we indicated with our different partners, it doesn't matter who provides it as long as somebody provides it. And to answer the previous question, we don't need to duplicate services. We need to complement one another. Agreed. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. So then just Oh, go right ahead. I just wanted to update you on the police department side when it comes to the success of this program. Yes, we are going to monitor it. Great. I'd like to thank my senior crime analyst, Dr. Milo Varrial. I know we put a heavy lift on his shoulders to produce these heat maps, but we would be able on the PD side to track the number of calls for service, repeat calls for services, and services provided. with these heat maps. What we're going to do is we're going to share them with the uh team members so that we can schedule, you know, introduction days with these individuals at their place of residence, which is a unsheltered or a homeless camp. So, we would be on the on the police side be able to track how successful this program is. And once we launch it citywide, departmentwide, yes, they I I think the numbers are going to be phenomenal. So, we will be able to produce those numbers for you. It'll be data driven. That's music to my ears. Thank you so much. So then just one final thing. Um actually two final things. Is it the unhoused person that can call in or is it a community member that can call in for a concerned? It's both. Both. So that's really cool part of it. Right. So we have that one dedicated number through the El Paso helps and then uh they have a QR code too. So a lot of them have cell phones and then maybe they don't have a phone service but they have Wi-Fi. So the Wi-Fi can access the QR code which is really easy for them. And then again, any a constituent can report it in through the the app that we have launched now. And then the script is also available as of last Thursday. So if they call in and they identify any of those items that that they're there, it gets routed to El Paso Hopes. Wonderful. And then um I'd love to see the mission on here because I know it's it's so important to understand where where you all are starting from, what your goal is, but I' is there a website that's going to be available either on the city side or anywhere? Is there going to be anything visible to the community? I know that nonprofits are having conversations as far as building a strategic plan together and uh aligning a mission. So that is to come. That's a part of the second part of the scope. So more to come. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I know there's probably a need for some type of um not only volunteers but for donations if you're going out there. I know that's one of the concerns that the unhoused have. Uh, I know the VA does a a good job and I'm sure there's other agencies that do it that I don't know about that uh provide pet food when they go out and and go to these camps. So, if there's any type of donations or anything like that that are needed, I hope that you all will reach out to us to be able to reach out to our constituents until that website and everything that you need is built. Awesome. So, thank you all so much. Wonderful job. Thank you. Thank you on that one. for those three days. Just to reiterate, um we will have our animal services on site for those folks that are there and they'll be able to provide the medical vaccinations and food for them while they're at the welcome center. Um and then if you know we don't want to displace them, the animals are or their family. So we don't want to displace them from them. So the kennels will be there at the welcome center. And if they choose to get the option to spay and neuter, that's an option as well. And no charge. And I just like to mention that we do have the website al pasohelps.org. Shameless plug. um uh we can update the the website to include this information that we discussed today in terms of volunteer opportunities. Thank you. Thank you. Please Yeah. And congratulations guys on a very very good pilot program and everything that you've done and I mean everything from the medical intervention to the uh contact time in 20 minutes is is incredible. And I think you know John was still in some of my notes here. It's good to see the collaborative work that we have as a community and what you guys are doing. And I think, you know, our unsheltered, our unhoused, and our veterans, you know, deserve this and more. So, by you guys putting the time and putting this together, I'm going to make a prediction that u other cities will be coming here to see this model and seeing how they can implement this in their cities because this is truly truly something special for El Paso. But you've got a lot of uh districts here that want it in in their districts. So they're super excited to see it's working, you know, at the west side. They're going to want it rolled out into the northeast. This they're wanting it everywhere. So you did such a great job that everybody everybody wants it. Commander Mayor, now you're stealing my notes. I have received calls from other municipalities, other police departments, not only statewide, but regionwide, asking about our process and how they can mirror what we're doing in their cities. So, I think it's uh it's very positive. Yeah, that's because you guys are doing one heck of a job. And I'm going to read the the slide one more time that was presented where it says, "No one of us is an expert, but collectively we are all experts." So, I agree with that. And John, we're going to put your name at the bottom of that one. So, Very well done. And I'm going to ask my my colleagues here to join me in a round of applause because this is something. It's all for them. Thank you. And mayor, thank you guys. Miss Turner would like to speak on this item. Sure. Good morning, Miss Turner. Good morning, Mayor Council. I may be a little slow today. I'm fresh out of the ER. Uh, it's very difficult to impress me. You basically have to to climb Mount Everest barefoot and no oxygen. I am so seriously impressed. I am so damn proud of these people. Pardon my French. They have solved the problem that cities across the nation are facing. And not only that, you've made the bean counter in me a static. I now have more police officers on the street. It's just and you're taking care of treating people like people and not something that's disposable that you can throw away. So, you seriously have impressed me, folks. I'm so damn proud of you. Love it. Thank you, Mayor Miss Bryan. Yes sir. That we'll now return to item number one and this is presentation discussion and action by Weaver and Tidwell LLP on the city of El Paso's internal audit current state maturity and needs assessment. Good morning again. Good morning again. Well, thank you so much for y'all's patience this morning as we have our technology worked through. Uh it is it is my pleasure to be here today uh to present you all with the preliminary results of the internal audit current state maturity and needs assessment. Uh as you probably all know um that the initial results were uh presented last week to the FOAC and we had some really great feedback um some additional next steps that we have worked on. Uh we'll be able to walk through what those next steps were and what we were and were not able to accomplish before coming to you all today. So there was definitely some items that we were not able to completely clarify and we'll provide some of that in our procedure steps. And so, uh, just to reintroduce ourselves, uh, again, my name is Brandon Tannis. I'm the partner that was over the engagement, joined by my colleague, Holly Hart, who serves as the senior manager, uh, also supported by a great team. And what I want to say is our team uh, is not just an advisory consultative type team. We're also internal auditors. And so, we work in this field. We perform very much the same type of processes and procedures that here at the city of El Paso's internal audit group were heavily involved as volunteers within the IIA and also ALGA and other similar associations. And so as we took this approach uh it's not just what I would say is going to be a weaver's best practice. This is best practices that we see throughout the profession and we take pride in that profession uh with being heavily involved in those associations. And so today we're going to talk through what our approach and procedures were along with the maturity model and scale our preliminary summary of results and our kind of results overview. Um we will touch on the kind of highlevel aspects of that. Again there's appendices uh that have a lot of detail and so it would take us many many hours uh much like we did at the the FOAC to walk through all that. We are here to answer questions. Uh but definitely we will touch on the high notes. And so again on the engagement scope um what I want to clarify is our engagement really was to assess the current structure, the organization roles responsibilities and practices that were implemented within the city's internal audit department and coordinating activities really to determine are those reflect the best practices and have the tools, resources and capabilities to address the needs of the city. One thing that we wanted to clarify that we clarified at the FOAC meeting as well is is we looked at really not just the internal audit department but what's the internal audit function. The function is not just the chief auditor and the people but also what are those assurance and advisory services that work daytoday not just with council and the FOA but also city management and key stakeholders to make sure that we're addressing the key risk of the city while improving efficiency, effectiveness and maintaining an effective control structure. And so with that we assessed the scope then we utilized really a customized maturity model for the city of El Paso to benchmark the current practices. Now that was informed by a capab capability maturity model framework. Uh this framework has been well established in the internal audit profession and used in similar engagements to be able to assess and evaluate uh internal audit function maturity. And we're going to talk more about that model here in the next few slides. The next was multiple different bodies of standards. Uh we have the institute of uh internal auditors has the global audit standards which just became uh revised and live in January of this year and before was the international professional practices framework. And then we have our generally accepted government auditing standards or gagas yellowbook that you may have heard. Uh what is unique is the city of El Paso uh does their internal audit function goes by both standards. Uh sometimes this is referred to an orange shop because they go by red book which is the IIA standards and a yellow book from the gaga standards. So uh this is is unique. Other cities also do this along with the state of Texas internal audit shops. They are all orange book as well and follow two sets of standards. Um and then we also use the KOSO integrated risk management framework which is a worldrenowned framework for the management and controls. And so while El Paso's internal audit function has demonstrated really necessary alignment um and and with the you know all these standards that we evaluated and through those peer reviews and so again uh you know peer reviews are done of the internal audit department and to clarify that this was not a peer review. Um we did not go to see the minimum standards uh were followed for each one of those engagements. We looked at really our best practices, the collaboration, the coordination, how are we making sure we're addressing the strategic risk of the city and what is happening on the day-to-day also with the structure and roles and responsibilities that are in that function. And so with that focus on the current maturity level of the city's internal audit function and to provide a clear roadmap to provide both short and long-term improvement initiatives aligned with the leading internal audit best practices. And so with those we actually have seven separate procedures that were performed. Um this is not just a come in have some interviews talk to people and leave. Uh we did do a lot of those. Uh but there's also seven key areas. Uh the first was evaluation against standards. And so with those we evaluated the function with really there's five key elements uh that come into that maturity model. ethics, independence, professional judgment, governance over the internal audit function, management of the function, engagement level, planning and execution, communication, reporting and monitoring. And that has in beneath those five, you have 14 separate components and 55 different areas of criteria that were evaluated to look at what the current state of our standards were. We had stakeholder engagement and future state alignment. So, we had a lot of discussions with city management, of course, uh you Mr. mayor and the council members here, the chief audit executive and the internal audit managers along with other stakeholders about the roles, responsibilities, function and collaboration with the department and to establish what that target target maturity level aligned with future goals. We also did a peerreview analysis and benchmarking. to review the prior internal audit peerreview results, the supporting documentation to identify suffic sufficiency of those current practices and procedures against those two sets of standards and sought additional recommendations and best practices for internal audit optimization u from comparable peer audit functions. We also looked at workpapers, so work papers that make up audit reports. And so we looked at a sample of those files, including looking at the the processes for planning, analysis, review, and reporting to determine the level of support for each of those sampled reports. Also looked at the internal audits, policy, and procedures. And so how did those uh policy procedures, manuals, guides, and directives uh stack up? Do they have the necessary information to describe the roles, responsibilities, and how those are to be executed? And then also assess the risk assessment. So the risk assessment process informs the internal audit plan. And so we looked at a deep dive of how that methodology is developed, how it's executed, who's involved in that process, and how that is communicated for the internal audit plan. And then lastly, the internal audit charter review. So to clarify, there's two set two charters to not confuse that the city charter. There's also an internal audit charter, which is very common practices within internal audit functions. They have a charter that really defines the roles, responsibilities, and abilities that are there for that function. And so those procedures were the seven that we performed. I will add that we we did perform additional procedures after the FOAC meeting uh last week u with some of the feedback from Mr. Calderon and we were able to revisit some of the previous documentation that was provided. Um unfortunately uh with some kind of pres-scheduled uh trips I were not he was we were unable to meet and discuss with him uh at that time and so some largely there was no changes in our results but we have added clarifying remarks throughout this presentation to clarify some of those main points but in the sense of uh we were able to go through that documentation but we're unable to meet uh due to some out of office that was already uh planned on his side. So uh we're happy to also have further discussions. Again, this is the preliminary results. At our next steps at towards the end, we'll also talk about finalization. And so, the finalization of that report in July will also include some of those additional contexts as well. So, next we're going to talk about our current state maturity assessment. And I'm going to have Holly kind of talk through this model. Uh because really when we talk about how we assess and perform these procedures, we have a standardized assessment model that is being used. And so, I'll let Holly talk through that. Thanks Brandon. Again, Holly Hart with Weaver, senior manager uh on this engagement. So just to give you a little bit more understanding of the framework that we used for this analysis, the capability maturity model. We talked a little bit about this at the FOAC meeting uh last week, but this is a model that has been around for 30 plus years. It has been advanced through time to really help organizations assess where are they today, where do they want to be the in the future, and where can we close these gaps. first used at the federal government level by the department of defense. It has been used uh across the globe uh to assist organizations with with matters like this. And so uh these stages of maturity that we have on the screen here everywhere everything from initial, repeatable, defined, managed to optimizing these are maturity levels that again have been integrated within that model uh for a very long time. Over time, they've changed to really evolve with our environment, including, you know, advancements in technology, uh, just our evolving risk environment and provides a structured way to take a lot of qualitative information, a lot of interviews, a lot of heavy uh, you know, looking at evidence and documentation and finds a way to quantify that so that we can objectively evaluate where we are today and then hopefully summarize it back to you all so that you can understand where you are and where you uh are kind of headed in towards of um progress for the short term and for the long term. And so what we really found by evaluating the documentation by talking to stakeholders as Brandon mentioned, we uh met with the council, we met with the mayor, we met with executive management, uh we met with uh the internal audit department and established that absolutely we do have foundational practices in place for our internal audit function. Uh we do meet standards and requirements. We do have opportunities to improve however in the short and in the long term and that's really the focus of our discussion today is how can we move the needle and how can we really improve our function going forward. Uh we established that again we are we're meeting our standards. We have some foundational consistency to be um really moving towards consistency on an enterprisewide level which is in the defined stage. We have some work to do. So that means we are currently in repeatable uh level of maturity requirements driven uh we we especially within the internal audit department uh those guys know what they're doing right they know what their processes are they know what their procedures are uh it's well established and uh within the department itself uh we did see that consistency it's the enterprisewide standardization that we are really looking to achieve especially in in in the long run and so uh another thing that Brandon mentioned that I want to emphasize here is the importance of understanding understanding that internal audit is not a department. It is again a function and I know that we've said that repeatedly but it is so important to understand the crosscoordination and collaboration that's really needed for an effective internal audit function. So that's everybody at the horseshoe. That's the executive management, the director level process owners and the management team. Uh as well as you know all the all the all the good folks in the internal audit department and the hard work that they do. And so uh those are all the coordinating activities that really come together uh that we we really like to see these activities working together um functionally to really see an effective internal audit function for the organization. This is just another way to frame uh where we are and where we would like to be. Uh again we indicated earlier that we were in the level two repeatable stage which really indicates you know we are meeting our requirements. Uh we got foundational practices in place where we would like to see our our our um our function move in the short term is starting to really approach into that level three defined area. Uh and then in the long longer term to target moving into managed which means we are more performance driven. We're more metrics defined. Uh we have um very clear feedback channels and coordination activities. Uh a really clear alignment and continuous feedback loops with our strategic uh objectives and goals and the evolving risk environment of the organization. Uh you might be asking yourselves well how do we know that we want to be here in the short term and how do we know where we want to be in the long term really that came from us diving into the conversations with you all. If you recall uh you know executive management included as well as uh Mr. in his office. Uh we asked a lot of questions about not only what's going on today, but where would you like to see yourselves improve? Where do you see opportunities? Uh what's working well and what's not working well? Uh and that's all internally as well as externally. And so all of those conversations really showed us as well as the fact that you guys even hired a firm like us to come in and do this type of assessment. We can see that you really are reaching to be in that defined area. Enterprisewide standardization. and the fact that we're even here. Uh some of the uh things that we also derived from conversations with you all especially regarding the desire to advance audit methodologies and practices really incorporate best practice technology and data v visualization and really using our data to uh inform where we're going uh and where we're headed. uh things like that really saw a a desire to start to creep into that managed phase which is why we see uh that uh in the long term level four seems about right for the city of El Paso. I will comment uh you see we haven't really talked about level five optimizing. Not that there aren't a few areas where of course the city would want to reach for the stars and and really operate in in in that area. uh we do have resource constraints and it's not always you know throwing everything at the wall and and you know um you know directing unnecessary resources if if that's not really what today the need of the city is and so there are very few organizations that really aspire to be at this level five optimi optimizing across the board not to say that there's not some areas that the city of El Paso would want to reach towards that um you know really incorporating continuous ous feedback, continuous moni monitoring and just more um you know just natural feedback loops and consistency throughout the city um as well as with external stakeholders. And so we know that there's areas where we can reach for the stars there. Uh but to be optimizing at every single 55 criteria elements that we looked at probably isn't, you know, where we really want to focus our time and our resources. Um and again as we do move through these levels of maturity it's important to consider you know the cost the complexity um and just the sheer lift of implementing some of these advanced business practices. And so uh that's kind of in a nutshell what we what we mean by our maturity model. Brandon's going to dive in a little bit deeper into what each of these levels really mean definitionally. Uh he's really good at running through that quickly so I turned that over to him. So in our previous slide deck this was all on one but definitely with the modifications so it's on two. So we have here really you'll see a stairst step design and we talk about maturity scales uh much like what Holly was mentioning on initial so ad hoc and you'll see things like no formal charter undefined certification inconsistent non-risisk based planning no QA process. So that is really a very immature environment that's usually sometimes brand new. it hasn't had time to set up and things like that. And then you start building on that. So each one of these kind of stair steps is so when you move to the next level such as repeatable, this one you have a charter that's approved, it's alignment with the audit standards, staff have minimal required certifications, uh there could be some inconsistent advocacy, uh engagement goals and performance tracking exist. Um there's some standard templates that are being used and some advanced uh audit methodologies. And then when you get to the defined, so where we're kind of striving in our next steps, enterprisewide standardization. So you have the charter including the internal audits role is endorsed and supported by the board and senior management, a structured ethics program, structured and consistent communication. Uh the internal audit strategy and riskbased plan is aligned with the city's goals, formalized engagement expectations, and so forth. So as you see, as you move up the scale, you have more and more what we call maturity in the function itself. Much like in manage uh it does the same thing. So manage you get to a higher level. The internal charter is aligned with the city's risk appetite and the strategic goals. Uh independence and confidentiality are embedded in the governance structure. We have periodic and ongoing collaboration across the board and management. Uh and performance metrics align with the organization's direction and so forth. And again optimizing is one of those continuous improvement. This is that shooting to the stars uh which rarely we see being being able to be performed by most internal audit shops which is okay you know but it gives us that stretch goal sometimes if you think where are those stretch goals that we would like to be in some of those areas you'll see continuous improvement uh and public interest drive ethical culture framework preserves and champions independence being internal audit being a critical pillar of organizational governance and so forth. So this kind of scale or stair step really kind of shows you how do you get from one to the other which takes some of that not just that qualitative assessment but that quantitative and kind of being able to assess where we're at. So those are really the scales and again when we talked about the different components and the 55 criteria this is how that looks and so you'll see there's three elements here and on the next page there's there's two more and then underneath that is the components. So for example in ethics, independence and professional judgment. You see there's ethics, integrity, internal audit professionalism, structural independence and objectivity. And then there's specific criteria under each one of those components that were assessed as part of this engagement. And so each one of these had a deep dive uh which incorporates the two sets of standards, both the IIA standards and the Gagas yellowbook standards. And so you'll see that here continued with those final components and elements and that criteria. So again, each one of these uh was um you know assessed in detail and really kind of comes together when we present next our summary of results of how did we come up with that? Well, each one of these criteria and areas and components and elements kind of make up where those recommendations come into place. So there is a framework and a methodology that was used. It's not just us coming in saying, "Well, we believe this is best practice based on our experience." This is actually embedded into a methodology framework. And so I'm going to turn it back over to Holly who's going to do a high level summary preliminary of results. Again, we're going to talk through the preliminary results. There's a lot more detail and feedback uh that is in the appendices here, but I'll turn it to Holly. Thanks Brandon. uh to to reframe again, we indicated earlier in that repeatable level with progress moving into defined uh in order to really boil all of these uh assessments that we did in these 55 criteria. I mean, if we kind of came at you with the all the detailed results, you'd probably your head would probably spin a little bit right now. So, we boiled it down into six core themes that we want to present to you today. Uh we we discussed these at the FOA. uh and we're excited to get some additional feedback on these uh at you know today and moving forward. The first one is really and by the way we we didn't just you know 1 2 3 4 5 six you know out of just kind of pulling a you know numbers out of a hat one through six the way that we've um presented these on the slides is intentional. Um it's not as if one is more important than the other. it's more that there was uh some some core themes were a little louder than others I guess is is the proper way to put it. And so the first theme to discuss today with you is stakeholder engagement, communication and collaboration. Um I I really I know that we were supposed to go first but coming in here second was actually really ideal. There was a lot of discussion about collaboration at an operational level with the good work that your team is doing um on the heart initiative. Uh the same thing goes here. We it's it's again functional across the board uh cross-coordinating activities. The focus really is on in effective engagement and collaboration. Uh you know the internal audit function and the role is really to be seen as that trusted collaborative adviser as well as an assurance provider giving you uh you all as well as city management comfort that our risk mitigation mitigation strategies are either working or need improvement. Uh so the internal audit department and the function wears a lot of hats. In order to make sure that these things occur across the board effectively, we need continuous stakeholder engagement. Uh really where we found opportunities to improve here is of course all you all at the horseshoe. Uh but also at the executive management and director level of management. Um you know the the good work that the internal audit team is doing. there's very considerable communication um and work with the process owners themselves. The folks that are actually carrying out the work where we saw some opportunities to strengthen engagement is going to be at the level of management where there's a a lot more authority for to to make actionable change. uh we did see that there was not as clear um uh documented evidence to indicate that that was occurring consistently. Not that it's not occurring at all, but the consistency of that um you know occurring uh would be really great to ensure uh that we remain aligned um particularly when it comes to our roles, what is our responsibilities uh in these different audit activities, the expectations and of course feedback throughout the audit life cycle. Um, one of the things that I like to say that is true within yellowbook is that planning is a continuous process. We don't stop planning and draw a hard line and then move into fieldwork and never look back. Uh, in order for continuous planning to occur, of course, we have to stop our planning procedures at some point and move on. But in order for that continuous planning to to occur, that requires continuous feedback and not just from the process owners, but from the management team that is responsible and accountable for executing on that function and that process that's being audited um in an effective way. Another thing that we discussed at the FOAC meeting uh the other day was that you know feedback is great, engagement is great, but timely feedback is is really the key. uh you know not just you know even before the audit engagement has started that timely feedback really does start at the risk assessment and audit planning level. it occurs annually and uh we do know that there is stakeholder engagement and that collaboration does occur again opportunities to increase that collaborative effort uh to really ensure that there's a mutual understanding on what are we going to be looking at how is that aligned with the risks of the city our strategic objectives and what are what questions are we really trying to answer within our audit engagements what risks are we really uh interested in in in evaluating and there was definitely some opportunities to improve the timely feedback uh to incorporate that into our audit planning process as well. And so that is the uh there's a lot more we could say here on stakeholder engagement, but that's definitely the the summary level version on that core theme. The second theme, another one that is it's very near and dear to my heart, strategic alignment of audit outcomes. the the really the cornerstone of effective internal audit is alignment with the strategic objectives of the organization. You guys I have poured over your strategic plan. I know that you guys have let's see eight goals and 54 different initiatives under each of those goals in all different departments which are carried on through your budget resourcing and allocation. your strategy, your strategic objectives and goals really do uh affect the way we reallocate resources, how we prioritize that should really trickle down into our internal audit function and what we address with our limited resources of the function. And so what we saw here was really an opportunity to strengthen the alignment of not just what we're looking at from an audit perspective, but what are we looking at within that engagement? you know, whenever we say we're going to do, you know, an audit, you know, of the police department, you know, within the police department or um not to pick on anybody, but they were just here, so they're on my mind. Um what are we actually going to be looking at when we go in there? You know, um can we do we know what questions we're really trying to answer? What risks have we already preliminarily identified that we can speak to? Have we considered what the chief and what you know the lieutenants and everyone else that is involved uh would say about the risks that we've identified? Uh where are additional value um ads that we can have and all of that really comes from again because management's focused on carrying out and executing a strategy and so are you guys at the horseshoe. And so really uh more strengthening of alignment of the engagement outcome uh you know the engagement objectives as well as the outcomes with strategic goals and key risks is is fundamental to an effective internal audit function and also driving measurable improvement. Um it's a wonderful thing when internal audit can come in here and say yes we know that we have measurable improvement in these strategic objectives of the city or no here's the risks that we are facing of not meeting our goals and our strategy for these reasons and we have a cause effect relationships that we've identified you know uh best case scenario we've used you know the the city's complex data to help tell the story um and and provide context around that but it's a really beautiful thing whenever internal audit can come in and say where Are we uh missing the ball on on what we set out to do as a city and what we've promised the stakeholders of the city? Uh let's see if I have anything to add here. Another thing to to uh for consideration too, where we see performance information and really holding the internal audit function accountable to this core theme does come in on uh ensuring that we've got performance information that's being provided throughout the year. Uh this can look like, you know, of course we know how many audits we've completed. we know uh what percentage of our resources have been allocated towards audit work itself. Those are really great that's really great performance information. What would be really great is additional performance information to say like for example how many of our recommendations have actually you know been agreed to by management. Is that 50%, is that 75%? Is that 100%? When they agreed to those recommendations, what was that call to action that management promised? uh the internal audit group does follow-up audits so we know when they're implemented. It'd be great to know, you know, from a performance perspective, you know, how did we affect change? And really, that's through those recommendations that are presented in your audit reports. Recommendations that have sufficient detail to show uh, you know, not be prescriptive, but hold not only uh provide, you know, the action needed, but also to mitigate a risk or to ensure effective and efficient operation, uh, but to hold management accountable to what they said they would do. And so definitely some opportunity there from a performance measurement standpoint to strengthen that feed again feedback goes back to communication uh throughout the year that would uh would really move the needle as well in this core theme. Core theme number three performance measurement and accountability. This differs from what I was talking about before in terms of performance information in that here we are really establishing a more structured approach for evaluating performance of staff and it leadership and re and more importantly how are we evaluating the performance of the function in its mission its call to action ensuring alignment with the city's goals and objectives and of course standards. So we we do know that the function itself hasn't had an evaluation. I know that the at the FOIC meeting we've discussed this. We are working on a performance evaluation process. So we are already making strides towards improvement in this area. Um and so this is not lost on anyone um in the room. So again, you know, it's not that internal audit staff don't have performance evaluations. They do have performance evaluations. What we would like to see in terms of internal audit staff evaluation is additional um incorporation of some of the work that they've achieved during the year. There are so many feedback mechanisms that Mr. Calderon and his team uh obtain throughout the year. They've got end of audit client feedback. They've got wonderful mechanisms in place to get some of that feedback. Where we saw a little bit lacking, a little bit of a disconnect is how that gets incorporated into performance evaluation. Um not that they don't discuss it, just something we couldn't see throughout the documented evidence. And so uh again really that goes back to strengthening the competency for collaboration for stakeholder engagement uh for you know how did our audit results really ensure that we remain aligned with strategic objectives. Those are things that could be further incorporated into performance evaluation uh which would be really helpful. And again not that that performance evaluation process isn't occurring. There is a lot of accountability on the internal audit staff currently. Again, opportunities for improvement and we all we all liked to improve. I'll move on to the next three core themes. Again, we're going to have opportunities for questions later. We can revisit any of these. The fourth one, transparency of procedures. This is a fun one as well. Um, one of the things that we noted when we discussed the internal audit function with the the council, with the mayor, with executive management, with the internal audit department, there's definitely some opportunities to ensure that there is increased visibility and understanding and transparency of exactly h how internal audit is executing on its mission. Um, there was a demonstration that some of that is not as well understood as it as it could be. That just means that you know internal audit at the end of the day while you know we're we're insurance provider we're a trusted adviser and a lot of times the hat that we wear is being a teacher helping folks to understand what is our process why do we do things the way that we do what is our riskbased approach to establishing what engagements we're going to perform and what our objectives within those engagements are going to be. uh a better awareness, more understanding if those objectives do change, if there's something that needs requires some agility within that audit engagement process and the life cycle, what are the procedures and how will management know? What does the executive team are they going to be, you know, called in for additional feedback? Again, not saying that's not occurring. What are the procedures though and how do how can we give management and executive management some comfort that you know if there are some uh you know agility needed within the audit work that we can be responsive to that and we can gain their feedback and clarity as well. Um and then again here what again try wanting to emphasize that the internal audit department is highly competent. You've got master's degrees, you've got certifications, certified internal auditors, you got a CPA on on deck, you've got uh government financial managers, government risk management, you've got a lot of highly qualified personnel within your department. Um, and when you really dig into the audit workpapers and the evidence, we see that the uh evaluation of the audit evidence is definitely um, you know, well established. It's it's it's well we can we can definitely see you know the purpose of each of their of their um engagement procedures and how that carries throughout the audit results and conclusion. Um again definitely some additional opportunity to ensure that how we are translating the procedures that were performed into the final results is well understood by management. And so again, that's not to say that we don't have these great procedures in place, just some opportunity to ensure that uh they're well understood. Um, another area which Brandon's going to touch on a little bit later is regarding the hotline procedures. Uh, we did see some opportunity as well to help city uh especially the employees understand what some of those hotline procedures are. They know that there's a hotline. They know what it's there for. Uh there's definitely some opportunity to ensure that the procedures for actual escalation. How do I know that whenever I call in something's going to be escalated? What's the decision-making point there? Um what are the possible avenues for escalation of those investigations if they are deemed to move forward? Uh what are conflict of interest protocols? What are anti- retaliation and whistleblower type uh protections that employees have? I'm sure they may be there. I just couldn't really see. It's not as clear through the evidence that those procedures are are well defined and not only well defined but well understood by by the more importantly the employees both and and then also those external um stakeholders that would like to utilize that function. Item five, uh, technology and resource enablement. Definitely an opportunity to modernize, modernize our audit execution through more effective use of technology. Right now, we have paperbased processes uh, and procedures that could really benefit from working more in ter within a digital format. So yes, we have sharepoints where we store information and data. we have um you know cloud capabilities to ensure that the raw files the evidence themselves doesn't doesn't get lost. However, the work the quality control the actual tick marking uh the the execution of the analysis is largely done with on paper. uh you know my team came out here uh whenever we asked for the audit working papers getting those workp papers electronically wasn't going to be sufficient because they themselves did not stand alone because they're on paper. The quality control the evidence uh evaluation itself is all on paper and so we came out and you know made copies of those which we're happy to do. Uh but right there you know definitely some uh opportunities to expand on how we can do that digitally. You guys have SharePoint, you guys have tools already that enable you to modernize some of this. We can create workflows within the system evidence quality control as well as routing of communication. Uh we can certainly use Adobe and other tools to perform and really uh evidence our audit analysis which is again is another fundamental thing about internal audit is the analysis the actual you know hard work that the internal audit function does. It has to be documented. I like, you know, we like to say if it if it's not documented, it didn't happen, right? And so, um, working within the system is is going to be really beneficial for this team. Uh, you know, and those are short-term uh, solutions. In the long term, we can consider additional audit working paper suites of software that are available. As the internal audit function matures and evolves, maybe even grows a little bit, something like a software solution would be would be really good. That's a very forwardlooking uh long-term possibility given resources that could be allocated for that. Uh but definitely we can still make some some progress today working digitally within the system. Um as well as you know we want to be sure that right now our paper the files is are greatly organized that you can tell that the team has really uh developed very consistent foundational ways and practices of establishing standardized way of documenting their paper files. They're currently stored in cabinets which are accessible but again anything could happen you know to a to a office or a building and then we would lose all that great audit work. We would still have the raw files and we could certainly probably go back and figure out what happened with an audit engagement would take some time but the hard work that's being done right now in paper format would be lost. Lastly strengthening public trust and visibility. Uh we know that um you know the city of El Paso is very engaged. They want an internal audit function that they understand that they understand what are the inner workings. What are those coordinating activities? How is my city working together, not in silos, to really move and make progress, make actionable progress on what they've promised they're going to do for us with our resources and really clarifying and positioning internal audit as both that assurance provider and trusted adviser that works uh in the city within the city. It's in the plays in the same sandbox as everybody else. We're working together. Uh we need all hands. Um I can't remember that quote. We're we're not individually experts, but together we are. I love that because I just felt like that was just so uh relevant for the discussion today and again for the um for for the public to see that that's occurring and also understand and understand the and and can visibly see the objective independence that the internal audit functions um and be able to balance that that's that's a heavy lift right I mean balancing tr transparency as well as confidentiality of information is not easy uh and so understanding How are we going to do that? Uh we have to be sure that we're communicating with external stakeholders what's going on within the function and how we are being held accountable to to actionable progress. Uh but also ensuring that we're keeping what you know the information that um could potentially harm the city as well confidentiality. Uh you know the internal audit function has policies that they don't discuss findings outside of the internal department and to their public. There's a reason for that. you know, we have to make sure that things remain confidential until they're finalized. And so there's reasons for those types of protections. And so again, all of this is really uh good to know, but for um the public and for both internal and external stakeholders to understand these expectations, it's also very important for continued trust and visibility of the internal audit function. All right, so I'll run through this. We've already talked about a lot of the undefined elements in these areas. Just to summarize some of the action points in each of these areas which we've already discussed so I won't go too too much more in depth because again you can you can certainly ask us additional questions in these areas and there's more detail in the appendices and there will be even more detail if you can imagine in the final report. Uh and so the first one stakeholder engagement, communication and collaboration uh we discussed some of the need for clarity around roles and responsibilities. uh consistent stakeholder engagement ensuring that those feedback loops are everpresent and working effectively. Uh a lot of uh what we can do is certainly establish clear comm communication guidelines help stakeholders understand what is their responsibility, what is your responsibility, the who, the what, the when, the why. Structured feedback mechanisms that include, you know, the follow-up procedures that ensure accountability. Um, and we're not only talking about followup within follow-up audit. We're also talking about followup within the audit life cycle. Executive management is constantly kept aware of where we are in our audit process and what are some of the results that we're going to need validation from them. An important part of our procedures is validating that what we understand uh to be true is is true. you know, um we see the evidence, we understand, you know, what we we think we know, but Brandon and I both know that we're always going back to the table to our uh our audites and and asking for additional validation that what we understood is there additional context that we need to really understand the risk environment or the mitigation strategy. And this also helps to ensure that our recommendations are actionable and well understood as well before we even get to the exit conference itself. strategic alignment of audit outcomes. Again, another one that uh this is this is where I I love to play with strategy and and how that all works together and comes together. Um opportunity to see some additional alignment in our audit planning process in our objectives, making sure that aligns and is well understood with what we are here to accomplish as a city and our strategic goals and objectives. Um some some action points here establishing a consistent methodology to align the audit plan with strategic initiatives in key risk areas. Um some areas that we saw additionally improvement is for the consideration the direct consideration of oper operational effectiveness and efficiency within the risk assessment the annual risk assessment process as well as what are some technology risks as well. And so um you guys have nine different currently risk categories and your uh risk assessment. Uh a lot of those categories are are great to understand. Definitely some some additions that we could recommend in terms of ensuring that operational effectiveness and efficiency is very clearly uh being considered within that and how that aligns with the operations and the strategies that we're seeking to achieve and goals and objectives within the city. Um some of the things that are you know again we're going to need coordination high coordination with council and management to establish some agreed upon um mechanisms for that feedback you know for those reporting the not only within the audit life cycle but in the reporting process itself um I mean I communication is just it's three-dimensional it's occurring continuously we got communication and engagement during our risk assessment and audit planning process it's continuing to trickle down through what we decided we're going to actually look at for the annual uh for the annual audit plan when we say hey management we're ready to start this engagement feedback mechanisms and loops are in place uh and well understood and um I think you know that that really also addresses some of well why can't you know is executive management actually engaged does management really understand the importance of why we're doing this engagement um for internal audit to maintain their competence that this is occurring. Again, structured approach. Management already knows that they're going to be there. Management already knows they're going to be at the entrance. Executive management already knows that they're going to be at the exit conference. Executive management knows that they're going to be at the horseshoe. You know, able to answer questions while reports are being presented. That's a structured expectation that we have set um for our internal audit function. Performance measurement and accountability. uh really developing and implementing a performance evaluation system that's um not only best practice but aligned with standards to evaluate your function. Uh we already see movement here. Some additional considerations uh performance criteria within the evaluations to uh consider some of that that wonderful feedback that's being collected throughout the year for individual staff auditor performance as well as how are we incorporating things like ethics related objectives. That's a new audit standard for this new global audit standards release is that we are incorporating ethics related objectives uh within our audits and how are we evaluating our team on those ethics related objectives and how did that actually carry through our audit engagement itself. Um okay moving forward transparency of procedures. Uh this really is just again communication. And I and I I don't want to sound like a broken record, but you know, this is really ensuring that everyone um across coordination across all the different uh activities and functions that really define an effective internal audit u function. Those communication protocols are well understood. They solicit involvement. Uh structured engagement and educational resources are delivered on an ongoing basis. Again I mentioned earlier that a lot of times you know internal audit does wear a lot of hats. One of them being a function that is ever um charged with ensuring understanding and teaching. Uh there's a reason why all these folks are highly credentialed and have a lot of wonderful education. They do have the technical competencies to help. And so understanding how that works and of course we talked about hotline procedures that's included in this core theme as well. And again, Brandon's going to cover that a little bit more. Technology and resource enablement. Uh again, we've already identified some action points here in the short on the short in the short term. Better utilizing the resources that we have, especially uh converting manual and paper processes, including those for quality control and analysis of the audit evidence itself into a more digital format. And in the long term thinking about do we need additional audit workpaper tools for um proper security retention availability uh organization you know the the bigger an or function gets the more advanced organization methods and uh tools that are needed and a lot of the um you know software suites that are available also have some really powerful data analytics tools. Currently the internal audit team does have those data analytics capabilities. Uh it's really nice when it's integrated into our audit software though. It's uh it's makes a more seamless transition from that really robust data analysis into actually reporting that and how that's used to compel action from management and then strengthening public trust and visibility. Um again this is really just about clarifying internal audit role uh making it more visible to the public. Right now internal audits website does have a lot of really useful information on it. Uh something that we could do here is really identify are there some additional things that we could include, you know, where is management on implementation of recommendations. Uh a lot of the more defined and managed audit organizations have dashboards on their on their websites that show a little bit more about where management is in adopting and and implementing these recommend the recommendations that are provided. Um, and so that would help the public know where things are and balance the need for uh transparency. Um, but also in, you know, we've already done the hard work to ensure management understands what their call to action is. And with that, I'll turn it over to Brandon. Thank you, Holly. And I know we we threw a lot of of highle detailed results at you, so we will have time for questions. Uh, but I think what's important to to also kind of regroup on those and think about all these key themes are very related. And so when you start fixing some of those areas for improvement to really get you to move that needle to that next level of maturity, you will see how all those kind of come together. And again, there's a common theme, the collaboration and communication and having that function itself to operate to meets the objectives of the city. And so uh we also say a common you know saying is internal audit needs to remain an independent and objective function but we still live in the house of the city manager right and and and so that you can't be at alone and kind of doing your thing it is a continual coordination and collaboration function while also remaining independent and objective and we'll talk about that a little bit here in the three lines model in a second and so one of the things that we've talked about quite a bit is the hotline practices and so you do have a hotline here at the city uh that is managed by the internal audit department uh which you know does have those concerns that go to uh the chief auditor who is assessing those uh and really some of the current information available for employees on how to use that is dispersed across multiple sources. So there is a lot that is out there being communicated on the use of that. Um however there is some of those that are uh you know feedback loops almost like what Holly was saying that do not adequately detail you know what is the expected resolution timelines what are some the conflict of interest protections and anti- retaliation some of those are very crucial too when you want to use those hotlines or report those is am I going to hear something back what is how long does it take uh and definitely someone that has managed hotlines uh for a number of years those are things you commonly get like hey I reported this I never heard back setting some of those expectations so people one feel like Yes, it has been submitted. We are hearing you and we are looking into it. Uh also the communicating the performance and operations of the those results uh to the oversight bodies including uh the FOAC uh does not consistently present information pertinent to effective governance of that program to ensure accountability. So you know this also includes how we're reporting that. So having you know realizing that a lot of this information that's being reported is also very sensitive and so we have to make sure that we provide enough detail to the FOA and the board of yes we are getting calls uh but these are also the types of instances you know trying to protect those that are submitting those until they can go through due process. And then the internal audit department hotline policies and procedures manual that we did evaluate um you know did have some key elements that we would like to see which are more some of the best practices including provisions for periodic independent review of our effectiveness of that hotline program. also defined anti-retaliation controls such as the definitions for retaliation and training and then provisions for independent or secondary review mechanisms and governance oversight to ensure accountability and fairness of the investigations because currently the CE is the sole responsible for receiving reports and determining whether they should be escalated um and and evaluated or closed and the determination of when and how those incident reports are escalated is not detailed to ensure consistency. That also ensures that uh there is a kind of panel that is looking at those to determine one is this something that can be substantiated and what is the mechanism that includes a lot of times collaboration with the legal council uh that also can include city management internal uh HR and so forth when those kind of incidents comes up and so as you see we talked about those elements that we did not see defined uh where we could be formalized more of the governance and oversight roles detailed and transparent procedures It communicated all the users and again established program performance reporting. And so having these in place uh and enhancing existing guidance would be very beneficial uh not just for the employees but also for citizens to see that fraud, waste and abuse programs are taken again very seriously and evaluated and how do we ensure that that's also communicated uh to our key stakeholders and within the city. And lastly here is we also performed an analysis of the internal audit charter. So much like we talked about in the beginning uh you have a city charter but that is different than an internal audit charter. So the internal audit charter uh really kind of sets with the roles, responsibilities and expectations. This is a common document uh used by most all internal audit uh shops which is baked into the different levels of criteria we talked about the IIA standards, gaga standards, KOSO framework. Um and we did identify that the mandatory provisions that you're supposed to see in a charter are there. And so those are seven elements including the mission and purpose, authoritative uh and responsibilities, independence and objectivity, access to records, compliance with standards, alignment with current organizational structure and charter process uh proposal process and approval. So some of the future state recommendations again is to establish a review procedure uh to update that charter and define basis and collaboration with the governance stakeholders including the FOAC when that should be looked at re-evaluated and approved on an annual basis in many cases to reassure that that's the expectations of the internal audit function. um consideration of greater clarity for uh internal audits purpose, authority, role and responsibilities within the city uh which should be defined within the charter and again oversight responsibilities as well including review of the CAE's performance and expense uh and should be included to support transparency and accountability. uh also would mention that with the new global internal audit standards, there's also expectations that go back to the governance bodies. And so there's more uh reliance now to have an engaged um FOAC, for example, in this case or audit committee that should be involved in the performance and assessment. And so it puts a lot more kind of responsibility and accountability that should be there on that oversight body. and then establishing a communication channel to ensure the final and approved charter is understood by all key stakeholders to reinforce internal audits governance role. This is important to ensure one internal audit continues to main access to all records uh and the ability to evaluate all processes here at the city not just financial or something like that. And so it's important to sure that that is known by all especially when you go into a sensitive area and it's kind of like well what is your rights to come and look at this area. So it's great to have a charter that's not just updated but also communicated and available so that that can be shown as well. And last time when we talked about really what when we talk about a governance model and what that looks like and so uh in the internal audit world there there's something called the three lines model uh and that here is you'll see the depiction uh and in that you have really three main bodies your governing body which in this case would be the FOAC uh you have management which is your first line management, second line management and internal audit. And so what I like about this model, which used to be called the three lines of defense model, and they removed the defense name of that part of that name a few years ago, uh mainly because defense sounded like we had barriers up and that we couldn't communicate and collaborate with. And so the Institute of Internal Auditors definitely was reassessing and and working with this model to say really this is a three lines model that has to have collaboration and coordination across all bodies. And it's not just we have a kind of barrier or a wall that says we can't do that. And I like the up and down arrow. So when you see the up arrow that's an accountability or reporting in this case management internal audit to the governing body and then you have down arrows which are your delegation, your direction, resources and oversight. And then my favorite is the sideways arrows which were the alignment, communication, coordination and collaboration to example for management internal audit to work well together. they have to communicate and collaborate and understand that how you know when we have an audit on our audit plan does it address the risk as of today in our city. uh what are the questions like Holly mentioned you know what are those questions that we want to answer that either come from this governing body or they're coming from management executive management to say we have questions we want to know how this program is operating and then defining that within our audit plan and again that constant communication and work because again management um is going to perform management functions and not internal audit. So internal audit has to remain independent and objective and not performing management function or making management decisions that includes the adoption of controls or resolutions things like that internal audit is there to work with management to identify solutions uh to help them move forward in that process. And so on our our last slide before we get to our kind of questions uh Holly's going to kind of walk through what internal audit strategic alignment uh can look like for you all. Yeah. And and we don't need to go too in depth. This was just a slide that I threw in. I I know that, you know, strategic alignment can be a little tricky. The internal audit department does have a strategy. It is required by new global audit standards to develop a strategy for how it's going to meet its mission. The uh requirement is also that that strategy align with the city's strategic plan. And so the way that we really think about this is through a few avenues. We of course uh the audit function understands what is the actual audit risk universe. I can't remember exactly how many I think it was eight different components that the risk assessment breaks out your city um at the department level not so much the process or functional level uh but that is currently how we have defined our risk universe. We have our city strategic plan and even within you know the this the strategic plan and the budget documents that I could evaluate. You know each department is kept accountable for what they are going to be doing with those resources by identifying which goal and specifically what are the actions under those goals that they are going to be held accountable for uh in terms of helping the city achieve strate strategic strategic objectives. And of course uh while the internal audit department lives within goal six quite a bit you know in ensuring transparency in ensuring uh you know sound financial management and stewardship. There are again um eight goals and 54 additional strategic uh priorities that are included in that strategic plan in which we would like to see consideration of how that is um or we would like to see how that's considered within that risk assessment and audit planning process. Uh again, audit results in intel. This is where your qualified um internal audit department is using the intelligence that has been gained through their audit results to also inform the the risk assessment process and of course of course stakeholder discussion. Uh we know that there is discussion taking place with council members. It's not quite as clear how that is executed through executive management. Not that it's not occurring. It's not quite as clear and well documented for us. And so how um you know is how are is management and council really being engaged uh timely to help inform what we're looking at uh in terms of our audit plan? And you know really a lot of times that's accomplished by not just presenting the risk assessment results but kind of saying hey just a casual conversation what what makes you lose sleep at night. You know what are some things that you're concerned about? you know, not necessarily ranking which audits we should do on the current, you know, um, uh, draft plan, but getting more insights into maybe things that audit hasn't considered. Uh, and so all of these things really go back into how we develop our annual audit plan. That includes audit selection. And when I say defined scope and objectives, I'm not saying that we have nailed down exactly everything we're going to look at within an audit engagement, but we have some preliminary idea of what those scopes and objectives are going to be, what risks they're going to address, do we know what strategic objectives or goals that they're going to possibly affect? All those things could be really um more clearly defined in that audit plan uh along with those risk considerations and strategic focus. And again, this is a two-way street. uh that arrow between the plan and the strategy is going both ways for a reason. Uh it's a continuous cycle, right? We are constantly taking uh not just on an annual basis but throughout the year re results and performance feedback uh being agile to our evolving risk environment and incorporating and uh that into how we execute our strategy for uh the internal audit function in the city. Thank you Holly. And so before we go open to questions, we'll just go through the kind of next steps here. And so again, today was a preliminary results. We had those preliminary discussions last week with the FOAC and then come to the council today uh to talk about that along with some of the additional clarifications which I think Holly did a great job of providing some of that. Uh again, we were not able to to meet with the the chief auditor to talk through some of that documentation. So, uh, we added clarifying remarks, but we were unable to really, you know, there was nothing removed, uh, that changed from the FOAC meeting, but we did add some clarifying areas based on the support and what we were able to assess. And so, uh, from that, uh, we will be kind of getting your feedback here today, answering any questions, making sure any updates, uh, working with this chief auditor as needed, uh, to make sure those clarifying remarks are accurate and an accurate reflection of the current environment, and then come back and have the final report here in July of 20 in the next month. And so, uh, we'll be able to provide that, um, in a date once that gets set. So, from there, um, I'll open it up to questions. Uh but then again definitely want to thank um all the the city stakeholders including the internal audit department uh that helped us with this engagement to get through. We asked a lot of questions. We got a lot of great feedback and appreciate that collaborative nature that was there. And so uh as we come to the table of you know where are those best practices to get this city to where it wants to be and I think we we were able to achieve that with these results today. So I will open it up for questions. Thank you. All righty. Thank you for the uh presentation and we're going to go to representative Roachcha and represent Lemon will come to you after Rocha. Thank you so much mayor. I appreciate it. Thank you all again and nice to see you in person over instead of over a video. So I it's really it's really great to see you. So the first question that I'll start actually is for Miss Mack. U Miss Mack has has the city ever had an audit of this nature with the internal audit department? Not that I'm aware of. I know we've often talked about the third party review and I think that's been a standard for us for many years. Thank you so much. I just wanted to make sure that that we asked that question and answered in in public forum. And then um secondly, I know that when we spoke during FOA last week, a a lot of the timelines and goals for getting from repeatable to defined could really potentially on the shorter term goals be done within three to six months if that's correct I remember correctly. And then the longer term goals within two years roughly. Is that correct? I just want to make sure. No, that is correct. And so it's it I know it was it was difficult. We got the question just to repeat from the FOAC of you know how long do these things take and and it really I know I don't like the answer that it depends. Uh but a lot of some of these are resource needs and some things that you know when we talk about technology if you want to implement a new audit software that has to be budgeted. Um some of these things could be more immediate the more collaboration on audit objectives and you know there are certain things that take or having the internal audit you know approved and and updated performance evaluation started some of those things could be done within a shorter term so less than six months but yes some of those could take up to two years depending uh getting to those maturity levels that are defined you know just takes time and that's natural um and so it's really what do we want to prioritize our resources and what is the prioritization of this governing body as well to help direct uh for internal audit Thank you so much. And so I just have two questions. Um first, are there any areas obviously preliminarily that the city may be exposed to significant risk due to current audit practices or even lack of support? That's a great question. And so when we think about are you exposed to significant risk, I think the the internal audit department is doing a risk assessment and they're assess and they're obtaining feedback to be able to perform audits according to that risk. Um but sometimes it's the things you don't see and so I always think also say kind of pipeline risk or horizon risk and it's how plugged in are we to this body also executive management of you know how are we taking that risk assessment and you know risk assessment should also be a living kind of breathing document. um when we when we see those kind of being done, it's yes, we do an annual risk assessment or you do a risk assessment that lasts for two to three years and then you want to do an update refresh and sometimes that refresh needs to happen quarterly because risk moves very quickly and so I think you take a snapshot of a point in time of what risk is but you have to constantly look at that and so that is something we didn't see that's something that's happening but it's something that definitely making sure that are we re-evaluating and assessing because sometimes you have may have something on your audit plan. Uh, and I think this is important for the board and FOC to realize. Sometimes you're like, this was on the audit plan, but we have new risks that have have arisen and we need to adjust that audit plan to meet the strategic risks that are happening at the city because risk travels very fast. Uh, and they can happen quickly and so we need to be able to be flexible. So, I don't think I see right now where we're not addressing a risk, but it's something that what are the the processes and procedures we have in place today to be able to see when those are coming and be able to address and adjust our audit plans to be able to do that quickly. Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate it. And Holly can add just to add one more thing. Um, you know, Brandon really touched on some of the opportunity cost of of really, you know, not ensuring that we have an aligned strategy, internal a lot of strategy with the broader goals and objectives of the city. Uh, another thing here is, uh, we didn't really touch a lot on reputational risk, but understanding that there are people watching. The city of El Paso for good reason is um you know an evolving environment, a complex environment and um you know the folks that are uh relying on this objective function to really be looking at what are the things that are the most um you know from a risk standpoint evolving and and really have an a high impact and a high velocity that could you know really affect the city uh you know today and maybe even you know tomorrow. as well as just comfort that um we're staying focused on the right things in the throughout the long term. And so I think there's also a reputational element of that of ensuring public trust and visibility. That's why that's a core theme. And so if we're if we're uh making strides towards uh really positioning internal audit function to be that trusted advisor, collaborative, but also objective, independent, again, no small feat. Um but uh that's really needed to have an effective function. and the that's the risk is ineffectiveness of the internal audit function. That's actually a great segue to my last question. How does the governance structure uh for the internal audit here in El Paso compared to any similarsized cities that you all have have uh worked with? No, that's great. And I would tell you the organization structure that you have right now where your chief audit and the audit function reports to really the FOA and the board is common best practice. Um, and so kind of that comment I said earlier, it's you you need to be an independent objective body and the best way to do that is to report directly to the FOAC or the audit committee and through also council, but you are also still living in city management's house. and so common even when I was you know in internal audit before you know working in internal audit shops before being at the firm um you know there was always the yes I'm I report to the governing body but I have to work really closely with executive management because they're the ones running the daily operations you know we're always kind of coming in and looking at their operations it can be disruptive and so you have to not just coordinate and collaborate but also make sure do we understand what's going on in the risk or if we do this audit is it going to be meaningful does it provide action and really give positive, you know, reinforcement to what we're trying to do here. So the structure itself is is what is common. And so I will say that and and is best practice of how you already have it structured. Thank you so much, Brandon. Appreciate you all. Represent Lemon. Thank you, mayor. Thank you very much. Brandon and Holly, thank you for your presentation today. It has really been an eyeopener for me. it has really um cleared up some of the the concerns or the issues especially in highlighting risk factors that may be out there. Um it certainly points us in the right direction and hopefully we will continue to move in that direction. Thank you very much. Thank you mayor. You got it. Represent. Thank you mayor. Um it's good to see you again. I I just um really have been looking over this over the the past week since we first had this presented to us on Tuesday and and overall I I think it's a it's a very fair report. I've been working or I guess I've been overseeing audit now for almost 6 years. Um the year and a half that I've been here and then the four and a half that I used to be at the school district. And and one thing that I continue to see from auditors is that there's always that notion of how can I improve? Please let me know. I I want to improve and I think overall that's kind of what we are seeing here and it's like in the blood of auditors. It's like this weird thing but and and I appreciate that and that that's why I love um working with the internal audit function. I wanted to ask you specifically right now about the internal audit charter. I I see a lot of lowhanging fruit and the short-term goals as us internal audit charter to really update it and use that as a starting point. And I kind of wanted to ask if you think I'm on the right track in that sense. I I completely agree, Representative. So to me, the internal audit charter really sets the foundation for internal audit. And so, not just does it establish the roles responsibility, but what they're allowed to look at. I mean, I've seen internal audit charters that say you're only allowed to go look at financial processes. I'm like, no, we got to clear that up. Like, we are here to look at all processes and also define the roles and responsibilities of things like the hotline. What is our reporting structure to the FOA and and really sets the expectation. I think you know in our professional opinion definitely the charter itself sets that bedrock of the foundation and from there you having that updated then it kind of guides you to the future. Okay. And and one of the things that this is where it's so complicated in the audit world where you have the internal audit charter and one person might think oh well that's what the policies and procedures are but that's not necessarily it right because on top of that you also have policies and procedures. So I as we're starting to implement a lot of this, I really want to have the help and recommendations on the best practices on what goes in the charter and what goes in the policies and procedures. For example, I I think that the city manager plays a role in in working through administratively with the internal audit function. So, I see the city manager playing a role in the charter, but then the city attorney, I I think there's more of a consultation that is not necessarily something that I would put in the charter, but maybe I would put that in the policies and procedures, right? And in that sense, where it could be something like, well, uh, the internal auditor will copy the city attorney on every single draft and final audit. And then another procedure could be if this looks like a very high-risisk report, then the internal auditor will copy the city attorney just in case, you know, saying, "Hey, this kind of high-risisk report before I post it. Is this okay?" And I see that more as procedures rather than cementing it in the charter. So, if you could speak to that a little bit. I can talk. Yeah. So, so you're you're exactly right. You know, the charter is the foundational bedrock that establishes the expectations, highlights roles and responsibilities of those coordinating activities that we've talked about. Policies and procedures support the execution of that. As you mentioned right now, um your policies and procedures for internal audit are posted on for you know everyone to see. They're they're available for review. Um we did there's definitely some opportunity within those policies and procedures to get more clarity around what we mean by a particular audit standard. For example, there is a lot of internal audit standards that are peppered throughout the policies and procedures where we do see opportunities to define what does that execution for El Paso really look like. And so I think you're absolutely right. you're on the right track in terms of looking taking a really strong look at the policies and procedures. Yes, having standards and interpretation of those standards is great, but how are we going to be executing that across all functions of internal audit, including, you know, city management um and particular a lot of those feedback and escalation channels that we talked about, a lot of what we talked about can be incorporated into those policies and procedures. not that they're not maybe at a high level already there but definitely some additional clarity and also you know we talked about this at the FOAC meeting but uh you know you there's this thing called single point of failure right and the need for succession planning and so if all of these really great things are happening within the internal audit department it's not really well understood uh within a documented space what these more you know the procedures that really give the the flavor flavor to the internal audit function, right? Not just why are we doing this, but how are we doing this? You kind of run the risk of not really carrying that forward into the next generation of auditors. We're at least giving them something to build upon when it's not clear in your policies and procedures. So, I think you're you're really looking at it from a healthy perspective in terms of where to start. Okay. Yeah. I I've just been like breaking my mind. I'm like, how where where are we starting with all this work? Go ahead, Brenda. And I just to clarify too because I think Holly makes some great points, but again I think your charter should identify that, you know, we're going to collaborate and communicate with city management, the city attorney because they're handling different types of risk for the city and they all need to be aligned. But the policy procedures would would actually give you these are the specific steps we're going to take, right? If we're going to include them on these meetings or these kind of documentations and that we should more clearly defined. But again, the charter should show that we're going to coordinate much like on the hotline. again that even though that's being managed by a group that's that's being managed by one point of person in the the audit department but it's not just the sole responsibility to do investigations and so that could be something that needs to go to the city attorney for consultation because of the matter uh or it needs to go to HR because it's an HR personnel matter and so fraud waste and abuse that comes in there's different parties that have to play now there'll be the initial what we call triage that happens within the audit function you're going to triage that fraud or waster abuse claim and you're going to look at it and to say, "Okay, can this be substantiated? Do I have enough evidence?" And then who do I need to have involved that a lot of times will include your city attorney and that'll include maybe the city manager determining depending on the type of incident it is. And so it's not something that's just being held done in silos because there is repercussions that need to take into place of course. Yeah. And and I one one other common theme that I'm kind of seeing through this report is that there needs to be a lot of um adaptability and flexibility across many of these things, right? Where in a perfect world, we would go spend all this money on all the really nice software for the audit function. But I think in a realistic world and where we're at right now is let's look at the tools that are already available to all employees at at city at the city and we can go from there right you could use Acrobat to start you could start implementing stuff through SharePoint and then we build upon that as we're seeing more progress for example and that that is just that one example but then we do that across many of the recommendations right and and to clarify I know with the the FO act that's I wanted to clarify here is you know the audit department is using you know Microsoft Office you know products for Excel and Word and documenting and using those kind of scanning documents but a lot of the how do we make sure that these files not can stand alone which that includes all the quality control and review process which is required by peer review and standards uh and really being able to put those in electronic format and stored so that it can be referenced and so uh you know you can definitely come on site and look at those processes but how do we one make sure they're protected and they are uploaded so that you can see the trail the audit trail and it's very clear. So I agree that's technology and and we're not we're not trying to say you need to go buy you know some expensive system because that's that that you know sometimes that complicates things and definitely there's a learning curve but we can use some existing uh applications and so forth to get feel feel real kind of realize where you want to go in the future as you go to mature in your assessment. So, and and the other thing on the hotline that you kind of touched on fraud, waste, and abuse. I I think the definitions of that, I make it a little complicated. When I was at the school district, we kept on getting a lot of different calls that were kind of HR related and they didn't fall into those categories. So, we implemented a system that really gave people the idea of like, okay, well, is this fraud, waste, or abuse? Answer these questions before you move on. And and I think it's really important for the hotline to be under the internal audit function because you have that third party that we pay for that makes sure that there's a confidentiality and and so how can we strengthen this in in a better way where we're still going to maintain that confidentiality and we're having an understanding of what is happening there and then we're including some sort of triage like you said to route things to HR. Right. Right. And I one of the things that I really liked did when you know when I was in internal audit is we did a what we call a fraud, waste, and abuse road show. And we would go around and do trainings and it included internal audit included HR and included legal and it would talk about these are the different types of things. This is what makes up fraud, waste abuse. You know, if it's a personnel matter or stealing time, you know that HR is probably going to, you know, if you're doing your time sheet wrong, that's probably going to go back to HR. Personnel matter, you know, you know, misuse of benefits. if it's a legal matter, you know, what what is that and how that's defined and then what is the role of of internal audit and again it's a collaborative you know function that that does that having trainings more communication um you have different types of um you know uh kind of newsletters and things like that again a lot of this is promotion of what the audit function is doing what their role is and also who do you need to contact and again uh making sure that's ingrained in in the employee so they know who to contact uh because you will get random you know, uh, things through the hotline. He's, you probably get things like my water bill's too high. And they're like, well, that's that's not something the audit department's going to look at, but we can forward that and have our decision tree that's going to go, which is probably already happening, but that's going be, you know, to the utility billing department so they can answer that. So, some of that is that decision tree of when you get those types of things. You're not going to triage because they're they're not really in your scope. It's just somebody need that needs to go to a different service at the city. I appreciate that. Um, and I believe I'm out of time, but I'll come back. Representative Chavez. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Brandon, and Holly, for this wonderful presentation. It's good to see you in person. Um, I just want to ask a few questions, some of which we went over during last week's FOAC meeting, but um, I think one of the highlights for me is just to make sure that everybody's on the same page that the auditor is is just not a department, but it's a function of the city. And I think that's important to know um because it speaks directly on you know the the level and standard of of functionality at the city of El Paso and and how we represent ourselves. I think it also speaks directly um towards you know our values and our ethics and all of that and and I think that's Holly what you just mentioned briefly right now in terms of um you know um how people view the city and and how we're performing basically I I also mentioned last at last week's FOAC meeting that you know all of us are trying to improve at some level and this is no different than that right so we're all working towards you know how we can make things better and move our city forward. Um something that you've you've spoken a lot about, Holly, and I would like for you to clarify just a little bit more because um in your report you speak a lot about feedback, but then you've you've highlighted several times the difference between feedback and timely feedback. And so I was just wondering if you could please clarify that, you know, where there where you see some gaps or or what you mean by by that timely feedback. Sure. And and I think to to really answer this question, go go back to the fact that feedback is should be continuous, right? It's you have so many different activities that that are occurring and not only within an engagement in the audit life cycle, but the governance and the management of the internal audit function. And so feedback, you know, really starts at understanding what is really, you know, what is management concerned, what are the risks that they are thinking about and focusing on. Uh you guys have your ear to the ground when it comes to what your constituents and what your residents are concerned about, you know. So what is that feedback there? Uh that is occurring on a continuous basis. Um, you know, if we even if we just do that once a year, we run the risk of not really adapting and evolving our audit strategy. uh not that I'm saying we should go back and reopen and rehash our audit plan you know every month or anything like that but making sure that we have tabled fully understand you know what have we been hearing over the year that's occurring as from an evolving risk uh you know what velocity or change um and how that's you know maybe yesterday this risk was kind of on the back burner but today now all of a sudden it's it's might be on fire you know and so that timeliness of that feedback, you you may miss an opportunity to really incorporate that into how we're going to allocate resources for that. Either, you know, whether that's a decision made and how we address it today or whether that's how we address it in the upcoming on annual audit plan. Um if you ask me something today about a risk and then you ask me in six months, I probably won't remember why I cared about that so much. And so having that door open or policy, again, I don't it's not that that stuff isn't occurring informally. We just don't really see how it's really being executed from a um you we're auditors so we like to see it being evidenced someplace somewhere. And so uh that so there's the timely feedback there at the more management and governance level. Then you have timely feedback at the engagement level. I mentioned continue planning is a continuous process which is I think something that management hates but you know in general like when I say that because it it's like well when are you going to stop planning the audit and just do it you know uh but what we really mean by that is that we are continuously throughout the audit life cycle before we engage as we're engaging when we're having our entrance conference and our planning discussions we've engaged the right people not just the process owners but we make sure that we have the right people at the table for feedback upfront. And then as we're going through our fieldwork, as we're going through some maybe some preliminary results or some findings, um ensuring that that communication channel remains open with the folks at the table who are there that have the ability and the authority to actually make some change. And so if we get to the end, you know, at the exit conference, uh, well, first of all, we run the risk of maybe we didn't understand something accurately because, you know, there's, you know, varying levels of management and there may be different perspectives or just maybe things that maybe a process owner wasn't aware of, um, from a more strategic standpoint in the bigger picture. U, so we might get to the end of a finding and realize, well, maybe the risk wasn't what we thought it was or maybe the condition of the finding wasn't we what we thought it was. Again, I don't really have any evidence that that's occurred. Uh, but making sure that we have that timely feedback. Uh, making sure that that make sure that our our audit results are as effective as they can be when we reach the conclusion and we have the exit conference and we've already developed a report. Management comes in the room. They know exactly what we're going to talk about. You know, they're at the, you know, they're out there whenever we present the report to council. they know exactly, you know, what their action plan is and how they're going to address the risks that have been identified. There's no, you know, question. We've already talked about it. We we got this, you know, and so when I say timely, that it's a that's a it's that's a very that's a a great question and I think it, you know, it means um that timely feedback both at the management and governance level and of course throughout the audit life cycle as we're completing our audit plan. And if I'm understanding you correctly, I think that's part of the collaboration that you were also speaking to. Absolutely. Um, you know, they can't do the internal department can't do that effectively without executive management really having that buy in, you know. Uh, and so that's another side of this coin that, you know, has is, you know, I think needs to be explored is um, you know, management trust, executive trust in the internal audit function and how that also operates the other direction. And so, um, you know, I think executive management is very busy, directors are very busy, and to make time for the internal audit function and not just make time, but really think about what we're going to be doing and how we can really put our heads together as experts and come up with uh the best audit um engagement um or maybe it's an advisory, whichever it is um and um collaborate on how how we can best execute that. But I think that, you know, foundationally building trust that goes both ways is important to have a collaborative effort and an effective collaborative effort. I I agree. Thank you for that. I also want to um talk a little bit about a slide that I you may have not included today, but we saw last week and I know that you had to make some changes, but if you could just briefly touch on it and it was the overall maturity achievement slide. Um there was some areas where we're already, you know, kind of clearly going into a more defined stage. Representative Chavez, what slide number is this? Well, in the appendex, it's in the appendix. So, we could bring it up for that. Slide 24. Thank you. Can we bring that up? There we go. There. Thank you. Perfect. Um and so if you look at governance, you know, we're already kind of going into the defined area, but if you look at uh technology, you know, we're we're you know, kind of in between between initial and repeatable. Um you know, I do want to say that we have made some progress in standardization ever since I came on onto FOA. I know that um we do we now have presentations during FOAC meetings and things like that. So there has been some improvement. I know that there's always room for more improvement. Um if you could just you know briefly you know talk about this slide and and see where where you see um you know within the next the short-term goals where where you can see that we could progress the best and and where you would focus on the most. That's a great question. Uh so I think so I think there was a the comment about lowhanging fruit earlier and so I think if we thinking about think about in terms of the short term and where we can uh quickly get up to speed in some of these areas definitely I see that in those middle three management of the internal audit function engagement level execution and then of course technology um management of the internal audit function and again this is going to be incumbent on everybody you know the right people at the table having collaborative conversations on how that's going to be executed. But management of the internal audit function can definitely really jettison into that defined area pretty quickly. The again the foundational practices are there. It's just making sure that they are defined maybe refined um ensuring that everybody understands how our procedures are executed the expectation roles and responsibilities which also kind of feed into that governance level. um you guys are further ahead in governance because you have a pretty robust internal audit charter while there's definitely improvements that could be made um as well as the fact that we're here today talking about governance and so we're already well on our way into define there but management of the internal audit function looking at our policy procedures that we talked about better defining some of the the practices that are occurring and being executed and ensuring that not only are they defined but that they are consistently executed um and held accountable for that execution through performance evaluation, performance information that's being uh communicated throughout the year. And then we talked a lot about already technology. I you know whenever you're in a paperbased environment, it just inherently you you spend a lot of time you know trying to organize files and you know translate from a digital environment into a paperbased environment. So, not only is that about uh the execution of, you know, putting things in more of a digital format, but also being a little bit more efficient within our engagement from a from a process procedural standpoint. Um, and so, you know, if you if you ask me, I think that those those middle three are where there's really a lot of um uh lowhanging fruit. I think the the bottom one communication reporting and and monitoring uh we are trying to creep in that to into that defined area and again that is setting that expectation for communication and engagement back to that first core theme. So you know it's hard to kind of really position this in a way that answers that um kind of black and white but I think the answer is we're we're working and making strides in all of these different areas. uh that's why we split up our results into short-term and long-term solutions so that you can more uh quickly approach into that defined area and then over time work into getting into managed. And so our final report will definitely have additional detail on where we see in the short term being able to push into that defined area a little bit more easily. Um again, it's still going to take a lot of engagement from all the different coordinating, you know, activities of the function. Uh, but that's kind of how I would I would table that in terms of the overall maturity achievement and where we go from here. Anything to add, Randy? No, I I think you handle that pretty well and and be able to cover that. Again, you'll see on this slide, you know, for those that have not seen it, we in the dark colored bars are definitely the where we've already seen the complete achievement. And so, uh, again, in the previous slides, you kind of see where we're at overall. But you can see as we break down each one of these components where we've already completed achievement and where there's still partial achievement. And so, you know, much like you talking about engagement level, planning, execution, there's been a lot of partial achievement that's already getting into defined. So, some tweaks there and some adjustments really can get you more into that defined space quicker. uh but definitely looking at some of these where we're already making progress and where do we need to prioritize some of our our resources and uh considerations for our processes to be able to get us to the next level. So, thank you. I think that's great and it definitely um at least now we're we're aware of of what areas are are the most uh short-term, you know, to focus on and and where we can improve quite quickly. I appreciate both of you. Thank you so much. represent STO. Thank you, Mayor. Um, so I'm back. I I just, you know, I really appreciate that you've been working on this over the last few months. When I transitioned over to the city, I left a similar process in place at at the school district. They had just started their own. And then I got interviewed and it was a very similar process where they used that interview to inform that process and then they used a similar model as you did um with the fivepoint scale just to kind of simplify it cuz I know it gets a little complicated. But I I wanted to kind of you know at the school district that was the first time we ever did that. At the city that's the first time we ever do this. So how often should we be doing this? because I feel like more more um engagements like this could really help. And is this just what kind of engagement is? This is an assessment, an audit. What would you call it? No, I think this, you know, I would call this one and really an assessment. It's it's not really an audit because it's it's really looking at where where do where we are and where we want to be. I I do think you've had this foundational work, which is a lot of body of work that's been done with recommendations that you can take and really build off. And what I would do is kind of like when internal audit does follow-ups, kind of reassessing annually where are we at? This is where we were last year at this point. Where are we this year? Are we progressing where we want to? What are the the, you know, what are some barriers that we may be uh getting into that's getting us from that next level. Um, and so I think over really the next four to five years, you could really continue to internally assess that or use outside help to kind of do that function as well if you want another independent view. Uh again that could be internal collaboration and coordination work sessions to look at okay how do we what are we doing now to get us to the next step or bringing someone in to do that as well but I think this this body of work um will last and I would say almost if you think maybe when the next time maybe the FO act changes is having that maybe redone. So really the the cadence of when that needs to be done can be dependent on how you think progress is happening or changes in priorities from the council. And I'll I'll add real quick. Uh another thing to consider when you're re-evaluating maturity of the function is when standards change. Um our fun our profession as internal auditors is not stagnant. It is changing all the time. I mean the standards now look vastly different than they did 10 years ago you know and so with new standards that you know come and up and into our environment that's always another good opportunity to take a step back and re-evaluating what we're doing not just because we want to be compliant right but because we want to execute effectively what these standards the the real spirit of what the standards are really trying to tell us to achieve. And so when standards change, this was a huge year for standards changing. I mean you guys were I mean not only I mean it was just ripe for for assessment because you have both standards had really significant changes uh that affect the governance and the management of the internal audit function and so and as as well as the execution and so uh when standards change that's another good opportunity to consider and they do probably what I mean every 5 to seven years at the at a minimum and and that seems achievable I think and oh yeah with with the work that you've done, you're going to give us an Excel workbook and kind of help us on that front of the implementation. Is there more that you can do in terms of helping us monitor that implementation as we're looking at this over the next few years? Yeah, I mean we we've done similar engagements um we call those implementation assistance. And so implementation assistance is also kind of that really advisory nature where you sit here and say okay we've identified where we're at. We know where we want to be. Let's talk about the in between. So how do we get there? That's where you can start defining those how many months does this take? What's the short term? What's the long term? What do we need to do to be able to get there? And I think those are assistance we've done with other clients as well. You you know you see where you say let me really get boots on the ground to help you get to the next level. And there's that's a lot of just discussions and and you know trial and error sometimes too of like how do I get to that next level. So that is something definitely implementation assistance that's something that could help. And I before I come back to you I just wanted to ask um Miss Mack and Miss Neman overall I know we've kind of said there was so many people that were interviewed for this and we all had a role in it. So just for the public's sake, what were your roles throughout this engagement? So since Nean and I along with uh the CFO were all interviewed during this project and so we had an opportunity to provide some feedback along the way. So it was just more feedback. There was no there was nothing else other than feedback kind of like what we did as a FOA in the council. Yes. So So we Yeah. I met with the Weaver and the group. Um I think they followed back up with us and asked us for additional documentation that we provided additional documentation and then we did have a meeting at one point to ask like the status and then what the next steps was to get you to this point. Okay. And then you paid the bills. Okay. I appreciate that. I think that's important to note just so we have a full understanding of how we got to today. One one other thing that I had um based on some of the information that you've shared throughout your your presentation, it notes that there's inconsistent advocacy and governance support for the IIA function. What steps are being taken and need to be taken to ensure consistent and visible support from city leadership and governance bodies including the council to strengthen the effectiveness and independence of the internal audit function. Yeah, that's a really really great question. Um, and so I'll I'll start with the the need to, you know, the the the advocacy aspect of it and the visibility of that advocacy. Uh, right now, you know, whenever these results are, you know, audit results are reported out. Um, really the being able for the internal audit function to speak how they collaboratively did work with management to get from point A to point B. I think the advocacy is something that just naturally shows through when you have an effectively engaged uh stakeholder group. Um and then you get that, you know, continuous feedback from the FOAC. And so I it's just a natural thing that occurs whenever we start to advance our function into a more collaborative uh and engaged environment. Where the independence part comes in is whenever the chief audit executive is um I would say empowered to perhaps push back on some things that maybe they don't agree with and have very sound reasons objective reasons why they are pushing back that are readily understood and explained by everyone. um you know for you know for example you know and and that includes push back from and when I say push back I would say just maybe from the perspective of being the trusted adviser being able to uh effectively communicate why there may be some additional things to consider before we make a particular decision. Um, for example, I mean, this is the simple example that I can show that you're probably really not expecting, but um, whenever we're asked to constantly review you or by, you know, maybe there's just kind of a concern about a particular one particular process within city and the the chief auditor is being asked to review that process multiple times by particular individuals or stakeholders. uh you know the chief audit executive feeling empowered to kind of push back and say hey I actually think that there's other things that we can do to put the accountability back onto city management and help you monitor that process more effectively so that you're not relying on our resources to help you with that. That's the kind of I think independence that also can shine through is whenever the function is empowered to say actually I think we have a better resource or a better idea for you to be able to address that at risk more continuously versus kind of coming back to us and saying hey I want you to look at this you know three times a year or whatever the case may be. Um, and so I think, you know, it's it's it's just something that naturally shines through to some degree, but also is visible in the interaction between the chief audit executive and the council and executive management. Okay, that that makes total sense and I really appreciate that example cuz then my brain got going on many other examples that that I think can fit that. So, thank you for explaining that a little bit more. I don't know how long you're going to be here today. Is it like you're leaving in the afternoon type of thing? Yeah, in the afternoon. Okay. I I was just um hoping that maybe we're we're probably going to finish this part of the meeting soon that maybe you could sit with uh Mr. Calderon since you weren't able to connect last week because of the vacation that was happening and and since you're here already, I think um it would be ideal to to do that if you can. And I'm sure Mr. Kalon will will be open to it. Um overall, I I think that's all I have. Mayor, I don't know if you want to allow Mr. Kaledo to also address Weaver here or the the council. I just wanted to afford him that. Okay. Uh and he's certainly welcome to if you want to, but I have a couple comments. Yes. So, just to make sure, I think Representative Roachcha asked, but we are at the level two repeatable stage and the short-term goal would be to get us to level three, and that's how long is it? six months or a year. I I was a little Yeah, that's the one where it kind of really depends because there's a lot of elements much like what's on the slide of of how do you get to level three defined and so some of those things could be short-term, some of those are long term, but I think that's where you have to sit down and say how long do we think it'll feasibly take to get us to that next level. So, um there definitely needs to be some prioritization and assessment of from what we're hearing today, what is it going to take? And some of that just is to be further conversations with this governing body, with city management, also the chief auditor to kind of figure out where do we need to be. And so it could be anywhere from short-term kind of the lowhanging fruit that's three to six months and some could be multiple years. Some of that's technology and where we want to be. Um, I I think a lot of this could be more short-term, you know, in the sense of we're talking about the charter, we're talking about evaluations, we're talking about, um, you know, how do we just set up some of our foundationals to be more effective, more efficient? Um, those things can happen a lot sooner. Um, and you're talking about six months or less. Okay. And I think Holly mentioned for a city our size, level four seems about right. Is that something you said? re reaching into level four striving for that managed um you know not only enterprisewide standardization and understanding uh and feedback channels but also met being very performance and metrics driven. Okay. Um and so I you know reach that's kind of I think reaching for a healthy healthy balance for the city. Okay. And then on slide 12 the um preliminary results you talked about strategic alignment and outcomes and one of one of them says um it's not clear how current audit planning and risk assessment results are fully aligned which may limit the functions ability to address the most critical areas. Can you go into a little bit more on that? Number two. Number two s. So going into the the alignment, is that what you're asking? And how that really appear? It's not clear how current audit not clear. Yeah. So um actually I'd like to am I controlling this? Y go back to this slide. This is where it starts. Um there's a lot of So it's dynamic, right? Making sure that we're aligning our function uh strategically is a very dynamic process. We understand what the various risk and audit universe is. We we know all the different functions and processes in the city. You know, chief audit executive, you got a lot of institutional knowledge about how the city works. And so, you're you're good you're good there. Um, but taking a step back, we we've got, you know, again, eight goals and all these different priorities and you're 30 for 30 and a lot of different things in that strategic plan. um as well as within our budget process, we have already determined what a lot of the departments that have a really foundational um operational element to making the city is working properly, they're being held accountable to. And so aligning what are you know when we did our risk assessment how did we consider those traits those those goals and those priorities within our risk assessment operationally uh from a human capital perspective you know from a technology perspective um while you know looking at last time audited and change management and all that is is is also very key um but really thinking about and thinking through you know what did the departments in you know strategic um focus and what they they've said they're going to do with you know their their budget going to achieve and how does that actually filter through the risk assessment process. Right now what we see is you know some you got the nine risk uh categories with various uh weightings. Um, so to be quite honest, having that amount of risk categories can be somewhat dilute your risk assessment results because you have so many various factors that are being used to calculate a final rating. And so when somebody looks at that, you know, and and the first question, you know, you might ask yourself is, well, what do these all these numbers mean? You know, one, two, three, four, and five, you know, being used to rate in the risk assessment. not really sure how that you know what what does that really mean in terms of probability and impact. Um so not I know the internal audit department knows what those things mean but is it clear to the stakeholders and how that's really being assessed against um you know the department yes but also the function and process and what they said they were going to do strategically. Um and so and what are risks that they're not able to operationally meet that strategic goal and objective and then that flows through it trickles down into you know our audit plan and uh what we uh seek to achieve within our engagement objectives and we can clearly see within our engagements in the audit plan within the description what risks are we are we seeking to analyze what um uh what are the questions that we're trying to ask and how Does that align with the strategic priorities of the city? I mean, you know, if we can do that on the front end, it's going to be a lot easier when we're executing our audit to continuously keep in frame with management what we're there to achieve when we can really link our engagement objectives within the audit plan itself to why did we pick why did we pick these? You know, what are we really seeking to achieve and how does that align with what we promised the the city that we're going to do here at city hall? Okay. And then the last comment or question is if you know looking at your preliminary assessment here, if you were to give us just the top two or three takeaways that you wanted us just real succinct, what do you what are your takeaways here? That's a great question and and you know when we think about those top things I think I always go back to communication and collaboration is our top thing because again it's a function that operates with a lot of different people to be successful and so that's also ensured that the value of that function is known throughout the city and that you know we always like to say when audits coming it shouldn't be a scary thing you know you should want that person to come in to help you and and you know being there side by side to help work through those processes to have a better outcome. And so communication collaboration strategic alignment with the objectives. I will tell you um that is not something that's uncommon in the audit world. I will tell you the Institute of Rental Auditors does a lot of u you know research reports and things like that and there's been a lot of strategic misalignment between what's on the audit plan and what is the strategic risk of their organizations. This happens private sector, public sector, no ma all across the world. they survey chief auditors and say does your audit plan meet the strategic objectives of your organization and it's it's kind of shocking when you look that it's not always aligned uh and there's various reasons for that. So, but we talk about strategic alignment is very important. So, that one that you continue to see value in the internal audit function and so having value knowing that they're here to help us. They are not just the police of of of the organization of looking at processes. So, collaboration, communication, strategic alignment and to being set up for success by the governing body here. So, those those are I would think were probably the top things that I would think of the themes uh to continue to be successful here for the city. Okay. All right. Uh, Miss Prime, do we have public comment on this? Yes, Mayor. We have Miss Turner. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Miss Turner. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Uh, I find it strange that they would be using a model from an organization that nobody can remember when they last passed an audit. An organization where billions upon billions of dollars are unaccounted for. Holly talks about resources and technology. Two things I want to address. Resources. Your internal auditor has been denied resources under the last city manager and those councils. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of requests that the very things that they have pointed out were denied. Now, the other thing I would like to point out because I know Holly is so hot on technology. Please, everybody, today change all your passwords. The mother of all data breaches happened yesterday. 16 billion passwords, credentials, VPNs, all that stuff is in the wild. Now you're the reason why Mr. Calderon doesn't have the resources to do his job. Along with that, another thing, audit plans are submitted to you for your approval. In all the years that I followed city council, which was almost 30, not once has the city council said, "We want to ed you to do this or do that or do this, add on something. You just take it. It's done. It's out of our way. We don't have to worry about it anymore." And there was a question, I don't remember the exact question from the district 2 representative. And I was thinking, were we suggesting that we ignore uh standard accounting principles? Because it sounded like they wanted us to go outside of what is acceptable and that I I can do. And I want to talk about the stakeholders. The most important stakeholder right now is the person standing right here, me, the public. Do we have trust in your internal auditor? And I can say yes after almost 30 years here is what is it been 20 years Mr. Calderon been I have learned that I can trust this man. I know the man has integrity and I know that he's got the best possible people that you can find because they're well trained. They're smart. So, as a member of the public, that's what I want. I don't want something like Enron where the internal auditors were offer Anderson and they ignored their job and the company collapsed. Integrity versus people. Thank you, Mr. Pay attention to their job. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Mr. Fry, do we have action on this one? Uh, I don't believe there's any action needed on it. Okay. So, there's no action. It's action, but council doesn't have. It's posted for action if council wanted to take action, but you don't need to if you don't want to. All right. Anyone? Yeah. Any action? Okay. No. No. I think we're good on this one. Okay. All right. Miss Prime. Yes, sir. Would council like to retire into executive session at this time? So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Call. There's a motion and a second to return to executive session. All in favor? Anyone opposed? And the city council of the city of El Paso may return to executive session pursuant to section 3.5A of the El Paso city charter in the Texas government code chapter 551 subchapter D to discuss any of the following. Executive session item one claim of Kyle Furid. Claim 748 under 551.071. Executive session item two, application of El Paso Electric Company for its amendment to its commission approved AMS deployment plan PUC number 58209 HQ number utility-68 under 551.071. Executive session item three, application of El Paso Electric Company to change rates PUC number 57568, HQ number utility-60 under 551.071. Executive session item four, discussion on economic development opportunities in West El Paso, HQ number 24-4099. Under 551.087. Executive session item five, discussion on exe economic development opportunities in East El Paso, HQ number 24-3468 under 551.087. and executive session item six, city attorney evaluation and legal consultation regarding employment evaluation process and duties for city manager, city attorney and chief internal auditor as city council appointed employees HQ number 4883 under 551.071 and 551.074. These matters are taken into executive session under 551.071 consultation with attorney 551.074 personnel matters and 551.087 deliberation regarding economic development negotiations. It is 12:12 p.m. This is so absolutely Welcome back. Thank you so much. I need really nice. I hope so. Okay, Miss Prime, you ready? Yes, sir. My computer's coming up. Okay. Seems I forgot my password. Green. It's password. The system's a a bit slow today. Representative Lemon is still with us. it. I need assistance, please. Okay. Never never mind. I I got it. Sorry about that. Is there a motion to come out of executive executive session? Motion. Second. There's a motion and a second to come out of executive session. All in favor? I Anyone opposed? And the work session is back in session at 3:52 p.m. Mayor Prom EX1. Thank you, Miss Prine. Motion made, seconded, and carried that the city attorney's office in consultation with the city manager be authorized to deny the claim of Glierel Fared in HighQ matter number claim 748, and to take all steps necessary, including the execution of any required documents in order to affffectuate this authority. Okay, there's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion and second. Mr. Prime, please call for the vote. Yes, sir. There's a motion made and read into the record by Mayor Prom Chavez, seconded by alternate mayor prom on ex1 to deny the claim. On that motion, call for the vote. I miss Frank. Thank you, Miss Frank. What about Representative Lemon? Is she Representative Lemon, are you are you in the meeting? I am but I am not voting. Thank you mayor. Thank you. Okay. In the voting session and that motion passes unanimously. Ex2. Motion made, seconded and carried that the city attorney in consultation with the city manager be authorized to hire and retain outside counsel and any other necessary consultants and to file an intervention in the application of El Paso Electric Company for its amendment to its commission approved AMS deployment plan under the Texas Public Utility Commission docket number 58209 in matter number highQ utility-68 and to take all steps necessary including the execution of any required documents in order to effectuate this authority. Okay, there's a motion. Is there a second? Second. There's a motion and a second. Miss Prime, please call for the vote. Yes, sir. The motion was made to the Representative Ato. I I need to state my usual. I'm sorry, Mayor. For for this item, Nex3. Um, I wanted to state that I got $1,750 from the El Paso Electric Employee Pack. representative. I too have received a contribution from the El Paso um electric company's employee pack. Represent Nino. Thank you, mayor. I too have received $1,000 from the El Paso employees employee El Paso Electric employees pack as well as I uh myself. Any other discussion? All right. Call for the vote, Miss Bryant. Yes, sir. On that motion to file an intervention. Call for the vote. Representative Lemon, will you be abstaining? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. In the voting session, and that motion passes unanimously. EX3, no action. Thank you. EX4, no action. Thank you. EX5, no action. Thank you. EX6, no action. Thank you. Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Second. There's a motion and a second to adjourn. The work session. All in favor? Anyone opposed? And the work session for Monday, June 23rd, 2025 is adjourned at 3:55 p.m. Thank you, Council. Yep. Represent Leone, thank you for hanging in there with us. Thank you, Mayor. Have a good day. All right.