of this event it is one of the major events that we partner um very successfully with the city of fort worth in running and we are proud to make this a destination event as well as nationally recognized internationally recognized race for over 28 000 runners on a normal year so thank you so much for having us so uh just to give you a little history the cow town started in 1979 with an ice storm and we held the race and we had 189 total finishers in 1979 44 years later we are praying that we don't have rain this year or snow or ice we did have ice in 2015 and that was the year that we had the most runners registered ever of 28 000 and of course we had to cancel half of that event so that is a little bit of the history there and then we have some other things we added a 5k in 1998 because we had a lot of school children participating but they were running a 10k for those of you don't know a 10k is 6.1 or 6.2 miles a little too long for the kiddos so we added a 5k in 1998. immediately that next year we had to split the 5k because we had so many children participate that they took over the 5k so now we have an adult's 5k and a kids 5k um we were voted though we are awarded the recognition of being the largest race uh in the state of texas back in the mid 2000s and then in 2017 we became the largest multi-event in north texas and we have stayed that ever since 2017. we are larger than the dallas marathon we're larger than the austin marathon the only one that sometimes beats us out is houston so we kind of go back and forth between that uh in 2020 our race happened two weeks prior to the shutdown of co with because of covid and it got lost in the news but we were voted the favorite marathon in the united states for the 2020 race we beat boston we beat chicago we beat new york as the runners voted and chose us as the favorite event in 2020 and we're very proud of that we're known across the united states and all across the world in 2020 we had 17 foreign countries participate in every state in the united states came in so we're a very large impact to this city we bring in 10.4 million dollars of economic impact just for the three days that it's taking place in a normal year we have 124 schools participate over 300 corporate and open teams and the most importantly is we give back to the community through our caf program children's activities for life and fitness we normally give about 5 500 free pairs of shoes socks and entry fees to children in need in north texas every year this year we're giving approximately 4 000 pairs of shoes socks and entries to races normally we have about 80 000 visitors visiting our expo that takes place on the friday and saturday prior to the race this year we anticipate about 50 to 60 thousand it's such an important endeavor we're doing when we work out when we put this race on because all of the proceeds go to pay for all those shoes and socks and entry fees for the children after we distribute the rest of the shoes this year in 2022 we will have given over 50 000 pairs of shoes and socks to children in the past 13 years and these are children that have never had a new pair of shoes in their life that are wearing shoes that are two sizes too small we deliver the shoes to their schools and we fit them and we sit there and wait for their little toes to uncurl because the shoes they're currently wearing are too small so it's just huge what we're doing and we're teaching children that running can be fun and it's an activity they can always do and they can take it through their lifetime so that's our that's our beliefs we believe it's never too late to start a healthier lifestyle regardless of age size or background and we believe a fit and active child will adopt healthy lifelong habits and take it through their entire lifetime and the community is the key that's what makes this race happen the city support makes this this race happen we could not do it with all the support that we have from the parks department the special events department police fire ems y'all help us make this event such a success and make it be the one that's voted to be the favorite in the united states we want to show you a video that tells the story of our calf program better than the way i can speak to it so i believe that's coming up oh this is the other thing we don't just have the cow town we have weekly social runs every thursday we have social runs taking place in front at our cow town office where they run along the trails we put on a fundraiser that will happen uh the end of april this year the fed and blanc to raise money for those shoes we put on a calf run normally in october we've had to cancel it the last two years because of covid but it will be back in 2022 and then we do a summer camp for youth in need and then just youth that wants to participate it's always been just a running camp where they come for half a day and they learn everything about getting fit and active and running and nutrition this year we've expanded it and we've partnered with the tarrant area food bank it's a full day program they will run half learn about running the half of the day in the morning and then the afternoon they'll go over to tarantaria food bank they'll work in the gardens they'll volunteer in the volunteer center and they'll learn about the importance of nutrition and how nutrition plays apart as they're running and exercising and then we also do virtual runs that take place year round and truly the virtual runs are what kept us afloat in 2021 due to covet and we had more virtual runs than any race in the united states i actually went to florida and presented on it to a race director's conference and we were the only one that did as many as we did but it truly is what helped us stay alive uh during the shutdown we're really excited to get back in person um you're all invited you have all been given a packet with credentials so that you are truly welcome on saturday or sunday to witness the race we'll take you on a vip tour i'm just really excited about having it back on its regular weekend in fort worth and this year uh the the races everything is coming back except for the kids race we can't social distance eight field eight thousand children so what we're doing with the kiddos is the same thing we did in 2021 and we actually go to their schools put on pop-up runs at their schools on their school grounds so that they're still running but they're still getting their socks in their shoes we've also partnered with the botanical garden so several of the fort worth isd schools are actually going to go to the gardens and run through the gardens instead of at their schools and we will start those the week after cow town and we'll do all those pop-up runs we've got 85 schools we'll do individual school pop-up runs for march april and may so that the kids are still a part of the event they just won't be there on race day so we'll be 8 000 less people on race weekend but it'll also be less chaotic because you won't have 8 000 children there but uh this is the video we'd like to show you oh you'll do it perfect and you have sound every year thousands of kids get a little healthier and a little stronger they learn how to get fit with better nutrition better exercise and better equipment all thanks to a program you may never have heard of it's called calf calf stands for children's activities for life and fitness children's activities for life and fitness the caf program is a program to promote physical fitness and enrichment and nutrition in a child's life so that they can make it a lifetime goal it really encourages the students to you know be fit for life cafe is organized by the cow town running organization and offered through schools to any kids who want to participate the program includes the cow town kids 5k run but it's more than a race it's teachers parents nutritionists and sponsors helping kids embark on a healthier life well back in about 1986 they started a program so that students that were in schools could participate running and it wasn't really the caf program then it was more the adopt-a-school program where sponsors could adopt a school and help pay for the children to run and i got sponsors to come in to help pay for the children and it kind of developed more into the calf program later on and then about three years into it we noticed that the kids were running in hiking boots and flat shoes with no support and flip-flops so we decided we need to do more and that's when we introduced giving the children shoes when you deliver brand new shoes a pair of brand new running shoes to students who've never had a pair before you can't imagine the the smile that is i mean you're giving them an opportunity giving them equipment that provides them uh the chance of a lifetime you know we think it's just a pair of shoes but it's not just a pair of shoes we're giving them a an extra you know opportunity at life and you know just to be encouraged and participate with our schools so this year the caf program will be giving away 5 000 new running shoes to the students who are participating we need corporate sponsors because it's such an expensive endeavor what we're trying to do to get these kids fit and get these kids outside and away from the screen for a little bit and exercising and these sponsors are what make it happen without them we couldn't purchase the shoes we have to pay for part of their entry fee and that's an expensive endeavor and then provide them with their food the more students we can get involved in it today will hopefully you know carry on down the line this is our youth we need to invest in them and enhance their lifestyles we practice uh twice a week and i have been able to run with the kids at least once a week and it's just wonderful to see how just excited they are about practicing it's just not going to practice it's just not hitting the miles you can't do those miles if you don't eat right or you don't have enough sleep and if you don't do your homework and take care of your pets and love your family you gotta have well-rounded everything and that's when you perform the best i have two daughters so they came to me and asked me mom i really want to participate in this and i signed them up for it signed myself and my husband up for it we have long-term goals of making a summer program so that it doesn't end at the end of the school year and the sponsors are what make that happen it's a great way to get their company name out into the media through all sorts of different uh ways through facebook twitter newsprint magazine print and then just on the news during race weekend so they do get a lot of visibility that way so as far as a marketing tool it's huge for years many years their motto has always been you run you win and they also say if you cross the finish line you're a winner and i believe all of the kids can be winners if they just pursue their goals and their dreams get involved give what you can your time your expertise your dollars take part in caf as a volunteer a participant or a sponsor great so race weekend is february 26th and 27th we'll see you at royal rogers thank you so much for your time thank you very much for being here we appreciate y'all thank you very much next up i'm going to call on michelle goot who's going to present a slide on our meeting schedule for the 2022 bond election and charter election we have an informal report that's in your packet it did not have the meeting dates times and locations and we wanted to make sure that the public got to see that thank you mayor and council based on the input that i got from the district offices this is the proposed meeting schedule we have for the um informational meetings to let people know about the election which will include the bond and the charter election so i sent a copy of this to um each of the district directors and if anybody wants any changes modifications additions just let me know and we're happy to make those how do you i see that there's none in three and so at least the combo community center we should add one there there's nothing close and i'd like to consider moving the mlk to hanley because i anticipate we'll have a larger audience than mlk can handle uh also for district eight uh sycamore community center center are they equipped to handle more than 50 people it's going to be in that small room because if not we probably need to go to the mcdonald ymca okay i will check and i apologize i had como on the list so i'll okay anybody else for michelle feed back everybody else good job looks great perfect thank you michelle thank you michelle and we'll make those changes next up we're gonna do some uh employee recognitions or introductions mayor i think you have the first one i do so we received this email into our office and i think is cindy garza here yes so we all love this but cindy i'm going to read this from a resident that sent an email into our office and i wanted you to be personally recognized today she said i would like to personally express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the city of fort worth neighborhood services department specifically the priority repair program which in this case provided a working heat system for an elderly widow which would have otherwise had to endure cold temperatures this season i can only suspect the need for this service is considerable in the workload daunting during this period of the year certainly those who benefit from any assistance received are eternally grateful your efforts may not always be acknowledged however rest assured your team's changed your team change people's lives for the better for my personal experience i would like to recognize and compliment administrative technician mrs cindy garza for her outstanding customer service and professional guidance in applying for this program it was truly refreshing to find someone who displayed considerable patience understanding and empathy and carrying out her duties her caring approach reflects exceptional professionalism and stand out as an exemplary model of customer service thank you mrs garza for everything that you do and we just wanted to recognize you for your incredible work cindy i think terrence is here as well who works with you in the office and neighborhood services director victor turner thank you for everything and you're welcome to say anything if you want to no thank you thank you cindy appreciate you [Applause] and speaking of keeping us active apparently you're also a former zumba instructor for the city of fort worth so if we we don't want to be running we can do zumba with you right okay thank you it's good to put a face with the name of the guardian angel of so many people i had no idea that was her congratulations next i'm gonna call on robert stearns to introduce our new assistant director of economic development robert uh thank you mr council um last summer many of you weren't here but uh we gave a presentation we were talking about preserve the four program and i had the majority of my staff standing up here with me and i was thanking them for all the hard work that they did on getting that 55 million dollars out the door and i made a comment at the time i said i'm glad that they stuck around with me because that was a really tough load for uh for a lot of those folks so i think i made jinx myself because not more than six weeks after that i lost about 30 of my staff including the majority of my management team we had several that got director opportunities in other communities i had one that had a great opportunity to go to oxford university so i couldn't fault for that uh and so we were really struggling there for a while uh we have been working over the past several months to kind of rebuild the team you may have seen several our members telemachus evans joined us as a revitalization coordinator uh ari mitchell is our research specialist uh uteron harris joined us as our senior accountant michael hennick who's been with us for a while was promoted to economic development manager and today i am very proud to announce uh that ori fernandez has joined us as the new assistant director for economic development i am really excited to have ori here she went through a pretty rigorous process uh interview process with both of our internal and external stakeholders and she really blew us away she has she is a rice university graduate so obviously very intelligent also has two master's degrees one in business administration and one at education she's been the economic development director down in south texas in del rio for about five years or so now has experience in the main street program she set up a uh edc uh in del rio and just brings a number of great skills to the table so we're really excited to have her join us i told her i'm not going to scare her off too much this week but we got a lot on her plate to keep her occupied so thank you all and orie i'll turn it over to you thank you um i didn't really expect to say much today but i want to thank you all for the opportunity um it's already you know been a great day and a half that i've started and everyone's been so welcoming and um although i hate to admit this i'm a san francisco 49er fan i hope i hope that i hope maybe in a couple of years i'll i'll bleed um blue and silver so um i appreciate the opportunity and um i look forward to working with everyone here thank you [Applause] all right jumping right into informal reports we have a large number of them so i'm gonna roll ready the first one is on strategic strategic planning for future covid surges brandon bennett is available with 30 questions moving on i do got a question all right i'm sorry all right brandon it's just real quick does this report includes i didn't have a chance to really uh dive down into it but does it also include for employees or this just for citywide we have been offering uh rapid tests to employees for a oh boy greater than a month at this point remember we didn't have a supply of rapid tests um initially and then we started getting uh stockpiling and then we've been doing it one of the things we found was um that in some of the work groups employees didn't feel like they understood the process of how to get a test rapid test to have available to them or to how to use the test so what we're doing uh this week and next week is we're actually going out and setting up tables at all the the major work sites where employees can come we'll show them how to use the test we'll give them a supply of tests um and encourage them to use them and then i've had some conversations with department heads today uh and they are going to increase their support and encouragement uh for employees to take advantage of the rapid tests that we have and then there's a there's beginning there was very few so we had to kind of give some guidelines of when to use them when not to use them now we have an abundance supply so they can be used more proactive than what we've used before but i will tell you that those that want to use them are using them and those that are opposed or making their voices be heard so it you know it's convincing those opposition people to participate is the bigger challenge now going into the spring in the summer do we have a prediction of when we might have peaks for the uh surge of conflict everything is based this is one of the struggles is you know it hasn't changed since the very beginning uh the variant comes out you study the variant each one's different and then you respond to it uh if you look at it over time though there's these waves these these peaks and valleys so i think it's safe to assume that that we'll have another run probably sometime in the next 90 days we'll see another update thank you i'd like to say something to brandon and about all of you around this table i heard how brandon aggressively wiped down this this this table i heard after after i tested positive thanks to a rapid test i see you turning red i heard about it but what was most hurtful was nobody around this table called and said do you know what brandon did but uh i do want to tell the world if you can get a rapid test do so yeah don't even try to talk folk and to get in the vaccine just get them to get a test and that and that's the start of that dialogue but uh brandon you and i have a debt to settle on that because from what i've been told you were quite dramatic i think you came at an environmental gear yeah it was definitely our own parks and rec moment i thought no one would notice it they kept it but but seriously getting the test is so very important i had no idea that i'd been walking around positive and didn't know it and so again don't try to change people's convictions but if you can just get people to get the test that's the start of opening this this knowledge block thank you so much thank you thank you i'll get you later and thank you for ratting brandon out on that one the second informal report is the 2022 debt financing plan overview and reggie zeno is available if there's any questions all right third informal report is the award of the defense economic assistance adjustment grant for the naval air station joint reserve base fort worth dana bergdorf is available if there any questions all right fourth informal report proposed future land use change for casino beach dana bergdahl is available if there's any questions we're rolling next one the proposed naming process for the trinity river vision bridges and dana bergdoff is available if there are any questions i don't have any questions i just want to take this opportunity to commend dana and dana dana and her staff on the um efforts that they went into to develop this this plan on how we're going to rename these three bridges i invite everybody in the community to take a look at this ir and look at that plan because it really is about what our residents want there's a lot of effort into letting you pick these particular these new names and so i'm very excited about it thank you and it's on your website too isn't it all right thank you next informal report is the economic development quarter one 2022 update and robert stearns is available with 30 questions all right next informal report overview of economic development corporations and proposed creation of economic development fund again robert stearns is available if there any questions okay the next one is on cancer mitigation efforts in the fire department and chief jim davis is available if there any questions absolutely and also put at your place because you may have gotten a letter from the fire service resource network board and a letter from me back to them just on clarifying some information and i'd like to hear from the chief for the benefit of the public at the good podium chief oh yes the others the good podium good afternoon ma'am good afternoon i was really pleased but also saddened just that the entry of information you were sharing with us about cancer our firefighters and just what we need to do to keep them safe and make them whole so from the time you last visited with us what what can you share with us because the public too is concerned about this matter um i first of all thank you for asking the question i believe that there has been a great conversation among city leadership city council the mayor local 440 michael glenn and his team about how we can try to dig into 20 20 years ago and find find data and find all of the information that still is available through the different outlets in order to try to look at that specific incident i believe there's a plan that's been developed and i believe the next steps are to try to work together to execute a review of that that's on that conversation secondarily i think that the the issue that mr cook brings up regarding a letter in a response back to an organization it saddens me a little bit about the way it was done because i believe that there's been a fair amount of transparency with the group i i feel that there's been a miscommunication of which i will take part ownership in that i i probably could have done better in trying to make sure that there's communication there i don't believe that there's any mal intent on anybody's part i think that that group as well as the leadership team of the fort worth fire department and with support of valerie washington and the city management team has been interested in making sure that we afford our folks the opportunity to go home safe at the end of the shift the last conversation i have with council member williams it's very obvious that you know there's a peer-to-peer conversation going on what's called forever chemicals in our community um there was a conversation today of you know is the fire department awakened at the table discussing what this looks like moving forward and the answer is absolutely yes and so um you know it's a matter of moving forward from this point here but my my interest is to assure everybody here in this room that we have maximized and made the best use with the best intent and we have not mis-informed misappropriated misapplied any of the funds and or the expectations that the public and or the city has from the fire department to reduce the risk of cancer in the fort worth firefighters thank you ma'am um chief thank you for this report i'll be really short but i just wanted to say that you know this important this issue is really important to me and to this table um you know you and our firefighters you know risk your lives on so many occasions right y'all are running in when folks are running away and you all are fighting fires in some cases that you know create chemical exposure that leads to risks of cancer i mean also y'all work with substances that are necessary and fighting those fires that also create exposure risks and so i'm one i want to say i'm grateful and two i wanted to say that we need to do something about that and so i know we've been talking offline and i want to follow up this ir with another ir specifically around pfos the forever chemicals that you're describing i mean looking at how do we incorporate mitigation solutions considering what we know and what the field of research is continuing to learn and know about pfas at its risk to people especially our firefighters so i just wanted to say that during this ir but i'll follow up later on with a follow-up request so that we can dive deeper into it and work together on it thank you yes sir we'll we'll we have a lot of information we'll be we'll immediately begin putting it in some form of report that is uh actionable to you awesome thank you thank you thanks chief chief just one comment right there uh as you know uh you and i and others attended you know a recent over the holiday break uh small ceremony you know accepting some of the extractor equipment station 12. uh you know you and i had spoken about that you know it is important to have that necessary equipment to our firefighters right but i also believe too that uh you know we all have participate in you know coordinating where those best go use fire chief you know uh offer that kind of indispensable input uh certainly the the gift is very welcome and uh you know going forward seeing where it can be best deployed but again it's appreciated there is an improvement uh there at station 12. thank you thank you councilman and next is the feet in former chief hold on a second i think you're up again the next informal report is uh female fire recruitment fitness requirements and hiring data once again chief jim davis any questions i've got a couple hey chief how are you doing good ma'am all right so um when i went through this ir um the first thing that caught my mind was or caught my eye was um the physical or the structure of how you recruit female uh firefighters and so we have the hiring and recruiting section so my question to you is how many women and minorities are permanently assigned to that particular section uh honestly it's a very small unit it spools up with people who come together as we get closer to a test there is generally speaking one african-american captain that his name's thaddeus raven he is the lead of over that group he that is his full-time job so technically one man okay um and do they have to be firefighters to be part of that particular group can you can you hire a civilian to be on that team say for instance a woman i don't believe that there's any reason why civilians should not or could not be part of a recruitment team no okay i'd like you to look into that because i think that's probably a barrier to uh sorry um a barrier is when you've got um it's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes if you've never walked in them and so if we're trying to up the number of female recruits i think it would be beneficial to have a woman's voice in that particular room i've got a couple of other questions for you camp heat was one day and we did it in 2019. yes ma'am and it hasn't been done since uh partially due to a lot of the different things and the challenges we've had with you know we went 20 without giving a real a test because of covid and stuff like that so camp heat was a program that was designed to actually um demonstrate the uh type of uh the the type of fire of job that firefighting in emergency medical services is uh the type of expectations from a strength and mobility aspect and to actually um it was based off of some other programs that have been put together on feeling you know in a day in the life of type role um and i know the age range was 14 to 19 so some of them don't quite meet our age requirement yet but have you did you see any of the the young women that participated in that program come back and apply so that's one of the great things that thad raven has done and i'll sit here and brag about the work that he's done all day long where he actually uses it as a mentorship opportunity he does bring in uh other um like groups you know in this case we're talking females so females of the fort worth fire department to not just be mentors but to also he has stayed in contact with them at every step in the process to just prepare encourage and to to basically keep them engaged in the process and keep them moving forward with preparation and knowing what it takes to be a successful candidate for us to hire so yes we have thank you um and then i want to talk about the physical ability test so i know there's been some discussion as to whether or not that's a a barrier and i know that particular standard is set by the state correct i'm sorry ma'am that is that our physical fitness standards for firefighters that's set by the state or by us entirely so so there are there are expected ex there are state expectations for the hiring process yes okay and so as it relates to our expectations here at uh city of fort worth are those expectations the same as the state level are they greater than the state level no ma'am we've done nothing to um make our our process any more difficult or disparate um than what is required at a minimum baseline from the state okay um and so i read here that says the second attempt to pass a pass rate for all candidates has been 100 in the last three years so is it safe to say then that our female recruits aren't necessarily failing out because of the physical portion of this so that's part of the entrance exam requirements correct and the the pass rate on the uh physical agility test has been quite high um and part of that has been that was changed prior to me arriving here and so i do not have a whole lot of experience with what was done beforehand but i understand that there was a higher and i use air quote washout rate at the test at that point it was changed under chief jackson it has had an impact of a higher pass rate and i'll i'll compliment captain raven on that as well because what he has done is put preparatory programs together to demonstrate the upper body strength that's required to do some of the uh skills that are required to successfully complete it and has made the bowlin facility available for people to train practice and understand um best ways to be successful leading up to it so he's been a big part of the success of it um but the um the struggles that that we have had have not been through that process it's been through the um the repetitive need to do it through the training academy that's where we have had some struggles with with strength and upper body stuff uh regarding that so they're passing the initial entry exam but not a final exam or intermediate points along the way fitness test so there have been there have been struggles through the training academy with getting you know our goal is to train people not to do it once but to be able to do it so it becomes muscle memory so they they not just learn to do it right but they fail to to do it wrong right so part of it has been okay that's great and let's take a break and let's get after it again so we can get to the state minimum in a lot of cases you know our recruit instructors will say yeah we can get them to we can get this or that we can get a recruit candidate through one time in order to meet the minimum standard but getting it on a repetitive basis to make sure that the muscle memory and the skill is embedded that has been a bigger challenge for our folks over over time okay um you gave some stats here on on when we see our female candidates failing out of the process but we don't have anything to compare it to for their male counterparts right so it's hard for me to say if you know they're failing the interview process at a higher rate or um the background check at a higher rate or you know whatever that is and so um i'd be interested in in getting that data yes ma'am you deserve that we'll make sure we get you the comparable data and then before i let you go i just want to say with respect to the interview that's much more subjective than it is uh than these other qualifications and so my charge would be to you and your staff is to go through and look at those interview that process those questions you ask what that looks like when they're in the room who's in the room is it representative is it is it all white males right or is it a diverse interview panel what types of questions are you asking and to what extent can implicit bias play a role in whether or not we're deciding if they pass or fail that interview process so i i appreciate that i'll answer very briefly by saying that every member of the fort worth fire department has gone through implicit bias training um and every uh every group of oral board members are are picked with a specific goal and that is to bring the best candidate for firefighter to the city of fort worth forward that that group is made of diversity that group is supported by hr here in the city there is a training session that's done with them prior to make sure that um that you know the rules and regulations of the city are followed and that there is no um um purposeful intent to uh eliminate any particular group based on any type of title vii violation so i would encourage you in the same way that you train our firefighters to have muscle memory for the physical tasks that they do um implicit bias training is not a a one-time go so let's uh and this is to every department not just yours but let's make that muscle memory as well understood man thank you chief i just want to add really quick um just to echo that you know we're working in a work group together on the homegrown heroes initiative to create a path career pathway for our high school students i think it's important and i think we've said this in our workers but i just want to say it here for the record too i think it's important that in our goal is that we also create the pipeline for our amazing young ladies to take up a career in this as well i think part of the challenges to what we're seeing today is the runway that we're preparing folks and also the process in which we're you know bringing people in but i just want to encourage you that as our teams work together that we tackle that challenge even in that program as well so and i appreciate that i'm very proud of the work that we've done but it does not mean that we don't have a lot of we have a lot of room for growth in that area but um we're working at it every day thank you for that thank you thanks chief the next informal report is on the farrington field redevelopment study and fernando costa is available if there's any questions fernando if you could come and just uh for the public's benefit give a very brief overview of this process and what it's going to look like because i know folks in fort worth are pretty emotionally tied to that stadium yes the fort worth independent school district owns the farrington field site which of course includes the stadium and the field house of billingsley field house the school district and the city of fort worth are co-sponsoring a workshop this week today tomorrow thursday which will end with a public presentation by an 11-member panel from the urban land institute dallas fort worth district council on opportunities to redevelop the farrington field site bearing in mind how that site could serve to attract entrepreneurial businesses in line with our economic development strategic plan but at the same time being respectful of the historic resources on the site of course both the stadium and the field house are now listed on the national register of historic places there are other challenges associated with any redevelopment of the site including gas flow setbacks and the need for drainage improvements to support development throughout the cultural district and not the least of the challenges is accommodating the stock show and other users of the parking lot in connection with large public events so these are all significant challenges and the idea behind the workshop is to bring to fort worth some of the best minds that we can find to determine what the possibilities might be and one of the options of course is essentially to support the status quo and not make any changes but it was the view of all the interested parties that it would make sense to explore a wide range of ideas before making any conclusion and just so we're clear this is the the dreaming phase so to speak it's purely a brainstorming exercise there is no expressed intent on the part of any party to proceed toward any redevelopment at this time and we will definitely engage with the public before we do that that's certainly our intent thank you thank you fernando the next informal report is about fictitious license plates also known as paper license plates and deputy chief creator is here if there any questions i would like to hear a report that's going on in my district good afternoon mayor council thank you for having me here to answer any questions you may have in reference to the fictitious license plates prevalent issue that we're having not only locally but statewide and nationally as well as you've all seen in the in the media you're here as of late before asking specific questions you know at least from me what is it that you could update us on since you guys have been looking into it and of course everyone has seen the nbc 5 news report through my area my npo often has to come through and look at these paper plates and whenever i see them i'm always trying to take pictures of them so what is it that you all are doing to help with this and how does your work flow into the state right actually we all know this is a hot topic and prior to this informal report councilwoman uh it's been on our radar and i can tell you that albeit a state dmv administrative issue it's incumbent upon all of us as law enforcement professionals locally state and nationally and we continue to collaborate to combat this issue i can tell you as far as fort worth goes we currently have uh three open investigations on three locations in our city that are uh distributing and selling these uh tags illegally so it's something that didn't just come on our radar it's been going on um we do run across a lot of issues uh councilman crane asked about is it enough probable cause to pull over a vehicle if you just see a tag it is depending on the fact that the officer runs a check on the computer and then car computer and if it comes back the majority of the time it comes back legitimate it's a legitimate e-tag or paper tag so that's not enough to pull a vehicle over however you have to look for another traffic violation to pull them over and or if you observe an individual occupy the vehicle that is wanted for a warrant and of course we can pull them over and then delve into the investigation even further as far as uh the temp tags a lot of these tim tags how does your process go you know how how do you fight this and can you think of any success stories you can share so that the public will know exactly what can i do to help police fight this matter that's the best way i can ask it first and foremost we can't do it alone right so we ask for the public the people in the communities the people that walk into the stores the people that know used car lot owners that if you have information that you know we hear you're in the neighborhoods you hear please pass that information along to us like i said we've got three locations we're working on now but i'm certain there's more because it's a national issue not just local you have the statistics that the numbers that we have i can tell you uh we've written an operational uh special operation uh plan that we started last weekend we used our covert and overt specialized units to conduct that in partnership with our state dmv and dps assisted tarrant county auto theft task force that assisted us and we'll continue collaborating along with cog in the future some of those numbers just from two hours two four hour days when we ran the detail this last weekend and we focused on the areas the high crime locations and we all know game rooms we've had an issue with gamers in the past it's nothing new focused on game room areas hotel areas we're a lot of crime drugs going on so we focus in those areas and we we had 41 traffic stops uh 13 of those vehicles were told this is all related to fictitious tax uh 11 citations 12 misdemeanor arrests felt four felony arrests and we generated 14 reports which will be ongoing investigations that we can also forward to the state to dmv to assist in hopes of getting to the source to revoking those licenses so they can revoke their privilege of printing these e-tags out we also seized drugs several methamphetamine and marijuana and we seized 14 of those temporary fictitious tags and we're going to continue our our efforts of course uh in the next few weeks we're going to continue the special operation and we're going to continue collaborating with cog and dmv we have a future meetings in place um to continue this effort to combat this nationwide issue thank you chief thank you we do have uh chris klaus here from the north central texas council of governments they have been a strong partner of the city in addressing the issue of fictitious license plates and i'd like to ask chris if you would just say a word about it thank you fernando thank you thank you again my name is chris klaus with the north central texas council governments and this is something you know i wish i was here on on different subject matter but the reality is that this is growing exponentially a lot of it is a result of funding that was not provided to us from the legislature from the legislative session a few years ago we we it was just a matter of time i think before we start seeing this this uptick as a result of the enforcement being diminished as a result of those resources that were not provided back to us this is all dedicated funding that was collected from all the residents when they went and got their car inspected six dollars of that inspection fee went into this fund so we'll be going back again to the legislative session so there's two parts of it you heard about the enforcement part after an uh situation has occurred we'll be going back to the legislature again there's been a recent shakeup at the department of motor vehicles we hope to be able to work with them and the legislature to try to prevent this from happening and making it much more difficult from the onset um of these individuals going in and being able to just print paper tags like there's no tomorrow uh dupe a lot of the the citizens in the in the uh community and councilwoman with your leadership at the regional transportation council to supplement some of the the funding that we haven't been getting the rtc has allocated some federal funds to be able to assist because you need a in insurance to be able to get your car inspected not only a safety inspection but an emissions inspection and you know that we're not compliant with uh you know the emissions in in our region and there's i don't know for the last 25 30 years there's been at least a fatality one fatality a day somewhere in texas on public roads so we're trying to address that obviously the the makeup of the car and the how safe the car is has a big influencing factor on that and then to get your car registered you need inspection so if you're getting a fraudulent registration then you probably don't have inspection you probably don't have insurance uh there's a lot of safety uh missions and of course just um you know bad stories that we hear about on the roadway so we do have funding set aside unfortunately as federal funding has taken a little bit to get all the agreements necessary to be able to start dispersing that money within the region to be able to support the enforcement efforts that we once had with the hope that this is a supplemental money or startup money before we can get the the money that's already been collected from the regions uh back to us to to have that that effort thank you david one thing i'll share is i think this proves that this is more than just a neighborhood situation and that even though it might seem to be quite minor whenever you see a paper tag there's a good chance that that's a driver who should not be on the road and who knows what history that driver has so i just say thank you to police the cog and everybody else who's joining us on this fight and i'll just make a comment chief uh thanks when i asked for this a number of months ago or whenever it was it was in response to a couple of citizens that had gotten in car accidents uh and then they didn't have insurance the people driving that would paper plate so this is a bigger wire i'm glad you brought that up mayor pro tem it's a bigger wider issue across the city and really across the state and i guess across the country but i want to make sure we're doing everything we can because those people are out of there out of out of pocket for their deductible and everything else when they've been doing everything right so whatever we can do to stop it one thing i did notice you had a good idea about reporting it i don't want to ever encourage anybody to be a vigilante police officer like it sounds like bigger pro president pivx is taking photos but i will say this we do have the my fw at my forth app and i just looked and there's a way to make vehicle complaints but there's not something on there about paper tags so i would see if we can figure out a way to do that so citizens can do exactly what you're doing and reporting that and then getting the information to you all to follow up on it can range from from felonies to something minor just trying to avoid paying tolls so we've actually had some of our covert units witness some criminals in the process or about to commit a crime and they pull over and physically take the hard tag the aluminum tag off their vehicle and put a temp tag prior to committing the crime so this is a serious issue and it goes to something minor is not paying toll tax insurance avoiding taxes to committing felonies they've been involved with thefts felony thefts stolen cars robberies and even homicides so it's a serious issue across the nation thank you i have a quick question i guess it's safe to assume that if they've got these fraudulent tags they're probably not just committing that one crime of the fraudulent tags and so do you see any correlation with the the additional crime that these folks are committing is it all over the board or do you typically is it drug related is it gang related is it theft related is there any kind of pattern that right the majority of the crime that we've seen is what i've stated earlier is your thefts your burglars uh vehicle and home burglars and your robbers and your homicides you know they're trying to hamper our ability to identify the vehicle people in those vehicles stolen vehicles but rest assured that we're going to continue combating the issue we have this special operation that's still going on we're going to continue to collaborate with our partners and and i can tell you that it is a dmv administrative issue however i think they're being proactive with the legislation that's been changed and um i've personally spoken to one of the board members and and they've called emergency meetings to possibly put in place fingerprints for these individuals that are trying to obtain the license not only that um just random site checks because we on all these individuals that are obtaining their license fraudulently there's not even a brick and mortar location they're just there to print these tags out and sell them and put them out vehicles another thing we have seen in ours has run across the issue is uh you run across a fictitious that was not fictitious so we can't call it fictitious it's valid it's in the system they're duplicating it triplicating it and they're putting it on several different vehicles when they go out to commit crimes so it's a huge issue but that's what we're here for to combat it and i think it's it's a i think we we look forward to combating it and i think we'll be able to get to the bottom of the source and our goal on these special operations is to gain intel to get back to those locations so those individuals that they're selling and printing these out illegally thanks chief chief hold on a second i have a question sorry guys when it comes to the automated license plate readers uh deputy chief corriado um i mean there are a number of ways i guess that uh they struggle to figure out what is legitimate and what is a counterfeit one right there could be even copies of a legitimate paper plate out there and as far as what we use here at fort worth pd um can those automated license plate readers say if they catch a say a car is identified okay as a certain paper plate and then somewhere across town there's another vehicle with the same paper plate absolutely is our system smart enough to say hey i have a hit here on the same play paper played in two different locations can our system distinguish that is it capable of doing that without compromising our investigative efforts right yes you're exactly correct our lprs and our flock cameras do have that capability and that's like i stated before that's an issue we're having you can have 50 of the same tag on different vehicles but we so to speak with their bolos are put out yes and it may hamper our ability temporarily or delay it but we will get to the bottom of it we will get to the individual that's doing it or the suspects that's utilizing that temp tag so rest assured our guys our boots on the ground are working hard to combat the issue thank you chief thank you sir thank you uh let's see next informal report is the fund balance allocation of 11 million dollars for arterial projects in the 2022 bond program and william johnson is available if there any questions all right next informal report is on lakeland edition in holdings in the fort worth nature center richard zavala is available for that history lesson if anybody wants it all right next informal report is monthly development activity report and dj harrell is available if there are any questions moving on next informal report is the proposed 2022 comprehensive plan and eric fladiger is available if there are any questions yes i am i have a couple questions okay eric actually eric i just have one and i'll ask it while you're walking up here because my my colleague mr nettles on my right is apparently antsy to get this this over with i just have one question and it is i've looked at um thank you for putting all of this together um when are we updating our vision and goals uh well um let me ask first when was the last time we did that uh that's a good question i think the with some minor tweaks it goes back to the 20 to the 2000 comprehensive plan effort and was that our first plan ever uh it's the first real modern comprehensive plan that city fort worth has had that's correct so you're saying we haven't done it since we decided to do a modern comprehensive plan okay that's right thank you but guess what we have coming up elizabeth a retreat and we can vision away eric is so excited i'm very excited i might have already sowed that scene okay very good thank you all right let's see next informal report is the proposed update of the panther island forum bay forum based district development standards and guidelines and daniel is available if there are questions uh no specific questions but i would like uh and presented to the record i've been getting a lot of questions lately a lot of interest gender of course with the announcement of the fund allocation from the corps of engineers uh to that project so if you can just give me a quick summary for our viewing audience you may have questions daniel and daniel basically what i'm looking for is if you can give kind of a an overview of the process that we intend to embark on you know to achieve that uh you know goal thank you mayor and cancel uh i just want to introduce evan steiner on behalf of randy hatcheson i i have to excuse him for personal reasons today but she has a wealth of knowledge on the background and where panther island is headed to okay that's fine so we like to um update all of our form-based codes approximately every five years just to adjust the codes to development that's happening and new trends in urban planning as well this one has not been updated since 2016 so we are looking at several things within this code including the minimum and max height requirements increased flexibility and setbacks we are adjusting things to deal with the canals we're rewriting the sign code within the ordinance we're refining the tree the street tree requirements and we're updating the graphics illustrations and then aligning the plan with the newest and latest engineering for panther island as well so we'll be working with community stakeholders throughout this process the purpose of this ir is just really to update you guys that this process is beginning now okay so when it starts uh when do we expect to finish any approximate date we um anticipate in this we anticipate finalizing the amendments with our stakeholders over the next three few months and throughout the summer and then in the fall we'll be back here for the public process okay and if you can can you just illustrate a little bit more on what that public process will look like for example when we did the stockyards forum based code you know we did charettes as part of that public process any ideas how we're going to do it for the panther island area um i would have to get back to you on that um we i don't think that we have any design charades planned at this time um but i do know that we will be meeting with various stakeholders throughout the process um and those will not just be panther island stakeholders but a larger community input as well okay just as long as there is some you know reasonable component of that public process inclusive of community and stakeholders all right thank you yeah i just want to thank david cook and carlos for spearheading this project on behalf of the trva board and membership as a city this is this is ours to own in the form based good process and it's a huge opportunity for the city of fort worth my request might be as we get closer in the summer and fall making sure we have an appropriate level of private sector input into what's possible and importantly most marketable into the future this is a opportunity to double size the downtown that many cities do not have that opportunity and i think it's it's more than just a public shred process this is a huge vision that a lot of people have a lot of input into and it's our chance to get it right thank you for working on this thank you okay next informal report was the may 2022 election outreach plan and michelle shared the schedule with you is there any other questions michelle's available otherwise i'm going to the last and final informal report and that's on ways to watch city council meetings and michelle gute is available if there are any questions i have questions see michelle and i think i was one of the ones that asked for this ir uh with the understanding about um facebook and i just did a little research and i just kind of wanted to i have a hard time when we say we just can't do it no more with being the 12th largest city and so and i did the research because i represent district 8 social media is very huge for my district and i believe that i wish we could find a way to include facebook because when i did the research october the 12th we had 1.1 000 views september the 21st we had 1.3 000 views for the work session september 14th we had 1.5 views thousand august 3rd we had 1.9 000 views june work session we had june 22 we had 2 000.3 uh views and so that tells me that facebook is a key component of making sure that the city of fort worth remains transparent where people can react and just easily get it onto their phones i do have a substitute idea for i see the website it says fortworth texas.gov fw tv if there is any way where when someone goes automatically to fort worth texas.gov there is a either a link or the video actually shown on the main page so every time that we go live that there could be a link directly on the main page because if you don't know to do slash fwtb it is very hard to find uh the the link now that's a subject that's it's not a substitute it's an addition to okay because i still want us to figure out how we can fix the facebook market um there's major churches and other uh locations that broadcast three four hours five hours long and and i'm sure david you know that we have the money to figure out how we can make sure that someone is operating this system and finding it um and i think you said we need a person to uh monitor and troubleshoot during the entire broadcast and so i think we'll just figure out a way we have a lot of city staff that stays here when we're here and so um those are my comments i really hope that we can find a way okay all right we will revisit the the facebook thank you any other questions well i think it's a great idea what um chris suggested having the the constant feed on our home page and so i would i would say take let's take that a step further and when we're not live the city produces a ton of content whether it's static images or videos on on different initiatives and i'd like to see that as well to free up that that dead time so to speak so that no matter if we're live or not you come to the city of fort worth website you're learning something about what we've got going on that you might not already know or you get to watch whatever meeting we've currently got that's riveting at the moment michelle quick question for you right now when you're when you're live streaming via youtube isn't there a way to embed that link and youtube video into the facebook page for the city of fort worth so that you're not having to stream on two sources utilizing youtube that might be the better thing to do since you're having those technical backend issues youtube's a little bit user more user friendly you're not having to keep up with it but if you just embed that link into facebook that may allow the users that are more familiar with facebook um that's just a thought for your staff to look into we can do that yeah michelle you should know i'm facebooking you live right now and before we got this new council i used to facebook live all the time because people did watch and it is very helpful it's not the easiest place to get to we don't have the best parking and it's kind of a hassle to come down here unless you have real business to address but i started back facebooking live when i realized we really weren't going facebook anymore so we want to make city council must see tv okay and and that's kind of hard because we can be boring but i promise you when we're talking budgets programming covet a lot of people look to us so i'm crossing my fingers you'll be able to come up with a rabbit out of your hat and we can get this back going again facebook live through youtube or however but thank you for looking at it and thanks to pastor chris for making sure we know this thank you i got you too and you're partnering crime all right anything else thank you michelle thank you mayor that concludes my report okay questions from council regarding any city council action items which will be for next week on the 22nd upcoming items no we're going to move then to the presentation on alliance texas economic impact with mike berry from hillwood who's been very patient thank you mike and we'll get a chance to ask future half future yes mayor members of the council thank you again for the opportunity to to uh come present uh on the economic impact of alliance texas gina i think we need to get you a custom-made stand and i know for your ipad so that you don't have to do that for me mike you'll want to we can do that okay there are some things we have a hard time building but we could probably build build that thank you um so for those of you who are new on the council let me just give you a short background on how this has evolved 30 plus years ago when we began the development of alliance airport was really the first thing that happened to open up the entire alliance texas region we felt like it was important to report out to our public partners on an annual basis how the initial seed capital that really was public sector driven um how it was performing and i was trying to go back to the first year that i did that i made this presentation it was probably 25 years ago been through a lot of councils and a lot of mayors since then but that is the purpose behind it so it's not to come here and you know tout the success of alliance texas it's really more about um providing you with the economic data to show the return on the original investment that was put into the end of the project i do want to highlight and thank and give a shout out to patricia garcia patricia and i have been working together on this presentation for probably that all 25 years yeah so we've we've we've gone through a lot of councils and mayors together um but i i greatly appreciate the fact that every time i walk up here that it's ready to go so is it is it this no i'm putting from the wrong button i gotta punch this one okay sorry um so i'm gonna quickly i just thought you'd be you'd enjoy a maybe a few high-level economic impact facts on texas on north texas and fort worth and sort of a reflection of what we're why we're doing so well here in this part of the country uh then a few highlights on activity uh in and around alliance uh talk a little bit about innovation some of the things we're doing there and then i'll close with a two-minute video and i know you've you've been here a long time so i'll try to try to go through it very briefly you do have a copy of this packet if you don't have it yet you will have it at your at your seat so you can feel free to go through it afterwards and call me if you have any questions this is something i thought you'd appreciate this is sort of brand new data about the movement across the country uh out migration from certain states and in migration in other states and it's backed up that bottom fact shows you the actual u-haul movement data across the country but probably no surprise to you that new york and california are seeing the greatest out-migration florida and texas are seeing the greatest in migration um and that trend seems to be something that is is going to continue then when you get to the you hone in on the north texas region uh the power of of our region is uh is really just continuing to to grow in in stature around the country we're the number one job growing region most people don't realize that we are the number two ranked tech jobs center in america you know we're not really known our brand and we struggle with this we all do trying to become more of a tech uh center but we really do when you just look at our workforce makeup we do have a very very strong tech workforce the other thing that i think is important is the fact that we have three tier one universities in the north texas region which is huge now for corporate growth and recruitment and we don't talk about that enough the state now has 11 tier one universities in our state so you know a huge strength of of the region that we probably don't promote well enough and then when you drill into fort worth you all know these facts we're the 12th largest city second fastest growing city uh and huge continued growth uh i thought this was an interesting one uh that we were the top attended city for global entrepreneurship week for two years in a row so that tells you a lot about the fact that we are making progress in becoming known more as an entrepreneurial innovation minded city the good news i have to report today is we just passed a hundred billion dollars in cumulative economic impact uh the alliance tech alliance texas corridor how we do that is we have an economic model that we built 25 years ago actually we didn't build it but our economic impact consultant did and then we continue to take tax dollars investment dollars payroll dollars and you throw it all into that model and that's how you come up with the cumulative economic impact so that was a it was a big milestone this year when that number uh jumped over 100 billion it's actually 100.3 billion i'm sorry 100.6 and then you you see the growth trajectory here so it's continuing to move upward and we hope we can keep that graph going in that same direction the other good news and this is something i remember vividly i remember standing here didn't seem like that long ago when we surpassed 1 billion in total property taxes paid off of the alliance texas properties it's now reached 3.13 billion in total property taxes paid that doesn't include sales tax and that doesn't include personal property that's just ad valorem so pretty exciting growth trajectory there and you can see the breakdown by all of the municipalities and governmental agencies that that the taxes are paid into fort worth being there at 621 the school districts are the largest beneficiary just because their tax rates are higher but northwest independent school district is over a billion dollars now in total property tax receipts so that's why they've been able to grow uh like they like they have um and then here's the graph just honing in specifically on fort worth you can see that that graph is going in the right direction beyond that beyond just the the dollars uh the job growth is continuing to be very very strong we're now over 63 000 total jobs working in the alliance texas program right now almost 560 companies and over 53 million square feet of space and that's that's growing um some of the highlights uh the the whole region the whole north fort worth region is now becoming one of the fastest growing and particularly in terms of industrial i think we're the number one industrial sub-market in north texas now but that that's reflected in in our building activity um and then charles schwab completed this year even though they're not fully back in the office because of kovat they completed construction on their 1.2 million square foot headquarters which will we believe bring a lot of continued spin-off development and then bnsf the alliance intermodal facility just became last year we surpassed southern california we're now the number one in terms of volume in the country so that's that was a pretty exciting milestone the airport itself uh is just if you haven't been up there recently i encourage you to come up really on any day which it's different than we've ever uh experienced before particularly with amazon fedex just continuing to grow so that's being translated into huge growth in cargo operations and in fuel sales and we're expanding our fbo so that'll bring in a lot more corporate aviation activity one thing we're very focused on is workforce and education and so we're spending a lot of time with our education partners and our corporate partners these are just three examples of programs that we're actively trying to grow i think the student influencers program is really one of our one of our best efforts so far because it actually brings we select from all the school districts in the region a group of students who actually are allowed to come in and engage with the companies and go through internships and get real exposure to the variety of of uh opportu career opportunities that are there we're spending a lot of time on innovation i think you've heard us report on this before but our mobility innovation zone which started literally on one sheet of paper has now become a real living breathing center for innovation we've got a number of the leading mobility innovation companies coming into alliance right now these are four who are engaged in different pieces of the surface freight mobility sector from long-haul trucking down to last mile trucking and everything in between and all these technologies are actually working today out at alliance you can come see these autonomous trucks actually delivering uh freight both on our interstate highways in our local region and then in short short hops and then on the air side same thing delivery of freight via drones is a little bit further down the road on a commercial basis than on the surface but it is happening very fast this company on the right wing is a google company we were able to convince them to come here and stand up they're basically their launch site for their commercial program and they're now operating at alliance every day they're operating across north texas they have a partnership with walgreens and they're actually delivering uh packages on a daily basis um on march the 2nd to try to try to continue to grow this and to make fort worth really a center for mobility innovation we're hosting in partnership with texas a m and the fort worth chamber and visit fort worth a conference at the hotel drover uh where we'll have industry leaders from all these companies coming in um and spending time here and brainstorming uh different strategies uh working towards commercialization so we're really excited about that we hope that will become an annual event that we can grow so lastly two minutes of uh just to show you since i can't give you the whole story in this presentation we've got two minutes to hopefully show you sort of everything that's going on in the alliance texas corridor [Music] go [Music] so [Music] so a lot going on thank you very much for the opportunity that was awesome who has questions carlos did you have something go ahead yeah quick question mine you know uh thomas weakles big interest of mine in general maybe hasn't uh maybe they haven't been adopted long enough yet but eventually you're gonna get fewer claims less fraud and there's gonna be a shift and liability for the driver you know onto the vehicle have you seen any cost savings yet so far in your adoption of too early it's too early i it's it's a long run before you'll actually see real cost efficiencies but they're still in the pre-commercialization stage if you believe the numbers they believe by 2030 that 30 percent of all freight long-haul in middle mile freight we'll be moving autonomously at that point i think you'll start to see some real economies um but it's more there's more of a push now than ever because the driver shortage is really acute in this country so you know a lot of people think well autonomy is going to take jobs away from humans it's just going to barely fill fill the gap feel the shortage but i think i think we're a ways off before you actually see real measurable but you've got to crawl walk and then and then run right thank you mike yes sir carrie and then leonard just overall mike um you know thank you to russell and ross pro jr for all the work you'll do for fort worth i don't think you know we enjoy the great places to live from parkland to heritage to harvest and love eating at the the restaurants and alliance town center and thank you for bringing the office but um also the jobs um alliance airport will surpass dfw by 2025 is the largest job center um fort worth you are regularly out there promoting fort worth and alliance texas and bringing you know top innovative companies to this city and so it's not just the residents of the restaurants it's also those jobs that you're bringing some good news if you have not heard is last tuesday this mayor and council injected another 50 million dollars in our bond package for roads east-west arterials along there and so we're trying to keep pace with all y'all's efforts um and so that'll be for the may election and again you are just engaged whether it be rtc or txdot you're regularly engaged and the city of fourth will not be the same without without you all so thank you very much thank you carrie appreciate it leonard and then gina mike um thank you for uh the presentation today um it's good and bad news i guess for district seven uh as carrie outlined there's just extraordinary growth that you all have facilitated over the years such that uh that area will no longer be in district seven so we're sad about that our time has been short together but uh we're so proud and thankful for uh what uh hillwood has done and certainly for uh mr perot's leadership uh in in building out that area um so just a couple comments though on what you presented today mike um i want to be sure i think if you all think this is a good idea in preparation for our retreat i think next week that some of this information i think would be really valuable for our facilitator as you know things that we should be talking about and highlighting about the the go forward uh just strikes me it strikes me that way so thank you in terms of the innovation and and those kinds of ideas um and then i just want to uh finish by saying i think you know the it's really hard to describe the impact that you all have had in the area i mean it's the the the detail that kerry went through in terms of the economic uh growth and certain certainly the population but you know something that uh you and i have talked about that i think is very appropriate to share and it's somewhat just a little bit of the recognition of of how the city feels about uh what you all have created out there is naming renaming the airport as we know it as alliance field right now we're going to talk about some name like the perot airfield at alliance i think it was i don't think we changed the name we probably add it added to it correct correct so i think and that's really in honor of of ross pro senior yes right so i think that's going to be great we're going to put that uh in front of council here um probably relatively soon uh next um couple sessions but um again it's a well-deserved uh recognition and so we're we're gonna be excited to do that thank you thank you thanks leonard i i like the idea of mike because the people in dallas for whatever reason think that they're the only parole interest and this is this is home you know for you guys so i think that's highly appropriate i gig dallas whenever i can but i've i wanted to tell you you you have never changed and it's very very positive but i first met you when you pulled a chair out for me at what is now the taran county opportunity district never will forget that but i was telling a staffer earlier today how when i went through leadership fort worth which was probably 2001 or two you were planning your first residential component and what was amazing is that those homes were wired back then and the staff for whoever it was said boy they've always been forward thinking and you have and so i just think when you look at tarrant county opportunity center that was part of the abatement package from way back when you all first started you have paid off not just that area but the entire city region and nation in spades and so we always owe you a debt of gratitude thank you very much gina now you know where i hang out just south of you so i'll expect my little component for my eye i just all i need to do is measure how tall it needs to be to get it right on the podium i know for the call thank you i think go ahead thank you hey thanks mike i just made a comment uh thanks for all you do i want to echo what everyone else has said um i sometimes when i get resistance from folks about tax incentives and public private partnerships and what we do there i usually an example of the job creation the growth the investment and entrepreneurship and everything else that happens up there so i just want you to know that and we're appreciative of all you do for the city and to something that uh councilman firestone said i'm just sad you're not in district three and um actually the way we're drawing maps you might be interested so yeah so i'm just kidding but maybe i'm not so [Laughter] great thank you thank you michael mike thank you for being here um we've spent a lot of time together in the last month or so specifically working on economic development to continue this trend but i know it's not part of your presentation today but i also wanted you to briefly mention hillwood is not just operating alliance texas in fort worth you've also got a lot of interest across the city um at a very high level just tell us how bullish you are on fort worth and other sectors of fort worth as well well i told someone today who actually didn't realize i was from fort worth and that i'm a fort worth native he thought you know because i worked for hillwood that i must have been you know a higher gun but i told him my my answer was i said well i i'd like to i like to think of myself as one of the biggest cheerleaders for the city um i mean i think i tell people we're just warming up in fort worth we have a lot of growth challenges that we have to manage and you all what i've sat and listened to today i mean you all deal with that every day um but i think we we might be arguably even though we're the 12th largest city maybe the best kept secret in the country and i think if we manage that growth properly and if we selectively bring in you know quality people companies this community should should be one of the one of the best cities in the country for a long long time so and there's opportunities everywhere it's not just you know obviously i'm focused on that quarter but i'm interested in the west corridor i'm interested in the central city we're doing development in south fort worth right now along 35 and rising her talking to a lot of people about different things i i love fernando's discussion about farrington field with you all bringing in uli i think is a great great move they are the intellectual uh stars of real estate development they really know how to vision things so um you know as you already have put me to work not letting loose don't worry thanks mike okay thank you okay now we're moving to our briefing on strategy reduce violent crime with chief neil knox fourth pd all media rise they did on cue like all stood up at the same time thank you so much mayor and council if i may before i start i do want to give a uh a nod a tip of the hat to mike berry into hillwood and parole family for all they have done not just fort worth but for first responders in fort worth and he's right he's not just investing in a certain area fort worth i was there for a meeting at the fort worth office last week i ran into a young lady who's with crystal ray she goes to school at crystal ray's an intern at hillwood they're hiring her to come in and empowering her they're pouring into her and they're making a difference in people not just places and i appreciate them very much for what you do thank you violent crime is the number one issue for the forward police department violent crime is the number one issue for me even when going through the process when i threw my hat in the ring to become chief one of the first questions we were asked is what is issue number one what do you want to address first my answer then and my answer now is violent crime we've seen looking across the country that this is a a nationwide problem but this is something that fort worth once dealt with locally and we will we've also seen looking across the country looking quite frankly my good friend eddie garcia in dallas has had great success with his crime plan what we're seeing the recipe is not that difficult comes down to two words really police and partnerships first is policing we need solid professional precise data-driven intelligence-led policing we need officers who go out proactively in communities and address the violent actors that are in communities but it also needs partnerships partnerships with social service agencies partnerships with our educators partnerships with nonprofits with private industry but it also means partnerships with our communities with our formal and informal community leaders with our faith leaders and what we've seen in law enforcement and we've acknowledged even more and more recently is quite frankly oftentimes the communities that need us the most are the ones that trust us the least and i want you to know those two things proactive professional policing and proactive engagement with all communities in fort worth has been going on for quite some time before i ever even took over as chief under chief krauss was happening and we're continuing to do it today we talked a little bit in the introduction about the national crime trend this is what we're seeing according to cdc in 2020 the nation experienced the largest one-year increase in the homicide rate since it began tracking homicides in our country the complete numbers for 2021 are not yet available but there's another group called the council on criminal justice that released some information and they said in large cities anyway across the country there is an additional seven percent increase in 2021. we all know that firearm violence affects all of us these statistics were staggering though firearm firearm-related injuries are among the five leading causes of death for people ages 1 to 64 in the united states but let's drill down a little bit more and very disturbing here teens and young adults 15 to 34 years of age that's where our homicide rates are the highest black american indian alaskan native and hispanic populations are the ones most affected by this violence if this doesn't catch you off guard if this doesn't make you upset i don't know much will look at the disparities here so national firearm homicides broken down by different racial demographics that tall blue line black males the smaller lines closer to me on the right those are for females but they mirror relatively closely what you're seeing with males as well so let's get to fort worth we look at injury and fatal shootings so that would be our aggravated assaults and our homicides that involve shootings here's the numbers we're looking at right here we've got fort worth dallas el paso some other large cities across the country if you look between 2019 the blue line and 2020 the orange line every city had increased homicide in major cities you'll see the same now one thing that's important to note because not all the information is available right now the gray line for 2021 is just up to september 30th i did get some information from the major city chiefs association recently for the 70 largest agencies in the nation the trend continued in most large cities where in 2021 there was actually an increase over 2020. aggravated assaults similar again this is only through september 30th of 2021 but looking at the information from the major city chiefs association again there were significant increases in aggravated assaults across the country robbery was one where we actually saw a bit of a decline that was the the glimmer of hope we saw in many cities across the country but the numbers are still higher than we want them to be now we've talked a lot over the last couple of years i've even said it myself about how we are seeing homicide numbers that are the highest we've seen in more than a quarter of a century and that is true one homicide is too many but one thing i think we need to do is give some context to that number so what this chart shows is our crime rate in fort worth from 1990 to 2021 along with our population growth 1990-2021 as you can see with the blue line as you all know at this table population has been significantly growing for many years but you'll also see that the crime rate has been dropping what was interesting when i looked at this is our population has more than doubled since 1990. now let's drill down a little bit more though talk about more recent numbers from 2010 to 2020 and that will show where that increase started you see the line consistently dropping to 2019 and we see the uptick in 2020 2019 into 2020. another number shows again 118 homicides is what we saw last year that's too high but the numbers aren't relatively speaking is significant when it comes to our population as they were in the 90s one thing that's never lost on the ford police department is every victim is significant so here are shootings from 2006 through 2021 again an important note here is we've increased the way we are able to more accurately report shootings we changed that in 2020 so the numbers 2006 from 2019 a lot of digging into narratives a lot of data mining had to be done where now as of 2020 it's a simple box to be checked in the report so we're tracking them more efficiently than we had before so the numbers we do believe are higher in 2020 and 2021 versus other years but probably not as significant as this shows because we have more robust data reporting now 2021 for fatal shootings 94 these are with firearms 294 with injuries staggering statistic you'll see here so i'm going to show you two slots one will show 2021 forward shooting victim data the next one will show fort worth shooting arrestee data meaning the ones involved in the crime that are actually shooting and the numbers are quite similar so the age of most of our shooting victims 92 percent or adult 86 or male and here's where real disparity jumps out 62 african-american so a population that makes up roughly 19 percent of our city accounts for 62 percent of our victims of gun violence here are the arrestees 93 percent adult 88 male 67 african-american one of the things we use is a tool to find where we need to address our resources to strategically and thoughtfully place our resources where they're most needed or hot spot maps this shows in 2021 where our shootings are most occurring in the city of fort worth so we started back in may may 11th an initiative called fort worth safe what we wanted to make sure citizens of fort worth knew is there was a lot of proactive police work already going on a lot of community engagement already going on we wanted to make sure they knew what we were doing we want to be transparent in our efforts what we did was create a web a website link on our traditional website to a fort worth safe site where citizens could go look at our heat maps look at the strategies we're using in neighborhoods look at the neighbors we're going to and why and see the results of the initiative here were the hotspot locations we were looking at during our fort worth safe initiative which was may 11 through september 11th they mirror what you saw earlier from our shootings across the city here are some of the results of the forward safe initiative we had over 671 arrests most of which were felony arrests 234 weapons were confiscated 104 gang members were arrested and this is not all arrest activity in fort worth this was just the officers dedicated to the fort worth safe initiative we use that data driven intelligence led technology driven strategy we talked about earlier when we went and made stops we went and encountered people it was because we already knew through the data we had the intelligence we had the cameras we had that someone was in a stolen vehicle was selling drugs was in possession of a firearm maybe all three and one thing i want to make sure everyone knows about is our gun violence investigations team which we started at the beginning of last year we found that many of our shooters were committing homicides were also committing non-fatal shootings but something was unfair to the detectives that were tasked with working those cases they were the same detectives working all the general assignment cases in our divisions their caseloads are massive they did not have the time to dedicate to those cases like those cases deserved not their fault but those cases needed more attention so we've created a team that investigates non-fatal shootings the same way we investigate homicides when this team was put in place the clearance rate for non-fatal shootings was right around 20 for fort worth since this team has been put in place our clearance rate is now 60 in climbing i'm speechless when i look at this slide because this looks like something a military unit would use i want to be very clear about something i am not anti-second amendment but i am all about responsible lawful gun ownership and there are people in our neighborhoods carrying weapons like this that do not need to have those weapons period i don't care where you stand on that issue the issue is some people do not need to have these weapons because they're killing one another with them you have citizens who see these in their neighborhoods you have forward police officers who every single day 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year go out in communities knowing this may be what they encounter but they continue doing it every single day and mayor i want to point out here thank you for your your vocal support of the police department you have no idea how much that support means to me personally it means to the officers of the ford police department they need that encouragement they need that support and coming directly from the top it means a great deal this is some of what we did with fort worth safe in addition to our law enforcement efforts because i said it's not an either either or initiative it's both it's an and an issue that we have the law enforcement efforts and the community efforts as the mayor says you can be pro-police and pro community at the same time they're not mutually exclusive very intentional very robust effort about going out into the community connecting with residents businesses organizations who serve the community letting them know what we're doing and why we're doing it we even created a forward safe business card with a qr code on the back to make it very easy to go to the site to see exactly what we're doing it was a level of transparency i don't think we've had with any of our initiatives before our gang unit was critical to this but it wasn't just the enforcement you see at the bottom no less than 158 guns taken off the streets just by the gang unit but they also are involved in boys and girls clubs community centers very involved with isds in the area engaging with children mentoring and coaching doing what they can to prevent and intervene when you have some children who are at risk of becoming parts of gangs themselves community safety partnership is a group we started uh last year with ccpd funds to fund officers who actually are going a little bit deeper we all have our mpos who do phenomenal work incredible work what the community safety partnership does it dives a little deeper into our youth mentoring programs like operation progress pal different school programs they also partner with groups like lvt rise to help pour into and support the communities uh during the summer of 2021 they put together a three-day camp and only 100 young people from fort worth participated were able to take a tour of tcu it was a really great day they loved it this next summer we're looking at doing the same thing at texas wesleyan we increase the dollar figure that we commit to our partners with a shared mission when it comes to ccpd funds to partner with groups who like us want to do something about violent crime but they approach it from a different direction to prevent and intervene and here's what the budget looked like for us it's very important for us to stay within the budget the best we possibly can so it's a reallocation of resources for instance some of our specialized units they will change their days off they will change the hours they work to be able to address the violent crime based on the trends that we're seeing in addition to that we had officers that would come in for overtime and between the general fund and ccpd funds we spent just under 369 000 in overtime just for our violent crime initiative efforts this is a very important slide for me because what i want you to realize even though the initiative forward safe it went from may 11th to september 11th that was just the first phase of our initiative to address violent crime it did not stop we did not hit pause it has continued from september 12th the day after the first phase before we're safe ended our numbers are even going up again more targeted precise arrests of violent actors in our neighborhoods more weapons confiscated and taken off the streets and the majority of you will notice there of the 992 arrest 639 were felony arrests violence prevention starts at home let's be honest it does violence prevention starts with families we're doing what we can to help pour into families invest in families invest in communities and i've said many times before we will never arrest our way out of crime but please understand we will be in neighborhoods and we will be arresting the violent actors who are committing these crimes in our neighborhoods we're going to be working more with violence intervention and prevention groups working more with grassroots organizations we're working with our lawmakers our district attorney's office judges in tarrant county it's an all hands on deck approach here's what we'll do moving forward we're going to continue to use the same technology that has led us to be more precise and specific in our details we're going to look at a temporary unit where we bring in multiple resources from multiple units within the fort police department to focus specifically on violent crime and more importantly gun crime in the city of fort worth we're going to continue to engage community members and seek input from community members and partner with those leaders in the community that i talked about earlier our director response unit has been critical in in dealing with this and responding to our our camera activations and notifications about stolen vehicles about vehicles related to felt wanted felons and about people we've seen on camera with guns and drugs at convenience stores game rooms and places right in our neighborhoods continuing to work with our crime analysts to gather that intelligence work with our gang units on enforcement as well as prevention intervention and all of our other units within the forward police department who have already been working on this problem they're going to continue to do so we continue to partner with our community members through our mpos and other groups within the communities that we serve we're planning on spending about another 370 000 and from our budgets meeting general and ccpd to cover the overtime that we needed so we're working within the budget we have we're very fortunate to have many federal partners who are working with us we've partnered with federal state county and local partners to make sure we're bringing all resources to bear working with the u.s attorney's office on prosecutions for many gun cases we're starting up another project safe neighborhoods program with the fbi working with our atf2 to address road gun dealers we have to make sure those who are selling the guns are doing it legally recently president biden mentioned some potential grant funding for community policing and violence intervention programs we are very proactively looking into those possibilities as well before we get into questions if i may i can't stress enough just how much your fort worth police department does every single day to support this effort talking about the officers that are out every day i'm talking about our civilian employees who often times were behind the scene with no expectation of any kind of recognition for the hard work they do talking about our volunteers who are out there every single day but also our partners with the shared mission our community members we talked before i mentioned oftentimes the people the communities the neighborhoods that need our help the most are the ones that trust us the least we were very proactive about that as well actually i'd like to ask my my friend to step up to the podium please so received a call recently from a friend of mine who's part of the baptist ministers union he said chief we want to be part of the solution we want to help we understand that the police can't do this alone the community cannot do this alone let's sit down and talk so we were able to go out and meet mount olive and talk about some options talk about things that we could do what i want you know this gentleman right here pastor perishy lowry with greater friendship missionary baptist church is a leader not just in the faith community he's a leader in the city of fort worth he's someone who cares about the community he's someone who wants to see things done to empower and give back to the community but he's not one to just talk about it he's one who wants to get something done i consider it an honor to call him a friend i'll ask him to come up just briefly to talk about what he sees the role of the faith leaders and men like him in the community addressing violent crime pastor larry thank you chief mayor council department leaders it's an honor to be before you i'll be brief um it actually came about in my garage i was preparing for sunday service i received a call some other pastors educating me on what was going on in our community i was very disheartened not only do i represent the baptist ministers union as the president and all that good stuff and a pastor but i'm also a business owner here in our city part owner of tree of life funeral directors and when i received this call i was actually going back to the funeral home that afternoon that evening to discover one of those individuals that have received the call on was on our table i want to stay in business but not that way and i was very uh troubled at the fact that no one was saying anything about our young black men being murdered and so it took on the task contact chief to just give him my uh insight and to educate me on what we were up against and so we want to be involved in that not only just from a community level but also from a business level but also from a clergy standpoint so we have agreed to get involved in the grassroots programs we have agreed to get involved in prevention programs also uh to bring in exposure to our young people to educate them on that there is a better way so i want to commend chief for his work i thank the world of him i think we have a chief that has a heart for the people so i i challenge this council this city to give our police department all of our support uh because they need it it's not just them it's going to take all of us so thank you for hearing me um i only paid for an hour and a half of parking so i do need to know uh if i'm ticketed thank you bishop ladies and gentlemen that's how change happens i'll be happy to take any questions now go ahead jared um thank you chief for um this presentation i'm a bit emotional right now um um i've been to one too many funerals of um kids getting caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time making the wrong decisions um the data you showed showed that kids and young adults were making those wrong decisions and the data you also showed was that black men black boys are committing bad decisions with guns for our teens that have guns and got a call last week right um kids at texas can academy outside of school classes exchanging kid gets pulled in his car into someone else's car by kids gets beat up pistol-whipped thrown out the car and they start shooting out the car um as a black man who grew up in this community as a black man who has two black boys as nephews i can't imagine myself nor my nephews being in that situation and i recognize [Music] that it's important that we train up children when i see your strategies thank you for the service that y'all do um something is uneasy about me as an elected official at this table for the city i love so much we can't arrest our black boys to get out of this and i think that it's important as a community that we're training up children and you're right it takes all of us doing that um some of the things that i lose sleep over one where do our teenagers get guns from you talked about that today and bear with me i'm i'm going through this thought process just to offer encouragement but also to offer challenges that we've made out of the solutions yet but this needs to be the number one priority um how do our kids get guns i also see um and i've heard from folks that i really trust that are doing this work alongside you that when they look in some of these kids eyes they've seen kids living in a community in an opportunity desert and they don't see anything in their eyes no hope right and i believe that as a city we have an opportunity to address opportunity deserts we talk about mccarter and alte mesa and that's one of those areas right and i think that there's work to be done yes in policing and also families and children want hope and opportunities to thrive in their neighborhoods and when we don't as a city when we and not saying we don't but when we don't prioritize that we create conditions of of despair in our communities of color another thing i thought about growing up where do black boys and kids learn conflict resolution what we see in district six is kids getting a fight in school no resources to resolve the conflict in school it boils out into the community one example a 13 year old girl in my district got shot in the head in a park i say these things because i think you know yes we're doing a lot of great things i mean you said it best one life is too many especially for our teenagers and i'm really rallying i've i'm i'm asking for help i've asked for help right and you and you've answered that call but i think there's intentional ways that before it comes to arresting a black boy putting him in jail and furthering that opportunity desert that there are things that we can do for our middle school students and high school students in our neighborhood committee chris brought up an amazing point about what are we doing for middle school and high school students in district six there's not a place for a teenager to go thank god this table made the bold decision right to create opportunities for kids go to community center but how do we attract our teenagers right into those community centers now that we've removed the financial barrier right so there's some things that not just pd but this entire table we're gonna in this entire city staff we have brilliant minds brilliant hearts um in this community and in the city that we can make reducing teen violence our top priority and not just arresting our way out of it but creating hope and opportunity in the lives of our young black boys isolating race because that's what the data is showing um and we need to do initiatives that are specific to that right i don't have the ideas yet but i say all this to say that we have to get very clear and very specific on on the reality that our black boys are losing opportunity and hope and making bad decisions that are ruined their life and creating generational cycles and so i am challenging this table um to figure it out and and i don't know what that looks like just yet but i'm in thank you mayor chris go ahead okay thank you uh first i want to open up and say and i appreciate uh the comments and i i think it's in order to um give accolades to the mayor uh basically being pro police and pro community but chief i do want to highlight i don't think anyone around this table don't support the police and i don't think you've met that you once said attention but i want to make a knowledge that we all support the police and we want to make sure that the police is policing correctly and so i want to say that again i thought i support the police i truly believe and i'm certainly committed to making sure that all issues are correctly founded i have a couple of questions for you in the presentation um you highlighted in the presentation hot spots and i don't know if you can pull that that that slide back up and so when i asked this question because i know we have ccpd funding and i know that we are using our ccpd funding but my question is when you look at these hot spots and you see the red as the highest are we using adequately ccpd funding in those pacific hot spots location are there groups that we are funding and supporting in those and i know this is a new presentation but can you answer that question yes sir that's a great question and if i may before i answer that yes i do understand this council supports the forward police department i've said many times there are not many similarly sized cities across the country where you're going to see the kind of support the police department here gets from the community and from the leaders of the city that sit around this table so thank you for making that distinction i appreciate that and you're absolutely right and we appreciate that support very much i can confidently say that we are focusing our ccpd funded resources in the areas where they are most needed and some of the community centers community centers in the schools we are pouring as much as we can into the areas where it's needed the most we get the most bang for our buck if you will okay and this may be a future agenda item i would actually like to see itemize accounts to support uh that answer you just given as we move forward i think that we want to channel our resources to the these areas that are affected the most the the next point i want to make is you so adequately and specifically highlight the different races uh the age groups [Music] the areas the types of crimes but when it got to resolutions it was broad we're going to work with the churches we're going to work with the grass groups my question is is one word how i think you need to as you ethically you got that bracket you we need to have a bracket to show we're going to work with the grassroots on this and this and i know it might still be finding that information but we just can't be broad when it comes to resolution and we have specific issues and so i think we need to take the nail put it in the coffin and drill until it's over and i for one would sit i mean that made and this issue is bigger than just today so that issue may be a group of us coming together maybe a committee it may be a task force i don't know but we you know if if guns is the issue then we need to drill in and so my and i know you don't have that answer today but i think my challenges to you is how do we incorporate grassroots movement because we had a meeting the other day and there are several different types of grassroots movements and each of them operate differently or they are associated or want some different type of resource you know some are protests or some are working with black young men some are working with black young girls some and i think when you put that slide up and and the biggest issue is black men and boys and we need to really hone in on those grassroots people so that we can make the connection one thing i can do is i can provide if the council would so desire a list of those organizations that we're actually working with uh the communities that they are impacting to give you a little more information about specifically where the coaching the mentoring the intervention the prevention is actually happening and as far as drilling down you're absolutely right we want to drill down as much as we can to these specific people and these specific places we're finalizing an agreement right now with tcu one thing that i've seen several different agencies do across the country one in dallas with chief garcia was partner with an outside entity a respected academic institution that would help us drill down show us from an outside perspective for pd this is what you're doing right this is what you need to do more of or this is something maybe you should try and this is an area where you should focus it because sometimes maybe we get so into our own data we need somebody to give us an outside perspective we are getting that outside perspective and once we're able to drill down even more i would love to come back and show you even more information if you would like i would certainly appreciate that go ahead carlos thank you for the presentation chief um i'm not going to drill down to too much minutia but like you like most police departments around the country were left scratching our proverbial heads to find the real cause you know behind the uptick in gun related violence in your opinion does our rate of increase in violent crimes involving firearms closely mirror those that we've seen on the national trend for major cities yes sir okay i mean there are a lot of theories around there right uh one theory that's kind of been bandied out a lot is uh the increase in the purchase of firearms that uptick you know here during the pandemic around the march time frame but that doesn't really sufficiently explain what happened you know three months later and and this is leading to my next point i mean even though there were in excess of two million purchases uh between march and may still doesn't explain it so gun ownership doesn't sufficiently answer that question correct okay uh you know like you uh you know i support the second amendment you know and uh having responsible gun ownership and use you know firearms you know it's imperative but uh i want to point out too this is why i asked that prior question you know our preventative and focused crime prevention measures you know taken by uh by fort worth pd uh i was trying to ascertain maybe quantitatively if that maybe perhaps helped keep our crime rate from being higher if what did from being higher yeah but are you asking did what yep keep it from going those focused you know crime prevention okay yes would you say in your opinion that they helped keep our crime rate down from being much higher i believe so yes all right and i don't know if you have this statistic but in general the gun related crimes here in fort worth what percentage would you say are from firearms that were obtained illegally i don't have that statistic but i can say that we it would be it would be a significant number but i don't know if the top of my head what that figure would be okay and that goes back to your point about responsible gun ownership because you know purchase of you know a weapon in the proper way shows that responsibility correct but thank you chief i appreciate your department's efforts and then one on one side note i can say this to the council there there is one group that is engaged uh you know in the north side trying to address gun violence there and they've been meeting with uh groups it's called act so if y'all want more information ask your mpos about that thanks carlos gina thank you chief very thorough report great information thank you for bringing it and i know how you met pastor parish at mount olive mayor he's a son of pastor glenn so that same spirit of working with community is very important and i think our own reverend nettles got him to give the prayer for tonight so he's he's been with us most of the day i've got uh three three he's just popping yeah he's definitely got a ticket go go pay his ticket we can get him back one question i have chief and this comes from my uh facebook live audience just so you know uh is the proliferation of guns and the removal of license to carry in texas making things worse i know you don't have data but would like your opinion on that and after you answer that i have another question for you involving uh what do you call it a workforce diversity you're right mayor pro tem i do not have that data i wish i could provide that to you but i don't have any doubt on how it's affected one way or the other so at some point maybe the study if we put together this task force like councilman nettles recommended we can let that be one of our data points that we take a look at because i would hope that we could see a tie-in there's got to be something and a tie-in to help us get out of this this hole that we're in the second question involving workforce diversity when it comes to game rooms specifically on rosedale in my district we finally were able to get the owner of smokey's to cry uncle but it would have been it could have happened sooner i'm told had we had more african-american vice you know officers and so talk about diversity and how you think increasing diversity may help with the stats that we're showing i think when it comes to having a diverse workforce we know from from data that that does work it does help any kind of situation including crime i would hope so where are we with that how how do your officers look in terms of those who can go in somewhere undercover and people not know who they are because everybody knows the two or three you might have invites that's a wonderful question that's a conversation i had with council member council member nettles recently and it's oftentimes when it comes to diversity and say specialized units for a police department there are two schools of thought one is you hire the best person with a job period the other school of thought is well you have to consider diversity to me those are not mutually exclusive those are really the same thing because if you have a unit let's say our vice unit it's made up of entirely say white males that limits our ability to do our job so for me when i'm looking at someone to put in a unit it's not just someone who's qualified yes they need to be qualified but it's someone who brings something to that unit that makes it better than they were without them and oftentimes we're seeing that is bringing in diversity into a unit so someone maybe we need someone to speak spanish because there's certain communities certain businesses we can't go into unless that officer speaks spanish and is able to communicate the way everyone else there does diversity is critical we're being very intentional by making sure those units are being diversified we are holding off on a lot of the spots right now because we are trying to focus more on keeping our patrol staffing numbers up but as more academy classes are coming out as we're going to be putting more officers in these specialized units diversity is going to be a key component of selecting the people to go to those units one thing you know that this council even the previous council has been very committed to assisting in your efforts to recruit you know i'm pretty sure you'd still get the kind of support that we offered before the videos that we did before i think there are ideas in your department that are more effective than even the officers who come up with the ideas realize themselves and so i would suggest taking a look at the junior billboards i know that we did get some billboards in place this time but not necessarily junior billboards which are often in the inner city communities and so but luckily i put uh officer swearingen in touch with clear channel and we were able to get some billboards uh my question to you criminals don't operate nine to five but for the most part you know npos have a schedule that is pretty much pretty much a daytime i've got several activities that take place in my district between midnight and 5am talk about the handoff you know involving npos and that cop who's on the street at night and the last question i'll ask you will be about how do you get people to take breaks where criminal activity is taking place because i've seen it work before at marshall grains and kale cleaners so those are two questions and i'll silence myself one thing i want to say is mpos often times don't get credit for the things that they that they do i know when i was the commander of north division we would have the mpos up there when they saw there was a crime trend in the middle of the night on the weekends they would work in the middle of the night on the weekends and what was also really impressive to see it wasn't just the officers we'd have our code blue members come out our volunteers that would come out and help be our eyes and our ears on those details when the mpos aren't able to do that that's where communication is absolutely key and that's communication between the mpo and the beat officers in that area between the mpos our specialized units like our our gang unit direct response uh narcotics our vice unit who can direct the resources that we need at the times we need it in the areas that we need them because you're right we can't have an mpo there 24 7. they do adjust their schedules frequently but they communicate frequently with those beat officers to make sure the resources are where they need to be that last raggedy question years ago when we were having trouble with the homeless you know just camping out wherever they chose especially at marshall grains when marshall grains relocated and kale cleaners in hanley and so i asked the officers you know take your break take your break there and just the presence of a police car we saw that problem go away uh is that mindset still something that's entertained now because since we know where the hot spots are you know what can we do but also keeping officers safe at the same time so that they're not ambushed absolutely one of the things we're really instilling in officers is the beat mentality taking care of their neighborhood taking care of the area to which they're assigned and that means if you have time between calls go sit if you have to do a report say there's burglaries in the parking lot of a business go sit in that parking lot to do your report be visible be seen be a deterrent when you can and go make sure that the info we make sure the information in roll calls and through emails is provided to those beat officers and mpos so they know where to go to be seen to be that deterrent thank you elizabeth and then kerry i appreciate you recognizing that this is a national trend and what it means for fort worth i want to reiterate that i don't love other cities in this nation my constituents don't live in other cities in this nation they live in fort worth and so i want to make sure that we are not hiding behind well this this is a problem for everyone my challenge to you my charge to you chief is to be the national leader to be innovative to do those things that are daring that i've heard you talk about so many times before and implement those so that when we look at our crime stats when other cities look to us we are that example and we are taking care of those our community here first um and so i wanted to talk to you about those numbers i appreciate the the crime stats that you gave us um but they were a little hard to to actual you know to to chew on because i you know we see houston has you know dramatically higher numbers than we do but their populations also double what ours are and so i did some rough math and um i know carrie moon but i do have some numbers and um i was sad to see how we shake out when you um when you control for population and we're not you know we've got dallas and houston are consistently in front of us but then when it comes to those other cities that that you showed on your chart um we're lagging behind our you know our murder rates are higher our shootings are higher um in the one city that really stood out was el paso our murder rate was 9.9 ish per 1000 or 100 000 people and el paso's was 2.7 likewise you know they're they're shooting fatality shooting rate um ours was 41.8 and theirs was 7.04 and so um let's find out what they're doing you know there's a lot of rhetoric about how our borders aren't safe but it looks to me like el paso is a pretty safe community to live so i'd like to know what they're doing to have you know numbers and and i want to see our numbers look like theirs as well and so i saw a lot on here but i didn't see a lot of specifics and so what i want to know is this new unit that we're establishing with the dru and the gang and the vice i think on its face it seems like a great idea but can you give me some more examples of how exactly how they're going to get out in front of this violence you know we could we could put folks in a room together we can put us in a room together and sometimes we work really well and really efficiently getting some stuff done and then sometimes we try to draw maps and we're here all day so um you know how exactly are they going to tell me a little bit more about what that's going to look like how they're going to operate we were talking earlier about one of the key things in dealing with crime in neighborhoods is that communication between mpos and the beat officers communication is key with all units sometimes having people in the same room at the same table having the same conversations helps one of the best predictors of the success of any relationship any detail is proximity if we get people around one another information flows much better and we when we have people who are experts in various areas of law enforcement various strategies uh we have the intel unit embedded with our narcotics unit saying this is what we're seeing this is where we're seeing it these are our top ten violent offenders we bring all resources to bear with the the full weight of the resources of the forth police department on the people that specifically need it not on a neighborhood not even on a block necessary but on the people that are actually committing the crime that allows us to be more specific in detail than who we're dealing with and if i may uh going back to your earlier comment if at any point it appeared i was trying to hide behind the numbers that was not the intent at all it was to share information the best i possibly could and i definitely agree with you council member we tend to follow oftentimes in law enforcement best standards we don't want to just follow best standards in fort worth we want to set best standards we want to be the city that other cities look to to say hey what are they doing like you just said wow look what el paso is doing i want people to look at fort worth and say the same thing i agree 100 and so let me offer uh myself and i think i can speak for everyone at this table as a resource um pd is not a silo just like no other department in this city is a silo we all have to share information and resources to make sure that that we're doing what we need to so whether it's a a street that needs additional lighting a park that needs additional security a block or a neighborhood that that needs some improvement that's where we can come in and be your resource and so i'd also like to just a friendly reminder that we're here um and use us because that's our job that's what we're elected to do and um councilman nettle said it earlier we all support your efforts and we want to make sure that our communities are as safe as as possible and we can we can add a little elbow grace to that so don't forget that we're here to help in that physical environment that recreational environment to to be that conduit into our communities to help you get a better um you know reduce our violent crime thank you for that kerry chief just overall just you know obviously we all talk about a lot of issues every every tuesday whether it be water or redistricting or budgets but there's or traffic but there's no greater impact we can have to an individual resident in fort worth and than public safety and we are seeing um you know the specific new challenges with crime and homicide rates and have aggravated assaults in certain areas that are affected more in fort worth in other areas and you know first i'll start with you know we have to aggressively um be responsible and and correct that and so i appreciate you coming forth i do want to say that i'm you know you know that you have the support of mayor and council and the citizens of fort worth since 2018 there is i'll put the city of fort's record up against anybody any other city with the measures that we as a mayor and council have taken to improve policing and that's adding the crisis intervention teams the de-escalation training banning chokeholds diversity recruit recruitment crime prevention programs overwhelmingly voting to renew our ccpd funding of 90 million dollars a year 65 to 35 completely silencing any defund police activists we show that the support is there for police and it's time for you all to stay this is the last metric that we have that we've got to show that we're putting the dollars in there and that there's a positive result for the people that are mostly impacted by this violent crime so you've heard the support at the table you've seen it the last four years if you need to put cameras in neighborhoods let's put cameras in neighborhoods you heard us talking about license plate tanks and trying to make our policy more strict and support for that just every week you're going to hear the support every year you see the support i commend you for your efforts we know the metrics that we've got to improve upon and let's let's go out there and and fight crime and make fort worth safe for all residents in the city of fort worth michael uh thanks chief uh i'm not gonna belabor uh points that have already been made i will say this said it before that our number one job is to keep our citizens safe the people around this table it's our number one job mayor and council to make sure we're giving you the tools and you have the tools to keep citizens safe and our job to do that so i want to commend you on the results from the safe program you put in place here and what we've seen it's not lost on me for district three the two places are are como area and las vegas trail the two underserved underrepresented parts of district three that the crime is happening there and i've heard you say too we're not going to rest our way out of this problem that we've got a program so i mirror what's also around the table of finding creative ways to to help those underserved underrepresented parts and we're doing some great things and spent a lot of time in those parts of the neighborhood parts of the city to do that last week i went and visited the real time crime center i would say if anybody around the table hasn't gone go see it it is enlightening to understand the information that we have and that what your your officers are trying to do i also know that we don't have enough officers to follow up with all the issues that we know are out there as we pulled up things on cameras across the city so i would say you again have the support around the here that people around this table and i think the citizens of fort worth to make sure we're addressing everything we can uh that the crime that we know exists and keep handling that one thing i will say has talked about the neighborhoods in my opinion are the backbone of the city and one of the biggest tools our neighborhoods have is the neighborhood patrol officers that we've talked about and what i would say if i would also like to see in this next budget that comes through if not sooner that we figure out a way to expand that program i think that you get out in front of a lot of the the problems that you know and some that have been referenced here you know access community etc it's just that touch that happens in the community and i'm watching the far west of fort worth as the growth is happening the beats and beats for those guys get bigger and men and women get bigger and bigger and bigger and so i don't think you can really drill down to the problems in the neighborhoods if those if those men and women are taxed to the level that they are at this point so that would be my push too as a as a a tool we know we have now in our tool belt to help uh uh decrease crime in the neighborhoods because they're on top of it thank you chief i participated in a call yesterday with u.s conference of mayors it was mayor it was led actually by mayor lightfoot in chicago um phoenix and myself and kansas city and every american city is at a defining moment right now and we're no different than that um you could point to a lot of things that are positives for fort worth but you can also as elizabeth pointed out some things that are negative when you compare us to some other texas cities um i do think very strongly that a pro-police pro-community model is really necessary because you also have american cities that was brought up to us yesterday where you have officers that are fleeing the job you cannot recruit and retain top talent and that's who really is combating this problem we don't have that problem in fort worth right now fortunately but we have to be recognized that we have other cities here in texas that are facing that difficulty i think there are also some really significant issues in our neighborhoods that maybe you're not able to talk about openly right now but i encourage our council members to specifically sit down with you and drill down and then also at a future ccpd meeting let's drill into how those funds are utilized and especially with our community partners because there may be some that are missing that each of you have worked with you want to make sure at their table even if it's smaller and then lastly i've had some conversations with middle school administrators and high school administrators lately that really need the assistance more so than we might be giving right now and that's across the entire city not even just in our hot spots um so they meet is a is a follow-up item that we could conduct and probably in each council district as something for them to have their voices heard because some of it's not just violent crime they're seeing things from their students they haven't seen before especially with mental health and these kids coming out of covid so all in all i'm proud that you're our police chief i think you're doing a phenomenal job as all your officers are as well and we have our work cut out for us around this table to make sure we're rolling up our sleeves as well to help you so thank you thank you mayor council okay we're going to go to the update on solid waste fund sustainability with brandon bennett good afternoon mayor and council before brandon takes the microphone i just wanted to make a couple of brief comments before we start talking about the solid waste fund we started looking at this fund several years ago when we looked at fiscal projections that had the fund in the red the solid waste team worked with scott pasternak who is here with barnes mcdonald he's in our audience here um he worked with the solid waste team to do a thorough fund review they looked at our fee structure we haven't looked at residential rates i don't think since 2006. we also looked at the life of the landfill i know that's a conversation that mayor and council you all want to be able to have around this table as we look at how much life is left at our landfill we worked with scott and his team to understand who was bringing in waste to the landfill whether it was fort worth waste or other cities bringing waste in we looked at our residential collection com contract with waste management and we also brought a plan to mayor and council to fix the fund and get it back to a point where it had a positive fund balance and was able to meet its minimum reserve requirement um we instituted some new revenues with the fiscal year 21 budget um we didn't get the budget in for the whole year for our new fees um we had been hoping that the fee structures that we introduced would get the fund back to a positive state we were in front of this mayor and council last september to provide an update um that the fees that we introduced were not enough to get the phone the fund back um to a positive state and able to meet the reserve requirement so we are back here again and we have a plan to present that will bring the solid waste fund back into a healthy state brandon and his team are going to give a brief history of the fund guiding principles we use when we're talking about the fund some of the challenges again and then some revenue options that will bring the fund back to a positive fund balance and able to meet the minimum reserve requirement thank you valerie are there any questions [Laughter] i uh so i'm going to make this quick and entertaining you know it isn't going to happen but all right um a lot of new faces around the table so we want to give you a little bit of history the fund itself uh was adopted in 1982. um you know prior to 82 actually prior to that time period right in there that you know you dug a hole and you put your garbage in the ground and there wasn't a whole lot of regulation and then getting into the 50s and the 60s and the 70s we started to see some development of federal and state mandates and we looked as an organization and said look these are going to have costs so let's set up a fund to collect revenues so that we can handle things that come our way and then also environmentally safe and compliant waste collection and then progressive solid waste services city of fort worth is still known in texas and regionally as being a very progressive city uh when it comes to these things um overall in the fund we have some guiding principles these are important you know that's how you start out your day you know what are the things that matter most uh we want to of course identif uh identify proper funding source for adding programs we have a solid waste uh plan a comprehensive solid waste plan that that has some costs attached to it uh we need to identify the best way to fund those costs and to identify which of those improvements matters most and so we do that as part of the annual budget process but we also do in this this context as making sure that we right-size who we're charging how much we're charging and what we do with that money we want to seek to generate additional revenue from commercial entities so if you look back you know prior to 2010 that was prior to solid waste being moved into code compliance it was heavily focused on residential only all the revenues came in through residential all the programs were residential everything was residential and when it moved over to code that's when we developed the comprehensive solid waste plan and we said look our landfill is filling up not just with residential waste but commercial waste and when you look at protecting the environment we need to make sure that we're looking at all waste not just the residential waste and so we we i'll in the slide presentation i'll go through some of the things that that we've developed on that and some of the things that we're looking at moving forward uh and then we want to exhaust potential revenue options before pursuing a residential rate increase this is not unusual i have had the benefit of salt running solid waste programs in other cities having been in the solid waste arena for 30 some years and i will tell you that in almost every city in america particularly those that have franchise agreements that commercial and industrial waste helps subsidize residential waste programs and so when we took our focus away from residential only that then put a spotlight on what some of our commercial and industrial options or opportunities were and that's a big part of the the presentation at the end and then we want to preserve and extend the life of our landfill more on that a couple of slides and then we want to make sure that we have a long-term funding sustainable funding program for the fund there's a lot of things that that have impacted the fund so i don't want to jump to conclusions or anybody give me a chance to kind of explain how we got here and how we're going to get out of it so from a solid waste fund challenge um you know there's there's a bunch of bullet points here but i'm going to talk about the residential fees it can be somewhat misleading if you look at our revenue about 90 percent of the revenue in the fund comes from the fees that our residents pay but about 90 percent of the expenses in the fund are tied to residential collection what happens at the curb what happens at the drop-off stations and then those things that that support it what has happened over time is that we've added to those primary services different investigative programs like illegal dumping and litter we've added street sweeping and then homeless camp abatement homeless camp abatement is a big one where that was a very little impact on the fund you know 10 years ago now as you guys got a report not too long ago it's pretty significant so when we talk about you know what's a primary and what's a secondary service so if you look at the residential collections uh we have about uh just shy of 250 000 households that we service weekly we do the curbside collection of garbage recycling and yard waste uh once a week we do the bulk once a month and then we have the citizen drop-off stations in addition to that we have the call center and we have the enforcement folks that are dedicated just to solid waste and some of those uh indirect costs just to residential and then things start to get a little uh interesting or more complex when you look at everything else we do so we have the landfill we own the landfill the landfill use has changed over time i'll go over that illegal dump it's got to be collected it's got to be investigated and those have been assigned to the solid waste fund along with litter abatement and like street cans so all the street cans downtown and all over the city where people can pedestrians can deposit litter all of those are collected uh by our contractor and paid for out of the solid waste fund here's some fun facts i'm not going to go through all of them uh the the two big ones are 29 million annual service collections that's a lot so you think about the few calls that you and your council aides get because we miss somebody's uh can that's a few months few that we missed out of 29 million annual service attempts and what a service attempt is a lot of people have three things they put out every week they have garbage recycling and yard waste so that counts as three service attempts when you average that with bulk over the course of a year it's about 29 million annual attempts and then one of the big ones one of the the ones that has been trending up because there's more litter but also treading up because we're picking up more litter is we're at 1.7 million pounds of litter collected annually so we look at cost and revenue drivers um you know as valerie mentioned we haven't raised the residential rates since 2006. uh since that time our population has grown by 35 percent carts and service has gone up 51 inflation's up 49 percent uh there's been big changes in the global markets and then of course these other services that are now in the fund and competing for funding each year we've been able to go since 2006 because we haven't increased a lot of service we have we've we've put off some of the things that are in the solid waste plan um we have found ways to be more creative and how we do our job per desk pedestrian pedestrian presbyterian night shelter uh using the homeless to help pick up litter uh and now helping with mowing and things like that um has resulted in this relationship where they also now help us with homeless litter and homeless dumping in that whole area around the shelters we're not paying them to do that we're just helping them carry the waste off so there's lots of lots of things that we do to keep our costs down we've had two very good contract terms with both waste management and with republic who does our murph and those have also saved us money to help us not have to do rate increases um there's a lot on this slide you know i kind of have more on on this slide to kind of explain re-explain some of the things that that we talked about and i think this one does a really good job where the top table shows our primary service and then the bottom shows the secondary services and and most important is that service focus there on the bottom slide where the the top services are residential so clearly if a resident pays a fee and we provide that service that's tagged to their fee and it's it's something that you see in almost every city in america that has solid waste services the way we do it here's the service we provide here's the fee we charge it covers that service next conversation what we've added and this happens at every city in america is we've had all these other services where there are other potential solutions so when you look at street sweeping um that happens primarily in commercial and environmental areas you can have it in the solid waste fund i think austin or one of the other cities at least at one point had it in their in their fund but that's really uh something that we do to protect our rivers right it all that ends up in a storm sewer and it washes out into a river so you could also charge that to the solid waste fund so there's there's all of these different options and and things that we need to look at as part of having a strategic goal uh the landfill just real quick um this is not costs this is consumption so this is i go back to 2009 uh that the blue part of the pie there that was the residential waste that came from our curbs residential curbs and it was the major contributor to the landfill in 2009 we had about a 50-year life at the landfill 50 years is a long time but there was also a agreement that the city entered into with republic who operates our landfill for us where they were not getting a return on their investment and as a result of an amendment to the agreement more commercial waste has come into our landfill and so now it is flip-flopped where the majority of waste that is consuming the life of our landfill is on the commercial side and the least of the waste that's going into the landfill is from our residential customers so we talk about like recycling on our on our from our residential customers in 2009 the better they recycled right the less we consumed but in 2021 that has less of an impact on the consumption when you have so much commercial waste going in and that's one of the reasons why we've developed some commercial programs working with major businesses and industries to try to reduce the amount of waste coming out their gate so we started out the budget this is this year's budget um as we were developing the budget for this year we had some improvement package and packages that we talked about and what we elected to do was to put up the conversation till now to see what would happen with our contract negotiation with waste management and other things that we anticipated were changing in the economy so we started out with about a 4.3 million dollar shortfall and as a result of things that have changed uh not requiring any type of fee increase uh our residential revenue is up 208 000 that's growth uh we were a little bit conservative on that and that's why that is up uh increased landfill volume the variable rent this is what our contractor pays us is up uh it's good because it's more money it's bad because it's more consumption of the landfill recycling revenues probably the most volatile thing that we have in the fund is recycling that when we're making four and a half million a year right we're not talking about things like this we don't have a shortfall but with the global economy the things that happened in china a few years ago we saw it tank and we were spending a million dollars a year and then with supply chain issues and businesses now trying to find raw material it's become more focused on using recycled material so they're consuming more of the recycled material which has driven the prices up so um where we were spending a million a year we're not doing that anymore we were spending about 1.2 so we saved that money and then we're making uh another uh 1.2 round that up making about two and a half million dollars uh a year where we used to be a million dollars in the hole there isn't anybody in the industry that thinks that this is going to last but we don't know how long it's going to last this is good but i wouldn't count on this money in the next two to three years the other is our contract with waste management we got them to forego a year of a rate increase cpi adjustment um that will result on significant savings so as i speak to you today um through through osmosis if nothing else we were 4.2 million in the hole and now we are 1.2 million to the good that's great news right but it's not great enough so we need to find other ways to raise to raise rates and one of the reasons why is remember waste management said we won't do a cpi adjustment which was about 2.1 million if you look at inflation we anticipate that next year when they do get their their rate increase it'll be 2.5 so for 1.2 to the good right now but we know we're facing at least 2.5 next year we're already in the red again so we have to find a way to make the fund good this year so that we're ready to make the expenditures next year so um we're looking at a number of things one is residential bulk non-compliance this would essentially you get charged if you put out bulk illegally if we have to clean it up it would go up about ten dollars for each person that puts it out illegally it doesn't go up a lot or ten dollars at least for five each five cubic yards uh it would raise about a half million dollars and again this isn't on every single residential customer this is just on those that are violating the ordinance this hasn't been touched since 2006. we've made it pretty affordable for people just to put their junk out there uh on on non-bulk weeks and have us haul it off sometimes that's cheaper than if they went with a private contractor so we just want to bring that up to to current rates commercial card increase um this is where you have the strip malls where they have roll carts instead of dumpsters that we would increase the cart charges on them uh and then last year council approved a landfill surcharge of five dollars it doesn't it doesn't impact our residential waste our residential waste goes across the scale without paying the five dollar fee but anybody who was not a grant a privilege holder uh since last year has had to pay an extra five dollars a ton uh environmental fee the grant of privilege are people that are the haulers that drive across our roads uh and the grant of privilege is is some of that half of it goes to public works to pay for road repair and then the other half comes over to the solid waste fund to pay for some of these commercial things like street sweeping and litter abatement and illegal dumping and things like that we are proposing that on april 1st that we would include grant a privilege haulers as part of that five dollar fee so every ton that goes across our scale except for our own residential waste we get charged that five dollar fee doing it mid-year gets us about 900 000 i don't think you know there will be some hollers that will act surprised but i will tell you in conversations with both the landfill and haulers last year everybody understood that if we didn't get the revenue from the non-gop haulers that we needed to make the fund hole that we'd be coming back and doing this so i think this one's pretty pretty straightforward um if we do these things on on april 1st um we would see then a positive cash flow at the end of year about 2.8 and that gets us in a more sustainable role or preparation for the upcoming fiscal year one of the questions that comes up is well if we raise it by five bucks for everybody that's another five dollars a ton so what do we charge at our landfill and the rates are set by republic who runs a landfill compared to other landfills in the area so even if we added five dollars to our bottom we're the very bottom one the very cheapest one if we added five dollars it'd be 51 and we're still the cheapest one the one right above it the iesi c d landfill that's just for construction and demolition debris but even so if we raise our rate i'm pretty certain they're going to raise their rate also now i even leave the slide up just for a second because part of our recommendation is going to be not only do we do this five years mid-year now but we're going to recommend that on october 1st we go to 7.50 a ton and then on april 1st of 2023 we go all the way to 10 a ton so if you look at this chart right here and you add 10 to 46 that makes 56 we're still the cheapest game in town one of the reasons why we would recommend stair stepping it as opposed to going to ten dollars right away is that the companies will need time to to change their billing mechanism on uh their customers and to prep their customers and the landfill will need to make adjustments um also on the the amount of waste coming across the scale and what they charge so based on all of those assumptions based on going to a five dollar surcharge the bulk um and the commercial carts um this is the the first column their fiscal year 2022. um we would end up uh at about 2.8 million dollars to the good then if if council this next year in the budget uh process for 23 uh takes it to 750 on october 1st and then to ten dollars on april first of 2020 23 um that um we would end the year then about 2.5 million to the good right but what i'll call call your attention to is the very last line on there is the estimate estimated uh non-city tons to the landfill so at five dollars charging everybody it doesn't change going to 750 and then to ten dollars it doesn't change it's continuing to go up what we do anticipate is into 2024 when we've got that full ten dollar fee in play not only will the fund be more financially stable but the number of tons going across um the gate will drop down to about where we are this year and then we believe that over time it will start to creep up one of the things that we're facing in north texas is everybody's landfill is filling up at the same time where we had 50 years in 2009 we have about 15 years left on the books now everybody's having to do landfill studies everybody's having to decide where their trash is going to go so we think that there'll be a drop but then when people realize when the contractor realizes how far they have to drive maybe to another landfill with a more competitive rate and you add up time and fuel and everything else they'll be back to bringing it across our scales so um what this chart shows is this is our cash and cash equivalent if you go back to you see in 2014 on the left side there that we've been in this downward trend there's a number of reasons for that one is we were losing a lot of our recycle revenue that we used to get so remember recycling revenue when it was positive it would go into the fund and then when we're operating at a loss we would take some of that money out of the fund and we did that with a number of different services that started to cost more money so we did that for a period of time but we're really at at a point in time now where we have to do these fee increases to make the funds solvent so the red line what that shows is over the next three years what we'd anticipate these fees alone would do to the fund it moves us back up towards the reserve requirement the reserve requirement is something that we set it's set by the city it's not mandated by any organization but it's it's good to have that reserve in play so we do know that even though this will get us down the road to 2024 into 2025 we know that we're going to have to come up with other funding strategies over the next few years so one of one of the questions you may ask is when we do this what is our outreach going to be to the haulers we know who the haulers are particularly the grant of privilege because they're already paying us money um and we will reach out to them we'll have conversations with them we'll explain to them the who what when where and why um and then we'll also reach out to our commercial cart customers again we know who they are because they're paying us for their commercial carts those rates have not been increased through 2006 so i would imagine that there's not going to be a lot of pushback on that and when you compare even our price increase to how much someone would pay for dumpster service it's still pretty affordable our outreach to our residential customers i think this is an opportunity to also re-educate people on bulk and why they shouldn't put it out on a non-bulk week and then also let them know if they do how much that they're going to have to pay us when that happens and then of course we want to work with our business community leaders uh the different chambers of commerce and others uh we'll have meetings in person by zoom uh so forth and so on i think most of this will be solid waste driven um and it's not really unexpected i don't think on on for most of them nobody nobody's going to like to pay the higher rate we know that but we have a fund that needs to raise rates we can't continue down this road of putting rates off so there's some good news about the time when we start go heading back towards the red we believe that we'll have a landfill gas revenue in play uh that will bring in about 500 000 a year we're working out the final pieces of the agreement with republic we think we can get into this with no money uh down in the capital and then do a revenue split with them uh 50 50. so that's good um the other is strategic residential rate increase and this is strategic in the sense that you remember if we move some of those services like street sweeping if we move it from the solid waste fund to the environmental fund then you're going to have to raise rates in the environmental fund to pay for that street sweeping service and both of those funds when you do a price increase end up on the water bill so we're we're going to be making some strategic recommendations to you on what should move when it should move how it should move and then how we would would impose those fees what is the best way um to do that the other is we still have a couple of contracts that we need to negotiate one is our material recycling facility the murph this is the place where recyclables go and they get recycled that is a big chunk of money in our budget we don't want to recommend a residential rate increase to you today based on what we think we're going to get we'd rather finish that murph negotiate or the rfp negotiation find out what that rate is and then bring you back um a rate that would pay for this over the next five to ten years that's a much better strategy so our recommendations to move forward uh we're recommending we do the mid-year fee increases uh as outlined earlier we want to begin the public education and outreach right away even though we would come back to you on march the 8th you know we want to give the haulers and the landfill in as much time as we possibly can to prepare for this um and then develop an implement to let gas the landfill gas agreement you all should be seeing something pretty soon on this and then continue to develop ways to improve the financial health of the fund we'll continue to work with our consultant with north texas council of governments uh particularly on the landfill side we're trying to come up with regional strategies uh it's hard to cite a new landfill but everybody's gonna need either one or a super landfill may be better to do things together and collectively and that completes this update on the very interesting topic of solid waste thank you brandon great job who has questions gonna take it offline an environmental science yeah i need to do this all the time because you're all tired of wore out right make me the very end no you did a great job no questions okay okay thank you appreciate you thank you okay council we're going to go to briefing about registration of community organizations council right now our plan is to adjourn the work session and then come back to continue our special meeting on redistricting that's what we talked about earlier i'm just throwing that out there letting you know i was sure i was going to get bummed but i'm glad i didn't you're efficient i bet you can do this efficiently i will i will go through it as quickly as possible um thank you for the opportunity to talk about the community organizations and our registration process that we have in place um first i'd like to start out by introducing the new manager for the community engagement office amethyst sloan although she's new to community engagement she has been with the city for seven years she was originally with the performance office and then the water department so we're excited to have her in community engagement looking forward to working with all of you yeah thank you so what does community community engagement due well we help communities organize that's neighborhood associations hoas and alliances and i'm going to be covering a lot of that support during today's presentation but some of the other things we do is we provide free training and presentations for neighborhoods civic groups and schools and we work with our departments very closely to help share their information with these different groups we share information on city services neighborhood events public meetings and we also provide meeting reports to council and departments for all the meetings that we attend so the city of fort worth has a registration process and it's offered to various types of organizations it's voluntary for all organizations and there are minimum requirements based on the type of the organization and that's what i'm going to cover today so why should an organization register with the city well if they register with the city we include them in our database and we rece they receive the weekly community engagement bulletin which has information that we pull from city news that we think is important for neighborhoods and other organizations they are included in the neighborhood organization map and they receive early courtesy notification on zoning cases we also provide them support and training at no cost city departments use the database for their outreach and information so it's important especially like when we have a zoning case and the developer wants to reach out to the neighborhoods this is where the information is that they receive so why do we have a registration process i would say the primary reason we have a lot of things listed the outreach and the engagement but i think ultimately it's to make sure that we're maintaining an updated database of the contacts so by us having a registration process and having annual updates that we request from the organizations we make sure that we have the most up-to-date information in the database it also allows us to provide these advanced notifications and again to share weekly information and assist neighborhoods with capacity building and any needs that they might have so the types of organizations who register with the city we have voluntary neighborhood associations hoas neighborhood alliances redevelopment organizations business associations crime prevention and faith-based organizations and i'm going to briefly go over all of these so voluntary neighborhood association we work with new work associations who want to establish an association in an area that's not currently served we help them publicize the meeting we help them establish boundaries select the interim officers we help them with their election if they ask for help and we help them adopt bylaws for all associations the voluntary neighborhood associations they must hold at least one meeting per year with advance notification they have to complete an annual update and submit it to community engagement and they must elect officers every two years so what is an annual update it's a very simple form it's online and we also have paper available it just provides basic information we link it to the database which is only available to city staff and you and your you and your district director it's not something that's publicly available and we do ask each organization to provide a public contact and that somebody who volunteers to have their information made public and linked to that association so it's a very simple form another group that we have registration processes in place for our hoas which we refer to as mandatory neighborhood associations so it's similar they have to provide a copy of the covenants conditions and restrictions to the office um they have a development contract for the association again defined boundaries bylaws they have to hold at least one general meeting a year they have to have election procedures included in their bylaws and then they have to provide the annual update to the community engagement office another group is our neighborhood alliances so this is groups of associations that have chosen to band together to form an alliance they have bylaws that they adopt and they provide those to our office they also have defined boundaries and they have to have a list of the associations that are occluded in the alliance one thing that we've updated that we do now that we didn't used to do is people alliances used to be able to just say these are all the associations that belong to our alliance and there was no double checking to make sure that those organizations actually knew they were a part of the alliance and so we do that checking now to make sure that the alliance is telling us who the associations are that belong but we're also doing that double check to make sure that the associations want to belong to that alliance and be considered with that group and they also complete an annual update and submit it to the community engagement office a redevelopment organization this is defined as an organization with community-based leadership that's formed to revitalize communities and typically and the group works on key development projects or community planning conservation it's a very large umbrella for a lot of very different types of organizations again these are the things that they have to do each year to remain registered and i know just within my neighborhood like to tell you some of the variety of the organizations like we have the friends of oakhurst park that's considered a redevelopment organization very narrow focused they take care of the park but we also have the united riverside rebuilding corporation which is a more economic development organization we currently have 27 redevelopment and business organizations um registered with the city i meant to include we have 11 alliances that are registered 140 hoas that are currently registered and 137 voluntary neighborhood associations crime prevention organizations this is something that we is fairly new um we had some citizens on patrol code blue organizations that wanted to register so this is another category and um it allows us to interact with additional people that are in the neighborhoods that some there's some crossover where members belong to both that and the neighborhood association but then there are some that are just members of the crime prevention organization so it's another way to get information out to the community we currently have five registered but we're going to be doing an outreach to try and increase that number and finally our faith-based organizations all that we ask from them is that they provide an annual update to community engagement and again that's just to make sure we have the most current um contact for the for the organization we currently have 285 registered faith-based organizations and we are working to expand that many we added during covid because they were instrumental in helping us get information out to the community we also keep a list of community organizations this is a list that was put together um during the race and culture task force then with census and covid so we've just kept adding to it as we looked for opportunities to provide more partnership with community organizations who can reach some of our underserved communities and so that's a database there's nothing that's required from them we just have the contact information and we send them information that's pertinent to their neighborhoods another program that we started in the past couple of years is called re-engage and it's a program designed to help those struggling organizations who maybe are having difficulty getting members or volunteers maybe they have some difficulty getting people to run for office the assistance that we provide is based on the needs of the organization it can include training and outreach and so far since we started the program we have helped 18 organizations re-engage and reorganize so what happens if someone is non-compliant with our registration policies um we try to work with the organization to resolve any issues that are standing in their way does it require extra training or perhaps helping them do outreach in the neighborhood the non-compliance can include they don't complete their annual update they're not holding a meeting they're not holding elections and i know some of you are very familiar with some of these issues that happen in our neighborhoods if it can't be resolved then a letter is sent telling them they're non-compliant and then ultimately it can lead to them being unregistered unregistering i want to emphasize this is always a last resort it's something that we never want to do but we also want to make sure that we're having the most current information available in the database and sometimes unregistering an organization is um is required so if a group is no longer registered with the city they won't be included in the database we do leave their boundaries in the the map but it's inactive and it's not public public-facing um they would not receive the early notifications for zoning cases and they can re-register at any time um and the the like i said through the re-engage program that's kind of our goal is to never have to unregister anybody to just find ways to help them become more active um during covid um there was a lot of like and that still extends to today there's a lot of flexibility with unregistering organizations because of meetings and annual updates we recognize that a lot of organizations were not able to meet they were not comfortable having gatherings and therefore it was difficult to have their organizations um continue the way they had before so now we're reaching out to those who haven't updated their information to see what assistance they can get from our office we also during covid one thing that we did we provide virtual meeting training and facilitation for neighborhood associations who maybe weren't comfortable with technology community engagement staff actually in some cases trained the neighborhood staff to learn how to use virtual meeting software and in other cases they actually facilitated the meetings for the organization so that they could continue meeting virtually and we continue to offer that assistance if they need it so these are just some other things some other services provided by community engagement the training and workshops we do as i said the meeting reports that you all receive after we attend a neighborhood meeting we have our annual awards program which was held last saturday which was a way of recognizing all of the work that our neighborhoods do in the community over the past couple of years again we do we help with the advanced notifications for zoning we provide support for the public meetings we have started a series of worst sharing stories which is highlighting neighborhood projects in our city news and in our community engage bulletin we also help to verify membership for boards and commissions because sometimes people will say they're speaking for an organization and so we can help verify that and we also have the volunteer management for the city located in the community engagement office so right now we're looking at our registration policy to see if there are some issues that need to be clarified we're also looking to update our database tool and confirm all the data um the we're as we're going through and finding people who have not submitted their paperwork we're trying to identify those but we also had the interns in the mayor and council office who have helped us by actually reaching out and making phone calls and we started with district five as our test to um to update that information so um when we get the database tool it will be a wonderful opportunity to make sure that all of the information is up to date as we launch the new program we continue to identify and work with groups who need assistance and we're going to amethyst and i are going to be meeting with each of the district directors to discuss ways that community engagement can help them in your particular districts are there any questions counseling gina good report michelle thank you so much uh i don't have a whole bunch of questions or complaints or anything because i know things are kind of in flux and being reformulated but i got a trick question for you how do you update a file submitted by a person who is now deceased because they're not going to email you and chances are other people are dead too i was looking at our database just a few hours ago and they're about five at least five to six leaders who are no longer with us okay so how do how do what are you if if the current contact like if we send things and we don't get a response from that contact we'll usually reach out to the council office and see if you have any additional information about that or if they happen to be in an alliance we can reach out to the alliance and see if they have any more up-to-date information but and one thing i want to point out when we're working through this process whether it's an organization that needs some extra help like we're going through we have an hoa in in your district that we're trying to provide some extra support to because they're in a very difficult situation but we when we're offering the assistance or when we see our problems we're keeping the council up to date on that because we want to make sure that whatever we're doing with that organization you're aware of and that that you support the the work that we're doing with them and i want to commend you for work you've done last year to identify alliances that really were not representing neighborhood associations they claim to be and so that's something that you always want to be abreast of but thank you for addressing that and i suspect we may have some more of that going on today but thank you for taking care of it in the past thank you any other questions council nope thank you michelle appreciate you and then our last briefing is on the 2022 housing tax credit application for the gala at ridgemart good afternoon mayor council uh if i can use a baseball analogy i know it's the bottom of the ninth two outs and i'm the last batter and uh whatever you do ground out pop up whatever don't extend this inning so i understand so as you all know we go through this process every year this year we only had uh we had two applications one with withdrew residents on hemp hill so we're left with the gala at ridgemar this is the process it starts with a tdaca they issue a qualified allocation plan each year which guides the tax credit process from that we go to local resolutions of support which is the stage we're at right now and from that the developers submit their application to tdhca they do further underwriting they announced awards in july this is uh some projects that we've recently uh uh tax created projects we recently had uh in in fort worth you can see by year uh the number of projects that have been approved by tdaca and then to the right or some recent developments what does qap say about city affordable housing policies they have to notify the governing body if we give them a resolution of support they can get 17 points and if we add development funding they can get an additional point neighborhood and associations and local officials must be notified and must comply with fair housing our policy we ask that it be a mixed income development we use 70 percent of area median income or above as our market rate units and then at least 10 percent have to be zero to 30 and then if the project is located in a high opportunity area you get max support we provide assistance in the waiver partial waiver of development fees up to 2 500 the notification requirements this particular development met all the criteria that's listed there on the left and they had the one information session this is the project it's located just north of 35 near ridgemart mall there are some other developments nearby but it appears to be a very good location for this type of development is a senior development 91 units with 10 market rate units council district 3. in our next steps this is timeline we met with the neighborhood quality and revitalization committee last week and then we're briefing you today next week it'll be on the agenda and then the deadline for their submission is in march and then tdaca release some projects later and make final awards in july questions any questions michael you're good awesome you're good victor thank you okay council to request for future gender items or reports go ahead gina i have three specific future agenda items i think they all might involve police one i'd like a report some type of investigation into how we handle pop-up entertainment businesses i have one that continues to have these pop-up parties at 2941 precinct line road and this is not to disrupt the business from thriving but what it imposes upon the character and quality of life of a residential community in this case legs of river trails something has to be done and i understand that we have talked about a cease and desist order for this but this is a pop-up business at 2941 and they have these parties that include the sale of alcohol that's one the other i'd like to follow up on something that came up during the chiefs dialogue that we had i do want to know the correlation between the proliferation of guns and the removal of right to carry i think there's a connection there and so that's something for pd and legal to take a look at for us and the final one let's see oh no this this is you're going to mention the test okay i wanted to follow up too often we learn about real good initiatives that police are coming up with but we learn about it like the average citizen does there's much to be gained with us and crime if we're able to work together and so i'd like for the acm in charge of pd or the city manager to to talk about how can we work together with police and the idea that councilman nettles had for a task force i think is very important because every council district is different and so how can we get this task force so that we work with police and work together because nobody really has ownership of any good ideas but we certainly can be made better if we are working together and i heard that from councilman nettles and councilwoman beck and that's i want to formalize that anybody else jared i have one and i support all of what mayor pro tem just said as well um i want to follow up on the ir that chief davis gave today with a full report and bear with me i'm going to read something so that i'm clear um i love for and maybe this is a shared presentation between the chief human resources and maybe risk management maybe planted data analytics but i want chief in this presentation to share details on cancer mitigation strategies in place um cover or address the concern with pfos options being considered to address minimizing pfos exposure and turnout gear and i would add maybe also in our foam as well for our chemical fires and then share emerging trends concerns that need to be on um rate on our radars um and then i think maybe the reason i brought up mark mcavoy is i think that they may be helpful with the financial piece of the discussion um however that fits in the presentation so that's my one for today in addition to the follow-up that the team presented on crime prevention thank you council anybody else chris no everybody's also good um i might ask staff to explore the option on the task force of how the crime control prevention district board should be utilized since we are sitting on that board so maybe rather than other task force we really use some time on ccpd to get that done that might be the more efficient way to do it so there's just that carry as a business guy um pro-business but also on the follow-up city regulations just an idea on when code enforcement can close a business um one of my bars um in fort worth it's open 365 days a year for the last 10 years and was closed by code because the neighboring tenant sink backed up and this we stay open on thanksgiving christmas july 4th every day of the year it was just it's an overreach of code it was during a peak hour for the business we've taken the necessary precautions to have different uh permits for the bar in the kitchen just somebody keep in mind that um you know i was because it happened to me i was able to make the changes to get it corrected but it's not fair that if it was just a regular business owner that they would not have the same access they would have that barrier to prevent them from getting their business back open and just need to be more cautious when we code is out there dealing with business owners i forgot one thing charges to my head not my heart i don't know and carrie please help me on this with the development services we talked with the audit committee about doing an auto report on the timing of the process there's another piece of that and i don't know if dj and his team is ready but i do want to put it out in the universe so that we can work towards that for them to do a study on on the practices internally that are needed to make that process more efficient and i know that we have different parts of the development process in different departments and out of that conversation came up a brilliant idea of bringing in consultants um who were experts in development services to help us think about how we streamlined that process and i think i mentioned that last work sessions i think they're working on a plan on how that should look um and what the sequence would be okay cool absolutely you and i are on the same page on that for sure i did have one when kerry talked about closing i have some motels in hotels that we have been doing some nuisance of basements on those and closed them and i had asked city how can we get in a position to purchase those properties to revitalize them for the future because basically we close them and then another hotel motel reapplies and open back up and i want to figure out how we can channel that if possible perfect anybody else no okay meeting adjourned okay [Music] [Music] [Music] you