oh mr joe miss prime can we can we get started please yes mayor excuse me if council or take their seats we can get it hello hello hello mr nello can we get started please mrs prine good morning mayor good morning good morning this is a special meeting of the el paso city council for tuesday june 28 2022 it is 904 am mayor lee sir is present and presiding also present in the meeting room is representative anello representative molinar representative salcido representative rodriguez representative rivera representative lizarda representative hernandez is joining virtually this morning and just a friendly reminder that council members may only use their desktop computers during the meeting if they need to take a call or respond to a message they may excuse themselves and leave the room to while they handle the the call and also if i can remind everyone to please unmute your microphones when speaking and mute them when you're done so we can reduce any background noise on the agenda this morning is discussion in action on the fy 2022 2023 budget as presented by the city manager discussion action may include but not limited to operating capital and debt budgets and all possible funding sources thank you and good morning everyone i know yesterday we covered a lot of subjects a lot of ground thank you everyone for your presentation um i know talking with mr gonzalez it looks like today really we're just doing a wrap-up of everything that we did yesterday and kind of i think all we're looking for is questions and things that maybe council would like to address with uh mr gonzalez and and the staff so with that i'm going to turn it over to mr gonzalez yes sir thank you thank you uh-huh so we have some follow-ups to the items that were submitted by council in writing and then we also have answers to the questions that were raised yesterday and so robert well and nicole cody robert cortinas and nicole cody will cover that and then if you all have any additional items that you want to discuss we can do that at that time robert good morning members of council we have a presentation we're going to go through some follow-up items so you ask that we bring back the council budget request we have those we also have some additional information just responses that you all asked questions yesterday that will provide the responses that we have and then finally we have a summary of the different fee changes within each of the departments a summary of those we have none of the dcms here today but we have the department heads on the call as well virtually attended via teams so just as a quick reminder i mean we talked a lot about this over the last several months and then last week and then again yesterday as well again when we developed the budget it's really about everything that we can do to help our community not only from the property tax standpoint but also with everything the council has done on holding the line and actually reducing the utility costs for our citizens all of the additional property tax revenue being generated from our economic incentives and then all of the additional tax we provide for all of our seniors and disabled and our veterans throughout the community these are really the four main key talking points you heard a lot about only yesterday but over the last several months as well again that financial relief through our economic recovery the council's directive to develop a budget that lowered the tax rate which this does to the tune of about 1.4 cents on the operating side of the budget overall about three quarters of a penny on the overall property tax rate while at the same time continuing to invest in addressing the priorities of the council in the community and our strategic plan this budget does that through the public safety bond projects the new fire stations and new police stations as well as those quality of lifebomb projects that we talked about yesterday the mac the children museum the penguin exhibit just to name a few and then finally continuing to invest aggressively in our employees through the form of compensation new incentives and their benefits and then finally all of the impacts we're seeing worldwide as a result of the ongoing economic environment increased costs and contractual obligations and fixed costs so a lot of information you all heard yesterday very detailed obviously to really summarize it again just to remind you all these are the four main points you've heard a lot of as far as the budget development for this current year so as we go through the budget request this is what we received as of late last week we had a couple that came in at the last minute and so we can go through this one by one we have responses from the department nicole sent out this information again you have a link to all of this information in your backup electronically via email if you click on that document it'll take you to all of this information this information is uploaded as posted as backup to the agenda as well for the public if they would like to view it to see what was requested and what the responses are from the department so we can go buy these one by one we also added the cost estimate where applicable where staff was able to come up with the cost estimate there are some that cost really that are unknown or it would take a little bit more time to develop a cost estimate so we can go through these beginning items we have district 4 request most of these are focusing on street projects uh there is a pretty large item asking for construction of interior and exterior pickleball courts at coin entertainment this is something that with the redevelopment of cohen's staff as estimated for a 88 000 square foot facility would equate to approximately 67.4 million dollars to construct a facility to generate or to fulfill that request and so a lot of the responses again related particularly the street projects you'll see the responses primarily related to waiting on the results of the pci study as well and so uh any request for resurfacing or reconstruction of those projects obviously sam and his team working with richard bristol on streets would all that would be dependent upon the results from the pci study that's due a little bit later next month okay so we have additional items from district 4 again more resurfacing projects um i'm sorry if it goes to the next there you go some more district 4 items some sidewalk completion requests more resurfacing and you can see the cost estimate there for those projects in the far right hand column a request from district six we talked about this a little bit yesterday when ben presented on exceptional recreational cultural opportunity vision block the request for a summerfest type project ben i believe you're on the line so one thing you may want to just clarify i know there's discussion about this being a city-wide event and being held at multiple locations this response the estimate that for the response is 550 000 uh continuing that project however we would want to make sure that if we were to move forward with something like this that would incorporate you know things that you really talked about yesterday being a city-wide at multiple locations and that this cost estimate would incorporate that uh thanks robert and actually yes i think i received more clarity in the discussion yesterday person with representative roth vegas so i think i would need to amend this um if this was really envisioning just a multiple day festival downtown but to go citywide i think we would need to have a larger budget so i will amend this and just as a reminder what we mentioned yesterday council so these items the council wanted to take any action on these obviously you could direct us to find a way to fund these but obviously we would bring this back on august 1st when we present the certified appraisal from cad and identify what potentially any additional revenue in the form of the property tax revenues as a result of property values and so at that time we'd have the ability to add items or delete items as requested can i add something really quick please of course so on that item i think it's very important that ben comes back with what i had asked him yesterday um what's the return um investment like how much money does does it stimulate in the economy and to see like if something like this a project like this would be worth us investing in so i don't know i've been heard me well i will say that the winterfest started as not it was a program that was i believe maybe four weeks long and then we extended it and so we do see to your point the benefit of what it does for the downtown for the businesses and keeps it lively we have also the chalk the block the the other smartphones just different events we started extending those times community really is engaged with those kind of projects so as a council and they're very popular so i know that when you brought this up it very much fits in the way that we're providing services and how we're re engaging the community in downtown so this this fits it's just a matter of funding and because i mean this this would be a priority not only if the council supports it but you know it segues nicely into what we've been doing to execute y'all's vision for downtown and re-engaging downtown so it it fits right in with what we've been doing and and i think that in talking to staff i talked to them about maybe doing like a spring fest and leading into a summer fest kind of starting to grow that program and and or if we did something in the summer do it like we did at winterfest do it for a little while and then see how we could expand it into your point because it's summerfest you know it really could tie in nicely to the water parks and we obviously include not obviously but we we include the airport with a lot of what we do in downtown because of when people fly in and we want them to see that as their first impression and so that's the reason why winterfest got expanded into the airport and it's it's beautiful quite frankly and we've been transforming the airport we still have a lot of projects still that we're working on at the airport that are going to continue to transform what people see whenever they go into the airport because we have a lot more to do at the airport so again this this fits nicely into what we've been doing and also just as a as a final note on it for for ben and staff you know what i would really want to see is this summerfest kind of be um embracing our culture and our heritage so looking a lot of like mexican type of decoration for the downtown plaza like pinatas and and kind of doing again a similar thing with what we do with the lights at the plaza during winterfest but like a summer version of that um and just again inviting the community and and hopefully helping the local economy you know the food trucks the shopping the stores everybody to be able to um engage in this summerfest and also i would also say finding a way to engage el paso street because i know we did paso la lucis in south el paso street but by the time those lights come on a lot of those businesses are closed so it's not really helping them during the daytime so if we're able to somehow close past the streets this is a suggestion and being able to do some sort of farmers market there as well something to bring um people into that area during the daytime during normal business hours i think that would really help that part of the of our economy well with respect to the the way it could help downtown and the connection to our culture i know that with the mexican-american cultural center there's a lot of things planned in the grand opening i mean there could be a good tie-in with that so again it just depends on the amount of funding that we have allocated for the project thank you mayor pro tem followed by thanks for molinar um yeah no i i think uh i think representative rodriguez brings up a good idea and you know i think um el paso street uh i mean i i i don't know this is so much a reinvention of the wheel um fiesta de los lucas that the dmd puts together and hosts i don't know if anybody has had a chance have you had a chance to visit any of them recently the the luchador one i mean there were thousands of people there during the day that were there i mean there was probably close to 100 vendors that were that were there and el paso street was closed down so i mean i think that that that integration and probably you know one of the things that we we heard from from mr pfeiffer from staff is that a lot of the success especially within the sort of cultural space has a lot to do with successful partnerships and so obviously anything like this would i would probably involve the dmd and i think that they've had a lot of success with uh the fiesta de les luces that they've been doing i think you know one thing that we can do is help to cross promote what they're doing as well but they have you know dozens of food trucks along el paso street a number of the vendors were were opened up a number of the stores were open during the day actually went and bought some things that we needed at the house yeah and so and yeah so i think that that's uh i think in terms of like a downtown street summerfest um integrating i think with the dmd and and maybe even thinking about how to supersize the the fiesta de les luces might be a an avenue to explore as well but i do think that that idea of doing something that could be a really monumental event downtown that could go not just in el paso street but spread into san jacinto and other parts of our our core um will be really great and thinking down the road when the mexican american cultural center is opened up when that law you know in cleveland square is reopened again which is a great big green space when we have you know an outdoor viewing um viewing screen that's going to be there an upstairs restaurant at the mexican american cultural center this idea and how to really further activate downtown through programming is is a good idea and so i think having these conversations now uh with with our input and with your input rep rodriguez i think is definitely something to to look at in the future and and uh some great ideas representative enough um yes one with the council budget request for example the 4500 block of capricorn maria and things like that it's i believe it was 16-5 does that include the total cost the design the labor the materials this is the sidewalk improvements right there's four yeah some of these chief operations officer yes it would include because sidewalk repair doesn't include design or sidewalk extensions to basically go out there and ensure that they meet the ada slope requirements and they just install the sidewalks these um these requests small ones like this is part of the on-demand funding so we're going to run these through the on-demand program that ellen mentioned yesterday that's going to run under mr ivara so that's that's how we'll address some of these smaller ones the bigger ones obviously wouldn't be included within either the resurfacing program as i mentioned when we do resurfacing we also look to address sidewalks and ada ramps as part of that program as well okay thank you sir i'm sorry anyone else mayor this is cassandra is this the final list ma'am we should have a few more slides represented wait oh wait thank you thank you so the next list we have district three it's a request for additional shelter space random services to improve the conditions and overcrowding and you can see the response there from the department uh two major projects currently ongoing not only the hvac but also the additional kennel medical building which uh terry capshaw i believe addressed or can't address if there's any other questions on that item and then a another part of the response so the shelter space needs to be addressed by cleaning and equipping equipping the socorro shelter as well uh request for the sunday service for some metro a lot of discussion yesterday with ms smythe that service started on june 26th so this past sunday the for the sunday service first time metro and that did start back up this past sunday we had a request from district 2 repair grand view pool this is a would be a large capital intensive type project and so you see the response there is it should be added to a bond program and there's a couple of other requests similar to that as well related to a fairly large amount of investment that would be needed more of a capital type project and not a annual operating type item the district 2 requester at the bottom necessary budget set aside for accountability task force outcomes the police department is still working on a response for that we don't have a detailed response for that item yet as well or any additional cost impact thanks robert i i spoke with uh miss mac and my understanding is you know i didn't want to put an item up and say this is what i want to fund because i know there were still conversations with the committee and the police department and ms mack and so i just wanted to say that we had the money available for when they come to a conclusion but my understanding is with the changes that need to happen uh outside of just budget um that will still take a year so i think i'm good on that response thank you robert all right thank you the next request we have again district two more sidewalks ada accessibility and flood mitigation in the northeast excuse me well you see the response there's undefined scope i guess they were looking more for specific yeah i mean i guess my staff messed that up but this has gone through cr several times and it was on a bond request i guess i just assumed i don't know why it got messed up for my staff but i see this down in the other items too with flood mitigation and i see that one of them talks about a ponding area that's another issue but we talk about this a lot on trowbridge right we have our water system for some reason uses residential streets to get to ponding areas and the sidewalks are deteriorating there's nowhere for that water to go representative rodriguez i know your grandparents live in that area you probably see it like when it rains and and the water trying to get to the ponding area is ruining people's property it's ruined the sidewalks um and and you know i i wish we had had this conversation with the bond talking about street sidewalks is another issue right um but you know in this area that's specifically in the northeast so i guess it's from hondo pass to fred wilson railroad to 54. um you know last year we put in a street request or two years ago we put in a pothole request and we're told that the streets were in such bad condition that they weren't going to fill the potholes um we obviously got through that those potholes were fixed um but but but they also weren't showing up on the pci list right they weren't being rated poorly on the pci so i mean this is a conversation we're going to have to have when we get that pci but it's just when when we were talking about the bond and i was given having a little bit of like heartburn about i know we're not defining streets right we're using pci data but like understanding that it seems like some streets are slipping through the cracks for lack of a better analogy that aren't being rated poorly on pci that have terrible road conditions that potholes can't get fixed that sidewalks are falling apart because no fault of the city but that our water system uses them um as as flood mitigation and so it's it's really those areas that i think that we need to take some kind of look at because it's not just central i mean i know district 8 has issues like that i know the east side had issues like that this weekend i mean we do need to be looking at how we're constructing sidewalks and dealing with what the water utility has given us as our only option so thank you sam sorry yeah again sam rodriguez i think uh part of um as part of a community meeting i think with within your district uh with john ballou and and they mentioned a lot of the studies that have done they have done on the on the east side of the mountains uh specifically in this area that you referenced um yeah issue right a lot of the conversation has been about central but not about northeast because you can only tackle one piece at a time i get right exactly and i in you know when we bring back the pci obviously looking at these streets and the feedback that you all provide us we'll certainly look at those and run those through the system to make sure that we're we're you know none of the streets are slipping through the cracks like i mentioned uh definitely the the sidewalks ada ramps are being addressed through the the resurfacing program the challenge as you as you just stated was that our drainage design manual included the streets as as part of the storm drainage conveyance system and unless we go in there and overhaul a lot of these neighborhoods to include underground systems ponding areas that address and take the the storm water off the streets and that's a very costly proposition that certainly needs to be looked at as part of a master plan to address certain areas as you discussed um no and i understand that but that's not what i've asked what i'm saying is that also based on our drainage design manual there's wear and tear to not only the streets but also the sidewalks um and so at some point that needs to be a maintenance upkeep from the city or the i mean the water utility maybe i doubt that's going to happen um but but we do need to start addressing that i mean there are wear and tear from essentially a function that the city and the water utilities have put in place and there's been no upkeep on that mr gonzalez looks like he wants to say something [Music] no i mean i i just i think it's it's important important to point out too that our city you know our city was designed i mean there's a reason why water during a rainstorm conveys and runs down on city street it's because that's how our city was designed our city was designed where our streets were designed to convey water like that's how our our city was designed and that's an issue that is probably in every different part of the city because what the city did was rather invest in drainage maybe because of the climate or whatever but cities are designed to convey water there's a reason why piedras is called piedras for example well no i get that but it's like you look at like country club right there is an amazing project done there to deal with how that drainage moves through that neighborhood right and so there are creative ways to look at how we are running water through neighborhoods and even i mean even if that isn't the conversation even if the conversation is that's how the city was designed it's too expensive to change it i get that what i'm saying is so based on that there's damage being done i just okay so i wasn't saying that that wasn't something to look at i wasn't saying it was too expensive all i would do was pointing out that the city and the city streets and i'm sure that we have probably somebody that can speak from city staff i mean the city when it was designed a hundred years ago and was built out like our cities our city streets convey water like that's like that's why it is like you can go down o'keefe and stanton and literally the water will drain right underneath mission hills park like that's how it was in fact mission hills park has drainage that's exposed towards the second half and you have grown up and played in that park and others have played in that park and you see where they have that open that open um drainage area in the middle of mission hills park so it's it's there water will always go from the mountain to the river yeah they've opened now in the last two weeks they've actually opened up a big drainage area and redone they redid that top part stanton street so now when it comes down it goes right into the big old drainage that they finished maybe two weeks ago and i think it's important to notice that to also point that out that that is el paso water and not the city of el paso in the case of the work on stanton street that was a drainage thing that already existed there during the probably the same storm that had damaged large parts of central there was close to four inches of rain also on the other side of the mountain believe it or not the west side and and central they all they all are alongside the mountain and so that did a tremendous amount of damage alongside canterbury drain as well as the stanton drain and so i can't speak to el paso water but i just all i wanted to point out was that the city is designed to convey water through its streets no i get that and i guess but i think i'm glad you all brought that up i think equity is a real conversation here because there's the water utility and there's the projects that they will do to mitigate it but there's also you would never see the sidewalks on stanton street or in kern place look the way that they do in the northeast triangle area because of water damage and then i think these are areas that no one in the city and i would say south of i-10 too there's some projects there south of i-10 that the water has done severe damage to homes and to sidewalks because of lack of infrastructure you know because of water damage right this is the way the water utility is set up we've never put in the infrastructure um to mitigate that mitigate that damage to homes and and it's something that we should be looking at that's all thank you for that just curious sam because because we get this conversation there's maintenance of sidewalks falls on whose responsibility the main is the sidewalk swallow the responsibility of the property owner unless we go through and do a capital project or or we have investment as part of the resurfacing there's ada issues associated with the sidewalk we addressed those as part of the project um but the sidewalk actual maintenance of the sidewalk is per code and i want to be clear yeah we're not talking about cracks we're talking about the streets have been repaved so far up to the sidewalk that there's no longer a gutter and so when it rains it just becomes one thing right so i guess you're right the maintenance is the response to the property owner but this is clear like large damage from water runoff and from from resurfacing thank you representative rodriguez followed by representative salcido thank you sam so for example because i know off of lee um there's several sidewalks that are doing this but they're behind people's homes those as long as it's in the frontage of your property that's still the responsibility of the property owner again unless we're going through and addressing ada issues and that's why we have the on-demand ada um funding the city council approves i will put that into the queue for addressing or if we're doing a resurfacing or full reconstruction of a roadway we'll address all the sidewalks as part of that project so again obviously if the sidewalk you know because of erosion they've done this a wheelchair cannot get through so that would clap um correct okay thank you you're welcome thank you mayor um now that we're just talking about sidewalks i have a quick question um in regards to the the back side of the owners you know that area um per coat i think they're also responsible for the maintenance of that area i just want to know like what what a homeowner is fully responsible so you said i didn't know about sidewalks so anything else that they're responsible for it's it's the sidewalk in the parkway um adjacent to the property that they're responsible for uh well it's it's it's technically it's it's outside the property line but within the public right-of-way but it's the sidewalk adjacent to the property and the parkway up to the curb and then the city picks up the maintenance from the curb and beyond unless it's an arterial or or a major road then typically streets and maintenance will pick that up through a maintenance contract if it's landscaped okay thank you sam thank you mr cortinas so the next group of requests again district two addition of an ada ramp to memorial pool park for zero depth entry and you can see the response there would require a feasibility study again just to ensure that they have the adequate scope there's no cost estimate at this time discussion yesterday regarding the disabled fee for sun metro ellen i don't know if there's anything you want to add on that so currently it's 30 cents and the fee schedule is going to a dollar and there's discussion about only going to 50 cents so i asked forrest clancy just to move that category to the 50 cents to stay with the seniors so i don't uh maybe i'm i'm misinterpreting this so let me know i i saw that there on the back up says that there's an updated let me pull it up as i close did i apologize um for the backup it says schedule b final i don't know if that was updated it has not been updated yet but we will come like it has i really do thank you so much okay so the next request again we ask for us to look at the wages for police cadets and we don't disagree that scenario that obviously recruiting is a challenge across the board for just about every position nowadays and so we would recommend increasing the starting salary to go to forty thousand it's currently just over thirty six thousand so that would be a again a pretty nice increase for our police cadets in order to ensure that we're adequately staffing those academies to address future concerns about staffing levels within the police department adapted reuse of the training academy facility so a lot of discussion about that item yesterday i'm staff's going to continue to do some research on that to evaluate new potential new technology the original cost of the current bond disposal facility you see on the response there is 318 000 but again that was over 11 years ago so that cost is pretty outdated the requester at the bottom from district 7 about how much it would cost to move or to construct a new bomb disposal again they would have to do some research on that again looking at any potential new technology or any additional of new options as far as that type of service and again no estimate at this time as it's been robbers on that if i may add real quick so we'll come back with some options on that i think part of part of what we have to be sensitive is the existing location and where do we move it to because there's also existing homes at that area and so we'll look for some alternative locations as well with police department and specifically looking at prefab solutions um as well will be something that we'll be looking at as well because i know the last one that we built was a hard concrete construction you see what we paid for for it last time it was 318 000 a prefab solution maybe a little more cost effective and give us more flexibility but we'll look at that thank you the next request from district 2 is to waive the non-resident fiat libraries and yes to see the accreditation requirements and the response is there they give a link to the site so uh yeah i have i did some research on this last night too is this a one-time accreditation fee it's very confusing in this explanation it is so um the accreditation is done every single year and it um the maintenance of effort calculation is based on a rolling three-year so you really have to maintain that maintenance of effort in terms of the per capita over a three-year period so we went back and did research because we really wanted to make sure we didn't let anything fall through the cracks regarding a council request we have an email that was sent from ms martinez to the state asking specifically directly the question what would it cost for us to take on the population of the county and this was the request that we got we understand through the code you're basically required to have a minimum amount of money per capita for your population served if we chose to take on the additional population for the county we would need that 82 13.82 per capita and that's how you get to that number so it number does change yeah so so the one-time fee is the accreditation and then yearly you have a fee for maintenance so each week now each year um what we are having to show is all of our financials to ensure that the city is maintaining the minimum credentials it basically comes out to about 13.85 well for the last year that we did and it's for the population that is assigned to us if we go above seventeen dollars and fifty cents then we no longer have the same type of criteria we can add county we can add whatever we'd like but we've been really right at that minimum amount of meeting our credential requirements for quite some time so what norm and i did last night was do the calculation to understand whether we were even close to being able to include that um so we're not at that number even in our current budget and so this would be the amount of money that we would have to allocate in addition she is on the phone and i believe that the county was thinking about doing a digital library and we began those conversations with them and so that also was a part of a conversation about what their requirements would be under the state well so i don't know why we wouldn't just partner right and this is where i'm a little confused it was a conversation we had in 2019 obviously there was a wall that was hit because you you need this additional two million dollars for accreditation but then the conversation stopped um and would never have happened if i didn't see it in the schedule c again and so i think that you know we've really missed an opportunity to say hey county it's going to cost us an additional two million dollars um to stop charging county residential fee what does that partnership look like and and it's been three years i think it's absolutely awesome and i think another thing too is i think you could have you could make the conversation that you know at our libraries or free internet access free computers could we have used opera funds can we still use arpa funds um when it comes to broadband or whatever those dollars were for cares for uh broadband access to have paid that two million dollars to allow people from the county to have access to internet and education and i i guess it's just it's more than that ma'am so just want to be clear if the county chose to re-stand up a library and i know a lot about this because i actually implemented these fees back in 13. if the county chose to stand up a library system according to the administrative code they would need to cover the entire population of the county which includes el paso which includes el paso then if we chose to have a reciprocal agreement with them we would then need the additional two million dollars ongoing that needs to be added to the base budget to ensure that we continue to have that per capita and so when we were looking at this was like how can we ensure that people at least have access and so the non-resident fee is not just for county it's anyone who chooses to use our library you can be in you know southern new mexico you can utilize our library for a nominal fee that's associated with that and so what it's what our accreditation you know allows us to do is apply for grants it allows us no federal funding all the databases that you see on the website all of that from a from a state perspective is what accreditation means for us very different than some of the others and we have talked to the county several times about um sharing services because and it included this discussion and they they at this point i mean they didn't want to allocate dollars or at least they didn't take it to the commissioner's court for a decision but but yeah we have talked to him numerous times i mean that's what my disappointment is is that we have talked to them numerous times though you haven't talked to the council now since 2019 since action was taken from this council there was no action ma'am i could not find that action i couldn't find it i could even find the conversation which was surprising but i did talk to the council has to vote on an action i mean i mean i understand you bringing something up tommy and i remember with representatives perez as well and i've had that follow-up conversation with her and none of that is on the video anywhere which is really confusing um but my question is dionne in 2013 was there a savings when you implemented this fee so what happened in 20 uh in 2012 up to 2012 for about a decade there was a fund called the lone star grant fund and so the state was actually underwriting the costs and expenses that were associated with providing services for counties in other areas when the city decided to serve the county we actually got a bump in those funds you saw that that funding stream degradate over about five years and then in 2012 it completely went away and so you saw a lot of counties across the across the state looking for ways to really try to figure out how to you know to backfill that fund and also figure out how you stay in alignment with our actual requirements under the administrative code if the county had maintained its library system then our conversations would be somewhat different but that went you know out of existence in in 20 in 1990 and unfortunately when i started with the library we were already at risk for losing accreditation because of all the cuts that happened during the recession in 20 uh in 2010. so it took us three years to get off probation and really start to think about how can we right-size this and we've seen the growth in an investment by the city to make sure that we have a stable library system and back to what uh representative hernandez brought up yesterday how do we approve residency so we actually um have a process where we're using um the cad information so um you fill out your library card application we're able to verify that through cad and then you get your library card you can do a six month or you can do a year and we look at the library cards as being a family card you can borrow up to like 100 items and so it's not that every individual in a family would need to apply for a library card wait so that's for people in the city as well individuals in the city as well in terms of borrowing your own property what if you are a renter how do you verify with cad you said you verify someone's uh property through cad so if if we're talking about non-resident okay but if they don't own property then we have you have your address that's within city limits and you're able to see that the address relies in city limits whether it's an apartment or not so if you're a renter in the county you cannot get a library even if you pay the library card even if you pay the fee yes yes you cannot yes you can okay but you're saying you verify with cad and so that's where i'm confused okay i'm not you said that you verify someone's address through the cad if someone doesn't own property how are you verifying that address and so people are bringing in documents that show you know where they're living or where their address is okay and so it's a combination of the two primarily cad is used when we have properties that are relatively close to city limits and you can see where they're paying their taxes plus you yeah okay i mean i i just i think this is really disappointing and i think if there needs to be a push with commissioners to try to get them to invest in this i think it's it's good this just limiting education especially in covert where people didn't have internet in the county they didn't have places to go right like they're it it's this is limiting our community it really is and and two million dollars i know is a lot of money um for especially our library system which is a very small budget compared to other departments um but we need to find creative ways i mean if there are more grants out there if someone needs to go talk to commissioners about doing this if you can share some correspondence with the county um anything we can do to help because this this doesn't benefit anyone yeah it really doesn't work in the city i began that conversation with the county even before you know mr gonzalez began and so we talked about what it would cost we talked about the investment we even talked about you know perhaps if they wanted to purchase small packets of vouchers that could be allocated to people rather than the full amount so we went through you know those steps before as well you know representative runello thank you when i was in office before we had the identical same conversation and they still didn't want to pay for it and that's and i agree with you i think that conversation needs to happen and somehow they need to come up and pay for it but this conversation's been going on for for a long time and i think they figure if they don't have to pay for it and they can get away with it the better off in their budget they are so i mean i agree with you on that though yeah i mean i think it needs to be very public then because it's not i mean it's just this isn't it's unacceptable for both the city and the county right now like nobody should walk away from this conversation feeling good about it and i'm not saying that it's not understandable that i don't know where you're coming from but the outcomes aren't good for anyone thank you dion and representative vanello just what i was saying earlier it was just to follow up on what you were saying we did follow up we didn't i mean even if we get a request if council doesn't act on it it's good idea it makes sense we still follow up on it and we did that was my only point earlier and we did follow up it's just you know it's tough sometimes to get others to agree um as the mayor said that to pay for it if if um if they don't have to and and in this particular case we weren't looking at options but the library it's not like like for example the the water parks we can negotiate a rate with them that's not that's not dictated by state or federal stipulations whereas in the library it's very clear and so we had we had no room on our end to negotiate you're right about the the arpa funds the care the cares funding rather and arpa funds but um we we haven't had um they have they have not come back and said they they want to fund this but we can ask again no i get it but what i meant with follow-up is like i you know we had a very long conversation again there's no documentation of this conversation on council i almost felt crazy like i was having fever dreams about budget but i did talk to a former council member and they remember specifically and so it was just disappointing for me to look at schedule c and see it on there again without any understanding of what the departments have been doing internally for three years right and it obviously slipped off my mind when our libraries were closed during the pandemic but it could have just been an email out of respect to the council hey this is what we found it wasn't as easy as we thought because i remember the conversation it was like we don't bring in that much money as revenue so we decided to do away with it but there's a larger conversation that no one was aware of it would have been a really easy solution if that was just sent to council representative if i may i just i do want to to acknowledge that the library has answered these issues in the past i know that there has been written correspondence with you um but we will make sure we will make sure i'll work together with deputy city ft city manager mack and we'll make sure that we follow up on this more fully and continue the conversation but i do want to confirm that i know that under norma martinez's leadership she has communicated these concerns and has communicated this information yeah about three months ago or six months ago and i sent that email but not not post 2019 there was not a conversation about it so thank you may i just add one clarifying point because i do want make to make sure the public knows there's all of our programs are open to absolutely anyone who wants to attend you can come into any of the education programs you can come into any of the early childhood programs and so this conversation is primarily about borrowing but if you want to come to a computer class if you want to utilize any of the technology if you know any of those things are still available to anyone who walks through the door without a library card and we want to make sure that you know people still know that's available to them particularly as we're inviting our families back on saturdays thank you and that's the same for other services that are offered throughout the uh the portfolio the quality of life portfolio including the museums i would just like to add to that sorry um you know i i think that the library has done a a really great job a lot with little and and also looking at bringing back law services i think the one of the things that's been extremely successful is the read and ride with the collaboration with sun metro and the streetcar system pretty much every single one of those are pretty much sold out packed with packed with kids they have utilized the glory road transfer center um at times where families from across the region can go and park for free at the parking garage and they're able to take their their streetcar and hop on and hop off and explore um our community as well so i think that that has been a a really big success as well and again helping people to feel more comfortable on riding this mass transit and celebrating our history it's not every community has ever had an international streetcar line and it's very very few cities that have gone and brought back those same vehicles that used to travel 100 times a day between both cities again to celebrate our unique bi-national culture and history and future so i want to give kudos to that because i think the read and ride program has been very great um i know there's one going on on july uh first for the fourth of july i was actually at the one last year which was a lot of fun so i think it'd be great for people have that chance to do it and maybe rep rivera wants to read a book or two as well it's always always enlightening to hear representative rivera with the youth thank you mayor thank you mayor i actually have a question and it's more of previous council's testing everybody ever been a council member that's put an item in the agenda of looking at how or programs that we all can work with the county to now duplicate services or even like you said any any request that they can fund has there ever been a council member that's ever put an item in the agenda or yeah we did that during covid if you remember it was a four to four split um you know that was uh where we had a previous mayor who decided they were the governmental entity and council should not uh be doing that uh but that was the only other time that i can remember on their for the libraries representative the mayor um whenever he was in office before this mayor and then mayor margot and now this mayor again meet with the county on a monthly basis and i attend those meetings and sometimes i have robert cortinas attend with me and or tracy jerome it just depends on the issues but mainly jerome or cortinas will attend and we go over things like what you're talking about today and we're two different entities they have to agree on something and they have to agree to take it to the commissioner's court whether it's library whether it's water parks whether it's information technology there's a lot of different things we currently partner on multiple things the animal services department they pay for those services the health department the office of emergency management as examples and we also had projects in the past that were information technology related that didn't go so well and and we also but but the other ones i've talked to you about go really well there's also a program with the da's office that we did a lean six sigma project on that's been in place for a long long time we did make that a little bit better uh we couldn't tweak it all the way because uh it would have tipped over the apple cart for them and so we did listen to them and made just some adjustments but we have several partnerships and and the mayor before he he was in his first office mayor margot this mayor again have really pushed for uh partnering on programs that make sense and i think in the past there have been some forced programs that didn't make sense for either party neither neither party really enjoyed the the relationship because they were kind of forced but there's a lot of natural partnerships we partner on lean six sigma as an example on the baldrige training that really is what helped a lot of the statistics that we report on with covid uh we have a deep embedded relationship with umc uh and included the county uh with respect to that and mayor has seen that firsthand in the meetings we've had with them in terms of how that's worked when we received the cares funding we we voluntarily gave them i believe two million dollars they didn't ask for it uh because we felt like that was the right thing to do as a staff the council approved it with our recommendation based on what we felt like umc needed uh because it was fulfilling the need and again that was something we felt like was the right thing to do and and it made operational sense not necessarily you know because i know people get caught up on what's right what's not right but it made operational sense and so we we did that so i could give you other examples but there there's there's a lot of clear examples where we have good relationships well they work really well and we have just one or two where it didn't work so well it didn't mean we'd have a good relationship just being meant that that service that we were putting together way back when it didn't make a whole lot of sense and so i talked to betsy frequently the mayor talks to the judge a lot more probably than i talked to betsy i know they talked at least at those meetings and i know they visit on a variety of issues but it's just dependent upon what they're wanting willing to take to the commission's court and approve and not now they work a little bit differently than the city because the county commissioners actually do do the work i mean in terms of they're required to by the state state constitution and that they they get a bigger salary than the council and they're actually involved in operations whereas we have a council form of government and so you know staff executes the council's vision so there is a difference in terms of of how we operate you know one of the things that's we do meet on a monthly basis and there's priorities and you know in the last year and a half priorities been coded you know and vaccinations and have we been talking about the library absolutely not i mean that's not been one of our priorities so you know to say that the county doesn't want to do it today we really haven't talked to them because that we before absolutely you know and there was a different administration back then prior to george somniego and so there's things that we've taken a lot of priority on and you know i know that uh mr gonzalez and betsy been talking a lot about uh the wi-fi and and connecting the city and the county and you know so there's so many different things that we do talk about and the forefront has been coveted and you know and and we continue to talk about that we spend most of our time with that and i know the county's done a really good job of working with mr gonzalez and you know i know that uh mr gonzalez and his team did an incredible job of uh creating the dashboard the dashboard really made a big difference in the community and then working with the umc so it's been uh you know can we talk about some of the things we're talking about today absolutely and and we'll we'll do that moving forward but there's i'll be real honors adventure priorities that have put that on the back burner that we really have not even discussed at this point and we will moving forward we're hoping that uh you know we keep looking in that back review mirror and covet stays behind us you know and this is not what we're talking about today but covet unfortunately it seems to be coming back and that's going to be a thing of priority again as we continue to work with them you know it's great to hear that you all are having conversations i think it'd be a good idea if we um create a i guess like you said a priority list from the council and we can you might not get there right you're not going to get to talk about libraries but just like our priorities and i think it even invites the opportunity to have conversations with the school districts as well that way we're using the same dollar but we're not duplicating the service and we could really serve the community better if we're joining together whereas we're all executing the same mission but then we're not going to execute it 100 if we don't join the dollar and the people get the best for for them for their tax dollar absolutely and there's those low-hanging fruits that you're talking about today that like said we really hadn't even thought of in the last year or year and a half that we probably need to bring up and i think there are things that we can work together that we're talking about today that well and i believe the county will be able to want to work with us on them but so the things we're talking about today i think there's some of the things we can make a list of and you know talk to them and like i said they've been very very good about working with us and partnering us with us to make sure that uh you know we maximize the taxpayers dollars so i agree with you 100 so we could put libraries we could put streets i failed to mention streets we did partner with them on connecting a donut a whole i think in your your district with uh i think you you and representative rivera have made that a priority and so sam has been working with them on that particular uh item so the council has a list of projects like what representative vanello's brought up and you brought up streets before are happy to to put that together and have the mayor have it when we have those monthly meetings and do you all have monthly meetings with the school districts with the school districts no ma'am no no i'd hope that we would we could probably possibly even have uh the new superintendent of episd has been really good to work with and and uh i think she would uh welcome these these meetings because she's been really good we did reach out to them though with regard to the discussion about the violence in schools the the the tragedy that happened in yuvaldi and so we did reach out to them with that because the council had asked for that several of you had i think representative rodriguez led that in terms of wanting us to reach out to them so we do that from time to time and we have been partnering with them with the budget advisory committee but no we don't we haven't had like regularly scheduled meetings we did have regularly scheduled meetings when we had the discussion as was pointed out on wi-fi that the mayor said we we did have a discussion not only with the county but all the school districts and then region 19 and it just that that didn't get to where we wanted to get to we did create a resolution and a local agreement but everyone was kind of going down their path with regard to what they've already done and what they've already invested in with regard to wi-fi so we didn't bear as much fruit as we would have liked there but we did have a discussion about how we could aggregate all the arpa funds and see if we could put those dollars together so that we could as you pointed out kind of used the same dollar to go after getting that completed but it didn't quite work out quite the way we wanted it to and you see a lot of the parks and schools and recreational things that we have been working really close with all the school districts do you have a lot of interlocal agreements yes sir with the school districts that uh we have we have dozens of those uh i think i mean they might even be closer to a hundred but uh we we can we can get that if you if you would like in terms of the partnerships we have yes sam yeah i think there's also a lot of coordination related to uh school traffic safety safe routes to schools right in coordination with richard's team that happened on a continuous basis just because of issues that come up related to drop-off zones and whatnot that's criteria that's important to continue to have and i think for with with the schools i think one that comes to mind is how can we partner up in regards to traffic mitigation of course right there's a school so you have the the parents trying to take their kids to school so that creates a lot of traffic congestion you know calling for street lights and certain things that i think if we were to of course share the dollar would go it would maximize for the taxpayer so i mean those are just suggestions and hopefully we we could have those conversations with them yes ma'am we agree with you representative hernandez and thank you thank you thank you i'm really excited to hear from you sorry hello okay it's fine um about city and county can and coordination and inter-local agreements um i couldn't agree more um as as we're seeing now a lot of the um concerns with el pasoans and and their values and other concerns it's now more than ever that we needed to share these discussion points in our local agreements not only with dollar sharings but having state same design standards that would address a lot of the concerns that you're seeing in the outskirts of the city um a lot not having fully developed communities not having street lights having uh you know streets that are too narrow um that should really be arterial roads i mean i can go on and on about county and city coordination it's gonna take the willpower from this group so mayor i appreciate you sharing the information there's a lot of intergovernmental work that you're doing i think it really is important that you share of those conversations with council not only as it relates to your role on psb um the u.s conference of mayors i think is a really important role as well as well as your your coordination with the county and other stakeholders so i appreciate all the information so please sending in please keep sending us that information can you go to the slide um to the to the budget request slides now i do want to comment you talking about the u.s conference of mayors i am not a member of it it's a 36 thousand dollar fee to be a member of the u.s conference of mayors plus travel plus everything else and i i um last time i was in office i looked at it i did go to a couple of the meetings and i didn't see what the return would be to the community for that type of investment i do belong to the big city mayors which is all the mayors from the city of texas that we meet on a bi-weekly basis and we do talk quite often and that's been a really good tool for the community because we talk about the state and it has no cost to the city of el paso oh great um do do they meet monthly or what is your participation in that role well we just have there's no you know we just meet and and and kind of it's a bi-weekly meetings uh not everybody we don't uh join every bi-weekly because it's 7am sometimes and unable to meet but it's a really it's a meeting of the big city mayors and when we just joined as you saw in the last with yuvalde we all united uh our voice together to send a letter to the governor and also on you know we believe that uh also had a letter sent to the governor regarding uh that we felt that he needed to have a special session regarding uh what's going on in the state right now so it's it's a very important group that meets that really resonates what's going on with the state of texas and it's the large cities and again the the other one is very costly and i did not see the return on investment to our community that's great and i wasn't aware of all the other things that you're doing when you when you all send letters on behalf of the city could you share that with us so we're informed but i appreciate you may have and i may have missed an email just right it's time to be happy that's not happening absolutely we can do that no no doubt but it's on behalf of all the cities and and every mayor signs it and we'll make sure that uh we circulate with you guys every time we do send out one of those letters so i thought we were getting up to y'all but we'll make sure we do but like i said you may have been um i just wasn't aware of it thank you for that information um now i just wanted to uh read this this line item for the municipal court i'm i guess i just i'm not understanding uh what it says mostly because i can't see it right now um could you elaborate a little bit on what what's needed for the municipal court uh representative this is lily wall so what what i would recommend is actually um um having a temporary recording operations even for 10 months that would be about 237 000 for staff and the judge the temporary court that was in session actually did hear 22 000 cases in in a six-month period so i think it is beneficial and the compensation for the judges that you asked about uh the per session pay it would be about 250 thousand dollars i know that hr was still looking you know at the analysis at this time so just to increase the not the salaries but the per day um i guess fee or do you call it a per diem um that that would equate for a 10 month temporary court would equate to 250 000 no the temporary court is separate it would be 237 000 and that would pay for the judge that would be scheduled every day a senior deputy a deputy to set the cases that's not including um the paylift because that's a separate fund that the court can absorb uh but that temporary court just is for the court itself so i know that we don't make projections on our budgets based on the amount but the amount of dollars you know tickets would bring because that's just not a good way to to govern however is there is there an average on what a full-time court produces in new revenues based on fees paid it would just depend on the judge um sometimes you know they are able to increase the fine sometimes decrease the fine if they elect defensive driving to to offer that to the defendant there's very not there's really not a fine that we collect but we can get that information we can do an analysis on that yeah because i'm curious if if the court is going to pay for itself through administrative fees and all those other costs would this just be a wash and just open a temporary court because again seventy thousand cases and backlog is just unacceptable um and i know we have to address it at some point if you're not going to do it now you're going to have to do it in the future but at any rate it could pay for itself off so if it does then i would urge mr gonzalez to implement that so that it would be like not only a cost-saving measure but it actually pays for itself i don't know what the what the data looks like but i would i would urge you all to seriously consider that because um it could mean more fines it could pay the court but also most importantly all of those cases that are pending a lot of them environmental services you know speed tickets whatever maybe we do need we do need to find result in a lot of them waiting over a year a lot of officers may forget you know who who they interfere so it may just be the longer you the longer we weigh the the more disadvantage it would be in order to to make do on all of those tickets so it's a lot of wasted time but anyway i'm just gonna i just want to highlight that that's really important i think you all really need to seriously consider pushing that forward i don't think there should be a budget allocation um significant to 200 000 because i because i think it'll pay for itself but that's that's just my opinion um you all have the numbers um representative uh representative dion mack and and the chief might have some comments for you representative you're spot on and so we've been working to try to get the positions filled and in the meantime utilize the judges and others as you recall we backfilled several of the vacancies and so i think we have two judge vacancies so it's really about our staffing and hiring i actually do believe that we're going to see some positive results in terms of the bonuses that were we just input in place for hiring and our omb team as well as our cfo had the same thought in terms of getting the cases through and allowing the fines and fees that are already associated with that department to cover those costs so it really is about the staffing and not so much about the actual costs of those services and we've really been pushing you know as much as possible to try to think of creative ways to fill the position to ensure that we can retain those staff we know that that's a very challenging position and also looking at restructuring some of the high turnover positions that we have citywide to sort of impact us across the board and so we absolutely agree that having these cases in the queue for as long are impacting the quality of life that people expect since many of those are codes cases and looking for creative ways to move that forward and so we're really not tying it to the budget process but in to the numbers as miss lily just explained i don't have any other comments on the other issues mostly because i'm about to have a crying baby here um but know that uh the the animal service side of the house i'm getting a lot of complaints about animal services which is why i did that i know you all are taking a lot of steps but when you say that you're in the development process um of more space what is what does that mean samurais um we are we through the 2020 capital plan there was uh funding associated with the expansion of the animal shelter that included additional kennel space as well as a medical house that would allow for segregation of sick animals and therefore and thereby freeing up additional storage space or candle space for for the animal shelter that project is in development meaning it's under design and then scheduled to go out to bed later this year and into construction in 23 representative thank you and one other thing i've done this that i i forgot to mention uh miss escobar also is in a group with all the big city chiefs of staffs to be able to work together and again that's at no cost to the city prior to taking office they were part of the u.s conference of mayors and again we saw no return on investment to our community so we did not renew the and i i really value the city mayors that have a great working relationship with so thank you thank you oh yeah i want to comment really quickly on the animal services and i i think that the two projects that are coming up and have been funding are much uh are long overdue i guess you could say but i also i i don't think that we should stop having the conversation about additional space um because i mean chief stop me if i'm out of line but i think that you go to the shelter now those those new kennels are are not going to alleviate the entire problem like we we have a serious issue and i know mr gonzalez said the other day that you know that location isn't great right it's limited in the amount of space that we can even grow and in most major cities even in texas the city operates two shelters on different sides of town right i don't know that we are having that conversation today i'm not trying to have that conversation today but i think that the improvements that we're doing are much needed highly anticipated we definitely can turn to them to the community and say listen we have listened we're doing this it's taking time but i don't think that should stop the conversation of expansion for the future so that's that's just what i wanted to say about that um okay i have a few things now uh so on slide eight one of my items the last item for sidewalk improvements and landscaping so i don't really necessarily need to talk about that what i want to talk about is the response because this has been coming up a lot in projects and i know some of the city council reps we've been like wait this is a policy what's going on how do we deal with this because we're dealing with it in individual projects sam i know you know what i'm talking about at this point um but this idea that when the city goes in and puts in a landscaping project that the residents have to maintain it is strange um to say the least it's also not consistent right so right i look at i had that issue on fort boulevard and trowbridge so we're being told on residential areas and now in some of my neighborhoods that i've taken in on the south side that's been happening but i want to focus on trowbridge and fort for a second because we're being told on residential areas on residential streets when trees are put on the residents have to maintain them yet when they want speed bumps or feedback signs they're told this is a thoroughfare right so there's inconsistency on that just again the idea that the city is trying to put in streets and then making people maintain them i i i'm going to go back to the word strange but it's also counterintuitive to the conversation that we had at council last week about how we're looking at kind of green spaces to deal with um climate action right and so um i don't there's been a lot of confusion i'm like is this a real like a written policy is this kind of an understood policy what projects do it follow so i don't take any action right now we don't have to have a conversation about it what i will ask is that maybe not next week but at the following meeting or in conversation with the bond however you want to do it we actually like sit down and understand where that policy came from if it is written what are the rules and what we do about it because i know what is at least happening in my district is just like a lot of end fighting it's like residents didn't want to maintain the trees so we took it out of the project and then in the end that's not what happened we ended up irrigating it just it seems like it's just creating a lot of confusion and it's maybe hurting some projects and and hurting real benefits for neighbors neighborhoods agreed and we'll be happy to have that conversation because part of the whole strategy of complete streets is to include the the trees and the sidewalks and the parkways the the discussion that we had earlier related to the parkway maintenance you know the trees and and the sidewalks are all part of the the residence maintenance as part of the operation and so what we've been working on projects is if if we're installing trees on a on the parkway uh we have conversations with the property owners we let them know what kind of trees we're going to be installing if they have an irrigation system we'll tie it into their system so that it becomes part of the maintenance operation as you just stated we have projects where a lot of the residents don't want to maintain they don't want it you know they're just not interested in having a tree uh in front of the property and i think from a maintenance standpoint you know you see the costs associated which is maintaining the medians and the arterials for the city to take on maintenance of residential areas and trees um along residential roads it's just will be just cost prohibitive from a city standpoint and so that's that's where the direction and the policy stands but we certainly have a conversation with you yeah i think we should just just understand a lot more because again if we're wanting to look at green spaces in neighborhoods and walkability as a source of you know climate action we're going to have to address this policy they're not going to work well together um and we need to have the full conversation though to be able to make those decisions so as i understand it mrnello there's an ordinance in place with regard to the sidewalks and i don't think that's just specific to el paso at least every city i've been in the the um the sidewalk is the responsibility of the resident the medians though when we put in uh trees on the medians we are responsible for the maintenance of those and when you did mention the uh street cushions that's on a street so that's not the responsibility of a no no what i was saying about the cushions is like we were telling people in certain projects that like oh this is a residential street so we're not going to maintain the trees but when they've gone out for cushions they've been told it's an arterial so it's like it's just there's a lot of inconsistent communication that's what i was pointing out thank you though um and so i guess my next uh i guess ask is so i want to move some things forward i guess not approve them necessarily for the budget but move them forward in conversation for consideration um and before i do that ellen i just want to double check that i don't need to move forward uh the disabled fee for you you have taken i just don't want to come back next year and they're like you guys didn't take action on it council will have to vote on it because i mean like if you ask for something or if anybody asks for something it's just one person but they put it on the list well council will have to vote on that item on that on that fee schedule is that right that's correct and so they need to put together a rough estimate on what that impact would be on the revenue so i'll put that on the list just to move it forward right not necessarily to approve right now and like i was trying to say yesterday one of the reasons that um we really weren't didn't really want to go down this way is because we don't have an estimate we don't know the volume of that population because we have never we haven't we haven't tracked them separately no i know i understand we have that conversation it's very difficult for me to estimate for this purposes so the city council is just going to have to vote yes or no on um whatever the cost is going to be and i don't really like doing that but the city council you guys have now actually on the budget council did vote yes or no on this though it passed unanimously right the policy with the conversation though and in that conversation we talked about that 30 cents that was part of that conversation as part of that agenda item what is happening now is it's being swi because you kept saying a dollar too during that conversation we were like no we are talking about the disabled fee and so what's happening we've already voted yes on that what's happening now is you've put it in an entirely different fee structure even though council took action to put it into one free structure okay i i i mean i'm gonna go back and listen to the meeting but um like i said we're i'm i've asked staff to change it but the difficulty we're having is putting a number to it because yeah we wouldn't be able to do that we know that yeah which it's scary for our budget because we run on a really tight budget already yeah and again we've had that conversation right that's the only way to be able to do that right is to isolate them and then be able to understand right and so that's why we've always said like we can have a conversation in the future about what that impact looks like so and and and i would just add that to that miss missinello i would just add to that that uh there's a correlation with what ellen's saying on revenue versus the the route schedule you know in terms of right now it's not a money issue it's just we're trying to hire as many people as we can and that's what's holding us back but you know in terms of getting back to all day service like i know that sunday services come back now and when we get to a point where we're continuing to add with brio and things of that nature there there's a there's a correlation with the revenue and then the expense in terms of the number of routes so i just just wanted to you probably already know that just wanted to point that out yeah and i guess they're just going back to the conversation is when council took action six months ago it was to add to the disabled the discount fair schedule whatever um individuals with mental health right disabled fee at 30 cents which has now changed to 50 but you've taken that out of a fee structure so does council even need to vote again because we already voted on that six months ago to keep that with the disabled fee well i think that if if if you can go back and look at the tape but i mean with regard to you you're right the disabled discussion did come up and with regard to the fee schedule i remember ellen talking to the council and then to also brief me with respect to you know she did talk to the disabled community and they were okay with the increases over time not to do it like all in one year and i think i think i remember that discussion so if you can just look at the table and whatever the council was whatever the council voted on obviously you know we need to execute and so you you might want to just double check that alan well so i'll just i'm going to make a motion to move uh three things forward uh obviously not to finalize them but to move them forward in the budget discussion but half the council isn't even here do we have a quarter yeah two you have a didn't say we didn't then we do you have five and you have one on the you have one on the representative schwartzman is walking in so you have five right now i don't know we have one on one on um okay so i'm gonna again just to move forward uh motion to move forward these three items uh we're not finalizing them we're just moving them forward in the council budget discussions for those representatives who are walking back in um so that would be um the disabled fee uh the circulator pilot for beaumont um in the council staffing so that's my motion in a second right and if i may we would really put together an estimate on the william beaumont circulator we do so it'll be um if the the unknown in that of course is we can estimate on a fixed route because we have actual costs on that but it's how many lift customers is the again a wild card factor so um 500 000 is just providing two or three lift uh rides a day and if it goes beyond that it'll probably be over the 500 000. yeah and again this is not solidifying anything this is just moving them out of today's conversation into the final budget conversations it's so with that ellen on any recommendation on the beaumont we're going to need specific details so council is fully aware of what you're incorporating within that 500 000 estimate well i would say that you all need to provide a proposal yeah i mean i'm not an expert in transit i mean i don't understand why you're asking us for details when that's the request from you no i'm not representing fernandez i'm telling ellen that the five hundred thousand dollar estimate that she provided we need to make it clear on what the proposal is for the campaign he was talking about bringing back a proposal then no no no i mean this is so frustrating bring back a proposal the other thing i want to add to that and i'm happy to second the motion this is uh for representative manelo's motion is to also bring the climate plan action plan um discussion forward so anyway i just i i didn't bring it up for a reason because i've been disappointed in the fact that the way it was presented it's not a proposal the climate action plan or the beaumont belmont i i have the details on the bowmen if you'd like to hear them because that number i had to you know i had to calculate it last night so the proposal is to run from downtown transit center the north gate transit center and the mission valley transit center to the hospital three times a day so it would be leaving the transit centers at eight o'clock and arriving to the hospital at 8 30 or whenever we get there leaving at 11 from the transit centers to get there by noon and then leaving at four the transit center to be there by five and then the return trips would be leaving the hospital at noon back to the transit terminals by one leaving at nine in the morning to get back by ten and then leaving at five for the workers to get back by six monday through friday only not the weekends and that is the basis of the five hundred thousand dollar estimate sounds good to me representing what is the frequency of per week is it three times a week monday through friday monday through friday okay so i'll amend my motion to add the climate action plan so ellen what is that cost compared and and and representative and on this um just to be clear robert was speaking to alan not not to you or the council right because i know there's sometimes there's confusion on that and there's been confusion in the past on that with council were trying to make a point whenever they weren't we weren't speaking to y'all just just just to be clear about that ellen what's the difference between thank you thank you yes ma'am no yes ma'am what's the difference between that and what we're doing and council we have to point this out i mean you obviously once we recommend you can you vote and you can do uh whatever the vote is but i just want to be clear so you have the information what are we paying now with the uber-like service that we're providing we're we're not leaving any veteran behind we don't provide a service at all to william beaumont right now so this 500 thousand dollars would have to be supplemented i understand that but like if we have people that need to get there and we provide the uber service that we said that we can provide have we done i'd like you to do the cost estimate on that just so that you can show the council the difference just so they can have it they have the information in front of them when they're making the vote right if you don't have it go do that but i don't have the vehicles yet i don't have my my vehicles haven't come in the first 10 are scheduled to be delivered in december so this new on-demand service is you know something that you city council approved the extra funding for it this summer and i've put the po together and ordered vehicles but they haven't delivered things okay but if you could just work on what that would cost just so they can have that okay so they can be they could have a juxtaposition of those of those costs that's all i think that's an excellent point that we have a comparison but we've allocated in the summer and what the difference would be if the 500 000 would it be a wash or right just so you don't think that's really important actually just so you have it absolutely um ellen the proposal that you have is starting immediately with the full-size buses is that what that's all i have right now are full-sized buses when are you projecting the new buses to come in i know your kind of supply chain just waiting we've ordered 10 15 passenger vans that are expected to be here in december my plan for those were to do pilots in the neighborhood circulators to pull the riders to the brio line they weren't intended for this particular service so okay thank you yeah hey um we have uh represent millionaire but before we we we go to represent mullin on then we'll go to meet you representative rodriguez um when you were talking about the budget and it's not monetary when we're talking about uh being able to fill spots because you have it set up what what do we have set up in the budget of how many non-filled positions are we keeping into the budget moving forward because of uh right now we've not had the ability to fill them for the next budget year what do we have set up for so it varies by department so the budget office worked very closely with each and every department this year looking at not only historic coalition but also what we've seen over the last couple of years obviously with kobe we know that we have more vacancies than we have in the past so so what would that be and you know may not be able to answer it this minute but i think that would be really important to this council to see what vacancies are left open and what type of dollars and cents are set up for whether it's each department or or you can you know how we can but i um it's going to be a nutrition amount it's not going to be a number of vacancies it's going to be a nutrition amount that we're building into each and every department and again that's going to vary depending upon the department based on their historical vacancies and i understand that and so we've taken more than than normal because we also had okay i understand that too can we get that number though of course thank you thank you mayor um first few people may or may not be aware of this but the el paso veterans administration they are how would i say it for example i don't know exactly where it's at on the west side but well first of all let's say back in a couple years ago everybody went to the va on piedra street and for treatment like for example myself i am a veteran and i do go and i do get care at the va center however now i go to the clinic that's on sanders and so we're not or they're not sending veterans to the va clinic and so i'm not sure if they're talking about the va clinic or the william beaumont but they're really trying to get people away from that as well and so yes i'm not a retired veteran so i don't get those services to go to beaumont but as far as the va the veterans administration for example i do go to the one on sanders and there's another one on the west side but i can't give you that exact address so i don't know if it's some misconception is that everyone has to go to the new beaumont because that's not entirely true so the veteran population you're talking about ellen would be the military retirees for sure the some metro ridership we don't track whether you're retired or not that's that's not how we track yeah okay i was just trying to make sure that people understand there's there's differences as far as the let's say a retiree like you sir you're a military retiree for so many years and i didn't retire but i did serve and i do do receive i have a disability rating through the va and i do receive care but i receive it at the sanders thing no you're right sir because uh you're right i'm a veteran retired and so you're right there's different services for for where they send you that's correct and the other thing ellen so you mentioned uh it would be from the metro 31 north gate or northeast downtown and what was the other thing valley mission valley okay so they would still need to transfer somehow or another to get to william beaumont one way or the other through that route that you're proposing the old william beaumont no the new one oh no it would it i mean that's what we're talking about is sending the bus from the terminals to the to the uh beaumont i thought that's where the new va was being built as well uh i don't that i don't know right all right thank you eric the day is followed by representative thank you sir thank you can i just have some clarity as far as the council request um they don't all automatically continue on to to the council meeting to the budget meeting no so for example um the one request that district six made for summerfest we would have to make a motion to okay so i'd like to make a motion to move that one forward as well please and that's not to approve it right it's about having to have that conversation a second yeah with regard to approving it i think that right now you have a balanced budget that has a tax rate decrease and then like for example the mayor asked about vacancies a lot of the vacancy when robert talked about attrition the attrition is built in so that when we do those increases for staff that's built in and we're already taking some of those savings but we can we'll show the mayor that number but with respect to like these requests let's say these requests add up to just say for sake of argument two and a half million dollars then we have to either cut on the budget that we have now and or on the 27th i believe when we receive the 25th meeting on august 1st no no no but worth the valuations from the cash july 25th we get the report 27th so july 25th that's kind of the magic date for council each year that when the valuations come back and let's say we were off and let's say we get three more million dollars and you have two and a half million dollars worth of requests then you can approve that two and a half million and you still have five hundred thousand left over that you can put in the race stabilization fund or fund balance somewhere and or whatever you can use that 500 for whatever you want but i would caution i mean you can do that okay and that's fine but with regard to like looking at just this year you we also need to look at the next year and the year after okay because when with the way we've built the budget and the reason why we're we're more financially sound we don't just look at the current year i think that's what the city used to do uh in the past they'd say oh we can just cut this cut that and boy we're good and then you have a reoccurring cost in the future like an operational cost then all of a sudden it hits you the following year so let's say in your and you run a business and you're like well you know i'm gonna balance the budget this way but you know you have to replace a truck and you don't put that in the future then you're gonna get hit in the second year or the third year so ellen's over there calculating whenever y'all ask for additional routes and i'm not there's this has nothing to do with anything council's considering right now but when we look at routes and look at different things like that the union depot as an example that's sun metros that they have to make an investment in it these these vehicles the buses they have to get replaced these smaller vehicles that she's referring to that's a new program you know to try to address the route situation so in the past what you had first transit doing you asked for something oh yeah well i had that route yes or something oh yeah we'll add that round that's the reason why we had a 38 million deficit now we don't have a deficit anymore so i think that we have to consider that and i know again i'm not saying this towards anyone recommending anything but you you have us to give you your you know operational advice financial advice that's all i'm doing right now so that when you have these different things the things you are asking for they could probably be approved right but it depends on the valuation that comes in the 25th as well that's a consideration we have to have and or looking at do we cut something else that that may not be as high priority as what you're talking about or not right now there might be something you're talking about right now that's a higher priority and we can move things around and just cut something else if the valuation doesn't come in at a higher amount and you made a point right now you talked about that council voted on and asked to kind of roll back the taxes yes sir so yes sir we need to look at any additions and everything we do could take that away yes sir well it could and or we would cut other things right now yes sir you're exactly right so right now we have a penny and a half on the operational cost that's that's being reduced that you see a reduction on there overall it's point eight i think or 0.75 percent of a decrease in in in the in the current budget you ask for a property tax decrease because of inflation and valuation and that's in the budget right now right so if you add to it you either have to cut somewhere else or you'll lose that and or the valuation comes in on the 25th you might have additional dollars you can decide then and i think in the past uh i'm just talking about in previous years y'all hadn't really taken action but you might feel more passionate about some of the things you're talking about you might want to take action and if you do have more dollars on the valuation that comes in a little bit higher if it does it might come in lower hopefully roberto over there is on target again but uh but but but the thing is that number could fluctuate i don't put too much pressure on him but i mean that that number can fluctuate one way or the other it's probably going to be a little bit higher i think we were conservative in our figure uh so i think i but i don't want to like prognosticate that number but i i i'm pretty confident we're going to be we're going to be good you might see a little bit extra dollars there but all that is also the number that i know you get conservative to make sure but you're not quite sure how many protests and what happens in all the protests and that's why it's such a fluctuation on it yeah so having spoke with cad yet i know they're doing a presentation this morning over with the tax advisory committee and so i'm going to get briefed on that to see where we stand with the number of protests i know that number is going to be much larger than we see in the past to say manager's point though he was talking about you know looking at the long term not just focusing on this year one of the things for the council to remember and you've seen that chart that graph we show you with historical property value increases this year is a good year we have seen significant increases in property values next year we will probably see another increase in property values just based on the significant increase that took place this year that is not the trend though for the city of el paso we do not consistently see seven eight nine ten percent increases in property values every year and so i think to the city manager's point about being fiscally responsible in the recommendations we bring forward it's about looking at the long term so four percent property value increase compared to seven or eight percent property value increase does generate a lot of money additional income for the city to be able to provide these services however we need to be fully aware of what the future is going to look like as we will not continue to see realistically based on the position right now we will not continue to see those double-digit growth properties and we had a run of a 1.4 1.5 1.7 percent valuation increases very low increase so we also have talked about the property tax and how much it's increased and people write about it and and you know what i'm talking about and and that is a reflection on our commitment the council's commitment to public safety to health streets you know and we've already pointed out where those dollars went to and you have had a very good discussion today about the continual need your your list of requests that you've had they're all streets the lion's share are streets related and so that's the reason why the 70 of respondents that we got on all the surveys we did and all the the community meetings we did came back 70 percent streets i mean your your constituents are saying same thing that you're saying in your requests so it just points to that and representative made a very good point about the way streets are used for drainage and when you don't have the proper funding for streets uh ergo the the pci study that shows you need 44 million a year in order to keep up with what's been neglected for so many years in the streets then it has situations like representative pointed out i mean that was a really good point that she made that really speaks to the lack of funding of reconstructing streets that street that she's talking about probably needs a reconstruction doesn't need any more resurfacing it's been resurfaced to death that's what she's referring to and and because we're not controlling how the dollars get spent on every fund that we have access to or that the city is municipally responsible for that we might not have control over it the water department is doing a good job on really attacking the problem but there's just a lot of problem to attack and so they would have to increase their dollars on the drainage significantly there's been other communities that have done that right off the bat they went high fifty sixty dollars for the businesses monthly fee and the residents were like in the twenty dollar range and then they they addressed the problem up front and then when you paid off the debt then you all had to just worry about operation maintenance here we haven't gone up as high as that and so you're going to have a long time coming that you're going to have this problem and you're going to be discussing the same thing over and over and all of that's due to planning i mean when you look at the city of el paso like mayor pro tem pointed out in terms of how it was planned out the one thing that was left out entirely and the reason why the this exacerbates the the flooding problem is no frontage roads on with txdot we're one of the few cities in the state of texas certainly the largest city that doesn't have frontage roads and that's an affront to planning if you ask me but you can't fix those things overnight it's gonna it's gonna cost a lot more to retrofit like we're doing in the drainage area and in the streets department point point of order i just want to acknowledge that i was referenced by our city manager thank you and by representative nello so thank you thank you both just shows the power of our vision so i guess you have a motion a few more council budget requests i don't know if you all want to take action on yeah on those items first and then we can move on but we do something what were those three items it was uh the circulator it was the oh i thought it was three no i i am ended yeah yeah it was uh so it's a circulator at the ada or the um disabled fee i wrote them down so i wouldn't forget yeah um the council staffing and the climate action thank you and then representative rodriguez had the one request she had connect with the summerfest and then and then you're going to continue the report yes sir can i say something though really quick so i don't i'm not comfortable putting 500 000 aside for a summer fest um and it's not because they don't think it's a good idea but i representative shortstring mentioned that other people have things downtown we also have other festivals around the city in the summer mr fife referenced art in the park yesterday i think that it's very hot and if we are going to push dollars towards like summer activities i think they should be outside of downtown right like the beast has like multiple water parks and and uh splash pads and there's lot like i just i don't think it's a bad idea i just don't think that i'm necessarily like i don't know that san jacinto is the place downtown i think if we want to look at putting monies into bringing things like um you referenced that festival in your request that used to be there or someone did no there's another one it was like a music festival that used to be downtown that doesn't do it go anymore neon doesn't music festival i'd rather put those dollars into helping stand those events back up because also like in october we do chalk the block because it's cool down right it's not that we don't do a summer festival because we don't spend the money we just have shifted it to the fall because it's a little bit cooler that's the only thing yes ma'am i do i do think she pointed out the water parks in the the airport and just other like you're talking about she did point that out and i think right now you're just talking about is if i'm not mistaken about pushing it forward for a vote not for a vote today i just want to represent the reporting period for sales taxes um and are you going to update your projections in the august meeting with any additional revenues from sales taxes as well so we just received the april sales tax allocation two weeks ago so we won't get the may allocation until probably the second week of july we'll review so no different than what we've done in the past when we bring forth the certified appraisals from cad we'll also bring forth our third quarter report at that time we're constantly reviewing our revenues in the current year to see if there's any potential for either increasing or decreasing those revenue projections um sales taxes as i've mentioned and we've talked about is a very volatile source of revenue so we know that there's a delay and there's a lag in that information that we receive from the state but absolutely we'll bring that forward on august 1st when we meet with you all to provide the you have done the closing like in october time frame mr cartinas um for for any for the previous fiscal year and there's always dollars on the table i want to i want to look at a conservative projection on what those dollars would be at the close out of august 31st of this year so that we can really have an understanding of what the true dollars are for this fiscal year so that we can allocate as opposed to reallocating next year at the year in savings when you have those budget discussions then i know that's i know that that's not what you all want to do because you want to hold off for any changes but i do believe you know having done this five this is my sixth budget year that that predominantly those dollars will either end up in our fund balance which is fine i appreciate that we've done a lot in our fund balance while there are other needs that we need to address now yeah absolutely that was my comment was that that we will do that we will do that on august 1st and actually we've done that in the past you all did that last year where you did allocate some of the current year savings last year to put towards some of those street residential street projects that were deferred i don't know if you remember we added the additional funding for those projects uh we pointed the pci with some of the year in savings and we uh paid off some of those the salaries for employees too correct so projected your report on august 1st when we provide certified uh appraisal votes representatives what i would add to what robert said um to your comments is that typically on things like sales tax which you can't depend on even though it has been doing well is that we recommend that you do it for like one-time purchases like if it's for capital intensive kind of things that way you don't have that reoccurring operational cost the following year because you don't know how that revenue is going to do the following year and then plus we're prognosticating or we're projecting rather on the cba as well we just are closing it out with the fire then we're going to have police next and as you know that's going to be something that we have to pay for as well and police we think based on the the numbers we think that's going to to be something that we have to project in there as well in terms of fulfilling you know being more competitive especially with the environment that we're in and what we've talked about and then robert already mentioned about on the cadet side going from the 36 000 to 40 000 so things like that we have to project as well and i know you know that but i just thought i'd just add that council just a friendly reminder please refrain from using your cell phones during the meeting if you need to step away to answer a call or respond to a text please do so thank you and what about the hot tax um rollout when we because there's discussions about tourism type of initiatives are you all seeing an increase or are you still are we like three months behind um on the reporting period so on the hotel occupancy tax it's even more challenging than the sales tax because there's those are paid quarterly and so you know we're usually behind by three to four months on that when we say we're behind the state this gives it to us after the fact on the sales tax on the hotel motel tax it's two three months after the quarterly report is due correct okay so i just want to be clear because people i want people in the public to hear that it's not we're not producing that we're allocations started by the state yeah and so with that also we want to make sure that we're being conservative on that as well and right now the hotel accuracy tax the occupancy as you heard yesterday is performing extremely well however the average daily rate is still not where it was at pre pandemic and so the overall amount of revenue has increased but not to the level we were prior to covet so the revenue okay i mean some of some of these requests i feel like can be outside of the general fund and looking at any additional revenues that weren't projected that are on the table and so i don't want to exclude them because i think that there might be a way to pay for it um and then so one so the other thing i wanted to bring about the climate change i'm looking at just dollars right now i know you all want to have discussions uh about each item but related to the climate action plan when we we already have planning documents underway are there any unspent bond proceeds interest occurred or any dollars on the table from any of those previously executed and funded bonds that are sitting in a bank account that we can reallocate to a climate action plan those are the type of discussions that i really want to have if not today when we get the july 25th going into the august meeting and so that we can really dissect into those individual budgets to see if there's any dollars on the table so that we can either partially fund it phase the funding or what have you um those that's just an idea and then i would be remissed if i didn't bring back the streetcar dollars um what what that could look like to increase weekly um hours and then what would be the total monetary value and then what would be a potential funding source and so again would like to have those full conversations about where the funding could come from um from but hearing from staff's perspective because you all know better the budget within your departments we hear you we hear you loud and clear and i think if that is in the form of a motion then that can be added to the motions there if you want to do that represented on this we can amend the motion the current motion if she wants yes streetcar hours please and then the climate action plan i think you already had right correct yes she has we have the voters you already had said it right she just yeah i mean i thought i was amending the motion to look at other sources of funding but i guess we can also add the street car to that motion we don't need that in the motion we'll review any potential opportunity for funding for these items right but i'm talking about just the items that they're bringing just to make sure we don't lose track of what they're asking for right for more items yeah i think what they're doing is fine-tuning their lists right now exactly so that we know exactly what we need to come back with point of clarification uh you had mentioned yesterday mr gonzalez that we should or maybe it was this morning um about moving some of these lists into the bond is that something that we should do with direction today or you'll take this list when we continue that conversation yeah no ma'am i meant well maybe i mentioned it today but i know i mentioned it yesterday i know i mentioned it yesterday as well but yeah well my point was is that every year the council i think is frustrated because they they submit their requests and then our response says well we're going on the pci if it's a street item and then the other ones we're like well y'all have to vote on them because they're they're they're outside the bounds of a cr request and i know that sometimes frustrates y'all and i just want to just y'all to have the information and so what i i've suggested in previous years and what i'm suggesting again now since you do have a bond item that are there things that are on that list that are really important you need to put that on there but here's the other thing that kind of interrupts that thought process the council has voted on a pci and says the streets are going to get done this way period so anything you put on a bond you're putting either dollars for reconstruction or dollars for resurfacing and then and then if you submit like what's on your list it'll have to it'll have to cross-reference the pci and now i understand your point about hey this one didn't make it and we need to go in and and and kind of cross-reference that well i'm talking more like to some of like the the grand view pool it says this should be that one i would say that one i would say if y'all vote on it you could put it on there but i think you all had a discussion the other day is let's just limit it to streets and then you add it two or three items that are important um not that that one isn't important but then we talked about or the council talked about coming back with a more profound quality of life initiative that kind of takes care of what you were talking about the maintenance but it also looks at some other new things that you might want in the park system so that's up for you all to discuss in terms of whether you all want to do it that way or if you want to add a fourth item or a fifth item to the reduced list that y'all had reduced down from 400 million down to under 300 million well i think it can wait i mean you've got this list i know these were also on my list for bond so i guess my question is sam do you need us to move things forward today or you just want to wait be prepared for that conversation on the fifth uh we'll just be prepared to have the conversation on the fifth okay thank you but but what you're saying is that the list you all have if you want to bring those up that's the time to bring it up on the fifth yeah got it thank you um so we still have time if there's any additional items that we can request to get a sort of sense on a quote on this isn't necessarily the last meeting well the earlier the better because if you have an item that's complex that might take cid longer it's just the earlier the better in terms of us meeting a commitment you know if you want to make it if you want it to make it on on a list and or for council to consider but yeah it's been our practice the council's practice rather that up until the 25th you've even brought items up but that that sometimes puts us in a in a bad in a bad response situation for y'all well i i would like to to add another item up to bring for a discussion it's something that we've already been kind of working on we've applied for a number of grants relating to feasibility studies to look at improving our ports of entry one item that this council had voted on and approved back in 2016 was looking at additional phases of the streetcar but also looking at international mass transit in general there has been a number of initiatives that have we've applied for different grants for an international mass transit feasibility study most recently in 2019 as part of a build grant was something that the city had applied for through sun metro um i think that when we look long term at investing in our economic opportunities part of that is making sure that we have safe and efficient crossing for not just cargo but also our people as well and part of that is making sure that there's a sense of dignity involved in being able to cross the border in a safe and efficient way it's one of the reasons why we have invested so much in our airway corridor is that we know that the airway in our airport is one of the ways that people come and enter our community it's one of the first places they get our community when we're talking about harnessing all the potential that we have in the 21st century economy where human capital and people are important and we have travelers going back and forth between our cities or even travelers coming from the juarez airport and over we need to be looking at ways to get people over safely and efficiently and so um this isn't the first time i've made this request i know that there's a number of feasibility studies already looking at how to improve our ports of entry but if we were to look at a feasibility study for an international mass transit system a sentry lien on steroids would be something that i think would be important to get a sense of what that might cost and so i'd like to see if we can come back to that as well on july 25th and sam if you need any backup i literally have tons of documents to share with you as well as a bill grant and this also is something too that is identified in the texas in the texas mexico border master plan that was recently completed by txdot as well this is also something too that was identified in the destino 2045 master plan from the mpo as well so this is not um some idea that is just coming out of the blue this is an idea that has been discussed by members of our community and has been identified by members of our community and different institutions uh for a very long time um so that is one that hopefully we can at least get a sense back on the 25th about what that might look like um i'm sorry let me make sure i i just want to make sure i understand the for the feasibility study for international mass transit go back and forth between el paso as well make sure that yeah and now we need a presidential to even be able to do some of that so it it would it would depend if it's a new port of entry so some of the discussions um with different partners is if you use an existing port of entry you would not necessarily need to have the same so say if you were to go and take stanton bridge right which currently serves as a century lane it also carries vehicular traffic if you were to take stanton street and repurpose okay if you were to repurpose it um it's all right it's just coffee my apologies um so anyways thanks thank you i.t for the wide shot thank you for that um [Laughter] if i could just add i think the the feasibility will look at all the requirements including modifications to permits uh whatever that's that's the thing i remember when we talked about it in the mpo last time and that's why when he brought it up that they said you need a trust financial yeah it'd be a modification to the existing permit or just modification to the operations but that's what the feasibility study analyze and possibly said that because i remember going to washington talking to um u.s secretary of state he was telling us that it would take about 10 years to be able to get one for for a new one it would matter may or no yeah they're not true because this is good guys does the past agreement come to play but you know how we used to have that agreement anyway so i think that's before we you know when we when we're looking at it i think that'd be really important to see if it's required if it's required the length of time because like i said when i went to washington last time and talked about it they did tell us we required one and it was going to be a 10-year process they did that uh automatically when they had their red buses come over to el paso that's what i'm saying i don't know that's why i wanted i think that expired and that's why i wanted to find out mr rivera you could look at amending existing presidential permits well necessarily a new one you could it's as amend the existing one as part of the feasibility review right and and and and i mean we'll just be completely honest just to get a sense like it it it is a it is a process it would be a process that would probably take 10 years if we were to commit to it today um also presidential permits there's some discussion about whether or not if you utilize an existing port of entry say you repurpose stanton the stanton street bridge committed towards uh towards different infrastructure on that again for getting people over the border in a safe and efficient way you could probably use that but again all of that starts with a commitment from the community uh looking at a feasibility study understanding what what it would take those steps including a presidential permit environmental analysis what could be considered different routes and others things like that and so you know what can that i'm sorry i apologize i need to interrupt you but i remember talking to mayor serrano at the time because that's where we were and he had told us that it would be really tough to do because of the reconstruction they had done to their streets over there and the overpass they had put in and and that was one of the biggest issues i remember mayor serrano so i think it'd be really important to be able to work with our partners on you know on the other side because that was their biggest issue back then was that uh their streets would not be able to do that because of the recon uh reconstruction of right there at the bridge that they had done i do remember that conversation and so and so okay i just wanted to make sure we saw the hand up i just wanted i just wanted to just respond really quickly and then i have a totally separate point from that and love to hear from mr coronado i mean i i i wouldn't suggest that we would have something that would go deep into juarez right if you look at something that could merely get people over directly at the port of entry could be something there again a feasibility study would look further into that and and one of the things that was was actually i think a really great point is that um recently the the um el paso community foundation just had a juarez unidos event that had uh administrative staff as well as um some other members basically from both cities meeting together and part of that was a discussion and there's actually data that shows kind of they had a those on those menchie surveys i don't know if you've seen that where you used your text message so they asked what are some binational initiatives and one that consistently popped up was looking at at binational mass transit and i think that is one way that we connect but again july 25th we can have more conversations about it all right mr coronado thank you uh good morning everybody for the record so so i agree with the comments that uh sam and and uh the city manager made right now about the presidential permit and the the length of time and the disability studies i think they were spot on just wanted to add a little bit more context on what uh we're doing right now and just so that so that you know our about our efforts so we like like the representative mentioned right we have applied to three uh federal grants one of which at the stanton bridge we already know from eda that we were not selected for that one and so we have right now two um pending applications are in the process and so for the three with the two pending we committed the a portion of the fan balance that we have in p3 to have to be to be able to match right to provide the match for those two and so we'll keep you know checking with the ult those two are under dlt and we also continue also exploring other opportunities for additional federal grants i agree with the statements made i think you know this is a good time for us to pursue large visibility studies because these projects do take five ten years in the making just to get it you know uh started and design and disability studies those kinds of things and so we continue pursuing additional sources of funding you know with with vot and other federal agencies so we can discuss more on july 25th but i think we're on the same page you know the we have the top we have been talking to a few other cities that have recently uh gone through the presidential permit process uh under the previous administration uh in the white house there were some changes being made to the to that process right now we actually already had a few calls with the state department who is the one that oversees that process so we have an in with with uh dc and the state department to get clarification on what that means whether we proceed you know in the future with an amended a whole new permit uh so again you know it's it's in the works um i i don't believe you know right now we wouldn't ask for any action at this point uh but but just know that we are working on this um uh on multiple fronts i just want to make a statement thank you and again and i think you know again my my point is just to sort of put that out there as awareness i think for for a lot of the budget requests that we see some of them aren't necessarily about funding this today it's about also raising awareness letting letting the community know that they're being heard letting staff know about the concerns as well i just wanted again to to to bring up this this idea that representative rodriguez brought bring brings up about the sort of summer fest i mean i i think that there is a way to do it where we we can pull resources both in the public and the private sector we have the paseo we have the paseo de las lucas festival or the fiesta de los lucis that the dmd has been doing we have the downtown art and farmers market that we've heard yesterday we're looking at finding a better configuration or different configurations to have that in addition to that we know we know that there's different events that other community members like the el paso community foundation like the paso norte health foundation organized from time to time and so i think that they're you know if we commit to the vision of it we can figure out the funding that that makes it there it doesn't necessarily just have to be the city alone that comes and funds this this sort of summerfest depending on how the council votes on that item because i know today's just for pushing forward for consideration you you could also just start the process winterfest didn't become what it is today overnight yeah and so this could be a very similar kind of process as well i just want to say i think it's it's a great idea and i think that once once you sort of plant that seed there's other people that want to help water it as well so that that is my comments for for right now thank you sir anyone else let's few more items to go through invite you bring that presentation back up please okay so we talked about the temporary court so we'll explore that item and look to have set that with the potential revenue that would be generated uh discussion yesterday about a farmers market at cohen and ben fife we'll follow up with representative molinar on that item absolutely thanks i think that both representative molina and schwartz might bring up a good point so i know that uh in the process of looking for a new location someone had reached out to somebody in central about their property and now everybody in central is like really wants a farmer's market um and i think right going back to the previous conversation like instead of maybe summerfest maybe we should look at growing those like local farmers markets across the city because they seem like people really want them i'm sure people on the east side would love a farmer's market and if that's a city-sponsored event i think that to me that's money more of what the community is asking for just wanted to let you know that thank you robert and then we had an item from several council members related to funding for council member staffing so increasing the funding allocation to allow for two full time the estimated cost there four hundred and one thousand that would bring uh two positions one it be an average of 58 000 for each position so you could have one at 63 and 153 again 400 thousand dollar impact we have additional lighting for memorial park again that project is recommended to be developed i don't know if sam almost add anything on that item because there'll be additional cost related to that so there's no estimate at this time but integrated into the dog park memorial park area again no funding estimated at this time climate action plan we've had discussion on that already the estimated cost for the climate action plan is at 1.3 million dollars right now and you can see the items that it includes so it's the data collection the assessment the outreach campaign it would provide financing strategies and also provide for some matching for some actions that would be identified within the plan would also add an additional position which would be an ongoing operating cost that the item's not on the online backups are so confused so yeah i'm sorry that it has been updated the information so there is a new presentation that has been um added to the backup i apologize and then we have a couple of requests from district sevens we have for additional park canopies which we've had discussion about and some of that discussion related to the st manager's point about adding some of these items to the bond which councils had already had discussion that we'll have continued discussion about that some stream resurfacing projects as well which we need to get some estimates on those projects but again that would all be dependent upon the pci study street reconstruction project again would relate back to the pci discussion finishing the walk path at marty robbins and again we need to get a cost estimate on that item and then again similar to the item that i just mentioned of the funding for additional or to provide for two full staffing members within the council members district so as of right now we have six items that you all have discussed about sort of finalizing the list of what you want to discuss further on august the first when we come back and i added the temporary court because we'll include that we'll keep you updated on what the outcome is of that we'll find a way to fund that we have the fee for the bus rides for the disabled the beaumont route the climate action plan the summerfest and streetcar of increasing the hours and then representative schwartzman did have the additional item but i haven't heard council members wanted to bring that forward as well for further discussion the international mass transit oh yeah i think he made that motion himself i mean i'm just saying he made that motion himself council please speak into the microphone microphone please i had a second point that was relating towards summerfest or i don't know you updated it see i'm confused so i i thought if we're bringing it back on the 25th that we didn't necessarily need a second or a motion because we didn't do that yesterday but council seems to come to a consensus on what items you want us to to bring back for further discussion so this isn't on this presentation anymore uh it was on the previous one that i just had opened about the conversation about charging on sun metro do you guys check that off though no ma'am nothing has been removed we've only added additional items that were provided by council yeah that's on the council information request we're going to get there we just wanted to go through the cost impact items first is does this complete the cost impact items yes sir that's all of them okay so as since he's just gone over the cost impact items that y'all talked about this does not include the departmental request by the way so those i know you've asked for them in previous years and those are things that get submitted don't get funded that departments ask for in their in their budgets this budget does have what everyone needs i mean there's obviously other things that people would consider hey i have another need that didn't get funded or whatnot but the way we do our budget now i mean the the most critical needs in each department do get funded and recommended to the council but again it did have the additional departmental requests that didn't make it to the budget just so you know as the person who always asked for those i actually completely forgot this year but now i'm going to ask to see that yeah yeah yeah we want to we want to always make sure you all have all the information so we're happy to provide that uh like we have in previous years thank you i figure staffing is on the top of everyone's list very much yeah and i think like like i've said you know we we've taken the attrition savings already to do some of what's recommended with the pay especially for our staff so a lot of that's already in there but yeah to the mayor's question that he had about tristan we're going to get that and and yeah we will provide that right yes sir okay so there's another question we're going to move along we do have motions on the floor okay we have motion we have two motions on the fly excuse me can you repeat the two motions please someone said we can go through the presentation but i was just saying two mentions mr parent will repeat them so the first motion that's on the floor was made by representative vanello seconded by representative hernandez and this is to move forward for additional funding consideration for next year's budget number one was the disable free to go from 30 cents to 50 cents number two was to add a circulator pilot for bus service to william beaumont number three was for staffing for council offices to have two full-time employees number four was to add funding for a climate action plan and number five i'm not sure if you want to add the streetcar hours or is that a separate motion no i think she did at it okay and that that's too by accident yeah and i think her emotion and uh this is amazing i think she just said to moving forward did you not miss an ella yeah that was just to move them forward and this is to move forward for additional funding consideration she just said to move him forward because the funding they'll be for further consideration okay to move the discussion forward on these items further for further consideration further consideration and she did add the the trolley hours i think did you not miss an ella i mean it wasn't intentional but i did so okay and then number five was to add additional hours two street car operations this is just moving it forward this is this is just the discussion correct to move that discussion further from consideration at a later time things should be noted in the current budget there already is signifi 60 hours a lot of we increased it to 60 hours from 40. no we can keep i mean but i think it'd be good to get a sense of what the i mean i don't know if you think that is i think representative uh and on this and you talked about it or she did talking about going above the 60 hours okay i mean i think it'd be good to go talk and then i'm going to i'm going to hit that trolley i've got a question on that veterans uh you just wanted strictly for beaumont or because how many facilities are there first of all you don't mind me engaging uh representing money not uh that they need to transfer they're one of the northeast on sanders there's one on the west side but i don't know the exact address i want to say it's somewhere off mesa so is the old and there's several it's the old beaumont building being used for hospitals strictly for hospitals in my district it is it is currently being used i think there are two routes correct me if i'm wrong ellen that go from the old beaumont right now right so that we do have a route that goes down alabama and on down fred wilson and you know right by the hospital and the va clinic um and we do of course have our brio routes on dyer and i'm i'm not certain about whether it goes right up to sanders or not and then of course we have our brio on mesa so many of those services are already probably being served i can verify for sure but it's the new facility on the far east so that we have absolutely no service in that area so my proposal is only for that one if if that was not accurate please let me know that's right he's going to ask her is that what you wanted yeah it was based on representative hernandez's request for the new pilot program yes sir and not the old one there are two routes right now that currently serve the old beaumont so there's the alabama route and the dire rio okay so they already have two routes so it would just be one new route for the new hospital okay thank you thank you for the clarification three new rounds one from each terminal right three new outs thank you mayor i'm sorry miss prine can you repeat item three what was item three yes ma'am item three was staffing for council offices to have two full-time employees okay so we're voting on five items is that correct this is fine move forward that's a separate item okay thank you very much for that clarification uh representative rodriguez when you mention summerfest you already have a tentative uh locations or in your district or anywhere on the far east side or east side no i think it's something like um the city manager just said just kind of planting the seed on how we can um expand on winterfest and bringing it on the opposite side of the year during summer time and and seeing how we could capitalize not just us local like our city but vendors and our shopping um local businesses small businesses and so it would probably you know just kind of looking at the whole scope of it downtown different districts seeing how it could incorporate the whole city as a whole for summerfest and you're good with that name summerfest to me i like it but i mean that's i'm sorry and it doesn't have to be downtown it could be at the water park and just let you all know um i i wanted to clarify i was inspired by you know in the 90s we had fiesta las flores and that's when like selena came and and so that was a very iconic time we would have the churches involved there was folklorico dancers and so something similar i know san antonio has fiesta um just something similar but making it our own here in el paso and mr gonzalez i would highly recommend camp corn you already have the water park there you have easy access to us 54 kenworthy luke 375 you have a lot of new businesses coming up there on woodrow bean trans mountain road you have three hotels and on at or near us 54 so that place is changing and we need to take advantage of the whole area of their of course i think if y'all leave it broad you know we can have the staff come back because they're very creative with some great ideas and one of the points i think that mr rodriguez made was about including all the water parks so obviously cohen would be one of them and we have three others in different locations and i think the theme of the fiesta's especially with the mac opening up in the next year is is a good co very good concept going to be summer fiesta it could be whatever whatever summer fiesta and i was going to ask you mr gonzalez if you know or if there's someone from destinational pastor what is the fee for let's say to enter i know there's like you can buy a summer park or a path for all the parks but let's just say the average general person coming into a water park do you know what the fee is on that sir i think it varies its dynamic pricing depends on what time of day and and which day you you go in but we can we can get that for you i don't know off top of my head because it's dynamic pricing at least that's what they had last year yes sir so yes sir sorry to interrupt yes the pricing is dynamic and it's done that way so that we can make sure that we're maximizing opportunities for people to get the best ticketing available they can book their tickets in advance of course the most economical way to attend the water parks is through a seasons pass because that's such a low price but the team is constantly working on making sure that the pricing is available at different times of the day and at different times so that everyone has great access to instant tickets so they lower the cost like on days that their attendance isn't so high like a monday as an example or a tuesday kind of thing right yes and then sometimes and then sometimes at the end of the day so there'll be a like a twilight option for people so that if they want to come in just sort of at the end of the day and and enjoy it at the very end of the day they're not paying the the the full price so and they they do this they they do this it's very scientific the way that they run this and they do the same thing with other ticketing throughout facilities like the plaza theater if you do like kind of last minute if you're willing to wait till the last minute sometimes you can get some great ticketing deals destination is really sensitive to making sure that they're they're trying to get everyone out and giving everyone great opportunities for ticketing and mrs jones do you know we have any we offer any type of discounts for city employees yes yes sir and we actually do promotionals throughout the year as well um oftentimes the there'll be promotional programming specifically geared towards city employees and mr gonzalez i'd like for you to research the possibility of even extending a possible discount to county employees county employees they live and work in our city and of course the county of el paso and that would be something to look at you know they have families too they enjoy their water parks they if all the other services that's a great idea sir if you don't mind i i listed it as one of the things that the council said was a priority that the mayor and i can he can bring up those monthly meetings that could be part of our discussion in terms of maybe if they pay uh a portion for the water parks that then we could extend that as well if you're okay with that no no that's fine i'm just that way there's a that's where there's a good partnership there when you mentioned that you talked to have monthly meetings with the county i think you know they live in our community they work they pay taxes and you know there's no line that separates us we're we're one we make the same argument with them by the way all right well thank you the city's part of the county and that we should share in in the cost sometimes but yeah yeah no no i i agree with yes sir we'll we'll add that to the list got a question for uh mr cortinas or michigan status so any any of our parts requests are they going to fall under that bond or are they going to look to see if they're gonna i'm sorry okay so are they going to be looked at to see we have additional funding right now we're bringing the presentation back on the fifth uh to share with you you know what what was uh requested for it to be in the bond this year and also to kind of start the discussion of what would be a future quality life bond so a lot of the the projects uh the shade structures a lot of the revamping of of existing fields or new facilities will be part of a future quality of life bond okay thank you because i saw in my request didn't show up there but you said we still have time to submit it right now okay thank you which request was that mr rivera oh it was a a playground for shower park they don't have one okay can you capture that now and then they'll send it later this is cody can we do that actually representative yeah design one of the all-ability playgrounds that were dispensed is going to chauver park it's currently in design right now i can hear that they're going through it design thank you gotta have one here okay thank you thank you mr five so we have those there's two motions on the floor mayor on the motion i'm sorry can i just say something really quickly um and i apologize i wasn't prepared the streetcar discussion can we remove that um i wasn't aware that the hours were increased so there's no action needed at that time absolutely we have it and just just for clarification how many hours are allocated we increased it from 40 hours to 60 hours right we've budgeted 60 but right now i'm committed on the personnel for 40 until i launch the brio the montana brio is required by fta to have a frequency of every 20 minutes and so currently i'm i'm short on the drivers t to do that so once the montana brio is fully staffed um then we'll have budget available to put additional drivers towards the streetcar if we continue with our recruitment so you're actively hiring for both streetcar operators as well as brio bus drivers oh yes always and part-time and full-time but but you have you have um planned 60 hours it's just a matter of hiring right so yes hiring from a budget perspective or hiring from finding the personnel personnel personnel the budget she'll have the budget we have the budget i just don't have the people walking in the door and so as a priority and i guess that's my message with william beaumont or any other disservice that you desire i i'm happy to provide the service if but the limiting factor today is personnel so we have commitments to the fta that we have to fulfill and once those are fulfilled then these additional requests that are not required by the fta would be the street car and and the bonuses she's referring i'm sorry she's referring to the hiring so she said i want to make sure y'all hear this correctly is that she's just making sure that the order of priority relative to operationally how she has to respond is that the fta has to be achieved first but she's not saying no to what you are saying it's just that that's not going to take priority over a friendly required item where we might could lose funding or things of that nature and she's just making y'all aware so yeah y'all hear that loud and clear and i'd just be clear too that the streetcar the streetcar has has um also oversight with the fta as well and i'm sure that for the state which gave us a grant of 97 million dollars there's probably an expectation that we would be utilizing our streetcar their their investment on our streetcar as well in our community sooner than later so i'm sure that there's probably 40 hours of you know september 1st um and then the 60 the additional 20 will be as my staffing permits so hopefully sooner than later as she increases tax staffing that's what she's saying okay miss um representative thank you mayor okay so excuse my absence but we are voting on two motions is that correct the first motion now only has four items because they remove the street cart and can you tell me what the second motion is it's a summerfest right yes the second motion is is for to consider a summerfest in 2023 or the fiesta fiesta from summer fiesta name can be determined that's better than summerfest yeah thank you very much all right so let's take a let's go ahead and take the vote on it yes sir the first motion again was by representative vanello seconded by representative hernandez in this to to move the following items further forward for further consideration number one the disabled fee to go from 30 cents to 50 cents number two to add a circulator pilot for bus service to the new william beaumont number three is staffing for council offices to have two full-time employees and number four a climate action plan on that motion mayor pro tim schwarzwang mayor pro-tem schwarzman aye thank you representative vanello hi hernandez yes molinar aye salcido aye rodriguez yes rivera hi and lisa i and that motion passes unanimously the next motion was made by representative rodriguez seconded by representative salcido is to move forward with further consideration of a summer fiesta in 2023 on that motion mayor pro tem shortly all right representative no hernandez yes salsido and that motion passes with seven affirmative votes representative angelo voting made the motion does carry approach point of clarification we we still can submit items up until for the for the follow up okay for the for the budget either or okay yeah or so i'm just curious sam do you need any more direction in terms of this the international mass transit feasibility study so specifically mayor pro tem you're you're asking for us to consider this funding as part of the fiscal year 23. to follow the same process i would request that you do a motion so that we bring that back as part of the july 25th discussion okay i'd like to make a motion second now second what was that you have two seconds no but i thought well i think the representative was first yes and this is to move forward with a discussion of funding the uninternational mass transit feasibility study prior to the budget adoption on that motion mayor pro tem shortsway again this is just to come back with a better cost this is not committing the city or the council to to funding this i think it's like the other items yeah exactly hi representative vanello aye hernandez yes aye and emotion passes unanimously so i think uh is that the meeting for right now we have a little bit more information to provide it should go relatively quickly from here on out though if it will bring the presentation back up so informational requests uh the mayor had a question about the p3 in the use on the capital we have that backup included nicole do you want to add comment yes everything is located in the email that was sent to you this morning there's a link at the first sentence and when you go to that link it's actually going to be labeled as council information requests and all of the items that are provided by the departments is extensive information it includes both the presentation and the answer to the request as part of that information for the p3 as well as for the information requested regarding any fee increases and for the hotel occupancy tax breakdown by category so all of the backups included in the information the coaches talked about for those three items on the increasing hours for the plant inspections the one stop shop staff will continue to review that and put together a recommendation so that they can maintain uh monday through friday at least to five o'clock advertising budgets for animal services sun metro so metro's promotional budget was is 310 000 for fy23 and animal services got cut off but we will get that for you right now animal services is 151 thousand dollars it was an increase of twenty one thousand dollars from fy 2022 and then there's a question about the ability to pay for tickets on on the buses they can buy single tickets on the buses but the drivers are not able to sell multiple day passes i guess is the issue but my question was actually the trolley yeah it's the same for the troll so they can buy individual tickets yes ma'am so one myself what i would like to have a conversation about in a future uh budget meeting since we were talking about increasing the hours is going back to charging for the trolley i mean i think summer may be a great time or a pilot to announce that it's back up but i i you know we're talking about studies on like sustainable transportation i mean we got to make the trolley sustainable at some point too i mean i don't know what the tickets previously before they were a dollar fifty the same i mean even if they're just like a dollar right it's like fine uh but i i do think it's a conversation that we should be having before this budget is final i can see representative schwartz finds like his entire body just tender no i mean i'm just curious when you when you when you define sustainable what do you mean like we currently know that seven to nine percent of sun metro's overall budget is actually covered by ticket sales the rest the rest is covered by our general fund it's covered by not general discovered not generally covered by by the half of any sales tax and the the other items um in the past you are right and if you inc it's not general fund but the debt side the city has paid for uh improvements to the system of sun metro at a hundred percent which is not the norm typically cities wait for the grants but i think we did that on a i say we it was done several years ago and i think the commitment was made in 11 or 12 or 13 and there were the extensions of the routes and the bus stations and and the systems that were built they they were built with uh with the geo debt or or co dead actually um i just i just want to say towards what she was saying is i mean i i don't see an issue necessarily with that i think the larger conversation should be about how we go and look at at um supporting the streetcar making more sustainable through aggressive public private partnerships naming i don't disagree i don't disagree because that nor the the metro system itself will ever be paid for it will never pay for itself the sales tax is designed to support to support both of those units so yeah i mean what representative sportsman said is true seven percent of the operating budget is covered by fees what is that number um the seven to nine percent ranges from five to nine million dollars so during covet of course it was it dropped to the you know five six million a year pre-code it was nine to ten million dollars a year so it's not an insignificant part of my budget i need that part of our budget so anything that we can do to increase that particular revenue is welcome yeah i mean i'm just going to be so rapidly about this but like if we're going to be making certain routes free why is it the trolley i mean like why is it not routes to umc why is it not routes to the new beaumont hospital you know it's just like to me again equity is very important and i just i don't see why the trolley would be free i do understand that it has been offline and inconsistent in its hours because of covet and nothing else and i do realize i'm speaking that there is a grace period to allow people to remind them that like charlie's back online these are our hours you know it maybe is free until september 1st um i let's just have the conversation what do we project and i would say in terms of equity you're absolutely right we have some of the most socially socially economically disadvantaged parts of our community sigul nawario many different parts of central and downtown el paso are serviced by there and for those that ride the streetcar on any regular basis you'll see a lot of people that are there with shopping bags because they utilize the free service of the streetcar to go back to their homes to their apartments after shopping with the streetcar and after utilizing it whether that's to go to walgreens to albertsons or to go throughout downtown because it also functions as a downtown circulator again serving some of the most socio-economically dismantled parts of our city so we can talk about it but it's being used people you know want to go and politicize things but we have very successful investment in our community something like that that's a disrespect i have the floor i'm not suggesting that you were politicized okay do you do you have that number smith of uh the ridership that uh mayor pro tem has referred to as far as yeah no i mean i was saying before i was interrupted is that people have tried to make the streetcar appear to be a failure within the month that it opened up and that's not based upon that's not based upon facts that's not based upon metrics the streetcar is an economic development tool it's a way to connect people it's a way to celebrate our history our past present and future and we've seen hundreds of millions of dollars of investment around there so i wasn't speaking to you specifically representative vanello about politicizing it but there are people in our community that choose to do that because there's some people that that get more pleasure about tearing people and tearing things down than trying to build and trying to invest in our community well as a staff staff we've received you know the the city received almost 100 million dollars for um an investment and right now we're utilizing the streetcar as as something that is a downtown uh unique attribute and it supports whether it's conventions whether it's these different businesses and just downtown and and also as it goes into uptown and and the utep area and i know there's to your point mayor pro tem there are people that are very fond of the streetcar and and others that aren't the fact remains that the state gave the city a hundred million dollars and you know we have to be responsible as an organization we are i think ellen was just simply talking about the number of hours right now is at 40 that she knows she can tell you look in the eye and that's what we're doing that's not going up to 60 until they meet those federal requirements but the commitment is to go to 60 in terms of funding that's in the budget so just want to make be clear on that well one thing that's important and i think you both have said it is that whether the state invested in it whether the taxpayers invested in it and you know chihuahua stadium is a perfect example it's ours it's part of us and us as elected officials we have to make sure that it becomes successful whether you like it or not that's not what the question is and the question is we have it it's whether people like it or not it's part of our community part of an investment and now it's up to us to make sure it becomes successful and like i said chihuahua stadium is no different and this is no different that we need to make sure that we get the best investment for the dollar whoever invested in it to make sure becomes a success to our community and again i i think it's important mayor it is a success we have brought we are bringing in us to make sure we continue yeah absolutely i'm agreeing with both of you continue to be a success because i'm agreeing with you whether i like it or not that's irrelevant whether you like it or not too relevant it's ours we're elected officials and it's up to us to make sure it becomes a success i mean we are we are it and i'm just saying continue to be a success because we're bringing in those major conventions right that we've invested with our hotels we've invested with our convention center and the streetcar is part of that story we're bringing in 3000 architects and planners in october the streetcar is a major part of why they were able to get that bid the texas democratic convention that's coming next summer 10 000 people heads in bed spending money in our community getting a wonderful real feeling about our unique border community the streetcar and you can talk to brooke underwood you could talk to folks at destination you can talk to that delegation that came and got that bid streetcar was a big part of that story that's why it made it attractive but again that's not the only reason why but that's just saying was just you know we need to again understand that we are building on the continued success and so thanks again thank you robert did you need any action for that or you all have direction to have that conversation i'm sure you've had it come back with some numbers what it looks like if council wants to further discuss it i'd recommend you make a motion okay um prepared staff can be prepared to yeah and again this is just having a conversation about it just not putting it in stone i also i i really love what representative hernandez suggested yesterday is make it part of a convention package you know if someone's having a convention at the convention center and they're using all these hotels use it as you make some money off it there's a convention package shut my mic off for no reason i make a motion to come back for consideration for fees for the trolley moving forward in fy 2024 second what year is it i would also like i mean if if we can do it maybe we can amend it to also have staff bring back research for naming rights for individual streetcar stops for individual advertising for it i mean there's been a cft that has been discussing that um you know i think again just looking at the fees is not looking at the entire picture of how to make this streetcar sustainable yeah and we talked about also that we had the hotels and you know businesses to kind of get a package with them to uh you know kind of buy it i mean i think that makes more sense within the convention center versus the hotel but if someone's renting out the convention center they buy that with the package which is like free passes yeah but we also you got these hotels you got a lot of hotels you got a lot of investment from the city and i think it would i mean the answer could be no at the end of the day but looking at it doesn't cost well yeah i mean i don't think it's i just know i think it's a great idea i just think that having staff come back with all this research to present in less than a month um is you know i don't know what kind of really well researched information we're going to get sure we can put an idea of like what a ticket could cost but this is not just about tickets it's about really creating as you said represent vanello a sustainable path forward for the streetcar and that is not just about ticket sales alone you know i was unaware that there was a cft going on i imagine that if there is they have some information they can share with us so we have a motion that we get a second i'm just just for the council's notification you we have several cfts with the council and i believe those have been those have been public just want to make sure you're not left out or you feel like you are because we have done that and we we we make that public with y'all just want to make sure that's clear to mayor pro temps point so i didn't hear the motion on when you want this information to come back but the i guess the action could be to come back into future work session to present right that to me would be more appropriate than to have it as part of this like this budget hearing again when there's less than a month to ask staff to to try to hobble something together in terms of that i agree with robert because just we haven't even gotten back to full strength so we would need more time and it would just be dependent upon us getting all that data put together it doesn't have to be part of the budget so i will amend the motion to have a staff come back within this fifth the first quarter either unless i mean i don't know ellen what are you thinking do you think you can come back before the budget's approved or you want first quarter um i would say i would say in 2023 that doesn't need to be part of the budget but i would say just to bring it back in 2023 to give you something that's uh more prolific and not just something that that's just strapped together in order to respond for something i don't know i mean we charged before i don't think this is like the craziest idea in the world um not really no so we did charge before and we did start looking at naming rights back in 2019 when the streetcar was running very actively and all of those pro studies were put on hold and so we can resurrect them and see what state they're in we are looking also on bus stop advertising and then also bus effort on the actual buses themselves and we haven't looked at advertising on the street car just because of the antique paint you know the look would it would kind of destroy what you have the inside area that happened spaces for 11 by 17 advertisements that we've discussed before we looked at all of that but like she said we looked at them for the buses as well right so we and of course the naming rights so we we i'll i'll find that where we left off and bring it back and then um we do have the data on the ridership like i said we're only open 16 months and we did charge the right off the bat when we opened and then when we were closed for 16 months and when we came back last july the last week of july is when we brought it out brought it back with no charge we were still in the recovery of covid so we have all of that data so i'll bring it all back and we can talk about it in depth it's been free for a year yeah at the last week of july would have we reopened so we've almost been open a year again it was i don't believe that i believe that it was free before the pandemic started as well i'm pretty sure of that you're correct it was um because they were they were we we had taken a very active approach staff had taken a very active approach um to address the low ridership that it had started out with and prior to the pandemic with programming efforts um with making the rides free and with a concerted effort on staff's part ridership had gone up quite dramatically and then coveted hit and in the system shut down um since the reopening that ms smith mentioned last july we have maintained that model of free rides and a very active programming session and when we have seen a continued increase um in the ridership um but again ms mike will be able to share that and the other thing that we had talked about i'm sorry go ahead i'm just saying like again this this concept of ridership as defining the success of the streetcar yeah don't do that it's not i don't know what you just said but it's not that isn't that is not why this community invested in the streetcar this is not why how transit-oriented development and investment works we need to look we need to be reorienting our understanding the success is a long-term investment in increasing ridership by having more development around the streetcar line about transit-oriented development about new apartments new new opportunities for engagement and we've seen that we have 10 hotels around the street within a thousand feet of a streetcar stop we've seen five new hotels around the streetcar line within the last five years those are real dollars those are real opportunities for people to engage and the streetcar is part of that story so i just think it's important to understand that ridership is one component of the streetcar success but there's much a much larger storage success of how the streetcar is there and the metrics to define that success back to that point about the hotels and what the mayor said earlier one of the things that we had asked our staff to do in ellen's right so is a jerome that it was put on hold because of covet but one of the other ways to kind of dovetail what you said about the hotel development and with the mayor talked about the hotels chipping in we talked about validating that the hotels could participate by validating a ticket so that they could write on free but then it'd get validated that'd be a good way for us to track ridership as well and also tie it back to the hotel so there's a there's a variety of things that we'd like to look at and that's reason why i i would recommend if if if it's okay with you miss another on your motion if y'all wouldn't just let us bring it back in 2023 or sooner uh because it would just depend on when we get the information together and how fast we could put it together but i know that that would be a safe bet in terms of us being able to bring you a quality response i mean i don't know i think that you know i supported it being free because there was no way to buy a ticket back then and then we invested in per like putting in mechanisms to buy tickets and now we're not charging i just i i mean i'm going to go forward with the motion to continue the conversation within the budget and people can vote how they want but that's electrical and that app that app is it fully functional yes sir it's fairly functional it's been certified for ada as well all right so let's take the motion this play so representative vanilla your motion is to move forward with a discussion on reinstating fees from a streetcar in fy 2023. can people in teams please mute your microphone for getting some background noise i think that's a street car i don't know all right so we have a motion in a second so this motion was made made by representative vanello seconded by representative rodriguez and this is to move forward with a discussion of reinstating fees for the streetcar operations in fy 2023. i have a point are you including information relating towards naming rights sponsorship opportunities as part of this i mean sure if they can bring that back but i don't know that they're asking for more time on that but if you want to add it at it well i i i'm not going to be i'm not going to be supporting this i don't think that i don't think that um having ticket sales come back without valid information about sponsorship to your overall point you wanted to see a sustainable solution for the streetcar what the most responsible thing to be doing as a policymaker would be to give staff the respect to be able to come back in 2023 in a work session to be able to discuss an overall holistic approach towards fully sustainable so it's a more sustainable future for the streetcar and so i'm voting against this today all right so go ahead no representative annelo aye yes the second was made by representative rodriguez representative hernandez no molinar aye salcido nay rodriguez yes i'd like to make a motion to have city staff come back in 2023 uh for work session item con the sustainability of the streetcar system can we say that's not a budget related item so how is that relevant to the agenda today thank you second i'm asking for report of clarification today we're discussing budget this is not budget related random work session in 2023 that relates towards the sustainability of the streetcar operations seems to be well within the budget sponsorships and naming rights would have a revenue impact potentially on right motion let's take the vote okay so the motion was made by mayor pro tim schwartzman seconded by representative rivera and this is to return with naming rights and sponsorships for the streetcar stops at a future work session in fy 2023 and in addition to other revenue sources for the streetcar in addition to other revenue sources for the streetcar on that motion mayor pro tem schwartzman aye representative anello no hernandez yes yes rodriguez yes ribera hi lisa aye and that motion it just has to be clear that other revenue sources could include ticket sales as well so i think that that is that is part of the overall process not sure you why you wouldn't support that represent manila representative schwartzman point of order do not address me thank you are we um breaking at any time sorry to interject we're almost finished we're almost done we'll be done in a few minutes and we'll break for the we have just a couple more items and we'll be done mighty can bring that presentation back up so there was also comments about the cadet requirements related to polygraph and credit score i believe chief pathias is on the line can you address that but i believe that's been addressed before cheap to see us is there something you want to add good morning council of mayor peter pacius for the record uh yes we addressed this in uh department updates the last few months as far as the credit uh check tequila sets the standard for personal history statements and one of the requirements in the personal history statement the applicant potential police trainee has to disclose their their credit and finance information and from there we do an investigation to ensure we have an accurate and thorough investigation as to the polygraph that is a best practice in law enforcement to continue to polygraph individuals entering into the law enforcement career it helps us identify any potential gaps that somebody might have left out of their personal history statement and we have discovered uh some applicants were not forthright in their personal history statement as far as it coming to uh various types of crimes so it's a best practice tool that we use thank you chief i just wanted to say i agree with representative molinar i mean polygraph tests aren't even like admissible in court in some states i think but most departments aren't even using them i don't know why we would be doing it on our own staff it just seems like really antiquated how long have you all been doing that uh for at least the past 15 20 years border patrol still uses it most of the federal agencies use it uh dps uses it that doesn't really sway me over but i appreciate the information but yeah i mean i just i don't if i'm missing them um i think if they're not even like considered uh like accurate depictions like in court why would we use them for hiring uh that's just i mean i just wanted to echo representative molinaro's sentiments on that i've said more than not thank you very much mayor uh chief asias are you using in-house polygraph examiners or are you contracting them out we use uh in-house polygraph examiners that are certified through the texas department of public safety and how many examiners do we currently have and active we have one two three three active uh on the department and they're certified texas peace officers yes sir is that their full-time position as examiners no sir um we have one that's full-time and then two that are um assigned to other divisions that can be pulled in based on the demand is there would you think there would be a way to civilianize those positions to get three more people off back onto the streets we can look into that uh possibility okay thank you sir yes sir there's no other questions on that and then the final two items there's a question about the mayor pro tem stepped out about the strategic communication staffing in their budget so there's currently six individuals that report to lord cruz within the city manager's office their budget total budget 463 000 almost all of that about 90 percent of that is made up of that staff and so that's an area that worked with mr gonzalez will continue to add the additional positions necessary to continue to invest in our strategic strategic communication efforts and what we've done to what ms jerome said yesterday is that we we restructured about i want to say a year ago and that has a direct tie to jerome so we've we've we've added some more firepower in that area as well and then the last item was related to the park staffing item that represent vanilla brought up we're working on compiling that information related part-time and full time so that can connection on that already excuse me that was one of them that was one of the motions for two full-time yeah it was this is looking at park staffing historical staffing levels full time and part time right stepping okay is that it so we also included i mean we can go through this if you like there was a question yesterday about the fee changes we provided within the presentation a quick summary on the different departments and the different fee changes that they have you have and have had since june 17th including the link in the email that ms cody sent to you all you've had that red line of all the fee changes in schedule c in addition to the resolution the presentations the budget document so you've had access to all of those so i'm going to turn it over to nicole let her go through these pretty quickly i don't think it's going to take very very long no nicole cody managing director for budget and purchasing so on the way we're going to actually go in order as you as they appear in the fee schedule so municipal court it's just uh several additional fees mainly for video and audio recordings and documentation for police you'll see an increase or new fees for medium and heavy duty towing which is new as well as what was already passed by council which is the convenience store registration reinspection and renewal in international bridges there's a slight increase for your parking meter rentals as well as a clean up on the extra axle for automobiles this is not a significant impact the dollar impact is around 24 thousand dollars and and so that's just a clean up of language on those fees for planning and inspections they do have several uh pages of changes and you'll see them highlighted in your free schedule but the majority of the changes are just adding applicable uh technology fees based on process changes that they needed there's also cleanup of redundant fees or fees that were repeated and you'll see those as well and then there is an increase in fees based on cost of service and so those increases that you do see was an incremental cost we are looking at spreading those over several years to make sure that we're minimizing the impact to our customers in addition there's an alignment of the alcohol permit fees as required under the texas alcohol and tobacco fuel structure under the environmental services we do have a addition of various sizes for the solid waste commercial dumpsters and then there's a flat fee for mattress disposal fee before it was based on the size of the mattress which just wasn't efficient and time consuming for the staff on board there is a new fee and it's really just the license replacement fee of five dollars for animal services and then for parks and rec what you'll see is a inc they have included a non-city resident fee and then also there's a rental cleanup fees and trash container fees for those parks um a fee schedule increases for the zoo include also the new non-city resident fees but there also is a fee increase projected for the spring and summer of 2023 that will reflect also the increase that they're seeing in the operating cost this is an opportunity to be able to capture uh or increase our fees at this time there will be the new exhibit with both the penguin exhibit and the komodo dragon exhibit and as you can see the fees range from 1.45 to 1.95 increases based on the age groups so the age groups themselves are not changing as you can see at the top and then with a non-city resident fee there is an additional cost but then also the it shows the same difference for those increases between 22 and 23. under museums and cultural affairs again it's an addition of a non-city resident fee and a realignment of fees for both the history and archaeology museum under public health we have food service establishment fees and there's also a great deal of alignment for medicare costs throughout the document so you'll see some slight changes in between fees and specific services as well as there's also new dental fees which are specific um procedures that they're also including as part of the fees and then there's a deletion of various unnecessary fees which include under the family planning grant which is the immunization portion i just want to highlight that they are still providing immunizations it's just a clean up on the fee schedule portion for that grant and that's that concludes the fee overview and here's the budget calendar so today of course this is the budget work sessions and then as the city manager and robert have mentioned we're expecting to receive the certified values on july 25th we are going to have on august 1st it's a very important date because we will be presenting the certified tax roll as well as introducing the tax rate and this also the same day that we'll be able to review the items that you have asked to move forward from today's meeting in addition and then we'll have the public hearing on the budget of course as required by state legislation and on august 23rd is our projected date for adoption for both the budget and the tax rate and that concludes thank you mr prine is there a motion to adjourn quick question is there a way to keep representative hernandez on the screen even though the meeting is adjourned well you don't necessarily republicans you you can keep her on the screen okay it won't shut off teams once the meeting is over t can you put can you spotlight our glorious representative hernandez thank you there she is that's a great background love that okay so we'll have her there um and then for those that are interested in wanting to be in a group photo we can all meet by the leadership as an action and not a position sign so we will set people sitting up over there and we'll take this photo so um motion to adjourn there's a motion and a second to adjourn the special meeting all in favor anyone opposed and the special meeting for tuesday june 28 2022 is adjourned at 1205 pm also members of council members at council there is lunch for you available in the leadership conference room if you'd like to pick something up on your way out