I think we have a quorum enough to get us started don't worry you're okay you come back you're good I will call our work session to order today is December 5th welcome everyone and turn it over to David Cook thank you good afternoon everybody let's see we have a couple organizational updates and recognitions first I'm going to call on Judge Rogers to tell us about what his next plans are good after afternoon Danny Rogers chief judge I'm here today on behalf of myself and my family to thank you for the opportunity to serve as a municipal court judge for the city of Fortworth for 27 and a half years the first time I walked into this room it was for an interview with the them Municipal Court ad hoc committee Jim Lan was the chair and after after the after the interview was over I walked out went back to my office and called my wife and I said well that ain't going to happen and she's like what happened I said I could not get Jim Lane to look at me I said it's just not going to happen an hour later the phone rings and the lovely lady on the other end of the phone said Mr Lane in the committee would like to recommend you to the full counsel to be appointed as a municipal court judge and just like that my life changed for 16 years I served as the jail judge and it was the best it was awesome you never knew who you were going to see what you were going to see or what you were going to smell but I loved it I loved every minute of it in 2012 chief judge mors asked me to come by her office and she told me that she wanted Rec to recommend me to the committee to serve as deputy chief judge but the downside of that was I had to give up the jail but it was a great opportunity to work side by side with her who I called boss and learned so many things from her in 2016 she retired and I found I applied for the job 2017 your predecessors appointed me as the chief judge of the Fort Worth Municipal Court you and your predecessors gave me so so much more than a job for the last 27 and a half years you gave me and my wife an opportunity to put our two children through Baylor University where they got educated and grew up into adults my son also met the love of his life married her and together they produced four little people who are who adore us we adore them and they call me Papa and they call her grandma you gave me the opportunity to work with a whole host of amazing people to help make our court into what it is today a court that seeks to do justice on a Case by case basis and that regularly goes out into the community to meet with with folks and to hopefully give them the opport hopefully have an opportunity to forgive some warrants and make their lives a little bit easier finally you gave me an opportunity to Ser my hometown in a meaningful in positive ways I'm very proud to have had received all of these opportunities and my words today I fear will not will fall short but please know that I have done the best I could do to live up to the trust that you and your predecessors put in me all of the former mayors and councils I have tried to be fair fair fair as I learned at the very first judge school that I went to so many years ago I will miss you and I will always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers thank you again for all the opportunities and thank you for leading Fort Worth the city that we all love thank you very [Applause] much [Applause] judge Rogers congratulations on your retirement I know we will be seeing you often around Fort Worth because public service is in your family's blood so it's just on the next phase of of service but as your friend and colleague over the last 10 years I love you and I'm so proud for you and we cannot thank you enough for the amazing impact you've had on the city and as a reminder of what Public Service really is all about you really do embody that every single day so thank you for all these years and thank you for the cookie although I think we probably should be the one thanking you but we do appreciate you Council if you want to say anything go ahead thank you very much thank you all thank you judge I'll miss the bow tie too I can teach you I don't know all right next I'm gonna call on Dana berdoff to recognize some folks here thank you David mayor and members of the city council I'm hesitant to follow the wonderful judge Rogers but thank you for that um I'm excited to be talking with you today about two Awards that have been granted to our historic Stockyards uh it's appropriate that we actually have Representatives here from the economic development partnership in Fortworth Chamber of Commerce to listen in because we certainly think of the Stockyards as a tremendous asset to Fort Worth and economic development initiative um but what's really important about the Stockyards is that it's authentic uh and that there's a huge amount of History associated with our historic Stockyards and is important part of of Northside uh Fort Worth so we're excited to uh report these Awards to to you and I'd like to bring up DJ harell our development services director to tell you more about them DJ good afternoon mayor council city manager cook the Texas chapter of American Planning Association recognizes exceptional planning efforts among uh many nominations across the state this year we met in Corpus Christie uh and this year the Stockyards won uh two Awards the first award was great places in Texas in the public space category for Mu La uh great public spaces promote social interaction and a sense of community the second was a public private partnership with Bennett Partners in Majestic real realy this award um the planning landmarks award for the Stockyards horse and muor restoration this restor H this regist this regist restoration work included the repair of significant structural damage including foundations walls columns and roofs from years of neglect weather and fire the removal of all non-original elements structures openings and Equipment also was a priority to return the borns to the historic State this year we have uh today we have Justin newart the manager of preservation and design for development services department Ethan cartright um vice president of marketing with the Stockyards heritage development company and Samantha Garber nerio uh from Bennett Partners to receive the award today come [Applause] on let me put this one right here one of y'all has to talk right okay well I would like to say it was a really easy to do uh what we've done over the last few years um but thank you for all the support the city has shown Bennett uh are great Partners to work with um you know the cool thing about all of this is when we first started we had about 3 million visitors I Believe by the end of uh December we will have 9 million awesome visitors so thank you all and let's continue to do good work and preserve history thank you i' just like to to also thank the city um for putting this together um we are very invested as a company um in Fort Worth and and me personally in the stockel and um hope that we can continue to restore a lot of the historic buildings um down there and give them new life and new opportunity Sam how many times did you redesign the MU barns do you think uh I can't tell you how many times we designed those openings on Exchange um they've changed Dimensions many times and we've done many iterations I won't go into exactly all of them but um so glad that everybody um has found um and and loved them the same as we do and um we're down to I think we have one last one last least space um left out of 180,000 square foot that's awesome and to Justin and your team thank you so much for your diligence it took a lot of partnership with the city to get it right and I think it's pay off so congratulations on this award for everybody involved thank you thank you so [Applause] much I don't recognize Justin without a cowboy hat on and let see now we'll call on Jessica mcaker to announce an award so we always get very excited anytime we get to get up here and recognize our employees like Dana said and today is no exception for me I get to recognize a great group of individuals um for a partnership that they've developed years ago so it is with great pleasure that I share with you that the Texas chapter of the public risk management association also called Tex Prima selected the city of Fort Worth athletic trainers program to receive the 20203 riskmanagement achievement award this is an award that recognizes programs that contribute to successful riskmanagement efforts the athletic trainer program was established in 2016 as a partnership with Baylor Scot and white Institute of Rehabilitation and it embeds athletic trainers within high-risk Departments of the city today we have three a athletic trainers that are on site full-time within the police department the fire department and the water department you know that athletic athletic trainers are most commonly employed in the education space and with professional athletic teams but over the recent years there's more and more corporations that are recognizing the importance of having athletic trainers within their companies to work on risk mitigation efforts as well the athletic trainers in the city of Fort Worth work work closely with the risk management and safety teams to provide individual and population wide risk reduction interventions some of the programs that they've established here in Fort Worth include driver ergonomic evaluations for police officers cardiovascular fitness programming for firefighters biomechanics training for utility employees and individualized stretch and strengthening programs for Crews across the city athletic trainers place an emphasis on risk reduction by identifying high-risk populations and activities and then creating um dedicated individualized programs that mitigate the risks of those positions and activities they also provide first aid services including cryotherapy taping and wrapping and massage techniques to address discomfort early on when an employee is injured and needs medical attention the athletic trainer stays with that employee and works with their Physicians to keep track on the treatment program the athletic trainers here in the city of Fort Worth assist on average 175 different employees each month and they've treated over 2,000 employees annually this program has proven to be highly successful with a rate of return of over 500% and an estimated Savings of $1.5 million annually in reduced claims cost I'm going to show it just a very short snippet of a video of one example of this program and while I do I'm going to have some individuals join me and then I'll recognize them after the video and they you know they will they will blow off some of those minor injuries in order to to stay on that firet truck every day and we recognize that we needed to first of all help our people we knew that there are uh injuries that are not being reported or continue to affect them dayto day we knew that we could help [Music] them PFT results so every Baylor has has been very forthcoming and helping us develop this new program for us we're started from nothing and we were able to bring things in and we immediately started seeing people I've gone into and watched the different drills and put on the equipment and learned how heavy it is and how physically demanding it is unlike a regular athlete their season never stops their entire career they're on season and they have to be performing at 100% all the time for their safety and for the Public's safety so it's really important that you take care of your machine and your machine As A Firefighter is your body so taking care of that is so important for not only your health and safety but the health and safety of fellow firefighters so the athletic trainer program within the city of Fort Worth is unique because there are not many cities Across the Nation that use this program however we've proven it is highly successful and can easily be duplicated for other municipalities that are interested and we see more and more that are starting to catch on I'd like for you to join me in recognizing the employees that brought this program to fruition as well as the athletic trainers that are currently working with us so to join me and they're gonna come a little closer not be shy we've got Mark Barta our risk manager we have Chris lamb our risk supervisor Danielle Caster our senior risk analyst is not able to be here with us today for our athletic trainers we have Sarah nectarine who works with the Water Department Brian Newman works with the fire department and Christina Ferguson works with our police department and I'm told that we also have joining us today the retired assistant fire chief Homer Robertson who star in this video who was also instrumental in bringing this program to for worth please join me in thanking these individuals and recognizing the receipt of this [Applause] award thank you all congratulations thank you Homer I Elizabeth has a bone to pick just a second you're going to walk into this building and not bring banana pudding that is a shame always it's good seeing you thank you all right next up are informal reports we have a number of them today the first informal report is on the September 2023 sales tax revenue and Clay Pearson is available if there are any questions keep going keep rolling there we go next informal report is on the adoption of the city of Fort Worth 2024 federal legislative and administrative agenda TJ Patterson is available if there are any questions no questions thank you to TJ and corle pipes all right the next two informal reports are on the recruitment for um directors the first one is on Code Compliance second is on environmental services and Holly Moyer is available if there any questions any questions Council nope rolling next informal repor is on customer care team updates and statistics and Sharon gamble is available if there are any questions I'm going keep going next informal report is on home buyer assistance program policy change and Victor Turner is available if there are any questions nope all right next informal report is on the inventory of Fort Worth Housing Finance Corporation lots and and surplus property available for sale again Victor Turner is available if there are any questions Elizabeth Victor and Ricky we'll have and Ricky's Salazar with uh Property Management thanks Victor the only question that I have uh as as we move through these Lots um has there been any discussion as we develop the Community Land uh trust in that model of including properties like this into that um Land Trust as well yeah we had some conversations with um rainwater about lots that we have and the possibility of those being included um in the community land trust also we have some other properties that will um be up for um where we can sell them in about another two three years about 64 properties that those would be a possibility as well so we've had some discussions with so so is it not possible for the city to just elect to include those in um since we own them or is that well we sell those properties uh so yeah they could uh make an offer on them and follow the same process we would with any developer right but we we cannot do that what I'm asking is as the city right we own these lots and we know we're developing this this um Land Trust so can we elect to as as opposed to selling them to someone can we elect to put those into the land trust yeah suppose the hfc could do that okay thank you any other questions for Victor thank you don't goar far Victor we'll do these next two uh the next two informal reports the first one is on veterans assistance programs and Victor's the guy and the next one is on small business program for veterans and service disabled veterans and Christina Brooks is available if there any questions Council lorf and I don't have any questions but I do have a couple comments and that's one is thank you for to everyone involved for put putting these together two I also urge my um colleagues here as well on the veterans assistance programs especially this time of year where it gets really tough for uh for veterans and their families make sure you send these out um especially the the Ford home veteran assistance grant one of the um I guess unknown secrets of that that one is the dependence of veterans 25 uh veterans 25 years or age of younger can benefit from that too so getting that out is really going to be huge especially the healthy homes for Heroes grants getting that out this time of year you're going to hear about a lot of folks who are without air or without a heater Etc and then come to find out that is a you know World War II veteran who just no one in their family knows about any of these benefits that's available and this is one that is available to them um and if they try to go online though to fill out the application it'll um and correct me if I'm wrong right now they won't be able to because the city fund funds are not not there however the funds through these grants are there but because the application process is essentially one of the same they won't see it so they actually have to fill out a a hand application and I believe take to the uh Community Action Partners in Arlington and please correct me if I'm wrong on this but I think that was the case and so I just ask that as a city if we can do better on the process uh because trying to navigate like I'm trying to help a veteran get down to Arlington to try to go through this process if we could just improve that or find a way and let me know what I can do at all um I'd love to be a part of that yeah to respond to that we're in the middle of of changing some software so uh once we get that implemented at a simplified process for they won't have to be doing paper and applications like that so that should streamline it for awesome and and and I don't know if it's possible but even seeing how many because one of the things I run into with veteran organizations all the time is they want to help but the funds aren't there and they're waiting till the next Grant comes in so a lot of folks will lose hope in the process because is this a one month weight is it a two-month weight is it a six-month if there's a way to even have like how much is still left in that that pool at all that way they know if there's even a chance you know they should just go start you know barking up a different tree would be great um and then I'm going to go move on to the uh the next one uh which is the the veterans programs for small business big thanks to uh Miss brgs for the work you put in on that one um I think you really understood the intent there uh with what we were trying to do and that's assisting these better known small businesses and service disabled better known small businesses with trying to find ways to work with the city and some of these contracts Etc um and so you understanding the the intent there and I know it's always difficult when you have the good idea of fair sprinkling these things out there but I appreciate all the work that you put in that to making making this what I feel is going to be an amazing program for the city of Fort Worth uh and then of course you know the veteran own small businesses that are here and then the things that we have what I really want you to know is what the action that we're going to have behind this not just oh thank you for this information but it's now it's going forward and working with the fort wor chamber and with some other initiatives and I think we got some really big things on Horizon and all that coupled with um you know council member Beck's initiative to get that veterans position which is now live which is huge uh I think all these things are coming together now so just thank you to you you and your team for putting all this together thank you I don't if you have anything I was just going to remind everybody that that position is live so for those of all you uh watching um not here in the room with us uh if you know a veteran that works in the veteran service space and would be a good fit for this particular position um please go to our City website and encourage them to apply because we'd like to get them in as soon as possible because as you can see we've got a lot going on thank you both appreciate that Janette go ahead Victor I did have a question for you sorry um I know that there are uh certain programs within the city of Fort Worth that assist not just veterans but their family members which ones are those specifically Victor sorry did you say program specifically City of Fort Worth well that yes that will assist not just veterans but also their family members like surviving spouses and children I'm want to ask uh Palmer to speak to that uh I know uh as councilman mentioned the forward home and healthy heroes are the two that we get from Texas veterans commission but then our all of our other programs are eligible for not only just veterans but citizens across the city So currently uh Mr Turner is correct the only um uh grant that we currently have uh that assist surviving spouses and dependence of veterans is the forward home veteran assistance program thank you the next in foral report report is on judicial pay recommendations for fiscal year 24 and this will be your last time to give judge Danny Rogers a hard time any questions for judge rer Rogers all right I think you're all free judge thank you thank you next informal report is on lease amendments with the southwestern Exposition and livestock show on the sheep and Swine bar renovation and Michael Crum is available if there are any questions I have one question thank you Michael um just to clarify the proposed amendment um does it change the ability for the fort with st Show and Rodeo to host private events or does it change the terms of their previous kind of yes ma'am uh well first of all uh we need to welcome Brad Barnes and Matt Carter uh to the meeting today uh as all of you can appreciate uh Stock Show they've been in stock show season now for several weeks so to so they didn't want to be at the bottom of the agenda is what I'm hearing you say well and to to yank yeah and to yank them out of stock show prep and to get them down here you know it's important none of us want to make them mad because if you ride Grand inry you wanted to put you on a good horse not a horse so words to live by uh so uh Council member Hill uh no it does not uh so the what we're doing in the agreement is we're codifying what has been an informal understanding between the city and the stock show about events that the stock show holds at the Will Rogers complex that take place outside of the license period yes ma'am so stay right there because the next inform for report is on the Will Rogers Memorial center Master Services agreement and my I have a question if you'll just summarize this for anybody that's listening or for council members that haven't F this as close y so this is um this is a conversation that the city and event facilities Fort Worth which is a supporting organization of the Will Rogers complex and the stock show uh have been in for several months about how to uh increase the efficiency of the delivery of capital projects uh at the Will Rogers Memorial center and so this this agreement uh any other questions Michael do you know what's the timeline to get the agreement in place uh so the uh we're ready with the document uh so we're we we're briefing you all today uh we're going to ask for your uh consent to enter into the agreement uh week from today we'll sign the document and be off and running thank you Mike thank you all right the next informal report is a litter control update both fiscal year 23 year end and a fiscal 24 Outlook and Cody Wittenberg Lauren prier and Richard Zavala are all available if there are any questions counc be I have a question from Cody specifically Cody come on down Cody hello hello uh first I want to say thank you to uh your staff um because we prioritized litter abatement this year and the year before um and we certainly see you moving around the city and I know I always get really excited when I see a street sweeper like I might cheer and honk and wave at it um but despite all of that work um and we can see by the numbers right that we are absolutely doing more to pick up litter it still seems like it's it it almost feels like we put the money in it and our residents you know are I'm going to say it's people from the East driving through U Fort Worth have just ramped up the litter and I know I feel it as I drive through my district um and so and are you noticing an increase in litter as well um is my first question and then my second question is um what can we do to better engage tch. because so much of the litter that I see um is along our Interstate freeways and so perfect segue into how hard Dr whittenberg has worked yes absolutely so for the first question we absolutely saw a lot of litter this summer there were some changes in contracts and was some changes with tech do specifically and their contractors had some some changes and some delays and we absolutely saw absolutely saw our highways getting more and more litter and debris along them and even throughout the city we certainly have seen that but as the temperatures have cooled off and some of our contracts and some of text's contracts have stabilized we're hoping we get ahead of of much of that moving into the fall and spring and moving on into the next year speaking specifically to Tech do uh we we sort of asked the question of what can we do working better together and how can we work to really Advance Highway Maintenance and to really improve our highways and I'm very very thankful to the Fort Worth tech. District they've been very receptive we started monthly meetings about three months ago we've worked to change our Municipal maintenance agreement with them to allow the city and us to with with Tex do to work more cohesively together and I think we're really excited for the prospects of what's to come yeah and I'll add that I know Rene's team is working on a city news story that I know I'm going to personally turn into a social media post each of you are welcome to do the same thing because I know everybody gets this question about Highway litter abatement so just wanted to say thank you Cody he's he's making it sound easy it has not been and they've worked very diligently and text still talking to us so that says a lot because I think they recognize opportunity for a partnership here so thank you thank you thank you thank you the next informal report is on managing the feral cat population and Chris McAllister is available if there question is that on the council rules of procedures that yeah okay we'll go the next i' like to hear a report on that and just our partnership with Operation Kindness how what all will entail and the increased number of spay and neuter that we'll be able to achieve hello Chris McAllister assistant director for animal control can you repeat the questions which your I was walking sorry just a quick report on this ir and just um I saw I read you know our partnership with Operation Kindness is that like a continued partnership and so so it is so currently Operation Kindness through facilities agreement Works within our shelters and they're just just helping us keep on top of the spay and neuters of the shelter pets the ones that are going out for adoptions adoption events pet smarts things like that what we've done is we just started talks with them uh about coming being in the shelter uh and maybe doing some feral cats maybe doing some popup uh in the in the neighborhoods uh we think there's a big need in some specific neighborhoods to you know lowcost vaccinations spay and neuters feral cats is there needed uh some Community cats so we have just begun those conversations and we're going to report back to you in mid January kind of what the plan was okay and so just grants out there that are they may be available for this so we have we secured a grant three months ago give or take two three months ago uh from pedco love a big donor for us uh and we my plan is to use part of that to support these programs uh with opk okay yeah thank you thank you Chris Chris thank you next informal report is the process for reconsideration of council action and lean Guzman is available if there are any questions Carlos go ahead lean just have one question um I don't know if it's already uh articulated in our rules and procedures but when the council member uh submits requests for reconsideration um I've read the IR understand how that works do we have to provide a reason articulated reason for that at that time or how does that work did you no you don't have to you don't have to provide any of an explanation it's just the request to do the reconsideration itself and remember that's a two-step process so of course the reconsideration is its own vote and then the actual action item would be reconsidered at the second vote okay so at the time that we do reconsider for can't speak today reconsideration request has been made at the D weekend whoever it is that and say what that is to the rest of the council understands okay all right thank you that's on my question councilor Nettles yes um I I had a question I thought of after you had spoke earlier um it said reconsideration for Council proposal is that this only reconsideration for Council proposal or is it any action item such as mnc's zoning it's for any action item so the council proposal is the mechanism that's used to get the reconsideration to happen so it's for any kind of an action a contract any kind of a any approval that the council's done okay and I think uh it would be uh Dr Williams mentioned it earlier if we could uh look into uh other practices versus um unanimous vote versus majority vote um so I wonder how yeah yeah that will even work okay yeah we'll look into that and I'll definitely get that information back to you okay any other questions for lean councel Jerry sorry and then go ahead Jerry no please go ahead um so Leanne as far as um reconsideration is concerned if a proposal is materially different than the previous proposal considered does it still applied this rule no this would just be for the actual action so if it's materially different it would be a new item great okay and uh something that Chris said uh triggered a a question for me uh when it comes to uh you know voting with majority and all that and again I'm relying on you to tell us what our rules of procedure says so how how are they articulated so that we can uh use the correct terminology when you're thinking of this especially when it comes to say two3 vote type of situations so what does our rules or procedures say that because it's not always you know a a clear majority right sometimes the prevailing side is 2/3 that's right so if the original item required a 2/3 vote when you you go back and you do that actual reconsideration of the item let's say you've gotten past the first threshold of whether you're going to reconsider let's say that's passed and you're at that action item you would still those same underlying roles are still going to apply so you would still need a two-thirds majority or a super majority or whatever the rules were the first time it passed would still apply the second time as well so do we need any kind of change to that terminology no I think it's clear as it as it's right now thanks that's it and lastly um I was asking about the unanimous vote in order for us to even vote on the reconsideration understood yes and we're going to take a look and see what other cities are doing about that and I'll get that back to you guys all right thank you there questions Council Jared you're good just a comment um when you're looking at that it would it would seem that reconsideration would require super majority at the most and maybe a simple majority at the least and so unanimous is a bit unique to me so I look forward to reviewing that all right next informal report is on the results for incentive agreements reviewed during fiscal year 2023 and Robert Sterns is available if there any questions Robert any questions Council yeah sorry sorry sorry mayor can we ask him well sorry ele I was just asking him to do an overview yeah fine is that fine okay sure okay okay thank you mayor members of council Robert Sterns Economic Development uh so again the informal report that you have in your packs today is really something that we present to you on an annual basis so as part of any of our Economic Development agreements as you know when we bring those to you they're kind of broken down their specific commitments that they have to meet on investment on job creation on spending with uh business Equity firms now on our current policy and on salary uh which is a newer requirement in the policy so uh those Agreements are reviewed on an annual basis uh through our department and then uh that information is compiled into the report that you see for in front of you uh today so for uh FY 23 we're looking at actually agreements uh we call it tax year 22 so we're always kind of following a lag year behind this a tax year 22 uh agreements and compliance that we're looking at uh for tax year 22 there were a total of 35 chapter 380 agreements and eight tax abatement agreements that were reviewed uh those projects uh that were uh finalized represent about $61 million in uh taxes that are being generated towards the city and as you can see in some of the charts and graphs uh that we included in the informal report uh those dollars continue to grow overall the overall cumulative investment over time has grown from about 3.56 million uh from these agreements to about 5.78 million in 2022 as for the overall results on the the projects and the compliance in general I would say that they performed fairly well uh the construction participation with for worth businesses succeeded the requirements uh job commitments or where they need to be the salary requirement which is a new uh thing that we put in place under the last policy the uh two companies that were uh that have commitments on salary requirements easily uh exceeded those the challenge that we are continuing to see and this is not new we brought this up last year is on our mwb participation uh and and really there's there's challenges with that in general with just tracking that over time right so many of these Agreements are you know 10 15 20 years in length and the MBE requirement is on the construction component so when you look at it we look at that year one year one when we do the first year compliance on the construction if they hit it great they get the full benefit of that percentage of the abatement or tax or the agreement if they don't there's a reduction and that reduction carries forward for the life of that agreement agement so there's not an opportunity for them to spend more on additional construction at a later date to to get that number out that is a ongoing drop and so when you're looking at just from the numbers if you got some long-term agreements in there it's it's hard to change that percentage because you're still carrying agreements that are now again 10 15 years old that never hit their requirements what I would say is that uh the we had one agreement that was completed this year under our new policy so we went through a significant revision of our uh policy to align the mwb requirement with the business Equity ordinance uh and so that business Equity ordinance uh and the uh company that is under those requirements actually far exceeded what their commitment was going to be on the on the project and so I think as we continue to see some of these newer projects that are completed under under the revised policy I think you'll see those numbers really start to look a lot better but again we're still continuing to carry some older agreements that that probably uh were were not as better aligned when it comes to the mwb requirement and then along with that we continue to talk with Christina's Department diversity and equity on how we can better align our processes so again how we can get them engaged earlier on in the processes talking with the general contractors uh how we can utilize their b2g now system to help us in the ongoing tracking and so again I think some of these ongoing improvements will kind of help us get that get that number a little bit tighter than than what you see it today so my question was actually related to the um MBE so thank you for addressing that first um I want to say great job because as we look at what was committed and then what was verified as I went through this IR um over and over again I saw that it was actually what was verified was greater than what was initially committed and I know when it comes to Economic Development deals I get it I'm sure my colleagues get it people you know they they question is it really the best use of our tax dollars why are you giving our money away um and I think what this IR shows is that we're doing a pretty good job of selecting who we choose to give those to and the the return that we're getting to our community so hands off uh hats off to you and your staff um and for for navigating that for us um in light of what you explained with the um the MBE is it possible because we looked like we were doing Stellar until we got to that right and knowing that the majority of that is done in the first couple of years but then we're still reporting years out um to the extent that that skews what this data looks like is there a way that we can capture that that you know in in construction stage and display it and report it that way so that we get a a better idea because it might actually be better than what we think it is if we just got these long-term agreements that are kind of skewing it yeah yeah definitely we can take a look at that we can coordinate with the lab and and Christine's Department see if there's a better way that we can present that information that giv gives you more of a real time look at what's going on as opposed to again some of these older agreements sure thank you thanks Robert oh sorry Chris I apologize I just want to uh piggy back on that uh I asked this all the all the time what is the actual goal for the MB uh the goal well it depends on which policy the agreement was approved under so the policies have two years the the tax payment policy has to be updated every two years so the city has to elect to parti in tax batement we historically have tended to make updates to the chap chapter 380 policy at the same time to ensure that those two policy are alignment so the mwb commitment has varied all over the place so at one point it was 25% was the goal uh that was kind of across the board when you had some ability to go back and negotiate that uh there was not a hard reduction tied to that 25% uh there was a goodfaith effort at one time under the agreement so you may have had a 25% commitment but if you made a good faith effort you would get credit for that so it was not until uh I think four or five years ago that we really tied down the the MBE component and we said it's it's a 15% goal and that number was really established by historically we want kind of went back and looked at some of the how the companies have been um uh performing under some of the previous deals and we were looking at some of the projects that were currently in the mix some City procurement projects and what the MBE participation was on those and so we kind of set it at 15% we remove the good faith Equity good faith uh effort portion of it and made it a hard commitment so right now under today's policy and the policy that was approved uh two years ago is a 15% hard commitment to business Equity firms and if you hit that you get 10% added to your uh agreement your incentive agreement if you don't that entire 10% goes away from for the life of the deal it's it's a very strict you either hit it or you don't it's pass go either way do we know what we measure with other cities with our goals we did uh so when we made the revision to to set it at 15% we did a a look at how a number of cities were doing it um our our policy as it s today is fairly stringent most cities still have some level of good faith effort uh in their requirements so even if they have a higher percentage they still allow this kind of vague good fi effort that if you have you can shown that you've reached out to contractors or you you had some event that brought contractors in that would satisfy your uh commitment on the project and in our case we do not have a good faith of commitment so it's either you spend the money or you don't thank you Robert uh appreciate you and Christina uh working on this and so I think it's very good if I like the 15% but if we can continue to increase that along the way as we increase those projects they'll be grateful also yeah and I think that's as we as I said you know we usually update these every two years and so I think that's part of the discussion that we have with Christine and what she's saying from the standpoint of uh overall capacity within our within our business Equity areas our sixth County region and so that would allow us to adjust that number to to be again exactly in alignment with the ordinance Robert I I'll add something that Carlos will remember we had a number of 8 a.m. meetings often on a Wednesday after after a council night getting to the point where we got to the 15% but what cannot be ignored is the impact the Beck school had on helping deliver these numbers yes and so that that's very important we didn't do it on its own and it wasn't done by staff you know this was Council involved we had contractors even uh Bishop Hornsby from moer Valley would come to these meetings and so it's quite a bit of work and to get to the the hard number of 15% was a struggle that uh some people really didn't think would happen so I just can't sit here and not weigh in on that yeah thank you and the final one more oh sorry almost got there no problem thank you um Robert um echoed all the sentiments in saying you know really good job I'm I'm always inspired by the work that your team delivers in the form of incentives um just uh kind reiterate some of my colleagues comments I think um the mwbe in general as a city is a huge opportunity for us especially on the side of um thinking about ways that we can continue to enhance availability of um mwbe um contractors here in the city um and I would love to continue to explore that with you and Christina and my colleagues about ways that we can um help bolster um capacity especially through our Black Chamber and our Hispanic chamber I know we currently do provide some support for that availability work and maybe there's some more we could do there to um help knowing that this is a constant conversation across all of our contracts if I may add Mr council member and also in reference to the question from Council buiness your this January 9th work session agenda includes a briefing on um um minority business Enterprise with the remarks by representatives from the uh the Black Chamber the Hispanic chamber and uh the be school of construction uh so we'll be addressing all of your concerns and everything the city is doing uh with economic development and diversity inclusion to expand the capacity of minority owned businesses so thank you very much thank you for that clarification I look forward to that and also um I don't want to you know be I would be remiss if I did didn't say this the work that we're doing especially with regards mwbe um is really important and we're doing a great job this is about how do we continue to um provide more opportunity in our city thanks all right now the final informal report is an update on the Texas Broadband Equity access and deployment Kevin gun is available if there are any questions Gina no no one you're good all right mayor that concludes my board okay Council first item any questions on membership boards or commissions coming up on December 12th if not any questions on zoning cases or MNC log for December 12th nope okay our first presentation is with Steve mcgomery and Robert Allen to talk about fourth Economic Development partnership in the fourth Chamber of Commerce and Robert Sterns is going to kick us off yes thank you mayor uh so again I appreciate the opportunity for uh three of us to get up here and and talk about economic development in Fort Worth uh Robert and I got to touch on this a little bit at the mayor state of the city uh Steve unfortunately could not be there for that event and so it's great to have Steve here with us uh you I always had I think some of the Genesis around this conversation today was making sure that we're not duplicating efforts and make sure everyone's uh kind of aware of what it is that we're doing and and and I would say I guess for me I can't speak for Robert see but you know we we talk so much that it's really less of a thought that we are duplicating efforts it's much more in my mind of how are we supporting each other through the partnership you know we all have specific things that we're trying to get done but in many cases you know economic development is a team sport and so it's not just the city it's not just the EDP it's not just the chambers we are continually working together to enhance and make sure that Fort Worth is as competitive as it can be when it comes to recruitment retention and Business Development um so I'm going to just walk very quickly through uh my piece of this because you all have seen you've seen this multiple times so you know exactly where the city stand from an economic development standpoint you know obviously we are focused on uh competitive business attraction and again we do that in support with the with the for wor EDP uh we do some site assessment we do special district development again so tiffs and pits that's our ROM exclusively the uh chamber and and EDP are not involved in that uh and then we do some support on promotion Target sector marketing and outbound marketing uh entrepr ship we really are focused on the Small Business Development and that's been through a number of initiatives that we've done uh really through the the Jamesy Gwen entrepreneurial campus to the entrepreneurship and Innovation committee you know we've done a number of activities related to how do we build up our entrepreneurial ecosystem and along with that it really involves how do we provide additional access to Capital so programs like cdfi what worth that provides dollars to some of our small businesses Innovation districts that's really uh our space particularly with some of the development happening around the Texas A&M hub and and uh the activity going on uh in your Southside in the medical Innovation district and then council's aware of all of our efforts as it relates to the uh smart cities heading out to the conference and utilizing that as a real Touchstone to be able to uh really market for where is the city of the future and that a city that is really bringing these Technologies of the future forward and then our find our final piece is really Community Vitality again you know we are heavily invested in neighborhood reinvestment uh retail recruitment not as but I didn't note that because obviously we aware that there are food deserts in several parts of the city and so we want to try to come up with a strategy to try to continue to focus on attracting uh grocery stores in those identified areas and then catalytic development you know those types of uh developments in underserved areas that can promote larger broader scale Redevelopment activities and so this is this is kind of the Wheelhouse that we spend the majority of our time with uh but as you'll see through the uh presentations from both Robert and Steve you'll see at the end how all this really kind of intertwines to support Economic Development as a whole and so with that I will turn it over to Mr Montgomery to talk about what's going on at Fort wor chamber you hear that Mr mcgomery you like that so um mayor Parker Council uh city manager cook thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today I am Steve Montgomery and president and CEO of the forward Chamber of Commerce while I am new to this role most of you know I'm not new to for worth uh grew up here spent most of my professional and personal life here uh earlier this year uh the Executive Board of the forward chamber made a very important decision to redefine our approach um to achieving our foundational uh um elements of our mission business attraction retention and expansion uh they established A Renewed Focus uh on business attraction and stood up a new entity called the Fort Worth Economic Development partnership uh to focus solely to concentrate on business attraction uh set up a new entity brought in the best and the brightest uh Robert Allen I think that was the right decision on both accounts um the forward Chambers mission was redefine the focus on the other elements of the fundamentals of business retention and expansion uh in addition to member services and member programming and that is my charge uh we are fulfilling that charge uh by reorienting reorienting the organization around these core principles leadership engagement and advocacy leadership ensuring that the voice of my members and as voice of the business Community uh that we are leading that we are at the table that we're doing the work and that we're engaged in the right conversations uh that we're engaging our members that we're uh providing fors by which our members can engage with one another and that we're engaging our strategic Partners the for worth Hispanic chamber that the for worth Metropolitan Black Chamber the city of Fort Worth um near Southside uh Camp buy district downtown Fort Worth Inc uh just to name a few of our strategic allies and finally to be the fierce advocate for our business members to help solve their problems help uh deal with and work with policy makers to articulate a business CL whereby Prosperity is shared across the community these activities are fundamental basic block and Tack blocking and tackling of what a chamber should be doing if we're not achieving these frankly little else matters but beyond these fundamentals we're also innovating around business intelligence and that is using data stacks and analytic tools to help our members and our community stakeholders make more informed better decisions uh we're also activating our members uh on issues like uh that have a direct Nexus to Economic Development Workforce and talent uh mobility and infrastructure veterans and Military Affairs uh small business and homelessness uh and we want to do engaging these matters in a constructive and productive manner uh to date um my my strategic Vision has bring has been to bring uh stability and A Renewed strategic Vision to the organization we've done some internal reorganizations um restructurings and uh and we're meeting with our members we're we're sharing our vision and we're Gathering feedback uh in 2024 We Begin delivery of these initiatives the be standing up the business intelligence unit which we can dive into more if you'd like um and in 25 we don't just deliver but we Excel and finally I just want to add one thing uh one of the reasons that one of the things that attracted me to this role was my belief believe that a high performing well functioning chamber has true Civic value uh and I'm passionate about the success of my community and I feel like this is a way that I can contribute to that success I know that everyone around this table shares that passion and I look forward to being your partner uh in this important work now I'm going to turn it over to my partner Robert Allen Steve thank you uh mayor council manager cook great to see all of you Robert Allen CEO of the fourth Economic Development partnership um new organization so for some of you uh this is probably going to be new so I'm going to walk through it briefly and then at the end I'm going to show you a slide that hopefully brings it all together for you to understand who's on first what play we're calling and why we're calling it so first of all again new organization so our work and effort I've been here nine months uh our work and effort um has been focused on building our organization what does that mean it means identifying necessary resources to compete better and also finding top talent so my Executive Vice President um I was able to uh steal from our partners to the east um after an 18 plus year Stellar career there Jessica hair and I inherited inherited Sarah Thurber on my team as well who's a second rock star uh that we get to add to our our team as well couple questions I've gotten is how big of a team are you building Robert our answer is very small so best case scenario I had two more members of our team and then we stopped there because of all the support and Council I need from these two gentlemen that just went before you so again foundational elements of the past 8 to nine months identifying the resources building the team putting together um the review and the refinement on our Target Industries what do I mean by refinement are we targeting the industries we need to you and your predecessors are spent a lot of time targeting certain industries for incentive purposes I think you're on the right track but I think we need to constantly ask ourselves could we adjust that moving forward for example could we highlight Financial Services more than it's being called out today does something not warrant an in incentive discussion in a Target industry Robert and I have this conversation it feels like weekly as it should be because we need to be constantly asking ourselves that question additionally we need to be targeting um Subs sectors underneath each of those Target Industries um that guides our work moving forward as you move into 24 and Beyond you start building an actual Target list um what do I mean by that exactly what I meant we are going to look at businesses that we think fit within the fabric of Fort Worth tarant County and our surrounding communities and then use that list as our jumping off port uh point to go on offense um there are versions of lists that I have uncovered and found um in the the uh uh files if you will of previous iterations of organizations we're going to use all that to guide us as we move forward but we have to be thoughtful about the businesses that we want to go after when we go on offense um homegrown growth is really important and I want to point this out because a lot of people have asked me you know how quickly are you going to be able to go on offense in a bigger way and I have said both publicly and privately I want to reiterate this now I am going to start in Fort Worth as I already have in very close coordination with Steve and his team at the Fort wor chamber if a business in Fort Worth wants to grow and expand we need to make sure they have all the tools and resources to do that first then and only then will I go look to the state of Texas an area where I spent 20 plus years of my career so I know it pretty well then and only then are we going to go coast to coast in this country and then and only then are we going to go International I want to correct the record about what was said about a conversation that invoked me in a previous presentation to you was said that we don't have the bandwidth to do International that is not true what I said is we will get to that after and only after we take care of Fort Worth Texas the country best case scenario we're International offense uh when it comes to business attraction and recruitment in 2025 but only when we feel confident and comfortable that we've taken care of those other boxes finally moving forward 24 and 25 fullblown offensive maneuvers outbound Communications and marketing and again all of this is done in extremely close coordination with Robert Sterns and with Steve Montgomery we all need to be playing our role as champions of for worth we recognize that we understand that we agree with that and we need to do it in very close coordination we need to use the opportunity we talked about the rodeo previously use that as a marquee event to host folks who are looking at for worth we absolutely intend to do that moving forward again full-blown offensive tactics um and then finally we need to make sure that we're on offense um in cities and states and then again ultimately countries that make sense um you can spend all of your time targeting certain areas for economic development and it will absolutely drown you if you are not specific in strategic about what we need to do and the methodology to get to that we will be spinning our Wheels over and over and over and I won't be here very long to be honest with you so let me try to bring all this together and then we're happy to take questions this is what the three of us put together to hopefully help explain roles and responsibilities but also very clearly overlaps because we want to be very clear there are overlaps as long as we're closely coordinated in those overlaps then we are all good to continue our coordinated missions moving forward everybody driving towards the goal of a thriving Community as you all know we are the fastest growing city in the state of Texas and that is an honor but that also comes with tremendous challenges so if we fall short of communicating through this Matrix if you will um it's going to cause problems for us on the international and then the domestic and then the Local Economic Development space um and so as Robert said we wear each other out uh feels like daily certainly weekly we have a standing weekly meeting uh with him and his team and my team I office down the hall from Steve we're in very very close communication as we're going to go through this process so I hope this lays out I won't I won't bore you with going through it because I know it's in your packets but we will answer questions in a minute but I hope this lays out for for you a very clear picture and understanding of who's taking the lead in what areas where our overlaps are why those overlaps exist and then what our ultimate goal is in the middle which is obviously to contribute to a thriving Fort Worth and region around us with that we're more than happy to take any questions you might have thank you Robert questions from Council I know mayor ptim Biven had a question yes I do and I can only tell you that this question is not for Robert so I don't know who's who's going to respond but uh a few years ago I tried to fold it Chris I'm sorry before Steve was hired the chamber had taken a different approach and that was going to find them not focusing exclusively on the member based concern and they were going broader into the City and so for so many years there has been the absence of grocery stores not just in inner city communities we have grocery store deserts all over the city and so this is a practical example that I hope to get from you and our Steve so Steve get up there too and tell Becky I said hi how does this this new makeup this new Focus that has me very excited how does this partner with the city of for worth Roberts team to get a grocery store in any Community where where it's missing I'm trying to see how this chemistry is going to work absolutely it's a great question so you are exactly right that uh the prior configuration of the forward chamber was focusing on focusing on our major employers which are are super critical right we we need to give them support and and uh we benefit so hugely from them what we got away from and what I'm getting back to is a focus on small business right that's the essential um essential economy in any community is small business so it's a it's a combination of that focusing back on the small business but also on the advocacy side helping on the public policy side working with Robert working with this this this body on what kind of public policies can we Advocate can we uh can we pass to help support you know closing the closing the gap on the on the uh food deserts and getting uh encouraging maybe a national retailer to to put an establishment in some of these areas what kind of incentives can we offer that so again it's smoke it's it's twofold one focusing on small businesses and also focusing on advocacy and public policy I think it's two two part let me tell you this Steve I've gone to the what did I join Robert the icsc whatever that was yeah I've been to those conferences it didn't pay off anything that was just too big for my world but I want you to know I live in southeast Fort Worth I know I'm going to have a grocery store at Trinity and 820 the development is going to demand that but right now I have to drive I have to drive to to Arlington or come all the way out on 7th Street to get the needs of my new dietary requirements which are very different for me and so I want you because you're my friend for so many years I need you to get me a grocery store yes ma'am in southeast forward I'm on it thank you thank you any other questione okay I have a couple questions and really just to play off um Gina's comment I mean high level how do you assess and this may be a question for you Robert Allen um how do you assess companies are a good fit so do you look at the landscape literally um we have a food desert we're trying to attract companies that mimic our morals and values in Forth can you just kind of give me happy too yes and councilwoman um let me add to that too if you don't know my background I'm a fifth generation Texan so all I know is Texas that's that's all I know um I spent 20 plus years in Austin um working for the governor's office in various capacities and then um at the Attorney General's office I've had the honor and privilege to to have a very very very small impact on the state that I love dearly I never felt like I had an impact on my community in which I lived in part of the reason I took this and and several of you around the table that I've talked to about why I did this know that this is part of the reason why I said yes to this opportunity is because I feel like I can have a very small role in impacting a community that I think is special part of what we're what we're do there and I talked to Robert about this actually just the other day I said part of what I really need to do is I get my feet down and we move forward through this endeavor is to understand how we bring Monumental change that doesn't show up pardon my language I'm a sports guy in the Box Score a grocery store in your food desert is something that doesn't show up in the Box Score unfortunately but it's monumentally gamechanging in your neighborhood when I get my feet down next year hopefully soon addressing some of those you know Monumental issues um is certainly on my personal to-do list and also on my profession professional to-do list bridge to your question um council member Hill you have to start with the understanding it was said earlier with the stockyard Awards uh commentary Fort Worth is unique it's authentic and it's special um I didn't take this job or move to Fort Worth to change any of that so I want that to be the Baseline of everybody's understanding of what I'm trying to achieve um I saw Austin grow I saw the pain I saw the traffic I understand that personally I'm not trying to change any of that I think it starts with trying to and it's very difficult out of the gates sometimes with the limited information we get to assess not only the jobs just the sheer numbers but also the wages this is very important we know this is important we have to make sure that they are long-term high-paying sustainable jobs I think it starts there for me point one point two um we had a company in our office today that just drink pack thank you all very much for what you did on drink pack and Holly from drink pack today told um us in our office you you know it was the right fit it felt right it's a gut thing it's hard to put an answer to it specifically but often times as we get the honor and privilege to host these individuals as we move forward you get to know them you understand what they're looking for do they want to be good Community Partners do they want to engage in the community are they looking for more than just an incentive um those are the types of things you look for in companies and then that's point two and then point three you know at the end of the day we need to diversify the economy to survive challenging times if if they are to come and they will because economies are cyclical and so we look at gaps of where we think we can better perform and we certainly go to work on trying to Target those gaps from a business perspective so that we can diversify the economy so as we move forward and become part of the largest Metroplex in the United States of America in 76 years they tell us that we can be prepared for that growth because that growth can be scary to a lot of people who don't understand what that really means does that answer your question yes Ma and oh one more follow-up question um you when you talked about strategy let's go to 2025 we're talking about going Statewide nationally globally can you again high level I know you don't have those plans in place yet can you talk to us about National and Global initiatives and what you see in the future for the city of Fort Worth I I will did you want to clarify something on that previous question robt no actually I was just going to provide a little bit of followup a little more detail so uh and I think I said this at the mayor state of the city one one of the first conversations that Robert and I had was around the types of companies that we were responding to right and I think there was a a previous desire to respond and pretty much everything that came through the door uh and and Robert and I both decided very early on that's really not what we should be doing Fort Worth is a special City we are not reaching and grasping for every company that comes through the door so there are several uh there are several Industries there are several companies that are not paying the wages that we want to see there are companies that are not the right fit that we automatically say hey that's not a space that we're going to play in you could more than welcome to come of for worth if you'd like but that's not something we're going to incentivize and I think that has been very helpful when it comes to being able to be very strategic and focused about what we do want because we're not spending a lot of time dealing with the ton of companies that we really don't have any interest in trying to bring here let me address your last question and I think um it starts with again I talked about at home homegrown growth um 40 to 50 some odd meetings Since U both Steve and I have been in these new roles with existing companies saying thank you first of all for what you've already done for Fort Worth if you have growth plans moving forward we want to be the first ones to hear about it we want to make sure you grow at home I do not want to wake up nor do any of you and read a headline in in a paper that suggests a local Fort Worth company is going to go expand somewhere else where we hopefully had the opportunity to keep them at home so the local homegrown grow growth plans are just good oldfashioned uh knocking on doors showing up at people's offices letting them know that we're here to support and and asking them that question directly are you planning on growing if so when how and how can we bring the Cavalry to support you when you talk um Statewide it's about again identifying companies or Target industries that we want to have a conversation with it might be CEO change that's a perfect opportunity to go have a conversation with somebody who may not be in your backyard domestically it's a little bit more targeted and nuanced there are certain states that provide good opportunities for us to have introductory conversations High personal income tax states are a great place to start the gifts that keep on giving Illinois California increasingly the Carolinas Georgia Florida those are becoming competitive States um those are opportunities for us we need to be mobilized and ready to go have conversations and just introduce Fort Worth into that conversation and then take that internationally and be thoughtful as you are looking at the countries in that case that you want to go Target again we could spend every day of our job jobs you know going to states and countries around the world selling Fort Worth that would be a wonderful job but I would submit to you that the ROI on that effort would be very low it needs to be very thoughtful very targeted especially when you get to International work by the way you have translation issues you have cultural issues and oftentimes you have deal flow issues certain countries do deals very differently than other countries and very differently than the United States and so you've got to be wary of all of those conversations as you're going in so you don't just assume that it's a partnership and a traditional sense of doing business in the state of Texas or in the United States does that make sense thank you thanks and thank you for the presentation this was helpful for me and I really appreciate it anyone else yeah I I will tell we lost Dr Harden to to Arlington I'm not saying I want them back because they cut down a lot of trees but you know we we have had some losses that have been rather stinging so so I wish you all well thank you that's funny any other questions or comments Council go ahead Michael please hey thanks again for this guys really appreciate it if you had to summarize when you're talking to companies why they're even talking to Fort Worth in first place what what would you tell us as a council uh unique genuine authentic um and we care about our community and so if we're going to have a conversation with you about Fort Worth and what it means to be in Fort Worth and contributing to the Fort Worth community and economy we care deeply about that and you know I I would argue I get asked about incentives a lot and you know I wish nobody had incentives but unfortunately you know incentives exist um and so I I really give credit to Robert and his team you know for the presentation earlier there should be pretty strong teeth in those incentives they're taxpayer dollars at the end of the day they need to be used wisely um but again authentic genuine and we care about our community and um we expect those that look at our community to understand what it is to be for worth uh and to contribute to it moving forward that's a long answer but that's what I would suggest to you thank you all very much great job today we appreciate you okay Council next presentation is wait for it ah proposed 2024 neighborhood Improvement Victor Turner chrm I heard there's a Santa Claus hat to go along with this presentation there's a hat but but it's not on it's not on notice you wore a red sweater yeah yeah so David asked me to wear a Santa suit Santa Santa wears red black and white well done and a hat the Hat it's a little warm in here so that's why I didn't didn't wear the hat uh good afternoon mayor counsel uh it is again time for us to talk a little bit about our neighborhood Improvement program and neighborhoods that uh staff is recommending this year um as you know we've been doing this uh for quite some time now uh the graphic on the screen shows all the different neighborhoods that have been selected uh starting with stop 6 in 2017 uh so you can see a little bit about each one of those areas and the boundaries and the square miles uh in each of the areas um last year here we we solicit a consultant to take a look at the program after we been doing it for a few years to you know just take a look and see if there are any tweaks any changes we need to make one of the things that was developed was a scorecard so we can see how those areas have have done uh once we've invested some dollars in them so this is the overall scorecard uh showing each of the neighborhoods that we've uh selected over the past few years and you can see for for the most part there's been very positive change uh in all those neighborhoods there are couple exceptions in some categories but I think that will change and those kind of outliers Citywide so uh crime against property uh crime against persons you can see the trends there from 2015 uh through 2023 and then in some of the upcoming slides you'll see uh some of these same statistics for that particular neighborhood stop six report card um you can see some of the improvements that um have been made in stop six and there continues to be improvements there uh as we all know with the uh Choice neighborhood initiative uh that $35 million Grant uh from HUD uh kind of piggybacked on what city had already gotten started uh with uh the nip program uh just some more information about stop 6 and each each neighborhood will have uh the same report card talks about property values uh building permits issues and and crime Ash Crescent this neighborhood is pretty much done with the exception of one Park uh Smiley Park that uh property management and uh our Park and Recreation Department working on to finalize that acquisition and get that project uh completed and you can see some stats here about about the ash crested neighborhood as well north side there are uh no remaining dollars there you can see improvements that we've made in north side more there I know we we going to run through these till we can get to the the neighborhoods for this year uh rosmont is another uh area we do have a little bit of money left there that we're working with the neighborhood on getting that uh spent uh Como and we had this picture uh down here uh that was something that was uh added later um to uh help with uh trash in in in the lake and I think that's uh worked pretty well and you can see in in commo crimes against person how that's that's gone down and this this is unique uh with come because that was one of those neighborhoods that we we had a little bit of discussion about cameras and all and and uh they did relinquish and have some cameras but you can see there's been a reduction in crime and Como Las Vegas Trail Community um one of our more recent ones so there's still some dollars left there but uh we're making changes improvements there as well and the most recent historic Marine uh too recent to have much data to to report so uh since 2017 you can see the amount that have been invested in each and other neighborhoods um how much is remaining uh so we're we're doing pretty well um as far as expenditures in each of those neighborhoods now while I got my Santa suit on um the whole process of when we made the the the tweaks last last year with the consultant making some recommendations and one of it was um kind of to get them kickstarted uh an intense code enforcement effort try to clean up that neighborhood and you can see uh year one where it says clean up trash dumping uh overgrown foliage those type of things so that's kind of the approach we're taking going in cleaning up the neighborhood getting it ready for kind of the level two where we start doing some Capital uh investments in the neighborhood and then setting a stage for more uh more large scale uh projects and so that's kind of the the phase and then um as part of our uh neighborhood quality and revitalization committee it came up that instead of one neighborhood we should do two and so thankfully uh we have budget for that and I think with this phased approach that goes uh really well with having more than one neighborhood and so uh previously we had probably I don't know 27 different metrics that we were measuring try to select neighborhoods so part of that Consultants uh review and recommendation was to consolidate that and so you can see we have three large buckets uh here uh financial hardship opportunity and neighborhood condition and you can see what makes up uh each one of those uh categories and we score those um across the city by census track this is another uh graph showing uh those areas and and the the color codes there to show um um how they score or in each one of those those areas financial hardship and you can see the sections of the city uh that are most hit by uh financial hardship and you saw the definitions of that earlier on the earlier slide uh oper opportunity which basically is about education and then the neighborhood condition uh infrastructure related things and and sidewalks so final selection no drum roll okay we keep going all right all right so uh after going through all that scoring uh the top two neighborhoods that came out are Seminary from uh Council District 9 and worth Heights from District 11 this is a more close boundary of of Seminary and that's that's based on that that census track you can see some of the the Assets in the in the area the greenb community center and park uh worth Heights um see that boundary there and this map shows some some recent things you can see the Community Land Trust uh over to the left of the screen where it says Carol Park CLT and then most recently when we invested in Tobias plate overlay uh how those neighborhoods uh uh are um categorized uh based on that that neighborhood conservation strategy plan we did and you can see worth Heights is in that uh color of I guess that's fuchsia or pink or something that's uh distressed and um also um um the other neighborhood that that's kind of a lighter pink Seminary so the two neighborhoods we're recommending our seminary in worth Heights for this coming year and uh take any questions Elizabeth thank you so much that is such a great gift to not just District 9 but the city um what I really want want to applaud in this new methodology um is that if you look at the map and you see that um we we could kind of go all over the city um but we're really making sure that we're um capitalizing on any investment that is going or recently has gone in that neighborhood um and I think that's just a really good use of of these funds uh because it really um you know it can stop the bleed in some areas and um it really helps us hyperfocus so thank you for doing that U thank you to staff for really sitting down and working with the neighborhood um Quality and revitalization committee um to kind of develop that and move forward so thank you very much you're welcome thank you Janette just thank you so much I'm very excited for District 11 City of Fort Worth you know just I'm really happy that you focus on the neighborhoods that really need these type of improvements you know worth Heights has a lot of issues and I'm hoping that you know it's just surrounding that Rosemont neighbor neighborhood and just like Elizabeth says capitalize on improvements that were made in the area but thank you again Carlos Victor I I think we mentioned it to you before um North North Side that might get confusing uh you know terminology but that's the far greater North Side Historical Area so thanks Jared um thanks Victor for the presentation um and also thanks to nqrc and his Council for app approving the neighborhood conservation strategy um this is um fruits of you know your team's labor and all of our labor and it's really neat to be able to see the three-year phase um phased approach on top of two more neighborhoods um on top of the scorecards to show proof of concept and impact I mean so all in all this is really really cool to see um the work in action I wasn't sure what the scorecards will look like when um we were um the discussing it um um as a committee but I'm really excited to see the results for our previous neighborhoods who have been selected and have um worked through these levels of investment so all in all really cool awesome job and I'm so proud of this moment thank youall Chris uh Victor if you can go back to the slide of the selections for me please that one is that yes right so I'm I'm looking at the the one through five and I'm glad that you did this as well when we look at that number as of today what's the likelihood that those can actually change when you go back and do the study for the next year for two yeah uh the crime statistics could definitely uh cause that to shift a little bit those that are uh three through five so uh the other things are based on the Census Data so they're not going to change much but but crime could definitely um cause a CH change in the scoring all right thank you anybody else great job Victor and team thank you very much yeah we have a whole uh group of them back here that been stand up andag y'all I see you here hid [Applause] out so I brought my own am man corner just in case like what I said in case we didn't like it you have a have a chorus back there that's good thank you Victor appreciate you okay Council next presentation is update on take-home vehicle policy and use Brad Hunter property management and Christian Simmons I think are going to do this one so so short I feel like I'm going to stand to the side so you can actually see me good afternoon mayor and Council Christian Simmons from the Fort Worth lab and I am here solo today um to talk about take-home City vehicles I do want to say thank you publicly because I think he's watching the live stream to Brad Hunter who is the ad over Fleet in Property Management he wanted to be here today and couldn't but he's been a huge collaborator on this project um and thank you to the other folks in property management and the lab who helped um it's you know never a solo effort as you all know so here today to talk about take-home City vehicles um as most of you know the city allows take-home vehicles for certain employees in certain positions um largely with the purpose of uh being able to respond in an emergency in a timely manner and so today we'll talk about how those policies look across the organization we'll show you some maps um as far as the current practice with take home Vehicles the lab did a compl clients review um so we'll talk about the results of that and then um progress and recommendations and a path forward the reason that I should explain this early on the reason I'm standing here um from the fort withth lab is because as the lab builds out its data arm for data analytics across the organization um we're looking to be a collaborative thought partner on projects like this where there's a big element of data collection analysis and in this case even visualization through mapping um and so that's why you're hearing from the lab on this on this process so we'll start with current policy overview um the first one I'll mention is in the middle there there's an overarching policy in the city's code of ordinances and in this part of the city code it's section 2189 c um and that code says that if you live outside the city limits and you're a person who um is going to be called upon to respond in a civil emergency that you should be able to respond to that emergency within 30 minutes so you should reside in a place where you can get the call get in your car respond in 30 minutes wherever that emergency is occurring and that's in normal daytime traffic going the speed limit so that's what the code says um that's still definitely an active and relevant part of the city code and so it's important to mention that um as the foundation against which these other policies should be built or at least balanced uh the second policy we'll talk about is the administrative regulation or ar E6 it's the use of City Vehicles it was uh last revised I think in October of 2018 the scope of this policy is All City departments accept police and fire I'll mention at this stage that today we're only talking about one Department that takes home Vehicles regularly outside of police and fire that's the property management department so you'll see on a later slide that there have been departments who opt in and out of this program over time um so we'll talk a little bit about that but for today um this AR is primarily focusing on property Management's use but any uh Department who opts in would be subject to the regulations in this AR so you'll see see the criteria there and this is all in your pocket so we don't have to read each piece um but you'll see the criteria number one necessary to respond to emergencies and then there's a couple of or statements about clean air objectives or other factors that contribute to efficiency so if you're a person who falls um under the take-home vehicle you know that's a privilege that you can have based on your position and your role with the city there's a few things that you have to do and those are outlined in the policy you have to annually submit this form to vehicle use agreement form the director of your Department is supposed to approve that you're supposed to have defensive driving every 3 years your vehicle should be outfitted with an AVL or an automatic vehicle locator that's a program through property Management's Fleet Department um and then your department should be verifying your home address I'm taking a minute to go through these now because when we populate the rest of the table there's lots of similarities um once you have a take home vehicle uh the Department is supposed to be doing quarterly internal reporting on vehicles where they are and how much um on call is happening that justifies the program um and then for every policy you'll see there is supposed to be an annual reporting process through budget um development so that would now go through the forth lab the authority to amend the policy uh the ARs is with the city manager so I'm going to skip and show you the next two just for method of comparing across the table um and because they're very similar so fire and police both have their own um sop or go for the home vehicles and I want to say that these policies can be more restrictive but are not less restrictive than the city's policy um and that's how they should read and so fires practice is um again necessary to respond to emergency or a high frequency of after hours use um they are also supposed to be submitting a form um approved by the fire chief or design and then they to um suggest quarterly internal reporting in their policy if requested by the fire Chief and they have an annual reporting requirement as well uh the difference going to the police general orders really the only differences I'll highlight are that they have an extra criteria that allows them to take home a vehicle that is that it advances the goal of police visibility in the city so that's one thing that's unique to them um their requirements are mostly the same and then reporting the Geo is actually more restrictive than the other policies we've seen because they are requiring employee monthly reporting on their after hours usage so that's the current overview of where the policies sit as we stand today you saw in each that there's a vehicle use agreement or a um a tool at least to sort of tell us where our vehicles are and who's driving them everyone right now this is a good this is a good news thing all those departments are using this same form and I know it's like a little dry to talk about a form but the form is important because it helps us with compliance to this policy so I want to tell you what it is it's an electronic form um and when employees sign it they're agreeing to a number of rules and regulations most of them are what You' think they'd be it's like I'm not using my vehicle for personal things I'm not traveling outside my authorized range without permission I'm adhering to all the rules um and then I'll highlight that fifth bullet they're acknowledging that they understand that the vehicle benefit the like the privilege of taking home a vehicle is subject to Federal taxable imputed income so they see that on their pay stubs there are some positions that are exempt from that it's really not the position it's the vehicle so for relevancy today that's marked police and fire vehicles if your a person who drives those you are exempt from the federal taxable imputed income um unmarked vehicles that have a law enforcement officer driving them are also exempt so I mentioned at the outset the reason I'm up here happily up here with you is that the lab did this data collection and so uh we provided we we queried all the data sources and provided the Departments with inventory lists and said here's what we think you have is that right what do you have and answer these questions so these questions were uh designed to measure the compliance with those policies that we've gone over so we'll get into the data it's an interesting part now that you have the right context um here's who's currently taking home vehicles on a regular basis so you'll see the police is 95% of the total and then we have property management and fire as I mentioned making up the other 5% at the bottom there you'll see uh Aviation code Parks CPW water all advised and we've you know tested this that they're not currently allowing takehome City vehicles on a daily basis so all of these departments at one point or another have had um part in the take-home vehicle program um and and they're not doing it anymore for various reasons um tbw has Vehicles assigned to people to take home when they're on call which might happen like four to six times a year or um sometimes in the case of like a winter storm they'll take home a vehicle and then water um pulled back their take- home vehicle program earlier this year and they're developing a supplemental policy which will be as or more restrictive than the city's policy but you should also remember that water has 247 Crews as well so that you know that sort of um changes what callback needs this is a map um I'll Orient you to the map so if you can see if you if you can see the color um that external purple line the outmost line that's a 10 mile buffer from the edges of the city limits so that gets us almost a D in the north almost at like Dallas we're pushing Dallas in the East um not quite to CBR in the South I think it actually goes through like Alvaro on 35 and then to the West Weatherford um so it's a 10 mile around the city limits or from the city limits then the green you can see the green is a five mile buffer um the Departments and their uh vehicles are noted by color you can see the legend there so Red's fire Blue's Police yellow's property management um if you prefer the data in a table it's there but some of the interesting statistics are off to the left so across all departments um the three we're talking about 58% of those vehicles are going outside the city limits on a regular basis mostly daily um police again makes up the majority of the total almost 60% of theirs go outside the limits and then the other two um have about half going outside the limits as well so we have maps by department just so you can see um oh I should mention the city limits if helpful are shaded a little darker like within you'll be able to see that on subsequent Maps a little bit better um so here's police's Vehicles we started we we did the five and 10 Mile buffers because you know the code says 30 minutes and we're trying to put some framework around like you know what does that look like in an objective way and so um this is how we decided to take a stab at it for this first conversation the five miles um if we were to make a policy change I'm not saying we are if we were to make a policy change that you know we were going to do a five mile buffer then 25% of police's vehicles are still outside that line and then if you increase it to 10 then 12% of their vehicles are still outside that line just kind of shows you where we are here's fire they have 11 Vehicles they're about half and half and then here's Property Management okay so that's Maps compliance findings um the maps obviously tell the story of where people are but they don't really tell the whole story on how are we doing with all those policy and anounce that we saw um it's it's sort it's safe to say that no one's perfectly compliant with the policies as they sit um definitely some reporting gaps to close so I wanted to highlight you know some of the things we are doing well I mentioned the form that it's available electronically everyone's using that form um they're not doing it as regularly as they should um we have the ability to pull reports on submitted vehicle use forms that's a helpful tool for departments that they probably really don't even know um and so we're planning to communicate with departments about that um and then we just lack processes for things that are outlined in the policy like driver's records checks driver's license checks have you taken defensive driving like some of those questions were supposed to be answering it's just not a great process for those right now um I'll mention on the left hand side there avls um I mentioned the automatic vehicle locator program through Fleet it's a great program um I think the latest iteration was like 2021 or something so um through that program we can do location monitoring because it's important to know where assets are obviously and track compliance with the program you can also draw a Geo fence with AVL and say like here's where I think the car should be and I want to get a ping if it's not there so there's some tools that we could use in a more robust fashion through the AVL program um I will say that police and fire don't have the AVL program they have um something different that happens through their mobile data computers but similar tools um quarterly internal departmental reporting is not happening on a regular basis and the fourth lab um has not been through the budget office in whatever previous iteration it was have not been um collecting that annual data and part of that annual data collection is supposed to include justification so that's an important piece of it um it's so it's not just like where are the cars it's why are you taking it home and is this still relevant based on your own records so here are a couple of recommendations um we'd like to First improve weaknesses in that vehicle use agreement form and like I said it's not the most exciting of topics but it is um I feel confident that it'll improve like a large chunk like 90% of the compliance and Reporting issues because we'll have accurate data at any given time we'd like to make that an automated push so like if you're on the city Network you might get um an auto push every year for like security training or some other like expired thing we'd like to do that with the the vehicle form so we'll be doing that' already convened the committee for a lot of these recommendations we'll be providing departments with a standardized format for internal tracking and Reporting um I think we'll revise the reporting requirement from quarterly to by annual twice a year for um our purposes um knowing that the Departments can still choose to take a more restricted um Cadence what they're reporting um and then the Fort Worth lab is going to conduct regular audits on compliance of departments I do think that will fall to us um and we commit to implementing that required annual justification process through the um the budget development stuff so it'll happen starting an fy2 budget development which is like coming so soon just already um outside of just report in the bigger question of like policy amendments we're going to do some cleanup update language across like PRS and administrative regulations Goos and Sops because there are some inconsistencies so that's an easy like matching definitions and requirements cleanup um there's also some vague language that I think we want to revisit like special circumstances that's um something that's allowed you can say a director can approve in special circumstances and I think you know based on what we're seeing we want to put some more framework around what that means we'll clarify some more reporting requirements for what the department should be collecting as far as not where the vehicle is but how it's being used and how often and then that last bullet I think is a key um going back to how I began which is we need to determine how to best comply with that response time requirement that's in the city code um and set a timeline for what implementation of that might look like if changes arise from those discussions so that's the story that's where we are right now now um these are sort of a a stab at next steps so this includes some of the form revisions um we've already convened like a cross- departmental committee to fix at least the reporting side so that we're compliant with the policies um and then we'll complete policy updates too hopefully in the first quarter and we'd like to commit to coming back in you know five or six months and updating you on the status of all of this so with that I will help facilitate discussion or take questions thank you uh thank you for putting this together I know that it was a tremendous amount of work um the first thing that I want to talk about is the length of time that it took us to get this um report to council I asked for this IR back in June um so it's taken us close to six months to get this done um and it's worrisome that it took that long but it took that long because we did not have this data because we were not following the policy um and so I'm I'm glad that we have at least writed that ship so thank you to the Fort Worth lab and to David Cook and to all the Departments um that that put in this effort to make sure that we were doing what we said we were going to do back in 2018 when that policy was enacted um I asked for this IR because I got a sense something was aai um and that sense turned out to be correct we weren't follow following policy um but more importantly we did not have an eye on our assets it is our job as a council to be good stewards of the tax dollars that are given to us by our residents um it's a job I take seriously I know it's a job that we all take seriously here on this Council um to do that we have to protect the assets that we have whether they be buildings or vehicles and I don't know under this current standard even now that we're in reporting policy right we so so let's be clear we're we're now within policy with the exception of the 30 minute which it sounds like um staff is is grappling with um but that policy was based solely on how we report right and so now we have a form that everybody fills out now we know how many cars we have and we know where they're going um because previous to this we did not know where they were going um and so thank you for that but I think it's time to really have a discussion about a reasonable policy if you could back to the map that shows all of the vehicles that are leaving the city thank you that is obene to me when I look at that map to think that that many vehicles aren't just traveling outside of the city limits outside of our etj outside of a 10 mile buffer but we've got folks traveling you know hours away on in City vehicles and so so David who who pays for the gas on those do do the city employees put their own gas in those vehicles or is that on our on our on ours our dollar hello I'm David D I'd like to answer this question um yeah so um I think what property management has advised is that typically these are paid for by uh like Fleet fuel cards so our tax our tax dollars our residents are paying for these hourong or twoh hour long commute um both ways every day correct okay great um who pays for the maintenance of these vehicles when they need their regularly scheduled oil changes yeah that's the city as well okay and that goes mostly through the James Avenue service center correct so we have put that asset in place to protect those assets and now I mean we're keeping them in good use because we're traveling you know what what is that far up way those two dots way up top do you happen to know what city that is I don't even know where that is that I mean I it's north of jaboro it is North yeah um I don't remember I know the one here that's like Ray hubard or whatever yeah so so so we've got folks going out to Bridgeport in Lake Ray hubard it looks like not quite to Graham but almost to pum Kingdom yep okay great that's right um so my question is what is the the reasonable policy going to look like because I am not comfortable with our taxpayers footing this bill and so I'd like a followup to know I'd like a dollar amount placed to this I think that's really important because I know last year we had to adjust PD's budget by $2 million specific to their fuel because they had gone $2 million over their fuel budget um and when you look at this map and you see just in addition to the the work that they do keeping our residents safe they're driving hours at a time I'm sure that adds up quite quickly when gas is three or $4 a gallon I'm sure our residents would love to have their gas bill uh you know their gas paid for by a fleet as well but we're not able to do that and so I think uh we owe it to our residents to make sure that we are tightening that Circle and that we are not um subsidizing commutes for any of our employees it's a gift of public funds I I'm not done so I have some questions of PD specific if they'd like to have someone come up here Christian or maybe you can answer them he's coming Chief noes is coming up thanks Chief appreciate it mayor and counsel thank you yes Ma so you're on the hot seat because y'all have the most Vehicles so um my first question is what is your process in selecting who does and doesn't doesn't get a take-home vehicle uh the policy is set up so we have some positions that are preapproved for different tiers of either take-home or offside parking okay there is a form a take-home vehicle request form that's available online on our portal that would be filled out by an officer making the request and this request goes up to the chain of command digitally through the system uh the deputy chief uh over each officer is responsible for approval but then they can go all the way up through assistant chief and chief as well okay um can you give me some examples of um the types of you mentioned tiers so could you step that back and explain to me what those tiers mean yes so there's basically four tiers first tier is full privileges inside the city or outside the city limits okay that's reserved for uh units such as SWAT uh hostage negotiations teams where where life uh is is potentially on the line and their response is uh obviously very important uh next we have the second tier which is in city limits or within five miles of the city limits uh tier three would be Vehicles sorry can you give me an example of what maybe tier two might look like yeah actually I have a list here if you'll give me a moment I can give you some specific examples if you want to go whatever is if you want to go through the tear and then give me the examples or do it as you go it's taking a moment to pull up um I'll go ahead and go through the rest of the tiers that third tier is for um vehicles that are not allowed to be taken home but they can be parked at an approved off-site location uh maybe another city facility uh there's also an option for neighboring cities maybe at a police department and a city that joins that it's borders City of Fort Worth and the last tier doesn't have to do with taking Vehicles home uh it's not one we make use of very often but if parking is a problem at a specific home assignment for an officer so much so that they don't have room to park through vehicle at that location they're allowed to park it at a secondary location with approval through that system okay so the main ones as far as what we're talking about today which would be uh officers who are taking their vehicles either home or parking offside on the way home would be one of those first three tiers okay great um has your list pulled up yet let me see while you're waiting uh are there any uh as you're promoted through Fort Worth PD um is there any point in which you're automatically assigned to take-home vehicle uh normally that's going to happen and if you look at the tiers the tier one is usually allowed for captains and above okay now there are some positions uh say for some sergeants or lieutenants and investigative units who have Heavy after hours usage of vehicles because of call back for uh in traffic maybe for for fatality accidents uh maybe a detective in a homicide unit responding to a homicide scene things like that okay um generally speaking so over half of the vehicles are leaving forward City Limits yes ma'am um and the majority of those are unmarked and so can you tell me specifically what types of vehicles are these unmarked vehicles are they could be uh tahos uh could be Chevy Impalas um maybe Ford Explorers uh there's various types of vehicles and how do you determine who gets what uh the vehicles are usually assigned based on the assignment and the need for instance a detective probably would not need an SUV responding to the scenes that they do they don't have a lot of equipment they have to carry if it's a SWAT unit they V has to be something that can not only uh store the equipment they have but secure it as well so it'll depend on the needs of that officer based on their assignment okay gotcha because these are vehicles that they are taking to straight to a call they're not coming in any place else that and that is the point we don't want them to have to stop and go somewhere transfer equipment we want them to be able to go straight to the uh location where they've been called okay um do you know how often we replace uh PD vehicles I don't know the schedule we can get you that information uh usually based on mileage but I don't know the exact uh the schedule off hand the exact mileage yes ma'am okay um is there ever any I guess one concern I have is um or let me ask do you ever audit once someone is given a vehicle that they were actually called in or after hours work what's supposed to happen is there's an after hour after hours usage for form and officers are supposed to fill out whenever they use the vehicle after hours it's justification for taking the vehicle in the first place and that is to be audited periodically um so is that uh is that form being utilized not the way it should be okay once this came up we started looking into it and and listen any any blame or any fingers pointed it all goes right here yeah uh I was not doing what I needed to do to make sure that everyone was following the policy as they should uh to make sure sure that these after hours usage forms were being done as they should that's something we're in the process of correcting right now and working with uh Fernando Costa working with the lab we're working on ways to make sure we's there's more levels of accountability accountability to make sure what needs to be done is going to be done because up to this point it hasn't been done the way it should have been right it was you and everybody else to be clear so what's that I said it was you and everybody else it wasn't just the whole city was was not following rules uh and so as we start doing these after hour usage um reporting because sounds like we're going to start making sure that that that's occurring as it should um what are your plans to audit and these particular positions to ensure that they in fact need um a take-home vehicle well one of the things we're going to be looking at obviously is our policy sure and if the policy aligns with the vision of the city when it comes to take-home vehicles our policy does require monthly reports to evaluate the indicated usage of Department vehicles and the appropriateness of continuation of take-home or offset parking privileges the policy is there we just need to make sure we're following it sure and then uh my last uh I I think my last question is um what is that threshold is it I got called in once you know this month or this quarter or I got you know I'm being called in once a week you know once every two weeks what's that justification look like for yall that's where we're trying to get a term and I don't want to have a knee-jerk reaction and just just pull a number out of thin air we've been talking with assistant City man manager Costa about that we've actually reached out to multiple apartments in the area to see if we can determine a best standard on how that's tracked and what the proper justification is so we'll definitely be providing that number but at this point I feel it'll be premature for me to give a number when before we look at the data that's fair um I think that's all I have right now thank you thank you questions Council Williams thank you mayor um this might be for the lab but um am I understanding correctly that there is no method of track or we're not currently tracking whether vehicles are being used at any of these places outside the city for non City uses I don't think we're currently tracking it based on the data here I think um the way we would do that is via vehicle location um employees are certainly signing that they're not doing that but I don't think that's being actively verified now okay thank you and then one legal question um for vehicles whether they're being used for City use but especially not City use um what is the risk if they're in an accident that's their fault to the city can I add if I can add to that um and what does that risk look like if there's a non- city employee traveling in that vehicle par our city policy if an employee is not acting in the course and scope of their employment we're not obligated legally obligated to car um to provide them a defense like we normally would for an employee or to pay damages separate and apart from the fact that as a city who um has Vehicles just like you if you're allowing someone to drive your vehicles you're obligated your insurance would pick up so one of the requirements that we have for the city is that employees have to have insurance and if you are involved in um if you are involved in an accident then we would pay just like a city your insurance policy 30,000 limit and anything other other above that could come from um the city uh from the employee also because we have rules in place about driving Vehicles not in the course in scope um if you are violating policy you could be disciplined and you could lose your privilege for driving a vehicle and then just to follow up for the portions of the policy that we're not currently following does that add additional risk to the same question so the risk is always and I'm saying this in public but the risk is always the same whether or not you're um if if you're driving a vehicle um and you are um and you're not looking where you're going and you hit somebody um that happens every day with anybody driving a vehicle you get claims for Dam notices of claims um at all of every other council meeting and if you look at them you'll notice most of them are accidents so accidents happen when you have this many vehicles um on the street that's going to happen um it's um we don't see a whole lot of them happening outside of the city limits or a lot after hours there have been occasions when we have said we are we don't think you in the co Courant scope of your employment and so uh we're going to deny coverage but that doesn't happen very often the vast majority of our accidents occur on duty and be it from whatever department and inside the city limits thank you um and just a kind of R that's all the questions I have but I'm just as a comment I'm I'm um I'm a bit concerned um with although I understand the timeline the six months to try to become incompliance I'm concerned of risk management issues if in the event of us trying to correct this issue that in that timeline something really unfortunate happens um in our vehicles especially as far as they're going um and so I am not sure if that's I don't the six-month htim doesn't really sit well um without corrective actions more immediate to reduce some of that risk Council mcraine yeah thanks uh thank you again for this thanks Elizabeth for bringing this up to one question I do I think we have to parse and make sure as we move forward I know that there are police officers that are hired our churches our synagogues our schools off duty special events so that isn't really considered City business per se though sometimes I think we require it depending on how large the event is so some of these vehicles I know travel and go to those what I would say not City business but are a public safety concern so I don't know if you have a comment on that chief of why I think you mean what you think about that but at least looking forward what that looks like and just parsing that I'm I'm not sure I understand the question Council in other words if someone's driving their their vehicle to an off duty assignment how do that how does that lay into this policy there is an approval process for that as well uh there are many part-time jobs where there is absolutely no benefit to having a a marked Patrol unit there on scene with the officer but there are some and as you mentioned maybe at our houses of worship within the city where the deterrent of a marked Patrol unit out front is absolutely beneficial to everyone involved so there's a process for that approval and in situations like that we do approve them to use those uh in an off-duty capacity Chief would wouldn't that U thank you for bringing that up Michael because I think that's fair um I my opinion would be that falls under the advances police visibility in the city and so um you know as long as it's within the city limits and and PD as y'all because don't you correct me if I'm wrong but every um every off-duty position like that y'all approve correct yes that's correct and so as long as it's within the city limits and it it it is to that end of advances police visibility in the city um i' like I think that that's a really good use of that um I I would be interested to know a followup um The Marked versus unmarked I know for operational reasons some Vehicles need to be unmarked right we don't want undercover Vehicles marked true um but when we talk about police visibility we do that because we want people to feel safe and I know a lot of us get comments you know I never see a police officer driving around well they could right we know that about half of our um vehicles are unmarked vehicles and so um when we're giving those tahos those impal you know Impalas whatever it is um Can more of them be marked I know that there's a cost associated with that because you've got to go to the paint shop but I think that goes a long way to increasing Vis visibility of our um our police officers throughout the city so as you go through this process I would ask you to look at um what when you decide if it's marked or unmarked and what we can do to expand the number of marked vehicles to to um align with that that part of that particular part of the policy okay I just got a comment thank you mayor uh my biggest take away from this thank you Chief uh and thank you Council back for bringing this up my biggest takea away from this is uh the budget how it affects um our budgeting process and the fuel that is used traveling so far outside of the scope of the city of forward um although I know it's important that they can go straight from where they live to the an incident or accident I don't know if I want someone traveling from Min Wells having to wait to come because that's still going to take 30 45 minutes and sometime even with our traffic uh going down 35 so as we go through this process of we looking at our policy I think it's important that we consider how far we want to allow certain vehicles to go and how much we going to be if we're going to be 100% responsible for I think that there needs to be a community weigh in on how how many vehicles we going allow to travel miles and miles outside of the 10 Mile Rus so that's what I want to look into the policy um and if we want to put a budget cap on fuel and so I think it's going to determine between PD fire and other departments to determine within their own departments how much they're going to use how many vehicles they're going to allow to go outside that radius and I think that would be fair to our community and not to our residents those are my comments Council Rens thank you mayor and thank you to council member Beck for uncovering this or bringing this this up Chief my my concern is number one you know hats off for being standup you know taking the questions I think all the questions that I even thought of were already prosecuted by council member bet and I appreciate your candidness here my concern is how this is going to impact morale because when you take a look at employees who were able to take Vehicles home there's obviously some type of benefit there and so I hope as you're looking for the answers to bring things right make sure you get the input from your your police officers because there will be some who can have uh who can weigh in with some positive input and I think that's going to be helpful with morale because you would expect a dip I think if you make sure you include them all with suggestions it may end up you know working for the for the better thank you very much for for recognizing that mayor Pro Tim I appreciate that because that is a concern there there will be a hit to morale there's no question about it because uh with the discussions we're having there's a possibility some people lose their take-home privileges um not something anyone wants to hear and in a time where we're struggling to hire and retain who we can I I hate to have any other reason for someone to be disgruntled uh but definitely will be something we need to have officers involved in as much as possible but there will be an impact to morale for at least some best of luck thank you any other questions or comments from Council Council lorf I just have one just a question about the uh the map I love Maps so thank you for the map um is this taken was this like one snapshot in time or was this this is the I guess the the final place for the vehicles every night or I guess what was the data used for for this particular so this map represents the addresses where the vehicles are going and residing for the night and it's a snapshot of current data that we worked back and forth with the Departments to validate okay gotcha thanks any other questions from Council Janette so this may be too much in the weeds but let's say there is a police officer in South Division um so will the radius start from their work area if they only stay in that division for their job if I may Christian that's something we're looking at with the policies that we have looked at from other dep uh departments and looking at our policy we've been trying to compare the way distances are measured some measure from the city limits some measure from the place of assignment some may measure from city hall or a Criminal Justice Center um very preliminary I don't know what the best is going to be but if you look at a map of the city of for worth it's hard to find a center where everything is even on all sides of town uh it's possible that doing it with something similar to this the buffer inside or outside of the city limits may be the best way to go but we're looking to try to determine the best way to do that that's going to be fair to all in all assignments and also recognize the fact that with some units again we'll go back to swat they're not responding to their regular business location they could be responding to anywhere in the city and even if they live in the city of forward say in Far South Division depending on the time of day they can't get to the other side of the city in 30 minutes themselves so we're trying to determine the best way to measure uh measure it that's fair for all and being respectful of the re resources that we have jar I think that begs a an operational question for me if we' got these folks that are uh that we need and we need quickly right it's the nature of their job um are there any we the city policy of 30 minutes but is there a is there a restriction does the four PD have a restriction on um on that distance to you know that recall time based on as as part of the application process for some of these specialized units I'd have to go back and look at this application process for those units we can definitely find that information out for you because when you I I want them there as quickly and as safely as possible whenever there's a crisis I think that goes without saying um but if we've got folks that are in those I mean it looks like we've got a couple down near Hillsboro right um it doesn't matter what whose car you're in or how fast you're going it's going to take a tremendous amount of time for you to get even to the you know the most southern border of our city um and so that's also something that I think should probably be taken into consideration is um practically speaking can they respond in a reasonable amount of time to keep our residents safe um regardless of if it's a take-home vehicle or not I'm not telling you to tell people where to live but um I mean from an operational standpoint that does seem like it could cause some issues for you counc Williams thank you mayor um Dove telling off of that it would make sense maybe to as a way of incentivizing um officers living closer to these buffers if maybe we provided a housing allowance and that's something that maybe we could discuss in the next budget cycle but um some of these take homes are really far the second thing I was curious of um after council member Martinez's question is um operationally speaking does the clock in terms of um hourly wages start from the moment they get in the car especially for some of these take-home video um vehicles that are further out like how does the hourly rate start or their on duty start when they're so far away normally when they're already off duty uh they're already at home when they get the call to respond that's when we start the clock because we've interrupted what they would have been doing in their own personal lives at that point so as soon as they get the call that's when we start and then if it's if they're not called in and it's just like a regular shift do they does the clock start from the time they get in the car or when they get to there well it starts whatever the normal shift time is so regardless of how long it takes them to get there or how early they may get there the pay doesn't start until that shift starts I see so if they're on a morning shift they their shift is starts at 6:00 a.m. doesn't matter what time they leave the house doesn't matter if they get there at 5:00 a.m. to work out first at 6:00 a.m. when roll call uh starts that that's when the pay starts got it thank you yes sir Michael one one last thing did you anybody I just want to say uh thank you to you and your team and everybody for the bank uh apprehending that and what y'all do for us every day so I do appreciate and you know we'll we'll musle through this but I appreciate what y'all do for us thank you um only one closing comment I'm less concerned about the distance for some of these if the job justifies it so I think that's where the detail is going to be needed for for the committee that you've convened to really understand where these tiers are who is receiving the vehicle and importantly it's a protection for your officers to or any other City employee that's taking home vehicles to make sure the policy is being adhere to in all departments and if that's not the case it really is comes down on them individually and no one wants that at the end of the day um and then second piece I it was brought up earlier about um morale from mayor Tim bons I couldn't agree more and so just being cognizant of that and I don't know who's on the committee but making sure some of your officers that have had a take-home vehicle and some of these specialized units and giving you feedback on how important that has been um or in in units that you maybe could rethink that policy they don't need a take-home vehicle and they could use a leather parking location moving forward but um I think we all can agree that budgets get squeezed and this is one area we could probably look to um be better stewards of taxpayer dollars um if at all possible so thank you for your hard work and we'll wait to come back when you're ready for additional policy changes thank you mayor thank you thank you conclusion of our presentations do we have any um future agenda items we want to discuss with CMO anyone else yes council member crane I have a few here um one I know back in October the 17th this has to deal with homelessness um a coalition sent a letter and just put in terms high priority medium priority longer priority I'd like us to actually an on that to exp to explore what is possible in the shortterm mid midterm and I know we're doing a bigger study but I think I think that's uh uh at least to have us to have an answer of how we're going to address that the second thing and and it can go together I don't know can um you know I feel sometimes this I'm say I'm using the word feel maybe we're not addressing the homeless population as best we can in a strategy and I think our team does a great job I'm not saying that but I think is we're all dealing with the subject um you know Austin has a homeless strategy office um you've got a a volunteer Court in Dallas now with homeless initiatives and Li to floor Brewer and all the great work she did um maybe we look at a more comprehensive plan of what we're doing there um and we can talk through what that what that looks like and then the third thing is deals with valet parking um i' just like to know and I've read through the ordinance um do we ever we issue issue them uh licenses but I don't know do we ever go back and look are they being utilized and used and what does that look like and so in light of driving around you'll see lots of can't park here ballet but we don't see any ballet out in front of it so like to look at that Council M bons I'm going to segue from council member crane the uh National League of cities is taking on homelessness in a real aggressive way now and what I wanted to see Michael I know staff listens to us and sometimes they give us U suggestions based on what they think we can accept and in the past I've told them don't ever bring little bitty houses to me and don't bring trendy things to me but now you I'm really trying to figure out some things we can do and so I would like for Victor's staff and DJ's staff to get together and see what type of housing can be brought to help homelessness uh I I looked at them as little Villages for a while surely there there must be some land in town that can be donated where we could accommodate a community that has housing that I disliked terribly in the past but I give and so I need some creative suggestions to address homelessness and I'm really thinking about not just homeless people but Veterans as well and we need some help so staff if you've heard me tell you don't bring that to me forget that we have a real problem that needs to be taken more seriously than what we're doing now and little bitty houses can be a part of that for me I don't know what else is out there you I want to say something to to that point Gina because I remember this I know you remember this when Johnson Murphy was here heading the zoning section she was working on that until we lost her to the City of Irving Irving so I think we lost continuity there we were talking about this years ago yeah yeah I'm serious I'm I'm desperate now Council lar then to Chris so I guess to add on to U council member Crane's thing I I met with a um homeless veteran just last week actually well he's living in his truck and he's trying to get off his feet and he was driven away he was underneath some Bridge with another community of folks living in their vehicles and they were driven away like well where do we go now so they're looking for place and so we were talking about parking lots there's other cities who are implementing uh safe places for these for these vehicles to park um as they're in transition is what they're saying um so they just want a safe place so there's a few places north Fort Worth where you know they're parking in the um business parking lots and the businesses are letting them because their businesses are actually giving them jobs too and so the citizens they're coming to me they're like hey I got a real big problem with this like can we get them tickets for the registration what can we do to drive them off I said well that's not going to make it any better for them so why are we going to make the issue worse make their situation worse um and so one of the things I'd like to look at and I was excited about that the lots that were for sale but unfortunately I went through all of them that wouldn't help but I'd like to know if there's any public property that we own uh any large parking lots uh that we may be able to utilize in a um I guess more efficient manner for a safe place for folks to park their for the you know the the homeless living in their vehicle who are just one more issue away from actually being in a tent outside of the taco battle and nor for so I'd like to know if we if we if the city owns any assets that we could utilize for that Chris yeah and I just want to add to I think that's what Michael was saying but if not I want to add to it looking at that position being a more high level position not getting rid of what we have as it relates to homeless but adding to we have chief officer of communication we have the lab which makes it a more brighter so I think adding to what we have in a more comprehensive Chief level position to handle this Innovation as it relates to homelessness and also I've been talking with Leanne about uh Council compensation uh and I know that uh some laws state that uh it can be within two years and I said we don't meet that for this may I know Jared had brought up an election in November and so I want this Council to consider or something brought back to us because it doesn't make sense to happen in election cycle which will be next May so if it's not this may which we don't make it legally if it's not November then we're talking about two or three years from now reconsidering um Council conversation about Charter election sure y okay or y'all can pay for my house like Jared said anybody else Council yes Carlos and then tocy i' like an update from tpw on the vision zero uh program haven't heard anything about it when in NLC I stopped and talked to a couple of GM Engineers they're doing their own Vision zero thing so I'm curious to see if any details are we collaborating with them and uh you know we're not uh what are we doing you know just a status report councilor Mill um I think just to tag on I think we're all concerned about homelessness um it might be helpful if we had someone from the mental health area as well because let's get down to the root of it yes we can try to house them but I think mental illness and addiction and some other things are causing the homelessness problem we're in so I don't know if that's a helpful thing for y'all to have JPS or healing Shepherd Clinic or people that are on the ground on East Lancaster that work with these people every day come and present to us and have a better understanding of a holistic approach to it anyone else Council I might offer I just attended the COC meeting for um tent County and the I would I would venture to tell you that from a community standpoint and from a resource standpoint we are doing everything right I think connecting the dots sometimes our most um biggest obstacle you have a lot of other municipality municipalities interfacing with tarant County and Parker County which is included in our COC um maybe the the better prudent use of our time may be in the in the late winter trying to convene a real workshop on this issue so that we're all the table you're bringing in all of our different partners and we can we can identify at the end of that Workshop where are the policies we feel like we're falling short we need more resources in is it money is it housing affordability mental health is a piece of that you're going to see a huge uptick in point and time count for family homelessness because they may use mcken vento to really count those families which will drive those numbers up considerably so I think if y'all are open to that rather than just do oneoff IRS let's convene a full session on it and we can we can decide on the the format as a as a body so I'll have my staff kind of work around through Tara's office as well the Taran County Homeless Coalition is coming to give us an update I don't know that they're on the calendar yeah no it'll just be a general overview yeah um it might be help I'm I'm really glad you brought up the mental health thing because in my conversation with Taran County Homeless Coalition yesterday that was exactly what we talked about is that at the end of their presentation uh part of it is we could do all of this money for homelessness but the truth is is that a lot of these people aren't homeless they just have severe mental health issues and so presentation let's just make it even bigger or part of that Round Table would be helpful so thank you for bringing that up let's incorporate Our Hope team too because you they'll they'll have information we'll work on a format and then get circulated so y make sure it's encompasses everything you want yes Gina I got one one I have one more future agenda item it involves the children and this is a project for Communications I'd like to see Community engagement Communications whatever whoever is going to do it because I can't do everybody's work but we need to communicate to the schools about our one daytime meeting and I'd like to see a coordinated effort of invitations to schools yeah to get here and see how government really works and that's they what happens you all we couldn't do it at nighttime because that would be overtime for school staff but if you can bring them in for daytime that's a daytime meaning that's a field trip and so we need help from Communications to get that word out to the districts that touch us and mayor thank you for the daytime meeting good suggestion councelor Martinez actually just came to mind but I'd really like to hear from PD on how bad the fenal crisis is here in Fort Worth and where are the hot spots in the city anyone else okay meeting adjourned thank you all