foreign thank you foreign foreign good afternoon everyone and um again um so I want to turn it over to Sharp with we'll start we'll turn over Miss prank good afternoon this is a special meeting of the El Paso city council for Monday July 31st 2023 it is 106 p.m mayor Lisa is present and presiding along with representative Kennedy mayor Pro temanello representative Hernandez alternate mayor Pro tem molinar representative Salcido representative Fierro representative Rivera and representative Canales mayor we have a core thank you all and I thank you all for for being here I know that uh one of this items in here is very time sensitive and uh Mr Cortina said I will explain and go over it so but before we start uh I do I don't see a flag but I do understand oh there it is I'm sorry for the pledge is thank you um team manager thank you mayor good afternoon mayor city council and all of our staff Council we have three items on the agenda as you can see including several Council actions to be taken today these presentations will lead to the final steps in the budget process which is are the public hearings on budget and tax rate that'll take place on August 14th and then the adoption of the FY 2024 budget and tax rate that will take place on August 15th so what you'll hear today Robert will go through the the three different items versus the property tax roll where we'll give you an update on the recent certified property values provide both the no new revenue and voter approval tax rates and there's no action that's required on item number one and the second item will discuss the current third quarter report which will be an update on where we are with the revenue expenses and year-end projections and then a recommendation that we will need action on that is to utilize Surplus to provide new ongoing annual funding for the general fund and I'll just say this because Robert will go into the details we had a lot of discussion this this actually came up pretty quickly within this is the last couple of days but when we're like thinking about the budget and we're thinking thematically on making recommendations to create a sustainable sustainably Financial uh budget going forward finding a new Revenue stream to do things like maintain and fix facilities Fleet and those kinds of things are really important so I'd ask you to think about that when you hear hear that presentation from Robert the second part of action two will then be the the FY 2024 proposed budget recommendations where we'll introduce the the no new Revenue rate you get information to see revised property tax sales tax and franchise fee revenues and then this will be another part of the approval process is some recommendations that we have to allocate additional revenues as I mentioned for facility improvements and repairs vehicle and heavy equipment replacement and then one of the things that differs a little bit from when we briefed you we went through and just were going through the the individual briefings and Robert will go through the explanation of this as well is we're going to recommend doing the pay increase remember we were going to do the 50 cents coming up in September and then the 50 cents in March is to do all that at one time do it all in September there's a reason for that and uh and we'll have that discussion and then the Third item is the introduction of the the tax rate ordinance and the the no new Revenue rate and so with that uh I'll turn it over to Robert thank you Colonel Weston Mr cortinas thank you thank you mayor if it will bring a presentation for the fy24 appraisal role please for the record item number one is presentation and submission of appraisal role certified anticipated collection rate for the current year then no new Revenue tax rate and voter approval tax rate for FY 2023 2024 taxes before we get started again Robert cortinas for the record but before I get started I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge some key people and not only developing the budget but just in what's being presented today these several items that Colonel Western just covered so I want to acknowledge Maria pacias our tax assessor collector who plays a key role in a lot of the calculations that you're going to see in in the United revenue and the voter approval tax rate her and her team do a fantastic job of helping out the budget office doing those calculations and then Nicole Cody and her team the budget office you're going to see not only the current year forecast the third quarter financial report but also how does the certified values compare to what we've had been we had been estimating and they did a fantastic job in developing that forecast which plays the key role in what we presented to on early July and so as you know that that's an estimate until we receive those certified values and the impact is very very minimal on the certified values so that her and her team did a fantastic job it's a very very small team they're all sitting behind me it's a group of eight total that manage the overall budget for the city so 1.3 billion annual budget on an annual basis so we have Mr Cody obviously who leads to that department Andrea Trio bunny Cordova Denise tagley Elizabeth lucerio Kimberly Rivera Monica langrino Ramon Lopez so seven out of those eight are also UTEP graduates so local local individuals so I just wanted to acknowledge them as well as mercury to Munoz in the contour's office who assisted me with some of the information related to the transportation reinvestment Zone that we're going to cover so again a lot of this effort it's being presented by Colonel West and myself but it's really the people behind the scenes that do all of the work to get these results for the city so moving into the first presentation so these slides we're going to be covering the certified values so we're going to show you the overall certified values show you the residential commercial how those compare and then show you the no new revenue and the voter approval overall tax rates for FY 24. can we go to the next slide it and then the next slide please so this slide shows you the overall certified values going back to 2004. you'll see on the far right hand slide here the 8.3 percent this is the overall certified values for the FY 2024 which will begin on September 1. again we had been estimating the budget office had been estimating nine percent when we developed a budget based on the information we received from the appraisal district all of the preliminary information and so that nine percent was what we have been estimating came in at 8.3 percent so again very very good job by the budget office in developing that forecast this slide shows you the overall appraised property value and then shows you the homestead cap which is that 10 percent for Homestead residents that can't increase more than 10 percent shows you the assessed property and then it takes you down to the total taxi property of 47.5 billion an increase of 3.6 billion from the current year or that 8.3 percent on the bottom there shows you the total new taxable Revenue for FY 2024 again 620 million compared to the 505 million an increase of 22.85 percent so good to see your increase in our new construction and then finally there at the bottom of the slide this is one of the pieces of information we're required to present the tax assessor collector Mr pacias certified The 98.79 Collection rate which is one of the information pieces of information that we use when we calculated the no new Revenue rate for the fiscal year this slide shows you the dollar value again of the overall net taxable values and you can see again the fy24 47.6 billion up from the 43.9 in the current year the residential single family here so on the left hand side shows you the dollar value on the right hand side shows you the percentage change so residential seeing a family increasing from 26.1 billion up to 29.1 billion or about 11.6 percent increase so again a smaller decrease in the prior year however again 11.6 is still a pretty significant increase compared to what we had seen historically over the last five to six years on the residential multi-family so I know we are very very sensitive to our apartment residents as well and so we actually saw a decrease in the multi-family of about nine percent compared to the current year so the overall value went from 2.9 billion down to 2.67 billion again a decrease for our multi-family that's going to be your apartments and your quads those quadplexes decrease of about 9.2 percent on the commercial side overall dollar value increasing from 11.3 to 12.1 billion overall increase on the percentage again on the right hand side about 6.3 percent again encouraging to see our commercial property values holding pretty steady as far as the overall growth three out of the last four years we've seen almost double the amount of commercial growth we had seen prior to covet in 2020 excuse me 2020 so again encouraging to see our commercial property values continue to increase as well the average taxable value on a single-family home again this is the average taxable value so after your homestead exemption increasing from 167 000 to 985 000 again one of the keys that we knew as we discussed all throughout the budget process that increasing property values increase in groceries utilities was you know really the driving factor in our recommendation the council's directive to go with the no new revenue for this year on the number of exemptions you could say the number of homesteads here increased from 131 000 up to a little over 134 000. again we've talked a lot about this information on the over 65 and disabled we saw an increase to just over 54 000 and then the disabled veterans of from 21 000 to 22 713 exemptions for the disabled veterans here are the dollar values for those exemptions so over 38 million dollars of property tax relief for these different groups on the disabled veterans 15.4 million over 65 in stable 17.7 million and then on the homestead 5.2 on the tips that we have the tax increment Finance zones we provide this information just as context and follow-up to what we presented in early July the percentage of taxable value that are any TRC or trz's 2.9 percent and again the state statute as you can't exceed 25 so we're well below well well below that 25 cap the slide shows you historical property tax rates and so I'll focus on the two columns on the far right hand side the foia 2023-24 you'll see right above that the preliminary the second bar from the right the budget office again they did a fantastic job in forecasting what that no new Revenue rate was going to be because again that really set the tone for how much property tax revenue we were going to have and what was presented to the city council they have projected it to be 81.7 cents and when we receive certified values as calculated by mrsillus the no new Revenue rate came in at that 81.9 cents so again a very very good job of ensuring that you know being you know very thoughtful and strategic and very diligent about how we're putting together these forecasts when we're developing the budget this light shows you the comparison in the FY 23 rate to the fy24 proposed going to that no new Revenue rate you can see the operating and maintenance is going down by 2.7 cents The Debt Service rate is going down by 1.6 overall property tax rate decrease to 4.35 cents from Foy 23. and so the item number three which will be the last item on the agenda when you will actually take action on introducing the ordinance this is the recommendation and these are the no new Revenue vote approval rates so again that proposed rate 81.88 cents that is the no new Revenue rate I'll calculated Again by Miss basius the voter approval rate is 83.8 cents which is the three and a half percent increase over that no new Revenue the city has continued to acquire essentially save up the unused increment which is something that's allowed by the state law anything below the voter approval rate in the prior three years is allowed to be used to that voter approval rate and so we do provide you with that tax rate as well so the maximum amount that we could go to without voter approval would be that bottom line there 84.7 cents which is again incorporating that unused increment from prior years again however the proposed rate is what we're recommending is what is on item number three for introduction by city council and so that completes this presentation I'll be happy to answer any questions if not we can move on to the next presentation yes ma'am representative just a quick question on the um the total the 4.35 cents what is one penny equivalent to and what is the total reduction in dollars it's approximately 4.3 million for each penny it changes every year and it's based on the journal fund as well because some of that Penny would go to the tips and to Debt Service but approximately 4.3 million to the general fund okay thank you thank you ma'am thank you sir thank you again for that presentation Mr Prime yes sir item number two is presentation discussion in action on the following budget items a FY 2022 2023 third quarter financial report and B proposed FY 2023 2024 budget good afternoon again so this presentation is going to be broken into two separate section so the first section we're going to cover the current year or FY 2023 third quarter financial report I'll provide you the revenues and expenses through the third quarter provide you the projected revenues and expenses for the year end of what we're expecting and then we will have recommendations at the end and then we will also cover the FY 2024 adjustments necessary as a result of the certified values we received on July the 25th so a summary of the general fund Revenue overall Jennifer Revenue up through the third quarters up by 5.9 percent 26 million a large portion of that due to sales tax and franchise fees we have seen a large increase as well in our investment interest earning again our Treasurer down in the office of the Comptroller does a fantastic job of ensuring that we're really maximizing the investment interest we can generate off of invest in the dollars that we have in the bank one of the things we have talked about and we've discussed this several times something we can continue to monitor working with the plant inspections department we've seen a little bit of a decrease on residential and commercial building permits about a 10 decrease compared to the prior year about 319 000 difference so again not not significant but again not insignificant at the same time it's something that we continue to monitor because our residential commercial building permits is something that we monitor when we're looking at potential impacts on the overall economy in El Paso we have seen increase in electric permits which has helped offset again that decrease on the actual building permits looking at the expenses overall expenses around four percent or 14 million compared to the same time in the prior year again no surprise the largest portion of that coming from our Workforce our salary benefits and taxes but also through some of the fixed costs that we've discussed throughout the year our I.T contracts our police and fire contractual cost as well up by about 2 million in addition to again increases that we've discussed early July and throughout the year through some of the updates on these fixed costs increase in fuel fuel prices continue to remain relatively High streets of Maintenance items materials and supplies of continuously increases there and again these are all things that have been Incorporated not only in the current your budget but things that we've accounted for as far as increases in the upcoming budget as well that we presented back in early July and then the final two again utilities and our tuition assistance program which we knew there was going to be an increase in the participation with making that program easier to participate in so we had accounted for that in the budget in this upcoming fiscal year so this is a table format shows you by category the different Revenue sources here shows you the current year budget it shows you the actual through May the percentage collected and then the last two columns that are highlighted in blue show you the prior same time period so the first nine months of that fiscal year last year the actuals and then the percentage collected one of the things I'll point out here if you just go to the bottom line there overall we've collected about 90 of our budgeted Revenue and if you look to the far right how that compares to the prior year of about 83 you can see that we're ahead as far as percentage collected and I'll focus on sales tax because that's really going to be The Driver so when you look at sales tax the budget 112.7 million for the first nine months we've collected already over 101 million of that so almost 90 percent of that budget so at the end of the presentation I'm going to show you what we're projecting as far as overall sales tax by the end of the year and so that really is the driver and if we're going to have a recommendation not only on sales tax but franchise fees as well as we look to not only in the current year but what we had budgeted for the upcoming fiscal year and we have some recommendations to make some adjustments there as well based on all of the recent data that we've collected over the last few months on property tax collections again this is just something that we Monitor and to ensure we're in line with property tax Collections and we are with the five-year historical average on the percentage collected so through May over 90 percent right on target with where we are historically right close to that that 100 which we are typically right around that hundred percent property tax collections on an annual basis on sales tax collections you can see here this goes September through May for the current fiscal year which is highlighted in red the blue bars there are September through May of the prior fiscal year FY 2022 and you can see that September October all the way through April we had seen positive growth and then we had a little bit of that decrease in April and then a very very nice bounce back in the month of May which is our most recent sales tax that we received going from 10.3 million to over 11 million about an 8.5 percent increase for the month of May we will receive the June sales tax next Wednesday and so we'll continue to manage that as well we have a recommendation to make some adjustments to sales tax once we get that amount next next week if we need to make another adjustment August 15th when we adopt we'll do so however we don't anticipate any significant variants from what we're we're projecting or recommending the slide shows you those percentage changes again going back through September of 2021 you can see blue all the way through that's positive growth comparing September 21 through the prior September going all the way through the last couple of fiscal years if you scroll all the way to the right hand side there you'll see the second from the right that April 23 decrease of about 2.3 percent again but then we bounced back in May with a very very nice 8.5 overall increase compared to May of 2022. and so as we look at again just to provide context of some comparisons pre-covered and mid-covered you can call and then what we're looking at as far as the current fiscal year again what this is actuals to actuals comparison here we again at the very end of the presentation or this section I will show you the actual projections compared to the budget but September through and that should be September through April is that 4.8 percent I'm sorry September through May 4.8 percent compared to the prior year about four and a half million dollars increase which is right around average of what we typically saw prior to covet obviously FY 2021 and 2022 we saw unprecedented sales tax growth which as I've been discussing in Weaver presenting over the last four months we knew we were going to come more back in line with where we are historically right around that five percent increase on an annual basis added this slide here to provide this is the most recent data that we have so we get our monthly sales tax allocation from the state there's the two-month lag we received this detailed information through a third party that we utilized there's another month lag so this is three months behind so not real-time information however this was in a part one mayor because this is where we saw the decrease in April I really wanted to see where we saw that decrease and it was in the retail trade the first line there let's see the decrease of about 526 000 so we saw a couple of different areas it was retail store clothing stores department stores and building and material supply stores that actually saw decreases that led to that overall decrease we'll get the May detail probably the next few weeks and so again we'll utilize that information and make any other adjustments or modifications that we may need to prior to the adoption of the budget however we're not expecting any brains is there any other further adjustments after today here's the last five years of franchise speed Revenue so you can see here again franchise Revenue doing very very well up by 5.5 million compared to the same time in the prior year or license a permit Revenue overall category up by about a hundred thousand again but you remember I mentioned the building and Commercial residential permits down slightly being offset by the increase in the electrical permits and then the bridge transfer to the general fund pretty much right on target with where they were at the same time last year so no significant increase or decrease on this Revenue source and then as we move to the expenditures so third quarter again this is looking at September through May again same format you have the budget for the current year the actuals through May the percent expended and then the right two columns again shows you the comparison to the prior year again just to provide for comparison purposes again if you look at the overall expenditures we're right around 70 percent so a little bit higher than where we were at this time last year but really no surprise when you look at overall increase going to come through our personal services which is our salaries benefits and taxes which you will see on this slide here so you can see overall expenses in that category the personal services again makes up about three quarters of the general fund budget we've spent over 266.9 million expended about 71 of the budget compared to last year we had spent about 72 percent so again right online with where we are historically on the exponential side here are the expenditures by subcategories so providing a little more detail in the various categories as we've been presenting over the last several months and as we did in early July and again same format here shows you the budget current your budget current your actuals and in comparison to the prior year and then just going through some of the fixed costs and these are important these are things that we've talked about not only through the budget updates we've done throughout the year but as we focused on during the budget process so looking at utilities we continue to see increases as utility companies raise their rates we continue to see increased costs there so we're up about 600 000 compared to the prior year as we look to vehicle maintenance and this is something that we're going to discuss as far as why we need that recommendation a little bit later in the presentation vehicle maintenance we do have no different than our infrastructure aging Fleet and equipment that we need to continue to be able to replace in autonomy manner so we've seen about a seven hundred thousand dollar increase through the first three quarters compared to the prior year so that 3.3 million last year we're up to 40 million this year and again this is really dependent upon the age of our Fleet that we have currently in operation as we look again to fuel costs so unleaded fuel about a 300 000 increase from the prior year and again this is really being driven by a few departments police and fire or heavy users of unleaded fuel and Then followed by our streets and maintenance department our I.T contracts again this was incorporated into the budget for the current year again we had another increase in RIT contracts due to a couple of big ones whether it's the Oracle contract that we have for maintenance and support of our p25 or Public Safety radio maintenance and software replacement and so in the current year up 9.4 million compared to 6.6 million in the prior year but again all these increased costs were incorporated into the annual budget for this year so there were no unexpected surprises there and then the last slide if it will go to the next slide please the tuition assistance program so this was one that we made some changes to last year just to make it easier for those who wanted to participate in this program to make it a little less restrictive to encourage those people that want to go back to school that they're able to do so without it being a overly political bureaucratic type system really prior process really discouraged individuals from taking advantage of this program and now it's very very easy for people to participate in about two weeks ago several of the senior leadership participated in our celebration of our recent graduates it was a very very good opportunity to sit down and speak with them and listen to them tell their stories about whether they were going back to school to further their current position or to think about what their future aspirations are with their careers I actually spoke to one of the budget analyst right behind me about what she's looking to do with her degree that she just obtained and so a very very good benefit to the workforce that we have to be able to take advantage of again not only in their current roles but then look into how they further their careers with the city of El Paso so the next couple slides we're going to start talking about the current year budget what we are projecting to finish at at the end of August and then I provided in the far right hand column how that compares to what we presented as far as the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year that begins on September 1. it really just to provide you with some comparisons and then really to highlight some of the key changes we're going to recommend particularly with sales tax and franchise Revenue and so if you look here the overall in the middle of their projected Revenue expected to come in at 551.9 million if you look at two categories in particular sales tax revenue we're already at or projecting to be at 135.9 million at the end of August and if you look over to the right on that right hand column the budget for next year is only at 135.2 million well it's important for me to remind you all that the FY 24 budget those Revenue estimates were done back in February and March because that's at the point time when we start presenting information as far as the budget updates we start doing the briefings with the council if you look at the franchise fees in the middle column there again projected to be at 65.1 million for the current year for next year the budget is only at 64 million so we have recommendations to increase both of those categories our sales tax and our franchise fee Revenue based on the revenue collections that we've seen over the last several months it really to align with what we're expecting to collect for the upcoming fiscal year again which begins on September 1. so we do have that recommendation and a couple of slides here the next slide I will show you the projection for our expenses and so again the same format here on the left side you see the current budget degenerate projection of 514 million which includes the already allocated or set aside 15 million for our pay for futures and then you can see how that compares with the FY 24 proposed budget 559 as we presented and what those cost drivers are again the large increase coming in the personal services category with the increases for our collective bargaining agreements with police and fire The increased Staffing with the three police academies Two Fire Academies and the pay increases that we have recommended for next year for our city employees so the next slide if you take the revenue projections and the exponential projections that's what this slide does here and you see highlighted in yellow there projected Surplus of 37.6 million dollars so this already incorporates into the expenses the 15 million are to set aside so this is 37.6 million dollars of projected Surplus which we have a recommendation and how to allocate this Surplus which will help not only in the current year but as we looked ahead again as Colonel Weston talked about a lot of the discussion that we had and some of the questions that were asked of the different department heads of what are their needs what are the challenges that they're facing our recommendation I believe will address a lot of those areas particularly a lot of the Deferred investment that we've seen in our infrastructure so we've begun making improvements on the street side with the annual allocation that we have for our streets however we've been working on how do we come up with the game plan to help particularly on the facility side is we have an aging infrastructure with the amount of facilities that we have I know that we run into situations I believe we just had one this past weekend with an air conditioner situation we've had roofs leaking by different facilities and so really developing how do we come up with that plan to where you have annual money similar to the streets to be able to adjust and make a be proactive in having a plan and how we're going to address some of those key issues no different than the fleet and the equipment that we need to be replacing as well we talked a lot about how back in 2017 the city went on and purchased 300 police cars and so in the annual budget we've had an annual allocation for police car replacement and firefighter equipment however we need to increase that a little bit more particularly because we're growing we're nowhere adding a new fire station a new East Side Regional command not only that the cost of those pieces of equipment are increasing annually as well and so we need to continue to keep up with the inflationary impacts and so how do we do that where we have the ongoing reoccurring annual revenue to be able to support these things and not be Reliant upon only having one-time Revenue which once it's gone it's gone that's the key to this and that's going to be the key to the recommendation is how do you develop a recommendation so that our facilities folks know what the annual allocation is so that they can be more proactive in having a plan our police and fire departments can be more proactive in understanding and knowing what's going to be set aside in the future for each of the next several years on an ongoing basis so that we can be able to plan appropriately and not have to rely upon using one-time Revenue to fund some of these things and so here's the recommendation we have several slides on this and so if you just give me just a minute to go through some of these I'll provide you some more detail and we've talked about this when we did your your one-on-one briefings we've been talking about and we did the Public Presentation in early July we talked about this as well how do we look at existing Revenue sources that we may not be fully tapping into that may have restricted purposes or that may not be coming back to the general fund and so one in particular the transportation reinvestment Zone number two which was created 2011 time frame our recommendation is currently the incremental revenue for that zone is restricted for The Debt Service for a couple of projects that have already been funded through the crma the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority our recommendation is to pay that debt off early and that will do a couple of things is that one it will allow us to dissolve that Transportation reinvestment Zone by paying it all fully there are current debt obligations that go all the way through the year 2050. there was actually just recently back in 2020 a 30 million dollar issuance for Frontage roads along I-10 that was has already been funded and so paying this off early will allow us to dissolve that trz number two similar to what you all did recently with the tirz number 10 of modifying those boundaries again to recapture some of that Revenue to come back to the general fund dissolving this particular Transportation reinvestment Zone number two will provide in the outcome fiscal year 7.8 million dollars of Revenue to the general fund that's currently restricted into this Transportation reinvestment Zone we don't have it in this presentation but you all recall it I showed this we've shown this a few times is that this particular Transportation investment Zone we've seen significant growth in these and I'm going to show you the the boundaries here we've seen significant growth in the property values which is generating almost at 8 million dollars now and it's grown particularly over the last two to three years we've seen really really strong growth in in this particular trz not only that what not only that not only will it provide eight million dollars of money to the general fund but it will also save over 20 million dollars of Interest costs by paying these bonds off early and so a lot of benefit to taking this approach again paying off this debt early by using that Surplus reinvesting it into the budget and then creating that ongoing annual allocation that we have flexibility now to begin to develop these productive plans to address some of those deferred areas so here is the boundary for this particular Transportation reinvestment Zone so this was again created in 2010 there was discussions 2011 was when I believe it was approved and this particular Transportation reinvestment Zone went to fund has gone to find three different projects which have all been fully funded it was the I-10 Elite 375 America's interchange the Saragosa direct connectors and then back in 2020 the I-10 widen projects to do some Frontage roads so if you look at these they're different color highlighted sections these are all corridors within the transportation investment Zone number two so there are five sections I'll start with the green one there so that's green section there covers across Trans Mountain and then coming down it's from Trans Mountain all the way down to Sunland Park and so it's right along I-10 this particular corridor the purple SEC or the you can barely see it there's a yellow section there that comes up Southern Park that goes all the way from I-10 all the way up to Mesa there's a purple section there that comes all the way down Mesa from sun to park all the way down to Montana so that purple section comes from Sunland Park all the way down to Montana the blue section runs from Montana we're at Oregon all the way to Joe Battle and then finally the red section there comes from Joe Battle all the way down through the Port of Entry over on Zaragoza so you can see these boundaries as we've seen growth in these property values that's all restricted currently to pay the debt but again these are key corridors throughout the city and so dissolving this Transportation reinvestment Zone number two will allow all of that growth now to come back to the journal fund again instead of being tied up within this particular Transportation reinvestments on number two so here is again the three loans one for the Americas the sargos and the I-10 widening this is the overall payoff amount after the current amount that we've already had set aside in the current budget so we budgeted the amount all of the revenue that we've been collecting the current year that's all set aside there's about 8.7 million dollars that we've collected in the current year already so that will be used in addition to this but the amount that we need to pay this debt off entirely is just under 41 million dollars and so I showed you all projected Surplus for this current fiscal year is the 37.6 and so our recommendation is to take that remaining three and a half million from our unassigned Reserves it's about three and a half million with the understanding that we're still obviously in the middle of our fiscal year we will bring back the final audited information for the current fiscal year until late December early January and so that projected Surplus will more than likely May potentially be a little bit higher than what we're projecting but usually three and a half million dollars to pay off in addition to our projected Surplus to pay this off and here's the current maturity dates for these three loans as I mentioned we currently have the last one which is done in 2020 that goes all the way through the year 2050. the interest by paying this debt off early is 20.5 million dollars so again significant savings on the interest cost by paying the state up early we have been making additional principal payments on these on this debt so all of the revenue that's exceeded the required Debt Service payment has been going to make the debt payments because it's required that's the agreements that we have in place however doing this amendment will allow again that Revenue to come back to the general fund but let me just make one comment Robert you know as as we've looked at this and we evaluated it I mean there's one thing that's for certain every year there will be needs in this community and there won't be enough funds to be able to support every single need in the city every year you also know that every year you don't know what your Surplus is going to be you don't know how the what the economy is going to be like you don't know if you're going to have good years down years and so rather than as Robert said banking on one-time money having some predictability to be able to take what's now about 8 million but will certainly grow and be able to bank on that money every single year to address and put it into things that we know as a community we have problems with we know we have issues with facilities we know we have issues with aging Vehicles all these different kinds of things so you know there is the there is the you know the desire sometimes when you look at it and you see that price of 30 plus 30 something million dollars let's just take care of our needs it's like the you know maybe not the greatest analogy but it's like like looking at the new toys in the toy store but that's one-time money this is we've talked about this during the budget process of finding another stream of Revenue in a very smart financially sustainable way to be able to predictably look at things across year over year and taking a year-over-year look on how we're going to do this budget to be able to address those needs and while eight million doesn't compensate for 37 million in the long run it sure does and so that was the thought process from staff standpoint on making this recommendation I will also tell you we didn't have a lot of time so if there's some concern about you know having the time to be able to to vet this with Council I didn't have a lot of time based on what we what we didn't what we knew we could do or what we couldn't do with this budget so if anybody wants to uh you know to throw some blame in terms of why this is on so late you can point right here at me we did it because we think it's a solid recommendation where we learned about the ability to be able to do this within a very very short period of time after we got done with seeing what the actuals came out and what we could do and that's why we're making the recommendation now go ahead Robert if I to you bring that presentation back up so just one more point on this as well as far as the the timing so the sibling to the cytagosa and I attend whitening those two the simpleton to the Saragosa current maturity date is February 1 2038 there's that particular loan has two payments throughout the year one in August August 1st and February 1st so there are debt payments that are due tomorrow August 1st for both subblown two and three for the set of ghost 19 whitening debt payments that are due tomorrow we had been working with the crma on whether or not we were we are allowed to make early payoffs on dates other than the current due dates they have done that in the past the crma has made additional principal payments on dates other than the due dates that's been allowed by the crma however when they reached out to the the state infrastructure Bank the sib their lead attorney was on vacation he wasn't going to be back until this week they were not able to give us a definitive answer as to whether or not they would allow us to do an early payment on any date other than the current due dates and So currently the way that the bonds are structured the way the language is written is that you're currently only allowed to make payments on the due dates on August 1st and so it this is when this or if this is approved we'll make the payments for payouts similar to the set of goes to the item widening on tomorrow August 1st and then we would have the money already set aside and transfer to the crma to be able to pay that last one off of the Americas on September the 15th on the due date for that particular loan and so this is the recommendation for the jiren Surplus for the current fiscal year so again transferring that Surplus to the crma who is the one that is responsible to make the debt payment we would transferred that plus the amount needed to fully fund that 41 million approximately total payoff so up to three and a half million dollars from our unassigned Reserves and again with the understanding that current fiscal year obviously doesn't end until August 1st so the current projections that we have can actually come in better than what we're actually projecting now so that actual three and a half million dollars use the fund balance maybe less will actually close out the fiscal year and we'll obviously bring that back to the council when we report out that fourth quarter report probably around mid-December is when we've been typically doing that report and actually show you all where we actually finished the fiscal year and how much we needed to actually to fund this amount and so that is the recommendation for the trzs we have recommendations on how to allocate the revenue that will be generated from this particular item but I want to cover that at the end because it there's also some other recommendation adjustments as far as the revenue for next year so I would like to discuss the actual recommendations at the end if you want to or counselors any questions on the trz or the payoff now I'd be happy to answer thank you sir I appreciate the presentation I think it's important that we look forward to how do we lay out the future instead of just like you were saying a one-time pay and Public Safety is our number one priority and it always has been financing 300 police vehicles for 25 years was a disaster for the community a lot of those cars we are show up insured if I'm not mistaken so when those vehicles are in an accident they're totaled out those Vehicles will still have to pay for the next 30 Years or 25 years I'm sorry as we know that most of them run seven days a week 24 hours a day it's a lifespan is between four to five years we're exceeded that we're on year six right now that they've been out there and we still have 19 years to pay on that so it's really important that we look to the Future and how do we continue to make sure that our community gets what it needs moving forward they had to buy the 300 cars why because we didn't have a program like this and we need to have a program like we kind of had a program like that and then they jumped the gun and the program we had probably would have continued the work if they hadn't done that but it was unfortunate that someone thought it was the right thing to do and this will fix things like that and buildings maintenance and not added to the budget every year so if you're telling me that we got 27 years left roughly on so about 27 years left on the note and we're going to have probably more I think you're being conservative like you always are that we're going to have eight million dollars a year this year you put 7.8 million so if you multiply that times 27 and we'll be able to put back into the budget back moving forward for the next 27 years roughly 260 million dollars that will allow us not to increase taxes not to continue to search for funding for a lot of the things you're going to recommend I think it's um we kind of talked about this it's the terrorists needed to go away and I was told you couldn't do it and I commend you all for finding a way to do it that would really move forward for the community Colonel thank you very much because this is really an incredible thing for El Paso that we're looking forward to whether you're the city manager whether you're a CFO or whether any of us are in office that we have literally have looked forward to maintaining and having a revenue for Public Safety and other items that you're going to recommend so I know that we didn't have time it seems to really have it brought forward but I know the payment has to be made by August 1st I think you showed by tomorrow so it was really important that we had this meeting and hopefully approve something that's for the future of our community and really for protection of the taxpayers without increasing the taxes every time we need something because we didn't look forward to it and we spent it all at one time and it's no longer going to be there so I I thank you all for doing that and I think it was an incredible looking forward and wishing it I know you all worked really hard Miss Cody thank you and I hope that this item will move forward and continue again to the best thing that we've done in a long time for the community and sort of like I said financing 300 cars for 25 years that will no longer be in operation within the next year or two uh yes sir yeah that's one other point just to make sure that we emphasize that based on the earlier discussions we had within the budget process you know I know Robert mentioned it but I just want to reiterate we don't plan on making any recommendations going forward that takes our operating Reserve past 90 days and so if you approve this item not only do we get the benefit of having this the this money coming back to the general fund right now at about eight million dollars but then if we're fortunate enough uh with market conditions to have an operating Surplus in the future that's just on top of it because yeah the whole idea is bring the operating reserves to a healthy healthy three months which is the 90 days and keep our and keep our Reserve there again no need to to go past that I think we ought to stabilize it there that's a really good amount um but there's just a lot of future benefit for having you know additional years of potential Surplus on top of a predictable Revenue stream like this thank you and like I said I think it's something important that we're promoted and become physically responsible to the to the taxpayers and this is a good way of doing that so thank you all representative nun this I think you were first man thank you well first I wanted to thank um you all and all the hard work it you have to do a Mad Dash in the last couple of days uh because we got the the appraisal rules so so thanks for all the hard work that you're doing um Mr cortina's a couple questions related to The trz2 Proposal um if you dissolve it does it inhibit the ability to do a future trz on the same quarters let's say there's a future project that's important for critical infrastructure in the past we have used Consultants to give us advice on that are you prepared to answer that or is someone in the economic development team prepared so we would follow there's I'm not familiar with the entire process of creative TRD but I know that similar to the tirz there's the process that you need to follow in order to have that approval and put in place I believe there's probably Nicole connects about it I can I believe she was around at the time when the Jersey was created but there's a whole public hearing process it has to be fully vetted there's Publications that need to be done and so there's a no different than the trz there would be a process involved but it does not inhibit you from doing that in the future okay as long as you stay which we're well which we're well under the only prohibition would be if we if we were over the cap that's allowable percentage-wise and we're not even close to that yeah and and it's unclear but I want to make sure that we're not limiting ourselves for future councils if they if they deem that um an additional vehicle a finance vehicle is is necessary so you have new freeways that are being contemplated the borderline expressway I think it's called or the yeah the Borderland Expressway going to the Northeast through the Anthony Gap so there I just want to make sure that it doesn't you said no but if if we could just double check on that um Additionally the because this would if we make an action today would go to the general fund correct let's say next fiscal year we're considering a no new Revenue rate with this transfer um impact or no new Revenue rate for next year so there is a calculation as part of the no new Revenue rate that does incorporate your tiffs and so there would be some impact as a result of that because it would back out obviously this whole trz so yes there would be some impact to the new Revenue next year Okay so it is unlikely that we would see an additional 37 year-over-year for the next fiscal year um so I'm just trying to understand what would be considered the no new Revenue rate and if we can see a projection on what that would look like as a result of this of a decision today in order to pay off the 40 million and change is it necessary to dissolve the trz can you just pay it off and then let it accumulate in the future so I'm going to ask I don't know if legal can answer that question I know that our recommendation is to actually bring action back to council to actually dissolve the trz I heard from one of the legal members that I think they either did up early automatically dissolved it however we're still I think these are very technical questions and I'm sorry that I'm asking because I didn't get the opportunity to do the briefing my family and I are on vacation last week so if we can from now to the end of the meeting we can just get additional clarification we'd have to look at one of the things that we'd have to look at and we can get this really quickly is if you don't dissolve it then you have to look at what's included in the project and finance plan in terms of what remains in the tours in terms of the the grill so I don't know without dissolving I can't answer the question that this would operate like a tax increment reinvestment Zone essentially if you don't dissolve it can you keep it in place and and readjust the finance plan for it maybe but right now I don't believe any of that money can come out of the out of the Zone that's right yeah so right now all of the money is tied up into that zone no different than a TI or Z so anything collected would stay within that zone right right and once it was modified and that and that's what I'm trying to understand like if you dissolve um do you let it do we have the ability in the future to to start it again if we don't could you pay off the debt and then let it start accumulating for future projects and and I don't have to say this but when there's an accident on I-10 no you're stuck you're on a gridlock you can't get out and so it's really critical that we are thinking about the future expansion of freeways or roadways as our city grows and so that that's the only thing I want to make sure because it's a really big I think Mr Gonzalez came in to answer your question Juan Gonzalez with the city attorney's office I've been discussions with Mr cortinas and Miss Cody for a few weeks now on the trz and how we can handle it by Statute once the debt or obligations or any contractual obligations included are completed then the trz automatically terminates at the end of that year so as of December 31st of this year once we make all the payments and the contractual obligations are done then the trz will itself dissolve and it's different from a tirz because it doesn't it's not tied to a project and financing plan this one is tied to financing mechanisms based upon approved loans or financing structures the ones we have now are the sib loans that we've taken out and they're typically tied to a geographic region that's been associated with the trz and the loan so the loans have a Nexus to the trz which has Nexus to the basis of the increment that is being used to pay off the associated debt okay so if that were the case then why do we have the trz on transfer on 54. and Trans Mountain if there's no project or there may have been in the past I can't answer those I I could look into it I believe the other ones were maybe had previous questions widening yes or contemplating it yeah but I'm not sure I know that there is another trz we have trz number three which was for the Trans Mountain right that's right but this Corridor covers trans 54. and so if there's a direct correlation with the I guess the the the the boundaries of the trz and the projects associated with it then then there's nothing happening on 54. so trz2 this is based off my memory which sometimes is good it's like all of i-1054 and it's actually I've been only it starts in I want to say around Mesa by um the first and most important of Mesa and then goes all the way down I'm sorry I misunderstood the slide then so I thought it was the entire so this is the map so the green section so the horizontal line there at the top the green that's Transmountain so if you follow from the quarter there it comes down I-10 from Trans Mountain all the way down to Sunland Park that's the green section okay along I-10 is from Southern Southern Park all the way up to Trans Mountain and then there's a little yellow section there that comes up it's on the park to Mesa and then it comes down Mesa from Sunland Park all the way down to Montana and then that blue line runs all along Montana from Oregon to Joe Battle and then the red line there comes down from Montana on Joe Battle all the way down to the Port of Entry over on Zaragoza okay so it has portions of I-10 Montana and Saragosa North and 375. um there are projects happening in in this boundary now eliminating or dissolving this how would it impact current projects under the Turfs so the only project that's ongoing is that I-10 widening project has been fully funded all the debt's been issued there would be no impact to that project what about Montana there are no projects that are utilizing trz2 funds okay other than the three projects that I mentioned the Saragosa the Americas interchange which those projects are done and the only project ongoing is the frontage roads it's part of the I-10 whitening project that the city issued 30 million for okay so there are no projects impacted with dissolving this no and um I would just like to clear be clear in understanding about if you dissolve it could you create a new one for any potential projects in the future you could like I said uh earlier the trzs are typically funding based and that funding should have a Nexus to the location that will be benefiting from the funding so there are statutory requirements obviously has to be a state or federally Run Road it meets the basic requirements as far as like who's going to be the lender typically it's going to be the sib but once we identify a project that we believe would qualify then we could reconstitute atrz to be able to provide that financing mechanism okay all right I think in final thing on the trz you mentioned you spoke to crma is that they take a position on this or was there a concern from the group they did not express any concerns thank you yes and I was in communication with them over the last couple of days anyone else representative mayor Pro Tem you Robert so first I'm going to go in order of your slide so on slide 14 you talk about the revenue from the franchise fees so I just asked you this hb3 and sb3 change it change title to chapter 171 of the Texas tax code which doubled the franchise exemption from 1.2 businesses at 1.23 million in Revenue to 2.47 how does that impact us I've not looked at the impact of that bill but you're you're you're giving us a final budget without telling us what the impact of a bill that takes place in less than 30 days or 30 days is I mean I don't I know how I'm supposed to finalize okay give me the bill number again please I was the one that was just passed hp3 and sb3 out of uh with the state I'm sorry I didn't hear that between in SB three three it I mean I've definitely asked this a few times since the state has announced it I just don't feel comfortable saying these are our final numbers if we don't know the impact of State legislation they also um part of the tax Leaf I know everybody thought it's just schools but that's not entirely the case um so for non-homestead properties valued under 5 million they'll receive a 20 circuit breaker I don't know what that means I would like to understand how that's impacting our numbers as well Mr cortinas and I'm not sure so I just if I'm not mistaken by looking at it and was that that has to do with the schools and that's the 18 billion dollar proposed by the governor that was just signed in the legislation the school the school impacts were different um we looked it up the circuit breaker it was stated would have relief on property tax for any local government and franchise impacts all franchise fees and since we talked about our franchises I just want to know what the impacts would be financially I wouldn't think it would impact our budget we're reviewing double checking we'd like to be able to say for certain these numbers are not going to change based on the state law and I don't understand um why we wouldn't have those answers now when this bill was passed over three weeks ago no it's okay he can answer it I mean we have people on legislative teams who have CFO I mean we should understand this okay I still have questions so okay you want to follow go ahead I mean ask the mayor can he follow up a question thank you yeah it's just a related question again if if the new uh limit is is we're looking at entities with revenue of less than 2.47 million up up from the previous one million do we know do we collect a franchise fee from any entities that small currently we would have to double check okay thank you thank you yeah I don't know yeah it's just again I know I keep hearing and I've been hearing for weeks like I don't think so we don't think so but I just think it's really important for this Council to make a decision with all of those details and if you can assure us that there won't be an impact but it seems like we can't do that today so I'm not comfortable making decisions on a budget today without completely understanding that but then I do I want to and and I'm sorry I just had my briefing with Robert 10 minutes before this meeting because I also scheduled my vacation around uh the scheduled meetings that we were given a month ago and and this one was not on there so I appreciate moving the meeting back so I could fly in at four o'clock this morning um but I still have some questions about this uh so I want to be really clear when it comes to the trz2 so it's generating 7.8 million dollars well actually I'm sorry I'm gonna go back um on slide 31 you show what the debt would look like in 20 years but do you know what this and you break down each of the three loans do you know what the balance on each of those three loans is it's on slide 30. slide 30 has the balances after this current fiscal Year's payments in principle only not interest step 41 million in principle only gotta enter the show it's all restricted currently it's all restricted to go towards Debt Service for these three loans you would pay them off in five years so to say that 20 million dollars in savings from debt is not really true because you would have paid that off and so the debt wouldn't because like right for the I-10 widening that's based on debt to 2050. you could pay this off in four years based on the current debt schedule that is 20 million dollars of Interest though yeah the full 70.8 million dollars to pay them off every 2050. and so my concern is I'm fine with this my concern is that Council sat here at the last budget meeting and said there are things that we want to look at once we get our values right I know one of them were uh based on voter approval of our new Department to deal with climate change we wanted to staff some of those for me it was code enforcement we have a lot of council budgets for lighting in restrooms and sidewalks that are under I think ten thousand dollars but what I'm hearing from your recommendation is that we're taking any kind of dollars that we have and we're putting them to towards this rather than giving the council even an opportunity to discuss some of the things they would like to fund well that's where my concern is I'm not saying don't put 30 million dollars towards this if Council wants to spend two million dollars on on other projects I just don't think it's right to come in here and say we're taking a recommend we're giving you a recommendation that takes away your ability to fund things that your staff has asked for and that this Council sees fit to fund and so I would like to start having those some of those conversations after all the questions are asked about this presentation mayor if that's okay I just I think there are some things that are important Council will have the decision to vote yes or no on them but I do think it's important that we take those and I think there's a way I mean even if we're not generating 7.8 million dollars in Revenue in next fiscal year we can pay a lot of this off and then pay the rest of it off next year um I I just I don't want to go ahead and spend all of the money we have I mean I've been fighting for a while to have this fund I understand and I agree with that but I also think there are some things that are really important I'm now directing this at you Robert it's not where it should be going so I apologize um but I do think there are some things that are on the list of council requests that that we should at least be able to have the opportunity to have a fair conversation about and we can we agree with you let me actually something here for you if you don't pay off the full amount of the loan you still have the payment and all that goes is towards the end so if you're looking at five years from now you'll still have the full payment until the loan is fully paid off oh I'm not suggesting during the five years I was just saying understand the calculation of debt if you use 7.8 million dollars a year you would have paid all those but you wouldn't have those what I'm saying is you wouldn't have the 7.8 because if you don't pay off the loan you're still going to have what's the payment almost 4 million roughly yeah about three points the Dutch you could just pay this that wasn't my point my point was about the calculation of debt you could put I mean you could put 31 million into it you could put 36.5 million into it right I think I'm just saying Council should have the opportunity to vote on what they think is important and then we should look at how much we're transferring to be able to cover this so we can curve yes we actually had that conversation and we we absolutely concur with you I mean I think that look we make recommendations we certainly understand that there's priority supplementals there's there's priorities from the things that you're putting in place and so we never meant for this to be at the exclusion of you know what's important to this city council in terms of priorities and having those discussions the things that we didn't want to lose sight of the fact that these are some of the more systemic ongoing areas where we typically have problems when it relates to things like facilities and Fleet and want to kind of pound on the table because those priorities continue but it's not at the expense of the things you're talking about mayor Pro Temp so we've had those discussions thank you ma'am anyone is there a motion Kennedy um I think it is a good fiscal policy to if you have a surplus like we have to use it to retire some debt if I could he left um good we can say whatever we want and he'll come bolting through the door like Batman um I was just going to say the trz is tied to the expenditure that it funded correct it's not the area it's actually the expenditure so we came up with new projects they wouldn't be covered by the TRC if they were within the boundaries yes projects could be added new projects could be added to the current trz and if this one expires because there is no projects the process is the same to create another one correct okay which isn't as complicated as tir-z's for what I understand similar but not as complicated okay um I mean I don't I don't know if we're at a spot to make a motion on this foreign I will make the motion we can still continue the discussion there with them any traditional discussion we'll let someone else speak and then we'll come back to you go ahead sir your next and then representative Molina so the city has backed the bond payment for this debt and so right now all of those funds that were collected in this boundary are committed to paying the debt service related to those projects that I presented the crma actually issued the debt however the city has agreements with the crma that we are backing the payment of those bonds with this Revenue source thank you Mr cortina's I believe you mentioned uh this ter trz was created back in 2011 is that correct yes sir do you know who the mayor was back then huh [Laughter] and the other thing um it was good for the end date is 20 40. the last payment for the most recent project which was at Frontage roads for the I-10 widening goes through the year 2050. 5-0 so you're talking about a turd that's in effect for like 40 years approximately another 27 years okay all right thank you very much representative um Hernandez followed by mayor Pro tem if you still have additional questions man I had some questions on the budget resolution were you all going to go over it at all or can I ask those questions well we can go through I mean it'll be on the next portion when we get to fy24 but you can ask now if you like here you're going through in the presentation no but we have discussion on the fy24 budget as a sub item under this okay particular item I can't wait to the to the next item thank you man I'm gonna put him yeah I mean I guess it type questions about the the schedule C and I do want to talk about Council requests I don't know if this is the appropriate time to do so and the next section we have all of the accounts budget requests in the presentation so what schedule C should I wait till then as well yes okay but I will say I mean I am I if we're going to take this vote right now I'm not going to support it because I am concerned about the questions I ask based on state legislation and so I don't know if it's possible I don't know how long it will take you to get that information to uh you know recess this meeting till tomorrow if that's how much time you have because I I'm concerned we would be voting on something that we don't know the numbers are correct I mean I just I trust you but I I have not no one can look me in the face and say yeah we are 100 sure that this is not going to impact our bottom line and so thus I'm not comfortable voting on something that deals with the 30. do you believe it's going to impact it Greater or lesser and so I just you're bringing less money into the general fund no you were getting more more because I mean no one's told me what the circuit breaker is what is a 20 circuit breaker on property tax go ahead sure it doesn't seem like when they say they're going to save you money on your property tax with a circuit breaker we're going to be bringing more money in sorry I don't even that's my time it's their funding and not us yeah the wow I would have a hard time believing I mean I'm sure somebody will but that people would vote against saving money yeah I mean the state circuit breaker is essentially like one-time replacement of Revenue with with the state surplus funds so I'm aware of that I was hoping that our CFO could answer the question I know yeah and that but still no one has told me about the franchise issue which I don't believe is going to the voters yeah if it was if just on the franchise piece it would theoretically be uh it would be we would we would be losing some amount of Revenue the the exemption cap is higher and so but they would Infuse money into your Juan Gonzalez office that's why they're voting on it through the state yeah from the circuitry but not on the not on the franchise but they should increase your funding subject to confirmation but I believe the sb3 it goes to the state's uh franchise which is in essence the uh charged at the state charges businesses to be able to transact in the state of Texas but it's not our franchises so it should be budget neutral to us but it would there was going to be an effect to the state but it's going to be offset by a higher rate that certain businesses will be charged when they have earnings of a certain amount and then certain businesses would be dropped off because they don't meet that threshold thanks Juan I think we should definitely get these memos across the board when the state passes these things it's not the first time I've asked it but I do really appreciate the answer my next question is if we pass this are we even able to have conversations about the Council budget requests at the next item and where would that funding come from if we approve things so we can discuss that when I get to the next few slides because we have recommendations again to make adjustments to both sales tax and some franchise fee revenues okay in addition to property tax revenue based on certified values so yes you will have an opportunity to do okay thank you thank you again I think we should wait on taking a vote on this um on the trz just for a moment to have discussions but I also my other question was related to the non-year revenue rate what do we have a forecast on how that would be impacted for the next year if there's any impact at all so we can go through the next few slides the next section of the presentation so I just Maria's working on something I'm just waiting for her to brief me on what the final outcome is but we can go through the next few slides thank you thank you Motion in a second Mr Prime yes sir the motion was made by representative Kennedy seconded by representative Fierro and if I may I would prefer that we do the action items at the very very end we can do one action item to actually do the payoff early and then another action item on how we want to allocate those funds based on the recommendation or Council wants to make any changes but I'd recommend we do all of the action at the very end because Robert you have more recommended actions correct enough in the presentation correct go ahead sir representative Fiero do you withdraw your second to allow discussion on the remaining items thank you sir fit would bring up the presentation again please Okay so looking at the certified values again we presented this in the presentation before this item let me stop you before you go there we're going to take each item now moving forward include an item two separately not all is one item so item two we have two sub items the way that it's posted under item number two so we have one course correct and they're both listed for these will be separate items so they're showing the whole picture but again those items will be taken separately correct because Council may have one action to actually do the early payoff and then a second action they may have under recommendations on how they want to allocate Revenue so this slide shows the fy23 the current year certified values the metal row there shows you what the budget office had been projecting the certified values that we received on July 25th to be so they were projecting to come in at 47.86 billion and the actual FY 24 for certified values came in at 47.55 billion so again when I spoke earlier about the work that they did and coming up with the forecast when you're projecting over 47 billion dollars it's it speaks really highly to the work that they did to to come up with that estimate that developed the FY 24 budget these are the rates again the proposed rate 81.8806 the no new Revenue the voter approval and then again that bottom row there includes the voter approval rate which is a three and a half percent combined with the unused increment from the last three years and cities are allowed to roll that any unused increment over for up to three years and add that to the overall voter approval rate and so that's what these numbers are reflecting just some recap again on the overall budget because I think it's important to not only recap the tax rates which achieving that no new Revenue rate which is essentially the city proposing that we're not going to increase city property taxes but what's built into the budget as well I've had some media and Colonel Western as well the media asked how were we able to achieve a no new Revenue rate has it impacted services are we still doing pay raises for our employees and so I'm going to take this minute just to kind of recap some of these things because it's important for the community here and the media as well so that they report out accurately on what's being included in the budget for next year so again Council was very very clear when we developed this budget wanted to see some options as far as achieving The Knowing Revenue rate again everything we see in as far as increasing property valuations which we just presented but also just increases across the board and utilities fuel and gas we went through some of those as far as the city costs but obviously our homeowners and businesses are being impacted as well so the recommended actions to get us to the no new Revenue rate again utilizing that sales tax growth which we've seen over the last couple of years now really strong sales tax growth utilizing the current year savings and reinvesting that back into the budget so our pay for futures fund which was created back in May this item that we're presented today with the trz2 item reinvesting that savings back into the budget to address some key areas not issuing debt next year was another one of the key areas that again utilizing the cash on hand of debt that we've already issued and then at the same time continue to invest in those key areas and actually increasing services for the priorities and so looking at neither the tax rate excuse me but the public safety investment as well having the three police academies again to increase the size of a police force adding a net increase projected of 53 officers to the police force adding additional firefighters as well through the two additional academies continue to move forward with the bond projects approved by the voters in 2019 continue with their investments in streets through our annual paygo allocations and then with the community progress fund that was approved this past November again continue to move forward with those items as well as the vision zero program which you've seen several presentations on recently continuing with our traffic safety by adding new traffic signals and some other Traffic Safety initiatives as well also increasing our quarter of Life amenities with the planned opening of the LA nube the children museum our new Mexican-American culture center and several exhibits over at the zoo one of the big ones the penguin exhibit which will be opening in FY 2024 so again increasing the investment in our Public Safety increasing the investment industry it's increasing the investment in our quality life amenities and then on the same token increasing the investment in our Workforce and I took time to acknowledge some of the individuals that have helped with this overall budget process but we all know that it's it's our overall Workforce that is the one are the ones generating the results and so we need to continue to be competitive to retain our individuals throughout the organization and also be able to attract and Recruit new individuals to work for the city as well and so the recommendation that we have is to increase the minimum wage Again by another one dollar an hour which will take the overall minimum entry level to 13.11 cents on here says broken down in two phases in February and March I think we have a recommendation on that to make some modifications but the overall budget for next year again we'll get that minimum wage 213-11 we'll provide a one dollar an hour increase for all of our civilian employees with a minimum of two and a half percent for those that may fall below that two and a half it will be a minimum of two and a half percent so on the general service classification equates to about a six percent professional managerial equates to about a four percent and then on the executive two and a half I'll surprise the additional funding for our tuition assistance which I talked a little bit about already and then again not increasing or passing along any increases on health care for civilian employees as well and then we just provide again the recap I presented this information in our third quarter report on the fy24 Revenue by category providing again where these dollars and these increases are going to broken down by our eight strategic goals and then rolls up into our four Vision blocks overall increase in the budget of just under 47 million as was presented back in early July looking at the budget by source of funds again overall general fund budget just under 560 million of what was proposed and presented in early July and now moving into the recommendations so as a result of the certified values that we received on July the 25th we have a slight recommendation or a slight adjustment that we need to make to our property tax revenue again we had been projecting that nine percent it actually came in at 8.3 percent so we have a minor adjustment to property tax revenue we have a recommendation again to revise our sales tax in a couple of our franchise fee Revenue to add additional dollars into the budget for next year and then at the end we'll go through a recommendation on how to allocate not only this additional Revenue but the additional Revenue that would be generated at the trz recommendation passes so here's the overall adjustments that's going to be made so taking the overall general fund budget from the proposed 559.7 up to 572.16 an increase of 12.4 million and again you see property tax reduction there 590 million to property tax revenue again as a result of the certified values coming in slightly lower but 590 000 on 260 plus million dollars is again a minor minor adjustment adjusting our sales tax and franchise a couple of our franchise revenues up by 5.17 million and then again the trz2 item would generate just over 7.8 million dollars so here are the adjustments broken down by the different categories so the again the property tax adjustment due to the certified values 590 950. the additional property tax revenue if the trz2 item would pass would generate against 7.8 million the sales tax account we're projecting or we're recommending to increase that by 2.2 million so the current budget is at 135.2 we're recommending to take that up to 137.4 again an increase of 2.2 million again maintaining that conservative projections that we've been talking about again some uncertainty we did see again that April decrease but this would add additional funding into the budget for next year and then looking at El Paso water and El Paso Electric increasing those two again just based on the collections that we've seen in this current year to reflect the actual again the actual collections in this current years adding an additional almost three million dollars for those two franchise accounts into the budget for next year so again overall addition of 12.4 million into the budget for next year and so here's the recommendation and so after the recommendation we will go through the Council budget requests we have well we won't go through every single one of them but we have them all listed on slides for the council's consideration Ms Cody did email those out with all of the information you've been receiving throughout the process with that link to this information with all of the requests and so the council has access to all of that information but we have them in the presentation as well so here's the recommendation for that additional 12.4 million and you'll see that on the far right hand slide right hand side of this slide and so facilities we're providing you a couple of different columns because it's important to show where we're at today and then with this recommendation where that will put us and so for facilities in the current budget we have one million dollars set aside for facility repairs improvements anything that needs to be done when we developed the FY 24 budget we increased that by half a million took us to 1.5 million with this recommendation of the additional 12.4 million our recommendation is to add four and a half million into the facility improvements and repairs which would bring that total budget to six million dollars on an annual basis going forward on the public safety Capital this is for police and fire equipment and vehicle replacement current budget is 7 million we had recommended to increase that or I'm sorry very recommend it to keep that flat at 7 million for fy24 the recommendation with the changes as we discussed today is to add an additional 2 million again not only to increase the number of equipment and vehicles that we're purchasing but again with the increased cost that we've seen to keep up with inflation we're recommending to add two million dollars to that allocation that would take the police department to 4 million and fire department to 5 million for next year on city-wide vehicles in the current budget we have one million the proposed budget added half a million to 1.5 with this revised adjustment we're recommending to add another half a million which would take that budget to two million dollars for our Citywide vehicles so everything other than police and fire and our heavy equipment so this is all of our inspectors our I.T our Parkland management team that is servicing all of our parks and all of our other Citywide Fleet other than police and fire and our heavy equipment which is the next item our streets department heavy equipment in the current budget we have zero dollars in the proposed budget we had zero dollars and so this recommended revision is to add 2.2 million dollars on an annual basis I know several members have visited the streets and maintenance department I've done it several times visiting Richard Bristol and his team and they will tell you that we need new equipment we need to start replacing some of these things because some of these things are 15 20 25 years old that they're having to to manage and it's creating issues when we get calls from City Council Members or we call us from the community we're running into equipment issues and so we need to get on a regular plan particularly for this category because these items are very very expensive street sweepers I don't even know what they are now I know that they've increased dramatically but street sweepers pothole patchers dump trucks bucket trucks that service their street lights all of these items need to be replaced on an annual Basin so to have money in the budget on an annual basis to be able to do some of these and actually have a plan and be able to forecast and project out the schedule will be critical for the streets and maintenance department moving forward the next item we're recommending is our compensation increases until built in we had 8.4 million dollars of an increased cost and that was to do the two phases 50 cents in September 50 cents in March our recommendation is to do the full increase of one dollar or minimum two and a half in September of this year for two reasons one it would take our minimum wage to 13.11 in September which will make us much more attractive as an employer again to fill some of those vacancies we've been talking about also what it does is it allows us to build in the full impact from these composition increases into the budget for next year and so what that does is instead of prorating for example of having that 50 cents in March if we don't do it if we don't do the full increase in September you get half of that year impact in the following fiscal year and so you're having to account for that plus whatever you do in the following fiscal year so you get sort of a double whammy it's it's a benefit because it allows it you to prorate it in the current year but you get that prorated amount in the following year and so our recommendation is to build in the full increase in September and then that way it's all built into the rate and we don't have that happier impact in the following year the last three items are items that have been discussed over the last several months one of the supplementals that we had and we had some discussion about this back in early July was the climate and sustainability office we had built in a hundred thousand our recommendation is to add an additional 300 000 into that program to allow us to start hiring some additional staff and to be able to allocate some of the existing staff into the general fund to get that program up and running so that would bring a total of 400 000 for the climate and sustainability office adding a placeholder for the municipal ID which is going to come back to Council in the near future so this is an item Miss Mack has been working on this will put a placeholder of 200 000 into the budget for next year as a placeholder and then partnering again with the county of matching whatever they put into the budget this will allow us again to get that program up and running once it comes back to council for the approval and then the final item is for the internal audit we had added as a part of his peer review um identified the need to do some more cyber audits we had added a hundred thousand into the budget for internal audit to do some of those we're recommending to add another 100 000 which are being the total to 200 000 which we believe will be enough if it's not we'll work with Mr cartone and sure he has the resources that he needs to be able to get those get that project up and running but that would add a total of 200 000 for additional audits particularly related to the cyber security efforts and so that's the total 12.4 million dollar total recommended adjustments Council law please ask you to refrain from side conversations and when speaking please make sure your mic is turned on so the video can be captured the audio all right so then I can proceed through we have slides on the next level slides that show the Council budget requests and there are quite a few so I'm not going to go one by one on those but more than happy to point out some of the key ones or sort of the the themes that we saw in the requests so if it will bring that presentation back up please so on the first slide of the list of Council budget requests I'm just going to point out some of the themes that we saw a lot of them are really Capital project type requests and so we saw Street resurfacing projects that wanted to get done we saw several dog park recommendations new park amenities some animal services on the next slide a lot of facility improvements whether it's at pools or senior centers recreation centers we saw recommendations on specific facilities within the request certain Park improvements were identified by several council members we saw District three mentioned the climate study which is currently in progress we're working on getting the solicitation up with the climate action plan but you saw the recommendation to add additional funding for Staffing to get that program up and running uh slide 53 we have again some Street projects that are specifically mentioned on particular streets request for Farmers Market at Cohen and so that's a relatively small dollar amount slide 55 again resurfacing type projects which you all have been presented with the list of those projects several times Richard Bristol went through those as far as the plan of projects that have already been approved by council with the annual pay go funding and what that list of projects looks looks like so we already have a plan in place for those resurfacing projects on slide 56 a couple of different recommendations here related to some traffic studies looking at particularly the east side of town a duck Park pickleball quartz which I know we just had recent reopening in Lola Richardson and they all they did some striping to insert the to do the pickle walk with the Nola Richardson slide 57 again I'm not going to go through every single one of these I mean you all can point out whichever one you think are important that are currently not included in the recommendations so a lot of them will be because a lot of these where we talk about facility improvements and Richard Bristol we've had discussions about making sure that you know we're doing that facility assessment that we've talked about over the last few months they're a little bit more than halfway done I know that he's working on priority list because six million dollars yes is a big increase from what we currently have however we know the need is much greater than six million dollars so we're not going to be able to satisfy all of the need up front so we're really going to have to have a strong recommendation to prioritize what could what get done first and then same thing with the fleet and Equipment as well so again I'm not going to go through each one of those but if there's something that the council feels that is not included currently in the recommendation and wants to make a motion we're more than happy to miss a real quick question and so you're saying a lot of these are capital Improvement and facilities and all are those included in the original budget that could come into there or no it depends and so some of them are particular specific Street projects resurfacing projects or reconstruction projects that need to get done the capital Improvement department and streets and maintenance department has presented those resurfacing projects that have already been approved by the city council with that annual paygo funding so it'd just be a matter of where those projects fall within the current PCI and the current projects that have been approved by city council there's some particular specific facilities that are mentioned council member may have asked for you know facility Improvement at a certain location that's something that the facilities team is going to have to work on identifying again prioritizing what facility projects get done first obviously six million dollars isn't going to be able to do everything in this list but it will allow us to start prioritizing what projects do get done sure it wouldn't increase the budget on some of these that have brought forward based on what you just said no I mean all of them obviously would but some of them would well what I'm saying is some of these requests from the council members may get covered through the additional Revenue that we've identified to be added to the budget for next year okay thank you for that yes ma'am we can make a motion it wouldn't necessarily increase the budget but it would guarantee correct correct so if Council wants to and I'm going to go back to if it'll bring that slide up so again our recommendation was to add the additional four and a half Millington facilities for example and so if the council wanted to say I want to allocate a million dollars to this facility you all can make that motion to make it that specific if you like again our recommendation is that the facilities team has some time to put together the plan prioritize it again obviously again six million dollars is a big increase in current budget however we know the need is much greater than six million dollars and so they need to put together the plan that prioritizes how we best go about utilizing that that pot of money thank you Robert um I want to talk some questions about your recommendations first I need to pull up the slide I apologize was it 40 what was the slide you had that showed the adjustments I apologize there's a 41. 49 thank you so much Miss Prime that made me laugh finally um I want to talk about the climate sustainability office so we're seeing an increase of 0.3 million dollars what does that include it's overall 400 000 total so we had built in a hundred thousand into the budget so they'll have a total of 400 thousand I don't know if Miss free is on the line but it's primarily going to go to Staffing and so it's Staffing but do you know how many emphasis are sorry no it's primarily going to be Staffing so being able to allocate some of her current staff time to the general fund as opposed to currently they're working on grants that are tied to HUD for example so this will provide me the opportunity to be able to work on different things besides that one particular Federal grant take it away yeah thank you and I guess what I'm looking for Miss farini because I don't want to have to shuffle through all my notes I took a lot of them in my budget book which I you know when I shuffle through right now but you had asked for a specific number of employees correct how many will how many was that and how many will this get you so if if you will recall the original supplemental I think had 13 and a half ftes and they were not all new they actually supplemented our administrative staff from Community Development the way uh Mr cortinas just described there was a handful of positions like that that also included about four new positions that would support the climate work primarily in the context of Outreach and policy so if you're asking me kind of what the difference is the it's been getting funded yeah so it it reduces some of the new positions that we asked for so we're sort of acknowledging that we can create some efficiencies by leaning into those Community Development staff and sort of partially funding them the other place that we were really able to lean in is that in this current fiscal cycle we do have we can lean on the community progress bond to some extent for planning and there is also some time before work we really expect to be grappling with compliance for example on certain grants and so there were some changes that we were able to make to get that number down um four hundred thousand is still a little less than we're comfortable with but I think that you know we're willing to make it work and when you say you're going to be leaning on some of your current Community Development employees so they will be doing both climate and current development work and will they see a raise or will they just be okay so we're going to have someone do two jobs they want to take money from two sorry no that's what I'm asking is that yeah no I mean I think I want to be fair and and and you know we're really doing our best you know working with the budget office to to make this work as best as possible so they're really doing the same job but they are taking on the responsibilities of of some new some new funding sources that they previously didn't handle so it's an accountant is still an accountant they're still handling a grant they're just handling some additional grants that they weren't before okay thank you for that clarification um do any of these positions cover the center for civic engagement I knew that was one of your other requests no ma'am this this particular conversation we're having with the 400 000 um is purely climate and sustainability currently your employees will also have to double as employees at the center for civic engagement they do Community Development staff primarily those that are General funded um also staff the center for civic empowerment yes and you're original request was for three individuals I think it was two part-time one full-time for the center for civic engagement it was two individuals for the center what you're thinking of is we were asking for three individuals under the Ada program so that we could service persons with disabilities correct okay um and that was not funded in any of the changes Mr coutiness no it was not but we're looking at Shifting the title six and the Ada function out of Community Development and under our risk and safety our risk and safety officer has significant experience working with title VI and ADA accommodations so that's something that we're gonna have to look at as far as the alignment how we utilize those resources that risk and safety currently has with the Ada function we'll have to talk about that um were any of uh I'm sorry I want to back up there because my notes are not very good there was a request for additional code enforcement correct um I don't know if there's anyone here who can remember what they were asking for it's for additional positions in Code Enforcement that's correct okay sir we can come back we can wait I got other questions um and I know we talked about some restructuring but there was also conversations from animal services for a behavioralist has that been covered at all okay the behavioralist I can't say that word correctly I apologize behaviorist s sorry so on the behaviorist we are working on the specification for that okay all right um thank you I am going to ask a question about Schedule C uh cheaper CSI I was just asking you how many Code Enforcement Officers you were asking for I couldn't remember and I took terrible notes additional five five and none of those were funded with any of these changes and what was the budget for those five I'm pulling up the supplementals thanks I appreciate it it's not in there Robert yeah I actually have that in front of me I don't know why I asked it because I am tired um yeah it's not in there it's 166 531 and it was for four ftes not five and how many um Code Enforcement Officers do we have right now six sorry is that really we have six that's it no matter oh okay sorry how many do we have hey Sarah Steve on the line so I don't know if everybody heard but the question is the number of code enforcement officers that we have currently yes I'm looking for that I mean the truth is I trust Steve and I I know that it's probably not enough so I mean I would uh and I'm not going to do it right now but I think I would at least like to make a motion to hire at least two more it's a complaint I mean I think every council member can probably agree that they can get complaints all the time about not being able to reach code enforcement or have someone come out or just the system in general and so when I'm done with my questions which is going to actually be very very soon I I am going to make a motion to at least approve two of them I think that's a reasonable compromise so I'm going to ask my last question um it's about Schedule C and so um it's about it's Capital Improvements so it's line number two three five four and it's the application fee for leases I think that's is that Mr Rodriguez it's actually hugeable is it if it's not you you don't have to answer hi I'm Ellen Smythe Chief chance at field operations officer real estate was moved under streets and maintenance I'm sorry I keep forgetting that so um keep forgetting that I miss my dear I've had a lot of conversations about this um I've looked at immuno Council change the provision was it last year two years ago to increase this there is language in the resolution the council approved or ordinance I apologize and I'm not sure exactly which one it is it says that there is can be accommodations made for non-profits how are you determining those accommodations um thus far we've taken about a case-by-case basis we we haven't had that many um apply and so we've been trying to hold the line at thus far without giving any considerations and so what we've asked any applicant to do is to provide the considerations to us we don't do it for them and so um to date I'm don't believe anybody sent back any formal request sorry I made a joke my mic was off um is a thousand dollars for an application standard practice most real estate firms who do this type of work is that three percent of the total sales price which we of course the city doesn't you know recover any of that and so the thousand dollars is a lot of work that goes into the process before the due diligence is um obtained for example we have to get a revised appraisal that's the very first thing most of our properties we have over 300 properties have not been appraised recently and so in order to come up with the lease price one of the first things we have to do is the appraisal we also have to verify title we have found some areas where we believe we own it and we don't and there's other areas that we have found that we do own it and somebody else is sitting on it you know using our property sure and so that makes a lot of sense to me especially you're primarily talking about property the city owns it's vacant or unoccupied correct correct we've been getting a lot of calls about nonprofits having to do this when they're using a room in a facility right we talked a lot about the garden center I think there was the museum off of 375 and Transmountain archeology yeah archeology Museum and so I wanted to clarify are they still having to pay a thousand dollar application if they're asking to come up with a lease or an agreement in a building that we already are currently using facilitating there's no need for an appraisal if they are already currently in the building is that your question no if they're asking to lease a room once a month in a building that's active utilized by the City Community Center a city museum a city library are they still needing to pay a thousand dollars just no no no no no that would just be a use fee and what is the use fee it depends on the the some of them have set fees um and and I don't know if the library I think that's one of the ones that but um the one in the museum I don't think that it's ever been leased down if that's what you talked about well and I'm going to say these groups have been told that and they're currently in negotiations with what's at least going to look like and I don't know if it was kind of stopped but they were told when Council passed that item that they're going to have to negotiate a lease and then no one has gotten back to them so they're in kind of a limbo of what that's going to look like so I just wanted to clarify based on this that that wouldn't impact them you've clarified that for me and I appreciate it I think that this is a conversation for another time moving forward yeah make sure that that was not tied to what they were dealing with and so I thank you for that clarification well I mean like I said I don't have the details in front of me and what my understanding right now they're using it as a storage space they're not using it themselves oh but the one that you're talking about that I'm talking about several I'm talking about like the odor yes the conversation thinking that everyone's exempt if we'll look on a case-by-case basis but you are saying that this application fee is tied to people needing to do an appraisal to verify title for like those are things on an unoccupied building that a non-profit local small organization that wants to use a room in the library is not going to have to pay a thousand dollar application fee that's just that what I want to clarify well because there's some buildings that haven't been appraised in a very long time we wouldn't even know what the lease would need to be so no that makes total sense in that situation the B would still apply for that all right thank you for that I I just want to clarify for quality of life in the individual buildings their rental charges as well as the cost per every item is listed under under those departments and so you'll be able to see the difference between for-profit organizations and non-profit and those are really tied to the cost of providing service thank you I just wanted to clarify on the lease because I know it's a conversation that's come up um I do have a question about something that wasn't a good budget request and I'm going to ask Mrs farini some questions if that's okay um I know a couple years ago in our strategic plan I talked a lot about continuing some of the work of the resiliency study that you did um I don't know how much of that has been implemented to date to my knowledge it has not been much but I obviously as we've learned today I don't know everything um but I want to talk about our deficiencies as an organization when it comes to public Outreach and public engagement and I'd love to move forward with this fiscal year looking at how we're looking at something we spent a lot of money on we spent a lot of time on like the resiliency study and how that looked at things like public engagement and I'm bringing that up now because I don't know if that would have a budget impact right if I was to say to you Nicole Mexican or you know in October hey I want to implement the resiliency study and everything it suggested I I want to know if you're going to come back and say well everything it mentioned in regards to public Outreach and engagement of course um you know I want to know now if you're going to turn around and say well it's going to cost us much to do X Y and Z I sure don't expect that you would have that information now but would just like to hear what you'd have to say about it so I I want to be careful with with my words here um I won't say that it you know if we were to really lean into what you're talking about is pillar two of I'm sorry pillar 3 of the resilience strategy which was empowering El pasoans and it was about approaching Civic engagement in a completely different way I do want to say for the record that we have implemented quite a bit of those strategies at a very sort of nascent stage right so when we built the center for civic empowerment for example we leveraged federal dollars to be able to do that so there wasn't necessarily a budget impact there but going forward as the center becomes more and more used and and you know delivering what it was supposed to we're coming back and we're asking for a couple of positions to be able to staff it so that we can make sure that it's available when the public needs it and I just want to remind everyone that the center is free for nonprofits and all the technology that goes with it that was why we built it that was part of why we built it it was part of the strategy so that's something that's been implemented I would suggest that if if the council were wanting to look at a more comprehensive Civic empowerment strategy we could go back to the resilience strategy and look at some key tools but I don't think that they would come at a tremendous cost it's really about having the team of people so the Civic empowerment office led by Christian Lopez and Nicole Rodriguez you guys most of you all interact with them quite frequently we leverage the neighborhood associations the nla but I think there's a lot more we could do love your block has been a great example about how to take a little bit of money go a long way I think we spent something like uh fourteen thousand dollars on like 13 projects because they were Community oriented so we could lean into things like that and so if you ask me in the future could there be a budget impact probably I don't have that number for you today but I can tell you that we would approach it the way we approached love your block right so getting as much bang for the buck as possible and delivering to the community but leaning into Civic empowerment and the center for civic empowerment would be how to take that part of the resilience strategy forward okay great and I'm thinking online and Mr Weston has experienced himself kind of when we do things like studies right like the royal master plan Memorial Park master plan that he got you know the community really in a frenzy about how the Outreach was done right like where we're clearly and I've seen this over and over with projects about how people respond to our engagement on certain things like we I think we definitely as an organization need to figure out what a better system looks like and I just I guess that's what I was more leaning into but I it's not going to cost anything I'll write that down remember I think I said it would cost a little bit okay that was my question on that thank you um now I'm gonna make some motions uh I'm looking at Henry um so I'm going to go through two well I'm going to make a motion um to add two full-time Code Enforcement Officers to the budget before we do anything like that I think it's really important to know that hiring additional people that enchant your process and procedures and I think we need to make sure that we have proper pressures and procedures and proper before we say we don't have proper Staffing unless you know staff believes that we don't have proper Staffing then it's something important but I really believe we need to make sure because throwing additional Personnel to any position doesn't always help you and it actually it doesn't change if you don't have proper scheduling procedures or even equipment you don't have enough Vehicles you don't have enough um equipment to be able to put them out to be able to do their job and I think that's something important you just can't say we're going to hire two additional people but what what are you going to put them out there with are you going to give them two additional vehicles are you going to give them two additional whatever equipment it's required and I think that's important before we show we want to put two additional people what's the impact to the budget and will we be able to add them and adequately be able to make them efficient and I think that's something we need to talk to the Departments as we look at because we're going to figure out what we need to be able to add two people two people cannot just be at it without what's the impact on the budget and equipment and everything else yeah I mean I agree and I would never ask apartment hadn't asked no that's what I'm saying but what's that's we're not only going to have two people what else do we need before we said we're just gonna add two people we got to be able to have them go to work so that's absolutely correct and they're they're barely coming to their Staffing levels at this point in time so they haven't even been at full staffing yet so once we see that we can do an evaluation we know there's vacancies across the entire organization I don't think we need to add more positions at this point in time but we will look at it as they're approaching that full Staffing level we'll be able to assess really soon what their staffing needs truly are okay well then I would expect in before the first quarter is over an update because I can tell you this department is not servicing the community well and I'm getting complaints daily about it on my personal cell phone or my work cell phone on my city phone it's it's a really deficient department and when I'm seeing that they're asking for more people you know that would you know and um dude I'm sorry I wasn't done I didn't know if you needed me to stop no he wanted the they were trying to figure out who's next after you okay and I'm starting to tell them go ahead oh yeah no I'm Gonna Keep Us here all day not Chief you said there was uh last year we had 1500 um full-time that were not filled but but funded we were going to reduce it if I'm not mistaken by 37 percent which is about 370 and then half of that could be another 150 and then 34 185 so 485 we're going to reduce it by so we're going to be roughly a thousand a thousand fifteen so based on that will that be able to fill some of the needs and wants one of the things that is already funded is what I'm saying they are one of the things that irrespective of what your decision is even if you make a decision to add the funding um I've got to take a look across and try to find some efficiencies of some of the vacancies we have I mean it really is hard to look at to look at you the the serious face and adding people when we have 1500 vacancies now I also know that even with 37 attrition the likelihood of us filling all those additional vacancies is probably not going to happen but one of the things that I will do is I'll make a commitment to look across at our staffing table to see if we can make some adjustments where we know that we have needs within the organization so whether you whether you would choose to approve this or not doing that I'm going to be doing that um but if you need to put the attention on on a certain department and you feel that that's that's something that that you need to do obviously you know we'll we'll support that but just know that I'm going to be looking to to see if we can do this from within without having to increase the budget I absolutely agree with you man you know I've for a lot of things in my district and I know a lot of them are extremely expensive and so I'm obviously not going to ask to fund those but I don't want to take away the importance of them but one thing I am going to make a motion you know I remember back in 2017 when I first came on Council we had a conversation about restrooms or Parks I think there was one in District Seven that I supported because it was really affordable because the plumbing was already there and so we've asked for a restroom at Newman Park it's only budgeted at sixteen thousand dollars I think that's really affordable forward amenity that the community has asked for so I'm going to make a motion to approve well I guess are we approving Robert are we putting it in the yeah are we putting it in the the kind of plan that you were talking about I I'd recommend going through and answering any other questions that we may have and then we can get into like we'd like to answer all the questions and then maybe take a 15-20 minute break and then come back and then we can start taking action items all right I do have one more question then right um and I think so one of the things I asked for was for a master plan for the police headquarters and that's uh they're saying it's going to cost 250 000 it's a little frustrating to me because the reason that I've asked for this is that I believe in the last fiscal year there was a master plan funded for the Five Points area which included the headquarters however I was told that's no longer going to be happening even though it was funded uh so I wanted to know if anybody had any comments on that since we funded something we didn't do it and now it's going to cost just as much to do a master plan on one building when the entire area cost 250 000. even better than this for the record so representative the 250 000 that was proposed is for master plans in general one of the things that we can do is make it a catalyst site within the comp plan and that was one of the another one of the recommendations I'm sorry if I didn't include that within there but that could be identified as such and and what but what is our timeline for the comprehensive master plan the comprehensive plan generally it takes two years so we're looking two years out okay and when is the completion of the police well okay and there's something else that's not in here that I'm going to follow up with but I'll let other people ask questions because I'm going to pull up that language for you all that was uh related to this okay there's some fear of followed by Russia Canales followed by representative new BEDA thank you Mr Mayor um just right motion would be to include a dog park at mark Oh I thought we were okay okay representative I think he had a second if you kept going thank you Mary yeah um again I won't make motions yet I only submitted to budget requests um and uh you know I submitted them later on in the process and so I understand they don't have cost estimates attached to them yet but I did want to ask staff about them um one of them I'm the first one was the paving of the unpaved entirety of Chariot way that makes it sound like a big project but it's essentially a cul-de-sac um I'm concerned about this one potentially falling through the cracks because it is neither a resurfacing nor a reconstruction because it's never been constructed it's a completely unpaved Road right in the middle of the district it's very strange that it's there in a strange set of circumstances that have led to it being unpaved but I'm just concerned that it doesn't fit into any other program that we have ongoing in terms of re uh surfacing and reconstruction funded by the the community progress Bond or or any other program uh Richard Bristol streets of Maintenance that's correct sir it's right now it's it's an unfunded request it needs to be built to city code and right now it's not and it's a small stretch of road I I cannot give you an answer as to how it has gone this long without being constructed but it's going to require funding to build it up to code and you're correct that's not included in any of the allocations that we got presently active could it be included in a future allocation of the resurfacing or reconstruction projects that will not wouldn't be resurfacing can new construction fall under the the Reconstruction funding that was approved in the community progress Bond it's time with the U.S chief operations officer there's multiple streets throughout the city I know we received multiple calls on the neighborhood in the Northeast that has been dirt roads for many years typically the last Bond that I know had that type of project was projects I think of 2004 as well as is the last bomb program but it was included those neighborhoods were included as part of a general obligation bond in addition to that there's you know before we the reductions in the community development block grant program we had opportunities to build a lot of those unpaved roadways as well because a lot of those areas like Borderland neighborhood association for example had a lot of those dirt roads that got paved Montoya Heights is another one that paid a lot of roads in their neighborhood and so there's different funding sources like that potential grants But to answer your question within the community progress Bond I think the the the flexibility that we had that we have within the resurfacing is is very strict to to the language of the bond to be resurfacing only and then the Reconstruction of roadways was very limited to the extensions that were included as part of the community's progress Bond so in this particular case if you're looking to get these streets funded it would have to be through this type of process the top project or some other Capital program we've been working potentially with Community Development on additional grants or working on a general obligation bond in the future thank you yeah and again I I try not to you know I I really wanted to not submit any capital projects here because I I generally think that you know working through our established uh Capital programs is the is the way to get these projects done it makes the most sense I'm just concerned that there's no other method that we currently have to fund this particular type of project where it's a completely unpaved uh roadway and so that's why I submitted this one here and then the other one I I just wanted to bring up I I understand it might not get funded uh today but it's just an idea that I've been tossing around and I think makes a lot of sense for El Paso um and you know it's I'll put it forward as something to potentially get funded but I understand we might need to do more work on it before we we get there but this is funding for an economic development program essentially an incentive program for the retention of new new Physicians who are graduating from Medical School in El Paso or surrounding area so Texas Tech or Burrell college or Physicians who are completing their residency here in El Paso um I think we we see we've seen a huge uh increase in the number of Physicians graduating in El Paso or again completing their residency in El Paso and a huge number of them leaving the community and so they're coming here for their for their training and then we're not able to retain them in El Paso and we're seeing a big shortage of Physicians um both Physicians you know patient-facing Physicians and research Physicians um and so I I do think that there's space for us as a city government to create some sort of program that helps retain Physicians here in our community obviously it's something that's really necessary for all of our residents um again I I there's there's not an estimated cost here I know it will take a lot of coordination with the medical schools and it might not be something for for this year but I didn't want to let this opportunity go by without pointing it out it's something that we could look to fund in the future and uh I'd love a I'd love a partner if anyone wants to help me work on this uh I think it's a good program for for the city and again making sure that we have adequate Medical Care moving into the future and people who are already established here if we can keep them here after they finish their training I think that's the easiest way to make sure we have a substantial supply of doctors are you recommending the to try to come up with a program through funding to subsidize their income or yeah I think there's a couple different ways that it could go if you can use tax dollars to supplement public sector jobs I don't think you can that's what I'm at that's right does everyone know that answer yeah it doesn't necessarily have to be supplementing okay there's all kinds of other ways why don't we look and see yeah maybe what from an economic development standpoint when there's been sectors like this where there's been shortages I mean obviously we've done some things as an example to try to help with nursing shortages through some of the programs of some of the nonprofits from training and those types of things let's just take a look at it first from an economic development standpoint and see what strategies we might be able to develop okay yeah and again I understand I'd like to work with you on that I think it's an important segment so yeah again I understand this might be one for the future Colonel Western and his staff I think it's something important that we can all look at I didn't want to let the opportunity pass without putting it out there as an idea um and yeah again staff even wrote in the notes that they're successful attraction programs that are you know direct Financial incentives but then they wrote help connecting to them helping connecting to the community assistance finding housing there's all kinds of other ways that we can put together packages that help Physicians stay in El Paso thanks so motion to recess no we still have representations thank you yes sir oh this I go back to Mr cortinas in the presentation that you did regarding slide 20 um slide 40 uh regarding the uh the the resurfing resurfacing and reconstruction of streets are we going to be able to maintain the high volume that we were doing as a council before yeah I think you were up to what 62 63 streets or on the resurfacing reconstruction are we going to be able to maintain the volume that we were doing as a council the volume as in the number of resurfacing and reconstructing the streets all together I mean you know we had a we were told we were doing a higher volume that was than what was done before we were doing that we were doing a higher volume than what was done before are we going to be able to maintain that one yes we will and we are what we're doing is well three contracts we've got two that we just approved from the bonds that's the 50 million dollar right I mean the 50 top most travel streets we approved these uh Street locations January 30th so those were the locations that we're doing for 24 and 25 um but yes we do have the bandwidth to pull this off and and we already have uh contracts approved and we're ready to go we're just we're in the process of actually executing the contracts for the bonds so we hope to have them working within the next couple of weeks okay thank you and then on slide 49 sir you mentioned the the breakdown for the facilities Public Safety Capital city-wide vehicles and Street Department heavy equipment do you want no more can you more or less let us know I mean doesn't have to be right now you can do it later with that budget that you have for them six mil nine mil two mil 2.2 how many vehicles are going to get per per Department yes we can do that yeah we had it with the original seven million dollar allocation but we'll update that to reflect the increase in the two departments and uh okay and then uh the break yeah the breakdown on on I guess for for Public Safety would be the PD on Mark units and unmarked right it'd be whatever they feel cheap to see us is still I believe in the waiting room but it would be whatever they feel is the priority whether it's marked or unmarked or one of the Special Teams yeah I I'd like to that the breakdown on that on the number four uh all four of those uh departments We'll add it to the presentation for the adoption on the 15th okay thank you oh there's chief sir what happened to that information they were just going to ask you on the Martinez and Martinez 20 minutes would be doing the research for 20 minutes I need a motion though first thank you there's a motion and a second to recess a special city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed the special city council meeting is in recess at 3 19 PM for 20 minutes is there a second there's a motion and a second to reconvene the special city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed the special city council meeting is back in session excuse me we're back in session at 401 pm thank you Mr fine go ahead ma'am I don't think anyone heard yes mayor thank you we're back in session at 401 pm and we're on item number two all right uh Mr cortinas all right it if you'll bring up that PDF presentation please so we apologize for the delay but we had to go back and do some recalculations with Miss pasius on the no new revenue and so I'm going to go through a couple of slides once this presentation comes up and if I could ask you to scroll down there I.T keep going so we're on slide number three this is a new presentation that was just added as backup to the agenda and so one of the things that we needed to do that we had not presented it was not included in the Noni Revenue rate that we presented is we have an adjustment or a revision to the no new Revenue rate and the revision is due to the trz number two and so we had shown you all the 7.8 million dollars of new Revenue coming to the general fund from the trz2 but the one thing we needed to do was to back out that trz2 if it has dissolved and approved back that out of the calculation for the no new revenue and so as you go through the no new Revenue rate calculation it's a form by the state there's different adjustments that are made one of them is to reduce your values by the amount that is in a tiff on your tiffs doing away with the trz2 essentially cuts that amount in half it goes from because the 495 million I think is the adjustment amount and so what that ends up doing is your adjusted revenue is now higher which means your no new Revenue rate is a little bit higher so the impact to the budget and I'm going to show you the impact to the rate the no new Revenue rate still maintaining the no new Revenue rate will generate an additional on top of what we already shown you all an additional 6.4 million dollars on top of what we've already discussed today so if you go down to the next Pages I.T and I'm going to show you the rate here in just a minute but the recommendation would be to take that 6.4 million dollars and we already talked about the facilities and the fleet and the equipment the pay raises would be that last line there the street resurfacing is to add that 6.4 million into the residential street resurfacing program I know that streets of Maintenance has already been working on that list of what you all approve on the every two year cycle so they'll need to go back and revise that and then bring that back to council for the approval on the actual projects that would be funded with the additional 6.4 million but that would be the recommendation to add that money into our current resurfacing program and then if you go to the next page it and go and go to the next one and the next one I want to show you this one because without that trz2 you see the rates on the left hand side there so the proposed rate would be or the proposed rate would be 81.8 which would be the no new Revenue not dissolving the trz2 so that would keep the trz2 in place that's what those rates would be on the right hand side is now what we're recommending again this is to reflect that revision to the actual no new Revenue based on backing that out of the calculation so it takes the proposed rate to 83.2 cents which is the no new Revenue so still maintaining again say very clearly still maintaining the no new Revenue rate of 83.2 cents which as we will present and when we do the publication it will state that this is a budget a tax rate that is proposing not to raise taxes with the city of El Paso so staying at the no new revenue of 83.2 and so overall it's a reduction of approximately three cents from the current rate and if you go to the next page it and so that will be the recommendation we'll make a revision to item number three the ordinance which currently has the 81.8 we will revise that and make that the recommendation of 83.2 cents as you see on the screen here which is the no new Revenue rate assuming that the trz2 has dissolved by the city council that's really good news great news thank you all for for looking at I think that makes a big difference representative Kennedy so to the average taxpayer they're looking at for the city's portion no additional taxes for the property tax is that correct it would depend upon the value of your house but since they do it since they do a bulk correct appraisal instead of each individual house per state law when Miss patius in the budget office when we publish the notification that we're required to publish it's going to say that the tax rate being introduced by the city council is a tax rate that will not increase property taxes for the city of El Paso okay are we in a spot where I can make a motion on the tours now or do I need to wait we're ready to make actually sir okay I I I'd make the motion that we authorize the city to pay the debt as laid out in this proposal on tours to we don't have to take any other action is that correct because it automatically then at the end of December 31st according to Mr Gonzalez I'm going to double check Wellington's also at the city attorney's office so once we effectuate the payment accordance with the sib loan document and I believe Mr Cortina has mentioned earlier that they have to be paid in certain amounts minimum amounts and during certain payment dates that they're due once the debt is extinguished in the contractual obligations are extinguished which they both go hand in hand in here and as of December 31st of the year in which all those debts and contractual obligations are extinguish the tourist itself dissolves what we will probably do is bring back a resolution just to have those findings you know belts and suspenders showing that sib acknowledged the payment of the loans in full and a few other findings that we'll need just to memorialize the transaction so the only thing we'd have to do today is is approve payment of the loan in full correct yes sir okay I make that motion second okay there's one motion two seconds anyone else yes ma'am you have a question for a second would it be possible if you can go back to the original slide where it shows the 6.4 million dollars I am having a hard time understanding um how this number was calculated number one number two why wouldn't it go to the next fiscal year or this current fiscal year that we're in so I'm assuming it goes into this fiscal year this action or does it go into effect September one so there's one more slide back please here okay could could you elaborate a little bit more yes I will give you the explanation and I'm gonna let Maria clarify if I say anything incorrectly because she's the one that's actually responsible for doing the calculations on the no new Revenue in the voter approval rate so what what ends up happening and the reason for the revision here is that in the calculation for the no new Revenue rate it begins with your property values and there are several adjustments that are entered into the the formulas one of the adjustments that's entered or subtracted from your adjusted values is your value and your Tiff and your tips and so I don't know the exact amount of turmeric can pull it up but I'm going to use the ball part number say it was a billion dollars a billion dollar in the tips so the original calculation that we showed you all with the uh no new revenue of 81.8 cents included trz number two when you back out the amount of value Within trz2 it lowers that adjustment to 495 million which means your adjusted property value is higher than we had originally shown you all which means when you do the calculation you're no new Revenue rate is slightly higher so it actually increases the normally Revenue by about a penny and a half roughly it's because it's essentially what it's doing is it's Revenue that was tied up in the Tiff now if it's dissolved that money's coming to the general fund so it's giving you credit essentially for that money coming to the general fund relax if they were if city council were to consider a non-new revenue rate for next year for fiscal year 25 does it will go based off of the new it will not impact us so that adjustment is built into the calculation that Miss what Miss pacias did so that adjustment to the trz2 is being incorporated into the calculation for the no new Revenue rate for our fiscal year 2024 which begins on September 1. okay so that's captured in that adjustment it's already captured in there okay was there anything else especially as you wanted to add um so it'll help the No-No Revenue rate this year and it'll also help us next year because when we participate in a tip Zone we are when we participate in the tip Zone we are dedicating you know we're setting aside that value for that purpose so if we have less value going into the tip then we have more money available for the general fund so it'll help us this year for the normal Revenue rate and it'll also help us next year because TF2 will be dissolved and you all are prorating because the last payment goes in December right before it's dissolved September 15th oh because you showed three different payment schedule dates you so you said you had to make it on the payment dates first two of them are due August 1st and then one is due on September the 15th okay so are you paying all of it tomorrow or one on the first and one in the 15. we're going to transfer all of the funds that just under 41 million to the crma tomorrow so that they have the funds needed to make the payments for the two on August 1st and then the one on September the 15th okay so we want to transfer any property tax revenue from prz2 starting September 1 and to the Sierra Mason still already had the funds we needed to make the payment okay no I'm comfortable with the advice they're given to us by our City attorney I'm just not sure if there's any new state Provisions or anything that would impact and I've spoken I've spoke with crma about this to make sure that we're in alignment and coordinated and they've expressed no issues we they've reached out to the state infrastructure Bank as well and there are no issues identified okay and I know you've done it I spoke also to the contact of the sib and they didn't have any issue with you know with the proposed action okay um and uh so the new rate without the tours would be 0.832 so what would be the tax rate reduction after the in the event that Council approves the the dissolution of trz2 there will be that proposed if it will bring up that presentation the no new Revenue that 0.83 .832001 832001 is this still a reduction of of 0.435 it's three senses of reduction from the current Texas total three cents yeah so about 12 million 13 million overall okay correct thank you thank you and you know as we talked earlier a little while ago that this is really impactful for next year where we can really look at moving forward and looking at no new revenue for next year because now it's really made a difference by canceling it and having as many moving forward every year moving forward so this is not only good for this year it's good for next year and this is one of the first times you can really say when we say we didn't increase taxes we really didn't you know I know I've heard it a lot but it really was not reality and this time it's actually real action so there's Prine with that I'd like to take a vote Yes mayor the motion was made by representative Kennedy seconded by representative Fierro and this is to utilize current year Surplus combined with a portion of the unassigned revenues to pay off the entire remaining principal for transportation reinvestment Zone number two on that motion representative Kennedy aye anello aye Hernandez yes yes hi and then motion passes unanimously thank you and I really do appreciate the hard work like I said I know the first time I asked you that if we could get rid of church number two you told me it was not legal possibilities you're gonna have to work with legal and it really was going to be tough to do it but I really thank you for actually listening and looking at the possibility and coming up with the great news and not only were we able to they're cancel it but actually save a lot of money to the taxpayers and actually look to have Revenue moving forward from now on to be able to do the things we talked about earlier so I'm not going to just go you know go over them again but I think it was an incredibly great job and and you guys found a way of doing it and I'm very impressed and thankful that you guys did that thank you for that Colonel thank you yes ma'am I'm sorry it was representative Canelo mayor Pro 10 didn't you I apologize go ahead thank you mayor so I I wanted to go back start my emotions um so I'm first gonna make a motion to approve the dog parks at Memorial Park and the one in District Six is Marty Robbins try to make a motion to have a dog to fund dog park at Memorial Park in Marty Robbins Park can you please repeat one more time I'm sorry Marty Robbins and at Memorial Park I mean I can separate them if you all want I just knew that representative Fiera was going to make what is the existing Surplus right now after this section it if you'll bring up the presentation it's 18.8 million total if you will go to the next page right there and so this is if you look at the far right hand side that our right hand column that 18.8 million is essentially the additional Revenue that we have to allocate and you can see the recommendation here going from the fy24 proposed to the fy24 revised that's that 18.8 million dollar recommended adjustment so that is what's on the table to reach no new Revenue rate that is the staff's recommendation that yes ma'am at this point to allocate that 18.8 million in this manner and still maintain the no new Revenue rate okay um okay so available 18 million correct I was just going to ask if we said yes to everything on everybody's list is the total 58 okay thank you it should not be possible without racing taxes yeah 58 265. I mean I just want to make sure we we need to put things in priority because you're right representative Kennedy mayor yes ma'am I I would you have a list of 58 million dollars you have a surplus of 18 million dollars um I I don't want to sit here and cherry pick what is most important in every district and I would ask the council would you all be more comfortable making divvying that up by eight districts and then you all come at a future meeting and then propose what you could do with a million dollars in your District or whatever the yeah that's a that's a really good idea and I think Mr cortinas has kind of brought that up when we were in my office a little while ago to make sure we were fair to every district and make sure so that's a very good recommendation ma'am that uh so if you figure that out it's 2.2.3 2.1 2.25 yeah okay I didn't have a calculator I will adjust my message as such you know I just would want time to consult with my constituents and say we have the Surplus for our districts and then we can organize um do you all want a few minutes I think it's important to go through your list and see how you want to or do you want to say let's vote on giving everybody 2.3 and then you guys bring back your what you want based on what was recommended I mean that's what you said I don't think this is what Mr cortinas was recommending I thought we were um we were not like funding these that these motions were not to fund them it was to put them in the priorities of the ffe I what I'd recommend is I really I really believe from a planning standpoint it's really important that year over year our folks can plan based on priorities in this city in the areas of facilities areas of Fleet and streets I think it'd be much more prudent as a council to allow us to be able to present plans of where we've got these needs within the within the city and that you you at least give us the opportunity to keep these funds focused in those areas all three of those areas there's big needs in this community and present plans I think because if we don't do that and we take and we don't stay disciplined with that with that approach what will happen is that every time there's a surplus into a budget year we may not be capturing really all the needs in this community in a really smart and logical way that's what I'd recommend I think what Robert was referring to is maybe something not in the not on that magnitude but some but something that's that's smaller but something you can predict that you can predictably Bank on in terms of going through this budget process at a much smaller level looking at something that that would help with some of the neighborhood projects in your District but certainly not the uh not the entirety of the of the of the FF and E fund that we're that we're suggesting and that'll be carried out equally and fairly throughout the districts yeah something something that's uh we have to take a look at it I mean I think a preponderance of this should go in those three areas that I'm talking about but something that you can look across the districts for some of the smaller neighborhood kind of related projects within your within your um within your districts we can have that conversation as well as as part of the budget process a couple of things one that 18.8 million it will bring that slide up again just so I can we can have it on the screen of that eight point 18.8 million on this slide here a majority of that is tied up into some of our recommendations related to city fleet which we would want to leave it up to the fleet department on how we're deciding which vehicles we're buying the heavy equipment as well you see 2.6 million there about the middle of the screen for a composition increases to do that in September so of that 18.8 million if the council wants to look at doing that we would take the 4.5 per facilities 6.4 for streets and there's 10.9 million I would not recommend splitting up Public Safety Capital by District obviously we'll leave it up to the police and fire departments upon the needs for their Capital so of the 18.8 million 10.9 would be if that's the route that the council wants to go to do it that way of splitting it per District would be an option one of the things we may run into though because obviously that amount comes down to just over a million per District is that you may have some facilities that are going to well exceed maybe a million dollars the cost and you're gonna have to wait maybe to year two or year three before you actually have enough to go out and knock out that one facility or two facilities the recommendation from our standpoint was to have the money set aside into the facility fund let the facilities folks finish their assessment figure out what the priorities are and then come back and address the facilities based on the data and the priorities but we do understand the Equitable piece and so one of the things we talked about was it's not a million dollars or two million dollars but at least starting maybe with a hundred thousand or maybe 200 000 per District police give each district something that based upon the concerns that you hear throughout the year whether it's additional Park amenities whether it's whatever the case may be to be able to go out and do some projects similar to an nip type program but to be based upon the council's discretion of which projects get funded but that way we're leaving it up to the facility folks to decide and make the best recommendation for how we maximize use of this one so I'm going to let Richard chime in because he oversees the I'm sorry yeah I was I was just going to add that we had taken a look at just the initial phase of just some of the basic things that you've heard complaints about failing HVAC systems and others we needed 20 million dollars just to keep the roofs from falling in any HVAC systems I'm so proud that we've got until six it's not as if those don't already have some place to go my Arts the art museum needs new chillers we've been working on that for a while we keep putting these things on the list and those are not things that we can defer not that we don't have a lot of needs with them but I don't think anything we have on the list these are things that we've just been asking for you know just to keep the doors open you all get the calls you know when our hvacs are feeling you're knowing we're closing our locations you know you get the pictures that are being sent you know from people in your community about us not being able to replace the basics this is a big step towards just getting the basic standards of what we need you saw in the earlier slide where the costs and expenses for the things in streets and maintenance have already gone up 69 percent and so we it doesn't go as far as it may look on paper and I just want to plead with you please exactly this is something that's really important and we understand what you're saying but now we have a steady stream to be able to do this we've never had this so as you say it's not what we need but we have a but we have a future and we have a we decided that we're going to do a systematically and not just do it every year but now moving forward so 6 million this year really helps us to continue to do it from now on without having to impact the budget so this is really a great job to be able to do that and you're right if we gave everybody 20 20 million dollars that break the taxpayers but if we do it this way from this point forward now we have a system put in place they will make sure that we're able to do everything that we need for the city and not continue to increase taxes absolutely and one of the things I just want to applaud the team and it has made such a difference for us in terms of the park amenities in terms of things that we've just added for one year and you saw the strategy to move some of those things forward and so it really is great to sort of see and be able to plan Beyond one year in terms of how we're going to maintain our facilities and how we're going to ensure that we're taking care of the things we already have so thank you so much mayor because otherwise should be a one-time expansion and we'd have to try to search for it next year and if we didn't find it it'd be you'd have to wait till the following year or the following year or the following year but this is really now we we got it figured out so thank you again everyone represent Kennedy I was going to say that that there is priorities already on the list before this 18 million we were looking at and I personally I would hope we could look to staff to say you guys know what's already being done and it may be some District like let's just say District Six that has a couple million dollars in projects already on the list because they are critical to then say we're going to you know for yeah let the council member decide I think that we would be better to have staff come back with a proposal realize that they're weighing any additional expenditures by District so that we could take a look at the picture as a whole rather than little pieces and I would you know my concept would be to have staff come back with a proposal and go here's what we think would be best but leaving some room for the the individual representatives to go listen I've got to get these bathrooms fixed you know because there's it may not be critical but it might very well be necessary from our end is that your motion oh well I'm going to take my motion off but I I mean I am going to to make a motion for the bathrooms at Newman Park well no because I don't think that that's right I don't think that we should be even involved in this kind of thing right I think do we have a cost already estimated on that it's 16 000. so now we we talked about that every well and I thought and I just want to be clear I think what we talked about prior to the break is that like this approval isn't to say okay we're funding this you're putting this funding aside we're saying we're putting it on a priority list yes ma'am yes ma'am yeah and so I'm gonna make a motion for that and I am going to separate the dog parks because I will say District 2 the nearest dog park in any direction is 20 to 25 minutes so I'm gonna make those two motions and what's your cost on the dog park ma'am it's a 750 000 but that I'm gonna say that's not correct because there's already fencing there I can get it down lower I'll pay for half of it it's fine um so I just need a second thank you ma'am representative Hernandez I I have I have um in my experience worked with capital um and all the different departments um so they would show me like a list of of projects and be like hey in our upcoming Capital list which is why I had asked Mrs Hernandez the last time is you know is there going to be a 2023 plan is there a 2024 plan and and that and and you know of course Council needs to give that direction um so as part of the planning what they do what we do before we get our projects our priorities on the capital plan um we of course there's equity in mind and there is um a list of priorities they have and for different facilities in your District um based on you know whether it's maintenance or even Renovations or things of that nature and then they will work with you and say you know what would you consider to be a priority so that so because like what you say is not enough what they have to do is they have to go back because if if you fund one thing it has a Snowball Effect to other districts so they have to go back and then look at how do you equally disperse the funds with equity in mind but also addressing the the key needs if you all want to consider quality of life amenities new ones I highly encourage us to work with Mr Weston so that we can do strategic planning session so that we can focus on putting together a quality of life package that takes a year of planning because you have almost um you know there was like 27 different requests that are just quality of life in nature so if those are the requests that you're getting in your District then I feel like we have a duty to go to the to prepare a package and go to the voters so that they can decide so that we can focus on our brick and mortar you know making sure our facilities are habitable and I'm really appreciative of that Mr Cortes and Mrs Mack brought that up because I can point to 10 different facilities in my district right now that are important that should be included in your general fund your maintenance um and then any new project should be through a quality of life bond which is the voters who decide not us um so I I would ask you all to to and I agree with representative Kennedy that that to let facilities come back provide a potential list and then at that time if you don't feel it is adequate then we can make decisions on voting separately on every request but I do believe that staff do a really good job they understand what the costs are they understand what the labor is they understand what the design costs are going to be they put contingencies percentage into the overall cost so I think it's really important that we give them the flexibility to determine what the cost would be um and so I I would support the the motion to have staff bring back some options and then if you still don't feel it's adequate then let's have a conversation about a potential quality life bond election in 2024 through a strategic planning session with Colonel Weston and uh so so I was there if there was emotion I said I I couldn't make it because I was waiting for the first motion and I will make that motion that we have staff to come back with a proposal I second that taking a motion to follow through with the bond interviews no I'm big I'm making a motion they come back with a proposal on how to spend the additional funds for this year I am not voting for a bond so she asked if I was Voting to go out for a bond and I said no I guess that they're going to come back with a proposal on that 18 million and so miss Prine we have a motion in a second motion was made by representative Kennedy seconded by representative Hernandez and this was to direct this is to direct staff to return with proposals on the allocation of the 18.8 million dollars is that correct okay can I make a clarification on this you want us to come back and so looking again at that list if I till bring it up of that 18.8 million roughly 8 million of that's tied up in Citywide Fleet replacement Public Safety Capital compensation increases climbing and sustainability office which we talked a little bit about what that will fund the internal audit additional funding and the municipality place so the four point or my recommendation be the four point I'm sorry the Six Million total per facilities and an additional 6.4 which is an addition to what council's already approved Street to maintenance would come back with the recommendation on based on the order of the streets what would be funded with that additional 6.4 so we can read that just to be clear facilities and Street projects to be funded with the additional allocation I don't think you should come back with the recommendation for streets I think there should be well to present which based on this amount of money I think it should be a multiple thing these are the facilities we need these are the streets we need you make the decision on that yes but not this is how we think you should spend those dollars specifically we will have a recommendation well the 6.4 yeah the 6.4 and then what was the and the four point and the Six Million for facilities and the additional 6.4 for streets because they've already I mean I think the facilities you need to fix as well I don't think that we should be making decisions on that well I think we have to make the budgetary decision it absolutely needs come back to us that's why we're going to them so they can tell us what do you think is best to spend the money on you know and then it comes back to us for approval at least to present an update Council on how those funds will be expended we would definitely do that be approved okay I also just want to point out that we had discussed voting on these things individually too there but that obviously didn't happen after the vote for the tourists took place we'll be able to give you enough decision detail in each of these areas based on the recommendation I think that's a wise thing for us to do mayor if I may um Sam Rodriguez chief operations officer I mean the way we do the street resurfacing is is a good process to go through the facility assessment was going to give us the same type of information it'll be database recommendation that we would bring back to council to say this is how we're going to spend the six million dollars for your approval that's what we do with streets it certainly makes sense that you all see so that we can also share with your constituents as well as to how we're going to spend those six million dollars we'll commit to that and bring that back I think that it'll be District sensitive it will it will not be District sensitive um represented because um the as has been discussed the facilities in certain cases especially the central part of a city has a lot of the existing facilities that District Two and Three is an example six may have a lot of older facilities so it's really going to be based on a facility assessment that's Teresa Mason is doing right now that will bring that recommendation but you could subset it by District yeah we'll we'll present it and share that with the districts and facilities are in but I feel that uh it'd be good practice for you all to see and approve the list of how we're going to spend those six million dollars yeah and I think it's important to look at all districts can't even know I mean it's and they will I'm sure Richard I don't want to speak for Richard but you know that's one of the things they look at when they're doing these these type of what we will do when we make this recommendation is access to the facilities right so do you have foreclosed recreation centers in your District well then obviously we probably need to fix one of those that you can get it open what's the closest location to your facility son I know that Richard will take that and took out when he develops the recommendation and Richard Bristol's piece of Maintenance when we do the assessment we're about halfway through and we're around 50 million so coming up with the list will be simple enough because it's very similar to like the vehicles in the streets we assess it and then whatever dollar amount that we're going to be given we can go down our our list of our priorities and and we're going to have them listed out for you okay we'll bring that back and we'll we'll show up our district we'll show you the equipment too well that on that but you still have your CIP the CIP money and what you're actually going to bring forward which is what amount for the year it'll be 7 million for the uh the 6 million for the resurfacing 10 million for surfacing plus three and a half plus seven so it's almost 20 min I'll have it all listed out that's what I'm saying so it's this is you we do have a plan and we do have a program moving forward this is just additional we will have it allocated by District we could take a look at it right I think that's really important and then I think that Mr katina's kind of made a suggestion that he gives some Toronto money to each district to be able to do some type of project that you'll bring forward so that was an idea that I was floating out there however you can bring him by him yeah I mean that could lead to some issues I mean I think the recommendation the way we have it laid out is the best route and that's the recommendation is the way that we have it here okay good because if when you go down that route you run into the following for example the nip has very strict a process that they followed and the way that those projects are selected and chosen allocating a certain amount each council member could lead to some issues about which budgets get chosen and which projects don't and so I mean the recommendation is to move forward with concur that's how we presented thank you Mr Prime yes sir so the motion made by representative Kennedy seconded by representative Hernandez is to direct staff to return with proposals on the allocation of six million dollars per facilities and the additional 6.4 million dollars per Street resurfacing for the FY 2023 2024 budget on that motion representative Kennedy Canelo aye Hernandez yes hi and emotion passes unanimously thank you so that completes item number two on the agenda the last item on the agendas item number three Miss Prine yes item number three is an introduction of an ordinance living FY 2023 2024 taxes and setting the tax rate of 0.832001 of one percent of the assessed value on all property real personal and mixed and so the only comment I was going to make is just so that for the new members of council the older ones I've heard this before but just a reminder as well whatever tax rate is introduced today cannot go higher at the time of adoption you can go lower but you cannot go higher so whatever is introduced today you cannot adopt a higher tax rate but you could go lower but we're already at the no new Revenue which is the no increase but we've introduced a no Revenue tax rate this is Juan Gonzalez with the city attorney's office there's a I wanted to read a four Amendment so section one of the ordinance uh will be oh she already wrote it in then never mind um regarding the tax rate that's going to be proposed today does that include the Surplus the Surplus um which is the additional funding we just discussed yes yes it does okay just maintaining that note but it's so yes it's the additional Revenue maintaining the no new Revenue rate as well Kennedy and I'm sorry I'm sorry go ahead and the budget resolution um I wanted to ask there was a couple of deletions and I wanted to ask what was the epitome we may need to go back to the previous item yeah we are on item number three the tax rate ordinance items are passed the tech the tax speaking about the tax rate is in relative to the budget resolution I think I'm gonna say yes that's on the agenda for tomorrow's council meeting correct no no um Mrs Florida Institute I'm sorry Jose for the record with the city attorney's office I'm what we're done what we're discussing now is the ordinance and um the actual rate is included in the ordinance what is what is included the the rate that's what you were asking about um the budget resolution is that included or reference in the ordinance no the budget resolution it would no so we can reconsider item two after this one so I just I have questions about that as well I mean I have I have questions now but if I'll wait to see circle around and see if anyone has questions for three if not then I'd like to be reconsidered so that we can I can just ask a couple questions about the budget resolution so what is the what is the item we're considering at this point item three the tax the ordinance for the tax rate right all right sir emotions second second all right there's some motion a second Miss Prime to approve the rate yes mayor the motion was made I heard representative secondary by representative anello and this is to approve the introduction of an ordinance living the FY 2023 2024 taxes setting the rate at the rate of 0.832001 of one percent of the assessed value on all property real personal and mixed on that motion representative Kennedy aye anelo aye Hernandez yes number two there's a motion and a second to reconsider item number two all in favor anyone opposed the motion passes and we're back on item two presentation discussion in action on the FY 2022 2023 third quarter financial report and proposed FY 2023 2024 budget thank you mayor um I have a lot of concerns with this resolution I shared them with Robert and Nicole I want to talk about first section 68 which was the lame duck um it doesn't make sense to me to say re-election if you're re-elected at the election you wouldn't be lame duck I don't know what the correct like legal term like how to fix that would be but it it wouldn't make any sense because lame duck is from the period after the election to your sworn in if you're continuing on on that seat you wouldn't be lame duck I looked at the state provision of that it's exactly what I was saying so it doesn't there just needs to be some language change I know it would be different if you ended up in a runoff that's a different conversation I am not in any way going to suggest the legal language that you should so we're trashiness if you're running for your same seat you don't think you should be part of the lame duck well because lame duck is after the election so if you win the election you're not according to the state you're not lame duck because you're just you're right so we met right before this meeting so we'll get with the legal too yeah you're right figured out some morning to add after after the election it doesn't impact me but I was just like that just doesn't seem right makes sense um I do excuse me could you I'm sorry Joseph voters again for the record could you tell me the paragraph number on that one uh 63 63 . thank you and then I'm trying to find the section I think it's 35 um I mean I have a lot of issues with having counsel put every single item that they spend discretionary on on the agenda um and for a lot of reasons I think you know we uh we've talked about Robert I remember I had to travel last minute and there was a provision that even though I got approval I could get approved after for city council and so I want to make sure that that's something that can still happen but I also I mean listen I spent a lot of my discretionary fund on cakes for senior centers for activities and games for rec centers because they don't have the budget for it I've been asked to buy a printer for a senior center because Parks doesn't have the budget for it I mean these are things that sometimes come with a time limit right if the senior center calls me and says hey we need a cake tomorrow am I supposed to say no because it has to go on the agenda I just I I understand that there has been some issues with the provision that there is now with a thousand dollars because someone was not doing their job and checking up on that should not be a punishment to the council that is not my fault that the office I was in charge of overseeing those p-cards did not do the adequate work what I will say is I'm fine bringing that number down to three or five hundred dollars I think a thousand is high but I just I think that there are so many things that we buy day to day for constituents and senior centers and rec centers and honestly I'm you know I'm going to say it again a lot of the times I feel like my discretionary comes at the fact that we don't budget for activities for our facilities and so I completely understand transparency I have no issue with that but I shouldn't not be able to do something because I have a two-week window you know I have to know three weeks ahead of time and especially if it has to be done by resolution you know we have a date with legal so it's three weeks ahead of a council meeting so I'm not again not going to recommend how to adjust this language but I do think there's a way to do it that makes a lot more sense I again don't think that every council member should be punished because a former council member or a department did not follow up and do their due diligence on the previous policy sorry that's all Colonel Washington no I I understand I mean we could even look at and this may be something that you were even going to recommend is just even a notation or something that kind of provides the transparency even if it's after the fact because I know that sometimes these things won't fit within the uh the time frame the two-week the two-week window I don't know two or three weeks and I don't think that anybody on the city council would have a problem with with notating an item in terms in the next selection next city council meeting just put it in for notation only pardon me just for notation only not for action just notation so mayor I was going to agree with a great suggestion that we put yes and I think it should be everything we purchase should be on on an agenda even on a monthly agenda um even after the fact we we turned we turn in all our receipts in for the end of June meeting so that's a great suggestion so why don't we just publish our our transactions every month on the website I mean I I don't know if that's allowed I think we already do want the proactive Pages don't we I was going to say that that the if the concept is we tell everybody what we're using the money for whether it's on a proactive page whether it's put on for notation which means it's just here's what happened on City Council is up to the council to decide but I do agree that if you say it's under 500 you then leave yourself open to I'll just make six 495 dollar expenditures because I don't have to report it which is pretty easy to see when you when you when you look at a report and you go well we know what's going on here so I I think it's a great idea Colonel Weston to have you know if there's a limit that has to be pre-approved I understand but then whether it's notation or whether it's on the website someplace that we make very public that we're going to show every place we spend the money on and I I mean I I'm transparent I just look that is work for our staff like they would have to sit down there in every single transaction get posted and do all this so if it is easier to just take our monthly statements that we turn in every month and publish them somewhere on the website I mean my concern is more of the extra work for my staff to have to go through everything if they're already filing all this wait what Robert is that can you not do that no we could we were just having a side discussion about what we would publish yeah I mean it just seems like less work for myself to go through every purchase they've made twice get it on an agenda then do all the paperwork for the P card but if you have a list of expenditures and that was the notation it's the same thing as turning it in for the month right you just put it on the extra workbook as an agenda well not if you have to do it before the transaction no I'm saying afterwards for things on that are that are under the limit we said right I'll return the news transparency I also do you think we should take the limit for three thousand a thousand down I mean I don't think that should be that high but we'll figure it out when are we approving the resolution the 15th so we have time to work on that yes ma'am thank you your next right are you done ma'am well you have some more representative uh okay represent had done this followed by represent Molina I was gonna run through all the same page number by the way um maybe we can have that edited at the next meeting uh but under uh it would be 24 e it states EF monthly payments and amount not taxi 300. so it's under paragraph 24 E and F monthly payments in an amount not to see 300 per month for each employee During the period in which each is assigned additional duties as strategic plan Mentor leaders and then like there's there's several changes to um the uh incentives and the benefits that we give to city employees like the you I guess it's the you matter program and all those that I have been to several events where employees receive um some kind of recognition the government above and beyond their their duties and um and and there's several points here reference are removed or reduced and I'm trying to understand what was the what's the explanation for all that um and just to reiterate this these programs are really important to the employees and to their morale we have over 6 000 employees and and I think that it's really important that you have a mechanism as in City management to to honor them well I I you know absolutely concur we looked at that very carefully so even though we we are reducing the amount I'll tell you why um first of all I concur with you I agree that recognition for our employees is vitally important and I'd like to actually do something that's a combination between gift cards and also like a plaque program but I don't want to be given how you matter cards just at luncheons for people reciting the Mission Vision and values as an example I mean I wanted to matter I wanted to matter for employees that are doing good work and that we don't dilute the significance of the recognition so I mean it's probably a very abrupt way for me to say it but we can do this to take care of our employees and recognize good work and not have to pay as much money that we've been paying in the past because quite frankly I want these to mean something when they're given out to our employees and that's the reason for the adjustment okay so so it would go from 200 000 to a hundred thousand and then it would go up to a hundred dollars and that's sufficient for the amount of employees we have yeah I think it's sufficient and we'll and you know and we'll look at it as well and so we believe after we looked at this and what we were giving out in the past that this is about the right Mark and and uh and I think that that we're going to find that that we're right in the ballpark where we need to be for this year related to the Foster incentive program I don't see a total budget allocated to that on the budget resolution is that because you're not doing it anymore um there's what my question was um like my question is I didn't see like the total budget allocated in the budget resolution or is it referenced somewhere else because under 26 5 D5 6 7 and 8. there's that's okay but just just the budget resolution doesn't give an overall budget for the Foster incentive program so I know that the Foster incentive program I know we're still working on that exact uh uh dollar amount and the program itself so it's it's not finalized so I don't think there's a exact number we we're going to limit it to the first 100 okay okay I I would ask if the team could add a total budget to that program in the budget resolution what's up Mary Michelle this is Nicole Cody representative Hernandez we don't have we can add that but we don't specify the budget allocation in the resolution since it's in the in the proposed budget book that everybody receives and it's usually included in the Departments so we can provide you with that number um but we don't include that allocation specifically for each of the incentives since they do cross multiple departments but we can provide you with that amount and then remember it's only through November 15th because it is going to be ending on that date so it's only from September 1st through November 15th okay um he said he limited to the first 100 and then there's a buy a weekly payment and so I think I think you could put a reasonable budget together but I'll leave that to your discretion um related to item 68 which is deleted um it states that any non-expended funds in the general fund Appropriations allocated to each city council Representatives at the end of the fiscal year shall be allocated to the discretionary fund of each respective city council representatives for the following fiscal year does that mean that any available funds that I have in this fiscal year wouldn't carry over September one it'd be in the next fiscal year so this year the budget resolution allows for that it would go away next year so in savings you have at the end of this year would still roll over it would roll over would would okay but what about the subsequent years would not would not so it would only be effective for this fiscal for this upcoming fiscal year or not moving forward moving forward doing away with that is there a way that we could encumber expenses because in the fall that is when most of our constituent requests come up and so like for example I'm planning events now for like days after the new fiscal year if I were to make a put a notation on the agenda to encumber the funds for Planned expenses because I can't help the fact that the expense has fallen a new fiscal year when we're planning three four months in advance um could we draft language that city council can consider where I can encumber funds for Planned events that have been already approved by Council through a notation it's a struggle that we deal with every year with every city department is getting them to plan well in advance of understanding the timelines associated with the urine close because their funds don't roll over River City Department so we have to work with them very closely so they understand the timelines so that they do make sure that they receive the goods by the time they're supposed to in this fiscal year and so we do not roll over anything you know and we do not roll over anything for any other City Department so I mean we can work with you all on on those deadlines I mean ultimately if you want to add something like that obviously it would take a motion to uh or yeah yes ma'am Robert you told me it wasn't discretionary it's a general fund oh it's essentially your salary your employee's salary is rolling over to the following year discretionary salaries specifically what's your general your general operating fund yeah so 68 it's doing away currently the way that it is is that at the end of the year your General Clinton savings let's say you had a vacant position or whatever you didn't spend all your office supply money currently the way that it works is that at the end of the fiscal year any savings that you have rolls over into your discretionary balance so the recommendation is to delete that section and not allow that anymore but your discretionary funds will stay in your separate all-years fund where they do not expire they continue to accumulate enroll over year to year then my my concern is extremely correct it's only the general fund yeah I mean we go over our office fund all the time um and then for 73 I noticed that there were revisions on the adopted budgets is that because they change through through the Central Appraisal District when they do all the settlements and everything I'm just trying to understand why there's changes to what we adopted so no representative item 73 is the police department's adopted budget so what we do is we do the three years and so what we'll do is we're going to update the information so the numbers are going to be the new the next three years so we're switching the years to FY 2021 22 and then 23 and then 24 and then so it'll be it'll be the new budgets it's the budgets for those fiscal years and it's just as part of chapter 109 of the Texas local government code we want to be able to illustrate that we're not defunding our Police Department so that does show the increase so so whatever was adopted and then what whatever was expended is reflecting on the changes it's only what what was adopted okay yeah I was like why are we changing what we adopted exactly so it's just updating for the for the fiscal year and then reflecting what we're adopting okay so this number would be changed based on the action that was taken today for the the vehicle replacement so there will be an adjustment there will you all be bringing back adjusted language you mentioned the the increase to salaries all of that is going to happen September right yes ma'am so that will be revised in section 24. and okay perfect thank you those are my questions I'm still waiting to go um I do have a question and I'd asked I thought it was really important and I don't see the change and I think it needs to be a change that uh a million dollars can be exchanged from CIP if it's an overrun if you have a saving from one you can put in any District you want I think that's a bad president I think if there is a savings you should stay within the district the savings show that way it doesn't get out over allocated now sudden one District keeps getting all the savings and all the savings and that's really a a bad deal and then all the other districts kind of get ripped off so I want to see where if any savings in a project have to stay within the district for their next street or project or whatever is going on instead of being allocated to someone else operations officer you know this particular provision and the resolution really allows us to move projects forward that are I mean there were million dollars from one District to another more than one so now the sudden you got happened to like uh ever since I'll see though and I save a million dollars on one project shall I give it to her I saved another million I give it to her and it's not fair to all the districts if you save money I think it should stay within the district and go to their next project or projects and I understand what you're saying but you should allocate them closer than that that you wouldn't have that kind of savings and I don't I believe that that becomes favoritism and I believe that that really opens us up to really bad business and I'd hate to see it out of it that I gave representative Salcido every time I turned around I gave it to her or I gave it you know every project so this keeps us clean that keeps us honest with the with the proposals and make sure it stays within the district and I don't think that's really hard because we've already allocated all the money in a every district has a lot of projects and I know that because when you do it you didn't take care of all the products and District three or four or whatever so I think it's important to not open ourselves up for that type of scrutiny and make sure that we keep it within every project and nowhere else represent Kennedy I understand I understand that you can get into a bind on projects but if somebody overseeing a multi-million dollar project said there was a million dollars that needed to be moved immediately and couldn't wait two to three weeks for the next city council meeting I would become very concerned about the process for that project if there's a million dollar oops and we need to make sure it could be on a regular basis then that brings other concerns up to deal with that project I understand that sometimes you say we have to move money to keep things going but I would say you didn't know three weeks earlier that you were going to need another million dollars moved so I would be seriously concerned and I understand being able to move it I agree with the concept of keeping it in the district because I think it does keep things cleaner and less have accusations of potential favoritism I worry about having to move a million dollars without coming to the council for approval anyway but that's just my issue so that would be that would be the recommendation from staff standpoint then as opposed to doing it per District because it's really about the projects that have already been approved by the city council and that's what the capital Improvement department is trying to do is fund the need for those projects so the recommendation if the council wants to make some type of change would be to delete items eight and nine which allows for the transfer of those funds for CIP up to a million is number eight number nine is the 500 000 for new CIP projects so the recommendation be just delete items 89 out of the resolution yeah I just think that if it's if it's a strong enough needs to stay in the district so there is no favoritism there is no problem that somebody is trying to buy the Loyalty of somebody by continuing to help them well this would require deleting those would require the council approval to be able to transfer those funds it would by deleting the as he said by deleting these items from the budget resolution then all these have to come to you for approval if we're going to correct that's what I'm in with that that's the point I mean from the standpoint of I just want to keep transparency and I don't want to be under scrutiny that somebody's taking care of somebody on any project or anywhere so I agree with that tend to delete those two items as stated by Robert cortinas second it's coming back as a full item anyway right correct I mean it's coming back as a rewrite if you have over a thing that comes back to council and then Council approaches I think we have a consensus so we will make the change to delete items eight to nine and that'll be on the back up for August the 15th yeah awesome thank you well yeah I have a clear I guess a clarifying question about this particular topic first which is uh Sam do you have an idea of how often this transfer of less than one million dollars has occurred you know let's say in the last fiscal year and so the the majority of transfers and these get reported quarterly to um through the Office of Management and budget as well it's really the really minor stuff uh mayor uh in Council when we're talking about change orders on foreseen conditions um that we have to make decisions typically the city engineer put the per the emotions that are approved on the construction contracts the city Engineers authorized to approve up to a hundred thousand dollars and again for change orders and so I I don't disagree with you with what's being recommended Robert um but if if we had some flexibility still to move money around it's typically those type of emergency situations where you have a a change order you have an open trench those kinds of things that we want to make sure that we act within the authority that's given us to a council and it's it's a hundred thousand dollars to the city engineer and so I would I would ask that the city manager be authorized to move up to 100 000 uh into a project or out of a project to be consistent with the change order Authority there's not that many like you just said what's the difference whether you bring it to council or not so the city engineer has Authority up to a hundred thousand and that's what he's basically talking about the gap between a hundred thousand and and a million it's very well stated uh we know those type of changes is it and we don't have no issue bringing those forward uh because we're going to know well ahead of time that that those types of funds are going to be required for a particular project so we can bring those forward for approval to council yeah I'm just I'm interested to know how many like if how many additional items on city council agendas will we see over the next year as a result of the leading it's not going to be very many um yeah I mean I I want to measure my words right now because of the construction if we have the right contingency funds allocated within each project then you should not see a whole lot of of budget transfer requests come to council you shouldn't have a problem with the item then no no problem mayor um no problem thank you sir okay so we have representable in our next interrupted and I jumped in front of Representative molinar and then you're after him thank you mayor going back to uh 35 on yeah what was saved the best for Lester anyways going back to the number 35 so I see an issue with more work for our staff but at the same time additional work for the city clerk's office we have eight city council Representatives if they're giving the city clerk more work they're gonna someone's gonna have to post these items on the agenda someone's going to have to research it someone's going to have to make sure it's there that's right it's timed correctly I just don't see we already reconcile the P card we have limits on the threshold for the discretionary funds so it's just to me redundant work and yes we're trying to be transparent great I'm all for that but at a cost I can only imagine that this thing goes to city council and someone from your District or not even in your District challenges another representative and say hey why did you purchase that you're going to have a lot of public comment inquiring about what you're doing and why are you doing it and are we going to be allowed to answer that or not so okay thank you sir if I skipped you I wouldn't intentional you happen to sit on my bad side yeah no problem um yeah I just I just wanted to make an additional quick comment about a number 35 or yeah paragraph 35 um which is I I you know I I definitely agree that we can be more proactive about putting you know I I think it's a good idea to do some sort of uh aggregated report of the spending from each district that that can come from one place reduces the the burden on our staff members to to work it out and have you know eight individual or nine individual posts every week um I do think well I just wanted to say I guess for the clarification for the public this isn't anybody trying to hide anything in fact we're saying we're going to put it out in front of everybody for all of the purchases um uh you know uh we had a limit of a thousand dollars before uh where items would have to uh or a purchase would have to go on a city council agenda for approval and um you know there has there I think there has to be some Middle Ground that's what we're trying to find today because every single item going uh on the city council agenda is also not sustainable for us um you know the people gave examples of a cake or a an immediate need for something like that I mean I think I can think of an example where you know a neighborhood is hosting a neighborhood cleanup kind of impromptu and they want a case of water to go through a three-week approval process for a five dollar case of water is also silly and and for us to have to do that again and again and again we'll tie up everyone's time and resources in our offices in the city managers and city attorney's offices um the city clerk's office and having to get all those agenda items posted and then everyone's time at the city council meeting to work through item after item after item and so I think I just wanted to clarify I think no one's trying to hide anything we have to be able to do our regular business um and and every five or ten dollar purchase having to go on the council agenda doesn't make sense for anybody so that's all my comments thank you mayor I was just going to say if it's if it's easier to have a report which we get off what we what expenditures we've had right we get a monthly report that we could just put on the proactive page where it's just right or have its own since since we get reports on a regular basis just have it have its own page or something where it's just you want to click on you can look we don't have to post it city clerk doesn't have to worry we're getting the report anyway they can just upload it yeah I just don't know that the public always knows where to look for that kind of thing I think if it's going on a council agenda council meeting agenda it doesn't necessarily have to be every meeting could be every month I just think that even a monthly recap because it would be easy enough to put a single item with everybody's recap on it because right that's what I'm saying I think a single item makes sense okay yeah that makes sense yeah that makes sense reconciliation process anyway they're already getting the reports yeah yeah yeah I was just going to say my concern had been what if you forgot to post one five out of five dollar item and then it became a big deal so if we're already doing the monthly report it would be there and with that I'm going to make a motion to adjourn there's a motion in a second there's a motion in a second to adjourn the special city council meeting all in favor aye wait a minute so we um earlier we have some modified we didn't vote on the budget resolution that's going to be adopted on okay so we'll take the feedback today that we received and the different things we've discussed make the modification to that item we will get them done as soon as possible we'll send it out once we get the based on the semi-final version to the city council in advance of the meeting and it'll be up for adoption based on all the changes and recommendation recommendation to bring it back on the 15th yes sir thank you so there's no action needed today no sir the only action on this item was the motion made to the first motions mayor that was to utilize a current year Surplus of unassigned reserves to pay off the entire remaining principle of Transportation reinvestment Zone number two thank you that was the only motion on item on item two so there's a motion in a second to re uh adjoin the regular the special city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed and the special city council meeting for Monday July 31st 2023 is adjourned at 5 12 pm