We're going to do our best. It's always Yes. There you go. Sir, how are you? >> Good. How are you, sir? >> Good. Haven't seen you. So, >> oh, back. Because I went I don't work on Mondays. Did you come in yesterday? >> Uh, no. No, I didn't come in yesterday. >> Okay. Like over the holiday break and just >> were working absolutely nothing. >> I know. I work. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. Council, I'm going to call our work session to order. Our December 2nd, 2025 city council work session is officially called to order and I will turn it over to Jay Chapa. >> Good afternoon and happy December. Um, as far as upcoming and recent events, we don't any new from the city side, but there is a big tree lighting downtown this evening. So, I want to remind everybody of that. On organizational updates and employee recognitions, uh, we have a couple. I'm going to call Jess McKan up to the podium, uh, to make a couple announcements. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. So, I'm joined by Dian Gordano, as you know. So Dion, as you know, was promoted to an assistant city manager a few months ago, but prior to that, she joined our city in June of 2021 as our HR director. And I've asked her to join me up here today because she did not share with us, but I happened to run across a post where in early November she was recognized as the 2025 HR professional of the year by Fort Worth HR. So, Fort Worth HR is a nonprofit that was founded in 1966 and it has over 600 members um all HR professionals in and around Fort Worth. And this is an organization that serves both businesses nonprofits governmental agencies, anybody and everybody in our Fort Worth region. And I've known that Diana is very special and and an incredible HR leader uh since joining the city and getting to work with her on day one. But I think this award is so special because she was not recognized by anybody here in the city of Fort Worth. She was recognized by a lady named Stacy Gileian with CMP, which is a local consulting firm, who Stacy recognized Diana's talents, her knowledge, her contributions to the city, and Stacy submitted the recognition. Uh Diana was selected from a number of nominations for this award. And so it truly is um an honor. And when she attended the awards night, she absolutely had no clue that she was being that she had been selected to receive this award. So she did not have her husband with her. Uh she was just she was just there to watch and so quite surprised but absolutely honored. Um she has done an incredible job for the city of Fort Worth in her last four years here. Um and even as an assistant city manager, she is still working closely with the HR department. You all know she led the recruitment for our new HR director, Kristen Smith, who's been on board now maybe not quite a month or so. Um, but Diana truly values our people and she says it all the time. Our employees are what make the city a Fort Worth success. Um, she has really worked to build a culture of service and collaboration both within the HR department, within the HR teams, but also between the HR department and all of the departments here within the city. And so for anybody that's ever worked with HR, you know that cannot always be a very collaborative relationship, but she has truly led that culture of collaboration. So we're incredibly proud of her and honored to have her on our team. And with this, I just again want to recognize her for being the 2025 HR professional of the year for Fort Worth HR. >> Thank you. >> I don't have a lot to say after that other than I'm glad glad to represent the city of Fort Worth and even glad to represent the HR profession. As Jess said, I think the people are really what make the city great. And I know in Fort Worth, that's no small feat. The people that work here, we attract great talent. We keep great talent. And it's a great place to work. But I don't have to tell you all that because there's great people here in the audience and watching that know that. And it speaks for itself. So, thank you. >> This was her award that she got. And again, not only she did she not tell anybody, she just quietly put this on the table. I mean, it was >> she's incredibly humble. >> Yeah, very humble. Thank you, Diana. So, next up, um, I'm going to introduce to you Cynthia Serrano with our public events department. Um, Cynthia, many of you may know her. She has been with the city for 26 years, uh, primarily tucked away at the Fort Worth Convention Center where she's worked in public events for a long time. But recently, Cynthia was named deputy director of the public events department and she's doing an incredible job there and she is going to now recognize a team within public events. >> Thank you, Jessica. Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'd like to recognize members of the public events team on recent accolades in the PR and communications. Last month, both Will Rogers Memorial Center and the Fort Worth Convention Center took home awards from the Greater Fort Worth chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. These awards were judged by PR executives and were awarded points based on quality research, planning, execution, and measurement of results, not to mention creativity. The convention center received a worthy award, the highest honor for a given category for its phase one expansion topping out videos. Many of you attended that topping out ceremony in August of 2024, and several videos were created to document that milestone. They featured interviews with elected officials, tourism leaders, and our joint venture partners. What you didn't know is that weekend, public events department co communications coordinator Andre Bennett, who is with us, became ill and could not be on site. Thanks to one city team, communication pros from CPE, library, water, and CMO jumped in to assist with media handling and on-site interviews. The video was beautifully filmed by Blissful Sky Studio, who made B-roll available within hours for media. All these contribu contributors are here and deserve recognition as well. Dominique Anderson with Blissful Sky. Thank you. The Will Rogers team received an award of excellence for a robust social media program with no dedicated social media manager position and 120 acres of daily events to cover. Members of the sales, excuse me, and event coordinator team took the reigns with the planning and creativity content to production, increase the venue's followers by 32% in FY25 with an ad budget of only $500. Will Rogers is open 24 hours a day, 364 days a year. We are closed for Christmas. So the team uses an elaborate color-coded content calendar to assign posts that include every show, multiple arenas, the auditorium, the exhibit hall, know before you go information, parking maps, and trendy behind the scenes features. The team is led by sales and events manager Christine Henry Gillette who is not with us and includes coordinators Lucy Puente who is with us, Audrey Hall and Kendra Elder, sales and events manager Charlie Petrich and director of sales Jordan Stefen who's also with us. Both venues punch well above their weight when benchmarked against their peer venues on Meta, ranking in the top five in the US in the number of followers and content. So I encourage everyone watching and here in the room to follow us both of our venues at face on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. So there there's the plug in keeping up with a hundred events that are produced at our venues and the impressive city teams that keep the facilities not only operational but safe and welcoming to millions of guests that visit Fort Worth. Thank you all for your time. Congratulations to you all. Um, up next are informal reports. The first is 25-0128, the 2026 affordable housing bond proposition. Casey Thomas is here to answer any questions. >> Any questions? Yeah, Council Beck, before we go into questions, I want to make a note at the during our presentations. I'm going to move the last presentation number nine pertaining to possible local ordinance regarding sex offender residency to the top of that. I just want to give staff an awareness before we get started so that council ldorf can go where he needs to be. Thank you Beck. >> Hi. Can you please ex uh walk me through the decision um to to put the $5 million in the bond um but also to restrict it only to for purchase single family homes? >> Sure. Yes. So Casey Thomas uh director of the neighborhood services department. Part of the reason for that is the city does currently receive grant funds that we put towards affordable housing. The majority of those funds go towards multifamily affordable housing development. Only a small percentage has been used on the single family affordable housing side. And so with the bond program, we were focused on the single family housing only because we don't currently use our grant funds for that purpose. And then also too with this being a new proposition, um affordable housing being a new proposition for the bond program, we thought that um focusing on the single family residential, we may be able to generate more support from the community for that. >> Um I appreciate that thought process. I have um some concern about restricting the dollars to a specific type of project. I think what made um our ARPA dollars so innovative and so effective when it came to affordable housing and permanent supportive housing is that we had those pot of dollars to partner with people and right now that takes it away this takes um away our ability. I don't disagree with the idea of having um building on our community land trust and the ability to purchase homes, affordable homes, not just rental properties, but we know that we still need those rental properties there. So, I'd like to see that restriction taken off. Um, I understand that it is new on the bond, but um, other entities, municipalities throughout this state, quite frankly, pass much larger housing bonds by by scales of of tenfold. Um, and they pass. And so I'm I'm not worried about affordable housing passing in Fort Worth, whether it be for um single family for purchase or um um multifamily. I think either way the voters either they're going to choose it or they're not. I also would like to note that based on my uh bond meeting and the people that came out to speak, overwhelmingly they asked for more dollars to be put in the affordable housing portion of um the 2026 bond. Um a particular note u the distinction was made that the city of Denton, who's much smaller than us, um has a $12 million affordable housing bond. And so we're not even at Denton's level of what we're committing in our bond to affordable housing. >> I think the plan in in January is to bring back um to the city council in a bond meeting uh all the feedback that we received across and then to have the council hash out what the final list would be and the amounts that go into that so >> get that done by February so you could actually u vote to have the election happen. So, we'll be bringing that back in January. And >> if I may add one more item, um you mentioned the permanent supportive housing. One of the reasons why we didn't include permanent supportive housing as part of the proposal is because of the ongoing cost to provide those services with the bond program. It would only be able to provide the one-time capital fund, but we would have to ident be able to identify external services to pay for those ongoing costs. >> Well, wouldn't we do that in the same way we did with through our partnerships um and the ARPA dollars? you know, we we gave money towards the capital, but those partners then provided the operational services of the permanent supportive housing. >> We could potentially we would just be need to identify what those funding sources would pay for the um for example, some of the ones where they partner with the HFC. We've been able to provide HFC funding for permanent supportive housing, but we would just need to identify that funding source. >> Okay. Thank you, Council. >> Thank you. Um, so I completely agree uh with Councilman Beck about um not restricting these funds because I think it's uh vitally important. Uh for one example, um when I approached the housing bond piece, I was considering some of the issues that we had with the Renaissance Columbia uh coming up short and they was going to provide housing and we didn't really have a mechanism to provide those dollars and we squeezed them out through our general funds or through some other dollars that we had. >> Um and so I think the funds shouldn't be restricted. But when I asked for this IR um in my bond meeting, uh they talked about wanting more dollars into the affordable housing and was speaking with some of the staff. I think that the initial request, I'm not sure, I'm not going to put words in math, but it was 40 million to actually do what needed to be done. And I wanted to see in the IR what we could do with the 40 million versus what we can do with the 5 million. I see what you articulated here, but I don't see the breakdown of what we can do with more dollars and it's not in this hour. That's what I originally asked for >> or additional. Okay. >> We can provide some um recommendations on how those funds could be used. So to what uh to Jay, what you're saying about come back in January, I think um if we're going to have a true discussion about putting more dollars in in the housing or not putting more dollars, we need to be able to see if we put 12 million, we're able to do X, Y, and Z. >> We that's fine. We can we can provide that information. We should also need to outline what we're going to take out of the bond to replace correct >> those dollars through as part of the process. Anyone else questions for Casey? Thank you, Casey. Appreciate it. >> Okay, the next IR is 25-0129 and that's an amendment to the economic development program policy and tax abatement policy with 380 policy and tax abatement policy. And Jessica Rogers here to answer any questions. >> Rolling. The next one's 25-0130. Uh, it's the economic development quarterly report and Jessica Rogers is here to answer any questions. Okay. Next one's 25-0131. City Council uh request for future agenda items and reports write up on on the status of those in the process. >> Yes, I have a question. Council >> Nettles. I think Bethany is here. Uh, thanks Bethany. If you can kind of give us an overview of the hour you provided. And then one of my specific questions was um do we have a time frame of future agenda items such as uh if we ask for one today, are we looking at a 30-day, 60, 90day window of receiving that uh feedback in the IR? >> Sure. Hi, Councilman Nettles. uh Bethany Warner, assistant to the city manager. Um I'll I'll start with the overview and then I'll go to that question which the general overview of this IR is it talks about the section of your uh work session agenda where you do the city council requests for future agenda items andor reports and kind of the process it follows when council members make requests at that time. Um those requests can take multiple forms depending on the complexity of the information requested. Um, for example, it might become an IR. It might become a budget response during a budget work session. It might become a presentation. Um, it might be a direct email response from staff. Depends on um what was requested, the time it takes to pull that together, the complexity and what the council member is hoping to find. Um it outlines a bit in this IR that process where um you know the day after uh generally one of these meetings CMO is going to look at those requests identify which departments have that information or multiple departments um assign an avenue for what that should look like to be resolved whether it be an IR or a different format and what a tenative timeline for that might look like and then the following packet that council receives from cso generally the ones that uh become IRS are assigned a tenative preliminary date for when we anticipate that to come. But as we know, sometimes that date shifts as we um delve into what it takes to pull that information together from the department. So um then to to your question, um it it really is uh dependent on what is requested. I don't think we have a standardized timeline of when a request happens. There is a specific date that that information needs to be provided because some information can be provided to you right away. Um, if it's a simple question that requires a simple answer, staff can follow up quite quickly. Um, and some information is bundled together with other ongoing efforts at the city into a more complex, robust response that requires research and potentially multiple departments involved. >> All right. Well, some of my concern is um, one, council members don't typically set the agenda. The only time we get opportunity to add something to the agenda is through a IR presentation or IR request or future agenda item. And so, and most of my future agenda items are coming from residents concerns or dealing with staff issues or whatever that may be or how we can broaden the scope or actually put it on the record, put it publicly. So, um I don't agree. Um I Well, let me ask you this question. Who determines uh whether it is a direct response to the council member or is it going to be a IR pres or a presentation? Is that the city manager's office or the the department head a leader? Yeah. So, typically Bethany mentioned tomorrow morning we'll go through all the requests and if it's an item very specific to a like a property in one district, we typically ask the staff member that's going to be dealing with that department to respond to the council member through an email because it doesn't necessarily pertain to the city. It's not a citywide issue or to all the council members. And then that way you have a written record of it. And if you'd wanted to send it out to I mean to put it in IR just extends the the overall u process and the and the presentation when we can answer the question fairly quickly is the thought process. If you all don't want us to do that and have an IR regardless of what the question is, we can do that. It's just adds more work, creates more process. And uh the idea behind an email to address a specific issue is is to shorten the timeline, be more efficient. >> Let me add maybe a note here, Bethany, in this IR towards the end in the tracking process improvements. It sounds like you're you are implementing a new tracking system sort of centralized way of understanding where all these are, which I think has been maybe part of the problem. I think some council members have been kind of confused who's owning what. >> Yeah, that's one of the things. >> Yeah. And so I think to council Nettle's point, it's probably nice for him to know I can email Bethany and she can tell me, you know, Jess is working on that right now. We have a general idea of a timeline because if you're communicating back to a constituent, maybe that also creates less friction back and forth. >> Yes, absolutely. The CMO support team is working with the city secretary's office to create a better place to look for the status of these different requests so we can better track how it was resolved, when it was resolved, who's leading on it, where it is in the process. um so we can follow those trails better for you whenever you're not sure where a request um ended up and you're looking for a status update >> and part of the process we we don't have another work session for instance till January and so in some cases the formal report or the request for the informal report could be outdated by then so that sometimes we want to expedite that process and provide the information to the person that asked the question so it just all depends >> yeah well I'll be I don't I don't uh disagree with direct responses, but I would say sometimes even if we get a direct response from your office or anyone else's office, the council member should also have the opportunity to say, "Well, we still want to I so that it's on public record." >> Sure. >> I think that's fine. >> Okay. >> Thanks, Bethany. >> Uh the next one is emergency overnight cold weather overflow sheltering and Tara Perez is here to answer any questions. >> Like an overview, please. And if Tara, could you give us also stats from the last couple nights if you have them? >> Tara Perez with CMO. So, Council Member Hill, you asked for a general overview of the process. >> Yeah, general overview of the process and also if you have stats from the last couple nights, I think that'd be helpful too. >> Okay. So, the city funds through a contract with the nonprofit When We Love. So, when our regular emergency shelter beds are full um on certain cold weather nights that the city funds extra beds. So, we use city facilities um but have a nonprofit when we love that provides the staffing to run this. The goal is just that if anyone is sinking seeking warmth on a cold night that they're able to find it. If not at a regular shelter at one of the city shelters. Um the stats. So so far this year we have been on standby. That's when we meet certain weather triggers. We've been on standby three nights and we have activated one. So the difference is the other two nights there were beds available um in our existing shelters. So, when there's still beds, we don't open. Um, and one night we did activate because we ran out of women's beds in emergency shelters. >> Where are we? Sorry. Where are we um putting these additional beds? Is >> sorry, where are we putting these additional beds? Are they in different locations across the city? Is it a centralized location? So, we are using some city facilities, um, community centers, and so we have there are three that have agreed to do this. Last year, we were able to just use one the whole time, but we have backups in case we ever need them, >> council. >> Yeah. What are those three the community centers where that we're using? >> Okay. The first one is Hanley Meadowbrook. And then the second one is Haw. That's an athletic facility. And then the third is a backup to Hanley, which is Riverside Community Center. >> Councilor Flores. >> Oh, no problem. Uh mine is related, too. Uh I did notice that DRC put out some uh cold weather uh shelter information as well. Can you tell uh us a little bit about that if if you know the details about what they were doing >> about DRC? >> Yes. >> Okay. To my knowledge, I didn't know. Sometimes they work with when we love. Um do you think it was supporting that effort with the city? >> It doesn't mention that in their post. This was on social media that I found it. >> Okay. >> Um but you know, they're asking that uh that information get widely uh shared. says, "Dial 311 or 817-3921234 in our call center and press nine for details." >> Okay. So, that may be DRC just helping us get the message out. Um, so that's what that's the information we distribute um to our partners and shelters and um our community organizations that work with people experiencing homelessness and our outreach teams directly distribute that information to people experiencing homelessness. And so it's just they call the city's 311 and they can press nine and they'll know if it's activated or not. >> Yeah. Because it's not a site specific. It didn't mention those three sites. And what was the third one again, Tara? I'm sorry. >> Riverside Community Center. >> Okay. >> The reason we don't mention those a lot is because they're not walk up sites. People cannot just walk up and say, "I'm here for cold weather shelter." And that's done very purposely um to mitigate any effects on neighborhoods. And so we ask everyone to please report to the regular emergency shelters. If those are full, then they just go across the street to True Worth Place, which is where the intake is. And then Trinity Metro provides transportation from True Worth Place to the overflow. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Any other questions for Tara? Yes. >> One more question. I'm Thank you, Mayor. Is there transportation provided? like if you're in a different part of the city, is there transportation provided to get you to the emergency location? So, we have kind of two levels. So, um when we are going to have like extreme extreme weather like ice storms, we also distribute bus passes to police officers. So if they are seeing people and then we have already distributed bus passes to our outreach workers that are not in the East Lancaster area so that they can give them the information about the shelter and they had the bus pass to get to East Lancaster. >> Thank you. >> Council Nettles. >> Uh yes. I have a couple of questions and it's kind of to one Dr. Hall just spoke about. When I'm looking at these shel uh these shelters, you got Hanley Metalbrooks east side halls is right here downtown and Riverside is close by downtown. So there's not any that's on the outskirts of the inner city such as Crowley Road or even North for Worth. >> Okay. So when we looked at those locations and we looked for a few things, one was just city facilities. Um, and so that helps us keep the cost down for our cold weather shelter operations is using city facilities. And then we work very closely with the park department to determine which are the best ones. For example, what we're looking for for overflow sheltering is a large gym. Um, but also it needs to be in a place, this is um, last year was the first year we had Trinity Metro shuttle people and so we were relying before that on bus stops. So, we looked at, you know, what facilities are near a bus stop and then also the setup of the community center. Um, for example, being able to easily block off the community center except for the restrooms and the gym. And so, we look at those things. And again, we we used these three last year, but only Hanley was ever used because it had the most we had there was 140 people. It was very full then, but it was 140 people. And so, we don't open all three at the same time. It's just if Hanley gets full, then we would open halls. >> Okay. Two questions and one or one question and two whatever. Have we um uh open it up to churches? I know you said to um officers may have bus passes, but I do know some of our homeless people may go to some of our local churches or even call. And the other question is what is our communication with our other nonprofits around Fort Worth so they can refer people to this 311 or to Hanley or to some police officers. >> Okay, I'll take the second question first. So we have um a sign up there's an email notification list. So we have about 150 partners that receive that. So whenever um they received it last night for me that says, "Hey, we're on a cold weather standby tonight." Um, and so that goes to about 150 different people from I'm not sure, but probably at least 40 to 50 different organizations in the city, some of our internal city departments to let them know, but a lot of them are um our hospitals and our nonprofit partners. Um, and so that's how we get the word out there is through email. But then our partners like Partnership Home and it sounds like DRC are reposting the city's information to let people know about the cold weather shelter. So that's how they know about that. Some churches do sheltering operations. We don't have a compiled list of who's doing that. Sometimes it's sporadic. So some sometimes people are just driving down. It's very cold and so they'll get motel rooms for some folks for the night. Um but it's it it doesn't always have a regular rhythm. We do work with some nonprofits that do that to make sure they're aware of our cold weather overflow. Um, and they've been really helpful in bringing picking up folks and bringing them to the overflow site. >> Can people sign up to be part of this 150 list that you have? >> Yes. >> Okay. We provide that to uh the council. >> Um, yes. Just that you want me to sign you up for the to get the email alerts? >> No. Uh, provide us uh information on how people can sign up for this. >> Okay. Okay. That's just emailing me. >> Just emailing you. Okay. >> Just email me. We keep we keep we keep the list. >> All right. Thank you, >> Tara. >> Yes. >> Given the state of construction over there, you know, Hadley Mbrook is in my district and so it's almost impossible to get to now. Have you all looked at that now? That road is is closed literally when you come off 820. So, um, have you looked at that? Are we able to still use that facility? >> I haven't. Um, when we spoke with Trinity Metro, we do kind of a afteraction call whenever we activate shelter. Okay. >> Trinity Metro didn't mention any problems um about that, but I can follow up and see if they're having any difficulty. >> Yeah, if you would follow up. I was over there the other day and that road from 820, the exit to get on there, you have to go a secuitous route now to get to the center and I want to make sure that people are able to get to it and use it. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> Thank you, Tara. Good. >> Next one is 25-0133. This food services program at city hall. >> Questions on this one, council? >> Okay. >> Okay. Next one's 25-0134, gunshot detection technology update. And Deputy Chief Mark Barton here. >> Yeah, we are. >> And I would like an update on that because we get lots of complaints about uh gunshots in various neighborhoods in D5. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Deputy Chief, >> we'll go back. >> No problem. >> Mark, no. No, you didn't. You're all good. Chris, go ahead, Mark. How are you? I'm good. Um, so is there are there any specific questions y'all are wanting to know that weren't included in the IR? >> Maybe start with just an overview and then they can ask questions if that's okay. >> Sure. So, uh, we currently have the gunshot detection, uh, technology in five areas around the city. Uh, those were selected based on historical, uh, gunshot um, statistics. Uh year to date, between January and November of 16th, there have been over 6,000 audio alerts. Those include false alarms. Those include uh gunshots that were detected by multiple devices. So, it's not an accurate number of how many shots have have been uh actually captured by the devices. Um the best breakdown, we don't have an a specific way to track each device as how long it or how many times it alerts, but um the best breakdown we could come up with is our devices that are in south division have activated 1522 times. Our east division devices have activated 622 times. And then in northwest we've had 186 alerts. uh we were not able to uh gather the statistics for west division. Um and in the the one that's for south division that's 76104. So that's short south. So that's kind of being lumped in with central division. So we don't have the statistics for deep south also. Um of those incidents, we haven't issued any citations as a result result of of these detections. uh if it's if it's an actual gunshot, discharging a firearm is a class A misdemeanor. So, we wouldn't issue a citation in that case anyway. Um but we have had a few instances where these have led to arrest. Uh but in most cases, the gunshot detection actually assist us with follow-up investigations, tracking down leads, and confirming uh information for detectives in their case work. Council member Crane. >> Yeah. Uh, is there a reason you couldn't get the west numbers? >> It wasn't it wasn't explained to me, but I will find out and get >> I'd like I think for an accurate picture. Yeah. I'd like to s >> Council Member Martinez. Council >> Peoples. >> No. So, what I what I mean when I say it's it's not effective for arrest is most the time if it's an actual gunshot uh where they're where they're picking up a legitimate shooting, that shooting has already called been called into 911 and we don't have a way to differentiate the two. So, it's hard to to sparse out those stats specifically. Um what we do is we can reach out to the individual detectives and and ask them if if they keep any notes on their shootings. And so it's more anecdotal than than empirical information. >> Council Martinez, um, do we know if all the equipment, gunshot equipment deducting is currently working that we have out in the field? >> Yes. And um, yeah, I think we would we would have notifications that that it's not accurately working. we would send that to Flock or ACOM, whoever owns that particular equipment, and they would come out and replace it. >> So, what was the um reasoning for acquiring this technology like in these specific neighborhoods? Um you said that there was a lot of gunshot detections. Were there a lot of um you know, people getting shot or was it just um discharging of firearms? Well, so that that was before my time, but like I said, it was it was based on historical information for um probably all of the above, gunshots, reported gunshots, um actual shooting victims, and um just general complaints. So, I can't speak to what specific call types they looked at when they identified these neighborhoods because I was not involved with that, but it was probably all of them. >> Okay? you know, like um Councilwoman Peele said, this is uh one of the top complaints at community meetings that I've been to. Even students when I go to career day um you know, have concerns about gunshots. Um so what's the point of having this equipment if we're not going to address those discharging firearms? Are there not any um heat maps where we can identify certain areas and do a detail to try to catch these offenders? >> Oh, sure. And and so I don't want it to sound like we're not doing anything with the information when it comes in. Like I said, with with the gunshot detection, if a shooting actually occurs, more times than not, that call has actually come into 911 be at the same time or before we get the gunshot detection alert. Those calls always get investigated regardless. Um if we have if we get notifications from a council member that they have concerns that a specific neighborhood is seeing an increase in gun violence um shots fired calls, we will absolutely address that um in multiple ways um because of the limitations with the technology. We don't move the gunshot detection because it this is way above my uh intelligence level, but they use algorithms and and whatnot to place these sensors so that they can triangulate and and determine where the call where that shot or where that noise is coming from. And to move these devices would it's it's very labor intensive. And what we can do, I I suppose to to what you're saying is if we notice that the trends are moving from where these were originally placed, we can certainly go to the vendor and look at at moving them to where the new trends are showing they should be. Um, but for sure if if there are if there's gun violence, we are investigating it and and absolutely pursuing those cases regardless of if it occurs near this equipment or not. >> Well, I mean, I tell people to call if you hear gunshots. um you know and and sometimes you see you see PD drive by or sometimes you're just you call and you go back to bed. Um but there are certain households that are discharging firearms regularly. Um are we not looking at the data of um where those um the area where those gunshots are coming from to try to address that problem properly? >> Oh yes abs. Absolutely. That all that gets investigated um and then gets addressed by whatever unit. If it's a if it's determined to be a gang problem, our gang detectives and gang officers will do enforcement in those areas. If it's just random gun violence or gunshots where a neighbor just likes to go out in their backyard and shoot off some rounds, we are absolutely following up on that. >> Well, just the numbers don't really reflect that. Deborah, will you turn your mic on? >> Thank you. >> 622 uh fire shots in the stall cup berry area on the east division. What are we doing with that information? Are we using it to uh up guy uh gy units? Are we using it to increase patrols? I mean, I'm with her. Do we want to spend this money a to do this if we're not going to use the data to help control crime? >> Excellent question. I will say, you know, with regards to gunshot detection, although obviously new here to Fort Worth and before my time as well, but from the national conversation with gunshot detection, you're 100% right. We need to figure out exactly if this was if this technology is worth it. Uh the reality of it, the the reality of it is it's normally coupled with a crime actually occurring that we respond to. I've heard in many many different places I've heard the arguments with regards to individuals firing gunshots from their homes and this and gunshot detection isn't the panacea uh when a gunshot is coming off of someone's backyard as an example if it's not coupled with a crime. Uh there's legal aspects of us going into a home to make an arrest just based on gunshot detection and coordinating exactly where it's coming from. Obviously, when officers have the time and there is gunshots that that that ring out, officers certainly can go in that area. Areas that I found incredibly successful has been when we've had chronic areas in certain neighborhoods going after the fact using utilizing NPOS's and possibly going after the fact to make contact with individuals to to to have some awareness of the issue. But with regards the reality of it in real time, uh unless unless we're capturing it with our flock cameras, going to the real-time crime center, uh generally speaking, it's more of an awareness if it's coupled with a crime. Absolutely. Um it is a it's it assists, but it's not the panacea as it pertains to someone shooting out of their backyard and necessarily other things from uh doing something at the moment as opposed to coming in afterwards with NPOS or others for awareness in that neighborhood if that makes sense. But as a police department, we do need to go back and see if that the money we're spending in this technology is worth it. That's 100% accurate. >> I would like to see us do that because I know this sounds crazy. I'm looking at this 622 wondering how many of them came on New Year's Eve. Everybody in the world is out there shooting guns on New Year's Eve and most of them while it is a crime, they do it because it's a habit. I mean, how many of these are actually like during the peak cur and all that? >> When I would I I would tell you, council member, I don't probably during New Year's time. Um, quite a few. Uh, Fourth of July, quite a few. Uh, and so I do say, I mean, if we if we sit back realistically and look at if we were to respond to every gunshot during New Year's and the Fourth of July, which are arguably, in my experience, some of the most violent times in a major city, um, you can see where the rubber meets a road a little bit with regards that if it's not attached to a crime. So I do understand from obviously with our community uh and us looking at the technology because there is a frustration that we have a technology why aren't we doing something about it when a gunshot goes off. That is a question that we need to ask ourselves because to your point in those heavy times which also are the heaviest times that we are staffed. Um if if we can imagine dispatching police officers to every gunshot detection that goes off that's not equate not not related to a crime uh our our men and women would be running around the city looking for that. >> So I just want us to do something about those repeat offenders at least. I know it's a misdemeanor but you know if they're shooting every weekend doesn't that build up the severity of the offense? Well, again, council member, I think it's one of those those issues I know I get particularly in my experience and we'd have to drill down exactly where they're occurring, but if individuals are shooting from their backyards as an example to pinpoint necessarily where that guns, gunshot detection is not the panacea to pinpoint exactly where it is. Uh and so that's why followup uh with the community which is helpful bringing communities on board if it is an issue to have community meetings with regards to having the community build strength with regards that we have your back but we need some pressure from the community to say that that this doesn't belong here how unsafe it is uh and also follow up by our NPOS's after the fact when we get those reports is important but certainly the realization and really the having having the the mindset and the understanding with our community understand that the simply having this technology isn't the panacea for every gunshot that's not related to a violent crime. >> Okay. Well, then you're a data guy, so give us the data. Let me know where the hot spots are and I can work with my community to start addressing those problem properties. >> Yes, C. >> Yes, Council Flores. >> U maybe Deputy Chief, you can handle this is I think this is more of a question for the flock people. Okay, I'm just going to put it out there. Um, you know, based on what I'm hearing right here, I think that again, uh, I don't know the details of the sophistication, you know, of of the detection equipment, but I would think that it should be able to, uh, harvest certain data, for example, frequency of occurrence over time at certain locations. And then it uses GIS uh, to do um, triangulation to locate where these may be coming from. Well, does it autolocate automatically locate or uh based on 911 calls? Say somebody calls and said, "Hey, I heard a gunshot." Detection equipment heard something in the vicinity. Uh is is the software sophisticated enough to say, "Hey, guess what? This is within the certain area, certain distance from one another associated with it to help police in investigating." Does it do that? >> That is a good question for Flock. I can't answer that for them, but I know that we do that manually. Our real-time crime center does that. >> Yeah. And see, there you go. That could be automated. >> Yes. >> So, that is something we'll take back to Flock and ask if it's a capability they currently have. And if so, how do we turn that on or if that's something that they can add in the future to let us test out and see how effective it is. I think we wanted to go back to the food services program. >> Yes. Thank you. Mayor, >> people's I think the request is we we'll just keep rolling. We'll get to make sure we get to your IR though. We won't >> Thank you, mayor. >> No problem. >> Okay. The next one is >> 25-01351 second collaborative update and uh assistant chief assistant chief um >> since we're talking about crime we might as well >> might as well mayor council how are you guys doing this afternoon good to see you >> good assistant chief Aldridge uh forward police department so we have to kind of go in a time capsule to talk about one second collaborative a little bit we weren't in this building we had a different chief had a different city manager some of the council members weren't even on council. So, you know, we go back to September of 2022 is whenever we kind of started this adventure with the 1 second collaborative. Uh, entered into a contract agreement with them from it was December of 2022 till May of this year. Um, it was about a little over $4.4 $4 million and that was uh to help with the with the main goal of reducing violent crime in some of our high high violent crime communities, improve capacity of community- based organizations and suppress youth gun violence. And they did that uh with four different strategies or objectives. Um one was to of course get an imple implementation plan. How are we going to do this? How does it look? how does it look in the city of Fort Worth and and for Tarant County as a whole. Um the other was to reduce the incidence of deaths um from our teen violence um by 5% decrease violent crime uh in the city of Fort Worth by 10% over the over 12 months and have a sustainment project for success beyond this program. So the implementation we have several members on the steering committee myself, Deputy Chief Martin from the police department were there. We had members from Fort Worth ISD. We had Crowley ISD. Uh we had council members, Councilman Flores, uh former council member Jared Williams was on this uh panel. We also had advocates from Mothers Against Murdered Angels, Lena Pope Home, One Safe Place, Center for Children's Health, uh VIP Fort Worth, Community Frontline, Communities and Schools, and Strategies to Elevate People of Color. Um we selected uh nine different zip codes and those zip codes were based on the crime the violent crime that we had whether it was within Tarant County or Fort Worth. vast majority of these were in Fort Worth obviously um because we occupy most of Tarant County and so whenever we started looking at uh you know the what what grants we're going to give to some of these partner agencies um they had a panel that they put together they looked at some of these applications and so they looked for intervention outreach workers prevention suppression and re-entry type programs and so during the first phase around July of 2023 they awarded $2.1 million to some of these partner agencies to help with some of those efforts. Uh they awarded micro grants back in October of 2024 to 12 agencies in the amount of $89,000. And then they also uh did continuation grants for 15 other agencies for about $800,000 in January of 2025. So the outputs, if you look at it, although we were um looking at nine different zip codes because those were our violent crime areas, uh they serve 63 different zip codes um around the community. um 52 crimerevention programs, over 18,000 total participants, over 7,000 participants from the age of 13 to 24. Uh there were 285 community events. Um we had over 1,600 youth received violence interruption type efforts. uh we had for over 4,200 families receive affordable housing and assistance and,00 uh there was reported of 1100 individuals improved behavior uh improved school attendance for 683. So you know whenever you look at the outcomes 78% reported an improve in their attitude 83 uh demonstrated positive life changes and 70% avoided behaviors that could have led to an arrest. So, some of the deliverables is that during this time frame, we saw a 58% drop in the youth um um fatalities. Um and we also saw a 13% decrease in our violent crime across the city. And you've seen that we've seen a considerable decrease as the years have gone on. And so, uh at the conclusion of this, the funding ran out for One Second Collaborative. And so although that that program has ceased, some of those programs have kind have started to apply for grants within CCPD for our partners with the shared mission. So we're trying to continue some of those moving forward. So with that, I'll answer any questions. >> Questions for Chief Aldridge. >> So Chief, I know you said they've started applying for CCPD. Yes. Uh >> and you don't have to tell me the name of the groups, but are you looking at their success rate under this program? >> Oh, absolutely. >> Okay. >> Yes. I mean, we we want to have positive outcomes and that's really part of the partners with the shared mission program is that we have key objectives that we want them to meet and they're evaluated each year. I did failed to mention on the last page you can see the partner agencies that we uh you know that one second collaborative helped fund um and the amounts that were funded you know throughout this program. Council, >> maybe I'm missing it here, but some have stars on it on SC funded. Are those ones that have already received CCPD funds as well? >> Yes, correct. >> Question. >> Thank you. Um, for the uh OSC committee, are they still convening? >> They are not. No, ma'am. >> Okay. And then I know um a part of the IR I know there's going to be some next steps and I know one of the goals of the initial program was to have a sustainment program. >> Yes. >> Is there a timeline or an expectation of when that may manifest or what the next steps are to create that program? >> So our goal in our partners with the shared mission is to try and get people to that sustainment area. And so if they start coming into you know into the CCD program under partners with the shared mission that's what I mean we have that progression you know where they get development grants and then we try and get them into sustainment grants and and get them self-pro uh proficient as as they move on. Um I guess one this is more of a maybe a suggestion um than a question but as we move forward in this one I want to applaud the efforts of the one second collaborative and and and the outcomes that we did get um from this um initiative. I would encourage that there be a systemic approach perhaps um on what that sustainable programs look like and I'm really glad that there are these the capacity for some of these organizations were able to grow underneath this initiative and they're going to be able to apply through CCPD but we still have opportunities I think with the school districts yes >> um to partner along with you know law enforcement other nonprofits and these um organizations that did have that did you know contribute to these outcomes. So, I'm just encouraging that we would take this momentum and not let this kind of die. >> I agree with you. >> And try to do something systemic and and continue to make an impact for our youth because >> it's it's a it's a huge deal. A 58% drop in teen shooting deaths is a is a huge impact in our community and we need to continue and that should be a priority. >> Absolutely. >> And it takes all of us, not just the police department. >> It is. Thank you for for your efforts on this. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions from council? Keep going. >> Uh, next is 25-0136 update on pan handling enforcement. Monica Martin, deputy chief is here to answer any questions. So, Chief, can you brief us on the program? It is a big issue in the uh eastern part of my district about pan handlers. There are 30. >> Yes. Thank you, Councilwoman Peoples. As we all know, the issue with panhandling and is very complex. It's very ambiguous. It's definitely ongoing. That's why I felt it was important to create an informal report where you could see what each of your division representatives, your commanders were doing with their teams of NPOS's as well as our hope team. Um, as you can see, it is unique throughout each division. It what one division does doesn't necessarily work for another division. Um, however, I want to emphasize that the people that we come in contact with, they are all not the same. They are some are absolutely struggling with homelessness, with addiction, um, and maybe even both. But we also are aware that there are others that that are out here for opportunities as far as making money, right? And we're we're not, you know, um far removed from recognizing that. However, that is why we have to stay balanced and consistent with the programs that we create with the the strategies that we come up with like understanding what our vehicles and what our drivers are and what are motivating these people because they have different motivations. Some are out here trying to survi to survive and some are making money. Some go home at the end of the day. Some drive nice cars at the end of the day. But also panhandling is also part of freedom of speech. So that's why we have to dive into the behaviors if they're stepping out and blocking traffic. You know, if they're creating uh a public safety um for our indiv for for our community or for themselves. And so that's why we have we work with our council members. We work with our uh hope team which are here today standing behind us each and every day. They go out there and they're making these connections meeting these individuals that may be in need or have a crisis or may not. But the goal is to identify one of the one or the other um in both situations. And so um collaboration is another key part of the panhandling crisis that we are um experiencing. And that's why we work with our council members um especially on environmental solutions. We have reached out to several of you with lighting or cutting down trees or even helping us put up signage to bring that awareness and education component to our community leaders um on in our city um um community. Uh because at the end of the day with those that are taking advantage of the community, they're doing it because they're getting a profit. They're playing on people's compassion, right? So, if we can educate our citizens on being more aware that when you give, and I've been in a line off of Eastch Chase where I've seen 10 people stick their hand out and drop money into buckets. Well, do you think the people are going to leave at that point in time? Absolutely not. They're there for a profit. It's the biggest business scheme you can ever see, right? So, we have to stay on top of that education and awareness. When you guys are having your town halls, reach out to us. Invite our hope team. invite our community leaders and invite our um business owners. We have to make sure that this awareness component is out here because there are certain parameters that we're going to always have to navigate and be in as far as law enforcement is concerned that sometimes limits us uh with what we can do. However, but that collaboration component although the the it's complex, it's ambiguous, we have to not be afraid of the complexity. We have to learn that complexity, learn from it to to come up with better solutions on how we are addressing the problem. >> Council Martinez, >> um Chief Martin, you mentioned that uh you know the data looks different for each division, so really inconsistent. Um is there any way we can get some numbers for those divisions that u and expanding on on the efforts in those areas where we got very little or um no numbers. You know, you would think that east and south had would have like higher um enforcement in their area. Well, I mean maybe because I'm more familiar with south and east, right? Um, do you think it's because constituents aren't uh reporting panhandling like they do in other areas? >> Part of that is part of the case, right? That's why I say like when you have your town halls, invite us so we can bring that education and awareness because like you know that data tells a story, but if we're not getting the data, we're not going to allocate resources to an area that's saying that they don't need it. So, we have to continue to spread the message that if you are seeing individuals out here that are panhandling whether they may genuinely need it or not, we have to know about these areas and the only way we know about those areas is if we're getting the calls. I know a lot of times you guys receive calls from the constituents, but they got to also call us and let us know about it as well. >> Do you feel like these uh it's okay not to give signs that we put up in hotspots are are working or what are you seeing or hearing? So, it's a matter of the heart, right? Um, if someone has a giving heart, they can see that sign all day and still not be discouraged from giving money if that's what they're, you know, their heart is telling them to do. So, again, there's the complexity in that you can't control someone's heart if it's on their heart to give. So, I I would say that yes, it may work, but also if someone is going to give, they're going to give. >> Council member Hill, >> um, I had a couple questions on the special detail. There was a certain guess specific time period that those areas it looked like >> west division, north division focused on pan handling specifically. Do you believe that was effective and is that something that all divisions are going to start doing? >> I think that anything that we can implement and test and strategize for is always effective. It's about really getting the afteraction report to see where we need to build upon what worked, what didn't worked. Um work I'm sorry I can't see you. what worked or what didn't work. Um, so sorry, 53 right here. Uh, but no, I wouldn't say that that the things that we're doing is not effective. It's it may just be that we have to build upon it and redirect. >> I guess I'm thinking of some of the Sorry, Alan, you're have to move your head. I guess I'm specifically thinking of the frequent flyers that go to the same intersections over and over and over again. if they see an increase of police presence, that seems to me that that's a stronger deterrent than just once in a while someone will report it and they'll get caught. >> Um, and I guess that's what I'm looking for, especially in um I think D7 D3. There's two specific corners that I'm thinking of that it's the same people every single day and they're not going away. So, whatever we can do to I guess raise the visibility of the police presence in those areas, I think is helpful for our constituents to see that we're doing something about it. And then two, um I mean I and they probably live in the area. I don't know what you do about that, but being able to spread the word to make sure that people do understand that use the My Fort Worth app to report it is very effective. And even though the the pan handling signs are there, I think to your point, people are still going to give, but we need to encourage people to also report. >> Yes. And that's where I lean on on you guys as council members again, that education, that awareness component. If you can bring us into your town hall meeting so we can talk to the constituents, our community members and continue having this conversation because a lot of times we'll have this conversation and then you go months and months down the road until someone calls and it becomes a bigger problem. So again, we have to stay balanced and we have to stay consistent with this problem just because of the complexities that surround it. >> Right. I guess I would just like to see that special detail happen again, maybe more frequently. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Did you have a question, Council? >> So, Deputy Chief, you you already named the hot spot. You know, East Chase off I30, there's a pan handler on every corner, and I realize there are people in need, but the residents there feel totally belleaguered. And uh so I think the signage may help there because it gives some permission people permission not to give. So while I want to help the homeless, I really do also know that's a major problem at that intersection. And if we could put up some signage there, I think that would help. >> And correct me if I'm wrong, I do believe there is a sign that is there that faces north and one on the south end. Okay. Okay. Maybe we need maybe we need some more. But I was told that one person they said, "Well, I don't have any cash." And the person said, "Well, I take credit cards." >> Oh, wow. That wouldn't surprise me. >> Oh, wow. Okay. So, >> it wouldn't surprise me, but yes. Um, our plan and our goal is to definitely stay consistent with what we're doing. >> Here's my Vinmo. >> Okay. Yes, Council Crane. >> Thank you. Thanks, Chief Martin. Thanks for all the hope, guys, men and women back there. Appreciate y'all what you're doing. Specifically to follow up on Council Member Hill, this may be what this is meant in in it in the west side. It says Helen Street, McGomery Street. Is is that Hulin and 30 and Montgomery and 30? >> Hen Street in Montgomery. >> Yes. If if not, that's I would just point that out because it is consistent there. Um as well as University and Camp Buoie, that traffic circle there. Not traffic circle, but you know what I'm talking about. Um consistent there and we consistently get uh text messages from people. Uh so if we know their hot spots, I understand that it's it's a little bit of playing whack-a-ole. They're going to move from one place to another. >> But uh the more we can do that, I'd appreciate that, too. >> Yes. And what I can also do is make sure that our commanders are staying in constant contact with you guys to let you know that when we are doing these special details and when you are coming in contact or if you're getting community calls, you are aware and can let them know what we're doing as well. Um qu really more of a comment when you read through the report like west division has specific numbers on calls for service and then the efficacy of those calls specifically arrests. Do you have that data for each other division? So when we um got the data from each division we just wanted to foresee what they were doing. Um, so a lot of them did give information that wasn't consistent and they may may have been by design so that when we build this out we can become more consistent with calls for service, how many citations have been rendered to individuals and going so on and so forth. Okay. So this information was very much preliminary but moving forward we will definitely streamline it so that you it can answer the questions that you guys have specifically towards the data. Well, and we can work with Jay and Senna and the rest of the team and your council members may have some thoughts about this, too. But the way we make may um publicize this information on our website on a more regular basis, I think, could be helpful to point to because sometimes people make the assumption you're not doing anything on pan handling and there's that's couldn't be further from the truth. And some of this data, I think, really does demonstrate your efforts are working and and I think we are making inroads. We just maybe have to communicate that a bit better. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes, council Hall. Thank you. Um, and just to clarify, um, and I think this kind of piggybacks on what mayor was saying, are the protocols the same and the expectations the same um, at each through each of the divisions. So like what might happen if I call about handling in south? Would it be the same response in the north or in the east or in the west? >> Um, I'm going to say it varies. Obviously, yes, we're going to answer the call, but again, panhandling from division to division, it looks different um based off one, how we're getting notified, how often we're getting notified. That helps us on how we're going to allocate those resources. But absolutely, if a 911 call comes in, obviously we're going to answer that call for service. um and we're going to look at that data to see okay if we're at Hulin in Montgomery and for the month of November we've had over a 100 calls at that location then yes we're going to create some type of detail and allocate s uh resources there to minimize that impact right there at that location. I asked that question just to say, you know, in the cases where, you know, certainly you don't want to criminalize um poverty, right? Um but in cases where there may have been, you know, someone that we've helped or someone that we've made note of or we keep in a database of those people where there's been intervention, how do we know if it's um habitual um things of that persistent? Um just trying to kind of figure out what the system is like and trying to be impactful, I guess, or be effective. >> Absolutely. And that's where our internal partners and external partners come into play like our hope initiative. Um every January they go and they do a homeless count in which they can identify panhandlers in that count as well. Um and even our outside liaison homeless liaison that's where they play that role with capturing those numbers, capturing that information so we know who is habitual, who is coming back and what resources can we provide to them or what enforcement resources we have to provide to them. Well, my last comment would be if if you could provide information on what we should be um telling our residents in our area, like what the protocol is if this is an issue, these are the steps you should take and that way it I I believe it would convey um our efforts as a city on what we're trying to do if we have some consistency. >> Absolutely. To your point, we absolutely do not want to criminalize anyone that is in homeless or in need of any type of help or resource. However, we have to educate one on how to make contact with police when you see it becoming a problem, right? How to call police, how to articulate what's happening at that intersection or surrounding area. Um, I don't want to say discourage giving, but route them to resources or nonprofit organizations that take those donations in and then establish them out to the people that need them like they know how to get to these certain individuals versus just dropping money in on the street and you don't know who it's going to or what it's going to at that point in time. >> You're welcome. >> Anybody else? >> Thank you. We appreciate you very much. Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Next is 25-0137 reappoint of substitute hearing officer and William Rumley with our municipal court is here to answer any questions. >> Nobody. >> Okay. >> 25-0138 regulation of special events and EMS standby service. And Taylor Paris, senior city attorney, is here to answer any questions along with Richard Harrison, our fire marshal. Anybody know? >> 25-0139 September and October 2025 report on the release of area from ETJ by petition of landowner and Landre Stringfellow is here to answer any questions. 25-0140 transportation engineering manual re revisions temporary street closures. Michael Owen our um from TPW is here to answer any questions. questions. 25-0141 update on the Texas&M Fort Worth campus project and Robert Ven Roger Venibals is here to answer any questions. >> I think I think >> Roger if you don't mind giving an overview. Thank you, sir. >> How's it going, Roger? Looks like it's pretty successful so far. >> It's going great, Mayor. It's going great. Roger Venable's aviation system director. Well, good afternoon. It is going great. Uh we are at the point of the project right now where we finished up the design, full design of the building, uh the RIB, the re research and innovation building. Um, as we began to wrap up the design work and the construction plans and permitting for the project, the university re-evaluated uh the RAGC's participation in the project and what the university could do to go from this point forward uh to not only finance but head the procurement and con construction of the building and about 60 days ago and had those conversations with us. It essentially removes the RILGC from participating in the project at this point because the university can just take it from here through their natural procurement process. The contract revenue bonds that were issued by the RALGC to pay for the design and pre-construction services has all been serviced by the university anyway. They are going to retire that bond. Uh so they're completely responsible for any of those costs that the RILGC had uh committed to the project at this point. Um they will be going directly back to TIFFs 3 and 8. Uh again this is part of the public parking component of the project. So rather than the RALGC entering into those agreements, reimbursement agreements with the TIFFs, it'll just be between the university and the TIFFs. I think believe we're planning for that maybe to occur next Monday to have that conversation. But yeah, all good news. Uh we're staying on track again to commence construction next year. Uh at this point, the uh university's board of regents is moving forward with the construction manager at risk to do the procurement process for the construction contract. Uh and again anticipate in their May board meeting of next year to approve construction and move forward with it. So it's all good news. the law department. The lawyers were really happy because it eliminated 13 documents. Yeah. From the process. >> They're in here and they're joyful. You can >> as joyful as they can be. >> That's right. Thank you. >> Thank you, Roger. >> Okay, we're going to go back to 25-0133 food service contract >> at city hall and Marilyn Marvin is here to answer any questions. Thank you, Jay. Sorry, I missed this when you called it earlier. Um I I did read through um the R the IR. Got a couple of questions. I see that FUDA um is taking a 20 to 25% commission in order to participate in the program. >> Yes, Marilyn Marvin, property management director. That is correct. That is in order for a restaurant or um um anyone to participate in the program with food that they do a commission of 20 to 25% depending on the type of service they're providing >> at a cap of $600 per day. So, no, that $600 per day is how much revenue that we how much that we purchase from that vendor. So, if um a barbecue place comes in, we have to buy six, we city employees have to buy $600 worth of food. If we do not buy $600 worth of food, say we only buy $500, then the city has to pay food $100 to make the $600 cap. That $600 doesn't have anything to do with the restaurant. They just pay 20 to 25% off of what they sold. So, it would be the $500. >> Okay. So, that's the part where we have spent the $55,000 to subsidize the program. >> That is a correct statement. >> Okay. And most of that happened when city hall was still half full. >> Okay. Um I have some concerns about food. I really want us to uh reconsider um bringing in a different group or even manning this ourselves. I don't know we have in our household to do this because I know there are several uh smaller entities, restaurants um that are not even able to participate in food because of the percentage that they're taking out that they're not making any money. >> Correct. And so we are um right now working on a contract to have someone come in and assess the cafeteria. Uh we hope to have that completed by the end of the year, the assessment, so we know what it will take to run the cafeteria, and then we will do an RFP during the first quarter of calendar year 2026 to see what interest we have and who could come in and actually run a different service outside of FUDA. >> Okay. cuz I I think when when it was first mentioned to us that uh we were going to have different groups come in where they was going to have the ability to use what you just described the full kitchen cuz right now nobody's using the kitchen. They're coming with prem made food. >> Right. So we have warmers that they use today but outside of that you are correct. No one uses the actual cafeteria kitchen >> and we did an RFP to get food the first time. >> Yes sir. >> Okay. So the idea is so I asked why aren't we using the cafeteria back years ago the old city hall there was cafeteria it was full-blown cafeteria before it got downsized and we didn't we would do an RFP for a contract for a local restaurant to come in and provider to actually run it and provide breakfast and lunch service. Part of it is that the kitchen hasn't been used since 2020. And so, as Marilyn said, we're bringing in a group to come and assess the kitchen to make sure we don't want it to blow up, right? To make sure it's safe and all those kind of things. And so, uh, they'll find out what needs to happen to make it working order. Then we'll put on an RFP and have, you know, back in the day we had John Carter at city hall for like three years. There were three year contracts. Then it would switch over. You put out another RFP and you'd switch over to another local vendor. But hopefully we'll figure that out. put an RFP and then we could have local businesses compete to actually run this food service out of our cafeteria for because we're up to 1500 people in this building. That should be plenty to to be able to support a restaurant. >> So, the idea is to have one vendor. >> Yeah, I don't think you could go multiple vendors because they can't make money because it's not consistent enough. That's that's one of if you did then you figuring out you know when they do it and when they don't do it and their employees and all those kind of things. >> Okay. Well, I look forward to seeing that come across our >> Yeah, me too. >> table. >> Any other questions on these IRS? Okay. If not, we're going to move into our work session agenda items. Let me flip back through here just a second. Yeah, we'll do first number nine, which is our possible local ordinance regarding sex offender residency and Jarus Mapes and Eddie Garcia will be up to present those. Good afternoon. Um, thank you council and mayor. My name is Jarus Mes. I'm an assistant city attorney and the police legal adviser. And um with regards to our possible ordinance regarding residency restrictions, we've identified a couple of issues that brought this to the forefront. One of which is the fact that we've got about um 3,200 registered sex offenders in the city of Fort Worth. About 2500 of those are offenders who had child victims. That would be under the age of 17. And approximately 877 of that number are on supervised release. And uh that is significant if they're on probation or parole because oftent times they already have a restriction that's been provided by the state. Um this leaves though when you subtract those numbers this leaves about 1,500 registered sex offenders with child victims who have no residency requirements. Another issue that has come up is with many of the our local cities and surrounding area here have started developing these ordinances in their cities. We are concerned that if Fort Worth has nothing that we may be become a an area where people shift over from some of these other more restrictive areas. So that is another area of concern. So, just to be clear, for the purpose of this type of ordinance, a sex offender is someone who is of course required to uh by law to register as an offender. And they must have a victim that was a child. And also, it's important to note though that we cannot retroactively apply an ordinance such as this. um that would go against the constitutional rights of the individuals. Here are some numbers here to kind of get an idea of what we're looking at. Uh the left column is per one sex offender we have in the case of Fort Worth, we have 315 residents just to give you an idea of what we're looking at. So, residency restrictions are all based on uh preventing a um registered sex offender from living within a certain distance of an area where children commonly gather. Also, some of these ordinances will have what they call rental restrictions, and that would prevent the landlord from actually renting to these same individuals in an area such as this. So note uh that the landlord would be responsible for identifying um the possible applicants that they have. But that's pretty simple. You know, they already do credit checks and background checks. They have to pay for those and use uh you know restricted access accounts. This is all for free provided by the state and it's very easy to look anyone up and identify them as a sex offender and what they were charged with. So the also an important side of the residency restrictions is preventing those uh from where children commonly gather which is not consistently defined throughout the state. It is dependent upon the ordinance to define that. Um we've seen some ordinances that identified of course schools schools are always there. daycare facilities, playgrounds, some youth centers, swimming pools, um different facilities that um have come to the attention of various cities as important to them uh to prevent people from living there. So, I want to mention that the state legislature did address general law cities uh back in 2017. uh a lot of general law cities have been trying to adopt ordinances, but they were being met with a lot of lawsuits. And so to to overcome that, the legislators did um give permission for general law cities to have these ordinances, uh they specifically defined a child safety zone and they did say that they could not restrict the individuals more than a thousand feet from those areas where children commonly gather. home world cities were fine. There is no restriction on the ability to issue that. With regards to cases, there have been a lot of cases over the years for various reasons. There is a more recent one though in the city of Lewisville where the fifth circuit ended up addressing it. And so, it's important to note, I think, that the city of Lewisville did have a restriction of,500 ft from where children commonly gather. And this did really limit the percentage that was left remaining in their city. However, um the fifth circuit did determine that there were no uh constitutional violations and that it was a a legitimate ordinance. So enforcement any violations of this ordinance would be as always a class C misdemeanor. But it's also important to note that when registered sex offenders, you know, they are required to register in the city that they live. And so there's a process. And in this case, you know, they go to the police department, they go to register, they would be told uh that you cannot register because you're giving us an address that is not legal. And in that case, they would be denied. So, that's going to give a motivation for that offender to live where they need to live. And if they don't, then they're going to be in violation and it would be a felony at that point because they were not registered. Um, a lot of these uh from other cities, looking at other cities, we can see that a lot of the offenders will self-regulate. They a lot of them are wanting to follow the rules. They don't want to get into any more trouble. Also note that when probation and parole first meet with them, they're exiting their their prison term and they meet with them and they're saying, "Yeah, this is where I'm going to live." Oftentimes, the probation and pro officers will give them information on these ordinances as well. Again, it's another way to self-regulate. specifically the Fort Worth Police Department, just looking at some of their data, um they had uh use an example here, uh did residency, uh verification checks over, uh 2,800 times, just in the first part of this year. So, um there's a lot of activity going on with that department right now. This is an example of the largest cities in Texas and how they are treating this. Uh Houston has no ordinance. San Antonio has an ordinance of a th000 ft, but theirs is unique. It's the only one I've seen like this where they restrict not from where children commonly gather, but from parks, all parks. Um, and so that was an interesting approach that allowed them to not restrict to just young victims. That means their victims can be any ages and can be restricted from a park. Uh, Dallas does have an ordinance. However, theirs is about remaining at or near certain areas. Um, so theirs works more like a criminal trespass rather than a residency issue. Austin has none and El Paso has a thousand ft ordinance. There's uh three slides here of various cities in our area and what they offer. I'll give you uh you know an opportunity you can read over that. If you have any questions, let me know. But you'll see a number of these cities are in our immediate area and um they cover a variety. It seems like the majority of them are using a,000 ft. Uh we do have a few 1500 and one. Keller got creative and recently changed theirs to 2,000 ft. So maps, that's what we're going to look at next. And just know that for the purposes of our maps, we used a child safety zone of schools and we did include charter schools in that daycarees, all the public parks and playgrounds, pools, community centers, and libraries. That's what we used. So, I've got two sets of map. The first set of these maps is an area. You'll see here we're using kind of an orangey red color. Um, this is identifying all the restricted areas in the city of Fort Worth based on a,000 foot buffer. And you'll see on the left hand side is a column of each council district and how much area is restricted based on the council district. >> We get the same thing but now with 1500 ft. >> I have a question. >> Okay. Yes ma'am. >> So go back to that map. So that tells me that only 40% of my district is restricted. >> That is correct. Yes ma'am. Keep in mind that that doesn't address things like airports, uh, parks, commercial areas, all the areas that people would not live anyway. This just sticks to land mass, I guess you could say. Um, >> so that means that 59% is open to sex offenders to move in my district. >> Well, the opposite. 59% is restricted. So, the opposite would be the case. Now, our next set of maps will get a little bit more precise and I'll I'll show you the difference. >> Okay. >> Am I understanding this right? >> Okay. I'm sorry. What What council member Peoples is district five. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. About 60%. Yes, ma'am. That's correct. >> So, out of all the districts, my all the sex offenders would move from every other district to mine cuz 60%. Okay. >> They might like uh >> 61. They might like district. >> You and me, we be picking up everybody. Okay. So, go to the next one though. That's about 1500 feet. Okay. >> 1,500 ft. Now, same sort of thing. Uh we are looking at just the restricted use. Uh percentages as you can see went up and now you're at 56% now restricted use. Um and then we go on up to the 2,000 foot buffer. >> And again, you see a lot of of of the red on there. I want to be like Keller, but we'll talk about that crane. >> But uh just for clarification purposes again, if you look at district three, there's a lot not developed out, right? So as it develops out, you could have parks, daycarees, other things put in there which further restricts the property. >> Absolutely. There. That's why this first set of maps, I think, is probably not quite as accurate for what you're wanting to see. The next set though we're about to go to specifically looks at what is available residential land use and that makes a difference because this will take out the commercial use, takes out the airports, the lake, whatever takes out all that property. So now we see um under a,000 ft the available residential land use for district 5 is 10%. That's a much better number. You must have a lot of commercial in your area. And then we move on to 1500 feet. Those numbers are going down still. Again, it's green in this this map. Green is what you're seeing is available available land use. And uh we had been asked before, how are we measuring land use? We are using the city's zoning uh codes and we are using all potential residential land use codes. So that even includes mixed use. We're including that in this. And then 2,000 ft again available very very low numbers available. And at the bottom you will see uh the overall Now I will say that staff recommends a th00and feet. Uh and the reason though for that is because that is the standard buffer zone set by the state. That is what the state recommends and they've required it for general law cities. Um that's also the standard buffer zone that is set by probation and parole. That is a number that they came up with that said that that seemed to be most appropriate. And of course, as an attorney, I'm always going to say that the least restrictive is going to pose less risk uh to the city um with regards to something this kind of an ordinance. >> Well, that's less risk for the city, but more risk for the residents that live in these districts where we will encourage sex offenders to move. And I believe as a steward for the entire city of Fort Worth, we should be trying to look at that that offers all of our residents the most safety. So I like the 2,000 ft. Uh and I think we have to get creative and become risktakers because our job is to protect children from sex offenders. >> Right. Yes, ma'am. And I I do want to point out though in talking about the risk um the reason why uh this perspective is there is because um when it comes to a point that you have nothing left for the these individuals to live it becomes what had the courts have referred to as a banishment. There is a difference between restriction and banishment. Banishment is considered a punishment. And so you cannot punish somebody again for something they've already been punished for. But we can be really restrictive and that's not considered a punishment if that makes any sense. That's the way the courts have looked at it. So we just want to keep that in mind when we're looking at all these numbers. >> And I get that. But I also want don't want to banish residents of certain areas of town. We are working to build up the southside and the east side and areas of the city so that people want to move there. And when we enable restrictions like that, we're encouraging the wrong people to move there. And people won't want to live there and to have their children go to school there if we have a large prepundonderance of a certain type of people. >> Understood. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah. Other actions? Councilor Beck. I have two questions as it relates to daycarees. Um, does this include inhome daycarees that are registered? >> If they're registered, yes. Okay. Only if they're registered. As we all know, there's probably some out there that aren't registered. That would not catch those. But anything registered? Yes. >> So, I have a practical concern there in that parks and schools, uh, facilities like that are built, they're not moving. Um but daycarees um can be much more mobile particularly those inhome daycarees. So how do we provide some sort of um reliability and consistency for people to to know if I'm in a you know if a landlord needs to know I'm in a zone or not. That could be very dependent on whether or not the person next to him is operating her his or her at home daycare. So how do we provide some level of consistency and well the the situation in that kind of thing is first of all we cannot be retroactive >> right >> and so if I'm living in an area and some lady decides to move in next door who runs a daycare that is not going to impact me because I'm already living here >> right but if you move out the landlord is now required to do this check that they weren't required to do that is correct >> six months prior So, how do we make sure that we're there's some sort of protection against that seems like a regulatory scheme that is very problematic to enforce and the last thing that we want to do is create a standard that we can't enforce. And so my question is when it comes to these mo these more mobile type um places, what do we have in place? I I just want to make sure we have something in place that we've thought that through because you're going to have landlords he hemmed up because they were not required to do something that they're now required to do because a new person moved in across the street and open an atome business. >> Right. Right. Exactly. Um, in other cities that have established these ordinances, they uh set up a program using the GIS where anybody could go in and type in an address to see if that is restricted or not. And so those updated uh list or registrations from the state on daycarees would have to be circulated. I, you know, they're not going to do it daily clearly. It may be every three months or something like that. And there would be a way to keep track. Um, and of course, but also keep in mind that you guys as council members can decide how you want this ordinance written. You could say that that's where children commonly gather does not include say a daycare that has less than five children, something like that. You could establish something that would make it a little less frequent uh to happen. But it there is a way with through a program in GIS to have those addresses identified by people. >> Okay. And then my second question is um when you go to the Lewisville case, and I haven't read it, um but it said um in your summary of it, it said this ordinance left a limited number of properties available for purchase or rent. um you gave us a really nice comparison or the the data that we drove down drove down to um for the city of Fort Worth. But if we were going to compare um what the city of Lewisville had left available that the court said was okay, where does the 2,000 foot, the five the 1500 foot or the 1,000 foot get us? because I I get what this case said and at 1500 ft but you can't put apples to apples. So if they had 20% of their city left in the they said it's okay versus we're leaving 2% of our city and so that >> right you know unfortunately the uh judges in these cases are not generous enough to give us actual number numbers. they just say this particular ordinance is fair. And in the case of that Lewisville case, it was over 90%. Uh was not available. >> Um but they don't say but if you went to 96, it's that's not going to be good. They don't ever identify that for us, unfortunately. >> Right. But we know in that case that they got to say 91% of the city was not available. And the court said that 91% was okay. Even if they didn't give us a a higher end threshold, we know that 91 or 92% is acceptable. >> That's correct. >> Okay. >> Council member Hill and then councles. >> Okay. Um well, on the legal case, um has Keller had any legal issues with the 2000 foot buffer? Do we know? >> They just set that up not too long ago. Okay. Um and so I'm not surprised that they have not as of yet. It takes a while, number one, for someone to be motivated enough to do that. They have to have standing. They have to be able to say, in this case, the Lewisville case, the guy wanted to live in Lewisville. I think he already had property there before he got out of prison and uh he had to move somewhere outside of Lewisville. So, that was his standing to say why he felt um he was being discriminated against. Um however, you know, those situations don't come up, especially the smaller the city it is, um the more difficult it is for those cases to come up and um so no, we have not seen that. Um but you know, it it it's just hard to say whether that'll come down the road. >> I'd like to see some other cases, examples of cases that we could review before we start looking at our ordinance. And then on page 14, I just need a definition. Dallas remains at or near. What does that mean? What is >> Well, instead of saying you cannot live in this zone around a school, this says you cannot remain at or near. So, you could potentially go and drop your kids off for school if you go and you leave. But if you're hanging out there, you know, for whatever reason, or if you live there, obviously, you would be remaining there. All of those are addressed through criminal trespass uh rather than just a straight up uh violation of the ordinance. >> Okay. There's no distance or time limit. It's just >> they they would I don't know about time limits. I could go back and look. It's been a while since I've looked at their ordinance. I could go back and see if there's a time limit on it. >> Okay. Thank you. And with regards to uh future case law information, do you want to stick to just Texas cases or are you interested in cases in general? >> Examples in general. >> Okay. >> Yes. Thank you. Can you pull up the the map for the thousand uh >> this one? >> Yeah. And so, uh, we're looking at this map and you said this map is, uh, concentrated on the zoning that currently exists in the city of Fort Worth. >> Yes. >> Okay. And we talked about getting creative. And so, when you're looking at uh, I guess district five and district um, uh, is this the correct amount? Because you you guys are um, recommending a thousand staff. >> Yes. >> This is what you're recommending. >> Yes. Is there a way for us to get creative with zoning? We did some creativity when we reszone a lot of killer properties to make sure uh that we uh save those properties of reszoning properties within the city of Fort Worth to lower this amount. >> Um I I can't really see that. I mean, you may want to talk to someone that specializes in zoning rather than me. But the problem with that is is what are you going to zone it to? I mean, you're going to zone it to commercial for this purpose, but that would mean someone couldn't live there, you know? >> Not with the news. Not with the news. >> Well, I mean, legally, I'm asking. So, if we decided to because that's that's a high that's a high amount. So, if this is the amount that we're looking at, then I I would will lean with Deborah Peoples of going to 2,000 because this is a lot of property available for uh sex offenders to live. So, if we're not going to be if we're not able to be creative and change zoning where it gives a little bit more protection where it's still a thousand feet, but the zoning uh are changing where it limits uh the amount that can uh live in such districts and maybe not the the entire city of Fort Worth, but some that's highly uh populated that's over 10% or 11. >> Right. Right. I mean, it's always possible. You guys, you know, are able to do certain things with zoning. Um so, technically, it's possible. I've just cautioned that it might end up creating more problems than we're solving. >> Mayor, >> do we do we have an existing uh So, we don't have no nothing on the record now. >> That is correct. People that are on probation and parole would have any existing restrictions. So I guess my question because I want to make sure that I understand when I look at this map you're basically saying um 10% almost 11% of of district 6 can have available residential use meaning that there's nothing developed there now right but that's how much the residential possibility >> right so that puts us on the higher end as compared to some of the other districts on this and um I don't know I just, you know, honestly, and maybe it sounds very selfish, but selfish on the behalf of district 6. I'm already fighting enough issues with regards to I feel like a certain level of proliferation of type of development coming into district 6. To me, you throw this layer on top of it and it just really is like ice skating uphill. So, I don't know what I'm I when I we first talked about this, I was very bleeding hard on this and I was really hard on because I don't want to be punitive to any group of people and I do believe in rehabilitation and all types of things, but I feel like this does marginalize some of our communities much more or impacts them much more inequitably than it does others. And I just really would like us to really really think about this deeply um on how we want to do it. Well, and then you know you've also got the 1500 foot option as well. >> Oh, great. >> So, um obviously this something we talked about a lot in public safety and made it quite clear where I stand on this and I'd agree with um Councilwoman Peoples is doing 2,000 feet and again we all know if it was me it'd be 2,000 miles. But to your point, uh Councilman Nettles, I agree. So, I don't think we necessarily have to get creative. I'm glad Dave Lewis is in the room. uh not to put him on the spot, but to me that says we need more parks in nine, more more parks in 10, more parks in six, more parks in seven, we need more parks. Quite quite frankly, we need more parks. And so if there's parks or other areas where our children can safely uh come together and play and that just so happens to put a restriction on somebody, again, they made that bed and they can lie in it. And if there's I I totally I understand your point and I agree completely and that's not something I think anyone wants to do in the city is concentrate a certain amount of undesirabs if that's what I call them in a certain area and so I do think there are ways that we can work with with staff and other ways to not necessarily banish anybody because we don't want to do that certainly. Um, but we want to make sure we keep our residents safe. And although just to point out to my my colleagues, I know we got this nice little residency restriction in Fort Worth, um, and why we shouldn't do it. But just to point out, the author failed to mention that he was convicted of and served time for aggravated sexual assault of a six-year-old. So, forgive me if I don't give a damn what he says about any of this. and trying to use a example from Austin from a psych psychiatrist saying that restrictions like this can can trigger an offender into offending again. I certainly don't want staff at any point to look at any restriction say, "Oh, well, we don't want to trigger an offender and to re No." So, I appreciate all the work the staff has put into this, especially the maps. I think this is one that we really needed uh in the public safety committee. So, I'm I'm glad this is what what came together. Um and I'm with my colleagues, I'm all for the 2,000 ft rule and then challenging and having enough faith in our city attorneys to uh to to fight that. Um and so but I'm certainly I'm just one of many here. So >> Crane. >> Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to ask another point of clarification on this. Uh this is just property already zoned for residential use. >> That is correct. >> So it doesn't include maybe a right now that might turn into resolutions. Okay. >> Exactly. >> So I I think we're getting to some point here where it's going to be a buffer of sorts. Just wish there was a way I mean we can't tell in the future. I get that. of what the property is going to be end of the end use of it. But there's I think a lot more open property there than we're seeing as as part of this meaning a that will probably go residential or it could go industrial. Who knows? But uh or other industrial that's switched. But anyway, I just >> That's true. Make sure you um build a park in that new residential area. Anything else? Yeah, I just have a comment I want to put on the record is that when I'm looking at the map, if we're going to uh implement anything citywide, it needs to um be equal around the city. So, as we worked to uh do our district maps two years ago, we made sure that the percentages uh were as close as possible. And so I I think if you're looking at one where it has 4% and the other one has 1%, we all need to get to two and a half or we don't need to do this at all. >> Any other questions or comments? >> Yes, Council Rebecca >> with with Chris on this. I think at the thousand foot it creates um clear pockets of concentration when you look at the maps. Um, I think at 1,500 ft it gets better and at 2,000 it gets better. So, I would be comfortable with a 1500 ft or a 2,000 ft or nothing at all. >> Any other comments or questions from council? Not really sure how to direct y'all. >> Well, I I certainly can research the case law. >> I think we're gonna come back. >> Yeah, come back with that. That'd be helpful. And then try to discern all the comments you got today. Um maybe >> and we heard a thousand's out so a recommendation 1500 or 2,000. >> Yes. >> Well, there's a lot of the question about whatever zoned a is not included in here. The new state law because we started doing this to change the open commercial can become apartments. That's not being captured in here. So there's a lot of a lot of things that are outliers that you just can't capture and it can't be perfect. So, uh, at the end of the day, if you go to 2000, and I'm not saying that's what, but if you go to 2000, there's going to be more land available than you're currently seeing here just because of those facts. >> And it could be useful to to have Teresa and TJ research what bills maybe come up last session around this issue that we may need to prepare for this coming session. Just meaning we don't want to have this exercise in futility if in the end the legislature is going to do something around this, right? So, um, and and how far they went along the process. I truly don't remember following anything last session, but I know they've dealt with it before. So, okay, on to the next. Thank you very much. Okay, next up is midyear program investments. Uh, city manager Jay Choa. >> So, I'm going to introduce this. Um, so basically what this is is when I started here at the city uh back at the end of January, early February, we were already through a portion of the budget preparation and we were as we looked forward, it looked like our budget was going to be tighter than it actually ended up being. So it didn't really look at any new programs to try to bring forward. Uh and then during that time, especially through the spring, I did a lot of listening to council members, community members on uh priorities as we went forward. And so what I'm bringing forward, it wasn't part of the budget process, is that uh three different initiatives. Two have uh monetary impacts and the other one's really just pushing forward an initiative that was under underway so we can move forward more quickly. And I don't know who has the clicker. Christian's going to do the first part, but basically the the idea is to initiate some new programs that staff believes are are critical for us to become more efficient and to have a big impact on the community on on nuisance that is out there. What I've asked the departments is to as best as possible is absorb the cost associated with any new cost associated with this uh and and really on one of them's capital related and so it would be actually funded through the capital side and we wouldn't see it in the general fund. Can you go to the next? So the three things are uh the first one is a a new group that would be doing centralized capital coordination and reporting and Christian will get into the details on that but uh as we went through the especially putting together the bond program it was clear to me uh that there was too much silo work being done by the individual departments and trying to bring that together in a in a comprehensive and efficient way uh just didn't exist. And the idea here is to really uh within the lab have a group that is an ongoing basis working with the departments to do the reporting to bring things together and and allow the city manager's office to have more clarity uh when what priority projects look like based on the feedback that we're receiving from this council and from the citizens. And then uh the second piece is like as I mentioned uh Christian will talk about this also. It's an initiative that's already already underway. uh it's around the smart cities program and she'll explain that uh but public facing data dashboards uh to provide more data to be more transparent to the public and so the lab will be working with departments to uh bringing those forward and she'll provide details and then the last one uh is what we're calling the net force >> uh and that is a pilot program on nuisance properties and you all probably are really aware of these properties that we're going to be recommending uh where cross departmental teams will be on an ongoing basis um uh doing reviews, doing inspections and becoming a nuisance to the nuisance from the city side to hopefully get the owners of the property to either improve how they run their businesses and how they maintain their properties and or hopefully maybe they decide to sell it and get out of that business alto together. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Christianne. Uh she'll do the first couple of the details and then Brian Dhy will come up and talk about Net Force. >> All right, good afternoon everyone. Christine Simmons with the Fort Worth Lab. Like Jay mentioned, I have two topics for you today. Finance, your favorite topic, um and data, which you seem to like more than finance, but we'll see. And then you'll get all Brian's energy to wake you back up. All right. So I'm start with capital coordination and reporting. So you know this just like I know this as a very large city. We have lots and lots of capital projects going on at any given time. Hundreds sometimes thousands funded by billions of dollars in debt from bond programs funding grants strategic partnerships and more. Right? We have lots of funding mechanisms for capital projects. Each department that has capital projects also typically has departmental finance and engineering staff that helps with reporting, tracking, the status of those projects, the funding sources, etc. Um, but what the organization kind of lacks right now that Jay mentioned is a centralized group that's sort of aggregating all of that from the different departments. um and then summarizing that and kind of communicating it regularly to the city manager's office, to you as council as appropriate, and then by and large to the public. So, the city manager's first recommendation today um is to carve out from capital funding a small group of capital finance staff that will live in the Fort Worth lab alongside the budget team to sort of serve as that centralized group. Uh so, these are some of our goals listed here. Um first, centralized understanding of status and funding. So really gaining um a transparent sort of frequent understanding of all the things that are happening across the city at bird's eye view of what's transpiring, what's going well, what's not. Um and then having a dedicated kind of non-EP departmental or neutral partner um for some of the big multi-depal or strategic planning, large capital efforts, having a group dedicated to monitoring and reporting on what we're calling pits, projects in trouble. Not that there's so many of those, but I've been in front of you a few times talking about, you know, we have capital shortfalls, capital gaps on bond funded projects. So, doing some more frequent and transparent monitoring on those. Um, and then finally, some public facing reporting. If you pay any attention to some of other large cities like dashboards and reports, you can even look at the city of Dallas, as much as it pains me to say, they have a great bond and construction management website where you can see quarterly reporting of how their bonds are being spent down. um and they have like a public facing project delivery dashboard too. We really like to do some of that. So in order to meet these goals, here are some of the services that we propose to provide out of the Fort Worth lab in close collaboration with the capital departments and finance and the city manager's office. So, we'd engage in more regular organized capital cleanup and closeouts as well as regular scanning of the capital projects and reporting on them when they're maybe in trouble from a financial perspective or a delivery perspective. But also alternatively when maybe when we're seeing savings um having a more um like a higher altitude conversation on how we're prioritizing those savings so that we're really getting the biggest bang for our buck high impact not just because maybe one department has capacity to deliver something else but sort of scanning all the departments and their different capital projects. For bonds we'd propose to work more closely with finance on the debt and cash flow planning and then we do again regular monitoring and public dashboarding of some of those projects. Um you all know that we just completed a robust round of public engagement on the 2026 bond. Thank you for all of that um engagement that you all did with us. And so some of you in your meetings, you may have heard a question because we got it kind of all over the city. Um some version of how much have we spent on the 2022 bond or like how many projects have you delivered from 2018 and 2022 sort of where are we? It was kind of hard to answer that question. You have to do a lot of manual data gathering. So, we'd like to to have that um not just in preparation for the next bond program, but more on hand all the time. And then again, we want to be kind of a neutral, helpful stakeholder on special projects that are capital focused. Panther Island is a great example of that. You know, there's a finance subcommittee kind of working on a lot of that. So, some of the departments may not have the financial expertise or the the view of all the different funding sources and how they stack and the way they work and their restrictions. We we can kind of play a role at the table in that perspective. Um, and so speaking of bond engagement, some of you um, through that process met April Rose Essamia. She was a primary lead and presenter at all those bond meetings. She's back there somewhere. Hi, April. Um, she is our current senior capital projects officer in the Fort Worth lab. So that's her little box there. We hired her mid year last year through repurposing of a vacancy because we were kind of seeing the issues I'm describing at that time. So we thought, well, we'll hire somebody with a vacancy. we kind of created this job description that we'd never had before in the lab um and started having her kind of on demand monitor capital gaps and the use of transportation impact fees and she started helping with bond project development. Well, the creation of that role has helped us really see the opportunities that are available if we put some resources toward this. She's just one person so right now she's being very reactive um but we'd really like to be more proactive on all these topics. So the proposal um is kind of twofold. The first would be to hire a capital projects manager. This is kind of a small team to work alongside April. So, this position would focus a lot on monitoring the actual projects on a monthly basis. Uh, and they'd be a skilled partner for the departments in the actual project development, the coordination of the multi-depal efforts, and they could help forecast the different phases of the projects, which helps with like debt and cash flow planning. Part of what's making April Rose so successful in her current role is that she has a background as a professional engineer. And so we'd like to have at least one more person that can help speak that language. Um kind of speak to the capital delivery teams in their language and help then translate that over to maybe more of the financial or management team. And then the other two positions would have more of the background that we already have in the lab, budget and finance and some project controls. Um they'd be financial in nature, really helping to focus on the financial controls and sources. So they do things like regularly scraping the capital projects and their funding sources. Kind of just making sure we're not having, you know, cash sitting around, right? When nobody wants idle cash. So we'd like to keep our money moving, making sure we're spending down our most restricted sources first. Um, they'd also focus on the large number of capital MNC's and you see all of those that appropriate capital funding. Right now that kind of happens all over the organization. So there's sometimes inconsistencies in the appropriation ordinances or in the way we award contracts. So we'd like to do that at a higher level of efficiency. Uh this is my last slide in this section. So the objective here is to kind of show that we'd hope to be able to accomplish the goals that um we've outlined without burdening the general fund like Jay mentioned. So while we'll be focusing first on the general fund department. So think TPW parks a couple of others. Um our proposal is to fund these three positions out of the capital projects themselves. So, as part of a project's allocated soft cost, you can you can do some of that administrative costing. And so, out of our $ 1.8 billion dollar in active infrastructure investment across 798 active projects, this would be a very very small percentage of that. So, we think that's a good return on investment to kind of fill some of those gaps in service. Um, okay. So, that is this section. Any questions on capital reporting and coordination? Anything I missed? Jay, if you want to add anything. >> Okay. Yeah, I have a question. So, is this new strategy team going to prevent me from watching a street get torn up to be reconstructed and then watching it get torn up again two years later for a new water pipeline? >> It will help. >> Okay. >> Nothing's guaranteed, but it'll help. Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah, that is that is definitely the goal. And April Rose has been able to kind of leverage some of her existing relationships from water and transportation and public works to help with that stacking and phasing of projects. So, that's certainly a goal. Okay, I'm going to move on. So, public facing dashboards. This is very exciting. So, just as a reminder, the city achieved what works city certification last year. And as a reminder, what work cities is the first standard of excellence for datadriven governance for local uh governance for local governments. Um, and it's through Bloomberg Philanthropies. the city had been sort of half-heartedly pursuing it for a while and then last year we got really serious about it and see achieved silver certification. There are three levels. Um and so a number of you actually a number of you have asked what you can do to kind of help us in our next round and we really appreciate that. We do want to continue to pursue what works cities at the next level gold in the coming years. So we're working interdep departmentally right now on on some of those criteria that we need to meet. But even outside of that credentiing process, we're also aiming as a city to be more transparent in general and really focus on honing the data that we have in ways that are really helpful to the public. Uh so right now current resources include an open data portal. It's I think it's data atorth texas or.fort texas.gov. There are a number of data sources there. Some of them are just um like individual kind of spreadsheet data dumps that they can, you know, people can download and kind of play with. permit locations, crime data, code violations, that kind of thing. Some of them are based on maps and GIS. Um, and then we have other departments who have created other dashboards on their own departmental pages. They're difficult to find. In many cases, you kind of have to go a couple of layers down in the website. Uh, and then over the last year with data analytics in the Fort Worth lab, we've also been creating some dashboards for internal use. So, um, starting in January, we'd really like to begin publishing several um, public facing dashboards. We have many that are in progress or even complete, but we'd we'd like to kind of slow trickle them out so that we can get in a really good rhythm of publishing, maintaining, quality control, and kind of taking in two or three at a time so that the public doesn't get like overwhelmed with all the dashboards. And we want to focus on quality control and validation. Make sure that we're doing doing a good job. We expect that some of these dashboards will have more interest than others, but I've I've tried to kind of give you a smattering across the city of some of those that are really near to completion, if not complete now. So, we have a budget dashboard. We have a page that's um based on your priorities, which excuse me, uh we'll revisit after the council retreat. We have some that are um really close to being done being validated around crime statistics and public safety response times, both police and fire. Homeless strategies is a work in progress that we've mentioned in this room recently. We still have more work to do that, but that will be of high interest, I think. Um and we have a lot around development services and permitting. So, just a sampling of what might be out there uh for public interest. Okay, a quick question. Since we're talking about transparency, is it worth having the conversation of doing the transparent star program through the comprollers's office? >> I think that I think finance already participates in the transparent star program. Correct. >> The more you know. Okay. >> Yes. Maybe we need to do a better job. >> We already Yeah, we already have that. >> Can we publicize that? >> We should. We we're gonna create a headline across the top of the web that >> the comprollers's office announced the entities in Tarant County uh about I guess midepptember and recognized both the city of Fort Worth and Taran appraisal district uh for their uh transparency star program participation. >> So is it five stars? I don't know that much about it. I'm just asking. Do we know? >> Do you know six stars? Oh, we have four out of six. >> Four out of six. >> Economic development. >> I think that's a good opportunity for an IRL. L I'll ask later, but okay. That would be helpful. Thank you. >> Preview of a future agenda item. >> Got it. They got it. Okay. Good. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. >> Um and I think just as a note as I think as we shift toward transparency and doing more online, some of the questions I get sometimes from departments, not so much from council, is I think we're this is going to create a lot more questions. like we're going to have to answer a lot, you know, things because we're pushing more data out there. And that might be true, but in my research of larger cities, um, actually over time, they see PS go down when you're pushing more data online because I think it's like a lack of clarity and sharing that maybe creates confusion that leads to a PI. So, I think it's an important shift to make. It's certainly a best practice among large cities to have more data publicly available. So, we're excited to advance our own efforts. Um, this one is the uh topic that Jay mentioned that doesn't have a fiscal impact. The fort with lab has staff in place to create dashboards. We're uh the organization's primary creator of dashboards. We have the staff to help with basic visualizations, automating data and reporting, building pipelines to active data sources, all kinds of things, even more advanced data science and modeling, but that's not really part of our topic today. That's just a plug for the data science team. Um but there are definitely departments too that have um the capabilities to create their own dashboards and that is fine. So we just want to consolidate those into one place and make sure that there's a good um strategy around publicizing those uh and validating them so that the public does not have to dig for information. So they'll all be uh hosted on the open data portal which is maintained by it and with each one we'll work with CPE to create descriptions of what the dashboard is, where the data lives, how you should use it, etc. Um, and Suna and I will work together on appropriate press releases so that we're really telling the story of being a more transparent organization. Uh, and then again, we'll have a good schedule for validating and uh, responding to people ask questions. Any questions for me on dashboards? Okay. If not, I'm going to give you to Brian. You can tell me which one of us you like more afterwards. This doesn't work, so you have to use that. >> Any of that was necessary. How's it going, mayor and council? Everybody have a good July 4th. >> What? No, you can't nod on there. See, there's a curveball. We all know that was Thanksgiving. We all know that was Thanksgiving. All righty. I'm pretty excited about this program. By the way, Brian Doerty, director of code compliance. Um, one of these uh initiatives that that Jay has uh proposed to us and we all got behind it and it it's pretty awesome is a nuisance enforment enforcement task force. And really what this is is this comes down to right now when I'm telling you about a nuisance and a property, every one of you have something different in your head that you're like that property. Well, this is what this program is is addressing those properties. And I say that where it's it's an allout blitz, if you will. So there's going to, you know, it's going to be a group effort from police, fire, environmental uh code obviously uh water. If there's anybody that can play a role in improving the conditions on a property or the the use on a property, that's what this this team plans to to take on. Um here's all the departments that are participating. Um there's quite a lot. Uh the biggest part of this though is that we're going to be doing joint inspections and the joint inspections will be code development services environmental fire and police. Um and to give you a quick breakdown, this isn't simply joint inspections. Uh these are uh from a code aspect. We're going to get into every single unit. If it's an apartment complex, if that means finding probable cause to get warrants or whatever we need to do, we're going to catalog and inventory every violation. And I say that where when we do these group inspections, so you have, you know, this sample property, police, fire code, everyone goes out there. Well, everyone's going to look at every possible thing they can address and that's what they're going to callull in that group inspection. Well, from that, well, if we see a lot of building standard issues, well, we're going to pursue all the existing violations, but also it's going to go to building standards commission. Just like as fire goes out there and they're like, "Okay, well, you know, they had problems with their sprinkler system." Well, they're going to pursue that. Same thing with police and every other department. And so, in addition to these group inspections, it is every single thing that we can address at that property and everyone stay on top of it. Uh the team will be meeting monthly. We're debating if it were bimonthly and that's where we're going to come back and go, "Hey, you know, we wrote this many tickets. we're pursuing this and everybody's in the loop on what's going on. Um, and so we're trying to get as much movement as we can on the property. Um, this is a a tool that uh Benjamin San Pratt and Leanne and her team proposed. He's awesome, by the way. I bug him so much with emails and he doesn't care at all. Um but uh this really beefs up uh CO revocation and what this this ordinance that they plan on proposing I believe in January is where if they have nuisances at the properties that don't normally fall into anything that allow us to revoke the CO well this now gives us that power. Um, and this is I'm so excited for this ordinance. And I say that because once, you know, we've made that determination, uh, they have to have a set of standards they have to uphold and they have to pay a fee. And if they don't, failure to adhere to the requirements is a CO revocation. Um, and for those that, you know, are not that are new to this or anything, but if you really want to stop use at a property, revoking the CO is the is the fastest way to get or not fastest, most effective way to get movement at that property. So, this is a a really big tool that we're all going to benefit from and I I really appreciate that that law has taken the effort to draft that up. Um, this is the the process I've described already a couple of times and that's where we identify target properties. Uh, we do the targeted enforcement and the the one thing and Jay touched on it briefly that you guys need to know is there's not really a perfect scenario on these properties. We want it in compliance. If that means they decide to demolish the property, awesome. If that means uh we go through litigation and a receiverhip takes it over, you know, but then they correct it, that's fine, too. If they say, "Man, this is a lot of money and they're coming after me hard and I want to sell it," that's fine. We're The whole purpose of this is to be a nuisance to the nuisance properties to make those property owners go, "Okay, whatever I was doing before, I am not going to be able to do that anymore." And the city is making sure of it. Um, and uh I' I've dealt with similar programs like this in in my experience, and you get their attention. you do one way or another, we will make them listen to us and get progress on the property. Here's a lot of the uh considerations when we were identifying the properties that we're looking at. Obviously, uh crime as well as, you know, code violations. Uh and here's a one that I really appreciate. Um and that's the neighborhood impact. Um we all have been at a town hall or a neighborhood associated meeting meeting and they are complaining that property A is causing all these issues that are in their neighborhood. Um we've all heard it. We're not they're not lying. we we need to we need to act on that and that's one of the criteria that we're using. Um as well as you know ownership efforts uh are they cooperating or they not uh because there are problem properties that we've dealt with and we're currently dealing with and the pro the own the property owners are 100% cooperative and trying to do everything they can to correct it. However, this this program is not that. These are the ones where they're out of state owners. They're non-responsive. They're they're essentially just getting money out of the property but not acting on anything. Um we have our three pilot properties. Uh a couple of them are ones that we've heard several from citizens. And then uh and then the the third one we to kind of switch up the different property styles. We have Rocky's one and two their convenience stores. The Eco Motel um and then Sandy Oaks Apartments. And this sort of varies up each different property type. And that way we can track it and we can see what's effective and what's not. And uh we have a little bit of data on each one. Uh actually here's here's all the criteria that we spoke of before and these are all the properties that that hit on those criteria. And again this is this is a pilot so we're going to go through and we're going to we're going to fine-tune it as we go. Um I do think it'll be successful and then we can come back in six months and show all the great results and say look this is our criteria. This is how we're going forward and uh it's it's going to turn a frown upside down essentially. >> This right here is some police data. >> Ryan, I'm so sorry. Will you go back? >> Yeah. How far back did you pull data for this? Because I remember Iraqis had a building code citation. >> It was about I believe we did it two years on most of the data. I think it was around two years that we had the data. >> January 24. >> Yeah. >> Might need to check that box. >> Well, just talk to development. They would know. >> Yeah. Oh, and there's a chance we we may have missed something. I'll I'll definitely look at that. Um here's all the the police service data that uh as you can see the blue star is where the property is and then the surrounding calls for service. Um and it's sort of a square rectangle argument. You know every square is a rectangle, every rectangle is a square. All these calls for service aren't directly attributed to that property. However, it it's very very likely that that property is increasing the area, you know, the challenges in the area around it. And so that's sort of what the map is displaying is uh there is a correlation with the numbers and there's 478 calls for service uh 16 offenses and four for aggravated assault at Eco Motel and uh a couple of these properties. It's also the surrounding area. So that's also going to include the vacant lot, the TL food mart on the corner. Um so it's going to be in conjunction with that whole area. Um this is Rocky's one and two. Very similar. A lot of calls for service. uh 16 offices, three aggravated assaults. Uh this one is a little bit different. I only say that because uh fire won't really play a role in Sandy's apartments or apartments in general. They don't do regular inspections out there. Um co- compliance has a lot of issues as well as police has a lot of issues. I also say that a little bit differently because there's about a 100 units at this. So if you were to do a group inspection at Rocky's or Eco Motel, not as intensive. uh if we're doing 100% inspection out here in a group inspection that that could take our staff around a week to accomplish because there's simply a lot of units to get into and check. And so um however, this one this is another one where uh it's again it's a it's a I've heard from several citizens um and I don't want to you know that's that's our role here is you know they tell us the challenges and it's our job to fix the problems and that's that's what we're doing this apartment complex. Uh here's the estimated budget from each department that's going forward. Uh I will stress to you that this is a sort of all hands-on deck number. Um saying uh so hypothetically if police does a joint inspection and they go out there and oh we saw drug activity or they're going to have narcotics or you know how are they want to work prostitution or any number of things. This is if everything is present at all them all at once. So we're going to be tracking it as we go. Um and it it more than likely will be substantially lower than that. Um and then there's a lot of stuff that like the shared department tools. I'm definitely going to butcher this, but it's uh TimmyI we had looked at um as far as this massive massive uh database on all public data. So, not just us, but the county, any federal data, all that. And they demoed it for us. And it it's nothing short of incredible. Uh and legal also is a big fan of it. And and I say that where a lot of these properties will have shell corporations or LLC. They even have tools on there that tie all the ownership to those properties with like a web pattern. and it's pretty impressive, but it's it's those tools that we need to have the impact because otherwise we're doing, you know, the the heavier lift of doing it all manually and tracking everything. And it's we've been doing that and we're not getting the desired result. So, we're not trying to do the definition of insanity and do the same thing we've been doing because we're not getting the desired result. And so, that's that's uh all the breakdown for each departments. And then we plan, we're already setting up our our first joint inspections for January. And uh we have a point of contact on each one. Um I'm really excited for this program. I I think it will have a significant impact and I I know you guys are tired of hearing the same complaints that you hear about these properties. And so, you know, we're going to get a solution to that. We're going to work towards it. >> You guys have any questions? I was just going to mention as I said earlier the the goal is to see if we can't absorb these costs and that was a top- end cost so hopefully we don't reach to that level and my goal is that we see benefits and we see a positive impact is that you can expect to see a you know decision package coming through for next year's budget as a recommendation to to do this program and maybe expand it see how it goes forward but that's I you know I've been here for 25 years in 26 years or started in the mid 90s and Echo Motel has been an issue since mid 90s and the city's done a whole lot of stuff and somehow even when it changes ownership all those kind of things it comes back to be what it is now and so I think it it's it's an opportunity for us to see if we can't uh especially with the change in the ordinance uh that allows us to pull the cos that that we can actually make a a huge difference in some of these neighborhoods. Councilman Peoples I >> I love this not because one of my properties is included in here, but I have talked about the need for intense innovation. Uh in when we look at some of these, and I think, you know, I've got a a service station, out ofate owner, it's just been a mess because everybody, you know, working separately can't do something about it. So, I love this idea of bringing everybody together. So we get in and intervene early and let's get some of these things closed. >> Yes. Council Hill and Council Larsorf. >> Brian, just because I'm curious about the correlation and the update in six months, can you also include any animal welfare violations that are at these properties during that time period? >> Yes. >> Thank you, Council Lorf. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh just two questions. What's going to be the approach for some of those vacant properties that are just, you know, always a nuisance? like for one for example in district 4 that's a huge problem but it's apparently in um foreclosure right now so no one really knows who owns it no one's keeping it up. Uh will there be a similar process to for the city to basically take ownership of that or what is there going to be a strategy for these vacant properties too or is this just right now only for occupied? >> Uh right now it's that criteria that we're looking at to meet it. Um, typically although vacant properties properties do have a lot of issues, a lot of this centers around the use of the property and everything else. So, it's not it's not the exact same, but there is a it is something that we can put a more coordinated effort on vacant properties as well. this one it this property is really not that sort of tool but it's also something where uh I'm not opposed to uh using it on you know the same approach sort of here and there but we've these three are what we identified working here but it's also something where if I'd love to come back in six months and we say well actually it's now these three properties because we've corrected the issue so it's going to be >> there's no shortage on the list of what we need to work on and so but no I I can definitely uh separately sort of parcel out some other things if you wanted to >> I don't think that we could have a budget big enough to attack all of them at the same time. So, this is a pilot, see how it goes. If it works, then we'd rotate another three and request a budget to be able to do that on an ongoing basis. >> Gotcha. And then the the last thing was just as far as the like the clock resetting because I know before one of the biggest issues was if they made any sort of adjustments, then that clock would reset, giving them more time to, you know, abate the nuisance. Does this just give everyone just more teeth to be like, "All right, you try, but just not hard enough." and then take legal. >> I failed I failed to mention we're also going to be collaborating with ACT >> right >> and uh they're they are interested in in the program and be they'll be able to bring private if they can find somebody that that would stand up as the as the uh complainant and they would be able to bring forward a lawsuit that includes general law or common law which it makes it that harder to happen. So the city would use our tools and then they would partner on the other side with their tools. >> Yeah, I was going to say that's I believe what you're referencing is a 125 lawsuits. That's a part of this process, but it's not all of it. So the litigation side of it, you know, that that may be one of the avenues, but that will not have any bearing on the group inspections, the enforcement um on that aspect. >> Council Nettles. >> Yeah, I think that's kind of what my question what we're doing. Is that going to help us on the legal side? you know, because >> well, I was just going to say we have um three ordinances that we're working on that you'll see coming forward after the first of the year. Um one of which it does address vacant buildings that may need to be part of the budget process because it will need a department that owns that process because it will have a registration component. Um but yes, we're definitely looking, of course, we have this habitual nuisance ordinance and then there will be a third ordinance that we'll bring forward to you guys. Just we are looking at beefing up everything we can that are that's on the books. Yeah, because I Yeah, I think that's going to help out a lot. And I'll be interested in seeing maybe the top 20 properties that may be on that one to three. And I don't know if your property made it because you always holling about none of your properties on there. So, because I have Riverside and Barry that should be in front of yours. So, I look at u the 20 properties. You do a good job. You do a good job. >> Council member Becca and Council. >> So, I would just like clarification real quick. a little over $3 million. And that will serve this effort on how many properties? Just three or more? >> Top end just the three properties. >> So, a million dollars per property to clean it up. >> Well, to hopefully make a difference in it. Yes. But hopefully as we go along, we become more effective and efficient on how it's run. This is it's the worst case scenario on that's what we asked staff to put together. Um, and again, we're going to try to try to absorb it within the general fund. And so as we come along, we may be asking uh you know some months in to say we'd like to move X money out of non-EP departmental. We're not going to do this and instead move it to cover this and those kind of things. >> And Alan, if you look at it then you're talking about 800 calls to police. You got to dispatch police all of that. So I mean when you start breaking it down I think it becomes even less than that. >> Anyone else have anything? Council Flores. No good. >> Thank you. Very exciting. Anything else? Okay. Moving to possible discussion of charter election in 2026. Gavin is going to lead us through this. Mayor, council. Good afternoon. Gavin Mijley, assistant city attorney. here to discuss a possible charter election for the May 2026 election date. Um, so as you're aware, the city's already holding an election on the May uh election date for the bond program and also for the district 10 council vacancy council seat vacancy. So adding a charter amendment election wouldn't be a significant cost to the city. uh because we're already holding an election. Um and so this presentation is to seek council direction on whether or not to move forward with holding a May uh 2026 uh charter amendment election uh or consider alternative options. So, if you did move forward, some possible charter amendment uh charter amendment propositions could include mayor and council pay, reducing uh the quorum from a 2/3 uh to simple majority or 60%. Uh shift setting council meeting scheduling from uh to staff. Uh eliminate public hearings for department heads, council appointees. Eliminate the restriction against budget adoption at the same hearing uh as a budget hearing. and revise the streets priv street streets privilege requirement in the charter to eliminate an individualized ordinance. Some of these uh are continued items that were identified in the 2016 task force uh charter task force um and some are results of changes in law and uh practice over time. Some more possible amendments would be to uh remove the requirement for an ordinance to create or abolish or reorganize departments that are not required by the charter. I think there's seven or so uh departments required by the charter. Uh or remove the charter requirement to have departments altogether. Another one would be to remove the requirement for an annual report by public service corporations. Uh and then possible changes to council terms, either increasing uh lengths, staggering the terms or term limits or all of the above. And then there's some modernizations uh or updates to current laws laws and practices uh that the charter currently is not in compliance with. >> Um mayor, can I ask a couple questions? >> Um could you you've kind of given us like kind of an overview of what some of the possible ones. Could you perhaps give the context of like what the motivation is for proposing these changes for the ones that are like aren't obvious? I mean, does that make sense? So, like >> why are we eliminating public hearings for department heads or council appointees? What what what barrier or obstacle would that remove? Uh some of some of these were recommendations that were continued from the 2016 charter task force where there was a citizen uh commit uh task force assigned to review the charter and these were recommendations that they made and some are uh at the recommendation of of city staff. >> Yeah. Council >> just to make things easier for >> Yeah. staff in the city. >> So some of these are goes back to the charter back into the 20s 30s 40s. laws have changed and so um Texas is an atill state. The uh directors and assistant city managers are at will folks. So under HR laws, the charter requires or provides a person if they are being disciplined or they're being terminated, the charter provides that they get to to do a public hear or public uh presentation to the city council about their situation. But the city council has no no impact. They can't rehire the person. We can't it doesn't really mesh with how you know the actual the actual state laws and and how the system works. But it's a carryover from being in the charter for all those years before we became a city manager form of government. >> Okay. So, okay. On that one, so for instance, is that something that happens a lot? >> What what's happened? What is what it it ends up happening with the city with in reality is if a person gets terminated and then they hire an attorney, they want to sue the city, then the attorney makes a case that the they didn't get their day in in front of the city council because they didn't have the ability to appeal. But at the end of the day, the appeal doesn't mean anything because the city council >> doesn't hire >> can't hire them. And so it kind of just muddles up the whole process. and muddles up what's really available and not available to them again because we came we became a city manager form of government and this was in the charter since before then >> and then my other question well I have a few but um I don't I know we've been here in a long time so um the the part about restriction against budget adoption at the same meeting as budget hearing um what obstacle or barrier do you does that eliminate or preclude >> so there's currently a quirk in the charter where the budget cannot be adopted at the same meeting as the budget hearing. And so that creates a weird scenario where the city has a separate meeting and then closes that meeting and has another separate meeting. It's not a requirement to do that except for our charter. So this would be to eliminate that so that it's more seamless and you can adopt the budget at the same one at the same meeting that you have a budget hearing. >> Okay. All right. So, looking at the mayor and council pay possible charter amendment, uh just a brief history and this this amendment has come up uh two times in the recent history. Uh 2016 it failed uh and then again in 2022 that failed um by a much narrower margin. uh those numbers for the 2022 one uh at that time would have been I think 99 uh 99,000 for uh half of the average salary of department directors. So 99 99,000 for mayor 76,000 for council members and that's 2022 numbers. I imagine if you'd propose the same uh amendment uh index to half of the average salary of department directors and assistant department directors that those numbers would be uh would be increased since 2022, but I don't have those numbers off hand. Um, some other options on council uh pay would be to specify some fixed base rate with an adjustment mechanism, index it to an outside uh benchmark such as Taran County median household income. That 85,350 number is for a household for four fourperson household. Um, and you could scale that up or down as as you desire. Um, from that figure, another option would be to authorize council to set it annually by ordinance, uh, but with a stated cap, similar how Austin does, uh, their council salary. It's set by ordinance, but their count their charter doesn't include a provision regarding council salary. So looking at uh mayor and council salary again in terms of what are what has passed in other cities and what has failed. Um the benchmarking to HUD AMI uh has passed in San Antonio recently in November of last year and in El Paso in November of 2018 and those are the reference figures for those. Uh Dallas had a council uh charter amendment election which included mayor and council pay uh in November 2024 when they included fixed numbers uh and that failed and then you'll see some of the smaller cities do it by meeting just for some reference not suggesting that for city of Fort Worth and then council term limits. This is just a comparison of other big cities uh the other big cities in Texas and their current term lengths and term limits. And the thought process behind potentially including term limits on uh a charter amendment election would be it might make the council pay salary more palatable to voters if there's term limits also included. So timing for a May 2026 election, February 13th is the last day to order an election. So, if you wanted to include charter amendment propositions on a May 2026 election, that's the last day in which you'd need to order an election. And then an election day is May 2nd of 2026. So, uh if you do want to proceed with a May 2026 charter amendment election, we'd bring back another work session to review the specific proposition language that you'd like to include uh on on the ballot. Uh and then we would uh bring forth an ordinance to call that special election uh or the charter amendment and those propositions would be added to the ballot along with the bond propositions. Um but regardless of the decision you make, we do recommend uh a charter review before the end of 2028. So any questions? >> Thank you, Gavin. Questions or comments from council? >> Yep. Council Nettles. Um, I think it's uh a good idea to uh pursue now uh with the fact that it's not going to cost us any additional dollars uh for uh putting the chart election along with our bond. And so I would like to kind of discuss briefly or if there's another work session of what options work best for this council. Um I I think we all kind of agree with the charter amendments because we already went through those the last two years. So, I don't think that's a problem with that. I think it's the issue is whether we want to um put the mayor and council pay on there. Um and I think everyone around this table does enough work and deserves to and I know some may think it's volunteer and it is volunteers. I don't think you that amount is not going to subsidize uh what we do. Um, and so I would think that if you can go back to that maybe slide where you talked about um a fixed rate or uh putting it towards the uh house medium >> uh sure yes so I um I think that it should be a rate that we put up there because I think a lot we heard people didn't understand what the amount was going to be and I think it'll fail about 1,200 100 people. So I think there has been some numbers done that it possibly can pass this next go around. Those are some of my just general thoughts. >> Any other comments or questions? >> So for today, Gavin, your your main clarity is a move forward for work session agenda item again on the six. >> Yes. Whether or not you want to see it back on a on a work session with specific charter proposition language. >> Okay. Does that sound okay? council you kind of digesting what they've suggested here today and we can work on it again in January. >> Thank you very much. >> They have a suggestion on the uh mayor and council pay. I didn't they just gave options. The suggestion was kind of just on the amendments. >> Well, I think there they probably were I'm not going to speak for legal. They probably were just giving us some insight into what other cities have done successfully. Maybe also comparing that to what has not worked here in Fort Worth. And so really it would be up to this body or some other mechanism where or some other idea you may have to look at what that would be if there was consensus on council to put it on a charter. >> Sure. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. Next up, Stormwater Valley Storage Regulation Recommendations. Ben Thompson TBW. Hello, Mayor and Council. So, today I'm here to talk about flood mitigation and specifically as it relates to Valley Storage. So, I'm going to talk about what is Valley Storage. I've talked with several of you already about this and I really appreciate your time. um what are we proposing exactly and summarize how that's going to affect our residents and development and then what the next steps are. So what valley storage is in the simplest terms valley storage is the amount of flood water that fills up in the flood plane between two points. It's just so the flood water that you see on the right side that is a some quantity some volume of water and so what re research has shown including case studies uh here in the city is that when we fill in that valley storage over time uh we have increased flood risk downstream uh with respect to increased flood levels and uh erosion. So it can be very tempting to uh fill in these empty spaces because they are empty, not full of water most of the time. Um and so it can be uh tempting to develop even if we're developing, you know, up high out of the flood plane. However, uh over time, little by little, these add up and increase uh the flooding to structures, roadways, and uh create uh major erosion issues. So here in uh the city of Fort Worth right now, we uh do allow filling in the flood plane. And so this is one example. This is a big fossil creek. So what you see on the left is an aerial 2019. A lot of that flood plane was filled in. And uh what you see on the right, the flood plane was remapped. And now we have uh one one development by itself that probably had uh minimal um impacts but as the entire watershed is is developed and filled in that that's when you get problems years down the road and it's and it's the folks downstream. So this this particular uh development did everything by the book. Got all the permits, city and FEMA flood plane permitting and uh did everything correctly. So valley storage in Fort Worth is not a new concept. We we have been regulating valley storage since the mid 90s. And what you see here on this map, the blue is the Trinity River. So it's the West Fork and the Clear Fork of the Trinity River. That's the area that we have been regulating since the 90s and we got together. This is a program called the corridor development certificate. We got together with all the different communities along the Trinity River. And this is a program that is uh facilitated by the North Central Texas Council of Governments. We get help from the uh US Army uh Army Corps of Engineers. They help help review things for us and then we make recommendations on whether someone can uh develop. What we would like to do is uh we took a look at what other cities are are doing this citywide. So we would like to expand it. Let me go back one slide. We would like to expand uh the regulations beyond the blue into the purple. So citywide regulations. And I'll explain exactly what that means, but you never like to be the first or the only city doing uh something when it comes to regulations that affect development, right? So, we are really the the last major city in uh Texas to do this. And we had the advantage of looking at what works well and what doesn't. So, this is not uh something we did overnight. We've been doing this for over five years. And um we did case studies so we can quantify what are the actual effects here in Fort Worth. And we did uh like I said benchmarking. We met with council committees. We met with the DAC a bunch of times. We presented them with red lines of of the uh flood plane ordinance and the recommended changes so they could give us a lot of feedback and input. And uh we also had our our own specific stakeholder group. So all the feedback that that we were given is that yes, this is something that we need to do citywide. Um the the recommendations from the development community is we don't want more permits. We don't want our permits to take longer and we would like for some exemptions. So, some of those exemptions would be like uh utility crossings or roadways where you just can't mitigate or instances where um there's property ownership issues. So, what are we recommending? Um uh before I move on to that, we we as I mentioned, we met with the DAC a bunch of times and we were able to get a letter of recommendation from the DAC in October. They said, "Yes, you have our support." And this is we we believe this meets the uh goals of the city. And so that was really big for us to have their support um before we move forward with recommendations to council. So what exactly are we recommending? This is a very simple graphic, but all it is is if you put two scoops in the flood plane, you got to take two scoops out. That's it. Um we're not saying you cannot develop in the flood plane. We're just saying it's it's a 1:1 ratio. And to make things simple, the flood plane is mapped throughout the city with the FEMA flood plane. So, we're going to use that as the boundary. We we do have some exemptions, exceptions such as utility work where it's just really difficult to mitigate that and certain city projects that are difficult as well. So, um these regulations just like other flood plane mitigation um are going to be uh recommended by with an update through the uh flood plane ordinance. And so the bottom line is this this really is going to protect our residents from flooding. Um mitigate that risk long term. This is a really long vision. uh look because one scoop in the flood plane is not going to make a difference but a million scoops over 30 years is really going to add up. So how many how many developments with this impact? We went and looked back. It's about 75 a year. 75 studies uh that are done each year that would have to look at this. That's not to say 75 projects are just dumping a bunch of fill in the flood plane. That's just to say that these are the ones who would need to take a hard look at it and maybe give us some calculations. So, we do want to uh consider that, you know, there are going to be some grandfather. So, if someone's already submitted one of these studies, we're not going to make them go back and redo a bunch of stuff and and redo some calculations. Um, so we were able to meet with uh most of you council members um over the last month. Uh, thank you again for your time. we got some good questions and feedback from you. Um so here we are today uh with the council uh work session and then the hope is we'll be able to notify everybody all of our stakeholders the engineers the developing the development community over the next month six weeks month and then the uh February 1st uh these uh regulations would take effect and um that is all I have unless you have any questions. Any questions, council? No discussion? >> No. No questions. But I just wanted to thank your department for such a good explanation. I was able to share that with several of my homeowners associations and flood planes and they were very pleased. >> Excellent. Thank you. >> Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it. Okay. Proposed zoning amendments to alleviate the proliferation of certain business uses. Stephanie Scott Sims, Development Services. Stephanie. >> Hello. Good afternoon. For those who I have not yet met, my name is Stephanie Scott Sims and I am the new planning manager here. Um, and today I'm going to be talking about uh the alleviation of uh the proliferation of certain business uses. So, just to give you just a kind of overall summary of what this is about. Um, the purpose of this presentation is really to address council members um concerns regarding the overconentration of certain uses within commercial corridors um including liquor stores, payday lenders, smoke shops, and pawn shops. Um, again, this is just to u promote the balanced land use um and protect neighborhood vitality and staff is recommending uh zoning amendments uh to address these concerns. I do want to note that um due to these amendments that certain businesses may become non-conforming um and that new ones would be required to meet the requirements, the new requirements. Just some background for you. Last year um in 2024, staff presented IR24-1867 which reviewed high proliferation business types um which included liquor and package stores, credit access businesses, retail smoke shops, and pawn shops. uh staff further uh went back and further reviewed regulations and similar comparison cities if you will uh like Arlington, Dallas, Plano and Irving and San Antonio and Austin to see what they require for these types of uses and we are recommending the following zoning amendments and this is just a overview of those zoning amendments. So for liquor and package stores, uh we are looking to are request or we are suggesting to define what a liquor and package store is. For one, um removing them from the E and MU1 zoning districts, which are our neighborhood serving commercial areas, and adding a 1,00 foot separation distance between those uses. So that would be um between new and existing uses for credit access businesses or payday lenders. Um again we are looking to define that use in the zoning ordinance. Right now um those uses are regulated under our financial institutions land use which includes banks um and credit unions. And then we are um suggesting to limit those uses to our G through K zoning districts which are heavier commercial um and industrial zoning districts. Uh as well as select formbbased districts which would be our um formbbased districts that are non um residential in nature. We are um also proposing to add a 1,00 foot separation distance between those uses. For retail smoke shops, we are um we are suggesting that we amend the definition. Um currently the definition of retail smoke shop includes a a threshold. So for um smoke shops to be considered a smoke shop you have to basically um have gross retail sales 90 I think it's 91% of your gross retail sales have to come from tobacco tobacco related products and accessories and we are recommending that we amend that and lower that standard to 51% um and 51% is because that signifies that the majority majority um of your sales are from are related to those types of products. Um we are rec we are suggesting that we add new sensitive uses uh to the list of existing sensitive uses. So right now retail smoke shops are um required to maintain a 300 foot separation distance from certain what we call sensitive uses like um schools and universities. So, we are looking to add some new sensitive uses to that list and increase that buffer from 300 feet to 500 ft. We're also suggesting um to add a 1,000 ft separation distance between those uses. For pawn shops, we are um proposing to increase the separation distance. So there's already um a separation distance in the zoning ordinance between those uh uses which is 500 ft and we're proposing to increase that buffer to 1,000 ft. And lastly, we are adding a definition of bar. Uh the city does not have a definition of a bar um within the zoning ordinance. So, um, we're looking to add a definition that's consistent with the TABC regulations and also to revise the definition of restaurant. So, I have some general information about liquor and package stores. Uh, this is a a U map that shows where all of the liquor and package store locations are within the city. um and the um zoning I mean sorry council districts in which they're located. So this is a heat map which shows you kind of the density of where those uh uses are located um throughout the city. Um again liquor and package stores are not currently defined in the zoning ordinance. They are allowed by Wright as of right now um in the E neighborhood commercial and MU1 mixeduse districts and they're permitted by Wright uh in the FGH MU and MU2 um and certain foreignbased code districts. Uh and then section 44 of the city code prohibits those sales um within 300 ft of some of those sensitive uses like churches, public schools, and public hospitals. Um, and so our proposed amendments include defining liquor and package stores uh as an establishment principally for the retail sale of alcoholic beverages as defined by TABC. Uh, and removing liquor package stores as a permitted use uh by right in the E neighborhood commercial and MU1 mixeduse districts which are again are our neighborhood serving commercial districts. establishing a 10,00 foot buffer between liquor package stores. Uh this one thing to note is the measurement and how that would be measured. Uh so we are proposing to measure that in a direct line from the property line to property line. Um not doortodoor or like sometimes other uses are measured. Um this is our standard measurement. I think I believe there are some uses that we do uh measure from door to door because we're required to by state law, but um generally this is how we measure. Uh and then one item for discussion is whether to add daycarees to that list of sensitive uses for credit access businesses. I have some general information about those. Again, here is a li um I'm sorry, a map of where these you um uses are located within the city uh by uh sorry uh council district. And we are proposing uh again to establish credit access businesses as a defined zoning use and separating it from banks or financial institutions. We are proposing to limit credit access businesses uses to our heavier commercial and industrial districts uh and um all form based districts except certain um certain districts that are residential in nature. And then we're uh we're suggesting that we establish a 1,00 foot separation distance between those uses. retail smoke shops. This is a map showing all of those uses within the city and where they're located um by council district. Again, these uses are defined currently as stores that derive 90% or more of its gross annual sales from the sale of tobacco and related products. Um, we currently have a retail smoke shop sensitive use buffer uh that prohibits the sale of these um or the location of these stores within 300 ft of schools and universities and hospitals. And these um definitions and the buffers, they're also codified within the city's smoking um ordinance. So, that would also have to be updated. And again, um, retail smoke shops, we're proposing to limit or lower that def that that percentage threshold from 90% to 51%. Um, establishing a 1,000 ft separation distance between retail smoke shops and increasing the sensitive buffer distance to 500 ft from 300 ft and adding public parks, places of worship, and daycare centers to that list of sensitive uses. And lastly, amending the chapter um chapter 29.5 smoking ordinance. Pawn shops. One thing here is a uh another map of the pawn shops and where they're located within the city. And one thing I did want to note about pawn shops is that um in 2006 the city council approved a zoning ordinance text amendment that removed these uses from um the e neighborhood commercial and MU1 uh mixeduse districts. So as a result of that there were 14 existing pawn shops that were made legal non-conforming by that action. So later on in 2010, council um initiated a resoning of those 14 um legal non-conforming pawn shops to a PD to make them conforming uses. So here is a list of those pawn shops where they're located. And so they would they would not be um affected by uh these changes in the ordinance because they're conforming uses. So that's just one thing to keep in mind unless something happens that makes them non-conforming. Um for pawn shops, we are um proposing to increase the separation distance between them um from 500 feet to 1,000 ft. And then bar and restaurant. Again, we are um proposing to um define the word bar and the term and amending the term the um definition for restaurant. Um bar uh means an establishment that basically derives 75% or more of its gross revenue um from the sale of alcoholic beverages as defined by TABC. And then restaurant, we just kind of reconfigured this. We removed some wording and made it much um user friendly uh for both staff and the public. And that is all that I have and I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you. Very thorough. Any questions or comments from council? >> I just want to say thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. I've been really excited about um this ordinance. It was um something that uh District 6 was very passionate about, especially with the proliferation of liquor stores and smoke shops. So, thank you for um bringing something I think that it's reasonable and fair and um I think will be very supportive for our residents and our city overall. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Any other questions, comments? No. Thank you very much. >> Okay, council. That's a conclusion of our work session agenda items. Are there any future agenda items to provide to CMO? Council member Blac. I'll move around the table. So, this is not necessarily an IR, but it is a a request if we to understand what it would take to reconfigure this room so that we all have line of sight to the speaker as was highlighted earlier today. Whether that's moving to the podium to the center or rearranging so the speaker is not behind us on either side. >> Yeah, good question. in Elizabeth and into Macy. >> Uh in a recent uh our NLC trip to Salt Lake City, I was able to take a tour of their film industry and what they do to promote it. And one thing I realized is that we don't have a set of best practices here for how we best integrate our film industry with our neighborhoods. So, I would like staff to work with uh Visit Fort Worth and the film commission to really look nationally at how other cities that are promoting film the way we are um permit and handle that um the interplay between our neighborhoods and our streets. For example, Salt Lake doesn't allow them to shut down a street for an entire day. They have PD there to support them and they shut them down for shorter periods of time. So, it's things like that that I think we can um get out in front of. >> You council Hill already mentioned my IR request about the transparency stars. I think that would be helpful. Um but I did want to on the M andC log on item number 21 prior to our meeting next week. Could we have Madori circulate the it's the plan the annual artwork plan for the fiscal year 2026. I haven't seen that. I'd like to see it beforehand. Council Flores had a request uh TPW staff in the legal department to look at evaluating creation of um noise ordinance enforcement signage, you know, for certain areas that we have repeated violations of that. Um they could be done in in combination, say with um no cruising. I'm talking specifically about the stockyards and I'm not necessarily saying let's revisit the no cruising you know ordinance matter again because at the time Chief Nos decided to uh to park that the time being but this continues to be a problem specifically in the stockyards where there is still an existing no cruising ordinance. So, what I'm thinking is maybe in combination we can come up with some appropriate signage to notify people if you're pulling in there, you want to have a good time, great. But don't crank, you know, your your radio or have some obnoxiously loud, you know, engine or, you know, muffler system. >> Any others? Council? >> Yeah, C Nles and then council peoples. >> Yeah, I have one. Um, we had developed something when we had the issue with LBT rise daycare um about adding them to list to have police come immediately. I think they uh put something at the daycare. Well, I wanted to see how we can do that to add that same thing to the YMCA or if they already added childcare associates. Okay. It was like a smart button >> like an hour or just a request that that happen. >> I'm clarifying. >> I mean, if if if this is just a simple uh request, that's fine. >> Okay. We'll we'll find out and then we'll get back to >> Okay. >> Um Council Peoples. >> No, I just want to thank all the staff. Today was probably one of the best work sessions I have been in since I've been on the council. I thought very thoughtful wellthoughtout presentations. Uh, and so I am appreciative. I know it takes a lot of work for you all to have to come down and present to us and a lot of time and energy goes into those presentations and I just want to tell you they were well done and wellreceived and thank you. >> Thank you Deborah. Um I just have one Jay and and also it's for Madori is we've talked about this I think at a CMO level several times but utilizing our libraries um specifically and then maybe using parks and wreck in this conversation too community centers where there's vacant space or possible space to activate specifically for our art community um and I know Madori had an interest in that when she first got here. So, if she wants to take the lead on what she's already thinking about and present something in January, that would be helpful. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, we're going to adjourn this meeting. We have CCPD. So, there's pizza. So, we're going to take a fivem minute break at their request because they got to flip things over for um cable and then come back. Meaning