[Music] [Music] [Music] Okay. Good morning everyone. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Welcome to City Hall and to Council Chambers. Um this morning our invocation will be uh led by Pastor Greg Hood with Reach Ministries. Pastor have a word for you. Happy Easter. Y. All right. Happy Easter. And the city is what? Latin. That's right. Body of Christ. Body of Christ. So meaning of course his presence with us and so uh I'm glad to be here giving you this sermon I'm sorry prayer at the beginning of this council meeting. So yeah so it is a wonderful uh season and I want to ask you is it good to have your sins forgiven? Yes. Every sinner should have said yes. So I'm going to pray for us to our father who out of his great love sent his son who was the innocent one to come on behalf of the guilty ones. Let's pray. Father, we approach you with adoration. This world belongs to you and everything in it. We're here to honor you with our lives. We're here to be sought the light for those around us. Thank you that our guilt and shame for sin, which we all have because we're sinners. Every single one of us has been dealt with by you. all those who come to you will receive forgiveness and the same life that Jesus has now when he rose from the dead will be ours now and forever for those who believe. So it's great to be a part of a city that has that kind of heritage in its name. And I pray here today for our servant leaders, all of them, and the citizens gathered that we'll recognize that one day we'll meet the king of all kings. What will we say to him then? I believed you and trusted you or I turned away from you. May it be that we believed and trusted. Bless this time today, all the proceedings. May they honor and glorify the King of Kings in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, pastor. Our pledge of allegiance to the United States flag and to the Texas state flag will be led by uh Gel Ramo. He's a 10th grader at Moody High School. He's part of the PEK welding program active in youth group at Kelsey United Methodist Church and he has a 3.5 GPA. All right, go Trojans. Please join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please join me in honoring the Texas flag. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God. One and indivisible. Thank you, Guy. And good luck. Yes, ma'am. Uh, Miss Wa, would you please uh call the role? Mayor Plet Wardo, present. Council members Roland Barera here. Sylvia Campos here. Eric Anthu here. Gilnandez here. Kayn Paxton here. Ever Roy present. Mark Scott here. Carolyn Bond here. City manager Peter Zenon present. City attorney Miles Rley here. Mar and council, a quorum of the council and the required charter officers are present to conduct the meeting. Great. Thank you, Miss Wa. We'll go on to section E, which is our city manager's comments and update uh on city operations. Mr. Zenoni. Thank you, mayor, and good morning, mayor and council. I have a um a special announcement to do this morning, so I'm going to do it from the podium here. We have somebody we want to acknowledge, and that is Alyssa Barrera Mason. And I'd like to take a moment to recognize her. She is the executive director of our downtown management district and we're going to provide her with a token of our appreciation this morning. So for seven years, Alyssa has played a key role in transforming and and activating downtown Corpus Christi to make it a more vibrant and welcoming place both for our residents and our visitors. Today, our downtown offers a unique coastal experience with various attractions, live music, the art scenes, and more dining options than ever before. Throughout her tenure at DMD, Alyssa has been instrumental in establishing innovative programs that have been key to attracting private investment and development in downtown. Later this month, an ArtWalk economic report will show what we know already, which is that that event alone has significant economic impact to our city of Corpus Christie. One of her legacies that she will leave behind is a footprint of public art and landscape projects throughout downtown. You can't miss the vibrant colors, the whimsical shapes, right? and the stories that these murals tell us about Corpus Christiey's coastline, the the Tahano culture, flora, and fauna native to our region. On behalf of Corpus Christi, Alyssa, I just like to take this moment here in front of the city council and the audience, and I know there's several board members here as well, to personally thank you for all the hard work and contributions you have made to the city. Uh, your work has made an extreme difference. We know that. We can see it. And we wish you continued success as you move to Houston, Texas. Right. And we know you're not going to be uh far from us nor a stranger to us. So, as a departing gift, we'd like to present you, and I know you got your hands full already with your little baby there, but uh we uh want to present you a commemorative plate. Come up over here. Yeah. Here we go. So nice. Thank you. We're going to present Alyssa a nice commemorative plate made uh from alotile right downtown. Right. Yeah. I was like trying to get it from you. Hi. What's that? I was trying to get it from you. And we got some flowers as well. Don't drop it. And we do have a small certificate of appreciation as well. Okay. Thank you. It says I'll read it for you all. says, "This certificate is presented to Alyssa Barrera Mason in recognition of your exceptional leadership and dedicated service as an executive director of the downtown management district. Your vision and commitment have greatly enhanced the vitality of downtown Corpus Christi and strengthened the city's partnership with the DMD." Thank you, Peter. Okay, Elissa. Thank you. here. Say a few words. Yeah. Oh gosh. Um, thank you so much, Peter, for the recognition and for the partnership and friendship of everyone in this room. Um, this wouldn't I mean the work that we've done downtown has definitely been in partnership with everybody, there's nothing that I've done alone. And so, um, while I'm really grateful to have been kind of a vehicle for all this progress, it really was the community's work, uh, that I was able to push through. And I know that that work will all continue um with the partnership of the council, our board members in attendance, the DMD team, and all of the stakeholders. So, thank you again for the opportunity to serve the community in this way. Um I want to say thank you to my dad who's here who really kind of uh raised me with a ethos. He was a firefighter for 33 years with Corpus Christie Fire Department. So, um that really had a big impact on my um motivation to do this work. And again, thank you for for the recognition and the opportunity to serve. Thank you. And Elysa, if I may, as a point of privilege, I do want to um you know what I'd like to do is ask the council to come down because we also want to um give you send you off a nice warm message and a little certificate for you. So, the council will join. Let's pull our seats in because we'll take a picture. right there. All right. Oh, darn. We don't have that microphone, do we? Or do we have it handy? So, No, if you have it there. No, no, no, it's okay. Um, yeah. So, so Alyssa um you know, this is a um this is something you can take home with you as you know, it's a certificate of appreciation. It speaks volumes. But I'm gonna speak from the heart right now because um what Alyssa has done for not only the downtown area, right? That's part of her title, but it's really this entire community and and not only the entire community, but multiple councils that you have worked with, that you have formed relationships with that that is what makes things move forward, right? and we have then because of this met so many people the stakeholders and everyone who is downtown. So her leadership is is what's so heartfelt and it is so bittersweet because um we're happy for you. You know life is about chapters, right? She just had her beautiful baby. So she's starting her family and I told her God wants you somewhere else. It's a new door to start right with your new family, a new beginning. And it's bittersweet because she leaves us, but she leaves us with so much. And so, we're so proud of you. We are so proud of you. So, this is a small tiny token. And I know I I know the council members would like to say a few words because what you have given us and what you represent is invaluable. So, thank you. [Applause] Whoever wants to go just a minute. Yeah, because it's 40 seconds. All right. Mindful of our of our time. Melissa, I just want to say I don't know how to do this. Go this way or this way, but yeah. Stand on that side. Okay. Like like I said before, I you are obviously Miss Corpus Christi. Seriously, uh I can't think of Corpus Christie without you being part of that. So, um I've grown up with you. I've, you know, I knew you when you were working for the city and then now with the downtown management district. But again, I'm so happy for you and your family. I know for a fact you're going to come back cuz cuz there's no place like home. So again, Alyssa, thank you so much. Um and we wish you the very best. Bless you. Um Alyssa, um thank you so much for what you've taught me. um the enthusiasm that you bring to all of us. Um the idea that projects that you've done have been featured in Texas Monthly, you know, speaks accolades for the things, you know, I I tell people when they're thinking about coming to town, I say come on the the first weekend of the month. So, and as I I'm going to say it again, one of my first one of my favorite things about Alyssa is her ability to tell a council member no, you know. So that that takes character and that takes professionalism and a high level of expertise because we're the layman and you show us how it's done. Congratulations. All the best to you and your family. A beautiful baby, you know. Uh what is it? Uh have a great one. I can't We're going to miss you. Well, you you can tell it's easy to tell Roland now. But no, thank you very much. you won't have to deal with Roland anymore. Uh it, you know, taking on downtown and all of us remember how bad downtown was. And you know, you took it on uh with the with a gusto and a determination and made it better. You made it better. And this little baby is just having a great time. It's not It's my way out. It is. It is. Um, you know, it's sad to see you go, but I'm glad you're going on to something, you know, to raise your family and it and it is having that time with your with with your children at a young age is precious and uh I I think it'll be a great thing for you and I I look forward to having you back at some point. Thank you. Your baby's beautiful. She really likes me. Um, you were here when I was here last time and you you have done a wonderful job over the years. I hate to see you leave. You're going to be so hard to replace. But good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Alyssa. You have set a really high bar. There's areas across town that sees the impact that you have had on downtown and and they say that's that's so brilliant and it's such a long lasting legacy. How can we duplicate that in our areas of town? And that is really something that I hope you get to really sit back, take some moments, and appreciate the hand that you have had in the future and the development and the growth of our city. We're going to miss you. But like our like my colleagues have all said, we wish you the best of luck, happiness, and and a full life and chapter ahead of you. Good luck. Thank you so much Dun for Corpus Christie. Um, we only worked together for a few months, but you've been a blessing to me and a blessing to Corpus Christie. Good luck and um, you have your hands full for sure. Thank you so much. So, so, you know, I was great friends with uh, Terry Sweeney. I think uh, Terry set a bar that uh, uh, couldn't be raised. You raised that bar and I think uh, I've been meaning to reach out to to Terry and and and let him know that you're moving on because he's he's okay. He's followed you closely in your success. You know, Corpus Christiey's losses, Houston's gain. I I think they know what they're getting, but they ain't seen nothing yet until you get up there and make work your magic. I I will close by saying I remember years ago when you would go downtown on a, you know, Friday night or Thursday night and you'd be you and your friend. And Carol and I were stunned at how many people were wondering around downtown when we went to one of those ribbon cutings recently. And that's because of your good work. God bless you. Thank you for all you've done. You know, uh, Alyssa, um, you've been a beacon of light since I've known you. Um, you hit the ground running and you never stopped. The things that you've done, the enthusiasm, your leadership, your staff, the growth that they've experienced just being um, working with you. Uh, you know, just downtown is such an important part of District 1. And the nice thing is is that you made me look good all the time. And I appreciate that. We appreciate it. And I think when you take a look at now that you have a new one, 10 years from now, you know, I hope it's before that, but 10 years from now, when you're walking through the downtown area and you're pointing out to your little one, I had a part in that. I I had a part in this. I had a part in that. I made that happen. That's a wonderful tribute. It's a wonderful legacy. And I know that we're going to miss you. We love you. We hope that God watches over you and protects you as you go on to your next journey. And we're just going to darn miss you. So, thank you. Thank you for everything you've [Applause] done. Right here. Big smile on the brain. One, two, three. One more time. Big smiles. One, two three. [Applause] I just really sir. Excellent. Yeah, we do have one other item, but did you want to go to citizen comment or do you want to do the uh we can do the second item which is an overview of the Buck Day's celebration coming up. Oh, I see. Because we have um it'll probably take a little bit longer than We only have six. We can you can do this one if you want. Yeah, we I think we have like six public comments, so we can go and go through that. That's okay. That might be better. So, we're not rushed. Um yes. So, let's see here. So, it's five uh four minutes till um and and I'm going to take a quick moment to emphasize the importance of this business meeting. Uh we handle significant matters concerning taxpayer dollars, making it imperative that we uphold the highest standards of decorum and adherence to our policies. Our core principles of openness, transparency, and inclusiveness guide our actions, and we aim to achieve them while respecting our city council policy, which has been in place for uh 30 years. Public comment serves as one avenue for communication, but certainly not the sole method. Uh you can also reach out to your members of this council by way of phone call, emails, or even scheduling an in-person appointment. With that said, let's proceed with public comment keeping in mind the importance of decorum and adherence to the policy. So before I begin, if Mr. Russle, if you'll please review the uh rules of decorum. All citizens must be courteous, polite, and respectful of one another, including the city council and city staff. The mayor and council members shall be referred to by title and/or title surname. All remarks must be addressed to the mayor and city council and not to the council members as individuals. Citizens are only permitted to speak on city related subject matter. Speaking on any non-city related matter is prohibited. Lou, boisterous, profane, or obscene language or behavior is not allowed. Citizens must refrain from any disturbing noise, demonstration, or other act disrupting to the city council business. Thank you, Mr. Risley. So, individuals will be called upon in orderly signed up electronically. We'll first hear in-person comments followed by virtual public comments. Residents of Corpus Christi will be given priority over non-residents. Please state your name and the city in which you live before beginning your comments. You have two opportunities to make public comment on an agenda item or city related business. First, at its present time, and second, when the item is actually heard. So, please choose one option. Citizen comments are limited to three minutes, while non-resident comments are limited to one minute. A visible timer position near the city secretar's desk will assist in managing the allotted time. And if you have a petition or any relevant information, uh, please present it to the city secretary prior to speaking and she will distribute it to us. So with that we will start with um Mr. Steven Cleer Steve Clipper District 2. Two points today. One is the importance of internal auditing. The independence in internal auditing is fundamentally crucial. Number two, with all due respect, the um current audit committee chair appears to be undermining independence. Now, I say that it may be uh unwittingly my perspective. I was a certified internal auditor. I was the audit director for the city of Boston before I came here. I was a performance auditor for the city of Dallas and I was basically a fraud auditor for J. C. Penney corporate out of Dallas. So I have been the last three audit committee meetings. Well, one was a non-meating because of the lack of a quorum. And as a retiree of 27 years here, I have watched the torturous path of establishing a city audit function, which by the way, some of you may not know, was only established in 2010 by charter change. Mr. Holland is the fourth auditor. So, and if I have time at the end, I'll well, time's running by. Um, independence is the ability to carry out audit responsibilities in unbiased manner. It's a big discussion point in the general uh the um general accountability office government accountability office yellow book and it's also which is adopted by the way by ordinance to be to to lack for the imp the um the auditor his job is to speak truth to power that can be very difficult and sometimes personal experience it result hominemum attacks on an individual. Not saying that's happened here, but um perhaps one of the specific things about lack of the impairment that I say is happening now is the city charter 12 or city charter 12 and a half says no less than 30 days prior to the beginning of each calendar year, the city auditor shall submit an annual audit plan to the city council through the audit committee. He's been trying to do that and he's been unable to get it past the committee. So I would encourage recommend the city council emphasize the importance of maintaining independence. I would also like to see them add to the ordinance the red book which is the institute of internal auditor standards. typically not thought about in government but it is the foundation body. It is the body for the IIA. I would like to see the audit committee meetings televised and recorded and made public and I would like the council to insist that the U annual audit plan come to the council as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Cleber. Uh, Rolando Garza. Is Rolando Garza with us? Okay. Uh, Joshua Frederick. Frederick, sorry. Hey everybody, Joshua Frederick, City of Corpse Christie. Good afternoon, council. I'm here to address two things. First, to start off with it that I was wrong, and I do apologize for that. Last week, I I can admit it. I'm grown up enough, just barely. Almost a month ago, I went to investigate the rules of decorum to find out where the questions are inappropriate policy stems from. I poured over Robert's rules and didn't find it in there. Then I went through a PDF of the city charter, and what I found was that the rules for public comment were set by the city council. Uh, I then went to the city's website where the rules for public comment were listed and all it said was questions to council or staff will not receive a response. This is what I screenshot and sent to most of you. Half of you got back to me with a variation of I'll look into this. I followed up with those members about a week later or so and still didn't get a a satisfactory response, more like I'll just look into it. Um, so last week just before the meeting, I was told that what was published on the city's website had changed and that was about 20 minutes beforehand. And that that made me quite mad. I was I wasn't sure why that was happening. Uh, and so I took it as Mount Fezance, but it turns out it was a clear clerical error, something that uh was a fixed the following day after I had sent the message to most of council. Um, so for that I I apologize. I can admit it. Um, what I didn't do was apparently go to www. library.unicode.com/tex/corpuschi/code/codesof ordinances no node ID equals pt i c opprentally where we list our our city rules. And I apologize for not checking that specific website. That's my bad, guys. I should have known better. But um I I appreciate that the the the error is fixed, but more importantly the the rules are set by y'all and it is something that you can fix. Um we can change the language in there and I have provided each of you um a copy of how I would personally word it. Of course, we have our first amendment that says that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or proh prohibiting the freedom exercised thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people to peacefully assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Further, the Texas Open Meetings Act does not prohibit questions either. It is in fact has all sorts of rules on how the government um is supposed to respond to inquiries made by the public during public comment. Uh I know from just a meeting a few months ago that it is not hard to get an agenda item added um concerning public uh comment. You know, we tried to cut it down to just a minute and thankfully that that those efforts were shot down, but I am here to suggest to you that you add that to the next item uh to the next uh agenda meeting. I I'd really like to see you guys move in a progressive way and uh to change the language of our city code. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Frederick Isabelle Arisa. Hey, I'm Dr. Isabelle Isa, District 2, um, and co-founder of For the Greater Good. And before I actually begin my um, public comment, I just want to say a little bit about myself. I have a PhD in sociology um from one of the most prestigious competitive sociology programs in the entire country. I go to I went to a school that was regularly ranked in the top 30 in the entire nation out of four universities. I received a full ride so that I could dedicate myself to learning. And I bring that expertise to my role as a member of for the greater good. And I also bring that expertise to my involvement with the um crime prevention uh crime control and prevention board group, which is why primarily I'm here today. Now, last meeting, I asked for evidence-based agenda programs to be presented at the next crimerevention meeting, and Joe Kramer, uh, the president said that the issue was brought up last year, and since there was no funding awarded for that program, it would not be placed on this year's agenda. Now, last year, we raised over $9.2 million for crime control and prevention. And if you look at the executive summary of the crime crime control prevention district, it says that um the goals, the following goals provide a basis for the implementation of community policing, serve as a catalyst to develop creative solutions to problems that do not focus exclusively on arrest and work to prevent problems to enhance the quality of life, which includes they had five items that could be addressed, but one of them was to de to decrease the incidence of criminal offenses associated with young offenders and um to reduce citizens fear of crime. Now, in the summary of the board's role, there's actually five different categories that money can be spent on. And one of those is spec specific treatment and prevention programs. And there are learner centered programs um that we could be using money for. And you know that could be structured activities, social skill, uh social skills training, mentorship opportunities to promote pro-social behaviors and reduce harmful behavior. And I went back and I looked at different resources and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention actually says that there is a spike in juvenile delinquency immediately following the close of schools. and a police chief magazine um actually had a header of an article called prime time for juvenile crime between 2 and 6 p.m. And so, you know, what I would really like us to be thinking about is prevention. You know, the city the police um the police department gets 25.3% of our city budget. You know, parks and recreation gets 6.7%, the library gets 8 1.8%. Like I think that it is worth taking some of that $9.2 million to invested in prevention programs. 3 minutes is so fast. Anyway, talk to your your appointees because I think that's a good investment of our dollars. And and Dr. Risa, I might mention last was it last last week? Yeah, last week we had a little conversation about um well, we had a presentation about crime and and in following up, I just want you to know some of the things that you have mentioned are some things that Chief Markle and I talked about. Um they're going to come back next next month. Yeah, they're going to come back next month. Um in terms of for example um you know, who are our partners with with prevention because it's not a part as you're mentioning, it's not a part of the model. It is to a degree. It is to a degree. I shouldn't say it's not, but not like it used to be through the crime control. So anyway, some of a lot of the things you're you're talking about are very much a part of the conversation. Okay. I'd like you to be part of our board's conversation as well. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Marilena Garza Garza, District 1. I wanted to come and echo what Dr. at ISA um is up here. I'm very concerned about crime. It makes crime and poverty hold hands. When we have more poverty, we're going to have more crime. And I have gone to some of the crime prevention and control um meetings and the culture that is being perpetuated on that is alarming. We don't call our youth juveniles. That's already setting the stage that we want to pipeline our juveniles straight into prison. That we don't want that kind of pipeline here. The minimal move that's always discussed is more police. That's the minimal move. Why do we want to do minimal when we can do more? Why are we not creating programs that are going to support our police? Things like ride share programs like what they did in Austin. The a city of Austin works with a nonprofit that has this ride share program to help decrease the drunk driving so that people are not running into our carriages on Ocean Drive. We need to prevent crime because it's more costly once the crime happens. We now have a victim. We now have who knows what kind of property damage. It's after the fact. The trauma has already happened and we're going to see more crime. So, we need to prevent it with community programs. We cannot just put crime control squarely on CCPD. If CCPD was able to control crime, we would see less crime. And crime oscillates up and down just like poverty does. We need to assist CCPD just like we want to assist our service providers in reducing poverty. Um there is a lot of money that rolls around um when it comes to crime control. And crime is very hard, like I said, to control. It's just like poverty. But we cannot do the minimum and expect different results. So I invite you guys, the crimerevention control meeting is this Wednesday at 2:00. Um, if you guys are unable to make it, please talk to your appointees and I would ponder out loud to ask questions like why are we not talking about solutions like ride share programs, better lighting, you know, I just came from a crime control event. There is a Westoso ISD field day trip occurring right now at the Antonio Garcia Center. I was able to teach so many young boys on emotional regulation. Teaching these kids why they're lit while they're very little about we don't fight. That's how we prevent our youth, our juveniles from shooting each other in the street. Ride share programs will prevent that person from wrecking into the carriage. That just looks bad on us. We don't want to put chiefly the control the the responsibility of drunk driving on the uh business owners downtown. They're trying to make a living. We know people go downtown to drink. It's it happens. So, I would uh suggest maybe a pilot program, a ride share pilot program that coincides with art walks. So, please talk to your appointees and come to the meetings. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Garza. Adam Rios, is Adam Rios with us? Okay, that concludes our public comment and thank you all for being here. So, we're going to go ahead and go back to Mr. Zenon's report. Yes, thank you, Mayor. So, this next item on the agenda is an overview of the 87th annual Buck Days Festival, uh, which will be celebrated this year between May 1st and May 11th, so coming up in a few weeks. Buck Days, as we know, has been celebrated annually in our community for 87 years and has been overseen by the Buccaneers Commission since 1938. It is one of Corpus Christiey's largest community events and it draws visitors from the entire Coastal Bend and across the state right here at Corpus Christie. Held on the Bayront, this event has something for everyone, including a rodeo, carnivals, parades, and even more than that. Since 1996, as an important part 2.3 million raised through these uh through the Buccaneers Commission in the Buck Days has been awarded to students as college scholarships uh through monies generated during the Buck Days. That's an important part that sometimes gets overlooked. So, today we have Johnny Filipello. He's the president and CEO of the Buccaneers Commission. We've asked him to come to the city council to share background and highlights from last year's events, but also give us an update on this year's events uh that are taking place very soon. So, Johnny, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Peter. And mayor, council, on behalf of the Buccaneer Commission, want to welcome you guys to Buck Days, which is fast approaching. Uh won't take a ton of your time. Want to just highlight some of the successes from last year and then talk about a lot of the the new that's happening with the event as well. Um last year's successes, you can see an aerial shot here. 80,000 people bought a ticket to come and attend Buck Days last year as part of the great festival. Obviously, the weekends are a big part of that. And as I've told you guys in the past, we've really tried to focus 100% of the event, if not 100%, but close to that, right there at the American Bank Center and utilize as much of that facility as possible to activate and and grow our event. Um this audience profile really shows you that we are Corpus Christi. A ton of uh the residents come from from uh the event. Um you can see the demographics of that's very similar to the region. But then the visitor journey also plots out uh people from all over the state and other states that come and attend our event as as well. It's a great tourist draw. Our digital reach is over 15 million. were broadcast annually on CPS in June with our rodeo finals. So almost over half a million people enjoyed uh that uh viewing uh which really becomes a great commercial for the city of Corpus Christi as they uh lead in and lead out of with their great attractions, the beaches and and the Lexington and and those type of things on that. Peter had mentioned the 2.3 million. Last year we set a record of 306,000 in total giving. We've broadened our giving to not just uh scholarships but also supporting the museums um working with the food bank on a a new endeavor we did last year and just a lot of different ways to help the community. And our goal is to keep growing that year after year with with 306,000 last year. Looking ahead to this year, a big change uh in the sense of dates. Uh the parade is now going to be a week earlier and kick off the event on April 26th. Um we uh feel like getting it separated from the rest of the event will allow the public to enjoy that and then come all the enjoy all the other offerings starting on May 1st. Um so we'll again start at Buck Stadium. Um we're really thankful uh Mr. Petri, who uh the city rents the radio shop from, is loaning us his big property just down from Buck Stadium to stage all of the uh floats this year, which is going to make things uh much more uh efficient and safe to get all of those floats off of the roadways leading up to the parade. So, we're really excited about that leadin. We'll uh go down uh through the stadium uh down Leopard Street, end up on Shoreline and at W's Edge Park uh to to finish things off. And then on the back end of the parade, on the back end of the event, May 10th, we'll have our children's parade at 10 a.m. that morning right there on Shoreline Avenue as well. A big part of the event is the ever growing rodeo portion. Our first weekend uh will include PBR Velocity Tour finals. Uh this is a 30 tour stop that has gone all over uh the US this uh since January. Um, Corpus Christi is promoted at every one of those stops as all roads lead to Corpus Christie where they'll crown the the champion of that event who will get a direct ride to Arlington to compete in the world finals the very next week. Following that up, we have Rodeo Corpus Christi May 6th through 10th. We'll have the youth rodeo the first night and then wrap things up with the rodeo uh competition with the total payout last year of 707,000. It' be very similar to that, guys. This puts us in about the top 15 in the world in terms of uh prize money for rodeos. Um out there there's about 700 rodeos in North America. So we're truly at that upper level of of rodeo competition um in in in that hemisphere. Concerts this year we're really excited. We have a good variety local flare. Uh Steve Trevinho the comedian Tuesday night Mercy Me the great Christian band on Wednesday. uh groupup signo for tahhano on Thursday, Clint Black uh Friday and dos parachos. Another good Kevin Fowler, Roger Kger on Saturday to uh to wrap things up for us for the rodeo side of things. Our shops at Treasure Island is is something that we implemented about three years ago. It's really starting to grow. Lot of activity in there for families. Obviously, shopping's a big component of that, but we'll have a kid fish where kids can go learn how to fish and actually catch fish inside the air conditioning. A lot of free stuff, petting zoo, racing pigs, all of those type of things. So, bring the family. Matthew CCAC is a new sponsor of ours who's presenting this area. And there'll actually be a home HVAC giveaway. Uh so, if you come in, register, you have the chance at winning a 20 to $30,000 HVAC for your house uh through them. So, really cool. uh uh uh marketing opportunity that they're partnering with us and and uh going to help some some family on the coastal bend out because of it. This is something we're really proud of and and uh we started this endeavor about four or five years ago with robotics and it's uh kind of taken off with Wildfire. our good friends at GF Coast Growth Ventures uh infused uh some support to this the last couple of years and you'll see we're robotics heavy now. Uh starting on May 2nd all the way through that weekend, we'll have teams from all over the state come in. We're actually going to have the large robots this year that um you see on TV and and whatnot with kids competing. So that'll kick things off the first and second. We'll have the smaller robots that Saturday Lego League on Sunday. Uh we also uh that first weekend May um sorry May 3rd uh we'll have a STEM day steam day uh we're partnering with Kingsville Mad Science out of Austin and we're encouraging kids to sign up elementary and junior high kids to sign up at buckdays.com uh it'll be a three-hour day of fun to energize about science, technology, math. So if you have students or that are interested in that, please um get them signed up. It'll be a really great great fun interactive experience for them. Uh the next week we will do a third grade school tours program where we bring kids in teach them where their milk comes from through agriculture with the extension service and those things. We have some 4H competitions, public speaking, food show, food challenge. So all of this is going on in the convention center during buck days. Um the newest thing we're doing uh that uh really our partners and first approached us in January and said, "Guys, we need a home for our UIL state championship." Um just so happened we had the facility then and were already set up for it. Uh said, "Well, why don't we bring that UIL championship to to Corpus?" So, we're going to have uh 72 teams that all won their district events all over the state. Uh coming in competing on May 10th. Uh there'll be over a thousand kids here for that competing and we'll crown state champions that that Saturday, May 10th as well. So really cool uh opportunity and you can see just the energy we're going to have. If if you haven't been to one of these robotics events, I encourage you to come one of those days. These kids are uh super super sharp, talented and and the energy they bring to the table is unbelievable. So, um, this is the future for us is how do we build more and more of that in the convention center in that 11 days and we're we're doing it right now. Another fun activity that we introduced obviously last year we partnered with crawfish for a cause on our first Saturday. Those guys are coming back and doing a tremendous job to to cook thousands of pounds of crawfish right there on the bayfront. Uh we stole their concept admittedly and and willingly they accepted and we've recruited the the best barbecue joints in the coastal bin to come and serve uh to the public. Um you can purchase a ticket in advance and basically enjoy the water garden area on Saturday, May 10th, sampling barbecue from some of the best barbecue restaurants in town. So uh come uh come check that out as well. It's it's a new thing we've we've implemented this year. Uh think it's always important to talk parking. Uh these lots in yellow indicate all the parking that we have under control uh with uh with Buck Day's events. That's almost 5,000 parking spaces. So we are uh well in on our way to um to making sure the event is safe um and people can get there. Uh the red indicates some privately owned lots that will also be in use during that time that that are partners of ours as well. And then I'd be remiss without saying uh CCRTA is a great partner of ours. Uh this shows the shuttle route that they do from both Waterburger Field and the Art uh sorry and the Ortiz Center. Um so yes, we do have we get this a lot. We do have ADA parking close to the gates, but if for some reason those are full, we have ADA parking at Waterburger Field, the Ortiz Center, and then those buses are also equipped to drop you off right at the front gates. And many times it's easier to do that than than trying to get to some of the ADA spots that we have as well. But uh really wouldn't uh you know can't say enough about the RTA working with us on this and really making it a a first class experience for all the guests. This uh this slide here really just shows the impact of all the different things going on. Um there's a lot happening on those days. May 1st, I'd be remiss without saying uh will be the uh the tradition continues with the dunking of the mayor. So, we're excited about that. It'll be a little after 5:00, so please come down to Shoreline and and check that out. Um, and then, uh, I guess the only other thing I didn't me mention on here is our Buck Day's 5K, and that will, uh, kick off right before the children's parade on May 10th as well. So, a lot happening in and around town. We have different community partners doing other events as well. Frostbank is going to have a chuck wagon breakfast on the first Friday of the event. So, just a lot of different things happening. And, uh, I'd be remiss without saying, uh, a big thank you to Peter and his staff. Uh, the continuity we've seen over the last five to six years of of not just the leadership, but the department heads, and so forth that help us put this event together in terms of traffic planning, waste management, safety, security, uh, you know, all the different things. Parks and wreck does a ton with that. And um it it really makes it easy when you're talking to the same face year after year and and being able to work with some of those same people. They they know what we're doing and what we're expecting to do and and so thank you for your team's efforts on that. So any questions anyone have? This that concludes my my presentation. So well first of all thank you um thank you for this for the presentation and just for everything. Um it has grown I mean so much it's unbelievable. And the how how many years is the has the robotics? So we we started about five years ago with robotics and we've we've slowly grown it and it seems like last year it just exploded and we'll have between four and 6,000 students here this this year for that element of it which is pretty remarkable. Wow. Okay. And then and then the rodeo um there's there's two different Yeah. So great question. So, so we're we're partners with with two different groups. PBR, uh, which is, uh, really what you probably are used to seeing on TV, uh, professional bull riders. Um, that first weekend is bull riding only. It's one of their three championship events. So, there's us, Las Vegas, and Fort Worth to get to host one of their championships. So, it's kind of the untold secret that gets lost in this sometimes, uh, that we have a a true championship PBR event here in Corpus Christie, Texas. And then the rodeo, we're partners with WC, uh, which is that Tuesday to Saturday of the second week. Uh, they're our sanctioning body, if you will, but PBR is involved with us and that they have our TV rights. So, we're one of about three rodeos that you'll see at all on on national television um throughout the year. So, us Arlington just had a rodeo and then the Houston rodeo are about the only three that you'll see on on you know there's the Cowboy channel that a lot of us have coverage of. But when you're talking CBS, Fox, those type of things, there's only three that have them. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up, Johnny. the fact that um it's us um Arlington Arlington and uh Houston basically and Houston and so I guess it was whenever the first year was that it was here PBR. Yeah. So that's Fort Worth and Las Vegas. That's right. So but didn't it come from like from Las Vegas? Yeah. So they chose Corpus Christie over Las Vegas. So and that is when it started here which you speaks volumes. I mean that's just it's huge. So I I like to I always remember that point from from back when um when it first started and that just that says a lot. I mean they're choosing Corpus Christie over or have chosen Corpus Christie over Vegas. So that's wonderful. Any questions or comments? Well, we're very excited. Everybody's going to be there at different uh you know so many different events and this is wonderful for families and you know individuals, everybody to just come forth. I like all your uh the stats there. So y'all are is someone up there kind of like at Disney asking people are you married single? You know it's all through cell phone tracking. It's pretty remarkable the uh the AI that comes with with that now. So well it's a good place to meet someone if you're not dating someone because there's a high percentage there but it was like 30 I don't know percentage was pretty high. So, and if there's uh you all have received packets, if you have any questions or are lost on where to go for parade or or any of the events, just give us a shout. We're we're here to help. So, okay. Johnny, if you can just say we did I just did want to close out by taking this moment to thank Johnny. Yeah. On behalf of us. Johnny uh he didn't say it, but he'll be celebrating 10 years here in Corpus Christie as the president and CEO. Uh he was recruited from Austin from Rodeo Austin and he served uh where he served chief operating officer but he's been with this city and the Buccaneers commission for 10 years. Uh Johnny has you can see here in his presentation a very steadfast professional demeanor and we appreciate that. Um but he also has the ability to rally us the community uh to step away from work responsibilities and enjoy time with our family and and just have some great fun out there in the city of Corpus Christie. So John, if we want to just rec Oh, there you go. You got a good picture here. You want to just recognize yourself? Well, thank you, Peter. Oh, wow. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, we just have a small certificate here that acknowledges Johnny and then a nice plate for him made from Aloile as well, just to celebrate with him in his 10th 10th year with the city. Johnny, thank you. Thanks for being a great leader with us. Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye, Johnny. Thank you so much for the great presentation. By the way, can we get that presentation emailed? Yes. Yeah, we'll get it for you. All right. Thank you. Uh, I think that concludes your report. That concludes the city manager's report. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay, great. So we'll go ahead and move on to section G that we've got items three and four. Item three is a Corpus Christi water supply and usage dashboard briefing. Okay. Good morning, Mayor Council. I think it's still morning. Is it morning? What time is it? It's afternoon. Okay, it's afternoon. Officially afternoon. Drew Molly, chief operating officer for Corpus Christie Water. The purpose of today's briefing uh is to provide you with an overview of the water supply dashboard that our team has been developing uh over the last several week over the last several weeks as well as um provide some background information on the ongoing drought conditions for our Noasis River uh wershed. Let's see here. Next slide. Don't want to move. There we go. Went too far. Okay. Okay. So, um we know that the current metrics which includes a daily accounting of our lake levels uh on the western supplies by incorporating Lake Corpus Christi, Choke Canyon, and the combined reservoirs h has worked well up until now. Uh these daily numbers are provided to council. Uh they're also provided on our website and we're still going to continue to provide this information on our website. However, uh with the ongoing drought conditions and concerns about entering the next stage of drought restrictions, uh the team has needed to provide a different set of metrics and datadriven information to help our community understand the current and projected water supply conditions. The water supply dashboard has been a work in progress over the last several months. Um, and I would just say that questions like when could we run out of water, when will our demands not meet supplies, what assumptions are we making about our predicted weather forecasts as it relates to rainfall and evaporation in our wersheds, what predictions are we making about how we run the Merry Roads pipeline? What new water supplies have we included in our projected water supplies going forward? These are a few of many questions that this dashboard answers. Um before we get into the details of this presentation, I would like to take a minute to recognize the team behind me, which includes CCW. They continue to do an excellent job. Um and we also have uh Corollo engineers that we brought on board to help us and and you'll see a couple slides presented by our our Corollo partners who have been helping us uh develop this dashboard. Okay, maybe the batteries. There we go. Okay, so our current water supply situation is where it is today because of the drought. The drought is severe and our partner here Corollo is going to present some slides that show how little inflow uh is entering into our two major uh reservoirs. You can see from this slide that we have here, this is the weekly drought map that comes out every Thursday and it shows the state of Texas and the drought conditions in the state. Um we are not alone. About 80% of the state is in some type of drought conditions. You can see on this slide that part of the Noasis river watershed is in exceptional drought conditions. Even the Lvaka Navidad River wershed, which is less likely to experience drought conditions, has some extreme drought conditions present. We know that weather is always very difficult to predict, but part of our weekly business is meeting with the National Weather Service to discuss short and long-term predictions for weather conditions. We've also met and we continue to meet with the state climatologist Dr. John Nielson Gammons. Uh during our last meeting with Dr. Gammons, Neielson Gammons, he stated that we have moved away from a leninia um weather pattern and we are now actually in a neutral weather pattern. He said that the Gulf of M the Gulf is warmer than it it it typically has been in in years past, which actually could potentially mean that we might see more tropical uh activity. Um, we know that moving away from a L nino weather pattern is certainly better for increased chances of rainfall. Um, lastly, our wershed is not in the city of Corpus Christi. Our wershed is is in a different location. And so, while we see some beneficial rain here in the city, it's really important that we get that beneficial rainfall in the watershed. I will say and you're going to hear a little bit more from our partners at Corollo as they walk through a couple slides with you here shortly that the inflows into Choke Canyon uh and you'll see this a little bit more pronounced are extremely low. Um one of the things that I think is pretty uh staggering is is that the drought of record in 2011 had inflows into Choke Canyon at 462 acre feet. Last year we had 434 acre feet. So are we in a drought of record? I might argue that we are in a drought of record, but that's something that will be left to others to make that to make that statement. Um so with that said, I'm going to introduce uh Michael Pikney who is with Corollo Engineers. Uh Corollo is a national engineering firm. They specialize in water and wastewater uh projects. Michael has been assisting our team uh with water availability modeling and water supply projections. He's going to summarize some some pretty important information uh here related to uh our wershed and some important metrics uh related to the ongoing drought conditions. So with that said, Michael, turn it over to you. There we go. Good afternoon, Madame Mayor, members of the council. Uh I'm Michael Pinkney. I've been with Corollo Engineers for about six years and I've been uh practicing engineering for nearly 20 uh all in uh water rights and water availability. Uh so just kind of moving forward here, the city actively looks at four USGS gauges when they're considering uh when they're evaluating what the inflows through reservoirs are. Two of those gauges are upstream of Choke Canyon. They're the Freo River near Tilden and Sammy Gold Creek near Tilden. Uh the other primary one is the Noasis River near three rivers which captures wershed for Choke Canyon as well as Nois River and the Atakosa and it primarily represents your inflows into Lake Corpus Christi. And the one of the important things to note about that gauge is that any releases any operational releases coming from Choken get reflected in that streamflow gauge. So that streamflow gauge represents not only what's occurred in the wershed but also what your operations are from upstream. Now we're going to take a look here at the Frio River near Tilden which is upstream of Choke Canyon. And what we've what we've prepared is a slide that looks at the annual departure for from of the annual inflows from the average. So, if you looked at as kind of like a portion of the budget where you were looking at property taxes, let's say you're expecting $160,000 a year in property taxes for an extended period of time based on what we've seen with the stream flow for the last 30 years, 1980 through 2009, you've established an average number. Now, from that point moving forward, your average inflows have been 38,000 acre feet. You're getting 1/4 the amount of water that you've gotten historically. And this has nothing to do with operations. This is purely climatology and hydrarology. It's just not raining. And when it does, it's not enough to run off. So what you see is again if you go back to the budget analogy if you're talking about we expect 160,000 uh $160,000 a year and we go 15 years without seeing as much as the 160,000 we were expecting. You start to develop a budget deficit. This plot shows that from 2008 to present, you have spent nearly every single year receiving less water than what has been in the historical average. Now, we're talking about a 15-year. Does that mean that's a new normal? We don't know. The few these last few years could be an outlier or they could be a new normal. Only time will tell us that one. Now we can look at these stream flows in another way. We'll look at the same 45 years. We'll organize those in descending order. You can see that annual inflows have ranged as high as 900,000 acre foot all the way down to near zero. where we occurred last or the the tail end of that these low flows for the last 18 years 12 of those years have occurred down at the very bottom of this inflow list you're we're looking at a very dry time in fact last year as Drew mentioned was the worst one at this gauge so as Drew mentioned 2011 we saw 462 acre foot go by this stream flow gauge last year 431 acre feet. The 10th percentile which means we would expect to see this flow exceeded 9 years out of 10 is 5,600 acre feet. That's 10 times what we saw last year. So you're looking at a very dry period right now. Similarly over at no on the Noasis River downstream of Tro Canyon you can see a similar trend from 2007 to present you're seeing a decrease in or you've been seeing less than average flows. It's not nearly as big of it's not nearly as small of a number. You're seeing 200,000 acre foot as the new new average for the last 15 years. that same 30-year period of 20 thou of 1980 to 2009 was 400,000 acre foot. So your average flows when looking at the last 15 years to the 30 years prior is only about half instead of 1/4 what it used to be. Part of that is because of um chokean operations. The other part of it is just because of the watershed. So, we've got the same uh the same descending plot of stream flows. 2024 wasn't the worst year in the for the Nois River itself, but it's still very low. It's the 40 it's 40th out of 45. And in this case for for the Noasis River, so the inflows for Choke Kangan, you were at least sitting in the 10th percentile. Part of that is because of tropical storm Alberto. So Alberto hit I believe it was May or June of last year came up from the Gulf got into part of the Noasis rivered but it didn't quite make it to the Frio which is why you don't see that increase in the Frio River and the inflows to Chokeang. And with that I'll hand it back to Drew. Thank you. Okay, so I have a couple slides here to take us through to the end. Um, so I think it's no surprise we're adding uh more information to our website. Uh, we started doing this a couple months ago. Our good friend Ted Mandel and a number of you here have asked for more information uh such as uh build usage data. So we have that. We've been putting that on our website for quite some time. This is an example of some of the data that we have available. Every month um that the month closes uh we put and update uh build water usage by customer class so our community can see how much water each customer class uh is using. Um similarly this dashboard um that we've been working on has a couple graphics. So, the first one, uh, the first graphic that you'll see when you go to the website is, uh, is one that basically just gives our community an overview of the different water supplies that we have. I think most of us here are probably pretty familiar with with those water supplies, but certainly if you're somebody that hasn't hasn't seen it, you you probably need a kind of a high level overview of what those water supplies look like. Um, I think what's important to note is is that obviously we have the western supplies and that's defined as Cho Canyon, Lake Corpus Christi. Uh we have the eastern supplies which are Lake Texana, Colorado River water. And you can see on the graphic that we do something fairly extraordinary in the state of Texas, at least I I haven't seen a lot of this in my career, which is moving water 141 miles from a water source all the way to the city is extraordinary. And so the Merry Roads pipeline continues to do what the Merry Roads pipeline does well, which is move that water from Texan and Colorado down to our one water treatment plant, which you can see is Owen Stevens. And then, as you can see, the graphic shows where does the water go? The raw water goes into the Owen Stevens water treatment plant. It's treated there, and then it's conveyed to our residences, our commercial businesses, uh our industry partners, our other municipalities. There's other municipalities that we sell water to. Um the next graphic that you'll see on our water supply dashboard uh is the monthly summary of how our raw and treated water is used. So for the last month or March of 2025, we used a total of 2.98 billion gallons uh which is equivalent to roughly 96.22 million gallons a day. Um on the left on the left column of the graph is the raw water source uh which you can see includes Mary roads pipeline uh Noasis River and Lake Corpus Christi. For March of 2025 about 59% of our water came from the MRP or the Merry Roads pipeline. 35% came from the Noasis River and then 6% came directly from Lake Corpus Christi. Interestingly, looking back in time, so if we went back to March of 2024, uh 51% of our supply came from the Noasis River, 42% came from Mary Roads pipeline, and about 7% came from Lake Corpus Christi. So, what's interesting is is is we went from last year having the Noasis River supply over half of our water to this year having the Mary Roads pipeline provide nearly uh 2/3 of our water. Um on the right side of the graphic uh or the graph we can see the um the user groups. So 46% plus you can do the math the 21% if you add that it's about 70% or 67% of our water comes from CCW's Owen Stevens water treatment plant. And then our our big water partner um San Patricia Municipal Water District uses about 23% uh of our water. Uh and then and then lastly the 10% uh includes water by our our partners and that includes uh you can see on there cities of Alice Beville uh um Matthysse uh and then there's two industrial uh partners that pull water directly out of uh out of the river. And then lastly, this is the um this is the the water dashboard that um that we put out last Friday uh is when we we put it out, made it available on on our website. And it displays um for those who haven't had a chance to really look at it, it displays time on the x-axis and then it displays on the yaxis uh the source of water supply and water demand in million gallons per day. Um you can see our total raw and treated water demand on the top of the graph. It kind of goes up and down. Um, where you see a greater water demand in the summer, typically around 135 or 140 million gallons a day, f followed by lower demand, as you might expect, in the winter months, which is typically around 100 when you add both treated and raw water together. You can see on this graph uh our eastern supply as well as our our western supply and they're colorcoded because drought restrictions uh through stage three anyways are based on the western supply levels. You can see that line uh it's the dark purple line. It kind of tends to just uh slowly uh decline. Um you can see where we predict that western supply level uh hits 15% and you can see where it's called out at 10% and then ultimately called out into time at 0%. Uh the the dashboard will will actually show you um that the 15% projected level of our western supply is predicted to occur in May of this year. The 10% level is predicted to occur in November of this year. Uh the dashboard also includes new groundwater that's being brought online from some of our water wells that are currently being drilled in Newasis County. Those new water supplies from the Noasis County groundwater wells are represented by the orange uh bars that are sort of in the middle of the graph towards the end. The next stage of drought restriction is referred to as level one water emergency and that is defined as when our current water demand uh is greater than our water supply. The water supply dashboard projects that date to occur as of right now in October of 2026. As far as the assumptions go, there's there's a number of assumptions that have been made to put this water supply dashboard uh together. Um, and so I just want to uh, and this is on the website, so you can read this, but those assumptions are that the Merry Roads pipeline is pumped at its full schedule 4, which is 70 to 75 uh, or 79 million gallons a day. It it assumes that we have two weeks in the schedule um, at schedule three. So, it assumes a couple weeks of having to drop the the the the flow down on the Merry Roads pipeline to schedule three for for some reason. Maybe maybe there's um an issue with the pipeline. There's a pump that goes down. So there there there is a little bit of a a lowering of flow for a couple weeks in this projection. Um, it assumes that the Noasis River wells are phased in throughout this year by adding 3 million gallons a day in June of 2025, another 3 million gallons a day in September of 2025, and then finally an additional 3 million gallons a day of water being added in November of 2025. It does not it does not include any other new water supplies, but we know that we're still talking and evaluating other new water supplies. And so, as those other new water supplies are more developed, we will add those new water supplies to this dashboard so our community can see how much longer that extends uh our water supplies out into the future. And lastly, our number one and most cost-effective water supply is rain. The model continues to incorporate, I will say, extremely low inflows into the western reservoirs over 2025, 2026, and 2027. It's the same extreme low extremely low inflows that we saw in 2024. So, we just look at 2024. It was a bad year, but we use that same data and extend it into 2025, 26, and 27. if we have even just average rain uh this next year, it is going to drastically improve what this model is showing us today. So, with that said, that concludes our presentation and we're happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Drew. Councilwoman Paxton, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Drew, and everyone for this um for getting this dashboard online. I know there was a huge interest in seeing um the data behind what water is being used and what water is available and so um I appreciate that you guys were able to build this. I know there's probably tons and tons of information behind the scenes that goes into it. Um, if you could when we get our lake level percentages daily and and previously we we access that regularly on the website and it shows us the percentage where we're at on water supply versus our overall need. That's really what targets us as to what percentage are we in, you know, what drought contingency level we're on. all those it's it's a very clear breakdown percentage available percent versus our use could you decipher that in a snapshot with that last screen that you just showed I see that purple line that that goes across the top is is the culative of all those sources but could you describe how to pick that those two pieces of information out of this so how I'll answer that question is is is it's complicated but it's simple and so simply what we're looking at trying to explain explain to the community is is simply we have water supply today, we're adding water supply tomorrow, and we have a water demand. And so the model basically has a lot of information in it, but ultimately what we're trying to do is we're trying to show under circumstances that have been described here. And there may be some that say, you know what, you're probably a little bit too draconian in what you've modeled for the weather conditions. That's that may be a fair constructive criticism of what we've done, but we also don't want to be overly optimistic because we while we're seeing some maybe some better improvements in the forecast from folks like the state meter climatologist, even some of the folks at National Weather Service, we haven't seen it yet. And so this model essentially what it does is is it it hopefully provides a better better data better da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d driven information so the community can see when to expect us to go into that next stage of drought restrictions we we are committed to making sure that that does not happen sure I know previously we had gotten to I think 16 and change and we were bringing on Mary roads phase 4 and then we got a little bit of brain and we saw our percentage improve by, you know, fractions, but there was an improvement, but we still were able to bring on that extra 20 million gallons a day through that um phase 4. So, that's kind of what I'm talking about where how do we take this information and subtract that data? You know, that 16 and change that I'm referring to previously didn't account for the added 20 million gallons a day. This chart adds everything in. and what we expect to add from the wells. So, how do we pinpoint that type of percentage from this chart? Well, like I said, I I I think what what this chart shows is, and this is why this is important, because the the situation has changed in that our first three stages of drought restriction are based on what the western supplies are doing. And I think we we we know that that is not the entire picture of our water supply. We know that we don't just have western supplies, we have eastern supplies. We also are now going to be having um groundwater supplies as well. So, I think that this puts that entire package together in one location where the community can see what those numbers look like. And I think again what I would like to say is is this is a um you know kind of a a living breathing document. If there are some things that we need to change, if there's some inputs that maybe we feel like we need to adjust a little bit, those are the kind of things that we can we can do. This is a this is really a conduit by which we can talk to the community and make sure that they understand that not just that we're in a pretty serious drought, but we're working to make sure that we have cost-effective water supply solutions that we can bring to the table until we get our next, you know, call it more permanent water supply uh option available and online. So, I think you hit the nail on the head being able to forecast anticipated days to that level one emergency. That's great. being able to see a little bit of um a collection you have on uh the one bar chart. It's it's showing us how many total million gallons a day we're seeing from all these different sources. I agree. Adding those in there once we get groundwater, that type of thing, showing that. Great. Um I think we also just like if you're talking to a team member, if you want to kind of talk about the bad side of things, talk about the good side. You know, we've brought on this water, so this is what that looks like. showing those percentages because that ties into a lot. You know, we're when we're talking about what level of d of water emergency are we in or what level of water um concerns are we in like you said, we've been focusing on those two main sources, but now we have more to bring. So, for me, you know, when I get asked that question, what you know, we've talked about wells and and phase four and all these things, but how is that improving the situation? How can I tell that narrative in a very clear way with the data you've presented here? Does that make sense? So, being able to tell that positive story as well. We've improved the percentage that type of thing. Maybe we can add that in there. Yeah. You know, I think I think one of the things that we conscientiously did as part of that graphic and it's may not be real easy to tell because there's there's a bit of information on that. Part of part of the challenge of this is is, you know, we don't want to put so much information on one dashboard that somebody looks at and goes, "Oh my gosh, there's too much for me to really comprehend." We we tried to hit the sweet spot. Hopefully, we hit it. If we didn't, there's some adjustments we can make. But one of the things that we did was was we started that graph in 2024. So, you could see when the Merry Roads pipeline came online at full capacity, you can see that uptick. You can see that that things get better when you're adding that Mary Roads pipeline to its full leveraged amount. You can see that um our our situation gets a lot better. It's not perfect, but when we add that groundwater from the Noasis County groundwater wells, you can see that the water supply lasts longer because of that 9mgd that we've accounted for. So in those daily counts, are we already adding this um the phase 4 additional water in those percentages? Yes. Yeah. From the merry roads, the schedule four as we call it. Yes, ma'am. And I we hear what you're saying, Councilwoman. I think we can do that. We could say but for this additional water, we would have hit emergency level one on this date, but because of it, it's prolonged by 100 days or something like that. That's what you're asking for, right? a a complete yeah you know that total with the complete picture in it. Yeah, we can put that uh we can add that to the dashboard below. There's a couple of call out boxes we could say you know with the wells with the mayor roads pipeline additional water with um you know whatever else we bring on we could say but for those sources so we can take you all can take credit for it. This is great and it does it's got a lot of info on it but I know previously folks were able to just click on the website and see that little what percentage are we at and here's the lake totals. Yeah. So being able to snapshot type thing including all of it. But thank you for your presentation. Can I just add to that mayor? So in Councilwoman Paxton, you brought it up and Drew and I have been talking about it, but the text that we send to the full council every day will change. And I don't know, I guess Monday we said, Drew, in a couple of days, we're going to update it to reflect more of what you see on the dashboard because that text now just gives you not even half the story. It's 25% of the water. So we're going to talk to you. We're going to recreate it to add more of this dashboard information. And so that'll be coming out. We have to we're working on that. Just so I appreciate you bringing that up. We're also just Councilwoman Paxton mentioned that in the in the um agenda material, the PowerPoint is dated. Uh Drew, who was up in Austin yesterday this morning, finished the presentation. So, we'll email this to the council. So, you'll have the most final presentation because the one in the agenda packet's not most final. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Peter. Uh Councilman Kentu. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Drew, for the um dashboard. It looks it looks really nice. However, for the regular person out there, they don't understand it. I mean, it's just it's all over the place, you know. I think we need to make something a little bit more friendly to the public to understand more of it. Um, my understanding is we're using 96.22 million gallons a day. Correct. Corre, that was for last month. Last month. Oh, last month. Yes, sir. How much water do we use again daily? depends if if you're talking about treated and raw water. Treated water treated water 85 85 million gallons a day is is uh is what Owen Stevens is producing about that. Yeah, like I said, this looks looks really nice. Um but for the average person, the public, you know, it's it's a little confusing. Um, so hopefully we can fix that and make a little bit more um, understanding for the public. Um, my second thing I was going to tell you and Peter is is there any way that we could start doing doing um, weekly briefings on our water status? Um, as in how many more days we have left till our water runs out. I want to let the public know that we're working on other water resources. what's going on with other water resources. You know, we we as a council knows some stuff, but as in the public, I want the public to know that, hey, you know, we're working on water solutions and um these are the other w water projects that we're working on and I really don't think the public understands it and knows what's going on. Um I think we should do a weekly um briefing on that. Um you know, what meetings have you had to get more water projects going? you know, stuff like that. You know, I I think that would be great for the public and I think the public needs to know what's going on. And then public needs to know that, hey, we're we're almost out of water. I mean, you know, um 741 days until until the supplies reach 0%. Um 741 days is going to come really, really quick. And I think Christmas is right down the street again. So, I mean, it's it's it's fast. So, um that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. And can I mayor if you don't mind that 741 Drew that's the western reservoirs? Yeah. Yes sir. That's the western reservoir and councilman that's a good idea. So we can do that in two ways. One maybe a memo but we have this new format where we're doing uh rec um I guess it's called inside city hall recordings. That could be a quick video that people could watch to say every week what are we doing? Who do we how are we advancing what water project? Who do we meet with maybe? So we could look at adding that detail because there are there are a lot of there is a lot of work happening but often we don't report it out you know so the community can know yeah what's going on right okay we'll work on a couple formats for that yes sir Councilman Scott thanks Drew thanks team I appreciate this I think it's yman's work I think it's crazy good information could somebody put those slides up on the freo and then the oasis inflows I'd love to see that again. Is that is that something you can go back to? I I don't know. I don't think I've ever seen it. I've never seen that. The new the new and the very impactful and they really tell the story. Go back to her. Yeah. Go back one more. Let's go back, you know, and one of the things that I thought was interesting. Um and this was, you know, this is organic discussion that we've had for a while. Look, it we all know Choke Canyon is is not performing and it's, you know, there's been anecdotal tales about Cho Canyon not being the the best location. I mean, just say it right. But at the end of the day, Choke Canyon is not performing. But what we did was we wanted to look at Lake Corpus Christi because Lake Corpus Christi tends to perform better. It's in a much more ideal location. And I think what's really astounding is when you look at Lake Corpus Christi, uh, it it's really not performing either. I mean, that's that's the graphic. And this graphic includes in Lake Corpus Christi what we're releasing from Choke Canyon. So, as much as Choke Canyon gets knocked a little bit, Choke Canyon holds water and it does release water every day and that's what's helping keep uh some flow into Lake Corpus Christ. Oh, wow. It would be even worse if it was just newis water. Yes. Gee, how many Christmas that's those are that's stunning information to me. I was unaware that that our rainfall had been that bad. Now, I did want just so there's no nothing going on north of us on the Freo River that that we didn't know before. I mean, there's no additional straws in the Freo River. No one's, you know, there's there's nothing but it's it's only rain. That's the only issue that's affected the Freo inflows. Yes. Wow. Wow. Okay. Hey, tell me again. So when you say like the average daily usage last month was what just 92 96 for raw and I'm ask both. So tell me. Yeah. Yeah. For raw and treated was 96 was the average. So treated was of that was how much? I I' I'd have to go back 89. Let's say 89 and six. It's it's probably you know probably 75 to 80. I I like I said I'd have to go back and check that number. Okay. I just a lot of times we we talk about water ends up just talking about treated when it really is all the water, right? I mean, I guess we should look at it from total water usage, not just treated. I I just always try to look at it as total. Um, hey, I think it's a great I I look at this as a as a policy maker, which is kind of geekish, I guess, but um what I what I got out of that graph was October of 206, right? That's that's when the western lakes get to emergency level one, right? That's that's the bad day. Now, the good news is, you know, there was the media was saying it was going to be next spring or this fall. I mean, so the first thing we got to say is, okay, let's take a breath. Not a big breath, but just a little breath and say we have until October or November of 26. Can you put that PowerPoint back up and Drew go to that slide, that graphic because it is as we refine this information that this is the most certain now that we've ever said it. So, um there's 561 days before we hit what is known as level one emergency and from that point 6 months left of New Oasis uh well the western reservoir water left and so that date is let's see here October Drew yes October of 2026 right so I I think my messaging is your council is spending every minute of every day moving that moving that date line back right so and I Um, Eric had good ways, good thoughts on how to communicate real. So, so I would love if it's and I don't this may be a closed session item in that to me this is all about getting to the summer of 28. Summer 28 I have a sub question. Summit 28 diesel comes online and that's theoretically 30 36 million gallons a day. It's all about getting to that point. And so what what I'm interested in is what does, you know, what does Formosa water get do to us? You know, how how far down a months to summer of 28 do these additional water opportunities get us? Because if they don't get us there, I think you pay whatever it takes, right? If it gets us past that date, well, then that's a different conversation to have with the the sellers, right? If I if I don't have to have it, but I want it, that's a different price than I have to have it. So that's the only reason I I'm sensitive about having too much of this conversation. But I would sure like to know, you know, um the conversations I think we've had in public, what what is what does Formosa water do? How does that move? Uh if Evangelene Evangeline, what does that do? What does polymer water do? And I recognize you're going to have to put those dates out, but I'd sure like to know because I'd sure like to be able to sleep at night to know that we're working on projects that get us to 2028 because if we're not, then what else? That was a conversation I had yesterday. Somebody say, "Oh, you're brilliant. That's great. You're working on But does that get you to the summer of 28?" I don't I don't know. I think it does. He goes, "But what if it doesn't?" Right? What if it doesn't? What else are we looking at? And and so that's my interest. Um, and I get we're going to use last year's water. I would kind of like to know was a normal year rain do it. I didn't know if you can just punch these in. All these graphs move, you know, quickly and we could all look at that to go, yeah, if we have a normal year, we're done. Or if we have between a normal year and last year, what does that do? What does Palmer, you know? Yeah. Because I think that's from a policy perspective, that's uh what I'm I'm interested in in using to help you get, you know, further down the line. Yeah, one thing I did want to say because this question has come up as far as Formosa and and Formosa doesn't really add uh supply time. What it is is it's an insurance policy. So for Formosa is was purchased to ensure that we can continue to have enough water to keep 75 million gallons 70 to 75 million gallons a day of water in that pipeline. Right now, one of the slides that we showed was that drought map. So, Lake Texana is is got some drought. Their their levels are not at the level that they would provide us with interruptible water. And because they haven't provided us with interruptible water, we went ahead and secured just about that same amount of interruptible water from Formosa. And so that that that is Formosa is a good insurance policy is kind of how I would look at it. I I thought there was some conversation that if you did the math by million gallons a day and we had our full aotment from the Colorado and Texana that you you you would use it before the end of the year which means you could draw additional water through the formosa water. Is that right? If we if we don't get the interruptible water supply from LNR, right, we're going to have a deficit at the current pumping levels that we have. What if you do get all the NRA water, LNR water, and you do get all the Colorado? Can you run through that by November and then layer on the the Formosa water to keep pumping at whatever 75? That's the question. Yes. Well, so then you do if that So I think I'm missing something. If you do, then then you are using the Formosa water. So we're we're using the formosa water. without a doubt if we don't get the interruptible water supply from LNR. So absolutely um we we need the insurance it's it's an insurance policy but if if we don't need the insurance will we use any of that water we might use a little bit of it and again it was structured the formosa contract was was pretty nice in terms of how it was structured because we're not going to we're not going to pay for all of it and then not be able to use it. We're only we're only on the hook for the two and a half uh thousand uh to 2500 acre feet and I we're going to I believe we're going to use that at a minimum. We'll probably use all of it. Well, mayor, just for the record, I like my story better because get that adds 10. Last thought, um are there more wells that we can drill uh on the newasis? I mean, are there conversations should be had with the uh conservation what is it? Groundwater conservation districts. We is there is there any help we can get from the governor's office and there's any way we can fast track additional wells if this doesn't get us to the summer of 2018. What one of one of the things that we've been told by the governor's office is that they very much appreciate the prescribed proactive process that we have gone through to notify them and make them aware of the situation in the coastal bend. So every time that we've had to go into a different drought restriction, we've notified them. We've been in touch with them. We've been in touch with TCQ. Um when we started recognizing in December that we were upon us in stage three, we met with the governor's office and the TCQ to explain to them the situation. We had plans in place which is these water wells along the river. We've explained that to them and they have acknowledged that that is a very cost-effective means of adding a short-term supply and there are some things that they would have to do to help us um permit that which they have been very uh willing to do and so uh we've had I think frank and good conversations with our regulatory agencies in the governor's office. We certainly appreciate the governor's recognition of the declaration of the emergency situation in in this county as well as many others and we're going to certainly use that declaration to our advantage to help us improve the time frame on the permitting and some of the other things. Maybe maybe financial resources are another one that we could put. Well, so I think great work. Thank you very much. Um closing thought is um if this doesn't get us to 2028, we need to be having a conversation about what does. And if that's more wells, then we ought to be that that's the bad news when you bring me this report and layer all this additional information. If it doesn't get us the summer of 2028, then the first question is, okay, what next? And so I would be thinking about that. I think you're doing great work. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Yeah. Thank you, Councilman. So is the goal not to make certain that between now and June, July, summer of 28, we are equipped and we find water. Absolutely. So every day you go to work and I'm asking because your question was was valid. Um and I guess never assume, but that was my assumption, right? Everything y'all are doing is to say, okay, what what what is this going to get us, right? Now, I guess and I think what I'm also hearing is um well, two things. Number one, Peter, I had asked and I think it was through someone in your office. Um I think we had had a conversation about it and it was about uh creating strong messaging so that the public knows and that's Councilman Ku points and that's what reminded me of it. have not heard back. But my point was we have to have I even you know we were talking about billboards and just strong messaging a plan. You know the city of Corpus Christie has a four tier plan. Remember we talked about that and this is what it is. So that the average person could say oh this is what they're doing. There's no detail necessarily behind it but you know the city of Corpus Christie or the council and the team are working on these things. Actually, I think it was a five point four or five. Last one being desalination. So, so I would like to see where that is, Peter, because that went through your office. Um, and it was a specific to I guess you could call it a campaign and and I even asked Drew about it because I knew Drew had uh communications people that are now uh downstairs with the city communications people. So, so there should be something that has created a strong campaign to show the public what we're doing and it's very clear. It doesn't have to be anything. It shouldn't be, you know, anything that is that is not just simple and clear to say here's what we're working on. But back to Councilman's uh Scott's point. So, so and maybe we we we need to see that more clear to say, you know, we don't we're we're working on a whole lot of things. some things work out the wells and we have challenges with certain things like the wells because the TDS is is very high. We didn't know what was going to happen there. Um but nonetheless, we're we're still moving forward. Um but but what I guess, you know, in theory, what would um all of these maybe we I think it's what I'm hearing, what would these different avenues, right? Where would they take us if we were if they were viable and feasible? Right? Because they're not all viable and feasible. I mean, that's what we're kind of that's what y'all are all going through right now is what what is viable? What is feasible? And then that comes back to the council to say, what do you want to consider seriously moving forward? But but the first step is, I think, what we're hearing, which is, well, where does it get us? Where does this option get us? How much time does it buy us? Right. Towards the uh summer of 28, right? Yeah. Okay. Councilman Hernandez. Okay. Thank you, Drew. Um, you know, I it's a nice looking graph, but it's really not very useful. Uh, it doesn't provide any raw data uh for independent analysis. Uh, and I'm not really sure what you were trying to accomplish with it in that particular particular graph. I mean, I I know I go to water data for Texas uh to try and get some information. And even with that, the numbers are kind of wonky uh for this particular month. And I get people sending me information all the time saying that what you're putting out doesn't necessarily make sense. Um, so how how can we get the data for the the graph that you put forward? You tell me what uh councilman tell me what data you need and we'll just provide you know you have I mean you have uh comparisons from day-to-day uh acre feet in terms of Lake Corpus Christi Choke Canyon uh Lake Texana what our availability is on that particular water what availability is on on um the Colorado River availability is on water on a daily basis from the water wells uh also So you don't have any projection. There's and some of one of the things that we asked for on this particular graphing is uh a stewardship to the to the public as to how our water usage is on a you know compared to an annual basis what we were what water usage we were last year versus this year. Are we meeting our goals according to the drought contingency plan? uh there is no information on on treated water loss uh on that the city is not you know or is losing uh within the system. There's a lot of information here that I mean this is a this is nice and it it kind of paints a picture but I don't think gives us a complete picture at least not not from my perspective. Um, so what is it? I mean, like I said, there are some specific items I mentioned there. Can you provide that in a consu uh in a concise sort of way? Because what you tried to do in one graph was put all this information into one graph. Uh, and it it I think it's too much to absorb in terms of what you're looking at there. There's a lot of information in it. And you know some of the information that we have is all publicly available. Like for example um Michael was was had a slide up and he talked a little bit about the USGS data. So USGS is a huge partner. USGS stands for United States Geological Service. So they they provide uh a lot of stream flow gauges uh and and other other data that is part of what goes into the model that was used. So if you have a specific question as to the data, the raw data, well, you don't have to recreate it. You could just link to it, right? To the USGA site, it is or you could link to the uh the one I went to, the water for Texas, right? Um which is, you know, just a basic. It doesn't talk about the Colorado River. It's basically your basins. Um you I guess you could look at ground. We don't have a groundwater yet here. But there's a lot of good information there, right? Have you linked and like I'm sorry to interrupt you. I was just going to say like the groundwater for example, I mean that that that's that's an estimate. Um, you know, we we can we can talk more about flow gauges. Pardon me. You don't have flow gauges on. No, because the groundwater data the the the future wells th those those are uh those are projected uh um flows that we would have from our future groundwater wells. So we we have one well online right now. Um we have we have uh two two wells that have been completed. We're on a third well. So um we have you have any data from that? We have we have some data. We have in fact the the flow data from those two wells have been very very good. I mean we've we in terms of quantity the quantity of the water from those two wells has been has exceeded expectations. Okay. So that would be some good information to have on here to steward back what we're doing. Right. Right. You know, I think I think one of the things I want to be I just want to be a little bit careful on is is, you know, we're we're we're in the middle of getting these wells installed and and developed. And so, you know, we want to be able to provide that information, but we want to make sure that that information is is fully accurate. And, you know, we've got a first or two wells that have been installed and the water has been, at least at this point, it's been better than expected in terms of quantity. Um, and so we just need to make sure that before we we finalize anything, we're we're absolutely 100% certain that we've got the right numbers. But the projection is is about a million and a half gallons a day per well. And Drew, we're not permitted yet, right? We don't have the TCQ permit yet. No, we don't. In fact, tomorrow we've invited the entire council to go on a tour of the wells. Yeah. Well, so is that tomorrow? Tomorrow afternoon. Yeah. So, we have a third tour of the wells. Uh and we can if anybody think we have what's that tomorrow? There's a tour. We have not we have not they didn't invite the council that one. Okay. Uh we have but we in the past we have the council was invited to go at least twice and I guess tomorrow was for the purpose of me going with Drew and and Nick. Yeah. Okay. So welcome we can forward you that invite. Yeah. Can can we get uh I mean our those at least those two things in terms of of trying to to steward back to our citry about how much water we're using versus previous years and percentage and are we meeting our goals for the drought contingency plan in terms of reduction. I mean, if you don't steward that back, then what's the expectation? And then also looking at your data, your dashboard, you have an expectation of well over 135 million gallons a day in the summertime. Is that correct? About 140, right? I think it I think it's 139. Uh but it's hard to tell because it's the graph doesn't give you a lot of you know it's you have ranges of 15 million gallons uh in between those. So it's kind of hard to determine that. So if we're not meeting our our reduction requirements by the drought contingency plan, then that goes to to the mayor's point about stewarding that back in communication that we're not reducing our our water usage. Um, and then also what's our water loss, our treated water loss. I mean, this is kind of the the, you know, we got to make sure that we're being honest about what we're losing as well. I agree. Okay. So, can you put the can you put that information uh and then maybe god it's just a lot of information on one graph? It might want to split that up a little bit so it could be a little bit more digestible and then you can have more information, you know, a little bit more detail as to how much volume it is you're actually doing instead of trying to have the entire thing fit into it. Uh, like I said, I just think it's it's a lot of information to put in one graph. And maybe that was the intent was to try and get as much information as possible, but I think you lose a lot in the process. Um, okay. Also, have we straightened out the issue with the gauge? The you you're talking about the USGS gauge, right? Yes. That that that was all sorted out. So, just just so you know, um the the folks that run the USGS department, they're out of uh they have an office here in Corpus Christi. Um they they basically had a gauge that was not providing um iterative information back to the host website. So they had a gentleman that came down. I think it was on a it was on and he came down to do some work on that and apparently there was a um a pressure transducer that um had had was was not working correctly. So they he made this change on this transducer and then over the weekend there was an issue with the gauge and it just by happen stance had happened to be the the week that we had uh the rainfall from two weeks ago and so that that that issue was addressed on Monday. So, we had we had USGS come down. USGS um we've been working with USGS for a long time. They do this. They're the premier federal agency that does data analysis, data gauging all across the United States. So, they they uh they were down here Monday. They replaced the faulty mechanism that was in the gauge and the gauge was working fine Monday afternoon. Okay. So, I I just want to make sure that we're getting good data and it it's been a little wonky the last couple of weeks. So, I I'll be the first to tell you USGS would be happy to come down and provide an overview and presentation on not just the gauges that that uh we we have uh we we depend on on them for, but they can provide a lot of good information about just what they do across the country. And um you know, they they they they're in the business of maintaining gauges and you know, they'll be the first to tell you that this was unfortunate that the gauge did what it did, but I'm sorry. Yeah. Last thing, I just want to make sure that uh we get good information. You provide the raw data so that you can be uh so it can be checked uh not only by myself but also the public. Thank you. You bet, Councilwoman uh. Okay. Um well, again, lots of lots of information. That's the first thing when you sent uh the email that oh we've got the the uh the website up with the the da the data and then I looked at it and I'm like oh my god make my head spin. Um but again um I think we're all basically saying the same thing. it I mean it's information but I you know I think it still can be streamlined and as you know I just emailed you on uh additional raw uh information on on how you uh were able to obtain uh these um let me see where am I looking at I'm I'm looking at my emails and then at at your present well actually we didn't even get the presentation did we just uh what you presented now, but we didn't get it ahead of time. Anyway, the point being um that I think I heard that we have been um in a drought for what 18 years. Is that what I just heard from the gentleman before you? 18 years. Is that correct? So, we've closure. Yeah. Low. So, we've had a long time to plan for this. And I know that we're, you know, some of us are counting on Del uh in three years, but I'm counting on water right now. And I want to know, um, we had been really gungho about the groundwater, and when we fit when we hit that first one, we were all happy. It was 1 to two million gallons per day. Great. But now I just heard that there's we're on our second or maybe third, and I've not heard anything about those other wells. Is that did I just hear that correctly? Well, so we because just to take a little bit of a step back. So, you know, we we initially had there was seven existing wells that were used for decades. So, those those wells were they didn't materialize. So, we went into phase two. Phase two was drilling new wells. So, we're on the third well. We we haven't gotten a TCQ. So, we're working with TCQ to get the permits to use that water. Okay. So we're on the third well, but on the first one we did were able to produce the 1 to2 million, right? Okay. So being on the third well and third well and not getting the permit from TCEQ will take how much longer? Tomorrow did you say you're touring? We're touring the wells tomorrow is what we were saying. But what about the TCQ? Right. So we we we've been we've had a pre-application meeting with TCQ. Uh we've probably had I would say three or four meetings with TCQ. So we're in the process of going through that permitting application. So um I'm not sure exactly when the the permit gets filed, but once the permit gets filed within the next couple weeks, we'd be looking at probably 30 days u before we receive potentially a permit from TCQ. Okay. So, um, one of the thing the other things that I was also looking at is, you know, the, um, the water reuse. I know. Oh, well, actually, before I go into the water reuse, the the other next best thing to making sure that we have water uh, for for all our water customers is going back to what Councilman Hernandez said is on our conservation. we finally did plan uh pass the drought contingency plan. But again back to his point as to are we actually all the customers meeting those goals of actually you know pulling back and when I look at at the uh usage of their our commercial industrial residential um it doesn't tell me if we are actually meeting those goals. So I would like, you know, for for us to be able to see that. Um the other is um the formosa the that one I think we went back and forth um uh going back to how much how much additional more water we would be getting from Formosa. At first I I think I thought it was 10 MGD. Was that not correct or No, it's about it's about that. I mean it's 10,000 acre feet. The combin is pretty close about 10 MGD. Okay. Less than that. And that one is how much closer to getting into a reservoir? Like how much? It's already there. It's already there. It's it's I when I let me let me back up. It's in the reservoir uh under the control of Lvaka Navad River Authority. So Vermosa has they have they have x number of acre feet of water. They were willing to sell us um that 10,000 acre feet of water to us. So that is part already of our uh mirror roads pipeline that we're Yes. Now it's not flowing right now, Drew. The water's not coming in. Right now we have uh contract rights and there's enough water through the lower Colorado that the 75 million coming in through the Mary roads pipeline is all the water we contracted to get. The formosa is because we're we're we're pumping water or or delivering water at a higher capacity than what we have contract rights for. Mhm. So if we keep this up through the rest of this year, then we'll there won't be water at the pump under our contract. So the FAMOSA then would kick in and we would use their water that we paid for to put through the pipeline. That's essentially it. Okay. So you're probably talking like November, November, right? That we start using that contract, right, that we bought from Formosa. So I I remember also hearing that we could actually pump up a little bit more right on the U mirror roads pipeline at least another 10 and no that's it. Yeah, we're at 70 70 and 75. 79 is like the maximum. So maybe four million more, but um yeah, it's at full capacity at this point. Right. Okay. Now, on the um water reuse, I'm going to just touch real quick on that. um how much closer would we be able to I mean I know that you're fully engaged on the del and and I'm not even sure if um I just realize that you actually sit on the association um the del association board and so I'm just wondering if your participation is a bit skewed towards del instead of the water reuse that possibly could be bringing and just about the same amount of water but for less for less money. Well, I and I appreciate the question. Um, what I'll tell you is is I I sit on a number of boards. No. So, I'm I'm I'm the director. There's two two people in Texas and I'm one of two people that sits on the American Waterworks Association at the director level. Uh, that that association looks at all water, looks at reuse, it looks at conventional water treatment. I mean, it is the standard by which the water industry brands itself in and and I'm fortunate to to have been elected and sit on that board. Um, so you don't see a problem? Well, you know, I how I look at it is is opportunities to learn and so you're sitting on a board with folks who have done this many many times before. Uh, the the the DESL association that that is seawater and brackish. So folks that are on that board are people that are well-versed and equipped in not just seawater desalination but the technology that goes to desaltting groundwater. So I think the the level of networking and experience that you get with uh sitting and learning from people who have done this uh for many many years I I think is invaluable. There's a lot of really good resource information. There's there's environmental uh studies that they share. There's there's a lot of good information that we get from those professional associations. And just out of uh curiosity, how long have you been on there on that board, that particular desalination association board? It's probably been about a year since I've been on that board. Okay. Um All right. The other Let's see. Um again, conservation. Aren't we um obligated to also pass a conservation plan as part of our uh when is that supposed to happen? We're we're in the process of working on a conservation plan. So So part of what that's going to entail is is developing a a group that we can work with so that we've got some input from various stakeholders. And the conservation plan is something that we want to try to get done as as soon as we as soon as we can because as I I think I've said repeatedly is that the fastest way to get water is through conservation. And so I would think that would be uh you know something that we needed to move on quickly. Um okay. Well, I guess that's it for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you, Mayor. Um I won't I won't take too much time. I just had a couple of quick additions to my earlier questions. Um if you could clarify on that TCQ permit for just for our information the one the process that we're doing I and maybe we've gone over it in the past but there's so much information is it collective for the well project as a whole or do we have to go through the same process for each individual well and that can be a quick yes or no answer. Um, if you could circle back to I know you referenced that the chart uh that that last one that we saw that has everything in it. Um, and and I I know it's a lot of information. I know everybody up here saying that we've had some text calls, but I've tried to build websites and stuff like that and I I do I appreciate that you guys have tried to put all that in there and and I get it. That's a lot to put in there. But you you referenced it predicts a little dip. Could you could you go back over that and and I think you were answering another council member's question when you described that or something, but I didn't have a whole lot of understanding when you referenced it was predicting a little dip. It's it shows on there and maybe you can pull that slide back up uh right where the orange word says uh drought stage three and then you said for some reason it's it's showing a dip. I missed your explanation for that. Is it the dip, Councilwoman? That's in uh looks like February 2025. The Okay, so this is historic. I see what you're saying. Okay, that Thank you for that clarification. I missed that. I I thought I heard you say something like a prediction. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are we talking about? Okay. Then my only other thing in addition to the TCQ permit is to to piggyback on on council member Ku what he said and then further what the mayor said. I know you weren't here at the time but several years back we had um an issue with the water billing and we had someone come in and had to just work on repairing this whole system and we had and and I think it I don't remember if you were here yet that was That was just before I got here. Yeah. So, it was well under It was underway when I got here. We had dozens of community members coming to public comment because it was a terri It was a really bad problem. You had folks that just suddenly got astronomical bills. They were it was a big mess. And so who the person we brought in to fix the issue provided in city council every week even if it was a five minute maybe 10 minutes sometimes even if there was no new data but a quick update as a regular piece because if we look at this issue right now I can't help but feel like we're similarly in the same position where everybody is involved in this water issue and for me as a as a council member until we're at the point where I no longer have to reply to to calls, messages, and emails telling landscapers, telling businesses, telling community members, "Sorry, you still can't water your lawn. Sorry, I know you want to do a fundraiser, but you can't wash cars." Those types of things. Then we're still actively trying to to troubleshoot this problem. And I realize, you know, this isn't a statement for blame, but I feel like while it's still at this active level, I would like to see part of this big public messaging, call it a campaign if you would like to have those those quick updates in council. If you want to do weekly videos supplementally, that's fine. whatever to add on to that. But I feel like this is a very strong avenue for us to stay in communication with the community. That's businesses, residents, that's everybody. And and you've got some folks who want to look at the chart much like council member Hernandez and pick through the data, every little bit of it. But I think pie chart of the public, a big chunk of that wants to know, can I water my grass yet? Have we solved the problem to the point that I don't have to worry about am I gonna get a fine if I if I left my lawn, you know, hoes on or something and somebody sees me? That's what they want to see. So maybe we leave that chart on there like you have it with all this data and do a secondary one that's that snapshot that's kind of like you heard. But I would certainly say increase our public message on our efforts and I recognize that some things we need to be careful, you know, for we're negotiating things actively. So I'm not saying, you know, everything out there, but snapshots, just like you said a moment ago, you know, we we're actually drilling the third well. That's great news to hear. Five minute updates weekly until we've passed this hurdle. And I can stop telling people, no, you can't water your grass. But then just that TCQ question and refer them to the website and and refer them to the website. Yeah, the TCQ question is easy. We're we're going to aggregate all the wells under one permit is the plan. Yeah. Thank you, T. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman. Actually, we're going to go to Councilwoman Vaughn. Um and then we'll go to Councilwoman Kentu since it's your second time. Thank you, Mayor. Um Councilmen. Yeah, clarify that. Whatever. Um Drew. Yes, ma'am. I don't hold it against you that you serve on all those boards. I think it is great because that's where you get educated. You get more information from other people. I think it's and I don't think people understand the hours that you are spending on this. So, see, and the dashboard I think looks good. I appreciate all the work that you guys did. I think we are overthinking this. I really do. I'm a regular citizen. I think I'm pretty normal. All I want to know is how much water have we got? How low are the reservoirs getting? And what are y'all doing to get more water? I don't think we need a buku of charts. I appreciate this one. I just think we don't need to go crazy and all the things we're asking you to do. If we keep doing this and adding and piling on, we're not going to find any water because that's what you should be doing as far as I'm concerned. So, I want it simple. I don't want it hard. Most people are not even going to get on the website and look at it. So, that's why what the mayor said, I think the communication is the biggest thing. One thing that I do notice that you probably would need to do is it needs to be in Spanish and English, right? I mean, I think that's important because we have a lot of Spanish- speakaking people. Um, how many people do we have in the communications department? Well, there's two big divisions that if you exclude the call center, it's probably like about 17. I think 15 to 17. Yeah, the call center has another 15 or so call takers that just deal with the 311. So, it's about it's about 15 to 17. So realistic, Mr. Sony, they could help us with this. Well, they are. And so, right, the mayor's comment that she made to me was also given to Drew and he's just backlogged with work. So, we have to get on it, though. Yeah. Drew knows about it that the mayor sent it to me and we sent it to Sure. And that's my point that he doesn't have to deal with this. He does that. The thing that's most important is get water. And what the public needs to know, and I think they know because we've said it. I do like the idea of an update from you every time. But we are looking for water. You've had several meetings with Evangelene. Mary Road's pipeline has been repaired. You've got more water going through there. We have an executive session on water. So, we are working on water. We know that. But that's what I want to see you guys do. Not spend so much time on this because I don't think you need to get even the weeds for people. They're not going to look at it. They want to know how much water they've got. That's personally for me. I think it's the normal citizen. Um, but I would think that we could even hand out things to the mall to senior citizens, just senior s centers, different things to just say something on the water. But I thought the other day I actually saw a billboard on water did. Yeah, you probably did. It was that we're in stage three water restrictions. Yeah. So that was good to see our communications department did that when we hit stage three months ago. So that's a good example. Uh Drew has a list of about 12 things he's working on, but we have to he has to raise up this communications plan. Well, my point just is the simpler to me is better because we are not all geniuses where we want all of this information. I think we want the main stuff. Those are the normal people. That's how I feel anyway. The normal citizens, right, Eric? That want that, that can see that and understand it. And I'm good. I thought you did a good job. Y'all did a good job on the dashboard. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Councilman. Uh, Councilman Betta. Oh, I thought that was Well, it's the second time, so it's your first time. Oh, okay. I can wait. Okay. All right. Well, well, I guess it's it's it's appropriate because, you know, Mark, people say you're my best friend on the council. Well, I tell you what, my new best friend is Carolyn. Oh my god. So, I just want to echo what you said. Yes, absolutely. I just want to echo what you said. I think number one, your job is to go out and find more water. Your job is to expedite the the the capital improvement program that we have. Your job is to expedite the the facilitation of our del facility. And you know, I think it's great. Number one, I I serve on way too many boards than I care to admit, you know, and then for my industry, I'm very active and I judge people based on their ability to learn and network with other individuals. Um, so I I think it's great that you serve on that board and that you're elected by your peers to serve on that. So I think that's that's fantastic, but I I think there's times that we need, Peter, that we really need to evaluate when we're going through this process and making everything more complicated when your job is to go out and make sure that we don't run across that we get across the finish line when that when that June when that mid uh 28 comes along. So, um, if if if someone I mean, if I I I don't know that you find a freaking graduate student that can put data together. I I I I that's the only thing I can think of because this needs to be simple for the public. All the public wanted to know was when's when's the date out? When when are we running out? What do we have to worry about? And I think you've accomplished that on here. So, I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a believer in KISS. Keep it simple, stupid, you know. So, uh what is it? that gets referred to me because I'm the stupid one. But uh what is it? Uh I just keep it simple. Don't forget what your what your your main charge is and uh what is it? Thank you so much for all that you guys and all the time that you've been doing. And I think this this this helps us tremendously so that way we can look at it and if somebody calls me I can say hey this is the date that's on. If you want that link just let me know. I just sent it to a reporter right now and they were very gracious. Thank you so much. So thank you. Keep up the good work. Councilman Roy. Um, yes. Thank you for the uh presentation and I think that uh Council Member Vaughn made a good point. I think all the points that we've had today are are very good valid points. Um, you know, we just want to make sure, like everybody said, that you continue to just do what you need to do and your staff needs to do because I mean, it reminds me of a story or a guy that I used to listen to back in the day of cassette tapes, a guy by the name of Zig Ziggler. And he was a tire salesman. And so he used to talk about when he was first married because they sold tires doortodoor. And so he would spend all of his time washing his truck, cleaning his truck, lubing his truck, doing all the things except for selling tires. I want you to get out there and sell tires. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Uh, Councilman GU, two questions. Um, first question, do you have an ETA on making the website in Spanish by chance? I I don't, but I we'll get that we'll get on that. That's a that's a really good point that Councilwoman Vaughn made and that's one that we need to get on. So, we'll we'll make a concerted effort to make sure we do that ASAP. Okay. And then second question is, can you put this um graphics online like everything you showed the city council? Can you put that online by chance? Oh, like the like the slideshow? Slideshow. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you. You bet. Yeah. Put it on the CC CCW water. Can I just remind because I don't want Drew to and the team to that Yes. Drew is the COO over water. He does have to find more water, but he has a big job. He's running a water wastewater system. So, hundreds and hundreds of employees he has to oversee. Uh, so his job is not just going out there and finding water. He has he has a lot more work. The campaign is under him. So, overseeing the campaign. While communications will help, ultimately Drew has to lead it. Uh, he's over new water sources. Um, so his job's not just every day getting up and trying to find new water. That's a big part of it. But it's really leading a team to do multiple things to include a communications plan, running a water wastewater system, finding new water sources, networking with industry, you know. So, just to point that out. I don't want people to get a mis misunderstanding what he does. Right. Right. He does a whole lot. Uh well, well, we appreciate it. And I think um I think you've heard what everybody has said and so you have accomplished this. Let's move on. It's it's online. Um there's a few things few things to do. Um but we move on. Absolutely. Um so we'll follow up on a few things, but other than that, Drew, thank you very much and thank you to the team. Thank you. Step on to all of your your water team for everything that you do. Um I am going to um pass the consent agenda item. I know I mean uh consent agenda. It's 149. Um let's see here. I think we'll go to we'll pass a consent and then come back to do the um quarterly update on the CCEDC. So, is there any um request from council to pull any items numbers 6 through 22 for individual consideration? Make a motion. Make a motion. Anyone from uh the public, our audience, anybody want to pull anything? Okay. Oh, you do. OS project. Pardon? Isn't the OSO project on there for today? Uh, no. That is under individual consideration. Okay. So, we have a motion. Do we have a And we have a second. Uh, please submit your vote. And this is to pass the consent agenda. Items 6 through 22. Items 6 through 22. Yeah, please submit your vote. Okay, the motion carries. So, uh when we return from lunch and we are going to go into executive session, uh we will go straight to the CCREC uh quarterly update and then our board appointees. We're going to go into executive session on items 27 through 29 per Texas government code 551.071 and 551.072. We will return. Okay, we're going to go ahead and reconvene our meeting and welcome uh let's see our well mayor. We have a motion. We do have a motion. Who has the motion? Go ahead, council. I'd like to make a motion authorizing a real estate sales contract with Jake Fairs for the purchase of approximately 4.63 acres of property at 5799 County Road 73. Um, which may also be described as lot one block 4 of the Wade Riverside annex Noasis County, Texas in an amount not to exceed 65,000 plus closing costs of up to 4,000. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Please submit your vote. button. Okay, the motion passes. We are on item number four and this is our the Corpus Christie Regional Economic Development Corporation quarterly update. Mr. Colbertson, good afternoon. Your Corpus Christi EDC. Glad to be here. Thank you very much. Uh remember our mission is uh is bring primary jobs and primary jobs are the way that we increase the wealth of the region. If we get more car dealerships, if we get more other things, all they do is just cannibalize each other. So, um we try to bring in military is a is a good example. Um tourism is a good example. People come here, leave their money and drop their money and leave. So, you know, you got to appreciate that. Uh I think one of the things that we do and when we get economic trends, we send them out uh monthly. I know at the first of the year it's kind of odd because all of a sudden if you have a new administration numbers change and we go through uh but we are I think one of the best places to find out the economic health of the region uh on a monthly basis. So let's talk about housing. Housing is just not in a slump because more houses are coming on but it is getting longer and longer to sell your house. uh the months of inventory, which is really just the number of uh of active listings divided by the number that's sold, is 6.4 up uh up from 4.6. Um I'm not a realtor, but I've always I've bought and sold 10 houses. So, uh I've always heard that 6 months is the break is the tipping point. Before then, it's a uh sellers market. after then it's a buyer market because sellers are more uh inclined to uh to take a lower price and then you can see as active listings go up that's because there's you're on there are more houses out there that haven't been sold. So, and that can be a range of things. Uh the interest rate um we have a monthly breakfast uh Mr. Hernandez uh Councilman Hernandez and Barrera have been there. Um, and we have people saying that they think the Fed's going to cut it, cut the rate this year. And man, I do not see that. I just do not see that. That is just with the with tariffs, they're on and then they're off. And um, one of the things for a recession, I know that technically a recession is a is a retraction of the economy two quarters in a row, but is consumer confidence. remember we were going to have a recession coming out of COVID and people just kept buying, kept buying and the consumer conference. Confidence was so high that we just bought our way through it. Um sales tax sales tax is uh actually looking pretty good. Um the only one down is Alice and and that's just that's just a rounding error. I mean it's not very much but things are uh continuing on. I know you're thinking well Mike you know because of uh inflation you know things going to cost more. So more sales tax. Uh however, inflation was a little bit higher last year than it is this year. So it actually is some growth and so we are moving forward with that employment. This is really the health of the uh of the region. And this is the region and it's counted as the the Corpus Christie MSA, Newasis, San Patricio, and Oranis counties. And uh we get these you can see up there Texas labor market information. You can go on there and get it. Uh we're right at 200,000. We were we were over 200,000 in December and then they did the numbers and it went way down. Now it's back up. U but things are going well. We're not losing a lot. I mean we do have 400 down in trade, transportation, and utilities. Um but that one tends to move cycllically. I mean not not necessarily seasonally, but uh but as things move through the economy. This is actually good news. this uh MSA unemployment, you can see that we usually sit just above a percent to half percent higher um than the US and Texas. And one of the reasons that I was told actually I've been told a long time ago so I would have to go back and check but is because of our education attainment. Uh only one in four of the people you meet on the street is going to have a bachelor's degree or above. One in five are not even going have a high school diploma. And when those people get hired for $10 an hour and then they move up to 12, 13, uh once they start trying to move up further, it gets difficult and so they change jobs to try to get more money. And so that's the friction in the system that allows that. Um but you can see we're we are right in there now. I mean, we are closing that gap and a lot of that is just having trying to get more people trained up uh in skills. And I will tell you, I have a 5-year-old grandson, and he has to be a lifelong learner. Uh my wife, she got her PhD, you know, she's a professor and then she retired. Uh me, uh I was a Navy guy and moved on into accounting. And you know, have the same job all the time. Um one of the things that they just came out with, if you read the Wall Street Journal, is they found that that job hopping is not as big as you think it is. that boomers hopped as much as other generations. It just seemed that way at some point. I mean, maybe people were doing it anecdotally and you and if I tell you something anecdotally, I will tell you that. But, uh, but it's not as bad as you think it is. So, we will see. But our unemployment rate is doing well. And so, this is the other part. You know, we talk about why go after primary jobs. Primary jobs are this. Take a look at this. Now this is 2013 actually 2012 to last to 2023 but it's as Texas we're as Corpus Christie were the bottom has lagged the state average and the US average in in average wage. This is just average wage. We're not talking about household you know one one two people two incomes or one income. We're just talking about average wage. This we finally got up there. And one of the ways we get up there is by some of the jobs that we have attracted here that have moved up plus all of the re all of these services jobs that we see come in. Let's talk about region successes even with all of this. Take a look at that. Are our local era improved uh since 1990 and since uh 2005 even with all of these things that are coming in. And why is that? Well, first off, they're all using the latest technology. Secondly, uh all of the existing industry are redoing their processes and trying to be better stewards of the environment and they're doing actually a very great job. Uh you can also see that the number of households that have moved up to $125,000 is increased by 16,000. So these are good. Now remember our population moves at 1%. I don't you know you can hear people I remember Ralph Coker said in 2013 that we're going to be a million people. I was like, I don't think so. But we move at 1%. And so even 20 years from now, you know, we'll probably only be at just passing 400 423,000. So, and that's what we that's how we move. Um, when I talk to projects, I always talk to them about islands. We're an island. I know you have North Per Island, but we're an island. Texas is islands. If you go to uh Virginia where I was stationed or Florida or California, you know, there's houses everywhere. But you come to Texas, there's the valley, there's Corpus, there's Houston. I will grant you San Antonio to to Austin is actually one big island now. And up to Waco, there's a little bit of green. And in between Waco and Dallas, it's getting harder to find green. So I mean maybe that might be one huge island but uh but we'll see how that goes. So let me talk about business retention expansion. One of the things we do is to ensure that the impediments for industry and this is any manufacturer. They don't have to be a investor with us. uh they just have to be in the region uh we talk to and I think that that helps us when we talk to you about what what their needs are and a lot of that is uh is being a traffic cop. I'd be you'd be surprised how many people don't realize just how helpful workforce solutions of the coastal band is. I mean they they'll do uh free job fairs. Uh they'll give you hey how am I paying my people? you know, give me a entry, give me a median, give me a top uh percentage on on all of these. And they give them they give them uh standard occupation codes, SOC's, not NASC, but I mean they can do all of that for you for free. And uh and they are very responsive and it's all free. So, one of the things we really have pushed is manufacturing day. We want a way to get manufacturers in the region in front of people. This is our third or fourth one, fourth one and uh it that's coming up in 2025. If you have a chance, please go there. You'll get an invitation. But it's great because you go there and there's four different three different types. First off, you go there and you manufacturers are meeting on other manufacturers. We had one audio. I don't remember when they came here during COVID from California because the rules were so draconian. Um, but they were having problems with stamping. They met a stamper here local and now they use them. Um, the other one is having kids come in who are CTE. Uh, one of the things that we have when we talk to projects is Mike, you know, you got Craft, you got Delmare, you got Texas A&M, you know, this is all great, but I need to know that I have a stream of people who are going to come up which involves CTE. In fact, the board with the with the mayor and now uh sorry, Councilman Barrera um um on our board, I mean, we put uh the superintendent of CCISD on after they had come and talked to us about CTE is how important we think CTE is, but we get those kids there. Another one is a round table where we have local manufacturers talk about uh what they see as um as challenges or opportunities in the future. So what else do we do for you? We do the type A and type B. We've actually done this since 2010. Remember Anal um um God, what's her name? she retired and uh and so we brought Emily over to us and we did the type A type A at the time uh staffing since then. And so these are all the projects that we have gone through. Um obviously when we went from 2016 to starting 2018 type B uh that certainly opened up all of the uh projects that we had type A was really just for manufacturing. So Ada yesa I think was it banana? Yeah. Um, no. Escabayto. So, um, so let's talk about where do we go from here. So, we as the as the mayor and Councilman Barrera know, we are doing a targeted industry survey. As I when I meet with uh city staff, I always remind them that we are partners. We are not going to go out there and do something that you cannot support. We are not going to do something that is going to put us at risk. So, one of our target industry surveys is what industries could we attract that don't use as much water, that don't use as much power. Now, first off, I I want to, as you heard, all of Texas is in a drought. Everybody is having trouble with water and power. I don't care who you are, where you are, everybody's having trouble with power. Um, even when I was in V Beach station Beach, they had problems with water um in Virginia. So everybody's having so what can we do and attract and keep these going? Now these are not going to be huge jobs right 58 to 65 things like that but you know they're manufacturers they're bringing money from outside of the uh of the region to inside of the region which will help us grow. So we're looking at MRO we actually completed the MRO which is maintenance repair and oh it says it on there. Um and we did it with uh with CC uh with Corpus Christie International. So it's very important to work as partners and we go there, we buy the booth and you know they help man it because no one can tell their story better than they can. So you know it's great having partners like that. Um Select USA is one that we're going to go to that is uh very important because it's site selectors. So now you're talking to the site selectors directly. Um and financial is another one with drones and uh of course you probably remember the Lonear UIS center. Uh it's not that anymore. It's ARRI the um autonomy research institute. So they do that and so they cover all types of drones um sea undersea walking all of those good things. in the pharma. Yeah. You know, we tried to find something that was uh now when I talk about pharma, I don't not talking about uh drug drug manufacturing um on the scale of you know having um run tests and trials. Uh we're talking about chemicals just breaking it down. Um, we have a company that's on the Celin East campus, BASF, that makes 94% of the ibuprofen in America and it's just a chemical process and that's what we're looking for. Somebody like that who can partner, come in, have a huge impact and they don't have a lot of jobs, but you know, it's it's it's great jobs and they get through it. So, what are we going to do? So, just so you don't think that we're just giving your money away, these this is what you're going to get back. The city of Corpus Christi, now it really jumps, right? Because just to give you a quick history lesson, um we did a uh a 380 agreement, uh which looks like this. It's all blank. You can make it you can make it anything you want. And that one said that they these large companies in San Patricio will enter into a uh industrial district agreement when they finish their their 380. So you'll see part of that come on in 3030, 2030, 31, 32, and then they will. So I mean it is a huge bump. I don't think you're going to get a refund check at tax time, but it it will be a uh a big thing for us. So, I want you to know that we're working that we're partners with the comp with the with the city, with the counties. Um, we talk if you have something that you want, you know, we talk with Ryan all the time about being in Austin. I'm in Austin. Uh, thank you for not putting me at the end, by the way. And thank you for not putting me right after Drew. I I request that I never follow him. But um but I'm in Austin tomorrow from 8 to 12 uh visiting two senators in the governor's office. So we are happy to help and we stand by. Uh Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you, Mayor. Uh thank you for the presentation. You're welcome. It's always great when someone comes up and tells us great things and and and the positive progress and things that are are taking place. So thank you for doing that. Um especially that you know making that note that you did looking for partners or looking for new industry members who who are a little less heavy on on resource consumption. Um so I appreciate that you made that note. Um but I was curious looking over your presentation your slides I see clearly Corpus Christie is an industryheavy yes region. Um, I think comparatively we have a lot of industry presence. It's not a bad thing. It's perfectly fine. But, um, I'm curious as the EDC looking at, um, like you said, full-time career positions, um, what, if any, or or what does it look like uh, interest to in diversifying? You know, I know there's a big interest in sort of like tech careers, bringing some of those types centers to Corpus Christie because those can be some really sustainable um careers that that do incentivize education and those types of things. Those are career roles often. So something additional not to not to detract from anything here if that makes sense. No, it does. In fact, uh we are we have a group right now that's made up of about 15 people uh from various organizations and schools and whatever and we're looking at what assets do we have and we hope the targeted industry survey will say hey you're avail from there we will go and say what else can we get what can Delmare help what does Texas&M uh what can they put in what and craft training center do uh you know we need pipe fitters right now. Um you know those are the things that we're looking at to try to find to fill those holes. Um, and it's not a chicken and the egg because, you know, you say, "Well, you you have to have the job before you have uh I'll agree that you do, but you can train people up or they will bring people in." And you'd be surprised how many people have skills already here, but you know, they're working at a accounting firm or they're working at a um at a at a uh industry or commercial doing um doing inventory. uh in inventory management that skills that we have and by that that will give us time to get training programs out to build into those tech or whatever. Also, I mean, while we're retaining talent that we have here and that we're investing in and developing, um I think it's also important that we continue to be a competitive region as far as incentivizing folks to to travel to our area. So we may not have the full burden necessarily of training and developing but now we kind of add in our scope attracting. So, we're we're increasing that base, if you will, and th those are, you know, things that we're looking at and as as the board um our my board members here know, you know, we are we are tracking all of those that but the whole point of the 15 uh and I don't really have a name is uh is let's say for example, we uh we challenged I don't say if challenged, we asked Omar uh if there was anything whole that you see uh in small business, what is it? And they said cyber. And so cyber is in its third year and I cannot tell you how important it is because the the fed the federal government has been holding off on fire on uh on cyber requirements. You know, if you do a if you take a credit card uh on the web, I mean, there are huge huge uh requirements that and they've been kind of holding off for small business. So they're about ready to let go and when they let go everybody has to be ready the first day and so that's one of the ways that uh Delmare has looked at and of course&m I mean they just growing and growing with the engineering support and the labs which this body has helped quite a bit with. Thank you. Thank you ma'am Councilwoman Compos. Thank you mayor. Um I was looking at uh the sales tax collections and allocations the city of Engleside the difference between uh 2024 693,000 versus this year 1,223 that's a big that's almost double what was the contribution to that what I don't know all of them but there is a um there is a uh an expansion in one of the uh in one of the plants over there and they get the sales tax on on the uh on on the construction material. Uh there is a a pollution control equipment tax exemption, sales tax exemption, both sales tax and property tax. Uh but the rest of it is taxed. And usually if you listen to um we track when you talk to companies whatever they say they're going to invest about 40% is taxable. The rest is you know labor um construction loans things like that. So what company are we talking about in Engleside that is uh let me check on that. I I don't I don't really know. I'll check on that. Okay. Well, um all right. The other um question that I had was in the next slide on the government. Um you had um where it's been going down as far as government jobs. Is that right? Um so we have So you're talking about Well, it went okay 34. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, they've gone down by 400. Okay, that moves quite a bit. That's uh now remember um school districts are considered government. So I mean you see this one u education and health services. Yes that's that's not school district. School districts are in government. So whatever governments are moving um CCAD out at the base uh all of that goes in there. So okay, you might see a huge dip in uh May when teachers who are on 10 month 9 month contracts drop off and then a big bump in August or September when they come back on. Okay. Well, good to know. Um the other is I notice also on the health care uh that always seems to be continuously going up, right? Yes, it is. And I I think one of the things we miss and I I got to tell you Corpus Christi is not only the retail but the entertain and the entertainment but it really is a medical region. Uh it's a center for medicine in in our region. So we get a lot of people coming. We all know about Driscoll, right? They pull from all over the place. Uh but the other ones too, you know, you come in for day surgery or whatever. Um and we have slowly been going up. Also remember we're getting older, you know, and so yeah, you know, more of us are and and what is it that you're that you all do specifically to bring any of those jobs or is it just up to the spawn system or the C system or one of the problems is we cannot incentivize those. However, on our website, if uh there's a place called Coastal Band, your coastal.com and you can actually go and you can take a look at all the neighborhoods. You could look at all the schools, you could look at all the amenities. Uh they use that, you know, in their recruitment. Um we help with whatever uh data they need for that, but no, they they take care of it themselves and Okay. So really for them I it seems like it would be a quality of life for them for certainly. Okay. Yeah. Uh so that's why I mean I'm a big proponent of the quality of life making sure that our you know we have good library systems that we have um you know water that our water is in is yes good um quality as well and and I I'm also I mean um thank goodness that we're finally you know closing that gap like you said um on our next slide uh with the federal state and yes yeah and so again What do you think contributed to that? Just I really think um job training because as this body has done and supported Delmare and Texas A&M um there are a lot of students that are graduating every year out of those organizations and in fact some of them were so successful that their graduation went down because companies would pick them up before they graduated. and then finally they they had a talk and said you can't do that you know you can get them to work but at least let them finish um I think that is it is upskilling and people finally coming to the realization that you have to be lifelong learners I mean my grandfather ran a lathe in wrigley you know textile plant do you consider vocational as a Yes I do okay that's a and you know I'll just tell you uh you go you get a job and and with these jobs, I mean, with these good jobs, you can get you can have a house, you can get married, you can have kids, you can have vacations, you can have a retirement. I mean, you can do all of these things and not have the debt, right? Uh that you have. So, I I think uh vocational can also be a way to move up the ladder. I mean, like I think mo like even now I'm trying to find a handyman and it's not easy, right? you know, it's one of those lost skills that we're, you know, we're losing out on. So, take a look at Austin. Austin has 50%, half the people will have a college degree or bachelor's or higher. 50% don't. 50% just graduated from high school and maybe not all of them. You got to have a place for these people and this gives them a way into the job market and into a career. So uh and also the other slide that you had about the local I mean about the airhed do does CC track also cancer rates because I know that uh I mean I'm glad that we're so we are members of the coastal band air quality partnership and we have been for a long time and right I mean we do that we we let experts track what they track and so we report because it's not reported here and I hear that we do have do we have a higher than normal? Not that I know of, but I've certainly look and talk to talk to them over there at the air quality partnership and see what they have. Okay. [Music] Uh, I guess that's it for now. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Von. Real quick comment. Thanks for the presentation. My biggest concern is downtown. I know you remembered in the 70s and 80s it was all oil industry down there. when they left, when they had the bust, it's never recovered. I know we've got lots of empty buildings. Is there any And I I appreciate the fact that you're looking for things that don't require water, right? Um are y'all looking at anything? You know, we were looking at what what does a a data center because could could you make could you make apartments out of out of these, right? Um take a look around. You you get to some of these and only the outer offices have a window. Not even a big window. Would you want to live in an apartment like that where No. You know, it's just one window. Uh ours ours could be one shoreline. In fact, if you go to San Diego, if you go to the marina, that building is right there. So it but it has condos. Um yeah, we're looking at that. Uh you know, we're talking, of course, the caller times are talking about maybe storage or something on that, but yes, we are trying to think outside the box. And one of the things we're doing on the site selector visit uh is to find out what other people are doing. I mean, uh, you know, we look, research, and, uh, you know, we're just finding ideas, and once we have, then we will make a specific marketing campaign to try to find those people. Good. Because other cities have a good downtown with businesses in it, and for it to thrive, they they need it. So, I appreciate the fact you're looking. Thank you. Councilman Hernandez. Uh, real quick question. And I noticed that you didn't have in your um report was uh cost of living comparisons with other major cities in the in Texas. We're actually pretty low. Um Well, I know that. And oddly enough, not in your presentation. Yeah, but we can't take credit for that. It's, you know, it's just it's just the way it is. We we don't have um oddly enough, Houston has a lower has a low uh cost of living. And I lived there for 20 years. Let me tell you what, gas is the same price, but I'll fill my tank up twice in Houston in a week and I'll fill my tank up once every two weeks here. So, yes, you're right. Uh and I I think part of this body, you know, some of your uh rate things that you're doing, um some of the partners that we have is historically here, HB and all of those, you know, keep that down. So, uh what about energy availability? Do you keep track of that? I mean, in terms of, you know, if somebody comes in, they have to have the energy. So we have so when we sit down with a project we have AE or NEC depending on on where they are. Um we have you know water of course it starts with CC water and uh all of those with us. Um they will tell you that they are doing things to try to get power down here. Um now they said there's OT wants to go from 85 gigs to 135. I really don't think that that 55 is or that 50 is real. I don't, you know, I think they're double counting some things because some's looking here and it's looking in Kash, you know, and it's looking in Victoria. But, um, you know, they they actually are doing some impressive things. for example, to get a get a put in a new line, you know, 345 KV, uh, takes like two years just to get get the, uh, engineering, uh, get the land, get the rightway, and all that stuff. But A is changing their 345s to 500 KVE lines on the same line, so they can do that. Uh, the thing I worry about is not really the wires as much as who's on the other side. I mean we have to build all of this uh all of this generation and wind and solar is not going to do it. Is the problem the generation or the capability to trans uh transport it to us or transmit it to us? If you asked me when I look at a project it would be transmission but I know the ultimate problem is going to be generation. Um Texas legislature last last session uh created the Texas Energy Fund and if you build one they will help you out and already two companies have fallen out of that because the time to get transformers and other equipment have pushed them outside of the uh outside of uh the deadlines for that. So, um, that's one of the things we're talking to in Austin, uh, tomorrow and trying to figure out what we're doing and what can we do. Do you see that as a barrier to bringing industry to us or, uh, primary jobs? Yes. But everybody has that problem. We are not alone. uh of that 50 million gig 50 gigs that they're looking at um Dallas is is really I mean if you put they want to talk about 20 uh data centers and if you figure each data center it takes 200 megawws you know that is it's just mindboggling trying to multiply that out so I I think everybody has a problem and we're no different okay but yes yes yes it but like I said everybody has the same problem because somebody's got to have to somebody's going to have to generate the power and you know you put wind up or solar. This is it. This is you California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. I mean we have we can do both. Uh I even saw them as far up as Pettis and Beville. And I got to tell you this, you think ours sit idle sometimes. I mean, they said I've drawn by and they're just sitting there just looking at you just anyway. Thank you. All right, sir. Okay, Mike, thank you so much and thank all the questions. Thank you for the presentation. We really appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Okay, next we have our board com and committee appointments. We have uh civil service. Yes, ma'am. It's the civil service board and the commission. So there's one vacancy on the civil service commission and that board handles police and fire employment matters. The civil service board handles civil service employment matters and it has three vacancies, one regular member and two alternates. The city manager appoints the civil service commission uh appoints to the civil service commission subject to council confirmation and the city council appoints the civil service board. Traditionally, the same members serve on both. City Manager Zenown recommends that Sylvia A. Martinez Pacheco be appointed a regular member of the Civil Service Board and the Civil Service Commission. He also recommends that Joel Mumford and Israel Talamanes serve as alternate members of the Civil Service Board. Excuse me, this loud. I move for approval. Thank you. What was Israel's last name? Talantes. And then Sylvia Bach Martinez Bacheco and Mum and Mumford as well. Yes sir. Mumford is the alternate. So Mumford and Thalont this would be alternate two alternates. Correct. Yeah. On the board. Okay. And uh Sylvia. Okay. So we have Silia would be the regular member on both. Right. So a motion and a second. And we had a motion and a second. You have a question? Yes sir. Put your Yeah. Thank you. Okay. On the civil service board, it says that Martinez Pacheco is an alternate and Mumford is the regular member. Is that Yeah, that's a that's incorrect. Incorrect. Yeah. Yeah. On the application. Okay. So, yeah. All right. Yeah. Just want to make sure it was clear because it say Yeah. Right. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. The the the header on that prior page has the correct information, but the Okay. Yeah. The Okay, there's an error. He's correct. Councilman uh Ku. So, um, Mumford is alternate. He'd be an alter. An alternate. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sylvia would be the board member, the regular one, primary commission member. Yeah. That's the motion's on the table right now. Motion second. Okay. Please submit your vote. Oh, I'm sorry. Can you do a verbal mayor? All in favor say I. I. Any oppose say no. The motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. So that takes us to item number 22 under public hearing section L. And this is a zoning case ZN8561 ADR Investments LLC. I'm sorry, item number 23. What did I say? 22 23. Yeah. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Uh Michael Dice, Development Services. uh before use case ZN8561. The applicant is ADR Investments LLC. Uh this property is in district 4 uh with a request to reszone the subject property from the CG1 general commercial to CG1 SP uh for a special permit. The property is uh 4 acres in size and is platted. Motion to approve. We have a motion to approve and a second. Uh, is there I'm going to open public hearing. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make comment on item number 23? Okay, there's no one. Are you sure? Just kidding. Okay, we're going to close public hearing and please without any further discussion, please submit your vote. The motion carries and Councilwoman GMPOS was Yes, she's absent for this vote. Okay, but that wasn't purposeful or was it? Is she obstaining? Not an abstension. She's just Okay, thank you. Uh the motion carries. So item number 24 uh is a zoning case number ZN8584, Dalvon Sigen. Sounds great. I couldn't pronounce it. Uh, Mike Dice, Development Services. I was curious how Excuse me. I'm so sorry. I I didn't even ask if you wanted to make a comment. I am so sorry about that. You just want the vote. Just kidding. Congratulations. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dice. Um so again before use case ZN8584 uh the property is in district 1 to reszone from RS6 and CG2 to an RM3 multif family. Uh the property is.33 acres and it will need to be replatted. I'd like to make a motion to approve. Second. Okay. Um and this is what what is going there again? They're going to do two forplexes. Two forplexes. Correct. So, this will create a buffer between the commercial that's on the east to the single family that's on the west. They're going to replat the two lots into one. Uh providing uh eight units basically. Eight units, eight living units. Just regular. Yes. Well, it's two forplexes, so it's eight units. Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. And it does have letters of support from neighboring properties. It has a what? Letters of support from Wonderful. No opposition at all. Okay. Great. Uh let's see. I'm going to go ahead and open public hearing. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make comment on item number 24? Okay, there being no one, we'll close public comment. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Please submit your vote. Okay, the motion carries. Uh section M, individual consideration items. Item number 25 is an ordinance approving the addition of 20 full-time positions and equipment to the engineering services uh department budget. Thank you. Let me uh get the presentation up. Okay. Thank you. Uh good afternoon, mayor, council members. Jeff Edmonds, director of engineering services. Uh this is the midyear budget adjustment that uh we reviewed uh two weeks ago on April 1st and was tabled and uh we're back here uh again today. I I am offering some savings right out of the gate. However, so um based on some of the comments, we went back and recalculated based on when we thought we could actually get people hired. Uh and uh the numbers in the caption are incorrect. The numbers in the body of that agenda memo are are the actual numbers. So for FY25, it should be uh just over $1.7 million and ongoing. FY26 was uh 1.969. So uh if you go to the second page of the agenda memo and the background and findings, those are the correct numbers. Um, okay. Oops. Okay. I'm going to let me start out uh some of the comments I've had had discussions with various council members and um it uh occurred to me that maybe if I described my operation in terms of a business it might help some of you folks because I know some of you are are business people and uh so it in a business parallel uh if you look at like a sales forecast that would be what the CIP is to me it's a forecast of uh what we hope to do. Uh if you look at sales, uh sales are actually contracts that are awarded by council. Uh and then when we have deliveries, uh those are like payments that we're sending out to uh to vendors, to contractors, AE firms. And I'm going to come back and forth to that help illustrate the the situation I'm in. Uh so our sales are up. Our sales uh are up 60% over last year. Um and they're predicted to continue at at that rate of growth. So, we're starting to experience problems. Uh and any of you that have been in a business situation like that where you're in a growth situation, uh we're having things like long lines, stockouts, uh mistakes, and and problems delivering our our service. And so uh the question that we're discussing today is if uh we're going to increase our staff in response to that trend to help mitigate that problem. Uh so a little bit about engineering services and uh this is pretty much same slide that we we had two weeks ago. So we currently have about a 100red active construction contracts. Uh and the unexecuted value on that construction uh is about 600 billion which would be equivalent to like unfulfilled sales. So we've made the sale and we've got to deliver the goods on uh $600 million worth of construction. Uh, so our cost target, we try to keep our cost at at 6% of that sales. You know, the money that's going out the door, we try and keep our costs below 6%. Um, recently our costs have been down around the 4% level. So, um, that's a good thing. Unfortunately, a little bit too much of a good thing. So, um, uh, Council Member Barrera asked me, "So, what does that equal to on a on a yearly basis? What you're coming in under under target." And that's probably at current rates of production, that's about $7 million on an annual basis that we're leaving on the table in terms of what's budgeted for us, uh, versus what our actual costs are. Uh so last three months we've been averaging Masamanos $30 million a month throughput and it's causing uh overtasking of staff and and that creates risk of delays, mistakes, uh you know missing things from the contractors, quality issues and ultimately delaying things in this business can actually increase cost. Um, so a little bit about how we work, how how we're budgeted. Uh, so every time a CIP project is is approved, there's money allocated in there for what we call engineering reimbursements, and those reimbursements are are charged to the projects based on actual time that our employees spend. Uh, we're not funded at in the general fund directly. Uh if we're doing a general fund project, it would normally be like a geo bond project and and the debt services paid by the general fund, but we don't get direct money from general fund. Only in rare circumstance, we were working on operating projects. We're not directly funded by taxes. Really, most of our revenue is coming from uh revenue bonds supporting the uh uh CCWCIP. Uh let's see. Okay, I want to make an introduction. So, with me is one of my assistant directors, Claudia Fernandez. If you got any real hard questions, real specific, I'm going to bat them off to her. Now, the main thing, most important thing she does is getting people paid. So, all of those $30 million worth of payments that are going out the door a month, uh, she's responsible for getting those out, getting those on time. And if we don't get those out on time, you start hearing from these contractors, uh, and Peter starts hearing from the contractors. She handles all of our project uh financial controls, financial reporting, uh managing our operating budget, and the the operating expense recovery, which uh as I mentioned, we we recover our costs from those projects, but it's not just a simple thing of take the money that's budgeted. So once a quarter, Claudia's team has to use all this time sheet data and uh recover our costs proportional to the amount of time that was charged to those projects by our employees. And that's a major effort, but this is something the auditor requires us to do. Uh and uh I've tried multiple times I can't get out of it, but uh uh that that's requirement to be able to charge those costs to the CIP the way that we do it. Um this is our org chart uh currently uh and I think there was some question about the positions uh last time I made a little bit bigger so you can read it better. Uh and it does equal the 103 that we currently have when you include myself and uh the attorney that we pay for uh at the top. So, um, another thing I'd point out about this, so we created a new division last year without changing our budget or or our staffing. Uh, we used some uh salary savings uh to adjust positions and we shifted positions within the organization to create a division that's focused just on treatment plant construction. And we did that because we were having some problems with some small treatment plant projects and we knew we had some very large projects in the pipeline. So we made that adjustment to help prepare for for some of those projects. And currently that division has about half of our construction backlog. So this is a new slide I jenned up. Uh too bad Mike Colulbertson left, but he can't fact check me on this now. But so what I'm trying to illustrate with with this slide is that if we approve this item, we're going to have a total of about 123 employees. Now, we're managing a lot of people out there in the private sector that are with private contractors, either AE contractors or construction contractors, which is 90% of that total. We estimate that there's about 3,000 people out there in the private sector that are working on helping to deliver the city's capital program. Okay, this slide um is a summary of the adopted CIP. Uh so last year when the CIP was adopted on September 17th uh 2024 um it had 272 projects in the current year uh and it totaled up to about 1.008 billion. Uh now subsequent to that on November 5th, all four propositions passed that were on the bond referendum and that added 38 projects and $175 million to to our tasking. Uh if you if you go in this book, uh this is a slide that's on page 16 uh of the adopted capital budget. Uh so there was some question about okay you know what is your level of tasking going to be going forward you know what is your sales forecast back in my uh business analogy so this is my best guess and I I know there's some debate about what this ought to be but uh this is really the best idea that I've got to go on. So, if you look at the 10-year forecast here, it totals up to $8 billion. Divide by 10, that's about $800 million a year. Uh, now that is about twice what we're currently doing. And I'm asking for this to help me do the the adequately staff the level of activity that we're currently putting out. Um this chart I combine the backward-facing and forward- facing CIP numbers uh from the adopted capital budget and as you can see we've had several years of very rapidly increasing uh CIP and we are making adjustments to help us to keep up with with that uh pattern and again looking out uh you know that averages about 800 million a year. It goes up, goes down. Uh I I'm more interested what's the average level of tasking and and trying to get in the right posture for that level of tasking. Um so as I said, we're doing about 30 million a month. If we get to 800 million, that would be 60 million a month that you need to be doing. Okay, this is a chart we went over last time. Um and my analogy about sales. So, that blue bar here, this is payments that we're making to contractors and AE firms. This is work in place. This is work that's being done on behalf of the city that that we're paying out. So, this would be like revenue coming into your business. is your clients getting their goods and they are paying you for the goods they received. Uh and you can see how that pattern has changed uh over time. Uh you know, we're expecting to be in the mid300s, maybe as high as 400 million this year. Now, the little green bar is what our costs are relative to that. And the the line is our employee count. And what I'm trying to illustrate with that is that our um our revenue in that model has been increasing at a faster rate than than our cost. Uh now again, that's a good thing. If you're in a business, that's a good thing. And like I said, it's probably just a little bit too much of a good thing. And so uh we need a little help to keep up with the level of tasking that we're getting. Okay. So, this is the same slide I had last time. Uh, you know, we awarded 524 million in contracts last year. That would be like the sales. There's 524 million of sales. Uh, we're trying to deliver on that. Um, the the expectation was we were going to exceed that this year. Uh so the FY25 CIP increased by 42% uh over the FY24 CIP. Uh again bond 24 added uh 140 million to that. Uh they split it between the two years. So it was 175 but and the FY25 it was $140 million uh adjustment that council approved in December. Jeeoff, I'm sorry. Did you say 40% or 142 million? Uh well, it was the uh when council amended the CIP after the referendum last year, they amended the CIP by 140. So of the 175, they put 140 in FY25, 35 of that, it's going to be in FY26. So that's how they split that. But uh uh so the amended FY25 CIP was a 62% increase over FY24. Um and as I've mentioned, our outstanding contract value. These are sales we've made that we've got to deliver on is uh $600 million. Uh we're also staffing emergency projects related to the drought. Um uh we're supporting uh some contracting mechanisms that are creating a greater uh toll on us than than standard contracts like the the RPP uh where we're doing Idiq contracts, delivery orders where you have track delivery orders individually. There's a lot more administrative burden on that that kind of contract. Operating departments like them because you can get the work done faster. It just does create some additional administrative burden. Um and we do have these larger more complex projects uh the these treatment plant projects. Uh our monthly throughput has increased uh by about 50%. FY24 levels and uh uh like I mentioned our departmental costs are are are going down and they've been down actually hidden below 4% uh recently of the the throughput. Uh so here here's the summary. So the uh we debated a lot over how to say this. I I want to say there is no fiscal impact but obviously you're spending money so there is fiscal impact but there's monies budgeted in the CIP for our department and we're still way south of those budget amounts even with this increase. Um, so what we're still asking for the 20 uh employees uh and uh as I mentioned the numbers in the caption aren't correct. The the year one FY25 amount uh 1.705 million and the recurring amount is uh 1.97 million. And so uh that's about uh a 15% uh adjustment in our u cost. But we're we're expecting work in place or our uh our revenues in my business uh analogy to increase by 45%. Okay. And again, that's the that's the summary. Uh I'm not going to go through all those details, but Okay. I'm ready to open it up for questions. Great. Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you, Mayor. Um Jeff, when we spoke on this item, um I had requested that for today you reach out to the contract service that we have an agreement with for this type of work and outline to them basically what you were needing here that equates to this 2.9. I think you adjusted the numbers a little bit, but um to get from them a written proposal on how many of the positions you're requesting they're able to fill, what the timeline on filling those positions would be, and the cost. Did you receive that? I I don't have that uh in hand. I do have um uh a resume from them that they've proposed. Uh I don't have a rate yet. I've just got a resume of uh someone that they had available and I do have a um uh another company reached out to me and they said they had a guy that was available halftime. Did you make a request for the three things I asked for for today? Uh I've I've I'm not sure we understood each other completely what you were requesting, but you're asking for I feel like I had asked it several times and I asked if that made sense. So, I'm a little I'm a little confused where the breakdown may have been. Let me see if I can explain a little bit about how how this works. So, uh in this business, you don't keep folks in these job descriptions on overhead waiting waiting for work, which is why I asked for you to get a proposal on timeline to fill your request. Well, uh I'm I'm sorry if I misunderstood. We could request that. So if I understand what you're asking, you you're wanting me to solicit a competitive proposal from them to do basically what I'm So in the CIP funding like you mentioned, we have budget allocations for these services, these engineering services. What you're asking is for these fees that we that we set aside or that we count into this total to go towards adding on 20 more full-time employees and equipment. So those same dollars that we would be using to add to our full-time compliment, we have it within our provisions to use for a contractual service. So my request to you, since you were able to provide to us a breakdown of what that cost would be if we were to fill those needs in house, what that would look like coming from the contractual service that we already use so that we could compare as the ones having to approve this apple to apple, which which deal did we want to take? Some of my concerns of course were we're gonna we're looking at bringing on 20 new full-time employees and then we would have to sustain those through and that's you know your presentation is based on maintaining at the pace that we're at now but that's an assumption we may or may not even do that. So what what I requested was to to make this decision was to see the contrast of not bringing on these full-time positions and equipment in house. Okay. Well, so let me tell you what I have done that might be a step in that direction. So um now we did some comparison and and we wanted to uh and what I heard from folks is you know are we better insourcing or outsourcing this uh and uh we made some calculations of what it's costing us to to insource. We looked at one position which was uh kind of uh mid to senior construction inspector. um let me say mid mid-level construction inspector that we would have a raw cost of about 42 bucks an hour is what um we're paying for somebody in that job category. Now we looked at all of the uh payroll overhead that we'd have. Uh we looked at uh factoring in for vehicle equipment all of those other costs. Uh we looked at uh adding some other external overheads for like HR risk and so forth. Uh and we felt like you know we could field that inspector for about 90 bucks an hour. Now the the rate sheet that uh we have with the one contract provider that we have currently under contract for this uh kind of thing uh their their range for a construction inspector is 110 to 120 an hour. So, you showed me those numbers last week when we talked, so I had that information, which I I appreciate. And basically, the argument is it's more cost-effective if we do it in house, presumably based on your rate sheet. But what I'm looking at is the cost that we're going to incur and maintain over the years. That that I keep coming back to that. That's my thing here. If we say yes to this three million right now, it's still going to be whether it's 2.1 or 1.96, $2 million to sustain. I can't guarantee you right now that that sales load or workload is going to maintain those years. I don't want to be in the position where we hire 20 full-time employees and we say, you know, come to Corpus. It's a great position. It's a career job and we're going to lay you off in 24 months. Yes, there's often opportunity to transfer them, but I don't want to get into that right now. We have the funding in here for contractual services to execute on these. So, my next question is kind of twofold since I don't have those things I requested for today. My next question is in our call, one of the things you brought up was that if we don't approve this, you know, we're not going to be able to continue to execute on these projects because you already don't have enough staff. So, when was the last time you contacted the group that has it within their scope to fulfill these roles and what was their response? Um, I had had a sit down meeting with them uh I want to say it was a couple of months ago and we talked about uh if if they had any construction inspector types, which is what we were thinking about mostly at the time. Uh I think you've got to distinguish a little bit in and what we're talking about. So the these guys work more in the construction inspection, construction management type of services. Uh we also have admin folks and uh we've uh they may swim in those waters. We've used some of the temp agencies. our our preference is strongly in favor of putting full-time employees in there because you have a lot of turnover in those job categories uh when you're you're going through something like a temp agency. So, uh I would look at these people as potentially being able to uh supply those construction inspection type folks. So for yourself as our director here to come before us and say you don't have the manpower to fulfill on these things and and I'm asking you when was the last time you specifically went to this group with your needs to ask for those to be filled and what did they say because you seem to be indicating that they told you they can't fill the need. Uh well, so what they told me is they were having difficulty. Uh but so can you tell me when that meeting was and when they told you that? Because if that's true, that was a couple of months ago and I I think if if something's changed since then, uh I I haven't seen it. Now I do have a resume that they just sent in last week that we're we're looking at. I don't have a rate with it, but it looks to me like a kind of senior construction manager kind of. Jeeoff, I've said it a hundred times. I I love what you guys do. I support you. I support your department. My philosophy is not in expanding this. That's why I asked those very specific questions last week in anticipation for this meeting. So, I could feel like I have everything I need. But I don't have that now. So, I have to say that not being able to change my position because none of the information has changed, I'm still not in support of this because I think we still need to pursue that other direction. And I and I do believe that this item supports that route. Thank you, Councilman Roy. Um, I understand your business model comparison. I think at the the bottom line is is that you're saying that your production's up and you don't have the the staff to be able to meet the new production needs. My orders are up, my sales are up. Yeah, your sales are up. But, I mean, again, whether you call it sales or whatnot. So, in the event that you don't have the talent to be able to get the job done, then you could be at risk for mistakes and errors and so forth. But I want to go back and I my question is a couple things. Um, not only are we talking about personnel, but we're talking about assets like vehicles, right? When you use an outside agency that provides staffing, um does the city provide vehicles for those outside agencies? No, sir. So, um they're they usually are allin rate. That's what we request to Okay. [Music] So again, if we did kind of use a blend of outside agency and inside, that could cut down on our um requirement to buy vehicles, right? Because if you hired outside agencies, they've they've got their own vehicles. You don't have to supply vehicles. I take it I take it and I don't know this but I take it most of the city personnel use city vehicles. Yeah that's kind of nice. That's and that's what we factored in to to this uh so our calculation that's how we get from the 42 bucks to to about 90. It's got all the the benefits paid. So there could be some savings there if we use the blend. The the other thing is um you've got some staff, temporary staff or I don't want to call them temporary staff because they're really not temporary, but you've got some outside staff that have been working with the city for 20 for for years, right? Well, no, not 20 years, but we do have some folks right now from uh AGCM that are helping us. And uh we have they've been there for a while. Uh pretty good while. We have one upstairs uh that's in the project management side and we have a couple of inspectors from them currently that have been how long? I want to say one's been a couple of years. Couple of years and he's been off and on here. Uh one of them has was a retiree from the water department and I think he's actually wanting to really fully retire later this year. I just think again knowing that we're going to have the possibility of this budget coming up that we're going to be looking at ways to cut dollars and and we have to look at every particular area and um if you want to call it the risk, you know, business has risk, but the risk is is right now we're looking at filling your slots and we don't know the rest of the picture. So trying to come up with the most economic way that we can do this to me is important. So, um, thank you for your information. I would say that if if there's cutbacks in other areas, those people could potentially apply for these jobs and, uh, they would be given preferential treatment under our So, should we wait for those cutbacks and then you staff yourself from the ones that are going through um that have to be transitioned from other departments? Um, that's kind of what you're saying. I'm not sure that's what I was uh Okay. I I think they would, you know, they would be able to apply for these vacancies. I'm I'm not necessarily The point My point is tap the brakes and wait for that. Yeah. My point is is we don't have necessarily the the full picture at this time just because we don't we haven't looked at all the other departments in the budget and that that's just part of my my concern. I'm not saying that we don't you know because we got to weigh the risk on what if we wait what is it doing to our cost and I realize that what is cost what is it doing in terms of safety and all the other things that you talked about. So, it's a decision we have to make is that are we going to dip our toe into this water fully or half or what are we going to do? And I I know that time is important because um we don't want to get behind on these projects because if we do there's additional cost so we got to be able to weigh all those things. So, it's a lot to consider. Thank you. Yeah. Can I can I just add to that council? Right. So, um let's see. This is May this is April. So May, it's going to take them 90 plus days to even try to fill any position. I don't know if we've told the council, but we have a um a position review where to fill any position today in the city with the exception of certain ones like um public safety and so on. There's a review committee that's looking at the request. So that's to slow the filling of positions so we can keep an eye. When does that kick in? It's been kicked in for a couple months once we saw the economy kind of um you know holding kind of stagnant or so that review process is in place meaning that to fill any position in the city with the exception of a few there's a deliberate slowing of the process so we can review the nature of the position. So ju the moral of this this statement here is that this just guarant this just adds the 20 slots. It doesn't add people it's going to take him. So, as we go through this budget development process in May and June, that's going to be the same time he's looking at do I fill this or not. So, yeah, when I asked the question last week and um how long is it going to take? And I came back when Jeff and I talked cuz I said okay. He said two months. And then he came back and we talked and he said some of the positions are two months, some of the positions are three months. Now, you're saying you've got an outside body there that is making a decision on staffing requirements. So even if we go through and we approve these 20 slots, there's a possibility that your outside crew might say, "Oh, you know what? Right now we're going to work on 10." It's an Right. And it's an inside crew. It's the HR director, budget director. Inside Outside outside, but I'm just saying outside of his department. Yeah. Yes, sir. Yeah. So, uh, and that and so it just it goes to the point I'm trying to make, which is that this just says we think we need 20 bodies today. Um, and this authorizes the ability to do that. But as we we're beginning the budget deliberation processes already, we've started, you know, week a couple weeks ago. And so there's no guarantee Jeff's going to be able to fill these right now or tomorrow or 30 days, 90 days. So, but um I do but he does need them based on current workload, not workload for tomorrow or the next bond program. Right. No, I understand. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the downside to that is he doesn't get staffing. Yeah, then there's going to there could be repercussions there. I and there are some issues already. I mean, we we've seen it in some of these projects. The U the Brown Lee Ayers project is a good example of that. And so when you stretch them, the other thing we we are trying not to jeopardize is the success rate that we've had in delivering bond programs in four years. It used to take 10 years to deliver smaller bond programs. And I think that that change is good. I mean, I think that that change is good because we're not sitting there waiting. I do remember when I first came on council, we had seven or eight years of that we were still trying to fill uh projects from seven or eight years ago. So I understand that and I think we're a better city because of it of those changes. Um so there is a little bit of check and balance that we I can't authorize position position slots. Only city council can do that. And so this is we're asking you to authorize the slots, but then we run the business to say we're going to look at this closely. It's not just Jeff filling them. It's the HR director. So, there is some discretion there. There's discretion and internal checks and balances and there's also discretion in terms of how you fill those slots as far as whether you're going to use permanent or or temporary staffing or something. Exactly. So, as we go through the budget deliberations and recall, and we're going to be doing a forecast here soon in a couple of weeks, if it looks like we have some positions that would be we would be recommending to cut or eliminate, we may tell Jeff, don't don't go out and try to hire those because there's a slot inside that we're going to eliminate and you could bring that person over there. So, there's processes inside the business to manage filling of slots. I appreciate that clarification because I think maybe that might for me at least that was probably the missing piece, right? So that you're not and I don't like to use the word willy-nilly, but yeah, you're not just running willy-nilly on right and everybody knows we we meet monthly with all the directors and so we've been they've been on notice for since December actually maybe January that uh we're going to have to reduce the budget again this year to stay within our financial means and so that means everybody has to look closely on especially filling positions since that's 80% of the budget. So is that group like the CIA or do we know the members on there? The CIA? No, I'm saying is that group is it a hidden secret? Do we know the members that are part of that? Yeah. No, it's it's pretty known, but yeah, and it's not we've done this before and we did it where I was before coming here after this job. No, thanks for your clarification. Thank you. I I would like to add one thing uh to to what Peter said. So, um some of the positions we're creating are are like senior construction inspectors or construction inspector 2. So the the probably the first wave is going to be internal applicants that are applying for those jobs. Then they get promoted, then that creates a vacancy that gets backfilled. Uh so there's to get through that first wave probably it's going to take a couple of months and then those positions will be ready for advertisement. And if there are candidates internally at that time that we want to consider shifting over, uh those are the kind of jobs that inexperienced people new to the department would be applying for. Okay. Councilman uh Hernandez. Hey, thank you, Mayor. And and uh Okay. So, Jeeoff, just for myformational purposes, I don't think I asked this last week. Are you fully staffed right now? Um the last time I checked we were about 4 and a.5% vacancy. 5%. How many positions is that that you have vacant? Uh it would be about five positions. Five. Yeah. Five vacant positions. Okay. So in looking at this, you know, having a mid-year um addition when we don't really understand what the all budget's going to be like. And I understand you're funded through projects, which makes it kind of a simpler process for you to contract out for um like you're doing with currently with AGCM as opposed to adding new positions. Uh and you can select by the project as opposed to having somebody in place that may not have the expertise to be on that particular project. Is that correct? Uh there are some advantages. Uh I think those the speed it is easier to get get somebody in the door uh with one of those contracts than it is for Okay. So I'm not comfortable with adding positions in the middle of the year when I don't understand what the next budget is going to look like in terms of in terms of positions. Um however, I don't want to leave you empty-handed. However, I don't think one company is probably enough. I think you should broaden that. make it like a master services agreement uh to where you have options to select from various resumes uh for that specific project and have the expertise on that specific project. Uh I'm uncomfortable with how you how this is coming to coming coming to us. I can understand going through a budget process if you're going to add some admin positions. I think uh out of the 25 of these are admin positions. Is that correct? uh contracts and funds administrator, senior contract funds administrator, grant and contract specialist, administrative support too. Um and then one administrative support. I think we've got seven I would call administrative positions. They're extremely important. Those are the people that help be sure that folks get paid. and then also help be sure that we recover the monies that we're owed from granting agencies and things like that. Okay. So, out of the 20, I'm I'm seeing five based on what you have listed here under that says administrative or support. Everything else is construction inspectors. You have one, two engineering project specialists, four construction inspector 2, one construction inspector one, uh, three, and then on the utility side, three construction inspectors, one senior project manager, and then project management division, two senior project managers, one project manager, one engineer, two. Is that there's one engineer in the mix? Right. So, five project managers are are in the construction side. They're they're really senior inspectors that are managing a group of inspectors. Okay. So, like I was saying, I think probably you need to expand your availability of of contracted work because it can be based on the project and specific to that particular um that particular project. I would support you coming back with a master services agreement with an up to, I don't know, let's say $1.5 million. It's all going to be paid out of the projects anyway. Uh that would be a much easier and quicker fix here and it wouldn't be a permanent um adding of FTEEs to your department. Uh I I think that would be the best solution. That way you're not left hanging. How fast can you turn that around? Uh, in terms of doing an RFP, well, we would, uh, the way we would have to do it like that, uh, we would probably want to get multiple um, MSAs in place. Uh, you know, we could probably wrap that up in seven or eight weeks, bring contracts to council on that, and then uh, uh, we could request proposals from firms based on staffing needs. Um there's a little bit uh you know they are a little bit quicker uh getting started up and and cutting people off. Uh there's there's no two ways about that. We do feel like there is a little bit of a cost cost penalty. Um so I I think it's we can probably save 15% uh bringing the people in house. Um, with the contract, we also have a little bit more administrative work to to manage contract capacities and review invoices and all of that stuff. Um, I do think uh we we have a little bit more continuity with um with folks that are in the system that are full-time employees. Well, going back to what I originally said two weeks ago is that I don't know if we're going to continue at this pace and to councilwoman u uh Paxton um to what she was saying in terms of of bringing on extra FTEES. Uh you know, we we have a situation where and Peter, you could probably, you know, kind of do this. We have what 400 open positions right now. I don't have that number, Councilman, but we we're running about 10 to 12% vacancy. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I I think you you know, you're relying on the fact that you'd be able to hire some some new people, and I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case. I'd rather you have the opport, you know, spend your time uh actually getting people that are already in in in the area that can can be contracted relatively quickly as opposed to waiting for somebody to to be hired, especially since you already have five vacancies. Um, and that's what I recommend, Peter. I think you need we need to do a couple of of beyond just AGCM and have open that up more to where you can get more people in because I think you're only you're only using what four or five people from AGCM right now. That's about right. Yes. Yeah. But um Jeff I wasn't in the meetings with AGCM but I think they have are they experiencing difficulties in hiring people? Well what uh they indicated to me is that uh they're they're experiencing some of the same difficulties that that we're the answer is yes. Right. They're having difficulties hiring people too at AGCM. They they only gave him one resume. That's they only have one person. We're trying to hire 20. Well, we have we have the vice president ACM here now. We can ask him directly. They can come down. They're here. Chris, you want uh And then the other thing that Jeff can talk about is there really and AGCM will tell you this. If they come down, there's there's really only a few companies in our city in this in this immediate area that do this type of work. AGCM is the only is really the the only one. Others include Freeze and Nickels. Um and who else? My favorite company. Well, exactly. Uh a lot of the engineering firms uh they I'd say they dabble in this and they'll provide this service uh as an integral service with their design service. We we kind of quit doing that about 10 years ago because uh you know it was a negotiated rate just like with engineers. it wasn't the competitive rate and uh we also felt like it created some conflict of interest situation where your paycheck has same logo as the plans. So right there's only AGCM is the really only company that provides this level of service. So to have a short list well AGCM is a specific company for project management and they have those certain things. No well what I'm trying to give is an an alternate an alternate solution. Okay, hold on. Hold on. I'm providing an alternate solution. I understand that, you know, you may not agree with that and you have some frustration associated with that, but that's okay. You can, you know, just take a deep breath and we'll we'll deal with it. Uh, okay. So, that's my recommendation. I'm going to vote no on the additional FTEES, but I recommend you coming back with uh some master service agreements that you can expand your availability on project management, engineers, whatever you in terms of what you need because I think you get that quicker because it already exists. Thank you. We we can do both. Uh, okay. Jeff, for clarity here, I've heard multiple people talk about the budget and the spending. Did not you say that this was already in you already have the budgeted positions? Correct. Uh, well, Claudia is saying yes. The so we in engineering is a little bit unusual because we we basically have two budgets, right? So there's money budgeted in the capital budget, right, for what we do, but then we go through the same annual budget process that every other department where it caps the number of positions we have and establish what our operating budget is. And and the situation is that the the amounts budgeted in here could fund this department for probably three or four years. Okay. Currently, and our our annual budget is is way south of of that. But for me to add one person more than what is in the operating budget, that requires council act. Right. Mayor, the can I answer that please? So the answer is funding is available to pay for these 20 positions in the CIP budget. And I want this is just like the police officer already already money is available already in the CIP budget to pay for these positions. You need the positions and and and there will be a huge risk of falling behind on our projects. If if we don't staff you, not staff you, authorize the positions, you all will staff accordingly. You just made that very clear, right? Projects will fall behind. You are not here because you have nothing better to do. You're here because you need help and you have the budget for it already. You need authorization. Correct. That's correct. Okay. And so so we don't need to be we I mean this isn't about the budget. You already have that the but Claudia is saying yes with certainty. I I right I mean because I'm hearing conversation I'm thinking but but you just said you have the budget for it you just need authorization like police officers we authorize those positions and they don't fill them all always and they take time or firefighters same so you are saying please authorize me 20 more positions I will fill them according to that's not our business how you fill them right we we're policy makers it's not our business how you fill You go fill them the way you fill them. Correct. That's correct. Okay. So, so there is no budget impact. There is no budget issue. There is no we're going to we got to wait. I mean I I don't think Right. No, you clarified it was clarified for you though. First you did say that but then you Peter clarified that because I was with you. One thing. Yeah. Just because you budget something, right? Because it's a budget. Yeah. Your mic's not on. Means that you should make it's a budget. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you don't that you want to make sure that you're spending the money. Sure. The right way. Absolutely. That's But you got clarification because I I understand there's an oversight and that's what I was looking for. There's oversight. Right. No. And you're and that is a true statement. But but my my point my question you just answered it. It is authorization. You're not asking for money. the money's the budget those position the those that cost is already there. Yeah. I guess I'm asking for two things. So I'm asking for uh authorization right to to add those positions and authorization to charge that revenue against the CIP where it is well within right budgeted amount. Right. Right. Which is Right. That's got it. I just want to clarify that. Thank you. Uh, Councilwoman Vaughn. Okay. I want to make sure you get what you need. I do because the citizens voted in the bonds and I get that. But to his point, I get this because when I go build a house, I contract it out. All the workers are there. When they get through, they're done. They're gone. I don't keep them for 20 years on my payroll. And that's what she's referring to because the funding is available to end the budget. And I get that, Mr. Son. is now for this year, next year, however long you're going to do those projects, which is probably going to take a while. And I get that, but I also look at the long term. I don't want to hire 20 people and then have to pay for them for 20 more years if we don't need them. And you may need them. Let me ask you a couple questions. Y'all talked about vehicles. Everyone in the department doesn't get vehicles, do they? No, it's just it's the inspectors. It's people that the ones that go outside on the site. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So, how many you think in your department don't have just an estimate out of those 103? Uh, I think about half. Okay. Have vehicles. Okay. So, that tells me they're doing other things inside and they're not going to go out and inspect the the the project. Um, of the 272 projects that you had from last year or whenever, how many of those projects were have been done? Is that what you still have? Uh well that's uh about what we still have. So and then wow we added 38 with the new uh bond. So we've got 100 active construction contracts right now that we're managing. Okay. And so what is your oldest project you don't have done? Uh the oldest project I don't have done. Well, we've got a couple of projects that are going to be coming to council here and uh it's probably the answer is probably North Beach and we delayed them on purpose because of the bridge. Yeah. Council just approved the construction contracts like for Beach Avenue. That's a 20 that's a 1998 bond program project. But then 18, but we delayed that on purpose 18. Yeah, I'm sorry. 2018. but we delayed it on purpose cuz we weren't certain of the bridge uh ramp exit and North Beach the North Beach Association was was in agreement with that to wait and so we've packaged everything together. That's that $26 million contract that's at work right now. That's probably the oldest one that's on the books. Sure. Okay. We do have a couple of other 2018s that are coming that we had an engineering firm that something defunked and we had to yank those back and give them to another firm because we couldn't get them to the finish line. Well, I'll say y'all have certainly caught up because in the years I was here, we had a lot of projects that had not been done that were very old. So, that's good. That's good. Um, how comfortable are you with doing contracts? Uh, I am fine with contracts. In fact, I I see Chris back there. If he's got any resumes, uh, send them to me, sir. Um, uh, and we've got contract capacity on his contract. if if he's got some people that are good fit. I I've got absolutely no objection to But the other side of it is does he have enough people? We don't know that. Um well, I don't think now I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I was in that business for about 15 years. And you don't keep people on the payroll that you don't have actively engaged. Sure. So, um, uh, that's that's a prescription for not being too successful in that business because we have to have people that know what they're doing or they're going to mess up the projects. We're it's going to cost us money. You want people that know what they're doing, but uh, you also, you know, are looking at people that are available. Yeah. Like I said, another firm, one of the engineering firms, when they saw me last week, they offered up a guy who had been an inspector for us before. He's really great guy. I' I'd like to bring him on, but he's like 50% available and rate they wanted for him was $153. Uh, which is high good bit north of what we think we can build an inspector for. Like I said, I want to make sure you get what you need. I do. And I think everybody up here does, I think we're just concerned about the long term. But from what you're saying, Mr. Cone, you may not get them for a while anyway, right? And there's uh they may not, first of all, all the 20 may never all be filled. And then secondly, um, if we have to reduce have a reduction in force, there's opportunities to move position people from one position to another. There's like positions in the organization. There's inspectors at aviation as an example. There's some in parks. And so, it's not like we're going to hire people and then say, we're going to have to get rid of you. We have a reduction force. In the six years I've been here, when we've reduced positions, only two people uh were impacted because they did they didn't want to continue with the city. We placed in this last budget close to 40 I think 45 people in another position even though we eliminate its position. So we have a process that the city has used prior to me even getting here. Uh but it's all about managing the budget. So Jeff is one of 29 departments. He has to manage his budget to the bigger enterprise. If we see revenues and projects are slowing down for one reason or another, numerous people are going to tell Jeff slow your filling. I'm going to do it. The HR director is going to do it. Michael's going to do it. Budget director is going to do it. So, there's a lot of internal checks and balances. Okay. We're a big enterprise. It's not Jeff over here just doing whatever he wants to do and then we're doing everything else. We all work together. And so, there's numerous checks and balances. And this is 30 doing it this way here with the city staff positions is 30% less expensive. 30%. So, in today's day and age where we're trying to save every dollar, um 30%'s a big deal. It is, you know. Yeah. So would you address since so many of us said that about okay the project's here you do the project then you keep your employees for 20 will you address that what is your thought on that well so any so take this bond program that just was passed by the voters that the 175 million that had 33 projects it's going to take three to four years to do those projects so it's very long lead he it's going to take him 6 months to fill the position so that means he has another two and a half years for that person to get the work done and so we move flow uh here on this business because there's a lot of work to do. Uh so those positions will be on for a while, but if we see that, hey, it looks like this next bond program, we're not going to do it. As people leave the organization, retire, go to another job, we'll leave those positions vacant and we've got the money to pay for them in the projects for those 5 10 years. Exactly. Okay. The big missing picture, and I appreciate you bringing it up, Councilwoman Bond, is it's about the overall management of the city. That's what we do as a living. That's it. So, it's not just we're singularly focused on one thing. Jeff has to be focused on recruiting positions, making sure those projects are done right, managing his budget, listening to the overall uh organizational goals. And right now, this time of year, it's about the budget. So, and I think we just need to remember this. Mark, you're going to remember we were here, we had projects that were 10, 15 years behind. We did, right? We did the analysis when I got here six years ago. The average time to deliver a bond program of not even nearly the size we're doing today was 10 years. Yeah. 10. We're doing them in four, three to four years. And why is because we have professional staff in the organization. When I first got here, Jeff was the only director in the department. The assistant directors are all contract help making even more than the city manager at the time. We really didn't disclose that too much. But so now we have a good process in place. We're getting projects done. There are some times when like a a a brown lead doesn't come out as good as we want, but uh most of the time the projects are done successfully. Internal inspectors working for us is the business model that we recommend. And as a result of what happened years ago with leadership, city managers, city councils, that's how we got behind. That's my only point here because I don't like hiring a bunch of people. But I see that I'm thinking we don't want to go backwards. We want to go forwards. Right? So this is a hard one. Yeah, Miss Van, let me add one thing to add on to what Peter said. Now, this is not a policy. It's not a rule, but I I want you all to remember it and you can use it against me anytime. That 6% I I think is a very good metric. It compares with Army Corps of Engineers, Naval Facilities Command. It was way south of what San Antonio gave for budget guidance and and their department that managed the capital programs. Yeah, if if we start cutting back on the projects that are added in and I keep all the people, I I'm going to blow through that that 6%. So, that kind of becomes selfp policing. Okay, Councilwoman, you're done. Councilwoman, you're good. Okay. No, you're fine. Okay, we have uh Councilman Scott and then Vetta, then Ken, too. All right. so quickly. I made light of it last week, but I'm going to support this because I just want you to get it done. And I don't want to I don't want it done by Saturday. I want it done by Friday. You know, uh for me, uh I would I'm a huge fan of AGCM. I think they do great work. I' I'd get some of them in the 20. I get that that is it is technically cheaper to do in-house. I'm just going to tell you that if there does come a time to rift, then then I'm all in and I want it to be happen. I want it to happen sooner rather than later. And I just want to get that out there so we don't have to have conversation. My sense is there's still a lot of projects need to get done in corpus. Then we need to find a way to to get them done and put them on bond programs to get them passed. So um I do think you managed the department well. That 6% kind of resonated in me. I do want to apologize. I'd step out a little work crisis. I think we've resolved it. So I'm back. I am going to support it. I'm going to trust that you guys will manage it well and manage it expeditiously and manage it fiscally soundly uh because I do think money is getting tight. So, I'm in. Great. Thank you, Councilman Scott. Councilman Bonetta. Okay. Um uh first off, a couple things. Uh man, I've been doing this a lot lately. Gil, I want to apologize to you. I felt like Monty from um um Land Man. and I'll I'll send you the scene, you know, but uh um you know, Jeff, first off, I want to say for everybody's sake, at the risk of another comment Gil made to me privately earlier, um you know, I talked to an engineer the other day and he said, "There's not many people in the country that could put out $30 million a month." Said, he said that he said, "Man, you got a good guy there." I said, "Are you sure Jeff Edmonds cyclist?" So, but anyway, uh so your peers think very highly of you. Um what is it? U and you know part of my frustration in and and and and is is this the way I've been reviewing this is not you. It's it's a governance issue now. And and I'm I just want to ask a question. I'm not trying to direct or criticize. Did Did council member Paxton direct you to contact the vendor, negotiate or to get pricing? Uh I I think we had some wires crossed in our communication. No, no, no. But I'm just saying it it was it Michael that directed you to to issue an RFP or do a get some quotes? Michael's your supervisor, right? That's correct. Okay. So, did was Michael She made a request to you, not from you, from your supervisor, from I know we're we're Peter's supervisor, and Peter's Michael's supervisor. Now, I I appreciate you extending a courtesy, and maybe you didn't understand, but I just I just and I'm sorry. I I don't mean that in a negative way. I just don't feel that's governing. I feel that's management. and we pay somebody $49,000 a year, of which I fully support and I've been highly scrutinized for, but I'm not I I I I'm not one of those people in the entire country that can manage 300 $30 million a month. So, but I I do know I do know something about management and I know I always say, gosh, I don't want to manage. I just want to vote up or down. Just give me something to vote yes or no. And hence my frustration. Now, there have been times that some management recommendations that I've made have been followed through on. You know, I think we would agree. I think we had some great success in municipal court. We've had some great success in human resources where some of mine is, but but I don't discuss it here. You know, I I don't like the idea of I don't like the idea of bringing it up from the deis. And most of the time I call Peter and then I'll ask Peter, "Can I talk to Michael?" You know, that's that's where I'm frustrated right now. I understand what you're trying to do. You know what? Kudos to you. I just don't think this is the right place to do it because that's why we work as a collective. You know, now as far as this, I obviously support it. The only reason I voted to table it is I felt council members didn't understand it. You know, I think number one, you're operating at maximum efficiency. You know, I would say my firm is operating at ma maximum efficiency, but when I fall out, all of a sudden things start to fall apart. And right now, we're going from 360 million and we've got 600 million on the books. And you're saying, I'm already pushing my people where they're more than optimal because the standard in the industry is 6%. Correct. You're exceeding that. Short answers to I don't want you to, you know, you know, I want long answers from Miles and he always gives me short answers or sometimes vice versa. So I I just want to know what time it is. I don't want you to build me a clock. And I think right now the ch the fr my frustration is that we're trying to tell you you're the expert how to build a clock. You know, a minute. Damn it. I'm going to have to start again. But but anyway, I obviously support this and that's my frustration and that's why I say, you know, I just think if you don't like it, you should vote no. And if something happens and something along the line, then we can go back and we can go back to the team and we can say, hey, this is a process. I I think we have too many does here, you know? I mean, that's the whole thing. And I I just think that the deis is the wrong place to try and manage that. I I was a huge adv I'm a huge advocate for AGCM, you know. I mean, unfortunately, I've known Veronica almost since birth, you know, and so uh what is it? Went to elementary school with my son, you know, and uh I think the world of all of them. I I I said I sat with with Chris Major at Beville 10 a decade ago when he was working for them. So, I think the world of them and so um um 17 seconds. Anyway, I support your project. I support what you're doing. I know it's within the budget and kudos to you for doing it uh with uh uh within um below the industry standard and saving the city some money. Thank you. Thank you, council. Let me let me respond to one thing you said. I I wanted to be known. I'm a big fan of AGCM. They are a valued partner. I ride bikes with Veronica. Uh so, um you know, we have current folks from them and I do want to see if they've got resumes. Look like they've got available folks that are a fit. Please send them on over. Yeah. Uh and so it's not an eitheror kind of situation. Thank you. Uh Councilman Kentu, I got like four questions on the 20 full-time positions that that you want us to approve today after the sales, how you say, slows down, what happens to those employees again? Well, what I would have to do now, and look, we have to go through this kind of thought process all the time because we never know whether a bond referendum is going to pass or not. Correct? So, we've got two different futures that we got to kind of plan for. Uh, and so what we would have to do is is start trimming the sales. But, but bear in mind, in fact, uh, I hate to tell a story, but I can't pass up the opportunity. So, uh, years ago, former city manager Ronald, and there was a big initiative from city council, uh, I believe some of y'all were there. I believe Carolyn was there, Mark was there, but they said, "We're going to go to zerobased budgeting." You know, we're we're going to just drop the hammer and, uh, cut back. And I asked for a meeting with the manager. I said, "Okay, I need to understand this." He's like, "Yeah, it's like absolute minimum, the minimum legal required level of effort." I said, 'Well, you know, I've got all these construction contracts. You talking about trying to terminate these for convenience? I I said, ' That's actually going to increase my workload. I said, 'If you start putting in a zero CIP, you know, that will affect me, but not so much in the current fiscal year. If you do that year after year, yeah, that's going to start affecting me and I need to plan for that and I need to start ramping down. Um, so yeah. Yeah. So, so my question is in two years from now sales are done. We we got the projects done two to four years. Do we terminate those employees? You move them around. What do you Yes. The answer to that is yes. We go through a a riff process if we have to to stay within our means. But I'm telling the council, we would try to put them in a another vacant position, Councilman. So the the we have we have gone through this just in this current budget. We had to eliminate. So So we have them in this budget, but we don't have them in a couple years budget. like this is just this year's budget that we have these 20 positions in. Correct. Well, so I mean it it does carry forward, but um yeah, you know, I' I'd like to go back to uh this slide. So the the the best forecast I've got of what future tasking is for my department uh is what's in the approved capital budget. Oops. I don't know what happened there. Uh uh so there's a 10-year forecast in there and that 10-year forecast is about twice the level of activity that I'm putting out right now. So even if you cut that in half, I'm I'm staffing for current levels of activity. Uh now if that goes down below that, uh you know, we're going to have to respond to that. Correct. So, uh, if I don't, and this is kind of what I was saying to to Miss Vaughn, uh, if if I keep all the employees and our throughput goes down, my costs as a percent of that throughput go up. And so, I'm trying to etch this in stone. That 6% I I think is a good comparison to peer organizations. And if my costs start drifting above that, we've got to correct. We've got So my other question is why do we have to get 20 people on payroll? Why can't we just do contract labor? And then when the job is done, it's done and they go on their way on their way. That's two two-part answer, Councilman. Okay. One is that this won't authorize 20 bodies of 20 people. It's just the slot to put them in and that's what we manage over time. Um and then I mean it saves us money. saves us. Yeah, it's about cars. They have they have their own cars. Now, they the so the rate that Jeff mentioned, this 110 to 120 with like an AGCM, that includes the price of a car at an advertised rate. So, you're paying say the car has a fifth fiveyear life, you're paying 1/5if of that and we don't have the asset once we pay the money to AGCM. And you guys are telling us today that if we don't approve this, there's a lot of projects not going to get done. Correct. Uh well uh we're going to give it the old college try to uh get everything done that that we possibly can understand. Uh but you know what's happening is we're overtasking people. Right. Okay. And and and when you're overtasking people, it it causes things like delays. Yeah. Okay. And and delays actually cost money. And we've seen that where we have to rebid projects. The bids come in higher than they were the first time. My third my third question real quick is um fourth question is how many vehicles you want to purchase? 12. 12. I probably seen more than 12 vehicles parked in parking garages for a week, maybe a month at a time, not even touched, dusty. I mean, do we not look at vehicles around town that's parked and not doing anything? I mean uh I mean for example, not trying to pick on you, but on the parks department at the parks rec department, our office there, I used to office there and it was a vehicle parked there for days, maybe weeks, not even touched, moved or anything. That's one vehicle. There's other vehicles I've seen in different different areas that we just buy these vehicles and we just park parked. You know, why buy 11 vehicles if 12 vehicles if we have vehicles out there not being used? Yeah. Ours ours are all parked overnight, but the majority of them on during the day out on job sites. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think that is all my questions that I had. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Uh Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to clarify since borderline accusation was made a moment ago. Borderline. I'll leave it at that to be friendly. When we had our meeting, a company was named as a person that we go through for contract services to offset completing projects where we don't have the bandwidth internally. I feel like as someone who is charged with having to make responsible decisions that I need to have the information on both sides of the spectrum of options in order to make that decision confidently. So for me asking for timelines, availabilities and costs, I'm not I didn't walk up to Jeff, Mr. Edmunds, and say, "I want you to go cast this net out and go get proposals." That is not what happened. I care very much about this city, the community, this organization, the projects, and everyone in this in this department, and all of our city staff. That is why these decisions are important. And I think all of the questions that are asked up here were probably asked in our one-on-one questions with this director. And if we didn't get the answers that we needed then, and if the feedback from those meetings was that a lot of the council is still indecisive and there's still more information, then maybe this object needed to be pushed down the line a little bit more. But it's it's within our scope. If we have questions or need further clarification when we've already sent emails, we've already had conversations, then we ask them here. We take that job seriously, I would hope. Thank you, Councilwoman Bond. I just want to kind of take up for her a little bit. Um, hey, it's not a bad thing to have a bunch of doses up here either. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. I think what's happened here is you wanted the information. I think there was a misunderstanding and and I don't I think we all know we don't demand stuff from the staff. We know we have to go through Mr. And I don't think that she that was an intention to do that. But Roland, I would just like to say this. I'm probably not going to be your best friend after this, but you've been on some radio shows and you've really kind of dogged the council, the ones on here that you say they, you know, we want more time because they don't understand it. No, we do understand it. I can talk for myself. I understand it. I just have questions. I'm not going to rubber stamp anything. And that's a good thing. And I'm sure you didn't mean it like that. But you know me, I just got to slap that hand. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Banetta. Yes, ma'am. That's why you're my best friend. That's right. That's right. It's like I tell my wife, I said, you know, I'm very powerful outside of this house. No. Um I, you know, in fact, I was just going to echo what you had said. I, you know, just to use an example. And once again, it's just my frustration because I believe governing is a determination of voting up or down. And and I I I ask I I think it's important to ask questions. I think it's important I and I ask most of my questions beforehand because I fully want to understand and I want the meeting to be as efficient as possible, you know, and if we still don't understand, everybody's entitled to it. I'm not I'm not debating. I'm just saying I'm just expressing my frustration, you know, uh what is it? Uh but, you know, in the example of the home building, I think, and I'm not being critical, I'm just trying to expand. I'm of the opinion that we're not just building one house. We're building We know that we have 6,000 homes to build and all of a sudden now we need to staff up for that. So I think that's that's the situation that we're in. So I obviously support it. I just once again I just think my frustration has been because I think governoring is just voting up or down and if we're unhappy with how things are running then we have one person that we speak to about it, you know, and I I just think so. So with that, I move to approval. I move for approval. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? I'm going to open public comment quickly. Uh is there anyone in the audience that would like to make a comment on item number 25? Okay, there being no one, we're going to close public comment and please submit your vote. Yep. Okay. I'm sorry. The uh the motion carries. Mr. Ed, oh, are you up for the next one? I've got the next one, too. All right. Well, the next one's um a fun one. Item and the LA item 26 and our last item of the day is an ordinance approving and authorizing an advanced funding agreement between the city of Corpus Christie and the Texas Department of Transportation for the Holly Road train trestle to tourism trail project. Mayor, I'm sorry. We didn't amend the Didn't we need to amend the totals in the ordinance, Jeff, on the previous one? Because they're incorrect. Oh, right. We did. I'm sorry. Okay. So, what do we need to do? We need to amend them. What do we need to do? The the caption was incorrect on that one. Okay. So, what do we need to do? Yeah. Well, I mean, we've already approved it. I think we need to reconsider it and then Okay, let's do that. Do it. So, let's reconsider it. So, let's Can someone make a motion to reconsider? So, move. Okay, we have a motion in a second. Uh, Mr. Scott, Miss Vaughn. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. So, now let's make a motion to amend. Amend. We have a motion and a second for the amendment. Right. All in favor? Is just for the record. So the 2025 impact is1,75,243 and then the FY2026 recurring amount is1,969 $969,676, right? Correct. So that's okay. So there's a motion and a second to amend. Yeah. All in favor say I. I. Any oppose say no. The motion carries and then we'll approve it as amended. So is there a motion as amended? Yes. Motion. Motion to approve is a minute and a second. All in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Say no. The motion carries. Thank you. So now we have a motion by Miss Paxton for item number 26, right? Yeah. Okay. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second. Um I'm going to open I think we did that. That's what we just did. We just did. We just did that. Yeah, we're doing 26. Yeah, we're on 26. Yeah, we did. Uh we had to reconsider the previous one because we didn't include the amendment. That's what happened. So, I'm going to Now, we approved it as amended. I'm opening public comment. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make comment on item number 26, which is the trestle project? Okay. There being no one, we'll close public comment. Uh, Councilman Hernandez. Yes. Uh, Mayor, thank you. I just want to express my frustration with Councilman Betta because I'm just frustrated with him regardless of the issue. Thank you. and it's just a one ball of frustration over there. Uh so I just, you know, I had to express it uh as you know in every one of these items is he's the frustration. Thank you. Thank you for that. My goal has been reached. Okay. Um, and and before we move on, we I know we're trying to, you know, it's been a long day, but but this is a very special project and and this is in your your uh district, Councilwoman Paxton, but this goes way way back. And so, um, Greg Smith and I were a part of this way back when, and so were many other people and council members. Um, but I know this is a huge milestone, especially for Flower Bluff, because Flower Bluff, you know, they're they're very very hands-on. They walk the walk. They, you know, carry their weight. And I think this is a big uh great example of a a really good partnership between city staff and and the community. So, I'm sure they're listening. Kudos and congratulations to our Hornets out there for, you know, bringing this to fruition alongside the city. Councilwoman, you just wanted the last word. You didn't want me to have the last word on Roland. Um I just have a question. That interest money, how much is left in that? I'm going to have to call in a line. It was interesting because I didn't even know you had this. So, it was interesting to see it. Y'all shouldn't have told us. I'm Heather Hbert, assistant city manager. Um, right now we've got about $3 million that is unassigned. So, we are proposing just to use a portion of not including the $3 million is left, but the um portion for this um there's also some no projects that we're going to be coming forward with. We needed some local match that we're going to be proposing using some of that money for that, too. Um, even with those two commitments, we have about $3 million that'll be left that can be used for other things. Okay. Just curious. Thank you. Sure. Uh, Councilman Scott, just quickly, thank you. This is a cool project. The cyclists are all excited about it. The, uh, the hikers are all excited about it. Um, the walkers, huh, the walkers runners. Walk. Yeah, the walkers are all excited about I I think maybe the conversation to be had and maybe it's already being had is what happens when it's completed cuz that's going to be so cool and then people are going to be I I get our side of it, the mainland side of it, that's easy. You go into the the the the hiking trail, the Flower Bluff side. What I'm curious is what are we going to do or what's happening on the Flower Bluff side to augment the success and move walkers, hikers, and cyclists into the Flower Bluff area. And I is that is that a conversation for another day? That's okay. I I I can't have that, but I can say we're going to connect with the the sidewalks on Flower Bruff Drive. So, it's a it's going to be a coolest project uh for years. That thing is going to be so successful. Uh those of us that can't really get out over water can walk that and stop. And I think there's some cutouts where you can kind of stop and get out of my way as I cycle over it. I just mayor, thank you for council members that did this in the past. Thank you for your work. I will tell you I was kind of behind the scenes kind of pushing that um just from a private citizen because I think it has uniquely positive opportunities to improve the connectivity between those communities. Thank you, mayor. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you, Councilman and Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you, Mayor. Um you're so right. I and I just want to echo that this is an it's such an important project for the district particularly flower bluff but um and I know Heather I've probably emailed you since election at Nauseium over this project. So I hope I I know that this is an exciting moment just to not get those emails anymore. So So there'll be more probably now as we continue to to develop this. I would certainly love to to continue the dialogues where um you know that community flower bluff really cherishes the the local spaces these raw environmental spaces and there's you know neighboring towns Porteranis has truly capitalized on that well it's a huge draw I can see that for flower bluff a huge element there and I hope that this is a tremendous cornerstone for that and the future of the OSO preserve serve. I know we've had some discussions, Heather. I'd like to continue those if possible, but thank you for all the team's hard work on this and and if there's more in that interest budget, we got sidewalks and lights to talk about. Thank you. Great. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman. Um yeah, we're going to go ahead and submit our vote, please. Who seconded the motion? We heard Miss Paxton. Can Can I just get a second? And I think Okay. Thank you so much. I'm invited. Okay, great. Motion carries. Mr. Edmonds, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, there being no further uh business, this meeting is adjourned.