everything's ready okay foreign um say well campers right there did it all right foreign year oh the present teacher yeah shine are we honoring them again good job um afternoon that's good you're welcome were you able to find mine good morning sunshine may I I present you with the revisions I'm doing well thank you you're in okay yes I just organized myself it's over 4 000 though at your convenience sorry it brought it all right I'll get rid of this we continue it's crazy oh I got it down to an hour 60 people doing it like that's okay all right I think I'm good okay that means history good morning you fix it you really practice my dramatic cause though foreign okay you'll have to do if you don't want to but we could do lunch tomorrow also I can't come on Friday I'm sorry my friend Janice is coming in town her birthday um mm-hmm Laura did you get a comment from okay never mind Paul Thompson had texted me a comment and I was like did you send it to miss Prine and then he just got he got back to the while I was driving um but he said you had it I don't want to read any comments did anybody asked me to read any comments I'm not going to read that I'm sorry today's not the day sure you know that's my fault I know that I like said something offhand but never followed up with you and we were revisiting I don't mind reading them I do think that it should be oh my son minimizing anything foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign all right I I left my house what was it Indian um no um it just would not they just need to achieve the rules how weird foreign like usually what it means is that I went in about five times and five shirts oh I see you never mind yeah so scarce that's saving my life now you like the dating Harvest I never tried it but I like the way it looked it just looks like a great smoothie I have it in my book too and I forgot it number District reps we had to clean the screen sorry good morning foreign good morning are you ready Miss Prime good morning mayor yes sir good morning this is a meeting of the El Paso city council for Tuesday February 28 2023 mayor Lisa is present and presiding inside council chambers along with representative Kennedy mayor Pro temanello representative Hernandez alternate mayor protemolinar representative Salcido representative Fierro representative Rivera and representative Canales it is 906 A.M and now will everyone please silence their electronic devices so as not to disturb the meeting and rise for the invocation delivered by Rabbi Levi Greenberg good morning Rabbi good morning I would like to begin with an act of charity Sovereign of the universe look favorably upon mayor Oscar liser and The Honorable members of the city council of our great city of El Paso and bestow upon them and all of us gathered here today the joy of life good health and prosperity next week the Jewish world will celebrate the holiday of Purim the anniversary of the miracle recorded in the biblical Book of Esther in synagogues and homes all over the world the book will be read twice inspiring us to apply its lessons in our daily lives when the Jewish leader Mordechai asked his cousin Queen Esther to use her influence to avert haman's diabolical plot of genocide she was frightened she didn't believe she had much chance of success and the attempt would put her life at risk Mordechai rebuked her for this paradise if you are silent at this time relief and rescue will come to the Jews in some other way but you and your family will be lost and who knows perhaps it was for just such a time that you achieved royalty you did not get where you are by accident God put you there and for a reason it may well be that God Made You Queen to give you this opportunity to act for your people and go down in history as a heroine if you let it go God will find some other way to achieve his will but you and your whole family will be consigned to infamy the lesson is clear we did not achieve our respective positions by accident or by our own efforts God selected us and put us there so that we could do his will when we are challenged to do what is right rather than what is convenient or safe it is up to us to make the right choices Sovereign of the world grant us all the wisdom and courage to apply the powerful lessons of the Book of Esther so that we be able agents of goodness and peace to ourselves our families our communities and to the entire world give this honorable Council guidance so that they will always be conscious of your presence and will strive to enact laws with honesty and integrity in accordance with your will May our Borderlands region serve as a beacon of light to all of humanity as we do our part in preparing the world for an era of Global Peace and tranquility may this occur speedily in our times amen thank you very much this morning to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance we have the following students from Emmanuel Christian School Mia Dominguez Vincent puga Chris Munoz Hannah Campos Brianna elridge Grace Johnson Jonathan Munoz Juan Guerrero Matthew Aguila Israel Molina and Camila Guerrero thank you you're the line leader this morning [Applause] which one all right next one is for me like a girl Chris Munoz Hannah Campos guys thank you [Applause] good morning everyone um thank you again for Manuel Baptist you guys did a wonderful job and I do want to thank everyone for being here I would like to um you know we always need to think of good things that happen in life and continue to thank for the opportunity and I'd like to do that today as we have so many things to be thankful in our lives and I also want to have a moment of silence while we're doing that for uh putting on those reasons I meet us which is Stephanie you want to stand up please Stephanie is her father that passed away last night so I do want to have a moment of silence for him and think of all the great things in life thank you thank you Miss Prine thank you mayor we now move to the mayor's proclamations the first Proclamation is women's History Month in the city of El Paso whereas women's History Month celebrates the achievements and important contributions of women and whereas El Paso Community College EPCC diversity and inclusion program will present its annual women's History Month celebration entitled celebrating women who tell our stories and whereas in honor of women's history among El Paso Community College diversity and inclusion programs will conduct virtual presentations each Wednesday at noon in the month of March in order to engage Inspire and celebrate women everywhere at Diamond award ceremony will be held on March 8th to recognize acknowledge and appreciate EPCC Diamond award recipients for the commitment hard work and dedication to this institution and whereas it remains our responsibility as a citizen to promote awareness and knowledge of women's history now therefore be proclaimed by the mayor and the Council of the city of El Paso through the month of March shall be known as women's History Month in the city of El Paso signed by The Honorable mayor Oscar liser good morning congratulations [Applause] good morning good morning mayor and City Representatives uh thank you once again for providing this Proclamation my name is Lee Vasquez and I'm the coordinator for diversity inclusion programs at EPCC we did hand you all a flyer on there with all our events and we want to take this moment to invite you and all the community to our events we do have three virtual events that will happen every Wednesday in the month of March and they're from noon to 1 30. and then we also have a diamond award ceremony that's going to happen in the second week of March uh that one is where we kind of highlight our EPCC women selected women the honorees that have done something good for EPCC and for the community so that's our in-person event at all rest our virtual the community can visit us at epcc.edu diversity Inquisition webpage for all these events and also in our social media so we invite you all to join us for that thank you very much thank you [Applause] and if this morning's honorees will please wait in Chambers Council will have an opportunity to take photos with you once all the proclamations are completed the next Proclamation is women in construction week thank you Laura Proclamation city of El Paso Texas whereas the El Paso chapter 248 has been over 40 years distinguished itself as the voice of women in construction in El Paso and whereas the chapter has donated labor material and equipment in support of the child crisis center the Ronald McDonald House Lee bura children home and a host of other community entities throughout the history and whereas the chapter has supported local college students with scholarships totaling to forty five thousand since 1978 and whereas the El Paso chapter of n a WIC is the oldest continuous construction industry association with a chapter in El Paso and whereas El Paso chapter number 248 and its many dedicated members is recognized for its steadfast work on behalf of its support of women in construction encouraging our citizens to congratulate the organization on its many accomplishments and now therefore be a proclaimed by the mayor and the Council of the city of El Paso that the week of March 5th through March 11 2023 shall be known as women in construction week signed by The Honorable mayor Oscar liser thank you good morning thank you would you like would you guys like to say something so good morning mayor good morning city council uh just so that you guys know that this is our 25th anniversary for women in construction week we will be hosting uh the March the 5th through 11th many activities that we welcome you guys to come and participate with us also too on March the 11th we will have a 5K run that also helps participate in our week week women's and construction week can you introduce yourself please I'm sorry Sandra Padilla thank you thank you very much for being here and congratulations [Applause] and the final Proclamation is developmental disabilities Awareness Month I'm sure whereas people with disabilities are important vital part of our community as valued workers Civic leaders business owners veterans family members and Friends whereas it is estimated that 14 of el pasoons live with disabilities and have an increased risk of suffering long-term effects of emergencies and whereas the Department of Public Health committed to people with disabilities created an El Paso Community Information Outreach Network to assist individuals with disabilities among other vulnerable populations with emergency preparedness planning and whereas the dph collaborates with the office of emergency management to promote the state of Texas emergency assistance registry and Community organizations to better service vulnerable populations and people with disabilities during emergencies and whereas marches development mental disabilities awareness month and dph will have different events to raise awareness about development development mental disabilities emergency preparedness as communities are strong and more resilient when they are inclusive of people of all disabilities and community and emergency planning none therefore now therefore be it proclaimed by the mayor and Council the city of El Paso that March shall be known as development disabilities Awareness Month signed the honorable mayor Oscar leaser [Applause] good morning mayor and Council thank you so much for the proclamation my name is Ruth Castillo I'm the program manager for the emergency preparedness program with the Department of Public Health we work very closely with our vulnerable populations we continue empowering them and making sure that they have all the resources that they need so that way they are able to prevent recover respond to different health effects that emergencies may have we invite any organization that serves vulnerable population to visit our website so that way they can become part of our coin it is a network in which we invite representatives from different agencies serving this vulnerable populations so that way we can ensure that we are providing assistance to to our most vulnerable during March we're going to be contacting different Outreach events so that way we can provide resources and also any type of assistance that they need for emergency planning and of course promoting the estate program that provides emergency assistance during during emergencies this year again thank you so much and thank you very much everything that you do thank you [Applause] Mr Price yes sir that brings us to the consent agenda all matters listed under the consent agenda will be considered by city council to be routine and will be enacted by one motion unless separate discussion is requested by council members prior to the vote members of the audience may ask questions regarding items on the consent agenda when the vote has been taken If an item has not been called out for separate discussion the item has been approved Council May however reconsider any item at any time during the meeting Pride I make a motion to approve the consent agenda with the following revisions page 7 item 21 move to the Forefront for representative Hernandez page 7 item 22 moved to the Forefront per representative momentar page 8 item 25 move to the Forefront per representative Rivera I'd also like to add I believe that representative Rivera asked for added language so the language right now reads Council PowerPoint presentation on digital video recording system I believe he wanted to add and body worn cameras so the motion would read Council PowerPoint presentation on digital recording system and body worn cameras thank you thank you page 10 item 31 delete per purchasing and strategic Source Department page 11 item 32 postponed four weeks per planning and inspections page 11 item 33 postponed four weeks per planning and inspections and page 12 item 36 revised pro-economic and International Development and that revision is to strike out the word city manager and replace with a mayor so it reads discussion discussion in action that the mayor be authorized to sign an interlocal agreement those complete the revisions I'm so sorry are there any other additional revisions from Council representative Molina yes thank you very much for this opportunity mayor Pro tem showing item 22 on the back of the correct ID number for chief Ellen should be 646 they have six two six but we need to correct that 646. Miss Prime did you get that yes and this is to the backup correct representative Molina should read number 646 thank you sir there is a motion made by mayor Pro temanello seconded by representative Hernandez to approve the consent agenda as revised on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously we now turn to page number seven item number 21 is discussion in action to approve a resolution recognizing will Burger Wally schick's lifetime accomplishments and contributions to El Paso and to El Paso City Council meetings this item was placed by representative Hernandez foreign good morning you want to come on up Miss check wow Mrs Scheck makes her way up I'd like to read a resolution into the record honoring Mrs Shack's lifetime Achievements not only as an entrepreneur but as a civically engaged member of this community and we wanted to honor you Mrs Shack because you have told me as your as your representative that you are preparing to stop coming to City Council meetings and today maybe one of your last days that you come but we hope that that's not true but you know we want to honor your wishes and so the resolution reads as follows resolution and recognition of Wally Scheck whereas Wally shot grew up in Augsburg Germany during World War II where she met her husband Johnny Sheck an American Soldier whom she married in 1948 whereas while Mrs sheck's husband was stationed at Fort Bliss in 1952 she began learning English using a dictionary magazines and newspapers and commenced her writing Journey whereas Mrs Scheck self-published her books in El Paso Texas describing her memories of Hitler and the Nazis marching into her town of Augsburg Germany upending her life and changing history she produced four books and you're gonna have to help me pronounce these um it's tell me the first one of Western Syrian Alfredo thing our food is in published in 1964. it means see you again see you again the last years Volume 2 that came in 1971 say the word again yes I don't want to say it wrongly thank you brings happiness volume three and hope and joy volume 4. they were published in 2000 and 2022. whereas in 1963 in his last visit to El Paso before his assassination Mrs Sheck gave President John Kennedy two dozen roses in honor of el pasoans and whereas in 1967 Mrs check opened and ran the happy Bavarian restaurant for 17 years and in 1971 it was named in Texas monthly magazine and where you you received the yellow rows of Texas award and Ras while Mrs Scheck retired from the restaurant business in 1985. she has remained an activist throughout her life serving on the Renaissance 400 committee to revitalize downtown El Paso in the 1980s and as part of kibo pass a beautiful helping store managers to clean up their storefronts and whereas Mrs Scheck has received several public combinations concluding from the late mayor Jonathan Rogers from General James Maloney at Fort Bliss and at the age of 82 she received the 2010 first humanitarian award for volunteer of the year for spending every Thursday at Del Sol Medical Center working as an auxiliary volunteer and rasmus's check continues to be an activist and involved in current events and particularly at the local level so much so that she has attended over 361 El Paso City Council meetings I think today is 362. and now therefore be it resolved by the city council of the city of El Paso that the city council recognizes Mrs Wally Scheck for her entrepreneurial Ventures that she has brought German culture and history to the Sun City for her participation in initiatives to better El Paso and for her consistent and enthusiastic attendance at all of our City Council meetings it has been such an honor and pleasure to work with you to be held accountable by you and to listen to you and see you here at the council meetings and I hope that my colleagues would join me in honoring You by approving this resolution so I moved to approve [Applause] good morning Miss check I will have my last three minutes speech at 12 o'clock and I have a gift for everyone I wrote a letter to each one a few because we're in El Paso at the city that's supposed to be all American and I will make my and speech at 12 o'clock because it takes more than three minutes and God bless everyone of you and have patience with me okay Mr Mayor please make a good assistant this is 361. three minutes features but 80 80 minute speeches okay this represents the 361 and there's a little star of four minutes okay and this is for you the lady that could make it and it says that God who understands each need to listen to every Player's Place you and keep you in his loving Tender Care she's a mama of five thank you this is my right here thank you for your time here okay let me get it and while she's wrapping that up I've made a motion to approve thank you 20 years old as an American city that's a surprise in it is for you foreign this is for you personally okay each one represents one thing I love him please all right and this is for the police chief this is for you yeah this is receive in their Corner can be made into a monument and I have 1 000 books for foreplays and we are gonna get them out there and in the meantime there is about 200 boxes and we can put them on the ashes of the wall and I have enough letters and stuff to put it there for the decoration until you can get those two one thousand books which is four column that's four thousand books to four please and every organization here in El Paso that is legal can also order direct from feed printing company eight I have to work it out and it kind of put you in charge you the mayor and don't you ever forget that so let's listen he is Easter channel the YouTube channel and you take orders from him okay and from all my heart I say I thank you and our freedom and say means see you again but not for three minutes if you gave me four minutes and wind up one minute then I will be back thank you Mrs you invite me I love you what do you do for the city no matter everything I love me or cook but you feed them out thank you you call the question [Applause] we don't need them there was a motion made by representative by representative Rivera to approve the resolution on item 21 on that motion call for the vote laughs I'm sorry Council vote please once again in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously representative anello not present the next item that was moved to the Forefront is 22. and this is discussion in action to approve a resolution to name the current and new El Paso Police Headquarters after police chief Gregory K Allen this item was submitted by Representatives Molina Hernandez San Rivera you son who's going to be reading the resolution go ahead sir thank you very much mayor um I'd like to thank a lot of people here today but before I do get started I'd like to acknowledge my colleagues representative Cassandra Hernandez from District 3 representative Henry Nevada from district 7 for helping me uh on this issue and the co-sponsoring this item and I'm going to start by reading the resolution into the record resolution whereas Chief Gregory K Allen ID number 646 was a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1975 and whereas Chief Allen was involved in the study of martial arts for approximately 59 years and whereas Chief Allen joined the open the city of El Paso in 1978 as a police officer during Chief Allen's tenure of over 44 years he rose to the ranks as a patrol officer training specialist at the police academy sergeant lieutenant Deputy Chief and chief of police and whereas Chief Allen served in several high-profile units of the police department including the gang task force SWAT the Tactical section auto theft task force and the commander of the dignitary Protection Team whereas Chief Allen's tenure in the Tactical section in swat he serves as field officer as well as supervisor serving as the first and only supervisor of a full-time SWAT unit and whereas Chief Allen was appointed chief of police of the El Paso Police Department on March 31 2008 and whereas Chief Allen fully supported the police department and its hard work and employees who continue to provide service to the community with a sincere belief that the street police officer is the most important person in the police department and whereas based on this philosophy it is fitting that under the direction for the first time in the city's history Paso was named the safest large city in the United States for four consecutive years from 2010 to 2013 and when the top 10 safest cities in the United States for several years and whereas she found the LED generations of police officers through countless tragedies in law enforcement emergency responses within our community including the domestic terrorist attack on August the 3rd 2019 and whereas in 2019 Texas governor Abbott appointed Chief Allen to the domestic tourism task force in the wake of the El Paso shooting to combat hateful acts and extreme extremism in Texas whereas the El Paso police officers and the city of El Paso mourn the Palestinian of Chief Allen on January the 17th 2023 and whereas Chief Allen survived by his wife Roseanne and children Nicole Joseph Monique and Christopher and whereas the city councils in receiver petition signed by hundreds of El Paso police officers their family members and the public seeking to name the current and new El Paso Police Headquarters after chief Gregory K Allen now therefore be it resolved by the city council at the city of El Paso that the El Paso Police Department headquarters be named chief Gregory K Allen El Paso Police Department headquarters and that the city managers authorized to make all necessary budget transfers for that purpose and Ms Prine I'd like to also make one another correction I did say hundreds of signatures but here before me I have over 4 000 signatures yes sir thank you so if I could get a second on that resolution that'd be great thank you and I need to continue saying a few more words like to thank everybody on the El Paso Police Department that was there that day I was there our city manager there mayor was there as well for everyone who signed that petition thank you thank you very much for all of those who volunteered to go out and get signatures thank you and for everyone whose signature signed it thank you very much it cannot be overstated I like to close that and one word for me Chief Allen was my friend but I had the highest respect for that man high respect so I miss my friend Greg Allen [Applause] chief on behalf of Roseanne Chief Allen and her entire family she'd like to express sincere thank you to all of you and all the citizens the city manager who are making this happen a chief Allen's career spanned for over 44 years 15 years being the chief of police leading the fine men and women of the El Paso Police Department this example is going to set for Future Leaders of this community and it honors the legacy of Chief Allen and it's very very much appreciated so on behalf of Roseanne she would like to express her sincere appreciation and gratitude for that Roseanne this is not just a legacy for for Greg it's also the family members that struggle with the police officers going out in the field every day and you're a fine example of what it takes for a family member to endure those struggles and trials and tribulation that every family member goes through so it's very much appreciated thank you thank you chief good morning Sergeant Vela interim president for the El Paso Municipal Police Officer Association again I'd like to thank mayor you and your staff all the district reps here appreciate everything you guys did for this not only did officers go get signatures you guys went out to your constituents and assisted also we greatly appreciate it city manager Deputy city manager staff we appreciate everything you guys have done for us uh true character can be summed up in doing things that when nobody knows you're doing them as I spoke to Roseanne for about an hour on Monday she was you know very very happy with the overwhelming support not only locally through the city the mayor but nationally on everybody that continued to call her text or email or give her letters she's very very grateful for all those things however what she told me she was most grateful is now that everything has passed on and she's in the healing process there's only been about a handful of people that continue to reach out to her on a daily basis and so city manager Tommy I would like to thank you and your wife she said that you are one of the handful that continued to support her and call her on a daily basis and that the show true character thank you may God bless us all thank you good night um Roseanne I am I know that um I thank you for those conversations at night and the stories you've shared with me that are you know not surprised of many of them to be honest with you but unfortunately a lot of them I can't repeat but uh you know he was a good friend and he was a friend because he really cared you know and he didn't hide it he didn't hide it with her he liked you or didn't like you because she was very honest with himself and with all of us and um and tell you during the day I don't go by and I'll be talking to somebody and I think of something he told me or something you told me and it you know in the middle of a story so he um my last text I got which was prior to him passing he uh he wrote me and he says I'm going to have to buy a car when I retire might as well keep you in beans you know and that's the kind of friend he was he um and I have it here and I'll keep it forever but you know he he was a great leader and I think that uh you know we talk about some of the things that have happened in very near future in our community and it's like Chief falling is still leading Chief Allen is still here because of the men and women in the police department that he was able to work with and there'll always be top in their job because of the job he did to continue to bring you all as one of him and I know that um when um when I was down at Police Headquarters you guys didn't miss a beat I mean I know he was there just by your all's actions and um you know um the roughly what 1100 men and women of the police department had a good Mentor had someone that cared for them and someone that really put them in front of him and I know that's some of the conversations you and I had had Roseanne that had when he would come home and he would talk to you that he always put the men and women of the police department always in front of him and like I said if you were his friend you're his friend forever and I I'll always think of him as the leader and the person that he always rush and um may God bless him may God bless his family and may God bless you thank you and I know we've had this more than once but I'd like to have a moment of silence so we all can think of our friend and kind of talk to him not for one last time but really just talk to him and tell him what how important today means to be here and from in front of his wife and his family as we dedicate this uh the naming of the building to him and as uh as again as we think of what he's saying right now I know that uh we can't repeat what he just said but we all know that he means it with love and respect and chief he earned it you deserved it and thank you foreign thank you God bless you Roseanne and God bless you Chief thank you and and before you all we do have a couple of commenters Mrs Allen so we just representative but none this followed by representative Rivera followed by representative ice as a spouse sharing your husband with the city of El Paso he was so beloved so it's such an honor to recognize his legacy today especially in Black History Month him being the first African-American police chief in our community that's that's so significant and it makes this day even more special that we got to recognize him before the end of the month also a Highlander I'm a Highlander he's so beloved in the Lower Valley and across this community and I just wanted to give my sincere condolences and thank you for his public service and for your sacrifice and sharing him while he didn't get to enjoy retirement I'm happy now that he is watching over us and so we have a good angel watching over our community thank you again for all of your your sacrifice and service thank you also foreign and police department uh family uh it's been said Chief Allen was the leader great leader that I said it uh before we were talking to the city manager that in fact he was nationally known nationally recognized nationally loved for what he did as has been said he spoke the truth and he spoke it his way it was his way and his way only and uh but it was all for good it was all for good um like I said I got to meet him shortly after I joined the Department in 1982. I knew him for a long time and not once did he ever say uh ignored me as I was going by or any other colleague he always made sure that he acknowledged you and he looked at you and he said and made his comments and you knew you're in his favorite book oh so uh has been as husband said oh I thank you for sharing him with with us uh this long over 44 years I was there too that night and uh it was very touching to see the men and women of that department of my old Department uh nobody had a dry eye everybody respected him and everybody was talking about how much he was loved and how much he would be missed I thank representative Hernandez when I called him we were on the same wavelength about naming a building after him and what better than headquarters and as soon as the new headquarters is built correct it will follow him in that direction I thank the police department the association for doing an outstanding job nobody had to ask you twice you guys started signing those petitions immediately and as well as most of the community did and I do want to thank you for that too as well thank you very much for being here thank you very much for accepting this honor thank you representative thank you mayor I just want to also thank representative Hernandez representative Rivera and molinar for honoring Chief Ellen in this great honor um I want to say he's a great friend to me he was a great mentor and I and I was able to talk to Ms Rosanne when I walked in and I wanted to let you know that he impacted My Life as a child he would uh he was part of that test that would go to the public housing to let us know that you know cops are your friends and make sure that we're staying out of trouble it's really what they're there for but he was the great impact for me impact for El Paso I remember when I came into Council I made me extremely happy to see a face I recognized and his first gift to me was this pin so I greatly wear it makes me feel that he's close to us he hasn't left us and we share your your grief we're here with you and we want to know that that this beautiful city lost the beautiful soul and thank you for Lending them to the city of El Paso and uh and God bless you thank you and I'd like to repeat the last word Sherman I ever had because bye for now pal so Chief bye for now pal there was a motion made by representative molinar seconded by representative Rivera to approve the resolution on item 22 on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously representative anello not present would Council like Teresa thank you Council thank you before we do I just wanted to let you know that on behalf of city council we we have a plaque commemorating today's action and to just to read it very brief Chief Gregory K Allen El Paso Police Department headquarters thousands of signatures were gathered in support of naming the El Paso Police Headquarters after chief Greg Allen in honor of Chief Allen's tenure and Legacy to the police department and to the city of El Paso the city resolution approving the naming was signed on February 28th of 2023 and this is going to be for you to take home this is Alan we're here with you today tomorrow and forever thank you mayor I'll make this quick and um it was Chief Allen that did my background check back in 1984 1985 that brought me into the El Paso Police Department I'm always grateful for that I saw a man that respected me and once again I respected him as well and with that window without saying even before I was a city rep he always acknowledged my work that I did when I worked in the white house with President Ronald Reagan and he always acknowledged that and during promotional ceremonies he always told people about that and I think he was very proud of me but I was extremely proud of him as well and Roseanne thank you very much for everything that you've done and to the men and women and the I don't like calling them civilians but the non-uniform Personnel in the El Paso Police Department thank you very much we are in good hands thank you is there a motion to recess there's a motion in a second to recess a council meeting all in favor anyone opposed and the meeting is in recess at 9 58 A.M for photos council members if I could get you actually out in the entrance of the chambers because we've got pretty large groups going here so we're not going to do it in the chambers itself but outside of the chamber Lobby and we're going to go ahead and start first with the women in constru no I'm sorry the women's History Month folks if the women's History Month folks could join us outside in the lobby entrance followed by the women in construction and then developmental uh disabilities awareness month and then we're going to go ahead and move on to um Miss Wally Chuck and then the naming of Chief Allen's I'm gonna get the women about the birds out here please [Music] foreign foreign thank you chance don't worry if we can get you out here foreign thank you you know okay thank you any pictures thank you uh yes but I'll give this right back to you sir thank you it's not tall Miss Prine can uh Rick can we reconvene our meeting should we go to mass transit first yes ma'am thank you have already reconvened right right good morning this is a meeting on the mass transit Department board for Tuesday February 28 2023 president in presiding as board chair Lisa and board members Brian Kennedy Alessandra nello Cassandra Hernandez Joe molinar Israel Henry Rivera and Chris Canales it is 10 10 a.m We have once a design signed up for call to the public today and that is Mr Steven Strummer I do not see Mr Stromer in Chambers that brings us to the consent agenda all matters listening to the consent agenda will be considered by mass transit Department board to be routine and will be enacted by one motion unless separate discussion is requested by board members prior to the vote members of the audience may ask questions regarding items on the consent agenda when the vote has been taken If an item has not been called out for separate discussion the item has been approved the mass transit Department board May however reconsider any item at any time during the meeting have a motion by board member Henry duvetta seconded by board member alessandranello to approve the consent agenda on that motion call for the vote and in the voting session the motion passes unanimous unanimously nine to zero that brings us to the regular agenda being item five discussion and action on the request that the managing director of purchasing and strategic sourcing Department be authorized to issue purchase order to Cummings Incorporated DBA coming sales and services good morning man Transit office and the parts that we need for our buses any questions there's a motion by board member Alessandra arnello seconded by board member Isabel Salcido to approve item number five on that motion call for the vote Mr Fiero enter the voting session the motion passes eight to zero board chair Lisa not present that brings us to item number six discussion action on the request for managing director purchasing strategic sourcing to be authorized to issue purchase order to Brooksville Equipment Corporation there's a motion to approve item number six by board member Henry Rivera seconded by board member Isabel Salcido and on that motion call for the vote question um future cross-functional team-related to streetcar and so I would hope that we could reactivate and place new members so we can have those discussions about the streetcar I'm sorry which cross-functional team I didn't streetcar sorry streetcar the streetcar yeah we'll reschedule thank you all right and on that motion call for the vote and this is for item number six board chair Lisa I already voted Miss alcido and in the voting session the motion passes eight to one board member Joe molinar voting nay that brings us to item number seven discussion action on the request that the managing director purchasing strategic sourcing Department be authorized to issue purchase order to park young Inc Bluetooth I have a motion by board member Alessandra nello seconded by board member Brian Kennedy to approve item number seven I just wanted to say really quick Ellen very excited about this I know we've been talking about it for a long time so I wanted to congratulate you on this thank you very much thank you on that motion on that motion call for the vote Mr Riva thank you into the voting session motion passes unanimously 9-0 that brings us to the conclusion of the agenda do we have a motion to adjourn second thank you there's a motion to address thank you all in favor yes any opposed and the meeting for the mass transit Department board has adjourned for February 28th 2023 has adjourned at 10 15 a.m thank you is there a motion to reconvene the regular city council meeting there's a motion and a second to reconvene the regular city council meeting all in favor anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 10 15 a.m we turn to page number eight item number 25 let's move to the Forefront and this is a council PowerPoint presentation on digital video recording system and body worn cameras it can have control for a moment please thank you Miss pinewell we're waiting for the presentation I know they're looking it up can we take item 24 real quick item 24 yes mayor item 24 is discussion and action regarding a resolution that the city of El Paso appoints Monica Lupita Perez to the Camino Real Regional Mobility authority to position one whose term will expire on February 1st 2025. there's a motion made by representative Kennedy seconded by representative Molina to approve item 24 on that motion call for the vote and the voting session and the motion passes unanimously item 25 is a council PowerPoint presentation on digital video recording system and body worn cameras good morning Council city manager mayor good morning assistant chief Xena Silva with the El Paso Police Department I'm here with Lieutenant Pals uh on the line on teams is Sergio signs from it and we're your core digital video recording system team I'm going to give you an update on the program for goal two setting the standard for a safe and secure City we did have a previous Council update last year almost exactly about this time February 24 2022. so we chose axon as our digital video recording system software and Hardware program and this goes way back to the summer of 2018 when City rep Henry Rivera was able to get us a hundred and ten thousand dollar Grant from the Endeavor Corporation to finance the first purchase of our body camera program I know he likes that picture so I keep showing us so what we did with the money we took the hundred and ten thousand dollars and it was able to provide an additional almost sixty three thousand dollars and we were able to purchase 34 body cameras at the time we used the watch guard camera system we use that money to buy servers and accompanying hardware and software we decided to deploy those 34 cameras 17 to the driving while intoxicated or DWI task force and the other 17 went to the crisis intervention or CIT team and we were able to deploy those cameras in June of 2019 so it's been quite a long time since we started the program in 2020 we received fifty thousand dollars from the Cardwell Foundation that money became available in 2021 and we use that money to purchase replacement equipment for the cameras cameras last about three years we came back to council and we talked to you about establishing a full-blown body camera program we ask that you would support us purchasing 700 body cameras for the patrol and the traffic division of the El Paso Police Department along with 410 of our patrol cars so that the body cameras and the in-car systems will be fully integrated we wanted to purchase this on a five-year service contract agreement with cloud-based storage and personnel and computer equipment to manage and monitor the program we talked to you about the benefits of having the program because it promotes public trust it helps with Public Safety it improves the transparency of the police department and the community that we serve and it also enhances accountability not for us the police department that's wearing the body cameras but also for citizen interactions so we came back and we um diligently looked at pricing and we wanted to bring back the best affordable pricing that we could we found a five-year leasing option which gave us the opportunity to expand our purchase over a five-year period while increasing the amount of body cameras that we have with the intent that we would have more Academy classes graduating over the five-year term so we started with the 700 that we currently have and each year we added about 60 cameras to the program the vehicles don't change we stayed with 410 vehicles and then we added in the personnel and Equipment costs for a total of 11.5 million dollars to fund the entire program over the five-year span we did apply for grant funding currently we have about three hundred and thirty thousand dollars from the office of the governor we have an additional 525 000 from Veronica Escobar's discretionary funds and we got 6.6 million dollars from you from the arpa funding so that left us a gap of approximately four million dollars we are in the process of asking for an additional five thousand dollars from the office of the governor the DVRs Personnel we wanted to make sure that there was going to be a high impact on the I.T side so we needed a police information manager a business system analyst and mobile network administrators so that they would have a background in I.T and then we have a support specialist their retired law enforcement and Military who have a background in working with either camera systems or other electronics and then we needed record Specialists who handle the open records requests in the gov QA and then the uniform officers do a lot of the auditing of the camera system itself this is what the camera looks like and we wanted to just show you different aspects of how the camera fits Lieutenant Palace is currently wearing a camera it weighs less than a pound and as you can see it's smaller than the size of our shirt pockets so they fit pretty comfortably and this is the axon body 3. it's attached to the shirt it has a very strong magnetic Mount so one goes inside the shirt one goes on top of the shirt and then the body camera simply Clicks in and it's held on pretty securely so you'd have to really try to yank it off and we're not encouraging anybody to do that but we just wanted you to know that it's a very snug fit we work really closely with it they had to build us these docking stations so that we could charge the equipment it works as a twofold process it charges the battery which is a one piece component equipment and it also downloads and offloads the video and uploads firmware so it's very very simple uh we bought a camera for each Patrol or traffic officer each camera is individually assigned to that officer so when they go into the back office software called evidence.com the cameras the video that they have offloaded is going to go directly into their um their account so it's very easy for them to create a tag an ID number a case number we have a drop down for every particular type of event that they could encounter whether it's a traffic stop or Class A misdemeanor is very very simple for them to tag the evidence and then it's safely stored into the cloud and then we can access it from the back end of the software and then to share evidence we've been doing this already we have the capability to share evidence directly through our evidence.com system through email securely to the district attorney's office municipal court and through open records requests so we are saving tons of money by not having to download onto DVDs or the jump drives which is how we used to do business and it really cost us a lot of money so this is really efficient it's really quick and it's very secure the videos cannot be changed it cannot be altered and they're very safe in the system so before we started writing our policy back in 2018 we we did a full survey of other police departments and this is just a list of those who responded and we made sure that we looked at every single City to see what they were doing how they were handling their um their camera policies before we chose to write our own so with the help of our executive staff and with our legal department we did come up with our own body camera policy it's under Section 11 of the police policies and procedures manual and just a brief excerpt of some of the things that we have in there officers shall begin recording for the following events and they'll continue recording until the event has concluded and that would include all dispatch calls for service initiated calls for service that are self-initiated citizens contacts traffic stops arrests Pursuits I mean we literally included every type of activity that an officer will be involved in to make sure that it's captured on a video recording and then of course subsequent to arrest handcuffing search will take place in view of the camera whenever practical an officer shall not stop a recording until the conclusion of the event and then this is just some some other information in the event the recording will stop and it doesn't meet the above criteria they do have to document it on a report they do have to notify a supervisor and notes are made within evidence.com to document that event as I've brought to you before we have put all of our policies and procedures online so it is available to anyone that has access to a computer it can get into either Google or Edge and as you can see it is number 11 under digital video recording systems and you can go in and look at the policy that's available just a little bit about the you know the basic peace officer course and all the training that we go through we ourselves that are part of digital recording team went through uh well over 40 hours of training to learn how to utilize the software inventory the program and get the cameras ready for deployment but in addition we do a lot of standard training with the Texas commission on Law Enforcement Education which is our certifying agency we are currently at 858 hours just for our Tico license and then the El Paso Police Department adds an additional 720 hours now with the camera program it's going to bump it up a little bit more to about 724 so that we have over 1578 hours of training before an officer can graduate the academy um once they've graduated the academy which is now about 10 and a half months long they go through an additional 12 months of probation and then after the 12 months of probation we bring them back to the academy and they get an additional 80 hours of training so they can get their intermediate peace officer certification not every law enforcement agency does that we do and we've been doing it for a very long time we think it's really important that our officers are well educated and well prepared to perform in the community and just some of the courses that we teach are professional police practices which include ethics training use of force which includes de-escalation strategies and of course Crisis Intervention and mental health so one of the things that I'm most proud of about this particular product is called axon respond I I call it axon live because what it does is gives off the opportunity to see what the officer is seeing when they're on a call if you look in the where the arrow is pointing it'll tell you how many cameras are actually recording right now it's on a Google type Earth Map so you can actually see the location you can see how many cameras are out in the field you can see which cameras are live streaming which means that they're on right at this moment and if it's dark blue in color then that camera is actually on and then you can also toggle to a map feature which actually puts every single camera that's turned on or recording on a map and as you can see the street views are very very clear and I'm going to transfer now so that we can see axon live working it can you minimize the screen so right now we have Lieutenant Pals and you can see him on the map and it actually puts him at City Hall and you can see how many cameras we have going right now and you see this is a really well put together map you can see that it actually says City Hall on the map so what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit the live stream button so I can select which officer I want to see are you on yeah and there we have our live stream so you're getting feedback because there's also audio attached with the video and you can see how clear and the wide angle View and this is the way your axon respond works so you all know we save our test recordings a minimum of 180 days so if you all want to see yourself you can do an open records request and we'll be happy to share the video with you all right so that just gives us an idea of how axon respond works so now I kind of want to show you three really short videos we've been getting questions on why we're having the mobile video recorders in the car and having the the body cameras on the officer what's the point of having the two of them together it's you know they're very expensive products why do we want them both at the same time so I just want you to look at these three videos really quickly and then I'll explain to you what we're looking at bigger so you can see the officer is in Pursuit and the car is driving backwards on a busy Street and this is the officer's mobile video recorder not his body cam this is from the second car that went alongside the the primary officer and you can see his bird's eye view this is also from the mobile video recorder inside the car and then this last one is going to be body camera of the original pursuing officer so the point here is that the body camera the mobile video recorder it only shows you what's in front of it and as you can see that there were three different viewpoints that we were showing from three different camera angles when you put them together it helps to develop a bigger picture of the incident the officer is able to swivel his head and he'll be able to see more but when you look at the camera from different angles it really gives you a complete picture of of what happened at any particular event so it's really important that the body cameras and the in-car systems work together so that we can have a complete picture of incidents and events that are occurring so going back to the axon respond it allows the desk officers and supervisors to view live video and to see the office's location on the Google Map and on the the uh the lower map and it provides um intervention if necessary immediate assistance or visualization of the officer's location one of the things the city manager likes to say all the time is that it's a force multiplier it gives us an opportunity that we can't all be in the field at the same time but it allows a desk officer or supervisor to be able to send other officers to assist if necessary to the correct location especially if the officer is unable to utilize His Radio so it's really important it's like a secondary set of eyes and then finally it allows supervisors to audit the interactions between officers in the community it can you minimize we are excited to announce a new body camera program for the El Paso Police Department the program will enhance the effectiveness of our Police Department by providing audio and video record of all interactions between officers and citizens our commitment towards ensuring Public Safety has never been stronger we believe this program will enhance the effectiveness of the El Paso Police Department and serving our community the Pebble Hills Regional command is the largest of the five Regional commands so they were selected as the pilot for the rollout of this camel project we have already outfitted and trained all Pebble Hills Regional command officers with the body worn cameras as of February 2023 our new body one cameras are equipped with high definition video and audio capable of accurately capturing what's in view of the camera we look forward to rolling out this program across the patrol and traffic divisions in the next few coming months we thank you for your continued support towards the El Paso Police Department as we work together with you to build a safer Community for everyone this program continues our community policing philosophy to promote proactive problem solving in our constant effort to enhance our police Community Partnership it helps transparency and accountability of all transactions between our officers and the citizens so that was our community outreach through our our public information officer we put that out over the weekend to the media and we hope that they give us some traction and let the citizens and the community know that the cameras have started to been deployed we started with Pebble Hills they're fully deployed we just completed Northeast last week and now we'll be moving into the West Side during mid-march followed by Mission Valley and then finally Central so that was our first community outreach with the public information officer and then today with council tonight I'll be at the west side and I'll give you the whole schedule where we'll be at the citizens Advisory board meetings at all the regional commands tomorrow will be with City rep Henry Rivera at his City rep meeting and we invite all you city reps to invite us we'll be more than happy to share this presentation with your constituents and then we'll also be conducting follow-up meetings without cross-functional team leads this is the um location and dates where we'll be doing this presentation again tonight at 5 30 at the West Side March 14th at Pebble Hills March 21st at the valley April 3rd at Central and Then followed by April 11th at the Northeast so the final steps in the program is to do the mobile video or in-car systems that's really going to be the the biggest part of this particular deployment because we have to remove the existing car system that we have and then install the new car system the axon team will be coming down in the next couple of months they'll be shipping the equipment in the next couple of months and then once we get trained and the equipment arrives we'll be doing the install and then we start doing the training and deploying the system it if you can minimize one more time so we've been beta testing Fleet 3 for a few months now and we're extremely excited to go ahead and get it fully deployed and implemented after three years of hard work and development it's real it's here and we're ready to ship Fleet 3 is a game changer for us it's much more efficient it's very cost effective and it brings in a level of situational awareness that we didn't have before we've gone from just a simple in-car camera on the dash to now a body cam dash cam as well as a LPR system all encompassed in one less equipment means lower cost and easier installation so the technology advanced so much now that one camera can read multiple Lanes in front of the vehicle and with great clarity the old license plate reading system we had you were good if you get two lanes over but with the fleet three I've been on the interstate and it has read four lanes over from the lane I was in and I think that's very impressive we expect that agencies will be able to get eight times as many plate reads for the same dollars spent as traditional systems with this technology it also allows supervisors to log in remotely whether it be a traffic stop or another incident and be able to provide resources and eyes on that situation at hand not another body it's not backup but it puts another set of eyes on a scene that can help possibly keep an officer from getting injured in a critical situation having as many viewpoints as possible is key to being able to respond effectively for example one of our officers was out on a traffic stop and I saw it was on the screen so activated respond and I was able to see both the vehicle that he had pulled over and his body camera footage of him his interaction with the driver but if say if there was a passenger in the vehicle and they got out with a weapon in their hands I would have been able to alert him that that happened and he would being on the other side of car would not have been able to see that our team at axon has been pouring their heart and soul into this product for the last three years it's a win-win for the community and the police it provides an extra layer of transparency for both parties the bottom line is it can potentially save lives and that concludes my updated presentation for the digital video recording system as law enforcement agencies add more equipment to their vehicles and to the PCS in the vehicle and on the officer's uniform the more there is for thank you chief for the presentation uh I can see the the great benefits of it and um and we thank you for for being here uh representative thank you man good morning great presentation awesome thank you just what I expected uh it's a learning tool for the public it's also I want to thank the city manager and his staff for making it possible to to equip our department with this um when we were trying to achieve this we're taught we were thought of as the sixth largest city without cameras why why why is it and but they need that you know I kept I kept defending our department saying that one of the best one of the best this only makes you better how much better and so I think uh my colleagues past some present for helping achieve this Council happening to achieve this this point this moment I I can't say it more than than enough is that this will build the trust that we're we're seeking not that we didn't have any but this really enhances that trust beyond words and so um I thank you my colleagues again Mr Gonzalez and the police department for finally getting the body cameras that we deserve thank you thank you sir Chief one question though um what's the length of time that any item could be stored for indefinitely great if we have cases that for example murder cases which take a really long time the body the camera videos will stay in the cloud until this disposition of the case is concluded now if the cloud ever fills you can build additional Cloud space that will be on the part of axon and they have a backup storage system okay good great thank you mayor just forgot to also take a congresswoman Veronica Escobar for using her discretionary funds as well and uh I know you all are seeking grants on the continuous basis to fund this program and not have to burden the taxpayers with additional taxes thank you sir thank you again sir representative Kennedy followed by representative nello I cannot tell you I'm from a different side I'm a criminal defense attorney that this not only keeps officers safer safer it makes easier decisions on whether to proceed with the case or not I was going to say that when it's uploaded into the portal for the attorneys that are involved it's much easier to upload into the portal and unlike in some cities where I've watched four hours of a dash cam that was shooting at a dumpster um the video was not on a body cam the the addition of body cams is truly a game changer for everybody I mean for for officer safety for the you know detainee for for the entire legal system so you're to be commended and I'm it's an exciting part thank you thank you representative mayor Pro Tem thanks mayor thank you thank us up technologically with a lot of other cities right it advances us but like uh representative Kennedy says it's it really opens up some transparency for our community and I really want to thank you I know this is we talked about this right government is slow and we forget that but like you all worked for many years on this so look at many options had many conversations this was not something that could have happened overnight and you didn't waver on it at all so I really thank you all um I also want to thank uh representative Rivera I know there were a lot of people in the beginning telling him this wasn't a good idea but he was persistent he went out and looked for money um and we really you know we were all supportive but he really pushed for it he really took the time and so um this is a real Testament to this Council this Administration we're really moving forward and we couldn't have done it without representative Rivera so thank you so much for this that's why I keep showing his picture thank you and I think I just want to repeat one thing representative Kennedy said and it's very important that uh and their selected officials it's our priority and it has been this Council and power councils for the safety of our men and women at the police department representative uh Hernandez thank you I do also want to commend um representative Rivera from day one body worn cameras is what he lived and breathed and we were just like ad nauseum like okay let's do this representative Rivera and so to see something like this so Monumental come forward and and come to fruition was certainly a labor of love and chief Silva you did a wonderful job at not only explaining this but I know that you were behind a lot of the rollout of it and so thank you for bringing that transparency and that professionalism to this role because we we are the custodians of this new initiative and my hope is is that it deters crime that those who want to bring harm against others know that the evidence is here you know to help deter that crime and so I know that there's a lot of concern and represent invited us to a public safety Roundtable this week and it was very enlightening to hear from some of the families who have a lot of fear and so my hope is that this will bring a lot of the concern to rest that people start to feel safer and that we continue to stay steadfast with being one of the safest communities in this country for our stock for our size top two top five for decades we have had this honor and this is only going to make us better so thanks to the city manager and all the team and for your leadership representative Rivera and helping bringing this to the Forefront congratulations to everyone thank you if I could just name the members of the team because it wasn't just me by myself it's impossible to do this kind of work Lieutenant Palace really spearheaded the program he's been my right hand person for years now since we started back in 2018 Sergio signs with I.T is my counterpart and he's had a strong hand in this program many magayanas from I.T officer Castaneda from our team and then we hired on Aldo Fiera who's one of our mobile network administrators and then Armando Aguilar if you remember him has come back as a police support specialist and Ben Roshe so I just wanted to thank my entire team because it took a village thank you all thank you Chief uh one second Chief we still have representative Salcido and representative mother not thank you mayor and also wanted to thank representative Rivera for his perseverance and pushing for this I think it's great for the community it does bring more transparency I want to say thank you to the staff like you mentioned it takes a village to really execute something like this um you all did an amazing job I think that continued to do this and and to get more cameras right I think this one I don't know how how much of our Workforce or police force has said facilitate so right now we're only doing Patrol and traffic because that's all the grants will support so that's why we're only outfitting Patrol and traffic great great and also have another question um what is the budget for o m for these cameras that we currently have do you know what do you mean like for operation and maintenance of these cameras do you have a rough idea of how much that's going to cost not broken out but I can get that to you later okay great great I mean overall Public Safety is a big concern of everybody in El Paso so whatever that cost we'll make sure we have those dollars to ensure that the public feels safe and and thank you all for your your great effort it only it takes pushing forward to in order to get a results like that so thank you for all your hard work thank you thank you very much Mr Mayor great job thank you very much Chief Lieutenant thank you very much as well and so uh representative Salcido mentioned a few things about the Budget moving forward I guess for this our city manager do you know ballpark figure how much more money we're going to have to dedicate through subsequent budgets so a lot of the councils com has commented on the uh the funding and how we came up with this the reason why it took a little bit longer we had a lot of catching up to do with police car Replacements and also with hiring enough police officers so we have the 300 program that we've increased academies each year and so to your question Mr Miller we're going to have to set money aside an amortization schedule which would be a portion of it so we can set up a good replacement schedules so that will be in the budget I don't have the exact number but it'll be an amortization schedule so that we'll have dollars set aside so that when they have to replace them all at once they can do that because these cameras uh the technology is going to change and so we have it in a leasing program so we'll be looking at it from year to year and then make adjustments accordingly okay so just to add to that the way we set up this leasing program on year three we will get new cameras refurbished so that's part of the contract okay and as far as Staffing how many more people are are going to be dedicated to this whether civilians or non-non-uniform uniform so I showed you the Personnel breakout and right now we only have we just hired the police Information Technology manager who starts on the 13th we have the two police support Specialists and we have Aldo Fiera who's a mobile network administrator so we and we have one police officer dedicated so we still have a lot of Staffing positions to filler if I might ask yes I just thought of something the main cost or a lot of the cost is going to be in the storage of the uh of the footage so that's going to be something that we have to budget as well okay and that's good and chief thank you very much it's good to hear that you know we only have one person dedicated from the field so we have more resources out in the field taking the calls doing the investigation things like that so good job on that part thank you that's all I am thank you sir and one last thing I just want to representative Salcido the uh mention the meeting that representative Dundas just talked about that we had on Saturday and I was very informative and uh Chief Sears and a lot of other law enforcement were there and she's having another meeting to continue to inform our community of public safety representative thank you mayor yeah I want to invite the public the second round table meeting will be at EPCC administrative Services 9050 Viscount if you all have any questions you can call my office that's 212-0005. Saturday was very enlightening uh we had just a great participation we had leaders here from El Paso PD and just that first conversation is going to really lead us to Solutions so it was it was very fruitful I want to thank the mayor Lisa also rep Hernandez for participating I know rep Kennedy is going to participate on the second one so I want to thank the council for being part of this very important conversation so I invite the public to come out we're taking public testimony as I want to really rally up and get all the information I can so that we really could include everybody's voice in in creating these to really ensure that El Paso continues to be safe thank you thank you representing thank you Chief thank you Miss Prine yes mayor we return to page number seven to item number 19. and this is discussion in action to direct the city manager to provide information on any steps the city of El Paso has taken in preparation for an upcoming migrant search as a result of the end of the National Emergency and Public Health Emergency declarations on May 11 2023 related to the covid-19 pandemic to include the potential Financial impact that we'll have on the city of El Paso this is representative Rivera's item American we also take 20 they're related 19 and 20. can we take them together they're related as well item 20 is discussion in action to direct the city manager manager provide a public safe plan this the city of El Paso as piration for an important migrant search as a result of an end of the National Emergency and public health declarations on May 11 2023 related to covid-19 pandemic specifically for neighborhoods and businesses near the border and to protect drivers from migrants pedestrians crossing the border Highway thank you good morning Chief good morning go ahead sir thank you thank you sir thank you I I approach these items to the agenda good morning sir first of all I apologize I'm still excited good morning the previous presentation um good morning to everyone uh I placed these items on the agenda because as we know the National Emergency and public emergency declarations related to Kobe 19. a pandemic are near to the end here on May 11th correct of this year Iris 19 and 20 were placed in the agenda to ensure and to keep our community safe and prepare before any issues impact our residents as I told you once before I'm still getting lots of calls on this I know firsthand residents are concerned regarding of of an upcoming surge they have already began contacting me and asking me for assistance on on and a presentation on how to handle this situation regarding the migrants in the recent past months many residents living near the border Highway witnessing experience and an increase of migrants crossing the border Highway and a reckless Manner and placing themselves in danger and placing the drivers at risk trespassing into their property leaving clothes and trash behind in another related issues as well on their properties so we also know we also need so this is the reason why I also need to know if there will be any Financial impact to the city with uh with the end of the National Emergency declarations and how we need to prepare for this as as I've been asked and so this is the reason uh because and I had placed that on on the uh item and not only that not only the financial point of it but also because of the public safety which ranks high in our priorities and so does our financial responsibility with taxpayers so before that go ahead sir I'll make the motion afterwards yes sir if we could um we were going to do the uh ordinance emergency ordinance reactment and so we can bring up 128 presentations embedded there okay we can handle that at the same time it's going to cover these points you're specifically talking to and then we can bring up 28 also 28 as well it's related also item 28 is discussion and action on an emergency ordinance extending emergency oranges number zero one nine three three three authorizing the city manager to assign Personnel Resources to assist in addressing the humanitarian and Public Safety crisis resulting from a mass migration through El Paso okay Bluetooth proof seconds very good can we bring up the presentation so as we've presented several times on this when we're looking at what the community releases look like for El Paso region I mean we saw some very high months December was over 30 000. January was significantly reduced in February even more so we're expecting just under 3 900 total within the community releases and so those are releases to the ngos those those are those are the stats that are normal that where the ngos can handle that daily volume but as we've seen and we talk about what are we doing to prepare or what about action plans it's a little bit of everything we've done over the past 12 months as we go into what Emergency Management does it you know it's it's based across these eight points from coordination looking at Sheltering whether it's what we do in in the past which is just helping the ngos and we still continue to do that it's within the Sheltering utilizing the hotel system which is a more manageable operation where it provides more privacy security for the migrants themselves it's more Humane system and then we see when it's really backlogged what we saw in December January and we actually took possession of those schools that's when you look into those Mega sites and that goes back into the convention center as well and so now you're looking at those large congregate Sheltering operations so that you also have transportation Transportation on a normal day-to-day is usually the use of use of shuttles Sun Metro buses to get them from shelters to the airport or to one of the birth terminals that's how that but we've also seen August September October where we had that large population that just had no means so we had to assist in transportation in those efforts so Transportation also covers those long distance transports those providing them a means to get to where they want to go to get to their desired location public health is always a concern it's making sure we're going out to the congregate settings making sure that disease isn't spreading Health Care System it's monitoring that what's the task it's putting on our local hospitals and our medical system public information as you know it's it's a lot of input you're getting a lot of media on it it's about staying with the messaging making sure we're ahead of it so that we can explain to the community what we're doing at all times looking at security and intelligence that's another thing it's doing our Recon how to how are we looking at what's what's transpiring what's moving up through Mexico working with our Customs and Border Patrol to see what is the actual daily influx into El Paso and what does that look like as far as releases coming up in the near future cost recovery cost recovery as we've talked about and we know we've asked for that FEMA grant money we've had to do some reimbursements we still have some pending we've gotten some upfront funding but that's another constant issue that we have to stay on top of because as you know this is a very costly operation we'll pass this next slide over to our City attorney thank you chief uh Council as I explained to you all yesterday we know that President Biden and and the health department have decided that they will no longer continue with the public health emergency as of May 11th the United States Supreme Court was scheduled to have oral arguments uh yes tomorrow March 1st on title 42 but since title 42 will now be going away since the health emergency is no longer in effect we will no longer be um dealing with title 42 at the border so we will anticipate um and I'm sure the chief will go through this situation now we're anticipating a large number of people coming through as a result of title 42 no longer being in effect we do have additional orders that have been put out by the Department of Homeland Security that requires that everybody coming through another country file and declare Asylum there's also an app that has been used but there appears to be some serious issues with that so you're going to continue to see people coming to the Border despite additional rules that will be passed once title 42 goes away thank you so this is this is this is a slight that I was going through so here's the new rule that I was explaining to the council it will affect their legibility to to ask for Asylum they are required to claim Asylum through a country that they're coming through so as you all know they're coming from South America or other places they have to declare Asylum at that location and then come through the United States so the the law is going to require that they still show that they are or have a credible fear of harm or that they are being subjected to some sort of political um fear of repercussion from their government and at the time that they're trying to enter the United States so those are the things that the federal government is responding to now that title 42 is going away and then this will be the new requirement however we don't anticipate that it'll necessarily stem the large number of people that are already waiting in Mexico or in other countries to come into the United States thank you you know while you're explaining that I know the title 42 will be lifted but title eight will still be impressed can you explain title eight so title eight is what we call our your traditional normal title 42 right people have always been able to come to the United States through some other means so there's a bus to come through a sponsor or they come because they have a Visa what have you so that's always been in place the only difference was that title 42 was not allowing title eight to be used right so people weren't coming through because we were trying to stop the flow of of covid and people were being prohibited from coming from certain countries so once title 42 lives Asylum has always existed but it was always impacted because of covid so now we're going to go back to your traditional title eight I apply for um a Visa or a pie through a sponsor to come to the United States that's going to continue to happen and then now we have this new rule that requires that if you're going to claim Asylum you have to do it through a third country or through the app before you attempt to enter into the United States so it's it's just another rule that they're implementing now that title 42 is going away thank you for that man no problem and So speaking a little bit more to that you know title 42 was the high speed process to go ahead and return them to their and and not allow that Direct Hit because of the health emergency title hates a longer process what is that affect as far as the system we see what we're going to see as far as releases is it's it's a lot longer process that they have to go through to make those determination so it creates a lot of holding issues for CBP they have to they have to house these people for a longer time because it's a lot more in-depth process and so that does create those backlogs as you say within the Customs and Border Patrol looking at the public safety plan we can go back to that last slide that I talked about and it was it was a little bit of everything and so we've seen what what's in our Arsenal what's in our toolbox and what multitudes we can use with them what do we expect with with title 42 going away we expect we might have to see we use all utilize all of those tools and let's you know just speaking to not only the food the water the processing but Sheltering of course the most economical the most feasible and safest humane way is to utilize the hotel system but we know when you get to those points as we saw in December that that's just too much and so now you have to look at those Mass congregation shelters and so that that makes difficulties there but luckily with the agreements we have in place with the El Paso Independent School District those facilities the the tools we have the the equipment we have set up that's ready to flip on operationally if need be we have those Extra Spaces to expand with we've also been in close Communications with ngos out of both just as close as Las Cruces New Mexico and in out of Houston they want to come in they want to assist with Sheltering they approached us at the at the end of you know mid-January when it was already slowing down so it was nothing that we could bring in at that point but we do remain in contact with them we're looking at them where we're supplying them the numbers they know that the next couple of months is going to bring change and they're on the ready to come in and assist as well also looking at operation stone garden and specifically to the safety of the neighborhoods you were discussing at representative Rivera um the El Paso Police Department has been long supporting border patrol through operation stone garden and adding for that additional surveillance along the border the El Paso Police has limited capability to detain those that are crossing illegally but they're there as a set of eyes to help to keep the community safe from people running across CBP Personnel demands during influxes as we saw during the December January time frame they pulled their staff off of securing the border and they had to move into a processing and so that's where El Paso Police stone garden the request through the state getting DPS on site was very critical to get those extra officers to help with those patrols not only in the downtown area but as long along the border Highway as well the community impacts I mean we understand that there's there's a a lot there's people crossing the street it's unsafe to drive it was unsafe at times when people were crossing the roadway and it was dangerous to all not just those that are crossing but those who are driving down that Community it led to people crossing through people's property it led to loitering in areas that they're just not accustomed to that and so with the use of emergency Management's teams those roving teams we've talked about several times we utilize those to go out to the community to actually get them to the Sheltering that they need to get to looking at some of the strategies going forward you know it's going to take the continued working with El Paso Police Department Department of Public Safety the Texas Military to ensure that we can make those borders safe to ensure that we are at least watching those Gates letting Customs and Border Patrol know when they have breaches so that we don't have people crossing through the roadways entering the community in an unsafe fashion again not only for them but also for the community itself once title 42 goes into place we will I mean we continue pushing we continue talking about our Partnerships with DPS we continue those Cooperative agreements but the conversation will remain that we need them here the fact that we're seeing such low numbers we hope that the state DPS Troopers are allowed to stay here for the interim but as we see title 42 going away we will be voicing it even further the need for that collaborative effort foreign Cody managing director of this slide covers the cost recovery so as you can see we'll review each quarter on third quarter we are still pending a final determination or reimbursement of 1.3 million dollars from the emergency food and shelter program and then fourth quarter report has been completed so this reflects in the 5.24 million dollars the full impact from October through December 31st so we do need to remember that there's approximately 3.5 million dollars in expenses that were related to what was occurring at the end of August September and then October through October 20th so that does include roughly 3 million for transportation and the rest was regarding meals and Staffing and then the final amount minus the 3.5 is related to the support that we provided as part of December so that did conclude into January and what you see are in January as part of the first quarter report is the expenses that were related to uh the the activities of the office of emergency management which included the Sheltering that was done at the convention center as well as the Sheltering that was done at Bassett middle and so you'll see that's going to remain pending until that first quarter report is submitted but we do not have any additional expenses at this time and it is covered by the funding that was Advanced as part of the fourth quarter so there's still remaining approximately 4.6 million dollars available in advanced funding for future needs thank you and then the next slide I've got is just a point of clarification so as part of the shelter operations we did have a third party that was the administrator for the Bassett middle in that we actually started looking at quotes and uh asking for quotes since June it was a part of the preparation that we had in ensuring that we were prepared if they did lift title 42 at that time um since they didn't there was that postponement of course but we continued to refresh and reach out to vendors and to ensure that we had quotes that were available in case we did need to move quickly that was under the ordinance of course and that we were ensuring that we were getting um competitive quotes as on December 28th we executed the agreement with Endeavors and the agreement was ended on January 11th we did bring a ratification for the expenditures to Council of the six hundred and two thousand dollars that is the full amount that was expended for Endeavors plus we did recently receive as a chief D'Agostino has mentioned twelve thousand dollar invoice that is allowable under the agreement thank you very much and I just I think it's really important that I clarify a poem when we talk about Street releases those are not to the actual Community to the streets those are releases to ngos that's to the County Processing Center or in other agencies that have been working with us I just want to make sure because it says Street releases but they're not released exactly into the street thank you representative and I do want to thank you and everyone that's worked really diligently to make sure that not only are communities safe but also the Asylum Seekers that are coming into our city y'all have done an incredible job of making sure that we have a process in place and right now not only we don't have the inplex but we still have a process in place as May 11th may come sooner than we think we are prepared for that day and you know one of the things we always talked about is what are we preparing for and we're preparing for the unknown so thank you for that Chief thank you sorry to go ahead representative thank you mayor I also wanted to Echo thank you so much Chief augustino Nicole and the staff for all the hard work um I had a quick question I know that you said how much did we have in advance you mentioned six points 4.6 remaining and I know that we're still pending that 1.37 um did they mention why they're taking so long I know that was the third quarter no we the last update that we did receive is they have to close out all the grants for the calendar year so that means all grants that were issued throughout the country and so that does take time on their part to see if then there's any available funding to be able to uh provide that reimbursement definitely um I will say that you definitely all have rice to the occasion but I'm glad to see some Advanced funding for us to be prepared uh May 11th it's around the corner so thank you so much thank you and I think uh if the number is correct it's probably 13 million dollars overall that we've had Advanced funding from the federal government yes shaking her head yes everything that's been reimbursed and advanced the total is the 16.9 million thank you very much for that and with that we have a motion in a second on that motion call for the vote May or do you consent yes ma'am thank you in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously thank you you know we took all the items combined so thank you thank you sir I'm sorry this motion was for 1920 also right now they're all taken together okay so they're with 19 20 and 28 taken together yes ma'am thank you thank you thank you Council may I ask you to get a 20 separately since the mayor doesn't vote on this one what do you want to do miss Pine can we take 19 and 20 together since you're yeah go ahead you don't vote on this one go ahead do we have a motion approve 19 and 20. so this motion representatives for 19 and 20 correct thank you 19 and 20 motion made by representative Rivera seconded by representative Hernandez to approve 19 and 20. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously one thing I did want to say that the state of emergency which was declared back in December we never went ahead and renewed at that State of Emergency actually did expire at the end of 30 days thank you Mr Prime yes mayor that 183 on the agenda and this is discussion in action on the employment agreement between the city of El Paso and the city manager this is representative Kennedy and Molina's item representative Kennedy mayor quick point of order we're due to recess in 15 minutes they're about two hours of speakers signed up for this item would it make sense to take our recess before you want to take a um 15-minute recess we have to take call to the public at noon anyway I think it might make sense to recess what do we how many lunch what do you want to do represent chronology to recess early um and address this item after call to the public okay again we have over two hours of speakers signed up for this item and so I think no I understand I just I think there's a lot of members of the public here waiting to speak and I would I would just ask for your reconsideration because that's fine I just wanted to offer it as an option I want to make sure that I also uh feel bad cutting off the item mid item well we don't need to cut it off so we will continue on it if you need to go take a break and it will hold down the fort so go ahead representative Kennedy what's your item foreign we're doing public comment first or sure and I do want to I think it's important and um we do have Miss Lee Rheem that was hired by uh the city to the advices and um uh I have had numerous conversations with Miss Rheem and we need to make sure that people understand this is not an evaluation or a performance evaluation on the city manager and that's important to note so please make sure the comments are base that we're not evaluating the city manager and it's not a city manager's evaluation at any moment or any time can you tell us what it is then because pardon me can you tell us what it is then it's well I didn't put the item in the agenda sir I just want to make sure that people stay respect respectful and respect to city managers rights under the nurse contract and the evaluation any when you do evaluate those tests we be clear behind closed doors on the ones written in riding by the city manager and this is not what that is I just want to make sure the public and everyone understands that I know there's going to be different viewpoints uh coming up to speak we have 35 people signed up to speak and I do like to make sure that people stay respectful of whether it's Council or the city manager and say respect for the process and if you can't we're going to ask you to stop and that's going to be important that we do respect the process thank you Mr Pine yes mayor the first person that signed up to speak has been Noel Pierre he submitted a statement to be read and it says I don't understand why the employment agreement between the state of El Paso and the city manager comes up again for discussion that said I would like to express my unwavering support for the city manager and the work he is doing on behalf of our community it should be noted that I don't always agree with him on policy but that's a topic for another day at this point this seems like workplace harassment to me Mr Tommy Gonzalez should be allowed to complete his contract without political and official harassment I think we should focus on the important work before us there is so much more work left to do in order to position our city in the best posture to thrive respectfully final Pierre the next statement was submitted by Jeanette nevadis and it reads hello I'm a resident of District Six I would like to ask the mayor and the city clerk city council to not renew the city manager's contract Tommy has shared responsibility for allowing El Paso Electric to be bought by JP Morgan the number one financer of the climate crisis buying EP would have been an investment as it would have given us control over the use of renewable energy and lowering utility bills and pollution while still generating money as a publicly owned utility in addition Tommy earns nearly 10 times what the average El Paso resident makes thank you Jeanette Nevarez the next statement was submitted by Annette Flores and it reads good afternoon I'm a constituent of District Four and I'd like my writer to be later to be read on Tuesday at the council meeting please I saw in the news at the city manager's contract is being brought up once again by the city council some reps want to basically fire the city manager on Friday I got annual report for last year in an email from the city the report talked about all the successes the city has done like winning 65 million dollars in grandstand made 200 million dollars in Revenue the city manager has saved us the city so much we actually have a savings account for once before Tommy Gonzalez was hired we couldn't even fill a single pothole now I read that we filled 40 000 in a year I hate that politics is a popularity contest what really matters to people like me who pay our taxes is the results like good streets and parks Tommy Gonzalez has delivered those things for us by being a good manager it doesn't matter if you don't like him I care that my city is working for me and right now it is if the Reps don't respect his hard work they aren't fit to serve I want to remind people listening that the facts speak for themselves the city is working the best it ever has for people to try to change that makes no logical sense ask yourself who benefits from firing the city manager it's definitely not you or me thank you Annette Flores the next speaker is Mayor John Cook followed by Nayeli Morales Ariana Valdez Sylvia Acosta Martina Santos good morning mayor good morning almost afternoon Good Morning America actually I was hoping that we I could get that question that representative Rivera asks what is this about before the public comment um we're going to take all the public comment and then we'll because it's important that we listen to the public first okay well it would be nice if we knew what was going on rather than just the agenda item which is sort of vague but anyway I also recently got the annual report and I was impressed with the the progress that the city's made and the city makes its progress in several ways first of all you have a mayor and a council who set the vision mission and goals and those are objective goals that have to be measured and if you if when you evaluate the city manager you're evaluating him on whether he's achieved those goals or he hasn't the council also has control of the budget the city manager doesn't approve the budget you guys do he'll he'll tell you what he thinks but the final budget is after it's amended by the elected officials so I'm sort of confused as to what's really going on here and I'll just sit back and wait until we hear what the elected officials have to say but thank you God bless you thank you sir the next speaker is Nayeli Morales with Morales if you're in the Q star 621 major telephone Nayeli Morales I don't see her phone number the next statement was submitted by Ariana Valdez and she has set representative Molina read her statement good morning Vermont Ariana Valdez hello city clerk I'm Ariana Valdez and I live in District Four I would like representative molinar to read my letter please the letter is as follows I'm not a person who generally cares much about politics but it really makes me upset to see politicians abuse their power the power of new council members another couple of a couple of the incumbents has made me disappointed in our representatives and motivated to speak out the city manager has been allowed to get a lot of hate for things that Council has done and no one up there has done anything to correct the misinformation instead they try to score cheap political points by letting Tommy take the fall for their bad agendas now they want to go back on their word and fire him for doing his job the job that they asked him to do the truth is that the city manager is an employee of the city just like anyone else the people in the council are not the council makes decisions and pass it on to the city manager to carry out if the city were a company and they try to fire someone who was really good at their job just because they have personal reasons for not liking them or fire him without poop that company would it could get sued for wrongful termination but the council is attempting to do to Tommy right now is wrongful termination you would think the lawyer and business owners on Council would know that and be cautious of violating someone's rights like that obviously they think they can get away with it I can't help but wonder why they feel like they can be so bold as the council cares about maintaining the shreds of integrity and credibility they have left they would stop this Revenge plot they have going on I urge Council to do the respectful thing for once and leave the city manager's contract alone he has done so much good he doesn't deserve to be punished for doing his job well thank you signed haryana Valdez thank you the next speaker is Silvia Acosta by Martina Santos Jesus good morning Mom you have three minutes good morning Council good morning mayor I have so much respect for so many of you on this Council that I've known for a very very long time um I know that you have what is in the best of this community in your heart I also received the annual report this last week and I was very impressed with the work that Mr Gonzalez has done in our community I currently am the chair of comunica De nacion and as the chair of Community Action which is made up of Latino leaders in this community I just want to say that we support the work that Tommy Gonzalez has done in this community I also want to say that personally not in this position that I have now I work for the national minority supplier Development Council now but in my previous position I found Tommy and his entire staff to be very supportive of non-profit organizations in ways that had not occurred previously they got us through and I will say the city of El Paso and many of you that sit on this Council got us through kovid and it was through your leadership but also the leadership of Tommy Gonzalez that allowed us to do that I want to I just I'm very confused I thought this was settled this is very confusing to me and I I Echo the thoughts of Mayor cook um because we thought that had already been decided I just want to thank you and I want to ask you and I know many of you I want to ask you to think about what's in the best interest of our community and everything that has been accomplished under Tommy Gonzalez's leadership as you consider your vote today I know that all of you love this city I'm a I'm a um I'm in District 8. I love this city and I want to see the best happen to the city and for me I don't think it's time to change city managers I think he's doing a great job I think his staff supports him I think his staff understands the vision and I hope that we all as community members understand that as well thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to speak and thank you as you make this decision please consider all of that and the annual report and everything that's been done thank you thank you the next statement was submitted by Martina Santos and it reads good afternoon I'm writing in to make public comment for Tuesday's meeting I would like to speak on item 23 and I would like the city clerk to read this comment for the record after years of corruption misappropriation of funds and other illegal activity reported by the council officials the city council and former and current mayor Oscar Lisa hired city manager Tommy Gonzalez Mr Gonzalez was hired because he has a history of making cities financially stable vastly improving the quality of life for the citizens of the city and improvements for City departments and their employees he saved the city millions of dollars secured Hotel rebates that have revitalized the downtown area and helped secure money from TxDOT so we could have better roads just to name a few examples this isn't about whether or not Mr Gonzalez can do the job because he has already proven time and time again that he can this is a blatant personal Vendetta against him which is not justified and has no validity keep his contract in place and let him continue to do the great job he has already done for the city thank you have a good evening Martina Santos the next statement was submitted by Sarah E Hernandez and it reads hello I'm writing in to comment on agenda item 23 for the city manager's contract I am a constituent from district one and I would like the city clerk or someone on staff to read this comment as I'm unable to attend in person why am I not surprised the city council is bringing up the city manager's contract again when will you leave this guy alone if anyone care to know Tommy is a proud son of immigrants and he's worked really hard to get to where he is he is in some inexperienced person who thinks he can run a city he has a track record of actually doing so which is why he was selected to run our great City without his leadership we would still have a corrupt Council running the show just like any employee you get compensated based on performance while Tommy has done a great job and is compensated for it what you expect to have your contract ended when you're performing and doing a great job no then why end this this personal attack needs to stop and it's sad to see that our council members are doing what typical politicians are known for doing whatever is in their own interest for political gain I'm willing to bet that most of you wouldn't be able to handle the day-to-day of his job so do the right thing and put your personal opinions aside allow Tommy to keep doing his job thank you thanks Sarah Hernandez the next statement was submitted for by Macy block for representative Hernandez to read okay just a second the email from Mrs Michelle or Marcy block good evening I am writing and to request that my statement be read at City Council on February 28th on agenda item 23 for the city managers contract I'm a constituent of District 3 and I would like rep Hernandez if possible to read this comment good afternoon members of council I read two opposing articles last week one with vague and unjustifiable reasons for ending the city manager's contract and another fact-based article quoting former mayor John Cook explaining why a city needs sound governance and why having the city manager Council form of government is a logical option for the city honestly I doubt people even know the difference but as the wife of a city employee I do my husband has been able to get an education through the tuition assistance program and participate in Wellness programs and they've increased the minimum wage none of this would be possible without Mr Gonzalez he brings a wealth of Knowledge from other cities he's worked for and we get to take advantage of that before him the city was in dire need of change due to the corruption by council members at the time we cannot go back to that by canceling Mr Gonzalez's contract you are stopping progress and all the spread of misinformation surrounding his employment is nonsense do not make the mistake and lose a good employee over your personal feelings or whatever you have against him regards Macy block thank you the next speaker is Jesus Reyes followed by Carol Cassidy mayor D Margot Joshua block Barbara Valencia good morning so you have three minutes good morning sir good morning um city council the mayor it's nice to talk in front of you all today I know there's been high opinions I mean High emotions concerning Tommy Gonzalez and his continued employment with the city now it's a lot like I said these emotions run high but I just want to give basically the cold hard facts and the information we do know about his history of employment with the city so we I think that with his performance of how the covet pandemic was handled uh in in terms of how like how Charis act funds were somewhat withheld for a certain for a significant amount of time I think that's something that needs to be addressed I also want to bring up how under his um leadership and under his supervision that the eppd was involved in some controversies the last few years and it's concerning how it's planning how they've been tackling the issue of the migrant crisis here at the border but the biggest thing I want to talk about and it kind of relates to my former employment um as a zookeeper at at the local our local zoo is that he currently according to the El Paso matters article that looked into his salary and benefits he has a current salary of 439 000 a year which is about an 80 percent increase of raise in his salary from when he first started about eight to nine years ago now I recall when I was working at the zoo that people there that were working for five ten years some who have worked there decades they've worked all those hardships they would come in at night in case When Animals had to um had health emergencies or there was a pregnancy that was about to finish these people came in on and off the clock and yet their raises under on their employment were not guaranteed and I'm just wondering how Tommy Gonzalez was able to have these raises approved almost automatically without any question so I hope that when you all negotiate this contract for Tommy Gonzalez that you consider these facts misinformation from the last couple years and that you award the these benefits these guaranteed reasons to the majority of the city employees that they help keep the functionality of the city going and that's all I have to say thank you the next speaker is Carol Cassidy as Cassidy star six to unmute your telephone good morning you have three minutes can you hear me yes okay well good day mayor and city council and all the good people that are there today that have taken the time for this very serious uh matter uh and I assuming it will be on the record look this is not about likes your dislike this is about responsible fiscal management which this city has been lacking for a lot of decades anyway the city manager right now is making approximately 1 000 more money than the median wage forty thousand dollars of el pasoans the city debt as we understand is about 2.2 billion almost 1 billion occurring uh during Mr Gonzalez's uh term of eight years uh through CEOs certificates of obligation that's where we don't vote on the taxes folks so it's really been since 1970s that all government jobs federal state county City Public Schools administrators have greatly surpassed the highest paying jobs of the private sector uh they actually live like monarchy they live like kings and queens at the taxpayers expense they're elected to serve us not to Rob us to Endeavor as they've done and I'm looking at the whole nation now 33 trillion dollar national debt that's unbelievable and totally unsustainable as we all better wake up and understand um and I'm on a contrast this real real briefly now but the Texas Texas oil and gas industry fossil fuels folks God bless the god-given natural resources that Texas has last year it's at 2022 that they added 24 000 jobs for Texas they employ about 350 000. they support almost two points more than 2.6 million Texas jobs their average annual wage in this industry is 139 thousand dollars contrasts at this with this city manager uh salary oh my gosh anyway uh Texas National gas industry has helped the United States become the world's largest exporter of LNG that's liquefied natural gas providing a Lifeline right now to the European country's energy crisis which of course Biden cutting off the Russian Nordstrom natural grass pipeline for Europe many over there are burning wood cutting down trees in order to to have heat well I'm praising Texas all the way our great fossil fuels so the climate of czars baloney when we look at climate czars you don't need a climate Czar that's what I'm seeing for the upcoming what Charter election that we're going to have in may we don't want any more wasted taxpayer money for any more bureaucracies that we don't vote for so what's at stake now is the United States sovereignty thank you Miss Cassidy you've reached the three-minute limit ma'am thank you thank you and God bless all that are there in have ready for for recognizing her the next speaker is Mayor D Margot followed by Joshua block Barbara Valencia Judd Burgess good morning mayor Margo thank you Laura congratulations Henry good morning thank you sir my name is D Margo I'm a resident of El Paso for 46 years I'm married to a third generation El pasoan my grandchildren our fifth generation El pasoans I spent 35 years as the CEO and primary largest shareholder of an insurance brokerage firm that sold in September of 2012 to Hub International which is the fourth largest broker in the world after that I also served in the Texas legislature and the Appropriations Committee and then I did the I was appointed to the president of of the board of managers of the El Paso Independent School District and ran that for two years after our Commissioner of Education had removed all the trustees from malfeasance after that I became mayor during my tenure as mayor we went through the first immigration crisis started in October of 18 and went through approximately July of 19. the numbers that we had crossed over were not nearly as significant as you had even though they called us Ground Zero then and then we went through the August 3rd Walmart shooting which affected all of us still affects some of us today and then on March 13th of 2020 I issued my first executive order related to our pandemic I say that to tell you what it was like working with our city manager during that time and being in the trenches with him we provided the support that the that the our ngos needed primarily the Annunciation house we worked with the United Way many of you all remember what we did that was during the immigration crisis and then during August 3rd which affected all of us our Public Safety Mario all of them did one hell of a job on behalf of our community and we're still healing for that and we will not complete our healing until we finish the trials and lastly his actions with Mario and everyone when we purchased the buildings we purchased for the inoculations we led the state in immunizations during our pandemic when I left we had a 61-day financial reserve we now have over 90 days of financial reserve that affects our bond rating it also affects our bond rating to have continuity of Staffing and they look at that I met with them they know that it is imperative that he remain in the position he has for the benefit of this community what I find hard to Fathom is that some of you have been here less than eight weeks in your position and how you could make a judgment on an individual to consider termination is beyond me given that length of time thank you the next statement was submitted by Joshua block and it reads hello I would like to have a comment read at the upcoming council meeting schedule for Tuesday February 28th for item 23 city managers contract good afternoon mayor and Council I'm a constituent from district one Mr Kennedy is my district rep I'm writing in to say that is continued political attack is absurd and Council will do well to abstain and not vote on this item council members are supposed to represent their constituents and for the record my representative does not speak for me or many of us that reside in his district for those of you that ran on the platform to remove Mr Gonzalez should be ashamed of yourselves after all the good things this man has brought to our community you want to get rid of him for years and years the community was run by council members who ran the city into the ground because they didn't know how to run a city and now that the city is doing great because of all the hard work that the city manager and Leadership have put in now they want to cancel this contract makes absolutely no sense no city is without its challenges but Mr Gonzalez faces them head-on and you want to punish the rest of us in your Vendetta against him please do not do this thank you Jay block the next statement was submitted by Barbara Valencia and it reads I'm writing this so it can be read during the comment portion of agenda item 23. it is time for our city to move forward in a positive and prosperous Direction unfortunately this doesn't seem possible with our current city manager the job of a city manager includes hiring employees to serve in various areas of the city overseeing All City departments to ensure they operate smoothly managing and reviewing disbursements expenditures and budgets developing efficient solutions to City issues that appear and create strategies to prevent them from reoccurring a city manager sees how the city can change for the better and implements programs events and of initiatives that bring positive change for the city our taxes continue to rise yes we receive little to nothing in return We the taxpayers are paying the city manager over four hundred thousand dollars a year and this is what we get for our money number one our roads throughout the city are in deplorable Condition it's not just in certain areas but all over the city it's sad to say but main roles and what is her in better condition that the roads and streets in our own City number two medians and other properties throughout the city are overgrown and unkept number three Community programs are being drastically cut back or done away with altogether number four upper management positions within the city are being filled with unqualified and inexperienced people to run those departments resulting in mismanagement and failures within those departments as an example Animal Services were the conditions with them the facility are dirty disgusting and inhumane and animals are left on the streets to fend for themselves suffer and die the current director as well as the two previous directors put in the position of director of Animal Services do not have any prior experiences working or in running an animal shelter and did not meet the qualifications for the position with its new unqualified director conditions continue to spiral downward these are just a few of the many issues going on in our city that falls under the city manager we are not seeing the betterment of our city it's time to cut our losses Now by taking this necessary steps so our city can continue to move forward in a positive direction Barbara Valencia district 7 constituent and taxpayer the next speaker is Judd Burgess followed by Arnoldo Hernandez good afternoon Mr Burgess you have three minutes good morning good morning or afternoon as a U.S citizen guaranteed the Constitutional First Amendment right to freely speak my mind in whatever manner I choose I expect you not to violate my rights by interrupting me muting my mic or cutting my audio to the online viewership the way you and mayor ex-mayor Margo used to do on numerous occasions that stated city manager Tommy Gonzalez and mayor Margo for that matter has never quite related to the average El Paso citizen most every decision he makes every idea he floats in every questionable project he supports is in direct opposition to the financial welfare of the vast majority of the people who are called El Paso home while directly benefiting a city Administration and the tiny minority of El Paso's wealthy investor class he is a master of administrative Financial sleight of hand and political smoke and mirrors this is why previous administrations including three of our current city council reps support him and give him free reign to poach and pillage our bank accounts when the El Paso City Administration can't convince taxpayers to give it more of our hard-earned dollars to pave our third world streets build Arena Foster clubs and freeway deck Parks then Gonzalez gets to work looking for easy ways to financially exploit of pestilence by a questionable means his favorite money siphoning techniques to accomplish his agenda are the issuance of hundreds of millions of dollars of certificates of obligation which conveniently bypass our permission our input and most importantly our vote he along with current and past City administrators and Reps conspired and succeeded in forcing epcat's executive director Dinah Kilgore to go on a wholesale Citywide appraisal spree where they evaluated our properties much higher than should be so that they could regularly raking millions of our tax dollars with very little complaint and protest this all came after Kilgore was on the record in the media stating that epcat was audited every two years and was in good standing in terms of valuations at that point because and I quota we don't have the type of businesses Austin has we don't have the Fortune 500 companies that Plano has we don't have the growth that we see in San Antonio El pasos continue to pay the third highest property taxes in the country in respect to our Rock Bottom average yearly income of twenty one thousand five hundred dollars per individual he Gonzalez along with several other city employees and Reps continually exploit Financial loopholes and twitch the lawn to knots in their constant efforts to fill the holes in the city budget and fund special interest projects off the backs of financially strapped though passwords this is why the city capitulates and pays Gonzalez is the Sealy stratospheric salary outrageous perks and his golden parachute should El Paso ever part ways with them I say to you Tommy Take the Money and Run do it for El Paso we're more than happy to cut you a million dollar check which only represents a tiny fraction of what it costs keeping you around here in El Paso and take that horse you wrote in on the next speaker is arnulfo Hernandez followed by Juan adame Wesley Lawrence good afternoon Mr Fernandez you have three minutes good afternoon mayor City Council here is a threats threshold question good afternoon sir are you pardon good afternoon sorry good afternoon here's a threshold question it's a discussion and action at the city manager's contract within the purview of the city council well you are our elected officials accountable for our city government we voted you in and we can fire You by voting you out but we can't hire the manager and we can't fire the city manager you can do both hire and fire the city manager for costs or no cost clearly it is within your purview an authority to discuss and take action on the city manager's contract it is no it is not harassment and it should not be confusing what you're doing we are two Mayors speak against whatever but mayor water came before you a few weeks ago and from this Podium he spoke he was critical of the transparency in extending the city manager's contract and expressed concern about the ever-going authority of the city manager over city government was the mayor during the 2003-2005 cycle when the city went from a strong mayor to the city city manager form of government we have today he said I think a little bit has happened here where the managers assume an outsize role in the city government the city managers work for you they are employees of the mayor and Council and serve the citizens of the city of El Paso it has nothing to do with Mr Gonzalez it is strictly about process and process has not been followed here and it is not setting a good example for the community he means no words he was concerned about the tail wagging the dog decide to fire the city manager for cause a long and expensive protracted lawsuit is sure to follow but you also have the option to part ways with a city manager without costs pay him his nearly one million dollar severance pay parachute the previous administration worked out for him in the long run it will work out for the city and for Mr Gonzalez in these no-win situations discretion is a better part of valor cut our losses and move forward the city avoids inexpensive and long lawsuit and Gonzalez gets to keep his employment record clear of any blemishes both are in the best interest of the city the media should report that the city council is letting our city manager go without cause the decision is not personal it's business so there's no cause for his termination the city wants to move in a different direction that will take shape and form if the council moves forward with governing city government the city council makes thanks Mr Gonzalez for services thank you sir the next statement was submitted by Juana Dame and it reads there's a hot mic please make sure you're on mute if you're in teams the statement reads Dear Miss Prine I would like my email to be read publicly as I'm not able to attend Council mayor and Council I am a lifelong El Paso resident I remember when we first switched from the strong mayor form of government in 2004 to a council manager form of government I was very excited because for years very little would get done in this town because of the instability of a strongware form of government Since switching to this Council manager form of government we have seen a huge amount of improvements most of these improvements are largely due to the council hiring Mr Tommy Gonzalez he has been a blessing to our city but now according to Mr Max Grossman's post on next door Mr Kennedy and Mr molinato wish to fire him which if true is a huge disappointment and an enormous mistake according to Mr Grossman Mr Kennedy and Mr Molina have the votes if that is indeed true I wonder how exactly that is feasible giving that it would be a violation of the Texas open meetings act it is not out of the question for this to have happened given this administration's past history when we saw Miss Lily Simone Mr schwartzbein and others accused of a walking Quorum do we have a similar situation here who knows but what I do know is that because of Mr Gonzalez our city has done some amazing things and it would be a shame for my representative to drag this man through the mud because some petty people don't like that he's getting paid properly it is a shame that his name is being slandered by Mr Grossman amen a man who has cost the city millions and it is embarrassing that the council is allowing for your employee to be slandered shame on you all Juana Dame retired lieutenant go Navy the next statement was submitted by Wesley Lawrence and it reads dear city clerk please have my statement regarding item 23 read into the record good morning mayor Lisa members of council my name is Wesley Lawrence I'm a lifelong El Paso in your state democratic executive committee man a Precinct chair but most importantly I am a concerned citizen today we have the opportunity to start the process of setting El Paso in a new direction that can benefit the everyday El Paso and not just the developers and oligars who are at time scene to rule El Paso with all due respect to our current city manager it is abundantly clear that the hard-working people of El Paso are ready for a change and my countless talks with my constituents in El Paso it is clear they are tired of the direction that our city manager has taken us that has led to constant tax increases the abuse of certificates of obligations the lies behind the now defunct rate with large land Swap and the feeling that developers are more important than the everyday El Paso and today we have the opportunity to write many of the wrongs of Prior city council administrations by holding our city manager accountable once and for all while I know to some in this chamber that today's decision might be challenging I would implore you to support this item and create a task force that will ensure that future city managers are local held accountable and work to ensure that no El Paso and feels Silas and Left Behind the next speaker is Ron KOMU Mr KOMU is in Chambers however he's asking rep Molina if he'll read his statement okay thank you Ron Cuomo I respectfully request this to be read at agenda for removal of Tommy Gonzalez Tommy Gonzalez has failed as an effective city manager he has failed to control City budget El Paso Texas tax rate 2.13 percent average medium income 51 325 dollars Fort Worth Texas tax rate 1.86 percent average medium income 67 927 Dallas Texas tax rate 1.49 average medium income sixty nine thousand twenty dollars making property taxes a burden on citizens of El Paso he has failed to protect the citizens of El Paso from stray attacks by continuing to follow Austin Pets Alive Haas program even with his comments that stated that the shelter is no longer in the House program he and other employees of the city of El Paso failed to speak the truth of what is happening in this city he has failed to reunite Strays with their family members by allowing the shelter to not pick up healthy Strays causing emotional pain of the citizens of El Paso he has supported projects like the six million dollars for The Starlights downtown we need a city manager pays attention to the needs of the city and the expertise to create a workable budget that doesn't burn the taxpayers I support the removal of Tommy Gonzalez the city manager the next statement was submitted by Veronica Carvajal it says Dear representative anello or city clerk please read the following message during the public comment period for item 23. my name is Veronica Carvajal I live in District 2. I urge you to please vote to terminate the city's agreement with a current city manager Tommy Gonzalez this agenda item has nothing to do with getting rid of the city manager form of government this agenda item is about removing the highest paid City employee who has failed us both in good times and bad I have personally collected hundreds of signatures for hostessa many of the people who signed ask me when we could do a petition to remove Mr Gonzalez I also share their frustrations under Mr Gonzalez's tenure of almost nine years our residential property taxes and public debt have skyrocked rocketed while the quality of our services has plummeted we should not have to take out bonds and certificates of obligations to pay for basic city services like our streets Mr Gonzalez and his staff have repeatedly made recommendations to council that served only the richest El person during covet Mr Gonzalez said on millions of cares act funds for weeks while covet spread killing so many people we made the national news and when we finally decided to spend millions of federal funds it was to buy buildings that were never used for testing or vaccinations and saved zero lives to be clear the county not the city acted swiftly and courageously the city manager chose to keep the most contagious businesses open and use a pandemic as an excuse to shut down our libraries parks and museums and fire 400 city employees this same type of delays and mismanagement of funds took place during the arrival of immigrants in late 2022 rather than work with the county the city manager instead embarked on an impractical and expensive busy plan that movement that of Governor Abbott instead of working with non-profits and local shelters the city manager used the police force to raid makeshift shelters and yes the manager is responsible for the behavior of the police department since it is under his control since 2013 the city has paid Millions of dollars to defend and settle police brutality harassment and wrongful death lawsuits not to mention the value of the lives lost I have also witnessed firsthand the lack of consistent funding for the CIT and the use of eppd to protect big money interests instead of those trying to peacefully protect durangito please vote to give Mr Gonzalez notice of the termination of his contract thank you Veronica Carvajal the next speaker is Lupe de la oh followed by Dan Olivas good morning Miss Delaware you have three minutes good morning mayor good morning Council my name is Lupe de Lao and I am the one who started the petition to the initiative petition to abolish the city manager position a few months ago my brother and I did it as individuals my brother was a city rep at the time that the position was established and I would like to read what the petition says El pasoans for Progressive Reform Group a nonpartisan Coalition is submitting an initiative petition for El Paso voters to amend the El Paso City Charter by adopting a strong mayor form of government and eliminating the city manager position this initiative is being submitted for someone to state of Texas election code petitioners declare the city manager is Not Elected by the people and is not accountable to the voters this had nothing to do with the person Mr Gonzalez it only had to do with the position and the high salary all my life I have dedicated myself to communities service and I've helped out a lot of businesses and a lot of groups organizations and individuals two weeks ago on February 11th of this year I was selected as a new El Paso County Republican party chair but I did this as a nonpartisan because what I saw was the El pasoans were upset at the high salary that this position had compared to the very low salaries of most El pasoans and we only wanted to abolish the position and let the city council and the mayor decide how they would handle it we were planning on recommending that the person become or the position become a civil service employment or a regular City employee everybody felt that the salary was way too high and that was a complaint of the thousands and the thousands of el pasoans who signed the petition it was just against the amount of the salary and the benefits so after finding out more information on Mr Gonzalez um I respect your decision it's up to you whether he'd be fired or replaced by another person but our concern for all our height uh tax paying citizens is just the amount of money most people don't believe that that salary should be for any person that works for the city and is not elected by the taxpayers we're the second highest in property taxes in the country is what I understand and I would like to thank the new conservative City Representatives I believe that El Paso is a conservative City most El pasoans or value or traditional conservative values and I would also like to request talking about money oh you've reached the three minutes man thank you very much thank you the next speaker is Dan Olivas followed by Enrique Rivas Yuri Espinosa Connie Romero Paul Thompson Aurelio Valdez Jr good afternoon sir you'll have three minutes thank you good afternoon councilman mayor oh you know I'm kind of like John Cook and and uh the former mayor D Margot I'm not sure what I'm talking about or against or for or whatever but I am going to say that our city is completely different under the leadership of Tommy Gonzalez than it was before anybody with any any Vision at all can see that things have changed and they've changed for the better I thought his contract was already solidified that had been hashed over but now all of a sudden with new representatives and and I respect the fact that you decided to to run but after this short minute amount of time you're thinking of firing the man that has been a leader in transforming El Paso in a very positive way I'm in the business community and I see this every day I see the difference of El Paso today in El Paso prior to Tommy Gonzalez coming into leadership it seems like since the day he got here he has been harassed and harassed and harassed it's it's unfair for an employee especially one that comes with his credentials and does what he has been able to do here in El Paso to have to every night go home and just wonder what in the world do these people want what is happening here in El Paso the rest of the state looks at us and I think they kind of laugh at El Paso El Paso's at it again let's not do that let's fulfill the promise that El Paso has of being a leader not only a regional but a national leader we have that capacity where we're located and with proper leadership we can accomplish that let's not miss that opportunity whatever you do today ask yourself are we better off today than we were before Tommy got here as you can hear from all the people that got up here to spoke to speak the majority of these people are supportive of Tommy Gonzalez and I think that anybody that understands exactly what it takes to run something this large he doesn't have just one Department he's got 25 30 departments that he is responsible for that is a huge responsibility please be responsible in your vote thank you thank you the next statement was submitted by Enrique Rivas and it reads to whom it may concern I work and can attend the council meeting can someone please read my statement during the meeting Mr Lisa and Council I find it very disheartening that the council members have created a hostile work environment for their two employees if I were the internal auditor I would be very nervous I will be voting note on the charter Amendment it is disingenuous for Council to claim to be all about diversity equity and inclusion when you're trying to fire a Hispanic military veteran for doing the work that he has been directed by the council to do he will think that the council would want to keep a highly professional nationally recognized leader who has saved the city over a million dollars instead you choose to believe the lies that cruel and small-minded people spread recently I read a social media post from Miss Veronica Carvajal with a lot of misinformation about Mr Gonzalez interesting enough I also received the annual report for UMC did you that Miss Carvajal a former mayoral candidate is also a board member of UMC did you know that the salary that UMC pays their CEO is funded by County taxes I'm sorry according to order we are we're attacking people that are not on Council this is not appropriate Laura can you not read a talks against people that are not on Council okay I detect with Ms Hamilton and she said that I could read this since Miss Carvajal is it's related to her social media posts they've already been posted on social media well it refers to miss carvajal's social media posts okay [Music] so it says my taxes according to a 2020 article in El Paso Times the board which includes Miss Carvajal who is clearly working to get rid of Mr Gonzalez approved a two-year extension of the CEO's contract set to expire in September 2024. his base salary was set at 533 504 he also got a Bonus giving him a total compensation of 659 434 dollars I'm not saying he doesn't do a good job but he's not an MD he's running the operational site of the hospital again I'm sorry I don't know what Jacob centrone has to do with this agenda item and I don't think this is appropriate to continue reading this Kristen Hamilton Karen from the city attorney's office um this is a matter of Rule of Order which does say that there is no personal attacks but this is related to the agenda item in that it's about the uh similar salaries of similar types of employees on track on another Public Employee that we do not hire a fire I do not think that this is appropriate I don't know that it's personal related to the taxpayer dollar issue may I continue man yeah go ahead just try to make sure we skip any personal attachments it says yes sir similarly you look at the EP water CEO the utility has increased water bills and we continue to see major issues with pipes bursting resulting in sinkholes that cars are being swallowed into and let's not forget the sewage that was all over people's homes smelling up our city and ruining the Rio Grande and yet the board which includes mayor Lisa reproves increases and extensions time's up thank you the next statement was submitted by Yuri Espinosa to be read by representative Molina thank you Yuri Espinosa hello I'm a resident of District Four can rep molinar please read my email in public comment thank you hello Council my husband is a city employee I wanted to tell you which department but my husband is concerned about his job so I'm writing this email to give him and other city employees a voice he and I have been watching the news and we're sad to learn that the new new council members want to fire our wonderful city manager we don't understand why I met Mr Gonzalez and his wife at the Winterfest this year and he was such a nice man he spoke about what he's been doing for us not just the community but for my husband and the city employees he loves us because of him my husband has been able to get pay raises almost every year over the last six years before Mr Gonzalez came to El Paso my husband hadn't had a pay raise in years but our health insurance kept going up after Miss Gonzalez came we saw salary increases and no insurance increases this wonderful person who protects his staff and loves our community please I beg you on behalf of the city's employees do not fire him thank you Yuri e Northeast resident the next statement was submitted by Connie rometto to be right by representative Canales thank you hello my name is Connie Ramos I'm a resident of District 8 and a retired social studies teacher I wanted to go speak to the council in person but my grandkids demanded my attention I would like to go on the record that I am vehemently opposed to the council firing Mr Tomas Gonzalez he has done great things Chief among them is the spray parks my grandkids love them we have gone to all of them we also have a membership at our nearby water park the closest one to us in is the one in District Two The Lost Kingdom we love it I understand it doesn't pay for itself but that really isn't a surprise given how little the membership costs are and the prices are so reasonable because the council told the city manager they wanted the park to be affordable so why are people surprised that it doesn't pay for itself do our libraries pay for themselves no do our Parks and Rec facilities pay for themselves no do our museums pay for themselves no the list goes on and on I'm sure some cities in our nation have Municipal facilities that pay for themselves but I would bet my pension that none are similar in the makeup of our border community that relies so much on the municipality to provide so much to improve our quality of life with these amazing facilities Mr Gonzalez is an amazing leader who is doing the will of the council if you don't like what the previous Council directed him to do then you need to give him an opportunity to do what this new Council wants him to do you can't just expect him to turn the bus around on a dime Mr Canalis I voted for you because I believed you to be a smart and moral person I hope I was not wrong about you I urge you Mr Canales to please keep our city manager in place the man is very sharp and will be able to achieve the expectations set by this new Council thank you Connie Ramos District 8 voter thank you the next statement was submitted by Paul Thompson president local 51 one of El Paso Association of firefighters and it reads to whom it may concern I would like the following to be spoken on agenda item 23 at the Tuesday city council meeting February 28 2023 I would like to speak against agenda item 23 discussion in action on the employment agreement between the city of El Paso and the city manager mayor and city council I want to thank you for your work and dedication to the city of El Paso I see that we have another item on the agenda which I feel takes away from focusing on what's truly important for El Paso and more importantly the citizens of El Paso let's stop the arguing get to work and keep moving El Paso forward and focus on running a city with a 1.2 billion dollar budget now is the time now is not the time to change course we may have differences of opinion but I'm sure each of you would agree our main focus is on making El Paso a better place to live and work I urge each of you to focus on that and stop posting agenda items which move El Paso in the wrong direction respectfully Paul Thompson president local 51 El Paso Association of firefighters thank you the next speaker is Aurelio Valdez Jr followed by Kelly Holland Carmen Rodriguez good afternoon sir you have three minutes good afternoon mayor um Lisa as well as the city council I'm really about this Junior I've served as a and that and excuse me an advocacist and humanitarian for human rights without qi2 plus youth on the local state and National level without Q of El Paso and as well locally have served as the founder of the El Paso genders and sexualities Alliance board um I'm here to speak today on agenda item 23. um I want to make very clear I'm not going to tolerate any misinformation or lie on agenda item 23. it says very clearly discussion and action on the employment agreement between the city of El Paso and the city manager literally the employment so um anyone who says any misinformation lie about this being on their Employment contract stop lying because you're literally lying to the people elected you no matter what side you're on we can't have that we just can't have that I don't care what side it is we just can't have that so we can't have any lies on that as to the city manager I greatly believe and I know very people greatly believe that there was a failure on how they protected us in our city against the worst code outbreaks as well as they refuse to shut down most contagious businesses and instead shut down our libraries our parks and museums if you're going to shut down any of them shut them all down or don't shut them down as well I would note that city manager Gonzalez Used the pandemic as an excuse to cut essential essential city services firing 400 of the lowest paid city managers while accepting arrays on their own salary of over four hundred thousand dollars um I will also note that while quickly while kovid was quickly spreading and people died city manager Gonzalez took um forever to use the cares act funds to improve the testing processes help businesses or reduce the spread and then use the money to buy buildings that were never used for testing or vaccines use that literal money that was never even used for taxing your vaccines which makes no sense they use the pandemic to stop spaying neuter Services animal services and under city manager Gonzales supervision El Paso Police Department has faced several lawsuits and allegations for police brutality as well as excessive use of force and wrongful death as well I will note throughout the fight to save during Gita and most egregiously in 2017 the El Paso Police Department used its Force to protect the interest of big money Property Owners using the amended domain clause however that doesn't excuse that in El Paso we've had for decades um the fifth poorest zip code in the United States 79901 why I don't know but clearly something needs to be done about it because if it's been for decades at 79901 is still the fifth poorest zip code in the entire United States it's unacceptable that at that time we were worrying about a neighborhood in duranguito excuse me that's unacceptable the office of Civilian compartment estimates that every year it's roughly 80 million dollars to help people experiencing homelessness in El Paso so the fact that we're wearing on other issues with um with the during guitar neighborhood with all those other issues when it really we've had a zip code that's a fifth person in the United States nothing's been done about it I will also know at which point at time OEM was activated during the deutschwood police George police brutality protests and the El Paso Police Department hired extra cops to investigate people protesting police brutality to even becomes activated sir thank you sir that's enough the next statement was submitted by Carrie Holland and it reads hello can you please help me by reading these comments I worked today in Kent call in Good Day Council my husband and I have two small children and we want to say thank you to Mr Gonzalez we appreciate what you have done for our city specifically for families we love the water parks the spray parks Winterfest and the fact that you are leading the progress in our city my husband and I both grew up in El Paso and are excited and proud to see how El Paso is shaping up Council please do not stop the progress and hurt our city Mr Gonzalez is doing a fantastic job addressing the needs of El Paso Kelly Holland the next statement was submitted by Carmen Rodriguez and it raised deer City officials I submit the following comment and request that the city clerk we did at today's city council meeting good morning and thank you for the opportunity to address this important issue from my taxpayer point of of you the manager's contract needs to be terminated simply because it is unfair to the taxpayers and should never have been entered into in the first place number one the terms are so favorable to the manager that it would appear there was no negotiation on behalf of taxpayers the city attorney's office failed to rigorously represent the taxpayer's interest number two the recent changes in the contract turned the employee employer relationship upside down the employer gave up its rights and duty to supervise his performance and administer discipline while increasing his benefits number three as an employee of the city the manager's role is to effectively implement the policy set by the council although the position gives him much Authority this Authority is not boundless and the mayor and Council should be and act as his bosses not the other way around the current contract distorts and assigns the roles and needs to be either rectified or terminated number four the enablers of the contract are the most responsible for the current one-sided version besides the five reps who voted for it the private parties who advise them and advocated for the changes acted out of something other than the city's best interest number five the compensation package is overtly generous to the employee and above and beyond what other cities pay it is not commiserate with our smaller size and our lower tax base compared to other Texas cities number six the grounds for good cause termination were essentially eliminated such that the taxpayers have no recourse in case of dissatisfaction with performance number seven the length of the contract is exceedingly long number eight and the one million dollar Severance bonus is simply irrational and excessive it amounts to a gift from the council members who voted in favor of the contract at the taxpayers expense payment of this bonus is especially objection objectionable because it results it's in an undeserved reward however even payment of this exorbitant price may be worth the opportunity to hire an administrator who is willing to be part of our community who is respectful of his employers and the citizenry who believes in transparency especially with respect to fiscal matters and who understands and is willing to abide by the boundaries of his or her Authority number nine your fiduciary duty to the taxpayers should be first and foremost when in all contracts are negotiated number 10 thank you for your attention and your service to our city Carmen Rodriguez District 8 rep resident and taxpayer the next speaker is Jose Alejandro Lozano followed by Edgar pasca Sarita Martinez Josh Simmons Joe Rosales good afternoon so you have three minutes good afternoon um I was a past City representative for district 3. and now I'm honored to be here with you tonight today I'm I'm very um stoned and surprised about what we're talking about Tommy Gonzalez here to me you know if you read what everybody's saying is that he's the number one man he can do everything we don't need you because we got him why do we need a city council when you have a man that does everything he takes care of the budget he takes several projects I thought that that's our job what's it our job to do bring wealth to the city as mayor and city council bring industry bring projects and allow the city manager to take care of them what I see right now is that he's bringing the projects he's bringing all this wealth and you're just approving it but what are you doing I mean I'm very concerned with uh with small individuals like ourselves that we need a problem we have a problem with the city and we cannot see you because you're kind of busy and you defer us to the city manager well for two years I haven't been able to see Mr Tommy Gonzalez on any projects on any issues they defer me to staff if I need if I have a problem I have to go to a staff member what does he do you see my representative no I need somebody to to vow for me to take care of me to look at my problem to oversee what I want and need but there's nobody there really see the Reps see the rep three I call your office many many times no answer not even an answer forget about calling back not even one answer so I don't appreciate that my job as a city rep was to help every single individual regardless our district I would go into other districts but that was my job to take care of you as a citizen not a big companies not a big I mean a city manager is good for big organizations they're great for that because they don't have to come to you they just go to him and he can approve it or disapprove it but he's a man so I'm surprised that but what I'm seeing here is that he's running the city what happened to my mayor and my city Representatives I thought that they're running the city not this way around so to me it's either he has to oversee or you have to oversee him thank you very much thank you the next statement was submitted by Edgar Pascal and it reads members of city council to realize do you realize El Paso is playing ketchup our streets are downtown our police and fire departments and overall quality of life have all been neglect neglected why because past leaders do not want to spend the money and work with the city budgets to address the real needs of our community the city manager we have has proven that he is addressing the needs of our city yes he has to spend money and he works on the budget to save and set aside money to fix to improve and provide for all the Departments and the citizens of El Paso we need our city manager to help our city continue to catch up and move forward Edgar Pascal the next statement was submitted by Sarita Martinez and it reads good morning my name is Sarah Martinez I'm at work and cannot come in to speak but I wanted to share these comments in support of Mr Gonzalez I have one question why do you listen to those who say Mr Gonzalez salary is too high for El Paso we are a big city with big city needs to have an experienced leader you need to have a competitive salary it doesn't make sense that the director of the water utilities was less less than 700 employees and continual issues makes almost as much as Mr Gonzalez the superintendent of yisd started in 2014 just before Mr Gonzalez and makes more than he does he is responsible for the schools in his district which is one part of our city Mr Gonzalez is responsible for the entire city and the 26 Departments of your course you can have another city manager with a lower salary but they will not have the experience and knowledge that Mr Gonzalez has please quit playing politics with our City's future and remember you get what you to pay for the next speaker is Josh Simmons Josh Simmons if you're in the Q star six please to unmute your telephone good afternoon sir you have three minutes good afternoon good afternoon um did he uh the council mayor and distinguished City staff my name is Josh Simmons I am a resident of District Five in all opinions that I expressed here now are that of my own and in fulfillment of My First Amendment right I want to convey uh the urgency that I would like to express to the city council to to discontinue the contract with the current city manager as a civil servant how can 430k salary be justified when long time city employees at all levels have not seen a raise and struggled to even hire or have retention of the attraction to employees to the city the evaluation of the city manager is still not public we don't know the Criterion in which the city manager was determined to extend the contract with their lavish rewards and almost Limitless uh top salary that he could earn the current city manager has mismanaged the cares fund act for the so the covid pandemic missed these those funds to purchase buildings that were not even used for testing or other public health support the also the evidence of the quote the closure of the libraries and and the layoff of necessary staff to outkeep essential city services and just to express the the just just the baffling comments made and support for the current city manager and how particularly even the one in-person comment that preceded me um if a single one person is responsible for all this and we are to truly be advocates for democracy then what you're advocating for is an authoritarian regime which is not Democratic and to have this item be presented now with newly elected City Council Members is exactly that Democratic process in play and if you don't like it then I encourage you to step up and run and get involved in politics um I just want to finally close with this statement the Crusty stock topic leader that is the city manager that is transforming the city of El Paso for the benefit of the permanent ruling class of developers in the oligarchs I urge that City Council vote to deliver the current city manager the notice determination upon his current employment with the city of El Paso thank you very much thank you the next speaker is Joe Rosales followed by Fabiola Campos Lopez and Dora Oaxaca good afternoon Mr Rosales you'll have three minutes sir okay good afternoon Mr mayor council members Mr Gonzalez um let me just tell you a little history about me my company my dad founded jar construction back in 1957. so we've been doing work for the city TxDOT the county for over 65 years so I've seen Mayors come and go council members come and go I've Seen It All I've seen the politics believe me even though I don't like it I'm involved with it and I'm here today in defense of Mr Gonzalez I remember when he first got here I don't know how long it's been six seven years what was really impressive he came with his humble parents and I mean they were humble Farm Workers and I and I met this good looking young guy thinking he was all that when I got to meet him he was just like his parents very humble very shrewd very smart I've done some business dealings with Tommy let me tell you there's no pushover I've seen the changes people I left I went and played for Nolan Richardson in Snyder Texas National Championship team we were 37-0 I went from there I went to Texas A M I came back to my city because I'm proud of my city and I want to see it to continue to grow I've seen water parks spray parks quality of life projects that I've never seen before ever ever and I know where it's coming from this right here is nothing but a political agenda and it needs to stop y'all or whoever approved his increase that was you people you must have done it because you believed in them and we still need to believe in them I'm here because I'm here to do what's right he's a man with morals and a man of faith and he stands for what he believes in and he believes in El Paso so he makes the salary so be it he deserves it if you didn't think so then we shouldn't have approved it so right now I want this put and do what's right for the city leave the political BS aside and vote for what's right so he can continue do you know we have quality of life projects on hold what do you think that's going to do the price of that's going to increase tremendously it's only going to get more expensive take it from me I'm a contractor so today please do what's right I know the Mr Mayor very well I respect them I respect everybody on Council doing your job I know a lot of you up here leave this in the hands of God and make the proper decision God bless you all thank you thank you the next speaker is Fabiola Campos Lopez Miss Lopez star sixth place two and major telephone good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon Council and mayor um my name is Fabiola Campos Lopez I'm a Community member of El Paso I'm speaking today because I believe this item and discussion will be inappropriate and unacceptable the municipal lost allows our council member to express himself or herself and post an unfortunate item like this still there is a fine line between I do it because I can in an abuse of power without any constituents meeting or without a proper evaluation I consider this I don't disrespectful to the decisions recently made by the city council and mayor only seven months ago on this exact item but above all this item underestimates the intellect of el pasoans in this regards the city Representatives responsibilities to its constituents it is disheartening that finger pointing at each other however a good leader unites not divides a good leader works and recognize the work of others and joins talents to continue leading our community to the long overdue Evolution for others in El Paso in the last seven years is in the suitable and evidence people interested in investing in El Paso see the successful result in progress we have been having several recognitions in our work had been obtained in community programs and services my experiences related to community programs to improve that quality of life in the neighborhood however the city situation is privileged in The Economic and Business spheres due to our location and consistent growth items placed by impulse like this should consider a repercussion we should not take the work done today for granted nothing is guaranteed and the risks and losses will be many and severely impact our community not to mention the leadership and empowerment in skills among City staff members they are also members of this community it is important to maintain Innovative skills to empower and moderate the Synergy between leader and team is capable like never before El Paso has developed a strategic plan that needs to be carried through and not to change as new city council members want the let us remember that currency Aid council members terms are for some only two years or for other sports and it is easy to start a fire and leave the city with chaos after the current city council terms are over the people of El Paso are people of their work and respect agreements unfortunately this item goes against these values despite your differences you can come together as a community and work with a city that Community deserves progress requires change which brings inconvenience by short-sighted work produces cheap results so let's stress the process thank you Miss Lopez thank you Miss Campos Lopez you've reached the three minutes the next thank you for your time thank you thank you the next speaker is Dora Oaxaca Miss Oaxaca star 62 in mute your telephone good afternoon good afternoon my name is Dora wahaga and I'm speaking against item 23. it is very disappointing that rep Kennedy and rep Joe molinar have placed this ambiguous item on the agenda it is very perturbing that the mayor leader refused to allow the authors to lay out their items and explain their intent and back up their reasons in public for placing this item on the agenda nonetheless I'm not surprised by Kennedy's and molinar's item on the agenda I'm neither surprised by Lisa's actions to shut down mayor's cook request to have the authors of this item explain their intent unfortunately these actions from this Council remind me of the returning to the Anthony Kobo days and Bob Jones era for those that don't know them Google them it's concerning how this council is conducting themselves it is evident that this new council is officially a dysfunctional and Gentleman's Club this is not about Tommy Gonzalez this is about a new Council wanting to take control to take it to a to a new 2.0 kobos Anthony era under Mr Gonzalez and his staff we are safe from any corruption because he is on it he conducts ethical business in the city and he delivers according to the city council's will we know Mr Gonzalez will not allow himself to corrupt politicians and political shenanigans maybe Mr Gonzalez sits on the way of unethical politicians who want their way just like during the Anthony Cobo day in what Kennedy and Joe moly won molinar one is Mr Gonzalez gone embrace yourself for an Anthony kobo's ride thank you thank you I just received an email from former representative Claudia Rodriguez it says this item is reckless to bring up again it's shameful that we spend almost six months negotiating a contract to rectify the mistakes of pest councils and today we're seeing a new account new Council eager to set the city on fire for their own political gain what is this item even about we are listening to public comment and having people second guess what this is about unbelievable to see how people will run for office to seek out personal vendettas absolutely disgusting stop it now former city council representative Claudia Rodriguez mayor that concludes public comment on this item thank you thank you Miss Prine thank you everyone for coming over here and speaking and with that we'll proceed with the item uh representative Canales followed by representative hello ma'am I apologize but I've been on hold for city council excuse me for open comments am I able to speak yes ma'am what is your name my name is Tammy Ava Tammy I'm sorry your last name it's ababas and Victor EMT thank you go ahead ma'am you have three minutes thank you good afternoon city council um and mayor um and the kids sick constituents that um we are all in this city I can tell you first class that despite what's happened with myself and the Northeast representative current Northeast representative Joan Molina I'm here to not bash or to um not um rendering ugliness towards anybody however I do not like to see the fact that you guys are at each other's throats again when we just went through this seven months ago Tommy Gonzalez has always been there for myself and my family when things were just not going right he's taken time out of his own family's life to call me back in regards to my son's Park I ask that you've not removed this man because you've done more in this city in the last seven years than I have seen since 1982 when I first moved here I'm requesting that you do not move forward and if you do please think of the possibilities of Us ending back into not even a democracy it's going to be city council I say what I do and that's what that's the way it's going to be so that's all I have and good luck to everybody thank you now we can uh representative um Canales go ahead thank you mayor um I'd like to have the whole discussion in Open Session obviously but I I have some specific questions that I think need to be answered in closed session I don't think I'm able to ask these questions in Open Session so I'd move that the city council retire into executive session uh pursuant to section 551071 consultation with attorney and section 551.074 Personnel matters also like the executive session item to also be heard so that we can just retire and hear both items as well which the executive session that's on today I did not want to mix them both together I think that would be improper we have both people we'll keep both items separate mayor we he's made a motion and I'm asking if you we can also hear executive session item and as part of your motion to retire um yeah that's that's acceptable we will hear them separately but I think it's all right so we'll go back in the executive session after the when that item will be heard no I mean the question that I'm asked him asks if you can make your motion uh and I'd like to second that so we can hear all the items I will leave it as is for now I'd like to retire just on the these two uh these two sections of the of the uh government code for this item only so I think it's important that we we take a break um we gotta hear uh public comment as well before we take a break so maybe we pause for a second and then allow for public comment because I think the noon o'clock hour has already passed before we take in emotions uh I mean I think mayor that would be your decision if no I think you were supposed to continue right my motion stands I know we were supposed to take call to the public I'd like to go ahead and continue the agenda yes sir he made a motion to go into executive session on this item that's correct is there a second on that hmm so so feedback from our outside Council if we can um hear both of those items okay we don't have a second to hear both items so we don't need outside counsel because it's totally different items with two different attorneys they've hired an attorney differently than the attorney that we'll be talking to right now so there will be two separate items you do not have a second to go into executive session on both items at this point are you making a motion on that so it's a representative Canal's motion is is not one that I support so my motion would be to return to Executive to hear all items if that's yours if that's yours I would I would second it well the same Canal said not get a second so we do have a motion in a second correct did uh representative Canalis get a second no sir so so there's a motion and a second to return to Executive session to hear items 23 and ex1 go ahead hold on one second representative um so has a question on this Laura quick question uh for call to the public how many people do we have nine nine I mean I think that'd be good if I mean they've been waiting um it's already an hour passive we let them do public comment first and then we could then take whatever emotions are on the floor yeah well a motion to take public comments Senator we have a motion on the table right now that we have to take if someone would like to remove their second or the motion then we can take an additional motion the answer is no okay so we have a motion in a second there's a motion by made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative Rivera to return to Executive session to hear items right I'm sorry the motion and you're seconded it yeah right so the motion is from representative and on the secondary by representative Rivera and I'm sorry to add additional clarification I thought your motion was on the table to to hear public comment yes you would have to remove yours and then we can hear public come and then you can make I'm sorry I'll remove my okay so the motion uh representative Salcido is to table this item yes there's a motion and a second to table item 23 to hear a call to the public or in favor anyone opposed the motion passes I just want to make sure Council understands there's no other motion on the table right now thank you that's correct mayor and the city council of city of El Paso is a local government body charge serving with this all the citizens of the city and the meetings must be focused on the meeting at charge the City Council meetings are public meetings under the Texas open meetings ACT public comment is an accommodation and not a requirement of city council all persons in attendance are expected to displace stability and decorum that is respectful to other persons without the use of insulting profane threatening or abusive language public comment will not be used for personal attacks against a person or group's character or Integrity which are not pertinent to City business nor May any member of the public uses foreign for political statements or campaigning please note that during call to the public the city council may not deliberate or decide any subject that is not on the agenda however Council May propose that a topic brought forth be posted on a future agenda this afternoon we have nine members of the public signed up to speak the first person is Miss Wally Scheck followed by Ephraim Salcedo Miguel Rico Ricardo Rico Albert Rivera Ron Como Barbara Valencia arnulfo Hernandez and Steven strommer good afternoon Miss check you have three minutes ma'am good afternoon good afternoon everyone of you in May God save America this is gonna be mileage three minutes speech and I have a surprise for all of you this is my three minutes I'm going to sing Ave Maria for you all I'm sorry and this is in honor of of my police chief oh and also Johnny okay and the chief of the police okay [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] in all the new energy boost Ed victors through Tuesday [Music] no novice [Music] [Music] Miss check you sing very pretty thank you thank you very beautiful ma'am the next speaker is Efrain salsa Ricardo Rico Mr Rico's topic is Police Department report filing good afternoon you have three minutes good afternoon major Council I just want to bring to your attention good afternoon sir I just want to bring to your attention that in in this month the 24th uh 12 37 and the location of 75 55 in our Mesa it was some incident that took place in the parking lot it was uh my sister that I called Mother after that my both of my parents passed away both of them uh she said dialysis patients so it's a blood pressure and I left her in a parking lot of handicapped space a company with my nephew Stephen that he's a special kid with ADHD meanwhile uh that I that I was parked before that I was parking the spot this lady with the veteran plates she would start honking at me for about three minutes the reason that I took the long it was because in front of me was a gentleman that was also with an electrical chair and he was struggling to get in his SUV or or car okay I had to take care of some business instead of Walmart I went inside and this lady take advantage of the moment that I was inside of Walmart and she started cussing and making some damages to the vehicle that I was driving that belongs to my nephew uh uh Jose Alfredo Rico well just to make sure I tried to look for help I called a police officer um Sergeant uh di Medina with the bachelor number 2331 but at that time he he seems his insurance interest to help me out but right after he talked to the security that it was imposed they just went like two or three cars away from me and he came back with Crossing arms like this with less interest because I guess the security guard mentioned to him that the car the do all these damages and was attacking my family members um it was a veteran and at that time he didn't even want to do the police report so I just wanted to I just want to bring this to your all your attention to please give more education to these officers especially the surgeons to do something rather than the spot instead of for me instead of him for me telling me to go to one of the original commands and do myself the police report so because you know a lot of charges has been happening especially in Walmart's parking lot like the last shootout you know that happens yellow Vista or the last I should all that happened on in Cielo Vista Mall so I just want to bring this to your attention so we could be treated with respect and please so that police officers can do a little bit more because just for them to tell us you know what do yourself why can't I do anything I don't think that that's the right way and please major please be more accessible to the citizens and to the public because every time that one of us is trying to look for you or other party other Council we never never got a returning call or there is always somebody else that feels that he's stuck out of the world just by saying you know what just try to deal with yourself that's only the thing that I just want to bring today and thank you for your time and hope that I could hear maybe later on from one of you guys thank you the next speaker is thank you Mr Speaker Mr Rico's topic is also a police Deport Department report filing how are you sir buenos um Del Caso yes list comienda is foreign Korean those decisions castigara foreign I Miguel Rico want to know if you did anything about a case on October 21st 2022nd at the Walmart store at Cielo Vista involving police officer batch number 2696 he approached us to intimidate us instead of helping us and I would like to know I would like to let you know that PD's policy has nothing to do with the Walmart store if they did nothing I want you to investigate and do something about it also another incident that I want you that I want to advise you of it happened on February the 16th 2023 in another Walmart 755 North Mesa where officer L Sanchez with PD badge 3435 did not did not make the report and did not care about the safety and integrity of my sister and my son my sister is a senior citizen diabetic and with kidney illness and my son has special needs the offender in this case is a veteran and her conduct is unacceptable when she clearly must be punished to the full extent of the law for verbally assaulting and harming my relatives property over a disabled parking spot that my family was using at that time because of the seriousness of the matter I ask you to discipline the officer who failed to do his job and to amend the codes or regulations to make the officers fulfill their obligation to enforce the law correctly I'm coming to you and not asking you to get more budget for for the government they use a minimum preparatoria on University I'm guessing he's referring to PD Officers minimum they had a high school they have a high school diploma in maybe some College financial aid and they asked for financial aids and even without all that financial aid and help from the government they didn't they didn't get prepared and they're not ready to service Studio I shouldn't be here to give you an example of a person as a person who did not have a did not complete his his education is not here to offend anyone or make anyone uh feel bad trying to do the things the way they should be done okay um I'm just asking that this person that had the altercation with my son that she been that should be uh that she'll be let know that it's unacceptable the next speaker is Albert Rivera and Albert Rivera I don't see him coming forward Ron Cuomo and Mr Como's topic is exercising my first right First Amendment rights Mr Cuomo you'll have three minutes he will be followed by Barbara Valencia good afternoon good afternoon everyone good afternoon sir so here we are again we finished out 2022 the boards that Barbara's holding up for me is information off El Paso Animal Services shelter reports I want to start out by explaining these numbers are the difference between 2019 and the no kill plan that we put in place and I would say probably there's only three of us that were involved in making that plan that are here today these this information is 2019-2022 live intake for 2022 is 9472 less Strays were picked up by our shelter that gives us a running total since the implementation of Haas of 33 660 Strays that have not been picked up by our shelter comparing to the intake numbers of 2019 which are actually a little lower than 2018. I would like to point out that leaving Strays on the streets is not part of the no kill plan it is the Haas plant I would also like to say that adoptions are down 3022 for 2022 and they're down because the shelter has pushed itself away from the community you cannot demand the community to be the shelter and expect them to support the shelter I would also like to say return return to owner 2337 less in 2022 which means the shelter did not get out and return strays rescue pulse are down 2058 in 2022. rescue polls are down because the rescues are pulled away from the shelter we're tired we're worn out we're fed up and now they're blocking more and more rescues after Loretta's last conversation here Terry and Kyla blocked her from calling them that is Haas that is not no kill the no kill plan made everybody work together there's lots of information live intake 10 647 less Strays when out the front door in 2022. we've already proved that the shelter is run by a director who is not qualified according to the city of El Paso's information on what it needs to have to be the director now we're proving that what's going on is it's just unacceptable I mean I can't say what I want to say but thank you Mr reach the three minutes sir is Valencia's topic is continuing failure of animal services good afternoon you have three minutes yes ma'am it won't eat the Elmo please it's just this one if you look at it while I talk thank you ready hello I'm Barbara Valencia with Huckleberry Hound Dog Rescue what is the goal of animal services when you ask them their response is our goal is to make El Paso a life-saving no-kill community please remember that as I'm speaking tax dollars are being used to pay best friends as a consultant to help animal services in regard to the animal crisis in the city best friend has partnered with Austin Pets Alive to promote the disastrous Haas plan that animal services has been using for almost three years we are paying what sixty three thousand dollars to the very people that put us in this deplorable state just so they can tell us to keep doing the Haws plan why the city already has a group of people with over 125 years combined of knowledge and experience in all aspects of animal Sheltering and Animal Welfare that experience includes shelter housing cleaning and sanitizing intake protocol standards of Animal Care adoptions and fostering transporting marketing and fundraising and it would cost the taxpayers and the city nothing to use them when we come to speak to you again and again and again it's because things only continue to get worse for the animals in our city as you can see in these pictures here The Strand lost dogs are left on the streets or surrounding desert to Fed for themselves and starves dogs are being attacked by other dogs and coyotes packs of dogs are roaming neighborhoods and puppies are being dumped in abandoned throughout the city like those two little puppies there that were found taped up in a box and left in an alleyway the local rescues are the ones stepping up to help these innocent animals because Animal Services is not doing their job the rescues are past the breaking point and cannot continue doing this how much sugar are you going to let this continue it's only going to get worse and at some point you will never be able to recover from this and that time is coming very soon the cat left on the pole for five days while animal services and Animal Control did nothing the disgusting and inhumane conditions in animal services and the dogs being left on the streets to suffer and die have all made national news I have people from all over the country messaging me about what is happening to the animals in El Paso and they want to know what is wrong with our city leaders one message summed up how our city leadership is looked at by the rest of the country you guys are known as the clown show is this the impression you want the rest of the country to have a view in our city it's time to address this issue head on and fix it and it starts with bringing in a qualified experience compassionate director and forming a task force with the people with a group of people I mentioned that can overhaul animal services and move it forward in a positive direction so we can actually meet the goal of being a lifesaver Community for three minutes thank you to our colleague thank you for speedy recovery thank you the next speaker is arnulfo Hernandez Mr Hernandez's topic is a Texas ethics commission order and agreed resolution foreign thank you um we're passing out for you um a notice an order and resolution by the Texas Texas ethics Commission I don't know I take no joy in sharing this papers with you um it talks about a 1 000 civil penalty being imposed on former City District Six of Representative she lost her re-election to Mr Arthur the violation started either technical nor the minimis and they are not confidential they may be disclosed to the public I share them with you in that same context however I just want to Pivot away from that Mr Mayor because I think there's a much bigger issue behind this thing and that is that the rulers of El Paso are corrupting our youth the rulers are described in the recently published book who rules El Paso I think Dr Grossman calls him the oligarchs the oligarchs rulers don't want people like Mr Kennedy Mr and Mr Canales taking those seats because they are accomplished a lawyer CEO president a member of the Board of Trustees EPCC including me against chair for a number of years Mr Canales University educated at Columbia work back east and the chief of staff for the former District 8 representative I think I think it it should be a of interest to the Council that the election laws be known by those who run for the city council the Texas Aesthetics Commission in which I've spoken to provides guidance to various public ethics um public ethics law to elected officials within on on laws within their jurisdiction the mission of the Texas ethics commission is to promote public confidence in government and provides ethics training program they do it for other folks they should be able to do it for candidates running for city council and I would urge the council including the mayor to look into bringing those folks here to El Paso and giving that kind of training Financial disclosures reports should be a priority for candidates for city council and for sitting City Representatives to avoid running a foul of election laws under the jurisdiction of the Texas ethics commission I think it speaks to a better government and I think our government will work better with this kind of training thank you and the final speaker is Steven Strummer Mr strummer's topic is Street lines around the St Patrick's and Cathedral High School area good afternoon Mr Strummer do you have three minutes sir thank you Laura good afternoon I haven't good afternoon sir it's a unusual I'm uh welcoming you Chris especially in this GTA um uh Mr Kennedy I'm asking for Street lining around St Patrick's Cathedral on Arizona at Mesa for the uh Lenten Easter season and East on North Stanton to California and south of the El Paso Independent School District headquarters on Arizona the reason is the safety of children and parents particularly from the school it's uh St Patrick's it is my thinking particularly for the streetcar at the Crossing that was done by Larry Romero it's about 20 percent only available bless you the thought is that if someone is hit an attorney could throw out the case because um the driver just can't see particularly at night so um this is really um a serious issue I have I have some friends of mine an acquaintances one has served eight tours of Duty overseas we did launch missiles uh worked in the um waste burning overseas and I sure as heck do not want him killed on those Street Crossings another friends served 10 years guarding the South Korean border I do not want him killed I have a friend from the Air Force she has one eye so we really need these um Street Linings it's imperative particularly for the upcoming Easter holiday I thank you so much for and I'm hoping somehow to meet with you sir my number if I ever could is 915 -493 five three three two and uh I'm a former New Yorker sir and um I would want to have a good relationship with you if possible thanks so much for hearing me thank you sir for your time mayor that concludes call to the public thank you is there a motion to second there's a motion in a second to return to item 23 all in favor anyone opposed motion passes item 23 is discussion in action on the employment agreement between the city of El Paso and the city manager representative Kennedy followed by representative Hernandez um I have a question uh of the City attorney if if a motion in a second is made and it's decided that there are questions that need to be in consultation with attorney you could then move into executive session for those questions is that correct so there's a emotion and a second and a vote no just a motion in a second but there are that raises questions that somebody felt would be more appropriate and executive you could then move into executive for that issue correct yes but no deliberation an executive so you have discussions in executive but you don't vote or deliberate in Open session so you're allowed to discuss items in an executive session okay thank you well I have a motion all right uh there's three actions in this motion I make a motion that the city exercise its option under 6.1 D in the amended and restated city manager employment agreement dated December 11 2018. and authorize the mayor to provide the city manager with the required 120 days written notice of the city's intent to terminate the employment second to terminate the city manager's employment at the end of the required 100 a day notification period and third under paragraph nine on the October 7th 2022 Second Amendment to the amended and restated employment agreement direct the City attorney to draft the mutual release previously agreed to and approved by the city manager and city council which is required to be substantially in the form shown in exhibit a of the Second Amendment second you have a motion in a second and we have representative adnanus questions related related posed motion today um and I wanted to get a better sense from you could if we were tied into executive session could we add other items um because I understand we've done that in the past it's nothing unusual is there any information that you can share that's right so so remember that under the Texas open meetings act in under the language of your agenda you can move any item into executive session when you seek the advice of the city attorney's office so you can move this item into executive session for that purpose as well as the discussions that the emotion that is being proposed on the floor here today um so I can add we can add other items as well correct that's correct okay is there um well but the motion is being read into the record now so the public would hear what you all are seeking to discuss so sorry I speak for myself um so my question is um can I make a motion to retire to executive and then add other items I'm just looking for information members of council and mayor um I think it's incredibly important that we have a discussion on all the matters um you know related or not mayor I would ask for the courtesy to get more information on both of the matters there's a lot of speculation a lot of rumors and I think you know as your governing body I think it's important that we are that we have the tools and all the information be before making such a Monumental decision and I would ask for the courtesy from Council that we take employment matters into executive session as well as the proposed executive session executive session item number one so I moved to retired to Executive session for item number 23 and executive item number one I'll check on that there's a motion and a second to return to Executive session to discuss items 23 and ex1 all in favor I'll do a roll call representative Kennedy anello no Hernandez yes Nate Salcido I Piero we better Canales we have a timer no and the motion fails my next motion would be to retire into executive session on this matter executive for item number 23. so I moved to retire into executive session for item number 23. there's a motion and a second to return to Executive session to discuss item 23 all in favor yes anyone opposed real cop please representative Kennedy anello no Hernandez yes Nate Salcido I Piero no Rivera Canales we have a tie once again nay then the motion fails and then mayor if I could still be recognized so I can yes ma'am you'll show up the floor um well you know I think it's certainly really unfortunate that we did not have the opportunity to consult with our attorney this decision uh and the motion that's just been heard um that's that's here to that we're supposed to be voting on we are not getting any legal advice we are not getting uh we have they have not been able to uh review the the terms of the contract and so we're we're working uh in the dark here we're we're completely blind on such an important decision for the city of El Paso and uh I'm I'm frustrated I'm upset we've heard from many people from the public that what is what is this about now we know um and you know that motion should have probably been bred before public comment um it's it's orchestrated in a way to mislead the public I take great offense to that I take great offense to not being able to consult with with our attorney um I I speak on behalf of my constituents District three we're talking about multi uh million dollar potential risk to the city my objective is to look out to the taxpayer my objective is to ask the questions the hard questions and so um I am concerned about things I've heard from the public and if if Council wants to have that debate in public well then let's let's have that debate in public even though it should be clear that there are clear exceptions with the Texas opium meeting acts four exceptions in closed session one of those being Personnel matters another one being being able to talk to your attorney or any attorney that's been retained to the city so public understand that here they have not afforded me the opportunity on your behalf to ask those questions to reduce the risk to you to reduce the risk to the taxpayer so I'm offended I think this is irresponsible I think this community owes some kind of protection for our employee when people are looking to our city to do business with our city they are going to see this who are we going to be able to recruit recruit if this decision the inevitable decision at this point is to end in termination irresponsible it's it's frustrating and this is this is avoidable but we are not afforded that courtesy we have a clear mandate from this Council that they don't want to have any discussion they want to they want us to lead I they you know they're making a decision for me they want me to lead this discussion in the blind in the dark bringing significant risk to the city I'm disappointed I'm sad for the public I'm sad for the city of El Paso I am sad for the citizens of El Paso we are in the middle of great momentum and progress we have work to do we need to get to work this is a distraction we have work to do we have a police chief we need to hire we have collective bargaining agreements that is the largest expense to the city of El Paso that are currently under negotiations we have a budget that's coming forward we need that expertise and guidance we have 7 000 employees that we funded this past fiscal year that need clear Direction and support from their city manager all of this feels orchestrated all of this feels they've come with their votes prepared I don't say that lightly I respect my colleagues but also I respect a process there is a process in this contract that affords the protection for Mr Gonzalez that protects his employment you're he's still relatively young and we we would you know I would appreciate again and I would ask this Council to please reconsider their their direction today to not get that consultation from their attorney at minimum let's consult with their attorneys to reduce the risk to you as a taxpayer I've heard no and and that's unfortunate so whatever action comes out of today be clear and I want the record to reflect that there should be clear efforts to reduce the burden to taxpayers and any risk to pack spares employment agreements should be consulted with your attorney we should have and give the dignity to our employee and and protect the interests of that employee because this is direct reflection of your Council moving forward who is going to want to do business with the city that does not afford even a simple consultation with an attorney that's not reflective of the city I have greater hopes for this city I have greater hopes from our political body and I would ask again please reconsider your vote give us the courtesy to consult with our attorney so that we can mitigate we can reduce risk to you as a taxpayer so that we can bring some hope to our city employees so that we can correct whatever issue we have right now this is a professional Administration we should professionally address this matter so again mayor I ask that you all reconsider your vote once again so that we can consult with our attorneys because it is of the utmost importance that we are prepared that we take any action with all the information that could hurt us in the future and so I I think that was just my misery statements we do have uh Ms Rim can you come up please and you know it looks like this Council wants to have this discussion in Open Session you are here representing us and you're here to answer any questions that Within the law and make sure that we stay within the guidance and I I asked Council if they do have any questions Ms Reem has to come here was hired by the city from San Antonio to come and answer any questions and give us any guidance we may need so thank you mystery yes sir and and I would just ask them I mean there are there are protection Clauses for our city manager are we allowed to retire into executive regarding employment matters are we allowed to speak and public on these employment matters is there any case law that you reconfer to to have discussions related to employment just to be clear um if if we if you're going to receive legal advice in Open session it needs to be clear that the body is waiving its right to the protection of that that it be in private and so before I answer any questions that would be providing legal advice I need to ensure that's the case thank you Miss rain are you um so uh representative lubetta you're next right mayor if I may historically this has only happened once before when Council waved the privilege it's actually a vote of the council to waive the privilege and receive advice in open session so you would need to vote to waive the privilege well my question to you on that is that those that vote no are they still protected against any legal obligation towards the council any action that is filed is filed against the body so you're not so what you're saying is that that uh whether we will know or not um you're not protected either way that's what you're telling me and that's the question I want to I want to ask a question because uh I still the the three main points were brought out but I still want to ask why I don't know if that's going to be explained that's that's what a lot of people are were asking about and you were sitting there and you heard them so now if the protections hold on now the the the if the mayor overwrites the the the the no or the yes what protection does that the ones that voted against it and have uh representative um let me ask Mr Raymond question real quick your suggestion we hired you to give us legal advice your suggestion what do you suggests his body do and I know it's a loaded question because I know how they voted but I'm asking your legal opinion I suggest that uh legal consultation be an executive session as provided by the government code all right So based on Ms rheem's uh consultation the Miss Council want to take a vote again yes I do so then we have to have a waiver on the member mayor a member of the prevailing party would have to um I guess reconsider the item let the motion failed oh okay there's no one there so we'll move forward there's a point of clarification here I'm sorry I think we need to take a vote based on Miss nieman's statement is that correct Miss demon so the motion that we need to vote on would be Miss Niemann Miss Pride I mean uh mayor I have a point of clarification okay please uh would there have to be a second anyone can make the motion to return to Executive session again right at any time right um okay I make a motion go to the exec second and this is for item 23 correct yes ma'am okay Motion in a second to return to Executive session and Council I'll do electronic voting this time since now the motion was made by representative riveta Thank You by representative Hernandez okay and that's to item 23 to get legal advice from my Council I want that on the record as well thank you well that motion called for the vote in the voting session the motion passes five to three Representatives Kennedy Hernandez Salcido Rivera Canales voting I Representatives so the city of El Paso the city council of city of El Paso May retire to Executive session pursuant to section 3.58 of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter D to discuss item 23 discussion in action on the employment agreement between the city of El Paso and the city manager under 551.071 consultation with attorney and 551.074 Personnel matters it is 1 28 pm thank you that's why something I have no idea do you want another one do I have I have the ladies [Music] I'll eventually find my my box up my box alone oh my goodness today no but that's the right items like the items thank you thank you [Music] oh thank you your emotions just want to be done same same motion okay no I won't get it do you Jerry over there a couple more days after today we'll wait for everyone to get here mm-hmm that's kind of cool oh yes here's the first one I want sweepstakes are you ready let's um you all ready to return you have a motion motion to return second there's a motion in a second to come out to come out here hi anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 2 36 pm item 23 have cleared the current um speakership anybody wants to speak I do uh I want to make sure people understand there's some motion and a second that we'll take action on and um like I said I have cleared the list here for whoever would like to speak and first speaker will be representative Salcido followed by representative Rivera thank you mayor just wanted to say thank you to the mayor and the colleagues that allowed me to be able to ask the questions I needed to ask we're talking about a million dollar decision here so I wanted to make sure I asked the right questions and I would know what I could ask out in in public I do believe in process and transparency and so a lot of my questions in executive were in regards to that there's some that I couldn't really probably share but I did want to say with a with something that's going to cost the taxpayer dollars I wanted to ask if there were if all stakeholders were reached out to a community employees and Mr Gonzalez himself but I think within the answers that were shared I think still remaining executive but I wanted to make sure I asked all the questions before we took this vote in and it's before us discussion in action so I'm still if the authors of this this item would like to share a little further or or I know that the public had a lot of questions in regards to it so also my only statements thank you thank you ma'am representative Loretta thank you um I just have to say the same thing that that representative Hernandez says let's be careful with our decision I believe that part of me coming to council you had a similar situation where um City the potential investors were looking at the council and at that time there was a lot of shenanigans going on and that was Junior Administration sir and so I understand that there was a 55 million loss of investment I strongly asked my colleagues to reconsider their votes because uh as you heard Mr Golden Sunday that's doing good for this community and I I believe in his vision and he's had a he's done great and um we should be careful with our votes on that because I I believe the man is genuine and he has done several good things for El Paso that others haven't even thought of but yet they're critical of him so I thank you mayor for that thank you I just do want to make clear that there's no vote been taken and I know you should be consider your vote there is no vote been taken and no vote was taken in executive session it was just for consultation with the attorney representative Hernandez right I mean so so certainly the unknown right representative Rivera and a lot of the residents of El Paso have a lot of questions so do the city employees and those who do business with the city all the contractors all the staff all the uniform officers and our Public Safety officers this this isn't an easy decision however a contract is a contract a contract that Mr Gonzalez has agreed to and all I ask uh you know from this body is to um you know really use your best judgment and good conscience in making this decision a lot of what we are doing is good a lot of what we're doing is a direct reflection of city council I heard a lot of things I'd like to clear the record um Council manager form of government that's what we are we set policy we set any budgetary directives we give the clear mandate to our City attorney and to our city manager they take those decisions and they Implement them the implementation from our goals and our strategic plan is the direct responsibility of our city manager I'm proud to say you know over the last six years I think if I'm not mistaken there has been nothing but raving reviews exceeding expectations the performance is clear the data is clear where we were at in 2014 to where we're at today has been such an achievement for our city we have a lot to be proud of it is not solely the city manager but to his credit he has built a wonderful team a team that I'm proud of a team that sacrifices their time their nights we have some city employees who literally wake up and go to bed every night thinking and dreaming how they can improve this community and that is because they have an employer through their leader Mr Gonzalez he challenges every single one of you to be better sometimes we're chastised sometimes you know you're pushed but that is because a cheerleader will push you to your fullest potential I have seen tremendous growth even with our city manager I have seen a community that was in like in every Department operating with the deficit I have seen through my time with the foak and my time as an employee of the city of El Paso I have seen and worked with two different city managers I can see the improvements changing from a strong mayor reform of government to a council manager government you have a professional Administration now and the successes are too too much to to Really demonstrate to the public we heard a lot of those today and I think what's important is our bond rating we are now we have more money in our savings and our rainy day account through the support of our strategic plan through the supportive Council and through the encouragement and guidance of our CFO and our and our CEO of the city our city manager I have seen new multi-million dollar new revenues that reduces the tax burden to Property Owners that's new money that no one would have ever applied for that would have gone to other communities but for our city manager and his team and from the boldness in the courageous Council they have given clear direction to our city manager that we need more dollars we need to reduce the tax burden to property owners and I have seen that success yes we're a community that has spent decades not investing in our maintenance not investing into our Police Department not investing into our infrastructure those were the sins of the past this council is responsible to make sure that we put those dollars aside and it costs money but we have been able to do that in a way that does not Shock the taxpayer and we are the custodians of this budget city council and we send those mandates to our leadership I have seen successes with this form of government I have seen clear empirical evidence that demonstrates how having a good leader in a community makes that better Mr Gonzalez on a personal note he he uh doesn't share this and I've heard I heard some of those comments today is the son of Farm Workers comes from another country is Latino one of the few Latino city managers in this country I'm proud of that I'm proud of the Legacy that you've left and that you're leaving here and I hope that you continue to have in our city because I don't know what's going to happen after this vote it is the unknown and although some of these decisions seem unfair I know there's a lot of city employees that are in a flex know that we are going to be responsible to do whatever it takes to keep the momentum of the city moving forward I don't agree with the way this item has been brought forward I think there could have been another time and place that we've taken this action so that we don't lose the momentum so that we don't um you know scare or disrupt any current progress that we have today but the unfortunate part of it is that you have a political subdivision that can make those decisions uh with or without cause because that's what your city Charter says now again it's the unknown it's unfair but I certainly wanted to lend my support to the city manager to the team he's created for the succession planning that he's implemented to the women that you've Advanced into leadership roles when you've never seen women uh in leadership roles at your city to the the minority and to the demographic uh changes with our employees you see more minorities leading departments uh and at directors levels and supervisory levels that you have ever seen before you now have city employees who have been elevated and their wages have been increased because we could afford to do so and because it was the right thing to do that was encouraged by your CFO and your city manager we have a great team today my hope is that we don't lose that momentum and that Synergy and my hope is that Mr Gonzalez you know that this community owes you a debt of gratitude thank you representative representative Canales I want to start with just a few statements of fact Tommy Gonzalez is the city manager and the city manager is a direct employee of the city council of us as a body uh Mr Gonzalez is someone who I've worked with over the last six plus years since I started working at City Hall not just in my more recent role here on the council um it's not a city manager's job to act on their own opinions but to take direction from us the city council and Mr Gonzalez has received consistently high performance ratings from previous City councils that of course is is not a reflection of the opinions of this city council but to me it's also not valueless Mr Gonzalez has according to his previous evaluations been highly effective at carrying out the policy Direction uh that he's received from the previous City councils um I have at some times over the past several years like I would with any person that I work with disagreed on some certain issues but by the measure of of his evaluations uh Mr Gonzalez has always carried out that that policy direction from the council very effectively I want to emphasize that I care very deeply about fairness and about good and proper process uh and I think that I've made very clear in my explanations of my my past decisions even though I know they're they're a little bit few at this point um but but including my decision about the the MPC or the arena project um my concern is is again with fairness and process and that's a big driver of of all of my decision making so I think that uh a decision should it come from this body today to terminate uh the employment contract of Mr Gonzalez something that's now on the table would be unfair without giving him a proper chance to show if and how he can adapt to receiving new direction from a new city council um that would not feel like the fairness or the proper process to me that that's so important to me in decision making um as I've already said I I think he deserves to be given a full and fair opportunity to demonstrate that he can carry out new direction from a new city council that admittedly has a very different set of priorities to what you've seen in past years um I I think it would be unfair to ask an employee any employee to change their approach in a large way and then to terminate them before giving the opportunity to change that approach um I want to be clear that that I have in the past publicly committed to giving Mr Gonzalez this period of several months to show whether or not he would be effective at carrying out new policy Direction um you know recently Mr Gonzalez and I have been collaborating on issues like raising the minimum wage for city employees making Narcan available at all City facilities and in all City vehicles to to prevent overdose deaths some really innovative solutions for some of the issues that we face in in Animal Services these are all things that I will be bringing before the the city council very soon and I hope that any action that the body makes today doesn't mean that those things Fall by the wayside either entirely or or for an extended period of time I know that there are members of of the community who will disagree with with my Approach today who want definitive action today for a variety of reasons I I understand that completely and trust me I understand your your reasoning um but please know as I've as I've said already here before today that my decision uh will really be driven by what I think is fairness and good process um and the idea that following good and proper process protects the city government and protects the taxpayer I always want to make sure that any decision we make as a council is done right and that our actions are properly and thoroughly measured against considerations like Risk like legal exposure and the many other factors that play into any decision that we make um again one more time to emphasize fairness and proper process are very important in everything that we do and I urge my colleagues to consider those important considerations when making their decision on how to vote today thank you mayor representative Salcido and then we'll call the question go ahead ma'am thank you mayor again process and transparency really comes to mind um but I know that it's in our purview to put items in the agenda as as it was done and um but one of the things that I'm not very clear and I want to be able to express or share with my constituents since this decision will cause the taxpayer 900 000 I want to make sure to be able to share with them um why it's coming before us I think that that's a question that needs to be asked to the authors of this item uh District One Kennedy and District Four molinar if they can share why this is before us just so that I have a clear statement to give to my district in regards to why they will be paying out nine hundred thousand dollars if this is your action limit this is prevails thank you thank you remember that Miss Prine we're going to call the question go ahead Miss Prime yes the motion was made by representative Kennedy seconded by representative molinar and it says first that the city exercises option under 6.1 D in the amended and restated city manager employment agreement dated December 11 2018 and authorized the mayor to provide the city manager with the required 120 days written notice of its City's intent to terminate his employment second to terminate the city manager's employment at the end of the required 120-day notification period third under paragraph nine in the October 7 2022 Second Amendment to the amended and restated employment agreement direct the City attorney to draft the mutual release previously agreed to and approved by the city manager and city council which is required to be substantially in the form shown in exhibit a of the Second Amendment on that motion call for the vote mayor there is a tie in the voting session and the motion passes five to four Representatives Kennedy anello molinar Fierro voting I Representatives Hernandez Salcido Rivera Canales and the mayor breaking the tie the motion does carry anything you can share with the public mayor on next steps in next steps anything you can share with the public that'll come in in the future I know we discussed that with Miss uh Rheem and and I'll come in the future at this point Mr Gonzalez is still a city manager for another 120 days thank you for that Mr Pine we'll take the next item that brings us to item 26 on the agenda this is presentation excuse me presentation and discussion on the FY 2021 Staffing for adequate fire and emergency response safer Grant award to add 21 new entry-level firefighter positions good afternoon chief hi my name is Gustav davidisman assistant chief of the El Paso Fire Department thank you Dave we're going to and present discuss the safer Grant the word of the safety Grant which was a which uh it's uh in the emergency response sorry for the adequate of fire and emergency response Grant awarded for uh four million 105 102 000 for a new entry level firefighter positions so we have a presentation for it this is for item 26 please see they say the fiscal year 21 C for Grant award um is a it's a grant that's been awarded by FEMA right it's for the staffing of adequate fire and emergency response um Personnel the purpose of the safer Grant is to is program is to provide funding for fire departments uh to be able to increase their the number of firefighters they help the community right meet the industry minimum standards uh this will help to attain a 24-hour Staffing right that will provide adequate protection for fire fire hazards uh to fulfill the traditional mission of the fire department the civil award was actually submitted back in February February February 2 of 2022 it was actually granted in February 15 of 2023. our performance period for the grant begins in August 8 of 2023 and Carries On for three years to August 7 2026 the award is to be used for Staffing so the award is to be used for Staffing and for firefighters for their benefits and salaries next slide please I'm sorry all right thank you so your word like I said it's four million 105 180 dollars this is awarded to to be able to provide Staffing for 21 individuals for fire station 36. uh luckily this year there is no cost uh share uh uh cost share so typically there's a cost share that has to do with with FEMA and the city so typically the first first year one and two we have a cost share of uh 75 percent for for the grant and the city has to put up 25 percent in the year three we actually have to match that with uh 65 percent of local funds to 35 percent of funding from the from the grant like I said this year there is a waiver for the cashier waiver so there is no actual um funding that the city has to provide to match the grant against the Grant's going to be used to go ahead and provide uh 21 positions for entry-level firefighters for fire station 36 which is going to be built uh which has been built in on the west side the breakdown of the grant is as follows so in year one um 775 106 dollars you can be allocated for for personnel with the benefits covering 322 226 dollars um total of for the first years could be one million 107 423 dollars second year is going to actually be a hundred and three thousand hundred thirty three thousand thousand six hundred thirteen I mean I'm sorry one million hundred thirty thousand three hundred thirteen dollars with Benefits covering 443 109 119 for a total of one million four hundred seventy six thousand seven hundred thirty three dollars in year three uh benefits for personnel are going to be four hundred fifty six thousand three hundred and ten and Personnel uh salaries are gonna be on one million 164 724 000. we've total of one million four hundred twenty one thousand thirty five dollars the total Grant that's been uh that's been awarded is four million hundred five thousand hundred and two dollars if you have any questions regarding the grant no questions thank you thank you chief uh representative um pharaoh foreign thank you mayor Chief congratulations you know was your office the one who wrote this grant yes sir we we have our office has grant writers on staff that apply for Grants on a yearly basis to go out and get funding for equipment and Personnel but congratulations uh one quick question you said year one the match was waived so does that mean year two becomes year one or does or do we start with no service so actually every this grant carries a a matching uh waiver cost share waiver so uh in this grant uh the city for the first second year would provide 25 percent of the funding and then the ground will provide 75 of the funding and then third year they will provide uh 35 of the funding and the city would actually be providing 65 funding but because FEMA waived the share cost they actually there is no cost to the city as far as sharing costs for just the first year no for all three oh for all three years yes sir so the breakdown is is on the screen so first year uh the the word is going to be for one million 107 423 right there is no share cost for the city for this for the first second or third year again congratulations to your grant writer and to your whole team thank you representative Fiero this this was a budget technique in order to ease into the costs so that we don't get it all in the first year so this grant enabled us to do that that was part of our strategy and so in the fourth year we'll get the full cost but it'll give us time to ramp up some response thank you thank you next item is 27 and this is a budget update on public safety good afternoon mayor and Council Nicole Cody for budget and strategic sourcing and if it can please bring up the presentation I'd really appreciate it good afternoon there it's item 27 again so today as part of the budget update I'm here to talk to you about Public Safety as you've seen in the presentations today we had the presentation from assistant chief Silva on the body worn cameras and the digital video video recording systems as well as the presentation just given by Chief Tavares regarding your safer Grant so we'll continue to look at the investment that has been made in public safety over the past years that includes both Staffing our Fleet and capital replacement as well as the impact of the public safety Bond projections this is all important as we lead into our five-year Financial forecast our two largest cost drivers are really Workforce and Public Safety so at the previous budget update we didn't provide an update regarding the impacts and the changes in the investment we've made in our Workforce in the past few years as well as what we can where we are considering moving forward in addition to that now today we're going to talk about our Public Safety Investments so included on that we will focus on both the recent and upcoming Investments that we see for both police and Fire but first I want to start with personal services and you've seen this graph before you've seen this pie chart and it shows that 373 million dollars or 72.9 or I'm going to round up 73 percent of the budget is on personal services so as I mentioned in the slide before Workforce is one of the major areas well this is your Workforce and of this Workforce you'll see that 71 percent represents Public Safety so let me stop because I think this is really an important point so 71 of your 73 percent of costs is for Public Safety that's the police and fire investment that this Council has made over the past years to support both fire and police response for our community and so I always go to community meetings and ask the the public how many of you know personally a policeman a policewoman a firefighter and odds are at least 40 percent of the room is going to raise their hand why because police and fire are supporting their own Community they're not coming in from another area they're not coming in from another city they are supporting their Community they are supporting their grandparents their Partners grandparents and it's an investment in El Paso so next you'll see the current budget recap and that this this slide was also provided as part of the first quarter presentation and here you'll see goal two and sorry I'm trying to give you the exact I needed to bring my glasses with me I apologize so goal to Public Safety is at 59 .61 I was trying to see that last digit sorry so 59 of the overall budget is gold too so who's included in gold two well if it's Public Safety so we've got police fire and Municipal Court these are the Departments that are included in the majority of your general fund budget so I talked about expanded investment over the years so here you can see since 2016 the overall investment that we have made in public safety that you all have approved in public safety that we have recommended for Public Safety is 84.5 million dollars or close to 40 percent so what does that mean so between 2015 and 2022 the investment of 110 million dollars at that point so please note that this included the slide included the investment in 2023 so if we just look through 22 you'll notice that it was 72 million dollars in addition to the quality of life Bond operating costs for the completed projects the street resurfacing that we've seen time and time again as being a priority for our community a priority for this Council as well as completing over 900 Capital Improvement projects actual tax rate impact was only increased by 21 cents so it's important as we look as part of the financial five-year Financial forecast we're looking ahead we're looking ahead to see what are those Workforce costs going to look like for both our uniform and our civilian employees we want to ensure that we maintain aggressive pay to be competitive because we don't just want to be a mediocre employer we want to make sure that we are hiring the best and the brightest for our community in order to do that how do you do it we need to have competitive pay and so in addition to that no civilian employee health care increases have happened in four consecutive years now it's important that I keep saying four because I've heard some people well we haven't really had increases in health care or will have people that have misunderstood and saying well we're paying more in health care no you're not four consecutive years we have not increased or changed the health care plan or increased premiums for four years also before I move on it's important to note and I believe it was mentioned earlier today is that we are currently in a collective bargaining with the police department police Union I apologize so to protect honor and serve this is the public safety Staffing and what we've seen and what we've committed to Public Safety so the net 300 that we've talked about multiple budget updates was a 10-year plan of ensuring that we are netting which means a odd number of officers minus attrition and we'll see it on another slide plus Academy graduates of 30 30 each year [Music] not also included is the forward drop program we continue to look and ensure that we are being competitive through our collective bargaining agreements as well as our 911 Communicator pay in addition to that we continue to leverage grants for Investments as a city manager mentioned the safer grant that Chief Tavares just spoke about being able to use it strategically to ensure that we're increasing the number of firefighters or the number of officers or purchasing the body worn cameras that are needed for our community and for our officers in addition to that we do have the sign on incentive for new recruits which is the thousand dollars that was approved as part of this budget so as we get into the police department here's a list of the new and enhanced programs since 2016. as you can see that we've got they range from animal cruelty units the centralized traffic units it includes increases that we've seen for the CIT and the downtown Metro unit all of these are staffing needs beyond the Staffing plan in the sense that later down the road we must account for the needs of the community we must account for the not only the net 30 plan but any positions that are going to be needed in addition as assistant chief silver brought up there are 16 positions with three future positions of uniform as well as the academies that are going to be necessary in order to support the net 30. in order to support the Far East Regional side command Command Center so here you'll see the projected police Staffing and nutrition all the way through 2032. so from we we went back a couple of years just because so you could see what was happening as far as attrition itself so it did Peak higher than we anticipated as part of 2022 we did reach a negative or a loss of 68 officers and we're projecting for 2023 to reach approximately 60 loss of nutrition as well in addition we have two current academies that are in progress one that started in January and one that started I believe it was September and so we have those projections for those additional graduates included as part of this in 2024 though you'll see we're moving from two academies since they're fairly small we have seen challenges in recruitment but we're anticipating to be able to have three academies next year and that's where you're going to see the projected increase of new officers from where we're at to about 105 and that's because of the additional Academy it did was part of the plan for FY 2023 but just due to timing and the length of the current Academy we had to plan for it last year in order for it to come into fruition for 2024. so here you'll see the uniform retire eligibility and so this just gives a snapshot on what the average age we're seeing regarding a retirees and how many are actually eligible for retirement so here you'll as we transitioned into the fire department you'll see under FY 2022 that we ended the year with 945 firefighters and with 45 vacancies so in addition to um the 945 is a 31 that Chief Tavares spoke about that they are working to be able to recruit for for station 36 of which 21 will be funded through the safer Grant so we're proud to announce that the graduation last week on Thursday February 23rd they were able to graduate 45 of firefighters and then we do have the next Academy has already started and expected to graduate in July of 2023. in addition to Staffing we really want to make sure that we highlight the investment in both Fleet and capital replacement it's an investment in public safety that we know that we've seen deferred investment previously we know we've seen the struggle previously and it's something that this Council and the city manager have really focused on ensuring that we're providing as part of our operating budget we're not using debt to fund this an ongoing Capital replacement on fleet replacement needs so police and fire combined are funded at seven million dollars as part of FY 2023 and the however combined they need upwards of 10 to 12 million dollars we continue to see prices go up as you can see the average price of a fire truck has gone up since 2019 and estimated for 2023 as well as the average price of the police car and just a quick note here this is something that we wanted to do because the city was using bond funds in order to pay for these kinds of improvements or these kinds of equipment replacement which was increasing our debt and so this allowed us to not have to issue debt and be able to do it on an annual basis because it wasn't being done on an annual basis they were waiting three or four years at a time or even longer and the equipment was getting older and had to be in the maintenance shop even more so our maintenance costs were going up so this was done strategically in order to make sure that they had the best equipment necessary in order to do a better job and so this was a priority as well as a 300 that's the reason why the body cams weren't done immediately but we appreciate the council's championing Mr Rivera y'all championing that and the rest of the council being supportive of it so I just want to make that note thank you is this part of the pay as you go yes policy that you guys had yes sir okay and and what that does is like I said you don't have to issue debt it's no different than you know like with our credit cards you don't put on the credit card you can do it with your money in your pocket and so it's just a smarter way to do it in order for you to in the long run save money but the debt is where it is because of a lot of the the neglect that I mean even Greg talked about it I talked about that when we were when we were saying goodbye to him but all all the folks have noticed that that all that neglect that had taken place but y'all have been very supportive of making sure that that's being done on an annual basis so just want to make that note thank you yeah absolutely thank you city manager and and to your point then it also prevents us replacing a bunch of vehicles all at once which ends up increasing the the cost for repair later on so here's a list of the capital investment or Fleet replacement items that we have and so as you mentioned representative Kennedy that pay go funding is really general fund funding and these are some items that we've used uh over the past years to be able to replace in addition to that we continue to look at leveraging Grants for Capital replacement where we can and so you can see that the aphis or the automated fingerprint identification system has been replaced at the police department for the fire department we were able to replace entire radio system in addition there's been a police marked and unmarked cars as well as fire trucks and ambulances so Public Safety Bond projects and we're going to get into next is really the operation and maintenance costs for these projects so anything anytime there's a new station added it's critical that we're anticipating not only as part of the bond proposal to the public that we know how much it's going to cost to operate and as the city manager always says is we have to not only account for the horses but we got to feed the horses and so as part of that is what we work with the departments in order to project the impact that new facilities will have in the coming years so here you'll see under the PD's Public Safety Bond projects the operation and projected maintenance a total increase of about 13.4 million dollars as a result of the public safety bonds and this is looking at the impacts starting in FY 2022 all the way through FY 2031. and so know it has not been adjusted for inflation and has not been adjusted at this point for the present value of the dollar in addition to that is the fire department's Public Safety bonds are operating the maintenance costs and here you'll see a relatively the same amount of 14.4 million dollars for the same time period from 22 all the way through 2031 and so what you see in 22 and 23 has been added I just want to point out we did do the additional Staffing required for 911 Communications to be added to add another radio channel so I'm circling back to the workforce cost and the look ahead and it's really because this next two presentations or budget updates are really leading into the final five-year Financial forecast when you can see the entire picture which will include both revenues and your expenditures but it's important that we focus on those major cost drivers so we really have a good understanding of of the assumptions and what we're building into our five-year Financial forecast since it will help us develop our FY 2024 budget in addition to that a huge component of our integrated budget process is the kickoff for our chime in so the integrated budget process a key component is our customer input while it's an anecdotal survey it is an important survey for us to ensure that we're in line with our priorities with our community and we always want to ensure that we're getting a good participation to um to ensure that we're providing resources to the priorities of our community so here's the budget process timeline so we're kicking off chime in today and then we will continue in March we will be presenting The Five-Year Financial forecast as you can see on the bottom you're we're going to see where we're receiving from the Central Appraisal District preliminary property values in addition so they provide us very preliminary information and more chicken in April towards the end of April early May and then on the flip side of that you'll also see that we are starting to work with the Departments we're working with the department for their requests what are their needs for other operational needs for their departments in addition to that we will continue working with them as well as we receive additional information regarding our sales tax and our updated property values and in June is when we brief counsel really of the departmental requests as well as the initial proposed budget so we work with you all and then have the budget workshops at the end of June or the beginning of July we then finally adopt the budget in August as part of chime in officially today is the launch date and so we work with our strategic Communications Department really to increase the number of citizen participation so in 2022 we had a record number of 8 675 in 23 we kind of held at 7 673 but we still continued to have a goal to surpass our 22-year in addition to that we have social media outreach our 311 app there's digital signage the QR codes we work with you all to please share that message share the chime in survey with your constituents constituents as well as through your community meetings this is a great opportunity for them to really be able to provide feedback into the budget process and what their priorities are and what are their areas of concern and then that concludes my presentation representative Hernandez thank you Nicole thank you and I'm sorry I'm just I'm a little distracted um and can you specify when members of council can start submitting those budgetary requests and then the process to move forward we will actually be bringing that um that kickoff probably within the I want to say it's not the next one but the the last council meeting at the end of March okay to be able to officially open it for all budget requests but at any time if you do have any requests feel free to just email myself and Robert okay um when do you get do you have the dates and I'm sorry you probably mentioned it do you have the dates when we get the pre-preminary um Revenue property tax property tax forecast so we have an initial meeting this march with them I don't have the exact date on hand but we can provide that to you but we do get an update around early to mid-march I want to say and then again in April and then again in May and then when would be the most recent sales tax revenues for the prior quarter when will you get that on this timeline so really the one that's becomes very critical to ensure that we've got enough trend for this current year is going to be in June June is that for the March quarter yes ma'am okay and um March certified okay you're going to receive the certified rules but the pre ones come and March on and April yes ma'am and then any changes to any exemptions have to happen June right at the latest any additional information you think we should know as we go into this process um no that I think this is all uh I you know what one item I'd like to clarify and I heard it in the call to the public is that we do not adopt a budget that is imbalanced we have a balanced budget always we're not running a deficit and I don't I'm not sure where that comes from but it's really important we we actively um try to counter that information okay thank you thank you I appreciate that thank you Nicole that's a lot of misinformation um but we do we're always passing our audits our budgets are always balanced and we appreciate the work that you do throughout the year for that um with that I have representative molinar yes sir thank you mayor Pro tem thank you very much for this presentation um reference the Chinese I know you've already made I guess a few years back from 2021 you know you started something and then you also I guess in 2022 you added the district where these people live so you can kind of like compare um what how much more feedback you're getting in certain districts and things like that is there going to be any other changes made that you can think of right now no sir I think the the changes we made last year I think were really beneficial it allowed us to focus on each individual group and allow them really to hone in on what are their areas of priority within those um within the goals that we already have so um no sorry I think that was those were the big changes yeah and I always look forward to seeing those results because you know and there's going to be a live or I can't think of what it's called the um real time I guess yes we'll have the data we'll have we'll be updating it on our website as well all right and it it's important that you let people know that the link is available on our website as well as the QR code and then we also are going to be printing it was really helpful last year a little business cards with the QR code so you actually can just hand those out thank you representative Fiero thank you mayor Pro tem um yeah on page 12 you mentioned that there was two police academies that had been started I can't remember what months um yeah so both of them have already started so we had one that started in September on September 12th 2022 is planned to end July 24th and then the next one was started on January 23rd and is expected to end on December 4th that was my question when when were those officers expected to be the street okay thank you uh-huh representative Kennedy what's the number on those academies so right now we've got uh it's for the class of 131 we've got 27 cat Cadets sorry sorry it's okay and then 100 on class 132 we actually only have 15 at this point okay yeah I know that it's difficult to recruit in which it's hard to replace and bring the number up I know it is but not only are we working together with the Department to try to find Creative Solutions to that we're working in a multi-faceted way to be able to really improve those numbers okay we also have the a program where we cross level where with other police agencies and so they can come over on an abbreviated Academy oh so that's a part of it as well it's very comprehensive is the county with you guys or are they on their own as far as the sheriffs do they training yeah recruiting training no they're separate okay that was something that we actually did visit about that I remember speaking with the former Chief with Greg Allen and that was something that was that was he wanted to keep it separate just because of the training was a little bit different and the force is a lot larger okay thank you yes sir okay thank you so much thank you thank you that brings us to the first reading of ordinances these are items 29 and 30. there's a motion made by representative Rivera seconded by representative Canales to approve the first reading abortences items 29 and 30. on that motion call for the vote and the voting session and that motion passes unanimously the next item is number 32. sorry 32 was postponed for four weeks so was 33 that brings us to item 34. and this is a public hearing on an ordinance approving a special permit to allow for infill development for a duplex property at 78.33 Mount Latona Drive there's a motion made by mayor Pro tem anello seconded by representative Hernandez to approve item 34. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and that motion passes unanimously item 35 is discussion and action requesting city council support for the staff recommended project by plan Brio first Last Mile update for submission to the FY 23 areas of persistent poverty Federal discretionary grant program move to approve changes the revised changes in our Supreme on that one there wasn't a revision on 35 sorry I'm sorry 36 sorry apologize go ahead there is a motion made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative and this is to support the staff recommended project on item 35. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously item 36 is discussion in action that the mayor be authorized to sign an interlocal agreement for good and valuable consideration buying between the city of El Paso and the University of Texas at El Paso move to approve do you think we have public comment yes we have Miss Susie Byrd that signed up to speak on this item Miss Byrd are you if you're in the Q star sixth place too and mute your telephone Susie Burke star six please I don't see her phone number I don't believe she's in the queue the motion was made by mayor po Tim onlo second and by representative Fierro to approve item 36. that motion I'm sorry was it I also saw someone just jumped in the queue I don't know if that was her Miss Byrd are you in the queue yes good afternoon you have three minutes you're back on mute ma'am star sixth place hi can you hear me yes okay I'm so sorry so am I speak now yes okay um this is on item number 36 yes it is I am item 36. okay I apologize I'm uh just now uh logging in um hi my name is Susie Byrd I'm here on behalf of the UTEP Aerospace Center um just here and available if you have any questions about the interlocal agreement but first just want to say thank you so much to Mayor and Council uh the city manager and City staff for investing and this really important Grassroots Economic Development strategy to help our small and media manufacturers here in the region compete in their current markets and to grow into Aerospace and defense markets I'm mostly here just if you have any questions I'm sorry and the motion was made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative Fierro correct thank you this is to approve item 36. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously item number 37 is discussion in action that the city manager be authorized to sign the First Amendment to the restricted funds management agreement entered on August 25th 2009 between the city of El Paso and the El Paso Museum of Art Foundation proof second we do have public comment on this item we have Stacy hunt Speer Miss Pierre are you in the queue star six to a major telephone or will Harvey Stacy Speer or will Harvey I don't see their phone numbers in the queue and we do have a brief presentation for the council if if you have questions if it can bring that up and I'm really quickly not sure if there are questions can you all clear the screen and then start over if there are questions but you can go ahead with the presentation we'll do questions after all right thank you ma'am just very briefly I'll go over background project design and the requested action from the council for the record Ben Fife managing director of cultural Affairs and Recreation so as background Council originally approved a gift from the El Paso Museum of Art Foundation which is an independent 501c3 organization supporting the work of the El Paso museum of art that gift agreement or the agreement from the foundation is that they will raise six million dollars to commission and manage construction of an original art installation by artist Leo Villarreal for the South exterior of the Museum of Art Plaza the city would receive the donation of the final artwork and as well as a fund for Perpetual maintenance just based on some of the conversations I heard earlier today I want to be very clear with the public that this is not that the foundation has has agreed to raise funds for this project and gift it to the city the project aligns with larger Alleyway activation that is being discussed and planned around the arts district to improve Aesthetics and encourage pedestrian activity between the Museum of Art Museum of History La Nouba Children's Museum the Mexican-American cultural center and of course our renovated main library as well as other assets including the hotel properties as well as convention center and the various theaters a little bit about the artist Leo Villarreal is actually an internationally recognized artist who's based in New York currently but has roots in Juarez and El Paso he works primarily with light and with computer coding and previous commissions have included the Smithsonian National Gallery uh actually it it's the linkage between the two buildings of the National Gallery in DC the Bay Bridge as well as Dallas Cowboys headquarters and commissioned worked for the River Thames in London this is a rendering of the final prod project you can see this would be creating an entryway that's a little more Grand obviously into the Museum of Art this is another rendering as you would be walking from the back exit of the Plaza theater towards the paso del Norte Hotel so the requested action is to approve an amendment to allow the foundation to utilize two restricted funds that they manage these are City restricted funds gifted uh decades ago and that were determined by the city attorney's office in 2015 were eligible to be used for either commissioning or acquiring new artwork the total of those funds is 775 000 481 uh sorry it's a little over 775 thousand dollars and the foundation would have until June of 2025 to complete the project are there any questions representative Canales so I like that I pushed the button myself to speak after him thank you mayor Pro tem um yeah excellent project we spoke about this yesterday um I want to once again make it extra clear to the public uh that these are restricted funds uh the the Roderick fund and the Harvey fund can only be used for very narrow uses within the Arts and so it's not like this money could be used for streets or for Parks or for any other use um and I think this is an excellent use of them for a very attractive art project thank you and I commend the artist uh Mr Villarreal and I think it's a great concept and hopefully El pasoans will enjoy it for many years to come thank you sir and yes you are correct these are restricted by the original donor intent so they cannot be used for operations or other Municipal uses Canales it's a really special piece uh yeah I was a special person to this community and the region I know his family well I know they're big supporters of the Museum of Art and so I think and you know he does have a piece in El Paso and it's so hard to see and a lot of people don't know it's there and so I think this is like a really great to have this out in the public and in front of the museum I couldn't think of a better place for it and want to take a second I know our public speakers aren't on the line but to thank the organization really I know that this was uh and why I can't think of their correct name right now it's just the museum Foundation yeah um and all the work that they put towards us and really organizing it and and thank you for working with them too um it's going to be a great addition to to our downtown thank you I actually have one more comment if you don't mind I apologize I should have remembered this in the in the first uh instance but I I also really appreciate that this project uh includes the The Pedestrian area below and they're seating and it really activates this as a plaza where events can happen and uh people can congregate and gather it really transforms that area I think into a space that's much more usable for outdoor programming and functions and so I I very much appreciate when an art piece uh has that that public gathering space aspect as well thank you sir and yes it's going to be a really great addition to the arts district and I think a great example of leveraging um you know Municipal planning with the Investments uh throughout that area with the private sector coming forward with with a gift like this yes there is a motion made by mayor Pro tem anello seconded by representative Canales to approve item 37. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously thank you item 38 is discussion in action on a resolution amending the rules of order for City Council meetings move to approve Mrs Neiman is there an update on this issue because you said you'd bring it back so yesterday the the question that representative Kennedy asked wasita that there was a contradiction between to to paragraphs where we looked at it let me look at my my notes the the amendment that is being proposed is to allow for Council to use electronic devices I believe that Mr Kennedy had asked so that he could take notes on the days on his on his um iPad historically the council's rules of orders have uh required that you not use your electronic devices besides what's up afforded to you by T the concern was that the council members text messages would be being sent back and forth which is subject to Texas open meetings Act and the public can request them so we would I believe that the language still allows you to use your electronic devices but it's only for personal reasons not business reasons or not for why you're sitting on the Deus and I think Kristen is on the line today did I capture all of that Kristen yes yes okay Kristen I think that's exactly what you explained yes um in the only Edition Kristen camp for the record um is that the language related the second half of that paragraph is related to Communications so use of electronic devices is is what was being amended and then the portion related to communication communication devices is the part that is still there uh yeah my question was the second sentence oh sorry representative Canales was first I'm sorry representative Kennedy go ahead representative my ways pull it up sorry I and I I imagine well I'll have a similar question to my colleague from the west side um yeah so just to clarify electronic devices are allowed but not electronic devices that are used for personal communication or any other communication and in effect that affords us the opportunity to use an electronic device to take notes but not for communication purposes that's correct okay um I did notice in the red line there is one additional change that nobody brought up yesterday to the sign up for public comment that is correct if representative Canales and I did explain that during a gender review did you okay yes and that's two so that the deadline to sign up to speak will be when up until the time public comment is concluded instead of prior to the vote because sometimes you've completed public comment and we're still having people wanting to sign up online of course so this just clarifies it we'll take requests to speak up until the end of public comment portion is completed for that particular item of interest and I don't have any questions with that or questions about that or any issues with that I just wanted to make sure we called it out specifically before we voted as well thank you I just wanted to say thanks for clearing it up that was foggy okay thank you that'll make a make sure to approve beckon there's a motion made by mayor Pro Tim anello seconded by representative gonalis to approve item 38. on that motion call for the vote in the voting session and the motion passes unanimously is there a motion to retire into executive session so moved second there's a motion and a second to return to Executive session all in favor anyone opposed and the city council of city of El Paso May return to Executive session pursuant to section 3.5 a of the El Paso City Charter and the Texas government code chapter 551 sub chapter D to discuss executive session item one complain against elected official matter number HQ number 436 under 551.071 and 551.074 these matters are taken into executive session under 551.071 consultation with attorney in 551.074 Personnel matters it is 3 43 p.m are you going to are we going to know who it is or are you going to be advised are you going to tell the public who I will be discussed an executive and then you'll be given okay yeah because I feel this puts a dark cloud over everybody around here I'm out of town thank you thank you soon memory they're right outside okay and I have the body camera presentation that the city council did print it out no that's fine that in The Notebook you do have it in the notebook but I also have a fresh coffee if you want yeah no more water for me it was you that gave him oh yeah foreign [Music] foreign thank you without your turn do you need to see this motion no there's no idea do you need a copy of it when I'm done no I don't yes absolutely bad so I'm just going to hand it to you when we're done reprimand can you read it it took me a few times but I got it now um oh where's it where's legal it's legal here you can't believe uh we're waiting for well right okay yes yes is there a motion to return there's a motion in a second to come out of executive session all in favor aye anyone opposed the meeting is back in session at 5 16 p.m got a question from Miss Newman we're on ex1 can the affected council member stay here or does he have to recoup or can he recuse him or does he have to no he doesn't have to recuse himself okay I don't know whether our council is still available of what was going to happen here we're going to take action there'll be an action item is what it is okay okay go ahead um I motion for the mayor to issue a letter of admonition against representative monar as a result of a complaint of harassment and request that the letter include harassment discrimination training and code of conduct training in addition any further violation could lead to removal from his committee assignments and Leadership roles on this Council is there a second there's the motion made by mayor Pro temanello and read into the record seconded by representative Kennedy on ex1 on that motion call for the vote mayor I just wanted to um go ahead ma'am share uh sorry I made a motion to speak um is there is a competing motion and so I'd like to to vote on the Computing motion too if this motion does not pass I will be making the motion for the mayor to issue a letter of reprimand against representative molinar as a result of complain of harassment and request that the letter include harassment discrimination training and code of conduct training in addition to any further violation could lead to removal from his committee assignments and Leadership roles on the council yeah Council of the voting session is open for the first motion representative on LOA seconded by representative Kennedy is that the same one or the letter of admonition so you're going to Second it or not there's there's no second there has been a second for admonition we're voting on that right now if that does not pass we will read the second motion into a record okay so we need to Second it then or you need the second the second motion if the first one then pass okay yes sir so the first one then pass then we go the second one the voting session is open representative Salcido nay representative Molina are you abstaining no ma'am I would advise not to vote abstain would be about someone voting thank you in the vote I Representatives carry I second the motion that was right into the record I'm sorry I did not read the second motion into the record you just asked what it would be if the first motion failed okay can I see the motion so I can read it right and that's it was right if the second motion first motion failed then the second motion would go into effect which was seconded by representative and that was the issue a letter of reprimand the motion passed on the first motion all right so the there's no longer the most the items over with correct correct the motion did pass to issue a letter of admonishment would uh represent Salcido and representative like an opportunity to vote again on this item s yeah so I moved to reconsider the vote I'm still having problems there's emotion and a second to reconsider the motion on ex1 motion was made by representative Hernandez seconded by representative Salcido and this is to reconsider ex1 on that motion call for the vote just to reconsider this is going to consider ex1 correct yes so this is to reconsider right the previous motion representative aye in the voting session the motion passes four to three Representatives I Representatives Kennedy and I love Fierro voting nay the motion to reconsider passes we're back on ex1 going to read the motion one more time do you need me to read the motion again I make a motion for the mayor to issue a letter of admonition against representative molinar as a result of a complaint of harassment and requested the letter include harassment discrimination trading and code of conduct training in addition any further violation could lead to removal from his committee assignments and Leadership roles on Council second there's a motion made by mayor Pro tem anello and right into the record seconded by representative Hernandez on ex1 on that motion call for the vote same one first one right go ahead representative Salcido nay in the voting session the motion passes six to one representative Salcido voting the remainder of council voting I the motion passes is there a motion to adjourn there's a motion in a second to adjourn the regular city council meeting all in favor anyone to post the regular city council meeting for Tuesday February 28 2023 is adjourned at 5 22 pm it's because I wanted to vote in the first one then the first one you can't change to the yes okay good to see you man go to sleep [Music] because now you voted issuing anywhere okay now that was the opportunity just like you did no but that's okay because you have that experience yeah that's fine you can just say that yeah thank you yeah can you ask