is their last council meeting yes thank you all good afternoon mayor and Council Jessica mccackrin it is it is unfortunate that I get to stand up here today though and let you know that Manya Shore our director of Library Services is leaving us um her last day will be the first week of May and so this is really her last council meeting here with us today so I wanted to invite you to join in me and thanking Manya for all of the work that she's done in her almost six years here with the city of Fort Worth and also wished her well and she is embarking on a very large Adventure that I'm quite envious of to be honest and really neat she is moving over to Japan and we'll get to just experience a whole new culture and world so we're pretty excited but um with that I wanted to invite Manya up I think she wants to say a few words as well and and thank you thank you thank you Jess for the last time I'll say Manya Shore library director you know this year the Fort Worth Public Library will welcome over 1 million visitors check out almost 4 million items offer almost 7 000 programs and make this community a better place to live work and play I am proud of the work that we have done and continue to do thank you so much to David the CMO team this mayor and Council and the previous mayor and Council for taking a chance on me a first-time Library director and a Yankee to boots what I didn't know back in 2017 when I accepted this position was how much I would end up loving this city and how much it would change me for the better this is why I wrote something instead of winging it like I normally do I hope this is not a goodbye but a see you later please continue to watch your public library because the incredible work and staff will continue long after I am gone crime here you are incapable hands with Marilyn Marvin and Michelle Gorman and trust me when I tell you that this library system has become a leader not just in Texas but in the nation keep it up Fort Worth This truly is one of the best cities in the country and I've lived in a lot of them it has been an honor thank you so much foreign we love you I'm so excited for you that's why I'm trying not to be sad because I think your next adventure maybe your greatest yet and you have left this place better than you found it your team is amazing every single one of us are on this table could say something great and most of all you're just a good human people want to be around you they you're infectious for all the right reasons and Fort Worth is so fortunate that we took a chance on you and that you took a chance on us moving forward so thank you for the blessing of all the time you've spent in our city among our kids and our oldest adults um one million visitors is something absolutely to celebrate God bless you in your next journey and we love you very much so much thank you no I'll cry like no tomorrow but um we kind of started this government journey together at the same time in 2017 I'm really thankful you as the mayor said and you said took a chance on Fort Worth time and time again I asked you to get creative and you did and so um we've got the library in Las Vegas Trail because of you we got another Library possibly coming because of you and just getting creative you and your staff across the board of of understanding we live through covid and you uh made sure that you got that Library open at least some people could still check out books I have a love affair with Libby still because of you and and getting things digitally but I just say thank you again for ensuring that we keep the library a great asset for our citizens and ensuring that you're running it it was running a really well well Manner and I'm going to miss you a lot thank you thank you all thank you Georgina oh yeah and yeah I just want to acknowledge your service and let you know that you really turned this city upside down with your creativity when you delivered that children's Library people all around this nation were talking about how unique how appropriate and I can tell you we coined the phrase only children can go there and if you don't have one you can rent a kid because man you're sure doesn't mind you renting children to get to the library uh you you also turn neighborhood leaders into Advocates you know people on the east side of Fort Worth advocate for you all the time in terms of what you're doing begging for more promotion from the city for your efforts and so even though we're approaching your last day you you also had your last name changed and it was fun you know meeting your hubby over the weekend we will miss you and hope to see you later great job thank you [Applause] all right next up we have informal reports the first one is on architectural design selection process and Steve Cook and Brian glass are available if there any questions all right the next informal report is on economic development program agreement with Sinclair digital and Robert Stearns is available if there are any questions all right I'll have a question I just got to say I am supported this I've seen what fruit has done but with this with this technology and I think it's a great thing that we can we can support in a lot of different ways so thanks very good the third informal report is on extending Community Center hours Dave Lewis from Parks and Recreation and Victor Turner from neighborhood services are available if there any questions I think Jared has a question yes just one overview of it Dave Victor well it's neither here comes Victor but that's not Dave good afternoon mayor and Council Kelly Picard assistant director Park and Recreation um and in summary this report what it provides is a listing of facilities their current operating hours in any Associated late night programs that are offered at those sites it also discusses this in regards to the one second collaborative these are in priority zip codes that have been established as priority because of the amount of youth gun violence in these areas and so what this list out is where we have existing facilities in the city of Fort Worth if there's zip codes that are in other areas like the City of Arlington what those areas are but it also talks about how we actually decide what the operating hours hours are for our community what are the demographics is a high senior population are there a lot of young families so we're focusing on a lot of after school programming youth opportunities um and so we can be flexible in that in our current operating hour structure but we have to give a little bit so to truly expand our hours we'll involve more resources for Staffing and operating supplies okay thank you for that um I think first of all I'm particularly interested and pleased that y'all connected with the one second collaborative knowing that they're prioritizing zip codes I'm going to see you all collaborate and coordinate about possible facilities and spaces where some of that programming can be facilitated is a huge opportunity for partnership I'm also particularly interested I know councilwoman Beck might be as well about the opportunities for Southwest Community Center specifically for late night hours specifically for teens to give the teens an automation McCart area a space where they can go and possibly partner in whatever ways we can with programming so I look forward to continuing to work with you all on that as we move forward absolutely Elizabeth hey so there was something in here that was a little alarming to me um or I should say concerning not alarming but it was about uh recruitment of staff for those programs and I remember what we went through last year with the lifeguards and so um it might not be appropriate for in the context of this IR but if we know that Staffing is is potentially an issue I'd like to see what we're doing if you can't speak to today maybe a future ir and what we're doing to get out ahead of that so we don't find ourselves in the 2022 lifeguard situation again and I know y'all worked really hard on that one too but I think there was a big PR campaign that helped us push past that and so if we can be helpful in that now preparing for the summer that would be really helpful and I do have um some hopeful news on that front the the hiring fair that was held this last Saturday was extremely successful in bringing out especially our seasonal positions to get helpful get those filled but we were after the sixth recruitment at Chisholm Trail for the late night Rec programmer we have a candidate who's ready to start so hopefully those late night hours will be starting in in the next month or so as soon as they're onboarded successfully but it is it's an ongoing issue that we try to Market to the community through every Avenue we can look and it's and it goes through Cycles sometimes at some positions and not others sometimes it's just seasonal we went through a period of full-time positions being difficult to fill but we do want to work with our partners in HR to look at these more difficult to fill positions in the late night hours and to see how we can improve that recruitment because this last go-round at Chisholm Trail was was difficult to to find someone to fill that spot and I wanted to address too we did have a great meeting initial meeting with one second collaborative and what that looks like right now we don't know yet because they haven't brought in their proposals for who their program providers will be but that can take a variety of forms it could be we use their curriculum with our own staff it could be they send out program providers to help supplement that or it could be a situation similar to the coming up program where they truly just come in we're the host site and they come in and use our space to provide their programs so we look forward to seeing that develop as well dang so um well thank you for bringing up the Staffing I know Clara at Como Community Center has brought up several times their staffing needs some happy you're getting out ahead of that one thing I'd like to look at this is I don't see this FW at six program especially it's Gang Related and from a meeting I had last week with the police department of the gang activities increased gang activities in Las Vegas Trail area I'd like to explore getting this program there and some other programming that's late night programming which we do not have at this point but um and so that might be off the off this offline advising is how to do that and getting on it looks like ccpd funding and other things I'll be advocating for that thanks yes um good afternoon I'm Monique Hill with Neighborhood Services Department and just to address the council member crane we can look at talking with LBT because we partner with them obviously right now about what their needs are we have asked for stats we typically will ask about gangstas and looking at the trends so that we can try to come up with programming but we can involve Paige and see what their needs are and see how we can get some Services there yeah and another thing I might just add is a you'll probably already do this or if you don't because we're having trouble extending hours and Staffing do we do a call to non-profits in the area that do programming especially for youth where they just need a space maybe or we can ask them for help especially as we head into the summer and we can take that offline we don't derail the conversation today but I've had a few conversations with nonprofits that might be interested in that partnership with the city of Fort Worth utilizing their staff and volunteers and so maybe we talk about that together and see if we can create a better situation here yeah thank you always willing to do that I was just going to respond quickly to that we do have a different program provider agreements supplemental that we don't do not have to pay for we also have program provider agreements where we pay for services to come in and do programming for Youth and then we also have staff LED and then contract instructors as well great so we're willing to look at any opportunity thank you Kelly Chris uh no man I'm mayor I believe that's a brilliant idea I work with a lot of non-profits and feeding opportunities uh where they're just looking for space and so and they have people that are ready to um work so I would love for us to see that make that happen I had a question here I don't know um on I think the third page of your IR it lists the extended community centers hours operation are these the only centers that's going to be extended at the time that it would be yes and no okay it depends on the direction we go and what the focus might be if it truly is ex looking at extending and where we need extended hours is it early morning hours to serve more senior populations is it those late later night hours for teens um and and older Youth and so this is just specifically focused on the priority zip codes with the potential collaboration with the one second collaborative so no no they're not the only ones we're looking at extending but for the purposes of this site or they're the only ones listed okay any of the kind of highlighting I guess a center location within the ZIP code okay all right thank you thank you all right our next informal report is on the Fort Worth Central City storm water and water projects and I'm gonna first call on Dana burgdoff to provide a little Clarity on that informal report Dana thank you David appreciate the opportunity um I get to work with the central city project with uh the regional water district and the US Army Corps of Engineers and so we've been working with them for um at least 10 years um but really 20 years on that uh Panther Island and Trinity River Vision project but what we wanted to bring before you today is um I think some really good uh puzzle solving and problem-solving work by tpw and and storm water as well as the water department to deal with a challenge that's affecting all of our projects um where we're receiving bids that are higher than our than our cost estimates one of the things that we wanted to assure everyone um and we're making sure that hopefully you've received I think we can get this up on the screen the um this chart that shows the the projects that we've that we've mentioned in in the informal report as well as getting the word out to Residents and the media and others um that we have no intent of delaying any of our city stormwater projects uh what we're doing is addressing a cash flow management issue to make sure that we've got the dollars available uh to meet the critical path schedule for the Army Corps but also not jeopardize our stormwater projects that our residents have been counting on we've heard uh for years the concerns that you all have in all of your districts with storm water and flood management you've been gracious in the past to increase the storm water utility rate so that we could begin to issue revenue bonds so that we could get more done than just using our pay as you go capital and in fact there's discussions going on now about whether it would be appropriate to consider a future rate increase to continue our capacity so what what you'll see in the chart before you is the listing of the projects that our stormwater team has identified where they're able to shift the funds it's basically a temporary shift so that we can authorize the contract work for Grand Avenue which is one of the major projects um that's a storm water relocation project in the way of the bypass Channel but they've done a great job of selecting projects where we won't be delaying their schedules so in some cases these are residual dollars coming from projects that are completed in some cases these are projects where they're under construction and they've got contingency and other dollars available so it's a safe bet to just transition these dollars for a few months in other cases these are projects that haven't begun design yet but in terms of the dollars that those projects will need uh they'll there there are four of them out of the 11 that would need some dollars coming up this fall or in early 2024 and so David and the city management team William Johnson regisino is our finance director have I are identifying the short-term whether it's a commercial paper program or other financing option that will enable us to keep all of the projects on track including those four so we wanted to make that clear to everybody that we understand how important our stormwater program is and appreciate you know mayor Pro Tim Bivins leadership on this in the in the past uh certainly appreciate councilmember Beck and the the work you've been doing to support Linwood uh and others and so partly wanted to put that message out there that we are not going to be delaying these projects uh we can't afford to delay them they're Life Safety projects uh then they need to and they need to be completed um and so but I do want to acknowledge that across the board we're all going to be running into cost overruns we've been seeing that for a couple of years now and so doing this cash flow management will be part of our challenge through a number of different projects not just related to Central City but because of the high profile nature of that project we wanted everyone to be aware of what we're doing be transparent about it and get that information out to you so let me stop there and see David if you have anything else to add I know Gina has a question in Leonard yeah go ahead Gina I just wanted to for the sake of the inquiring minds I did get a call from media and I explained that you know we've done this type of transfer before but not on such a bit scale but it's all about managing the dollars making sure that what shovel ready gets addressed while we maintain the schedule that we we're going to be adhering to and so I think it's important that the public know there there's no funny business about this money it's just like managing pots of money and making sure what is ready when the project is ready is the best way I could explain it I just think the public needs to be confident that we do have a great staff we know what's top who's on first who's on second and the idea of money being used is not money being stashed away in some slush fund thank you Gina Leonard and then to Carlos yeah thank you Dana um I guess in a similar vein to Gina's uh comments there so our phone and email certainly lit up when the Fort Worth report article came out which was a bit of a surprise where did they get that information and can you address the information that was in there whether it was off base where you know the Genesis of it yeah the the the what I'm um my takeaway was that there was wording in the article that implied that by moving the dollars from the projects that we were automatically delaying those projects or for perhaps giving folks the fear that some of the projects might not get completed at all and so that was unfortunate because that was not what was conveyed um and so our you know our Communications folks were following up with the Fort Worth report to make sure that they also have this very data that we prepared for you all to to make that clear unfortunately folks you know picked up on that and and ran with it so thank you yeah Carlos thank you Dana for that report and also thank you uh Jennifer Dyke and the stormwater folks for putting out some further information uh to clarify the projects and again as to your point this is a reprioritization of these projects because it frequently gets I think conflated when you talk about Panther Island but what we're talking about here is a central city flood control project correct that is what's driving this yes the Corps of Engineers have their timetable we have our own we have to make sure that we meet theirs so that we can get these critical uh plan uh projects in place and one thing that I will you know counter is it's not a taking from uh Peter to pay Paul it's not that there is a reimbursement plan already that is part of our staff report that's in place the dollars are traceable we have to meet our needs these are part of our total needs and they will be addressed and I want you to clarify something else that in District 2 came up as well that I want the viewing audience to hear and this deals with the 28th Street and the Lebo Channel hazardous Road over topping mitigation project because that was mentioned there in the the Fort Worth report a news story as well it was not called out in the IR or mentioned in the table per se but are you prepared to give a little clarification to that project and how that project is not impacted correct that that project is not impacted and I'll ask Jennifer or Lauren or whoever would like to come up and speak more specifically to to that project but that's another one of the pieces that was to be corrected correct right definitely that's an active construction project so we would never just stop an active construction project so definitely it's moving forward so what we think happened is that in the informal report um there is a bullet point that specifically says um stormwater hazardous Road over topping project so we were removing 4.6 million from this project and so we think that maybe there was some confusion that they thought that that was the 28th and Decatur project off LeBeau because later on it says something about this amount of money in the Diamond Hill area that's where we think the confusion came in yeah and I spoke to many of the stakeholders of Diamond Hill afterward and clarified for them to make sure that they understand that the Libo Channel work which is a multi-phase project continues and is not impacted correct correct and we're actually about to move forward with awarding a contract in May to start up the next phase of project development and design on upper Lebo so terrific thank you Jennifer thank you Dana councilmember back um so I was trying to follow the the money here in this ir and it was a little um hard for me to to to put it all together so the original budget was 10 million dollars for this project for Grand for Grand Avenue for Grand Avenue okay and so that's doubled more than double down correct correct um and so when did we initially um when did we initially develop that 10 million dollar uh after the cost estimate I think is from last May 2022. and then we went to bid in December and I think bids first came in in January and they were actually about triple so then we went back out we changed the scope tried to break it out to um because we only had one bidder uh that was part of the challenge as well so we had Council rejected the bids we went back out with a rescoped project also put in an alternative construction methodology because these are large pipes going through the the Levee and worked with the Army Corps on that piece as well to get that approved so I know in the transportation of Mobility subcommittee meeting I guess last week we talked about how price overruns are impacting our bond allocation dollars and the number I believe that I wrote down from that meeting was about 30 is what we're seeing the increase is that correct is that the number y'all gave us so 30 percent I seems to be on par with what we've seen in other construction projects this is double more than doubles and so what how did we miss the Mark or what happened there so we really think it's the complexity of the project because it's going into the federal project footprint the course property and we typically don't do projects in core property and so looking at the bid amounts the highest prices of that bid were for the copper Dam so where they're out falling the storm drain system into the bypass Channel you've got to hold back that water to be able to construct the outfall and this Lucy Gates that open and close to protect the water from going you know up the system so those were the most expensive parts of the project and so we just don't have experience I think we don't have like historical bids on doing anything like that because that's a typical core of engineer project not a city project sure okay um but yeah we'll follow up with the the team the consultant team that work at this I'd appreciate that and then so what is I see later that it gives us a total dollar amount for uh the central city project and that's between 53.8 and 60.5 is that correct or that's not so where did we start for total project costs but 23 million yeah the 22.9 so we've doubled yes so what we did is when the Grand Avenue bid came in and it was so high we knew that that was going to obviously the future drainage projects bids were going to have similar high prices so at that point in time we used the Grand Avenue bid to update all of the other projects very similar and then um sorry I have a lot of questions about this because yeah this is a hefty increase as all of that reimbursable by Terror Regional water district so even though we've had the price increase we're still going to get dollar for dollar back from trwd correct 100 so we're not going to have to in the future find additional dollars anywhere correct right so this we're not going to my concern is we've got some big projects either here or in the future that we know need to get done and and I don't want to I need us to be a little more careful when we're bidding those because it seems to be kind of an issue that we're having in the city David is when we're bidding we're we're low balling what we're telling our residents and what we're factoring and then it's coming back in at significantly higher amounts and that's not good for y'all it's not good for the city it's not good for any kind of planning yeah okay thank you and the one thing I do want to point out is um we've done some other small projects uh for the Central City work in terms of relocating utilities and uh the Water District per our agreement has reimbursed us when those projects are completed we call it a green sheet here locally in terms of the the city having the as built drawings and those those projects being completed the water district to to help us out on the cash flow side are going to reimburse us annually even for multi-year projects and so um but despite that we we do need to have this interim financing effort so that we can have you know within two or three months have that cash on hand so we're not having to wait for the annual reimbursement and to keep all these projects moving forward any other questions from Council no I'll just repeat what I told David Cook yesterday I think maybe our greatest mistake here is not actually the information within it it's how we present it and you both did a beautiful job today trying to explain a very complicated topic that has immense amount of understandable sensitivity around it in the community because of our flood control needs so maybe just moving forward we always do a presentation this turned into one anyway out of an IR to make sure that the public really understands what we're moving here and thank you both for providing additional context today appreciate it thank you next informal report is the monthly development activity report in D DJ Harrell is available for any questions all right next informal report is an overview of leave benefits for Parental needs and Diana Giordano is available if there any questions yes I do Diana Diana maybe more of a statement of thanks to Diana and her team and to city attorney's office for working on this so diligently both with me personally and my staff it's no secret that I feel very strongly that the city of Fort Worth should embrace a 12-week policy for the women having babies in the city of Fort Worth and if you look at the closely council at the summary recommendation at the end of this IR I think this is the right approach no abrupt moves will be made on City policy this would be a part of a consideration in our budget process for the next fiscal year a consideration from each of you and feedback to Diana would be very helpful if she leads into the budget decision package process but importantly we think a hard dollar amount of six hundred thousand dollars per year to offer that additional six weeks of of pay leave to our our females that are having babies in the city of Fort Worth I think for me personally knowing what it's like to deliver a child and try to come back to work is an incredible importantly benefit but I think there's still some things to work out I just wanted to thank you Diana for all that you've done to this point and we'll keep going and can't wait for the next school year movies we make Elizabeth uh yeah I'm I'm with you I think six weeks I know uh yeah sorry I can't see you uh I appreciate that you did the survey to kind of see where we were in other municipalities um and when we compared to the corporate world I think that as one of the largest employers in Tarrant County it's really incumbent on us to set the standard and you know make everybody else reach it with us so I think that in that vein the 12-week policy is US leading the charge on that and setting the standard two questions I noticed in here that when you did the comparison of um of some of the different cities civil service was treated differently than General employees that's correct and I wanted to know what that mechanism was is it because the Civil Service employees negotiated that in their contract and so if is that the case that's our understanding is that it was applied to their General employees only and that the Civil Service units would have to bargain or meet and confer so with that being said what would that budgetary look like if we only extended that to our general employees and left it up to you know those Civil Service organizations to Advocate on behalf of their membership for that so the cost that we have in there the 600 000 with the additional of the of the new maternity leave benefit that 600 000 is what we have costed to be the the cost for the city that in that would include both fire and police fire is probably the one Department that gets a little trickier because they have backfill requirements where police does not and general employees also do not so we'd have to get into understanding their makeup they have a very small population of females so it wouldn't be as impactful okay and then if that were the case I know we just renegotiated fires contract I mean according to the the next IR meet and confer the Police contract is coming up in about a year so if we were to Institute that policy in the upcoming budget cycle for General employees and then leave it up to the the labor unions to to do their thing how does that impact the change to fire given the fact that they've just signed their contract yeah so let me look we would have to have an mou or some memorandum of understanding to get that into their collective bargaining agreement and we're advocating that this be applied for all employees that's kind of our position and that's what we would submit forward in a decision package and that's the four million dollars that's 600 000 is what we're calling it would only apply you're thinking before when we were going to apply this additional 12 weeks to all employees right we found additional benefit that's available just to those that are having the baby themselves the women that are available so that's the 600 000 okay I see what you're saying yeah okay all right so thanks so more to come thank you Diana very much for all your hard work all right our next informal report is on please pay in turnover and Harold Cates is available if there any questions all right that takes us to the last informal report regulating sale of alcohol near Child Care Facilities Daniel I'm glad to hear about that Daniel and Melinda who's got there we go good afternoon Michigan Council I think Gina would just like you to describe the IR yes not mine thank you so this higher report responsible council member Flores requests to review the city regulation of alcohol sales and to consider whether to require 300 foot distance between restaurants that sell alcohol and child care facilities in 1984 city council enacted chapter 4 of our city code alcoholic beverages section 404 sales near churches schools and hospitals in accordance with section 10933 of the Texas alcoholic beverage code make it unlawful for any person who is engaged in the business of selling alcoholic beverage to sell alcohol within 300 feet of churches public or private schools and public hospitals the TABC section I mentioned above it provides that a municipality May adopt an ordinance to apply the 300 foot distance or separation to child care facilities that are licensed by the Texas department of facility and protective services ABC the 300 foot distance must apply to all business selling alcohol not limited to restaurants the 300 foot distance may not apply to businesses that were the child care facility is located on a different story of the same multi-story building or if they're in different buildings they are at different levels as well if the city council wishes to amend the city code to require this 300 foot distance between childcare facilities and businesses that sell alcohol staff will need to determine if the affected child care facility is indeed licensed by the Texas department of facility family and protective services and it is suspected that the number of variances to be heard by Council would increase by doing so staff would recommend the current alcohol distance exception anyways to the central business district downtown near South Side West West Seven Urban Village and panther Island continue to apply that's the AR if you have any questions any questions Council Carlos go ahead um not a question per se but again the purpose of me asking for this was uh per the last experience that I had uh with um such a variance right uh and in doing my research I came to find out that there was a a licensed Child Care Facility in the vicinity right and you and I had talked about in Dungeon and uh caused me to start to wonder well is it something that council could consider so it's exploratory in nature I do totally understand how in certain districts there would be in areas there would be an increase you know in those uh applications for um for variations so again exploratory nature you know want to get informed as to what is out there what can be done so what you just said was TABC uh does allow for municipalities to make those decisions on their own correct yes it does allow for a city to enact such an ordinance okay and the variances will be applied only to new businesses not to exist in potential conflicts understood so what is staff's recommendation right now again I think I heard you say it but what would it would it offer an undue burden and uh too much of an increase in these applications for staff to handle and uh you're I think as comfortable with leaving it as it is I think we could we could assume that workload okay well see I don't want to assume I I want to hear what staff's position is so I don't think we have a strong position it was more of a explanation of the situation but the the Texas code allows for cities to adopt that so okay it's it sounds prudent to adopt that so I would be so something we could explore a little later on say perhaps when Council uh Grows by two yes okay thank you okay I do have a question because I'm just a little bit confused maybe it's to Carlos uh are you proposing that we decrease the foot of distance no I'm not proposing anything Chris what I'm saying is that uh in addition to uh when we consider say schools you know churches being a vicinity of a of a you know a place that sells you know alcohol maybe Child Care Facilities could be on that list too when considering the distance that's all yeah and and again it was exploratory nature just to see if that's something that uh you know first know about it and then something the council can consider at a later date okay thank you thank you thank you thank you mayor that concludes my report okay we'll keep moving any questions regarding the city council MNC log that you've gotten in your emails for next week no let's move on to update on Tarrant County College Dr Elva LeBlanc is here with us from TCC thank you for joining us Dr LeBlanc the floor is yours get to say congratulations in person to Dr LeBlanc good afternoon thank you so much mayor Parker City Council Members thank you for inviting me as you know I am honored to help lead an institution that has meant so much to me personally I have seen firsthand how Tarrant County College changes personal lives families and communities for the better so this is very much appreciated I would like to begin my brief presentation by sharing a little bit about community colleges in general so community colleges are truly an American concept based on the belief that for a democracy to exist for people to make wise decisions in their representation that education is extremely important and so nowhere else in the world do you see community colleges like you do in the United States they have the entrepreneurial Spirit they stand ready to Pivot quickly and they are connected to the community hence we call ourselves community colleges so it also speaks to the issue of giving people bootstraps so we are in Texas we're always wanting people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and community colleges do just that and which is important to point out so in the state of Texas you will note that 43 percent of all Texas post-secondary institutions excuse me post-secondary students are enrolled in community colleges 70 percent of all minority freshmen and sophomore students are in community colleges now community colleges do serve students of all ages in addition to the young students that we have in dual credit early college high schools we have workers that we call mid-career adults workers now change careers more frequently than in the past and this is particularly true since the pandemic so so we they're always we we are increasing the number of adults that are wanting to upskill and reskill and that's an important comment to make and you'll also note in the presentation that 94 of the dual enrollment and 93 percent of the Career and Technical education degrees are coming from the community colleges there are three important documents that can help educate people more on the community colleges these are all online and and free to anyone that's interested in learning more there's the building uh Talent strong Texas which is the Strategic the state strategic plan for community colleges the Texas commission on Community College finance and a report by the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank community colleges are requesting different formula funding starting after the the legislative session currently we are funded by head count and contact hours and we are moving more towards student outcomes so we are wanting to be funded for the number of students we graduate the number of students that actually move on to a university or that goes straight to the workforce and by making it focused on student outcomes we believe we will get gain additional support from from the state the Federal Reserve Bank in their study will also talk about how the community colleges in Texas move more quickly and are able to serve the community better than um other models in other parts of the country part of it has to do with the governing model that we have the the trustees are elected officials they are elected to represent the community many of them actually are connected to the business Community which allows us to um have influencers on our boards that help connect business Community with with the college and that is certainly true of Tarrant County College we have a very strong Board of Trustees and they work tirelessly for no pay by the way in support of our students which we very much appreciate so now let's move toward the discussion about Tarrant County College so Tarrant County College is the fifth largest college in Texas and the 20th largest higher education institution in the United States it has a huge footprint throughout Tarrant County we offer courses year-round so yes we have the traditional semesters but we also have semesters in between semesters and individuals can earn their degrees quickly if they so choose we have associate degrees credentials Workforce and economic development programs weekend college and customized training programs for area businesses and corporations Tarrant County College has quite an impact on tarent on the on the county we have over 8 000 students that graduate every year of those 8 000 students 55 are come from economically disadvantaged families so you can see that the community college is a real game changer and if you want to move people from poverty to middle class they can certainly start at a community college like Tarrant County College now one in 10 Tarrant County College students take dual enrollment in Early College High School um a very large number of our population have taken courses at Tarrant County College I'm just curious of the city council members how many of you have taken courses at Tarrant County College okay it's a it's a nice number and there I know there's at least one that has I'm still recruiting to teach for us but we'll discuss that at a later time right so so we our mother did take classes there just so you know okay so well we're always recruiting good people you know um so in terms of our Workforce Pathways we respond to our business partners by continuously adapting and implementing Pathways and programs that keep students progressing efficiently towards completion and align with career opportunities the five education and career Pathways that we've identified are aligned with the public school Pathways so we start conversations with students long before they joined Tarrant County College we often comment on the fact that we are we are advocates for our students before they come to us and we continue being advocates for them after they leave so we have strong technical programs linked to Workforce Development we have over 70 specialized Workforce programs because they're very expensive to fund we don't duplicate them on every campus so every campus has a specific technical programs most of the time they are aligned with the area that they serve so for example Trinity River Campus being downtown and close to the hospital district has the nursing Allied Health programs Radiology nuclear medicine Etc the Northwest Campus has Aviation Transportation Logistics entrepreneurship Police Academy fire academy Etc again the location plays an important role and the other campuses have equally strong technical programs the South has manufacturing Automotive robotics construction welding Northeast has Cisco training they have very strong computer science programs and education and Southeast being in Arlington has the culinary arts Hospitality management and engineering so when we look at all of the different groups that we partner with you will note that we also have a small Business Development Center not far from here we work with the Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County and the Fort Worth chamber and our Workforce Services Learning Center is connected to Workforce Solutions I did notice in preparation for my presentation today I reviewed your impressive strategic plan and I noticed that on page 24 of your strategic plan you talk about the importance of Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County and the Fort Worth chamber and we're certainly part of that partnership additionally on page 25 you mentioned Tarrant County College our Partnerships with K-12 as well as our expansion with online offerings our online program has um really grown significantly since the pandemic during the pandemic we transitioned thousands of students and thousands of employees from face to face to online and people learned really fast how to take courses online and so as a result of that people feel more comfortable with it and are are more inclined to be interested in the online courses 77 percent of our students work and so the online becomes an excellent option because they can work anytime and take the online courses we partner with everyone I'm often mentioned that we are nonpartisan we work with our Community Partners universities business and industry our Public Schools government and of course TCC Foundation oops yes that's correct okay so in terms of our K-12 Partners we have dual credit Early College High School and Pathways in technology we work with 18 independent school districts 69 dual credit high schools 21 early college high schools and seven p-techs that's a that's a huge growth in a very short period of time so examples of business and industry partners are on this particular slide we do partner with 1 200 businesses in the Metroplex they serve on our advisory committees they partner with us on multiple fronts and they are critical to Our Success Community organizations we partner with Catholic Charities and other groups of greatest importance as the tarent to and through that's been a huge success in a very short period of time it includes the public schools Tarrant County College and the universities so it's it's been quite impressive Terry County College was considered as a partner toward the end of the conversation it started out with universities and as a result of us being included we've discovered that about 50 of the students are starting at Tarrant County College and they're doing extremely well their persistence rate from one um semester to the next is over 83 percent which is impressive I'm so I'm so sorry to interrupt you we actually can't have questions from the audience that's that's okay that's a great question after we'd be happy to answer questions afterwards that sound okay to you are you sure okay well we we're happy to visit with you yes ma'am okay thank you so much Dr LeBlanc uh that's that's fine I appreciate the participation actually um in terms of our University Partners you will note um that we we partner with um many many universities not only throughout the state of Texas but outside of Texas as well we have articulation agreements again in in an effort to be advocates for our students so when they move on to universities all their courses should count and you will note that uh UTA UNT and Texas A M are among the top universities that the students will transfer to we also have government Partners we talked about the Small Business Development Center and we do Garner federal grants such as title V and Trio programs all of which are there to support our students and then this community has been extremely generous in multiple ways but one way in which I can demonstrate Is the participation in our foundation we have people from this community that serve on the foundation raise money for scholarships and make it possible for even more of our students to get through and finish quickly so to in my my presentation um I want to again thank you for your time and I want to say that Tarrant County College is all about Solutions Partnerships and we are working harder than ever in order to serve this community and and make it possible for more of our students to finish with a certificate or an associate degree and either transfer to a university or move straight into the workforce and I thank you for your time and I'm available for any questions you may have thank you Dr LeBlanc and we're excited on Thursday we'll have our second annual where achievement begins celebration we're celebrating your Tarrant County College students that are currently high school students we are all Underachievers they graduate with their associate's degree from Tarrant County College their college degree at the same time they graduate high school and that's just another reflective partnership that you have with our area schools thanks for all of your work and and for giving us an update this afternoon any questions for Dr LeBlanc oh Gina does have a question go ahead Gina just a tidbit of information for the the audience there Dr leblanc's spoke with such enthusiasm and excitement about Terror to and through I think it's important that people know the founder of tarot to and through is leading this city right now thank you Maddie for that inspiration thank you Gina appreciate that thank you Ella for being here we appreciate you thank you okay moving right along our next presentation is a briefing about the gun violence unit deputy chief Mark barthen is here viola afternoon Marion Council thank you for the opportunity for me to present to you all the gun violence unit and really highlight some of the significant good work that they're doing to combat gun violence in city of Fort Worth um gun violence unit is part of the support Bureau investigative support command and part of our violent personal crime section uh it was created in 2021 as a pilot project we took six detectives and a supervisor on loan and the goal was to investigate non-fatal shootings the same way that we would investigate a homicide um since then the unit has become a full-time unit of 10 detectives and a supervisor and as you can see in 2022 they answered 344 345 calls of non-failed shootings across the city so again investigate non-fatal shootings same manner as a homicide take weapons used in criminal offenses off the streets and arrest the violent offenders that are responsible for these offenses so one thing that separates them from normal divisional detectives is like we said we want to approach this the same way we would a homicide the investigators are going to make the scene of every shooting regardless of how severe it is this allows us to preserve evidence lock-in Witnesses and really it I guess it excels the speed of an investigation and leads to more successful outcomes so previously non-fatal shootings were investigated by our divisions typically those divisions are overworked they've got caseloads that are you know they're they're working everything property crimes uh and then all your your non-fatal shootings and non-uh major offenses is what we would call it when they were worked by the divisions the clearance rates were about 16 percent they just didn't have the resources to work these cases the way that that they needed to be worked so the gun violence unit uh since since their Inception in 2021 that clearance rate has jumped to as of as of February of this year it's actually about 70 percent so clearly they're they're much more successful with uh getting these cases and and bringing into a successful outcome so this is the map for the last three years of all the offenses that these guys responded to in 2021 2022 and then so far in 2023 so basically what the map show us is is it coincides with our Pras which are our police identified hot spots across the city um and and it kind of matches our historical crime Trends as well they they correlate with our socio-economically challenged areas um some of these areas have more narcotics issues more gang issues and and it really just kind of ties into information that we we've already known it's just puts the data to it this is a breakdown of victims and suspects that that are known and then you know one of one of the things that we've seen in Fort Worth and and really kind of everywhere is is road rage shootings are increasing in 2022 we responded 16 of them so far in 2023 we've run to six the bottom numbers are better as far as the gun violence unit is concerned we've only responded to one known shooting that occurred on a high school campus and so far in 2023 we have not had any so one of the benefits of the gun violence unit is a lot of times we would get uh gun victims that would claim that these were accidental shootings they still investigate these cases just as if if it's not an accident and a lot of times what this turns up is these were Family Violence offenses or they were engaged in other criminal activity and they were claiming that the shooting was accidental to try and cover up the offense the gun violence detectives do an excellent job of interviewing Witnesses and and suspects and victims and are usually able to get to the bottom of the truth on on what those calls involved so the goal is let's rethink how we investigate these cases we want to identify and apprehend the offenders but we also want to understand how and why these shootings are occurring we're going to investigate the cases thoroughly regardless of if we're getting cooperation from the victims and and the goal is to take this information that we learned from these shootings share it with other units across the city and try to identify our known actors and get them off the streets as quickly as possible to prevent any future gun violence moving forward um there's there's opportunities for this unit to tie into the the one second collaborative um if we can identify young adults that are associated with gun violence that aren't necessarily involved with it we can possibly kind of send them to those deterrence programs and maybe in some of the systemic violence that's happened in our community um we work with our real-time crime Center we are able with the centralized unit we're more able to share this information across City departments and across different units within our own department and that leads to just successfully identifying who these offenders are and it allows us to go into those neighborhoods where we're having those significant issues and Target the offenders with as little disruption to the neighborhood as possible ties into the chief's vision of the violent crime initiative in Fort Worth safe where we want to take that surgical approach and remove remove the Bad actors without disrupting the community foreign questions thank you Chief Carlos and then Elizabeth no questions but I want to take this opportunity to um to acknowledge the gun violence units efficacy you know I got to see that unfortunately firsthand when my mother was shot recently uh bringing all those uh forces and subject matter experts to Bear to expedite an investigation was very Illuminating you know for me even among that chaos of that night certainly the improvements that you've made in you know clearance of cases I mean nearly 70 percent from 16 it was it's very impressive and I just want to reiterate gun violence can can touch anyone at any time do not consider yourself immune so uh my thanks to everyone involved you know I can list the names but you know who you are you know supported us at night and I think this is a a great resource to have if needed you know for the residents of Fort Worth thank you Carlos Elizabeth uh yeah so when it talks about um All Leads are followed up on all Witnesses or spoken to the day of the shooting do we treat juvenile Witnesses and I would any different in in how do you classify them as a witness versus a victim I'm going to refer to Sergeant Green yes uh yeah I'm Sergeant Greenwood I run the unit uh juvenile Witnesses we we speak to we have uh we utilize Kaku which is our crimes against children's unit they utilize the uh I guess the uh the interviewers from there for for their criminal activities they will utilize their interviewers for any juveniles of a certain age and is that Witnesses if they're a witness to it as well or okay um and that's all within the same day correct yes do you happen to know off the top of your head um when a police officer is involved in a shooting how long we have before we interview them when police officers involved in a shooting CPI yep that would be related to the major case unit okay can you answer that question chief thank you so you guys get to see me no matter what um so usually the major case unit they try and at least interview most the witnesses within the first two weeks of an offense I'm talking about a police officer one of Fort Worth so whenever a Fort Worth Police Officer of course they have they're afforded the rights of legal representation and usually we get the interview done within three days 72 hours okay sometimes it's sooner sometimes it might be a little bit later but you know it's done very quickly okay I just want to make sure that we're providing our juveniles with the same level of care that that we're giving everyone in our community and so to the extent that we're interviewing the day of an event I understand operationally right we we get it and we're able to process these cases faster but what is the um the balance that we have with making sure particularly our juveniles adult is a different standard for me but particularly other juveniles that we know are most often a witness and a victim or you know it's a thin it's a very thin line so um I'm just interested in how that interplays and making sure that we're being careful of that and so I heard you say Kaku are they there for all of them no we we utilize our interviewers they have special specialty forensic interviewers and they'll come in and actually interview the children for us okay we do not approach them like I said you know there's due diligence and care for for children and juveniles in these particular incidences and we definitely take that and consideration okay and that's for all of them right okay perfect thank you I appreciate that um and then my next question is um we talked about some reductions let me get there sorry I made a note um I'm moving forward we talked about some reduction strategies um and specifically one of the bullet points that interested me was to work with other departments where non-police uh crime prevention approaches needed can you give us some examples of maybe what you're thinking about or what we're already doing well one thing that came up earlier was the the presentation with Parks and Recreation um you know in the one second collaborative and how they're trying to extend hours for certain rec centers and things like that those are the kind of other departments within the city that we would want to partner with um and then there's other programs through the city that are already in place that you know we can explore how to better utilize them like Hope Farms um or even even operation progress or lvt rise just utilize what we already have to try and um maximize and combine our efforts um are there any projects or programs that we're not doing right now that y'all are looking at or would be helpful not not I mean not that I'm aware of I mean I I don't know what I don't know so I'm not sure what's out there sure okay that's fair thank you Chris I had a couple of questions I think the first question I had um this gun unit is investigating uh non-fatal uh cases who uh do they participate in fatal cases or absolutely if in in some cases their their cases do turn into homicides and when that happens these guys are trained and operate just like our homicide detectives and they often will keep that case and work it to conclusion um but but I guess to answer you want to yeah absolutely if we're two or three days into a case and we've identified Witnesses crime scenes we've collected evidence we'll continue with the case we work directly with homicide in our robbery units uh very well and we stay in contact with them quite a bit we will meet with the homicide detectives to ensure that the case is moving properly and smoothly but again my background comes from homicide I teach these guys how to work these cases so they're pretty much on spot I review all those cases in in clear detail so to answer your question if we're well into the case we'll continue to work the case okay the homicide right I mean uh if they're murdered right on the scene you guys don't have no affiliation with homicide will respond to those particular cases okay and just the question I'm this is an open-ended question uh in the in the your investigation process of gun violence where are they getting these guns from difficult to say you know these uh we're seeing a lot of uh guns that are being recovered from from theft issues you know we're not seeing the original owners uh utilizing these weapons so through theft do trading off weapons and that's why we respond so quickly as to we we wanted to obtain these Firearms as quickly as possible so they don't commit the offense and then go sell or trade this weapon for another firearm so we've almost doubled the number of guns in the city recovered last year just our unit alone but getting out there and getting those those guns off the street as quickly as possible is as part of as part of it but before they are traded off but again you know finding out where these guns are coming from we do work directly with the ATF they are stationed out of our unit and we do specific backgrounds on these weapons and uh again we're finding they're they're either stolen in car burglaries or not report reported stolen but we're not finding a lot of original owners committing these offenses does that make sense fair and the original owners uh you might not have this maybe it's the future gender item how many of those original owners have had multiple guns stolen I I wouldn't have those those particular numbers yeah I think we're finding a lot of people who have a car burglary or some they may not have their weapon information they may not report it stolen um you know it's it's it's very difficult to make that determination especially if people don't take the time to to report those thefts or they just may not be realize it is stolen at that particular time and are we investigating uh weapons being sold on the street I mean I think that's a part of well absolutely we like I said we work directly with the ATF okay uh we communicate with them directly with all our suspects and victims and whatnot and they use our information correlate with their information and they actually put together operations in conjunction with our unit and they move forward to get these guns off the street they just actually did a very large sting operation was very successful thank you for those questions those answers I just um when I look at the areas of the crimes and the victims and uh those who have been committing these crimes and look at the age we look at criminal history uh we look at background a lot of these individuals should not have been able to purchase a legal gun and so when you have hundreds of them happening that has to be a something that's happening within our communities on our streets in our neighborhoods or at shows or whatever it may be and so I I think it's very important that we continue to work uh with what you guys are doing in the process that you're working with gun violence but I think there's another piece that we're missing that we need to focus on where these guns are coming from and if we can stop that corporate then we maybe can save some lives absolutely thank you Elizabeth and this is just my ignorance is there a requirement if you have a gun stolen that you have to report that then there's no legal requirement for that correct I don't think there's necessarily a legal requirement there's definitely logins possessing or stealing a guy right I just didn't know like if someone had their car broke into they didn't report a lot of people don't even have their gun information serial numbers things that sort on hand so okay would it be helpful um is that information that would help you further if you knew that it had been connected to a robbery or I guess is it pertinent to know where it was stolen from or who owned it before in your investigation for future crime prevention oh absolutely we actually work with the ATF and an iben program where we identify guns that were used during specific offenses multiple offenses by collecting by specific well let's just say we we can identify multiple shooting incidences and how they're related we find that a lot of our shootings may be related to homicides or robberies and that way we actually meet with those units we bring that information together and we've actually I think solved a couple of homicides because of that information sharing and developing that so then would it be useful to bring back something to us a plan or whether that's a you know PR campaign or some sort of concrete program that helps encourage people to report those stolen I know registration is can't say that word without people getting wild but um you know to to encourage them to report it as a crime prevention mechanism oh absolutely absolutely that identifies where the thefts are being twofold okay who's taking the guns of course where they're coming from and are the people using those stolen weapons the same one who stole the guns so it would be extremely helpful so then that would be my charge to y'alls to in the future bring back something to us that we can work amongst here and with Renee to help you all um help us thank you any other questions from Council thank you both for this update um we appreciate it keep doing the good work next update is the community engagement office update Renee tell us and Michelle Goot are going to Dazzle us with their presentation foreign good afternoon uh Renee tayas Chief Communications officer the communications and engagement um Team the small But Mighty team members within our team to focus on engagement and not to be confused sometimes with our pal and partner Victor Turner leading the neighborhood services department the CPE engagement team is dedicated to building trust support and open dialogue with community members our neighborhood associations are one way in which we could and should do that and they're Central to this mission we are at an important time in the decision-making process for the division including an assessment of what software should house our neighborhood registry yet still speak to the other programs in the city that it needs to as well as any upcoming budget requests associated with that determination so kind of as things have developed after about a one year tenure from the previous manager I assessed I needed someone who could quickly kind of get under the hood make some fast operational and hiring decisions and I'm thankful to our director of communications and public engagement Michelle for taking on this role in a temporary capacity for the weeks ahead during this critical time foreign would be very nervous to hear that I was under the hood to uh to handle this so um thank you um and just as a reminder as Renee said the community engagement office is part of the communications and public engagement department and this department handles internal and external Communications Fort Worth TV the website call center and media relations so today I'd like to give you all a history my screen disappear that I hit you okay um today we'll be covering a brief history of the office and a detailed description of some of the major areas that we focus on While most of this presentation is about the current and future goals of the community engagement office I thought it was important to provide a brief history thank you for allowing me to share a quick Refresher the Fort Worth League of neighborhoods was an organization founded in 1985 with 17 charter members over the years the level of involvement and activity of the organization has decreased during covid they did not hold meetings and their website has not been updated since that time the city has not interacted with them in several years at one time we had a very close partnership with them but over the years that diminished as they became less active in the neighborhoods at one time the league also refused to share their list of participating organizations with the city and So currently they are not considered registered with the city in the 2000s some of the league duties transferred to what became the city's neighborhood education division which took on the responsibilities such as maintaining the neighborhood database providing Community organization training and mediation the initial City team that was formed to in the neighborhood education division was staffed by at least one member who previously worked and volunteered with the league of neighborhoods which led to the division's continued focus on what had previously been the responsibility of the league in addition to Neighborhood organization support the neighborhood education division also began to deliver educational curriculum and programs for four departments who funded the division this was storm water water environmental and code in 2016 the neighborhood education office was moved to Communications and public engagement Department in order to avoid confusion with the new neighborhood services department the division's name was also changed on occasion there is still some confusion between the office and the department the office also expanded the partnership beyond the four initial departments to include all City departments and programs and also began supporting all city-wide meetings the office changed to a general fund model in 2020 to better reflect the expansion of Outreach and operations for multiple departments what I'm doing can I get the keyboard down there you go technology okay Staffing the office has full has nine full-time employees assigned to the community engagement office one manager which became the manager position became vacant as of 27 March our volunteer services coordinator has been hired and will begin April 24th and we have 7 7 Community engagement Liaisons three of those are currently filled unfortunately I don't think any of them could make it today because they're actually out doing presentations at schools we are in the process of interviewing for the four open liaison positions and hope to have those filled by mid-may this chart really just shows a timeline of the Staffing and I'm sure you all are very familiar with the fact that we've had kind of an ongoing challenge with keeping positions filled and to rotating traditionally the community engagement liaison position experiences turnover the role requires significant evening and weekend work we require them to do school presentations during the work week and then go to community meetings at night and then frequently do events on Saturdays so it's a very time intensive um work and it's not for everybody the job is also fairly entry level particularly in terms of compensation more importantly a liaison's work exposes them to the entire city including job opportunities many Liaisons have left the office for internal promotions that provide them with increased responsibility and pay for example there's a former liaison who is now a police officer and the previous manager is now an assistant director in another department we are pleased that many of our previous previous employees are choosing to stay with the city but we wish they would stay with Community engagement maybe a little bit longer we are excited for amethyst to take on this new job in her former Department and as Renee mentioned for the next several weeks I will be heading up the office temporarily to focus on bringing the team together getting new staff members selected trained and onboarded a two of our three members that we have as Liaisons have been with the city less than a year so we have a very young and inexperienced team but I believe the vacancies over the last year and the new staff members are an opportunity to build and expand upon the office's work so for the focus areas that we have within the office it has always focused on four general areas there's been a heavy focus on neighborhoods which includes work with associations and HOAs and the neighborhood registry and database there's also been a focus on Outreach and education material including presentations and courses delivered to schools and Community groups as well as Outreach on timely topics we added volunteer services to the department or to the office in 2018 and that includes one full-time employee and we also provide meeting support and engagement for special initiatives that have traditionally been led by the communications staff with support from engagement moving forward the goal is to have the community engagement team more involved in this for the major of the presentation I will cover each of these areas individually so our Focus area neighborhoods some of the things we do with neighborhoods includes the registration policy and database we attend meetings we provide Operational Support and training we administer the street topper program and we put on the annual neighborhood awards ceremony I'm going to go into these in more detail the office is currently working on transitioning the 20 year old neighborhood database to more user-friendly format that will include streamlined processes enhanced visualization of the information and a better usage user experience for staff and the public the current system is as much a frustration for us as it is for you as you know accuracy of the database is really important and it fell during the pandemic staff recently made a targeted effort to connect with all registered organizations we received over 250 updates and recently provided a list to each district office with organizations that we were unable to contact I recently reached out to District directors to set up meetings and we will be going over these lists during those meetings to provide updates and get any addition we have also set up a reminder system within the database so that we can proactively work to get the updates done as quickly as possible I know you're probably thinking why can't they keep a database up to date and why do we have this clunky system that we haven't replaced well our database is more than a list of contacts it interacts and is directly connected to many internal systems and it combines and displays information from many different departments it also includes a GIS system which is used by multiple departments and processes to identify organizations that need to be contacted the primary purpose of the registry is to ensure that we have contacts when the city needs to reach a neighborhood organization and relate information to them about the area specifically development and Zoning information the annual update process is also being adjusted so that in the past we've only had one registered contact that we listed if that person happened to leave the neighborhood or just get a different email address we would end up with the information going to a black hole so now when we have the registration process in place we're asking for multiple contacts so that we have backups if we need it in the system while neighborhoods and HOAs have been the focus of the registry system we are also updating the information we have for other organization types including alliances Redevelopment organizations and faith-based registries we appreciate your assistance in encouraging people to complete their registration each year we are also coming forward with recommended updates to the registration policy with the intent to make it easier for organizations to understand and comply with attend meetings with nearly 300 neighborhood organizations our department is going to make sure and actively track that the city is making regular touch points across the board particularly when there is timely information staff from many departments not just engagement isn't are in frequent contact with neighborhoods this includes npos water tpw and Park and Recreation capital projects Representatives the library presentations and Outreach by code and other departments including Neighborhood Services we are actively looking at ways to enhance our ability to capture and report all of these touch points um we are currently I'm sharing the meeting reports once again that we do whenever the community engagement staff attends a neighborhood meeting but we only have those reports when we are attending a meeting and completing the report we want to find a way to make those more comprehensive and inclusive of all the Departments so that you know who is being contacted in the community and we also have one place where we can go to see everyone who's been involved with a certain organization Operational Support and training we provide training presentations to community organizations including how to build trust officer roles and responsibilities how to create agendas and have great meetings and how to recruit volunteers moving forward we have plans to make much of this information available in a self-serve format in the form of an online toolkit we will continue to offer all of the training in person but would also like to have an online version for those who prefer that as a way to get their information sometimes the staff receives pressure to mediate situations and take sides on operational and interpersonal conflicts within neighborhoods I'm sure you all are familiar very politically correct Michelle worked a long time when we're on that one okay um in order to support organizations during these times we're working on establishing a network of Mentor organizations and leaders that will allow us to match organizations with needs of their peer organizations for other types of disputes we are going to work on referrals to the Tarrant County dispute resolution center um when we're asked to this person doesn't get along with this person you need to come and fix it it's really it's a no-in situation I don't know if you all are Star Trek fans but it's a Kobayashi Maru there is it's a no-win scenario for us when we go into that so um we also assist organizations with just starting or reorganizing and we are currently working with seven associations who are in that category and last we administer the street Hopper program in cooperation with tpw the street tops Toppers are paid for by the neighborhoods with signage design approval and installation and we also host the mayor's annual Neighborhood Awards the last one which was held in February thank you to council member Flores for serving as our MC that day and congratulations to the neighborhood of the Year Oakhurst and I had nothing to do with the judging I just need to say that because I live in Oakhurst so I um so our next Focus area is Outreach and education the office provides Outreach and education to residents on behalf of a wide variety of departments this includes both recurring and standard topics and information on special initiatives whenever the city has information to deliver to the public the engagement office connects with neighborhoods and Community organizations through the contacts in the database the election is a perfect example in the past month and a half we have attended 40 different neighborhood association meetings and HOA meetings to provide election information we also use next tour to distribute information on both city-wide and targeted neighborhood areas WE Post information for the city-wide and Geographic specific programs recurring key messages that we post and provide information on include recycling winter weather heat advisories holiday bulk trash pickup water conservation election and other topics we also distribute um neighborhood information and Outreach on capital projects the Wi-Fi construction and public meetings one of our future goals is to look at call center data to determine what messages are needed in different parts of the city for example if one part of the city is having a lot of phone calls come in about street light reporting we will increase our Communications and targeted messaging to that neighborhood to make sure they know how to report the issues deploying education curricula for children and adults we have a great relationship with our schools and we have a variety of teaks correlated courses and lesson plans that both staff and teachers can deploy staff delivers these courses also at City libraries and community centers is particularly during the summer courses cover many key City messages and these include Aaron Noir quality stormwater and other topics if you've ever heard a child mention Freddie the fish they learned about him from the city Community engagement liaison we also actively participate in the Fort Worth ISD vital link career awareness education program which brings in Rising 6th and 7th graders for career Exploration with the city during covet our ability to deploy school programs stopped almost entirely however staff was resourceful they packaged course material including full lesson plans and made them available to teachers this was very successful and as a model that we would like to make continuously available moving towards more tailored presentations for the schools we aim to create an educator Resource page online which can be used not only by rsds but anyone who happens to homeschool Community groups and others we are also going to continue continue our Workshop series and we are looking at offering it regionally throughout the year we will once again survey neighborhood leaders to see what are the topics that they are most interested in when we're designing the workshops this is just a list of some of the topics that we have and we have the list available online the adult workshops we primarily do at neighborhood association meetings HOAs we're actually coming out and doing them to senior groups at the community centers as well and then the topics for the children are the ones we do at the schools and summer camp foreign part of the Outreach and education staff also interacts with residents and distributes Kitty City messages by attending community events the events greatly slowed down during the pandemic as we all know but the levels are now rising and we're coming together with a comprehensive calendar that lists these events so we can be sure and attend as many as possible these include committee Community Center events and larger events like Earth Day we also hope to work with our new volunteer coordinator to perhaps develop a group of City staff who can volunteer and help at these types of events yeah some other things that the community engagement office the team is responsible for in 2018 we added a full-time employee who is our volunteer services coordinator we have over 25 volunteer programs in the city that attracts around 10 000 volunteers every year this coordinator is responsible for maintaining the volunteer database working regularly with all of the Department volunteer coordinators working with a third-party background screening vendor and then coordinating all of the different programs within the city and then finally meeting support and engagement while the city engages with the public in multiple ways it has traditionally been handled ad hoc by departments or by the communication staff redistricting bond election and the race and culture task force meetings are all engagements that were handled primarily by Communications the goal is for our community community engagement team to be more involved in this process which is a better fit we will also look at a variety of tools to use for engagement both in person and digital these will include tools like the thought exchange which was used during the last budget Outreach in closing I'm excited about this opportunity to continue the work we currently do with our neighborhoods and to look for new ways to engage all the residents in Fort Worth as we um when we looked at the statistics we found that 44 of the residents do not live in an area that is covered by a neighborhood association or an HOA so we want to well we continue our support our strong support for the neighborhood associations the HOAs and the alliances we want to be sure that we don't leave out those other people who might not have an organization that they can go to for information and find ways to engage and educate them we welcome your input and ideas and I look forward to giving you a future presentation once we have all these new things in place as I said before we recognize that neighborhoods are a strong foundation in our community and we continue to support and engage them but we also want to be sure we provide opportunities for all the residents to provide input to the city thank you Michelle any questions from Council Chris uh just the last comment you just said uh the ones that are not associated with the neighborhoods and HOAs how do we engage them do they need to sign up for City News City engagement what's the process the um the neighborhoods and HOAs the ones that I'm not in neighborhoods are HOAs when we have like our community meetings you know hopefully we bring in other people whenever we have sign-in sheets at events we always ask people do you want to sign up for city news and so city news is one way that we um that we continue to provide information we've done a big push recently to get more people subscribing to city news but we're still at less than 40 000 and for a city our size we should have more people in our whole database I'm getting off topic but we have gov delivery and we think of delivery when you go in to sign up for gov delivery you can sign up for specific topics that you want to get information on we have 170 topics and total we have over 900 000 people subscribed to get updates city news is still a much smaller number than we would like and so we have those other subscribers that we can share information with when we need to encourage them to to sign up for for other tools where they can get information um social media is another way we share information we're on Facebook Twitter and Instagram next door I would say when we're dealing with getting information directly to Residents in a geographic area next door with all the stuff that goes on I think a lot of our accounts next door but uh so for the best way of city news to go online and sign up for city news is that the best way because I'm I do newsletters and I try to encourage people to get involved in the process so the best way for neighborhoods that are not on HOAs are uh Naval associations to sign up just for the city news online yes and it goes directly to them correct there's no and that's the other challenge with neighborhoods and HOAs some are really good with sharing the information like we send it to the person and it immediately goes to their members and some we realize don't share it and so there's that gatekeeper and I think the other uh comments you made that you guys always reach out to neighborhood association and those are neighborhood associations who are registered with the city and I think that's a key point to put to let people know because there's associations or neighbors that's out there that's not registering they're not getting information yes so I think uh and I'm sure you guys are already doing that but making sure they know you get the information if you're registered with the city if you're not you're not going to get the information and I was just talking with someone earlier that HOAs is we're having a challenge with getting HOAs to register and so we're doing a big push to for ones that we know are out there and organized to tell them to register I think sometimes they think that the registration is somehow like going to come in and try and control there and that's the last thing we've been into is we don't want to come in and control it the city forward doesn't want to control the neighborhoods but so I think it's educating what it means to be registered thank you Carlos Gina you had a question go ahead yes Carlos or me go ahead Gina okay I want to thank Michelle for the recent work they gave my office in reactivating a neighborhood association that had been deactivated back in 29 2019 and so since 2019 people living in the Carver Heights East neighborhood area were missing that connectivity that Community engagement provides and so we now have a group of offices there and I'm on a mission here after uh Chris and Elizabeth and the new people came up with the idea of hiring new people I hired someone to just work on community re-engagement so that's important to me one thing that I think we still lack is that traditional public information function and you know there there's a a stark difference between Community engagement and public information and I think we're still missing that we haven't had that role functioning as as it should since Pat schwachino left and I don't know if we ever hope to get to that area because the larger we grow the more difficult it's going to be to train the public to look for some point of communication from a person or an office I do think on the other hand the way community engagement is rebuilding rebranding itself will be an indirect way of getting information to people but I still think we need the typical Pio and that that's a topic that I think we have to discuss with David uh on the other hand I will tell you that I have a few neighborhood associations and a real good mentors to new ones you all hear me often talk about the John T white neighborhood association the reason why the people in East Fort Worth are real real aware of zoning changes is because James hooks will call development services every Monday to ask what's coming at us and so they'll put out these red alerts on their Facebook page and that has helped a lot of neighborhood associations nearby but we we hope to continue reactivating those who have been deactivated but when boundaries are Territorial and cause a problem we'll be trying to start crime watch operations that way for example there's a gene Capers Edition that right now is part of Rosedale Park Edition in my district but those two neighborhoods don't really connect and so to keep the peace we may just try to do a crime watch Organization for Gene Capers but thanks so much Michelle and your team Terence Howard was awesome Terence Hamilton was awesome but if you think about it for since 2019 no activity because paperwork you just didn't make it to City Hall when we find neighborhoods that don't have those associations that's the best way to recruit them to start one because usually they're mad about information they didn't get but they would have gotten if there had been an association so thank you for your work thank you Carlos thanks smear Michelle and Renee no need to tell you that as a recently that department has experienced a lot of turnover and thusly you know some turbulence there from where I sit in my Council Office I saw some noticeable you know disconnects and and the input that I would get from some neighborhood orgs that would tell us well where are they right why aren't they coming to our meetings anymore so I can't over emphasize enough how important it is to have a presence there you know as a council member I try to make my meetings as much as possible I still haven't mastered the art of Being two places at once but you know it's helpful to have you know someone else you know when your District director can't go in there as well to help you out and to cover that base now one specific thing and Renee we've talked about this I think I know uh with uh amethyst I had but uh bylaws that request comes up every now and then especially when you have a lot of turnover in a given neighborhood organization a new one's coming on or you know they come to the point where we need to revise our bylaws and eat some you know expert advice right uh just to put a bug in your ear you know if you can have someone that can be ready Beyond just whatever posted training we have you know come time that they can rely you know on a subject matter expert to help them out without regard I've gone through it myself I've given them pointers you know it can get a little you know intensive as far as the labor now dispute resolution all I'm going to say about that is please keep our Council offices in the loop on that because oftentimes like it or not we're very well aware of those dynamics that go on there and that can be helpful instead of you walking in you know to uh to something you know you may not find too Pleasant all right um the street topper program yes uh right now tpw administers this so when you say you're going to administer it what what does that mean I mean does it still stay under the or you know the uh the Wheelhouse of tpw I mean they control the the funding and all or you're just strictly administrative the we work with the neighborhoods when a neighborhood is interested in getting Street Toppers we'll work with them on the design the colors getting all of that ready and then we work with tpw to do the install and the neighborhoods cover the cost of that okay so it stays there yes okay so you're still putting those signs we're not going to be okay climbing up ladders okay perfect thank you that's all I have any other questions from Council okay thank you very much Michelle we appreciate it thank you Council will move to our last presentation The Briefing On Solid Waste technology with Brandon Bennett and Steve Keller with waste management Brandon alternative to you yay okay so we've got some really good and exciting news for you but you know before we get to it we have to go through a little boring stuff and talk about where we've been and how we got to this this excitement for you this afternoon uh we want to cover again the the contract overview customer service education efforts and how all of these things have resulted in the implementation of a smart truck technology uh we currently uh we have for for a number of years now since uh 2003 um had a contract with Waste Management of Texas to collect our residential garbage our commercial garbage is free market uh we have a grant the privilege system where the free market commercial haulers pay us a percentage of gross receipts in order to drive on our roads but on the residential side our customers only have one option and that option is Waste Management of Texas uh and in that contract they are required to have an mwbe subcontractor uh and that contracts for for 25 percent and it's always at 25 or sometimes a little bit more and that's with night Waste Services and they've been a great partner for the city both of them have been a great partner so we have a large number of uh contractors that work for us in solid waste and today is our day to brag a little bit about solid waste and night Waste Services uh historically uh we haven't always had this contract prior to 2003 actually go back into the 90s we were like most major cities in Texas we collected our own garbage we had our own trucks our own staff uh in fact the MLK property where Waste Management operates its trucks out of today uh that used to be a city facility with city garbage trucks and City staff and we we did the right thing we moved from uh it being a a city garbage service to a private garbage service we are in the business of Public Safety and repairing roads and all the other things that are that are unique to government and solid waste as a private sector option that we have available to us it saves US money uh and it increases our service level and and our options we uh in the contract uh there was an initial 10 years and and every 10 years or so weekend or a little bit before 10 years we can extend it another 10 years we could do that four times uh we can go all the way to 20 uh see this one is up in 2033 we can go another 10 years no yeah I only got another 10 years from there uh if we wish or we can go out and we can uh place it on the open market and go out for competitive bid That's Not Unusual in solid waste when you look at the number of trucks that are required and how much each one of those trucks costs and you look at the um the the level of knowledge that that that that entails to pick up garbage every day and to do it correctly uh without any gaps all of that is important to have long-term contracts so that the company can invest in its vehicles uh and we can invest in that knowledge so that it's seamless to the public uh that that if there are garbage routes on Tuesday it gets picked up on Tuesday and they're not any of the better when you start switching contractors every 10 years or so you start getting these big gaps in service you start having problems with service and that's something that that we want to avoid our last contract um negotiation uh was wrapped up around December of of 2021 and in that process we ask waste management for a number of new things uh and and one of those was some smarter and Innovative technology that we could employ in the in the day-to-day garbage collection process uh in doing that uh we again we always look at our goals and guiding principles we always want the best service uh we want to be neat and clean uh and safe as a city we want to decrease our costs wherever possible preserve the landfill that's critical and of course maximize our Contracting opportunities to meet business Equity goals and so in extending that contract we were able to meet all of those things uh and some of the some of the highlights from that is and I know Carlos and and Miss Bivins has not been around for a while um that we have that we have this Antiquated system where people could not put extra bags out they had to go to the grocery store and buy a pay bag uh and then they had to know to do that and then they had to know to have a supply of them on hand and then sometimes people would have a couple extra garbage bags and the lid on the garbage container would be up and and waste management under the old contract didn't have to pick up a black plastic bag outside a cart and didn't have to pick it up when the lid was standing open and that resulted in a lot of customer service impacts and it also resulted in a Messier city that you know when you don't pick up people's garbage and it's overflowing it'll continue to overflow do they get home and then they have another week's worth of garbage they got to figure out what to do with that under the new contract right if it's a garbage bag that's sitting out if the garbage cart if the lid is sitting open they're going to pick it up and they're going to empty it now they charge us for that extra service and as we develop this technology we'll be coming back to all of you with some budget recommendations budget decisions on how we would assess that feed back to the property owner for putting the extra bags out or having the overfilled cart we are a pay as you throw City that people pay by the amount of garbage that they put out there and we don't want to be a city where we just say you can pile up 10 or you know 10 garbage bags outside a cart or something along those lines because that results in additional litter before the truck comes around as animals get into it and tear it up so we were able to do that in in the in in a very large degree because of the smart truck technology that um we'll go over in more detail and it essentially is there's computers on the trucks there's cameras on the trucks and then they they use artificial intelligence and that intelligence gets smarter every day uh and we'll be able to talk about that and show you some pictures later on uh and then we also established some performance metrics to drive down missed collections by 20 percent we uh we're just into that measuring period right now as you all know that in today's economy uh fine finding staff retaining staff finding parts for your trucks replacing trucks that all of these have had an impact on the solid waste industry as a whole not just in our on our local solid waste collection folks and then created incentives for Waste Management historically it's been a penalty if you don't pick up a cart and you don't then go back and get it within 24 hours there's a liquidated damage that that we hit you up and it's all penalized penalized penalized so we also built into this contract uh some performance uh incentives and that is if you reduce the number of missed collections by 20 percent over this over this quarter then then we will reward you by not charging you the liquidated damages so the the better you do at avoiding the frustration in the first place then the better it's going to work for you financially so our customers win and the contractor wins also on the the new contract um again focusing on landfill um diversion uh based system we want to increase recycling we'll go over that a little bit more uh and then there was always a concern whenever we don't go out and competitively bid these contracts did we get the best deal and I'll tell you we hired a consultant um this is a consultant that works with cities all over the state people tell you that as he did when we when we came to you and said we'd like to move forward with it we got a good Financial deal with waste management and we also got one of the the leading contractors for waste collection in the nation and part of that is particularly for for our smart truck technology is that Innovation and creativity um that we we probably would not have gotten if we had gone simply out and done a low bid type document so when you look at this side there's an example there when you have cameras on a truck it records um as it's going down the road we can we can now say such things as with somebody's card out or not out was there uh a couch that was sitting out uh that we collected or didn't collect that that's the benefit of it uh it also and I'll give us a little bit more but it also helps aside from Solid Waste um I I will tell you that um in this last week I can't talk about it or actually it's today um I can't talk about it in great detail but you know we have a very we have a society where everybody has a video uh ability on their phone uh and with Waste Management having these smart cameras on their trucks it's not just about collecting garbage but it's also about Public Safety uh and then the only great partner to Code Compliance uh but very very much into public safety and um working with the police department so as an example and there's there's a camera on the side of the truck maybe there was a burglary at a house and that camera picked up the suspect data picked up the license display to the car that was there doing the burglary things like that that will help our Police Department uh reduce crime on the residential collection service details uh we always feel like we need to remind you all because we don't we don't talk about Solid Waste as much as we used to uh garbage Recycling yard waste that's once a week uh and then bulk collection is once a month um so if you look at this and you kind of average it out that's about 13 service attempts per household per month um the number of collection customers we have is is a little over 250 000 you do the math and that's approximately 3.3 million service attempts every month it's a lot and so when when we get the calls where we perhaps missed somebody's cart that day um you know when you look at those numbers they're relatively low in fact they're less than a half a percent so getting into that half a percent if you look at this to date we've been doing really well so when you look at our our service success rate uh almost at 100 percent for garbage and recycling and yard uh bulk is down a little bit uh some of this has to do sometimes with the amount of bulk um or the damage so sometimes what happens is when there's storms and there's wind damage people drag the bulk after the truck goes by and then they report it to us that it was out when it should have been when it wasn't but it's still reported as a as a service Miss so we expect uh the bulk in this this time of year when you look at March April sometimes into May those numbers tend to be a little bit lower because of the storms overall when you add all those things together uh there at the right side you can see that over time um we've been up there pretty close to it to 100 and that's awesome reroute we just uh you know it's been a it's been a few months since we did the reroute and we know that there were some concerns we wanted to just give you a quick update about a third of our households uh were rerouted back in November uh the benefits were uh we knew we would have fewer missed Collections and assurance that more routes would complete it up be completed on time we wanted that predictability and since the route change uh garbage and recycle misses versus last year have decreased 8.8 percent um and garbage and recycle routes not completed um are down 36 percent and that's huge because some of our routes were so big and so far away from the landfill that they weren't able to pick up the Wednesday on Wednesday or the Tuesday on Tuesday now we're seeing a much higher uh completion rate of that and again there were Lessons Learned on the timing of of communications I can just say overall um that you know on the private sector the the waste haulers deal with reroutes all the time uh they don't necessarily work with councils and others uh and and how they communicate but they're they've got a dead set on how they communicate with the customer that seemed to work pretty good we had several hundred um uh uh customers over about a two to three week period um that that that that that had repeat uh problems a lot of those were uh tied to a new driver and a new area and things like cul-de-sacs uh and software glitches so it it overall it was pretty painless uh much different than a city to the east that went weeks and months and uh even a council member up there had to pay for garbage service for some of their constituents so it um it was pretty much I I feel comfortable saying for the customer it was seamless it's never perfect there there are always people that um will not get the mailer or get the thing at the door or get the additional information and sometimes it takes a couple of weeks to get it I will say we always picked up people's garbage right we didn't charge anybody extra and we went the extra mile to make sure their garbage got picked up uh QR codes again you know where this falls on the heel of Michelle's presentation uh we continue to push our apps for people to use them it's it's user friendly for both a clean and safe City to report litter and illegal dumping and things like that but it's also for recollect a great way for people to get reminders on when their garbage day is and when they're bulk month or bulk week is for the month so they don't miss that um Waste Management involved in uh technology and with that I'm going to ask Steve Keller from Waste Management to come up and and talk about some of the new uh technology well you're on the wrong slide [Music] keep going I think we're starting on Clean Slate okay all right hey Council mayor good to have you here today I can see the excitement on your faces that we're talking about the the exciting world of garbage uh there's nothing more exciting than garbage correct yeah go ahead say that uh my name is Steve Keller I've been working with the city of Fort Worth uh you might find this crazy but starting in May it'll be my 24th year as the representative of Waste Management to the city of Fort Worth I look around this table and I see so many different people over that 24 years that have had great impact on what the future of Fort Worth is you know y'all may not believe this you know this to be true there's there's a few things that are more personal than garbage to a resident out there they want their garbage picked up they want it done in a timely manner when it doesn't happen they're going to call y'all and they're going to call somebody and be upset about it but Waste Management has partnered with the city of Fort Worth to bring into effect a program the the regular collection program that we're doing right now and I just want to mention this 23 years ago 22 years ago when they started talking about converting and Brandon talked about the collection system is right here you don't realize what impact that has 20 years later but during the covid pandemic the mere fact that Fort Worth had changed their collection system from citizen containers you know those galvanized cans that you used to see out there to an automated system you had very few glitches in your garbage collection system during that covered time during that during that coveted period there was about a 35 percent increase of volume that was at the curb and the reason is everybody was at home and they were looking for things to do and they were cleaning out their closets and their garages and all that kind of stuff and the amount of volume that came to the curb was incredible but we were able to keep up with that because of decisions like folks like you all right here made during that time period And I think that's that's interesting Brandon said we've been a good partner this is just some of the examples of what we do the Clean Slate Program in particular has been a really exciting thing we partnered with the Presbyterian night shelter to identify people that were needing jobs out there have worked in this program we've had we've had several employees several folks that became full-time employees at Waste Management through this program it's very very cool the heroes hold the water we've been doing this out at our wildlife habitat Sanctuary which is just west of downtown Fort Worth at our closed landfill councilman Beck we've had a lot of a lot of of the veterans out there and we continue to do this several times a year it's a real cool program next slide Brandon this is just some of the examples of the things that we've been involved with from the Trinity trash bat to the Habitat for Humanity and those kind of things okay Brandon I'm going to talk about smart truck just real briefly here and tell you some of the some of the things that have that have happened waste management is the the leader in innovation in this industry there's no question about it we do things Seven Ten Years Later our competitors start following up with this and this smart truck technology in particular is very cool there's been cameras on trucks forever out there we could we you could you can take all the pictures that you want but what do you do with the data how do you as Brad had mentioned 3.3 million service opportunities a month how do you disseminate what needs to be seen what is personal what happened on that resonance collection day and waste management pioneered our own technology as proprietary we call it smart truck and it's an artificial intelligence-based technology like what Brandon was saying right there that scrubs the data down to where circumstances that have taken place can be disseminated and be looked at and be seen and be told to the resident that may be complaining or needs educating on what what is out there go ahead granted this is just a little bit about the smart truck technology itself what it does it validates service in real time so right now while we're sitting around this table and our trucks are out there and on the streets performing Services it is validating every individual service on the garbage and the recycling side that's taking place there's what it does the platform collects video footage it it pinpoints the location of the truck and then it has this telematic data I had to ask exactly how to how to describe that that is a the circumstance has taken place it goes from the truck to the cloud and then to customer service where it can be used for verification uh circumstances in there that is one of the real Innovative things that we've come up here come up with it it's it does have service verification Avail it has the ability to share pictures and images with the residents that might be calling in and said I have a problem and you miss me or whatever it is if we can pinpoint and show exactly what took place at that resident in real time it's also accessible by the call center and the solid waste staff and it it increases program efficiency and Effectiveness okay Brandon now this is just kind of a schematic of showing what the truck looks like in the camera positions and what it does one thing in particular you see the red button up here what that is we you know not everybody puts their card out every day or puts their card out on time sometimes they might be in the kitchen fixing breakfast for their kids and hear the truck coming down the street like has happened recently to one of our members here I think it was it was it you I think I thought it was the mayor that this happened yeah yeah I wasn't trying to pick on you mayor but so now I'm concerned that there are pictures of me in my pajamas in the middle of my street waving down truck I will tell you that we do not share that information with anybody so excellent freedom of Memphis Elizabeth right and your sweet driver I think I told you this got out of the truck noticed because I took two cans across the street because I had to cheat because I was late that morning at 705 and and he got out and he brought my cans back up and then proceeded to tell me and I quote I've been doing this for a long time and I've noticed the women are the one doing the work that right don't do anything which I thought was really really funny yeah well mayor Parker what happened that day when he drove by your house and said he hit that red button and it said nothing out and it's because that does happen and you'll be surprised how many people have called and said they they missed me today well you were in there fixing breakfast for the kids and forgot to put you put your card out and now you're calling back in but it does do that it also has these two other cameras over here we're going to show you what these cameras do um you know this this is just all of the technology type things but the real interesting part is that it records a video of the Ben's contents when it is being dumped it actually records every service that takes place out there okay go ahead Brandon um the smart truck technology means a cleaner Greener safer Fort Worth the camera Brandon mentioned the bags one of the things that the staff insisted to us is because in the old system and this was debated around this table Ad nauseam for for a long time we only picked up carts that were filled correctly and that means they weren't snow cones so if you had four or five extra bags and you raised your lid up and you put those up on top and they were sticking this far up above what the card is you didn't get collected in the past if there were bags sitting outside on the ground those things did not get collected so Brandon made it clear and his staff made it clear what we want is if it's out let's get it picked up and so that's what we can do with this technology and as he mentioned we do get a fee for doing that it's not huge but how do you verify that well these cameras take these pictures and show exactly what is out there on the ground it also helps with the with the litter and I know litter is a is a big focus of this Council and this staff and it is it has had a I think Brad will say it's had a tremendous impact on litter in the neighborhoods by the fact that we're getting all these extra bags can I ask a quick question about that process because I know I've had it happen to me with my recycle bin sometimes you get odd shaped boxes that you can't break down completely but my recycle bin isn't full but it might be open so do we get charged for that as well is there like is there a mechanism that you can tell like this was just a okay go ahead yeah we have a video to show you and I think we can cover it that'd be a good time to cover that yeah you just you want to go to the videos no I think I think you want to keep going okay let's do that smart Trucking action okay here's what it does it takes two pictures that are captured at each one of the services it takes a picture prior and then it takes a picture it this thing's called the inclometer that's the arm on these trucks once that arm is engaged and starts starts moving out a video starts and it shows the actual action of that service taking place right there it captures an eight second video it shows the lifting of the container five seconds after the after it's triggered and it shows the refuse being dumped into the hopper itself yeah the my area I said this I hope you weren't putting this out there you know what happened to her we were we are guaranteeing to you guys we will not share the images or the customer information with any third parties for marketing or data mining this is proprietary this is City of Fort Worth it is not going to be going to be shared out there okay that also means with my colleagues correct that's right well I don't know if they've noticed but there's kind of a red dot in front of all of their homes to identify where it is I don't really want it because I don't want you to have mine you also didn't say harassment photos weren't going to be used for harassment right um the purpose of the photograph for videos is to educate and form the city and WM about what's going on at the customer level so we can improve collection Services diversion and recycling our images are shared with the with the service uh address customer on record and they can be shared with the city Communications team to illustrate service issues or successes for the community there okay bro okay how was the way how is it used well I just did that one Brandon yep you got it okay all right in the future and we're working with the staff right now by the way I want to say this I've worked with several Solid Waste staffs in all of these years that I've been working with City of Fort Worth you have the best the finest Solid Waste staff that I've worked with Jim Kiesel and his team Christian Harper Sharon gamble they are tremendous they are on top of what they do and it is a pleasure to work with them they're tough when they need to be but they're fair and I just I think that that needs to be said to you guys and you're very fortunate to have the far looking folks that that you have on that staff right now um the future uses and this has been talked to us Jim and and has brought it up to us recycling recycling contamination is one of the biggest problems in our industry and it's not just Fort Worth it is everywhere people do not realize what they can and cannot put in there now y'all done a tremendous about amount of education and still their people don't get it well we're working in the future as this technology keeps being developed to be able to help identify contaminated recycling and to help you can use that education that that information to educate your residents out there about this is what you did wrong in there does that make sense okay uh the current state I will say this right now every stop linked to WM excuse me customer database every cart left in its contents is captured on the camera the images are reviewed for overage contamination and that's part of this AI technology that we provide we we do all of that work and then send it to the city to be verified whether whether it's a real case or not and in the future uh notification and education sent to the customer to drive the right Behavior out there okay and then we do have a couple of videos of believer next just to show you a little bit this is just real short I'm sorry it's a little bit blurry but uh I want to show you what takes place as the car is being picked up and let me just set the stage a little bit on this video so it's a camera inside the hopper and you'll see the cart come up and empty where where artificial intelligence is going to be key to us is Let's Pretend in this case it's a recycle card it's garbage carpet let's pretend it's a recycle cart the way we do recycle cart checking now is we have to send staff they drive out to the neighborhoods they have to pick up the recycle cards and see what's in there and then determine whether it's garbage or not garbage with artificial intelligence it does it all without staff intervention but it takes some time it takes months and months of emptying garbage for the artificial intelligence to recognize number one it's a recycle cart and then number two there's a black plastic bag when this gets in the next over the next few months as this gets better we'll be able to send notices to Residents saying there was a garbage bag in your recycle cart without any staff intervention uh to speak of so let's uh this is really kind of cool to watch it pick up the cart and empty it and there's the black plastic bag right so artificial intelligence will be able to identify that it will it will create an exception and then that will then go into a file which we can send a letter off to the and Brandon to the customer that it will know the low it'll know that address now it's not going to know the human being or anything you know we use partial diode and all that kind of stuff but it's so you'll have the ability to send information to that particular address to say this is what you did wrong or here's how to do it right so we have one more video um just to show you at least one more here and so what Steve was saying what's I think is cool about artificial intelligence is it will start predicting where your carts are so we're creatures of habit so people at a certain address people that live at certain address they'll put their their carts on the left side of the driveway or the right side of the driveway and when those carts aren't where the computer system is anticipating that they're going to be it starts thinking to itself did they not put their carts out is something different it also because it knows where people will typically put their carts when there is a a violation or an exception it will be smart enough to know whether it's your cart or your neighbor's cart and then staff will be able to verify by watching the video the same thing in this case I I want to I want to kind of kind of set the stage that let's pretend that you're a customer and you get home from work and your recycle cart is is not empty still got all the recycled material in it so you call the call center yeah you call the call center and you say they missed my recycle cart the call taker can then look up your address and watch the video that I'm about to show you and to see number one was your recycle card out when the truck went by and then number two did they empty your recycle cart right and so let's play the video um as if you're the customer on the line and let's see what the driver saw that's right you see that house didn't have anything out yeah so and then yeah oh and there's and there's a recycle cart right and as you can see in the video it stops at the recycle cart it picks up the recycle cart and it it attempts to empty the recycle cart in this particular case they had stuffed full boxes they hadn't broke them down and the boxes were in there so tight that the boxes didn't come out so it wasn't a failure on the part of the contractor right it was an opportunity for the call taker to help educate the citizen that you have to break the boxes down because sometimes they won't come out of the they won't come out of the car but to speak to um you know that also if the if the cart Lids are open just a little bit right the the the AI is not going to flag that as a violation or to charge you right I want anybody to know that if it did there's still human intervention on this where we look at the videos and say it's kind of like when you slow down for a stop sign and you almost stop and there's no other traffic around right a police officer I'm not going to write you a ticket for that that you were close enough kind of with the recycling with this also if you're close enough you're good to go and one of one of the things about that also most of these overage bags that we're talking about are the ones that people are leaving on the ground outside of their cart that require the driver to get out reload the cart back up and dump them back that's that's where most of these instances are taking place and by the way if you'll notice he showed you the video the other camera angle is showing the location and it's pinpointing the GPS of what that house is right there okay this this video that we just saw if if you were the customer calling in the call taker can can ask you for your email address and actually email this video to you at home so that you can watch the video for yourself I I hate to mention red light cameras but it's almost like the red light cameras I don't know how many times I thought I didn't run a red light only to look at the video and say yeah I guess I did right it's kind of the same thing with the car that way people can see yes my cart wasn't out when the truck came by or my cart was and that's really a feel-good story because I think when you work in solid ways for a number of years you start feeling like people put their carts out late the truck really didn't miss it but they're trying to say the truck missed it I will tell you the vast majority of the super majority of the time um the contractors are not or the contractors are missing the cart and are on our citizens are honest when they say they miss the cart right and you say well that that's a good thing well of course it's a good thing it shows that our our residents when they call and they report those things they're being honest and they're being reasonable and then we work to make it right for them and again a lot of the missed cart collections are simply just having a right number of drivers and the right number of trucks and and having routes that we can get to in a single day um the call center is an integral part to this um and Sharon Gamble and her staff do wonderful you know they're the unsung heroes sometimes that that you think of all the calls that that come in for all the various things in the city uh and how well that that Sharon and her staff do in this particular case uh We've pretty much talked about the highlights that when somebody calls about a missed cart they can look at it online they can see where the truck is right they can see is the is that is that person's area been serviced yet um there's all of this data that that we will uh continue to to make better use of um and then just kind of this this kind of a it's kind of a geeky dirty slide here um but when you think of artificial intelligence it gets better over time um if you look at over the past 10 months um between staff getting used to the system the driver's getting used to the system and the artificial intelligence generating better data for us uh we've been able to uh drop uh the the data errors in the system by over a third and that'll continue to climb that's what the graph shows it shows we are all getting smarter and more customer friendly as we move forward on this and that's exactly how it's supposed to happen without any questions any questions from Council no I don't have any questions I'll say thank you uh when we had the switch and change I'm still getting some uh complaints from neighborhoods that that things are missed but I appreciate staff Christian Harper we've been blowing him up so appreciate that and all the the this technology is great because I know sometimes it is people haven't put their trash out and now that we have the video well outside that now y'all are all official trash rats for the rest of the day welcome welcome to the club thank you anybody else thank you thank you counsel us our presentations any future agenda items for Mr cook go ahead Alan and Michael and Gina thank you thank you mayor thank you Chris so I have two hour that I'd like to request today both are related to police uh the first one is uh I would like an hour related to police response times specifically I would like a breakdown of calls requesting police response the average response time by priority and I would like it by Patrol Division and Council District if possible with reflection of the new council districts based on when it will probably get to us the second one I would like an IR related to preventative Patrol time and I would like to understand its impact on crime statistics overall how much we're doing currently and what other safe cities or cities that are widely regarded as safe are doing in that area Michael Gina go ahead I'd like to talk about how we can get food to school kids when school is out you know we learn during covet that there were people who had severe food challenges right now I've got a food truck that's in my district that's feeding people but it's not in the right zone for it to be taking place in and so I think we could work with Neighborhood Services and Zoning to see what can we do to help get food to these school kids when school is out because Mobility is going to be a problem and if we can just work together with with the school district Neighborhood Services and other agencies we need to address this food insecurity during summer again Michael yep I'd like to request an IR on we have a neighborhood that is close to TCU that's uh been in the overlay but looking at all the development that's happening around it so an hour about um from zoning and probably preservation staff on what zoning changes might be necessary in that area to preserve that neighborhood and also what a talk a little bit about conservation districts historic preservation districts and the TCU overlay and what those implications might be if we open that up again and what that would look like and what that process would look like and what voices might need to be around the table Etc a full comprehensive look at that do you mind if I go ahead and tag team on that so that's actually coming on the east side of the University as well and so also with that um what we can do with our building standards because a lot of these homes look like single family on the surface but when you start examining plans they're very clearly stealth dorms and so to what extent we might be able to tighten up our building codes to prevent some of that as well thank you any other future items Council I have one quick one and it may be in the normal Cadence of updates on not only Communications specifically it could be an IR presentation how we're handling when you get a text from 9-1-1 once you've called in or you text 9-1-1 how they're handling that I personally had a little mix up and so I'm just kind of curious what the procedure is and y'all can handle it however you think is best thank you well at that meeting adjourned