Thank you. They're all looking at you. >> [laughter] >> How are you? Let me know. I agree. >> Okay, council. We're going to get started. >> Good afternoon. I'm going to call our city council work session to order. Welcome. It is 2:22 and I will turn it over to Jay Chaka. >> Good afternoon everyone. Uh too bad that we're inside. It's beautiful outside has been the last couple of days. We have no upcoming and recent events to announce. Uh but do have some organizational updates and employee recognition. And to start, I'd like to call up the Honorable Kelly Hancock, acting Texas comproller of public accounts to make a presentation. Yes, thank you very much. Uh, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Beautiful building, by the way. >> Welcome. We're glad you're here. >> Yeah, great to see each one of you. As you may or may not know, the state of Texas has the stars program, which is um in regards to transparency. We promote transparency in school districts and city uh in order to develop trust with citizens. We think trust starts with transparency when it comes to government and city for Worth is to be commended for that. you have four stars already that we've recognized you for. You've I just found out you your staff has submitted the six star which is the final one uh on economic development. So that's not here today. Uh this one's on contracts and procurements. And so, uh, I did want to come, um, because it allowed me to sleep in my own bed at night because I am from Fort Worth, which is always a good reason to to come back home and doing that. And just recognize the great work, uh, that you've done on providing that transparency. Your team, your finance team's done, providing that transparency in all areas of government. And I do believe as citizens look, as they get involved in government, they want access with it. And technology allows us to have access to this information. And Fort Worth is really one of the leading cities. As you know, mayor, there are 12 large cities in the state of Texas. Look, not all of them are pursuing this the way y'all have. And I think that's commendable um for Tarant County, for the city of Fort Worth and all the citizens to recognize that their elected officials are willing to prioritize getting information out to the public in all aspects of what they do. Um the school district's involved in that as well and continue to work with them. But we just wanted to stop by, commend you for your efforts and uh let the citizenry know that this city council, the mayor, finance team, this information is available and there's nothing being hidden here and it's being transparent and it's being honest with them when it comes to pensions and everything else, the financial positions that city of Fort Worth is in. So, I thank you for leading on this. Uh, we do want to bring recognition to it because our office leads in that area uh effort as well and we want to encourage it all across the state. Um, and so, thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Kelly. We appreciate you. [applause] I think the recognition really does go to our staff, um, Reggie and your team if you'd like to accept the award from Control Hancock. Um, and importantly, those for you don't know, Kelly has served almost 20 years in the Texas legislature. And I think you're going to find yourself a little more free time with your beautiful wife, Robin. Congrats to her, I think. Uh, um, but jokes aside, we've always appreciated your leadership here in Tarant County and Fort Worth. And we we thank you for recognizing the city staff because while we've talked about the need for this transparency star process, they've done the hard work and the heavy lifting. We're really thankful to them. Council, if you'd like to say anything, please go ahead. I think we're going to take a group picture also. Council member back, did you have something? >> I just want to thank you for your work in the Senate. I know every time I see you, I I thank you for a very specific piece of legislation, but I don't normally get to do it publicly. So, um, I really want to thank you for your work in the Senate, particularly as it relates to veterans. Thank you for your years of service for that, and thank you for making sure that I get free access to our state park. [laughter] >> Today would have been a good day. >> It's not too late. That's true. Absolutely. Thank you, Kelly. Council, let's take a quick picture, please. Thank you. >> I will say they offered for me to stick around, but 13 years of schoolboard work sessions, I'm le I'm leaving. [laughter] See Just a little bit. Mayor, I'll continue. Um, up next, I've got Casey Thomas, director of the neighborhood services department, to come up um to recognize them for National Community Development Week. >> Hello. Good afternoon. I'm Casey Thomas, director of the neighborhood services department, and I thank you for this opportunity to talk about NCD week. I'm actually going to turn it over to Allison Velisana, who's our um NCD week coordinator this um year. But first, I just wanted to say that the grant programs that we're going to be covering today provide a lot of great programs and services. And the reason we talk about um NCD week is to keep that work going. um just last week and also with the proposed FY26 federal budget, there were proposed um eliminations to the grant funding, but it's through the training and it's through the advocacy of programs like NCD week that we were able to ensure that that funding was preserved for the current fiscal year. Hello, mayor. Hello, city council. Hello, city manager. And hello, City of Fort Worth staff and fellow residents. And happy National Community Development Week. I'm going to kick us off, Here we go, by saying that National Community Development Week is a nationwide recognition of the CDBG, that's the Community Development Block Grant, and the Home Investment Partnership Program, or just home for short. And so I want to highlight that from April 6th to the 10th, the Neighborhood Services Department will be highlighting the crucial role that these two federal grants play in ensuring that we are able to provide uh affordable housing and public services for low to moderate income families and residents here in the city. And so on screen to the left, you'll actually see an example of one of our affordable housing developments. We have Colombia Renaissance Square. It's actually uh still under construction, but we will have that forthcoming. And then to the right, we have an example of one of our public service agencies that were able to fund. Here we have the Taste Project. And so specifically for them, we've been able to fund their culinary training programs. And so we have great stuff just coming from uh NSD, that's neighborhood services department. Here we go. And so since fiscal year 2022, the city of Fort Worth has received over $50 million in CDBG and home funds. And so these grants directly support efforts to address access to affordable housing as well as strengthen community infrastructure. Furthermore, CDBG specifically has allowed us to partner with local nonprofits, which allows us to increase not just the reach but also the results of some of the programming that they offer to our residents here. And so, all righty. Together, home and CDBG support a broad range of initiatives, including developing affordable housing and home repair and minor rehab programs as well. And we also have our first-time home buyers assistance program. And so aside from these critical programs, they also help us fund our public services such as our youth development programs, our senior nutrition services, and our workforce development programs. And so through partnerships with organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club and Meals on Wheels, the city is able to support the delivery of these vital public services to residents across the city. So, here we go. So, this year, in honor of National Community Development Week, the Neighborhood Services Department would like to invite everyone to come out and be a good neighbor at the Good Neighbor Resource Fair this Thursday from 6:00 to 7:00 at the North Side Community Center. We plan on featuring an accomplishment gallery so that community development nerds like me can learn a bit more about CDBG and home and the impact that these federal grants are able to create here in the city. And so aside from this, we will also have a kid zone with games andor prizes. So I want to leave everyone with this. National Community Development Week serves as an opportunity to recognize the impact of these programs that make all of the work that we do here at the neighborhood services department possible. And so we uh excuse me will also be having our uh community development appreciation day the following day on on Friday. Um, but with that said, I want to just highlight that the most important part of this resource fair is going to be the partners that we have. Uh, so these will be local nonprofits just sharing about the specific resources that they have for low to moderate income families here in Fort Worth. And so we would uh definitely appreciate if everyone would be able to come out. We also appreciate the continued support of the mayor and other local elected officials in advancing these efforts and ensuring that we have access to home and CDBG funds for the future years in Fort Worth. Thank you. [applause] >> Thanks for the presentation. They requested a a picture with the mayor andor council. >> Perfect. Who else is joining us? our DSD, I mean NSD leadership You're good. >> Good job. >> Appreciate your pres. Up next, I'd like Jessica McArin to come to the podium to recognize our very own DJ Herel. He's being humble and going slow. So, development services has been on a roll over these last few months. You remember recently we recognized the department for fastest permitting and then at the last work session we recognized Don Guy um who received the real estate council excellence award and today it is my honor to also present DJ Herel who received a national uh recognition recently by the national forum for black public administrators. DJ received the 2026 Jacqueline L. Whitman Distinguished Service Award. This is a very prestigious award that recognizes public administrators who exemplify excellence in leadership and service to others who demonstrate a proven ability to build meaningful collaboration communication and cooperation across communities and organizations. Being selected places DJ amongst a distinguished group of leaders who are making meaningful impacts in public service nationwide. DJ's leadership within the development services department reflects a deep commitment to operational excellence and community focused outcomes. His work exemplifies the values that we strive for, including continuous improvement and exceptional customer experience. Through his efforts, he has strengthened partnerships, improved processes, and contributed to the continued growth and success of the Fort Worth community. He represents the very best of our organization, showcasing how local leadership can have a national influence and impact. I hope you'll join me today in thanking DJ for his service to Fort Worth and also congratulating him on this incredible honor. [applause] >> Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, City Manager Chapa, and thank you ACM Katherine for this recognition. It's is equally as important as receiving this award. Um you know one of the reasons as you stated uh across the country this award is given to one recipient a year for the service they do not in their nineto-5 but outside of their nineto-5 to serve the community where they live and work. Um so so that feels really good to to be recognized in that manner among my peers around the country. also to be recognized in front of you because we watch you guys every week and in the community in philanthropy and in service and the things that you do to dedicate yourself outside of the DAS in our communities and so I I I feel really good and inspired by the work that y'all do and I want y'all to know there's many staff members that work for the city of Fort Worth that are also working in the community outside on nonprofit boards and and leadership in other ways. So, thank you for this recognition and let's continue to make Fort Worth the best place to live. >> Congratulations, DJ. [applause] >> You know, DJ, while we're out at all those events and things in Fort Worth, you know what we're really doing is just handing out your cell phone number [laughter] and letting them know to just call DJ. He's going to make it right. Jokes aside, you have an awesome team and you're a fantastic leader. We're very thankful for you. Congratulations. >> What's that? >> Oh, yeah. I kind of wasn't joking. Yeah, that's true. Up next, I'd like to call up Cody Wittenberg to recognize his team for a proclamation that was made recently. So, thank you for a few minutes today to celebrate litter control in Fort Worth. Happy Earth Month, which is all April long. So, appreciate that. We have some great team members today that I just wanted to highlight and focus their efforts. We also have an IR today that highlights some of the great litter control components that are being happening in our city. So, I just want to highlight just a few leaders that you probably work with frequently. So, Neil Johnson is our superintendent for litter and illegal dumping. So, see you back there. Also, Miss Jordan Baloo has stepped in as environmental supervisor, but she's leading our FIFA beautifification efforts as we prepare for FIFA this year. Mr. Ronnie Smith oversees our campsite cleanups and our nuisance abatement. Justin Smith oversees our street sweeping program. Robert Collins oversees our litter control and our works with Upspire every single day. JP Inoso works with our cleanup for illegal dumping and dead animal collections every day. Also, Roland Bell, our supervisor for EIU. So, this is the this is the team that goes and inspects whenever illegal dumping occurs throughout the city and helps to solve those those crimes. And then our newest member to the team is Amanda Mayor and she stepped in recently to become our keep for beautiful coordinator. So the people you see behind me are just amazing representation of of our department and our commitment to taking care of our city. Also want to point out that Ronnie Smith this year will celebrate 35 years of service to our city. >> That's awesome. >> Thank you for [applause] Ronnie. You're not gonna give a speech. Not today. [laughter] Thank you, Cody. >> All right, jumping into informal reports. Uh, we the first report is 26046 0046 cardiac arrest survival reporting and improvement opportunities. Dr. Jarvis is here to answer any questions. >> Dr. Jarvis, I don't have questions. I just thought it might be helpful to the audience and anyone listening um to have you briefly go over the IR and opportunities there. Thank you for being here. Well, thank you, Mayor Council. Um, thank you all for the opportunity to talk about cardiac arrest. So, you probably know this, but it's worth repeating. Cardiac arrest is one of the most critical events that we respond to. Um, the men and women in our dispatch center and our fire department on our engines and ambulances respond to about 11 to,200 cardiac arrests a year here in Fort Worth. uh that is about a hundred a month and to put that into perspective somewhere between two and four cardiac arrests a day occur in this city. So we have the opportunity to make a tremendous difference in the lives of our citizens when we coordinate the efforts of a well-trained EMS system and a well-trained public. So I wanted to give you an idea of the things that we do with every cardiac arrest to learn from our experiences. match those experiences with the science and make sure we're optimizing our outcomes for our patients. So, we look at every cardiac arrest. We look at the medical record, the hospital medical record, and we also look at biotimmetry data that comes uh from the monitors we use. We can assess the uh quality of every single compression, every ventilation, every medication we do and every shock that we give the patient. So we look at that, we put that into a registry. We participate in a national registry called CARES. It's the cardiac arrest registry to enhance survival. And our hospital partners also put data into that registry. That allows us to combine our local data with our hospital data to look at the overall outcomes on our patients. And we use that data to improve our performance. This is something we've been doing for uh well many many years but we've really been paying attention to it for the past five years and we've seen steady improvements in our cardiac arrest survival rates. So we basically track this in two ways. what the overall success rate is, the overall survival rate and that is of everyone we attempt resuscitation on. But then also in the group of patients that are most likely to survive if our system functions at a high level. Those are called Ustein cases. Um Ustein is a patient who has a witness arrest. Somebody sees them go into arrest and when we get there has what we call a shockable rhythm. their heart is out of rhythm and they need to be defibrillated. The national standard on that is anywhere from 25 to 30%. And our impro uh survival there meaning leaving the hospital intact, going home, resuming your job, going home to your family has been steadily arising over the past five years. And you see that in the informal report. We are now at 40% as of last year. Um, so I'm very pleased. The national uh survival from those arrests was 31%. We're doing better in the city of Fort Worth than the rest of the nation is, but I still think we have opportunities to improve and I wanted to highlight several of the things that I think we can do to improve survival. We continue to optimize the professional response. what happens with our dispatchers, our firefighters, our medics, and our police officers. I think we're going to we're doing that no matter what. But I think the real opportunity we have is to work with our community to improve the response before we get there. The response that um the true first responders, meaning our citizens, have the opportunity to do the key to doing that, the key to survival is rapid recognition. calling 911 very quickly, doing bystander CPR, and having access to an AED, an automatic external defibrillator, and using that. So, there are a couple of initiatives that uh we are doing now that I think can improve survival. So improve bystander CPR and I would love to make sure that as many people in city government and in the city know how to do CPR, have access to CPR training and feel willing to help out their um their neighbors. The next thing is I would love to see improved AED access. So, as many places as we can get it and get those AEDs into a public registry so that we know where they are. And that registry turns out to be um a product called Pulse Point, something we are in the process of implementing right now uh with the fire department. So, I'm really excited about that. When it comes online, it will be able to notify the public when there is a cardiac arrest near them. they can go and be a first responder, actually make a a difference in the lives of that patient. So, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and to highlight the great work that uh the men and women of the department are doing. >> Thank you, Dr. Jarvis. Council member Peoples. >> Dr. Jarvis, what was the name of that registry again? >> It's called CARES. Uh it's uh the cardiac arrest registry to enhance survival >> and it's the the AED you said. Uh >> oh, yes, ma'am. That is Pulse Point. So that's an application that plugs into our CAD system um and is it's an app that lives on your phone. You can think about it as Uber for lifesavers. >> Thank you. >> I just want to say thank you for hitting the ground running. You have been out in the community. It has been noted and much appreciated. So thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate it. >> Dr. Jarvis, thank you so much for this IR. I did uh I initially requested it because of a conversation or a presentation that you had done for for me and I appreciate that. Um I know that you cited in this IR uh like Seattle cities like Seattle that are having uh good a um availability and CPR response. >> Um what are the strategies to increase um our residents knowledge of of CPR if you would? I mean, h how do we do that on a on a on a scale in a city as large as ours? >> You bet. One of the as I I was recently in Seattle learning what they do and they use Pulse Point and you can bring up a heat map of the city of Seattle that shows where all the, you know, a little dot for each AED. They don't have a bunch of little dots. They have one big red dot um over the city. So, it's just saturated with AEDs. Uh we have quite a few AEDs in the city of Fort Worth, but I think we can get a lot more. We still have a lot of dots. I would like to see one large dot um all over the place. So I think the opportunities are to um help increase the amount of CPR training we do both to our own employees in the city but also to the community um and work with our partners. For example, the American Heart Association has uh an initiative called Nation of Lifesavers uh and they are trying to focus on improving community CPR as well as access to AEDs. >> And and my last question with the AEDs when you are increasing their availability is that just trying to like also encourage the private sector to have them available as well, not just private sector. >> Yeah, the good news for me is I don't it doesn't matter to me who buys the AED. Um, I would love for as many people who are able to buy AEDs, um, that they do that. Wherever that money comes from, I would love to to see more AEDs in the community. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. Thank you all. Thank you, doctor. The cost of adding the next is the cost of adding a new sister city and Val Washington, assistant city manager and Kipend Alba Chu is here to answer any questions. >> Oh, as I asked for this IR, could I have an OV, please? Chairman Beller. >> Thank you. And council member Peoples, we'd love to provide a brief overview. And I'm here with Kippen, who is the executive director for sister cities. And we had talked, I believe maybe even during last budget cycle just about what it would potentially even look like to have conversations about adding a new sister city. Um, so Kippen and I have spent some time together along with the Fort Worth lab just trying to provide a basic structure of what those expenses would look like. It's about a two or threeyear period to add on a new sister city. We've broken it down in the IR by year one, year two, and then ongoing expenses. Um, a lot of the early expenses in year one and year two are try are tied to travel um to the sister cities and just a lot of delegation and back and forth. and Kippen can talk more about some of those details. Um, and I also want to share that the sister cities board has convened and if the city is going to consider these conversations as we look at, you know, future budget years, um, they do have some recommendations on two cities that they would like for um, us to consider. >> Yes, council Hill. >> Hi, Kevin. Um, have a couple questions. something in the IR um they're largely limited to elected officials referring back to the France sister cities. What can we do in in your opinion to get more people and take out just having it just elected officials attend the sister cities trips, but how do we get more of the population to participate in the sister cities program so we can validate the investment we're making in it? >> So, what we want to do is get the word out more in the um Fort Worth ISD. So we we really want more applications from high school students and this is where we're we're trying to push we want to have one person one teacher in each school called a global academic fellow who actually helps to promote the programs for us and we're also building we have an endowment at the North Texas community foundation to provide scholarships. It's still small but it is growing. It's close to 250,000. Once we hit over 250,000 we can start to give out more scholarships. >> How many scholarships you have right now? Uh right now we are giving this year 30,000 in scholarships to students. >> Great. Thank you Nettles. >> Um Val, have we uh talk with Mr. Thompson to try to work with getting uh schools involved? >> No, we haven't because we've really been in just kind of the initial what does this look like and what are the costs and making sure we had good structure and definition around that. But I think those would be some of the next steps that we reference in the IR that the sister cities organization would spend time as well doing outreach and fundraising and working with community partners. Um I would think working with our economic development department and you know other city departments that may have connections in other industries to maybe spark um interest and involvement. >> Yeah, I think getting him involved with that u because he's a very uh good advocate for the schools and that's a great idea. Anybody else? Thank you, Kippen. Good to see you. >> Up next, we have the FY 2026 midyear litter control update and Dr. Cody Whittenberg is here to answer any questions. >> Yes, Council Hill. >> Cody, I don't know if you're going to give an overview, but I did want to commend you, your team, on the efforts on East Lancaster. I've heard from our shelter partners and our unsheltered neighbors. um the staff feel safer crossing the street and it just looks a whole lot better and I feel like the the homeless in that corridor can live with dignity and I just appreciate everything y'all done. >> Yeah. And importantly, I think I've had probably 10 people in the last month that were here for visit for pleasure, travel, or for business comment on how beautiful Fort Worth was and that really is a testament to your entire team and commitment. So, thank you for your hard work. >> That's it. >> Thank you. >> It's Cody's day. What can you say? Up next, proposed natural area management policy and Allison Ducker is here to answer any questions. >> Any questions for Allison? The good one. >> Could Allison just give us a quick overview? So much of district 5 is in uh nature areas and I get a lot of questions from citizens about what we're doing uh to continue to preserve that. >> Sure. So, just specific to the um uh the natural area land management policy that we're working on, we'll be bringing with you with the resolution the end of this month. [clears throat] It's really a policy to create a city unified strategy because right now we don't really have a strategy for managing natural lands and um areas. Just recognizing that it's very different than how you would maintain and take care of recreational parkland. These areas are meant to be and stay natural. And when we manage them in a way we can really reap some ecosystem benefits from that. And so um you know the policy is not a as I mentioned last week it's not an in the weeds document that dictates what will need to happen. It outlines a process that can happen when um these uh properties are recognized as a priority for being managed in that way. Is that helpful? >> Any other questions? Looks great. Thanks, Alison. Thank you. >> Next up, we have a sale of renewable energy credits. Marilyn Marvin's here to answer any questions. >> Questions on this IR? >> Nope. Keep rolling. >> Thank you. Up next is update on the small business development program. And Jessica Rogers is here from economic development to answer any questions. Ory is out of town. >> Jessica, I think maybe come up if you don't mind. I know we have some partners here in the audience as well. you can introduce and walk through the IR. >> Absolutely. Um, so I do just want to say acknowledge that Ory unexpectedly had to be out today and she would have been here if she could. Um, just acknowledge her and her team and the tremendous amount of work I hope that we conveyed in the IR that the small business team within the city and our partners outside have been doing over the past six months. Um, and I will say we have we have a number of our partners here and I can certainly let them speak to everything that they've been doing. So, if you want me to go ahead and and call them up, whoever. We have Steve here with the Fort Worth Chamber, Erica with the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber, and Michelle here with the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber. And um when when we say partnership, we mean partnership. Um I think I don't I don't know that a day goes by that someone from our office isn't talking to one of them. Um but we've outlined in the IR a number of programs that have been undertaken. Um we've kind of themed these first few months as capac capacity building and foundational elements for the small business development program and putting a lot of things in place um to bring awareness to the program and the changes um and get businesses prepared for entering into city contracts and bids. Um, we've also entered into contracts with the North Central Texas Regional Certification Agency. Um, and we had 85 businesses successfully go through that expedited certification process. Um, which I actually think the number ended up a little more. The timing of the IR was a little bit before the deadline for when that closed. So, I think we ended up closer to 90. Um, which was excellent. There's a lot of demand um, for businesses going through that certification. Um, and then lastly, I'll kind of highlight that our team has really been ramping up communications about the program. So, I hope you've noticed um a lot of our social media, a lot of our communications from economic development. Um, we've been trying to promote um a lot of the programs that we have going on as as much as we can to really focus on getting attendance um at the business assistance center, getting attendance at our chamber and partner um programs. And we've had a lot of success with that. So with that, I'm I'm happy to answer any specific questions or again turn it over to to the team that's been doing a tremendous amount of work. Thank you, Jessica. Council member Peoples. No, >> I was just going to ask I know you all put a lot of work into combining this and creating this initiative for us. So I'd like to hear from the head of the three chambers a little bit how they thought the process worked and uh how it's going. So, Steve, I see you're trying to tell Michelle to go to hide. I kept trying to get Come on up. [snorts] >> Mayor, esteemed council members, Mr. Bllelock. Um, [laughter] great to be here. Uh, I will point out it's it's true pleasure to work with the city and my my colleagues. I will point out that while they are smarter and more capable capable than me, I am taller than both of them. Um, >> yeah. Um, but, uh, this has been a great project and I've enjoyed working with this team. Uh, happy to answer any questions. >> Good afternoon, uh, Mayor Parker, city manager, and council women and councilmen. Uh, I'm here to tell you that it has been um, you know, throughout this whole process that happened last summer, the silver lining for us truly was being able to partner with the two other chambers. Um, I'd love to tell you guys too that, you know, we just had some really incredible visitors for uh, our upcoming conference in 2026. And it was such a pleasure having guest speakers talk about how the entire city is waiting for them, but most importantly to share with them what we're doing with the city, how the work was divided and the partnership between the the two chambers. And that has been incredible. It's been great and it's been great to see our team work on it and um most importantly help our small business community. Thank you. >> Good afternoon, Mayor and Council and City Manager Chapa. I'm so excited to be before you. I have to tell you that when we started this process and when you guys sent us out with the mandate to go forward and make sure our small businesses were really growing and developing in the city, it was a little scary because we're in unchartered water. Uh that is no one's really done this under this mandate. And I'm happy to say that the last six months have been incredible. a lot of learning curve but I want you to know that the pieces are in place for us to be extremely successful and those pieces have been the communication between the chambers the economic development department um one of the things that's major right now is that our city leaders are engaging with us on a bimonthly basis with our advisory board meetings so we have members of the city departments water TPW uh legal alongside inside all the chambers as well as the contracting agencies and certification agencies. So to me that is the key that's moving us forward. We're talking on a regular basis. The city is telling us where they're having challenges and you better believe our contractors are telling us where they're having challenges. So we are plowing through that and communicating and we've got a lot done but there's much more work to do. So, we're looking forward to the next several months and we can come back before you with some real numbers and looking at how well it's going and what we can continue to do. So, thank you for the opportunity. We appreciate it. >> So, the only thing that I would ask are you comfortable we arrived at a funding amount and so are you all finding that that's enough for each of the chambers? >> Okay, I'm going to confer with my partners. Do we have enough? No. [laughter] I know what Steve answered to that. Um, currently obviously we're very thankful for what's been allocated for this project, but as we go forward over the next couple months, we will have a better idea of where there may be need or where some things that we need to do differently. And I think we can bring that back and have some data to help us to see where we need to really invest more or where there may be some areas that we thought we need to be focused on um that are really not uh as pressing. And so again, we're in unchartered waters, so we're trying to work through that, look at the data, hear from everyone, and see what the results are, and that'll give us the idea of what we need. Thank you. >> And all three of you probably have an answer to this, but how do you hope to collect data that demonstrates ROI? So businesses that are building capacity have other opportunities well outside of public sector opportunity, but also private sector business capacity that's built. Are they self-reporting to you individually or do you have a database that you're sharing? >> We use our uh CRM and we sometimes have to proactively reach out to ask them about the connectivity that that may occur or what contracts they are they obtain or when. >> Um so we that we do use a data tool for that. >> Okay. >> And we'll we'll we will be happy to share that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> To answer the question, under the as long as we have fidelity to the current scope, um, we can we can do the the work. Yes, >> Council Member Beck or Allan has a question apparently. I just wanted to actually reach out and and say thank you to Erica, to Michelle, and to Steve for all the work you've done. And and uh Steve, please tell my favorite Montgomery High, >> Council Member Nettles. >> And no, no, no, wait. >> Yes, sir. I will. [laughter] >> Okay. I know we at this the IR and I know we had asked for an update within the six months about also drafting together a policy where it supports the small businesses that's different from what we had in the original agreement that uh we voted down in the summer and I know we're about two months from the summer. So, do we know when we're going to have that or we still working on that as as the different chambers are working together? >> Um a policy can you explain that again? had I don't recall a policy related >> well with the uh the um with the DEI diverse inclusion we had the uh percentage amount that different contractors had to meet uh when it come to contracts within the city or >> right so currently the council did adopt a policy it's it's 30% >> for the smallest businesses >> for the small businesses yes >> okay and then we have we received a procession on that >> yes well we we the the council adopted the policy back in the fall That's what we are working with purchasing right now and and going through all of the the actual specific purchasing data and so it wasn't included in this IR this was more of the programmatic elements but we are working on that >> well to bring it back to make any changes. So we're we wanted some time to understand how well that's working or not working. >> Yeah. So I think my real question is what the data looks like since we done implemented that policy and what has happened with our because I think it's going to be important with the chambers. I think the chambers were allocated different missions or things to do within the city of Fort Worth. So, I think I would like to see more of a data of what has taken place with the new procedure. Uh it's one thing uh and I appreciate all the work that's going on. Uh it's one thing to uh hear about what's happening, but to actually see on paper uh how it is affecting our communities to make sure that those who may have lost opportunity still have opportunity in the city of Fort Worth. >> Yes, sir. We are working on >> I think the timeline we were going to come back in June once we had that data. Okay. >> The council with with the update on the actual do numbers and then he suggested to suggested changes regarded to that >> and we're still I think on on track to meet that date. >> That's for Martinez. Jay, u I was wondering if within the RFP process or application if to collect data, are we asking if they have received any type of assistance through any of the various chambers of commerce? Is that an opportunity there where we >> on what applications? >> Just any contractor applications? >> No, not at this time. We we don't ask if they've went through a specific city program, but on our next IR, we may be able to touch on [laughter] >> I guess to add to that too, Jay, is the certification process. I think we was going to work on doing a certification within the city of forward. >> Well, we we contracted that with the North Texas Central uh regional certification agency for this programs for these 30 the the small business program for Fort Worth businesses that are part of our overall policy. So we have that contract in place. >> Okay. >> Any other questions from council? >> Nope. Thank you very much for coming. >> We do have an additional IR related somewhat related. This is an update on the small contractor development program which is specifically uh tied to construction uh contractors. If there's any questions. >> Thanks Jessica. And that's all our informal reports. >> Okay. Our first presentation is on illegal gunfire educational campaign. I believe Dr. Sed is going to lead conversation alongside Chief Eddie Garcia. All right, Mayor and Council, thank you for this opportunity. I do want to take a moment and really thank Sun's team uh for the help they did uh with this campaign. It's actually just very nice to see um the teamwork uh that that we have here collectively. A lot of the things that I'll talk about in these first few slides you've heard many many times before we get down to the meat and potatoes. But uh first and foremost, you know, the background just is showing that uh we are that the department is taking up some quite a bit of action is that between 2024 and 2025, there's a 20 almost a 30% increase in actually arrests that were related to illegal gunfire. Uh we know that stray bullets incidents spike around Fourth of July, New Year's Eve, major sporting events. Uh but quite frankly, this is a year- round issue. Uh there's probably not a council or a community meeting that I go to uh that I don't hear about this issue. Um, and obviously with the officer involved shooting that that we just got into uh recently with which was related into this realm, it's something that obviously it's year- round. When we look at specific events like Fourth of July, the department is actually currently proactively working on a citywide campaign as it relates to uh illegal gunfire andor uh fireworks as well. And we'll be rolling out rolling that out uh soon. Also, when we talk about the top age groups for this area, uh usually it's around 16 to 23 years old from the arrests that we're making. Uh but generally speaking, I would tell you anecdotally and speaking to community members as well in neighborhoods that also it ranges to obviously individuals that are that are much older than this as well. Um and although you know we do concentrate on hotspots, we just we can't emphasize enough that this is a citywide effort. Uh obviously the hotspots are important uh but regardless every victim is important to us. So regardless if if an area is a hot spot, uh one shooting could be too many if uh someone gets injured. So this is a citywide campaign. You know what are object our objectives? Our objectives are to reduce stray bullet incidents by increasing community understanding of the risks and consequences of reckless gun use. Uh you know, we truly want to convey uh that we as a police department and and as a city take this seriously. Uh we do not and I made these comments in the press conference after the officer involved shooting that we do not see this as celebratory. Uh we see it as a potential andor violent crime and that my officers have to deal with it decisively and with caution and that again I implored our community to not put themselves or my officers in the same situation that we were just in a couple of weeks ago. We want to reassure residents and community members that the city has taken action to put a stop to stray bullet incidents and that we will not tolerate illegal gun violence. And we want to establish a culture of safety, um, community intolerance and active engagement regarding illegal gunfire in our city. Our overall approach is we want to be firm, a very firm tone. Again going back to the point that we don't see see this as celebratory or fun or a time to play around that we take this very very seriously because lives are at stake that it is a crime and can be a very serious crime. We want to be empathetic uh towards victims and the families and we want this to be community centered and the main focus in protecting serve. I will tell you our biggest partners in this in this fight is our community and our community members and our neighborhoods that have asked uh and plead uh for us to do more in this area and we agree uh that we do need to do more. Um we want to avoid messaging uh that uh that really that that send that sends that sends a message with regards to guns themselves, but that it's the irresponsible individuals uh that are committing this crime that we need to focus on. Um, it's a city-wide focus obviously in hotspots, but again, we want to concentrate on the city as a whole because there's not a neighborhood in this city that I have not heard that there are issues in this area. We want to concentrate obviously young adults and parents uh to ensure that they get this message and obviously individuals and neighborhoods uh that are at higher risk of illegal firearm activity. You know, we've said to this council uh many times, you know, where the areas are in our city. we've presented many times and again I cannot emphasize enough uh that of what a citywide effort this will be. You know our taglines and being very seriously you're going to pull that you're going to pull a trigger you're going to pay a price. there are going to be consequences and we want to stop illegal gunfire as we get down to, you know, the things and the different uh, you know, methods that we'll be using as you can see up on the uh my upper right or your everyone's upper right, I guess. Uh, with regards to the materials and the and the avenues that we'll be using for uh the outreach, it covers uh a myriad of areas and I'm sure Suna can go into that a little bit more. Uh but we as we get into the marketing and how we're going to push this out um as we prepare for the 4th of July which will there'll be additional messaging from the department that we're using uh a citywide effect what works great in one division should work great great for the whole city uh and that's certainly a message that we're going to be putting out. So to go uh with further on this I'll turn this over to Sona. >> Right. Well, I will jump into the key messaging and kind of the creative that we've come up with for this campaign. Um, in public safety, some of you requested a campaign to be built out to address this issue that a lot of you are facing and that you hear about from your community members. So, some key messaging that we are focused on is awareness and education. You saw the highest age demographic for that. Doesn't mean that that's the entire age demographic, right? But that is the highest. So explaining what is illegal gunfire, why celebratory gunfire is dangerous, how fast, how far a bullet can travel. Sometimes people don't understand that. Consequences and the purpose. So what are the consequences of illegal gunfire? What is the purpose of our campaign? How to report illegal gunfire. Understanding responsible gun ownership as we also saw this week there was another incident regarding responsible gun ownership with with another teenager who was killed. And then how you can keep your community safe. All right. So, we do see spikes around holidays and if we have holiday specific outreach, we would like to do targeted messaging two to three weeks before Fourth of July, New Year's Eve and major sporting events. World Cup is coming up as you know. We have a number of games that are headed our way. And this is something that uh tends to bring celebratory gunfire with it. We have identified with police signage near vacant lots or areas where celebratory gunfire has happened and we've created some door hangers to target neighborhoods and apartment complexes. As chief said, this was a team effort. So, we sat down and talked about, okay, what is some messaging that we can get across that will really hit home for people that this is not fun and games and it is illegal in the city. We are reiterating that it's up to $4,000 in fines and a year in jail. um you pull the trigger, you pay the price, what goes up will come down. You think you you you shoot a gun into the air and you think it just disappears into the air. That's not what happens. And um basically asking for the public's support to help end illegal gunfire. Here you'll see some of the marketing collateral that we have developed with the police department. Um again, what's really impactful is talking about how far a bullet can travel. And so here we have for you something for you to review is a flyer, a wrap card, and a door hanger. And so the door hanger instead of paying people to go out and do it between the police department, police volunteers, um CPE, and our volunteers, we feel that we have enough people to target specific areas. We have social media graphics as well. >> Council, do you have a question? >> I was just reading the one. Um if you could go back where no one Oh, sorry. forward right there at the flyer. Um, when it starts off with shooting a gun within the city limits is illegal except in specific situations allowed by law, but we don't we don't mention later in that flyer what's allowed by law. And it'd be my preference that I mean obviously everything's allowed if it's allowed by law, but not giving uh it almost feels like a little soft, right? like it's illegal except for I mean common sense would say except for so I don't want to give them any reason to think that that there's um a reason you know I want the first thing they think is to be no not do I have an exception because people will if they're anything like me right they're going to read that and then they're going to start looking for those exceptions right when can I fire that weapon >> yeah thank you so much um I do want to dive into a a little bit of um parental and student outreach. >> Councelor Nettles has a question. Go ahead. >> Just before we get too far on the door hangers, um I appreciate I guess the volunteers and the police officers doing it. Is there a reason why uh we're not able to uh get others to put out their flyer instead of I mean officers are already busy enough. Is it a funding issue? >> No. No. We would definitely work with neighborhood associations, community groups. we would have a website landing page where community groups can print this themselves. So, it would be a concerted effort, but we just didn't want we didn't feel that we needed to add another line item to our budget for distribution. That's all. >> Okay. >> Because I will say I mean um we do want people to get the information that does not follow the forward police department on social media, which I'm sure is most of maybe the people who are illegally this uh have these guns. So, I want to make sure if if there is a budget item line that we need to add just to make sure we get the word out across the C for especially in the high um the high zones, >> right? >> Back on that, you might be able to get some neighborhood associations to also a lot of them do newsletters. Um, and I know I have a couple that actually like handd deliver. And so, um, if you'll work with each council office to kind of figure out which, um, neighborhood association, you know, help let us help you get those into the newsletters. >> Absolutely. >> No, because I was going to say my Carver Heights neighborhood association every they're going to have a meeting in June to talk about Fourth of July and so I think if we put flyers in their hands, they'd be happy to walk. >> Great. We're happy to work with all the council offices to make sure this gets to the right group. >> And so, just so I understand, I know that it's a citywide issue, but we we did use the terminology hotspots. What are we considering to be the hotspots? And what would how would the messaging be different or is it different in the hotspot versus citywide? Is everyone going to get a door hanger? Like how we we'll determine those targets. >> Well, the messaging is going to be similar citywide. uh with regards when we look at hotspots in certain areas, if we have more calls for service as an example, and more incidents of it occurring, again, not to to to oversimplify this, but there may be more material that needs to be in a certain neighborhood than there are in others uh based based on that based based on the calls that we get. But the messaging the messaging is going to be as loud as we can make it in every in every place, but there's going to be more concentrated efforts with regards to the messaging in certain areas as we've discussed in certain areas in the city. Uh but certainly as I've made mentioned before again you could have 20 incidents of illegal gunfire that don't end up with a victim as one example. You may have one incident that happens in another part of our city that does end up with a victim. one victim is too many which is why this is citywide but concentrating efforts in making certain that not only that we're there and the visibility as well as we have a hot spot if we if there's a a possibility as particularly as we get to Fourth of July to look at historical data to see where these calls are happening we may have more resources in those particular areas than we have others because we'd have to use data to really let us know where to put our resources so that's what we mean about looking at hotspots and not ignoring the data that we've seen year in and year out that there are certain areas areas that particularly in the 4th of July and other areas may cause us to have more more staff there. >> We've built out strategy that focuses on parental and student outreach. I do want to mention that Tyranny Tenan, chief communications officer for the city of Fort Worth for for Worth ISD rather, and Christina Villa, who's director of communications for Fort Worth ISD, they're both here in case you all have specific questions about um parental and student outreach. We did have a discussion with them and they were immediately on board and willing to partner with us on this to help get messaging out to students, particularly in that high school population and to parents. And for the parents, we are making sure that any collateral we provide will be bilingual. Um, and so our audience breakdown here is, you know, in addition to Fort Worth ISD, working with youth mentoring organizations such as the YMCA, libraries, um, working within Fort Worth ISD to reach student leaders, PTA groups, afterchool summer programs, and of course parent groups. So, the key messaging for parents is going to be focused on gun and bullet storage safety and consequences for parents if a minor uses their firearm. Um, we are ready to develop a number of videos. Um, they're already in the works. Um, based on council feedback, we can make adjustments to the campaign if you all are happy with it and we can be in place to position a launch in May and that gives us a couple of months of traction to get through Memorial Day, July 4th, summer, graduations. Um, so May for us is an ideal time to launch. but short videos, stickers, social media content, student media. Um, working through Fort Worth ISD to address through morning announcements, school newsletters, providing flyers with QR codes and resources. The next page is about ahead. >> Um, is ford in the house? Because I would like to shout out Wait. Okay. Hey. Okay. So, we're going to shout forthd. All right. I had to recognize my colleagues. Um the other side of that is um district 6, the predominance of my district is Crowley ISD. And so y'all know I love forthd dedicated my whole life. I would love to see this messaging and an attempt at a partnership in Crowley ISD. Uh chief and I had the opportunity of meeting with Crowley ISD early in the fall. I think time moves so fast. And so they had already pledged a commitment. So if we could reach out to them and engage them in this, I would love to do the same messaging. >> We can do that. >> Thank you. Just to tag on to that real quick is same thing for Keller ISD. Recently we had some these these exact things happen up uh up north. Um so if we can include Keller ID in that messaging. >> We can do that. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> So we built this campaign um with the focus on a younger demographic and as you all know the younger audience is on their phones constantly and Spotify and YouTube tend to be the highest used platforms among that aged demographic. Um so we have budget set aside for that um potential uh advertisement on for local newspapers and that really the idea here is we're trying to tell people that if you hear something please call it in so that we can respond or address the situation. Um Facebook geoargeted ads permanent signage that is placing permanent signage in empty lots in areas that we know that are hotspots for this. The stickers are youth focused. Um, door hangers. We've talked about obviously the print costs associated with that. So, Chief Garcia is was kind enough to give us about 20,000 from CCPD and we're going to bridge the gap. Um, and then what we discussed is if this works well over the next few months, we take the budget through this fiscal year, which is why you're seeing it broken down this way. And then beginning in October, we would ramp up some of our marketing efforts going into New Year's. Um, I just want to thank you both for this. This is something I've been asking for a campaign like this for literally for years. Um, it's so important. Uh, I really appreciate the effort that you both put into this and um, I think it it seems really well really thought out. Um, the only question I would ask is do we really think 16 to 23 year olds are reading newspapers? No, that would that the idea there was to think through audience for who would call it in, encouraging people to call it in and parental gun storage. That's more for the older demographic. Our our younger demographic will be Spotify and YouTube focused. >> Okay. And then um the I didn't task you with this, so I'm not expecting um you to have an answer today. Um, this is kind of one of my classics, but also, um, we just had a tragedy in District 9 where a 16-year-old was shot by another 16-year-old because they were handling a family firearm. Um, there are so many nonprofit organizations out there that work to to educate on safe handling of firearms and they even provide lock boxes. Um, is there any opportunity, let me ask this, is there capacity within the Fort Worth Police Department or with communications to reach out to some of these organizations to see if icing on the cake in addition to this, we can >> I'm smiling, council member, because I we I just literally we just literally talked about this this afternoon with staff about a campaign uh with regards to self storage of firearms. Uh, and it really goes deeper than that. I mean, it goes with the safe storage of firearms, the percentage of firearms that are being stolen in res from residences and burglaries, the percentage of firearms that are being stolen out of vehicles because they're unlocked and there uh and really with a message saying don't let your gun be part of a violent crime because they're not being stolen for safekeeping. Um, in addition to that, obviously, you know, dealing with the gun laws are, it's a it's a very nuanced section with regards to charging uh adults uh and individuals for utilizing that firearm. But we absolutely had that discussion that is going to be a campaign that we're pushing and precisely what you said um is putting something together and get some get hopefully get some nonprofits for uh for gun for gun locks andor safes because we we literally just talked about that this afternoon. >> I have some contacts in that space. So whenever y'all are ready to do that, if you please reach out and I can connect you. Thank you. No problem. >> Council peoples. >> So Chief, you did take out the map, but uh on your Facebook geoargeted ads, you left out district five. So I would ask that you go back and look at that because it seems to me that uh we probably have a lot of gunfire in district five and we would need to do it. Also, I wanted to tell you I I know that money is tight now, but door hangers only a thousand. I you know, I have 40 neighborhood associations that I think would want some hangers. So, I think that probably, you know, the uh 10,000 stickers and the thousand door hangers may be a little less than what you really want. >> Okay. >> Well, we'll beg Jay for some money. Jay, we want her to have some money for door hangers there. That's so See, you don't have to beg. It was easy. I do think 10,000 isn't a lot. I mean, I'm glad you brought that up because in like I we think about door hangers that we all order when we knock doors and a thousand isn't going to get you very far. >> Yes. >> Yeah. The Facebook geo targeted ads, we were working with the police department to figure out, okay, where are we seeing some of these hot spots? But this is definitely a city-wide campaign and so we can activate this anywhere in the city. >> Council Martinez, >> thank you Sana and Chief for this great presentation. But like Councilwoman Peoples said, don't forget about District 11 because it was just District 11 where um our great uh police officers in East Division had um got all those young men off Ben Avenue that were discharging uh their firearms. Um, I was a question for Chief Garcia. Will you be putting together a press release or uh something to the uh broadcast media so they can pick up the story since we don't have money allotted for paid advertisement through TV or radio? >> Oh, abs. Absolutely. I I think it's one of those things where I think presenting here was the first step. >> Okay. >> Uh and getting the, you know, getting the the the go-ahad with all of this. But absolutely. I mean, again, not only this, uh, but as we get closer to the fourth, there's going to be things that we're going to have to utilize, and I'm sure our media partners are going to want, uh, what message that we're going to be sending with regard to this. So, whether it's this or the Fourth of July plan, we plan on being very loud about that. >> Yeah. And I just really want, you know, not there's some certain media groups that don't pay attention as closely. So, I really want like Unison and Telmundo to to get this story and be able to share that information to our Spanish speaking residents. Yes, Council Member Flores. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um, Chief and Sunna, thank you for, you know, uh, presenting this information. I would say that, uh, or ask rather, uh, are you utilizing any of the information that was, uh, done and when worked on during the 1 second collaborative specific to youth related gun violence? >> This is through the framework of United Way. >> [snorts] >> I think we we mostly stuck with our with the data of where this is where this is occurring and obviously then working with our partners and the ISDs to figure out what best messaging but >> if if there's anything that you can um utilize from there say for instance uh any any groups that might help facilitate you know sharing that information that you're planning on doing that might be of benefit then two other things uh you know my council district in addition to Fort Worth ISD Castleberry ISD is present and also Eagle Mountain site on so please make sure you outreach. >> I think uh we will say that I mean we'll say that every if we have schools in the city of Fort Worth uh we're going to be working with them. We'll just we'll just say that up front. One thing uh chief um as far as the campaign on for the the adults who are we we're encouraging to call these in what's the messaging going to be for expectation managing expectations as far as response times and call times because I know that's going to be a big one that we always hear report it. I know a lot of times for us the data is what we really need so we can find these areas. So that's really what we want to do. Like we'd love to be able to respond in time but there's a good chance we're not going to be able to get there in time and actually catch the individual. So, is there going to be messaging there is like why we really need them to call it in? >> Well, we're uh prioritizing every call like we norm like we normally do and obviously we get the calls now with individuals that are that are calling these in as we're going to get through as fast as we can. Uh giving the resources that are available at that time. Um, I will say, um, although it turned into a a a crisis situation with the officer involved shooting, as you may or may not know, um, there were calls coming in in that neighborhood while the officers were getting on scene. Um, so our residents are calling in particular in those cases. Uh, and so it's a high priority call. Uh, and we'll deal with it as a high priority call. Um, and again, I think it's also from an expectation of I think I don't think that market might be the wrong word, but I'll just say I don't think we market enough the fact of how many arrests that this police department that these men and women are making on these calls. Uh when we see almost a 30% increase in arrests that are making before uh because of it, the tremendous work that was done in the council me members district, there's great work being done. Unfortunately, no, not we can't specifically get there at the current time that it's doing. Um an individual in this current case that's walking down the street firing guns in the last officer involved shooting. oftentimes it's an individual that may come out in their backyard or other things. So, there are expectations that that probably need to be placed uh with regards to uh the response and when we get there, but we treat it as a high priority call. Uh and again, the results um with the with the data that we have that the department is taking action and making arrests, I think it's something that's critical to go out there that when someone does call, there is a good probability that that that there's going to be some consequences for that individual. Thank you. >> Are those arrests um when we get the crime report, where would those fall under? Because I I know they're not their own category, but I think and the reason I ask is because I know I get it. I didn't I am really actually shocked that we made any arrests on it just because it seems like such a hard thing to police, right? Um so the fact that we're up by 30% I think is pretty significant. And I know I hear a lot at uh neighborhood association meetings and I'm sure my colleagues do too. What are y'all doing about it? And so this is that's really incredible data for us to move forward with. Um so that would be maybe helpful for us to push out in our crime report because that is something that seems to be of such concern to residents. >> I I don't disagree, council member. I mean listen, there's different things that are important. Uh there's been a lot of things just already in these last few months that we've asked for more data to drill down more on things. That may be another avenue that we'll drill down more because it's important to you and important to the residents because it is important for them to understand and know that we are doing something about it. Um and so yeah, we'll I'll definitely take that back to the team and see if we can do that. >> Just I think the sentiment is we're not doing anything about it. Um, and so if we could also change that, I think that would the big issue, the underlying issue for this is safety. Not just the physical safety, but the feeling of safety. You don't feel safe when you have uh when you hear gunshots. I think it would go a long way to make residents feel safe if they knew that we were actually arresting people um doing this. >> Agreed. >> No, I did want to make a comment. First of all, I wanted to echo everyone's sentiments with regards to thanks for the the energy and and the and the intentionality behind this. I know this was something I was very passionate about um back in the around the holidays when we had the death by illegal gunfire in district 6. Um also on the education front, I know there's we have a lot of ISDs and so that's a lot of work and a and a heavy lift that we're asking you to make. But as we wrap up for the school year, I think there's, you know, a lot of captive audiences or surrounding graduation, um, marketing through our community centers where kids are going to be going to, uh, summer programming and things of that nature. So, if we could really lean into the opportunities that we have, um, while everyone is kind of figuring out what they're going to be doing with their kids, so often kids are left unsupervised in their homes and there's going to be some opportunities, I think, there to prevent. So, thank you again for all of this. >> Absolutely. Thank you for that feedback. >> Thank you. Next up, it is the Cody show today. Dr. Whittenberg, solid waste, long range planning update. >> Well, good afternoon again. It would not be Earth Month if we didn't have a little trash talk involved. So, >> how long have you been waiting for that one? [laughter] >> Probably probably an hour. Anyway, no, I appreciate just a chance to do give you a quick update on our on our active effort to create a strategy for solid waste moving forward. So, just a quick highlight. We'll go through guiding principles and some major milestones, a quick update on our southeast landfill and working groups, community engagement, and then some reminders on our long range planning objectives and then some updates on RNG and Swiffer at the end. So just every decision we make, whether we're talking about budget or whether we're talking about our long range strategic plan, we're always focused on these guiding principles over and over again. So exceptional customer service, best value to our city, creating a clean and attractive city, and preserving landfill life. I just want to just echo those again as we get started. Just as a quick reminders of some things we've done recently. So in July, we executed the contract with Archa to pro to promote the RNG facility moving forward. And we also more important perhaps secured operations for the southeast landfill with Republic through the end of useful life. So useful life could go not only after the landfill closes but also for as long as it produces uh natural gas. Moving into September, we passed uh as part of our FY26 budget our first rate increase for solid waste rates. We understand that there's a gap to fill in that enterprise fund and we know that there's going to be additional increases required to continue to catch up in that fund. moving into October where we really kicked off this particular strategy. And I also want to point out that WM was able to open their state-of-the-art MURF or or material recovery facility, sometimes just called a recycling facility in the south part of the city. Moving into November, of course, we laid out the strategies here for this particular long-range plan. And the last few months, our great team has been really working to launch this process and move it forward. So, just some reminders on our southeast landfill, which is one of the drivers that we really need to continue this planning effort. We know that our southeast landfill is projected to close around 2036 and we know that that landfill is a critical piece of our infrastructure and our overall solid waste network. So, we really want to just continue to anticipate everything we can do to promote diversion away from the landfill and also just to plan as much as we can so that we are able to continue providing solid waste services without any major impacts to our community. Just a quick reminder, you may have seen this graph before, but just to orient you, the the city of Forest, as a reminder, owns the Southeast Landfill, and so we're able to have some revenues because we are the owner. So, we receive rent, we receive search charges, and you can see that in 2037, whenever we project that the landfill will close. You can see that we lose some of those revenues. So the green line continues from 2037 on to show that we're going to be able to continue to capture RNG or renewable natural gas revenues, but some of those other components will fade away if we are not the owner of the landfill. >> Can I really highlight the team? >> I wasn't going to interrupt you. I just a quick question before we moved on. Have we identified a replacement site yet? Are you actively looking for that? >> I appreciate that. So citing a landfill is is certainly a big challenge and a critical piece to this. We're not to that point yet, but we're hoping that when we return this fall, we'll be able to give some some additional guidance on what that looks like. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> Um, so we anticipate to have a potential site selected sometime this year. >> So, let's Yeah, let's talk about a little bit. So, we our plan is to come back in this fall with some strategies. And I'll cover it a little bit more later on the presentation, but we want to create a a a series of opportunities or kind of a menu of options, if you will, and lay out some of those strategies. So, I don't know if we'll have a specific site planned by the end of this year, but we'll be able to give some context of what areas we might be able to look for as we move forward and then some some uh other solutions that could come into play if we're still trying to identify what that long-term strategy looks like. And does that does our timeline include the inevitable litigation that will take place when we try to site a new landfill. >> So we certainly want to honor the the the conversations that surround any type of project like this. So that in my backyard and all of that certainly. So we have we have thought about all those different um obstacles that we might have to face as well as some of the funding as we bring these solutions forward. >> Okay. Thank you. So moving into our workg groups, we really wanted to highlight kind of our overall community strategy as we have this conversation. And our hope to that point is that we're trying to educate along the way and we're really trying to hyperfocus with as many stakeholders we can throughout this process. So we limit some of that that those conversations that can happen whenever we talk about long range landfill opportunities. I'm really focusing on interdep departmental work group. Of course we have some great partners throughout uh all of these other departments that you see listed. to the Fort Worth lab, FMS, development [clears throat] services, property management, others, critical partners, and we really are including everybody as we model these long range strategies. Also want to focus in on our community focus group. We've got about 20 stakeholders that have come together representing various industries and even our residential components. Also want to say thank you to CSE leadership with Miss J.R. Labby and and Miss Laura Burnside who are here today. They are helping to lean in with us on this particular community group and really helping to move that forward. We did our kickoff in March and we have a few more planned later this year. Then we also want to highlight our solar waste industry partners. So we can't really have this conversation unless we're speaking to the private haulers and the private um landfill operators and such that provide these services in the private market. And so I want to highlight something like you may receive throughout this course of the next few months or maybe you already have you may receive contact from different waste haulers or or vendors. And I would say please please please reach out to us. We're happy to navigate that. As we move into this month, we're going to be setting up a call with, for example, WM and Republic and IT and others, and we're going to be working with them to also gain their input for this long-range strategy as we move forward. All of that feedback will be included in our overall summary of recommendations that come back later this fall. And then, of course, we can't discount the fact that this is not a Fort Worth ccentric problem. This is a regional problem that we just have to face, not just in our community, but throughout the region. And so we are working with the North Central Texas Council of Governments. I want to highlight Sue Alvarez and others that are partnering with us through the COG as we move this forward. >> And Cody, when you say regional partnership, and I know we're not deciding a location yet, but is that a possibility as fast growing as this region is, you could have several sites that are coll-located for multiple municipalities. >> Yes, absolutely. So the concept of a regional landfill where many providers are are are or many cities or communities or even counties and partners are coming together to support that solution could be one of the strategies we we uh lean forward and bring forward to you in the fall. >> And and keep going. I'm not going to sidet track. Keep going. Thank you. >> So as we lean to this again really focusing on community engagement, we now is the time for anyone that's a resident or a member of our community who wants to offer feedback. We have our community feedback form which is at that QR code or you can visit the solid waste homepage that we've developed for this particular plan. Please, please, please allow anyone to promote this out through your social media networks or others. We're happy to receive that feedback because all input is really useful as we navigate this conversation together, but we're going to lean into to data and science and finance to really guide the conversation and the summary of of our solutions. Finally, just another highlight on the long range plan. we really are going to focus in on closing this gap for our solid waste rates. We want to make sure that as an enterprise fund that the rates that are coming in are taking care of those annual expenses for offering solid waste services to our community. And then from there, another key objective is to really divi define this set of of long range strategies not just for disposal but also for collections because the two are interwined and we want to make sure that we're allowing for all of that. some solutions that may be a part of our future could include transfer stations, could include a new landfill, could include additional recycling facilities and other components as we navigate this together. And then the last piece here is to develop a capital plan. So once we identify what units are needed to provide our services long range, then we work to define a capital plan and a funding strategy to bring those those units online. So, some quick wrap-up comments as we move this forward, kind of our projected timeline. This spring, we're going to really work to finalize some of those modeling components and really work with FMS to identify the cost of these particular units with our consultants Burns and McDonald and GBB and others are helping us with that again, as well as those industry partners. Throughout the summer, we'll continue to work with our groups and really look at rates and the overall cost of service. It also kind of intertwines with our budget conversation for FY27. And then in the fall, we hope to come back again with that menu of options for you guys to help us look through and to give your feedback at that time. Just a couple of quick updates as we close the conversation day and then we'll open time for questions. Um really excited again as we look for all opportunities for for bringing revenue to the city. We are able to say that we are on track with that projection of about a million dollars. 1.2 is what we're projecting for our RNG facility. Even though the facility is not online, Archia is providing us a development fee while they work through that process. There's a quick timeline ahead, but you can see that construction is really slated for 2027. We'll continue to receive that development fee throughout the construction before it switches over to actually producing RNG in the near future. And then the final piece, this is really exciting, we did receive $4.8 million from the EPA through the Swiffer grant. Solid waste infrastructure for recycling is what Swiffer stands for. And so we're also excited to use some additional funding to continue to promote diversion and recycling throughout the community. So with that, we'll go back to questions. >> Questions for Dr. Whittenberg? >> Thank you for the updates, Cody. We appreciate it. >> Okay, our last presentation, council, is long-term budget forecast. Brady Kirk, our Fort Lab finance assistant director, will walk us through it. Finance is fun. Remember >> it is fun. Well, good afternoon. I appreciate your attention here, especially with this being the last presentation on the long-term forecast. So, last week we had our internal city budget kickoff and departments are starting to work on their budgets now. And we've known for at least a year that heading into FY27 that this would be another somewhat tough year. And that picture is always coming into focus a little bit more as are the focus of future years. Now you all know the apherism that the only certain things in life are death and taxes and this presentation would only concern taxes. But when you're an individual, you got your W2 and your federal filing, that seems like the shest thing in the world. But being in an organization that depends so heavily on taxes and the way that those can fluctuate with the whims of the economy and local, state, and federal policy and everything else. Sometimes it would feel nice to have a little bit more certainty on those. So, this is really the reason that we have a long-term forecast so we can come to you with a look one year or 5 years or seven years ahead of time on what we think we're going to be dealing with in this especially in the general fund. And we'll be back in another month with at least a little bit more for specifics because three and a half weeks we're getting our property value estimates and then we'll know something about what we're going to have for growth this year. on the property tax side. Now really this is not a presentation overall about the tax rate in particular but I do want to remind you that legally we adopt two different tax rates. So one of those is the maintenance and operation tax rate which funds the general fund. And in the general fund there's so many cost categories. You've got personnel, you've got pay as you go capital, some big contracts, and all of those have their own circumstances that we have to project and that can make some years look really different for expense growth in the general fund. So there's a lot more up and down on that side. Whereas on the general debt service side, which is funded by the interest in syncing rate or the debt rate, that's a lot more constant because once you've taken on debt, you know what your debt service payments are going to be by and large. Not to simplify that, but that is already set up as well knowing that we have an upcoming bond election that that tax rate is at a level that can accommodate that bond program. So, this presentation on the long-term forecast of the general fund isn't about the general debt service fund or the uh INS tax rate. This is only concerning the operating side of that equation. Now, if you've been here for two or three council terms, this budget year and the last couple budget years are probably feeling a [snorts] little bit different than some of those ones in the early 2020s. And I just want to look at the economic conditions that we're dealing with now versus what made some of those other years feel a little bit more abundant. So coming down coming out of the the COVID 19 pandemic and what was briefly a real financial crisis. Uh we I think everybody thought at that point that the economy was going to fare a lot worse and there was a lot of federal stimulus to deal with that. So coming out of that and when the lockdowns were done in 2021, people were in experiences and maybe in spending kind of making up for lost time and there were a lot of direct payments from the federal government. And even though inflation was really high, the combination of prices going up and federal stimulus that stopped the economy from slowing down in activity that made spending just grow at a really fast rate. And that's why you saw sales tax in some years was going up by more than 10% from the previous year. And another part of that stimulus was that interest rates in about one or two weeks time were brought from about what they are now all the way down to 0%. So having 0% interest rates in at least three different ways can really impact our property values. First one is because since a lot of people want to buy a home with a low interest rate and lock that in, that really increases demand and that pushes house prices up. The next one is that since the cost of capital is low, that could cause people to be buying and flipping houses. And when they're doing that, part of it is that they're investing in the house and doing some new improvements. So, they're really making the property itself better before it goes back on the market. And then finally, if you've owned a home for a long time and that's uh grown at a rate to where the homestead cap can't catch up to that, there's a lot of value the taxing entities lose to that. But if you buy a new house, like a lot of people were doing when open market transactions were more common than they are now, that value goes all the way up to the market rate. So you would have less cap value in that period. So if you take all that and compare it to the second half of 2024 and now heading into another year of fiscal planning, we've got interest rates that had been as high as 5% recently, which is about a quarter century high or close to it. They're still about three and a half% to 3.75. We've had less government spending both because of the shutdowns but also some spending cuts just other sources of national and global uncertainty. And then it says economic conditions but it probably should say economic and policy conditions because another big part of this is TAD or Tarant appraisal district reappraisal plan and that every other year starting now we're not having reappraisals on residential property. So that makes our property values for a pretty big segment of our property base either not grow or grow at a lower rate or grow when we do have appraisals at more unpredictable rate. So before we actually show the forecast, we're going to look at some of the growth rates we're projecting for this year and future years. So for FY27, for most expenses, we're expecting those to go up 3 to 4%. And this is not really a budget or a guarantee at this point. I mean, this is the the purpose of our annual budget process to find out how much we're really going to need to fund operations. But we expect it to be at that level for costs on average and then with some really large categories growing at a faster rate. So our EMS program and our our health costs are a couple examples of that. The revenue side on the other hand, we have the vast majority projected to grow at a lower rate than our expenses overall. So for this year, we're looking at right now 2.2% on property taxes, 2.1% on sales tax, and just 1% on the other tax category. And it's only a projection right now. As I said, we'll keep learning more as we get property value estimates, and every month is another data point on sales tax. But this is our current estimate. And then for that other um 12 and a half percent, we think it'll grow at a little higher rate, maybe even at the rate of expenses overall, but that's a pretty small portion and not enough to help our uh revenues balance that expense growth. Then beyond FY27, this is what we're projecting for revenue growth in our main categories. So there's a couple things I would draw your attention to on the property tax side with that being over half of all revenue in the general fund. So every other year, that's when we're not getting the reappraisals on residential property and that's why we're projecting lower growth in those odd years. But in FY27, there's also a new business property exemption that takes us below that three and a half% that we would be forecasting otherwise. And then on the other tax category, that's about it's probably maybe six% of the overall general fund, but that includes some old legacy accounts like uh phone lines, landlines that people pay franchise fees on that are just falling year-over-year. And so that's why category overall, even though some of the other ones might grow at least at the rate of inflation, that those falling franchise fees on those legacy accounts causes that one only to grow at about 1%. And then we're not showing expenses every year, but they should be at about that same 3 to 4% rate annually. So this is our seven-year forecast for the general fund. So of course your eye is going to go straight to that amount for 2027 to where we're currently just for the cost of our existing services. We're projecting a gap of about $49 million between what our expenses would be and our revenues would be. And that's of course if we didn't take any action to balance that. So when we come to you in August like every year plan is to bring you a balanced budget and that's why we have that second line on there for each year which is the shortfall to a balanced budget. So you really have the the best result of the whole thing in FY28. And that's saying that if we when we balance the budget in FY2027 that we're expecting the picture would be about 10 million 11 million revenues higher than expenses next year. So that's partly because we're going to get those reappraisals on all residential property for the first time in three years. But there is also a major business appraisal cap that's set to expire at the end of this year. So that expiration won't aid us in FY2027, but as long as that's not renewed, it will aid us in FY 2028. And that says that commercial property overall, similar to the 10% homestead cap, that that can't grow more than 20%. So if that's allowed to expire, all those valuations will go up to their market value in FY28. C >> can I ask a question? >> Um, was there do you I know not in this presentation, but is there a way for you to show us the the historic tax rates? Am I am I overlooking that? Like what the tax rates have been historically so that we can look at that? Yeah, we could follow up um maybe with a presentation or we could just send that out what the tax rate has been. >> Yeah, just send. Great. Thank you. >> Now, I want to want to remind you that this is the forecast of the cost of our current service levels. So, this doesn't include new positions or new programs. It includes a few final operating impacts of our previous bond program coming online, but it doesn't include any operating impacts of our 2026 bond program. And when I say operating impacts, I mean if the bond has funded something like a new facility that that needs utilities and positions to operate it, that those are the operating impacts that will come onto the general fund after that is built and is opened. So those would be things that would probably not have much impact on the revenue side but would increase expenses in future years. >> Does it include the fee increases? Any fee increases? >> Well, this assumes for FY2027 a really high level estimate of what we might do with development fees, but those are not decided yet. They're still being discussed with the development community and it's not projecting any other fee increases. most most of the fees are tied to to enterprise funds. So they're not really so many in the general fund except for development services. So, in terms of upcoming dates, things when this will become a little bit more certain at the end of this month, we get those estimated property values. And that's not where the book opens and closes on property values for the new year because there's protests to sort through and we're not sure how that process will go, especially for the second straight year of no reappraisals. But, we'll know more than we do now at that point. And then uh this summer is when we have the the FIFA World Cup. Um and any impact would be reflected in our really our current year financials. So that would that would not really change the seven-year outlook. And then in July 8th, we're going to get our last sales tax payment before we bring you the proposed budget for FY27. I can't believe I left off what should be included on here. It's almost like a second birthday for me. That's July 25th when we get the certified values. Um, [laughter] I really can't believe I forgot to put that on there. And then at the end of this year, [laughter] >> you spend enough time thinking about it, you start to look forward to it. [laughter] It's perverse. >> At the end of this year, then that's when that ex uh it's not an exemption, but you could call it an exemption for commercial property is going to expire. be our star witness during legislative session. Brady, >> I know >> we're gonna love you. [laughter] >> Thank you. Um, if this didn't seem like good news, I should remind you that DJ got that award and that Brian has got the live release rate so high. So, remember that I told you that, please. >> I think he's done. >> Thank you. [laughter] >> I Righty. Wait, I do have a Sorry. I do have a question. Uh on the slide before the second last slides, it doesn't the commercial tax appraisal cap uh the December 31st it expires. Is that a state who who who reauthorizes that? That is a state special um appraisal method for commercial property. So that is a that was a three-year appraisal and it's set to expire this year. Is there a chance they're going to reauthorize it in the >> I haven't heard anything myself about that in the state of priorities, but I would definitely not say it's impossible. >> Got it. >> We don't want to talk about it really long. >> Yeah, I know. Thank you, >> Council Member Hill. Okay, Brady. Um, well, first I think last budget cycle y'all came to us a lot earlier than you did the previous year on just bringing up issues that were going to come up, you know, that we could address way in advance. Um, you talked about the EMS and healthcare costs that we know that are are going growing at a higher rate than the 3 to 4%. Can we get that also in advance and kind of work through any capital expenditures we know are going to come up? Um, I know we anticipated some of some higher expense this year. What does that look like from 27 and 28 just so we can be thinking about that? And then secondly, I'd ask um way in advance too, can y'all start looking at cost cutting measures as we're having these budget conversations so we're not last minute scrambling around trying to figure out where we can to make the balance the budget balanced? Yeah. >> Yes, ma'am. And next month, we'll start our our budget workshops to city council and we'll be addressing every area that you saw here, plus uh we'll get into fees, other the other areas as well before you go on your break in July and before the the budget recommended budgets delivered in August. >> I just um thank you so much for that presentation. Um, I didn't think it was going to be fun and it it wasn't, but um, >> it was funny. >> It was funny. So, good job. Um, I just, uh, so much of of our upcoming budget and how we budget is really going to depend on the 90th legislative session. And I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind Councilman Alan Bllelock of his friends here at the city of Fort Worth. >> I love your comments. I'm gonna get there >> and and you're going to do it. You're going to make sure that we budget correctly. >> He's going to be the most important freshman in the history of the legislation. >> He's actually getting local control tattooed on his um on his forearm. So, >> uh Brady, is it Have y'all started projections? I know you can't maybe get you do some guesswork around what FIFA may look like on the sales tax receipt yet. >> We haven't started projecting on that. Um we about all we can do is cross our fingers I think. I mean there's so many unknowns with the games not being here and then some of the biggest impact should be on the hotel occupancy tax which doesn't really affect the general fund, >> right? So, we think that there will be some um sales tax impact, maybe a little bit of the mixed beverage tax. Kind of joke about that, but it's true. There should be some of that, but it's really hard to estimate what that would be. >> Thank you, >> Mayor. If you recall, we didn't include a FIFA bump in our this year's budget. We did that purposely because we didn't know what it was going to look like. And if you saw last week, COG lowered the amount of visitors to about half of what their original uh uh estimate was like 2.5 down to 1.2. And then beyond that, all of FIFA has released all the hotel rooms because the teams that were potentially going to come here chose not to. Only two teams came. So there will be a less of an impact than a lot of us thought was going to happen, but we should have some kind of bump. Any other questions for Brady? Council, >> thank you for the presentation. >> Council, that's the last of our official reports. Are there future agenda items or requests from council for management? Council >> Ples like a new budget noted more money. Anyone else? >> Yeah, I have one. >> Nettles. Um, I saw that the US Attorney Office North District of Texas uh projected uh the project safety neighborhood expansion to southeast well southside district 8 and downtown. Can we get like a IR uh to see what that looks like and how it affects our police department? >> Noted. Anyone else? Nope. With that meeting is adjourned.