Good morning and welcome. Uh we are going to begin with an invocation and pledge of allegiance and we have a pastor here. Uh if you want to come on up. We have pastor Tommy Merritt with Southern Hills Baptist Church and he's going to lead us in the invocation. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for today. And Lord, we acknowledge that you are the giver and the sustainer of life. And so, uh, we thank you for giving us breath in our lungs and for the ability to do things that you've called us to do. God, we thank you that salvation is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for all of the ways that you provide for us and all of the ways that you meet our needs. God, I thank you for our city and for the ways that you've blessed us. God, I pray for these folks today who are leading out and who continually serve our city. God, I pray your blessing on them and their families. God, I pray that you would give them wisdom, that you would give them discernment, that you would protect them from the evil one. Uh and Lord, we do acknowledge that on our own we can do no good thing. And so, Lord, we pray that you would help us today to do the things that you've called us to do. God, we thank you for the resources that you've entrusted to us. We pray that you would help us to be good stewards of those resources today. More so than anything, God, I pray that you would help each of us to understand more fully how much it is that you love us and care for us. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, pastor, and thank you, councilman, as well. And with that, we will call this uh meeting to order. And I believe that will take us to item three. Is that correct? Yes, sir. And that is our presentations and discussion of fiscal year 26 uh and its proposed budget. We have three departments on today. Uh one item will be our planning department followed by item B our airports department or rather on the agenda the department of airports and then the police department and we'll begin city manager with the planning department. Our planning director Jeff Butler is here to present the planning department budget. This is our last round of budget presentations and um uh we have the budget scheduled for next week's council meeting on June 3rd for adoption. And so we'll have some conversation about this. At the end of the presentations, we'll talk a little bit about the engagement um the engagement that we received back from citizens and the feedback that we got. And so we'll talk a little bit about that at the end and as we're wrapping up the budget preparing for next week. So I'll turn over to Jeff and let him present the planning department budget. Okay. Hey, thank you, city manager. Um, again, Jeff Butler, planning director. Uh, good morning, vice mayor, council members, city manager. Um, pleased to, uh, present our budget to you uh, today. Make sure my uh, there we go. So, uh, first of all, we'll start off our, um, with our mission and department overview. We'll go to a budget summary. We'll talk about the divisions and the functions that they do uh, in the department. And, uh, we'll finish off with the council, community, and department alignment. So first of all, our mission, this philosophy is at the heart of the planning profession. Our mission is to guide growth and development of our vibrant city in a sustainable way to ensure that our current and future residents and businesses can thrive. This is our department structure. We have 61 budgeted employees working in five divisions, not including five staff recently converted from contract positions to city employees to address homelessness and one hired to manage the beautifification program funded by MAPS 4. I'll cover each of our divisions shortly. Um, but here's a summary of our budget. The general fund portion of the department's budget is 6.9 million, which supports all programs and employees except housing and community development. The bulk of the department's budget comes from 41 million in federal HUD grants that support the staff and programs in the housing and community development division. This amount fluctuates from year to year, and we try to maximize the amount of grant dollars that support programs by being as efficient as possible with administrative costs. So, a casual observer may wonder why the planning department's $52 million budget is so large. Um, and that is because, um, lost my place here. Uh we have 41 million assigned to grants is a total available but it will be expensed over multiple years. Um and then the special purpose fund that you see there the second from last line is includes one 1% for arts code update funding remodel funding and approximately 2 million in CIP funds for the key to home program specifically the c the encampment rehousing initiative. We're able to meet our budget this year by making some administrative adjustments and fee proposals that were introduced last Tuesday to offset existing costs. So, our uh first division I'll cover here is the planning administration that includes executive leadership, the office of arts and cultural affairs and the office of sustainability. First, the office of cultural affairs. Randy Marks leads this office which expands and improves the quality of the community's arts and cultural opportunities so the community can experience social, physical, educational and economic enrichment. The program provides assistance and information to artists, residents, businesses and organizations. It initiates, encourages and facilitates cultural planning, preservation and development and builds relationships between and among artists and cultural and community organizations. Uh some of the uh completed works are shown on your screen. Um th those are just recently completed. We're happy to see them done. Uh the office of sustainability uh covers several things just we'll cover just a few today uh uh in the way of highlights. Tio Bowman leads this office which provides planning and outreach services to city departments and city residents, business and visitors so they can integrate sustainability into decision-making for improved economic, environmental and social health. Recent activities include uh under the heading of extreme heat planning, mobilization of over 250 volunteers and collected um we collected air quality and temperature data across 350 square miles of the city to map the urban heat island effect. Uh the police or excuse me the office also collaborated on development of a heat vulner vulnerability index for the for the city. Under grants the office was awarded the department of energy funding for electric vehicle study and strategic plan and permit ready resilient home plans projects. Uh we're waiting on those to see if we can go ahead and proceed with that funding. We also, the office also supports bike lanes uh acquiring uh ACOG congestion mitigation and air quality grants for the north ly and Lynwood projects. Uh under solar planning, the office initiated the process of contracting with a solar consultant to assess city properties for solar energy generation potential to establish a scalable multi-sight procurement strategy. and uh the sustainability office is supporting the code update by assisting with parking and landscaping standards, solar protections, and electric vehicle readiness. And finally, the sustainability plan. Uh we're looking at updating that uh starting this year. Um our housing and community development division is our largest division supported by federal funds. Uh it's led by a new manager, Ben Davis, who you heard from last week uh when he presented the consolidated plan. Um so this this division manages the federally funded programs that serve primarily low to moderate income residents, focusing on susting stabilizing neighborhoods, rehabilitating housing, providing new affordable housing, redeveloping brownfields, and addressing homelessness. Um, so we'll talk about some accomplishments uh by way of affordable housing provision. I I'll highlight some of the division's recent activities and accomplishments. Uh, the Harmony Garvey Apartments is a 40-unit development that converted the former Marcus Garvey School into 20 units and added three buildings with an additional 20 units. This project was a partnership with Okira and is in the MLK neighborhood in SNI area. Hillcrest Green is a lite-ch project, a low-income housing tax credit project located at 3317 Southwest 74th Street. The affordable housing development program provided GAP funding for the project. And finally, the Citizen uh which is funded by the Mura Revolving Loan Fund is a 160,000 foot 12story mixeduse building overlooked o overlooking the National Memorial. Uh the building includes offices, a boutique hotel, and a social club and a restaurant. Again, that was partially funded by the uh Merl loan fund. Um, additional accomplishments. Um, of the nine funded projects through the Corona virus state and local fiscal recovery funds, two have been completed and the remaining are underway. Avalon has broken ground. Uh, currently modular units are being installed in the site. Karita Cassidas is approaching completion. Crossroads and Northeast Grand is scheduled to be complete in July of this year. Portland Place is approaching completion. Westlake is approaching completion as well with interiors being completed now. We host Alliance has been has completed permitting and Crestston Park has reported that they will break ground this summer. The housing affordability implementation plan was adopted by council in January and planning established the housing affordability strategy manager position which we are currently recruiting for. In the fall, we plan to host an affordable housing forum and begin a series of developer roundts to gather further input for plan implementation and program development. Housing and community development accomplishments in the SNI uh program include uh two new SNI areas. Ross Heights Pitts Park and Stockyard City were just recently selected. We're excited about that. uh broke ground on three ARPA projects, Capitol Hill Plaza and the Capitol Hill Trail to Wy Post, Dwey Park, WY Post and also Dwey Park. Um and the neighborhood alliance assisted many neighborhoods and HOAs um with successful events. We have 16 blocks of new sidewalks, many hazardous trees removed, 25 trees planted, five neighborhood neighborhood beautifification and placemaking public art projects, 200 after school students served regularly, and we also completed a new 10-year uh SNI impact report. The Brownfields program, a couple of highlights there. We worked with MAPS to make the Clarooper Civil Rights Center shovel ready. We were recently awarded a $500,000 EPA assessment grant. Uh and you can see there are many other uh activities going on by way of the various uh functions that the office does cleaning up sites. Um let's talk about homelessness services a little bit. Um the city is the lead agency for the key to home partnership a collaborative effort of more than 50 organizations partnering to address homelessness in Oklahoma City. The key to home management team embedded at the city includes the city manager's office, planning and police, and is tasked with developing a systematic response to homelessness, increasing the systems capacity, and improving the systems efficiency and overall production. The management team facilitates 17 workg groups composed of service providers and people with lived experience who meet regularly to drive the work forward. These tables show the sources of funds dedic dedicated to homelessness with federal funds on the left and city funds on the right. These are annual numbers with three exceptions indicated by asterisks which indicate one-time grants or aotments that we are in the process of spending down. The largest annual item is the continuum of care program followed by the youth homelessness demonstration program which was a competitive grant. The encampment rehousing initiative was launched in September of 23 to address the population of people who are chronically homeless and unsheltered. The longer a person experiences homelessness, the more barriers build up, the harder it is, and the more resources it takes to help that person exit homelessness. Though through the encampment rehousing initiative, services are brought directly to encampments with the goal of housing everyone residing there in an expedited six weeks. A myriad of service providers, each with their own unique role and expertise, come together to serve encampment residents, all with the same goal of providing a dignified response, housing encampment residents and assisting them on their journey to stabilization. As the lead agency, city staff provide project management and coordination for this program, selecting encampments for closure and holding daily and weekly meetings to coordinate efforts and drive action. Once residents are housed, the encampment is closed and the city staff work with various city departments, law enforcement, and private property owners, if applicable, to develop a plan to maintain closure and ensure the site is not backfilled with more folks experiencing homelessness. This initiative has seen great success in our community so far. 23 encampments have been closed. 370 people who were sleeping outside have been housed with case management support. 403 units have been secured and over 1,600 people have interacted with our street outreach teams. Lastly, 88% of encampment residents have been have accepted housing and support, dispelling a pervasive misconception that people who are experiencing homelessness just don't want help. The point in time count is a snapshot of the home of homelessness on a single night in Oklahoma City. Uh HUD requires that jurisdictions receiving federal funds conduct a count at least every other year. In Oklahoma City, we conduct a count annually in January. While the information from one year doesn't tell the full story, we can use point in time data over time to identify trends. These trends help us determine what is working, areas of opportunity, and other key information we can use to plan services. In this year's count, we surveyed a total of uh 1,882 people who were experiencing homelessness. This represents a 2.4 increase from 2024. While any increase in homelessness is too much, this nominal increase represents significant achievement for our community, especially when you consider the 28% increase observed from 23 to 24. The key to home partnership has been instrumental in our ability to decelerate the growth of homelessness in OK in Oklahoma City. Furthermore, many of the subops tracked through the point in time count saw reductions. Perhaps most notable is the number of people experiencing long long-term and unsheltered homelessness. The population targeted for housing and supports through the encampment rehousing initiative. Since the initiative launched in 2023, we've seen a 43% reduction in this population, reinforcing the notion that when we have targeted interventions paired with dedicated funding, we create impact. Additionally, we saw reductions this year in youth homelessness and veteran homelessness. The last group want to talk about briefly for in this division is grants management. This team provides uh program and fiscal administration services to the city granting organizations and funding recipients so they can receive and disperse grant and loan funds in compliance with relevant rules and regulations. The group administers 75 active grants and annual spending of 20 to 25 million with 120 subawwards and 30 loans worth over 40 million in outstanding principal. Moving on to the current planning and urban design uh divisions. First of all, ask if there are any questions. I'll go ahead and pause. If not, I'll keep going. Okay. Um, so current planning and urban design led by Katie Friddle um improves development codes and manages the special design districts in the city such as Bricktown, historic preservation, downtown, and urban design districts like the Asian District, Plaza, and Uptown. Current planning works closely with subdivision and zoning to update the zoning code and to review development applications for conformance with the comprehensive plan and applicable regulations. Urban design reviews development projects and rehabilitations of existing buildings in the city's five special design districts and nine historic preservation districts. Application review includes new applications, revisions, and recommendations to other bodies. The division reviewed 351 cases over the past year and updated several ordinances. In addition to design review, the historic preservation program engages in work to increase awareness of historic resources and historic preservation tools. The development codes update also housed in the division and supported also in the administration division. Um this is a complex multi-year process. Its purposes are to implement plan OKC recommendations, improve efficiency and outcomes of development, and to make the development process easier to navigate and administer. Over the past few years, as we have continued to develop potential changes to the overall zoning ordinance, we have completed some early action items resulting in the adoption of the new sign code, consolidation of our design review committees and commissions into fewer bodies, a recent update to the home sharing ordinance, and the adoption of the new accessory dwellings ordinance. We currently are working on completing um on the complete zoning code for the core of the city. We intend first to hold meetings and do additional outreach with residents in the core or what the comprehensive plan calls the urban medium land use topology area so that we can further develop the prototype code into a form that will meet the diverse needs of the core neighborhoods. We will allow we will address allowable development types, design review, demolition, historic preservation, and historic landmark zones and other topics. After the new core zones are adopted, we will complete the new zoning code for all other areas of the city and bring those forth for adoption. Um, now subdivision and zoning. This program or division led by Sarah Welch processes development applications for planning commission and board of adjustment. provides consultation to developers, applicants, and residents, and assists with updating the zoning code and subdivision regulations. Their accomplishments um are are lengthy. They process many many applications uh over 1,000 agenda items uh this past year, including over 250 resoning applications and 61 plat. uh they've done a lot of work uh ad administrative work this year to make themselves more efficient and make information easier for the public to access as well. So over 1,000 new records were made available online. That means all PUDs, all PDS and plats are now available on our online zoning map. The plan development and implementation division led by Kim Cooperheart develops plans as studies like plan OKC bikewalk OKC uh the the recent meridian study the housing affordability study and its imple implementation plan. This division houses several key programs comprehensive and long range planning commercial district revitalization transportation planning and the maps for funded beautifification program. We'll start with commercial commercial district revitalization program which provides revitalization support services to create and maintain successful unique and vibrant urban places. Highlights of the past year include 15 districts hosting 180 event 80 events that provide jobs, support the arts and generate sales tax revenue. The Asian district welcomed the impact welcomed the impactful we have arrived sculpture in military park. Hundreds celebrated the Kyedosinos Kyosino Capitol Hill groundbreaking event for the public plaza set to open in fall of 2025. And the Britain district now benefits from their new welcoming streetscape with the two outdoor patio spaces. The um comprehensive planning section uh we'll talk about that next. It uh uh does a lot of um um behind the-scenes work for the city, helping us to improve our data uh collection and use that information. Their accurate and usable information is critical for planning. The comprehensive planning team continuously improves how it collects, analyzes, and communicates data to better assist with decisions. The team assesses development trends, tracks infrastructure needs, and evaluates land use patterns over time. All of this feeds directly into implementation of plan OKC and other plans, helping officials make recommendations and decisions that are aligned with the vision and goals adopted by the city. The team ensures that the comprehensive plan remains a living document, not just a policy guide, but a foundation for coordinated datadriven growth citywide. Um, a new program, beautifification, again, as I said, it's funded by MAPS 4. uh the commercial district with some of the things that we've got going uh coming soon for this program, commercial district beautifification for Route 66, uh sustainable streetscape management, newly planted tree health and focus on proper installation techniques. Trees are just such an important part of beautifification. And finally, coordination with local beautifification and s uh sustainability organizations. Um in this uh this division the the final section to talk about is the transportation planning uh section. The transportation planning program works closely with public works, parks, police and embark to improve our multimmodal transportation system so that it works as safely and efficiently as possible for all users. Uh they've recently adopted we have recently adopted the vision zero plan updated bikewalk OKC uh with public works secured over $15 million in grants for various uh important city street projects and sidewalks and trails and resurfacing. Uh they've done a lot of work uh again working with public works on the 2025 bond and helping prioritize projects for that. And finally, right now, we're working on a $25 million grant to help implement the vision zero plan. A couple of plans I'll mention before I move on. The class and corridor transit oriented development plan. This is something we're also waiting on the federal government to uh hear a little more information about. Uh but we're optimistic uh that we'll be able to move forward soon. This would cover a section of class from 10th to 48th and it would it is about uh increasing writership, making it a transit oriented development corridor, um increasing affordable housing especially near those transit stations, increasing p public and private investment along the corridor and improving safety. Uh finally, the downtown strategic development plan. Um this uh is a plan that we're uh actually right now in the works uh trying to u we have we have several applicants and we're going through the selection process right now. Uh we hope to make that in the coming weeks and bring the um contract to you all soon. Um but that will uh help us prepare for uh a lot of a lot of good things happening downtown in the next few years. uh coordinate land uses uh see what infrastructure needs we have um that those land uses might be bringing or that they might need. Um so we're very excited to move forward with that. The planning department's budget aligns with the city council's priorities and the community's vision and goals which we implement through our strategic business plan. So to close, I'll walk through a few of our issues and strategies and some example data points. Our strategic business plan calls out specific things that that contribute to declining community vitality that can impact the city's ability to provide services and attract economic development. These issues include crime, poverty, homelessness, public health, education, community involvement in neighborhood schools, and a lack of quality affordable housing. Community development and social service programs help us prevent further decline and deterioration of our neighborhoods and business districts. We are strategically using community development resources in targeted revitalization areas, working to improve community appearance and working handinand with our partners to assist the needs of our city's most vulnerable residents. We measure the percentage of individuals who were previously homeless and remain in permanent housing for more than six months. This is a national benchmark used by HUD to evaluate the effectiveness of a community strategy to address homelessness. The the average our average actual since f fiscal year 16 is 87%. The national average hovers around 80%. Our strategic business plan identifies issues that impact the thriving neighborhoods council priorities such as urban revitalization. Some urban decline is an inevitable part of a city's growth. If we don't address it, older ne older districts and neighborhoods will increasingly become vulnerable to continued decline. Our strategies to spur urban revitalization include focusing resources on areas experiencing decline to help strengthen them. Our CDBG program, the CDRP and SNI programs are the primary tool tools we use to support urban revitalization. Measures we use to track how we are doing regarding revitalization include the percentage of CDRP districts that maintain or increase property value and the percentage of residents satisfied with their neighborhoods attributes. A fitting end to my presentation is the issue of sustainable growth. It is our responsibility to guard this to guide the city's growth in a way that promotes quality of life, efficient service provision, and our human, economic, and environmental health. Comprehensive plans help guide many different types of decisions in understanding that each decision contributes to the cumulative effect of a growing and changing environment affecting things like the cost and quality of public services, infrastructure and construction maintenance costs, the stability and strength of neighborhoods, public and environmental health, and the functionality of the multimmoal transportation system and our capacity to support it. The same strategies we are applying to our urban revitalization and community development are also excuse me also support our city's growing our city growing more sustainably. In addition, we want to improve our transportation system to offer more options and modes of transportation and improve the tools that regulate how we build our city through our code update. One measurement, one measure we use to determine the sustainability of our growth patterns is the percentage of development or redevelopment in the inner loop or core of the city. So that concludes my presentation uh for this morning. Happy to take any questions. Thank you, Jeff. I have a couple questions. Uh is anybody else? I'll go up. No, please. You go first. Thanks, Jeff. Um, just wondered with all of the changes that are happening in with the federal government, um, especially with cutting grants. I'm particularly concerned about the Brownfield program and obviously our our funds for rehabbing houses as well. Any indicators so far that any of those grants will no longer be available in this upcoming year? Um, great question and I know that we there was some discussion last last time. Um, unfortunately the uh information we get back is not precise. Okay, I'll just say that. Um, so too early to tell is what it's too early to tell. Um, you know, we're reading all the tea leaves we can, but um, uh, the folks that we work with in the federal government, um, I guess sense haven't been given a lot of information. some of these grants the what you were talking about and also others um um we just there's a lot of unknowns right now we have gotten some clarity um but not enough I would say so we just it's it's hard to know any anything more than what what you might read in the news okay that's all thank you um would you go back there's a couple slides I wanted to look at would you go to the slide. It's on homelessness. It's the one where you had the two charts and on both sides it was the percent of federal funding. This is actually just to pick up on councilman's question. It's the federal funding and the city funding. Um again, is your previous answer also what we're kind of hearing here? Because when I look at the percentage or just the numbers here in terms of the dollars we receive for f from federal funds to help us address homelessness versus what the city puts in um the the idea of losing any of these funds becomes uh yeah a bit worrying to me. Do we have what what are you hearing in this regard? Um and then I guess my followup Yeah. What are we hearing? I'm guessing it might be the same answer we just heard you give to Councilman Pennington. What are you hearing? And then I guess my second my follow-up question is, is this about the balance that cities comparable to our size uh peer cities you might call them? Is this about the balance where the this is how much federal funds go in versus what a city puts in to address this issue? Um that's a great question. I am not sure the answer. Um, I don't know that we have done a kind of a a comparative analysis to peer cities, how much they they might put into homelessness versus how much they get from the federal government. Um, I'd be interested to look into that. So, I need to get back to you on that uh question. Uh as far as the impact goes, um I believe it was asked last week, but we we have uh contacted the Center for Nonprofits and they are doing some outreach, some I guess survey for lack of a better word, to see what what their folks are thinking about impacts that that uh kind of the the what what may happen and what they would do if these things happen, if funding decreased. Um so we're we're in touch with them. We don't have anything um reportable back yet, but we'll certainly get that information back to the council when we get something. Um but yes, you know, if if these if these uh numbers were to go down, we get um 26 million uh roughly and um from the from the federal government and that the continuum of care is of course the largest one. If that one were to uh decrease substantially, that would be problematic for us. Would you remind us why the continuum of cares, what that funds? I think this is important for the public. I learned about the prospect of these cuts happening the day I was sitting down and getting an update from Jamie Caves with homelessness. Like walked into that meeting with national news breaking that these were the funds that were um let's just say per uh imperiled. Would you mind reminding us what they're funding in terms of the services the city of OKC is providing which I think are wonderful services? Yeah, the continuum of care is that that or in other words, the key to home program which we've kind of it is that whole system that that provides homelessness services that we as I mentioned during the presentation are the kind of the the point organization for the organizer, the manager of and so it funds a lot of our work. It funds a lot of our partners' work, our subcontractors, uh, for just all of that care for homelessness and trying to get folks out of homelessness. So, if it were to go away, then our good friend, the city manager here, would have to find in our city budget, right, funding to address that andor if we can't, then that's that's that, right? Okay. Yeah, that is that is our single well we we have the home ARP but that was a one time but the in terms of our single largest annual that is by far it. Two final questions. One um would you go back to your opening slide? It was the one I believe it's in the Wheeler district with the trees and the sidewalks. There we go. Um I heard you mention how important trees are and I'm I just remain a bit confused. Um I agree with you that trees are important. Um what are our plans to use the you said it was around 200 volunteers who went out uh to do the heat map study around our city to see where we were kind of most vulnerable uh in terms of missing shade and thus uh so my understanding is it's difficult for the city with it not just the current budget but its budget generally to um maintain the trees we plant. Like so maps for beautifification which I think is wonderful is going to fund I want to say it's about a million dollars worth of trees. Um but I guess my confusion is how are what is our plan to not just plant those trees but to ensure that they uh survive thrive because at present my understanding is we're relying on private property owners but we would plant it plant the tree in front of a private property and that private property owner a business homeowner would be the one responsible for plant for stewarding that tree. And in theory, maybe, but every time I hear that, so for instance, I wanted trees up and down Northwest Expressway where we've just done this $26 million BRT investment matching funds with the Fed. But several businesses told us they didn't want to take care of the trees. And if if that's the response, now we're we're treeless. It wouldn't just be Northwest Express. We talking about any areas Meridian etc. How are we planning to use the research we did with the heat map study that the volunteers in the office of sustainability did to actually find a coordinated plan to plant trees along walkways for our seniors and our children. So that this image that you're presenting here is not just an image but the lived reality in places that for decades um have not received that sort of investment. And I think this is a very important thing because these um I'll just conclude with and give you your answer there. Let you have your answer but we have neighborhoods in the urban core but not limited to that um because there wasn't that investment they just become a bigger attractor for the sun and it makes it a bit more dangerous in terms of life expectancy etc for everyone from children to seniors. So that's I I I'm obsessed with this issue. Yeah, good question. Um, urban heat is an issue. Um, it is hotter to live in cities and in part because in large part because of the the the u uh the lack of cover. Um, so there are there are a few ways that we that we approach this um in terms of getting trees in in certain areas. Uh, and yes, as you as you mentioned, you know, MAPS has gone and recently said, we're trying to put trees here. Who's interested in maintaining them? And some are and some aren't. Um we when we do a a street enhancement project with with trees or other landscaping for that matter, we are looking for an organization would be best that we can um make an agreement with to maintain those trees and landscaping. Um and and usually where we are doing a street enhancement, we have such an organization and it works out great. Uh sometimes it doesn't. When we can't get that to happen, then uh we're also exploring with public works um contracts where the the the tree installer would then maintain the trees for their stabilization period, two to three years or so. So, that's relatively new. I think um that's something that we're going to try and and and do in cases where we can't find uh a good enough solid commitment to take care of of substantial stands of trees. Um, so that's definitely something that we're that we're trying to move forward with. Uh, because if you if you plant a tree and it it is not maintained, it will die pretty quickly. And and I think beyond that, it's the challenges we have in all of our budgets of like how we grow to maintain what we've got. And right now, even with parks, we're stretched to maintain just medians as they stand right now. And so it's like as we can grow the budget, you know, challenges with wreck programs or bus services or police services or fire services, all of our services, trying to grow as we can um within the resources that we have. Some of it is a design and construction issue. Making sure that we put the right trees in that can handle it. And also that they are uh placed in a situation the soil base and the soil volume is is is all set so that they're most likely to thrive. And how much does it cost to maintain a tree? Oh, good. For two to three years. Um I'm not sure. I'll have to get back to you on that. Yeah, I thank you for that followup. I'd love to know that and I'd like to know what other cities do again pure cities in terms of having in-house arborist. I mean, I just want to know. It just seemed it strikes me that we did very scientific historic work when around 200 people, including some W 2 people, but again, not limited to um who went out there and drove around the city with the that technology to find out where were where our residents are the most vulnerable. And I have not heard a plan on what we're going to do with that research. And I I don't want us to miss an opportunity because I just think it's so long overdue. So, I would love to learn again what do other cities uh do in house to be able to meet meet those those needs. Um I have other questions but I'll just take them offline for now. So, thank you. Well, I did want to mention one one of the things. So, as part of the code update, uh we're working on updating our parking ordinance. uh it'll be quite different um because it will be responding to the urban heat island problem and the lack of uh sustainable trees um and these giant parking lots that contribute to that. So part of the solution is when private development happens that the parking lots provide a reasonable degree of shade and healthy trees. Uh so that is one thing that is coming out of uh that heat study and that uh T Bowman and his office are are helping and assisting on. Well, I appreciate it. Oh, I'm sorry. You want to say something? Go back to the slide where the federal and the city dollars and maybe it's hidden in there, but where's the MAPS money on the city side of that? I don't see it individually listed there as the Um yeah, so the the maps for affordable housing. I'm not sure that yeah, we don't have that on here. Uh and I think it's just because that's the the the use of the funds is just for construction of those units themselves, the affordable housing units. Uh whereas this is more um um just a bit a bit different. I mean, it's all related, getting people into housing, providing affordable housing. These funds are a little more for, you know, continuum of care, encampment closure, um, supportive services, um, street outreach and so on. So, yes, there would be, um, there'd be other funds, uh, some of the other slides I showed earlier that that are talking about the actual program or excuse me, the actual projects, uh, that are being done that are funded by various sources. Is it I think that's a good question that you just asked Councilman. So if just to follow up is it then my understanding that what we're looking at here is more we might consider it like operations that this is the operation dollars that the Fed and then the city put in versus a maps for so in other words like the wraparound services and that support system whereas maps for constructing structures but we don't just put people in housing. We can't just put them in housing without that wraparound services. Would that be a good way to kind of think about what we're looking at here? Yes. Yes, I think so. And and there's some overlap, too, because of, you know, this the various services that that OHA might provide, but yeah, that's I think that's a fair way of looking at it. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it. Next up is Jeff Moulder, our airports director, to present the airport's budget. As he's coming up, I'll just remind us that airports is another one of our departments that actually has funding through a trust as well as through the city. And so you'll see he'll present the trust budget as well as the city's budget and their capital plan um as he goes through the airport trust. And so Katpa and Aquit are two other departments that are that way where it's a trust and city side. So I'll let Jeff present the budget. Thank you. Good morning. Um before we get started um want to introduce a couple of folks. Melissa Fairbrush is our finance director for the airport. Scott Keith and Terara Sland back there are our assistant directors for the airport. Um go to the next slide. So on this slide you can see how we are organized with the director and then the admin and operations those two areas divided between Scott and Tara. Next slide. Wanted to um highlight this. This is our um value statement. S O A R. It's an acrostic. It has an aviation theme, but what we try to emphasize for our employees every day is our safety for our customers and our employees that we're open every day. Um obviously as an airport, that's our that's part of what we do. Uh and and that really our goal is to have a great first impression for the community because we are the front door for many people. First time to Oklahoma City. Um, our industry is rapid, always changing, so we have to be agile and to adjust to what's happening and then reliable. Um, our customers and our attendants depend on us to be there to make sure things are working every day so they have success. So, next slide. Um so we divide our budget into two pieces really or it is one budget total but this first part we're focusing on what we essentially call our city portion of the budget the $27 million which funds essentially the the personnel services that we have. It also funds some of the cross charges that we have from the city like from the police department and insurance services and things like that. Go ahead. Next slide. Um and so this portion of the budget is essentially flat. Slight decrease of $103,000. Um really we're seeing the benefit this year. Um and this is with no we we did some ad delete with our positions but no new positions for this next year. Um and uh we're seeing the benefit of some risk chargeback reductions, some insurance costs that we're seeing a decrease in. Um and that's helping us maintain essentially this flat portion of the budget um for this next fiscal year. Next slide. So when you add that then to the overall Oklahoma City airport trust budget uh 20 um $28 million um which is a slight decrease uh from the fiscal year 2425 of $211 million. As you can see, um, a lot of what we do is our capital and our construction and project development. That makes up, uh, the majority of our overall budget and our efforts there for our three airports. Next slide. So, this shows you the comparison of um, fiscal year 25 and 26. And the first thing that uh jumps out is about an $8 million $8 million reduction in revenue. Um our airlines are f forecasting about a three and a half% reduction in passengers. A lot of our revenue is related to of course the passengers with parking and rental cars and concessions. Um the airlines anticipate this fiscal year or this next year that they'll see a reduction in passengers. A lot of that has to do with consumer confidence. you've seen that at the national level um go down and so um airline tickets are something that's discretionary so they expect to see a reduction. We are for this calendar year we're tracking about a 2% reduction in passengers compared to last year. So we're we're basing our budget plans based on that. Um um what we also have as part of our resources is quite a bit of carryover and that's essentially our resources from this fiscal year. Most of that are the capital projects that we have budgeted that we hadn't been able to complete. Um a lot of that capital funding comes from federal grants. Um it's a timing issue generally. So we haven't been able to get the grants in a timely manner. Um, and so sometimes it's the timing issue where projects roll from one year to the next. And so that's where you're seeing a lot of that resources roll over into this next fiscal year. Next slide. So you'll see the revenues here broken down. Um, and you can see that we have lots of different revenue streams u from building rental, the landing fees, parking, concessions. Um, and they cover the gamut. Um, and overall, as I mentioned, we're we're anticipating some revenue reduction based on our our airline passenger activity. Um, and then you can see at the bottom some of the carryover that we have, the project funds, the senior lean maintenance, that's an item for the Mike Moroni Aeronautical Center. We also do a lot of capital projects for the FAA um center. Next slide. And on the expense side, um we um are are um we see a for the overall expense side, we're seeing a small increase. Um really a lot of our service contracts, those costs are not going down. Those are continuing to increase. And uh so that's reflected in in the slight increase in our on the expense side. uh and the reserves. That's essentially um an area where we um are building up some of our cash. We currently have a significant amount of cash available. We have a several large projects that we see on the horizon. Uh one of them being the need for another parking garage. And um we are trying to reserve some cash for that project as opposed to going out and to bond uh a sign a significant portion of that. We want to try to cash fund more of that. So that's reflected in the reserve line item there. Uh that at the end of this next fiscal year, we hope to have some of that essentially net income that we'll then set aside for future capital projects. Next slide. I wanted to highlight some of the projects that um we um have been working on for the last couple years. One is the passenger boarding bridge replacement. So we have 21 boarding bridges in the terminal building. Four of them were new from our 2021 expansion project. So 17 were 25 plus years in age and needed to be replaced. We've been able to receive some FA grant funds over the last couple years and uh this next fiscal year we plan to use about 9 million of that to replace some more of the boarding bridges. Next slide. That's just a picture of one of the uh bridges at the terminal. Um, a project that we are working on in collaboration with the state of Oklahoma and one of our tenants, AAR, is we're building the new 3ay 80,000 square foot hanger. The total cost, you can see there, is about $40 million. Um, we are probably about twothirds of the way through that project. This next fiscal year, we expect to re spend about about $13 million. We expect the project to wrap up by about the end of 2025 and the beginning of 26. And there's a photo from a couple weeks ago. You can see that it's taken shape and uh is um we at this point you can see it's the structure is up. They've been pouring the floor and um we the tenant hopes to then have it complete and start using it in January of 26. Another project, this is for the WY Post airport, is um we're working on replacing the control tower. The control tower that is there uh is very old. Um it isn't tall enough to see all of the airfield surfaces. Um and uh the FAA over the last couple years has provided some more funding for air traffic control towers and so we are trying to take advantage of that. We're in the design phase for that project now. And then uh we are pursuing federal FA grant funds to then construct and replace that tower. And there's an image of how it will look. So overall this next fiscal year about $135 million in capital programs as you can see almost 90 million of that goes to OKC will Rogers Wley Post about 20 million uh 20 almost 30 million for Mike nautical center and about 885,000 for Clarence Page Airport and um you can also see it broken down via the various funding sources that we have about 55 million from the airport trust um grants of about 34 million um Mike Moroni is the FA or nautical center the state about 5.6 6 million AR iss that tenant that we have that's contributing to the construction of that hanger and CFC's are rental car charges that we collect. Also, um the FA requires us to do a five-year capital program so they have a vision and they can see what we're planning to do the next couple years. And so this shows you um almost $500 million over the next five years for various programs. These include runways and taxiways and aprons, buildings, um wide variety of projects that we have anticipated over the next five years. Next slide. So um we also participate in in LFR leading for results and so we have a couple metrics that we track. Uh this one is usually the timing on this particular slide is usually a little bit confusing because of we we have numbers through March of 2025. The first quarter of the year is usually pretty quiet for us for parking. But you can see um we expect the same for as you wrap up fiscal 25 that um almost half the time half the year we exceed 85% parking capacity and that continues. Um, if you go back just a second, Melissa, um, and one of the ways that we're addressing this, um, in the last year, we constructed a surface parking lot that has canopy covers on it, about 600 spaces, and that's now available to our customers. We feel that's a good move. Uh, it gives our customers some cover. Of course, this time of year when they're traveling, they don't want their car necessarily parked outside and subject to the weather. Um, and that also then helps us because we are beginning to design for a new parking garage. By the time we design that and construct it, it's a couple years out. So, at least we've been able to address the short-term issues for parking that we have been experiencing. Next slide. Um, you can see for the calendar year 2024, 4.6 million was a record year for us. Um, obviously we had recovery. You can see from 21 on from COVID and um we expect this next year we'll probably get close to our record year of 24 but based on what the airlines are telling telling us and how their schedules are changing so we expect we'll probably be a little bit short of our record year last year and that that obviously is an outsized uh graphic as far as fiscal 22 that was recovery from CO and you can see though the growth has continued um with the recovery with the growth of Oklahoma City and the strong market that we have but as everyone knows there are so many outside factors that affect air travel and affects us also. So we're starting to see that certainly level off. This shows our current map of the air service destinations that we have. The one obviously for us that stands out this year is that leg to Cancun that will start in November of this year. American Airlines will start service. That's our first international service. So, we're excited about that. Continue to talk to the airlines on a regular basis, meet with them, um encourage and suggest new routes uh or increase frequency for the routes that we have. Um the airlines themselves um are struggling with a couple issues. Um, one of them is aircraft deliveries themselves like from Boeing, Southwest Airlines and others. Um, their planned for replacement of aircraft is behind schedule because Boeing aircraft delivery is years behind schedule. That inhibits their ability to grow and so that's limits their ability to add new markets and add destination. So essentially we as Oklahoma City airports are competing with every other airport in the country to try to add more service with limited capacity that's available. But we've been we've had some success and obviously excited about the new international service. Quick photo of various departments out in their workplace areas. So, obviously these uh many of these are the frontline departments that make sure everything's working every day at our three airports. And that's it for my slides. Happy to take any questions. Uh the one thing I want to say is I fly a lot for work and uh when and I've said this before, when I return home, I'm always so proud how clean our airport is, how functional it is, how the people are so friendly, like my friend Harold. um the the parking, the landscaping, uh we have something to be really proud in this airport and I think you guys are doing a great job and I just wanted to thank you for that. Sure. Thank you. I'm going to echo his sentiments on Harold. One of the favorite smiles I like to see when we go through there. Can we go back to the slide real quick on kind of some of the monies that you have uh you're dividing up between the airports? The Yeah. 18. Yep. What are we doing out of C page? Can you elaborate on that a little bit? That's we're going to spend that money on. Yeah. Um so recently we completed a project where we installed some new visual aids for um precision approach path indicators they're called. They're they're um aids for pilots so they can land safely. It gives them the right angle to land uh safely towards the end of the runway. Uh that's one of the projects that we've undertaken. Um most of what we're dealing with at Paige is the the infrastructure is in relatively good shape. We've got some rehab projects underway uh for the runways and taxiways, but most of what we have envisioned the next five years is expanding the taxi lanes so we can allow for more higher development in that area. Um and that's p primarily what we're looking at the next couple years for that airport. We have a lot of people using that airport. It's more than we thought. So it it's not a controlled doesn't have a control tower so you don't have a traffic count but we put out a um a receiver a year ago and it tracks uh the ADSB which is the satellite receiver in these aircraft that ATC uses to track them. So now we've been able to build an actual account and we 30 to 40,000 operations a year which is more than we thought we were seeing there. that helps us also with the FA in planning and justifying grants, but relative to the other airports, of course, it's not near as busy. Um, but that's um but it serves its need. Um, you know, it's it's used by it's used for training quite a bit from pilots in the area um from the various flight schools in the area. So, that's one of its primary functions. Thank you. Yep. Can I Well, I I want to echo what Councilman Stonecipher said. It is I don't know, maybe just being from Oklahoma, but there's something very comforting once you arrive at the airport and I love seeing the public art there, what Matt goat's been doing, for instance. Um, could you help me understand? You mentioned with Boeing that they're behind with delivering what's going on there. Um well a lot of factors there as a company um they over the years have sold a number of airplanes to airline customers and they plan that on making so many airplanes per month usually 30 to 40 airplanes a month which is quite a bit for a variety of reasons they've fallen behind that delivery schedule. So the airlines, the airplanes they have, they do through obsolescence they do retire them because of the time on the aircraft and the engines and so they have to take them out of service. Well, they plan to replace them with new airplanes. Well, if the new airplanes aren't arriving as scheduled, they lose their capacity. They lose their ability to grow. And that's one of the challenges that um many of the major airlines are dealing with. So um their intention to grow is being in they don't have enough airplanes to to really meet the market and uh so um that creates it more because over the last couple years there's been a lot of growth in the industry um and and the airlines have been projecting to grow more but due to the lack of new aircraft deliveries they've had to really slow down their growth plans. Oh that's interesting. Thank you for that clarification. All right thanks Jeff. Appreciate it. Next uh department presentation is Chief Basy with the police department budget. There you go. PDF. Well, as we as we get this ready, allow me to say good morning to all of my esteemed council members, uh, city manager Craig Freeman. Um, I see the Vice Mayor James Cooper stepped out. um want to acknowledge Amy Simpson and um Matthew Collins um and to everyone that's present here today. I'm excited to give you an overview um of what our budget is going to look like and what we know is going to be an upcoming uh challenging um fiscal year. I'm looking forward to discuss how we can use it to serve our community and the growing needs um of this community. Um, before I get started, I want to acknowledge that several members of my command staff are present here today, and I want to thank them for being here. I also want to thank the people who helped me prepare, uh, this presentation for you. So, uh, that would definitely be, um, my budget manager, um, Michael Stroop, who is in the room, as well as, uh, the planning and research unit, and especially Liliana, who will be assisting me here this morning. I want to start with what's really important to us. Um, this is nothing new. You've seen this for a few years now. Um, it's our mission statement. It's our vision statement. Is our core values. Um, our mission statement is the mission of the Oklahoma City Police Department is to deliver exceptional police services to our community with integrity compassion accountability respect, and equity. The vision statement is the vision of the police department is to ensure Oklahoma City is one of the safest cities in the country through strong community relationships, innovative strategies, and healthy, well-trained employees. I want to take a pause for just one second and tell you that when we read this to you last year, that last word said officers. And we realized and it was brought to our attention, it wasn't inclusive of everyone who serves our community. So, um, we change it to employees to incorporate our professional staff as well because they work just as hard for our residents in the community that we serve. Um, and obviously our core values integrity compassion accountability, respect, and equity. And those spell I care. Want to give you a quick overview of the department and how it's it's laid out. Um you have the office of the chief and under me the office of finance, media relations and professional standards. Um we have five bureaus um that are led by deputy chiefs. Um so um if they're here I'll just acknowledge them. Um deputy chief Vasha Butler is over the administration bureau which encompasses logistical support administration and the training divisions. Deputy Chief Jason Samuel is over the investigations bureau uh which covers the investigations and the laboratory and support services division. Deputy Chief Deputy Deputy Chief Jason Clifton is over the operations north bureau which covers the Hefner Spring Lake and operations admin divisions. Deputy Chief Bobby Tommpkins is over operations south bureau that covers the Santa Fe Southwest and 911 communications. and Deputy Chief Brian Jennings is over the special operations bureau. Um that's the special operations and the uniform support division. As you can see our budgeted um positions are 1235 with for sworn and 343 um for professional staff. Um currently we sit at,40 um right now which includes 82 recruit overages. Um recruit overages includes anyone who's in the academy field training or on probation. Uh that leaves us with net vacancies around uh 95. Want to discuss some uh major budget changes coming up um to incorporate or to address uh the 1.5% um cut to our base budget in the general fund. We're freezing 20 police officer positions and we're deleting one vacant polygraph examiner. Um, also a significant change, um, or not as significant, but um, worth noting here today is in July of 2025, the city's contribution per employee to the pension fund increases 1% due to Senate Bill 102. This is our proposed budget for the fis upcoming fiscal year. Um, you can see that our operating budget um is just over 251 million. that incorporates our supports our daily operations patrol and those core um functions that we serve our community. Um Oklahoma City is uh really robust city as far as land um size 621 square miles over 700,000 people. Um and this is the uh core of what we do. Um our capital and nonoperating expenses are just over 59 um million and that is going to be our special equipment, major facilities and major repair to facilities. We have several facilities around the city. Some of them are in old and um are old and in a constant need of repair. Um so that gives us a total budget of um just over 311 million minus transfers to other city funds. Um and those transfers are going to be wage adjustments and our 911 subsidy fund. And so our total um proposed budget is 297,951,282. Breaking down that budget by classification, you'll you can see that the largest portion um our budget is personal services. Um that's going to be um salaries, part-time, overtime, um just wages and benefits for our employees. Um second largest fund is going to be services at 11% and that's going to cover contracts and you know and utilities chargebacks for IT and fleet services. Supplies and equipment are 10% of our budget. That's going to be uniforms, equipment, um computer supplies, and fleet replacement. It's important to note that 621 square miles I talked about. We're not un we're not like other major cities. We're spread out and our officers have to go quite a distance and their shifts. Sometimes they put quite a few miles in servicing calls and making sure that we are responding accurately and timely to um the needs of our community. And so um we put a lot of miles on cars based on the size of our city. So fleet replacement is critical in ensuring that we actually service our community um the way we need to. Our capital fund um is 9% of our budget and that's going to be as I stated special equipment, major facilities, major repairs to facilities. Um some upcoming um capital projects, new storage facility at Southwest 15th in Portland for large equipment, replacement of the boat docks at Lake Hefner and replacement of the police facility at Lake Lake Hefner, excuse me. And then our transfers um small part of our budget 2% that's going to be the 911 fund subsidy and then legal services. Our budget broken down by source. The largest portion of our budget is the general fund and this primarily pays for personnel expenditures and some services and equipment. Uh the police it's just over $184 million. Uh the police sales tax fund is just over 72 million. Um and you can see that the I'm sorry, this also helps um fund personal personnel expenditures and some equipment and services. U the MAPS for use tax fund um is going to help fund fleet replacement. Um and the 911 communication center um pays primarily pays for personnel expenditures. So, I've already introduced uh these deputy chiefs to you, but I definitely wanted to take a moment and and really just hone in on this for a second um prior to going into more detail about the lines of business. Um what you're looking at is over 150 years of police experience, and I don't want to discount that. They bring a lot to the table. I can't do what I do. um without them or any of the people in here today and I just wanted to take a moment and thank each and every one of them for their service to our to their community. First line of business is going to be administration. Uh you can see that's um 91 positions, 14 units. Uh it covers executive leadership, office of personnel, office of media relations and professional standards. I want to discuss some of the highlights of this line of business. And the first and foremost thing um that I will talk about is going to be wellness. Wellness is something that is um very um essential in making sure that we are the best version of ourselves when we serve our community. Um people often say or it's often said that we encounter people on their worst day. But what people don't understand is sometimes we encounter you on your worst day or on our worst day. Life doesn't give exemptions to us because we put the uniform on. So, we want to make sure that we're supporting our employees and giving them the physical and emotional wellness resources um to be the best version of themselves. And not only do we want to do that, we want to make sure that that extends to the families. That starts in the police academy. Um you can see some of the projects on the right of the screen. Um at the very bottom you're going to see the the bottom two hearts behind the heroes is designed for spouses and significant others or law enforcement professionals because we know the impact of this work not only affects the employee but as their families as well. And then of course the family academy is something we start with the recruits in the academy and we incorporate their family into that process. Um over 600 individuals were served or delete were given resources from the wellness unit in 2024. But there's something a little more um pressing and we put it right in the middle of this slide because I wanted to hone in on something that most people miss. The mortality rate for police officers is very low. We don't live very long after retirement. That's something that we've seen in national statistics and we've got our own stories to tell. Uh we want to do something about it. Um, our wellness unit recognized um, after we had three employees who all died at the age of 49 from cardiac issues that something needed to be done and they started the 49 project and that's why it's called the 49 project. Three people that should still be here with us today potentially. And over 400 employees have been serviced through collaboration with U Health um, through these health fairs that we have hosted all over the city um, in all of our different divisions. Um they do biometric tests, body um testing, physician resources, nutritional education. Um it's just something that we do to to try to not only extend the life of these employees, we give them a better quality of life while they're here and long after they're gone. Media relations. We're very proud of Oklahoma City. I think all of us are. and that's why we sit here and we serve. But I think there just a lot of I always hear Oklahoma City is a a hidden secret when people visit. This is like a hidden gem that people didn't know about. We often hear that. Um well, the secret's getting out. The events are coming. Um the larger um corporations are starting to pay attention. And some very important things in this slide. We're probably ranked third most followed police department on Facebook. I want to let that sink in. Think about how many cities there are larger cities in this country and we're third in Facebook. Um I'm just going to read you a few stats um to show you how much work we put in just across five social media platforms which includes Facebook's Facebook X Instagram threads and YouTube 56,000 followers. 2,800 social media posts made by us. 40 million impressions. 97,000 posts shared by people, 78,000 plus comments, 393,000 post reactions, and 2,300,000 video views. Our goal is to prov provide information to our public, build a brand, and enhance the image of the city. And people are listening. One of the most important things that I don't want to be overlooked, which is in the top right corner of the slide, is Crimes Stoppers. This is when we reach out to our community to help us resolve crimes and solve community issues. And you can see the number of illegal drugs seized, arrest, and cases solved and weapons recovery through the partnership with our community. Um so, um media relations is more than just putting out information about what happened or what's coming up, but it's engaging that public and and getting them involved because when we say it takes a village, it takes all of us. So, these are the results of that. Some other things in this line of business, fleet management um manages 1172 vehicles is quite a bit um in information technology. Um just body warn camera, video camera, dash camera, a lot of the things that um they're actually in charge of um is incredible. Um I didn't know what a pabyte was and if anybody wants to know, they can ask me later. Um but that's just a lot of storage space um that we have. One of the things that came out um more recently that you've seen on the news and you've heard about is online reporting which now allows um residents in our community to create crime incident reports on their own from their fingertips. It also allows them to complement an officer. It also allows them to file a complaint. Um this goes along with the theme um that you're going to see with us where we're starting to find ways to reduce the workload on those emergency responders so that they can respond a lot faster to those life safety issues um that are more pressing at the time and it's also a convenience for our community as well. So, we had a big year in 2024. Um, we made a major shift. We were running threemmies a year and we shifted to twomies a year and decided to go with uh larger classes. Class 152 started in February with 71 recruits. It's the largest number we've had in a while. As I stand here today, uh there are still 61 recruits left in that class and they're slated to graduate on July 6th. Um we're hoping to begin an academy class 153 in August with 80 recruits. That's our goal. So, we are aggressively going after um individuals we believe have a heart for service to serve this community. and we're starting to see that people are really interested in this profession. Um we've had other cities come to visit us to see just what we're doing to get those numbers. But I'm going to point out just one thing that we've done um that's unique to this city. Um the cadet program, uh you can see we currently have 63 enrolled. If you're unaware, we get involved in children's lives in the vocational programs in high school as early as 15, 16 years old. And when they're interested in becoming police officers, we have officers assigned that mentor them um and teach them community service and all the the roles and the the the pathway towards becoming a police officer. We have the OKCPD cadet program for those 18 to 21 post high school. And indeed, if you walked into this building today, you walked past a cadet. Um, what we're doing is we're taking Oklahoma City's youth and we're planting that seed early and we're we're sprinkling them with love and water and experience and they're growing up to serve their community that they grew up in and they're from our city and so they care. Um, and at the heart of it is service. We have currently uh hired eight of those cadets on our police department and I will boast um I'll call her out. Daisy Nunes sat down at that front desk for a long time and many of you know her and she's a police officer on the streets right now. And so we're doing something very very unique when it comes to to recruiting. And we don't wait until someone is 21 and beg them to come and join our police department by catching them when they're early. We get to provide mentorship and help them navigate um all the life's challenges to become a productive and positive um productive member of our of our department and our community. Our investigations uh line of business um has 245 positions, nine units um that covers person crimes, property crimes, victim services, bilingual unit, digital evidence management, property management, property crime specialist, laboratory support services, and crime scene investigations. In 2024, we had 78 homicides. Anytime I talk about homicides, I will still I will look you in the eye and tell you that's unacceptable. That's an entire ecosystem that's disrupted. Not just the families um of the victims, but the families of the suspects will never be the same. What we can do is try to provide some closure and some justice um for those victims. And in 2024, we had a 92% solve rate. Whereas other major cities might boast really high solve rates and clearance rates, we don't count that case um as solved as part of our clearance rate until the DA accepts charges. And so that's what makes us unique. The national average is 58%. When you do the unthinkable in Oklahoma City, we're going to do everything humanly possible to hold you responsible. We owe that to our community and we definitely owe that to the victims. And as much as I value everyone's time, I'm going to take a little bit of it because I want to read something to you. We have a cold case unit. And this year, they did something unique. They solved a 1976 homicide. And I just want to read you a small part of it. In 1978, 68-year-old Leela Johnson, a recent retiree from Oklahoma City Welfare Services, was found brutally murdered in her Oklahoma City home. The investigation revealed that she had been assaulted and strangled, but no suspects were identified at the time. In 2003, the Oklahoma City Police Department's cold case unit revisited the case and developed a suspect DNA profile which was entered into Cotus in 2004 with no matches. In 2023, the case was selected for forensic investigative genetic genealogy with the help of DNA Labs International. After extensive analysis and elimination of multiple suspects, investigators traced the DNA to a specific family, ultimately linking Charles Droke through evidence from his own 1989 homicide to the DNA found at the Johnson Johnson's crime scene solving the decades old case. Why would I take a moment in time to address that? It just hones in on the fact that we know the impact these things have on families. And I don't care if it happened in 1978 or if it happened last week, those families deserve answers and we're going to work very hard to get that. So when I brag about this clearance rate, um I still think about the 8% that don't have answers and that's where my heart is and that's where the heart of each and every one of these people are. We take some of our other um crimes that don't amount to the loss of a life just as seriously. Um and you can see the total number of person crimes and property crimes we had throughout the year and the the clearance rates for those. How do we solve these cases? We have police officers who respond, um, crime scene investigators who respond, but you know, a lot of the work sometimes that um, the winds um, don't always acknowledge the people who do the work behind the scenes. And our laboratory um, support services do an amazing job of providing us the evidence that we need to solve these cases. And if you look at the number of cases completed by each of the labs, the the latent print laboratory, farms laboratory, DNA laboratory, and um the drug laboratory, and if you recognize how specific the work they do is and how much time they have to put into each one of these cases, it's amazing. And with the spike in violence that we see around the country, if you look in the far left, you'll see that we've entered um 3,443 firearms in the Nibben in 2024. That's a huge effort. On the right is something again that I absolutely want to point out. um that theme I talked about about taking responsibilities away from emergency responders and putting other people in play or technology in place so that emergency responders can respond to those life safety issues. The heroes of that um definitely um will definitely I would say be the property crime specialist. They work 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. 7 days a week and they take those lower level property crimes. But let me tell you, they give something that um that's almost impossible for us to give at their level. And it's called customer service. Because when they show up for your property crime, they work it like the biggest crime there is on the planet. They've got the time. They they make the effort. And indeed, you can see the number of DNA swabs, the drugs, um the firearms that they process, the prints, all of those things help us solve cases. you know, on top of everything else that they've done, there's 16 of them, uh, with two lieutenants, and I mean, just looking at some of the, uh, the information that I have on them, they have worked 9,257 calls for service. And I believe that's not the slide, right? Okay, I have a different slide. I apologize. There's always going to be a technical issue, so I'll read it. property crime specialist. 9,257 calls for service in uh 2024. Um the collision reports um they took 78 non-injury collisions and crime scenes processed 1,645. That's a lot of work that they've taken away from police officers so that they could respond to calls. And again, I apologize. There's always going to be a technical issue when we run presentations in this building. We're keeping that theme. I will tell you that our laboratory services do this phenomenal work and solve crimes in an outdated building that they've outgrown. And um they don't complain and they come to work and they give 100% every day. But it's why we actually have a bond project to address that in the near future. The operations line of business is our largest workforce. You see there are 99 positions. It's the largest part of our budget. It covers patrol, 911 communications, youth services, crime prevention, um, and awareness. I'm always surprised and amazed at the number of 911 calls serviced in this community, but last year was 1.28 million. There were 21,451 priority one calls. That is the highest life safety threat. Um, and then 9,499 mental health calls. I want to dig into that aspect of 911 calls. Um, so life-threatening calls dispatched within 2 and a half minutes, um, we responded to within 71%. But mental health calls decreased from October 2023 to April of 2025 by 58%. This is significant and it's important and there are a number of reasons for that. I want to thank the fire department for the mobile integrated health which brought to us the crisis response teams um the alternative response teams and the crisis call diversion dispatchers and dispatch. It's a wonderful partnership and one of the things that we've looked at in best practices is having the right resource for the problem when it arises. So some of the decreases, number one, dispatchers receiving mental health training and deferring those calls to other community partners such as 988. Our public education piece where people are made aware to call those resources upfront instead of 911. Um some of that could be and I don't think people account for this enough. When you give the right resource to the person the first time they call, it eliminates all those repeat calls that you get because they're still in crisis and they didn't receive what they needed um otherwise. And so we're moving in the right direction when it comes to addressing the needs of people and putting the right resources in place. And some of that goes back to um our public safety partnership u which started out of the community policing working group and the law enforcement policy task force. So, thank you to all of you who were involved. Community outreach um programs, the numbers are up there and the number of people served and these are these are juveniles. Um this is our investment in the next generation. It's something that many of you are passionate about because I see you at our events. It's something I'm definitely passionate about. We have a very very robust youth outreach and we keep expanding it. I could stand up here all day and waste most of your day talking about this, but it would probably get me in trouble with a few of you. Um, some of the things I will tell you about um, as we've expanded, you know, we had we created a chess club under PAL because we wanted to be inclusive, but not all kids are athletic. Um, and wouldn't you know it, on the day that it rained and there was torrential flooding in the city, 99 kids showed up for a chess program and a young lady's grandmother flew in from India to watch. I was blown away. That same young lady went to Florida the next week and I believe placed fourth nationally. Um, and we had a part in that giving her that opportunity. Um, and just to see those young kids focused and and driven and competitive, but they're aligned with mentors in the process. Um, we started muscles and mentors and some of you were there where we rehab shilling gym and we're going to teach all kinds of life lessons about goal setting and character and pushing through adversity um while engaging in something that's as simple as physical wellness. Um and although it may seem there are 50 to 60 kids in every session um wildly successful, the youth leadership academy has been around for a while, but I don't think everybody understands that what the goal is is we teach them to give back and each youth leadership academy works to identify a nonprofit um that they want to raise money for and they go out into the community and they solicit donations. So, I just want to go back over the last three years. Um, class six chose Positive Tomorrows. They raised $40,000 for him. Class 7 chose the care center. They rose they raised $50,000 for him. And the most recent class, class 8, chose one church, one church, one child, and they raised $25,000 for him. There's nothing more fulfilling than watching youth people tackling the issues of our community and actively working to support others who are doing the work and the life lessons and hopefully them paying it forward as they move forward and becoming even more productive um members of our community. Um the sky's the ceiling for them. The youth engagement council and the youth police academy are two new programs we started within the last year or so. Those are also recommendations that uh we fulfilled through the public safety partnership. And as much as I want to continue to talk about youth, we have to talk about what's often left off the table and that's our the senior members of our community. And we have our triad program where we work with them in various programs. A couple of them just shop with the cop and grandparents raising grandkids. We want the senior members of our community to know they're seen, they're valued, and they're loved. And we want to be a part of that village that helps take care of them. Next line of business is the public safety support. Um, it has 114 positions and within it are training, records management, permit services, inmate processing, court enforcement, and courthouse security. We've talked a little bit about recruit training and um, the two bigmies, the one that we currently have and the one that's coming up in August. Um, what I will tell you is that when you graduate from our academy, you have,00 hours um, of training. The cleat mandate, the state mandate is only 600. So, by the time you leave our academy, you've almost doubled the state requirement. And I want to really drill drill in on that is that we go above and beyond from the very beginning. All of our recruits receive CIT training in the academy. All of our recruits receive able training. And although you don't know what that is, it's something I'll dial into um dive into a little bit deeper in future slides. A reality based training unit is scenario-based training. They have their own facility and they create realistic scenarios in which to train our officers. Um I can tell you haven't gone through it. The stress inoculation is real. You don't realize that you're in a scenario and it gives you that opportunity to learn from your mistakes to hone your skills and enhance your skill set. Um we use this for sectorbased training, return to duty protocol, uh supervisor school and training reviews. Um the total number of hours this unit um provided training for um this year was 1796 hours. It's pretty impressive what they do. Able stands for active bystandership for law enforcement. Um, this is something that was created out of Georgetown. Several uh other min major municipalities have it. Um, I'll just read you a little bit about it. Law enforcement agencies achieve able certification by committing to a comprehensive set of standards designed to foster a culture of active bystandership. This includes securing letters of support from agency and jurisdictional leaders as well as from two independent community organizations. Agencies must provide all officers and recruits with an initial 8-hour ABLE training followed by annual 2hour refresher courses delivered by ABLE certified instructors. What does ABLE mean? It's one thing to say that we have a directive that tells our officers to step in when another officer is losing control of that scenario or that situation um is not deescalating properly. We don't just tell them to do it, we train them to do it. And so this was a national program that was renowned for that very thing. And we jumped on board. Uh it was something that we always did. It's something that we use our reality based training unit for as well to incorporate the values of deescalation. Um taking the proper steps, but also to step in when necessary. The special operations line of business um has 219 positions, six units to include uniform support and traffic safety, special operations support, special protection events, and emergency response. Most of you are familiar with the real time information center um known as artic. Um there's some statistics on there just kind of to show you how much work they've done in 2024. um some of the calls that they were able to clear. Um clear means when they actually cancel a call or the patrol response to a call based on their observations, they've been invaluable in helping us gather information, um evidence, um and responding approp appropriately to calls. Um and with Oklahoma City growing, the large events that are coming, they're even more critical for us. Um in the top right corner or to the right, you'll see a QR code. That is the connect Oklahoma City.org. network that allows residents and businesses of Oklahoma City to register their cameras with our real-time information center. It doesn't give us live feed access at all. All it tells us is there's a camera there. So, if there's an incident, we know to ask for any potential criminal interdiction team of central Oklahoma. You can see the number of arrests they've made. You can see the amount of money that was seized and the amount of drugs that were seized. And I now I want you to look at this these numbers and for a moment imagine what Oklahoma City would have been like last year had none of this occurred. Had none of these people been held accountable, had none of this money been seized and had none of these drugs um been seized, what could have happened to members of our community without the efforts of these people. So what they do is really important. They go after um really dangerous people who pose a significant threat to our community, the traffic safety unit. Couple of years ago, there was a an intentionality about how we enforce traffic safety. Um we know the city has a vision zero plan which is zero fatal fatality collisions um in the city. Um we know that there's been a spike in serious injury and um fatality collisions and especially um auto pedestrian fatalities. Um we saw a huge spike in those and so we became extremely intentional about it. hired, you know, an analyst to study traffic data to pinpoint those areas where we were having collisions and we've done traffic enforcement operations. You may have seen them on the news, we put them on our social media and the goal is to simply affect driving behavior so that people commute more safely. um even with the autopedestrian fatalities. Unfortunately, we saw in a lot of those that happened with members of our unhoused communities and they even spearheaded or worked with other agencies to get fluorescent material to put on their um on their persons or on their backpacks or whatever they were carrying so that they could be more easily seen in low areas. Um and you can see that that dropped from 32 um in 2023 to 20 to 23 and 2024. um may not seem like a big thing, but that's a few more people that are still here with us today based on the efforts that we're trying to make. And I want to update this because this is the um the other PowerPoint. We actually have done 80 traffic enforcement operations to date. So, the special protection and events and emergency response um unit, I don't know how much I can say about them. There's one captain, two lieutenants, three sergeants, three professional staff members, and 17 part-time ambassadors, but they are responsible for a lot of events. Um, so special events are going to be those activities that are planned, dignitary protection, VIP escorts, um, things like the the bombing memorial, the marathon. Um, they're responsible, a very small group of people responsible for coordinating the response to that. And then, of course, our emergency response is going to be anything that's a disturbance, property damage, um, natural disasters, plane crashes, chemical spills, things of that nature. and you can see the number of incidents that they responded to throughout the course of the year um and the number of training hours and that's be going to become critical with the number of large events that we have coming Oklahoma City ensuring that we have a team that's well trained um and is um experienced in handling whatever happens whether it's planned or unplanned. Every year the city does a residential survey and um some of the statistics are shown from the most recent um we show that 88% of people who had an encounter with law with Oklahoma City Police Department um reported that they received fair treatment. Um the satisfaction with police services were 67%. The national average is 53%. Um we have always enjoyed the support of our community and by no means um are we satisfied with 67%. um some of the things when we drilled down into the data, we found out that people were um dissatisfied with their feeling of safety in certain areas of the city and they pointed that to the unhoused community and um people don't understand that as a city there is a robust effort to try to address those issues as we heard earlier today with the planning department and provide resources and get people into stable housing. Um but we also had complaints about traffic enforcement and it's not the traffic enforcement that you're thinking. and they're upset because they want more traffic enforcement in their neighborhoods where their kids are playing or in school zones. And so some of those things reduced our number, but um we're happy to be above the national average, but we're not satisfied and we want to work to keep that keep that number going up. So with that, I want to say I appreciate the support we always receive from you and I want want to thank each and every one of you for what you do for our community every day. With that said, I'll entertain any questions you may have. Couple of questions. Um, you touched upon the real-time information center, which is relatively new. Uh, can you talk about the growth, the success, and do you need additional resources to make that program, that center work better? The answer is yes. That's a simple question. I mean, we know that we got, I think, the World Cup of softball in 2026. We may or may not have some FIFA involvement. We've got the Olympics coming in 2028. It's a really big lift and it's going to require a lot of coordination and we have a great partnership with our federal partnerships and the other metro agencies that are willing to kick in, but the real-time information center is a gamecher in how we keep people safe and we absolutely will need more resources as we move forward. Great. And then you also talked about our lab. It's kind of outdated. We need better facilities and we have new facilities on the drawing board. Is there any specific location you'd like to see that built when we build it? Absolutely. So, we're looking at an annex um five or six stories um just on the north side of um our building um kind of where the the old jail is standing right now. Um, we see the ability for maybe a parking garage and then an annex um to give them the space that they need to really um they're winning um with old equipment. I won't say old equipment, but um they're winning with um less than and we want to give them more than so that they can exceed. I'm I'm excited about that development. Great presentation. I appreciate you being here today. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Councilman. Chief Oh, go ahead. No, please. I feel Okay, chief. I just wanted to say thank you. Did you say age before beauty? Is that what you did? Chief, thanks for the presentation. I just want to say how much I appreciate you, your entire department, and the work that y'all do. Um, I mean, I've done the ride along things and uh some of the training stuff, different things like that. It was a little stressful and uh I tell you, y'all do a job that there's no way I could do that. just no way I could handle that stress and uh every day it's a ton of work. So, appreciate y'all very much. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. I just want to echo Councilman Stone's job. I've gone through the the the real time training, some of the ride alongs, and it is it is pretty intense. Um, but one of the things I I noticed that was missing from your report that I just wanted to kind of bring up and I'm sure just because it's happened within the last few days is the uh the descent decree from uh the DOJ got uh pulled better yet got dropped um and in large part according to their letter because of the the work that you do the work that this city does and it actually uh gave let me see um it has no faith in the report findings that were uh reported and we are impressed with the way the Oklahoma City Police Department has actually handled all of their behavioral health disabilities. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for the way you lead. Thank you for the way that our officers represent this city very much. Thank you. And if I might, I just because you brought that up, um yes, they redacted the findings report and we got a closure letter, but the work doesn't stop. Um, what most people don't realize is when we talk about some of the issues in our community, many of us that wear this uniform are impacted by that as well in our personal lives. We all know someone or related to someone that is struggling or affected by something that we deal with at work. Um, we're just as committed to keep going and trying to innovate best practices and how we respond to people in crisis. Um, we we can see the progress that's been made with mobile integrated health, with 988, with our iPad program, with everyone being CIT trained, but I just want our community to know that although um the DOJ investigation is closed, we're still committed to providing those best practices and working to ensure that we ensure proper responses. Thanks, J. I think is there someone else? Yeah, I'll say something really quick. Um, one, thank you, Chief, for the presentation and I again uh want to just highlight the uh mobile integrated health and I appreciate you sharing that because um I I know I'm still very new to this council, but one thing that is very important to my neighbors um is that they know that they can call 911 or other resources for people who are experiencing a mental health crisis and know that a police officer is not going to be the one who shows up. They want to ensure that those services are are given to that person in a humane way. and I appreciate you lifting up that and uh so I hope we can continue to support that program. One thing that I also appreciate was your discussion about the able training and the emphasis on um officers being effective active bystanders and and stopping any uh and helping with deescalation. Um one thing I also noticed though in the in our stats about our our force is that it looks like about 35%ish of our staff have over 20 years of experience. So, I'm wondering um with that ABLE training, are we are we including that for officers who are already um in the force or was that just for people who are going through the the academy? In order to be ABLE certified, every officer and recruit had to be trained. Everyone. Okay. Yes. And so, is there like some continuing education that goes on around deescalation? So, we we train deescalation as part of our defensive tactics and controlling deescalation control and defensive tactics annually anyway. Um but we also so ABLE is peer intervention and so we incorporate that into everything we do now on top of the two hours um that we're going to there's a refresher every two years of two hours with an ABLE certified instructor but it's just something that we're adding on top of what we already do is with that peer intervention and the deescalation. Thank you. Um thank you for your presentation. I'm curious. So, when you mentioned uh that one of the elements you hear from residents where they don't feel safe that it actually relates to traffic in their neighborhoods. That am I misspeaking? Um no. Um so there's a question that says what is your and I'll be specific. What is your feeling of safety in downtown? And there's a downgrade in that sometimes because people are upset about the unhoused community and it makes them feel less safe. Um but then we also see um one of the things that we get a complaint about a lack of traffic enforcement in their neighborhoods. So two separate things. Sure. I want to hone in on the ladder for just a couple moments. Um so I think there's still a little bit of a disconnect in terms of funding opportunities here. So, I'm really proud of the work that the traffic commissioners set in motion with the speed speed abatement program, the 5050 split that neighborhoods can do where they can put in half the funding. The city of OKC puts in the other half of the funding to do installation of things like speed cushions. For an example, 36 and Classen Putham Heights has done this. Bell West has done this. I just recall when I was knocking doors in the new part of Ward 2 um over around like 19th and Purdue like the Windsor Forest area that um residents said exactly what you were saying. They're like and I mean I saw it kids were playing in the the street and you know people would just speed down 19th Street for instance between Meridian and and MacArthur. Um, I'd be curious to learn because I every so whenever people reach out to our office about this topic, our office does, I think, a a good job responding pretty quickly, but what they do is they send out law enforcement to go put extra eyes on that street. But I'd be curious to know how much it costs to do that, like in terms of labor. Uh, and then when you were talking about the crimes, right, that law enforcement needs to be out there solving. I'm just curious how much it cost to send an officer out there to do those extra hours of patrol versus a speed cushion is $5,000. It it's $5,000. It's and and you know, I just am of the belief first of all that the street is misdesigned in the first place. Maybe it's too wide and that's what's uh encouraging people to do the kind of Fast and Furious part 17 down Windsor Forest. Thanks for laughing at that, city manager. Uh I really am. I'm serious though. This is a very serious things. I I I can see visually in my mind these kids playing in the middle of the street there thinking that they're safe in Windsor and this elderly woman just moments before when I was knocking her door saying that speeding was a concern of hers. And then, and this was at Christmas time, by the way, so it was very decorative lights and stuff, so I can just see it so clearly. But I I guess what I'm worried about is we as a city government are not setting aside enough money to help neighborhoods, particularly our lowincome neighborhoods, that can't come up with the matching funds of $2,500. That's how much it would cost, $2,500 for them to match what the city of OKC would match. And so I I'm worried that we're taking time from our officers where they could be out solving crimes to have them go do patrol, sit at a intersection to watch for speeders. Whereas we could kind of mitigate that by setting aside funding that I think I think I'm not sure might cost less money by the simple installation of of speed cushions. And and and by the way, in the top five issues when I was knocking doors during the reelection, traffic calming and walkability were if not number one next to homelessness number one. And so I can we get some research on I don't know if you have any responses to that, Chief, or what your thoughts are. I don't know. I absolutely understand where your thoughts are. I will clarify one thing. So the traffic safety unit actually is that's their job. They go out and they saturate those areas and they may utilize resources from other areas of the department. But you're absolutely right. Um there are other things that that can be done in conjunction with that that would probably mitigate some of the uh traffic issues that we have. Um and I'll take it another step further for my extended family if they're watching. Northeast 43rd and Lahi years ago had a child hit and it's amazing that um there weren't several others hitting because it's it's a raceway and I have family that lives on both both corners and they've talked about it for years and you know we'll aggressively enforce it. Um but when we're not there um it's almost like someone's waving a white flag saying go. Um it's almost as if there's a checkered flag at the end of the street. Um, but at the end of the day, um, we know that there's no yellow flag on city streets to caution, resurrect. We know that those are lives that are that slow things down that are impacted. So, absolutely, we we're really big into anything we can do, utilization of technology or something as practical as that, which you mentioned, um, to alter driving behavior, um, to air on the safer side. I appreciate that. And I'll just say as we're finalizing this bond package, I've already recommended it. Um I believe you're already nodding your head. Um I would really hope that this council would get behind it's not too much funding, but funding for speed cushions for neighborhoods. Uh I just it was I heard it so many times across demographics within neighborhoods. So, I think this is a public safety issue. Um, so I just wanted to take time to to u bring that to everyone's attention and I just think it u might be a little bit more um cost effective than the labor of law enforcement. So, I'll just leave it at that. Thank you so much and thanks for your presentation. Thank you. Thanks, Chief. Okie dokie. So, we have Was there anyone? I'm sorry. I didn't want to take any more council members need to say something. Okay. Um we have some residents who have signed up to speak um if you wouldn't mind when you uh arrive at the podium u say your first and last name um your address and then you'll have three minutes and you'll see a timer up there to kind of help you. Uh, but you'll have three minutes to give your remarks, but again, introduce yourself first and last name and your your address, please. And I'll call your name. Please forgive me. I will do my best not to, uh, mess up your name and respond to welcome to mess up James Cooper if you'd like in some capacity. But uh Dylan Ruie, did I say is it Rui? R Ui, is okay, it's you. Come on up. And then I'm guessing I mispronounced it. Please, you pronounce it. Let me try. Hello. Okay. So, um, the full name is Dylan Rice. I forgot. I think Oh, there's no Z. Okay. Yeah, the pin the the ink of the pin was dying out. So, that's okay. Okay. Um, but I am part of Ward One. I live in 6823 Newman Drive, Oklahoma City. And oh, first and foremost, good morning, council. Um, I'm here to speak on the budget with the people's budget coalition. My ward is is in dire need of improvements to our parks and seeing these budgets cuts to the department is unacceptable and I'm in favor of a more open process for how the budget is developed where the voice where my voice is heard and the needs of of me and my community are taken as pri priority number one for the very beginning. Our coalition continues to ask our city manager um Freeman to implement a participatory budget process. I assure you that this budget would look totally different this year if you had this uh participatory process um developed in the beginning as some of the key topics and comments um from each presentation would have allocated for that because it was a lot of feedback from people within these um localities and we see this in the presentations today where in the first one it was recorded that there's an extreme lack of sense of community and that was within the city development And we saw it in this past pres presentation where the public safety support was marked as the lowest among all budgets for the police department. Yet one yet one slide mentioned that they're the cornerstone of our public safety efforts. We want community safety and not safety rooting and policing. We want more opportunities for our young people, not less. I want more resources for the homeless people who live under the bridge near my house. And I want them to have access to affordable housing. I hope you hear my words as your constituent and to concern and the concerns residents of this city and take the necessary steps to make changes to the next year's budget. The people must see that their government's responsive to our needs. And if you continue to prove you are not, we will have to no choice but to replace you. There are aspects in this budget that I believe in. That even gave me goosebumps just visioning what Oklahoma can look like in the near future. gave me hope in knowing that in the cities and the and the even same streets where I used to play in as a kid that there was development structural fundamental development where sense of community could actually be growth um all across because as officer said it yeah as the chief police said it takes a village what type of village do you want to create 30 seconds remaining thank you thank you also I'll just say you look very familiar to me Yes, I was your middle school student. Son of a gun. I knew it. Oh my god. Oh, it's so wonderful to see you grown up. Oh my lord. Okay. I was Yeah, I was like, "Wait a second." Wait a minute. Oh, wonderful. Thank you, Dylan. Thank you. Oh, yes. Sorry, I completely got distracted there. Um, Dolce Mononttoya Good morning, city council. My name is Dulce Mononttoya. I reside at 915 Nor Valley View Drive in Oklahoma City. Um Bradley Carter, War One representative. Um so I also come here today to speak to you um about the uh participatory budget. We want to have a more democratic process where the needs of the community are actually uh listened to what what is it that we need right now and work with you all to create like those changes. I personally think and I have uh the notes but listening to the budget um the increasing of the budget to more incarceration policing and um does not do any good to Oklahoma City and Oklahoma in general. I like to talk about numbers and data. data shows that in the state of Oklahoma we have the largest incarcerated um population not only in the country but if you go and check in the nation but also globally. So for me including more budget to um policing impacts my community directly the Hispanic community we do not feel safe when we see more police. do not see um feel safe when we're being pulled over and we know that there is a racial uh component to that. Instead, um I do turn into war where one Bradley Carter uh in the area that I reside, there is an increasing list of things that are missing. One of those is transportation. there is a disconnection from the people that live on um for example northwest tent from um Morgan all the way to Meridian where there is no public transportation. So instead of continuing investing in something that I have more of a chances to uh end up incarcerated why don't we invest in things that we actually need like education programs for summer school uh that we know that are limited right now for community. So um yes that's what I wanted to to come and say here uh to all of you that is a responsibility of all of us to create a city that actually prioritizes the needs of the community and the needs of the people and that does not reflect in the budget right now. Thank you. And Dolce, can I ask did you give your address right at the start of it? Yes. And so is that right around the 10th and Morgan area is kind of where you Yes. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that I'm like at the edge, but being in at at the edge of Oklahoma City, that also means that the public transportation does not get to that level. I also live in a um a food desert. Like for me to be able to uh get groceries, I have to drive either five miles into Oklahoma City or go to Yukon. So, there is definitely a need um in that area of the community. Appreciate that clarification. Thank you so much. Okay. Uh, next up we have Tevin McDaniel. And you'll just state your name and address and you'll have the three minutes, please. Good morning. Good morning or afternoon. Um, Tevin McDaniel, 323 West Michael Drive. Um, I've been thinking a lot about what I wanted to say today. Um, and I think it it it boils down to um, the police are not our friends. The police are the most dangerous people in Oklahoma City. And it's very apparent for people who look like me and people who don't look like the majority of people who are sitting on this council right now. Um, and I think that's a hard pill to swallow when you don't actually understand what that looks like. But as a black man, early 90s, my father was beat by the police. Early 2000s, pulled out of his car multiple times, hands on the steering wheel, guns out. I'm a child in the early 2000s. I've lost family members. I've been a part of situations where people have been uh separated from their families because police officers don't know how to address people who look like us or deal with with with lack of resources that they're never been accustomed to. Resources that can be brought in in this city budget. Transportation. How can we get more people across this large city? The city's one of the 10th top 10 in in land mass. We have a lot of people who live across the the state and we don't have a good way to get them from work to jobs to schools, right? We we can be talking about all these other things. Parks and recreation. How are we getting our kids to not have to be dealing with the re the lack of resources again that we're not getting, but instead can go to places that are safe havens, that don't have police there, that are community embedded, that are life embedded, that are brought with with humanity, rather than what has been spoken on, this this constant idea of if you look like me, you're probably going to end up in jail. something that I've had to experience here in Oklahoma City, being targeted to fill a quota. And that's what the police do. They're dangerous. They run our streets. And they are the people that we should be worried about in our communities. So I am asking for you to not only move towards a participate bud part pet participatory budget for these next couple years and how however soon we can get to that point but also not to continue to give the police more money as we're taking more money from these other resources that the community direly needs. 30 seconds remaining. Thank you Kevin. Um, next up we have Merrily uh Perium and yeah, you'll uh state your address, please, and then your uh three minutes will begin. Yes, I'm Merily Perry. I'm at 101 Northwest 16th Street. Um, my note just disappeared. Okay. Um, I'm here to ask you all today to fund more proactive, preventative community safety and less restrict less reactive and punitive uh policing. I understand that the propo proposed budget has reduced the budget for all the departments more than you have for the police and that's really troubling to me. I think the safest communities are not those with the most police. They are those with the most resources. As our federal government gets creative in cutting programs and funding that serve the poor and marginalized, we need to get creative in how to fund them locally. Affordable housing, safe transportation, health care, mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, restorative justice. These are the things that make communities stable and thriving. I have a young friend who I met about a year ago. She's 24 now. Uh, but I met her just on the worst day of her life when she lost her wallet and lost her job. Um, but she was fleeing domestic violence. She came and lived with me for a little while. Um, and I just see the struggles that she has trying to get around this town, trying to get a job, but when she does get a job, get she's got to take two buses to get there. Some of those buses, I believe, are getting eliminated. Just getting getting to mental health appointments. It's so challenging for her. Um, she's on the section 8 weight list, but that takes years. She's on the pivot tiny home weight list. She's been on that for nine months. Looks like she's going to age out of it before she gets there. Um, so I ask you to dedicate more of our budget to ensuring these kind of needs are met for everyone and less to our police department, which often struggles to hold itself accountable. Um, I see there are still items recommended by 21CP that require essentially no funding that have been put on hold. One of them is eliminating the 48 hour waiting period before taking a report about an incident. Another one's not allowing officers to review the video before making their statement. And I don't understand why we're um stalling on these lowhanging fruit when it's been years. Um, and our precious city resources did not need to be used to jail 150 people standing and allegedly watching a street race. That's not a good use of our funds and it ultimately harms many of those people. 30 seconds remaining. The more we can proactively ensure that all our citizens are having their needs met and able to thrive, the less we'll need to respond with policing. the 28 2028 Olympics are coming and I know there's a long history of uh hiding homelessness and poverty before Olympics come and so I'm asking you to please use our resources now for taking care of citizen needs and not hiding them at the last second. And lastly, one of Chief Bassy's slides said police personnel are the cornerstone of our public safety efforts. And I say the cornerstone of our public safety efforts should be meeting community needs and we need to fund them. Thank you. Thank Thank you. Uh we have Bridget Burns and you'll state your name and your uh address and then you'll have three minutes. And thank you. Hello, my name is Bridget Burns. I commute to Oklahoma City to work in Midtown. Um I um first want to say thankfully I have an employer who um allowed me to be here today. This is not a very accessible time for most working people. Um personally I'm the child of two teachers who work very hard to um take care of kids during the school year and during the summer. Um and this definitely would not have been an accessible time for them. Um I think that we really need to think about how we are involving people in the budget process. a participatory budget would be an opportunity for us to have a more effective budget, for us to have a more engaged public, a more connected public, which what I'm hearing from everyone is that's why we're here. We're here because we care. Um, everyone who presented talked about um stories in Oklahoma City, why they care about this city. Um, but this is not again an accessible process. Like for example, the most access most um apparent native representation I see in the room are disembodied heads on these light fixtures. Um whereas we have a very high native population here in Oklahoma City. We're on Witchah, Comanche, Oage, Kikapoo, and Kya people's lands. Um, I just want to ask why we continue to increase funding for the one department that can kill people with impunity. That is legal. We see that over and over again. Regardless of how you feel about the police, how hard you believe they work, how hard it is for them to do their jobs, how much they're trying to meet our needs, they can murder people with impunity. That's not preventative care. That is not preventing crime. It's only criminalizing crime. The things that actually prevent crime are resources. Our resources like public parks, like public libraries, like summer food programs, like summer school programs. Um, a lot of the people that I see being unhoused are also too young or too old to not have someone checking on them daily. Um, there was an elderly gentleman um with bad knees who I gave a ride to the Embark station the other day. This was 10:00 a.m. and he said he'd been lost looking at the station since it was dark outside. As I am driving up from Norman every day, I always see unhoused folks. I don't see very many trees. I don't see very many places that I would feel comfortable going and just sitting outside and enjoying the sunshine. And as a commuter, um I do value the city very much. I um work to contribute how I can um and I would like to see this budget invest in parks, invest in public transportation, invest in planting trees um so that we can breathe. Thank you. Thank you. We have Doug Vincent and you'll uh introduce yourself first and last name and your address and then you'll have your three minutes and you can follow along at the television. Good morning council. My name is Doug Vincent. I live at 8428 Northwest 71st in Ward 1. Uh I'm also a part of the people's budget coalition. Uh I also want to uh adjust our priorities uh to uh preventive uh preventing crime and uh getting people to thrive. Uh that can include parks. Um that can include better public transportation uh assistance to housing. Um I didn't see a lot of attention to restorative justice or community uh violence interruption. I think those are good efforts to uh prevent crime rather than respond to it. Um, one thing that is a a good uh initiative is the uh mobile integrated health teams. Please keep this uh going and uh increase it. Um and again about public transportation uh that is going to link our city. It's going to give people access to jobs and education and it's going to create uh much better outcomes than just responding to crime. Thank you very much. Thank you. You have Nicole uh McAfee and you'll state your name and then uh you'll have your an address please and you'll have your three minutes. Hi, my name is Nicole McAfee. My pronouns are they and she. I live in Crestwood in W 6. This is my sixth year to speak to you about the budget. And I'm here today with the People's Budget Coalition. Those presentations we just listened to didn't feel super engaging to me as a resident, even one who's super interested in this work and spends a lot of my time analyzing government presentations and meetings. How did they land for you? For the last six years, I've watched the budget process again and again. I've seen votes to approve a budget crafted largely without the input of Oklahoma City residents or the council members who are supposed to represent us. By the time any part of the budget is made public, there's no room for meaningful input or changes. And it's a foregone conclusion the council will vote to approve it. And yet again, you're hearing these presentations about what you're going to spend of our tax dollars without meaningful impact about what we really need. In my word, we need sidewalks. We need drainage solutions for the increasingly common delusions of rain that cause flash flooding. We need better shade so kids can enjoy the outdoors through increasingly hot summers. We need more common green spaces free from the dangers of cars. We need affordable housing as increasingly community members I know and serve in my work are priced out of their apartments, duplexes, and homes. We need a budget process that is open to community and council member feedback. I continue to ask you, city manager Freeman, give us participatory budgeting because what my community needs is not another ninef figure investment in reinforcing the criminal punishment system by further inflating the police budget, but rather the safety that we see in communities with the most resources invested in them. We need care, not cops. I want to lift up particularly the amount of times 988 was mentioned by the police department budget presentation without the note that 988 still engages in non-consensual police intervention. Further, there was no mention of the huge numbers of calls to warm lines that don't engage police like Trans Lifeline from Oklahoma as folks who are being targeted by our government officials without support, especially two spirit transgender and gender non-conforming folks are trying to stay alive. We need people who are keeping us alive, not those who are responding to crises after they've already happened. 30 seconds remaining. When you engage the people and meaningfully incorporate our feedback, you get groundbreaking programs like mobile integrated health teams, which should receive further and expanded investment. When the people's budget coalition came together, people dreamed up things that would revolutionize the way the city works. For each of you who's going to be asked to vote yes for this budget, how much engagement did you really have in the process? Can you tell your constituents in good faith that you believe these are the best ways to spend our dollars? Can you say that continuing to grow police at the expense of community needs is defensible? Please give us a budget process that is truly responsive to community needs. Don't use all of our funds to expand policing in our city. I would thank you for your attention, but given the amount of effort that you require for us to give any input at all, it seems the thank you should really go to all of the residents who showed up here on a Tuesday morning who sat through more than two hours of presentations just to be able to speak. Thank you. And then we have Marie Turner. And you'll give your name, please, and address. And then you'll have the three minutes. Um uh asalama alaikum. My name is Mory Turner. I live uh in Ward 6 on the corner of uh 22nd and Walker. Um right at the beginning, we can do no good deed alone. And it made me think that faith without work is dead. This is part of our work. I'm glad we get to talk a little bit about our social social media presence um uh to express why we should uh have our comments heard for the budget. Uh earlier in March, I made a post on March 6 that got 333,000 likes and 55,000 shares. And I think that's pretty impressive. Um uh I'll be the first to admit that I should be paying more attention to city council, but I am a single parent with no car, no afterchool program because of a lack of affordability and a full-time job. I used to be a state representative and I heard about the Asian district plaza district in Uptown. Um uh those are some of the places listing in the city planning part of this meeting. I represented these places. is in a historical election um uh with historical outturn uh uh out uh turnout in a presidential election and in a midterm. And I was only able to run for that office because of financial stability that was afforded to me by my friends and stimulus checks. Uh after I won that election, I had to go on food stamps for the second time in my life. And then my landlord raised the rent. They have every year since I've lived there. And I don't know if you sat in an apartment crying with a three-year-old when your lights have been turned off, but I have. I haven't found a good landlord since I've lived here from leaking roofs to black mold and non-responsive because they don't live here. I have, however, seen people evicted at every apartment complex that I've ever lived in since moving to Oklahoma City. Legal aid is underfunded and backed up. Rent stabilization, affordable housing, and city initiatives that hold landlords accountable for living conditions of their properties are just a few of the things that would be nice. So, I didn't have to threaten a landlord uh or property manager with the fact that I'm a state rep that I was a state representative or that I worked for the American Civil Liberties Union because that's not a a luxury that's afforded to all. One thing I heard about over the last four years was about parks a lot being clean, splash pads being accessible as the heat increases. And I think it's important that we continue to give funds there. 30 seconds remaining. Thank you. I think about gosh, I think about what hurdles to education and access to school programs look like and as I heard about the recruitment efforts efforts for Oklahoma City Police Department, it feels like a poverty draft. it would be. And I wondered what a project 15 could look like for someone like Stavian Rodriguez. And to me it looked like instead of 13 bullets, I imagine that it could look like afterchool programs, free movie passes for students who volunteer for the city, um uh shadowing city council members, school curriculum tailored to a variety of student needs, a program for the kids who fidget, the dyslexic stu uh visual learners, arts and music. I just want to finish by saying as we're sitting here, my little one was watching the presentation and he said, "That's our city." He pointed out the people that he knows on the screen and in this room. And we've been talking about what it looks like to have a participatory budget and what a city budget looks like. About how we spend money where we can, about how we listen to those that we care about and want to understand, and we change where we have uh where they need us to within our means. A new participatory budget is what we need now because what we have is not working. We need budgets that are for the people and by the people and we need budgets that show what our city wants to invest in the people in this room on this side of the desk. So, thank you for your time. Thank you, Honorable Representative Aurelius Francisco. And you'll have a few minutes and you'll want to introduce yourself and your um address as well. got to follow up. Mari Turner got me emotional. Uh, good morning, council. My name is Aurelius Francisco. I'm from the east side of Oklahoma City, Ward 7, 1033 Northeast 4th Street. I'm a lead organizer with the people's budget coalition and I'm here to say that we need a participatory budget process in Oklahoma City. 5 years ago, nearly to the day, hundreds of Oklahomaans got on a virtual meeting due to the pandemic and asked for systemic change to policing. 5 years later, you all have answered that call with a nearly $300 million police budget. to be exact, $297 million. Yet another increase. This budget is a slap in the face to my community, to Latino and indigenous communities in this city who have been under the thumbrint of this racist police department that has surveiled, harassed, and maimed and killed so many of our loved ones for generations, including this year. Last budget presentation two weeks ago, Mayor Holt, who isn't here, asked Councelor Cooper where the money should come from to support the lost youth center being cut due to the park's budget cuts. My answer to this is simple. The inflated police budget, which is outsized for a department that has not produced safety in any measurement for our communities, black, white, or otherwise. My demand of you all is to cut the excess budget for the police and put that into services like mental health crisis response, transportation, and recreation centers. I'm not here to just talk about what is bad in this budget. I will give credit where it's due. I am happy that the recommendation that came out of that public outcry in 2020 have manifested in the mobile integrated health teams. I want more and more and more of this nonp police crisis response. These teams could have kept love community members like Benny Edwards alive. Safety to me is about community and resources. When someone commits a crime or what we in the restorative justice space refer to as harm, we interrogate the question why. So much harm happens due to lack of resources and lack of community because we are so isolated. We then dig into who is responsible for meeting those needs. So many of the resources people need are the responsibility of you all as our city government. Housing, public transportation healthcare recreational activities, beautiful neighborhoods with art and parks and sidewalks and water parks for our young people to play in is what safety is. This is what I want to see as the top line of the pie chart showing the percentages of the budget, the general fund budget, 69% to public safety, majority of that to the cops. Participatory budgeting is what we need. We are here as residents, as constituents, to help you understand what our communities need. It's on you to listen and be open to learning. Don't let another 5 years pass making the same regressive policy decisions. Care and community not cops. Thank you. And then for uh the police uh part of this in terms of comments, we have one final person and that is Ryan Mukes. And then Ryan uh you'll want to give your first and last name and your uh address and then you'll have your three minutes, please. Hello, my name is Ryan Mues. I'm from Spencer, Oklahoma. Address is 8317 Northeast 34th Street. Um I'm here. It's been well said. well documented um on what goes on in certain neighborhoods and part of our community and uh I just after this whole thing has ha asked myself I heard a few of y'all say how proud y'all were of the chief and uh there's a lot of people in this community that may not impact um the community as much as the police in so many different areas but there's a lot of us to wake up every day to work to uplift this community. And I just leave myself asking, wouldn't y'all want to be proud of all of us that do this work in the community? And when I ask that question, it it automatically puts me in the position of knowing if we had more funds to be able to uplift our communities out of this darkness and into light, which I think we all want, that this city and this state could be a great place like we say it is. And I just want to put that on y'all mind and and and have y'all realize that we all wake up every day and put one foot on, one shoe at a time, and we make one step one foot at a time. So, let's just start coming together and figureing out ways that we can uplift each other and not tear each other down. No matter where we come from, no matter what we look like, no matter how much we make, no matter the decisions and the mistakes that we made before, cuz we are all human beings and we all deserve the right for redemption for whatever we've done. Y'all have a great day. Thank you, Ryan. And that will conclude that portion. Um, and I just want to say thank you to everyone who spoke. Thanks for your time. Um, especially the little ones being here. I I know that that can be a that can be a whole thing. Um we're going to move to item four, citizens to be heard. You want to go and do that and then you'll give your sir? Yep. Okay. Um thank you. And for that portion we have Lynette Morris. You want to come up and introduce yourself? Um you'll also want to uh speak to your address which I think we met previously at the public transportation trust. I'll let you take it from here. again your uh name and Yes. Hi y'all. Thanks for letting me come. My name is Lynette Morris. I'm currently homeless. Um so I'm here about the public transportation. Um your first community meeting was at 6:30 p.m. on North Lincoln. Well, the last bus runs over there leaving the terminal at 6:30 p.m. So, how would we get there? How would I get there? I would have to walk from your meeting all the way to Northeast 23rd to get there and I can't do that. I can't physically do that. Um, right now I am currently in a hypertension crisis, but I needed to be here. That's why I keep going in and out cuz I'm running to the bathroom. I'm in a hypertension crisis, but I know this is the last time that I would be able to be heard. um for the route 19. If you guys completely shut that off, I go to the doctor office out there. How would I get there? What about the residents that live out there? Um my Oh, I am also a a substitute teacher. So now I don't have a job either because school just let out. So if it's not one thing, it's another. Um, but with this city bus, if we can I don't want to leave any of the other residents out cuz I would say give me a ride from the terminal to the doctor's office, but that wouldn't be fair. If we could add the add the bus 19 route to the end of the bus 15 route and just connect it, I would still be able to get to the doctor and other people would too. And people would still be able to get from Spencer to Oklahoma City because without that, how would they? They would have to go all the way to the east side from Spencer just to get on the bus. So, um, I think that's all I have to say, guys. Thanks for your time. Thank you. And I'll just add, uh, thank you for sharing what you're experiencing right now. Um, and I remember you coming to Kappa and speaking and I asked you to bring your voice to council as well. So, I just want to on a personal level say thank you and especially I I didn't know what you were experiencing in terms of the medical stuff. So, I know that probably presented a bit of an extra challenge to do appreciate appreciate that. So, thank I want to also quickly share um thank you for being here and I know how challenging that is and I want you to know that um we have been working a lot to resolve the issue of the route 19 and so I appreciate um city manager Freeman for those conversations, productive conversations about how we can ensure that we have quality access to public transit because again for our council members taking away Route 19 is like is is it's an island essentially that's receiving services and so without that uh vital lifeline for people who are in that isolated area, they wouldn't have the ability to access all of the great amenities or job opportunities that we have here in downtown Oklahoma City. So, it's just really important and again, I appreciate the conversations with city manager Freeman, um, ACM Fairbrush, and, uh, Director Rush about all of this. So, we're working for you and I, I appreciate you being here. Take it away. Okay. Yeah. So, I'm going to have Chris come, Chris York, our budget director, and just give a quick update on the input that we received. Um, as he's coming, I want to talk just a minute about route 19 that was just mentioned. One of the things I'd like to recommend to go into the budget is it's it's one of the routes that was cut as a result of just trying to reduce services across the city to try to make some adjustments without having too significant impact. Um, this one was partially challenged by the fact of the county's funding not being available because of challenges they had, legal challenges there that they're still trying to work through. What I'd like to recommend, and we can do this without amending the budget, we can do it administratively, but I'd like to recommend that we adjust the funding to ensure that we have the route going into next year for one year as we work through with our partners, with other cities, and with the county to see what options we have, reduce our um fleet replacement uh funding. And so, it's a one-time capital need. I mean, it's like we have continuing need for fleet replacement for every type of equipment that we've got. Um, but we could reduce that temporarily while we work through and try to solve this. It solves it for another year for us. It's not a permanent fix, but it gives us the option to work on that for the next year and make sure those services are there for the next year. So, we don't have to make an adjustment within the budget. We can do it administratively with budget transfers to adjust that. But, I just want you to know that we're proposing that going into next year. So, Chris, I'll let you uh give a quick Go ahead. I'm sorry. Oh, can I just ask a question? Sure. Well, to first let me say thank you city manager for hearing the community and I also want to say thank you to ACM Fairbrush and director Rush uh for listening to the folk who came and spoke at Kappa. Um, I know that was I know it's painful right now the budget cut season and it just really means a lot to hear the residents and to let them engage in this. So, I just want to pause and say thank you. That said, um I know some of the early talks and I think the three people who really might need to hear this, well really four because it's your ward councilman. Um, and I don't want to speak out of turn with what I'm about to propose, but you know, we're talking about, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the next year would be, you know, keeping in place this route. And then we're talking about conversations about this concept that's new to our city that we initially proposed in maps for, which is microtransit. And so since it's new to our city and we're talking about microransit out in the east side, I think something that would make me feel first of all I I'm so sorry as I am interested in it. I'm on the one hand excited but I'm a little nervous because it's so new and I don't want to I don't want residents who are in need like we just heard Lynette describe not be able to access employment, recreation, doctors, etc. So I guess my ask would be I think we identified 47 writers who use the current service. One of them is here right now. I think my request if possible would at least be start here and ask them what would microtransit need to look like for the people who are already utilizing this service. Just get that input. I'm not saying we do it exactly as they're asking, but at least hear from them how they're using the current system. Let them learn a little bit more about what microransit is. I would love to learn a lot more. I've already asked this of the director who's smiling, so he knows I've said it, but I just think that getting that resident input on how they're using the service and how to combine this, you know, new microtransit investment. I think just getting their input could at least help us create something that is, you know, efficient and and definitely when we do transit changes and transit, different transit technology and transit services, we're reaching out to the areas where we're going to serve those. I don't know, as we were talking through it and looking at options, one because we don't have microransit currently available. It didn't give us the opportunity to plug that in. Um, we looked at other options that the the team really worked hard on looking at um other options of services we could provide that would serve that area. None of them quite seemed to cover all the area that we needed to. And so that's why we step back on this. I think as we go into microtransit, one thing I would say is definitely we will reach out to the community that would be served. And as they're looking at that, we'll we'll decide on a a pilot area. Um, I don't know this area is going to be the pilot area that we may have pilot area in another area that's maybe more densely populated and I just don't want to predetermine that. But definitely as we move forward and decide on what methods we would use for microransit, we'll definitely reach out into the community and look at what services are needing needed to make sure that we're meeting addressing those uh needs. Can I clarify just from what I heard there? My understanding is that this next year of keeping in place route 19 would then transition to a micro train. But now I'm hearing something a little bit different. Yeah, I don't think we're predetermining that that's what would what it would be. I think it gives us the opportunity, one, even just with Route 19, to continue to evaluate with our partners if the county has the opportunity to resolve the legal issue that's there, if they would still want to participate, if there's other cities that would want to. So, I think it's looking at all of those options, but other microtransit or other types of transit services, shuttles or whatever, we would definitely continue to explore. I just don't know that microtransit is going to be the specific answer. It's just we'll look at the options that are there. whatever it is. I guess my my bottom line question is just making sure and I think starting this early hearing from people system users out in east side. Yeah. Well, I I'll just say this. Number one, thank you because I think hearing that Route 19 is going to be in this budget is very encouraging to all the people who did so much work to call attention to the importance of this issue and to lift up their voices. So, I think that's a win that we should that is worth celebrating here. Um, and I also would say, Councilman Cooper, like we're gonna have to spend the next year working with the county directly, working with the other municipalities that are impacted. I've had a lot of conversations with the leadership of Spencer about this and their need for micro transit. Same with Dell City and Midwest City. Like, we've got to keep having this conversation. And so, I think we're going to spend the next year, I would like to be a part of the next year's efforts to really pull together those stakeholders, including those people who are utilizing the service to ensure that whatever we do to resolve this issue throughout this year is effective. It won't do us any good if we are just going to if we're making plans that don't impact those 47 people who are using this bus route and allow them to still have access to to quality services. So, I'm with you. Can I ask a quick question because hey, Councilman, I think there's a lot of I have a lot of confusion on this. Oh, go for it. Okay. So, the county was funding part of it, right? Yes, sir. And why does anyone have the bet? Jesse, do you have or Jame? Either one. Is it because it goes outside of Oklahoma City or No. Uh that's I don't think that was the only reason. I think it was because an area that was being served. So the question was, you know, why would why was the county involved with helping with the funding? Yeah. So the county helped uh provide funding for Route 19 as part of like a social service. Uh they've been doing it for 28 years and there was some legislation passed last year that prevented them from being able to provide that funding for that route. But I guess so it wasn't a decision. I'm sorry. It wasn't a decision decision they were making not to participate, but it wasn't necessarily because it was specifically outside of Oklahoma City. Is that right? But to the councilman's question, but why that particular route for the social service? Is that what you're kind of asking, Councilman? Well, it just I mean, so how many routes do we run outside of Oklahoma City? I'm just curious. None. No. Except this one. That's right. Yeah. Okay. because that's why I thought the county paid a portion of it is because we're providing a service that actually goes outside of Oklahoma City. Go ahead. Don't we run routes to Midwest City, too? We do. Sorry. Yes, we do provide routes to Midwest City and they help support that. Yeah. Does Spencer subsidize the bus in any way, shape, or form? Does Midwest City? They do. Okay. But I'm sorry. I I just want some clarification on this, too. So the route 19 goes out to the east. Which parts of it are in Oklahoma City proper? Is there parts of Route 19 that are Oklahoma City or is that all Midwest City? That's No, there are. That's what I thought. So this is not how What portion of it is outside of Oklahoma City? I'd have to look at a map. Yeah, but not [Music] a crosses. It goes in and out. It crosses different. Yeah. Yeah. But so is it because of that inner city connectivity that the county stepped in to do the social services? Does that answer your question? Yes. Okay. Cool. All right. I just wanted to because I had heard some different facts about this and I understand it's a problem we want to try and resolve. I was just curious because I thought maybe I was thinking of the wrong thing. Thank you. Oh, I have one more question. Um, I don't know if it's director Rush or if it's uh, city manager Freeman, but I'm just wondering since the sample size for the Route 19, you know, being around, you know, under 50, we just heard a story from someone who's experiencing homelessness, who uses our services, has these medical conditions. You know, my experience on KPA for the last 10 years is we have pretty good expertise with Dr. Marilyn Dylan about connecting some of our most vulnerable residents to you know community stabilizing services is that what I would kind of say a I I mean I want to connect Dr. Dylan to our good friend here. I mean we have so many services in this city that so many of our residents do not know about. Absolutely. And I think this is one opportunity but then we have sounds like about 47 people. I'd be curious to know that what you know where Dr. Dylan's sort of connectivity to the different um programs which exist in our city. We might find we have vulnerable residents who need that access. So that would be my ask as we're going through this next year. Yeah. No, that's a great point. So we we recently hired folks to that can pinpoint that that go out into the community and provide information on those programs. Uh so yeah, great point. and we'll make a a much better effort in getting into the community to make people more aware of those programs that not only that Dr. Dylan does but also our other outreach programs that we have. Yeah, great point. Thank you. Okay, Chris, just real quickly on the uh the resident feedback, just give a quick update on information from the resident feedback related to the 26 budget. Yeah, we'll do. Thank you, city manager. Uh I I want to acknowledge that we don't have the live comments from the public hearings captured here, but we will bucket those up for you and reflect those on your final version of this. So uh we'll just be supplementing the live feedback that we heard today. Also, the comment period for this is going to run from April 29th uh up through May the 22nd. So any of our residents who posted something online since the 22nd, it might not be captured here, but it will make it its way to council u before the June 3rd uh uh final adoption request there. So just uh next slide, please. So just want to talk about some of the outreach channels that we used. Of course, our city um website um also the tailormadevision.c.gov is kind of our centerpiece for engagement uh now. Um we used that heavily this year and then working with our partners in PIM they broadcast out across all the social medias. Um we also had uh a couple of news releases and then we took at least two um interviews as well. Um all pushing uh the same solicitation for this feedback. So just to capture what we received back we had 19 total comments. Um so relatively sparse uh as we've come to see over this last couple years. This is actually less than we had last year. The breakdown of that was four were through email, 15 were posted to vision.c.gov and then you saw that we had zero uh in the other categories there. So, as we bucket up those comments, um I would say we had one pertaining to the budget book and just saying that we did a fantastic job. I don't know if that was one of my staff members or my mom, but uh we appreciate that comment. Uh we also had four pertaining to bus routes. Uh two of those were more extensive proposals from uh either community groups or um a former planner um pertaining to Route 19 and 24. Uh and then we had one resident that uh was just anti-transit altogether. And then uh one resident who questioned the use of free fair days. Uh it seemed to um cause them some disruption. I guess they are they are a user and and they had some complaints about the free use days. We also had eight comments from residents that were against cutting of funding at the Northwest Optimist Performing Arts Center. Three comments were pertaining uh to public safety. Um and one of those was uh concerns with any reductions to police and fire. We also had one complaint about allowing our police officers to take home their uh the take-home vehicle program. And then we had uh one resident who suggested writing more tickets to cover the deficit for our police officers. Uh and then finally, we had three residents that had comments on infrastructure. Two of those were very specific uh comments related to uh work they'd like to see in their particular area of the city. And then we had one that just wanted more general investment in streets, lights, and drainage. And that's all I have for you this morning. What I'll leave you with, though, is that um residents can continue to make comment through any of those channels, and we will uh capture all of those and bring those back to you for the June 3rd meeting. That's it. Thank you. Happy to answer any questions if you have any. That's all that we have for today. Can I ask you a question? Sure. Since you mentioned Route 19, is this also true the preserving of the time period to Norman Director Rush is coming up. All right. So my understanding as he's coming up was that that wasn't changing that begin time. That was a misunderstanding on the communication that that that is not changing. Yes. Go ahead. Yep. Great point. So during our community outreach events, we had a few folks come in that uh mentioned that based on the times that we were showing in our presentation that that would preclude them the ability to be able to catch the route to go from Oklahoma City to Norman. Now, what happened was we were trying to simplify the information showing that we would start start service at 6:00 a.m. and the understanding was that the the misunderstanding was that we would not be providing that initial start at 5:50 a.m. which was the the route or the time that they were catching the bus from Oklahoma City to Norman. That's not true. We were trying to simplify the information. will actually still be starting at OK in Oklahoma City at our transit center at 5:50 a.m. So, specifically Sherman, who came to the the meeting a few weeks ago, we'll still be able to provide that uh service for him to be able to go from Oklahoma City to Norman. So, not specifically for him. So, nothing was uh really changed, but that is just really semantics. We were trying to simplify the information, but our folks, they clearly understand our routes. And so when we were saying 6:00 a.m., it was his understanding that we were not going to be able to provide that 5:50 a.m. trip. So is the So is it the the the back and forth in the middle of the day that you're reducing and it's but you're keeping the sort of the commuting times the same as they've been? Yes. So our original proposal is still moving forward. So, we'll still provide the commuter route, commuter trips in the morning, commuter trips in the evening, but that midsection of the route will still be proposed to be eliminated. I just really appreciated that was I I'd never seen Sherman come to a to city council or to a a COPA meeting, but I mean it was his employment he was concerned about. So, I just really appreciate that clarification. I really appreciate people who showed up. Thank you, city manager, and thank you Park. I have one. Oh, councilwoman. And and I would just like to ask that as a council we take a moment to look at things from a broader perspective and that is we have a responsibility to all of our all of our residents, all of our taxpayers, um all of the people that are serviced by our police, our transportation, our parks, and um part of the responsibility that we have is to really to look at it from a financial perspective as well. And I've been trying to get really smart in a very short period of time um on the things that are the the different issues and the different concerns and in our community. And I hate um ever having to say no or to cut. I I hate h the idea of having to cut 19, but whenever I looked at the data that director Rush submitted and we have a half a million dollar bus at $250,000 cost per year and we have less than one person per service hour riding. That's a really huge investment that we need to think, can we do it different? Can we do it better? And I think that we're at a place where we have a responsibility to have that conversation and to be agile and to be fast because a $750,000 investment for transportation for 45 people is not smart business. It's not smart governance and I really hope that we can have a conversation before we start making decisions right now. I think that's a gavvel meeting adjourned item five.