without pouring you started just I don't want to get to 20 minutes so we have to cancel. [snorts] >> Good afternoon. We'll be calling the meeting to order. >> We start off with the pledge of allegiance please. 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. Moment of silence for any intent. You may be seated. Just for the public to be aware, we're starting this meeting because we only have 20 minutes as per TOMA rules. Uh we don't need a quorum. >> Actually, you have a >> Oh, we got quum now. There we go. Fantastic. We do have >> great. >> Mr. Secretary, would you please uh have call roll call, please? >> Honorable mayor Dr. Victor D. Travin, honorable council member district 1, Gilbert Gonzalez, honorable council member district 2, Ricardo Ranel Jr. >> Honorable Council Member District 3, Melissa Ceroa >> here. >> Honorable Council Member District 4, Ricardo Rick Gara, >> here. >> Honorable Council Member District 5, Ruben Gutierrez Jr. >> present. Honorable council member district 6 Dr. Tyler King honorable mayor promp Vanessa Perez honorable council member district 8a have a quorum. Thank you. Um Mr. Secretary any citizens comments? No public comments. Okay we'll move to number five. Number one, discussion with possible action on fiscal year 2025 2726 budget priorities including financial needs and the impacts of the upcoming bond referendum to guide financial planning and key funding allocations in any matters incident there too. >> Mr. Chair, before you start >> sir I just uh for the record I just want to say thank you to all the directors staff everybody that's here. I see we have the chambers as well. I appreciate it for coming out, you know, having giving your divided attention to all of us, you know, for being here at time. Thank you. I know you have so you have a busy a busy schedule. Uh, I we appreciate it so much for taking your time to understand and give us direction of everything that's that you guys are asking for and what the what the city needs. Uh, you're the professionals. We're just here to hear you out, try to make as much sense and know what we're doing, you know, to to change the to change to to pass these bonds. So, appreciate it. Uh I hope we do the best to to our ability and appreciate your time being here. >> Thank you, council member. Um on the same note, thank you all for being punctual. I apologize on behalf of my colleagues for not being here. Um, but nonetheless, we'll get the meeting rolling, going, and I appreciate you all being here. There are certain things that we need to clarify. There's numbers being thrown out there in the public stating the amounts that taxes will go up if this bond should pass, which are completely false. Um, so I'm glad that we're here. I'm glad that you all are here. The public is here. The chamber is here because fact of the matter is a lot of the information being passed out there is simply false. Um, so any questions? I I do ask the public to please please come join these meetings, watch these meetings, get informed because there's a lot of information that's being put out there that is simply not true. Mr. Neb, you'd like to continue with the discussion. >> Council members, um yeah, tonight today is uh going to be the budget workshop. We my understanding based upon staff uh input and everything is that we've never had a conversation with the city council this early in the budget cycle. But this is the part of of how we we should be creating our budgets. Uh one, we build the budget off of your vision, the things that are that are important to you. We we need to be talking earlier within this budget cycle. And so we wanted to incorporate you earlier into the budget. This year we are doing a lot of different changes. You'll hear all about within that, but we'll talk about some of the strategic initiatives that we know that are out there percolating. We'll talk about the budgets that uh you all influence as well too like the district budgets and and all of that information. We're going to walk through uh predominantly today the I guess the nature of how we're trying to build the budgets is that we need to start with the revenue essentially how much revenue are we going to have in order to build the expenses that are there. We are required by state law to have a balanced budget. It cannot be we're not like the federal government where we can create money out of wherever. Uh we have to have a balanced budget by state law. And so that means >> we can't print money. >> We cannot print money. We >> can't print money. That's unbelievable. Yeah. >> However, we may maybe we should I don't know. No, but the but the whole idea is that um we have to have a balanced budget where the revenue and the expenses match up. The revenue comes from a lot of different sources. And so that that's why we want to talk about the revenue first. We do know that uh there is only so much new revenue that's generated unless we start changing fees, changing whatever that structure. We have caps on our property tax. But there are some there's some opportunities within all of this for you. As we build this out, this budget, it becomes a prioritization of the budget as to what's the most important all the way through until we've balanced it out. And uh we don't normally try to leave much money left on the table because there's a lot of needs out there for our community and we want to look through that. The bond referendum section of this conversation with with when we get to it. Uh again, the bond referendum is a is a conversation with the public. It is us going out to the public saying, "Hey, here's some of the needs we have. Can you help us do these needs?" We're not forcing anything on anybody. But what we are doing is we're asking the public to consider the options that are out there. And so we have we we followed up on some of that. I will share within that section some of the alternatives that we may have to us if the if the bond referendum wasn't to be successful. Most of our bond referendums are on basic needs. For most of it is all basic needs where it's repairs of buildings. It's it's improvements of those systems. There are some new things as well, too, but it offsets the cost of maintaining stuff that has been loved to death. So, we're going to walk through that. Um, I'm going to keep my uh uh a lot of the information um more brief on this and but I I we have it we have it all laid out to kind of walk through these steps. So, we are going to work on a clear foundation. We want to align our priorities. The city's priorities should be the vision of the council first. And that's why we're why I'm building it this manner for this this budget year. This is the first time that we've we've invited you in early. Uh you're going to get to see how some of the sausage is made as we as we walk through the steps because there is a lot of conversations that go through that. This will be a more transparent and communication process. I believe that the the bond referendum was actually a more transparent system where we're going to the public saying this is what our needs are rather than just initiating something on top of the on top of that. We'll talk a little bit more about that as we get to that. uh want to prepare for the key financial considerations and I want to talk a little bit about the district level engagement because uh there's there's been some conversations about how that fits within our model and just know that uh within all of our research and everything we are looking at the cities like Austin San Antonio Corpus Christie McAllen we're looking at a lot of our comparable cities and we're saying we're we're trying to steal the best of what they are doing and bringing it here with us as well too so Um, I'm going to stop my part of the presentation right at that point and we're going to bring up uh Mr. Sparza. He's going to cover uh the revenue estimates and uh kind of the overview of the annual budget process, key dates, and then the preliminary revenue estimates which is going to temper the next part of the conversation. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. your name for the record, please. First with the budget department for the record. Honorable mayor and council uh as far as again for the record uh I will be talking about the strategic meeting for the budget uh for the going over the fiscal year 25 current budget that we're working on and I will also be looking at some of the projection revenues [clears throat] that we have seen preliminarily right now at this early stage. But before I get into the PowerPoint, I do want to uh advise council and the public uh that the uh we received the uh GFA award for the distinguished budget presentation for the budget year of effective October 1st, 2024. Um this is an award that is uh we submit our budget last year to the GFA for their review. Our our submission is in December. We normally around March get notified if we receive the award. So, uh this is the uh third year that my staff uh as when I came in as the budget director have been working and this is the uh third uh recognition that we have. So, I'd like to uh you know thank my staff for their dedication and support uh in in continuing this uh GFO award that we the budget department has been getting uh from your views. Thank you very much staff. Appreciate that a lot. Thank you. ABSOLUTELY. [applause] You all can please STAND [applause] [applause] doing a wonderful job guys. Thank you for all that number crunching. I can imagine the miracles you all have to work out there in there. Thank you. The first slide that I have is the uh table of of contents of the material that we're going to be covering. Uh like Mr. Net mentioned, we're going to cover the budget calendar with some of the key dates that we have in there in the upcoming months. We're going to go over some of budget, some budget glosseries, some definitions, the different uh governmental types that we have within the city of Laro. We will also cover the consolidated budget and what the consolidated budget is. Um within the consolidated consolidated budget, we do have the enterprise funds, we have the internal service uh funds, we have special revenues and we have our main general fund revenue and the numbers above each one of this category correlates to the page number on the presentation. So we will also be discussing and talking about the budget process that we've done in the past and the new strategies as we go forward with our proposed fiscal year 26 budget as we develop that with the department's conjunction with management and and council's uh support and direction as well. We will be talking about some preliminary general fund revenues uh that that we have to work with in balancing our budget for general fund. So with that takes us to our calendar, our budget calendar and our budget calendar here starts in February. However, we do [clears throat] start, like I mentioned, we submit our final draft or of our adopted budget to GFQ for their review. So as soon as we finish that, we start in January and we start creating our different uh levels for the departments to enter their information. In the month of February, we kick off our notice to our departments. We also start conducting budget department trainings with the different departments. We have some general uh sessions and we also have onetoone trainings with the departments. March which is the month that we're in right now. Uh we in March we have to complete our internal service funds. Uh and I'll go into detail of what internal service funds we have. But the reason we need to finish those prior to is that they're funds that have like health and wellness that we need to determine our in proposed insurance medical rates, our insurance rate, our IT services that we need. >> Excuse me. May the record show that council member Tyler King is present. Thank you. Thank you. >> And one of the other ones is our our fleet internal service. We also finish up the revenues and expenditures that are due from the departments in March. This year we have the council strategic meetings which is today. uh this is what we're covering in March. We'll be also be having budget town hall meetings as per uh request. We will be submitting this uh Wednesday. We'll be submitting all the payroll reports to the departments. This is a list of all the personnels that they have that they review uh make sure that everybody's accounted for, all vacant positions are accounted for and they review that and they submit that to us back to the budget department. We will also be conducting a a citizens uh budget survey and I have a slide specifically on that as we as we move forward in the in the presentation. March uh in April we have those payroll reports due from the departments. We will also have our fund summaries uh initial deadline from the departments to finish all their ex revenues and expenditures. May we have city manager and department meetings to review proposed budgets as well as CIP. One of the other items that we start back in uh we actually started earlier than that in uh January uh is meeting with the departments as it relates to CIP projects. So last year uh we started we the CIP has been in different departments. It's been in finance department. It's been in the budget department. has been in the city manager's department. Uh two years ago it was delegated to the engineering department as uh that has been a best practice recommended by GOPA since engineering has a primary role on projects. So we have had we are now having more of a team effort in our CIP uh budget uh finance city manager's office and engineering are working together to update our CIP projects and we're actually having to develop uh better strategies to do uh have a better representation of what's in the CIP and that has really uh given us some dividends uh and we'll have something in reference to CAPS as as we move forward in the presentation. as well. Thank you. Um, in May we have performance measures training for the departments which is part of a budget process that's included in our budget book as well. >> Mr. SP, one second, please. Okay, >> Mr. Spurs, just regarding the CIP budget that's going to be in July, are you doing a plan A and a plan B pending if the bond referendum passes? Because obviously the CIP discussion in August will be quite a bit different based on whe They're not >> most of our pro most of our projects and that's one of the things as we're meeting with our departments that might be projects that come up everything that's in our CIP or should I say the items that are in the bond referendum are in our CIP currently as we have it uh we've been updating the CIP the the CIP is a work in process as we uh find out that certain projects are no longer a priority we change their priority levels but all the items the referendum or in the CIP, >> right? But it would significantly increase what we can do with the CIP. If it passes in August and if it fails, then there's then it's a tougher, you know, challenge of of the limits of of how much we can do. So, I'm just asking is is there >> is there a contingency plan in case it doesn't pass because we'd have less bond capacity in August. So we would have to make much more difficult decisions in August if it didn't pass versus if it does pass it opens up possibly some other projects that would not be included if >> we do have in in uh uh the presentations today we are going to be talking to that as to what happens if it doesn't pass and I think Mr. is going to be that section as we go forward. >> Thank you. But yeah, council members, the the nature of this is that yeah, depending on what happens with the bond referendum, that will change our priorities of our general bonding that we have done on a regular basis that but if if the bond referendum doesn't pass, then there are certain things that we can fit it within that that structure. There are certain things that we can do and so we'll talk a little bit about that as we move forward. But but the the quick I think to the the point of what the question is is that yes what we we will rep prioritize essentially with the CIP depending on what happens with with the within the bond referendum. >> Great. Thank you. >> May go ahead. Yes. >> Thank you. It so we will be talking about priorities today because I would like to know what those priorities are for the >> some it is I I would state that um that we're not we may not deep into like these are the these are the top priorities within that but we are going to do some strategic uh initiatives that that the council needs to kind of weigh in that will alter how we build the budget. So I I don't know if we're going to get it exactly there. You'll let me know afterwards I'm sure as to whether or not we get that far on this conversation but this is um I I would state that getting into the priorities that would be the next step. It's just going to be based upon your vision at the beginning. Sure. And then we're going to interpret that vision within the the budget. So if we don't get there today, we get there the next the next conversation. It tempers our conversations with our departments. >> Right. Absolutely. Thank you. >> I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> And where does the VA compliment fall into all of this? >> I I've got a little bit of a conversation with that. I I would uh I would argue to a certain point the within the Viva Laredo compensations uh the the Viva Laredo comprehensive plan uh it has a vision an overall vision within the structure and then it of course it has a series of projects that are that are within there. We'll try to incorporate that but I I would I would tell you that based upon the vision of the the comprehensive plan everything that we do meets back to that. we've just not articulated it to that level. And so, uh, but it plays within that role. And and so we'll we'll talk a little bit about that because there is there's there's part of the the vision and the spirit of the plan as well as those specifics that are listed in the plan. They do balance out and I I believe that the city does a very good job of matching it. We just not articulated it as well as we could. >> Mr. Um, >> may the record reflect please that the mayor is present and also mayor promp that is >> and council member Gonzalez. I apologize I didn't see you back there. [laughter] >> All right. Thank you. >> Yes. Go ahead. >> When you're showing the the presentation on the screen, is this also being shown to the people at home? Because I know for us it's ing up a little bit. Is there a way to show them the presentation as well? >> Just from here only the visuals that we're seeing here, but all of that is >> perfect. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, mayor. In June, uh we like I mentioned we will be finalizing the fund summaries and that will take us to July. I will finalize the proposed budget that is going to be coming to council. The submission of the budget and CIP to city council. We have a tenative date of July 29th to meet our requirements. We publish in July also the we publish the summary of the proposed budget and CIP notice to the public hearing in a local newspaper. Then at the dates that we have for that is July 29th to August 1st. That moves in moves us into August where we have our city council budget workshops. They're tentatively uh scheduled for August 5th through the 7th. We normally have them in that first week of August. As we move into September, there are some key dates in there. We have the public hearing and introduction of the ordinance. Uh tenative date for that is September 1st. We have the notice of the tax rate on September 8th. That's a tenative date. And then we have the final reading of the ordinance to adopt [clears throat] and levy taxes on September 15th as a tenative date for that. As we finalize September, we create all the uh accounts for our new fiscal year. And on October 1st, we implement our adopted budget. This is basically uh the overview of the budget calendar. These days uh you know change a little bit within those months to meet the deadlines that that we have with the departments. Any any questions on the calendar itself? >> All right. >> No questions. Proceed. Thank you. >> Following we have some budget glosseries. Uh what we're trying to explain here uh to the public is the different type of fund types that the city of Laredo has. Uh one the main uh government type that we have is where the governmental fund type. This is where we have our general fund. We have our special revenue. We have our capital projects. We have our debt service funds fund. And then we have our permanent funds. And I'm going to elaborate on some of this as we go through the projections as to what falls under each category. We have proprietary funds. The proprietary funds are funds that focus on determination of operating income changes in net position or cost recovery. Financial position and cash flow. There are two types of proprietary funds which are the enterprise and the internal service funds. From there we move to debt service. Debt service is where we account for the expenditure of principal and interest payments and this is for property taxes. And then we have capital project funds which are mainly our account for expenditure of capital outlays including acquisitions of constructions capital facilities and assets. In this category we mainly have all our bond issues and this takes us to the consolidated budget for the city of Laredo. This encompasses a a consolidated budget is a summary of multiple budgets that are combining to one. It can be used to present an overview of an organization finances. And to the right, we have an example of the city of Laredo's uh consolidated budget, which is 984 million. And this is for fiscal year uh 2425. and we'll go into the details of each one of those categories to the right general fund special revenue so forth. One item that I did want to cover in today's meeting was that the there is a total net operating budget. The consolidated fund financial statements may include inner fund val balances and activities within the primary government which is the first type of of uh fund type that we have. This amounts must be reduced to prevent duplication in governmentwide financial statements. So as as we talked about the total operating budget which is 984 million we have to take out less the operating transfers that we have transfers are transferred that are going from for example from general fund to health department to the police grants the fire grants and all the departments that this the general fund supports included in there is Max Mandel as well. So the total net rating for the city of Laredo uh is $697 million when we exclude our intergovernmental transfer. >> Any any questions on the net operating budget for the city of >> Is this for all departments? >> Yes. >> So >> our consolidated statement is we take all our individual uh statements that we have out there. We take care of activities uh sames arena all the different funds are combining to this one main document which is the total budget for the city. So sometimes when we say we have 984 million as a as an appropriation or budget, it is all these different components that we had throughout the city. Utilities, solid waste, bridge, >> right? I guess my question though is that you say less operating transfers. So you're transferring out to the health department, police and fire to cover math grant matches. >> Correct. >> Are you is this uh operating transfers to the all the departments across the board? >> Correct. Yes. There's departments that transfer within departments as well. Like for example, we have bridge, we have the bridge operating fund, but we also have a debt service fund, a construction fund. So from that department, there's intergovernmentals as we move monies into the specialized funds that we >> Yes. Go ahead. >> Along the same lines, there municipalities. >> Yes. >> Because a lot of times people our budget to other cities budgets in Texas or elsewhere similar size. So, you know, just wanted to make sure that we're all, you know, we're reporting the same way. >> We we we're following the GFOA guidelines to reporting and that's one of the reasons when we submit our budget to the GFA for the review. They're they're looking at all that that we have to meet certain standards of reporting. mayor and mayor and city council. The the one difference though that you'll see within the consolidated budget is that not every city operates a bridge or a port system. Not every city has a water or wastewater utility. So those are the differences that will occur within the budget. So you can't just look at the numbers themselves and try to compare against the numbers of of what how the city operates because a lot of things have been privatized in different areas. So when you look at it, you also have to look at the services that are being provided. General fund generally is our our our [snorts] most uh normal fund I guess that everybody operates because almost everybody operates a police and fire department. They operate a a park system, a street system and so that's the general fund. So you have to you have to look above than just the consolidated budget. Everybody reports it the same way, but you have to look at the pieces within it. >> Just as another distinction is most cities don't run a health department either. >> And that is correct. That's another fund that yeah it would be divided differently from that. So >> mayor question um so what what efforts has the city made to present a zerobased budget to achieve a balance budget >> zerobased budget is a budgeting uh process where we start at zero and everything has to be justified. So we we we don't do a zerobased budgeting and and I'll go into the strategies that we've used before and the new strategies as we move forward with the the new direction that we have. So I'll touch a little bit on that as as I move forward. >> I appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Go ahead. So as we look at the consolidated budget which is which represents all the different departments and fund within the city we like I mentioned the 984 million appropriate we have appropriating expenditures. General fund is 278 million. General fund is the one that we there has to be a balanced budget of 278 revenues. We have to have the expenses have to match. As we move down the list, we have special revenues 147 million. Debt service, which I mentioned is where we pay our debt service payments, 35 million. We have our capital projects, 31 million. This is where we have our bonds. We have our enterprise funds 393 million. We have our our internal service funds of 95 million and then all the other are categorized under we have a fortune of 5 million. So as we look on the donut chart to the right, enterprise funds make 40% of the consolidated. Uh we have general fund makes 28% of our consolidated budget followed by special revenues at 14.9%. This is the the allocation of the consolidated budget. [clears throat] This chart uh I wanted to show this chart because this is a year history of the different type of funds that we have. When we look at the consolidated from left, we have fiscal year. We're looking at fiscal year 16 to fiscal year 25 that we're currently in. Our budget back in fiscal year 16 was 58 $588 million. Moving to the future, we're at 984 million, which is a $395 million increase during this 10year time frame. This represents an average of 44 million growth from fiscal year 16 to f year 25 at an average percentage increase of 6%. So looking at the last 10 years, our budget has been growing at about 6% when we look at the consolidated budget including all funds >> below that and thank you very much. I I specifically asked for that information and uh it means a lot. I think the public should should understand and should see how we got here. It's that type of wording that I used. How did we get here and how are we going to how can we justify such increases over the last 10 years. Um right now that's this is a general overview of it. I think we'll get into the, you know, the fine details as we move forward, but um I think this but this represents that that those two little lines right there represent pretty much uh what what I see that is very important for the public to understand um how we come together with with bond issues and and and why we go to bond issues and how it intersects with budgetary matters as we move forward in those increases because I know you're you can discuss right now, are the revenues catching up to to um the uh the budget cycles? In other words, are we are we in line? We're growing. Our revenue growing, our budget is growing because we're expanding. And um I think in the detailed presentation that you're going to have that will explain the last 10 years. >> Yes. And as we looked that the top section talks about the consolidate which is all the funds again the the our primary fund that we have the most issue balancing is our general fund. General fund is also one of the funds that provide a lot of the the services that the city of Laredo provides police fire public s uh public safety parks public works etc. So in in looking now at general fund alone fiscal year 16 we were at $177 million. Moving forward to fier 25 our current uh budget is $278 million. So in the last 10 years we've grown $101 million in our in our budget. This represents about an average of 11 million per year. And you can see in there the different years in 17 it was 6 million uh we have years of fiscal year 18 11 million 6 million 73 and you're going to see that in fisc year 25 we grew 29 million and this was partially because of the uh growth that we've had uh in personnel uh we've had two fire stations that are coming on board u so this equates to about 11 million per year. We average it out and this averages averages out to a 5.2 increase in our expenditures. >> Special revenues. Special revenues. >> When you're aaging percentages in the last column and it says percent, >> are you just Oh, the chart went away, but I have it here. Okay. >> Is the average between fiscal year 17 to this year? So you're you're just adding the percentages together and divided by 10, I'm guessing. But it it's actually a you know, it's a 67% increase over total over the 10 years for the consolidated and a 57% increase um for the general fund. You're you're just saying that >> on average that's how much it went up per year. >> Correct. I'm not getting the the percentage increase from fiscal year 16 to fiscal year 25. I'm getting the average increase per >> Yes. Go ahead. >> Do you have a chart with the inflation rates for those years? >> I don't have it with me, but I I I do look at that and consider that for our budget process. >> Have that too. >> Can we have that too? >> Yes, definitely. The special revenues went from 86 million to 147 million uh increase of 61 million. It's an average of 7 million per year or 9.7% on average. We have our enterprise funds went from 236 million in fiscal year 16 to 393 million in fiscal year 25 was an increase of 157 million for the enterprise funds and our internal service funds went from 52 million to 95 million as a 43 43 million increase for those of those 10 years. >> Mayor question. Yes, go ahead. >> Mr. Spa, excuse the interruption. Uh going back to the general fund, we have a budget of 177 million in 2016 and we went up $101 million and our revenues are our expenditures at that rate as well. So you have the the percentage of increase of what we we're receiving, but what about what we're spending? >> Has it increased at that rate or is it higher? >> No, we're well we're we have to have a balanced budget. So whatever our expenses are, we have to have the revenues to match it to accomplish our balanced budget. Part of the issue that we're having right now is that our revenues are not keeping with our expenditure growth. I do have >> Why is that? Where are we spending unnecessarily? And why can't we keep that up? Why are we not are we not able to keep that up? >> Not spending anything unnecessarily. We're spending it for specific purposes and as we move forward uh and I have a slide that talks about the top three revenues and where those top three revenues are going to. >> Okay. >> We'll get to that in >> a couple of slides. Thank you. >> And I like I mentioned I know that there was there had been some questions on the 10 years. That's why I wanted to make sure to cover them. And I want to make sure that the the citizens also see how we have grown and we are one of the fastest if not growing cities and and and with that comes the issue of of a growing budget. Even if we prioritize we're going to have that growth. >> Yes. Go ahead. >> Um Mr. Special revenue fund for fiscal year 2022. It's it jumps significantly. Can we assume that those are the ARPA funds that the city receives? >> Yes. >> And um in this slides I'm going to go into the different type of funds. Enterprise funds kind of give you a definition and and we have some picture depictions here of the departments themselves. So an enterprise fund uh is a proprietary fund like we mentioned in a slide below before. uh they are used to report activities for which a fee is charged and an external users for goods or services. So in our enterprise category we break down now what is part of our enterprise on our top of the list we have bridge with $108 million we have utilities water at 111 million utilities uh sewer 81 million so those two departments are utilities we just broken down into the water and the sewer side of it and uh because the 111 million it would add the 81 million and that would be the total budget for the utilities department. So that's one of our biggest departments out there followed by solid waste at $49 million. We have transit which is a component unit of the city at $41 million and we have the municipal housing at $3 million. To the right we have the pie chart and if we look at the bridge bridge represents from the 393 million that we have in the enterprise fund uh types 27% is uh bridge utilities water alone represents 28% of the enterprise funds and then the water the the sewer represents 20%. As we look into now the internal service funds. We have some pictures there of the internal service funds that we have as well. And the internal service funds are proprietary funds used to report activities that provide goods and services to other governmental departments, agencies or entities on a cost reimburse basis. These funds are designated to operate on a break even basis over time. While shortterm surpluses or deficits are not problematic, a significance of growing surpluses or deficits over time would undermine the fund cost recovery purposes. These are the internal service funds that I mentioned earlier and we'll we'll look in this next slide. [snorts] We see which departments those are. So we have fleet management bud which budget is 23 million. We have the health and benefits budget for 51 million. We have risk at 12 million and we have the information systems technology IST at $8 million. And in the pie chart to the right health and benefits represent 54% of the $94 million that we have in the internal service funds. followed by fleet at 24%. And risk at 12.9. So with with [clears throat] this funds as as we do the budget for them and I mentioned earlier in the budget calendar, we need to finish this funds because this expense trickles to those individual funds and of course in in past years we have been uh having some issues balancing because anything increase here because of the fleet charges uh that are increasing. The health benefits have have been increasing and and are projected to continue to increase. This increases here are are mainly passed to the department and one of those department is a general fund department that we are trying to balance. Internal service funds back. Then we have the special revenue uh funds that we have out there. Uh those are the funds is a a governmental fund type used to account for the proceeds of specific revenue sources that are restricted for a com committed to expenditures committed expenditure for a specific purpose other than debt service or capital projects and exclusive of resources held in a trust for individuals private organizations or other government. So this is where whenever we have special revenues for example stormwater fees which are under our NPS uh the health department that has fees that have to be spent on the health department or grants that have to be accounted those are all our special revenue funds and in in this slide we show the the special revenues that we have within the city. We have the sports and community venue uh 35 million, health department 35 and in in this category right now health we have as well detox uh we have the police grants uh 20 million airport at 19 million environmental services 10 million we have community development 6 million uh hotel motel 6 million conventions [clears throat] and district 4 million uh parks 4 million and the special The pie to the right of that uh our health department is 23% of the 147 million that we have in this category of special revenue funds followed by the police grants at 13 and a half and airport 12%. And the sports and community venue at 23 24% of the $147 million that we have for special revenues. Then we get to the good one. General fund. General fund typically serves as the chief operating fund of the government. The main operating fund used to account for and report all financial resources not accounted in any other uh fund. Currently as we stand we have 19 departments in general fund out of the 27 city departments. And following are the different departments that we have. City manager, budget, municipal court, city attorney, city secretary, tax office, [clears throat] finance, human resources planning engineering traffic, police, fire, public works, parks library intern economic development, community development, and marketing and communication, which was a a new department that we added last year. As we get into the general fund numbers, uh we have $278 million for general fund and these are the revenues. Now look, looking at the the other side on on the revenues because we spoke about the uh appropriations in the expense side, we have property taxes uh this for this fiscal year at $93 million. That's what's coming into general fund. We have sales tax that generates 55 million. We have the bridge transfer that bringing in $44 million. We have charges for services at 24. Other financing sources we have 23 million. Licensing permits 10 million. And then we have the miscell miscellaneous franchise fees, fines, and the other taxes. The pie in the the pie on the right shows as the property taxes bring in 33% 33.3% of the $278 million that general fund has to operate followed by sales tax at 19.9 transfer accounts to 15.9 of the $278 million that we have. Then we have the the the other smaller ones. But as you can see, this three are the main ones that are bringing in the most the main revenue for general fund. As we look at the now the general fund expenditures 178 million. This is where the money is going to. Public safety 167 million, general government 39 million. Culture and recreation 26 million. We have transfers that we talked about the intergovernmental transfers that cover other departments or other funds uh 17 million. We have other financing uses at at 12 million, public works at 12 million. We have insuranceances of 4 million and health and wellness at 1 million. As we look at the pie chart, you can see that 60% of our money goes to public safety using fire. As we look at the next category, we have general government at 14.2. And then we have the other smaller amounts that go to the different departments culture recreation transfer, other sources, public works, and the insurance that we have. May >> go ahead. Um when you're discussing public safety now taking 59.9% of the entire g or encompassing 59.9% of the general fund budget that's a change it it seemed well just from what I had heard previously that that number was a little bit higher the numbers were in the 60s do you see that as a trend is there an explanation >> one of the we had is we had uh traffic was part of the public safety prior to in the last year's budget. Traffic has now been is now part of the engineering department. So we're no longer accounting for it in this category. That was a change that was done last year, but it's been about 60 we've been about around the 60% range for the public. >> I have it and another slide that's coming up. >> Mayor and city council, uh, one of the things about that when you look at our comparable cities as well too, anything within the 60 to 65% range is good for public safety within the general fund. Almost everybody kind of holds it within that realm. It seems to work function very well for what what everybody else is doing. So, Laredo is no different. We're at we're at essentially 60%. >> We're very compar comparable to the comparable cities that we live in. Now these are the general fund expenditures and this is the fiscal year 25. This is the numbers that we're currently working with. So this is by category. So out of our budget as we spoke about the the revenues that we received 20 $20 million go to personnel. So as you can see in the pie, it's very evident that most of the general fund because it's it's personnel intensive goes into personnel. That is our biggest category making up 72.2% of the general funds budget. It is followed by uh contractual at 13.7 and then the rest materials supplies other charges and the intergovernmental transfers. That's why when we look at cutting general fund, it is it becomes very difficult because if if we want to make a significant cut in general fund, it basically means we're going to tap into our personnel. As we talk about personnel and this is one of the slides that we have the column, the slide here has a department name. It has the the original budget that they have for each one of those departments and it then it shows me the personnel amount related to that correlated department and then the percentage of their personnel is to their original budget. So city attorneys uh you know they have a $ 1.7 million budget, 1.5 is personnel. We're at 90 91.86% is Personel cost as we move down we have fire at current budget for fire is 74.2 million personnel is at 68.1 that is a 91.77% is personnel and we move down the list uh I have internal internal audit 90% budget 89% finances 88% is at 88.27% of their budget personel. So personnel like I mention it's it's that's where when we look at uh cost of living uh longevity uh contract increases have a a direct impact into the the number of of general fund when we balance when we try to balance it. >> Is it safe? >> Is it safe to say that that the percentage city attorney down the line. Um the remainder to get to 100% is mostly operable operating costs >> because you can see the disparity on on on some of these departments and and how little how how you know but pretty small amounts to to operate each individual office or department. It's very important to see that. Thanks. And and if we add and and I'm going to get into the strategies that we have before um the the the rem the the monies that they have after we take care of of contract the personnel uh departments have been asked to work within that those allotted budget because once we allocate the funding for the personnel the the the money that's left over to cover materials and contractuals uh is pretty much depleted. One of the issues that that we're having lately because of the one inflationary cost and and also we also seem to have a a big increase on our IT cost anything related to it which is now most of the software that is out there is cloud-based so we don't purchase a software and then we just pay a maintenance now we're having to pay a continuous annual uh service fee and that has transitioned from a capital site to an operating expense side. So, that has been a challenge and like I mentioned uh on our internal service fund. We're trying to keep up with those changes in how those those costs are coming in for that >> can and and can you elaborate a little bit more on u [clears throat] how that affects uh well I know how it affects you all but departments within themselves the the operating cost uh because of u um you know let's take for instance the police department and how much of that cost is now going to maintain those buildings. Uh does it tap into the the extra does it does it make your budget go over because of maintenance and operating those buildings or >> there's there's two components of that and I know we have it in one of our future uh slides that we have. Uh Mr. De has it on his side. U but there's the day maintenance of things that break and there's the the improvements that we need to make replacing a big AC that falls under the capital side of it which we can bond for it instead of having those monies impact our operations side. >> Okay. >> So if it's just maintenance things that break you know here and there that's part of within the operating it's already incorporated into our operations. >> Yes. Go ahead. Do you have a breakdown on if you're wanting to emphasize personnel percentages on this slide, but do you have information on the difference like what is being spent from the original budget compar like for example take I don't know human resources or city manager's office you have the budget amount and then you have the personnel amount and then it's only about 7978 % what's the other 20% going to you have that breakdown >> uh I don't have it in this slide because I'm I'm trying to have a high level uh amount of what we have and and the point that I'm trying to bring across here is that the the main portion of the general fund's budget is personnel. So, as we try to reduce and and I I know there's been comments out there that there's a lot of fat in our budget, you know, or there inefficiencies on how we're paying for some spending this money, but the personnel is the biggest cost, you know, that we have. And that's my point in saying there that the materials and contractual is a smaller portion of that budget. We still look at it and make sure when when we look at the departments when they submit for budget, our workets I can we can see what they spent before. >> No, I understand that. I understand what you're trying to show us. But what I'm saying is I don't see on the next slide any breakdown on what else is going into these departments. And for example, police fire um when we approve uh grants or for resources, uh vehicles, you know, supplies that they need, is that for in the original budget. >> Yes. >> Can we have a breakdown of what you're including from the original budget? >> Yes. >> And then what you're because I don't see it in your >> It's not in the presentation. And if if uh for example, we have our uh when we submit the the the book and I think we have one of the books which is our book if you want to pick it up. John within that book each of the fund sermons when we have in there it has a break [clears throat] it's broken down by personnel materials and supplies contractuals uh capital outlay transfers and that information so >> so this is from 2024 will be in that book or is this the projection? >> No, this is this is still we're going over the current budget. So that is in that >> and I can provide you as as because even the book has a summary of that. We actually have worksheets that give you every single line item that we have and we have the same thing. Uh the two years actuals. >> How many pages would that be? >> Uh I would say about 300 350 pages. >> You have it electronic? >> Yes. Yes. >> Can we have a copy of that? >> Yes. >> Yeah. And and Mayor Pro Tim and city council. The idea of this meeting too was to stay on the revenue side as we kind of move into it. So all these numbers will kind of adjust but happy to pull that information together uh for for further conversations. >> Mayor Pro may >> Yes. >> Mr. Fa um reverting back to my question earlier. So let's take for example 2018 an increase an increase of $1 million 22 an increase of $13 million 23 an increase of $20 million. And you just mentioned that 80 some% of our general fund is for employees. Correct. So you're telling me that we've increased employees or personnel by that amount of money 80% of let's just say I give an example in 23 >> 72 >> the 72% is the the percentage of personnel within our budget for each one of those >> right but we see the increase happening at an average of 5.2% 2% per year. >> So is our personnel increasing by that amount? Not by the five point percentage, but if I'm talking about 70 some percent of the $20 million, let's just say 10 year history. >> Yes. >> Because at this point, I see there should be a surplus at the end and there is not. >> Well, personnel is not the the we do have contractuals materials in the other in the other line items and those have increased as well. So we do have a growth because this number here includes everything not just personnel >> right but you mentioned the majority >> of that is personnel >> is personnel right so is that increasing at the same amount that that's what my question is so if we're increasing by $10 million we're increasing $7.2 $2 million for employees. That's pretty much I'm just talking around figure out of course >> and and the revenues have been increasing. The only thing we have been using some of our reserves to meet those increases and one of the strategies that we're using that we're doing now is that we need to uh slow down the expense side to let the revenues catch up. And I do have a slide. So at this point we're surpassing what we're bringing in as far as general fund is concerned and the increases are simply not enough to keep up with demand as far as our personnel. Thank you. [clears throat] So this this slide talks about the last year's budget process and and in previous budget years that we had normally we have departments are instructed to implement a zero growth for all their controllable line items. Any additional requests were prioritized and submitted to management for review. The internal service funds were given more flexibility to address inflationary costs for medical insurance and technology. And this has been the the past practice. We looked at all the expenditures and then we identified the monies that we have to meet those expenditures. Most of the time the expenditures are higher than what we generate with our main revenue line items. Our strategy moving forward. A new directive growth control growth. Number one, align expenses with revenue growth. Departments are required to prioritize their expenditures to correspond with revenues. Manage the use of reserves and fund balance. Two, potential revenue increases. We have asked all our departments to look at all revenue ordinances to evaluate potential increases that account for inflationary that can help us account for inflationary costs while also considering the practice of similar other cities or comparable cities that we're looking at. Three, the fund balance uh the general fund closing balance increasing to 80 days. We have a minimum requirement of 15% in general fund as a fund balance. Last [clears throat] year we were at close to 20% when we presented our budget and we are striving to move we're trying to get to 22% but in long term we're trying to reach 25%. And this is if this is tied into the financial consultants recommendation that now more most cities comparable cities that we have are getting to that 25 30 35% fund balance. The fund balance is what the agency rating agencies look at if is something that happens. Does the city have enough money to carry them through the fiscal year? And our fourth fourth uh item that we have in here is our survey. Uh we are conducting a budget survey to collect feedback from citizens as budget uh as budget priorities from from their input. So this is the new strategy moving forward as we prepare our budget process. the budget survey that I just mentioned. These are some of the questions that are put out and this QR scan scope takes you directly to that survey. It is already online and working. Uh we are working with our PIO office to also deploy this survey into the uh different apps that we have. We will have it in our main uh website and our uh for the citizens to log in. But this is currently already working. If you scan the QR code, it takes you to the survey and these are some of the questions that we have in there. Um we uh for example, please rank following the the following city services in order of importance to you and they have they select from the selection. How satisfied are you with the following how sorry how satisfied are you with the following uh city services? If you had a $100 to allocate across the following areas, how would you distribute it? >> Mr. Can I stop you? >> Sure. >> Um where did we get these questions from? >> This is this is questions that we work with management uh to put out and get some input from our >> Yeah, Mayor Pro Tim. Yeah, the these questions came from we we researched other cities in Texas that had actually put the surveys together. San Antonio and and Austin predominantly are the ones they either do a uh every two-year survey or they they build it within their system. So these questions are actually based upon that research that we have done with other cities about trying to trying to focus in on those best practices those other cities are doing. Dallas was also a city that we looked at as well to come up with some of those questions. >> Question. >> Um, Mr. N, this is also being produced in Spanish. >> Yes, ma'am. >> I think we can move to the next slide. So these are the preliminary uh the previous slides have been showing uh numbers for 25 fiscal year which is the current year that we're working at. These are some preliminary general fund revenues. Uh the top three revenue accounts that the general fund has which represents 72% are current taxes sales t tax and the bridge transfer. So currently we're projecting uh revenues of 287 on the right square compared to our current budget of $278 million in >> and can I can I ask where did you get the 3.5 like is that based on but is that based on growth of >> or what >> it's over it's based on the growth that we've had on our those three line items that we were talking about. So we're looking at uh current taxes and how that increase has increased in the last 10 years. Uh we're looking at the sales tax and bridge in the same manner. >> So how much of how much can you break this down further like how much increase from sales tax? How much from bridge and how much from the current tax including the 2.5 cap that we have plus the growth because that seems like a small increase when you factor all those things. >> I have those in the following. Do you have it? Okay. >> Yeah. Can you see it? >> So, um the big takeaway from this slide is those those three revenues generate those three revenue accounts generate 72% of the 287.8 million. This the general fund has 203 revenue accounts. So, we're very dependent on current taxes, sales tax, and that bridge transfer to be able to fund the the expenditures in for general fund property tax valuation. This is just a slide depicting on the left side we have a tax a total taxable value and this is as to where our current taxes come from. We have about $ 24 billion of assessed valuations and on the right side we have the breakdown of the debt service and general fund. This is the revenues that are generated from the property tax valuations. So in 24 f year 24 uh 25 uh in descending order 25 23 and 22 in 25 we had $93 million coming from property taxes current property taxes. 26 million goes to debt service to pay our our uh bonds. And then the 93 million is what comes into general >> fund to work that still doesn't show current um you know >> property taxes >> property like the property taxes from the current >> and the growth >> I'm too sides away to answer that question >> general general fund property tax revenue. Uh to the left we have our tax rate. Uh the fiscal year 2425 tax rate is is uh 0.57623 for every $100 valuation. The amount of of that portion that goes to debt service is the 11 cents. It's 110735 which is the 11 cents that we talked about. And the M generates those $93 million is 396888 and then to the left of those that number we have the prior year uh tax rate that the city has had. So if we look at 21 which is the first column on the left we see that the tax rate was 60 615370 and it has gone down to 57 533945 and to where we're at right now at 507 623. The chart on the right shows us the revenues that we're getting. So if we look at the second from the right this is the 24 the 93. So it's if we look to the left of that, we have 85 81 73 million71 going back to 2021. And we're projecting a $7 million increase in property taxes with the preliminary numbers I mentioned. Uh we'll be at about $und00 million. >> But I still don't see the breakdown on the growth side, the industrial side, the residential side. >> Oh, no, no, no. Okay. No, you won't have that. We don't have that information. Well, for the projections we still don't have. You're talking about where the revenue is coming on the from the appraisal district. >> Well, just not necessarily. I mean, or you could use the current data that we have right now just to show because people don't understand the the 2.5 cap that we're working under. They think we're lowering the tax rate just because we want to lower the tax rate. And they're not understanding you. I mean, we need to get a clear picture that that people taxes are going up on their properties 2.5 the rest of it's coming from new growth or manufacturing or where where I think this needs to be broken down a little bit >> Mayor Pro Tim and city council u within the [clears throat] big book we do it every year so that 3.5 it does break out how much of that percentage is coming from the the property tax how much is coming from bridge that's the question that you're asking we'll be able to show that we we have that information as well too but it's not built into the presentation that's that's the challenge I think we have with that. But >> yeah, just >> that is that is one of the things that we do every year within the budget cycle is that we look at the the growth rate of every one of those revenue sources and then they combined and and you'll you'll you'll recognize the questions that we're going to be asking because I don't see how we can grow a budget faster than the new revenue that comes in. And that's the that'll be the conversation that we're all going to have. >> Well, it's just nice to see a graph version because the big book is all numbered. >> Yes. Yeah. No, and we can we can we can get that information in into that detail. >> Thank you. Um, so going back to the general fund property tax revenue, um, the the amount that's set aside for debt service, which is that darker blue, >> is that okay? >> So that number has been decreasing. >> Correct. >> And is is that capturing because this does get technical. Is that capturing a a healthy trend? Is that We want to see if we were to pass this bond. Does do we have um an idea of how much that debt service would increase and would we still remain within our historic uh our historic rates? the the item on the B for the bond referendum if I understand the the question correctly is any of the items and and that information is is currently in in the our website there's a section that we have for bond referendums and I can show you that section if you wish when it takes you there we have that ordinance that's going to pass which is going to be in the ballot each one of those items has an impact on that rate that we're talking about for service so that is listed in there with what that increase in that tax rate is going to be. So when we when we had that conversation, we had certain scenarios that we looked at 5 cents, six cents and I think what we passed or what council passed uh as an approved to move forward had a possibility of 10 cents increase on the debt service side. >> So you would would would that be added as 10 cents to that 11 cents? >> Now Keep in mind that as you approve each section, it's on it wouldn't happen all at the same time because we're project we're looking at the next five years as a project would be done. So if year one you have you issue a bond and you know you need three cents to cover that portion of that. That's the only thing that it would increase. >> But one of the things and and that was a great observation that you have in there. We had been at almost a 14 and a half uh rate in there. But past uh past action that that we have done has reduced that amount on the debt service. So normally what we try to do is we want to try to maintain that debt service rate steady and as we pay debt we reissue that debt to keep it in there. But we have had we have been allowing that to be reduced. So this in turn makes the total tax rate decrease. So we have two components in there is we've had a a declining increase on the debt service and the declining increase as the mayor mentioned on the the uh the uh cap of the three and a half%. So that's why we've gone from 61 cents to 50 cents. And what we're trying to do or one one of the impacts of the referendum would be is going to is going to get us higher if those items were to be approved. >> But I I I like the fact that you It's not all the next year. This is a fiveyear project. So, it would be spread out in some way depending on what the needs are if if the voters approve the specific bond projects. >> Correct. >> And I I know we have a little bit more discussion on that as we move forward next presentation as well. >> Yes. Mayor Pro Tim and city council, please pay attention to the left side of the sheet here because that from the 2122 to where we're at 2425, that's considered capacity that we currently have available to us as well too. I want we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to that that item, but I wanted to make sure you understand that there is there's capacity within our budget. It just has an impact on tax rates and everything as well too. So >> I think Mr. N it would be helpful to that SL that graph have its own kind of you know focus >> I think it' be a good >> and it's important for the public to understand that I think in this process. >> Yes ma'am. Thank you. >> Next. >> So now we're going to go into the those three top uh revenues that the general fund has. Uh we're looking at sales tax revenue here. We do have a history going back to 21 to 2425 and also looking at the projection that we're uh coming up with for the new fiscal 26 year. So we're projecting uh the sales tax will be increasing from 55 to 58 million. And I mentioned this are preliminary numbers based on what we're seeing out there. The next the next slide are the bridge transfers we are projecting as you can back in history 21 uh to 25 we were at 30 242 we're at 44 and we are projecting [snorts] an increase of an additional $5 million coming to general fund >> yes >> sorry so I know it is the big unknown and it's a national conversation but do we have ideas of what an increase in tariffs will mean how that will impact our bridge revenue and not not that we can ask your department to be very specific because it seems to be a moving target every single day, but do we have some kind of a plan B for some type of projections if some of these tariffs were actually to go into effect? >> We we've been closely watching the issue of the terror. At this point, it's really difficult to for that. So the assumption that we're doing right now is because the tariffs are going to have an impact on the cost and those costs will be pushed to the consumer. So it's hard to project, you know, what impact that's going to have at this stage of the game. So we're starting our budget process. We're making an assumption and we're looking at a history and a trend and not necessarily taking into account that at this point as we move through the next two three months before we come and present a budget if any of that has an impact we're going to have to adjust our budget to uh to stay within those those means of those revenues. >> Do we have any ideas based on the last time because during the last Trump administration some of the tariffs actually did take effect. So do we have any comparables? Mayor, Mayor Pro Tim, city council, we have not done a full analysis on that though. But the the parts parts of the stuff that we looked at is that we also know that once with the threat of the tariffs coming in this last goound, we saw a drop in the vehicles that were crossing at that time, the commercial vehicles. So, we know that there at least short term there's going to be an impact to it. Uh but I would the analysis that we have completed is is that based upon where we're at now if the tariffs were to go in place and of course in our trip in DC one of the conversations that got said was about the the mentality of the administration wanting to reshore or onshore there they use both of those terms and that's essentially bringing manufacturing back into the nation. That that was the thought process. Just so you know that that is the most expensive proposition based upon the analysis that we have done is that a reshoring and bringing manufacturing back is still more expensive than even doing the tariffs to the level of what they were. We truly believe that anything that happens on the tariff side should be a short-term impact to us because as long as they keep the playing field for everything everybody then we're all good. The customs brokers, of course, they work in annual contracts. And that's the big issue is that because they have these annual contracts of moving product back and forth, they have set fees of what they're charging. And the problem is that the tariffs throwing the tariffs on next week will have an impact on all those contracts. And that's the big issue that we have that we think we're seeing on that. And so the I the whole process is to buy time to get there. And so the custom brokers, they they have to eat that cost if it was to happen during their contractual period. Uh over time it'll everything will balance back out because as long as the playing field is equal. So I would hate to see it done to our bridge but nobody else is right. That's the concept. And so but we we truly believe at least on the front side of that um some of the conversation we'll have today will help us develop out a prioritization of what's the most important to the least. I don't think we'll get there today, but the intent is based upon what that impact is to our revenue because as as Mr. Espars is talking about, we live off of the current year revenue a lot. Now, we're complementing our entire budget with with revenue that we've generated over the years, and that's that's why we're able to carry the budget that we have. But our whole conversation will be is that we need to we need to build our budget based upon the new revenue coming in. Any budget increases unless it's a bigger change because there is a cause and effect on each one of these things which means we all have to drop certain programs in order to maintain the priority uh programs that we have. I think that um in terms of that question from council member Saroa, it's important for us to you know start um looking at the elasticity of this revenue a little more closely so that we can start to stabilize our income and other revenues. I know one of the big criticisms from the public is that we're so heavily dependent on our bridge revenue for operating which is understandable from our perspective. They have trouble understanding it from theirs um and why we can't you know afford certain things with with this money but um you know I know in our 380 agreements we've prioritized manufacturing diversification diversification in other areas so I think um we could use this year as a good um [clears throat] exercise towards shifting our the way we operate and so that the bridge revenue um you know we're projecting growth but you know if we're still at the same level from last year or whatever we can still we probably need to account for that $5 million projected increase just so that we're not because just in case it doesn't come you know or whatever but >> yeah and we'll we'll have we have some actually additional conversation on this as we move into the next part of the convers this this meeting. So, >> so we talked about uh the previous slides of revenues where the money is coming from. Uh on the expenditure side uh we just have I had this slide that just shows for public safety. Uh we public safety is a priority for the city. Uh and this is that's the one thing that we cover first. revenues. So on the left side we have the operating uh total operating for police uh and this includes grants and annuities that we have to cover. Their budget is about 95.9 with the grants and annuity the grants that we uh match as well. Their budget is about 101.6 million. Fire's total budget is 80.8 million. So we have about 182.4 4 million for public safety which includes transfers to cover any uh grants that we're uh matches that we have for grants. When we look at the right side of the uh slide, we have the revenues that are coming in. So current taxes have 100 million sales tax 58.2 million. So that's 158 million if we just look at those two line items versus the 182 we're already short in there. So we then use some of the bridge transfer of 48.6 to cover the 182 million. After public safety, uh the next thing we look at is uh health uh and wellness and that's what we use the the difference of the 206 and the 102 to cover. So mainly our our main bulk of those two three line items that we have goes into public safety to cover our public safety uh expenditures. We are currently working as a uh on the payroll estimates uh which is like I mentioned in previous slides one of our biggest expense that we have for the department. So the departments are still working on those expenditures. They're also we're also working on finalizing all the internal service uh uh expenditures that we have in there. Uh one of the ones that we are looking very closely is our medical and insurance rates. There are some projected increases that they're recommending and um we're we're trying to minimize that cost to the internal service because those funds will be transferring to general fund uh and and the other funds as well to cover uh flee charges and it like I mentioned before uh are also a struggle but those are part of the internal service funds and departments are working to prioritize their expenditures as as directed within a maximum three and a half growth that we have out there and we're trying to max to control that growth. We cannot continue to have an 11 and a half% growth like we did last year. So this year is is a year of of of trying to control those growth and meeting those growth with the expend the revenues that we have within those top two line items and and minimize the use of of of bridge which is is needed to balance those public safety. Yes. >> Can um well that that seems to be you know a a a good game plan for that. Um I'm just thinking that u that there's there's more of a breakdown to to to prioritize 3.5%. Meaning that you do you do not want to u risk your deficiencies and service. for the sake of getting to that level and all of that has to go through you all before you even you process it and and do that right so I just don't want that you know think it out loud here that u just for the sake of saving it don't don't save it but you know you don't want to you don't want to ruin your your your work that you're doing right now just because you want to save money >> and and it's we're trying to match our revenues not necessarily that we're trying to There is there is there is truth to that because we are trying to as also increase our fund balance in our general fund. So that is a savings that we'll have in there. But that savings most of the cities now are trying to get that savings for those unknowns those those things that come out that we're not really planning for a tariff that comes in. The economy is slowing down. Our sales tax revenues uh decreased. We the agencies out there are also looking to see that we have enough revenues there that we can finish off the year and then readjust and and and go over those those those times where where something's happening. >> Yeah. Mayor Pro Tim and city council u and and the the those the reserves that we will carry essentially that also protects our bond ratings as well too and that's what we're seeing when we're going out to the market every year for our bonds is that we want to maintain that high rating uh and we're trying to keep up essentially with all the comparable cities as well too because they're carrying a little bit more as well too within the reserves. So the reserves protects us for the rainy day, but it also protects all our borrowing, our leveraging of our funds and everything. So we do want to bounce it in there. I would argue to a certain point that's just that's just as important as what we're doing operationally side. I appreciate what you're saying, but >> yeah, >> I think the challenge is that if we keep growing faster than our our current our new revenue comes in, we will eventually hit a wall. That's that's the intent of the conversation and we'll have to make harder decisions. So, we're hoping to nudge it and try to try to get there, but there'll be future further conversation. I think you're going to see the balance within there because uh yeah, there's there's another piece of this next conversation. >> I guess I don't I don't want our trend to be um I guess sarcastically I just don't want to, you know, cut any heads without it being necessary and then learn later on that we shouldn't have done that. and and and um that's the directive that we have for the departments when we met was to work within that three to 4%. Three and a half as as a goal. There's going to be some issues that we have in the departments that will need more than that. By us setting this rate, that'll give us some leverage to adjust within those departments on the the years as we move forward to adjust for in things like that that need to be taken care of. In summary, um we reviewed the budget calendar with the important upcoming dates. We some of the dates that we have in there in in bold are are dates that we uh want to make sure that council is aware. So uh for the budget workshop uh those findings uh we covered the fund categories within the consolidated budget, the different funds that we have. We looked at the adopted budget by government type and where the money comes in and where the money is going to. We looked at the preliminary top three general fund revenue accounts which is what generates uh the re most of the revenue that comes into general fund those three accounts out of those 203 accounts that we have and and I will be providing uh the a a listing of those revenue accounts individual accounts so you all for your review and then the new budget guidelines to manage growth boost revenue enhance fund balance reduce reserve usage and conduct a survey to engage the constituents and that takes me to my last slide >> thank Any questions? Thank you. >> All right, Mayor Prom City Council, we're going to shift gear gears just a little bit. And this is where I'm hoping to get a little bit of input. Um, and I'll be preaching a little bit, but I I think some of the inputs inputs coming as well, too. This next section we've we've titled council directives and strategic priorities discussion. So, within here, we're going to talk a little bit about uh the financial policy and fiscal sustainabilities. I got them broken down into three different categories. I'll talk just very briefly about the compliance within the Vivo Laredo comprehensive plan, proposed caps on budget growth, the allocation of fees and revenue to the general fund. some ongoing rate studies and public health general fund shift within this section of of uh this this division of the next section. Really quickly, uh I do want to emphasize that all of our budget directives are grounded in the guiding principles of EVO comprehensive plan. Even if it doesn't tie directly to a project that is listed within there, they all support the livability, the economic opportunity, the sustainability, and the fiscal responsibility. So they all they all match up to that even if they're not listed specifically in the plan. It's very simple to take the plan and identify a project or an activity and say this is tied directly to that. So the vision of this uh I think that's really the spirit of what that that comprehensive plan is is very important within this conversation proposed caps on the budget growth. And so uh you've heard that what we are recommending of course is to try to maintain our budget growth at what the re new revenue coming in. Um and this at this point in time we are we we believe that 3.5% is a very conservative estimate as to what those what that cost is going to be coming in there. Um I think Mr. As far as I mentioned about last year, we actually had an 11.7% increase in our our general fund. That covered a lot of the changes that we were making in public safety as well as a lot of other things. I will tell you that when you walk through some of these pieces that I'm going to share with you, I'm not sure how to keep it in that 3.5% box, but at least we'll have the justification that we have to go beyond that. But I that's the intent of this. So uh but I would always recommend that we have to build a budget based upon the new revenue coming in on that our current system of how we do the budget because we had so we it was mentioned about the zerobased budgeting. There is nobody out there that does no city out there that does a strict zerobased budgeting there. Most everybody has it out there whether it be a priority based whether it be a zerobased it's a hybrid type of model. Laredo right now currently does what's called line item budgeting. And essentially they look at each one of the lines. Every director looks at each one of their lines in their budget and they determine whether or not it's going to go up or down based upon the conditions that they're aware of. What a zerobased budget does and what a priority based budget does is it can it makes you justify out the reasons why they're adjusting within a line line item budget. The line item budget is the most uh the simplest form of budgeting out there as you're walking through all of that process. Zerobase is very intensive as to how to provide the justification. Priority based has its own little uh system that you have to walk through there, but we'll more than likely Laredo I would always recommend that we do a hybrid type of [snorts] style. Uh if you noticed in one of m Mr. As far as the slides, we asked all the directors to keep their uh zerobased all their all their everything they could control, keep it at zero. By the way, we did not do well with that. I I I I would I would argue or debate that saying that if it's at zero, then it's at zero. There's no work that has to be done. You can move anything around in there. But we increased everything based upon how the jobs we were trying to do. Uh so I I would just never put anybody into that that predicament where I say it's zero. Unless it is absolutely zero, we should we should at least provide the ability for the conversation that occurs. Now we we will get into uh as we talked and and you you alluded to some of that in our conversation. We are saying a 3.5% cap over over the entire budget with our expenditures coming in with our revenue. If we find our revenues are going to go up, that's good. But we can we can also go in there and go department c specific, not just citywide, right? And say everybody's in the same box, but we have to start at at that model. And it's so much easier to to direct everybody and say we're going for 3.5 and then we're going to have this justification analysis as to whether or not certain departments need to grow faster than others based upon the priorities. And some of that you'll you'll help me with today. What this I I threw this in there because I I think we have to do a better job of explaining exactly how we utilize the bridge revenues within our general fund as well too. Uh and when you when you talk to the industry within the bridge and and this goes for all our different funds from different sources. When you talk to all of our industries that are that are actually paying in, they want their funds to be paid to a certain service or certain structure. I ended up doing a report for a reporter uh on our conversation of u debating a port authority and how that would fit within our model. And you've heard the conversations with some of our port of entry uh board members that have talked to you as well too at one of our council meetings. My my information to this reporter was is that it's the impact of the bridges is why we move money into the general fund because we have these bridges that are so active that we have all these 18 willers in every neighborhood out there. We have all this input impact into it. We have all these people working in the industry that need services in order to provide for their families and everything. The general fund is synergistic with the bridge and San Antonio when they build their budget, they actually build off their their uh their funding source is their electric utility. They offset their general fund a lot with their electric utility. We just we're just thankful and lucky we have the bridge and I think uh Mayor Pro Tim's point of we have to diversify. we have to find a way to diversify uh is very important within that because if the bridge was to drop that is those economics do damage to our budget but I wanted to make sure because I know the question always comes up well if we're going to charge for this I would like to keep that money there and not support the general fund just note that our general fund our police departments fire departments cannot generate the cost of that service on their own they're not allowed I I've tried to put quotas out there with the police department. They won't let me anymore. You know, uh the the nature of our public safety system. [laughter] >> No, no, I wasn't. But no, yes, I am. Yes, I am. No, those people deserved it. Um but the but the nature of it and the point I'm I'm trying to make with that is that there there is a there is a nature to that service that we provide that everybody should have the expectation of how that service is done regardless of where those funds come from. the but the nature of this thing is that we have to look at that that division of those funds all the time within that. So really I just wanted to make sure I had that conversation because the most recent one was the bridge but there are other funds out there that we we help support different programs and everything else and uh but I want to make sure that you understand that we walk through that justification as to why when we collect a dollar you know a portion of that dollar goes over and helps with our police department. It goes over helps with our streets. it goes over and helps with our park with that whatever is in the general fund and I think if we justify that I think that's the the conversation that we'll we'll start having on that. >> Just to add to that comment I mean I think that in terms of a true you know seabased port authority it's easy a little bit easier probably to kind of keep operations within that external port. It's a little I think a little harder since we're an inland port that we do have to account for the congestion and all these things. >> I can tell you that >> I'm working with the port of entry >> committee. I do think there is a need to um invest in the port in terms of the congestion, the roads and things like that and um improvements just to the bridge facilities getting to the text office to the CDB office and all those types of things that um I think that's where maybe we can have some kind of hybrid model that some of the maybe not necessarily the money that needs to go into the general fund to support the operations, but some of the reserves um be used for improvements to the port. And I think that's kind of been missing in in the years. >> And Mayor Pro Tim, I I I agree completely with you on that that strategy as well too. And and if you if you remember what you heard from our port of entry board members that were here, they don't want to change that structure necessarily, but they they want to justify it out in a different manner as well, too. And and I truly believe and and you're going to see this I don't know which item I have on here but um exactly the issue of what you're talking about. We are not reinvesting in our properties the way we are supposed to and we have to invest in our properties. We have to take care of that that foundational piece first uh within that structure. >> And Mr. And also, I think it's important for council to know that um you know, we know how to cover a deficit because we pull it out of reserves, but what do we do when we have a surplus? And I think the surplus doesn't really come to us. We never get presented, oh, we had a surplus. How do you want us to spend it? How do you want us to allocate it? >> The surplus money's basically is up to the department to decide or half and half. I don't know. But I think it's a conversation we should have in this budget is how do we want to handle surpluses >> and bigger pro Tim and yeah let me address that really quickly here before we go on as well too because I I don't believe that the departments have the ability to just spend they have to work within the budget that's been adopted by the city. Now what happens when we bring in a new grant is that we essentially amend that budget at that time to incorporate that money in there. But I agree with you. I think we can do that very easily. That if we do have a surplus, that money usually just goes into our checking account and or in our savings account, I guess, and then we bring it out and we utilize it to help prop up the next year's budget usually. >> But, uh, there has been times that we we we've received that additional money that we would go and do a budget adjustment to place in there. So I I I think we can incorporate that that that that request very simply within that as we look at our at our revenues and our expenses saying hey just so you know we have this much money extra for that. Um I think that's something that we have to watch for within our entire budget size cycle because uh there is almost to a point there's a use it or lose it for every one of our departments. So there's really no effort to salvage and say I can do it cheaper over here instead of this way. That's what we thought we could do it cheaper because that money will be swept back into the our our savings or checking account and then we'll put it back out again. There is there is a process that goes through that. So I appreciate what you're saying. >> Thank you. Um, well, when we're talking about savings, if they were to come our way, we just spoke about the reserve needing to be increased, would any type of savings plan also include incorporate that? So, I mean, maybe we get to this increased in increases in reserves a little bit more quickly, especially if it's going to approve improve our bond rating. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that because yeah, the intent is to get there. And so we're talking we're talking on the broadest level with all of you right now to kind of get your guidance, get your get some of your vision within there. Um, we went through and and I don't know if you remember when I first got here, our our reserves were essentially at about 17%. We're we're now a little we're up closer to that 20% because they budget and finance did just that. We tried to bump it up quicker to try to get at that window. And what we find is that we find that everybody is within that 20 to 25% level and that's where we want to be. Um from these conversations based upon your input we will put together the plan. I mean you know the it's less expensive the longer farther out we go but then we're taking a chance on it's a we're taking a chance on it not working. So the idea is that if we can get it done within one year or three years or five years then we can we can eat that. I I use the eat the elephant scenario quite a bit. We can eat it slower and then that has a less of an impact on anything that we're doing within our our structure as well too. But yes, we can we uh we will definitely be putting that conversation into play. It'll be coming back to you and saying, "All right, here's our budget. Here's how quickly we want to do our reserves. Here's how quickly we want to we want to we want to move everything within this." >> Mr. Ne, I'm going to stop you. Uh Council Member Saw has quick um question comment slash. Um so I keep hearing a lot of and yes I understand that at the end of the day that we as a council make a make you know make the um the different decisions but at the same time like you are our CEO and you're you should be I in my opinion I believe that you should be coming to council with a a strategic plan and a list of priorities rather than saying oh well it's up to you all to decide how we're going to send that bond or um when we're going to do project versus this one and what can wait a couple of years, where do we want to be in five years and how are we going to get there? Like I I I don't see those questions being answered or any of that being presented. >> Thank you. And and and Mayor Prom and City Council, the intent is to get to that level, the the nature of this thing, but it has to start with the vision of the council. Yes, we're we're all the professionals. I mean I lean on my people every day in order to say how can we do that service better or what [clears throat] do we do with that? It it is my recommendation. Let's not build a budget that is over the revenue that we have that we're generating and coming in because I I believe that that hamstrings us from any of the other priorities that we want to get to. Uh we talked just a little bit about the bond referendum just on in the earlier conversation that all of those items are on the CIP. they they're they're out there on the CIP. Uh I would argue that the Hamilton Hotel was one that was just recently added because it wasn't our issue until within the last year. So we will provide that that that guidance within there and it's coming it is coming for that. But I I think I just want to make sure you understand that it has to meet what the the overall vision is. I think that's why the Vivo Laredo comp uh the plan is very important for that. That's why all those pieces are there. But uh we will present that information forward in that format and then you have to determine if if our justification my justification or the team's justification makes sense within what you need to get done. >> Thank you. Thank you for that. Um so I guess if I may just add a tag tag on another question too. So, I I also and I I apologize because I do want to get through the presentation, but we're totally >> not problem >> diverting um or digesting, but I also keep hearing a lot of like, well, we're struggling to meet a balanced budget every year and we're being creative about it. And so, in thinking about and um just like what what would happen and how would we meet a balanced budget if we do >> if the the bond is approved and That's a that's a really >> important detail. >> How we would meet those on the no costs. >> Yeah. And and I I think hopefully hopefully you heard a little bit in Mr. Spars's whole uh presentation piece of this thing. We are required every year to have a balanced budget. The problem is that and I think uh council member Gutierrez actually alludes to it as well too. We are we are taking reserve money in order to help complement our budget. That's that's the challenge. By the way, we have the funds in order to spend. I am not one of those individuals that believes that we should ever tax and not have justification why those dollars are are there. You you just should never do that. We should just reduce the tax rate as well too. But I would tell you that we have conflicting um not not directives as such but a conflicting vision. I talked just a little briefly about the capacity of where our our tax rate has been lowering. That is also the thing we we've been we've said we don't want to we don't want to in we don't want to maintain that tax rate where it's at. We want it lower and that's been the marching order. So it's really difficult to lower the tax rate, keep all the projects and keep all the all the work that we're doing and then and then think we can live within the the dollars are there. The the uh the economics of our of our property taxes not such that we can maintain that flow. Uh and there there there's another part of this thing at the toward the end I'll talk about the efficiency studies that that you have all asked for within your own way in February as to how we're going to tackle those uh review all of our departments and try to eliminate the programs that don't really fit anymore. And uh but I think that's the nature of what we have is that we have a balanced budget because we're required to have a balanced budget. we but we because we have we have not spent in the past and I would argue that that's the reason why we have to go after a bond referendum for some of the work that we have we've loved our stuff to death and we've never reinvested to take care of it and that's why we're out there asking saying we've got to do things differently than we've done before and uh but that's where you can kind of look back hindsight being 2020 right hindsight being 2020 you can look back and say man if they would have taken care of this then then we wouldn't be taking care of it today, >> right? >> They took care of the things that they had to take care of. I'm I'm not arguing that point. But I do believe that hindsight being 2020 because we weren't in reinvesting in the buildings the way we were, we love them to death. And it doesn't matter whether it be Brun Plaza, whether it be the the federal courthouse that we picked up, whether it be the Conco House, whether it be the uh the old city hall where the arts center is now, whether it be every uh the police station. We loved our properties to death and we never put money back into it to maintain them. That's one of the biggest things that you're going to see in one of my slides. I've got to incorporate building maintenance into everybody's budget, which is scares me about the 3.5% cap when I'm trying to add something that all they've done is they scraped the money from salary savings or they scraped the money from somewhere else. I'm telling everybody, no, make this a priority because what hurts is that we have buildings out there that are we love them to death for lack I'm not going to say it any any other way. We love them to death and then we wonder why we have to go and borrow money on a bond issue to go out there and replace all the big expensive stuff. Can I can I ask? >> Okay. I'm sorry. Um, which is it just brought to mind um Einstein once said u in order for you to solve a problem you must remove the behavior which within which you got there and by by just saying what you just said I think that that was the problem. You've identified the problem. You don't want to uh continue to repeat it to do that. um in and going through this. I'm I'm wondering also because we're going to be like you said the 3.5 does Yeah, it scares me too, you know, because uh but I'm wondering if if we're going to be looking, which by the way, this is this this other document is very well done. uh because it's going to tap into what I'm about to say uh that we I'm not sure if in the past or or now you're considering the idea of process re-engineering on a departmental level uh and and and try to get some some more efficiency out of it because of that and and thus saving us a little bit more money and going for that >> and and yeah, Mayor Pim and council member to that point. Yes, that that is part of what it is and I will tell you that every one of your department heads have done a great job of that. Anyway, when we introduce technology, we try to shift those resources to something else. I think the thing is that we've never looked holistically at the entire department and said this is this is what we're trying to do. And I've had a couple conversations here recently about uh holding your standards higher and building departments one of the predominant departments that we say what we've done is we've lowered our standards to the amount of resources we've devoted to this to the service. And I said no, you got to keep your standards up here. Now you got to tell me and I I got to be able to tell every one of you this is how we're going to keep those standards there. And that's I think that's where our system is broken down within our whole budget cycle. we're not having the right conversations within that structure and as hopefully you can see that that this this budget workshop is the start of that new structure as well too. >> Have council for Seattle. >> Thank you. And and I guess maybe just one um one really great example that we witnessed recently with our utilities department. We have a a consultant that that has come in and but and pro probably without even asking he looked at the numbers of the department and actually saved us like I over four plus years that I've I've um been here I've never once heard any co kind of cost savings at the way that it was presented in that manner. And so it's clearly possible that there are ways that we and savings that we could um address and and probably redirect them in a more efficient manner. Um such as some of the needs that >> I I I appreciate that well too and I think an analogy that works here. Give me 40 acres and we'll get that 18-wheeler turned around. I mean it's a it just takes a little bit of time and it takes the right questions to be asked and it takes the scenarios that are there and hopefully you can kind of see some of that as well too because I agree with you that's the things that we're starting to we're growing up >> for lack of a better way. >> Mr. I think that what to look to the council member's points is that um it's kind of like what Dr. Haruna was talking about in in the class that we all a lot of us took that um you know we shouldn't necessarily start from a position that everything we're currently funding today is automatically going to be funded next year. I think we would like to see where we could possibly shift some of these longstanding focuses that are variable that maybe we don't need to go in that direction. we could allocate those fundings for a different directive. I I we never see that in the budget. We always get this is what we're spending and this is how much we need to current to spend there and this is how much that's left and it's barely anything and we don't get to allocate it to anything or to have these prioritization conversations because we're barely breaking even and we're left with like a million dollars and we have to decide between, you know, an animal surgery hospital and like $20 million worth of wants. >> Yeah. >> And it's just not enough money. So, um I do think that it might not be um the time to just completely scrap everything and start from scratch, but I think some flexibility in the budgeting is probably what we're looking for. >> Yeah. And let let me address that too, Mayor Pim and city council, because we we spent a lot of time discussing this as well too. The challenge we have is that we have to have a budget done by October 1st. And so then we then you back it up and then we have to have all those different kinds of conversations. What I would argue is quit putting yourself and I've tried this I've tried this the last couple years. Sometimes I'm successful sometimes I'm not. If if we can get these things to you and have you debate it within the structure of the meetings that system that we have. Don't worry about the happening at that time of that budget. when it when that when that issue comes to your table, then we walk through that item and for that regardless of when it is, we can trigger it at the next year's budget or we can trigger a budget amendment and fix it right then and there. We can adjust that. I I think that um I never like to spend money that we think we're going to get until after we've gotten that money. I we shouldn't we shouldn't say, "Well, the check's coming next. It's in the mail. It's going to get here by the next Tuesday. Let's go ahead and spend it on whatever the project is." I'd rather put that money aside and that but the nature of what I'm trying to say as well too is that try let's try not to do all of this renovation this realignment and everything within just one budget cycle. It's very difficult to get it done because one you don't have enough time to get it done. We don't have enough time and I think that's why we we I think over the years Laredo has thrown himself into this other box that they don't have those conversations. they need to happen as they're going and and you can see some of those adjustments out of police and fire. You can see some of those adjustments out of some of our other departments as well too that we're trying to tackle this thing a little bit differently than we have. And so it's it is working, but it is time consuming of its own right to a certain level to get that done. But if you think you can get, we definitely can't take 42 different departments and divisions and be done with it in time to approve a budget in October when it may affect the priorities of what you think need to be the focus. And I think those are the things that we have to kind of balance out. That's why in my mind I don't think we're going to get exactly what I'm telling you I want to get in the budget for this year. But I'm not but I think next year I might get a little bit closer and then maybe the next year I'm I'm all solid on that because it takes a little time to build out that thing. Let me walk through a couple other of these pieces if it's okay. We do have two ongoing rate studies right now. We are doing the bridge system rate study uh and we are touching on all of those points that that was brought up a little bit earlier. We want to look at the justification. We want to look at if we raise that it's a 50 essentially 50/50 for every dollar we raise there 50% goes to the general fund 50% stays with the uh the bridge. I want to make sure that we've looked at all of that to make sure that it balances out so that if we do if we do adjust our rates they adjusted up on what our needs are as a city and as a bridge system. The utilities rate study is also out there right now and we are looking at those. Uh the water and wastewater rates, not the solid waste yet, but we we should probably look at the solid waste rates, but the water and wastewater rates are being looked at as well too to make sure that we have the the the funds in order to do all the work that we are doing. You did go through in the last couple years where we changed from the regular cost of living adjustment about 3%. We went up to 5% for a couple years there because our our costs were growing faster than what they were. And I think this alludes back to what council member Cigaro is saying about, you know, we're now looking at reductions of saying these projects don't matter within our system of utilities. And so that'll all impact our rate study. Uh but we want to we want to make sure that those rates rate studies are out there. This follows along with, and I know the mayor has talked about this a couple times, the public health general fund shift. Uh we want to share the intent to continue shifting the public health department's budget from grant funding only to general fund expenses. There are there is there should be a uh and this will be the longer conversation on public health is that we should have the core model of our public health department that says this is what we're going to run regardless of any grants of any any system within there. the grant programs that we have, they're all good and they all help uh a class of our public. They they all help something within that structure, but once the grant is gone, we don't know whether or not we can absorb it. That's the challenge that we you guys have had over the years with that. We want to continue shifting that public health general fund and we want to kind of increase that. One of the items on here, I'll talk about building maintenance as well too, trying to build that into the budget. I think that will get us uh my request for budget and public health is to try to find another 2% to move public health 2% higher in the general fund rather than rather than on the u just the the grant system that we have. Um and of course we are asking for the estimates and the financial impact and long-term planning because I think there are some core services our health department does that that should main that should be there unless unless something gets cured, right? it should always be out there. [snorts] Uh but there are also all these other other ones that are really nice because they've been they've been um important to the federal government or the state government said let's do something about this this issue. And so I wanted to make sure that you know that one of my recommendations for public health is to try to meet that expectation. At least the mayor's been the most vocal about it. I think all of you have actually agreed that we can't we can't live on grants alone. We need to we need to actually make sure if this is important to our community, let's make sure we're covering that cost. >> Mayor, >> yes. >> Thank you. And um yeah, hearing that actually worries me quite a bit, you know, because I like like I mentioned earlier, we're one of the only cities in Texas that has a health department >> because generally speaking, they're county health departments that and for whatever reason historically that's just the way we evolved as a community. Y >> um but there's also some tools that you know counties have that cities don't like we talked about with hospital districts and whatnot. And of course I know right now the county seems to be not in favor of pursuing that but um I just makes me nervous to think we're going to be taking more I mean and I understand the mayor's and he's not here but I know that's his preference. Um but uh you know just it worries me a little bit um to think about um adding taking more from the general fund >> um than we already do just because I mean we already talked about how tight our general fund is as it is. So I'm just wondering if down the road there's ways we can talk about collaborating um the more entities that are involved in any issue but particularly public health in my opinion um the more entities we can the more public entities that we can get involved in this because we all have a stake in this not it's not just um you know city. It should I don't believe it should be a city exclusively a city issue, but I just if I'm in the minority, that's that's fine. I just need to state my my position on that. >> Council member, I I agree with you. I agree with >> Mr. Can I interrupt uh Council Member King, do you want to make a motion to direct staff to do something like that, make an arrangement, or do you want to wait until another time? >> Well, I mean, >> sure. motion to at least start conversations with our partners uh whether it be county or other or state uh options or um just to have a more coordinated effort to kind of share and I know we did this with the detox center. County uh did renovate um the the facility. Um that was a onetime expense though and then now we are in the situation when the ARPA funds go down um uh when they run out for the detox center. >> Council member King let me get a second to start second to instruct to start the conversation. >> So uh I think it's important Mr. Nav since we do have a close relationship with the county. I mean, we've been working closer with them over the years and um if this is something that the city's absorbing, we could provide better services if we were collaborating in that way as well. There's a way that we can have that conversation as per council member King's u motion. I think it's important, >> Mayor Proim, and and I I I I concur completely with that that conversation. We have to have that conversation. the the counties are tasked with the the the the health county health departments and and such like that. I'm assuming that way back when whenever it happened the county wasn't interested in doing that because they they are not required to do it. It is a they're the ones that are built to do it and then Laredo decided to take it in on itself. This goes into the efficiency conversation as well too. I I think when I when I talk about this is that we if we're going to meet the expectations within the budget, I I need to keep moving with the with the directives that I'm provided. I'm I have no problem with having those conversations with the county saying there's got to be a better model with all of us participating together rather than just at all being on that. Uh I would also say that Laredo is predominantly the population center for web county as well too. So >> we'll take a vote on that motion. Everybody in favor? I. >> Anybody opposed? >> Motion passes. >> Thank you. [clears throat] All right. And just just so you know, and that doesn't mean that we stay that way, but if we're going to if we're going to go away from a grant system, we need to we need to have that conversation. Uh compensation and staffing like you like you just heard with Mr. Sparza, we are uh we will have we'll be recommending salary adjustments within this budget for all all the positions. Uh we are going through a leadership position salary adjustment. We are looking at employee benefits, cost projection and enhancements. And then just really quickly, I'm going to mention about the collective bargaining agreement, we have the police department this year. And really quickly with the uh the salary adjustments, um unless somebody says that we shouldn't be doing this way, this is our classification compensation plan. And within that plan, we look at our salaries for two different ways. One's a cost of living adjustment. The other one is a merit-based or um salary adjustment. It's the movement on the scale. We have a minimum maximum salary level and there we should be able to move people across that scale. Uh but we also have inflation which is also the cost of living adjustments. So when we look at our our salary adjustments, we are going to be looking at both of those those systems within that structure. Uh depending on depending on how we can fit it within the budget. I would argue that um every budget that I I have built over the years, you have to and again you saw it as being 70 80% of our budget, we rely heavily upon our people. Taking care of our people are they're our number one asset. All the other stuff kind of comes separate with that. So I want to make sure and this is the whole idea about the classification compensation plan is to eliminate the uncertainties that our people aren't taking care of to that level. And so uh I left the I left the numbers off there because we are looking at the cost of living adjustment. We are looking at how to move people on the scale. I just wanted to make sure I laid it out to all of you that u we are going to follow our classification compensation policy that was presented to you and it'll be coming forward in a manner that we can kind of fit. Um right now I believe that uh we we are seeing uh the tenative of of about 2.5% for sure uh based upon the inflation and essentially what the social security cost of living adjustment is. So we are we are working on those numbers right now. You just approved the uh the seagull study for all of our directors and above positions. They so we now have a fully updated scale grade and step scale for all positions within the city. Um and so just know that within this budget we will be taking care of those directors and above positions. We'll be balancing those out because we have moved some from one grade to another >> and so depending on what that what that is what that position is. >> So do we have a copy of that old study? Can we have it? >> You uh we can get you a copy of the study. Yes. >> Yep. Yeah. We get a copy of the study but just know the study actually sets everybody on the scale. It doesn't set them it's it puts places them on the grade. It does not move them on the on the grade from step to from the minimum to the maximum. That'll be the next. >> So Mr. Let me ask you Mr. May >> uh the study what do you where would you base it? Where how do we base ourselves from that study? So that's something that you know for me it's okay people then and the reason I'm I'm sorry m the reason I'm asking is because we got people for that have been there for many years >> you know and then you have people that are get hired >> and then that study puts those people to the same level >> for the people that have been there for many years >> right >> so I want to know how and why >> yeah and and a lot of that is is also internal equity within the structure so just I I'll explain that terms as we get into this deeper, but there is an internal equity. This is what you ran into with the first seagull study as well too because we bump people for being in in the the city longer. Um and and that that offset then when we bring in individuals for different departments as well too. We're we're challenged with engineers. We're challenged with a utility director right now that is actually hitting up against those internal equity questions as well too. Um but when we built the schedule when we built the scale it is based upon the compensatory or the the the comparables of all the other cities around the industries around us for what it what it is. We don't look at oil and gas though because oil and gas it's a it's a feast or famine kind of system as well too. So we can never keep up with those kind of things. So we do lose people within that. But I'll we'll we'll explain all of that to you at a at a at an updated version. employee benefit cost projections. We are we are looking right now I've heard anything from uh right around a 10.6 10.8% increase on our benefits just because of the insurance market. Uh we are looking at some of the potential of of changes within that uh right now and just so you're aware uh I think if you if you saw in the news is that Zepbound now is capable for doing sleep apnnea. And so it is it and so we're checking with Blue Cross Blue Shield as to whether or not that is a that can now be in there because when we were looking at it for obesity all those those uh medicines for obesity it our our insurance couldn't cover it. We would have to compensate for that that differential within that structure. What we'll do is that as we walk through these systems and within the the employee benefit, we will look at whether or not we can actually add it in and increase our value within the employee benefit or if we have to come and ask you, let's drop off some of the the stuff that's not being utilized and cover the insurance on the things that are more important to us. So, those conversations will be coming within this item. Again, I'm I'm not going to talk specific numbers with you right now, but just know that those conversations are out there. >> Yes. And also we we did add um beriatric surgery this past during the budget this past August which went into effect for fiscal year um you know 2425 but actually didn't really go into effect until January 1st of this year which um and so I'll be interested to see what the cost I mean we're not going to have a lot of data because it's only been two almost three months um but I'll be interesting to see the cost of that um and of course the longterm >> savings an impact and then the medicines you mentioned you know for obesity I they are very expensive right now um but like you said there are new indications that we could use to maybe not use it on quite so many patients so you mentioned sleep apnnea there's also just history of cardiovascular risk that have special indications so there's maybe ways we could implement it slowly with very specialized you know >> I I just don't want you to feel like we're avoiding the conversation we want to make sure that we have the conversation and also know that our our current insurance processes is that the employees pay in as well as the city. So there's a balancing of that as well too. So just be aware that we're walking through those conversations. But I yeah, I think the idea is that we again and this has been a conversation I've had in the last couple weeks as well too. We can't leave everything the way it is. We need to we need to we need to catch up with what where the world is at as well too. And so that's the process that we're walking through really quickly. This conversation's coming. I'm not going to talk about any of the strategy or anything else, but we will be asking to go uh have a conversation in the back room. Uh we already have our strategy laid out at least internally. I want to talk with the council to make sure our strategy matches what you believe we should how we should walk through the conversation. I think that's one of the breakdowns that we might have had in the past. Uh again, um we're going to be working with the police department on their their financial as well as their non-financial pieces within the CBA. So that conversation is coming. I believe that those uh negotiations actually start in April, toward the end of April. Uh we are hoping that based upon our pre-preparation conversations with you and everything, we'll actually move it a lot better than than I think the last CBA that we've done. So, uh, we're we're we're getting ready for that one. Really quickly, uh, going into committee budget allocations. This I don't know who would somebody up there had probably said something a little bit about this, but but we have run into this a couple times and I and I've seen it. None of our committee budgets, our citizen committees have any type of a budget to work with. So, anytime they need something to get done for what their what their committee is, we're asking for a lot from our citizen committees. I would like to establish at least a dollar amount within there that they can kind of move against whether it be we send them off to training whether we send them off to whatever we're we're taking that money I I I would expect either out of our reserves or we're taking that money out of the department's operating fund and so what we what I intend to do within our budgets is that we're any of the liaison departments that are managing that that committee for us it will have a line item now in there that says these this is for the use of that committee that they are responsible to be the liaison for. [snorts] Right now, I'm recommending a baseline of three to 500,000 because I'm not sure exactly what we need, but I do know we have we have citizen committees that do come in and ask for funding every once in a while for different things. And I I I feel like it's they're they're wrong term. It's not politically correct. They have to come in and beg the city to help them do what we've asked them to help them do for us. And so I want to I want to establish this and make sure that we kind of reestablish those funding levels for our our committees and and we will place those funds underneath the uh the liaison capital planning maintenance and development policy. This is the third section of this uh high level strategic initiative pieces. Building maintenance budgeting uh addition of increased annual expenses for the municipal court park development improvement fees. We'll talk about that one. expansion of the impact fee committee responsibilities and third party funding. All right, there we go. Okay, you've already heard a little bit about this and and I think we've talked about it. We do not have any in our bud in our departmental budgets for anybody that has a building. We don't have a line item that says this is building maintenance necessarily. We may have a contract of service or two that are in there, but I really want to make sure that we have the line items. And what I am recommending right now is $2 per square foot of whatever that square footage is in there. By the way, I expect that because of the age of our buildings, that's not going to be enough. So, going from zero to something is going to be better than that. I have an example there as to what it is. But I liken I liken this conversation and and by the way, I love the bond referendum conversations. Those are the conversations we should be having as to how are we going to make these ends meet, but it does it does show you what happens. And I use the police department building and I don't mean it in a bad way for for our officers and everything, but it wasn't the focus. And nobody nobody said you have to prioritize this as well too. Fire department buildings, they usually maintain them like they maintain their equipment, but police departments, they made sure that they were taking care of the pri the primary jobs as well too. and that was keeping the officers on the street, keeping them safe and everything. But when you go through a police department building and you see ceiling tile missing or you see light fixtures that aren't working, you see you see different things that are that are happening, we really should be funding into that. I I liken it to even the buildings that we are actually trying to utilize for different things. I the center of arts, the Laredo Center of Arts, they're in the old city hall building. We've in the lease agreement, we left them responsible to take care of that building to a certain certain level. But when you start talking HVAC, you start talking roof and you start talking windows, those are very you see it with the Hamilton Hotel right now as well too. Those are very high level expenses and they don't generally have the capacity to get that stuff done. So what happens is that the building suffers. We we had the same thing happen with unit trade. eight million dollars we reinvested to fix everything that had gotten broken over the years. And I would rather do it on a regular basis because I believe it's cheaper to do it that way than to wait till it falls down around us and then say, "Hey, let's buy it. Let's build something new. Let's build let's do something different from what we've been doing." >> Excuse me. Um, in so in that spirit when you say that you're you're suggesting a budget of $2 per square foot, >> is there a way to just emphasize that this is not to transfer the normal janitorial budget that they're using currently >> and replace it, right? This is for additional measures that will tackle those types of projects, the window replacement, looking to put money away for the HVAC system, all of that. So, it's seen as in addition to >> Yeah. Yeah. And we want to we want to do that right now. Right now for if they do building maintenance in their building, they're actually transferring from the salary line item of of of positions that they've they lost or they've salvaged dollars from to go and take care of if it's something that's urgent. Um but yeah, we I think we have to do it a little bit differently from that structure. Uh and if you notice the last item there too is that any of the major expenditures, if it's a big dollar item, we will try to capitalize it. We will try to leverage our our our bonding capacity and try to take care of those things at a at a different rate. It really depends on how how long we can survive without it being fixed or actually working the way it's supposed to. >> Mr. Ne, I have a question on that. Um, is there don't we have through accounting like a useful life schedule as far as >> for every item that we own? I mean, if we're going to be putting money into maintenance, I I think it would be better to maybe give a a facilities person a manager like that money and they can go off the the useful life schedule and start replacing things as needed or if that item is still working, they can pass it for that year and kind of hold off or something. only because I've come into situations that I've seen where when you give a department or or you give an entity uh money for routine maintenance, you'll start to see a lot of remodeling, painting, you know, like just kind of sprucing up. And I don't think I I don't want the money to get like and then you're going to have a lot of different people interpreting what exactly is maintenance, what's allowed, what's not. I I I understand where you're going with this. I just I think that um if we know what we have needs for, like for example, we were just shown the same as Zena has all these millions of dollars in need, uh all these other facilities that we have, and I know we have buildings that have needs. I just want to make sure that if we're going to go this route, we have some pretty strict rules for how that money is going to be spent. And I don't want it to be a use it or lose it situation because if I give me 40,000, I'm going to spend 40,000 because if not, you're going to take it away, >> right? you know, >> but but and but and you allude to a little bit there and and I would I would argue to a certain point that if we have if we had anybody saying, "Well, I'm not going to go fix that broken stuff over there because we we kind of have an outstanding one of my one of my first things I ask everybody if it's broke, fix it." And and because don't leave it broken because as we're going and having bond referendums, we're going and asking the public saying, "Trust us to take care of this stuff." It makes it really difficult if we leave it broken. And I I think those are the things if you see in the green section there also goes right along the lines with you. >> I think any >> we do we do need a facility uh responsibility within that. We we take care of so many things. So well except our buildings. I think we don't we don't identify those and they are expensive to fix and maintain and and actually replace if if it gets to that point >> especially the areas that the public gets to Yeah. you know, >> I I agree. And so I just want you to know that I am asking everybody to try to find capacity within their budgets to add this in there because uh some of the departments have done a great job on their buildings. Don't get me wrong with that. But then you can see the buildings that we are not reinvesting in there. I I I look at like Brun Plaza and we have the library system in there, but the rest of the building, we got all the asbestous out of the building, but it's still we we need two to three million dollars, I think, in order to put that building back into the shape of what it is. And I'm also a proponent and and I think I think this goes along with your vision. If if that building is no longer needed for the city, then we should not be keeping that building. We should be getting rid of it. we it should be it should be in somebody else's hands where they can do something fantastic with it instead of us. But uh this is this is coming forward um because I I really believe that this is this kind of this has affected so many of our conversations uh and and you know it ever since the unit trade uh but I I think of the relationship with Lucas for the conco house. I look at the the Laredo Arts Center for for downtown. I look at what we're trying to do with the federal courthouse. I look at what we're trying to do with Rooney Plaza. we have to reinvest in this stuff and we can't wait all all the time for a CIP project in order to fix those things up to that level. May I just I just want to so and again I appreciate um everything that you're saying and just but just adding to that last point of not waiting but I also think we need to see >> what the priorities are to make a decision that's that that's facilitated by um critical thinking and what can what can we do this year what can we do next year and so on and I don't I don't think we've seen that because we've seen just in the past few years we've cut out of of about the CIP plan for discretionary funding and where was the guidance from management at the time of saying that that could be better used in different areas? >> Yeah, I I think we're all growing >> and we're all learning. All right. Um charter amendment, we have added another elected municipal judge within our system. So we now have two of them. Uh we are estimating that the annual ongoing cost will be anywhere from 200 to $300,000 a year in order to operate our court system the way our charter has implemented that. There is there is there's a $50,000 I think uh office of renovation that doesn't happen every year, but it has to happen on the front side of that. But this will be what we are going to have to place into the budget. uh and so there will be that impact of of the impact within the general fund as to how that fits in there. And so this is why I think that uh we're we're we're we're trying to hold our expenses to our our new revenue, but we have a lot of cleanup that we're doing as well too. That's the challenge we have within the system uh as to how how to deal with those priorities. >> Mr. What would that look like if we converted one of the associate judges and it would be the two and then one associate instead of two and two >> within the within the charter we have we have two elected judges and two associate judges one each judge has one associate judge now I don't know if it's in the charter that way it is in the charter that way so we that is our system >> what what we are doing is the associate judges because they are not elected bodies they are actually appointed by the municipal elected judge. They will be essentially what we call contracted labor. That was the only way we could kind of work even like with our doctors, our veterinaries and our our our attorneys that are serving as judges. That was the best way to do it is to operate them as a contracted position because then it works within that municipal judge. So, >> um [clears throat] so didn't we have we had one municipal judge with two associates. So now we have to have two municipal judges with two associates >> with one each. Yes, that's how our uh charter is written and passed. >> It says that right there even with the amendment. >> That's the amendment. >> Okay. >> The the difference with the associate judges, we had one judge, two associate judges. One was appointed by the city manager, the other was appointed by the judge. With the new charter amendment, we have two elected judges and they get to both appoint an associate judge when they're unable to do their work. That's the difference within that. Just I just wanted to share with you what the estimates are because we're going to have to put that into the budget. Um this is a this is actually a nice thing. Well, we'll find out if it's nice as it comes to your plate. I I think it'll be the second meeting in April. We were trying to get it on the first there was a a notification that has to happen but the park department went through all of the development improvement fees structure. They went through the planning and zoning commission. They got blessing from them. That was the first time we had our plan commission and our park commission actually meet in a subgroup to walk through these things because uh if you if you're not aware of why why we were doing it, the park development fees were not covering the cost to develop the park. And so what would happen is that we would utilize that money to help develop out the park, but then we would have to complement that with additional property taxes and everything in order to to uh to complete the park. So this is this is bringing everything up to date uh with exactly how we also give the benefit within this this structure and you'll hear all about this. I won't I'm just not going to digress too much but I wanted you to know this is one of the what I think is going to be a good win for us uh within that structure is that we also have given the developer the ability to if they want the infrastructure built go ahead and build it within your system we can lease it from them essentially design build very similar to some of the other things out there we'll lease it from them they won't they won't lose their shirt of building a public facility but very similar to the streets and the water and the sewer and everything that get dedicated it over. This is a way that we can do it with the park side as well too. All right. Um this this goes into a 2023 item as well too is that we had talked about um doing the impact fee committee uh util utilizing the technical review committee and creating the impact fee committee. This happened in 2023. It sat uh is sat on the back burner for a little while here. I just want to make sure you understand we already have an impact fee committee, but it is actually the liaison is our utility department and I would say that we're not looking at just utility impact fees. We're looking at all of the all the development that happens with that. So what we'll do is we'll be recommending to you the the amendment of this committee to actually expand their duties out. We may move the liaison around. Just so you know, out of the nine positions we have on there, I think we have at least four to five openings already on that. So, we'll renew this committee to do that work so that we can get the information to you and say this is what we this is how we can work together with our development community as to how we have to absorb these public improvements that they make. >> Mr. Ne, they don't have any progress to present for this. There is no progress to pro present at this point because it was never it was that work was never completed. That's what I'm saying is that this was placed on the back burner from the 2023 directive. It had >> but didn't we have a consultant working on that? >> We had outsourced that. >> We we have a consultant working on different pieces of what the impact should be but not on establishing an impact fee of of all the city type services and such like that. I don't think there was a consultant doing that part of the business. I I can check because the impact fee committee within our structure is underneath utilities. >> Yeah, because I remember we have a consultant under utilities that was >> I'll I'll have to I'll have to check in. >> There should be some proposal already. >> All right. [snorts] Third party funding is another one that we've uh revamped. You've already reestablished it as a civil partnership and engagement committee. Uh my understanding is that we are walking through that that process with all of our third party funding. The reason I wanted to share with this one because I think this is a good one as well too. Um along with our support of all of these agencies and everything, what we're asking for is a little bit of assistance back with with different functions that we do as well too. So uh depending on the amount of the value within there, then we want to structure it uh how we work together with the third parties, these little the little nonprofits. Um, I'm going to use one example because it is coming forward very soon and that's like even with the Boys and Girls Club. I'm wanting I am intending to remove the Boys and Girls Club out of third party funding. Now, that's that's the shock system, right? But the idea is that we should have a contract with the Boys and Girls Club, not not they should not be beholden to us through third party funding. They are providing a service for our some of our population that the parks would do if we didn't have a Boys and Girls Club. We would we would do something similar to that. So, what I'm trying to do with the third party funding is trying to get all these groups out of the third party funding that we should have actually agreements and relationships with outside of the third party funding. third party funding. The way it's built now is that we're trying to give them funding for up to three years in order to get them on their feet or or to help them sustain their feet. The idea though is that like especially with the Boys and Girls Club, they already have their program. We should be supporting that program as a contractual thing. I I liken it to having the agreement with uh our Laredo Urban Agricultural Center as well too is that they're they're kind of more of a pseudo group of us, but I would like to have an agreement rather than having them come in and say where where can I find funding to do my mission? So, the whole goal of this is that we're trying to remove those things out of there. The city council did say that as well with the WBCA. I would argue that pony league and some of these ones that are regulars, I would rather not have them a case by case every year. I would rather have a relationship built in there so that we can maintain and sustain that that that relationship through that window. >> Also, [snorts] Mr. N with when we hand out monies and things, we don't really have a good um way to check or like verify of expenditures or there's no followup. It's just, you know, here's your support and there's no kind of like a report card from them as far as like what was utilized for and and um it's kind of difficult when it comes to the the third party funding. Council me, >> thank you. [clears throat] Um I I do believe there is there I know that third party funding requires regular reports and um the metrics that were given at the beginning of the request the agencies are are supposed to match up what has happened in that quarter with those requests. So yeah. >> So I do think there is a a structure. >> Yeah. Yeah. Really quickly support >> essentially we're not calling it third party funding anymore. If we provide them any support it's about civil partnership. It's about engagement with the with these groups. That's the significant difference within there. It we may provide funding for that. We may do that. What community development did do is that they have a a uh one person responsible to help with all within that structure as well too. And so all of those reports are given all those all of that information is actually uh reviewed at this time. And I would I would argue that community development was always looking at that information. It just wasn't translating back as well as it could. And I think with this renewal that we've done is that you're going to see that happen better within that structure. Am I >> Yes. >> So my question to you is have we reached out to like that now that you're looking to do this changes [clears throat] have we reached out to the Boys and Girls Club and to see what's what's the difference what policies they have that you know once they come into our system their their policies are going to change. Do they have to adapt to our policies or would they, you know, continue with their policies and continue the services the way they do it or are they going to have to go under our structure and follow our structure? >> No. And essentially what's what'll happen and and not to negotiate with Boys and Girls Club because they they've been reached out to and we're walking through that. They don't have to change their processes. Essentially though, they're going to commit that we're going to do these after programs. We're going to do this for for the public. We're going to do that and then we're going to match it up to that. I will tell you that within the third party funding, I think at times because this is a service provided to the community, we have not provided them the assistance that we could have if we would have done it contractually. So, in my mind, I think they're going to get uh they're going to get a better deal within that structure. We're we're going to just hold their re their requirement to perform for us as well too for that th those kids that they are assisting. They are they are leasing a building from us. That is that's at least I know the one building is ours. I don't know if the other one is, but they are leasing a building from us. So, we have a lease agreement with them as well too. So, in my mind, I'm just trying to take I'm trying to take the individuals that don't belong in third party funding and and say we've got a relationship with you and it's going to be a longer term one. >> Mr. Nap, um the LED um >> LEC would be a very similar one to that as well. >> They haven't been coming by their reports and stuff like that. >> Yeah, I think we look at >> they were they were scheduled to do their report in October, but when they changed their executive director, the executive director asked for a little bit more time. I believe they have been ready to do their report and bring it up today. They're required to do one annual report and then they're supposed to do the periodic uh updates as we go through that. So I I can get them on that. But yeah, LEDC is another one that uh within the agreement that we are we are implementing with them are the metric system to make sure that they are actually completing the work that we need them to do. It should be complimentary to our economic development department so that we're not overlapping those things. We don't have enough room to compete against ourselves. So we have to complement within that structure. So did I cover that well enough? Are you going to correct me? I just wanted to add Tina Martinez, community development director. We are uh monitoring their progress and we do require quarterly and end of uh year reports to see what benefit they did actually all third party and hotel motel what benefit they did bring to the community. >> Can we get copies of them? >> Of course, >> because we don't get them. >> No, we we can definitely share. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. I'm just going to keep chatting as well too and that way we keep moving as well too. Um this is the slide that is like are what are we missing within our strategic you know if you have anything at any point in time you don't have to have them tonight but do you want us to look at any other fee structures do you want us to look at any other incentive programs do you want us to look at any other evaluation we are going to do and that's one of the last slides so I'm a little bit out of order probably for making sure you see the whole picture of my my map u we will be doing efficiency studies or at least initiating them by the way it takes time to get those things done the right way. But I I just want to make sure that you're aware what else are we should we be looking at within this budget cycle. No, nothing to say tonight unless you really have something that you want to put on there. Everybody's keeping notes of everything that we're talking about. So you're you're influencing where we're headed. Anyway, >> I'll >> Yes. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. Um, basically I' I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating uh as far as incentive programs with zeroscaping incentive program and and use of turf and any anything as relates to uh water rates that any incentive programs to allow people to find a way to save money on their water bill. Um, I would appre we've already passed several motions to bring a rebate or incentive program back, but I'm just I know Mr. has mentioned it, but I just, you know, it's worth repeating. >> Uh, yes, thank you. Um, the fee structures, you're talking about the proposed rate increases, >> any fee structure. >> Any fee structure. >> I mean, the fees don't make up a lot of our expenses and everything, but they should, as you notice, what 12 years or something with our last time we looked really seriously looked at brid, >> right? So I I think that's my question is what is the timeline? Because I know you want to do this carefully. You want to do comparables, but at the same point if it has been 12 years, this process does need to reach an end goal. And I'm wondering what timeline you're looking at. >> This would be what establishes within this budget. So if you have an idea of something that we should be looking at, I'd like to know it sooner than later so that I can build it in the conversation. Just so you know, the rate studies will more than likely the the utility rate study and the the bridge rate study, no matter where they're at within the system, because it's not on the floor today, they won't be counted in as revenue for this next year's budget for fiscal year 2526. We will introduce it as new we will implement the the fee structure, but it won't be placed into the budget until that next budget cycle. So that that's the challenge that you kind of have to watch for because uh it takes a while in order to uh establish how it gets implemented as well too. There has to be notifications. There has to be all that stuff. So I I would say that we're we're in March right now. Having it ready and set to go in October is a very aggressive time frame for that. So but anything that you provided me and that's why there's not really a timeline on this. I don't think those fee structures unless they're simple simple types fees will have a have the speed in order to get on there in time to get there. We have increased our ability for research and everything where we can get you a response back on on anything that you provide within 90 days at the at the latest and if it looks like it's going to take longer. My my my directive for the departments is if they can't make it done in 90 days, then at least we're going to have another conversation with the council to say this is what this is what a a real timeline looks like. But so 90 days if it works for for at least that, but that's where uh there is no there's no real set of >> Oh, just um for incentives also just if we could be looking at the inner inner city housing incentives for different Yeah. And I would say that they're not going to make or break the uh the budget really because they're very specific uses, but but they all play a part of the whole strategy to not wait. Let's bring this stuff forward. Otherwise, I think our our group should be telling the council saying, "I don't know if you should do this at all." We should have that conversation. Give you guys the ability to help direct with your vision. >> Mr. Also, I think it's helpful to re-evaluate some maybe some decisions that were made in the past in terms of things that affect us having trouble with maintenance going forward like our streets, things like that. >> Definitely. >> Um um uh parking on the parking ordinance that we have with the ongoing issues. um you know I if you present some suggestions to us uh as terms of what you think we should modify fee schedules to be or what the recom I think it's easier than asking us well what do you all want us to do because if you ask us we're going to say cut rates and cut fees because that's >> that's you mean we want to try to save the citizens money but >> you all are telling us what needs to happen from a fiscally irresponsible side >> hopefully what you're starting to And this is what I warned you about keeping me for another year as well too. I will ask you first to try to get your your vision, your opinions within this structure. If it's something that I believe in, I will be bringing it back for you and having you react to it that way as well too. I think that's that's that's the piece that has been missing within this whole structure is that we are not having those conversations and and uh and I think those are the conversations that that's your work as well as my work as far as how to get that done. And so we're you're going to you're going to be bringing these things forward as fast as you guys coming up with your ideas about what we need to touch as well too. I know of one out there and I'm just going to throw it out there because the ones of you that have been involved with it as well too. We will be bringing forward uh a conversation on taxi caps very soon and because it has been it's been an issue that has been out there sitting we we talk about all different kinds of options as to how to deal with it. By the way, the state has stepped in and implemented their own thing for Uber andyft and we can't touch that one. It's kind of like the conversation we had with the fiber optics people in working in the rideway. we we have we have abilities within our our system that we can make it better and bring it up to today's thing. So, it's coming. >> Thank you. >> Next item, uh the mayor and district budget allocations. This is something I have mentioned in the past budgets as well too. We didn't get as far as I would like to. I would really like to have out of each and every one of you a district budget for the annual to place in there rather than just have a big number and then say all right you can you can figure out how you're going to spend it later. I I kind of liken it to um well this is a very simplistic way. I I this is probably not the best solution but but it is one that I can make sure I you you'll understand exactly what I'm saying. I provided you with my entire leave schedule for the year for for 2025. I told you what days I'm going to not be in the office, what days I'm going to be here. As I get closer to those dates, I may not that that training may change or that activity may change and so I may still be here for that. But I gave you an annual calendar. I said this is what I expect going to happen within that window and it's going to adjust throughout the year. I would ask the same thing with your district budgets is that if we know exactly what you want to get done, we can plug it into our whole system and make sure that you're taken care of rather than as when they pop in there. So, I do want to make sure that we do the district budgets. Uh the amendment and use of the purpose of the council system >> and I I love the idea, Mr. I love the idea. The only thing that's for me it's like we're still behind if anything we're still behind. You're still we're behind 22 23. Uh we're still doing those uh I'm sorry. Um how those updates? >> Yeah, the updates. >> Yeah. >> And you're asking for us to be, you know, to give you a schedule of what we want to what we want to do for the future, which is a great idea. you know, giving, you know, all these projects and we put them in order, but you know, we got to catch up first and you once we were there, well, it's easier for us to say, okay, we don't have to, you know, those budgets that that money's already allocated for this. Now, let's work on this. But if we can't get there yet, well, >> let me let me meet you halfway with that as well, too, because I I I understand exactly because we have we have funds out there sitting from 2016 forward. And so some of you are carrying uh additional dollars for different projects. What I if the system was pristine and the system was working the way it was, you would provide me your list of projects for this year only. So when I when I provide you and I say this is your budget for this year. If you meet me part way and say well that's these these are these are the projects that I want to do with that money. You guys are still working on the old money as well too. And we have to find time for that within our budgets right whether we contract it out or not. if you if we can kind of find a balance within that because I would argue if we wait until you spend all that pack money because just so you know councils we're in 2025 and the councils all the way back to 2016 haven't spent some of that money as well too and so I want to make sure I I want to give you guys the ability to utilize those funds because they were obligated for that purpose but then we also have this year's budgets and so I don't I don't know what it looks like but we'll get there close >> and and the thing is like And I'm sorry in my mind. Um, we're seeing these projects. We're go we're going so right right now and I'm I'm not I'm not trying to criticize this this idea and I love the idea like I said and it's it's good to be prepared. But the thing is we're going right now we're going back because of let's say this this miscommunication we had back in the day or whatever on the line the updates on the line the changing of the lines uh you know the vows uh this uh the program that we had on on uh the utilities side. So we're going back to it and and it sets us back because we're trying to create more let's say the infrastructure it's not there yet. we might have like a mind to say, "Hey, we want to do a project. We want to do a water park." Our infrastructure ain't there. >> So, it's hard for for us once again, it's hard for us to continue and it we should with the old projects that are already there. >> Uh right now, we're doing we're dealing with the sports complex. >> Sports the sports complex should have been done uh was allocated what 20 2010 or 20 2016. So, you know, we should have seen that, you know, pretty much done by this time already. >> But be aware as well, too, as we as we're having this is a good conversation to have as well, too. The sports complex is a city project, not a district project. The uh the nature of a lot of the different things of what we're doing are city projects, not district projects. >> The ones I'm ones I'm cons we can always have the conversation on the citywide projects as to how to get there. That those would not go into your district budget. You know what I mean? It's a city project but nevertheless it's also depending what's around that. Let's say the sports comp my thing is if the sports complex is built the developments start it's it's going to start growing around it. >> Right. >> Right. So we won't know the impact or what the necessities of the community until it grows around it. So we can't guess say you know what I want to make this road over here. I want to do this these sidewalks over here because we don't know yet. We don't know if it's gonna grow, it's going to impact, you know what I'm saying? >> Hopefully hopefully we do our development correctly. It's not again it's not a district thing to add sidewalks or anything else. It should be it should be done with the development that is occurring. But really quickly on that and yes, >> uh, Council Member King had a quick a >> Yep. Okay. >> Oh, sorry. I was actually just going to say if anyone's having issues spending their district priority funds, I'm happy to. [laughter] Okay. >> But but so let me let me let me let me share a little bit too because [laughter] >> you may or may not be aware of this but and because we we the way we kind of function within it it it actually just happens. You as individual city council members are not allowed to spend any money of the city's money whether it be in the district or not. it is actually through the city manager as being the the administrative head or you bring it to the the council and the council says we're going to spend it that way. It converts over to what it is. You don't really have the ability to do that. But I I would say that we need to wake up just a little bit because San Antonio being a good example, they actually have some of that already built into some of their system as well too within a certain dollar amount. You'll see that here in a second. If I may, I think what you're referring to is San Antonio because if you look at their bond packages that they do every five years, basically what's in those items that is getting funded in their bond every five years is what we use for a lot of it. Correct. It's what we use for district priority funds. >> And you'll start to see the difference here with with my within these conversation of what I'm we're recommending to a certain point. >> No, Councilman King, you can't have any of our monies. Okay. >> All right. >> So So I've talked a little bit about the having Oh, yes. No, I was just going to add to to to the some of that conversation in the sense of it's being strategically planned out though in some of these other cities and it it's stated line line by line and also I mean it would be helpful to understand what are the responsibilities of some of the departments versus where the discretionary money should be sent as in are are is public works planning to um pave XYZ streets and add sidewalks or are they not? Because then I don't think that there's a prop a really great process of the way that we use our discretion. >> And I and I would agree. Uh I think we're trying to work on that. I do have a I had a white paper that I put together to try to explain the districts to the cities because I I also believe that our departments at times when when a when a district council member comes asking for something, they say, "Well, are you going to put the money in to take care of this?" That shouldn't always happen that way. Uh in in my mind, there are certain responsibilities that the city should be taking care of. Happy to happy to have support from the district at the time when we're doing that work, but there are also things that you are doing individually within your districts that it'd be good to have the city partner with you rather than carrying the full ball as well too. And so I I put out a paper trying to distinguish between those two as to how we can work closer together. And that was from a past conversation about uh making sure that the city council is a part of our organization, not really an independent outside of it. And that's the structure. So the district budgets are are really something that I would really like to aspire to because again, if we can get it in some type of a format, we can at least tell the public what we're how what we're aiming on and what we're doing. All right, here here's the next one. This came up in the last conversation at the council meeting. I wanted to bring this up as as an option. I think I shared it with some of you as well too. The amendment of the use and the purpose of the council assistance. We had a one conversation. I want to make sure I distinguish the difference. It was asked about the internal auditor as opposed to the council assistance, you know, and why can't why can't we have other employees report to the council? In a council manager form of government within the charter, the internal auditor does not affect operations. They are not an administrative body. They are they they can go in and look into a department and say this is how that department operates. They can't they don't influence they recommend a council assistant is or any of this other staff they are administrative in nature of what they are and so that's why they have to report underneath the city manager into that structure. I I say that because when we look at this, I went out and and did a research on all of our comparable cities, again, the ones larger and everything else because uh the the real question here is that how can we get help within our district model as to getting some of this stuff done and everything. Our current system is with the the mayoral and council assistants. I will tell you that there is room within the structure based upon Austin they have five to seven assistants that help out of the city manager's office helped all the district offices we have San Antonio that has I think two to three within that structure I this you'll you see the model here is that we're trying to grow Larredo up as well too there is the value of having one council assistant per elected official up there if that's what you want to do, but then we're going to have to add additional work within that structure as to what they're doing. >> So, be aware that that is that's the that's the analysis that we're going through. Uh, some of you have expressed that, you know, a half a person is not enough for the things that I'm trying to get accomplished. Some of you say, "No, a half is plenty." I want you to have the conversation. I want you to think about this a little bit because I want to make sure that we build it into the budget because essentially if we go to one council uh council assistant per elected official that will double the budget for the council assistance because we have four we'll go to eight. Um and so I want to make sure that you're aware of that impact to that that whether it's whether it's good or bad that's up to you. It's I think it's really about putting them to work and doing all the things that that they're supposed to do. I would argue that those council assistants are more than event planners. They spend a lot of time doing that for for all the different activities that we're doing out there. But that's not all that they do. They are trying to track projects. They are trying to watch your budget. They're all trying to do all those different pieces. So, understand that as you walk through that but >> Mr. Y would [cough and clears throat] be helpful. I mean, even if we didn't go that route where we're each getting our own, if that's the route we go, if not, I think it is helpful to have like a [clears throat] someone on our on our on on our office to help us coordinate because um it is it does get overwhelming and it is a lot of stuff to keep on top of and um it it would help to have somebody like that our our assistants could also work with to help them and And I know that's where the assistant city managers come in and all that, but they're also getting directives, you know, from from you and and so it's it's there is some need for some modification there. I just don't know exactly what the answer is. >> So, and the nature of the structure of that is that all these from all these other cities that are council manager forms, they're essentially reporting through the city manager. So they're the ones that hire, fire, you know, discipline within that structure, but they take their day-to-day direction from you as a council member. Kind of like our system with the halftimes. It's just that they have our halftimes have to figure out what's the most important priority for each one of you. And you got to do a great job with our people for that. But I I I wanted to walk through that a little farther. Uh there was a conversation about whether or not that we should include them within the travel allowances and such too because I know that council members have taken their own trips to see other cities and different things and they want they want that resource available for that purpose. be aware be looking at all this and I you all have your own opinions about where that is at but I'm saying that in order to to address this this question that was that was placed on the agenda and everything this is a model that can work within the structure of a council manager form if that is where you would like to utilize it >> otherw otherwise you stay with the consolidated system we have where if you need legal help you call the legal department if you need administrative help you call the city manager and so on so >> I But I think it's important to to identify I'm still obviously I'm the new guy in town but the trying to identify the actual scope of work that they're responsible for is is very difficult because there's a uh just think you said event planning right now the scheduling part of it uh is coming from 10 different locations at one time for them and I just integrated thank you to our IT guy I just integrated the uh so important the uh scheduling process this into my calendar. Um, I missed several meetings because of it. I was a, you know, I wasn't in line with what my job needed to be done here. And so I think if we identify what their roles are right now, >> I think it's half of this problem, half of the problem gets solved right there and then because that'll initially tell you whether or not there's enough time in their day to merit a second person, right? And so, uh, and then what that second person's job going to do? I mean, because if it's going to be that, yes, they're in need of it, but not really 100% of the second person, it's just going to create, I think, issues. >> So, so the conversation, you know, and it goes back to old council members saying, well, when I was a council member, I didn't even have a council assistant. >> Yeah. >> The world has evolved. And I think I think when you look at Austin, >> Yeah. I don't know. I don't know who to direct that to, but But >> but then we actually had I think at one point we had one assistant for all and then we evolved to the halftime version and everything else. Um you know I I think that >> don't be afraid of the evolution either. That's what I want to make sure you understand. We're we're we're all we all get our blinders on and say it has to be only one way or another way. But in my mind we have to [clears throat] evolve. Laredo is not a small town no matter how much we think it is. It is a large city and and we should be behaving in in that manner as we tackle these kind of issues. We we can't and I think a lot of the conversations whether you're whether you're on the side of an issue or another one the way the conversation's going is that everybody's telling us to grow up be a big city do our work differently even all of us are doing the same thing. So I just wanted to make sure I laid that out there. >> Mr. Council has a >> com in terms of that. Yes, we're evolving and that also takes it but we also have to take a look at how how how decisions are made and how how we get there in the sense of could we work together to add items to an agenda rather than each one of us having three items per agenda which is quite chaotic for the for the for the city. Um but just Yeah. And and and this is what this is the this is the stuff that we have to be kind of evolved with within that structure. We you know the cons the council assistants assist with constituent services as well too. If you can't answer the phone they will you may direct them and say I'll call them back and I'll find out exactly what's going on with that depending on how we want to operate within our structure. And that's that's the nature of of that. I would argue that all the way in the Vivo Laredo plan it is about our transparency. It's about better communication. We talked about that the last council meeting as well too. All those pieces are very important within [snorts] the structure. This all goes into assisting that. You all have a different idea of how to get there. And that's the that's the fun of democracy. But but in my mind, I just wanted to make sure you laid out there that we were there. We talked about the travel with them. We can talk about the different job responsibilities that they do. I apologize. And there is nobody, Council Member Garza, that would ever want you to miss a meeting. So, uh, we want you there. >> Well, I mean, through no through no fault of their own, it was just a >> we want to make sure that they have >> get me online was going to is it was a huge task in itself. >> All right. Um, potential use of promotion funds for district projects. You guys have went through, not just you as a city, this city council, but every city council. We used to have what's called priority funds. We used to have what's called promotion funds. We have travel funds. Those are essentially those were the three orders. I I remained away from the bond the bonds that we do every year because that'll be a longer conversation that we all have to have as to whether or not we have district centric stuff built into any of the capital bonds that we go out and borrow for this model here about what I'm what I'm kind of wanting to discuss with you about promotion funds. Again, it's about a it's an evolution of where we are at. I am using San Antonio's model for this because San Antonio provides every district $50,000 a year. And here's the difference on this. It's not just for uh speed humps. It's not just for signage. It is also if you wish to provide assistance to any of our nonprofits that want to use our services as well too. And I think some of you have heard that I really I really don't like waivers because one they're not really a waiver. It is it is a essentially a sponsorship of assisting some nonprofit trying to do something in the city and we're we're saying that we're happy to sponsor with that but I don't like them coming case by case. I would like to have them built in or at least a process for that. And so this process here was is to increase the promotional funds to $25,000 for every position, but also say that if uh there is a waiver requested for nonprofit that those funds would actually be used. On the other side of this thing, I've placed in there a city level promotion fund as well too where if the district says I want to help support this by $500, the city is going to do a match of $500 as well too. Now, we've got this relationship between the legislative body and the and the administrative body taking care of these needs so that you're not the one carrying all the all the all the cost. The challenge we have right now when you when you bring it to the floor of the council and say, "I want to wave these fees. The departments are eating that cost essentially. That's what's happening. It's not it's it's not it's free to them. It's free to who's using it. The city still is paying for all the cost that's associated. That's why I call it a sponsorship, not a waiver. What I want to do is be able to give you guys the ability, and this is this falls San Antonio's CCPF fund, just so you know, that's what they call it. If you want to go out and look at what that scenario is, but it also provides for the the sponsorships for any of the activities that are happening. We can do it citywide, districtwide, it doesn't really matter. It provides the city to actually help balance that as a partnerships. Well, so you're not the ones carrying the entire ball for that. But I would like to make sure that we're talking about this because in my mind, this is actually your budget. Outside of this, the promotion and the travel, this is what's in your budget for the council. >> Mr. I I'd like to suggest that um we look at um events [clears throat] that council has given the directive to go ahead and sponsor like at Saves Arena or Unit Trade. um look at what we've done this past year, maybe even this year and last year. Put a number to that. put a number to those events so that we can make the decision during budget time that we're going to go ahead and we can see how much that spons because it's, you know, they come to us, they ask for help, we want to help, but then it's a $20,000 ask or a $30,000 ask and and here we are during third party funding kind of, you know, picking and choosing and and I think revamping of the third party funding is helpful in terms of there's a lot of community there's a lot of organ organizations that have needs that we also have other organizations coming in that want to get their feet off the ground, but they can't because they're just not part of this long-standing system of all these other organizations just always get funding and they're used to it and we look at how much they got last year and we try to either match it or give them more and it's hard to give them less. Um, I think the model in how we help would be helpful. I think we need to look at all of those costs, anticipate that if we were to sponsor everything again this next year. This is how much it would cost so we get that true picture. I don't ne I don't necessarily think it needs to come out of our office per se. It's just I mean we can do it that way, but I think it would be helpful. >> The the main the main point I'm trying to make on this I want to budget for this as well too. And I and I I that's what we will do is we will go back and we will see exactly what our history was. What's the trend, right? What what do we run into that? It's [clears throat] kind of kind of interesting. Every one of our our our service areas are whether it be the arena, whether it be unit trade, we have a a cost of associated if you want to utilize it for an hour, you want to utilize four four hours, there's a cost there. Then we have this nonprofit rate as well too. And then [clears throat] we have then we have them coming in. And so I don't know exactly how we we pick which ones get it for free [snorts] or don't have to pay anything and the city's going to cover that cost as opposed to any other nonprofit that's out there because I think that's where you guys have have tried to balance that system out as they come and make those requests. >> Well, last time I wanted to have a meeting there, it was going to be like 10 grand or something for two hours and we we don't realize how expensive it is. [clears throat] If I may, my question is is that [cough] those uh that money, this money that's we're allocating or that you're proposing that we should have as a budget that would would that cover that those events, will it cover staff employment as well the hourly rate of of the individuals who are sponsoring or helping us out for the event for parks and for all that, >> right? It would it would cover what what you believe should be covered within that. I I'll put it together. But uh in San Antonio, they make all the all the individual when they wave well when they utilize this program to to take care of the fees, they won't cover salaries, which means that the entity has to cover salaries. And my challenge is is that uh we've had we've had all a lot of conversation with our police and fire the support of of those big big services within these these things. Our costs continue to climb because we There's that's not politically correct either. There's stupid people out there that cause problems for any of our people trying to have a good time. >> And so that means we're going to prepare appropriately for that. And I don't I don't disagree with either one of the chiefs saying these are the resources we have to have out there. But there's other ways to get it done as well too. I think one of them was that we're requiring you to have a security depart hire a security firm rather than us to do certain pieces of that as well too. We can build it any way you want essentially is what we can do. Um I would recommend that because our our if we don't build it into these [clears throat] and we actually justify out exactly what we're trying to do the department is the one that eats the cost. It still gets paid for >> but they're still they're still getting the calls with the salary, >> right? So the main thing is there what we the services that that the city provides when we give our promotional money or for for whatever the the events that we got. What we're covering or what we've been told is that we're covering the salaries the time that the of they consume. >> It it depends on how it comes forward to you. Uh because there have been some uh and I I just think about the WBCA from last year. It was like city, you need to help take care of WBCA's stuff. >> That was that was the directive. >> I don't know exactly what that means other than we took care of everything that they needed in order to get it done. So, it really be it depends on how you lay it out on the table as to how we're going to cover that and what we're going to do with it. But in my mind, I really want to get it into the budget because they, you know, having having us try to find where the money's coming from. There's only a couple sources. We're going to take it out of the reserves or we're going to make the department have that cost eaten in there. And I think we've used the example of the parks department as being the example. We give them money to go out there and mow the grass and go go, you know, paint the lines and everything else. If we go and move their resources over here and say, "No, go take care of this thing instead of that." Then they're not mowing the grass. That's this is we have to make up that difference and u you know and and I think the police and fire do a really good job of providing that service, but it's at an overtime rate, too, because we have our primary jobs that we have to protect. So the overtime, and I would say that overtime's nice when they like the overtime, but if we wear our people out, they're not going to be available for our primary work either. And those are the things that we have to keep watching for with this. In my mind, I thought San Antonio at least had a model there that we could kind of build off of where we can you where in San Antonio they can actually provide support to these entities that way. Ours is kind of u this is the way we've always done it. And so I'm trying to put some sense that why how do we want to do it and why do we want to do it that way? >> Go back. Question Mr. Just to go back to that. I mean it it [clears throat] is important to have this conversation because like for example third party funding right all these entities are competing for this pot of money but then you'll have an entity outside of that process come and ask us to sponsor something that um there's no budget for or they didn't have to compete with the other entities for even though it's something that we normally sponsor or whatever. So, um I do think it's it's good to and like for example Washington's WBCA, like not to not to single them out or anything, but um when they asked us for the third party funding to put on their event, >> it didn't include the I don't even know how much we spent in extra police money to cover the security part of that that we had to absorb for that event, which turned out to be pro probably a lot of money, which we we do probably need to see that. Um, but [clears throat] those are all components to these things that are that were not part of the original, you know, >> agreed amount that we would sponsor, but now we kind of have to give them another $100,000 in sponsorship because we have to protect public safety >> and and council member Seattle, do you have a question? Oh, I guess just to to add that in in any event where the city is sponsoring or um an event or or an organization, um it would be good practice if there are guidelines in an application across the board, whether it's third party funding or even council priorities. But there should be there should be some I I would hope that that I could garner council support in setting up that we set up guidelines and an application process so that it's fair. Go ahead. >> Yes, if I may. If I'm not mistaken, councilman uh the council woman, I'm sorry. Uh we do have the application especially when we have what to tournament like they have softball or like for instance they got to go to to the toina which is the main office for sports or for parks and reccks and they submit an application they pay their fees and then if we got to they ask for sponsorship I think we do have I think we do have the enrollment >> for for some of them for some of them the ones the ones I think we're we're talking a little bit about are the ones that come in after the fact or or weren't prepared. I think in our last third party funding conversation, last year's budget, we had three nonprofits added in at the last state saying, "Well, I want to make sure that these people get these funds as well, too." And they never applied in third party funding, and so how do we fit them into the third party funding? And u and so I I think those are those those pieces that are there and you utilizing and I'm not picking on WBCA either because they do a wonderful job for us as well too bringing in that stuff but I don't know if everybody's aware that the WBCA only has this many activities h all the other activities are associate groups within the WBCA so there there is a balancing act. So, are we providing the benefit to the associate groups as well as the WBCA itself? Because what happens, our associate groups like to piggy back on the WBCA name because that helps them have value for what their activity is. So, those are the things that we have to kind of watch for with the city. Um, I'm going to I'm going to keep moving because I want to I wanted to try to get you guys out of here before 11. [laughter] >> Uh, you got 30 minutes. >> All right. >> 30 minutes. Uh but but know that [clears throat] this is coming forward. Know that we will have further conversation on these things because I I I'm not going to implement them on top of you, but I want to make sure you understood how we make the sausage as well too. What what are we walking through because we don't avoid any of these conversations anymore. Um I do want to know uh with this in this section, are there any other programs and initiatives we should be including or excluding? Are there any new services initiatives and expansion you wish to prioritize? any low priority programs recommended for reduction or elimination. Just so you know when we get into the efficiency conversation that I got one I think only one slide for that maybe two. Um we're going to get there anyway and we'll be providing recommendations back to you. But I want to ask you what you think we should be looking at as well too. That's the in my mind that's that relationship that we're supposed to have. And so I want to give you the opportunity and then I'm going to give you all the crazy ideas that we have as well too. But >> well Mr. I think we all gave you some pretty he heavy feedback and we've been going item by item. I think that's why it was kind of helpful not to save it to the end and we went through that. But if anybody has any other um things to add in terms of that if not we can have that conversation again >> next time. >> The last part on our budget on on that conversation this we're kind of done with the budget conversation. We're going to run into the bond referendum and then the efficiency study. I'm sorry, just just one I'm sorry, but just so that we can be clear. Um, >> this is a a moving living breathing breathing organism, right? Uh, we're going to be able [snorts] to adjust this as we go along. >> I mean, obviously there's a lot of questions asked right now. I'm taking notes over here as to what to ask for next time >> and then we'll just continue to update as we move forward, right, through the process. >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah. Yeah. The the the thing is that in October 1st, we will have a balanced budget. Again, we're going to do a lot of wonderful things for the city. We will not be able to do everything that we want to do, but I don't think the council, at least in the recent history, has had an opportunity to weigh in before we start building the budget. One of my primary job is to build a budget for this this city and I I take that responsible, but it has to be based upon where you're at. Otherwise, and you saw some of the conversations over the years, we adjust the budget so much. I don't know if it's my budget by the end when you vote for it, by the way, because it's it's like we make so many adjustments. So, this is my ability or my opportunity to hear from you and say, "Okay, now when we build the budget, I can say this is what you talked about. This is why it matches up to that." But I appreciate your time on the budget. Uh, as you can know, we are doing we're doing the city uh citizen surveys as well too. Uh you do have a survey up on >> your do we have a plan ready for whatever what's going around the nation you know and all that we have another plan for the budget just you know in any case it changes the outcome of what you know where our main source is coming from. Do we have another Do we have a plan B or a plan C? >> We We do not have a set We talked a little bit about it, I think, when Mr. Sparza was up here. We don't have a set plan that says this is where we're going to be at for that. What I what I will tell you is that we have we've we've looked at what the the to potential impact is of what may or may not happen. We believe that it'll be a short-term impact of anything on that federal level. it'll be a short-term impact, not a long term. It's just that our whole industry can't can't function with a decision that happens like that, right? That that's the nature of what we have. So, we we have we have assumptions within that mix of that. We'll be able to provide you I I I can tell you that because that's part of the conversation within this budget depending on what we add or take away within that. Well, this will be in this alternative for the bond referendum. This is this probably hits you a little bit closer when we get to that conversation >> is that if we don't do it this way, then I'm going to be asking you to do it this way. >> That's that's >> there are pieces in there. Now, if you tell me not to do it that way, then the next idea is that well, then we're going to have to drop these programs off the list in order to stay balanced within that. That's the hard nature of what it is. But there will be some of that in this >> and the reason I'm asking is because we're around the corner of whatever's going to happen. >> Yeah. And it's like Revy, it's you know proceeding to this budget and then it's and you see all these changes like okay so are we ready for that just in case the public comes back to us what is it that you're going to do with a new budget you know now saying that you have these tariffs. >> Yeah because these alternatives in here will actually work for any if we have an an economic downturn then we can we'll have that adjustment cycle within there. I just can't tell you right now without having a conversation with you because a program that I would say is not the highest priority. You may all disagree with me. >> Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. All right. Thank you, Mr. >> Um, Mayor Prom Council. Uh we we did have we have some slides if you want to look at the marketing plan of the bond referendum or we can jump right into the alternatives because the alternatives actually tie closer to what what the budget conversation is. I wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to see some of the information that we're putting out and everything. But if you if you want me to speed up in 30 minutes, you said, >> "Yeah, you're you're speaking." >> Yeah. >> For me asking that question. I lost five minutes. Thank you. U would you like me to just continue on with these pieces and if we have time? >> I'd like to see the marketing part. >> All right. Let's do that as well, too. Let's Let me jump out of here. Um >> Yeah. >> And then we'll >> Which part is that, Mr. N? >> I'm sorry. >> Oh, there's just slides, right? It's is it on your presentation or it's something else? >> This this is not my presentation. The this is uh this is from our consultant and our our PIO for this is this is what we put together and this is where how we're tackling. >> I think I think you you would probably need to just summarize all this for us afterwards [snorts] before we like adjourn. >> Okay. >> After the market. >> You want me to go ahead and finish my stuff first? >> All right. All right. Let's do that first and then I will I will speed through mine because the nice thing is we got the slides, we got the handouts. We will we will post all that information on the budget convers the budget workshop as well too so everybody gets that. See I lost five minutes. I'm trying to steal there five minutes too. But no but uh no thank you. I'll get out of the way. All right. >> Mayor and council members, my name is Neon. I'm the public information manager and I'm just going to give you a little bit of a recap of to where we're at right now with our campaign and then I will also introduce um our marketing um consultants that have been helping us with the entire campaign and where we're at right now and what's coming after this. Okay. Um so first and foremost, the public information office is leading the bond referendum marketing campaign effort at the moment. Our goal is to maintain, of course, a consistent and factual flow of information to our public about the bond referendum. We want to ensure, of course, that our residents have the tools to make an informed decision. Now, with that said, to ensure that the bond um campaign was effective and informative, we brought in um a marketing agency, which is PMDG, a professional marketing firm with ex extensive experience in community engagement and public information campaigns. Now, we have been consulting with them as well as we've been consulting with other PIOs with the city as well as our legal department for all of this information. Our team um has been consulting with other cities that have also ex executed their bond campaigns very successfully. Um and their PIO offices have handled most of the work for that information like San Antonio, Corpus, Austin, etc. Um we're so they're all have been telling us that we're on the right track by following a similar approach and like we mentioned we have consulted and gotten approval for all the materials that are out there right now from a legal department before we even you know put any kind of information out. I just wanted to go on the overview efforts um up to date as of right now. Um, again, our primary goal is to educate the community on this and and we want to make sure that the community understands what is a bond, of course, first and foremost. Then also how bonds have historically happened here in our community and what projects are being proposed right on the four projects. Um, and how they align with the city's growth and infrastructure needs. Um we've already made significant progress with the printed materials, video production, um community outreach efforts, um and also with the marketing agency on board. We're amplifying this reach. Um we only had literally very limited amount of time so that we can get all this information together. This process usually takes months in order for us to start from beginning to end. So, so far on the branding and messaging, we've developed and finalized all the artwork for the bond related materials. We've created alreadyformational cards that we introduce this um to you all and mayor um during the Washington DC uh visit as and it was wellreceived. Now, these cards will also be distributed at the upcomingformational sessions and also other community events that we are going to be um involved in. Now, we've also done digital and printing advertising. So, the artwork has already been done for billboards across the city. You're already will start seeing these. They are already out as well as ads developed for newspapers um to ensure of course coverage across print and digital platforms. And I believe it also came out in the Sunday newspaper already. Um video and radio spots. Um, we've also have done the initial video highlighting that the city will go out for a bond and has been completed and distributed. That's also been it's it's already out. Um, two additional videos are in production that will be coming out this week and that will be what is the bond and the history of the bonds in Laredo. We didn't want to put a lot of information out to the community so fast um because it is very extensive and we want to make sure that the that the um the community first knew from us that we're going out for a bond. Now we're going to explain to them a little bit more about the bond and how we're going to do this. Um theformational sessions um there's three of them and we have scheduled those. The first one will be tomorrow at the Joey Gara Public Library. That's at 6 PM. Um then the next one will be on Thursday and that's at the South Florida Wick Clinic and then April 2nd will be at the Fascin Recreational Center. And so what we were trying to do is to make sure that we have all of the areas of the city covered so that everybody has the opportunity to come ask questions. Theseformational sessions are going to be very interactive with our community. We want it to be that way because again it is a lot of information for them to process and we just want to make sure that everyone is understanding. I'm going to stop here because um I would ask our um consultants to come up here so that they can show you a little bit more about their work and how they've been able um to help us. Thank you. Tonight, my name is Amy Bara and I am Coco PMDG Marketing Communications. And I I'll go quick. I think uh you know I may have chatted with you a little bit about kind of what our bond referendum campaign looks like but just as not mentioned uh we've been working closely with the communications department the office of the public information office as well as Mr. AB and it's been uh you know very quick I think as I mentioned usually a process like this takes anywhere from 4 to 6 months. I think we've accomplished a lot in 3 weeks. Um we were engaged and we've actually been meeting weekly. Um this is obviously an image that you've already seen which is a Laredo bond 2025 brand bond election day May 3rd. Um I'll talk a little bit about kind of our meetings. We've been uh having weekly meetings with all stakeholders and all departments have been involved. So all public information officers for anyone that's representing one of the propositions has been in these meetings and they've been extensive. We started with a SWAT analysis which obviously identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and ourselves as far as our team we wanted to be a absorb all the information as best as we could. Obviously it's a lot of information and a lot of information to put out. One thing that Niva pointed on is that you don't want to overwhelm the public with something that they don't even understand. This hasn't happened in 32 years. So, educating the public is key, right? So, the first thing we did as part of our plan after meeting with all the PIOS is we started there's a bond. You know, that's the first piece of information and then there's tidbits of information that's going out strategically. It's not just uh without a plan. It's all being done very strategically. So, there's four phases to the campaign. Uh the first part obviously is a research and planning which is what we did really the first week that we were engaged which included our swan analysis. Then there's a creative and content development component which again that process typically will take anywhere from four to 6 months. We distributed some copies of the squad first of all so you all could look at that and then also um information regarding our creative brief which basically tells us what direction we're going to go in. Now we are not the subject matter experts. uh the city of Reno management team is NOIDA and all those PIOs for each one of those departments that represent one of the propositions they are the subject matter experts we are there to help them strategically communicate that message to the public very factualbased and that's one of the challenges that we had we worked closely with uh the legal department because there's only so many things that we could and could not say right so that already was a challenge but nevertheless you have a copy of the creative brief that talks about that and then of course the engagement and campaign launch which really started last week with the first piece of information that went out and then of course mobilization. So that's really kind of where we are right now between the engagement and mobilization phase where we're starting to roll out theformational sessions uh the town halls. We're trying not to call them town halls to try and get more people involved and get them excited about exactly what's going on. So obviously there's objectives that we've uh put together together with our stakeholders and you have copies of that strategy on your bond election marketing strategy piece which is this one here that we distributed. I'm not going to go through all of them but we developed key insights as well as key messaging that is going to be consistent. So the idea is that everybody's singing off the same sheet of music. The city is delivering a very consistent message based on facts. Not based on rumors, not based on hearsay, not based on so-called social media influencers. It's all based on facts, based from all the information that we gathered from all our research, all our meetings and the results of the SWAT analysis. And then of course the campaign strategies. How are we going to roll out this advertising campaign? Right? And so therefore comes the creative brief which all of you have a copy of. Um creative approach. We developed brand personality for the bond 2025 which you've seen and Baku my business partner will come up to show you some of those elements of the campaign that represent all of the propositions. Um obviously Laredo bond 2025 is the official title. There's a new URL which is larbond2025.com. It's embedded and has already been on the city website. It's beginning to change now based on the elements of the campaign. So, the overall look and feel of that uh domain once you click on there, it's part of the city website, but it's going to look and feel like the campaign. The colors, the personality, and all of the detailed information on every proposition is there. There's only so much we can put on a 5x5 card, right? So, if people are really interested and they really want to know, then they can go online and they can read all of that information. By the way, everything is being done in English and in Spanish. We developed a brand logo which you've seen and then of course the visual identity for the campaign. [snorts] Uh in terms of our campaign strategies, our audience education is where we started. What is a bond? And we're continuing to communicate that digitally. We're also doing it on video both in English and in Spanish because again it hasn't been done in 32 years. People are not aware of even what a bond is. There's a feel-good campaign. You know, are we being progressive and competitive as other cities are? We continuously get compared right to other markets. It happens all the time. Interesting really quick story, but while on our DC trip, I stayed behind because I serve on the board of the American Advertising Federation and there was people there from municipalities all over the country who are also currently undergoing bond campaigns and talked about the very same thing, right? It's about how are we progressing our city? How do we feel good about our cities? We always think that the grass is greener on the other side, but we're not ever willing to sacrifice certain things. certain amenities, whatever it may be so that we can move forward, right? So, that's part of the feel-good campaign. The proposition breakdown's important. People need to know where the dollars are going. That's the buy the numbers breakdown, and you'll start seeing that in everything that we distribute. And then, of course, a grassroots advocacy. We're working closely with Mida and the communications team. The one thing and the first thing that they've done kind of by default has been our breakfast with the mayor, which was last week, uh, partnering with Laredo Chamber of Commerce. So the mayor was there and there was also a representative from each one of the departments that have a stake in this bond referendum. So they were able to talk one-on-one with CEOs, local leaders of our private business community which I think went well. That was really the first part of our grassroots advocacy. Ourformational session which is coming up tomorrow will be part of that as well. Uh in terms of campaign outlets, Niva mentioned it to you. Traditional media is being utilized. We're really uh focusing a lot on digital outreach because it's cost-effective and it's easy to reach out to people ver uh ver uh via digital printed collateral. You've seen one piece of it so far and then of course continuous public relations and grassroot efforts and so I will let come up and talk a little bit about the visuals and the [snorts] campaign brands. I'm creative director and partner for PMG. So I heard so many words budget and numbers and my mind was kind of like you know going all over. But this is the creative end. This is this is the fun part. Um this part was about how do we interpret the prop the proposition you know how do how do we capture and how do we craft this message. We're very limited in messaging because we really can't say much. I mean it just has to be straightforward. So we used a lot of visuals and if you can see I'm going to break down this really quick is you can see the four propositions in this logo. you know, you see the buildings, you see the surfaces, and we also wanted to communicate with color. I know color sometimes it's like the last thing that we think about, but color also communicates a lot. So, we wanted to keep it fun, alive, you know, and and and just a very positive thing. Um, do I go down here? >> Just the arrow. And so then we created four four icons to res to to represent the four propositions individually even even though it's going to be it's a big bond but you're you're voting on them separately. So we have the safety, we have public, we have the street improvement and senior housing and again the same color palette and then we combine the icons with the logo. Um again just to really really brand it and communicate those live colors that it's about progress, it's about positivity. Um then you've seen this piece that we already printed. Now it breaks it down into what what proposition is how much money. Um very simple consistent consistent on the message. Um this is an ad that we did for this is our first ad that we did explaining what the bond is and how we break it down. Um these are evites for uh tomorrow, Thursday and April 1st uh town hall meeting. So again, we're trying to really keep it con consistent and alive with the visuals. Um, >> can I can I ask a question? >> Yes sir. >> Are you going to put a QR code or or a website or something that they can reference on the Yes. Is it on there? >> Yes. >> Okay. I didn't see >> the website is on there. The QR code we we haven't included yet. We just wanted to make sure that the new URL was up and running. It is now. So that's the plan. >> Awesome. >> Yeah. So this is a new website. the to visit uh visit loredo bong or lored bond2025.com. >> Thank you. >> Um and these are electronic billboards. You're going to see them throughout the city. Um we have about maybe six of them right now circulating and they started this weekend. Um and then this is a simple video that we did uh for for uh social media and I'm going to play it and it's it's really about um what the bond is. Heat. Heat. So that's that's one one of the video of many that we'll be producing as we go along. Um another one oh the same So, as we as we move along, we're going to be producing more videos, more information, more prints materials. I think we have on schedule, I'm not mistaken, a direct mail piece that we're working on. Um, and we have a lot of social u media activity that we're going to be rolling out. And so this is just the first part. >> Sorry, Mr. Ventos. Um, the the editing on those infographics, will they be corrected? >> Yes. Yes. Um, so this is pretty much the entire uh that we have. And so a as we move along, we'll be adding or correcting or revising and modifying um kind of getting the news out there, you know, getting the information. And if there's more questions, depending tomorrow also on the on the town hall what questions they have, we might put out information on answering those questions through social media, through any other communication. >> Councilman King, >> thank you. Um and thank you guys. Um and interestingly tomorrow your town hall at the library actually the last time the city held a um bond election that passed that was in 1993 and one of the propositions on there was that library that you're going to be in tomorrow. >> Yeah. >> So it might be worth you know making that connection for people um as a you know history you know reminder as a you know so I don't know if that was on purpose or that was a coincidence but um that um noteworthy and the other a couple of the other items. Well, the West Laredo overpass was another one. Then there were some fire stations and some other things. So, it might be u historically relevant if you include that type of thing. So, so because people may not believe that it's been 32 years since the city has done that like ah they're just saying that. Okay. But if you actually show them something that they're aware of, you know, um that might be um that might just explain. >> I just want to mention just on that. It's interesting you say that because with a lot of the other municipalities that I've spoken to over the last couple of months regarding bonds at their cities is that's one thing that they never do a really good job of is post referendum. Once the bonds pass, they don't go out and remind people, look at what we did with the money. Here it is. We promised you, now here it is. And to your point, you know, we may not have done, and I say we as a community, we may not have done a very good job about reminding people about the fact that we got a new library and way back then, a new police department station that now has been outgrown, right? I mean, it's been almost 35 years, right? So, that's just a very good point that we need to remember that that after this bond, if if it does pass, we need to ensure that that we go out and we remind people, look at what we've done here. Here are the results of your vote. One more question. >> Yes. >> Are you going to do like individual videos for each? >> Yes. And and I just wanted to address council member Ros that second video with that edit has not been released yet. So yes, we're we're correct. >> I know we can. How far can you know that's not to get in in those problems of saying that we do support we don't support or whatever the case is between our colleagues just we like if if I want to be there and they you know most of the our constituents or the people is there they see us they're going to be like oh you answer me why do you want this or why did you vote for this so how far can we go so we won't be getting trouble Oh, that's a good question. I thank you for that. So, the the line is we cannot electioneer, right? We can't uh go and spend uh city resources or or in your position as official council members uh support this. Let's just be honest. That's that's the side we're we're concerned about, right? Because normally in a election, you have voting for for and against. So, there'll be for and against. here the the actionable side is if we're advocating for uh passage of this bond then that's what could get us in trouble right so if you show up then most I would say you have to be a bit more cautious because at this presentation and you're there as a council member you're going to be representing the city right so you can't say well I personally think we should have >> you know yes to this no to that fair enough right so if you're going to show up I believe you you need to stay uh focused on the facts, right? Answer questions about the facts. If they ask for your personal opinion, say you can talk to them offline. >> That's that's that's the clearest >> just just to clear up, you know, for the record. So, just in case the the public goes out there say, "Well, he didn't want to answer this question that we don't want to answer that. We can't answer that question." >> So, I'm here I'm here on behalf of the city. We're presenting facts and information. >> I talked to you offline. Just to clarify, um I do [clears throat] think that that's important because I mean we've had this conversation before as far as taking off your council member hat and putting on your private citizen hat and you know it's kind of difficult because people see us and they recognize us as council member unless they've known us personally you know before this role or whatever. So I do think it is um dangerous [clears throat] for us to um speak about our personal opinions on platforms that are in our capacity because we've gained an audience based on our position. We have friends on social media based on our personal and we have people that follow us based on our title and then we're speaking [clears throat] to them through our title, but we're telling them that it's our personal opinion. I think that's very dangerous. We have people on council that are doing that. And I don't [clears throat] um I don't think that that's I I'm I'm I understand that there's a legal line and everything. If we show up to a town hall and we sit in the audience and we say, "Well, we're just here as private citizens." I also don't think that that's going to fly either. If we go to a meeting and we show up, we're showing up as our official capacity. We have to speak in that official capacity. And my I don't know is that the legal interpretation? >> Yes, that's just exactly uh what I just said to to council Ron Hill. I appreciate you you clarifying that. That's that when you show up to this uh town meeting, it's hard to discern to separate yourself as a private citizen. So that's what I mean by there you should stick to the facts and information only. If you want speak about your personal feelings, that should be spoken to offline. Outside of that >> council member when it doesn't >> I just I know we're talking about it. We're never a private citizen. When does it finish? Because you're putting us in a between our hard a rock and a hard place. It's like we anywhere we go, we took an oath and it doesn't matter who it is, we're still the same people and we are elected officials and we represent the city. So, we hold ourselves to the standard that standard. Where does it finish or what time does it end? Do you have a do we have a time after 5:00? No, I just No, I'm not trying to be No, you know, but I'm trying just trying to make sense because I might be at a at a at a place and they might ask me and I may be with my family and they might ask me, "Hey, Mr. Mr. Gohead, this is what was going on. What do you think about this?" And they may take that cont, you know, take it out of context and then I'm in trouble. So that's why I'm trying to figure out where does it finish or where's the line. >> Okay. So, if I may answer fully, I appreciate this. You know me, I'm nerdy about this stuff. I I want to show you exactly where that line is, right? So, you're always council members, right? You serve 24 hours a day, right? However, you do have your personal rights, your your first amendment rights. So, I'm just saying if you want to be totally cautious, then always speak on behalf of the city, right? But you're you're smart people. you're you you care about this community, you may want to speak your mind. You just have to make sure that it's very clear that you're only speaking as a private citizen, not as a council member. >> I'm Mr. I'm sorry, Mr. Zone, I'm not trying to be a person that's on it. It's that >> When is that? >> How's it? >> How's it How How can you clear it up for us and say we are able to speak and say and express our opinion? Even if it's in favor or against it, it doesn't matter. When do we where's that line? >> When is it? So, can you get a can you get us an answer for that? Because, >> you know, my answer is it has to be clear in the recipient's mind and clear uh so that objectively if if you get sued for it, you get grief for it, people who who can look at it and say, "Yes, you're speaking as a private citizen." If if you can get across that threshold, then then you're clear. But unless you you want me to to be right next to you and [laughter] they tell you, "Yes, you can do this and that." I I'll do that. But as smart people, you you can't. >> No, but if if anything, Mr. Zone, it would be nice if you would be in these tall hall meetings at the same time. So if we're not talk if if let's say something comes up, you're there to protect us at the same time saying not only us as as individual as a city councilman, but I I know as our uh our our staff that can not not they can't speak on it either. and they can't say and they're not in favor of it or against it, but they're stating their facts and that and that way you'll be there in case a person comes up and say, "Hey, well, you don't want to answer my question," which we always have. We always have, not even in public comments and our and our uh and even our platforms and stuff on our uh what you call it um on our Facebooks. We social media. There you go. Social media. They they respond to us and they tell us, "Oh, you you you don't want to tell us what that money where that money is going to or because why is it that you want it, Mr. or why is it that you want? I'm just using you as a as an opinion, right? But and that's why I'm saying can you be there at every we're going to have two town hall town hall meetings within this week. It would be nice if you would be there. No, not it would be good to be you be there. you'll be there say you know what he can't answer that this is this is the reason why because you're the lawyer of the city >> well and zone just to piggyback it people are going to ask us do are you in favor of this do should we vote for this how should we vote for this like they are going to ask us that they that's just how it's going to happen and so are they asking us in our professional capacity in our personal capacity I think that um if you're amongst friends or in a private setting maybe you can give your personal opinion, but if we're out in the public or in the public eye, um what we're saying, if we're telling them yes or no, that that I don't want to get caught in some kind of problem. >> And and just to add to that is that we're at we're in a public we're not a public city, but at that moment, we're representing the city. You know, we're having these town hall meetings for the community to go out there and have the conversation to ask any question as they're good or bad. Whatever question they want to do, they have that question. Well, >> I'm just as a body, you all voted for these propositions. So, you're asking the the council, I mean, the the citizens to to vote for this. So, as a body, I mean, that that's that's what you're you're pushing forward, right? But as but as far as advocating, you know, for against it, by all means. You know, I'm a city attorney 24 hours a day. So, you you want me to show up, I will show up. >> Council council member. Um, so, uh, trying to find that line. Um, if we run separate accounts, if we have a personal social media account versus a leaning towards city business personal account, uh, account, it's all personal, right? Social media is all personal. But if we're defining ourselves with our personal social media versus our out in the public city council social media, that seems to be a division. That's the line, right? So on the personal account, we would be able to be not that I want to cross it by saying rah rah rah, but talk a little bit more about what the implications are. And the other question I have is if if and I believe Council Member Janel brought this up, are we able to say I can see the need for these bonds? You're not saying how you're going to vote, but I mean we are elected officials and when you're talking about people coming and looking to us for guidance, it like you said, we're the ones who put them up. We're the ones who propose them. Then are we able to express ourselves in that way? if if you're >> let him answer and then >> answer real quickly. So uh first part uh if if it's a city account then then it's a it's a public form. So uh uh you cannot speak your private uh concerns. If it's your personal account, yes, you pay for it all. That's a private account. However, even in a private account, if you're uh publishing things uh in your official capacity and that could become a public form. I I've talked to some of you about this over the past couple years. So, you have to be careful there. So, it's just because it's your your own private account doesn't necessarily mean it's always going to be private. So, you have to keep those two separate if you want to to keep that distinction. Uh the the other question about uh uh >> phrasing it again if in your official capacity we cannot election that that's the pipeline. So you can't say that we really need the Hamilton, we really need this police station. You cannot say those things unfortunately. Yes. >> Oh council. No, I just wanted to um talk about it because I think a lot of this is um directed at me, but um I would like to to share that in other cities, other um ent government entities there you have your personal public page that is that is identified as such and and there there are other there are public pages that are by federal, state, city staff. And we don't have that. We don't all of every social media account that we have is is personal. Um whether it be personal, private or personal public, but and and to the things that I have shared, there's I don't see anywhere that I say vote for or against. I think that it's asking people to think critically and just to think about what the impacts are going to be and come up with the decision on their own. But at least think about it critically. There's and I don't I don't see where the harm is in in in that. And I would even go as far to say is the city is running its own marketing campaign that's a feel good campaign. How is that not leaning one way or the other? >> Uh council member >> I was going to speak to more more about the marketing part of of that. I think a lot of it can be cleared up by by uh you know I the first time you told us that you know that fine line it's very clear to me we just we cannot be the face of this bond election. We were the ones who voted for it to come forward but we cannot be the ones who take it across the finish line. That's you all. Uh personally I'd love to go to those meetings. I did it before. Uh but I can understand when people come up to you and ask you for your opinion. Um, but it's very difficult to try and sell it. Uh, and here I am. I don't want to cross that line. Let's just let the facts speak for themselves. And you guys more than anything are the ones that do it. But I do want this. So if if I can, uh, if I'm going to let the facts speaks for themselves, uh, and make a a decision because of it, rightfully so. Rightfully said, then our marketing strategy has to be geared towards that. Because if they're asking questions up here, then our marketing has to be, you know, like you you started it off by the introduction process, which I loved. Okay. Then now that you introduced it for a week or two, then here comes the facts so that we can I mean totally zero in with something that comes together with the town hall meetings. And then town hall meetings are going to be totally fact-based. And so I'm wondering if we as as as a group us we have a scripted uh town hall that is going to be geared towards um speaking to somebody like me. Are you going to be able to dumb it down for me? You know, and I would hope because sometimes these things can be um quite daunting because a lot of people don't I mean really the the [clears throat] greatest example of that is is the simple question. Do we really know where that money is going to go to? Okay. So, if you can answer that, I'm just I'm speaking as a council member saying that if you are going to be selling this product or you're going to be introducing this product to it. Well, the by not insulting the process is to really educate everybody out there with what it is. So if and and in educating, I don't mean bombarding them with information or needless information that's out there, but really zeroing in on a guy like me and explain it to me like I'm a fourth grader. And I think that you that people will get it whether they like it or not. And that's it. When you put it in those terms, I think it's very easy to make a decision whether no, I'm not for it or I'm for it. And so that's my two cents worth on that. That's uh I'd love to go to those meetings, but I I can understand how people misinterpret me going out there as as electioneering and um you know but that's part of the process of doing this. >> I just want to clarify real quick on on answering your question council member Garca and that's exactly the >> uh yes nor public information manager for the record that is exactly what we are going to be doing especially at theformational sessions as well. Um we are trying to put this information that people can understand they can digest it like you're mentioning it. Um and so yes it That's why we wanted for it to be very um interactive with the community because we're going to be able to uh on one-on-one kind of explain or you know if they have any other questions that we're able to explain those and so each booth of each department of each proposition we'll be able to highlight that and we will be explaining it in very um I guess >> very yeah exactly very terms >> I have a question about that um you said right now that we can't talk about what did you just say right now? Can you repeat that? Uh you said that we can't talk about the consequences of not doing it or or we can't talk you >> I'm trying to yeah think of to to answer customer regards question along with yours is that if if I'm talking to a fourth grader I would say keep it fact specific specific like if here's our population these are how many fire stations we generally have this is how many this is the time frame when we uh turn over vehicles those are facts But when you say it's it's good to have this or it's bad to have this, you put opinion into it. That's election. >> Well, um >> I know that helps. Perfect. >> Any other questions about that? Councils. >> I I do. Yes. >> Okay. >> So, um I think back referring back to uh council member Garca's proposal about asking about what happens if it fails. are we have and I know that was the part I guess you're getting to, but we do have very specific things that can happen if this proposal would fail. Are we allowed to discuss those? >> Again, that's a good question. The line I believe could that might be helpful is if it's fact specific. If it fails, then we we would be short in funding. Those are facts. So you say if it fails, Laro is going down. That's an opinion, right? No, I guess talking about the alternatives, how to find that money to do those projects. >> If it's fact specific, it's it's >> so the balance in this is that the the the alternatives that I'm going to provide to you are not the only alternatives out there. These are just some I think that was the challenge we had when I was putting this slide together to because the question was, well, what are we going to do if it doesn't work, right? U the challenge I have is that I don't want it to come across saying well if you don't do this then we're going to do this because that's not what the nature of this thing is. We have all the all the different structures we could do nothing. We could we could cut if you if any of those propositions are still important to us. We can find room within our own budget which means we're going to drop programs in order to make room for all of that stuff. >> Can you say that you say you were going to drop programs? But you don't want you don't want it to stop just at dropping programs because there are all these alternatives out there, right? I mean, the do nothing. That's why I said that one first is that we'll just we'll uh there are cities out there or actually schools I guess more often than not when they have a failed bond referendum, they've actually just repackaged it and they go back out and ask again if it's something that's really really important. We have all those different alternatives out there. The ones ones I'm going to share with you are is I want to make sure you understand the distinction between the four propositions as well within that structure. But uh I never wanted it to come across as hey if you don't do it this way then we're going to do it this way. This is the conversation I'll have with you all though is that because if any of this stuff is very important then we're going to find a way to make it work right one way or another. >> Um miss um Mr. I just want to comment that um and Mark in terms of I guess in terms of marketing um for people to um understand also uh we're not going to put the financial I think as much into the marketing but we did have a motion to have a financial workshop for the public. Is is that going to be scheduled? I know you're having information >> part of the stuff that you heard tonight will actually actually be repackaged for for these these town these town halls andformational meetings as well too. Uh what we want to do is make sure that when we are talking in these in theseformational sessions that we're actually reaching them. We don't want to inundate them with information that's not important to them. So, but the idea that that's the reason that we went into so much detail in the in the early part of the conversation so that when we do sit down with the public, we can at least say here's the information we shared with the council. Here's how here's how we're going to utilize that information. So, they it will there will be a part of that within those conversations. >> Well, is is and another question is um since I think most people can understand the concept of like, you know, getting a loan for home improvements, right? you know, versus saving the money up and waiting so you can pay it all cash. Um, is there a way to translate that in terms of that's basically what we're doing is we're asking them for the permission to go out for a loan so we can bring these things to them sooner than later because we need them now because they're things that we've needed and we're going to pay it back over time like a loan because most people understand that they want to build a pool, they want to build a palapa, they want to make improvements to their home. Most people take out a loan so they can get those things instead of saving up over the years, right? So, um is it okay to communicate like is it okay for us to just make it very simple for them to understand because you the word bond, you know, but you talk about >> but but going going with your and and maybe we didn't do a good enough job of explaining all of the steps in that that is exactly what we're talking about doing is putting that information out there in the layman terms. fourth grade terms right? >> Yeah. >> If I may, I can address that really quickly. So, f first of all, and I'm not speaking um name for the >> AVA with PMPG marketing communications. I'm not speaking uh regarding anything having to do with legal, right? Obviously, you've got your legal department, but I can tell you that the way that the campaign was created and in marketing, we we do write copy and content at a fourth grade reading level. It's the way a newspaper is written because it's for everybody to understand, right? So we have to simplify the message because it's so comprehensive that no one's ever going to understand it. But going back to what he's talking about facts, everything that's being uh communicated is factbased, right? So the little cards that you have, if you know, obviously it's your choice whether you attend these town hall meetings or not. But if you were to go and somebody was to ask you for your opinion, you can say, "Well, these are the facts and this is what we're looking for and it's four propositions and this is exactly what they're for." You know, I encourage them and say, I would encourage you to go to loredobond225.com where all the information is there in detail and then if they have any additional questions, they can shoot a message or an email, an instant message through that website, right? But if you sit there and try to explain it, they're they're never going to get it, right? Um, at the end of the day, in terms of, you know, your question, right, uh about uh simplifying the message and how the finance uh aspect of it, absolutely there's going to be comparisons. So part of the strategy also is to release uh information regarding the facts versus myths. You know what is the myth? The myth is that this is going to impact my taxes by whatever it is. Well, that's already being communicated on social media. It's not it's not factual. It's just hearsay. You know, the council, you know, uh gave themselves a raise. That's just somebody's opinion, right? So that's always going to happen. It's going to be continuous. So all we need to do is continuously be focused on giving them the correct information over and over and over again. You know, consistency is king, right? These are the facts. These are the numbers. This is how it's going to be impacted. And you know, to your point in terms of the finance, we're not going to get super comprehensive because they'll never understand it. But there will be an opportunity. And I think that the best people to deliver that message also are our our staff. When we were at the breakfast with the mayor, I can tell you that probably 80% of the people that were in that room were they were not sure what to expect. But when that hour and a half session ended, which by the way was going to be 30 minutes, it was an hour and a half. The way that, you know, they presented and they spoke and they explained it cost so much to repair so many miles of street. If we wait now, it's going to cost us this much more. Everybody understood and every question was answered one-on-one. At the end of that presentation, people were coming up to city staff and say said, "I get it now. >> You know, I wasn't sure what the bond was for, but you explained it." And so, there's always going to be that confusion. I will also um you know, alert you that you know, when you were talking about opinions and public and private, everything is public. The minute that you post anything, whether it be on, you know, X or on Instagram, regardless of what account it is, it's public. You're posting it for anybody to see. somebody can walk away with it, right? So whether it's an opinion or not an opinion, it's public at the end of the day, right? That's the way social media is. The the key here is that if you are, you know, going out there and believing everything that you see that people are writing and commenting on, we're never going to be effective. It's it's about continuously just like he said, the facts. Continuously repeating the facts. And if they say, "Oh, you're wrong. You're lying. You know, this money is going to go to your pockets because you're greedy." just because that's somebody's opinion. And if we're worried about that, we're never going to be able to move forward, right? We just repeat the facts. You know, this is what the bond is for. It hasn't happened in 32 years. Other cities do it. That's how they get things accomplished. Keep moving forward, right? But it's also in my just from our experience over the years, social media is not the that's not the we should have been looking at social media to decide whether or not this is effective or not. That that's one small voice at the end of the day. And we all know that. All of you know that when you all ran for office, you know, if you let that social media consume you, it'll drive you crazy and you'll never get anywhere. >> These bond campaigns are designed to deliver facts and to encourage people to make educated decisions. At the end of the day, the vote is in their hands. If they feel that they would like to see improvements, I used a personal example. Uh they brought up Dr. Chamberlain, who by the way did a phenomenal job explaining why they needed those funds. You know, I I went back in the 90s, I worked at the city of Loredo Health Department. And back then, we we had no room. We were out of space. And that was in 1996. So, you can imagine all these years later, they still don't have the space, right? There was portable buildings in 1996 where I had to be in my office because we didn't fit at the health department. And the way that he explained certain grants, right? grants are willing to come in and fund us, but we need so many, you know, so much square footage of space for each one of those programs. People don't understand that. Do we have the time to to educate people and tell them? Probably not. But we can definitely go out in a grassroots fashion. We have theformational sessions. We have a little bit more time. We can explain why these funds are necessary for every proposition, not just the health department. I used it as an example because he did a phenomenal job of explaining and breaking it down. And I I think hearing from the experts has made a world of difference. It made a world of difference for me and I think the first presentation that we had was was good. But at the end of the day and just like Zone has said, stick to the facts and and I I appreciate all of you being so cautious of this and not just going out there and saying this is my opinion. This is what I'm going to do and asking the question over and over again because it it's critical. You're absolutely right. Um it's like a celebrity. A celebrity can have their own personal, you know, social media account and they can have their official celebrity media account. Well, regardless, they're still a celebrity in every likeness, right? That's never going to go away. So, you know, if council member Sigara, if you're approached at HB, what do you do? They put you up against a wall, which I'm sure happens, right? And what do you think about this? How do you respond? And the best way to respond is take out one of those little cards and said, "Here's some information so you can learn more about it and go to the website and it's great seeing you." you know, versus giving them an opportunity to wait for your opinion, right? And so that may be the best way to do it because, you know, otherwise we're all going to drive ourselves crazy. We're going to keep asking, you know, you all are elected officials. You voted for this. You you can't technically go out there and electioneer like he's saying, but you can go out there and deliver the facts. >> Council member Sio. >> Yes. Thank you. And I just just to add [clears throat] to that, I do I mean I do believe that the effects of for or against this bond should be talked about and what are the adverse effects? What is the long-term effects? What how is M going to affect affect the the um our city and our financial um situation? Where where are we going to be if I mean we're trying to raise bridge fees. We're ra If this passes I don't know where you're saying that it's raising taxes is not a fact. I mean, over the next couple of years, if this bond is approved, the bond will be sold and we will have to raise a p a percentage. So, I'm I'm not sure where you're saying that that's not >> Oh, I'm sorry that I misinterpreted that, but yes, indeed. Uh, council member Sarah, in our in our all the information that's going out, it does clarify that what that increase in taxes is going to be. Uh, and we got that information from the legal department and community development and all the experts have given us the exact number. And so we know it's going to be 100,000 for I think it's every $100,000 in in valuation, right? If I'm not mistaken. So if if you do the math, I mean on a $100,000 property, which we know is is a low number, but you're looking approximately at about $8.33 a month that those taxes will increase, right? So the public needs to know that yes, taxes will be increased by $8.33 a month on every $100,000 in valuation, which is about 27 cents a day. So yes, they need to know that and and we're telling them taxes are going to be increased. But that's where I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, what are we willing as a community to to do, right? The grass is greener on the other side and and we've actually done the research in all the markets that have implemented bonds, taxes have increased depending on the proposition, right? So either taxes don't increase, things stay the same, and this is what happens, right? But again, that's why we're being fact-based. And and you're right, they need to hear both sides. But I think what uh if I'm not mistaken, Zone, what you're leading to is it shouldn't be elected officials saying that. It can be a third party that's talking about, look, these are the good reasons, these are the bad reasons. This these are the pros and cons, right? But it shouldn't necessarily be the city, and it shouldn't be elected officials. I'm >> But the city is doing a marketing campaign and a feelood one at that. Well, they're all facts. They're they're not telling them which way to vote. They're not saying vote for this or vote for that. Yes. >> And then same thing, nobody here up here is telling how anybody how to vote just to to think. >> Um also, uh just to clarify, uh zone also, it's not just us, right? It's also city staff cannot cannot I mean what is are you going to provide like a fact sheet for for staff for us? So that mean because I know that you all you all can't even push for it either. >> So you know we're all we're all saying why we need it. We're saying why we're doing it, why we did it, why we supported it to put it on their on their plate for them to, you know, say yes or no. But um none of us are allowed to really say I think it wouldn't be helpful for us for legal to provide us with >> Tim. we can put that together and then at least give you some whatif scenarios that we think that as to how to respond because u I think and and zone alluded to it a little bit with one of the the answers that this council voted to put the bond referendum out to the people. These are the four items that they voted on that would go to the people. Right? I mean, we haven't said do this bond referendum or else. We what we said was is that these are the four items that we determined based upon the information provided to us that we wanted you to consider. So, we we can put together kind of a whatif of of how to uh how to how to kind of stay in that balance. Uh I will tell you that this campaign, even as short-lived as it is right now, has went through so many different adjustments about things that they wanted to add to it that would bring something else to it. we had to take it off because it it can't it went too far over the the line. Um and that's why that's why we have the all the all the marketing information right now is Loredo Bond reference. >> Mr. Council member Sara has a comment and then I think it would be I don't know if m before that council member Sierra Mr. Bara did you have anything else you wanted to add or does council have any questions for Mr. Bara specifically? It is okay. Council member >> S um the information about the $100,000 and and this may actually be more uh answered by city staff, but the $8.33 per $100,000 property valuation. Is that based on a fiveyear spread of this bond? >> I'm I'm not sure what the tenure of it is. That was just the information they gave us based on the valuation number. So, it it is factually accurate or we we are able to say that it's $8.33 per $100,000 property valuation >> and and maybe it's it's a little wonky in that all those bonds aren't going to go out at the same time. Understanding that, right? But, um they aren't also going to go all out the next year. It's going to be that fiveyear span. Are we safe in saying that it's $8.33 per $100,000 valuation? >> Let me let me put together the information specific that's safe to say >> that because I think that's very important when you talk about fact-based and you talk about the misinformation. People are putting out wild numbers about what it's going to cost. >> But at the same time, we should be putting out the accurate number based on this five-year projection and understanding there's going to be a little give and take in that. But that is something that is worth knowing and and I think that's easy to talk about at least for me. >> Yes. Any other comments for the market? >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. B. Your work. Congrats. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Ne, do you want to wrap it up for us? >> Let me wrap it up. >> Um 10 minutes. >> Really quickly on the bond referendum alternatives. Five my five minutes are left. >> 10 minutes. >> 10 minutes. All right. I'll I'll digress a little. No. Uh so there there are a lot of different alternative funding approaches that that will that could happen if we don't do this. I think the challenge we have with this bond referendum, so much of it is bu built on fixing something that's been broken and there are there are some new pieces in there, but we can do tax rate adjustments, service reductions, reallocation the current funds and and then we can get very creative within the structure. And so I was going to share a little bit of that. One of the key alternatives is of course is that and this goes back to the earlier conversation where I said remember the capacity conversation based upon our current tax rate. We have capacity within our current tax rate. We are actually taxing our people less than what we have the value that we can tax them at. That is something that everybody kind of misses a little bit. There's there and so we actually have the ability to bring that tax rate up to that amount without public action. The the nature of where the council has been is that we want to we wanted to keep the taxes going the other direction and that's why we're in that in that status. So when you look at that graph that had the uh that had the tax rate and and you saw it always dropping down on that that is what the capacity is. we can go back to the FY2122 and bring the tax rates back up. Just so you know, regardless of the bond referendum, you know, if it if it if it goes through, it's going to cost whatever it's going to go through. If it doesn't go through, it's still going to cost if we're try to do the work. There is no there is no free way out of this thing. It's it's somebody's going somebody has to pay for whatever it is. >> But there is there is capacity within our structure. So that cap excuse me that capacity that you're talking about what we were what we have been told during those tax rate workshops is that we are restricted in the amount that we can actually raise that rate it's the cap of 3.5%. So where is the capacity that you're talking about? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. So the INS side which is the interest and syncing side. So we can go out and do capital and bring that number up. We're capped on the M side of the three and a half%. >> All right. Thank you. >> Yeah. And this this was the conversation. So, yeah, my question and my conversation on the weekend as well too was we have the ability to go up there. What is so nice about the bond referendum is that we went out to the public and said, "Can you support this?" We just didn't enact any any kind of adjustments to their tax rate like I would argue that has been done in the past. We said can can the public support this? >> So we're we're trying to meet the whole aspect of meeting with that. But this is the uh INS side. This is the interest in syncing side. >> Yeah. May just that's something that I learned when I went down the rabbit hole of this is that like San Antonio for example when they go to the bond every five years they actually don't have to do it. They could do it without going to the people. They do it for the political aspect of Okay. If someone says, "Hey, why did you why did you do this?" The the response from the city can be, "Well, the people voted for it." They don't have to because they don't again like you said, INS you can actually increase. It's the M that you need the permission uh for. So, >> so now the the other side of this thing, and this is on that last little item over there, out of the four propositions, we can only increase the INS for the public safety and the streets. We can't do it for the public health. We can't do it for the Hamilton Hotel. So the INS is one option that we could actually do that if depending on how the conversation goes, we can fall into the INS. This is the one called pay as you go strategy. This means that essentially you're going to live within your means. That means we're going to do fewer projects and we're going to do it'll take longer to get a project done because it's based upon how much money we have coming in. And so that I I would I I don't wouldn't recommend that because we've already talked a little bit about that. It's just like a home loan. We go out and we leverage our our revenue to get something done faster. And that's what these all these projects are. So paying you pay as you go. If you if you're adverse to any type of debt, this works well. But just know that it tightens every you can't get things done as quickly as you you have to. um the service and program reductions. Uh just just stating within this thing to begin with, uh we talked a little bit about the waiverss tonight. I would argue that any outside agency funding, any incentive programs where we're not taking care of our primary services, those should be the ones that we look at first because it has no effect to our core services. That's not outside of the conversation that we did have going, is our core service doing what we're supposed to do? But I'm saying that those funds that are going out to support these other things, that should be the first thing we look at. And then then it's a prioritization within our core services as to protecting those things that are the most important. Um special assessments and fees. That's the other part that we have. We can go out and we can initiate special assessment districts. Uh chapter 372. We do street improvements, local infrastructure projects. I would recommend that we have a conversation later on. any way about street maintenance fee. U some of our sister cities do do it already and they actually charge on the utility bill a cost of the street maintenance side where everybody is paying into it. It makes a lot of sense to me in order to do that. Um I've also I've also recommended at one time or another that streets are a utility essentially. They're an infrastructure system. Let's do an enterprise fund and put the entire street department under an enterprise fund and and charge everybody accordingly based upon whatever that front footage or whatever it is. Those are the ideas that we have with the special assessments. Public improvement districts, we've talked a little bit about PIDs in the past and everything, but you know, PIDs can actually uh be established over any type of an area out there. It can fund parks, recreation centers, localized improvements. It does require property owner consent 50% of the value or the area and the assessments have to be tied to the direct benefits. So very similar to the hotel occupancy tax as well too. There is very specific uses we have to do this. The public improvement districts are a good thing. The people have to say yes we want to do that though. I mean the owners of that in that area but this is a way that we can kind of get into that. Of course, always with grants and public private partners groups, we can go farther within those. And um and then the alternative approach system uh public safety. This is just a layout of those four propositions that we have out there. These are the alternative strategies that kind of match up with what I talked about. So these are opportunities that we can kind of go into and try to figure out what what else we what else we can do if there any of that's still important. I will tell you that within our budget cycle, and I'm going to use the police department building as an example, if we do not build a brand new building and move them into a brand new building, I have to fix the old building. So, that'll that'll have an impact of of however much we have to put in there, whether the $2 per square foot's enough or whether we need more. We we'll do we'll go out and do an assessment of that building and I have to fix that building. So, that's going to have to be looked at uh within that structure. Uh the streets, I would always argue we we need to put more money into our streets. Uh the Hamilton Hotel, I think we we really have to find a way to uh make that Hamilton Hotel. One of the questions that got asked at the uh at the chamber breakfast for the >> Yeah. Can Can I Can I just one one thing on the on the police department deal? Um, yes, we can always fix that building, but I mean part part of the deal that has to be truly inserted in there is that that building is never going to be ours because we don't own the land, own the land. So, >> yeah. And just so you know, with the police department building, the long-term, the most uh beneficial long term is to build the new building because it will be designed to what they are doing today. We're converting an old building and trying to fit everything into this old building the way it's structured. And so the most coste effective method is to build a new building rather than to renovate the other one. The renovation though gets us through the emergency need. But if you look at the long-term benefits, it is the the corrective is to build a building that does what they wanted to do they needed to do. And so um >> you were saying something about the chamber or something. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. with with the chamber breakfast and now I don't remember now so um I lost >> well okay yeah the Hamilton thank you that is with the with the mayor breakfast of the mayor the question was asked whether or not that will will the Hamilton actually um can it reach a rate neutral system and our conversation was yes it can get to a rate neutral system so the the rates we'll have to raise the rates of the people that are living in there. We have to improve the downstairs where we have the commercial so that there's a value to that. And so this this improvement of the building will actually if everything worked the way it is supposed to, it'll be the last time that we have to use public dollars to salvage it. I mean, we have a HUD loan out there and it's still at about $5.5 million. We're going to go back out there and actually we're actually actually asking to borrow more to bring that building up to a usable condition, but then the rates and everything should actually sustain it. That's the that's the reason why we're and that came out of that breakfast this morning. So or that the other morning. All right. So this is the spec alternatives. Uh won't go into that much. Long-term recommendation is that we will have those all those conversations at that point in time. I I think there are a lot of different ways to get there. Uh final message on this postponing it does not eliminate the need. It only increases the cost and risk to service this degradate. We've got to do something and I think that's why we're doing what we're doing. We are recommending uh proactive transparent engagement with the community to highlight the long-term benefits of any bond referendum and the trade-offs required if alternative measures are pursued. Some of this goes back to hindsight being 2020 as well too. If we would have been tackling this stuff different 20 years ago, we may not have been in the boat that we are now. I what I really appreciate about every one of you, regardless of where your opinions are on anything, you're not willing to kick the can down. This bond referendum isn't saying that this is the only option out there. This is the most this is the best option that we had when you when you considered it today. And and so I think that's the nature of that is. And so the people that are for or against it, it they're going to say what they are going to say. I think our campaign is to make sure that we keep our information correct. Just the last thing really quickly, you see it in here. We're going to do an efficiency study. This came out of my conversations with you all in the individual meetings in February that we're going out there. We're we're asking our public to help support us a little bit more with that. I would argue that there is no difference between the city and the public. We are one people. The city operates for the public. So, please keep that in mind when we're all talking about this. We just all have different ways of getting there. But the the whole concept of this is going through each one of our uh departments, our systems, our divisions with a fine tooth comb saying, is it still meeting what we want it to meet? And um and I I would argue you've been doing that to a certain level every time time we have a budget conversation. I think we've adjusted. Uh I think this is just going to put it into it. That's this is just the purpose of the study. Uh this type of a study will take 9 to 16 months to get done. So, just so you know, I can't get it done in time for the bond referendum question, but this will be very good information as we build every budget after this one. >> So, >> thank you, Mr. Mayor Prom. Yeah, city council, I appreciate you uh everything for you. >> I'm going to stop you there. Does anybody on council have any final questions or comments before we >> I'll I'll have one on this. And like I mentioned earlier, this document is is the way it's broken down. It's going to mean the world to the to the city and the citizens here because it it really that's the the bond is not going to transform the city to get to its final destination [snorts] but it's going to this will because we don't we don't start working on the efficiencies and the deficiencies that we have and looking at them and trying to figure out how to fix a lot of the problems that we have internally. I really don't think that uh we can we can set up for the next 20 30 years. The the brick and mortar is not going to get us there. This will >> Thank you. >> We'll we'll get a copy of this out. Council >> King, you're good. >> And and and if you notice, you do have a survey in your hands as well too. So based upon this conversation, if you can take your just a moment at any point in time, just tell me. Uh it does have the tax rates on there as well too. Talks about whether or not what to do with the reserve funds. It's just a three-page high level uh from our leadership saying these are the things that are most important to me within that structure. We'll incorporate that into that mayor prom council. Thank you for your time. >> Appreciate it. >> Anyone else? Okay. Motion to second. All in favor? >> Anyone against? Motion passes this meeting.